Showdown in Ukraine. Hobbled US Turns to War to Preserve Its Waning Primacy

By Mike Whitney, March 01, 2023

The future of humanity will be decided on a battlefield in Ukraine. That’s no exaggeration. The conflict between the United States and Russia will determine whether global economic integration will expand within an evolving multi-polar system or if the “rules-based order” will succeed in crushing any opponent to its Western-centric model.

The Scholz-Macron Plan: How to Crush Serbia with Her Consent

By Živadin Jovanović, March 02, 2023

Тhis Scholz-Macron “proposal” is but an ultimatum requiring Serbia to recognize the illegal unilateral independence of the so-called Kosovo, accompanied by a list of threats of what will beset Serbia should she fail to abide.

War Propaganda Media Ignores Rising Antiwar Sentiment in America and Europe

By Kurt Nimmo, March 02, 2023

Did you know there are large anti-NATO protests ongoing in Europe? If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising, as the corporate media, stenographers of war propaganda, have ignored thousands, if not millions, of Europeans, arguing NATO is an aggressive and dangerous anachronism that must be abolished.

COVID-19 Vaccine-Injured Doctors Are Finally Starting to Speak Up… And They Are Shocked that the Medical Establishment Abandons Them.

By Dr. William Makis, March 02, 2023

‘I apologize on behalf of my profession for refusing to listen to patients with vax injuries’ – Dr. Michael Huang, physician who treated 4000 COVID patients says he’s seen hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, cancer, pregnancy loss, etc.

Canadian Foreign Policy Is Utterly Barbaric

By Mark Taliano, March 01, 2023

Canada’s foreign policy is basically an appendage of U.S foreign policy, and it is utterly barbaric. Consider the example of Syria. Syria, like Turkey, has recently suffered catastrophic earthquakes.  Whereas humanitarian aid has justifiably poured into Turkey, it barely reaches the vast majority of Syrians.

How Social Networks Became a ‘Subsidiary’ of the FBI and CIA

By Jonathan Cook, March 01, 2023

In 1975, the Church Committee managed to take a fleeting, if far from complete, snapshot of the netherworld in which agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and National Security Agency (NSA) operate.

Land Loss and the Renewed Struggle of African American Farmers

By Abayomi Azikiwe, March 01, 2023

In the years between 1910 and 2000, African American farmers and agricultural workers lost over 14 million acres of land. One of the major demands of the post-Civil War era was the allocation of land to the formerly enslaved Africans in order to establish a foundation for building a self-sufficient community.

NATO’s Destruction of Libya

By Shane Quinn, March 01, 2023

Libya is among Africa’s biggest countries and it shares a lengthy coastline with the Mediterranean Sea. It was only Gaddafi who had managed to hold together Libya and its fragile national structure, since the state’s independence in the early 1950s. Under Gaddafi, though the country was not a paradise, Libya enjoyed by some distance the best living standards in Africa.

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

By Colin Todhunter, March 02, 2023

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

Commission Reveals that Trudeau Government Lied About Nature of Truckers Protests in Ottawa Last February to Justify Invocation of Emergencies Act

By Ray McGinnis, March 01, 2023

OPS, OPP, RCMP, Canada Border Service Agency and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) were pointing away from ideologically motivated violent extremist (IMVE) threats. CSIS reported on the afternoon of February 14, “Downtown Ottawa…was actually quite festive—not threatening to a passerby.” CSIS entered as evidence before the Commission that they “had no concern with IMVEs in Ottawa.”

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The increasingly shabby treatment of former US marine Daniel Edmund Duggan by Australian authorities in the service of their US masters has again shown that the Australian passport is not quite worth the material it’s printed on.

In January this year, Sydney’s Downing Centre Local Court heard that Australian Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus accepted a request from the US before Christmas to extradite Duggan.  Duggan is no longer an Australian citizen, but Canberra has often regarded this as irrelevant when it comes to the US-Australian alliance.

In a 2017 indictment unsealed on December 9, Duggan is accused by prosecutors of using his expertise to train Chinese fighter pilots to land on aircraft carriers along with eight co-conspirators working at a South African flight school.  It is also alleged that the US State Department warned him to apply for written authorisation to train a foreign air force in 2008, which is a requirement of the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR).  The allegation here is that he went ahead without securing authorisation, thereby breaching trafficking and arms control laws between 2009 and 2012.

Duggan has been held since October. In the finest traditions of Australian justice, he is being confined in conditions that suggest presumed guilt.  His lawyer, Dennis Miralis, has stated at various points with some exasperation that his client is “presumed innocent under US law”.  Duggan’s wife, Saffrine, insists that her husband is “a victim of the United States government’s political dispute with China.”

This presumption has also been sorely tested by Duggan’s detention in a two-by-four-metre cell at the Silverwater jail, which also houses convicted terrorists.  Miralis can only assume that the New South Wales Department of Directions has been all too willing to follow instructions delivered from on high.

Earlier this month lawyers for Duggan made a submission to the UN Human Rights Committee challenging these conditions.  Their submission argues that the authorities have failed to protect Duggan from “inhumane and degrading” treatment, failed to segregate him from convicted inmates, violated his right to adequate facilities to enable him to prepare his legal defence, and denied his right to confidential communications.

The submission also references the assessment of a clinical psychologist who visited Duggan in the Silverwater prison.  “The psychologist described Mr Duggan’s conditions as ‘extreme’ and ‘inhumane’.  He advised that Mr Duggan was at risk of a major depressive disorder.”  Another condition causing him even further discomfort is benign prostatic hyperplasia.

Regarded as nothing more than contingent paperwork, citizenship is feeble in prosecutions of Australians by other allied countries.  To the contrary, Canberra has often aided and abetted the undermining of citizens’ rights with a snotty “good riddance” attitude, glad to be rid of supposedly bad apples in the cart.

During the poorly conceived “War on Terror”, a tellingly ghastly response to the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, Australian citizens found themselves captured, rendered and left to decay in detention.  Such names should forever be taught in schools.  They include the Egyptian-Australian national Mamdouh Habib, and David Hicks.

Habib’s arrest in October 2001 in Pakistan and subsequent detention for three years on suspicion of having prior knowledge of the September 11 terrorist attacks, was a fantasy encouraged by both US and Australian personnel.  Despite the US expressing the view in January 2005 that it would not lay charges against Habib, the Australian Attorney-General and Minister for Foreign Affairs were still adamant that Habib had prior knowledge of the attacks, had spent time in Afghanistan, and trained with al-Qaida.

Hicks was sent to the purgatory of Guantánamo Bay in January 2002 after being captured in Afghanistan by forces of the Northern Alliance.  He then became something of a judicial guinea pig, the victim of a military commission system initially deemed by the US Supreme Court to be unconstitutional, unfair and illegal.

What was particularly striking here were the instances of premature adjudication and Australian calls that the US authorities do all they could to try and convict Hicks.  Prime Minister John Howard worried that Hicks, were he not to face a military commission trial in the US, would escape charges in Australia.  He did not “regard that as a satisfactory outcome, given the severity of the allegations that have been made against him.”

Foreign Minister Alexander Downer even dared to claim that Hicks be grateful for not having a longer spell in US captivity.  “He would have been there for years if it hadn’t been for our intervention.”

The subsequent Plea Agreement reached in March 2007, under which Hicks pleaded guilty for “providing material support for terrorism”, saw him receive a seven-year sentence, most of it suspended.  The remaining seven months of the sentence was served in Australia, which the UN Human Rights Committee held to be a “disproportionate restriction of the right to liberty” in violation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.  The HRC also noted that Hicks “had no other choice than to accept the Plea Agreement that was put to him” were he to escape the human rights violations he faced in Camp X-Ray.

On February 18, 2015, the United States Court of Military Commission Review set aside Hicks’ guilty plea and sentence.  The judges noted that the charge of providing material support for terrorism should be vacated, given the Supreme Court ruling in 2014 that being tried for such an offence by a military commission was an “ex post facto violation”.

To crown this appalling resume of achievements is the Australian government’s grossly feeble response to Julian Assange’s continued persecution at the hands of the US Department of Justice in the United Kingdom.  Facing a preposterously broad application of the Extradition Act of 1917, thereby imperilling national security journalism, Australian calls to drop the case have been weak and lukewarm at best.  The trend was set by Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose response to Cablegate in 2010 was to presume Assange was guilty for having breached some regulation, despite failing to identify a single law to that effect.

Given this inglorious record, the Duggan case has an all too familiar feel to it.  The training of Chinese pilots by veteran personnel from a Western country would hardly have raised a murmur when relations between Washington and Beijing were less acrimonious.  Hicks also found himself in the historical crosshairs, foolishly wishing to throw in his lot with forces that were once the anti-communist darlings of the US intelligence community.

The question here is what Australian citizens can do when providing services for foreign countries.  Serving in ultra-nationalist Ukrainian regiments, or moonlighting in the Israeli Defence Force, is unlikely to land you in trouble.  But proffering aeronautical expertise in a private capacity while earning some cash on the side?  How frightful.

If the fevered assessments from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation are anything to go by, the only thing missing in Duggan’s extradition is the welcome card for the US DOJ.  ASIO Chief Mike Burgess, in his annual threat assessment, was eager to justify his agency’s bloated budget.  “More hostile foreign intelligence services, more spies, more targeting, more harm, more ASIO investigations, more ASIO disruptions. From where I sit, it feels like hand-to-hand combat.”

Burgess shows a striking inability to understand why much of this is overegging paranoia.  Academics, business figures and bureaucrats, in suggesting he ease up on ASIO’s foreign interference and espionage operations, could only offer him “flimsy” justifications, such as “All countries spy on each other” and “We were going to make the information public anyway”.

Facing such a jaundiced worldview, Duggan’s future is bleak.  And now that Australia has willingly committed itself to Armageddon in lock-step with US forces in any conflict with the PRC, Canberra is doing everything it can to be an efficient detainer for its enormous and not always considerate friend.

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

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The Scholz-Macron Plan: How to Crush Serbia with Her Consent

The Illegal Unilateral Independence of the so-called Kosovo

 

By Živadin Jovanović

Живадин Јовановић


ЕУ каже да је статусно неутрална. У сваком случају, ЕУ није објавила да је напустила статус неутралности. Генерална скупштина УН је септембра 2010. поздравила спремност ЕУ да „олакшава дијалог страна“, полазећи управо од декларисане статусне неутралности ЕУ, и ништа више од тога. Та улога „олакшивача“ дијалога довела је до тога да се, најпре, појави Шолц-Макронов  «Предлог основног споразума“, да се потом тај «предлог» опрогласи за «нови преговарачки оквир ЕУ, уз подршку САД» да би се испоставило да је у суштини реч о ултиматуму Србији да призна илегалну, једнострану сепаратистичку творевину као себи равног суседа са којим ће сарађивати поштујући  суверенитет, интегритет и државне симболе суседа, да «се неће противити његовом чланству у било којој међународној организацији», укључујући и у ОУН. Иза тих «очекивања» ЕУ и Приштине  следи листа претњи шта ће се десити уколико Србија то не прихвати.

Истина је, дакле, да је ЕУ на драстичан начин, напустила статусну неутралност, стала уз илегално једнострно отцепљење тзв. Косова и да је најновији папир (когод да га је написао, придружио му се или га «само» подржао) доказ да ЕУ, без објаве, излази из мандата Генералне скупштине Уједињених нација. Убеђен сам да је питање веома важно за Србију и да ничему не служи да се понашамо као да је таква «еволуција» улоге ЕУ нормална по било ком основу – правном, политичком, моралном, цивилизацијском. Јер, уколико се не поштују правно обавезујуће одлуке СБ УН као што је то резолуција 1244, нити политички ставови Генералне скупштине о мандату ЕУ за „олакшавање дијалога страна“, имамо одговорност и обавезу према себи, према «orbi et urbi” да кажемо да то није нормално, да није добро за међусобно поверење и да није прихватљиво за Србију.

 Ако смо сагласни да се ради о животним и дугорочним интересима Србије, ако смо уверени у принципијелност, основаност и исправност наших оцена и ставова,  а јесмо, па ако се и поред тога и због тога, било ко љути, онда једино можемо рећи да нам је жао, али да се због тога не повлачимо нити одустајемо од принципа, најмање од интереса који су засновани на тим принципима. Не смемо се повести за тренутним стањем односа са ЕУ или било каквим обећањима тзв. бенефита, нити за краткорочним интересима. Поготову што је и сама ЕУ у дубоким превирањима, Европа и свет такође.

Морамо објективно распознавати смерове стратешких токова а оцене на основу којих  пројектујемо стратегију и путеве остваривања дугорочних интереса, темељити на сопственим искуствима, лекцијама историје, поузданим партнерствима и ослонцима. Шире трендове од којих се не можемо изоловти морамо сагледавати, не из једног, већ из свих важнијих стратешких углова. Бојим се да сада то није случај зато што смо, као земља и народ, у дужем времену изложени претераном утицају једностране пропаганде Запада, њихових извора, погледа и интереса. То није добро ни онда када то долази као резултат добрих намера, а може бити погубно када стиже упарено са стратегијом хегемонизма и доминације.

Само поштовање основних принципа међународног права, Повеље ОУН као и целовито спровођење резолуције СБ УН 1244 представљају кључ за мир, безбедност и бољи живот свих народа на Балкану, укључујући српски и албански народ.

Ничега од тога нема у тзв. Шолц-Макроновом плану представљеном јавности као некакав „Нови преговарачки оквир ЕУ подржан од стране САД“, или као „Основни споразум“ Србије и тзв. Косова. 

Шолц-Макронов тзв. план није никакав оквир за преговоре, праведно или одрживо решење. То је план за дробљење Србије. И то, ако је могуће, уз пристанак Србије.

Ако је тзв. Шолц-Макронов план било какав „кључ“ онда је, то најмање кључ за мир, стабилност и напредак билокојег региона, народа или Европе, као целине. То је план за тоталну доминацију НАТО, на челу са САД, над српским народом и Балкану, за припрему Балкана као стратешког положаја у  глобалном рату против Русије и Кине. То је план-млин за настављање дробљења Србије и целог српског народа на Балкану. Уколико би у том плану било иоле добрих намера, они би се бар потрудили да помену гаранције Савета безбедности УН  према Србији које су њихови претходници дали 10. јуна 1999. године. Да су принципијелни, да стварно поштују принципе и међународно право, да воде предвидиву политику, као што то од других очекују, зашто би онда бежали од УН и од одлука Савета безбедности! Пошто нису, Србија треба да остане верна себи, свом народу, својим прецима, историјском наслеђу и непролазним тековинама цивилизације.

Зашто им је била била неопходна Мелонијева – да Макрон ублажи на баш часну улогу у „двојцу“ са Шолцем, или  да тако проширени ојачају ЕУ димензију „плана“, или да Рим, иако једини сусед, не остане без заслуга за договорену инкарнацију Велике Албаније? У том трију, без обзира на САД као редитеља, ипак, недостаје Риши Сунак у улози Нелвила Чемберлена, како би реприза „спашавања мира“   1938, у Бертсгардену, била бар приближно уверљиво као и премијера пре 85 година.

„Бриселским споразумом“ од 2013. Србија је повукла свој правни и уставни поредак и институције на Северу Покрајине. За узврат је обезбедила ЗСО са извршниом надлежностима, истина, само на папиру. Изгледа да противници Србије које она третира као „једину алтернативу“ смерају да сада у Брислу, након 10 година затезања „конопца до пуцања“, принуде Србију да поново плати формирање ЗСО, макар и по тзв. уставу тзв. Косова, тако што ће се сагласити да је Шолц-Макронов „план“, или „споразум“, добра основа за настављање преговора који ће водити закључивању „свеобухватног правно обавезујућег споразума о нормализацији“. То да „нормализација“, значи међусобно признање, успостављање „добросуседских односа“,  поштовање  реципроцитета, суверенитета и територијалног интегритета страна страна“, чланство тзв. Косова у међународне организације, укључујући УН, све то и много другог у истом смислу, ће саопштити САД, ЕУ, НАТО и Приштина. Ако прихвати то што су јој спремили они који одувек Србији само такве ствари спремају, она би могла и другачије интерпретира своју сагласност, само то не би много мењало ток ствари на штету Србије.

Врло је ризично уздати се у гаранције оних који их до сада нису поштовали, а не инсистирати на постојећим гаранцијама Савета безбедности УН и оних који другачије мисле, који подржавају суверенитет и територијални интегритет Србије. То је готово 2/3 света и то оног чија релевантност у глобалним односима расте, не опада. Притисци и тежина ситуације у којој се Србија налази нису оправдање за удаљавање од права, принципа и постојећих гаранција. Напротив. 26.03.2023.9

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НСПМ (Нова српска политичка мисао), 26.фебруар 2023.

Живадин Йованович является президентом Белградского форума “За мир равных”. Он является постоянным автором Global Research.

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The Scholz-Macron Plan: How to Crush Serbia with Her Consent

March 2nd, 2023 by Živadin Jovanović

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Original in Serbian

Шолц-Макронов план: за дробљење Србије 

By Živadin Jovanović, March 02, 2023

The EU claims to be neutral [Kosovo] status-wise. Or at least, the EU has not declared parting ways with its status neutrality. Back in September 2019, the UN General Assembly welcomed “the readiness of the European Union to facilitate a process of dialogue between the parties”, on the basis of the EU’s declared status-neutrality. Тhis Scholz-Macron “proposal” is but an ultimatum requiring Serbia to recognize the illegal unilateral independence of the so-called Kosovo, accompanied by a list of threats of what will beset Serbia should she fail to abide. In addition, this ultimatum is declared to be the position of the entire EU. Its true nature is not altered by being presented to the Serbian public as “a US-backed, EU’s new negotiating framework”. An ultimatum will be an ultimatum, whatever the packaging.

We need to vocalize the truth: firstly, that the EU has drastically abandoned its status-neutrality and secondly, that the latest paper (whoever by written, joined, or backed) is proof of the European Union silently stepping out and beyond of the mandate given to it by the United Nations General Assembly.

I have no doubts whatsoever that this matter is of utmost importance for Serbia, and that it is a fool’s errand trying to act as if this is business as usual. Because if faced with the scenario where the legally binding decision of the UN Security Council are not observed, and the UN General Assembly political guidance on mandating the EU to “facilitate the dialogue between the parties” are disregarded, we have responsibility and duty to say out loud that this is not normal, not beneficial for mutual trust, and not acceptable for Serbia. Rather, it should not be normal or acceptable for any bona fide state member to the United Nations.

If we agree that the ongoing events concern the vital and long-term interests of Serbia, if we are confident that our positions and views are righteous, principled, and well-based – which we are – and if any party gets angered by this, we regret but nonetheless we have to stand our ground, and not retreat. We must not get carried away by a current state of play, or get swayed by any short-term interests. We must discern strategic trends and articulate our positions based on our own experiences, lessons taught by history, and overall trends as evaluated from all important aspects instead of any single angle.

I am afraid that, as a country and a nation, we have been continuously exposed to an excessive influence of the West’s one-sided propaganda, views, and interests. This cannot be good for us, not even if stemming from good intentions; when creeping in as a precursor to the strategy of hegemony and domination, it can be plainly disastrous.

The one true key to peace, security, and a better life for all nations in the Balkans, including the Serbian and Albanian people, lies in the observance of the fundamental principles of international law, the UN Charter, and the consistent implementation of UNSC Resolution 1244.

None of the above is to be found in the so-called Scholz-Macron plan, presented to the public as a sort of “EU’s new negotiating framework, US-backed” or a “Basic Agreement” between Serbia and the so-called Kosovo.

The Scholz-Macron plan is not a framework for negotiations, or for any just or sustainable solution. This is a plan to crush Serbia. If possible, with the consent of Serbia.

If the Scholz-Macron plan is the key to anything, the least of all is it a key to peace, stability and progress of any region, nation, or Europe as a whole. It is the plan for the total domination of the USA-led NATO over the Serbian people and the Balkans, and for setting the Balkans as the strategic stage in the global war against Russia and China. It is the juggernaut plant to keep crushing Serbia and the entire Serbian nation in the Balkans. If their plan had had any good intentions, they would have made an effort to at least refer to the UN Security Council guarantees vis-à-vis Serbia, given by their predecessors on June 10, 1999. If they were principled, if they really respected principles and international law, if they pursued a predictable politics as they expect others to do, why would they stay clear from the United Nations and the decisions taken by the Security Council! Since they were not, and did not, Serbia should remain true to herself, to her people, ancestors, historical heritage and enduring achievements belonging to the world civilization.

Why did they need Meloni? To help Macron water down his not-so-honorable role in ‘duet’ with Scholz? Or to jointly bolster the EU dimension of the ‘Plan’? Or maybe help Rome, as a neighbor, claim a piece of merit for the connived incarnation of Greater Albania? Apart from the USA as mastermind, the trio still misses Rishi Sunak to reprise the role of Neville Chamberlain, so to make rerun of the 1938 “saving the peace” in Berchtesgaden at least as convincing as its premiere was 85 years ago.

Under the “Brussels Agreement” of 2013, Serbia withdrew her legal and constitutional order and institutions in the north of the Province. In turn, albeit in paper only, Serbia ensured the Community of Serbian Municipalities (the CSM) with executive powers. Now, after ten years of ‘stretching the rope’ to the point of snapping, it looks like Serbia’s adversaries, the same one that Serbian leadership swears are the ‘only alternative’, are set on forcing Serbia to pay once more for the establishment of the CSM, that is, an incapacitated CSM fashioned pursuant to the so-called Kosovo Constitution. For this meagre gain, Serbia is expected to agree that the Scholz-Macron plan/agreement is a good basis for the resumption of negotiations that will lead to, and result in, the conclusion of a “comprehensive and legally binding agreement on normalization”.

Then, the USA, the EU, NATO and Priština will proclaim and explain that ‘normalization’ means mutual recognition, establishment of ‘good neighborly relations’, respecting reciprocity, sovereignty and territorial integrity of ‘parties’ and the so-called Kosovo’s full membership in international organizations including the UN, and the like. If Serbia does accept what was devised by those always brewing a same plot for her, she might as well articulate her consent in a different way, but this in itself would not alter the unfolding of events much to the detriment of Serbia.

It is very dicey to rely on the guarantees given by those already proven to have never kept their word, instead of insisting on the existing guarantees given by the UN Security Council and by those who have differing worldviews and who support the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Serbia. The latter comprise almost 2/3 of the world, whose relevance in global relations is increasing, rather than decreasing. The pressures and gravity of the situation in which Serbia finds herself are not and cannot serve as justification for shifting away from the rights, principles and existing guarantees. Quite the contrary.

*

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Translated by Branislava Mitrovic

Živadin Jovanović is President of the Belgrade Forum for a World of Equals. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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***

Neuroticism is “a tendency toward anxiety, depression, self-doubt, and other negative feelings,” as succinctly defined by Psychology Today,

One thing you notice living abroad in certain (not all) non-Western countries, coming from the West, is the neuroticism differential.

Westerners in Bangkok, for instance, get super mad when the bus doesn’t come on time. To cope, they verbally berate minimum-wage workers who have no control over the matter whatsoever. In contrast, the locals shrug their shoulders, chalk it up to fate or whatever, and take the punches as they come.

One comes away with the awful impression that the bus tardiness is not, in the ultimate analysis, the source of the farang’s consternation (“farang” being local jargon for “white foreigner”).

Carl Jung, famed psychoanalyst of posterity, agrees.

Per the video, the basic Jungian dilemma goes like this:

  • An individual encounters a problem/crisis.
  • The problem or crisis remains unresolved due to an inability or unwillingness to confront it: “If we follow the history of a neurosis with attention, we regularly find a critical moment when some problem emerged that was evaded.” –Carl Jung
  • The mental discomfort caused by the unresolved problem or crisis is subconsciously repressed by displacing emotions, self-medicating or engaging in ritual distraction. In one case study, Jung notes of a subject: “By suppressing disagreeable thoughts she created something like a psychic vacuum which, as usually happens, gradually became filled with anxiety.”

“I am not altogether pessimistic about neurosis… Neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure…It is an attempt of the self-regulating psychic system to restore the balance, in no way different from the function of dreams – only rather more forceful and drastic.” -Carl Jung, The Symbolic Life

Unfortunately for the prospects of overcoming neurosis, distraction in the civilized world is easier than ever.

Via Computers in Human Behaviors Reports:

“The pervasiveness of the Internet has raised concern about its (problematic) use and the potentially negative impact on people’s health. Neuroticism has been identified as one potential risk factor of Internet and other online addictions… High levels of neuroticism significantly correlated with all measures of problematic Internet activities.”

Another important factor to consider, offered in the above video (which might speak to the modern world’s neuroticism pandemic) is the helicopter-parenting phenomenon. The child remains an infant forever — never exposed to danger or challenge.

As a result of never getting out from under the watchful eye of the parent, the sheltered child simply doesn’t learn through trial and error – the only way to really do it — how to face difficulty and come out on the other side stronger and wiser:

“Though it is a misfortune for a child to have no parents, it is equally dangerous for him to be too closely bound to his family. An excessively strong attachment to the parent is a severe handicap in his later adaptation to the world, for a growing human being is not destined to remain forever the child of his parents.” -Carl Jung

Lastly, the COVID-19 hysteria and lockdowns didn’t do any wonders in terms of combatting neurosis either. Via CNBC:

“In 2021 and 2022, the 30 and younger group experienced a significant increase in neuroticism, which is a tendency to see the world as distressing or unsafe, and a decrease in agreeableness and conscientiousness.”

What we have here is a toxic cocktail of negative social trends and influences that, taken together, seem to dramatically increase neurosis.

Everyone is neurotic to some degree. As Psychology Today annotates in its definition of neurosis, “all personality traits, including neuroticism, exist on a spectrum—some people are just much more neurotic than others.”

So no one is ever going to shirk neurosis totally. But there are ways to conquer it so that it doesn’t hijack your life: face down your fears head-on. Get out of your own headspace. Brave the unknown. Get outside. Ditch the social media. It’s the only way forward.

*

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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. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Locals, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Did you know there are large anti-NATO protests ongoing in Europe? If you didn’t, it wouldn’t be surprising, as the corporate media, stenographers of war propaganda, have ignored thousands, if not millions, of Europeans, arguing NATO is an aggressive and dangerous anachronism that must be abolished.

Millions of Europeans also demand their governments stop sending military hardware to Ukraine and get serious about a negotiated peace and the prevention of WWIII and nuclear annihilation.

As to be expected, coverage of the demonstrations was virtually nonexistent in the corporate war propaganda media. Reuters reported on the protests, but you will need to get out your wallet or scale a paywall to read what I can only assume is a downplay of growing outrage in Europe.

Politico ignored the protests and focused on Belgians expressing “solidarity with Ukraine for the one-year anniversary of the invasion by Russia.”

The same message was sent out by the CIA’s “RadioFreeEurope” and “RadioLiberty” (sic). “A long Ukrainian flag was spread across at the main Republic Square as people laid flowers in memory of the victims of war in front of the Ukrainian Embassy,” reports the Cold War relic.

I don’t believe the memory of 14,000 ethnic Russians slaughtered in the Donbas and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine by neo-nazi thugs figured into this solemn remembrance.

The answer is obvious. In the 1950s, the CIA turned corporate media into its “Mighty Wurlitzer” of propaganda. “The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media,” admitted William Colby, former CIA Director, cited by Dave Mcgowan in his book, “Derailing Democracy: The America the Media Don’t Want You to See.”

“By the early 1950s,” writes former Village Voice reporter Deborah Davis in “Katharine the Great,” the CIA “owned… respected members of the New York Times, Newsweek, CBS and other communications vehicles, plus stringers, four to six hundred in all, according to a former CIA analyst.”

Alex Constantine writes,

Most consumers of the corporate media were – and are – unaware of the effect that the salting of public opinion has on their own beliefs. A network anchorman in time of national crisis is an instrument of psychological warfare in the MOCKINGBIRD media. He is a creature from the national security sector’s chamber of horrors. For this reason consumers of the corporate press have reason to examine their basic beliefs about government and life in the parallel universe of these United States.

Lies of omission are a crucial element of the national security state’s “psychological warfare” against rational thought and the desire for peace. For over a year, the corporate media, long ago twisted into a propaganda tool by the state, have lied repeatedly, in serial fashion, about the nature of the conflict in Ukraine.

In America, antiwar protests were similarly ignored by the corporate war propaganda media.

As if on cue, blue-checkers—such as Ford Fischer, an “independent journalist” with White House press credentials—have denounced the effort to end the conflict as a white supremacist conspiracy.

In addition, if you are against war, it means you’re probably a commie.

Finally, according to blue-checker Zachary Petrizzo of The Daily Beast, many Rage Against the War Machine participants were Putin lovers.

“Objective analyses of the war in Ukraine are hard to come by through the thick fog of war propaganda,” write Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies.

But we should pay attention when a series of senior Western military leaders, active and retired, make urgent calls for diplomacy to reopen peace negotiations, and warn that prolonging and escalating the war is risking a full-scale war between Russia and the U.S. that could escalate into nuclear war

*

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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.

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***

‘I apologize on behalf of my profession for refusing to listen to patients with vax injuries’ – Dr. Michael Huang, physician who treated 4000 COVID patients says he’s seen hundreds of COVID-19 vaccine injuries, cancer, pregnancy loss, etc.

Click here to view the video

Vaccine injured physicians are starting to speak out…

Dr. Melissa Halvorson Smith MD

Dr. Melissa Halvorson Smith is a gynecologist from North Dakota and heads the Women’s Health Center. She was injured by 2 doses of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. In her words (click here):

Dr. Smith has been shocked by the horrible treatment she has received from her physician colleagues as a COVID-19 vaccine injured patient.

Dr. Shmuel Shapira MD

Dr. Shmuel Shapira MD MPH (Col) led Israel’s effort to develop a coronavirus vaccine and was the Head of the Department of Military Medicine of Hebrew University Faculty of Medicine and IDF Medical Corps (read more here):

“Professor Shmuel Shapira might be the most senior ranking medical-scientist in the world to openly criticize the COVID vaccines.”

On May 13, 2022, Dr.Shapira said: “I received 3 vaccinations (Pfizer), I was physically injured in a very significant way as many others were injured

Dr. Kerryn Phelps MD

Dr. Kerryn Phelps is the former President of the Australian Medical Association (AMA). She and her partner were COVID-19 vaccine injured. She is the highest ranking Australian medical doctor to admit to being COVID-19 vaccine injured (read more here):

“This is an issue that I have witnessed first-hand with my wife who suffered a severe neurological reaction to her first Pfizer vaccine within minutes, including burning face and gums, paraesethesiae, and numb hands and feet”

“I continue to observe the devastating effects a year-and-a-half later with the addition of fatigue and additional neurological symptoms including nerve pains, altered sense of smell, visual disturbance and musculoskeletal inflammation. The diagnosis and causation has been confirmed by several specialists who have told me that they have seen ‘a lot’ of patients in a similar situation.”

“Dr. Phelps revealed she was also diagnosed with a vaccine injury from her second dose of Pfizer in July 2021, “with the diagnosis and causation confirmed by specialist colleagues”.

“In my case the injury resulted in dysautonomia with intermittent fevers and cardiovascular implications including breathlessness, inappropriate sinus tachycardia and blood pressure fluctuations.”

“Dr. Phelps said both reactions were reported to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) “but never followed up”.

She revealed she had spoken with other doctors “who have themselves experienced a serious and persistent adverse event” but that “vaccine injury is a subject that few in the medical profession have wanted to talk about”.

Dr. Danice Hertz MD

Dr. Danice Hertz, a 64 year old physician was “horribly ill” and “incapacitated” after getting Pfizer’s COVID-19 mRNA vaccine. Her story is here (click here):

“Dr.Hertz, a gastroenterologist who retired in October, got her first and only dose of Pfizer’s vaccine on Dec. 23, 2020”

“Within 30 minutes, I started experiencing adverse effects”

“Hertz said within 24 hours she developed neurological symptoms, including severe paresthesias in her face, tongue, scalp, chest wall and limbs, as well as tremors, twitching, weakness, headaches, tinnitus and imbalance.”

“I saw six neurologists, five allergists, three rheumatologists, and no one had a clue,” Hertz said.”

“Dr. Danice Hertz said people like her who have been seriously injured by COVID vaccines are being dismissed or ignored, and because health officials won’t research their injuries and potential treatments, they have nowhere to turn.”

“After taking the Pfizer injection Danice got neuropathy, mast cell activation, pericarditis and many other symptoms. She has now seen 22 different doctors and still hasn’t recovered.” (click here)

Dr. Stephen Wright MD 

Dr. Stephen Wright (UK) died at age 32, from blood clots caused by the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

Mark Steyn conducted several interviews with the family:

My Take…

It is crucial for doctors who have been COVID-19 vaccine injured to speak up and let the world know what has happened to them and how they have been treated by their colleagues and the medical establishment in general, once they became COVID-19 vaccine injured patients.

It is also important for everyone, vaccinated or unvaccinated to be kind to these doctors as they share their painful stories with us. Their voices will be crucial in turning the tide on the COVID-19 vaccine propaganda, gaslighting and censorship.

*

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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***

With Russia’s military operation in Ukraine evidently destroying NATO’s ambitions, Washington is becoming increasingly frustrated that Moscow has not been isolated. Russia did not economically collapse, as was predicted in the West, partly because of the robust and longstanding relationship it has with India. It is unsurprising that in only a matter of days, Germany and the US have pressured India to capitulate their sovereignty and serve Western interests instead of their own.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz sought assurances from India on February 25 that it would not only refuse to block, but also support efforts to isolate Russia. Following his talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the chancellor refused to reveal what exactly they discussed in relation to Ukraine.

Although the contents of the discussion were cited as being confidential in nature, it is likely that Scholz did not want to humiliatingly admit that India refused to step back from its tried and tested relationship with Russia. Scholz did reveal though that he and Modi had discussed the war in Ukraine “very extensively and very intensely.”

It is noted that this trip was Scholz’s first official visit to India but his fourth meeting with Modi since taking office in 2021. Although they also discussed ways to boost economic cooperation, including through a free trade agreement between the European Union and India, it cannot be overlooked that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in New Delhi only days after Scholz.

Days before arriving in the Indian capital, Blinken said that countries like India, which have not joined the West in denouncing Russia’s military operation, were on a supposed trajectory away from alignment with Moscow. He stressed that the process would not occur “in one fell swoop.”

“There are countries that have long-standing, decades-long relationships with Russia, with the Soviet Union before, that are challenging to break off in one fell swoop. It’s not flipping a light switch, it’s moving an aircraft carrier,” Blinken said in an interview with The Atlantic on February 24.

However, for all of Blinken’s claims that India is moving away from Moscow, there is no actual suggestion that this is occurring. The US and India cooperate through the QUAD format, a naval bloc aimed against China, but this has not meant India’s submission to Washington, as the Americans evidently anticipated.

Although India has faced sustained and continued pressure from the West to distance itself from Moscow, New Delhi has thus far resisted, citing its longstanding ties with Russia and its economic and oil interests. It cannot be overlooked that Russia has been India’s largest weapons supplier since the Cold War-era, particularly since the US traditionally favoured Pakistan.

However, Washington in recent years has looked to turn New Delhi away from its main military supplier (but without wanting to adjust its policy to Pakistan).

“India for decades had Russia at the core of providing military equipment to it and its defences, but what we’ve seen over the last few years is a trajectory away from relying on Russia and moving into partnership with us and other countries,” Blinken said, without mentioning the fact that India is moving towards home-grown production, something that Russia is playing a key role in.

None-the-less, it is expected that Blinken, in the same way as Scholz, will try and convince India to change course regarding its ties with Russia.

As Bloomberg reported, citing Kpler’s lead crude analyst, Viktor Katona, “India purchased almost no Russian oil a year ago, but has become a crucial market after the US and European Union imposed sanctions on Moscow. The Asian country imported around 1.85 million barrels a day from Russia in February, close to its potential maximum of about 2 million barrels a day.”

The cold hard facts are that Moscow and New Delhi have a longstanding relationship that India will not break just for the sake of serving Western interests. Beyond the time-tested security ties, Russia offers energy hungry India the best deal for oil, something that will not be sacrificed because of a far-off war in Eastern Europe.

According to QUARTZ, India has in less than a year saved an estimated $3.6 billion by increasing Russian oil imports. This is a significant amount for a country that depends on imports to meet 85% of its petroleum needs.

It is recalled that in November 2022, Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar said “Russia has been a steady and time-tested partner. Any objective evaluation of our relationship over many decades would confirm that it has actually served both our countries very, very well.”

With this statement, he effectively confirmed a continuance of the current policy despite sustained pressure – a pressure that Scholz and Blinken are the latest to apply. They are however also the latest that were unable to convince New Delhi to change its policy regarding Russia.

*

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

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***

A year ago Canadian mainstream media and politicians described an unruly mob headed for Ottawa. 

On January 26, 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told Canadians there was a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” coming to Ottawa in a “so-called freedom convoy.”[1]

A few protesters arrived in Ottawa on January 28, with the majority coming the next day.

On Valentine’s Day, Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to crush the protest. Bank accounts of hundreds of protesters were frozen. After the police crackdown on protesters, Bill Blair, the Minister of Emergency Preparedness, said it was “textbook” police action: “It restored my pride in my profession.”

Blair continued, “what I witnessed [was]…an entirely professional proportional, measured response. They moved slowly, methodically, respectfully….I’ve never seen it done better than what I witnessed here in the City of Ottawa as they…peacefully as possible, brought this to a resolution.”

On February 22 the Liberal-NDP coalition ratified the invocation of the Emergencies Act. But a day later the Act was rescinded. The Emergencies Act legislation of 1988 required that, on the occasion of its use, an inquiry must be held to determine if it was justified.

What Sparked the Protest?

Truck drivers had been designated essential service workers transporting groceries, hospital supplies, factory parts and other critical goods. In March 2021, Trudeau had called them “heroes.” But in November 2021, the government announced that the truck driver exemption from vaccination would end, requiring proof of vaccination in order to cross the Canada-USA border. The Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Canadian Manufacturing Coalition, Canadian Trucking Alliance and Private Motor Truck Council of Canada were among those urging the government to reverse policy.

The Private Motor Truck Council of Canada (PMTC) warned that “over 31 thousand cross-border truckers will leave the industry.” The Canadian Trucking Alliance had similar estimates of drivers who would exit the industry. The PMTC estimated that, if the government postponed its regulation until at least April 15, 2022, only “22,800 drivers would exit the cross-border industry if given the extra time” to decide whether to get vaccinated.[2]

Image is from Uncancelled

The government did not produce any statistics proving truck drivers, who travel alone in their trucks, were a source of Covid-19 infection in Canada. One could infer, by the government’s hard line, there was a solid basis for fearing truck drivers were spreading Covid-19 when crossing the international border, though not when they traveled interprovincially.

When asked in January 2022 by the House of Commons Health Committee, “Neither Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos nor Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam were able to provide any data about COVID-19 and truck drivers.” [3]

It was not enough for the Public Health Agency of Canada to advise all truck drivers who were ill with any symptoms to stay home. It was not enough to simply require truck drivers to take a PCR rapid test before a trip across the border, allowing drivers who tested negative to proceed. It did not matter that truck drivers were not interacting with retirees or seniors in assisted-living facilities, those most vulnerable. Or that the overall infection fatality rate for Covid-19 was about 0.25% with 99.75% of the population who got Covid surviving.[3]

The new border restrictions for truck drivers at the USA-Canada and USA-Mexico border were outliers. In Africa, Europe, South America, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, truck drivers were deemed essential service workers. Concerned about supply chains and economic well-being, other nations gave truck drivers the same exemptions that were suddenly denied them at Canada-U.S. border points.

The Official Story

As truck drivers headed from the British Columbia coast on January 23, 2022, a media narrative instantly emerged. It depicted protesters headed for Ottawa as the worst of the worst. On January 25, a CTV headline screamed: “‘So many angry people’: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory.” CTV interviewed Kurt Phillips, founder of Anti-Racist Canada, who warned that he had

“seen people online calling the trucker convoy Canada’s version of the U.S. Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, for the truckers to ram their trucks into Parliament, and people encouraging the hanging of politicians.”[4]

The Convoy was next framed as an inspiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin. “Russian actors” had instigated the convoy. On January 28, CBC reporter Nil Köksal mused,

“Given Canada’s support of Ukraine in this current crisis with Russia… there is a concern that Russian actors could be continuing to fuel things as this protest grows, perhaps even instigating it from the outside.”

The CBC quietly retracted the statement on February 4th.[5]

On January 29, CTV journalist Mackenzie Gray posted a photo of an individual carrying a Confederate flag. Gray tweeted above the photo, “We’ve got our first [C]onfederate flag of the day here on Parliament Hill.” Florida Governor Ron Desantis’s press secretary, Christina Pushaw, responded on Twitter to Gray’s tweet, observing “You claim to be a journalist, so why don’t you interview him? You can ask him who he is—and why he is flying a Confederate flag. If you just post a picture like this with no context, it looks like you’re implying the entire convoy are racists. How do you know he isn’t a plant?”[6]

The Toronto Star reported

“The appearance of a Nazi flag at the ‘Freedom Convoy’ in Ottawa drew widespread condemnation from across the political spectrum. Opponents of the protest said it was proof of white supremacist sympathies lurking beneath the movement’s surface, while supporters said it was unfair to paint the entire convoy as hateful because of a few bad actors.”[7]

On January 29, it was reported that a woman was yelling “freedom,” and dancing on the tomb of the unknown soldier. The National Observer asked the Chief of the Canadian Defense Staff, General Wayne Eyre, for a comment. He responded,

“I am sickened to see protesters dance on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrate the National War Memorial. Generations of Canadians have fought and died for our rights, including free speech, but not this. Those involved should hang their heads in shame.”[8]

On the morning of February 6, Matias Muñoz alleged two arsonists came to an apartment building lobby in downtown Ottawa at 5:00 a.m. Muñoz tweeted: “One of them taped the door handles so no one could get out.” This apparently included the arsonists. According to the story, a tenant, who saw the arsonists lighting a fire in the lobby, asked if they were truckers. And then decided to go to bed without calling 911. Which is what you would do if you knew you were in a building that was on fire. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson held an emergency meeting of city council condemning the “malicious intent” of the convoy protesters. “Yesterday we learned of a horrific story that clearly demonstrates the malicious intent of the protesters occupying our city.”[9]

Convoy protesters were also accused of being terrorists. Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans referred to the protest as part of a “nationwide insurrection,” and the protesters themselves as “terrorists” and “mercenaries.”[10] A repeated talking point was that the protesters intended to orchestrate their own version of the events of January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C., here on Parliament Hill. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Justin Trudeau and others in the Liberal cabinet inferred a plot to overthrow the government was in motion.

In early February, Bernie Farber, chair of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, decried an anti-Semitic flyer alleged to be the work of Ottawa protesters titled “Every Single Aspect of the COVID Agenda Is Jewish.” It turned out the offending flyer was from a photo taken in Miami, Florida, two weeks before the Ottawa protest began.

Image is from The Post Millennial

In addition, the truckers were painted as delinquent parents whose children should be taken away from them. “I can only say that there have been ongoing reports regarding child welfare concerns, and that we consider all information received to determine the best response,” said a spokesperson for the Ottawa Children’s Aid Society. After the Emergencies Act was invoked on February 14, bringing children to the demonstrations was prohibited. If a child were in the cab of a truck, it would result in a potential fine of $5,000 or up to five years in prison. Ottawa police said roughly 25% of the vehicles in the blockades had children in them.[11]

In an opinion piece to The Globe and Mail, former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada Beverley McLachlin wrote “The Ottawa truck convoy has revealed the ugly side of freedom.” McLachlin wondered “what does this vaunted ‘freedom’ mean? The answer is, everything and nothing. Everything: the right not to wear masks in public places; the right not to be vaccinated; the right to hold Ottawa’s downtown residents and businesses hostage; the right to malign public officials and call for the Prime Minister’s death; the right to shout epithets at people of colour.” To date, no protesters connected to the Freedom Convoy have been charged, or face pending legal action, in relation to uttering death threats against Justin Trudeau.[12]

There were also suggestions in the media that protesters threatened to bomb the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario.[13]

Politicians lined up to rebuke a protest they described as “illegal.” Yet, on February 7, 2022, Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean ruled the protest was legal. He wrote, “the defendants and other persons remain at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest.” McLean also issued an injunction against honking of horns, with which residents and businesses understandably took issue.

Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino stated that “threats of rape” by truckers in Ottawa was one of the catalysts for the Liberal government invoking the Emergencies Act.[14]  He also alleged protester trucks in Ottawa contained weapons.

Public Order Emergency Commission Established

For a majority of Canadians following the mainstream news, the Prime Minister had fended off an insurrection. White supremacists, misogynists, and homophobes had been sent packing. Nonetheless, the nation would have to go through the perfunctory exercise of determining if there was anything to tweak regarding the Liberals’ invocation.

Passed in 1988 to replace the War Measures Act, the Emergencies Act legislation states there are unique circumstances by which the act can be invoked. These are that “The emergency must be a ‘national emergency,’ which means an ‘urgent and critical situation of a temporary nature’ that either ‘(a) seriously endangers the lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it, or (b) seriously threatens the ability of the Government of Canada to preserve the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Canada and that cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.’”

A Growing Counter-Narrative

In late April 2022, Justin Trudeau appointed Chief Justice Paul Rouleau to head the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC).

By the time Rouleau was appointed to head the POEC, articles had already appeared in the press calling into question the media narrative about the Freedom Convoy. Indo-Canadian reporter Rupa Subramanya wrote several articles and was interviewed about her experience speaking with the protesters.

Subramanya explained,

“I wanted to go there and make up my own mind. The reality of these protesters, the truckers, starting from Day One, is very different from the received narrative that was already in place—propaganda—because that is really what it amounted to. These people were a cross-section of Canadians. They were mostly working-class. I encountered people of colour. I saw new immigrants. I saw children. I saw women. I saw the old, the young. Franco-Canadians, Anglo-Canadians. A lot of camaraderie. I spent three weeks at the protest every day, several times a day. I didn’t encounter a single racist, white supremacist, or even a misogynist. These were some of the warmest, friendliest, people I’ve ever met in my life [after] two decades here in Canada. It was quite unusual that my perspective, as a person of colour who went into the protests, was so different from the mainstream coverage. There was this total disconnect between what was being said and what I personally experienced.”

The Ottawa Police Service (OPS) held a press conference on February 8 stating that no protester was under suspicion for the attempted arson of a residential building in downtown Ottawa. The OPS subsequently charged two Ottawa-area men with the arson in March 2022.[15]

On March 24, 2022, Interim Ottawa Police Service Chief Steve Bell confirmed there were no weapons in protesters’ vehicles in Ottawa. These and other allegations about the protesters were discredited in the months following the protests. Protesters had not called in bomb threats against hospitals, threatened or committed rape. The woman who danced on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier turned out to be from Quebec and was not involved with the Ottawa protests, despite the good luck of the media to catch her “freedom” yells with the cameras rolling. And video of protesters being beaten with rifles, kicked by police, and trampled by horses, put the lie to Bill Blair’s pride in the “textbook” police action to crush the protest in Ottawa.

But, these news reports challenging the initial headlines dribbled out over weeks and months, and were under-reported. The majority of Canadians were still reeling and felt threatened, disgusted and agitated by the news reports about the Freedom Convoy protesters. Watching the nightly news, the specter of seditionist, violent, racist, white supremacist truckers trying to topple the sitting government set in stone an emotional scar that has yet to heal. For protesters, and those who supported them, however, the news coverage confirmed a slanted mainstream media bias resembling textbook propaganda.

Sensing the historic importance of this unfolding story, I flew from Vancouver to Ottawa to attend hearings one week in mid-November 2022.

“Lack of Violent Crime Was Shocking”

During the Public Order Emergency Commission, numbers of police were called to testify. It was revealed that earlier on the day the Emergencies Act was invoked, the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) issued an internal intelligence briefing memo. Titled “Operational Intelligence Report,” it summarized the Ottawa protest, stating,

“The mood today was again calm, festive, and family oriented. Speakers were again telling people to walk away from agitators and thanked the police for remaining calm. Many of the speakers were promoting love and peaceful protest, some even taking quotes from the Bible. Speakers were also wishing everyone a happy Valentine’s.” The memo noted there were “children on Wellington Street playing hockey.”

Superintendent Patrick Morris,

“the foremost authority in the Province of Ontario regarding Intelligence” with the OPP, testified before the POEC. He said of the protest, “the lack of violent crime was shocking….If there was an actual threat, then there would have been an investigation, and if it was an actual threat, I assume the Ottawa Police Service would have laid a charge for uttering threats.” Morris agreed it was “hard to lay a charge” “or even to ascertain if it’s an actual threat if you can’t identify the individual.”

“Comments made…by public figures…the media…were not premised in fact”

Regarding the media coverage and statements by politicians about the protest, Morris stated “I was concerned by the politicization and I was concerned by hyperbole and I was concerned by the affixing of labels without evidence to individuals’ movements et cetera.” In a letter entered as evidence at the Commission, TDF lawyer Alan Honner quoted Morris’s letter where it states, “But now the public discourse is dominated by political figures and the media, and the commentary is providing a very different picture from what law enforcement collectively gathered. It is painting a different picture. It speaks to extremism. It offers parallels to terrorism. It speaks of sedition.”

Morris elaborated in his testimony that his letter reflected his concern about “comments made publicly, by public figures and in the media that I believed were not premised in fact….I was leading the criminal intelligence collection of information and the production of criminal intelligence in relation to these events. So, I believed I was in a unique situation to understand what was transpiring. So, when I read accounts that the State of Russia had something to do with it; Or that this was the result of American influence, either financially or ideologically; Or that Donald Trump was behind it; Or that it was un-Canadian; Or that the people participating were un-Canadian and that they were not Canadian views and they were extremists; I found it to be problematic, because what I ascertained from my role…I did not see validation for those assertions….I did not see information that substantiated what was being said publicly and via the media. And I found that the subjective assertions sensationalized…and exacerbated conflict….So the labelling was problematic to me.”

Morris further stated in a letter, “I do not know where the political figures are acquiring information or intelligence on the extent of extremist involvement.” He was emphatic, “I want to be clear on this. We produced no intelligence to indicate these individuals would be armed. There has been a lot of hyperbole around that.” During his testimony, Supt. Morris confirmed that at no point did he receive any reliable intelligence that there was any risk to national security due to the Freedom Convoy protests.” In cross-examination with Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Supt. Morris confirmed that at no time did any violence against property take place. No arson, no destruction, no vandalism, no bombing.[16]

“The narrative about what was happening in Ottawa was being controlled…”

Ontario Provincial Police Superintendent Carson Pardy, testifying on October 21, 2022, stated that the media depiction of the protest in Ottawa was

“problematic. The narrative about what was happening in Ottawa was being controlled and was one-sided.

There were a lot of good things happening. We heard about the bouncy castles and there were prayer meetings in the morning…. This is a family event. Bring your kids. There’s a bouncy castle. We can have fun.”

Pardy found media rhetoric about protesters being extremists

“problematic…because I’ve been involved in events from the past, G-summits…where we had a lot of extremist views. There was fringes of it…that were not a major concern….The profile of the protester at this event was unlike none that I’ve seen in my 36-year career. We had everything from grandparents. You know, my first day on this assignment, I was shown a picture of two officers that had worked for me in the past, who were retiring, who were in the crowd with the protesters. We saw children. We saw a lot of crestfallen police officers, military, nurses. So it wasn’t your normal group of people that you’re dealing with.”

Margaret Hope Braun, a mother of two from Peterborough, Ontario, was at the protest on Valentine’s Day. During her testimony before the Commission, she recalled: “I witnessed hundreds of roses being offered to the police officers. There was a lot of love. There was a lot of trying to heal the divide…being created between us and the police.…[T]he streets of Ottawa were covered in roses that day.”

Source: theepochtimes.com

OPS, OPP, RCMP, Canada Border Service Agency and CSIS (Canadian Security Intelligence Service) were pointing away from ideologically motivated violent extremist (IMVE) threats. CSIS reported on the afternoon of February 14, “Downtown Ottawa…was actually quite festive—not threatening to a passerby.” CSIS entered as evidence before the Commission that they “had no concern with IMVEs in Ottawa.”

In the aftermath of the Valentine’s Day invocation of the Emergencies Act, Supt. Morris reported on February 22 the Freedom Convoy protest was “not comprised of ideologically motivated violent extremists. The actual leaders are not violent extremists with histories of violent criminal acts.”

Former Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly testified before the POEC. He confirmed it was “correct” that at no time before Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14, 2022, did the OPS issue any form of formal notice to the protesters that they had been designated an unlawful assembly and must disperse. The protests were not a criminal matter under section 63 of the Criminal Code. There was no declaration that the Ottawa protests constituted a riot.

OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, with a certificate from the University of St. Andrews in Terrorism Studies, also testified. He agreed that, “based on all OPP intelligence and the intelligence provided by the RCMP and federal intelligence agencies to the OPP…there was no credible threat to the security of Canada.”

Carrique confirmed it “would be my understanding” that in order to invoke the Emergencies Act, there needs to be a “credible threat.” He agreed that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms protected citizens’ rights to assemble and protest. He agreed that this includes protesting government policies. Carrique also concurred that the trucks that were arriving in Ottawa in late January 2022 “did so at the direction of police officers.”[17]

If the protest in Ottawa had become unlawful, as determined by the OPS or OPP, the Riot Act could have been enforced and the protest declared a riot. Arrests would have ensued, all under the existing laws of the Criminal Code. But prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act, not a single charge of unlawful assembly was laid against any protester in Ottawa.

Agreement Between City of Ottawa and Protesters to Remove Vehicles

Serge Arpin, Chief of Staff to the Mayor of the City of Ottawa, testified that, by noon on February 14, 2022, 102 protest vehicles had been moved out of a four-block by five-block area in downtown Ottawa. Most of these had left the city.

The protesters were on schedule to remove 75% of the vehicles from downtown Ottawa, and leave the city by February 16. With so many vehicles scheduled to leave Ottawa voluntarily, the need for tow-truck drivers would be moot. Remaining protest vehicles were to be confined to Wellington Street along Parliament Hill, taking up their complaint with the Trudeau government. [18]

Under testimony, Kim Ayotte, General Manager of Emergency and Protective Services with the City of Ottawa, confirmed that the movement of vehicles onto Wellington Street “got stopped by police.”

Movement out of Ottawa, or over to Wellington Street, was not blocked or abandoned by the protesters. It was the police who blocked the movement of protest vehicles. Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller pointed out, “the difficulty in moving individuals to Wellington Street after the agreement was announced…was only stopped because the police wouldn’t let them on to Wellington and because the police then also stopped them from leaving the streets they were parked on…”[19]

Emergencies Act Threshold for “threat to national security” Not Met

The government’s justification for invoking the act was not based on any of the tests of the Emergencies Act being met. CSIS Director David Vigneault admitted the four criteria for declaring a public order emergency were not met.

1)    Was there espionage? “No,” said Vigneault.

2)    Was there foreign interference, sabotage? “No,” said Vigneault.

3)    Was there any serious violence associated with the protests? “No actual serious violence,” said Vigneault.

4)    Was there a plot to overthrow the government? “No. Didn’t even investigate. It was so nonexistent,” said Vigneault.[20]

RCMP officer emails reflected a lack of urgency. “It would be a stretch to say the trucks barricading the streets and the air horns blaring at whatever decibels for however many days constitute the ‘use of force.’”[21]

“There was no serious violence in Ottawa”

Jody Thomas, the National Security Adviser to the Prime Minister, was appointed on January 11, 2022. A month later she advised Justin Trudeau to declare a national emergency. Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer Cara Zeibel asked Thomas at the POEC, “you understand that currently the definition of a Public Order Emergency in the Emergencies Act is tied exclusively and exhaustively to the definition in the CSIS Act?” Thomas testified, “The Federal Government legal opinion is different, and there will be legal arguments to that end.”

Lawyer for the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, Rob Kittredge, took Jody Thomas through the CSIS Act tests for declaring an emergency. She confirmed there was no espionage, no sabotage, no foreign interference.

But what about serious violence? Thomas replied by swapping the word “serious” for “continual.” Said Thomas, “There was continual violence in the streets of Ottawa…” Kittredge asked her to be specific about what she meant by “continual violence.” Thomas identified “harassment, people being followed, people being intimidated, the noise, the pollution…”[22] Yet, incidents of harassment, stalking and physical intimidation are matters police address every day across the nation upon receiving a complaint.

I spoke on the phone with Freedom Convoy protest leader Tom Marazzo. Expanding on his testimony before the POEC, Marazzo told me he was continually in contact with the OPS Police Liaison Teams (PLTs) during the protests in Ottawa. He told me the PLTs would alert him if there was anyone blocking an emergency lane. Protest leaders, police and City of Ottawa officials all agreed that these needed to be cleared.

Yet, on one occasion it turned out an emergency lane in downtown Ottawa was being blocked by the City of Ottawa’s own equipment vehicles. Marazzo confirmed that any protesters intimidating or harassing Ottawa citizens would be counterproductive to the aims of the protest. But the PLTs never brought to any protest leaders’ attention even one instance of a protester intimidating or harassing local residents. The disconnect between the rhetoric of protesters being violent and what was happening on the ground was problematic.

Eventually, Jody Thomas conceded, “No, not serious violence.” In a February 21, 2022, email, RCMP Deputy Commissioner Brian Brennan wrote “There was no serious violence in Ottawa, the main reason for the Emergencies Act.”

Expanding the Definition of Threat

Considering the lack of serious violence, Jody Thomas quickly reframed matters. She stated, “A Public Order Emergency is broader as defined in the CSIS Act.” She elaborated: “There’s a range of threats that need to be considered when you’re talking about this country, economic security; The threat of IMVE; The rhetoric of threats against public figures; The inability to conduct a livelihood in the City of Ottawa—as an example, the Coutts border blockade…; The threat to public institutions and the undermining of the confidence in public institutions.”

Thomas identified “economic security” as a national security threat. Yet, in contrast with the border point blockades in February 2022, the Liberal government dealt with the 2020 protests differently. From January to mid-March 2020, First Nations protesters variously blocked construction of a BC pipeline, disrupted BC Ferry sailings, shut down CN Rail freight and VIA Rail passenger service for over a month, blockaded an Ontario highway and more. Through eleven weeks of economic disruptions, Prime Minister Trudeau maintained the importance of engaging in dialogue with protesters to resolve matters.[23]

The Coutts, Alberta, border blockade and arrests of persons in possession of weapons were handled by the RCMP under existing Canadian law. However, the “threat to national security” was becoming fungible, an elastic term the government could shape for its own purposes in order to invoke the Emergencies Act at will.

Legal Opinion to Expand Definition of “Threat Remains Secret

The Liberals, on a legal opinion to expand the definition of threat, invoked the Emergencies Act. Asked about the basis for the legal opinion, Justice Minister David Lametti, testified, “For reasons of solicitor-client privilege [he] could not describe the various kinds of legal analysis relied upon by cabinet.” Justice Rouleau told Lametti that, by taking this position, the government is asking Canadians to “just assume (it) acted in good faith,” to just “trust us.” Asked if he agreed “that Section 2 of the CSIS Act has a different meaning…a different scope based in its reference in the Emergencies Act,” Lametti responded “I will neither confirm nor deny that.”

In addition to David Lametti and Jody Thomas, another person who recommended that the Prime Minister invoke the Emergencies Act was Janice Charette. Named Interim Clerk of the Privy Council in March 2021, Charette was confirmed in her role in May 2022, three months after the Ottawa protests. She has a B.A. in Commerce and served in a number of capacities as Deputy Minister of Human Resources, as well as for Immigration and Health Canada. However, Charette had no background in national security. She said under oath, “I’m not an expert in any of these domains. My assessment from a layman’s point of view was it [the protest] was not legal.” Charette’s assertion contradicted Ontario court rulings on February 7, and again on February 16, 2022 that the protest was legal.

“A meaning can have different meanings at the end”

Ms. Charette fretted that the government “didn’t really have a full 360-degree view” of the protest. She urged her Incident Response Group to “really think outside the box.” Yet, this did not include meeting with some of the protest leaders. Since early February, protest leaders sought a meeting with senior Public Health Agency of Canada staff and politicians. Still, the government declined to meet with protest leaders, even to gain a more expansive view of the facts on the ground.[24]

Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, and Associate Secretary to the Cabinet, Nathalie Drouin, explained one of the reasons the Prime Minister was advised to invoke the Emergencies Act. “[We] couldn’t wait to invoke the Emergencies Act because then it would have been a national security threat.” By waiting any longer, Drouin explained, “we would have been in a situation where the threat would have materialized.” By underscoring her panicked reasoning, Drouin made clear no threat to national security had actually materialized. Asked about the definition of “threat” in the Emergencies Act, Drouin stated a “meaning can have different meanings at the end.”[25]

Drouin took part in Justin Trudeau’s February 14, 2022, phone calls with the First Ministers of the Canadian provinces and territories. It was clear to her that a majority of provincial premiers opposed the looming federal government decision. Drouin summed up that viewpoint, “that there is a risk that invoking the Emergencies Act can inflamate [sic] the situation.”

Vulnerable to Challenge

Janice Charette was shown a memo where she commented on the legal advice the government was relying on as a basis to invoke the Emergencies Act. She stated, “In our view, this fits within the statutory parameters of the Emergencies Act, but this conclusion may be vulnerable to challenge.” The Emergencies Act states that it is to be a measure “of last resort” when all other options under the laws of the land are exhausted.

Yet, not all other options had been exhausted. By February 14, OPS, OPP and RCMP did not view the protest as unlawful. Had it been deemed unlawful, the Riot Act could have been used to declare the protest a riot. As well, the OPS had signed off on a detailed 73-page plan with the RCMP and OPP to de-escalate the protest. Under testimony, Prime Minister Trudeau referred to it as a “so-called plan.” When shown the plan during his testimony, Trudeau stated he had never seen the plan. Nonetheless, he asserted he had “no confidence” in the plan.[26]

During Charette’s cross-examination by Canadian Constitutional Foundation lawyer Sujit Choudhry, she confirmed that CSIS Director Vigneault was not asked to speak during the February 13 Liberal cabinet meeting regarding the need to invoke the Emergencies Act.Choudhry said to Charette, “I would like to put this point to you.…[I]n a constitutional democracy, to prevent the abuse of executive powers by an elected government, it is imperative that the views of a professional non-partisan and expert security services be front and center and that they not just be a factor, but that they be at the core of whether a government decides to invoke emergency powers.”[27]

Nathalie Drouin jumped in, responding to Choudhry’s point by stressing other threats to the nation: “We saw kids, you know, being used as [human] shields.” Children were sitting with their parents in their trucks to keep warm. Children were making snow sculptures, playing in bouncy castles and playing hockey.

When pressed under cross-examination to substantiate allegations of rape committed by Ottawa protesters, Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said, “The absence of a criminal charge doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.” Freedom Convoy lawyer Eva Chipiuk tweeted in reference to a riot in Vancouver on June 15, 2011, after the Vancouver Canucks lost to the Boston Bruins, “Compare 1 night of Stanley Cup rioting where 268 people were charged with a total of 814 charges to 3 weeks of Freedom Convoy and 11 charges, ZERO hate crimes, and we don’t know how many of those were protesters because @OttawaPolice did not provide those details.”

Preceding the Liberal cabinet retreat on January 24, 2022, Alexander Cohen, Director of Communications to the Minister of Public Safety, and Mary-Liz Power, Issues and Policy Advisor in the Prime Minister’s Office, were sending texts to each other. Their text messages discussed the best ways to exploit a narrative to frame the protest traveling to Ottawa as a “January 6-style insurrection” and as “extremists.”

Vaccine Mandates and Canadian Charter Rights

Justice Rouleau was petitioned to have the Right Honorable Brian Peckford testify. Peckford was one of the speakers at the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, and the last living person who signed the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which was enshrined in 1982.

Image: Brian Peckford screenshot/YouTube/ CBC NL – Newfoundland and Labrador

The protesters were not only challenging the rationale for the vaccine mandates in Canada, but the infringements on Canada’s charter.

This included the right of all Canadian citizens to mobility. Quoting Section 6 of the Charter, Peckford said to the protesters, “Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada.”

As stated in all Canadian passports, “The Minister of Foreign Affairs requests…all those whom it may concern to allow the bearer [of the passport] to pass freely, without delay or hindrance, and to afford the bearer such assistance and protection as may be necessary.” But the Commission was not interested in having such an eminent person involved with the protest give testimony.

Testifying before the POEC, Prime Minister Trudeau stated,

“We have a robust, functioning democracy and public protests are an important part of making sure…Canadians are getting messages out there and highlighting how they feel about various issues. But using protests to demand changes to public policy is something that I think is worrisome.”[28]

As someone who previously voted for Justin Trudeau in a federal election, I find his apprehension of the right to public assembly and free speech worrisome.

Trudeau is saying Canadians have the right to protest. But if those protests are used to demand changes in government policy, the current Canadian government will tell those protesters that they have crossed a line. It seems the prime minister thinks of democracy as something that citizens engage by keeping their heads down, watching what they say, and not publicly questioning government action. The invocation of the Emergencies Act by Justin Trudeau on February 14, 2022, was political theater.

It was not a last resort. It was a choice made by a government that would not countenance public debate about the basis for its continued pandemic measures. And by January 2022, by expanding pandemic measures, Canada was now an outlier. Where dialogue was the solution to address eleven weeks of national protest in early 2020, Trudeau closed the door to any possibility of discussion with protesters in January 2022 before they arrived. Documents entered as evidence before the POEC suggest the Liberals were restless to invoke the Emergencies Act many days prior to February 14, 2022. When asked under oath at the inquiry “when did the Emergencies Act come into play as a possibility?” Trudeau replied “from the very beginning.”

Under cross-examination by Freedom Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland conceded that the regulation to force cross-border truckers to get vaccinated was to compel “as many Canadians to get vaccinated.” This was the real purpose.

Another indicator of the trajectory Canada is on is the matter of Dr. Jordan Peterson. Back in mid-February 2022, on social media, Peterson questioned the wisdom of interim Ottawa police Chief Steve Bell. At the time, Bell was threatening protesting parents in Ottawa with having their children removed. Peterson commented,

“‘Children removed’ how exactly? Why, exactly? By whom, exactly? Sent to where, exactly? And for how long, exactly? Think this through, Canadians. This is a bad decision.”

For this, and a handful of other political opinions unrelated to his work, it was announced on January 3, 2023, that Dr. Peterson faces a mandatory six-month re-education by the Ontario College of Psychologists. Otherwise, he will lose his license to practice.[29] The message to all Canadians when exercising free speech? Stifle your dissenting political opinions.

Did the Liberal Cabinet Break the Law?

In early February 2023, Attorney General David Lametti lost a key Federal Court ruling on his use of emergency powers against the Freedom Convoy. Justice Richard Mosley ordered internal emails, contradicting Liberal cabinet claims of a national crisis, must be admitted into evidence in a court case with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association. Mosley found “Evidence of the cabinet proceedings that led to the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was not disclosed despite repeated requests.” He concluded the internal emails were “essential to the just and proper determination” of whether cabinet broke the law.[30]

Over the decades, progressive and “classic Liberal” voters in Canada—like myself—have looked over our shoulders nervously at attempts by conservative governments to reign in democratic freedoms. Thirty years after the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was adopted into the Canadian Constitution, Justin Trudeau warned citizens to “listen very carefully to those who choose to divide, or play up fears and insecurities as a way of advancing a political agenda.” Ironically, Trudeau’s present Liberal government in Ottawa offers up a sobering lesson. An autocratic trajectory can also be instigated by political parties in the middle of the political spectrum, as well as on the “left.” This is no time for Canadians to be complacent.

Citizens in other countries should pay attention. What other governments might now feel emboldened by Trudeau’s actions, opt to freeze their citizens’ bank accounts?

Note: Justice Paul Rouleau, a former executive assistant to Liberal Prime Minister John Turner, released his Report on February 17. He concluded, “reluctantly,” that the Trudeau Government was correct in its decision to invoke the Emergency Act.

Rouleau explained

“I do not come to this conclusion easily as I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming. Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I arrived at.”

Rouleau recommends the tests named in the existing Emergencies Act for declaring a state of emergency—espionage, sabotage, serious acts of violence, plots to overthrow the government, foreign influence—be omitted.

He recommends that perceived threats be the measure for invoking the Emergencies Act in the future. His report will be considered by the Trudeau cabinet as it crafts revisions to existing legislation.


Global Research Video Produced by Jean Francois Girard

Are the protesters really what he claims them to be?

I was there for four days with my camera, I never saw or witnessed anything close to what he describes. 

Is it possible this is all made up? If it is, what is the purpose?


*

Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

Ray McGinnis is author of Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored, and Writing the Sacred: A Psalm-inspired Path to Writing and Appreciating Sacred Poetry. Ray attended the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings in November and heard over a dozen witnesses testify. He lives in Vancouver, Canada and can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

  1. Rachel Gilmore, “‘Fringe minority’ in truck convoy with ‘unacceptable views’ don’t represent Canadians: Trudeau,” Global News, January 26, 2022.
    https://globalnews.ca/news/8539610/trucker-convoy-covid-vaccine-mandates-ottawa/

  2. Kevin Heppner, “Thousands of truckers prepared to walk due to vaccine mandates, warn Canadian trucking groups,” Real Agriculture, Altona, AB, December 13, 2021. https://www.realagriculture.com/2021/12/thousands-of-truckers-prepared-to-walk-due-to-vaccine-mandates-warn-canadian-trucking-groups/ 
  3. According to Health Canada, as of January 26, 2023, there were 4,560,962 cases of Covid-19 in Canada with 50,629 total deaths from Covid-19, that is, 1.11% or almost five times what this article states. https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/ 
  4. Ben Cousins, “‘So many angry people’: Experts say online conversation around trucker convoy veering into dangerous territory,” CTV, January 25, 2022. https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/so-many-angry-people-experts-say-online-conversation-around-trucker-convoy-veering-into-dangerous-territory-1.5754580 
  5. “CBC issues clarification over claim Kremlin behind truckers’ protest,” Toronto Sun, February 4, 2022.https://torontosun.com/news/national/cbc-issues-clarification-over-claim-kremlin-behind-truckers-protest 
  6. Christina Pushaw, Twitter, January 29, 11:20 a.m. https://twitter.com/ChristinaPushaw/status/1487506015709011972?ref_src=twsrc^tfw|twcamp^tweetembed|twterm^1487506015709011972|twgr^|twcon^s1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Ftnc.news%2F2022%2F01%2F30%2Fthe-canadian-legacy-medias-ten-worst-spins-on-the-truckersforfreedom-convoy%2F 
  7. Omar Mosleh, “Why banning hateful symbols like the swastika is nearly impossible,” Toronto Star, February 7, 2022. https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2022/02/07/nazi-flag-at-freedom-convoy-sparks-bill-to-ban-hateful-symbols-but-enforcement-is-seen-as-tricky.html 
  8. Nicole Thompson, “Anti-vaxxers danced on Tomb of the Unknown Soldier and desecrated National War Memorial,” National Observer, January 29, 2022.
    https://www.nationalobserver.com/2022/01/29/news/anti-vaxxers-danced-tomb-unknown-soldier-and-desecrated-national-war-memorial  
  9. Ottawa police arson unit investigates fire lit in downtown apartment lobby,” CBC, February 7, 2022.  https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-investigation-fire-apartment-lobby-1.6342347  
  10. Rupa Subramanya, “Ottawa City Councillor Diane Deans has upped the ante.” https://twitter.com/rupasubramanya/status/1582432989027258369 
  11. Amanda Connolly and Ahmar Khan, “Ottawa police issue new warning amid convoy blockade: ‘leave the area now,’” Global News, February 16, 2022 https://globalnews.ca/news/8624024/ottawa-convoy-blockade-police-action/https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/ottawa-police-arson-investigation-fire-apartment-lobby-1.6342347  
  12. Beverley McLachlin “The Ottawa truck convoy has revealed the ugly side of freedom,” Globe and Mail, February 22, 2022. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-ottawa-truck-convoy-has-revealed-the-ugly-side-of-freedom/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter 
  13. Rupa Subramanya, “Justin Trudeau’s case against the Freedom Convoy falls on its face: How are our elected officials who purvey what can only be called misinformation be held to account?” National Post, October 21, 2022. 
    https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rupa-subramanya-justin-trudeaus-case-against-the-freedom-convoy-falls-on-its-face  
  14. Liz Braun, “Conservative politicians question sexual assault threat from truckers,” Toronto Sun, February 28, 2022. https://torontosun.com/news/national/conservative-politicians-question-sexual-assault-threat-from-truckers  
  15. Craig Lord, “Ottawa man charged in February apartment arson, police dismiss convoy connection,” Global News, March 21, 2022.  https://globalnews.ca/news/8698744/ottawa-arson-freedom-convoy-arrest/  
  16. “Supt. Patrick Morris, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 19, 2022, pp. 184-305. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-5-October-19-2022.pdf  
  17. “Comm. Thomas Carrique, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 27, 2022, pp. 229-245,  https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-11-October-27-2022.pdf 
  18. “Mr. Serge Arpin, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 17, 2022, pp. 194-329.
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-3-October-17-2022.pdf 
  19. “Mr. Kim Ayotte, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, October 18, 2022, pp. 208-277. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-4-October-18-2022.pdf 
  20. “CSIS Director David Vigneault, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 21, 2022, pp. 1-162. 
    https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-27-November-21-2022.pdf  
  21. “Emails Ridicule Mark Carney,” Blacklock’s Reporter, December 12, 2022. https://www.blacklocks.ca/emails-ridicule-mark-carney/  
  22. “Ms. Jody Thomas, Sworn,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 172-323. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-25-November-17-2022.pdf  
  23. John Paul Tasker, “Trudeau calls for ‘dialogue’ as blockade cripples rail network, while Scheer says clear out protesters,” CBC, February 14, 2020.
    https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/transport-minister-dialogue-blockade-1.5463960  
  24. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 105-309. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  
  25. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 105-309. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  
  26. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 25, 2022, pp. 83-84 (also pp. 3-192). https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-31-November-25-2022.pdf 
  27. “Ms. Janice Charette, Sworn, Ms. Nathalie Drouin, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 17, 2022, pp. 242-255. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-26-November-18-2022.pdf.  
  28. “Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Affirmed,” Public Order Emergency Commission, Ottawa, November 25, 2022, pp.3-77, during examination by POEC Commission lawyer Ms. Shantona Chaudhury. https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/Transcripts/POEC-Public-Hearings-Volume-31-November-25-2022.pdf 
  29. Editorial, “The Orwellian re-education of Jordan Peterson,” Toronto Sun, January 6, 2023. https://torontosun.com/opinion/editorials/editorial-the-orwellian-re-education-of-jordan-peterson  
  30. “Can’t Hide Emails: Fed Judge,” Blacklock’s Reporter, February 2, 2023. https://www.blacklocks.ca/cant-hide-emails-fed-judge/   

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***

Activists plastered hundreds of suspected Covid “vaccine” injuries and deaths onto the doors and windows of the CBC building on Front St. early this morning.

The CBC, Canada’s taxpayer-funded media corporation, has been charged by many to be complicit in propagandist lies over the safety of the experimental gene therapies.

Without any critical investigation, the CBC and other mainstream media outlets continue to push the “safe and effective narrative” in spite of overwhelming evidence of catastrophic and unprecedented levels of adverse events.

Seeking to bring attention to the injuries and deaths temporally related to Covid-19 “vaccines,” the activists worked feverishly to get the profiles up. Security guards were present but did not intervene.

Special report coming soon.

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Canadian Foreign Policy Is Utterly Barbaric

March 1st, 2023 by Mark Taliano

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***

Canada’s foreign policy is basically an appendage of U.S foreign policy, and it is utterly barbaric. Consider the example of Syria.

Syria, like Turkey, has recently suffered catastrophic earthquakes.  Whereas humanitarian aid has justifiably poured into Turkey, it barely reaches the vast majority of Syrians.

Why is this?  The answer is simple. Criminal unilateral coercive measures levied against Syria and Syrians allow aid to terrorist-occupied areas on the one hand, and deny aid to all areas governed by the democratically-elected, overwhelmingly popular, secular, pluralist government of Syria led by President Bashar al-Assad. (1)

The aid to al Qaeda terrorist-occupied areas such as Idlib is hoarded and controlled (2) by terrorist-warlords as it trickles down to the people. (3) In fact the legitimate Syrian government recently attempted to ship aid into Idlib, but al Julani, former al Qaeda boss, now rebranded HTS boss, refused a convoy of aid coming from Damascus, saying that “he wouldn’t legitimize the internationally recognized Syrian government and he wouldn’t accept the aid.” (4)

Meanwhile, the truth of Canada’s foreign-policy barbarism is concealed by a vast war-propaganda complex which creates false perceptions of Canada’s humanitarianism as it doubles-down on barbarism. The deception is so great that people trying to help Syria are actually helping al Qaeda.

Consider, for example,  the case of the Canadian-funded White Helmets.  Known and documented, the White Helmets are not the legitimate Syrian Civil Defense. (The real Syria Civil Defense was established in 1953, and is recognized by the International Organization for Civil Defense in Geneva.) They are instead, as pointed out by John Pilger, a “propaganda construct”. They operate solely in terrorist-occupied areas and hence they would be more accurately described as Al Qaeda rescuers.

Vanessa Beeley recently pointed out that the White Helmet brand has been

“extensively damaged by Syrian civilian accusations including theft, murder, torture, detention, being embedded with armed groups dominated by Al-Qaeda, organ trafficking, child abduction for presenting their chemical weapon staged events, and of course they were proven to be staged after the Douma 2018 chemical attack when the OPCW dissident inspectors, who were on the ground, pointed out that the events at the Medical Center in Douma were staged as I had already confirmed visiting the Medical Center days after the alleged attack.” (5)

The plight of Syria and the Syrian people, victimized by Western unilateral coercive measures, by Western-supported terrorists, including ISIS and al Qaeda, and now by hypocritical and toxic earthquake response measures, is yet one more sordid example of the need to honour and enforce international law and the charter of the United Nations. Any so-called “Rules Based Order” as offered by Washington, would surely be more of the same: degenerate barbarism.

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

Notes

(1) e-mail/newsletter from Syria Support Movement: What we’ve learned about how to send donations to Syrian earthquake victims (mailchi.mp)

(2) News Desk, “Qatar, US encourage legitimizing former Al-Qaeda leader in Syria: Report.” The Cradle,  23 February, 2023 (Qatar, US encourage legitimizing former Al-Qaeda leader in Syria: Report (thecradle.co)) Accessed 28 February, 2023.

(3) Saffa Syria, “Al Qaeda Propagandists abuse Earthquake-struck Aleppo Children.” Syria News, 25 February 2023. (Al Qaeda Propagandists abuse Earthquake-struck Aleppo Children (syrianews.cc) ) Accessed 28 February, 2023.

(4) Vanessa Beeley, “Multi-million-fund al-Qaeda/White Helmets are back.” (Multi-million-funded Al Qaeda/White Helmets are back. – YouTube) 25 February, 2023. See also:( Multi-million-funded Al Qaeda/White Helmets are back./ By Vanessa Beeley – Mark Taliano)   Accessed 28 February, 2023.

(5) Ibid

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***

Covid vaccines are linked to a 20 percent rise in new diagnoses for at least three months after vaccination; a second report finds even higher risks for people with preexisting autoimmune problems

Adults have sharply higher risks of being diagnosed with heart, skin, and psychiatric conditions for at least 90 days after they receive Covid jabs, a peer-reviewed study of almost 300,000 people in California has shown.

The researchers examined new diagnoses given to the same people before and after they were vaccinated to see whether the shots changed the risk of new health problems.

They found that people were about 21 percent more likely to receive a new diagnosis in the three months after a shot, compared to the three months before. With almost 240 million American adults jabbed, the rise translates into millions of extra new medical problems found in the months after vaccination, and tens of millions worldwide.

Serious conditions such as hypertension were about 25 percent more likely to be diagnosed in the three months following a shot than the three months before, the researchers found.

Depression, eczema, diabetes, and cellulitis were 10 to 20 percent more likely.

Myocarditis diagnoses had the highest additional risk. They were about 2.6 times as likely overall, with an even higher risk in men. Myocarditis is a known side effect of the mRNAs, so the fact it had a particularly high rate of extra diagnoses provides strong evidence that the signal the researchers found was real.

Overall, the researchers reported that the 284,000 Covid-vaccinated adults they examined received almost 6,000 additional diagnoses of health conditions in the 90 days after being jabbed compared to the 90 days before.

With about 237 million American adults vaccinated, that estimate would translate into about 5 million extra diagnoses for problems like diabetes in the three months following the shots. Worldwide, the number could be up to 25 million.

In the chart below, the blue column is the risk someone will be diagnosed with a new condition following vaccination, compared to the risk before.

For example, about 2,560 out of the 284,000 people were diagnosed with hypertension up to three months after vaccination, compared to 2,080 of the same people up to three months before. The extra 480 cases translated into a 23 percent higher risk of hypertension following vaccination. Because the number of cases was so high, the risk was highly statistically significant, meaning the finding probably was not due to chance.

(Apologies for the laptop screenshot)

SOURCE

The study’s researchers are a group from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, a big hospital system in Los Angeles. Their findings were published in Nature Cardiovascular Research in December. But the paper has received almost no attention, a common response to reports that raise questions about the safety of the vaccines.

The researchers also noted that in a smaller sample of adults infected with Covid, new diagnoses for health conditions rose about 40 percent in the three months after infection compared to the three months before.

That fact should come as no surprise. Viral infections are both a marker for and a potential cause of ill-health. Further, people are likely visit their doctors both while they are sick with Covid and shortly after they recover. Those contacts provide a chance for them to receive new diagnoses.

In contrast, people generally receive Covid shots at clinics or pharmacies, not from their doctors, so the chance that the process of receiving a new shot will lead to a diagnosis is minimal.

Thus, if Covid jabs are not harmful, mass vaccinations should not impact the timing of illnesses or their diagnoses. New diagnoses should be scattered randomly before and after the shots.

In fact, people who are feeling ill when they are due for a vaccination may be likely to delay the jab and go to a physician instead. They may then receive a diagnosis that would be counted as occurring before the shot, not after.

This “healthy vaccinee bias” should mean that new illness diagnoses are less likely for a few days after vaccination than before, even if the shots have no effect. As a result, the 20 percent increase in common diagnoses after vaccination is particularly stunning.

Meanwhile, researchers in Hong Kong independently found an even sharper increase in autoimmune “flares” following Covid shots.

The risk of new episodes of lupus, rheumatoid arthritis, and other serious autoimmune conditions roughly doubled following the shots in a group of 562 patients with those conditions they followed, compared to 1,055 who did not. The paper was published February 17 in the Journal of Clinical Rheumatology and Immunology.

SOURCE

But not all vaccines carried the autoimmune risk.

Only mRNA shots did. Chinese-style inactivated virus vaccines did not. Hong Kong used both types of jabs, making a direct comparison possible. The researchers suggested that the mRNA shots cause the flares by stimulating a specific immune receptor that causes the release of inflammatory cytokines.

“Risk-benefit considerations in patients with active rheumatic disease may favor inactivated virus rather than mRNA vaccines to avoid the risk of flare-ups of any severity,” the researchers wrote.

Americans do not have that option, as the United States does not allow the use of Chinese inactivated Covid vaccines.

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Featured image: NOT a Vaccine: the mRNA COVID vax is a chemical pathogen production device and a technocratic, transhumanistic tool to repgrogram you. Image credit: Jordan Henderson


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

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***

Four days ago, Sameh al-Aqtash returned from Turkey, where he had been supporting earthquake victims as a volunteer. On Sunday evening, the 37-year-old Palestinian was killed by Israeli settlers rampaging through his village, Zatara, in the occupied West Bank.

Zatara is located south of Nablus, near an infamous Israeli military checkpoint where, according to residents, soldiers abuse Palestinians on a daily basis. Only 100 people live in Zatara and they are all members of the same family. Most of them are women and children.

The Israeli settler attacks began after a suspected Palestinian gunman killed two settlers near the town of Huwwara on Sunday afternoon. In response, hundreds of Israelis attacked Palestinian towns and villages, wounding nearly 300 and burning homes to the ground.

Despite Zatara being around six kilometres from Huwwara, where the settlers were killed and the mob violence was at its worst, a group of Israelis attacked the village and began trying to remove its main gate.

Abdel Moneim, Aqtash’s brother, was with him as they rushed to stop the settlers’ vandalism.

“We all hurried, including Sameh, and stopped the settlers at the gate and prevented them from entering,” he told Middle East Eye.

“But after a short period of time, the settlers attacked again, this time with the protection of the Israeli soldiers. Gunfire started targeting us, and then Sameh fell to the ground.”

With Israeli soldiers and settlers blocking roads, no ambulance was able to access Zatara, so Aqtash’s brothers had to use a private vehicle and transport him via a dirt road to the neighbouring town of Beita.

As they raced down the bumpy road, blood poured out of a bullet hole in Aqtash’s abdomen. He began to lose consciousness.

At the Beita medical centre, Aqtash’s siblings broke down in tears when the doctor told them that he had died of his wounds. He left behind three children, the youngest a four-month-old girl.

“There were no clashes when the settlers attacked us. Sameh was a kind person who loved helping people, and two days before he was killed, he spoke with the heads of local councils in our region to collect donations for earthquake victims in Turkey and Syria,” Abdel Moneim said.

Towns burning

The scars of the unprecedented settler attacks on towns and villages south of Nablus will be difficult to erase. Homes, shops, and cars have been smashed and torched. Settlers slaughtered Palestinians’ livestock.

Elias Dmaidi, an eight-year-old resident of Huwwara, said he thought it was going to be the last of his life.

“I have never seen such a major attack, and hundreds of settlers were screaming, insulting, smashing everything in their way, and setting fire to homes while the families were inside,” Dmaidi told reporters.

Huwwara, a town divided by a main road frequented by Israeli settlers and soldiers, has had a growing history of friction.

Most of its lands were confiscated by Israel to build illegal Jewish settlements, with various roads exclusively for Israelis that were constructed to serve them and maintain their security.

As chaos engulfed the town, the Israeli military closed all checkpoints surrounding Nablus, stranding Palestinians inside and outside the area. Despite the settler attacks, residents opened their homes to everyone unable to leave.

As morning broke, the sun revealed the extent of the damage. Black-charred streaks stained houses, shops, and trees. Even the school had been attacked. The students stayed in their homes on Monday, fearing for their lives.

During the riots, medical staff and firefighters were prevented from reaching affected areas, resulting in hundreds of wounded Palestinians being treated long after they were attacked.

Ahmed Jibril, director of the ambulance and emergency department at the Palestine Red Crescent, said medics were subjected to many violations during the attack on Huwwara.

“The paramedics were attacked and prevented from entering the town, and even ambulances were fired at. The attack wasn’t only at the hands of the soldiers, but also by the settlers, who attacked the medical staff while trying to transport a wounded person,” he said.

Targeted at home

Burin, a neighbouring town that rubs shoulders with settlement blocks, was also subject to frenzied attacks.

Ayman Soufan was at home with his wife and children when settlers attacked them and set their home on fire.

“More than 100 settlers attacked us and they divided themselves into two groups, one smashing windows and doors and the other stealing our stuff and sheep from the front of the house,” he told MEE.

“Then they set it on fire. My brother’s family and I fled to the other side to protect ourselves. My son was hit by a stone in his shoulder after being thrown by settlers.”

Almost every month, they are attacked by settlers who want to take their home and steal their land to expand nearby settlements, and it is under the protection of Israeli soldiers.

“The settlers tried to burn us alive inside our house, and if we hadn’t been able to escape, we would have been dead now. Despite the huge fire, the firefighters were unable to reach us because the soldiers prevented them, and the fire remained burning until it extinguished itself. Since 2000, we have been living in the same spiral of aggression,” Soufan said.

*

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***

Abusive government behavior has again been found to be too sensitive to national security to face legal challenges in the court system. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to review a lower court’s dismissal of the Wikimedia Foundation’s lawsuit against a National Security Agency surveillance program revealed a decade ago by Edward Snowden. With “state secrets privilege” barring litigation, that leaves upcoming congressional debates over renewal of the law authorizing the program as the only recourse for civil liberties advocates.

“The U.S. Supreme Court today denied the Wikimedia Foundation’s petition for review of its legal challenge to the National Security Agency’s (NSA) ‘Upstream’ surveillance program,” Wikimedia announced February 21. “Under this program, the NSA systematically searches the contents of internet traffic entering and leaving the United States, including Americans’ private emails, messages, and web communications. The Supreme Court’s denial leaves in place a divided ruling from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, which dismissed Wikimedia’s case based on the government’s assertion of the ‘state secrets privilege.'”

“This decision is a blow to the rule of law,” commented Alex Abdo, of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which worked with Wikimedia and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). “The government has now succeeded in insulating from public judicial review one of the most sweeping surveillance programs ever enacted. If the courts are unwilling to hear Wikimedia’s challenge, then Congress must step in to protect Americans’ privacy by reining in the NSA’s mass surveillance of the internet.”

The “Upstream” surveillance program at issue collects “communications ‘to, from, or about'” a foreign target designated under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, according the NSA. In the clearer language of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, “upstream surveillance involves collecting communications as they travel over the Internet backbone, and downstream surveillance (formerly PRISM) involves collection of communications from companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo.”

As Edward Snowden revealed and the NSA conceded, this broad surveillance may be authorized against foreign targets, but frequently scoops up Americans—often deliberately. “The government is increasingly using these broad and intrusive spying powers in run-of-the-mill criminal investigations against Americans, circumventing their Fourth Amendment rights,” the ACLU warned in 2020.

Wikimedia argues that the NSA’s surveillance discourages people from using Wikimedia’s Wikipedia to research sensitive topics for fear of attracting government attention. The organization points to a 2016 article in the Berkeley Technology Law Journal that reported “a statistically significant immediate decline in traffic for [privacy-sensitive] Wikipedia articles after June 2013, but also a change in the overall secular trend in the view count traffic, suggesting not only immediate but also long-term chilling effects resulting from the NSA/PRISM online surveillance revelations.”

But in court, federal attorneys insisted that the NSA’s surveillance programs are such secret-squirrel stuff that national security would suffer if the nation’s snoops were compelled to explain how their activities can possibly square with constitutional protections for individual rights. The court bought it.

“In a divided ruling on Wednesday, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that the lawsuit must be dismissed after the government invoked the ‘state secrets privilege’, which meant that a full exploration of the issue in a court would damage national security,” Reuters reported in 2021. That decision was left to stand last week by the Supreme Court.

As I’ve pointed out before, state secrets privilege has a sketchy history, evolving from bad official behavior after a 1948 plane crash that killed several civilian observers. When the observers’ widows sued in United States v. Reynolds, the government argued that information about the plane was too super-secret to be revealed in court (a complete lie concealing official negligence, by the way). The Supreme Court agreed that some things are too sensitive to reveal in legal proceedings and gave officialdom a free pass to invoke the phrase “national security” as a shield against accountability. That disturbs even some modern members of the Supreme Court.

While not entirely questioning the existence of state secrets privilege, it “is no blunderbuss and courts may not flee from the field at its mere display,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote last year in a dissent joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor to the majority’s invocation of the privilege in United States v. Zubaydeh. “Recent history reveals that executive officials can sometimes be tempted to misuse claims of national security to shroud major abuses and even ordinary negligence from public view.”

That case involved detention and torture at a black site in Poland under circumstances the government clearly found embarrassing. The Wikimedia lawsuit involves allegations of widespread domestic snooping that also reflect poorly on the powers that be. Political inconvenience is a lousy reason for preventing legal challenges to unconstitutional and criminal government conduct.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s decision leaves little recourse for determining the extent of domestic surveillance by the NSA and seeking its end. The spy agency says it cut back after “inadvertent compliance incidents related to queries involving U.S. person information.” But that leaves the public taking the NSA at its word and wondering just what is going on behind the scenes.

Edward Snowden revealed just how far we should trust the intelligence apparatus.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act‘s Section 702, which authorizes the Upstream surveillance at issue in Wikimedia’s litigation, is up for reauthorization this year, and the NSA very much wants to retain its broad power. It faces calls for reform from civil libertarians outside government, but also from Republicans and Democrats concerned about intrusive spying on Americans.

“While surveilling foreign targets under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), the US government collects exabytes of data pertaining to American citizens,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) objected earlier this month. “The Constitution requires a warrant to query that vast database for Americans. End warrantless spying now.”

Similarly, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) has long called for the intelligence community to reveal how many Americans it sweeps up, and for curbs on such snooping.

With litigation against domestic spying thwarted by the invocation of “state secrets privilege,” Congress, for all its many faults, may be the last line of defense.

*

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J.D. TUCCILLE is a contributing editor at Reason.

Featured image is from Medical Extremism

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***

My last-minute trip to Karachi was painful, an 18-hour flight through four countries. But that was before I met with my client, Ahmed Rabbani, and learned how he and his brother, Abdul, had fared on their way back from Guantanamo Bay.

Half a lifetime ago they had both endured their rendition trip to Cuba. Last Friday, after 20 years of detention without charge, now cleared for release as “no threat to the US or their coalition partners”, they flew back home.

It is an illustration of the gulf between Guantanamo and the real world that such flights remain shrouded in secrecy – as if someone might try to waylay the aircraft that was finally delivering liberty. The US government gave me only a few hours’ notice of their departure, so I could not get to Pakistan ahead of them, and was still in Britain.

But this meant I was able to follow their journey across the Atlantic on a plane tracker app. It was thrilling to see them flying to freedom, but I feared that, instead of delivering the apology that was long overdue, the US would take a stab at a final flight of abuse.

Sadly, this came to pass. Ahmed, 53, later described how little had changed in his treatment despite the passing years. Theirs was a 21-hour flight, only three hours longer, but infinitely worse than mine. There were 30 American soldiers on hand to handle two shackled prisoners.

Once more (still presumed innocent of any crime), Ahmed and Abdul, 55, were forced to wear ear-muffs and eye covers lest they might somehow divine their route back to Pakistan. If they wanted to use the toilet they still had to endure the humiliation of having soldiers watch.

One final torment behind them, they landed in Islamabad at noon on 24 February. In that instant, their world changed. The Pakistan Federal Investigation Agency official who greeted them showed respect.

And then came the moment that had eluded Ahmed for so long: there, in front of him, was his 20-year-old son Jawad. Ahmed’s wife had been pregnant when he was abducted on 10 September 2002. Father and son had never before met, never touched.

“Waa-llaah!” said Ahmed, the age-old exclamation.

“We’ve got a lot to catch up on,” said Jawad, hugging his dad for the first time.

A thousand battles

I have often met Jawad. I am keen to support his dream of becoming a human rights lawyer. He will never enjoy another human moment quite like that first meeting. I wish I could have been there for this encounter, but as it happened I was about to leave the UK.

One of a thousand battles we waged at the Cuban prison was over intellectual property: would Ahmed, a talented artist, be allowed to bring his paintings with him when he left his Cuban prison?

Thankfully, with the vigorous aid of the United Nations, we had recently prevailed, and Ahmed arrived with 130kg of his art, along with his legal papers and the only compensation he will likely ever get from the country that tortured him: two dozen plastic bottles of Ensure, the liquid nutrition that the US forced into Ahmed during the seven years of his hunger strike, his peaceful protest against mistreatment.

Forty-five hours later, I landed at Jinnah International Airport in Karachi. I was summoned before an immigration officer.

I was taken aback when he whispered for a bribe to speed up my entry. My path was splendidly rapid anyway – I was off the plane and out with my backpack in just 18 minutes. Not long after I arrived at the local Ramada hotel, my Guantanamo clients arrived.

What a moment! The last time we had shared coffee, I had brought a cup from the Guantanamo Starbucks – tepid before I reached the cell where our legal visits took place. Now we were seated in the Opera Cafe.

In came Saifullah Paracha, at 75 the oldest detainee in the prison, released at the end of October. It was the first time I had seen him back in Pakistan, and he immediately showed me the massive scars from his heart bypass surgery. He had refused medical care in Guantanamo, where the doctors had conspired with the interrogators.

Magical moment

Soon Ahmed and Abdul arrived, each with his son. I squeezed Ahmed’s scrawny body – still only 95lbs (43kg), little over half his original body weight – and we sat down to talk. For two decades the rest of the world had moved on while the brothers sat in Guantanamo stasis.

With his artistic eye for detail, Ahmed was astonished at how the froth on the coffee was patterned as a palm frond, a corporate innovation that took place after he was abducted.

Reunion in Karachi, from L to R, Abdul Rabbani, Clive Stafford Smith, Ahmed Rabbani and Saifullah Paracha (Photo supplied)

Reunion in Karachi, from L to R, Abdul Rabbani, Clive Stafford Smith, Ahmed Rabbani and Saifullah Paracha (Photo supplied)

Then Ahmed asked Jawad to bring over a tattered cardboard box they had carried into the hotel. I thought for a moment that it was the mandatory gift for me, the visitor. It was not.

He presented the 24 bottles of Ensure to Saifullah, who has been having trouble with digestion since his heart operation. I took a picture (for old-force-feeding-times’ sake, and to memorialise his only compensation from the US government).

Sometimes people ask me how I can go on for 40 years dealing with such emotional, life-and-death issues. My response is always the same: there are not many people who are fortunate enough to meet people in extremis, and help to hand their lives back to them.

This was another such magical moment. Both Ahmed and Abdul have a long climb up from the horrors of 20 years of detention without trial, but at least now they have started their journey.

*

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Clive Stafford Smith is an Anglo-American lawyer and founder of the non-profit the 3D Centre (3dc.org.uk).

Featured image: Ahmed Rabbani (R) meets his son, Jawad (L) for the very first time in Karachi, after spending 20 years in the US’s Guantanamo Bay detention facility (Photo supplied)

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***

On Monday, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price would not acknowledge Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal, actually referring questions on the subject to the Israeli government itself. After the briefing, I received a written response to detailed questions regarding Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal I submitted on Feb. 13, below.

The State Dept. is, as I charged, maintaining — actually escalating — a decades long cover-up in not acknowledging Israel’s nuclear weapons arsenal. This is for the apparent purpose of not invoking the Glenn-Symington amendment to the Arms Export Act, which prohibits aid to nuclear proliferators. Archbishop Desmond Tutu admonished the Biden administration to end this cover-up in his last article, published by the Guardian a year before his death: “Joe Biden should end the US pretence over Israel’s ‘secret’ nuclear weapons: The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians.” Clearly, the administration is not heeding Tutu’s words.

This comes at a time when the Biden administration is reportedly greenlighting Israeli threats to attack Iran, a subject which Price passed on addressing at the news conference.

Video (transcript below):

Grant Smith, director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, who has closely tracked US policy toward Israel’s nuclear weapons program, said today: “This is a major policy disclosure breakthrough. The State Department is admitting that formal US acknowledgement of Israel’s nuclear weapons program and accountability to U.S. taxpayers who want Arms Export Control Act compliance is Israel’s decision.

“For example, ongoing lack of progress on JCPOA negotiations over Iran’s thus far non-weapons producing program means zero AECA [Arms Export Control Act] enforcement on Israel’s program. Israeli declarations that a rival’s delivery systems are ‘nuclear capable’ means zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program.

“Israeli ‘discovery’ or suspicion of the existence of any ‘rogue’ nuclear facility such as the one Israel destroyed in Syria in 2018  mandate zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program. False but enduring US intelligence community 2001 assertions that aluminum tubes bound for Iraq were to be used for centrifuges or that country was determined to procure uranium from Niger mandate zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program. CD’s seized by Mossad from “Iran’s nuclear archive” reported in 2018 mandate zero AECA enforcement on Israel’s program.

“If such a State Department position and foreign aid law had been in place in 1963, when JFK was fighting to keep the Israelis from producing nuclear weapons at Dimona, Israel could have delayed enforcement. The Israeli government, through publications financed by the Jewish Agency and distributed in the United States, was accusing Egypt of building ‘weapons of mass destruction’ in order to ‘launch a war of extermination against Israel.’” [See graphic below]

”The Department of State’s declared position means that Israel effectively controls when, if ever, the US will uphold AECA. Given Israel’s position of ‘nuclear ambiguity’ over its own weapons and constant generation of often false reports about its regional rivals, AECA enforcement will never happen.”

Transcript:

HUSSEINI: Yeah, I ask you about the apparent Israeli violations of the Arms Export Act a week or two ago [“State Dept. Claims ‘We Follow the Law in Every Instance’ but Stonewalls on Law About Israeli Nukes”], and you said you weren’t familiar with the laws that would cut off funding to any state that was a nuclear proliferator. Do you have anything further on that?

PRICE: I believe the team provided you some additional background on that. [They emailed me that they would but didn’t give a substantial response until after I asked this question (below)] As in the past, we’re just not in a position to comment specifically on this. Would refer you and any questions you may have on this —

HUSSEINI: But how do you have – how do you expect to have any credibilityon this subject when you can’t even acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal?

PRICE: Again, I just don’t have anything to offer on this, so we’d refer any questions to the Israeli government. As a practice, when it comes to just about any country, certainly any partner, we don’t speak in detail to the capabilities, to the programs of partners around the world, just as we would expect they would not speak to ours.

Yes.

HUSSEINI: You’re referring me to the Israeli government about their own nuclear program?

QUESTION: (Off-mike.)

PRICE: That’s correct.

HUSSEINI: About their own nuclear program – you can’t acknowledge that Israel has a nuclear weapons program?

Full transcript of Feb. 27 news conference. Full video.

After questioning State on Feb. 13, I was asked to submit more information to State, which I did that day:

The Symington and Glenn Amendments in the Arms Export Control Act 22 USC §2799aa-1 forbid US aid to clandestine nuclear weapons state non-NNPT signatories unless presidents obtain a waiver from Congress.

Israel has been acknowledged by the US as a nuclear weapons state.

The 1974 CIA SNIE states “We believe that Israel already has produced nuclear weapons.”

The Department of Defense report Critical Technology Assessment in Israel and NATO Nations clearly documents Israel’s nuclear weapons production facilities, revealing:

1. The Israelis were “developing the kind of codes which will enable them to make hydrogen bombs. That is, codes which detail fission and fusion processes on a microscopic and macroscopic level.”

2. “The SOREQ and the Dimona/Beer Shiva facilities are the equivalent of our Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore and Oak Ridge National Laboratories. The SOREQ center runs the full nuclear gamut of activities from engineering, administration and non-destructive testing to electro-optics, pulsed power, process engineering and chemistry and nuclear research and safety. This is the technology base required for nuclear weapons design and fabrication.”

3. “The capability of SOREQ to support SDIO and nuclear technologies is almost an exact parallel of the capability currently existing at our National Laboratories.”

While there are provisions in USC §2799aa-1 for presidents to obtain waivers from the Congress for continued aid, as recently as 2018 a member of congress confirmed that no such waivers had ever been issued. (attached)

My unanswered question remains, specifically, how can past, present and future U.S. foreign aid to Israel be lawful under the Symington Glenn amendment restrictions found currently in USC §2799aa-1 and in force since 1976?

I had some communication but did receive a response until Feb. 27 at 9 p.m. from State, which makes no reference to the law cited. This is especially remarkable since the entire exchange took place because Ned Price, the State Department spokesperson claimed: “We follow the law in every instance.”

U.S. policy on this issue has been consistent for decades. The United States has long supported universal adherence to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and remains firmly committed to the goal of a Middle East free of all weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems. We have urged all states that have not yet done so to accede to the NPT and to accept full-scope IAEA safeguards on all of their nuclear activities.

However, we acknowledge that achieving these goals in the Middle East is a long-term objective that will require essential precursors to be in place, including a comprehensive and durable regional peace and compliance by all regional states with their existing nonproliferation commitments and obligations.

So, Israel has to make peace with everyone before the US will acknowledge it has nuclear weapons.

*

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Featured image: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers a speech on Iran’s nuclear programme at the defence ministry in Tel Aviv on 30 April 2018 (Source: Middle East Eye)

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***

Volodomyr Zelensky has a lot of powerful backers around the world, and from afar, the Ukrainian president seems politically invincible.

He’s got the Uniparty in Washington, D.C. on his side, coupled with the international globalists in the robust World Economic Forum-attached network, along with the public-private asset management behemoth financiers in BlackRock and co, and another heavy line of credit through the IMF-World Bank group.

Domestically, it’s an entirely different story. The Ukrainian people are suffering greatly under Zelensky, with mandatory conscription and half the country’s land mass now exposed to the horrors and bombardment of an indefinite war footing. Kiev once pursued neutrality and embraced its role as a buffer state as the functioning gold standard for geopolitical relations. Now, at the insistence of the western ruling class, Ukraine has committed realpolitik seppuku and has become fiercely antagonistic to its more powerful neighbor.

The corporate press and D.C. institutions have insisted that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s standing is most at risk of a coup or popular overthrow, but there is no evidence for such an assertion. In fact, polling from the independent Levada-Center shows Putin’s approval rating has spiked to over 80 percent since the commencement of the war in Ukraine. Zelensky, on the other hand, is heading in the opposite direction, becoming increasingly unpopular as the war drags on.

The Zelensky government is fighting wars on two fronts, having engaged in ethnic cleansing against large swaths of its own population, especially the third of the country that is now labeled as enemies of the state due to their Russian ethnic and linguistic backgrounds.

Moreover, despite the seemingly endless rounds of Western supplies and money disbursements contributing to the war effort, Ukraine is losing this conflict badly, and their citizens are paying the greatest price for it.

In order to protect his government and his personal standing in office, Zelensky has spent recent weeks and months conducting a Great Purge within Ukraine.

Countless high-ranking ministers, governors, and other Ukrainian bureaucrats have been stripped of authority, of course, without any due process. In recent weeks, Zelensky’s deputy minister of defense, the deputy head of the country’s presidential office, and the deputy prosecutor general are but many of the high-ranking individuals who were removed due to “corruption” allegations. In one such incident, the three highest ranking officials in Zelensky’s interior ministry were killed in a “helicopter accident” over Kiev.

There’s surely a large kernel of truth to the corruption allegations, as Ukraine is regularly ranked as the most corrupt country in Europe. Yet it doesn’t seem to be the motivating force behind the systematic removal of upper management at lightning speed.

Despite facing an ongoing war, Zelensky has been known to take time to engage in very public spats with his political rivals — only those who are still allowed to serve in government, following the Zelensky government’s extrajudicial elimination of their political opposition — over trivial issues. Nonetheless, he’s been publicly beefing with a political rival in the mayor of Kiev, the popular former boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, who has previously been well positioned to throw his hat in the ring for the presidency.

Over the weekend, Ukraine took another series of devastating battlefield losses. On Sunday, Zelensky fired a top general in Eduard Mykhailovich Moskalov, who led Ukraine’s joint forces and was appointed to the post in March of 2022. There was no reason given for the abrupt firing, but in all likelihood it has to do with Ukraine’s struggle to retain Bakhmut, the war-torn city in the country’s east.

The corporate press has finally started to address the possibility that Zelensky’s Great Purge is not a corruption-busting endeavor, but a power preserving initiative. It is much more likely, in fact, that these officials are being removed because they threaten the integrity of the regime. While Zelensky’s foreign backers can continue to prop him up, the people closest to him must also buy into the mission. As the fog of war clears, so too may the honeymoon period for Zelensky’s unopposed standing as the leader of Ukraine.

*

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Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers an address in Kiev, Ukraine, April 15, 2022. (Credit: Ukrainian Presidency)

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Ukraine and The Tunnel at the End of the Light

March 1st, 2023 by Robert Freeman

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***

“Light at the end of the tunnel” was an iconic phrase used by the warmongers who kept the U.S. in Vietnam long after the War had been lost. The implication was that insiders could see through the fog of war and know that things were getting better. It was a lie.

In January 1966, long before the military height of the War, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara told President Johnson that the U.S. had a one-out-of-three chance of winning on the battlefield. But Johnson, like Eisenhower and Kennedy before him, and Nixon after him, didn’t want to be the first American president to lose a war. So, he ginned up a simplistic lie and “soldiered on.”

The lie was blown by the Tet Offensive in January 1968. More than 100 U.S. military installations were attacked in a simultaneous nationwide assault that stunned the U.S. The broadcaster, Walter Cronkite, then “the most trusted man in America,” bellowed on national television, “I thought we were supposed to be winning this damned thing.” It was the beginning of the end of the U.S.’ murderous and failed occupation.

We’re now facing another light-and-tunnel event, this time in Ukraine. Only now, it’s not the light at the end of the tunnel. It’s the tunnel at the end of the light. What do we mean by that?

Until now, it’s been all light. Remember when the scrappy Ukrainian forces were kicking the barbarian Russian hordes’ asses? When every development betrayed the Russians’ clod-footed strategy, its soldiers’ bad morale, its army’s poor provisioning and worse leadership, and the perilous political situation for Putin back home? The testosterone was flowing. The bravado was intoxicating. The exceptionalism was sublimely seductive. It was only a matter of time and pluck and determination before Ukraine would bloody the bully’s nose and show it what the West was made of.

Remember?

No more.

You can prosecute a war for only so long on the strength of smoke and mirrors, delusions and illusions, lies and press releases. Eventually, however, reality catches up with you. The thuggishly propagandized American citizenry couldn’t know it, but that catching up began in the first weeks of the War and has only accelerated since.

Within the first week of the War, Russia had destroyed Ukraine’s air force and air defenses. By the second week, it had taken out most of Ukraine’s armories and weapons depots. Over following weeks and months, it systematically demolished artillery shipped in from former Warsaw Pact, now NATO, countries in Eastern Europe. It dismantled the country’s transportation and fuel supply systems. It has recently taken out most of the country’s electrical infrastructure.

The Ukrainian army has lost an estimated 150,000 troops, a pace more than 140 times the rate of U.S. losses in Vietnam. This, at a time when 10 million of its formerly 36 million people have fled the country. The military is down to dragooning 16-year-old boys and 60-year-old men to man the barricades. It cannot get replacement ammunition. Russia has knocked out some 90% of Ukraine’s drones, leaving it largely sightless. Delivery times for the tanks that are the hoped-for “game changer” are running into months and years. Not that that will matter.

Remember all the other failed “game changers”? The M777 howitzers and the Stryker armored fighting vehicles? The HIMARS multiple rocket launchers and the PATRIOT air defense systems? All were going to turn the tide at one time. All have proven impotent to stop Russia from seizing 20% of Ukraine’s territory and annexing it and its people to Russia.

The U.S. lost the economic war, as well. Remember Joe Biden’s delusional prediction that the U.S. would see that “the ruble will be reduced to rubble”? And that “the most stringent sanctions regime in history” was going to “weaken” Russia, perhaps even leading to Putin’s overthrow? Most of it backfired, badly. Last year, the ruble reached its highest exchange rate in history. Russia’s 2022 trade surplus of $227 billion was up 86% from 2021. The U.S.’ trade deficit over the same period rose 12.2%, and is approaching $1 trillion.

As a result of all of the above and more, the tide of insider opinion has turned against the War. Senior officials in Europe are talking openly about how the losses are unsustainable and they need to get back to security architectures that prevailed before the poisoned CIA-supported coup in Maidan in 2014. Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently let slip that “It will be very, very difficult to eject the Russians from all of occupied Ukraine in the next year. The Washington Post warned recently that Ukraine faced a “critical moment” in the war, belaboring the fact that U.S. support was not limitless and would soon be reached. Hint. Hint.

The Rand Corporation, one of the U.S.’ best-connected strategic whisperers, just published a report stating that “The consequences of a long war far outweigh the benefits.” It explicitly states that the U.S. needs to husband its resources for its more important upcoming conflict with China. Newsweek headlined that “Joe Biden Offered Vladimir Putin 20 Percent of Ukraine to End War.” It also revealed that “Nearly 90 percent of the world isn’t following us on Ukraine.” Vast swaths of Latin American, Africa, and Asia refuse to support the U.S. in its demand for sanctions against Russia.

These are not “Light at the end of the tunnel” divinations. Quite the contrary. If there’s a common thread running through it all it is the sickening recognition that the war is lost, militarily, economically, and diplomatically, that there is no plausible scenario in which those losses will be turned around by soldiering on, and that what is needed now is a hide-the-loss, get-out-any-way-you-can, face-saving exit strategy.

That will not be available, either. That’s where the tunnel at the end of the light comes into play.

Even before the U.S. and its NATO puppets undertook the War, the rest of the world—and that means most of the world—was congealing itself into an anti-Western economic and security bloc. Led by China and its strategic ally, Russia, that bloc includes more than a dozen trade and security organizations. Those include the BRICS confederation of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, working explicitly to devise multi-polar institutions to stand up to the U.S.’ unipolar hegemonic model.

It includes the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security compact made up of leading nations from east, central, and south Asia, including China, Russia, India, and soon, Iran, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. It is explicitly working to devise measures to prevent the kind of predatory military assaults the U.S. carried out against Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and Afghanistan.

The organizing economic engine behind these efforts it is China’s Belt and Road Initiative. BRI is a dizzyingly ambitious plan to connect Asia and more than 100 nations with 21st Century economic infrastructure, everything from highways and high-speed rail lines, to power generation, energy pipelines, communication systems, cities, ports, and more. It is critical to understand why BRI poses such daunting challenges to U.S. supremacy in the world.

Infrastructure is so powerful because it spins off a vast, unimaginable array of secondary, and tertiary economic benefits. It was the railroads in the nineteenth century that bound the U.S. together as the world’s first continental-scale market. Manufacturers could produce for a larger market, and, therefore, at larger scale, and, therefore, at lower cost, than could producers anywhere else on earth.

The railroads made the U.S. the largest market in the world for iron, steel, machine tools, grading equipment, farm equipment, and scores of other commercial and industrial products essential to a modern industrial economy. The U.S. began the 1800s with 1.5% of the world’s GDP. It ended the century with 19% of a four-times larger number, making it the largest economy in the world.

Similarly, automobiles. People think it was Henry Ford and mass production that made the Twentieth Century “The American Century.” In fact, it was the build-out of millions of miles of roads and, later, interstates, without which automobiles would have remained expensive playthings of the wealthy. Those roads stitched the country together into an asphalt network that allowed individual mobility, by virtually anybody, anywhere, down to every street address in the country. The world had never seen anything like it.

The secondary and tertiary economic effects were astounding, everything from the world’s largest markets for steel, glass, plastics, and rubber, to gasoline, diesel, highway construction on a continental scale, repair shops and drive-ins, to the entire panoply of culture we know of as suburbia. The Twentieth Century was the Century of the Automobile. The infrastructure the U.S. built to make it possible was the major reason—at least economically—that the U.S. led the world for most of that century.

China is now proposing to do the same for Asia in the Twenty-First Century, but on a much larger scale. It is leading an infrastructure build-out that will dwarf Eisenhower’s Interstate highway system. It will serve most of the five billion people in Eurasia, thirty TIMES more than the 150 million people Eisenhower’s project helped.

Wisely, China has ensured that all of the 100+ nations joining BRI are enriched by their participation, whether building themselves up domestically, or extending their reach internationally. It is the largest, most compelling, geographically extensive, nationally inclusive, mutually enriching economic enterprise in the history of the world. The U.S. is not part of it.

Finally, there is the matter of the dollar. Since the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, the global economy has used the dollar as the primary currency of international trade. This has given the U.S. an “exorbitant privilege” in that it can essentially write an unlimited stream of hot checks to the world, because countries need dollars to be able to conduct international commerce. The U.S. “sells” them dollars by issuing Treasury debt, which is a universally fungible international medium of exchange.

One of the consequences of this arrangement is that it has allowed the U.S. to spend far beyond its means, running up $32 trillion of debt since 1980, when its national debt stood at a mere $1 trillion. The U.S. uses this debt to, among other things, fund its gargantuan military with its 800 military bases around the world, which it uses to do things like destroy Serbia, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, and a host of lesser predations on other countries. All the world sees this and is repulsed by it.

The world sees how dollar hegemony underwrites the U.S.’ ability to carry out or attempt coups in Honduras, Venezuela, Peru, Bolivia, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Myanmar, Belarus, Egypt, Syria, and, of course, Ukraine, among others. And these are just those in the past two decades.

The same dollar hegemony underwrote U.S. predations in the latter part of the Twentieth Century against Iran, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Cuba, Chile, Congo, Brazil, Indonesia, and dozens of other countries. Again, the rest of the world sees this. U.S. citizens, rapturously oblivious in their hermetically sealed media bubble, do not.

The world saw how the U.S. stole $300 billion of Russian funds that were held in Western banks, part of its sanctions regime against Russia for its role in the Ukraine war. They’ve seen how the U.S. has carried out similar thefts against dollar-denominated funds of Venezuela, Afghanistan, and Iran. It sees how the Federal Reserve’s raising of interest rates to take care of U.S. needs makes capital flow out of other countries, and how it makes their currencies fall, forcing inflation on them. Not a single country in the world is left untouched.

The cumulative impact of these facts is that many countries would rather not be held hostage to the implicit and explicit negative consequences of dollar hegemony. They also want to remove the “exorbitant privilege” that they believe the U.S. has abused to their individual and collective detriment.

They have begun—again, led by Russia and China—to build an international finance and trading system that doesn’t rely on dollars, that uses countries’ local currencies, gold, oil, or other assets to trade. This received special impetus last year when Saudi Arabia announced it would begin accepting Chinese yuan in exchange for its oil. Oil is the world’s most valued internationally-traded commodity, so the perception is that a dam is beginning to break.

It will take years before an equally functional substitute for the dollar is devised but what began a few years ago as a trickle has gained momentum and urgency as a consequence of U.S. actions in Ukraine. When the dollar is no longer the world’s international reserve currency and nations don’t need dollars to trade with each other, the U.S. will no longer be able to fund its massive budget and trade deficits by writing hot checks. The withdrawal will be agonizing and will greatly circumscribe the U.S.’ role as global hegemon.

U.S. actions in Ukraine have driven together its two greatest adversaries, Russia and China. They, joined by India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran and dozens of other countries, are carrying out a Mackinder-feared Eurasian integration that will leave the U.S. outside of the world’s largest and most dynamic trading bloc.

The U.S.’ military failure has advertised, once again (after Iraq and Afghanistan), the relative impotence of U.S. military solutions. Yes, it can still destroy small, defenseless countries like Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iraq. But against a peer competitor that has chosen to stand up to it, the U.S. has, frankly, been handed its ass. All the world can see it.

Events have shown the hollowness of U.S.-led economic and financial systems, as well, especially compared to China. China’s economic performance has far surpassed that of the U.S. It has lifted more people out of poverty more quickly than any country in the history of the world. Its growth has made it the largest economy in the world in purchasing power parity terms. While average inflation-adjusted incomes in the U.S. are little higher than they were 50 years ago, incomes in China are up more than 10 TIMES over the same period. And it has done this without brutalizing and pillaging other nations that refuse to bend to its hegemonic will.

And, the War has betrayed, as nothing else possibly could, the diplomatic isolation of the U.S., with the vast majority of the world’s people refusing to implement U.S.-demanded sanctions against Russia. Its destruction of the Nord Stream gas pipeline is recognized as the greatest act of state-sponsored terrorism in history, easily surpassing 911 in terms of the hundreds of millions of people it will hurt. And this, to one of its putative allies, Europe. Imagine what happens to its enemies.

This is the tunnel at the end of the light, a multi-polar as opposed to a unipolar world. It means increasing isolation of the U.S. from the rest of the world, the closing in of options, the narrowing of opportunities, the loss of strategic primacy that once graced the greatest power in the history of the world. It will mean dramatically reduced power and influence vis-à-vis the U.S.’ strategic adversaries, and markedly constrained ability to operate militarily, economically and financially in the world, what with the hot checkbook soon to be taken away.

In twenty or thirty years, the U.S. will still be a substantial regional power, perhaps like Brazil in South America, Iran in West Asia, or Nigeria in Africa. But it will not be the global hegemon it once was, able to project and inflict power in the world as it has done for the last century. The U.S. abused its providential anointment as the exceptional nation. That abuse has been recognized, called out, and is now being acted against by most of the other nations of the world. The future will be very different for the U.S. than it has been for the past 80 years, since the end of World War II when it towered over the rest of the world like a giant among pygmies. Ukraine will prove to have been the turning point in this transformation, the tunnel at the end of the light.

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

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Robert Freeman is Founder and Executive Director of The Global Uplift Project which builds small-scale infrastructure projects in the developing world to improve humanity’s capacity for self-development. Robert taught economics and history at Los Altos High School where he also coached the Speech and Debate team, including producing a national champion in 2006. He has traveled extensively in both the developed and developing world. He is the author of “The Best One Hour History” series which includes “World War I” (2013), “The InterWar Years” (2014), “The Vietnam War” (2013), and other titles.

Featured image: Photo by Master Sgt. Sean M. Worrell, U.S. Air Force via ABACAPRESS.COM

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Nuclear Armageddon Games in Ukraine

March 1st, 2023 by Joshua Frank

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***

In 1946, Albert Einstein shot off a telegram to several hundred American leaders and politicians warning that the “unleashed power of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking and we thus drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Einstein’s forecast remains prescient. Nuclear calamity still knocks.

Even prior to Vladimir Putin’s bloody invasion of Ukraine, the threat of a nuclear confrontation between NATO and Russia was intensifying. After all, in August 2019, President Donald Trump formally withdrew the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, long heralded as a pillar of arms control between the two superpowers.

“Russia is solely responsible for the treaty’s demise,” declared Secretary of State Mike Pompeo following the announcement. “With the full support of our NATO allies, the United States has determined Russia to be in material breach of the treaty and has subsequently suspended our obligations under the treaty.” No evidence of that breach was offered, but in Trump World, no evidence was needed.

Then, on February 21st of this year, following the Biden administration’s claims that Russia was no longer abiding by its obligations under the New START treaty, the last remaining nuclear arms accord between the two nations, Putin announced that he would end his country’s participation.

In the year since Russia’s initial assault on Ukraine, the danger of nuclear war has only inched ever closer. While President Biden’s White House raised doubts that Putin would indeed use any of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists ominously reset its Doomsday Clock at 90 seconds to midnight, the closest since its creation in 1947. Those scientific experts weren’t buying what the Biden administration was selling.

“As Russia’s war on Ukraine continues, the last remaining nuclear weapons treaty between Russia and the United States… stands in jeopardy,” read a January 2023 press release from the Bulletin before Putin backed out of the agreement. “Unless the two parties resume negotiations and find a basis for further reductions, the treaty will expire in February 2026. This would eliminate mutual inspections, deepen mistrust, spur a nuclear arms race, and heighten the possibility of a nuclear exchange.”

Of course, they were correct and, in mid-February, the Norwegian government claimed Russia had already deployed ships armed with tactical nukes in the Baltic Sea for the first time in more than 30 years.

“Tactical nuclear weapons are a particularly serious threat in several operational scenarios in which NATO countries may be involved,” claimed the report. “The ongoing tensions between Russia and the West mean that Russia will continue to pose the greatest nuclear threat to NATO, and therefore to Norway.”

For its part, in October 2022, NATO ran its own nuclear bombing drills, designated “Steadfast Noon,” with fighter jets in Europe’s skies involved in “war games” (minus live weaponry). “It’s an exercise to ensure that our nuclear deterrent remains safe, secure, and effective,” claimed NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, but it almost seemed as if NATO was taunting Putin to cross the line.

And yet, here’s the true horror story lurking behind the war in Ukraine. While a nuclear tit-for-tat between Russia and NATO — an exchange that could easily destroy much of Eastern Europe in no time at all — is a genuine, if frightening, prospect, it isn’t the most imminent radioactive peril facing the region.

Averting a Meltdown

By now, we all ought to be familiar with the worrisome Zaporizhzhia nuclear complex (ZNPP), which sits right in the middle of the Russian incursion into Ukraine. Assembled between 1980 and 1986, Zaporizhzhia is Europe’s largest nuclear-power complex, with six 950-megawatt reactors. In February and March of last year, after a series of fierce battles, which caused a fire to break out at a nearby training facility, the Russians hijacked the embattled plant. Representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) were later sent in to ensure that the reactors weren’t at immediate risk of meltdown and issued a report stating, in part, that:

“…further escalation affecting the six-reactor plant could lead to a severe nuclear accident with potentially grave radiological consequences for human health and the environment in Ukraine and elsewhere and that renewed shelling at or near the ZNPP was deeply troubling for nuclear safety and security at the facility.”

Since then, the fighting has only intensified. Russia kidnapped some of the plant’s Ukrainian employees, including its deputy director Valery Martynyuk. In September 2022, due to ongoing shelling in the area, Zaporizhzhia was taken offline and, after losing external power on several occasions, has since been sporadically relying on old diesel backup generators. (Once disconnected from the electrical grid, backup power is crucial to ensure the plant’s reactors don’t overheat, which could lead to a full-blown radioactive meltdown.)

However, relying on risk-prone backup power is a fool’s game, according to electrical engineer Josh Karpoff. A member of Science for the People who previously worked for the New York State Office of General Services where he designed electrical systems for buildings, including large standby generators, Karpoff knows how these things work in a real-world setting. He assures me that, although Zaporizhzhia is no longer getting much attention in the general rush of Ukraine news, the possibility of a major disaster there is ever more real. A backup generator, he explains, is about as reliable as a ’75 Winnebago.

“It’s really not that hard to knock out these kinds of diesel generators,” Karpoff adds. “If your standby generator starts up but says there’s a leak in a high-pressure oil line fitting, it sprays heated, aerosolized oil all over the hot motor, starting a fire. This happens to diesel motors all the time. A similar diesel engine fire in a locomotive was partly responsible for causing the Lac Megantic Rail Disaster in Quebec back in 2013.”

Sadly enough, Karpoff is on target. Just remember how the backup generators failed at the three nuclear reactors in Fukushima, Japan, in 2011. Many people believe that the 9.0 magnitude underwater earthquake caused them to melt down, but that’s not exactly the case.

It was, in fact, a horrific chain of worsening events. While the earthquake itself didn’t damage Fukushima’s reactors, it cut the facility off from the power grid, automatically switching the plant to backup generators. So even though the fission reaction had stopped, heat was still being produced by the radioactive material inside the reactor cores. A continual water supply, relying on backup power, was needed to keep those cores from melting down. Then, 30 minutes after that huge quake, a tsunami struck, knocking out the plant’s seawater pumps, which subsequently caused the generators to go down.

“The myth of the tsunami is that the tsunami destroyed the [generators] and had that not happened, everything would have been fine,” former nuclear engineer Arnie Gunderson told Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! “What really happened is that the tsunami destroyed the [sea] pumps right along the ocean… Without that water, the [diesel generators] will overheat, and without that water, it’s impossible to cool a nuclear core.”

With the sea pumps out of commission, 12 of the plant’s 13 generators ended up failing. Unable to cool, the reactors began to melt, leading to three hydrogen explosions that released radioactive material, carried disastrously across the region and out to sea by prevailing winds, where much of it will continue to float around and accumulate for decades.

At Zaporizhzhia, there are several scenarios that could lead to a similar failure of the standby generators. They could be directly shelled and catch fire or clog up or just run out of fuel. It’s a dicey situation, as the ongoing war edges Ukraine and the surrounding countries toward the brink of a catastrophic nuclear crisis.

“I don’t know for how long we are going to be lucky in avoiding a nuclear accident,” said Rafael Grossi, director general of the IAEA in late January, calling it a “bizarre situation: a Ukrainian facility in Russian-controlled territory, managed by Russians, but operated by Ukrainians.”

Bad Things Will Follow

Unfortunately, it’s not just Zaporizhzhia we have to worry about. Though not much attention has been given to them, there are, in fact, 14 other nuclear power plants in the war zone and Russia has also seized the ruined Chernobyl plant, where there is still significant hot radioactive waste that must be kept cool.

Kate Brown, author of Plutopia, told Science for the People last April:

“Russians are apparently using these two captured nuclear installations like kings on a chessboard. They hold Chernobyl and the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power reactor plants, and they are stockpiling weapons and soldiers there as safe havens. This is a new military tactic we haven’t seen before, where you use the vulnerability of these installations, as a defensive tactic. The Russians apparently figured that the Ukrainians wouldn’t shoot. The Russians noticed that when they came to the Chernobyl zone, the Ukrainian guard of the Chernobyl plant stood down because they didn’t want missiles fired at these vulnerable installations. There are twenty thousand spent nuclear fuel rods, more than half of them in basins at that plant. It’s a precarious situation. This is a new scenario for us.”

Of course, the hazards facing Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl would be mitigated if Putin removed his forces tomorrow, but there’s little possibility of that happening. It’s worth noting as well that Ukraine is not the only place where, in the future, such a scenario could play out. Taiwan, at the center of a potential military conflict between the U.S. and China, has several nuclear power plants. Iran operates a nuclear facility. Pakistan has six reactors at two different sites. Saudi Arabia is building a new facility. The list only goes on and on.

Even more regrettably, Russia has raised the nuclear stakes in a new way, setting a distressing precedent with its illegal occupation of Zaporizhzhia and Chernobyl, turning them into tools of war. No other power-generating source operating in a war zone, even the worst of the fossil-fuel users, poses such a potentially serious and immediate threat to life as we know it on this planet.

And while hitting those Ukrainian reactors themselves is one recipe for utter disaster, there are other potentially horrific “peaceful” nuclear possibilities as well. What about a deliberate attack on nuclear-waste facilities or those unstable backup generators? You wouldn’t even have to strike the reactors directly to cause a disaster. Simply take out the power-grid supply lines, hit the generators, and terrible things will follow. With nuclear power, even the purportedly “peaceful” type, the potential for catastrophe is obvious.

The Greatest of Evils

In my new book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, I probe the horrors of the Hanford site in Washington state, one of the locations chosen to develop the first nuclear weapons for the covert Manhattan Project during World War II. For more than 40 years, that facility churned out most of the plutonium used in the vast American arsenal of atomic weapons.

Now, however, Hanford is a radioactive wasteland, as well as the largest and most expensive environmental clean-up project in history. To say that it’s a boondoggle would be an understatement. Hanford has 177 underground tanks loaded with 56 million gallons of steaming radioactive gunk. Two of those tanks are currently leaking, their waste making its way toward groundwater supplies that could eventually reach the Columbia River. High-level whistleblowers I interviewed who worked at Hanford told me they feared that a hydrogen build-up in one of those tanks, if ignited, could lead to a Chernobyl-like event here in the United States, resulting in a tragedy unlike anything this country has ever experienced.

All of this makes me fear that those old Hanford tanks could someday be possible targets for an attack. Sabotage or a missile strike on them could cause a major release of radioactive material from coast to coast. The economy would crash. Major cities would become unlivable. And there’s precedent for this: in 1957, a massive explosion occurred at Mayak, Hanford’s Cold War sister facility in the then-Soviet Union that manufactured plutonium for nukes. Largely unknown, it was the second biggest peacetime radioactive disaster ever, only “bested” by the Chernobyl accident. In Mayak’s case, a faulty cooling system gave out and the waste in one of the facility’s tanks overheated, causing a radioactive blast equivalent to the force of 70 tons of TNT, contaminating 20,000 square miles. Countless people died and whole villages were forever vacated.

All of this is to say that nuclear waste, whether on a battlefield or not, is an inherently nasty business. Nuclear facilities around the world, containing less waste than the underground silos at Hanford, have already shown us their vulnerabilities. Last August, in fact, the Russians reported that containers housing spent fuel waste at Zaporizhzhia were shelled by Ukrainian forces. “One of the guided shells hit the ground ten meters from them (containers with nuclear waste…). Others fell down slightly further — 50 and 200 meters,” alleged Vladimir Rogov, a Russian-appointed official there. “As the storage area is open, a shell or a rocket may unseal containers and kilograms, or even hundreds of kilograms of nuclear waste will be emitted into the environment and contaminate it. To put it simply, it will be a ‘dirty bomb.’”

Ukraine, in turn, blamed Russia for the strike, but regardless of which side was at fault, after Chernobyl (which some researchers believe affected upwards of 1.8 million people) both the Ukrainians and the Russians understand the grave risks of atomically-charged explosions. This is undoubtedly why the Russians are apparently constructing protective coverings over Zaporizhzhia’s waste storage tanks. An incident at the plant releasing radioactive particles would damage not just Ukraine but Russia, too.

As former New York Times correspondent Chris Hedges so aptly put it, war is the greatest of evils and such evils rise exponentially with the prospect of a nuclear apocalypse. Worse yet, a radioactive Armageddon doesn’t have to come from the actual detonation of nuclear bombs. It can take many forms. The atom, as Einstein warned us, has certainly changed everything.

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

Featured image is from South Front


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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Serbia Dangerously Close to Capitulation

March 1st, 2023 by Drago Bosnic

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***

For well over three decades, the political West has been exerting unprecedented pressure on Serbia. The incessantly belligerent and imperialist power pole invested decades and enormous resources to fragment and reduce Serbian ethnic space to only a fraction of what it was just 30 years ago. This was accomplished through the backing of various Neo-Nazi and terrorist groups and setting up their respective regimes in areas previously controlled by Serbia. These vassal entities would then conduct ethnic cleansing of native Serbs from the area, engineering their respective majorities in certain regions which would then be incorporated by the said NATO vassals or turned into new states and statelets by carving them up from Serbia.

A prominent example of this is the NATO-occupied Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohia, which the belligerent alliance took by force in 1999, after the illegal bombing that was the focal point of almost ten years of continuous US/NATO aggression.

Now, after over two decades of crawling US-backed separatist actions by the illegal narco-terrorist government in Pristina, the European Union is pushing the final solution that would be the last nail in the coffin of Serbia’s sovereignty. Months of tremendous pressure from the US, EU and NATO have pushed Belgrade to the brink. The previously veiled threats by Brussels and Washington DC have become as direct as they could possibly be, particularly since the start of Russia’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe.

Serbia’s continuous refusal to impose sanctions on Moscow is seen as nothing less than “heresy” in the political West. The small country is rather unique in this regard, as it’s still the only one in Europe that has not imposed them. The result is a constant exacerbation of the political West’s hostility towards Serbia, which is now being forced to finally renounce its well-over-a-millennium-old land occupied by NATO forces. The so-called Franco-German plan, in the works for several months now, means the de facto recognition of the illegal “State of Kosovo”. One of its points represents quite possibly the pinnacle of the utter hypocrisy and double standards the political West is well-known (or rather infamous) for.

Namely, Article 3 states that “the sides… …reaffirm the inviolability… …of the border existing between them and undertake fully to respect each other’s territorial integrity”. It’s rather laughable to suggest that Serbia’s territorial integrity will be “respected” by the very separatists aiming to take approximately 12% of its land (recognized by the UN). Worse yet, Serbia is now forced to “respect the territorial integrity” of the illegal US-backed narco-terrorist entity currently occupying its southern province. Unfortunately, the Serbian government has also been trying to circumvent Western pressure by voting for anti-Russian resolutions in the UN General Assembly, hoping to relieve at least some pressure from Washington DC and Brussels, but it’s now obvious all this was in vain.

In doing so, the Serbian government went against the vast majority of its own electorate, which is overwhelmingly pro-Russian (and has been for centuries).

For years, Belgrade has been trying to maintain its (official) neutrality, but as the political West operates under the “you’re either with us or against us” foreign policy framework, this is effectively considered “hostile” and now, the Serbian government is forced to make choices which will effectively mean political suicide in a country whose populace is well aware of the malice and harm caused by Washington DC and Brussels. And yet, even the attempts to appease the political West have been completely in vain, as the pressure on Serbia and its sovereignty and territorial integrity continues unabated.

On the anniversary of Russia’s special military operation, the UN General Assembly passed a non-binding resolution condemning Russia and “supporting the territorial integrity of Ukraine”. Serbia was forced to vote in favor, meaning that Belgrade officially supports the territorial integrity of the illegal Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, but it violates its own by “respecting” the “territorial integrity” of the NATO-backed narco-terrorist entity in Pristina. To make matters worse, it is doing so while siding with the political West, the greatest threat to its very existence, against Russia, its only true ally in the international arena. The cognitive dissonance in this case is hardly comparable to any other geopolitical situation anywhere in the world.

Serbia is a perfect example that appeasement will not only fail to produce the desired results, but also backfire. Despite well over two decades of accepting virtually every political West’s “suggestion”, the blackmails continue. The very next step is extremely likely to be the termination of Republika Srpska, forcefully integrated into “independent” Bosnia and Herzegovina nearly 30 years ago.

Soon after, the question of sanctions against Russia will surely be presented as “vital” to Belgrade’s “Euro-Atlantic future”. And yet, even if Serbia accepts this, Washington DC and Brussels will certainly demand further subservience, including possible sanctions against China, another global power Serbia has good relations with.

Unfortunately, Serbia is a perfect example of how any attempt to maintain sovereignty and territorial integrity while trying to appease the political West is not only absurd, but also a dangerous fantasy that will always end in utter disaster for anyone attempting it. True sovereignty and independence can only be guaranteed with the complete dismantling of the political West and the emergence of the multipolar world order which would ensure that neocolonialism and imperialism are defeated once and for all. Sadly, there’s only one known way to achieve this.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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Quoth the Vultures “Evermore”

March 1st, 2023 by Edward Curtin

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***

On the short roof outside the bedroom window, two black vultures sit, staring in.  They have come to remind me of something.  I put my book down and peer back at these strange looking creatures. The book: Our War: What We Did in Vietnam And What It Did to Us by David Harris.  I had read it when it was first published in 1996 and it has stuck with me, as has the utterly savage U.S. war against Vietnam that killed so many millions, what the Vietnamese call The American War.

I am of the same generation as Harris, the courageous draft resister and anti-war campaigner who died on February 6.  Like him, many of us who were of draft age then have never been able to extricate the horror of that war from our minds.  Most, I suppose, but surely not those who went to Vietnam to fight, just moved on and allowed the war to disappear from their consciousness as they perhaps tried to think of it as a “mistake” and to live as if all the constant American wars since weren’t happening.  As for the young, the war against Vietnam is ancient history, and if they learned anything about it in school, it was erroneous for sure, a continuation of the lie.

But it was no mistake; it was an intentional genocidal war waged to torture, kill, and maim as many Vietnamese as possible and to use drafted (enslaved) American boys to do the killing and suffer the consequences.  It’s Phoenix Program, the CIA’s assassination and torture operation, became the template for Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, CIA black sites, hybrid wars, terrorist actions, etc. up to today.  Harris writes:

[that] . . . . “calling the war a mistake is the fundamental equivalent of calling water wet or dirt dirty. . . . Let us not lose sight of what really happened.  In this particular ‘mistake,’ at least 3 million people died, only 58,000 of whom were Americans.  These 3 million people died crushed in the mud, riddled with shrapnel, hurled out of helicopters, impaled on sharpened bamboo, obliterated in carpets of explosives dropped from bombers flying so high they could only be heard and never seen; they died reduced to chunks by one or more land mines, finished off by a round through the temple or a bayonet through the throat, consumed by sizzling phosphorous, burned alive by jellied gasoline, strung up by their thumps, starved in cages, executed after watching their babies die, trapped on the barbed wire calling for their mothers.  They died while trying to kill, they died while trying to kill no one, they died heroes, they died villains, they died at random, they died most often when someone who had no idea who they were killed them under the orders of who had even less idea than that.

That’s the truth.  Unvarnished.  But such historical truth hurts to consider, for it reminds us that the belief in the U.S.A.’s good intentions is a delusion. The war against Vietnam was immoral, but even that word fails to grasp it.  Pure evil is truer.  And to consider that war on military terms alone, one must accept the fact the U.S. lost the war despite all its military technology.

Time, that truly mysterious bird, forces us back to the past as it perpetually opens to the future – all in the meditative present.  I look out the window and think how each of us lives in the time circles of our days, morning till night and then the same again and again as these small carousels carry us like arrows to the day time runs out for us. Time is a circle and an arrow within a circle and . . . pure mystery. It encloses us. And when we are gone, as is dear David Harris, the circle game goes on and on as yesterday’s wars are resurrected today.  An unbroken circle of human madness.  Yet many carry on in hope because conscience calls.  And now is all the time we have.

I am writing this on Ash Wednesday, the day Christians begin Lent and take ashes on our foreheads to remind us of our mortality – dust to dust.  Six weeks later comes Easter, the Resurrection from the dead, the day of hope.  Six circular weeks celebrated every spring within the circle of every year on a calendar that moves straight ahead with the clicking of the numbers.  Death, hope, and resurrection, even as history suggests it is hopeless to stop wars. That the vultures always triumph.  Yet many carry it on in hope because conscience calls.  And all time is now.

Yes, I look out and the vultures’ gaze reduces me to a cataleptic state for a few moments. Then the thought of David Harris and his book on the table transports me back to the past, while my vulture visitors mouth the words “Evermore, Evermore” to remind me that the same war vultures are here now and are eager for prey in the future.  They devour the dead.  They have never left, just as the truth about the U.S. war against Vietnam has not, if one allows it to sink in. It is a lesson not too late for the learning, for the United States warfare state has continued to wage wars all around the world. None are mistakes.  It would be a terrible mistake to think so.

Cuba, Iraq, Serbia, Nicaragua, Libya, Syria, Palestine, Chile, Indonesia, China, Afghanistan, Philippines, Yemen, Somalia, Russia via Ukraine, etc. – all intentional and all based on lies.  It’s the American Way, just as it was for Vietnam.

Quoth the vultures “Evermore.”

Like David Harris, I refused to go to the war but the war came to me.  When I became a conscientious objector from the Marines, I avoided killing Vietnamese but their killing by my countrymen has haunted me to this day. Unlike David, who was far more courageous than I, I didn’t go to prison, although I was prepared to do so. But I learned then, and have never forgotten, that my country is controlled by blood-thirsty vultures.

Flying back in time, I remember a conversation I had with a friend on the plane to Marine boot camp at Parris Island, that infamous torture chamber in South Carolina where boys are made into professional killers.  I told him how confused I was since I hadn’t been raised to kill people.  Actually the opposite.  As a good Catholic boy, I was taught to love others, not to kill them.  No one I knew ever said they saw a contradiction.  Yet here I was going to do that.  It was insane.  I kept conflating the slogan “The Marines Build Men: Body, Mind, and Spirit” with the advertising jingle I grew up hearing from the New York Yankees’ announcer, Mel Allen, who would intone the sponsor’s (Ballantine Beer) slogan: remember fans “The Three Ring Sign: Purity, Body, and Flavor – So Ask the Man for Ballantine.”  Then there was the Trinity, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost: let us pray; men built by the Marines; purity and impurity, body, God’s body, bodies denied and maimed, killing other bodies, “In the Name of the Father and the Son and… “  It all felt so bizarre and my mind was a confused whirligig of contradictions.  What the hell was I doing on that plane, I thought.  Whose life was it anyway?

October 6, 1966.  Zippo Squads on CBS News, setting fire to peasant huts in Vietnam.  When I was younger, a Zippo lighter seemed so cool and manly.  Silvery and clicky, a cigarette in the corner of my mouth.  A real tough guy.  John Wayne or Humphrey Bogart.

These boys were on a flatbed truck with their plastic guns as they
presented themselves at a Veterans Day Parade

in Albany, Oregon in 1991. This parade was a few months after the U.S.
Military won Gulf War I, otherwise know as “Desert

Storm.” The people at the parade were overwhelmed with joy that the U.S.
had “ won ” another war. Little did they know

that the war was a slaughter. Like Viet Nam, the U.S. War Machine went
berserk with their systematic killing and

destroying infrastructure. Every time you buy a boy a war toy, you
trample his soul. In the film “ All Quiet On The

Western Front,” the key word in this title for me is the word, “ Quiet.”
Soldiers stayed quiet about the horrors of war, as

they were too traumatized to talk about it. The truth is never passed
down to the next generation. When it comes

their time to go to war, they are a patriotic blank slate. The
entertainment of violence in the United States is a

malignant disease. When boys come home from war, they stop growing
emotionally. PTSD is a state of being in

which the emotions have failed to grow to the stature of the intellect.
Without help, it is a slow death sentence.

Mike Hastie

Memories.  That’s what vultures can do.  One look and you are gone.

In the 1960s, things were simpler.  Although there were many newspapers then, and people read much more, it was television with its few major networks that fixated people.  Unlike today – when there is no military draft, the realities of U.S. wars are hidden from television viewers, and the internet is regularly scrubbed of the grizzly truth of our wars – in the 1960s, bloody images from Vietnam became a staple of the evening news shows.  Harris writes:

We must not forget: it was a more simpleminded age, the information superhighway was still a deer trail, and network television was taken as reality, giving the folks back home a vivid, utterly riveting look at what some of their boys were going through, a kind of visceral access available to no previous generation of Americans.

To accompany those sights and sounds, the folks back home were also given a running explanation of what was going on from their government. And the latter created the war’s second front.  Unprecedented visibility ensured that in this war, the government fought one war in the paddies against its NLF and North Vietnamese adversaries and another over the U.S. airwaves, trying to put the appropriate spin on events and convince America that there really was some important reason for going through all this. There wasn’t enough political support for the war to do otherwise, and television had too much impact. The obvious consequence was that Lyndon Johnson and then Richard Nixon spent a good deal of their energy playing to the cameras, just trying to make the war look like what America thought its wars should look like.

More simpleminded it may have been, but that so-called simplemindedness together with the visual imagery from Vietnam – despite all the government propaganda – did help turn many people against the war despite Nixon’s ruthless ability to keep it running so long.

Everything is different today, except for the propaganda and the wars.  A look back to Vietnam is crucial for understanding what’s happening now, for it makes absolutely clear that the U.S. government has no compunction about killing millions of innocent people for its evil ends, whatever they may be.

Then, it would destroy a village in order to save it; today, it will destroy the world in order to save it.  It is the logic of madmen in the grip of evil beyond description. Yet most people repress the thought that nuclear war is very close.

All the mainstream media headlines about Ukraine echo the U.S. propaganda about the American War against Vietnam.  Just substitute the word Russian for National Liberation Front or Viet Cong.  They are suffering extraordinary casualties.  The tide is turning.  “The enemy was being taught the hard way,” writes Harris, “that aggression does not pay.  We were steadily destroying their capacity to fight . . . . Victory was just around the corner.”

It’s easy to laugh at the parallels until a vulture comes calling.  The seeming unreality of their visitation is only equaled by the delusional nature of what passes for news today.

Quoth the Vultures “Evermore.”

David Harris was right about the 1960s when he said, “All that craziness had compromised the nation’s epistemology, rendering our accustomed patterns of knowing dysfunctional.”  This is true a thousand times over today.  If the ‘60s were simpler times, the digital internet revolution and AI have scrambled many people’s minds into a morass perfectly suited for today’s government lies.  “Not only was it hard to know what was really going on,” he writes of Vietnam, “but it was even hard to know how we would know what was really going on if we stumbled over it.”

Then came a shocking surprise: the Tet Offensive that began on January 31, 1968 when everything became quite clear.  This massive attack by the NFL and VC was “the mother of all such epiphanies.”  All official lies were exposed and any prominent dissenter to these lies about the war had to be eliminated, thus Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy were assassinated in quick order by the government that would go on for seven more years to wage its genocidal war against the Vietnamese and neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

That was long ago and far away, but it’s worth contemplating.  No one knows what exactly is around the corner in Ukraine.  But then, I didn’t expect two vultures to visit me with their warning.

I’m just passing on their message.  Epiphanies happen.  But so do cataclysms.

All time is now.

Although David Harris has died, he and the many others, such as Randy Kehler,  who were caged in federal prisons for resisting the draft and opposing the war against Vietnam, live on to inspire us to believe that if we resist the warmongers, someday all free birds might chant in unison “Nevermore.”

Here’s their story, a revelatory film about David and those who refused the siren song of evil: The Boys Who Said No

True patriots.

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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). 

Featured image: frame:BOYS WHO SAID NO  /  helicopter:MIKE HASTIE

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***

The future of humanity will be decided on a battlefield in Ukraine. That’s no exaggeration. The conflict between the United States and Russia will determine whether global economic integration will expand within an evolving multi-polar system or if the “rules-based order” will succeed in crushing any opponent to its Western-centric model. This is what’s taking place in Ukraine today, in fact, all of the recent government-prepared documents related to national security identify Russia and China as the greatest threats to US hegemony. For example, take a look at this brief clip from the 2021 Congressional Research Service Report titled Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress:

The U.S. goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia… is a policy choice reflecting two judgments: (1) that given the amount of people, resources, and economic activity in Eurasia, a regional hegemon in Eurasia would represent a concentration of power large enough to be able to threaten vital U.S. interests….

From a U.S. perspective on grand strategy and geopolitics, it can be noted that most of the world’s people, resources, and economic activity are located not in the Western Hemisphere, but in the other hemisphere, particularly Eurasia. In response to this basic feature of world geography, U.S. policymakers for the last several decades have chosen to pursue, as a key element of U.S. national strategy, a goal of preventing the emergence of regional hegemons in Eurasia.” (“Renewed Great Power Competition: Implications for Defense—Issues for Congress”, US Congress)

That sums up US foreign policy in a nutshell; “prevent the emergence of a regional hegemon” at all cost. Now check out this summary of the 2022 US National Defense Strategy by Andre Damon at the World Socialist Web Site:

These documents, which were not seriously discussed in the US media, make clear the fundamental falsehood that the massive US military buildup this year is a response to “Russian aggression.” In reality, in the thinking of the White House and Pentagon war planners, the massive increases in military spending and plans for war with China are created by “dramatic changes in geopolitics, technology, economics, and our environment.”

These documents make clear that the United States sees the economic rise of China as an existential threat, to be responded to with the threat of military force. The United States sees the subjugation of Russia as a critical stepping stone toward the conflict with China.” (“Pentagon national strategy document targets China”, Andre Damon, World Socialist Web Site)

These two excerpts are by no means a comprehensive summary of US foreign policy objectives, but they are a pretty effective thumbnail sketch. Bottom line: The war in Ukraine is not about Ukraine. America’s clearly articulated strategic objectives are as follows: To weaken Russia, topple its leader, take control of its vast natural resources and move on to containing China. Simply put, Washington’s escalating aggression in Ukraine is a Hail Mary pass aimed at containing emerging centers of economic power in order to preserve its waning position in the global order.

This is the geopolitical chess match that is being played behind the cover of “a war against Russia’s unprovoked aggression.” People should not be hoodwinked by that absurd deception. This war was concocted as a desperate attempt for the United States to defend its flickering global hegemony. That’s what Ukraine is really all about. It’s a clash between the warmongering western oligarchs who have a stranglehold on the US media and political establishment and the emerging economies that are using the market system to link their resources and manufactured goods to countries around the world through “high-speed” infrastructure and cooperative development.

So, the question everyone must ask themselves is this: Do you want to see more economic integration, lower prices, more shared prosperity and less war or another 80 years of onerous and arbitrary sanctions, color-coded revolutions, regime change operations, genocidal interventions and bioweapon warfare (Covid-19)? Which do you want?

Perhaps, you are one of the millions of Americans who believe that China is an enemy of the United States. Perhaps, you are also unaware of the role the US played in creating modern China. Here’s a question for you: Did the US and western corporations move their operations en masse to China to escape the high costs of production in the US?

answer– Yes, they did.

And, did they betray US workers because they didn’t want a fair wage to interfere with their excessive profit-making?

answer– Yep.

And, did they offshore their businesses, outsource their product manufacturing and do everything in their power to make themselves winners while robbing American workers of the opportunity of making a decent wage so they could put food on the table?

answer– They sure did.

Then who is actually responsible for the rise of China?

answer– Western corporations are responsible. If Americans want to blame someone, blame them!

But now the corporate mandarins and other elites are unhappy with China because China will not allow them to take control over their markets, financial system and currency as they have in America. So now these same cutthroat corporations want us to fight a war with the monster that they created?

Can you see that? Can you see that the relentless provocations against China have nothing to do with US national security or US interests. We are being led by the nose to fight and die for the cadres of voracious western oligarchs who have settled on China as the next target of their grand looting operation.

But let’s forget the past for a minute and focus on the future, after all, that’s what really matters, right?

Well then, which country has a more “positive vision” for the future: China or the United States?

Have you ever heard of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the massive, multi trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that is the centerpiece of China’s foreign policy? It is the biggest infrastructure program in history and more 150 countries have invested in the plan already. It is a development-oriented project aimed at increasing connectivity through high-speed rail, shipping lanes and ports, skyscrapers, railroads, roads, bridges, airports, dams, power stations, and railroad tunnels. By increasing the speed of travel, China’s products and merchandise will get to markets faster generating greater prosperity for itself and for the other countries involved. And, keep in mind, the BRI will link countries around the world in a high-speed system that will not require its participants to follow a specific economic model dictated by Beijing. In other words, the Belt and Road Initiative is free market economics without the politics. It’s a “win-win” situation for everyone, a guarantee of mutual prosperity absent political manipulation, coercion or exploitation.

The venal oligarchs that run the US can’t even imagine a project of this scale or potential. In fact, they can’t even pony-up enough money to keep the trains on the rails in America. The profits these billionaire parasites extract from their activities invariably come from stock buybacks, tax evasion, and other sleight-of-hand, debt-layering ponzi-scams that benefit no one and merely shift more of the nation’s wealth into their own bulging bank accounts. Of course, ripping off the country would be bad enough, but now we see how this same class of miscreants have settled on public health as a means for amplifying their political power so they can impose repressive, police-state measures that greatly curtail the freedom of the entire population. In short, they want absolute social control and they aren’t going to let-up until they get it.

Where is the “positive vision” in this behavior?

There isn’t one. America used to be a country of ideas, ideals and vision. Now it is an oligarch-run detension center in which all hope for the future has been ruthlessly extinguished by a handful of mercenary billionaires.

At least, in the case of China, we can imagine a better, more prosperous world that is interconnected and more accessible to everyone. But what about the United States? Are we supposed to believe that fighting a war in eastern Europe is going to improve our lives? Are we supposed to believe that the only way “we can stay on top” is by pushing everyone else down? Are we expected to hate China and Russia even while our own government demonizes 80 million of us for voting for the wrong presidential candidate or for not supporting the terrorists who burn and loot our cities or for believing that the people in East Palestine are more deserving of our support and assistance than the Nazi stormtroopers in Kiev?

The fact is, our leaders cannot imagine devoting public resources to a giant interconnected infrastructure project like BRI, because that would mean less lucre for themselves. So, they’ve decided to destroy it just like they destroyed Nord Stream. Just read the press reviews on this groundbreaking project. Western journalists can’t find a ‘good word’ to say about it. A vast area in the center of America was fiendishly nuked with vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene, but the western media would rather criticize China’s ambitious BRI project than hold their paymasters accountable. Go figure.

The same rule applies to Russia. The Biden team and their wealthy allies don’t want closer relations between Germany and Russia because closer relations mean more prosperity for both countries, and Washington can’t have that, which is why they blew up the pipeline that was Germany’s lifeline to cheap fuel. That’s how Washington solved the problem. It pushed Germany and Russia down so the US could remain on top. Who doesn’t see this?

In contrast, the Belt and Road Initiative provides a positive vision for the future, which is an idea that the majority of the world supports. It puts us on a path to an interconnected world in which people can raise their standards of living, make a meaningful contribution to their communities, and enjoy their own culture and traditions without fear of being sanctioned, incarcerated or bombed to death. This is an excerpt from China’s Global Times:

The China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has already become a well-received international public good and an important platform for international cooperation…

“BRI transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games, and created a new model of international cooperation. It is not an exclusive group that excludes other participants but an open and inclusive cooperation platform. It is not just China’s solo effort, but a symphony performed by all participating countries….

Since the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) was proposed in 2013, the initiative has always been development-oriented, and consistent efforts have been made to ensure that it is high-standard, sustainable and people-centered….

By August, China’s goods trade with countries participating in the BRI had reached around $12 trillion and the country’s non-financial direct investment in those countries surpassed $140 billion. … By the end of 2021, Chinese enterprises had invested $43 billion in the construction of economic and trade cooperation zones in BRI countries, creating more than 340,000 local jobs, official data showed…

China is open to other countries’ and regions’ participation in the BRI and is considering connecting with infrastructure initiatives proposed by other nations to provide more good-quality public goods for the world…. China hopes to join hands with all partners to advance the high-quality development … stressing that China aims to strive for global connection rather than fragmentation, for mutual opening-up rather than shutting doors, for mutual integration rather than zero-sum games.(“BRI remains open, inclusive for all, transcends the outdated mentality of geopolitical games“, Global Times)

What is the American-led project that rivals the Belt and Road Initiative?

There isn’t one. The US allocates over $1 trillion per year for lethal weaponry and war-making, and trillions more to bail out the Wall Street banksters, and trillions more to shut down all the businesses across the country that were forced to comply with the diktats of billionaire elites who wanted to inject the population with their toxic slurry, but zero for any global infrastructure project that would peacefully bring the world’s people closer together through commerce and recreation.

No one is saying that China is perfect, at least, I’m not. Nor do I want to live in China. I don’t. I’m an American and I plan to die here.

But I’m not blind. It’s easy to see that this war with Russia has nothing to do with “unprovoked aggression.” That is merely a smokescreen that’s being used to conceal the real objective, which is to preserve America’s global hegemony. What we need to do now, is honestly analyze ‘what is happening’; try to understand ‘why it is happening’, and, then, figure out what the outcome will be if the United States prevails. In other words, do we want to perpetuate an oligarch-controlled system that crushes Russia, contains China, starves Europe of the energy it needs, sabotages the Belt and Road infrastructure plan and reinforces the same failed policies that brought us Afghanistan, Libya, Syria and Iraq?

Do we want that? Do YOU want that?

The American people want their government to cooperate with other nations in order to create a more prosperous and peaceful world. They don’t want a new world order and they certainly don’t want a Third World War.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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

All images in this article are from TUR

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No, “COVID” Still Doesn’t Come From a Lab

March 1st, 2023 by Kit Knightly

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***

The big Covid news the last couple of days has been that the US Department of Energy, via the Wall Street Journal, has claimed that a laboratory leak is the “most likely” origin of “Covid”.

Citing “new evidence”, a DoE panel has amended their assessment from 2021, essentially switching “we don’t know” to “it probably came from a lab”.

This is just the latest step in the lab-leak theory’s remarkable journey from fringe idea to mainstream position, or from “conspiracy theory to government debate”, according to Forbes’ article timelining the whole process.

You know what OffG thinks of the lab-leak theory, we did a fact-check on it back in 2021, and then addressed it again in 2022: “Lab leak” theory makes no sense, and only reinforces the mainstream narrative.

Further, it can now be used as fuel for the “new cold war” narrative.

The US can blame China for creating the virus, while China can either claim it was natural or that the US released it in an act of “bio-terrorism”.

Both sides will claim the other side’s vaccines don’t work, but that theirs do. And, make no mistake, both sides will still very much want to vaccinate everyone.

In some ways this is a symptom of the failure of the Covid narrative. The greatest propaganda push of all time ran out of steam just two years in, and is suddenly fighting defensively simply to hold itself together. Because the “lab leak” debate is very much a fallback position. A retreat in good order, protecting – at all costs – the fundamental lie of “Covid”, viz – there was no new disease.

Let’s say that once more with feeling….

There was NO NEW DISEASE!

There were the old flu symptoms, there was a new name, and there was a crappy test.

And that is all.

This is the one admission the establishment will never make, because it totally breaks their narrative.

Kills it stone dead.

Every other “admission”, debate or idea – “lab leak”, early treatment, government panic, “we underestimated natural immunity”, “the vaccine trials were misleading” – can eventually be brought back around to justifying lockdowns and other authoritarian “public health measures”.

If not for Covid, then for the next “pandemic”.

Patrick Henningsen put it perfectly on Twitter:

Further, every other admission preserves the idea that while governments might lie, they might manipulate, they might “panic”, they might be incompetent, they might be corupt, they may even do quite obscene things, they definitely don’t just make stuff up and pretend it’s real.

That’s a very important line that needs to never be crossed. They will tacitly admit to almost anything else – never that. Because once you start pulling on that thread, who knows what might unravel.

Hopefully the US Department of Energy and the Wall Street Journal throwing their collective weight behind the “lab-leak” theory finally wakes people up to what it really is and always has been.

There’s an old axiom in politics that says you should never believe something until it’s been officially denied.

The reverse holds true: Never believe something once it’s been officially endorsed.

They’ll admit to anything but the truth.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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Ukraine and the Curse of Zbigniew Brzezinski

March 1st, 2023 by Kurt Nimmo

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***

Here is U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres.

I don’t recall this level of denunciation and condemnation on the part of UN officialdom when George W. Bush invaded Iraq and killed over a million people.

There was criticism, most prominently by then Secretary General of the UN, Kofi Annan. He said the neocon invasion violated the UN Charter. Kofi said it was illegal.

Nothing came of this, naturally. There are rules, and they are “based” on whatever the rulers dictate, and the rules then and now dictate the USG, the United States Government, may do as it wishes, no different than any other enforcer of an authoritarian ideology.

The double standard is plain as day. The USG may, without fear of repercussion, and under the cover of false pretense and engineered lies, invade another county, kill thousands if not millions of its citizens, and claim it is promoting “democracy.”

Even if it is revealed a war is based entirely on lies and fabrication, as the Iraq war obviously was, the perpetrators, the neocons in this instance, not only escape culpability, they are allowed to retreat to think tanks and media corporations. Is it any wonder they seep back into government—or never left in the first place—and are now once again dictating foreign policy?

The neocons are the foreign policy establishment, never mind which of the two uniparty factions we might be talking about. During Bush II, Dick Cheney was allowed to drive the neocon foreign policy dream, or nightmare rather, and oversee the widespread destruction across the Middle East.

Back in the day, the neocons were viewed as a republican thing. However, the early neocons were democrats disenchanted with the peace movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, in addition to a dislike of cultural values taking shape in 1960s America.

For the neocons, the democrat faction is a natural home, primarily due to its renewed interest in a belligerent foreign policy, most prominently under President Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. “If anything, on foreign policy,” write Marshall Auerbach and James Carden,

the Democrats have moved rightward in recent years, having fallen not only under the spell of “Russiagate” but also increasingly under the influence of neocons and other former Bush officials… The Democrats have also displayed a rather supine obeisance regarding the country’s intelligence community, despite many well-documented lies or half-truths that would, at the very least, justify some skepticism about their claims or motivations.

The “Democratic establishment rehabilitated the neocons,” writes Omar Hassan,

…the neocons dutifully supported Biden against Trump. And the president-elect is filling his administration with militaristic hacks. For instance, Antony Blinken, Biden’s choice for secretary of state, was a supporter of the Iraq invasion. Jake Sullivan has been appointed as a national security adviser after spending years on the board of right-wing think tank Alliance for Securing Democracy.

Elon Musk, all of a sudden a geopolitical expert (despite his war profiteering), was paraphrased recently by Rep. Gosar of Arizona,

Considering the current hysterical political climate, Gosar’s remark, for a government official, is quite amazing. He will be denounced as a Trump stooge and a Russian disinformation bot, never mind the truth spoken.

Call it the Curse of Zbigniew Brzezinski, the russophobic Pole that served as Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser. Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard” sketched the contours of Russia’s prophesied fall and the capture of Eurasia for neoliberal exploitation. Dr. Carl Boggs writes for Global Research,

None other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, once president Jimmy Carter’s foreign-policy guru, laid out an imperial strategy that would ultimately lead to the gates of Moscow, in his 1997 manifesto titled The Grand Chessboard.  Brzezinski believed the noble superpower was entitled to whatever natural resources it could access in Eurasia, a territory stretching from Europe to the borders of China.  Here it was determined that oil, gas, mineral, and other reserves dwarfed those accessible anywhere else on the planet.  Russia itself would be a special prize, just as Wilson in his ill-defined global liberalism had been the first to recognize. (Emphasis added.)

The subjugation of Russia, the neocon-proposed dismemberment of its union, a return to the 1990s (widespread poverty, disease, alcoholism, shortened life spans), and the repeat of a Nazi invasion (and Napoleon’s before that) have galvanized the Russian people.

There will not be a Ukraine-style coup in Moscow. It remains to be seen what will happen in Ukraine. However, as Russia considers the treachery of the USG and its partners (Minsk I, II), the outrageous war propaganda coming primarily from the USG corporate media, the nonstop stoking of dangerous russophobia, and above all providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to neo-nazi psychopaths, we can reasonably predict the war will continue.

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

In the years between 1910 and 2000, African American farmers and agricultural workers lost over 14 million acres of land.

One of the major demands of the post-Civil War era was the allocation of land to the formerly enslaved Africans in order to establish a foundation for building a self-sufficient community.

As the Union army swept across Georgia and other coastal areas of the southeast from Florida to South Carolina, General William T. Sherman in January 1865 issued his Special Field Order No. 15 which provided for the confiscation of Confederate controlled land and its redistribution to emancipated Africans. On January 12, Sherman met with leaders within the African community, many of whom were Baptist and Methodist ministers, who urged the Union military forces and President Abraham Lincoln to take immediate action.

The policy had the approval of President Lincoln and the agency founded during this period known as the Freedmen’s Bureau. The Freedmen’s Bureau was designed to assist Africans in their effort to transition from captivity under the Confederacy to being controlled by the Union military into an independent existence after the war.

The Order took control of huge swaths of land and granted each enslaved family 40-acre plots along with mules. The notion of 40 acres and a mule for formerly enslaved Africans grew out of a practical post-Civil War necessity in regard to disempowering the slavocracy and providing the capacity of Blacks to gain self-reliance.

An entry in the Encyclopedia of Georgia says of this period that:

“The immediate effect of Sherman’s order provided for the settlement of roughly 40,000 Black Americans (both refugees and locals who had been under Union army administration in the Sea Islands since 1861). This lifted the burden of supporting the freedpeople from Sherman’s army as it turned north into South Carolina. But the order was a short-lived promise for Blacks. Despite the objections of General Oliver O. Howard, the Freedmen’s Bureau chief, U.S. President Andrew Johnson overturned Sherman’s directive in the fall of 1865, after the war had ended, and returned most of the land along the South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida coasts to the planters who had originally owned it.”

Despite this historic betrayal by Lincoln’s successor, President Johnson, African Americans through their own initiatives within a weakened Southern economy and racist political structures, were able to acquire approximately 16 million acres of land from the period of Reconstruction to the eve of World War I. Most of these land holdings were utilized as family farms by the millions of African Americans remaining in the former Confederate states after collapse of Reconstruction and the institutionalization of Jim Crow segregation through legislative and court actions on local, state and federal levels.

Consequently, the call for reparations to be paid to the descendants of formerly enslaved Africans must also extend to the post-Civil War and Reconstruction period. African Americans continue to be impacted by the legacy of Atlantic slave trade and the domestic national oppression experienced in the U.S. some 160 years since the Emancipation Proclamation.

Even Bloomberg News, a publication which reports on and analyzes the dimensions of Wall Street transactions and global commerce noted in an article published in 2022:

“African-American farmers lost about $326 billion worth of land in the U.S. due to discrimination during the 20th century, a study found. From 1922 to 1997, Black farmers in 17 American states saw a precipitous decline in their acreage caused by state-sanctioned violence and intimidation, according to the paper. The study, which analyzed U.S. Department of Agriculture census data, will be published in the American Economic Association’s Papers and Proceedings journal. Reuters reported on the study earlier.”

Another source, the American Bar Association, emphasized in an article published on their website in January 2023, said of the historical theft of Black owned land in the U.S.:

“By 1997, Black farmers lost more than 90 percent of the 16 million acres they owned in 1910.

In a recent study, we used county-level Census of Agriculture data to estimate the value of the lost Black agricultural land from 1920 to 1997. For all counties in each of the 17 (mostly southern) states that comprised over 90 percent of all Black-owned farmland, we calculated the yearly acreage loss, multiplied by the county-level estimate of per-acre land values. We then compounded those land- loss values forward to the year 2020 at a rate of return of 6 percent per year for the appreciation of the land and a rate of return of 5 percent per year for the income the land could provide. Our results yield a cumulative value of Black land loss of about $326 billion. To put this figure in perspective, if this represented the gross domestic product (GDP) of a country, that country would rank 41st out of 213 countries in the world ranking of GDP in 2020. This would be in the top 20 percent of countries, ahead of South Africa, Finland, and New Zealand.”

African American Farmers Intervene

In 1981 in Southwest Tennessee, where the movement for voting rights in Fayette and Haywood counties took place beginning in 1959, Thomas Burrell, a leader of the Concerned Black Farmers of Tennessee (CBFT), held a 23-day direct-action occupation of the Department of Agriculture offices in Tipton County. Burrell and his comrades brought nationwide attention to the plight of African American farmers due to the discriminatory practices of the U.S. Department of Agriculture through its Home Farms Administration (HFA) which allocates loans to agricultural producers.

Burrell pointed out during the 1980s through the early 2000s, that at his peak he had farmed 3500 acres in adjacent Haywood, Fayette and Madison counties. The demonstration by the CBFT sparked Black farmers in North Carolina, Georgia and other states to take decisive action. They organized into several organizations, hired lawyers and took their complaints to the federal courts.

These efforts led to a renewed Black farmers movement in the U.S. The farmers gained the support and sympathy of a wide spectrum of African Americans including the Congressional Black Caucus and several publications. Progressive and Left-wing organizations as well viewed the struggle against the Agriculture Department and FHA as a continuation of the disenfranchisement and disempowerment of the African American people.

In an article by Gary Gant, the President of the Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association (BFAA), he reflects on the legal decisions which resulted from the class action lawsuit:

“On March 2, 1999, Judge Paul Friedman (U. S. District Judge for the District of Columbia), the presiding Judge in the class action lawsuit of Timothy Pigford, et al., v. Dan Glickman, Secretary, U. S. Department of Agriculture held a fairness hearing wherein the Black farmers and those representing the other side gave testimony as to what they called ‘the fairness and adequacy’ of the lawsuit. Like many of those Black farmers present that day, Thomas Burrell felt then that the lawsuit was not adequate. One of the original plaintiffs in the case against the U. S. Department of Agriculture and the alleged racist and discriminatory practices of the old Farmers Home Administration, Burrell had hopes of seeing America’s Black farmers gain more than a paltry monetary payment from their admitted wrongdoers. ‘In 1982, it was predicted that unless something changed at USDA, Black farmers could be extinct by the year 2000,’ said Gary Grant, president of Black Farmers and Agriculturalists Association. ‘We have dropped from almost one million in 1920 to less than 18 thousand in 1998. The class action lawsuit ensures – from my perspective – the total demise of the Black farmer in America within the next five or six years.’”

Another class-action lawsuit filed in October 2022 charged the federal government with not paying the settlements which had been agreed upon in earlier legal rulings. During subsequent administrations, the U.S. Department of Agriculture agreed to pay up to $2.4 billion to aggrieved African Americans.

Black farmers organizations say that they continue to suffer under the institutional racism of the USDA and other financial institutions. Land loss has not let up while impoverishment of African Americans in the rural South remains constant.

Image: John Boyd and member of the National Black Farmers Association 

An Associated Press report on the latest legal action by African American farmers says:

“John Boyd Jr., president of the National Black Farmers Association and one of four plaintiffs in the lawsuit, said that the new programs don’t match the USDA’s earlier offer to pay off 120 percent of the debt of farmers who are socially disadvantaged…. He said the guarantee of future federal debt relief caused some farmers to invest in their farms, only to be left in worse financial condition after the law changed and payments were delayed. The lawsuit is pending in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims, and Boyd said he hopes it will put pressure on the government to act.”

These developments portend much for the ability of the federal government and courts to address the fundamental issues of national oppression and economic exploitation against African Americans. The more than one century of Black land loss has its counterpart in urban and suburban areas as well. During the Great Recession beginning in 2005 and beyond, African Americans lost more than half of their household wealth through subprime mortgage lending which impacted the entire country.

Under capitalism the problems of farm and household losses have not been effectively addressed. The reparations needed to compensate for these aspects of national oppression can only be resolved under a socialist system where land can be nationalized in the interests of workers and farmers.

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

All images in this article are from the author

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A look at US-based think tank CSIS’ war game regarding a “Chinese invasion of Taiwan.”

Western military leaders and the Western media itself suggests China is pushing for war with the US over Taiwan by 2025;

It is actually the US rushing to war over Taiwan before China’s military and economic power surpasses the US and closes the door indefinitely to Washington’s ability to use its military to coerce and threaten China;

Taiwan is officially considered by the United States as part of China under the One China policy it itself agreed to with Beijing;

US arms sales to Taiwan, visits to Taiwan without Beijing’s approval, and even stationing US troops on Taiwan constitute violations of Chinese sovereignty and are deliberate attempts to provoke war;

US-based think tank CSIS war gamed a scenario in which China is provoked and invades Taiwan;

CSIS admits Chinese military capabilities are comparable to the US’ but ultimately the US could defeat an attempted amphibious landing on Taiwan;

CSIS admits Taiwan’s infrastructure and industry would be destroyed but it would maintain its political autonomy, trading its physical existence in to maintain its political existence;

It is clear the US is simply attempting to disrupt the peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the rest of China and forcing China to pay the highest price possible to defend its sovereignty.

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NATO’s Destruction of Libya

March 1st, 2023 by Shane Quinn

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Robert Gates, the former US Secretary of Defense, wrote in his memoirs that when the decision was made to launch a military attack against Afghanistan in 2001, that nobody in Washington had a real idea of how complex a nation it is. This included Afghanistan’s various ethnic groups and the rivalries between urban and rural areas of the country.

It was a similar story with Iraq which the US, with heavy British support, invaded in the spring of 2003. Gates admitted “nearly always, we begin military engagements–wars–profoundly ignorant about our adversaries and about the situation on the ground” (1). Gates went on that the George W. Bush administration (2001–09) was unaware of how degraded Iraq was by 2003. The country, already poor, had suffered years of crushing financial measures imposed on it by the Western powers.

President Bush’s successor, Barack Obama (2009–17), was hardly more enlightened in relation to the north African state of Libya, which the US, alongside its NATO allies France and Britain, started bombing in March 2011.

Libya’s rural structure is based on many tribal groups, for which blood and affinity were the main unifying force. When Muammar Gaddafi took power in Libya in 1969, he at first tried to reduce the significant influence of the nation’s tribes. Colonel Gaddafi believed it would be difficult to integrate them fully into the new, modern Libya which he planned to construct. He considered that tribalism weakened loyalty to the state, shifting power away from the government.

Gaddafi had grown up in a semi-nomadic Bedouin tribe in northern Libya. He understood the tribal life and mentality. With Gaddafi’s attempt to negate the power of the indigenous communities, he divided Libya into zones that split the tribal borders. His policy separated certain tribes and merged them with others into a common zone.

Yet Gaddafi was unable to completely subdue the tribal authority. Out of Libya’s more than 140 tribes, between 30 to 40 of them possessed varying degrees of political sway (2). Recognising it would be dangerous to alienate the indigenous people, Gaddafi pragmatically negotiated alliances with them. In this way he won a certain amount of loyalty from the tribes, or at least neutrality, in which the clan chiefs did not pose a threat to Gaddafi’s leadership or to his government in Tripoli, the capital city.

Libya is among Africa’s biggest countries and it shares a lengthy coastline with the Mediterranean Sea. It was only Gaddafi who had managed to hold together Libya and its fragile national structure, since the state’s independence in the early 1950s. Under Gaddafi, though the country was not a paradise, Libya enjoyed by some distance the best living standards in Africa. By 2010, the year before the NATO bombardment of Libya began, a UN Human Development report placed Libya at the top end of the high human development bracket (3). With regards to living conditions, Libya was ranked 53rd out of more than 190 countries in the human development table.

In 2010 living standards in Libya – based on life expectancy, annual income, etc. – were superior in comparison to major countries like Brazil, China and India. Standard of living in Gaddafi’s Libya was also better than people were experiencing in places like Bulgaria, the Ukraine, Macedonia and Albania.

In mid-January 2011, armed protests against Gaddafi’s government occurred in the Libyan cities of Benghazi, Derna and Bayda. These were not peaceful demonstrations and resulted in dozens of deaths. Many of the insurgents had been encouraged by Anglo-French special forces. The rebels were also advised to secure control over Libya’s oil installations, located in the northern parts of the nation.

 

It was in early 2011 that the second-in-command of the extremist organisation Al Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, sent veteran terrorists to Libya so as to establish a foothold in the country (4). Western news agencies, and television networks, were portraying the anti-Gaddafi insurgents as benign civilians, despite the fact that video clips showed the “moderates” walking around heavily armed. Intelligence amassed by the CIA, however, stated that the opposition by themselves did not have enough strength to overthrow Gaddafi. That could be done only with outside interference which was well under way.

Elite soldiers from a NATO and EU state, the Netherlands, belonging to the Korps Commandotroepen (KCT), were taken prisoner by Gaddafi’s troops in Sirte, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Sidra, at the end of February 2011. These special forces from the Royal Netherlands Army entered Libya by helicopter (5). On 24 February, a British vessel called ‘HMS Cumberland’ had arrived into the port of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi, and British Special Air Service (SAS) commandos walked off the ship. In the weeks before the March 2011 NATO bombing had commenced, special forces from the US, France and Britain were present on Libyan soil; among them were CIA personnel, MI6 officers and French secret agents.

The Italian journalist, Franco Bechis, wrote that France’s foreign intelligence agency (DGSE) had been planning the revolt in Libya since the autumn of 2010 (6). One of Gaddafi’s close colleagues, the Chief of Protocol Nuri al-Mismari, who had fallen out with his leader, abandoned Libya in October 2010 and, by way of Tunisia, he moved on to France. In Paris, al-Mismari spoke at length to the French authorities about the situation in Libya, and he also met with the French military. The plot against Gaddafi involved opposition figures in Benghazi. On 23 December 2010 three Libyan insurgents arrived in Paris, named Ali Ounes Mansouri, Farj Charrant and Fathi Boukhris – they would help to organise the effort to topple Gaddafi, along with France’s military and al-Mismari.

The French leadership and its president at the time, Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–12), wanted to oust Gaddafi for various reasons. Gaddafi was showing too much independence and unpredictability for the West’s liking. In 2009 the Libyan leader had compelled the French energy multinational, Total, to accept inferior terms relating to oil and gas deals from Libya (7). Total’s contract for the exploitation of oil fields with Libya’s state-owned firm, the National Oil Corporation (NOC), was considerably reduced. Moreover, the French had to accept lower terms (30%) from Libya’s gas production rate, whereas with previous contracts they had taken 50%. (8)

It was the case that the American fossil fuel corporations, Chevron and Occidental Petroleum, were forced by Gaddafi’s government to accept lesser deals from Libya in 2009. Libya contains the largest oil reserves in Africa and the quality of its petroleum is very good. The British had investments too in Libya, worth £1.5 billion, mainly in the oil industry (9). Even before Gaddafi’s demise Lord Stephen Green, the British Minister for Trade and Investment, travelled to Tripoli in late September 2011 at the head of a delegation of businessmen, including officials from British Petroleum (BP) and Shell. They were in Libya to have talks concerning business deals with the National Transitional Council, the new de facto government of Libya.

A report from the Guardian newspaper on 26 September 2011 noted,

“British companies are not alone in seeking to make money in post-Gaddafi Libya… The best hotels in Tripoli and Benghazi are buzzing with visiting businessmen as well as security consultants, diplomats, and journalists”. (10)

It may be worth pointing out that the terrorist organisation, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), had performed a central role in the insurgency against Gaddafi. The LIFG commander was Abu Yahya al-Libi, a top-ranking member of Al Qaeda. As with al-Libi, the Al Qaeda boss, Osama bin Laden, was firmly backing the rebellion in Libya and also in Syria.

At the start of April 2011, Bin Laden outlined his desire to see Gaddafi gone and he described the unrest as “a great and glorious event” (11). In a message of 28 March 2011, Bin Laden wrote that he was proud of the response of his “Libyan brothers” who joined the revolt in the country, and that more Al Qaeda fighters were then entering Libya, while others were being prepared to train in neighbouring Algeria.

As was the case in Syria the Western powers and the extremist groups, though for differing reasons, wanted the same immediate outcome: the removal of Gaddafi and Syrian president Bashar al-Assad.

In late February 2011 Sarkozy, as though he was the ruler of Libya, said at a news conference, “Mr Gaddafi must leave” (12). In mid-March, president Obama echoed his French counterpart, “Mr Gaddafi has lost legitimacy and he needs to leave”, a view which was shared by Jose Manuel Barroso, the European Commission president. (13)

Obama was being regularly encouraged by his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, to intervene militarily in Libya. On 26 February 2011, the White House accused Gaddafi of “continued violation of human rights and brutalization of its people” (14). This opinion was reiterated by German leader Angela Merkel, who 8 years before had supported the US-led invasion of Iraq. Obama and Merkel neglected to mention that Libya, as noted earlier, enjoyed the best living conditions in Africa, with the highest life expectancy on the continent.

Shortly before the attack on Libya, when the West proposed to the UN Security Council a no-fly zone over Libya, their politicians failed to provide evidence that Gaddafi was using military aircraft against protesters. Proof could not be found and so nothing justified the establishment of a no-fly zone, or a NATO intervention. It was a pretext to allow the West to assail Libya from the air and to replace Gaddafi. On 30 June 2011 Gaddafi’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, said in an interview that one of Libya’s major errors had been to delay the purchase of weaponry from Russia. (15)

NATO was providing material aid to extremist groups in Libya, such as the LIFG (16). Five months into the assault, a NATO vessel sailed into the Libyan shoreline loaded down with weapons. Emerging from the ship were soldiers from the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), SAS commandos and units from the French Army Special Forces Command (BFST). These groups had formulated a plan for the capture of Tripoli, and the city would subsequently fall on 28 August 2011. Now that Tripoli had been lost, the end was not far away for Gaddafi. With crucial NATO support, he would be killed less than two months later in Sirte, to the east of Tripoli.

Following NATO’s “humanitarian intervention” in Libya, at the end of 2011 the country’s UN human development ranking had already fallen 11 places to 64th. By 2019, Libya’s position had plummeted to 110th position (17). From the final year of Gaddafi’s reign, this is one of the steepest drops recorded for any nation relating to living standards. After Gaddafi’s ousting, Libya became a broken country fought over by rival factions. The state had lost the power to govern.

*

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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.

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

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

Notes

1 Robert M. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (WH Allen, 6 August 2015) End Chapter, Reflections

2 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019) p. 100

3 Human Development Report 2010, 20th Anniversary Edition, p. 158 of 238

4 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer 1st edition, 23 June 2017) p. 161

5 Ibid., p. 176

6 Franco Bechis, “France had been preparing to overthrow Gaddafi since November [2010]”, Voltairenet.org, 25 March 2011

7 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 172

8 Ibid.

9 “British trade mission seeks to make most of Libyan goodwill”, The Guardian, 26 September 2011

10 Ibid.

11 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 161

12 “France’s Sarkozy says Gaddafi must go”, Reuters, 25 February 2011

13 “Libya: US and EU say Muammar Gaddafi must go”, BBC, 11 March 2011

14 “Readout of President Obama’s Call with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany”, 26 February 2011

15 Bandeira, The Second Cold War, p. 171

16 Ibid., p. 160

17 Human Development Report 2019, p. 315 of 366

Featured image is from Geopolitica.RU


History of World War II: Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests

By Shane Quinn

The first two chapters focus on German preparations as they geared up to launch their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbarossa, which began eight decades ago. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavic peoples. Analysed also in the opening two chapters are the Soviet Union’s preparations for a conflict with Nazi Germany.

The remaining chapters focus for the large part on the fighting itself, as the Nazis and their Axis allies, the Romanians and Finns at first, swarmed across Soviet frontiers in the early hours of 22 June 1941. The German-led invasion of the USSR was the largest military offensive in history, consisting of almost four million invading troops. Its outcome would decide whether the post-World War II landscape comprised of an American-German dominated globe, or an American-Soviet dominated globe. The Nazi-Soviet war was, as a consequence, a crucial event in modern history and its result was felt for decades afterward and, indeed, to the present day.

Click here to read the e-book.

Invoking the Russell-Einstein Manifesto against Nuclear War

By Emanuel Pastreich, March 01, 2023

The need for intellectuals to commit themselves body and soul to the common good, and the opposition to world war, and nuclear war, is only the greater at this horrible moment of taunting and daring launched by Presidents Biden and Putin today.

China’s Peace Plan for Ukraine: America Does Not Want Peace, Prepare for a Horrific Global War?

By Michael Snyder, February 28, 2023

Of course any peace plan proposed by China was not going to be perfect.  But for the good of humanity our leaders should be willing to at least sit down and talk with the Russians.  Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, eventually somebody will use nuclear weapons.

Western Leaders Privately Say Ukraine Can’t Win the War

By Joe Lauria, February 28, 2023

Western leaders privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine can not win the war against Russia and that it should begin peace talks with Moscow this year in exchange for closer ties with NATO.

Video: “Never Again Is Now Global”: Part IV. This Time Around We’re All Jews

By Vera Sharav and Children’s Health Defense, February 28, 2023

Never Again Is Now Global,” a five-part docuseries highlighting the parallels between Nazi Germany and global pandemic policies. Each one-hour episode focuses on recent testimonies by Holocaust survivors and their descendants who discuss comparisons between the early repressive stages under the Nazi regime that culminated in the Holocaust and global COVID-19 policies.

Calling the 2014 Overthrow of Ukraine’s Yanukovych a “U.S. Coup” Is True, and Extremely Important.

By Eric Zuesse, February 28, 2023

On February 25th, Elon Musk tweeted “That election was arguably dodgy, but no question that there was indeed a coup.” By “That election,” he was referring to Viktor Yanukovych’s having won the Presidency of Ukraine in an election.

Avalon Militarism. Australia’s Air Show, a Celebration of Aerospace

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, February 28, 2023

Also known as the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defence Exposition, Avalon 2023 promises to “showcase” much in the “dynamic world of aviation, aerospace and space, new materials, fuels and ways of flying”.

The Antiwar Movement Roars Back to Life

By Rep. Ron Paul, February 28, 2023

On February 19th, the National Mall in Washington, DC saw its largest antiwar rally in 20 years. The speakers list included four former US presidential candidates and a broad and diverse collection of antiwar activists from beyond the left and right.

Call for the Total Evacuation of East Palestine Due to Extremely Toxic “Dioxin Fallout” that Will Poison the Land and Crops for Generations

By Mike Adams, February 28, 2023

The toxic cloud event that’s dropping extremely toxic dioxins across a large area of residential housing and farmland was deliberately generated by the open burning of vinyl chloride, creating combustion byproducts of dioxins which are many orders of magnitude more toxic and dangerous than the original substance.

A Nanny State Idiocracy: When the Government Thinks It Knows Best

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, February 28, 2023

The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

By Rejecting China’s Peace Plan West Pushes Beijing Closer to Russia

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, February 28, 2023

On the first anniversary of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, China presented a peace plan, aimed at re-establishing diplomacy and bilateral negotiations. Consisting of twelve points, the proposal reflects the stance of neutrality of the Chinese government, which has refused to support anti-Russian resolutions at the UN, maintaining a strong direct dialogue with Moscow which allows it to develop more realistic proposals, unlike the Western unilateral demands of Russia’s retreat.

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I wrote this call for sanity to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto (back in 2015).

The need for intellectuals to commit themselves body and soul to the common good, and the opposition to world war, and nuclear war, is only the greater at this horrible moment of taunting and daring launched by Presidents Biden and Putin today.

Although I most certainly cannot agree with President Biden, I am not sure that I can support the rhetoric of President Putin either.

Politicians and heads of state are the least equipped to respond to critical historical questions, especially concerning nuclear war. I would like to call on everyone to pull together and write up a similar manifesto, this time explaining how the president invokes powers that he does not possess.

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Call for Sanity on 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Foreign Policy in Focus

July 9, 2015

(drafted by Emanuel Pastreich)

It was exactly 60 years ago that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered together with a group of leading intellectuals in London to draft and sign a manifesto in which they denounced the dangerous drive toward war between the world’s Communist and anti-Communist factions. The signers of this manifesto included leading Nobel Prize winners such as Hideki Yukawa and Linus Pauling.

They were blunt, equating the drive for war and reckless talk of the use of nuclear weapons sweeping the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, as endangering all of humanity. The manifesto argued that advancements in technology, specifically the invention of the atomic bomb, had set human history on a new and likely disastrous course.

The manifesto stated in harsh terms the choice confronting humanity:

Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto forced a serious reconsideration of the dangerous strategic direction in which the United States was heading at that time and was the beginning of a recalibration of the concept of security that would lead to the signing of the Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 and the arms control talks of the 1970s.

But we take little comfort in those accomplishments today. The United States has completely forgotten about its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty, and the words “arms control” have disappeared from the conversation on security. The last year has seen the United States confront Russia in Ukraine to such a degree that many have spoken about the risks of nuclear war.

As a result, on June 16 of this year Russia announced that it will add 40 new ICBMs in response to the investment of the United States over the last two years in upgrading its nuclear forces.

Similar tensions have emerged between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Isles and between the United States and China over the South China Sea. Discussions about the possibility of war with China are showing up in the Western media with increasing frequency, and a deeply disturbing push to militarize American relations with Asia is emerging.

But this time, the dangers of nuclear war are complemented by an equal, or greater, threat: climate change. Even the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, told the Boston Globe in 2013 that climate change “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

More recently, Pope Francis issued a detailed, and blunt, encyclical dedicated to the threat of climate change in which he charged:

It is remarkable how weak international political responses (to climate change) have been. Consequently the most one can expect is superficial rhetoric, sporadic acts of philanthropy and perfunctory expressions of concern for the environment, whereas any genuine attempt by groups within society to introduce change is viewed as a nuisance based on romantic illusions or an obstacle to be circumvented.

As the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto drew near, I became increasing disturbed by the complete inaction among the best-educated and best-connected in the face of the most dangerous moment in modern history and perhaps in human history, grimmer even than the catastrophe that Russell and Einstein contemplated. Not only are we facing the increased likelihood of nuclear war, but there are signs that climate change is advancing more rapidly than previously estimated. Science Magazine recently released a study that predicts massive marine destruction if we follow the current trends, and even the glaciers of the Southern Antarctic Peninsula, once thought to be the most stable, are observed to be melting rapidly. And yet we see not even the most superficial efforts to defend against this threat by the major powers.

I spoke informally about my worries with my friend John Feffer, director of Foreign Policy in Focus and associate of the Asia Institute. John has written extensively about the need to identify climate change as the primary security threat and also has worked closely with Miriam Pemberton of the Institute for Policy Studies on efforts to move the United States away from a military economy. Between the two of us we have put together a slightly updated version of the manifesto that highlights climate change — an issue that was not understood in 1955 — and hereby have published it in the form of a petition that we invite anyone in the world to sign. This new version of the manifesto is open to the participation of all, not restricted to that of an elite group of Nobel Prize winners.

I also spoke with David Swanson, a friend from my days working on the Dennis Kucinich campaign for the Democratic nomination back in 2004. David now serves as director of World Beyond War, a broad effort to create a consensus that war no longer has any legitimate place in human society. He offered to introduce the manifesto to a broad group of activists and we agreed that Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute and World Beyond War would co-sponsor the new manifesto.

Finally, I sent the draft to Noam Chomsky who readily offered to sign it and offered the following comment.

Last January the famous Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest it has been since a major war scare 30 years ago.  The accompanying declaration, which warned that the constant threat of nuclear war and “unchecked climate change” severely threaten human civilization, brings to mind the grim warning to the people of the world just 60 years ago by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, calling on them to face a choice that is “stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” In all of human history, there has never been a choice like the one we face today.

The declaration on the 60th anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto is displayed below. We urge all people who are concerned about humanity’s future and about the health of the Earth’s biosphere to join us in signing the declaration, and to invite friends and family members to sign. The statement can be signed at the petition page on DIY RootsAction website:

Declaration on the 60th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 9, 2015

In view of the growing risk that in future wars weapons, nuclear and otherwise, will be employed that threaten the continued existence of humanity, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.

We also propose that all governments of the world begin to convert those resources previously allocated to preparations for destructive conflict to a new constructive purpose: the mitigation of climate change and the creation of a new sustainable civilization on a global scale.

This effort is endorsed by Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute, and World Beyond War, and is being launched on July 9, 2015.

You can sign, and ask everyone you know to sign, this declaration here.

Why is this declaration important?

Exactly 60 years ago today, leading intellectuals led by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered in London to sign a manifesto voicing their concern that the struggle between the Communist and anti-Communist blocs in the age of the hydrogen bomb guaranteed annihilation for humanity.

Although we have so far avoided the nuclear war that those intellectuals dreaded, the danger has merely been postponed. The threat, which has reemerged recently with the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, has only grown more dire.

Moreover, the rapid acceleration of technological development threatens to put nuclear weapons, and many other weapons of similar destructiveness, into the hands of a growing circle of nations (and potentially even of “non-state actors”). At the same time, the early possessors of nuclear weapons have failed to abide by their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to destroy their stockpiles.

And now we are faced with an existential threat that may rival the destructive consequences even of a full-scale nuclear war: climate change. The rapacious exploitation of our resources and a thoughtless over-reliance upon fossil fuels have caused an unprecedented disruption of our climate. Combined with an unmitigated attack on our forests, our wetlands, our oceans, and our farmland in the pursuit of short-term gains, this unsustainable economic expansion has brought us to the edge of an abyss.

The original 1955 manifesto states: “We are speaking on this occasion, not as members of this or that nation, continent, or creed, but as human beings,” members of the human species “whose continued existence is in doubt.”

The time has come for us to break out of the distorted and misleading conception of progress and development that has so seduced us and led us towards destruction.

Intellectuals bear a particular responsibility of leadership by virtue of their specialized expertise and insight regarding the scientific, cultural, and historical forces that have led to our predicament. Between a mercenary element that pursues an agenda of narrow interests without regard to consequences and a frequently discouraged, misled, and sometimes apathetic citizenry stand the intellectuals in every field of study and sphere of activity. It falls to us that it falls to decry the reckless acceleration of armaments and the criminal destruction of the ecosystem. The time has come for us to raise our voices in a concerted effort.

Initial Signers

Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus, MIT

Last January the famous Doomsday Clock was moved two minutes closer to midnight, the closest it has been since a major war scare 30 years ago.  The accompanying declaration, which warned that the constant threat of nuclear war and “unchecked climate change” severely threaten human civilization, brings to mind the grim warning to the people of the world just 50 years ago by Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein, calling on them to face a choice that is “stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?” In all of human history, there has never been a choice like the one we face today.

Helen Caldicott, author

It was the Russell Einstein manifesto on the threat of nuclear war 60 years ago that started me upon my journey to try to abolish nuclear weapons. I then read and devoured the three volumes of Russell’s autobiography which had an amazing influence upon my thinking as a young girl.The manifesto was so extraordinarily sensible written by two of the world’s greatest thinkers, and I am truly amazed that the world at that time took practically no notice of their prescient warning, and today we are orders of magnitude in greater danger than we were 60 years ago. The governments of the world still think in primitive terms of retribution and killing while the nuclear weapons in Russia and the US are presently maintained on hair trigger alert, and these two nuclear superpowers are practicing nuclear war drills during a state of heightened international tension exacerbated by the Ukrainian situation and the Middle East. It is in truth sheer luck that we are still here on this lovely planet of ours.

Larry Wilkerson, retired United States Army Colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell.

From central Europe to Southwest Asia, from the South China Sea to the Arctic, tensions are on the rise as the world’s sole empire is roiled in peripheral activities largely of its own doing and just as largely destructive of its power and corruptive of its leadership. This, while humanity’s most pressing challenge–planetary climate change–threatens catastrophe for all.  Stockpiles of nuclear weapons add danger to this already explosive situation.  We humans have never been so powerfully challenged–and so apparently helpless to do anything about it.

Benjamin R. Barber, president, Global Parliament of Mayors Project

Naomi Klein, author of This Changes Everything

David Swanson, director, World Beyond War

John Feffer, director, Foreign Policy in Focus

Emanuel Pastreich, director, The Asia Institute

Alice Slater, NY director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation and serves on the Coordinating Committee of Abolition 2000.

Leah Bolger,  chair, coordinating committee, World Beyond War

Ben Griffin, coordinator, Veterans For Peace UK

Michael Nagler, founder and president, The Metta Center for Nonviolence

John Horgan, science journalist & author of The End of War

Kevin Zeese, co-director, Popular Resistance.

Margaret Flowers, M.D., co-director of Popular Resistance

Dahr Jamail, staff reporter, Truthout

John Kiriakou, associate fellow, Institute for Policy Studies and CIA Torture Whistleblower

Kim Hyung yul, president of the Asia Institute and professor of history, Sook Myung University

Choi Murim, professor of medicine, Seoul National University

Coleen Rowley, retired FBI agent and former Minneapolis Division legal counsel

Ann Wright, retired U.S. Army Colonel and former US diplomat

Mike Madden, vice president, Veterans For Peace, Chapter 27 (veteran of the US Air Force)

Chante Wolf, 12 year Air Force, Desert Shield/Storm veteran, member of Chapter 27, Veterans For Peace

William Binney, former NSA technical director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis and co-founder of the SIGINT Automation Research Center.

Jean Bricmont, professor, Université Catholique de Louvain

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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.

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Eleven days after the outbreak of full scale hostilities with the Palestinian militant group Hamas, the Israeli Air Force on October 17 bombed the Al Ahli Arab Hospital in the Gaza Strip killing over 500 civilians at a conservative estimate. Overall Palestinian casualties from Israeli strikes over the past 11 days had reached well over 16,000 by that time, although the destruction of the hospital sparked particular international outrage from across the non-Western world with harsh condemnations made from Russia and India to Southeast Asia and Africa.

With the incident gaining particularly high publicity, due largely to the significant international attention that has for decades been concentrated on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it has also served to highlight a long history of air strikes hitting and often entirely eradicating hospitals. While these serious war crimes have often gained little attention, a recent history of such attacks over the past 75 years serves to place the latest attack on the Palestinian hospital in context.

Israeli Strike on Al Ahli Arab Hospital

Second World War 

During the Second World War the use of incendiary weapons to carry out firebombing raids by the U.S. Army Air Force allowed it to effectively erase entire portions of cities and their populations, with these indiscriminate attacks resulting in the destruction of multiple hospitals from Dresden in Germany to Tokyo in Japan.

The firebombing of Tokyo on March 9-10, 1945, resulted in the bloodiest night in the history of war with Japanese deaths estimated at well over 100,000. With entire districts of the city and their populations erased effectively overnight, multiple hospitals, schools, temples and other targets were eradicated.

The attack represented among the most serious war crimes in history and caused far more civilian deaths than any other on record, destroying the homes of 372,000 families. General Curtis LeMay who oversaw the attack stated that it killed more than both the later nuclear attacks on Japanese cities combined, with higher estimates for the death toll reaching 500,000.

With smaller firebombing raids targeting the populations of 66 other Japanese cities, mass civilian casualties and the destruction of multiple hospitals with their patients still in them occurred across the country at the hands of the U.S. Army Air Force, culminating in nuclear strikes on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The nuclear attack on Hiroshima destroyed 18 hospitals and 32 first-aid centres, with 90 percent of the city’s medical doctors killed or seriously injured, while in the attack on Nagasaki the city’s chief medical facilities were destroyed including the Nagasaki Medical University and its related hospital, the Urakami branch of Mitsubishi Hospital, Urakami First Hospital.

Tokyo (left) and Hiroshima After American Bombings

After the Second World War the continued use of incendiaries for mass bombing raids to target cities from end to end ensured that hospitals would continue to be destroyed in subsequent conflicts. During the Korean War the Supreme Commander of U.S.-led coalition forces General Douglas MacArthur ordered the bombing of “every means of communication, every installation, factory, city and village” in North Korea, stating on a separate occasion regarding the northern half of the country that due to the intensity of Western bombing “this area will be left a desert.”

With Assistant State Secretary Dean Rusk assuring that bombers would attack “everything that moved in North Korea, every brick standing on top of another,” hospitals were far from exempted. The bombing campaign was estimated by the end of the war to have destroyed approximately 1000 hospitals across North Korea as well as killing the majority of the 3–4 million North Koreans estimated to have died in the war.

Air Force General Curtis LeMay later recalled of the bombing of North Korea:

“Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population,” with other estimates being as high as 30 percent.

During the Korean War the initiation of similar firebombing or nuclear attacks against cities across China was widely advocated for by key figures in the American political and military leadership, MacArthur among them, with nuclear weapons forward deployed and their use authorised accordingly. It was primarily the presence of Soviet forces in China, and the demonstrated vulnerability of American bombers to MiG-15 fighters which China was being supplied with, which ensured Chinese cities were not targeted as those in Japan and North Korea had been. 

Pyongyang After American Bombings

In the 1960s and 1970s American bombing raids against cities across North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia caused significant casualties and similarly destroyed hospitals across all three countries, and after the Cold War’s end the Gulf War saw Iraqi hospitals similarly targeted. Where hospitals were not hit directly, the mass targeting of civilian infrastructure including sewage and electricity placed them at serious risk.

An example was revealed in a July 1991 interview by Patrick Tyler from the New York Times with the director of Baghdad’s Saddam Paediatric Hospital, Dr. Qasm Ismail, who recalled that on the first night of the Western air campaign the targeting of civilian infrastructure cut off his hospital’s electricity. As a result:

“mothers grabbed their children out of incubators, took intravenous tubes out of their arms. . . . Others were removed from oxygen tents, and they ran to the basement, where there was no heat. I lost more than 40 prematures in the first 12 hours of bombing.”

The bombing of the Infant Formula Production Plant in the Abu Ghraib suburb of Baghdad on the seventh day of the war, which Washington at the time claimed was a biological weapons facility but which was later disproven, was one of the examples of an attack on Iraq’s ability to provide healthcare which gained greater levels of publicity.

Attacks on pharmaceutical facilities, paired with economic sanctions preventing the import of key medicines, could at times be more devastating than direct strikes on hospitals themselves, with a notable other example that decade being the American missile strike on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan seven years later in 1998. Washington similarly claimed this was a chemical weapons facility which was again later disproven. 

Remains of the Kunduz Trauma Centre in Afghanistan

In 1999 a massive NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia similarly saw hospitals widely targeted. Australian journalist John Pilger referred to civilians being “blown up in crowded passenger trains and buses, in factories, television stations, libraries, old people’s homes, schools and 18 hospitals, many cut to pieces by the RAF’s [British Royal Air Force’s] thousands of ‘unaccounted for’ cluster bombs which fragment into shrapnel.”

A notable example was the Royal Netherlands Air Force’s attacks on a crowded marketplace, a hospital, a university and several shops, in the Serbian city of Nis from May 7–12. When not attacking hospitals directly, the Western air campaign caused food and fuel shortages, loss of access to medicines, destruction of water, sewage and sanitation systems, and breakdowns in healthcare which ensured that hospitals could not function effectively.

Moving into the 21st century air strikes on key medical facilities continued to be launched, with one of the most prominent examples being a strike on the complex housing the International Committee of the Red Cross in Kabul, Afghanistan, with a subsequent second strike on the facility also being launched destroying the food and medical supplies for tens of thousands of Afghan refugees. With NATO forces launching strikes in the country for close to two decades, Afghan medical facilities were far from safe. One of the subsequent attacks which gained most publicity was the October 2015 U.S. Air Force strike on the Kunduz Trauma Centre operated by Médecins Sans Frontières, during which patients were reported to have burned to death in their beds. An AC-130U gunship was used in the attack. Although far from isolated, the incident gained more publicity than other attacks on Afghan medical facilities because the targeted building was operated by a Western organisation. Thus while Israel’s targeting of a Palestinian hospital has been widely condemned and represents a serious war crime, as the world’s leading power and claimed upholder of international norms the conduct of the United States in wartime has for decades made attacks on medical facilities far from abnormal. 

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Featured image: AC-130U Gunship, Al Ahli Arab Hospital Attack, B-52 Bombing Vietnam, Bombing of Baghdad; all images in this article are from MWM

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NewsGuard is a self-appointed misinformation watchdog. It seems to be just one more way Americans are not allowed to think for themselves. Co-CEOs Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz claim it is the “librarian for the internet.” Set up specifically to rate online journalistic integrity, Brill states NewsGuard provides services that “explain to people something about the reliability and trustworthiness and background of those who are feeding them the news.” Eric Effron is the organization’s Editorial Director.

Brill is a Yale graduate and lawyer who has authored multiple best-selling books and was, among other things, CEO of Verified Identity Pass, Inc., the first U.S. biometric Voluntary Credentialing Program that went bankrupt in 2009. It was the parent company of CLEAR which went back online in 2010 and then went public in 2021.

According to MintPressNews, “Crovitz held a number of positions at Dow Jones and the Wall Street Journal, eventually becoming executive vice president of the former and the publisher of the latter before both were sold to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp in 2007. He is also a board member of Business Insider, which has received over $30 million from Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos in recent years.”

Crovitz’s alliances might account for the organization’s favorable 100 ratings for WSJ and the Washington Post. He is also a contributor “to books published by the American Enterprise Institute and Heritage Foundation,” which are also favorably rated by NewsGuard.

Notable NewsGuard Partnerships

NewsGuard has partnered with Microsoft, Pfizer, the Department of Defense with a 2021 $749,387 one-year contract, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), and the WHO using NewsGuard’s trademark “new Misinformation Fingerprints” analyst and AI cataloging tool. NewsGuard’s other products include NewsGuard, HealthGuard, and BrandGuard—which help marketers concerned about their brand safety.

NewsGuard mentions its partnership with the WHO in August 2020 and discusses its Misinformation Fingerprints cataloging tool. The tool is essentially a database with a “unique identifier for each hoax that, when combined with the platforms’ machine learning tools, will allow platforms to identify each hoax across the entirety of their platforms.” NewsGuard describes Misinformation Fingerprints as an “extraction and cataloging” tool. It  provides “data seeds for existing AI/Social Listening tools to trace false claims across the internet and social media or can be used by human analysts to understand mis- and disinformation risks.”

NewsGuard was also a signatory in 2021 to the Code of Practice on Disinformation for the European Commission. Commissioner statements from the May 2021 announcement are below:

European Commission Statements

Microsoft was the first signatory to “provide NewsGuard ratings and labels to its users as a “middleware solution” for empowering consumers.” Microsoft licensed NewsGuard ratings and labels. They are “free of charge” to users of the Edge browser.

NewsGuard Wins Contest Run by Pentagon and DoD in 2020

NewsGuard won a 2020 contest run by the “Pentagon and Department of State to offer solutions to hoaxes related to the COVID-19 pandemic.” The contest focused specifically on the “pre-bunking” of internet hoaxes. NewsGuard was also “a winner of the Countering Disinformation Challenge, a contest offered jointly by the State Department and the Department of Defense (DoD) as a part of the DoD’s National Security Innovation Network (NSIN).” NSIN is a “government program office within the Office of the Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OSD (R&E)) that collaborates with major universities and the venture community to develop solutions that drive national security innovation.”

NewsGuard equips “defense and military personnel” with the tools to fight disinformation from foreign and domestic adversaries “in real-time.”

NewsGuard/DOD/Mil/

Per the NewsGuard press release:

“As a winner, NewsGuard will receive $25,000 to conduct a pilot and will work with the State Department’s Global Engagement Center to scope and develop a test in support of the DoD’s Cyber National Mission Force. Two other companies, PeakMetrics, which offers a dashboard for tracking mentions of a topic across multiple media channels, and Omelas, which offers a product for visually mapping online information, were also named winners of the contest.”

Notably, the tech company Omelas focuses on the “actions of overt state and nonstate actors” who exert “malicious influence on the web.” Omelas regularly contributes with speeches and written submissions to influential global organizations and domestic institutions like UChicago’s Data and Democracy initiative and the UChicago Center for Effective Government, attended by the likes of Tiana Epps-Johnson with CTCL.

Teachers’ Union Signs Contract with NewsGuard in 2022

The American Federation of Teachers, with its 1.7 million members, announced its “pathbreaking” partnership with NewsGuard in January 2022 with the rollout of the “free, real-time traffic light news ratings,” a “crucial news literacy tool” for students nationwide. The announcement coincided with National News Literacy Week. They released this video on the dangers of misinformation at the time of the announcement:

Touted as a “game-changer for teachers and families drowning in an ocean of online dishonesty,” a “licensed copy of NewsGuard’s browser extension” would help students “separate fact from fiction, as we help them develop their critical-thinking and analytical skills.” AFT President Randi Weingarten gave NewsGuard glowing reviews:

“NewsGuard is a great tool in this regard. It is a beacon of clarity to expose the dark depths of the internet and uplift those outlets committed to truth and honesty rather than falsehoods and fabrications. This historic deal will not only help us steer clear of increasingly fetid waters—it will provide a valuable lesson in media literacy and a discussion point for teachers in class on what can and can’t be trusted.”

NewsGuard’s 2022 Social Impact Report

NewsGuard issued its first “social impact report” in 2022. The report championed NewsGuard’s provision of tools that would promote “online safety for readers, brands, and democracies.” Its CEOs proudly state a mission to fight false claims of “Nazis running Ukraine’s government and Americans running bioweapons labs in Ukraine,” COVID-19 misinformation, and misinformation surrounding the mid-term elections.

According to the report, “more than 938,200 people were exposed to COVID-19 vaccine myths between Oct. 2021-Feb. 2022 on social media.” The report also reveals NewsGuard’s exposure of “pink slime sites pushing Democratic propaganda in battleground states ahead of the midterm elections.”

 

What are NewsGuard’s Stated Standards and Procedures?

The NewsGuard Dashboard “helps clients access NewsGuard’s database of News Reliability Ratings and Misinformation Fingerprints through a powerful, searchable web interface purpose-built for use by businesses seeking to identify and mitigate risks from misinformation and disinformation. Users can browse NewsGuard’s ratings, get alerts about changes in the news and information environment, and stay on top of emerging false narratives and trends.”

The site issues “stoplight red/green journalistic ratings” for news sources. Influence watch describes NewsGuard as a “web browser extension that rates the trustworthiness of online news sites based on nine criteria, providing a trust score between 0 and 100.” Nine basic “apolitical criteria” for journalistic practice are outlined on the NewsGuard website. The criteria are listed in order of importance and weighted accordingly. Satire sites, platforms, and news aggregators “are given separate designations and are not scored using the nine criteria.” The nine criteria and standards for credibility are as follows:

  • Does not repeatedly publish false content (22 Points)
  • Gathers and presents information responsibly (18 Points)
  • Regularly corrects or clarifies errors (12.5 Points)
  • Handles the difference between news and opinion responsibly (12.5 Points)
  • Avoids deceptive headlines (10 Points)
  • Website discloses ownership and financing (7.5 Points)
  • Clearly labels advertising (7.5 Points)
  • Reveals who’s in charge, including possible conflicts of interest (5 Points)
  • The site provides the names of content creators, along with either contact or biographical information (5 Points)

NewsGuard Ratings/0-100

According to the website, NewsGuard substantiates the basis for its ratings with “evidence and examples to back up its assessments, includ[ing] any relevant comments from the publisher, and indicat[ing] the history of the sites’ ratings.” NewsGuard employs “a team of journalists and experienced editors” who make an effort to contact publishers who might “fail” specific criteria before a rating or an updated rating is published, “ensuring a publisher[‘s] ability to reply.” NewsGuard has recently dropped its stoplight rating system and now uses its “nutrition label” exclusively.

Are Conservatives Being Targeted by NewsGuard?

According to a series of email exchanges made public by the Conservative organization PragerU, Newsguard targets conservative organizations unfairly. NewsMax, Dave Rubin, and Harmeet Dhillon also allege having been targeted by NewsGuard. Rubin says the service sums up “so much of what is wrong right now in American culture relative to big tech and government.”

NewsGuard claimed PragerU was spreading “misleading content” on its website. Sites with scores below 60 are labeled “unreliable.”

PragerU/NewsGuard Ratings

PragerU and NewsGuard Exchange Emails

The emails from 2021 between PragerU’s Chief of Staff Adrienne Johnson and the NewsGuard Co-CEOs seem to indicate PragerU was reputationally and financially damaged by a NewsGuard red rating of 57.

Notably, officials from PragerU clarified in its emails that it is not a news website, but a “nonprofit focused on producing and marketing well-researched, issue-driven educational content” featuring healthy debate from experts. As such, PragerU discloses its donations with the required IRS 990 form and does not disclose that information on its website as “required by NewsGuard.” NewsGuard disregarded the disclosure because of its standards, not because the information was unavailable.

NewsGuard penalized PragerU for never having “corrected one-sided claims related to COVID or hydroxy,” all of which were objectively and verifiably true. Specifically, NewsGuard challenged PragerU’s sharing of videos featuring America’s Frontline Doctors “that promoted false claims about the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine” as a “proven cure for COVID-19.” Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin have been well-known as effective early treatments for COVID-19 since early in the pandemic but were suppressed by the government and its overly helpful legacy media partners. NewsGuard challenged PragerU’s removal of the videos because PragerU failed to publish a correction once the videos were removed.

Sadly, PragerU had removed the videos not because they were incorrect but “due to overall social media censorship on the topic.” One of the emails shows CEO Marissa Streit writing that PragerU “created an ROI analysis on our end, and we removed it rather than face the penalties of censorship.”

NewsGuards also reprimanded PragerU influencer Will Witt who stated in a video that “children aren’t actually dying from the virus.” Witt allegedly cited without attribution a “study with the statistics of children ages 0-18 who had died from COVID-19, “none of whom died.”  Witt’s statement was not far from the mark because CDC data shows that almost no healthy children have died from COVID-19.

It appears that NewsGuard may have held Witt accountable for inexact wording, not for the spirit of the claim. It is not clear from the emails whether NewsGuard upheld its promise to “ensure” Witt or PragerU had a chance to be more exact in its language or supply “feedback” for the “failed” information on its website.

At one point in the exchange, Streit asks for confirmation from NewsGuard to certify that the “removal of certain content” will “remove any negative marks on our ratings and provide us with “Green” status—a stamp of approval that should be unnecessary in America as a prerequisite to the exchange of ideas.

Streit ultimately revealed that NewsGuard held PragerU to account for “less than 0.001% of its overall content.” Even though Streit made specific good-faith efforts to reply directly to the ratings and even removed truthful content to avoid censorship, NewsGuard doubled down and persisted with its bias. Streit wrote:

PragerU Email/NewsGuard/Streit

Directors, Advisors, and Investors

NewsGuard’s directors, advisors, and investors are an interesting cast of characters. One of the investors, Publicis Groupe, is “the third largest communications group in the world.” Publicic allegedly has “shadowy ties to Saudi Arabia.” Pfizer and Bayer/Monsanto are two of its top clients. Ironically, many of the advisors/directors are former U.S. government officials, entertainment moguls, and journalists “associated with agencies known for producing false news.”

Among the advisors is Michael Hayden, former Director of the NSA and CIA, who was “the architect of George W. Bush’s secret domestic spying program.” Tom Ridge was the first Office of Homeland Security Director following 9/11. Richard Stengel “is a former senior official in Obama’s state department who once described his role as being that of ‘chief propagandist.‘”

Below are two videos with Stengel discussing his thoughts on free speech and NewsGuard’s role in the information landscape. He says he used to be a “free-speech absolutist” but has changed his point of view as he has traveled the world. Stengel states that his travels have taught him that “Our notion of free speech is an outlier to people. The First Amendment is no longer working.” He shares he has become more sympathetic to legislation for hate speech. “There is a design flaw in the First Amendment in the age of social media. We need to start thinking about hate speech laws.

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I knew exactly what would happen when China unveiled their peace plan for the conflict in Ukraine.  The night before, I told my wife that western leaders would immediately dismiss it.  Sadly, that is precisely what happened.  Of course any peace plan proposed by China was not going to be perfect.  But for the good of humanity our leaders should be willing to at least sit down and talk with the Russians.  Because if we stay on the path that we are currently on, eventually somebody will use nuclear weapons.  And once things go nuclear, we could be facing a nightmare scenario in which hundreds of millions of people die.

This is not a game.

At some point, peace talks may become impossible.  So if we have an opportunity to talk now, we should grab it.

But instead, our leaders made it abundantly clear that they aren’t even interested in considering China’s peace plan…

US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, speaking on CNN, brushed off the Chinese proposal, saying it should have ended after the first bullet point, which calls for “respecting the sovereignty of all countries.”

“This war could end tomorrow, if Russia stopped attacking Ukraine and withdrew its forces,” he said.

Asked about the proposal, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said, “China doesn’t have much credibility” in light of its failure to condemn Putin’s war.

And Volodymyr Zelensky is completely rejecting the idea of ever negotiating with Vladimir Putin

The Ukrainian president has repeatedly rejected the idea of negotiating a peace deal that would see Ukraine lose any of its territory. Speaking on Friday, he said he would not negotiate with Putin – even though he was prepared to speak to him before the war started.

“It is not the same man. There is nobody to talk to there,” he said.

I think that Zelensky would see things quite differently if he was one of the men that was being forced into the meat grinder in eastern Ukraine.

According to a former U.S. Marine that is fighting there, the “average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours”…

The average life expectancy of a front-line soldier in eastern Ukraine is just four hours, a former US Marine fighting alongside Ukrainian forces in the Donbas told ABC News.

“It’s been pretty bad on the ground. A lot of casualties. The life expectancy is around four hours on the front line,” American Troy Offenbecker said.

It is a really, really horrible war.

But those that are far from the front lines can afford to talk about how glorious the war is

Just one day before the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion, the official Twitter account for the NATO military alliance has come under criticism for a post that said Ukraine is “hosting one of the great epics of this century” and compared the war to Hollywood movies.

The post, which quoted a Ukrainian soldier named Pavlo, said: “We are Harry Potter and William Wallace, the Na’vi and Han Solo. We’re escaping from Shawshank and blowing up the Death Star. We are fighting with the Harkonnens and challenging Thanos.”

The idea of comparing the war, which has claimed thousands of lives, seen widespread destruction, and destabalised the world’s food and energy supplies, to fictional characters was quickly deried by many on the social media platform.

I would like to see leaders from both sides be forced to serve on the front lines.

If that ever happened, this war would end really quick.

Sadly, a conflict with Russia is apparently not enough, and so the Biden administration is now relentlessly provoking the Chinese.

This week, a new round of sanctions that were announced by the Biden administration actually included entities located inside China

The White House has announced yet another package of sweeping sanctions targeting Russia on the one-year anniversary of its brutal invasion of Ukraine – with new efforts to target third countries including China for sanctions evasion.

And it is being reported that the U.S. will soon “quadruple” that number of U.S. troops in Taiwan…

The US is expected to quadruple the number of forces deployed to Taiwan in the coming months as tensions with Beijing continue to simmer.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the Pentagon plans to deploy between 100 and 200 troops to the self-ruled island, up from around 30 a year ago.

Service members from the Marines and the special forces have been sent to Taiwan in the past and the number has fluctuated over the years.

The Chinese consider Taiwan to be their sovereign territory.

This is something that they believe with a passion.

And so the fact that the Biden administration will be sending more U.S. troops to the island has really pissed them off

A commentator for the Global Times, a media project of the Chinese Communist Party, issued a threat to the United States on Thursday night, intimating that China would not hesitate to engage U.S. forces stationed in Taiwan if the Chinese launched an invasion of the island nation.

Hu Xijin, formerly the editor-in-chief of the Global Times, reacted to a Wall Street Journal report about U.S. troops traveling to Taiwan by calling it “illegal” and suggesting that the Chinese would treat them as enemy combatants.

“It’s illegal for these US soldiers to go to Taiwan and Chinese mainland won’t take any responsibility for their safety,” tweeted Hu. “If we take military action when necessary, they’ll be wiped out together with the resisting Taiwan troops. They can also be eliminated first as the invading army.”

But most Americans don’t understand any of this.

Most Americans have absolutely no idea that we are literally on the verge of a war with China.

Unfortunately, such a conflict is getting a little bit closer with each passing day.  In fact, we just witnessed a very alarming incident over the South China Sea

A voice, saying it’s coming from a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) airport, crackles over the radio of the US Navy P-8 Poseidon as a CNN crew, given rare access aboard the US flight, listens in.

“American aircraft. Chinese airspace is 12 nautical miles. Not approaching any more or you bear all responsibility,” it says.

For some reason, the U.S. Navy aircraft was carrying a CNN crew, and the Chinese fighter jet got so close to them that they “could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with”

In a few minutes, a Chinese fighter jet armed with air-to-air missiles intercepts the US plane, nestling in just 500 feet off its port side.

The Chinese fighter jet was so close, the CNN crew could see the pilots turning their heads to look at them – and could make out the red star on the tail fins and the missiles it was armed with.

Why does the Biden administration see the need to endlessly provoke China at a moment like this?

It is madness.

We could easily find ourselves involved in conflicts with both Russia and China at the same time, and I have been precisely warning of such a scenario for a very long time.

Unfortunately, we have a hothead in the White House that is in an advanced stage of mental decline.

And he is surrounded by irrational warmongers such as Jake Sullivan, Antony Blinken and Victoria Nuland.

They do not want peace.

So global war is coming, and I would strongly encourage you to get prepared for such an outcome.

*

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***

Western leaders privately told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine can not win the war against Russia and that it should begin peace talks with Moscow this year in exchange for closer ties with NATO. 

The private communications are at odds with public statements from Western leaders who routinely say they will continue to support Ukraine for as long as it takes until it achieves victory on the battlefield.

The Wall Street Journal, which reported on the private remarks to Zelenksy, said:

“The public rhetoric masks deepening private doubts among politicians in the U.K., France and Germany that Ukraine will be able to expel the Russians from eastern Ukraine and Crimea, which Russia has controlled since 2014, and a belief that the West can only help sustain the war effort for so long, especially if the conflict settles into a stalemate, officials from the three countries say.

‘We keep repeating that Russia mustn’t win, but what does that mean? If the war goes on for long enough with this intensity, Ukraine’s losses will become unbearable,’ a senior French official said. ‘And no one believes they will be able to retrieve Crimea.’

French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told Zelensky at an Élysée Palace dinner earlier this month that he must consider peace talks with Moscow, the Journal reported.

According to its source, the newspaper quoted Macron as telling Zelensky that “even mortal enemies like France and Germany had to make peace after World War II.”

Macron told Zelensky “he had been a great war leader, but that he would eventually have to shift into political statesmanship and make difficult decisions,” the newspaper reported.

A Return to Realism

At the Munich Security Conference last week, Gen. Petr Pavel, the Czech Republic’s president-elect and a former NATO commander, said:

“We may end up in a situation where liberating some parts of Ukrainian territory may deliver more loss of lives than will be bearable by society. … There might be a point when Ukrainians can start thinking about another outcome.”

Even when he was a NATO commander Pavel was a realist in regard to Russia. During controversial NATO war games with 31,000 troops on Russia’s borders in 2016 — the first time in 75 years that German troops had retraced the steps of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union — Pavel dismissed hype about a Russian threat to NATO.

Pavel, who was chairman of NATO’s military committee at the time, told a Brussels press conference that,

“It is not the aim of NATO to create a military barrier against broad-scale Russian aggression, because such aggression is not on the agenda and no intelligence assessment suggests such a thing.”

The German foreign minister at the time, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, also embraced realism towards Russia, saying:

“What we shouldn’t do now is inflame the situation further through saber-rattling and warmongering. Whoever believes that a symbolic tank parade on the alliance’s eastern border will bring security is mistaken.”

Instead of an aggressive NATO stance towards Russia that could backfire, Steinmeier called for dialogue with Moscow. “We are well-advised to not create pretexts to renew an old confrontation,” he said, adding it would be “fatal to search only for military solutions and a policy of deterrence.” Under U.S. leadership NATO clearly did not follow that advice, as it continued to deploy more troops to Eastern Europe and to arm and train Ukraine (under cover of pretending to back the Minsk Accords to end the Ukrainian civil war).

Before its intervention in Ukraine, Russia cited NATO’s eastward expansion, the deployment of missiles in Romania and Poland, war games near its borders and the arming of Ukraine as red lines that the West had crossed.

After a year of war, Western leaders appear now to be turning to a realist approach. Macron, for instance, at the Munich Security Conference dismissed any talk of regime change in Moscow.

 No US Reaction

Left to Right: Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock at Munich Security Conference. (Schulmann/MSC)

Washington has not commented on the Journal‘s story about the peace talks-for-arms proposal. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last month discussed with The Washington Post arming Ukraine post-war but he did not say that Ukraine should seek peace talks.

“We have to be thinking — and we are — about what the postwar future looks like to ensure that we have security and stability for Ukrainians and security and stability in Europe,” Blinken told the conference in Munich.

The proposal to bring Ukraine even closer to NATO than it already is, with greater access to weapons after the war, should be on the agenda at NATO’s annual meeting in July, said Rishi Sunak, the British prime minister, at the Munich conference.

“The NATO summit must produce a clear offer to Ukraine, also to give Zelensky a political win that he can present at home as an incentive for negotiations,” a British official told the Journal. 

The deal with NATO would not include membership with its Article 5 protection, the newspaper reported.

“We would like to have security guarantees on the path to NATO,” Zelensky told a press conference on Friday, however.

In the meantime, Macron, according to the WSJ report, said that Ukraine should press forward with a military offensive to regain territory in order to push Moscow to the peace table.

There has been no reaction from Moscow about the proposal. Geo-political analyst Alexander Mercouris, in his video report on Saturday, said Russia would likely be incentivized to continue fighting rather than enter peace talks with the knowledge that Ukraine would be heavily armed by NATO after the war.

“The Russians are never going to agree with something like this,” Mercouris said. “They must be saying to themselves that instead of agreeing to this plan, it actually makes more sense … to continue this war because one of [Russia’s] objectives is the total demilitarization of Ukraine.”

What the Western powers are proposing is the opposite, he said. Given that Russia considers it is winning and “there seems to be a general acknowledgment amongst Western governments that Ukraine can’t win this war … where is the incentive for … Russia to even consider this plan?”

For Moscow, Mercouris said, Ukraine’s demilitarization is an “absolute, existential matter.”  If Ukraine is going to get even more advanced weapons from NATO after the war as opposed to what it would get “whilst the war is still underway, then it makes even less sense” for Russia “to stop the war and agree to this plan.”

Russia is facing a “weakening adversary now,” Mercouris said, and Moscow clearly prefers that to facing a “strengthened adversary later.”

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Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times.  He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe  

Featured image: Élysée Palace where Macron and Scholz told Zelensky to seek peace. (U.S. State Dept.)

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***

The horrific environmental disaster in East Palestine, Ohio has contaminated the air, the soil and the water in much of the region.  So how much, if any, of the food that is grown in that part of the country will be safe to eat?  I had not thought about that question too much until I received a very alarming phone call.  One of the people that I spoke to during that phone call was a woman that I know personally.  I have known her for years, and I have visited with her in her own living room, and so I can vouch for her honesty.  She told me that her “son-in-law manages three organic food farms in California, Idaho, and Washington State”, and that he is “warning family and friends to get ready for severe food shortages starting this spring”.  Apparently there are several factors that will cause food supplies to be tighter, and one of the biggest is the fact that the “Ohio spill has contaminated a lot of land and water”.  Apparently there is a scramble “to find clean food” and her son-in-law is receiving lots of phone calls from buyers in the eastern half of the nation that want to buy what his farms are producing.

We will just have to wait and see if things will be as bad as this source is suggesting.

But we do know that some companies have already started to take action due to concerns about contamination.

For example, one grocery chain has already removed bottled water from store shelves “because it was bottled 25 miles from the derailment”

Weeks after a train derailment near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border left hazardous chemicals burning from railcars, fears of the potential impacts are being felt in places far from the accident.

Grocery chain Giant Eagle, with hundreds of stores in five states including Ohio and Pennsylvania, pulled bottled water off shelves out of an “abundance of caution” because it was bottled 25 miles from the derailment.

And we also know that large numbers of animals are dying.

In fact, officials are now publicly admitting that approximately 43,000 “fish, amphibians, crustaceans and other aquatic animals” are already dead…

The derailment in East Palestine potentially killed more than 43,000 fish, amphibians, crustaceans and other aquatic animals in nearby streams, state officials said Thursday.

It will take time for the stream ecosystem to recover, said Mary Mertz, director of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources.

“We know it won’t be quick,” she said. “But it’s going to come back.”

Ultimately, the final death toll among animals will inevitably be much larger.

Another thing that we know is that lots of people that live in and around East Palestine are getting sick.  The following example comes from the New York Post

Wade Lovett’s been having trouble breathing since the Feb. 3 Norfolk South train derailment and toxic explosion here. In fact, his voice sounds as if he’s been inhaling helium.

“Doctors say I definitely have the chemicals in me but there’s no one in town who can run the toxicological tests to find out which ones they are,” Lovett, 40, an auto detailer, said in an extremely high-pitched voice. “My voice sounds like Mickey Mouse. My normal voice is low. It’s hard to breathe, especially at night. My chest hurts so much at night I feel like I’m drowning. I cough up phlegm a lot. I lost my job because the doctor won’t release me to go to work.”

We have never seen anything quite like this before, and there are so many questions that are going unanswered.

Right now, a lot of people are wondering why the EPA has suddenly stopped all shipments of contaminated waste from the disaster site…

Federal environmental authorities have ordered a temporary halt in the shipment of contaminated waste from the site of a fiery train derailment earlier this month in eastern Ohio near the Pennsylvania state line.

Region 5 administrator Debra Shore of the Environmental Protection Agency said Saturday the agency ordered Norfolk Southern to “pause” shipments from the site of the Feb. 3 derailment in East Palestine but vowed that removal of the material would resume “very soon.”

Why can’t they tell us why they made this decision?

And why won’t Joe Biden go to Ohio?

When he was directly asked about visiting East Palestine, this is how he responded

The president answered, ‘At this point, I’m not,’ but then he appeared confused and strained as he tried to explain himself.

‘I did a whole video, I mean, um, what the hell, on,’ Biden rambled as he looked for reporters to fill in the gap.

‘Zoom?’ one of the reporters said, trying to help the president.

‘Zoom! All I can think of every time I think of Zoom is that song in my generation, Who’s Zoomin’ Who,’ he said, referencing the Aretha Franklin song.

Come on Joe.

Is that really the best that you can do?

Meanwhile, we continue to see very odd disasters happen at critical facilities all over North America.  On Thursday, massive fires suddenly erupted at three different Pemex facilities

Three separate fires at Petroleos Mexicanos facilities on Thursday killed one worker, left at least eight people injured and several others missing, putting the Mexican state oil company’s safety record under scrutiny ahead of its earnings call on Monday.

Are we supposed to believe that three separate facilities all had catastrophic “accidents” on the exact same day?

Here in the United States, more than 100 food processing facilities have been mysteriously destroyed over the past couple of years.

How many incidents have to happen before authorities will finally admit that there is some sort of a pattern?

Food production just keeps getting hit over and over gain, and this comes at a time when the global food shortages that we have been anticipating have already begun.

I would highly recommend stocking up while you still can, because we are moving into times of great uncertainty.

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***

“Never Again Is Now Global,” a five-part docuseries highlighting the parallels between Nazi Germany and global pandemic policies.

Each one-hour episode focuses on recent testimonies by Holocaust survivors and their descendants who discuss comparisons between the early repressive stages under the Nazi regime that culminated in the Holocaust and global COVID-19 policies.

Watch the trailer of part 4 below. And click here to watch the full episode.

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***

On February 25th, Elon Musk tweeted “That election was arguably dodgy, but no question that there was indeed a coup.” By “That election,” he was referring to Viktor Yanukovych’s having won the Presidency of Ukraine in an election about which even the British Guardian newspaper had headlined on 8 February 2010, “Yanukovych set to become president as observers say Ukraine election was fair”, and it made clear that even Western international observers there were testifying to the authenticity of that electoral win by Yanukovych, such as by its reporting that, “Observers from the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said there were no indications of serious fraud and described the vote as an ‘impressive display’ of democracy.” However, Elon Musk, without citing any evidence, was now saying otherwise: that Yanukovych’s win had been “arguably dodgy” — and (despite that tweet) he provided no argument at all to back up that ‘arguably’ allegation.

Only fools cite tweets that have no links to any evidence, as being evidence for anything other than that the tweeter had made that given assertion. As a general rule, tweets are the least-reliable source of information. Certainly Musk’s tweet was. However, he also said there that there was “no question that there was indeed a coup.”

Anyone who has at all followed the evidence on that matter knows that it unquestionably WAS a coup that overthrew Yanukovych in February 2014; and even the head of the “private-CIA” firm Stratfor said on 19 December 2014 that the overthrow of Yanukovych that had occurred then was “the most blatant coup in history.” It was that, because the evidence that it was is not only this smoking gun that it was a U.S. coup, but because there was plenty more of high quality evidence and all of it showed the same thing: it was a coup by (or “on behalf of”) the Obama Administration. (Obama and his team, and all ‘allied’ countries, however, and all of the Western news-media, called it instead a ‘democratic revolution’. This is George Orwell’s 1984 made real. It’s not real history, but real deceit.)

The fools who follow Musk’s opinions should know that he himself thinks that coups are just fine: when Elon Musk received on 24 July 2020 a tweet from an “Armani” saying, “You know what wasnt in the best interest of people? the U.S. government organizing a coup against Evo Morales in Bolivia so you could obtain the lithium there [for Tesla cars’ batteries].” Later that day, Musk replied:

“We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

He likes coups that profit himself personally, but apparently there are some coups that he disfavors — and he doesn’t ever explain (or at least not honestly) why. Maybe, for twitter-followers, “why” just isn’t an interesting question? (Maybe that’s why they use social media — instead of articles like this, that link to their primary sources — to ‘know’ what’s ‘going on’ in ‘the news’?)

Musk’s stupid tweet about Ukraine was likewise in response to something that one of his followers had tweeted: He was responding to one of his twitter followers, “KanekoaTheGreat” having tweeted quoting Professor John Mearsheimer’s having said in the September/October 2014 issue of America’s most prestigious — and strongly pro-U.S.-empire or “neoconservative” or pro-Military-Industrial-Complex — Foreign Affairs magazine, “For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a “coup”—was the final straw.” Ultimately, that’s what Musk was responding to — not the evidence, but instead the opinion there, in that prestigious, overwhelmingly pro-U.S.-coups and empire, magazine, from (as it turns out) a professor who was arguing that the coup had been merely (and only) a mistake:

On February 17th, under the headline “John Mearsheimer’s Misrepresentations In Order To Be Allowed Space On U.S. Propaganda-Media (i.e., U.S. ‘News’-Media)”, I had pointed out numerous distortions of the historical record regarding that coup — such as his alleging it to have been due to a “flawed view” (not a vicious, or even just a “false” view, but merely “flawed” — and he doesn’t so much as hint at in what way “flawed”) including “such liberal principles as the rule of law, economic interdependence, and democracy,” which “went awry in Ukraine [and, again, he doesn’t hint at in what way ‘awry’],” and on and on — as-if it weren’t what it actuallhy WAS: which was the U.S. Government’s bipartisan neoconservative obsession to trap Russia’s Government, to checkmate it, into its being forced to yield, finally and inexorably, to the control by the U.S. Government. That’s imperialism — and there wasn’t a word about it — except one passing reference, which was 180 degrees in the false direction: against actually the victim-country, NOT against the aggressor:

In September 2013, Gershman wrote in The Washington Post, “Ukraine’s choice to join Europe will accelerate the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents.” He added: “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

And that distractionary and deceptive reference is to Russia’s ‘imperialism’, NOT to America’s own authentic hyper-imperialism that Russia is now responding to (and which imperialism entails a military budget that now (including what’s hidden in non-‘Defense’-Department agencies but is still for military purposes) is half of the entire world’s military spending, and it pays for 900 foreign military bases and much more that is counterproductive if it has any real impact at all on protecting U.S. national security. (It’s not “the Defense Department”; it is “the Aggression Department.”)

This is the hidden reality: and neither Musk nor Mearsheimer, nor any other mouthpiece of the U.S. Establishment or the “Deep State” lets its audience in on it — and on the EVIDENCE that this IS the reality.

The U.S. coup against and that grabbed Ukraine was a very intentional, and very evil — not at all unintentional or ‘by mistake’ — U.S. coup, and Putin is being villainized in U.S.-and-allied media for finally responding to it in Russia’s case. Not ONLY was it “a coup” but it was a U.S. coup, and it was by careful and evil design, no mere (nor Mearsheimer) ‘error’.

This is — on steroids — the 1962 Cuban-Missile-Crisis in reverse: Ukraine is only a 300-mile or five-minute missile-flying-time distance away from The Kremlin and decapitation of Russia’s ability to fire-off its retaliatory weapons (within less than five minutes) against a U.S. blitz-attack. Russia needs to prevent that.

“The West” — including all of NATO — are 100% the aggressors in this matter. And that fact is unmentionable in U.S.-and-allied media.

To top it all off: on February 25th, another budding U.S. politician, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, is apparently entering the U.S. Presidential primaries campaiging for the Republican (traditional fascist) nomination, by tweeting:

The main thing should be the main thing: focus on China. China wants the Ukraine war to last as long as possible to deplete Western military capacity before invading Taiwan. It’s working: we think we *look* stronger by helping Ukraine, but we actually *become* weaker vs. China.

Perhaps in foreign affairs, while the Democrats (liberal fascists) will be campaigning for war against Russia to precede war against China, the Republicans (conservative fascists) will be campaigning for war against China to precede war against Russia. It’ll be a contest about which ‘enemy’ to hate first. Either way, the owners of mega-corporations such as Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil will be beaming. They’re the realconstituency in this ‘democracy’.

It’s like: Will the flavor be chocolate, or will it be vanilla? Either way, it’ll be loaded with sugar, artificial flavoring, and artificial coloring, and will fatten you, and rot your teeth, just the same, no matter how different the taste is. And those are the only two ‘choices’. That’s all the billionaires are offering, in the political market. Truth isn’t anywhere on the menu, from either Party.

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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.

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***

Wade Lovett’s been having trouble breathing since the Feb. 3 Norfolk South train derailment and toxic explosion here. In fact, his voice sounds as if he’s been inhaling helium.

“Doctors say I definitely have the chemicals in me but there’s no one in town who can run the toxicological tests to find out which ones they are,” Lovett, 40, an auto detailer, said in an extremely high-pitched voice. “My voice sounds like Mickey Mouse. My normal voice is low. It’s hard to breathe, especially at night. My chest hurts so much at night I feel like I’m drowning. I cough up phlegm a lot. I lost my job because the doctor won’t release me to go to work.”

Despite his health woes, Lovett and his fiancée, Tawnya Irwin, 45, spent last Thursday delivering bottled water to locals. They picked up new cases outside a home on East Clark Street which has become the heart of East Palestine’s homegrown campaign to fight back against the forces that upended the lives of roughly 4,700 residents and their animals.

Locals are frustrated and furious over what they say has been a lack of real information and help from both local officials and the Biden Administration. Last week, East Palestine Mayor Trent Conaway ripped President Biden for heading to Ukraine for a surprise visit instead of the scene of the toxic train derailment, calling it “the biggest slap in the face.”

Click here to read the full article on NYP.

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The global pandemic was not completely catastrophic in its effects.  It led to the cancellation, and postponement, of wasteful projects and events.  It spared public money.  But as the pandemic slides into the shadow of policymaking, bad habits have returned.  The profligates are here to stay.

One such habit is the Avalon air show, a celebration of aeronautical militarism in the southern hemisphere best done without.  In 2021, the organisers announced with regret that the event would be cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions and uncertainty.  Last October, however, organisers promised a return to form in 2023.  Those with tickets “can look forward to a whole new program with jaw-dropping aerial displays, a refreshed food and beverage offering, and live entertainment.”

Also known as the Australian International Airshow and Aerospace and Defence Exposition, Avalon2023 promises to “showcase” much in the “dynamic world of aviation, aerospace and space, new materials, fuels and ways of flying”.

The program features both a specialist dimension and complimentary conferences “open to any accredited Trade Visitor”.  The specialist aspect will feature presentations from, among others, the Royal Australian Air Force, Australian International Aerospace Congress, Australian Association for Unscrewed Systems (AAUS), Australian Industry Defence Network (AIDN), and the Australian Airports Association.

With this military bonanza unfolding on February 28, the Australian Defence Minister, Richard “Call me Deputy Prime Minister” Marles, has tooted his justifications for more hardware, more military merchandise and more engagement with the defence industry.  His address to the Avalon 2023 Defence and Industry Dinner revealed a boyish credulity typical in so many who lead that portfolio.  The boys-with-toys credo becomes all seducing.  Air forces, he noted, “are the coolest part of any military.”  Trying to amuse, he called Top Gun Maverick “an important and insightful documentary”.

With that treacly tribute out of the way, Marles could get down to the business of frightening Australians and delighting the military industrial mandarins.  Australia faced “the most challenging and complex set of strategic circumstances we’ve seen since the Second World War.”  The “global rules-based order” had been placed “under immense pressure”, largely due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.  “The post-Cold War era – a period of democratic expansion and unprecedented integration of global trade and investment – is now over.”

The scriptwriter had evidently gone to sleep in drafting such words.  The post-Cold War era was streaked by brutal invasions and interventions (Iraq and Libya, to name but two instances), supposedly by the rules-abiding types in Washington, London and Canberra.  The Russian invasion did feature the imposition of will by a larger state on a smaller neighbour using “power and might”, but the US-led invasion that kicked the hornet’s nest of sectarian violence in 2003 came from the same stable of thought.

The speech then follows a familiar pattern.  First, call out the Russians.  Then highlight the Oriental Armed Scourge to the North.  “In the Indo-Pacific, China is driving the largest conventional military build-up we’ve seen anywhere in the world since the Second World War.  And much of this build-up is opaque.”

Australia’s security, assured by its remote location and geography, could no longer be taken seriously.  “Today we face a range of threats – including longer-range missiles and hypersonics and cyber-attacks – which render our geographic advantages far less relevant.”

The enemy could do damage from afar, causing harm “without ever having to enter our territorial waters or our air space.”  It was therefore important to place Australian defence upon the footing of “being able to hold any potential adversaries at risk much further from our shores.”

This was a rather devious way of laying the ground for more cash and larger budgets, ignoring the clear point that Australia has no truly mortal enemies, but wishes to make them as Washington’s obedient deputy.

One particular product is meant to take centre stage.  The Australian Defence Force is lagging in the department of murderous drone technology.  One promises to be unveiled at Avalon.  As reported by the national broadcaster, “The unscrewed air system has been developed by BAE Systems Australia and is designed to be stored in shipping containers.” The device is allegedly capable of carrying a lethal payload in excess of 100 kilograms.

Australia’s Chief of Air Force, Air Marshal Robert Chipman, has made no secret of his desire for low-cost killer drones.  “We’ve seen a proliferation of low-cost drones and loitering munitions delivering both ISR [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] and fires to great effect,” he told a Melbourne audience filled with foreign air force chiefs and senior officials, “they don’t replace the roles of contemporary combat aircraft, but they might serve as a useful complement.”

With that in mind, the RAAF was “considering the potential of low-cost drones that bring mass to our air combat system, and we’re considering what new measures are necessary to defend against them.”  Such views thrilled the war mongering offices at The Australian, which expressed satisfaction that Australian military policy was finally “moving in the right direction.”

Chapman has been particularly busy in the leadup to the Avalon airshow, walking the tightrope of defence propaganda.  Self-praise and capability must be balanced against a fear of achievement on the part of an adversary.

In an interview with the Australian Financial Review last week, the Air Marshal revealed that the RAAF had also joined the hysteria about targeting high altitude surveillance balloons.  He also defended the merits of the F-35 fighter jet, praising their pilots as having “retained an edge over drones or other unscrewed platforms despite advances in technology.”

China, however, was causing jitters in the area of hypersonic missiles, capable of delivering a warhead at five times the speed of sound with extreme manoeuvrability.  “I think China is in front when it comes to hypersonics […] and that is something we are actively working to address.”  Thank goodness, then, for the Avalon Air Show, even if the organisers were not sagacious enough to invite both Chinese and Russian manufacturers.

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

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The Antiwar Movement Roars Back to Life

February 28th, 2023 by Rep. Ron Paul

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On February 19th, the National Mall in Washington, DC saw its largest antiwar rally in 20 years. The speakers list included four former US presidential candidates and a broad and diverse collection of antiwar activists from beyond the left and right.

The aptly-named “Rage Against War Machine” rally drew thousands of attendees, however many pro-war advocates eagerly pointed out that it did not match in size some of the larger rallies against the Iraq war 20 years ago.

To that I say, “who cares”? The US mainstream media engages in war propaganda non-stop, with the only exception being Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. So I think it’s a miracle anyone had the courage to travel to the heart of the war machine in Washington, DC to make their voices heard! We don’t need a majority to fight back – an educated and dedicated minority will do quite nicely. And we certainly had that at the rally!

As I sat in the green room waiting to speak, I had the opportunity to visit with former Democrat presidential candidates Tulsi Gabbard and Dennis Kucinich and former Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Political commentators Jimmy Dore and Chris Hedges were there, along with many leading and well—spoken libertarians. Everyone backstage carried the same message: we must put aside our differences to build a new, broad coalition against this war!

I believe the antiwar movement is starting to catch fire both at home and overseas. The DC rally was followed by much larger antiwar rallies in Paris, Berlin, London, and elsewhere.

Several recent polls, including by Pew and AP, show that American support for Ukraine is evaporating. Even in the EU, new polls show a public turning sharply against their governments’ support for the war. According to a recent Ipsos poll, less than half of Germans support continuing to send weapons to Ukraine. Change is in the air.

The DC rally took place in the backdrop of Seymour Hersh’s explosive investigative report demonstrating how the US government blew up the Nord Stream pipelines and the mainstream media’s desperate attempt to cover it up. The truth is coming out, and it’s even uglier than we imagined.

The US mainstream media is clearly getting nervous that its control over the narrative is also evaporating. How do we know they’re nervous? They have turned up their lies and slanders of antiwar rallies and voices.

Rachel Maddow, who fed America a steady stream of “Russiagate” lies for the past six or so years, let loose with a slanderous blue streak about the Rage Against the War Machine rally. Literally everything Maddow said in her post-rally rant was objectively false and her mischaracterization of rally participants as “weird” was devious. She falsely claimed that the rally was full of “white supremacists,” “Proud Boys,” and “anti-vaccine conspiracy theorists.”

No one who was at the rally would have had any idea what she was talking about. But her job was not to describe the rally, it was to defame it. What does Maddow’s hysterics about the rally show? They are nervous. It shows that the mainstream media, despite having near-total power, is afraid. They are afraid they are losing the narrative. Good. It’s about time. Let’s hope that more Americans begin to rage! Rage against the war machine!

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URGENT: Today we join Eric Coppolino in calling for the immediate, total evacuation of East Palestine, Ohio due to the dioxin fallout now taking place there. The full interview with Eric Coppolino is now available at the bottom of this article. The interview also appears at the HR Report channel page on Brighteon.com.

The toxic cloud event that’s dropping extremely toxic dioxins across a large area of residential housing and farmland was deliberately generated by the open burning of vinyl chloride, creating combustion byproducts of dioxins which are many orders of magnitude more toxic and dangerous than the original substance.

Understand that the combustion of chlorinated compounds always results in the formation of dioxins. This simple fact is known by all competent chemists and is openly admitted by the EPA itself on its dioxins warning page, which states:

Studies have shown that only small amounts of chlorinated materials in waste are required to support dioxin formation when burning waste… Much of the dioxins created and released into the air through backyard burning settle on plants. These plants are, in turn, eaten by meat and dairy animals, which store the dioxins in their fatty tissue. People are exposed to dioxins primarily by eating meat, fish, and dairy products, especially those high in fat. Backyard burning occurs most commonly in rural farming areas where dioxin emissions can more easily be deposited on animal feed crops and grazing lands. These dioxins then accumulate in the fats of dairy cows, beef, poultry, and swine, making human consumption of these harmful chemicals difficult to avoid.

Near-PERMANENT ecological destruction on a scale never before witnessed

The EPA even states that dioxins are PBTs, which means 1) Persistent. 2) Bioaccumulative. 3) Toxic. This means they don’t go away, they accumulate up the food chain to achieve higher and higher concentrations, and 3) They are toxic. As the EPA explains:

Dioxins are classified as persistent, bioaccumulative, and toxic pollutants (PBTs). PBTs are highly toxic, long-lasting substances that can build up in the food chain to levels that are harmful to human and ecosystem health. Persistent means they remain in the environment for extended periods of time. Bioaccumulative means their concentration levels increase as they move up the food chain. As a consequence, animals at the top of the food chain (such as humans) tend to have the highest dioxin concentrations in their bodies.

What sort of health problems are caused by dioxin exposure?

1) Immune suppression.
2) Infertility, spontaneous abortions.
3) Extreme hormone disruption.
4) Developmental disorders in babies and children.
5) DNA mutations.
6) Cancer.

Via the EPA:

Dioxins are potent toxicants with the potential to produce a broad spectrum of adverse effects in humans. Dioxins can alter the fundamental growth and development of cells in ways that have the potential to lead to many kinds of impacts. These include adverse effects upon reproduction and development, suppression of the immune system, disruption of hormonal systems, and cancer.

The “controlled burn” actually transformed a relatively harmless chemical into an extremely toxic, deadly chemical that will persist across Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York State for CENTURIES

The media and government are both repeatedly using the phrase, “controlled burn” to describe the setting fire to the liquid vinyl chloride monomer that was being carried by the Norfolk Southern railroad.

Vinyl chloride is made solely of three elements: Carbon, hydrogen and chlorine. In its simplest form, it looks like this (the monomer, liquid form is on the left, and the solid poly form is on the right):

Although vinyl chloride is somewhat toxic, it’s nowhere near as toxic as the dioxins created by burning vinyl chloride without fully incinerating it. Low-temperature combustion actually produces far more toxic compounds than what you started with, in other words.

Put another way, if you incinerate it as a hazardous waste at > 2000 degrees (F), you will destroy the molecule’s morphology and end up with just the individual elements such as carbon and hydrogen, each of which is relatively harmless by itself.

But if you ignite vinyl chloride in an open ditch, you create a dioxin factory that produces extremely toxic molecules from the combination of heat and oxygen. The hydrogen, carbon and chlorine are combined with oxygen from the open air (hence the fact that the burn was actually uncontrolled, not controlled), and you produce molecules like this: (2,3,7,8 TCDD)

Image source: Restoration and Remediation Magazine Online, RandRmagonline.com

After this relatively low-temperature combustion (an open fire in a ditch), you have now converted relatively harmless vinyl chloride into extremely toxic, persistent toxins known as dioxins.

Burning the vinyl chloride was an act of ecological terrorism and a crime against nature and human civilization

In effect, you’ve just increased the toxicity of this substance by perhaps 10 orders of magnitude or more, given that dioxins can be toxic at exposures well below billionths of a gram. A femtogram is one millionth of one billionth of a gram, and dioxins can produce toxic effects at femtograms of exposure.

In fact, competent scientists have concluded that there is no safe level of exposure to dioxins. Not even one femtogram. That’s because at any level, dioxins begin to produce toxic effects on biology, no matter how small the exposure.

Put another way, by setting fire to the vinyl chloride, the railroad turned their relatively non-toxic product into an insanely toxic chemical bomb and released it into the open air.

To call this a “controlled burn” is a crime. The media is gaslighting the entire nation by refusing to report on dioxins.

Whoever set fire to this vinyl chloride in an open ditch just carried out the worst act of ecological terrorism ever recorded in North America.

As Restoration and Remediation magazine explains, these dioxins are the most toxic chemicals known to humankind

Post-structure fire and wildfire settings, especially those where plastics, synthetic materials, electronics, or PVC have burned, extremely hazardous and carcinogenic chemicals are created that are typically overlooked altogether.  One chemical in particular, dioxin, some consider to be one of the most toxic chemicals known to man.

Not only is this substance extremely toxic to all life, and far more lethal than asbestos or lead, it is also known to the World Health Organization as a member of the so-called “Dirty Dozen” – a group of dangerous chemicals also referred to as persistent organic pollutants (POPs).

POPs are chemicals of global concern due to their potential for long-range transport, persistence in the environment and atmosphere, ability to bioaccumulate in ecosystems, as well as their significant negative effects on human health and the environment. Bioaccumulation is the accumulation of chemicals in organisms from the surrounding environment through skin absorption, ingestion, and inhalation.

As this article explains — a fact that can be confirmed by any competent chemist, dioxins are created when chlorinated compounds are ignited or combusted:

Dioxins are formed when products containing carbon and chlorine burn, especially plastic, paper, pesticides, herbicides or other products where chlorine is used in the manufacturing process. Dioxins do not typically exist in materials before they are burned and are especially prevalent in structure fires and wildfires.

When set on fire, dioxins are formed and then chemically bond to smoke particles

From the R and R magazine, link above:

Depending on the temperature in a fire, dioxins can be adsorbed or chemically bound to smoke particles or remain in a vapor phase. Adsorption is when particles bond with one another, similar to how a magnet bonds with iron, rather than being absorbed like a sponge absorbs liquids.

This means that when you are observing the giant smoke column rising from East Palestine and spreading over the entire area like a giant toxic doom cloud, you are seeing dioxins spreading through the air with the smoke. The following photo is essentially showing a dioxin cloud spreading in an uncontrolled manner, into the atmosphere:

All the people who have been breathing in the fallout areas in the aftermath of East Palestine are breathing in highly toxic dioxins:

TCDD can enter your body if you inhale contaminated particulate, have skin or eye contact with contaminated soot, ash, or other materials, or eat contaminated food.  Due to the fact that ultra-fine smoke particulate matter generated in fires is often less than 3 microns in size (half the size of a red blood cell), inhalation of dioxin-laden particulate can easily bypass the lungs and enter the bloodstream.

Here’s another list of some of the effects of dioxin exposure, via the same source linked above:

Other adverse health effects may include cardiovascular disease, diabetes, cancer, porphyria, endometriosis, early menopause, reduced testosterone and thyroid hormones, altered immunologic response, skin, tooth, and nail abnormalities, altered growth factor signaling, and altered metabolism.

Diseases which have been linked to dioxin seem endless. Ingesting dioxin can also result in congenital malformations, spontaneous miscarriages, and a fatal, slow wasting syndrome similar to AIDS. Dioxin is strongly suspected of contributing to pathology of the urinary and hematological systems, growths in the colon, gallbladder complications, multiple myeloma, and lung, larynx and prostate cancer.

According to researcher Joe Thornton, “Dioxin’s health effects include endocrine disruption, reproductive impairment, infertility, birth defects, impaired neurological development, damage to the kidneys, and metabolic dysfunction. There is no evidence that there is a safe level of dioxin exposure below which none of these effects will occur.”

Long-term DNA mutations / DNA damage, even affecting pregnancies TWENTY YEARS after exposure

From the same source linked above:

TCDD is genotoxic and a known mutagen. A mutagen is a physical or chemical agent that causes a mutation, which is a change in the DNA of a cell. DNA changes caused by mutagens may harm cells and cause certain diseases, such as cancer.  TCDD alters the genetic structure of living cells. The effect TCDD has on cell structures and genes can be passed down to future generations. In 2012, a scientific study found that dioxin affects not only the health of an exposed rat, but also unexposed descendants through a mechanism of epigenetic transgenerational inheritance. Michael Skinner, Ph.D., a professor in the Center for Reproductive Biology at Washington State University, discovered that “exposure to dioxin caused changes in the DNA methylation patterns of sperm that were transmitted across generations to affect the health of multiple generations of descendants. The grandchildren of exposed rats showed dioxin-induced effects ranging from polycystic ovarian disease to kidney disease. Due to its extremely long half-life, dioxin may still affect pregnancies occurring even 20 years after exposure.”

This means the toxic dioxin gas bomb just released over Ohio is also a genetic mutation bomb that will destroy the lives of millions of people for generations to come.

This is, in fact, far worse then Chernobyl, a Soviet nuclear accident that killed dozens and poisoned hundreds of thousands over time. What just happened in Ohio will poison millions of Americans and likely kill tens of thousands, if not many more.

This event dwarfs Chernobyl, yet the entire U.S. corporate media is complicit in this criminal cover-up that also involves the EPA, CDC, White House, Governor of Ohio, the railroad company and more.

We are going to start seeing babies born with deformed faces and limbs over the next several years. We are going to witness mass human suffering, animal die-offs and “dead zone” areas where no animals can survive.

There’s much more coming on this. Watch for my full interview with Eric Coppolino to be posted here, and also watch for NaturalNews.com’s upcoming report on natural phytochemicals that can help block and detox dioxins from the body, according to published medical and scientific research.

Finally, note that we are adding dioxin testing to our food science lab using one of our mass spec instruments (a tandem ms/ms combined with a GC interface) and we hope to have dioxin testing up and running within 90 days. More updates coming…

Watch the full interview with Eric Coppolino here, in the Situation Update podcast (the interview starts at around the 19 minute mark): click this or click screen.

 

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Gaza Children’s Artwork Removed from London Hospital

February 28th, 2023 by Middle East Eye

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A London hospital has taken down a display of artwork designed by Palestinian schoolchildren from Gaza after complaints by a British pro-Israel charity.

According to a statement by UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), the hospital was compelled to remove the artwork following a complaint by the NGO on behalf of a number of Jewish patients, “who said that they felt vulnerable and victimised by this display”.

The artwork contained a display of decorated plates, along with illustrations of their significance. Entitled “Crossing Borders – a festival of Plates”, the display was shown by the entrance to the children’s outpatients’ department at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

It was designed by children at two schools run by UNRWA in Gaza and transferred onto the plates by children at the Chelsea Community Hospital school. The caption for one of the display plates was: “The olive branch is the symbol of peace and is used to express the wish for an independent Palestinian state.”

The group said: “The drawings from Gaza all appear to be professional artwork, in the same style, and carried out by the same person,” although it was said to have been designed by children at the Beit Lahia Girls’ School and the Jabalia Prep Boys’ A School in Gaza.

UKLFI said in the complaint that some of the artwork displayed Palestine as covering the entire area of Israel.

Another description of a plate says: “The olive branch is the symbol of peace and is used to express the wish for an independent Palestinian state.”

“However, the picture on the plate accompanying the text shows the Dome of the Rock with a large Palestinian flag, implying that Jerusalem and in particular the site of what had been the Jewish Temple, would be part of a Palestinian state,” UKLFI said. The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque are located in East Jerusalem, an area designated as Israeli-occupied territory in international law since 1967.

Israel has imposed a land, air and sea blockade on Gaza since Hamas won legislative elections in 2006. The siege and several Israeli military operations against Gaza have killed thousands of Palestinian civilians, including children, and left many suffering post-traumatic stress disorders.

UKLFI claimed that the young students at the two Gaza schools had been taught with Hamas ideology embedded within their curriculum.

“The fact that adults could find a piece of artwork done by children intimidating, that an outfit such as the UKLFI could move to issue a complaint, and finally for the hospital to actually remove the artwork, is utterly bizarre,” said Anas Altikriti, CEO of The Cordoba Foundation, a UK-based research group.

Middle East Eye has reached out to the Chelsea and Westminster hospital for comment.

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I was actually talking to Cory Morningstar, who put me on track to investigate the White Helmets. So I think she wrote about them originally in 2014- one year after they were established by British Military Intelligence operative, James Le Mesurier, employed by Analysis Research and knowledge (ARK) group that’s headed up by very probably an MI6 operative Alistair Harris, who’s operating in a number of countries around the world on behalf of the British government.

And we were both talking about the fact that we’re suddenly post-earthquake seeing wall-to-wall propaganda resurrecting the White Helmet brand, that of course had been extensively damaged by Syrian civilian accusations including theft, murder, torture, detention, being embedded with armed groups dominated by Al-Qaeda, organ trafficking, child abduction for presenting their chemical weapon staged events, and of course they were proven to be staged after the Douma 2018 chemical attack when the OPCW dissident inspectors, who were on the ground, pointed out that the events at the Medical Center in Douma were staged as I had already confirmed visiting the Medical Center days after the alleged attack.

So the brand itself had been we thought irreparably damaged. They tried to revive it in Ukraine. The White Helmets go to Ukraine…That didn’t really work. In fact, it really worked against them because people then started to affiliate them with the Nazi elements in Ukraine, particularly with the mercenaries going from the northeast of Syria into Ukraine to fight alongside the Azov and Aidar battalions, and also of course more recently the influx of ISIS from Syria into Ukraine to fight alongside the Ukrainian forces such as they are now.  But suddenly after the earthquakes, or the two earthquakes, major earthquakes that hit Syria on the 6th of February, we’ve seen it’s like Groundhog Day. We’ve gone back to the 2013 promotional material wall-to-wall across all media outlets, who are the White Helmets, the same kind of copy-paste Syria Campaign narratives that were produced back then, who are they volunteers- three thousand volunteers saving 115 lives in Syria etc….But what I want to focus on today is the fact that here in Syria we see that the West collectively and their allies in Israel and the Gulf States, namely Qatar and Saudi Arabia, are capitalizing on the humanitarian tragedy on the earthquake to effectively revive the military war against the Syrian government.

I mentioned attacks carried out by ISIS…The Western media is portraying attacks by Assad personally… Of course that’s what they’ve always done against terrorist positions in the Northwest….And reality those so-called attacks have been defensive campaigns to prevent the advance of the armed groups dominated by Al-Qaeda, known to be a U.S admitted to be a U.S. asset inside Syria.. And so the White Helmet Resurrection in my view is part of this drive to re-arm, re-equip and refinance the armed groups in the Northwest to lead a military campaign alongside ISIS in the Northeast, Central Syria and the southeast, and bolstered by the latest Israeli aggression on the 19th of February around 1:00 am when they attacked various sites in Syria, including a number of sites in Damascus, killing five Syrian civilians, injuring dozens, more damaging the Damascus Citadel’s archaeological institutes destroying historical documents by UNESCO heritage site in Sweida- to the south of Damascus- 300 kilometers away from the U.S military base in al Tanf.

So, what I’m trying to say today to people that are not aware of who the White Helmets are and who may be getting pulled into funding the various donation sites that are associated with the White Helmets… I want to try and point out how this uptake in funding has come as a result of the earthquake.. So in other words the earthquake is being exploited by the West, while of course they’re maintaining to a large degree the majority of the sanctions against the bulk of the Syrian population- 80% living under the Syrian government protection.

So first of all, let’s have a look. I’ll run through quite quickly, and I’ve only really taken a small percentage of the funding campaigns that are out there linked to the White Helmets. So first of all we see secretary Antony Blinken: “Today, I’m announcing plans for additional 100 million dollars to provide life-saving aid in Turkey and Syria”.

And I have to say also when they mentioned Syria, they’re talking about Northwest Syria. They’re talking about the pocket of Syria that is controlled by Al-Qaeda or Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham and Abu Muhammad al-Julani (the head of HTS) who by the way refused the Convoy of 14 trucks of humanitarian aid that came from Damascus through southern Idlib, and after a week of negotiation between Syrian Arab Crescent the UAE and the armed groups dominated by al-Julani, Al-Julani put out a statement saying that he wouldn’t legitimize the internationally recognized Syrian government and he wouldn’t accept the aid.

Activists on the ground told me he was asking for ten thousand dollars per truck for it to enter Idlib to bring aid to the Syrian people under their occupation. So Blinken basically goes on this is all part of this kind of rebranding or cleaning up of the White Helmet brand. So here he states that he’s honored to meet representatives of the Syria Civil Defense, of course we know there are not the Syria Civil Defense. The real Syria Civil Defense was established in 1953 in Syria and it’s the only recognized, Syria Civil Defense by the International Organization for Civil Defense in Geneva. Added to the U.S. So Blinken’s talks about 100 million which will be distributed part of it through USAID, we have Germany offering 30 million euros for NGOs. We assume among those will be the White Helmets in the Northwest again controlled by Al-Qaeda. Samantha Power, who heads up USAID under the Biden Administration is talking look at the second part of her tweet 85 million in funding, and of course she had a conversation with Raed Al Salah (the head of the White Helmets).

And so we know that much of this funding will in effect go to the White Helmets. The White Helmets putting out their thank you tweet to Samantha Power, the USAID Bureau for humanitarian assistance, lead photographed alongside a White Helmets management. And I have to say all of this money to our knowledge is coming into bank accounts in Istanbul, that are managed by the three directors of the White Helmets: Raed Saleh, Farouq Habib and Munir Mustafa,  and of course we would like to have some transparency on how this money is going to be distributed into the Northwest which as I keep saying is under the control of al-Qaeda, again from Samantha Powers. So she very kindly adds on an additional 5 million to assist with rescue equipment fuel for life-saving operations and crucial support for ambulance networks. We’ll come on to that later.

Interesting here, I just want to point out look at the uniform and the branding of the White Helmets. We’re going very much towards kind of EU-UK fire Brigade insignia, and notice of course that everything is in English despite the fact that they work in an Arabic speaking environment. Ambassador Linda Thomas Greenfield, the United States Representative for the US, is talking about the decision to open two additional border crossings. So again, this is related in my view to the uptick in military support for the armed groups, and the Revival of the military campaign to topple the Syrian government while Syria itself is at its most vulnerable. Qatar which of course originally put in around 3 billion into supporting regime change in Syria from 2011 onwards, and whose media was responsible for much of the propaganda that demonized the Syrian government.

Now interesting that they do actually state that they’re going to support the operations of the White Helmet, but they’re a little bit coy about mentioning the amount. They say that basically they are fundraising 10 million dollars and they set aside one million. But we can assume that an awful lot more will be coming in from Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The Canadian government will provide an initial 10 million in aid to Turkey and Syria. And Denmark alongside the UK krona 20 million to the Syria civil defense. So again going directly to the White Helmets. And I think that’s around 2 million. I think sterling and a little bit more than that in dollars. The UK government not to be outdone commit to additional funding to the White Helmets to support search and rescue in Syria.

The White Helmets thanked the British delegation, which was headed up by the right honorable Andrew Mitchell who’s the Minister of State for development and Africa. Of course he was honored to meet the white Helmets Heroes involved in search and rescue operations in Northwest Syria. They’ve released an additional 4.3 million pounds. The UK foreign office funds the White Helmets year on year 2.2 million minimum, and I believe that 4.3 million has just been increased to 5 million.  I’ll do a summary of all the funding so far at the end,, but then let’s get on to what I call the kind of billionaire complex, influencer cartels “Choose Love” which was previously help refugees has had a target of 4.164 million to raise for the White Helmet. I recommend everybody goes to the UK column article: “White Helmets, Halal Systems and the Grotesque Militarization of Humanitarianism in Syria” where you will find a lot of information about Choose Love or help refugees as it was previously.

This rebranding of these NGOs, or the members of the NGO complex is very common when their reputation is tarnished. The rebranding happens just as of course it did with al-Qaeda in Syria multiple times, then we have a AVAAZ, instrumental in funding the war campaign against the Syrian government from 2011 onwards. I mentioned Danny Abdul day, and before if people remember back in, I think it was 2012 of ours had the smuggle hope for Syria Campaign, which raised over 2 million to equip the so-called citizen journalists, who produced much of the early propaganda before the White Helmets took over. So the latest of our campaigns.

I also want to draw your attention to the language that’s being used by the major and by these funding campaigns. It’s doomsday in Turkey and Syria. I’ve seen this across multiple media outlets again pushing the very familiar tagline on the White Helmets, one brave group of Syrian volunteers who’s already responding literally digging people out of trouble with bare hands. Pay attention to that sentence “The white helmets are the best hope for people in parts of Syria”. Will they admit they omit the fact that “it’s the part of Syria that contains the majority of al-Qaeda and affiliated armed terrorist groups including the Uyghurs from China, Chechens, Saudi Arabians, Afghanistanis, Turkistanis, etc….”And then they are crying out for rescue supplies: fuel and an emergency shelter,  and our movement could provide it in hours. That’s interesting. Avaaz could provide materials for the White Helmets in the Northwest now.

You’ll also be seeing- and that’s where I  really want to draw people’s attention to this. You’re going to be seeing a lot of images like this: White Helmets holding children aloft, a lot of cheering and shouting and a lot of cameras, a lot of mobile phones and very clean children and children that don’t look remotely traumatized by six -now ten- days under the rubble. You’re going to see a lot of that.. Don’t please be fooled by it.

The real theory of civil defense, the Syrian Arab Crescent and the various emergency relief teams inside proper Syria are too busy actually doing their work to pose for photo opportunities. But note here the White Helmets thank of ours then you have what’s this one the Voices Project USA, which is effectively Syria Campaign. Syria campaign established by Ayman Asfari, a UK based Syrian oil baron investigated by the serious fraud organization that looked into his funding of the conservative party under Theresa May. And this is the American version of the Syria Campaign. But the Syria campaign have their own funding campaign going again showing very emotive pictures of the White Helmets: “GoFundMe” that shut down multiple fundraisers for people inside Syria under the government protection, but however managed to raise a hundred thousand to support the White Helmets riots ahead of the White Helmets was actually allowed to start a funding campaign with Gulf. On me it wasn’t shut down. The mayor of London said it can’t. In Trafalgar Square, City Hall is assisting the Syrian community and creating Syria house a space where they can pay their respects, and we even have the royal family involved in Trafalgar Square. The king looks very sorry. Syrian Community tent where members of the Syrian Community can come together to support those who need it most and guess who’s on the left of King Charles ( in the photo) that’s Ayman Asfari, who I just mentioned, who has pretentions to the throne of Syria. The king himself has committed to making a donation to the DEC appeal that has raised over 60 million for Northwest Syria.

Now this is where it gets kind of interesting. So here we’ve got an interview on Le devoir. So in this interview I’ll translate from French. We’ve heard the cries of people under the rubble but they said we don’t have equipment to save them that’s the White Helmets, and here you have one of the primary members of the White Helmets talking about the White Helmets’ needs: fuel,  search and rescue equipment, heavy vehicles, spare parts for vehicles, tires for vehicles.

Now remember how many millions are being pledged to this organization of less than 3 000 volunteers. Now in amongst the media campaign I found these photographs of the lack of heavy machinery, while the White Helmets are allegedly digging people out from under the rubble and then let’s have a look back at this. This is the White Helmets YouTube channel in Idlib. 15.2k subscribers. It’s been running since 2013, and if you can play the video Mike, I just want to show from one year ago amount of Machinery that the White Helmets had available to them. And at one point that I want to make during this video is the White Helmets operate with an annual budget from their various sponsors in the west and in the Gulf States and Israel, 35 million  per year.

The real serious civil defense, 10 000 volunteers across 80 percent of the population of Syria, have an annual budget of 50 000. While the White Helmets have all of this equipment. And while the White Helmets had in fact stolen equipment from the rails of Syria civil defense -when they occupied areas where the real Syria civil defense operated. In Aleppo- for example, I spoke to one of the captains of the Syria civil defense the real one and he told me that for 44 collapsed buildings they only had seven machines to actually help them dig people out from under the rubble.

So this gives you an indication and a comparison between the two organizations: One funded by the West in order to destabilize their country and criminalize the Syrian government. The other, the genuine Syria civil defense that is working for the Syrian people. So I want to look at this very quickly. This is the Syria Regional program for USAID final report 2020 and note in the small print at the bottom that “USAID and now the British government siphoned their funding not directly to the White Helmets but through Chemonics  International.

And let’s have a look. So this was since 2013 to 2020. I’ve circled in Red. So 46% of the funding, 25.2 million went to the supply of heavy equipment for the White Helmets. So their claims that they don’t have heavy equipment available are false, and so therefore one has to ask: Where are the millions going??? and let’s just do a quick recap of what I’ve talked about. So, Blinken talked about 100 million [part of it via USAID], and we also have to remember USAID’s connections to the CIA. Germany 30 million Euros. So, 31.7 million dollars USAID, 85 million plus an extra 5 million for the White Helmets, Denmark in collaboration with the UK 1.9 million, the UK FCDO about 6 million. Choose Love $4.8 million. DEC that I mentioned that the King Charles is going to be donating to 72 million dollars,  Qatar at least 10 million. So the total is 316 million so far.

And as I said I’ve only scratched the surface. I’ve not looked into the EU, the UN pledges, etc…, and the White Helmets 20 million minimum. So their annual budget is 35 million. They’re getting that anyway one assumes, and here we have 20 million on top for 3 000 volunteers that already have all the equipment they need to dig people out. So why is this money needed. And just a quick reminder from John Pilger award-winning journalist/ film maker as he said: “I think in 2016 or 2017, the White Helmets are complete propaganda construct”, and he also mentioned they’re working alongside Nusra Front, which is Al-Qaeda in Syria.

NOTE: Avaaz is U.S.-based nonprofit organization launched in January 2007 that promotes global activism on issues such as climate change, human rights, animal rights, corruption, poverty, and conflict. In 2012, The Guardian referred to Avaaz as “the globe’s largest and most powerful online activist network

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***

An interesting story was reported on Feb.26, 2023 by News 8 WTNH, New Haven, CT. They took the story down about 24 hours later but it is still available on EIN Presswire (click here).

“Nearly 500 people from Washington, Oregon and Idaho gathered at the Wenatchee Convention Center in Washington State on Saturday, January 28 to hear and share stories of…injuries and deaths from COVID shots and hospital protocols; careers upended and families torn apart by mandates; and numerous harms from closures of schools, businesses and churches.”

Heart screening was available and conducted using multifunction cardiogram technology, or MCG, provided by HeartCARE Corp”

we had the opportunity to perform Multifunction Cardiogram™ screens on a variety of participants…over half of those tested (16 of 30 people) (53%) had positive markers for myocarditis. Two of these were active duty US Military pilots.

Studies on rates of post COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis

The rates of post COVID-19 vaccine myocarditis are much, much higher than what Public Health Authorities have admitted to (most will admit to about 1:5000).

There are two key studies on what the real rates of post COVID-19 vaccine heart damage may actually be:

  1. Prospective Thailand study of 202 boys showed 1:30 (7/202) boys ages 13-17 developed myocarditis or pericarditis within a week after 2nd dose of Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA (click here).
  2. Professor Christian Mueller, University Hospital Basel Switzerland conducted testing on 777 healthcare workers within a week after COVID-19 booster shot, and found increased troponinemia in 22/777 (1:35) that had no other cause other than the COVID-19 booster shot (click here)

    “The actual incidence of post-vaccination myocardial lesions is 2.8% vs 0.0035% of myocarditis in retrospective studies (unvaccinated)”

    “The incidence of myocardial lesions is 2.8% (1:35), or 800 times higher than the usual incidence of myocarditis (in unvaccinated)” the researchers add.

My Take…

I believe myocarditis (heart inflammation) is responsible for vast majority of post COVID-19 sudden deaths that we are seeing now, and health authorities have intentionally downplayed the risk of myocarditis post COVID-19 vaccination.

They don’t want to conduct autopsies on sudden deaths now, because they don’t want us to know that the risk of post-vaccine myocarditis and sudden cardiac death was always much higher than what they admitted to publicly.

Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health admitted to a myocarditis risk of 1 in 5000 and he was lambasted by pharma-captured Ontario doctors who didn’t want any truth to be known (click here)

But both the Thailand study and Swiss study suggest a myocarditis risk of 1:30 or 1:35per vaccine dose. That means 3% of all COVID-19 vaccinated people could be walking around with heart inflammation (myocarditis) they don’t know they have, which puts them at increased risk for sudden cardiac death, during exercise or in the early morning hours (the trigger for sudden cardiac death is a surge of stress hormones).

The Washington event cardiac testing was not scientific and 53% of people walking around with myocarditis seems very unlikely. But it raises a crucial question.

WHAT IF the risk of post COVID vaccine myocarditis actually increases with time?

As reported by Dr.Peter McCullough, we know that spike protein circulates at least 28 days after injection, and gets delivered to the heart during that time (click here).

The Thailand and Swiss studies tested people only within the 1st week after COVID-19 vaccination and 3% had heart inflammation or heart damage.

What if this gets worse as time goes by? What if the risk of myocarditis actually increases from 3% because the spike protein which inflames the heart continues to circulate for 28 days after injection and probably even longer?

That is what this Washington public cardiac testing is suggesting.

I am also concerned about those 2 pilots with inflamed hearts.

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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***

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military.”Simone Weil, French philosopher

***

It’s hard to say whether we’re dealing with a kleptocracy (a government ruled by thieves), a kakistocracy (a government run by unprincipled career politicians, corporations and thieves that panders to the worst vices in our nature and has little regard for the rights of American citizens), or if we’ve gone straight to an idiocracy.

For instance, an animal welfare bill introduced in the Florida state legislature would ban the sale of rabbits in March and April, prohibit cat owners from declawing their pets, make it illegal for dogs to stick their heads out of car windows, force owners to place dogs in a harness or in a pet seatbelt when traveling in a car, and require police to create a public list of convicted animal abusers.

A Massachusetts law prohibits drivers from letting their cars idle for more than five minutes on penalty of a $100 fine ($500 for repeat offenders), even in the winter. You can also be fined $20 or a month in jail for scaring pigeons.

This overbearing Nanny State despotism is what happens when government representatives (those elected and appointed to work for us) adopt the authoritarian notion that the government knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives.

The government’s bureaucratic attempts at muscle-flexing by way of overregulation and overcriminalization have reached such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair, as ludicrous as that may seem.

Consider, for example, that businesses in California were ordered to designate an area of the children’s toy aisle “gender-neutral” or face a fine, whether or not the toys sold are traditionally marketed to girls or boys such as Barbies and Hot Wheels. California schools are prohibited from allowing students to access websites, novels or religious works that reflect negatively on gays. And while Californians are free to have sex with whomever they choose (because that’s none of the government’s business), removing a condom during sex without consent could make you liable for general, special and punitive damages.

It’s getting worse.

Almost every aspect of American life today—especially if it is work-related—is subject to this kind of heightened scrutiny and ham-fisted control, whether you’re talking about aspiring “bakers, braiders, casket makers, florists, veterinary masseuses, tour guides, taxi drivers, eyebrow threaders, teeth whiteners, and more.”

For instance, whereas 70 years ago, one out of every 20 U.S. jobs required a state license, today, almost 1 in 3 American occupations requires a license.

The problem of overregulation has become so bad that, as one analyst notes, “getting a license to style hair in Washington takes more instructional time than becoming an emergency medical technician or a firefighter.”

This is what happens when bureaucrats run the show, and the rule of law becomes little more than a cattle prod for forcing the citizenry to march in lockstep with the government.

Overregulation is just the other side of the coin to overcriminalization, that phenomenon in which everything is rendered illegal and everyone becomes a lawbreaker.

As policy analyst Michael Van Beek warns, the problem with overcriminalization is that there are so many laws at the federal, state and local levels—that we can’t possibly know them all.

“It’s also impossible to enforce all these laws. Instead, law enforcement officials must choose which ones are important and which are not. The result is that they pick the laws Americans really must follow, because they’re the ones deciding which laws really matter,” concludes Van Beek.

“Federal, state and local regulations — rules created by unelected government bureaucrats — carry the same force of law and can turn you into a criminal if you violate any one of them… if we violate these rules, we could be prosecuted as criminals. No matter how antiquated or ridiculous, they still carry the full force of the law. By letting so many of these sit around, just waiting to be used against us, we increase the power of law enforcement, which has lots of options to charge people with legal and regulatory violations.”

This is the police state’s superpower: it has been vested with the authority to make our lives a bureaucratic hell.

That explains how a fisherman can be saddled with 20 years’ jail time for throwing fish that were too small back into the water. Or why police arrested a 90-year-old man for violating an ordinance that prohibits feeding the homeless in public unless portable toilets are also made available.

The laws can get downright silly. For instance, you could also find yourself passing time in a Florida slammer for such inane activities as singing in a public place while wearing a swimsuit, breaking more than three dishes per day, farting in a public place after 6 pm on a Thursday, and skateboarding without a license.

However, the consequences are all too serious for those whose lives become grist for the police state’s mill. A few years back, police raided barber shops in minority communities, resulting in barbers being handcuffed in front of customers, and their shops searched without warrants. All of this was purportedly done in an effort to make sure that the barbers’ licensing paperwork was up to snuff.

In this way, America has gone from being a beacon of freedom to a locked down nation. And “we the people,” sold on the idea that safety, security and material comforts are preferable to freedom, have allowed the government to pave over the Constitution in order to erect a concentration camp.

We labor today under the weight of countless tyrannies, large and small, carried out in the so-called name of the national good by an elite class of governmental and corporate officials who are largely insulated from the ill effects of their actions.

We increasingly find ourselves badgered, bullied and browbeaten into bearing the brunt of their arrogance, paying the price for their greed, suffering the backlash for their militarism, agonizing as a result of their inaction, feigning ignorance about their backroom dealings, overlooking their incompetence, turning a blind eye to their misdeeds, cowering from their heavy-handed tactics, and blindly hoping for change that never comes.

The overt signs of the despotism exercised by the increasingly authoritarian regime that passes itself off as the United States government (and its corporate partners in crime) are all around us: censorship, criminalizing, shadow banning and de-platforming of individuals who express ideas that are politically incorrect or unpopular; warrantless surveillance of Americans’ movements and communications; SWAT team raids of Americans’ homes; shootings of unarmed citizens by police; harsh punishments meted out to schoolchildren in the name of zero tolerance; community-wide lockdowns and health mandates that strip Americans of their freedom of movement and bodily integrity; armed drones taking to the skies domestically; endless wars; out-of-control spending; militarized police; roadside strip searches; privatized prisons with a profit incentive for jailing Americans; fusion centers that spy on, collect and disseminate data on Americans’ private transactions; and militarized agencies with stockpiles of ammunition, to name some of the most appalling.

Yet as egregious as these incursions on our rights may be, it’s the endless, petty tyrannies—the heavy-handed, punitive-laden dictates inflicted by a self-righteous, Big-Brother-Knows-Best bureaucracy on an overtaxed, overregulated, and underrepresented populace—that illustrate so clearly the degree to which “we the people” are viewed as incapable of common sense, moral judgment, fairness, and intelligence, not to mention lacking a basic understanding of how to stay alive, raise a family, or be part of a functioning community.

In exchange for the promise of an end to global pandemics, lower taxes, lower crime rates, safe streets, safe schools, blight-free neighborhoods, and readily accessible technology, health care, water, food and power, we’ve opened the door to lockdowns, militarized police, government surveillance, asset forfeiture, school zero tolerance policies, license plate readers, red light cameras, SWAT team raids, health care mandates, overcriminalization, overregulation and government corruption.

In the end, such bargains always turn sour.

We relied on the government to help us safely navigate national emergencies (terrorism, natural disasters, global pandemics, etc.) only to find ourselves forced to relinquish our freedoms on the altar of national security, yet we’re no safer (or healthier) than before.

We asked our lawmakers to be tough on crime, and we’ve been saddled with an abundance of laws that criminalize almost every aspect of our lives. So far, we’re up to 4500 criminal laws and 300,000 criminal regulations that result in average Americans unknowingly engaging in criminal acts at least three times a day. For instance, the family of an 11-year-old girl was issued a $535 fine for violating the Federal Migratory Bird Act after the young girl rescued a baby woodpecker from predatory cats.

We wanted criminals taken off the streets, and we didn’t want to have to pay for their incarceration.What we’ve gotten is a nation that boasts the highest incarceration rate in the world, with more than 2.3 million people locked up, many of them doing time for relatively minor, nonviolent crimes, and a private prison industry fueling the drive for more inmates, who are forced to provide corporations with cheap labor.

A special report by CNBC breaks down the national numbers:

One out of 100 American adults is behind bars — while a stunning one out of 32 is on probation, parole or in prison. This reliance on mass incarceration has created a thriving prison economy. The states and the federal government spend about $74 billion a year on corrections, and nearly 800,000 people work in the industry.

We wanted law enforcement agencies to have the necessary resources to fight the nation’s wars on terror, crime and drugs. What we got instead were militarized police decked out with M-16 rifles, grenade launchers, silencers, battle tanks and hollow point bullets—gear designed for the battlefield, more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year (many for routine police tasks, resulting in losses of life and property), and profit-driven schemes that add to the government’s largesse such as asset forfeiture, where police seize property from “suspected criminals.”

According to the Washington Post, these funds have been used to buy guns, armored cars, electronic surveillance gear, “luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.” Police seminars advise officers to use their “department wish list when deciding which assets to seize” and, in particular, go after flat screen TVs, cash and nice cars.

In Florida, where police are no strangers to asset forfeiture, Florida police have been carrying out “reverse” sting operations, where they pose as drug dealers to lure buyers with promises of cheap cocaine, then bust them, and seize their cash and cars. Over the course of a year, police in one small Florida town seized close to $6 million using these entrapment schemes.

We fell for the government’s promise of safer roads, only to find ourselves caught in a tangle of profit-driven red light cameras, which ticket unsuspecting drivers in the so-called name of road safety while ostensibly fattening the coffers of local and state governments. Despite widespread public opposition, corruption and systemic malfunctions, these cameras—used in 24 states and Washington, DC—are particularly popular with municipalities, which look to them as an easy means of extra cash.

One small Florida town, population 8,000, generates a million dollars a year in fines from these cameras. Building on the profit-incentive schemes, the cameras’ manufacturers are also pushing speed cameras and school bus cameras, both of which result in heft fines for violators who speed or try to go around school buses.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is what happens when the American people get duped, deceived, double-crossed, cheated, lied to, swindled and conned into believing that the government and its army of bureaucrats—the people we appointed to safeguard our freedoms—actually have our best interests at heart.

The problem with these devil’s bargains is that there is always a catch, always a price to pay for whatever it is we valued so highly as to barter away our most precious possessions.

We’ve bartered away our right to self-governance, self-defense, privacy, autonomy and that most important right of all: the right to tell the government to “leave me the hell alone.”

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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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By Rejecting China’s Peace Plan West Pushes Beijing Closer to Russia

February 28th, 2023 by Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

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***

On the first anniversary of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, China presented a peace plan, aimed at re-establishing diplomacy and bilateral negotiations. Consisting of twelve points, the proposal reflects the stance of neutrality of the Chinese government, which has refused to support anti-Russian resolutions at the UN, maintaining a strong direct dialogue with Moscow which allows it to develop more realistic proposals, unlike the Western unilateral demands of Russia’s retreat. However, the West does not seem interested in peace, having immediately rejected Beijing’s project.

Beijing calls for an end to hostilities and for the two parties to return to peace talks immediately. Defense of civilians and prisoners of war (POWs) is also a central topic of the project, as well as the safety and stability of the nuclear power plants. In addition, Beijing also advocates the banning of all unilateral sanctions, thus enabling the resumption of economic cooperation and the possibility of a rapid reconstruction of the zones affected by the conflict.

The points of the proposal are: 1. Respecting the sovereignty of all countries; 2. Abandon the Cold War mentality; 3. Ceasing hostilities; 4. Resuming peace talks; 5. Resolving the humanitarian crisis; 6. Protecting civilians and prisoners of war (POWs); 7. Keeping nuclear power plants safe; 8. Reducing strategic risks; 9. Facilitating grain exports; 10. Stopping unilateral sanctions; 11. Keeping industrial and supply chains stable; 12. Promoting post-conflict reconstruction.

As we can see, China proposes a broad diplomatic platform, indicating essential topics for achieving any peaceful solution to the conflict. It is not possible to point out any biased aspect to either side during the analysis of the proposal. These are points that, despite the proximity between Russia and China, reveal a true position of neutrality, seeking to meet, as much as possible, the interests of both sides.

However, as expected, the plan did not please Western governments, which rejected the measure without even establishing forums for prior discussion. According to several Western politicians and experts, the Chinese objective was simply to propose a “pro-Russian peace”, ignoring Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.

For example, according to Clayton Allen and Anna Ashton, analysts linked to the Eurasia Group, a consulting agency and think tank that advises several Western governments, the Chinese twelve points are biased in favor of Moscow and echo the “Russian justifications for the invasion”.

“Although several of the 12 points revealed Chinese concerns over actions primarily associated with Russia, it continued to echo Russia’s justifications for invasion and can largely be framed by Russia as supporting Moscow’s positions (…) China’s approach suggests that they are walking a diplomatic tightrope of strengthening ties to Russia – a key geostrategic ally and counterbalance to the West – while avoiding a position that is seen as openly hostile to Western aims”, they said.

This assessment seems extremely exaggerated. Proposing peace means seeking the best solution for both sides, but obviously also involves meeting the interests of the winning side, which, in this case, is the Russian one. The fact that Moscow seems to “benefit” from this plan is due to the evident reality that Russian troops have an advantage on the battlefield and it would be absolutely unrealistic to think of “peace” seeking to fulfill the Ukrainian objective of withdrawing Russian forces from the liberated regions. What Ukraine and the West understand by “peace” is the recapture of Russian territories, including Crimea, which obviously will not be accepted.

However, worse than that, NATO members and allies not only refused to consider the proposals but began to spread rumors about a possible Chinese intention to send weapons to Russia. According to the Western narrative, the Chinese peace project was a mere excuse to advance cooperation with Moscow and boost bilateral military relations, with plans to supply Russia with weapons in case of rejection of the proposal.

Beijing has denied the allegations, calling them “disinformation”, but at the same time Chinese officials seem aware of the danger caused by Western bellicoseness. In a recent statement, Mao Ning, the spokesperson for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, informed that the Chinese attitude towards Ukraine is completely peaceful, but recalled that while supplying the Kiev regime with weapons, Washington also acts in a destabilizing way in Taiwan, thus posing a security risk to both Russia and China.

“On the Ukraine issue, China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis (…) [However] In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués”, Mao said.

What seems to be happening is yet another “self-fulfilling prophecy” on the part of the West. Believing in its own baseless narrative that China wants to send weapons to Russia, the US takes unnecessary preventive measures whose side effects can be precisely the increase of Russian-Chinese military cooperation. If before there was no plan on the part of Beijing to send arms to the Russian side, it is possible that this will happen now, since the peace proposals have been exhausted and the Chinese are aware that these same forces that push Ukraine towards a proxy war against Russia may soon act against Beijing in Taiwan.

In their anti-Russian and anti-Chinese paranoia, the US and the EU make the wrong decisions and put global peace at risk. Beijing is trying to resolve the situation diplomatically, but Western forces also need to prioritize peace.

Read China’s document:

China’s Important Document entitled “US Hegemony and Its Perils”

By China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Karsten Riise, February 23, 2023

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter and Telegram

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***

Diplomacy has always been one of the cornerstones of the so-called “soft” power projection. Countries have used it throughout human history to negotiate issues that otherwise would have been resolved on the battlefield. The United States of America, the world’s most aggressive imperialist (and neocolonialist) power, is rather unique in this regard, as it is essentially using its “diplomacy” as a form of arm-twisting instead of actual dialogue and negotiations. For the warmongering elites in Washington DC, utterly barbaric behavior seems to be a given, while mutual respect and taking the other side’s legitimate interests into account is clearly considered a “foolish weakness”.

This has resulted in numerous wars around the world, further leading to hundreds of millions of dead, wounded and expelled people, or in simpler words, countless lives destroyed due to unparalleled US aggression against the world. And while such a belligerent foreign policy approach is expected from Washington DC when it comes to smaller countries that cannot match US power, they certainly do not attempt to behave similarly toward global powers and superpowers. But America is doing exactly that, with the US State Department issuing open threats to China, accusing it of alleged (planned) arms shipments to Russia. Top American officials also added that Beijing will suffer “very real consequences” if it goes ahead with the supposed deal.

Obviously, the Asian giant wasn’t even given the chance to deny the accusations as the US resorted to directly threatening Beijing. However, China is anything but intimidated. Increasingly confident due to its meteoric rise to superpower status, Beijing was quick to fire back at the blatant threats. During a press briefing on February 27, Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry of China, stated that the Asian giant is fully prepared to retaliate if illegal US sanctions against Chinese companies operating in Russia are not removed. Mao also dismissed allegations that Beijing is planning to send weapons to Russia, rejecting the questionable (at best) US mainstream propaganda reports as disinformation.

“The US, however, has been fanning the flame and fueling the fight with more weaponry,” she (quite correctly) indicated at the blatant American hypocrisy, adding: “This is out-and-out hegemonism and double standards, and absolute hypocrisy. The Chinese side will continue to do what is necessary to firmly safeguard the lawful rights and interests of Chinese companies. We will take resolute countermeasures in response to the US sanctions.”

Mao also reiterated Beijing’s official position on the Ukraine crisis as one of peace, seeking a solution through negotiations rather than the force of arms. She stressed that “China has been actively promoting peace talks and the political settlement of the crisis,” adding that Beijing has been much more constructive than Washington DC. Mao once again indicated that the US is fully responsible for the incessant escalation in its relations with China. This is certainly true, particularly in recent times, as Washington DC has used even the most trivial matters to denigrate and antagonize Beijing, while also illegally arming the Chinese breakaway island province of Taiwan, exacerbating US-China tensions to a boiling point.

“In addition to pouring lethal weapons into the battlefield in Ukraine, the US has been selling sophisticated weapons to the Taiwan region in violation of the three China-US joint communiqués. What exactly is the US up to? The world deserves to know the answer,” Mao concluded.

Mao also remarked that America is spreading disinformation about China’s alleged supply of weapons to Russia in order to use it as a pretext to sanction Chinese companies, thus eliminating competition by using such underhanded tactics. One of the affected Chinese companies, Changsha Tianyi Space Science and Technology Research Institute, has already been sanctioned based on unsubstantiated claims that it is supposedly supplying the Wagner Group PMC (private military company) with satellite imagery of Ukraine. US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland stated last week that sanctions were targeting Chinese companies that “have been observed sneaking up to the edge and trying to provide weapons to Russia”.

The unprecedented US hypocrisy is also seen in the attempts to portray Russian President Vladimir Putin as a supposed “war criminal”, with US President Joe Biden already accusing him of being one and even saying “evidence needs to be gathered for a war crime trial“. This is despite Biden’s central role in starting numerous wars under several US administrations and despite virtually the entire establishment in Washington DC being involved in warmongering and war crimes, regardless of political affiliation. Perhaps an even better example would be the May 2022 speech made by former US president George W. Bush, whose Freudian slip about the “wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq, I mean Ukraine” clearly showed the entire world the sheer scale of US hypocrisy and double standards.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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At last week’s Rage Against the War Machine peace rally in Washington there was no shortage of speakers who denounced the Biden Administration’s hypocritical foreign policy, which essentially judges any violent action undertaken by the United States and its friends as good by definition while anything done by rivals or competitors, sometimes conveniently referred to as “enemies,” as “evil.” In the current context of Ukraine versus Russia, where the US is engaged in proxy warfare, speakers were able to cite and compare the formidable list of America’s armed interventions worldwide since World War Two ended.

Neither Russia nor any other nation comes anywhere near the United States in terms of constant bellicosity, conflicts which hardly ever reflect any real vital national interest or imminent foreign threat. Throw into the hopper the 800-plus US military bases scattered around the world and a growing defense budget larger than those of the next nine nations combined, including China and Russia, and the reader will obtain some idea of the real problem: the United States has become a nation that is best described as a warfare state. That is where the tax money goes to disproportionately and the corruption it feeds produces a willingness to engage in “one more war” on the part of the coddled, protected and richly remunerated political class which in turn supports the carnage by overwhelming majorities.

Several speakers last week also cited as the real problem the media, which once upon a time sought to expose lies and subterfuges by government but now has become a partner with the White House in shaping and promoting a preferred narrative. It should also be pointed out that that media is overwhelmingly Democratic in terms of its ownership and sympathies, so much so that it collaborated in efforts to label Donald Trump and his staff as “Russian agents.”

Sometimes this promotion of a particular point of view is best accomplished using silence, i.e. by not sharing or following up on a story. There was virtually no coverage of last week’s peace rally even though speakers included a number of well-known public figures, three of whom were former congressmen. Likewise, apart from a brief mention in The Washington Post, there has been virtually no follow-up in the mainstream media on Seymour Hersh’s carefully researched and documented investigation of the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines by the United States hidden behind the plausible deniability of a covert operation carried out last September.

Much of the press ignored the clear investigative line on day one when the pipeline exploded that the White House had previously been warning that it would “do something” to stop Nord Stream and that it had both the means and motive to follow through on its threat. Likewise, after the Hersh story broke and Russia sought and obtained a hearing featuring Professor Jeffrey Sachs and former CIA Officer Ray McGovern testifying before the United Nations Security Council to initiate investigation of the matter, the US media ignored the story on the evening news and did not follow-up on it on the next day or subsequently.

A major story involving what were war crimes committed both against adversary Russia and NATO ally Germany and which had nuclear conflict potential was thus made to disappear, but the US and its propaganda machine were not finished yet. The White House predictably denied any role in the pipe line destruction and Vice President Kamala Harris sought to turn the tables by declaring at the Munich Security Conference that it is Russia that is guilty of “crimes against humanity.” She claimed that

“First, from the starting days of this unprovoked war, we have witnessed Russian forces engage in horrendous atrocities and war crimes. [They] have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population – gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation. Execution-style killings, beating and electrocution. Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people from Ukraine to Russia, including children. They have cruelly separated children from their families.”

Harris concluded that “we” must continue to “strongly support Ukraine…for as long as it takes!” One might observe that Harris has been unable to secure the actual US borders over the course of more than two years, so “as long as it takes” by her reckoning might well run into the 2050s. And she is hardly known for her ability to discern what is and isn’t true. She might well have added spice to her tale by joking how it must keep Vladimir Putin and his cabinet up until late at night coming up with new atrocities to carry out.

Joe Biden doubled down on the Harris remarks in a speech in Warsaw a few days later, delivered on his return from the Kiev photo op with the man he loves more than any other, Volodymyr Zelensky, where he gave the diminutive comedian another half billion dollars of US taxpayer money and promised that the US will never give up until Russia is defeated. He commented somewhat hyperbolically to Zelensky that after a year of fighting “…Ukraine stands. Democracy stands. The Americans stand with you and the world stands with you.”

Biden told the Poles just before the February 24 anniversary of the conflict in Ukraine that it was a just war pitting “democracy” against “totalitarianism.” Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “craven lust for land and power” had only served to unite democracies around the world.

“It wasn’t just Ukraine being tested. The whole world faced a test for the ages …. And the questions we face are as simple as they are profound: Would we respond, or would we look the other way? One year later, we know the answer. We did respond. We would be strong, we would be united, and the world would not look the other way.”

Demonstrating that delusion is bipartisan, the Biden visit to Kiev was followed by a group of Republican congressmen repeating the feat and traveling to Ukraine to fawn over Zelensky at his presidential palace on the following day. One wonders if there is anyone still “at home” trying to alleviate the huge toxic spill that appears about to consume Ohio? One might well ask where the US federal government gets these idiots from? Dancing around to the tune of a conflict that could have been negotiated away and winding up at the brink of a nuclear war which would in all likelihood destroy the planet is “a test for the ages?” And who pays for these useless congressional trips? More’s the pity, this is not just going on in Eastern Europe. The US is currently cooperating with France in what looks like what will become another military intervention in a perennially unstable Haiti and, of course, China is also in the cross hairs.

And then there is always the Middle East, where Israel benefits from “ironclad” commitments and “unbreakable bonds” rhetoric from Washington. When Israel commands “Jump!” the Biden regime only asks “How high?” Since the media avoids any provocative reporting about the Jewish state, how many Americans know that self-declared Zionist Joe Biden’s Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides has just given Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the green light for attacking Iran with US support for any action taken? Nides told the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in Jerusalem last Sunday that “Israel can and should do whatever they need to deal with [in regards to Iran] and we’ve got their back.”

There is already a precedent as Israel has in fact been attacking neighboring Syria repeatedly without any comment from Washington, which actually has troops based in that country stealing Syrian oil. Nor has Washington objected when the Israeli army raided two Palestinian camps during the past month, killing respectively 10 and 11 civilians and wounding more than 100 others. To set the stage for what comes next vis-à-vis the wag the dog relationship, after Israel struck a defense compound in Iran on January 29th, the Biden administration suggested to reporters that the Israeli attack was part of a new “joint effort” by Washington and Jerusalem to contain Tehran’s nuclear and military ambitions. Secretary of State Tony Blinken elaborated on the shift on the next day while offering no criticism or concern for the destabilizing potential of the strikes, let alone a condemnation. Instead, he defended the Israeli attack, saying

“[It is] very important that we continue to deal with and work against as necessary the various actions that Iran has engaged in throughout the region and beyond that threaten peace and security.”

Nides’ comment reveals that he is ignorant regarding who is causing trouble in the Middle East. It also confirms that even if there is a military action initiated by Israel that does grave damage to US interests, the White House will support the Israelis. That should surprise no one as the top three officials at the State Department are Jews, as are the top two on the National Security Staff, the Head of Homeland Security, the Director of National Intelligence, the Deputy Director at CIA, and the president’s Chief of Staff. The policy shift, for that is what it is, also gives Israel the green light to attack Iranian targets with impunity. Nides also stated that the United States is pledged to deny nuclear weapons to Iran, implying that if it believes such a development is imminent it would destroy the facilities used to create or store the weapons. He also mentioned that the US will not engage in any possible negotiations with Iran as long as it is selling weapons to Russia. Though Nides has no problem with freely killing Palestinian children, he is rather more inflexible when Persians are somehow involved, saying that

“The Iranians are providing drones to Russia and those drones are killing innocent Ukrainians. There is no chance today of us going back to the negotiating table.”

So what do we have? Does anyone remember the famous quote attributed to British statesman Lord Palmerston, that “Nations have no permanent friends or allies. They only have permanent interests.” The United States, uniquely, does not even appear to have interests, apart from pandering to the various constituencies and groups that have bought or stealthily acquired control over the political system and media. So the American public, less safe and prosperous now than at any time since the Second World War, is kept in the dark about what is important and is lied to about almost everything. That is why we are on the brink of destruction in Ukraine and are slaves to the power brokers who hate Russia and favor Israel above all nations. Raging against the war machine will do little good if we are incapable of first figuring out who is screwing us and then developing the courage to put a stop to it. Starting with cutting the current tie that binds with Ukraine and Israel would be a good beginning followed by bringing the troops home from nearly everywhere. Trying the Biden Administration officials who initiated an illegal war by destroying Nord Stream and putting them all in jail would be even better. Yes, every one of them in jail with no parole, starting with mumbling Joe himself.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will fly to the US to meet President Joe Biden on March 3. According to the White House’s press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, the visit is an opportunity to “reaffirm the deep bonds of friendship” between the two NATO allies. One could, however, describe such a friendship as quite a peculiar one. In fact, more often than not, it looks much more like a veiled enmity.

For one thing,  Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh’s 8 February piece has denounced the Nord Stream pipelines’ explosion as a sabotage act clandestinely carried out by Washington. In fact, on February 7, Biden himself, during a press briefing, promised: “If Russia invades (…) there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When asked just how, his reply, with a smile, was: “I promise we will be able to do it.” Scholz was right next to him. This astonishing statement echoed Undersecretary of State for Policy Victoria Nuland’s own remarks just two days earlier – it is no wonder that many suspected American involvement in the still unexplained explosion.

In the aforementioned piece, respected journalist Hersh quotes unnamed intelligent sources who claim the US did fulfill its promise/threat by planting the explosives while using the June 2022 Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22) exercise as a cover. So far, Hungary’s Minister of Foreign Relations Peter Szijjarto has been a lone voice in calling the episode a terrorist attack and calling for an investigation.

Nord Stream 1, as two of the pipelines were collectively known, had been providing cheap gas to Germany for over a decade, something which Washington always opposed; Nord Stream 2 pipelines in turn could double the amount of such cheap gas provided. The explosion harmed all of Europe and the UK, bringing back the ghost of a new depression – but mainly Germany. I have written on how the European energy crisis has served US interests well and hurt European industry as well as on how economic nationalism is once again on the rise, especially today when Europe and, particularly Germany,  is facing de-industrialization. I have also written on how American aggressive subsidy war against Europe, in the form of the  Inflation Reduction Act, only adds fuel to the fire and risks dividing the political West. In post-Nord Stream Europe, gas prices are to remain high, condemning the continent to inflation, while American interests profit from making the conflict in Ukraine perpetual.

When it comes to Russia, Ukraine and Europe, Washington’s geopolitical and geoeconomic interests are intertwined. The tragedy of the European continent lies in the paradox that it  is still heavily dependent on Washington for security, while it would benefit from energy cooperation with neighboring giant Russia. Washington has been consistently betraying European interests to its own benefit, and Germany is the clearest instance of that contradiction.

Berlin could be an industrial power, but Washington’s long campaign against Nord Stream, among other things, has hampered its potential and now its auto industry is particularly vulnerable to the US IRA legislation, which has created new barriers for European electric vehicles. On top of that, Washington has been pressuring Germany to further spend on Ukraine, while German Armed Forces face shortages.

Despite Berlin’s silence regarding the attack on its strategic infrastructure, in the wake of the explosion, both far-left and far-right lawmakers from the Die Linke and the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) political parties, respectively, were calling for the setting up of investigative committees. AfD’s Co-Chairman Tino Chrupalla has demanded the government coalition clarify the matter. In his speech he rhetorically asked whether the NATO alliance “guarantees security in Europe or rather endangers it”. In an interesting development, the leftist Die Linke expressed its solidarity with the rightist AfD on this matter.

European “populists” and the far-right have been capitalizing the growing popular discontent with NATO and the EU itself. In April 2022, defeated French Presidential candidate Marine Le Pen promised to pull France out of NATO, following Charles de Gaulle steps. Regarding the disastrous anti-Russian sanctions (which have backfired against Europe), Viktor Orban’s Hungary has been a kind of lone voice. One should however expect to see a multiplication of such voices, be it from the far-left or from the far-right.

Although often described as an “extreme” and marginal party, the AfD has been growing in popularity in Germany, reaching 17% in a poll for the first time in years, according to a YouGov February poll. It is about time for Europe to assert its sovereignty, and Berlin and France could lead the way in this regard. Calls for investigation regarding the Nord Stream’s sabotage in fact might be gaining traction among wider portions of German society.

In his 2020 book, Udo Ulfkotte, a former editor for German mass daily newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), denounced how the German Federal Intelligence Agency (BND) has cooperated with the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to recruit German journalists and shape public opinion. This could partly explain the overall silence amongst German media on the Nord Stream issue.

As long as the traditional media keeps covering up the topic, one should expect trust in the press to decrease and support for far-right and far-left parties to grow, with potential electoral results in the near future. Such a political wave can increase skepticism about NATO, but before it could advance any rethinking of the European relationship with the Atlantic Alliance (as proposed by Le Pen), it may first cause instability and turmoil in a continent already isolated and deindustrialized. In Germany, right now only Die Linke has supported AfD calls for an investigation, but more voices within the German broader political spectrum are expected to join them.

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

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Game Over: Medicare Data Shows the COVID Vaccines Increase Your Risk of Dying

By Steve Kirsch, February 27, 2023

Isn’t it a shame that none of the world’s governments make the vaccination-death records publicly available? My claim is that if they did that, it would end the debate instantly and prove to the world that the vaccines are unsafe. So that’s why they keep it locked up.

Building Unity Against Imperialism in the 21st Century—Lessons from African American History and the Necessity of Ending Permanent Wars of Aggression and Conquest

By Abayomi Azikiwe, February 28, 2023

Since this is African American History Month in the United States, I will utilize this fact to illustrate the necessity of building unity against imperialism.

“Mass Murder Campaign”: Turkey-Syria Earthquakes, Ukraine, Plandemic. Interview with Romania Senator Diana Iovanovici-Șoșoacă

By Sen. Diana Iovanovici Sosoaca and Večernje Novosti, February 27, 2023

I have shown in my political statement in the Romanian Senate the continuity link between the mass murder campaign through alleged pandemics and the imminent need for injection of untested vaccines that kill people, in fact crimes against humanity, and the outbreak of wars that would establish terror and terrible fear among people, destroying their psyche and resistance, with the aim of reducing the population of the world, restoring power poles and changing borders, plus economic changes worldwide.

Covid Vaccine: Over 96 Canadian Children Ages 2-19 Have Died Unexpectedly in the Past Three Months. A Warning Call for Canadian Parents.

By Dr. William Makis, February 27, 2023

In the August 2022 James Gill paper titled “Autopsy Histopathologic Cardiac Findings in 2 adolescents following the second COVID-19 vaccine dose” (click here), two teenage boys died in their sleep within the first week after receiving the 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose. Both boys were pronounced dead at home.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution. The Great Reset = The Fourth Reich

By Katherine Norton, February 27, 2023

The real purpose of ninety nine percent of the available media out there is designed to help us ignore the truth. Not just mainstream media – all media.

Biden Administration’s Decision to Ignore the Poisoning of Thousands of People, Not Only in East Palestine but Across Ohio and Pennsylvania

By Kurt Nimmo, February 27, 2023

East Palestine is the lesson du jour. So long as it remains in the corporate media’s “news cycle,” coverage will downplay the federal government’s decision to ignore the poisoning of thousands of people, not only in East Palestine but across Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The Essence of Evil

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, February 27, 2023

The perpetrators of the universal lockdowns, the imposition of useless masks, the destruction of businesses and livelihoods by these measures and then by the mandates to be inoculated with an unnecessary and dangerous medical intervention – these perpetrators are the people I call evil; and I call evil also those who, knowing better – doctors, for example – went and continue to go along with the horrific charade.

From the Gulf of Tonkin to the Baltic Sea. Seymour Hersh

By Seymour M. Hersh, February 27, 2023

Why Norway? In my account of the Biden Administration’s decision to destroy the Nord Stream pipelines, why did much of the secret planning and training for the operation take place in Norway? And why were highly skilled seamen and technicians from the Norwegian Navy involved?

Idlib Earthquake Aid Hijacked by Terrorists

By Steven Sahiounie, February 27, 2023

Idlib, Syria was devastated by a 7.8 earthquake on February 6.  The leaks coming out of Idlib are from those working with the international aid groups in Idlib.  Whistleblowers are exposing Mohammed Al-Julani and his terrorist organization Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS).

What Will Happen When Banks Go Bust? Bank Runs, Bail-Ins and Systemic Risk

By Ellen Brown, February 27, 2023

Financial podcasts have been featuring ominous headlines lately along the lines of “Your Bank Can Legally Seize Your Money” and “Banks Can STEAL Your Money?! Here’s How!” The reference is to “bail-ins:” the provision under the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act allowing Systemically Important Financial Institutions (SIFIs, basically the biggest banks) to bail in or expropriate their creditors’ money in the event of insolvency.

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Author’s note: These remarks were prepared for and delivered in part at a panel discussion sponsored by the Michigan Peace Council. The event was held at the Swords into Plowshares Art Gallery located in downtown Detroit. In addition to Abayomi Azikiwe, other presenters were Steve Boyce of the U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association in Ann Arbor; Dr. Catherine Wilkerson, an activist from Ann Arbor; and Mixx H., a member of Anakbayan USA Detroit chapter, a Filipino mass youth organization. The event was moderated by Bill Meyer, Chair of the MPC and Linda Rayburn, Vice-Chair.


Since this is African American History Month in the United States, I will utilize this fact to illustrate the necessity of building unity against imperialism.

Many African Americans historians such as Dr. Carter G. Woodson, who founded this commemorative month as Negro History Week in 1926; Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois, pioneers in African and world scholarship and culture; Ms. Ida B. Wells-Barnett, the woman journalist, sociologist and organizer against lynching and for women’s suffrage; among many others, based their philosophical approaches on the critical importance of deconstructing the ideological falsehoods under which the U.S. has projected itself domestically and internationally.

Since the Civil War between 1861-65, the U.S. has been consistently exposed around the world for its failure to create a genuinely democratic society. Even with the decisive defeat of the Confederacy along with the passage of the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, the concepts of full equality and self-determination have remained unfulfilled. During the period of Reconstruction and its abandonment on a federal level in the decades after 1876 to the 20th Century, African Americans were subjected to racial terror through legal and extralegal means while at the same time being compelled to serve in wars which only benefited the capitalist class.

Prior to the Civil War, people of African descent and indigenous people were not citizens of the country. The majority of Africans prior to 1860 lived in the Southern slave-owning states of the South. In many ways over the last 160 years, the actual status of African Americans has not fundamentally changed in a manner beneficial to the majority of the Black population.

If we look back on the so-called Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, Korean War, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Haiti, Libya, Syria and now Ukraine, none of these conflagrations have enhanced the social status of the African American people. In fact, the situation is quite to the contrary, when in the post-war periods within U.S. history there has been a wave of repression aimed further solidifying the yoke of oppression by the ruling interests.

After the conclusion of the Spanish-American War where African Americans participated, there was an upsurge in lynching and other forms of racial persecution. Although African Americans were drafted in great numbers into World War I, they were forced to undergo humiliating forms of segregation while stationed in France on behalf of Washington and its allies, while at the same time Black soldiers were attacked at Camp Logan, near Houston, Texas in 1917, and later executed in great numbers by the military. Two years later the advent of racial terror in post-war events of 1919, popularly known as the Red Summer, resulted in further deaths of African Americans. During the summer of 1919, African Americans were attacked by white mobs, law-enforcement and military personnel in many municipalities including Chicago, Washington, D.C. and Knoxville, Tennessee.

Many African Americans died as a direct result of racial terror from 1919 until the Great Depression of 1929-1941, when the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt directly entered the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific and later North Africa and Europe. Over one million African Americans served in segregated military units during World War II where they were denied the same rights as their white counterparts.

After WWII, when the African American people demanded their rights as human beings living within a state which is purportedly based upon merit and equal opportunity, again on an institutional level, were met with a sharp rise in lynchings, police killings and a further intransigence on the part of municipalities, state and federal governments. We only need to point to the work of William Patterson, Paul Robeson, the Du Bois’, etc. when they presented a petition to the United Nations entitled “We Charge Genocide” in 1951.

Paul Robeson presents We Charge Genocide document to UN in 1951 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

The U.S. invasion of the Korean Peninsula in June 1950 coincided with the Cold War which targeted many African Americans for their commitment to peace, civil rights and the abolition of Jim Crow domestically along with colonialism in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The struggle for fair treatment, equal access and universal suffrage became synonymous with communism by the federal government.

By the early and mid-1960s, the U.S. government under two successive Democratic presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, often hailed for their contributions to Civil Rights legislation, deployed hundreds of thousands of troops to Southeast Asia. After the assassination of Kennedy nearly 60 years ago, in the spring of 1965, a massive intervention in Vietnam had horrendous social consequences for African Americans. Black soldiers were disproportionately sent to the frontlines in Vietnam to die on the battlefield all the while their people were being denied the right to enter private businesses, public schools, neighborhoods and job categories in the U.S.

After the defeat of U.S. imperialism in Southeast Asia in 1975, the urban areas where African Americans had migrated during the course of the 20th century from the Rural South, were well into a spiral of structural and economic decline. The areas of the South where African Americans had toiled and struggled since the conclusion of the Civil War forced millions off the land they had worked for generations extending back into the antebellum era of enslavement.

Since 1975, there have been several genocidal wars in which the U.S. has participated as instigators and underwriters directly and indirectly. The Angolan war of liberation was opposed by the U.S. between 1961-1975. The post-independence war in Angola from 1975-89, was largely fueled by Washington and Wall Street in order to preserve their interests in Southern Africa. It was the Republic of Cuba, Soviet Union and other socialist states which supported the revolutionary movements against colonialism, settler-colonialism and apartheid at a time where the U.S. sided with the forces of reaction.

For these reasons alone, we must today oppose the U.S. proxy war in Ukraine. As the people of the U.S. and Western Europe continue to live under conditions of impoverishment and uncertainty caused by the ongoing class exploitation and national oppression, the administration of President Joe Biden has pledged over $100 billion to continue the war. The corporate and government-controlled media has played its traditional role of providing propaganda and psychological warfare aimed at confusing the U.S. population in regard to the real reasons behind the war.

Our Position in Opposition to the Ukraine War

Since the beginning of the Russian special military operation in neighboring Ukraine on February 24, 2022, there has been an array of talking points enunciated by the Biden administration and the Pentagon as to why it is necessary to send massive amounts of arms, material aid along with continuing diplomatic cover provided to the Zelensky regime. The first point is to portray the Russian Federation as the aggressors in the war which attacked Ukraine without provocation.

It is important to note that this conflict did not begin on February 24, 2022. The war has been developing since February 2014 when the U.S. engineered the overthrow of the Ukrainian government of Viktor Yanukovych forcing him to flee the country. After a brief interim period there was the election of Petro Poroshenko. However, the character of the so-called “Revolution of Dignity” was in fact a counter-revolution aimed at the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) including Ukraine and other states into this imperialist alliance established in 1949 during the Cold War.

The government of Yanukovych was overthrown utilizing billions of dollars from taxpayers in the U.S. while at the same time gravely misinforming the public about the situation in Ukraine, the Russian Federation and the entire region of Eastern Europe. Amazingly enough, many people in the U.S. who wanted to argue against Russia and in favor of U.S. and NATO assistance to continue the war, are not even aware of the events of 2014 and the role of the then administration of former President Barack Obama. Victoria Nuland, a State Department functionary, made it explicit that the U.S. would determine the future political trajectory of Ukraine even without the European Union and other NATO members.

The coup of February 20, 2014 could not have been carried out without the direct leadership of neo-fascist elements in Ukraine. These extreme rightist parties and militias claim their political heritage to those same forces that fought alongside the German Nazis during World War II.

When the special military operation began in February of last year, there was the open and obvious presence of neo-fascist militias which made it clear that they were the first line in the defense of NATO and its imperialist backers. African students studying in Ukraine were attacked by racist mobs, denied admission into public transportation in efforts to flee the country and excluded from any form of humanitarian assistance being delivered by the West.

As early as 2014, monuments to the Red Army which fought and defeated Nazi Germany during WWII, were vandalized and removed by the Ukrainian fascists. Russian speaking Ukrainians, who constitute at least one-third of the population were immediately disenfranchised. The Russian language was banned on an official level while the Ukrainian military bombardments of the Donbass region proceeded leaving thousands dead and displaced.

These facts are necessary to recount when decisions are being made over which approach to take in relations to the Ukraine situation. What has happened in Ukraine represents the ongoing efforts by Washington and Wall Street to expand NATO while encircling the Russian Federation.

Therefore, our position is quite similar to that of the African Union (AU), the 55 member-states organization based in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia which represents the 1.3 billion people on the continent. We want to see an immediate cessation of hostilities and the negotiation of a peaceful resolution to the war. This position has been bitterly opposed by the Biden administration which has no Ukraine policy beyond the sending of weapons, the propagation of a rationalization for the expansion of NATO, while creating the conditions for a wider war with Russia and the People’s Republic of China.

Moreover, we say what the AU cannot mention at this time for diplomatic reasons. However, the masses of African people on the continent and within the nations of the Asia-Pacific and Latin America are articulating and expressing solidarity with Russia and China. In countries such as Mali and Burkina Faso in West Africa there have been demonstrations in solidarity with Russia in the war. Recently, the Republic of South Africa held joint naval exercises with their counterparts from Moscow and Beijing in defiance of the Biden administration and other imperialist states.

Billions around the world represented by the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit, which represents far more people than exist in the U.S. and the NATO states combined, have not condemned the Russian Federation and its government. This holds true for other multilateral organizations such as the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which as Fidel Castro once said over four decades ago that “we represent the immense majority of humanity.”

Any genuine anti-imperialist, antiwar, peace and social justice organization can in no way welcome the expansion of NATO based upon the historical legacy of imperialism over the last century-and-a-half. We must move from a world of unipolarity to multipolarity, where the majority of the world’s population can take center stage in determining the future of our planet and its people.

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

Featured image: W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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Večernje Novosti (VN): You are the first politician in Europe who, as early as February 8, in the Romanian Parliament stated the strange events surrounding the earthquake in Turkey.  Please repeat those observations for the readers of Večernje Novosti. 

Senator Diana Iovanovici-Șoșoacă (SDIS): I have shown in my political statement in the Romanian Senate the continuity link between the mass murder campaign through alleged pandemics and the imminent need for injection of untested vaccines that kill people, in fact crimes against humanity, and the outbreak of wars that would establish terror and terrible fear among people, destroying their psyche and resistance, with the aim of reducing the population of the world, restoring power poles and changing borders, plus economic changes worldwide.

But everything became even worse when we witnessed the production of custom made or controlled earthquakes, in fact an attack on Turkey by the world’s top leaders who disliked the fact that they were being confronted by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the President of Turkey.

Moreover, his position as neutrality and mediator in the Ukrainian-Russian war has deeply disturbed, especially as Turkey is the second largest military power within NATO. His position to block Sweden’s NATO membership, but also his speech in Davos, in particular, as well as his gesture to leave in the middle of the press conference, defying Schwab, did not remain without echo in the harsh and cold world of global leaders. But no one thought that it would be necessary for so many people to die, killed in such a despicable way, only for the world’s mighty to demonstrate their power. And it was just a warning, because it was not the most populated area of Turkey.

There were 150 replicas of a devastating earthquake, the second largest than the first, without an outbreak, the area being artificially stimulated. We know that geological weapons have existed for a very long time, but they were used so far without causing too many casualties, probably for experiments. 

If we look carefully at the map of the pipelines in Turkey, we will see that this country it is run by gas and oil pipelines, which are in fact one of the goals: their destruction.

It is worth noting that the maps presented on all television channels showed that there was not an epicentre, but an epiliny with thousands of earthquakes. And I am the only politician in the world who had the courage to show that President Erdogan was punished for his courage, dignity and honour and for his closeness to the Russian Federation, in fact a position of neutrality and mediation for peace.

In addition, the earthquake purpose was meant to remove people’s attention from the war in Ukraine, where already representatives of many countries have begun to vociferate against the despotism and orders given by President Zelensky, as if he is leading the world and someone had the obligation to send weapons and participate in his war where he sacrificed his own people and destroyed his entire country.

VN: Where does your information come from and is it really true that gas and oil pipelines were closed immediately after the impact? 

Image is from ALEXANDRU DOBRE / MEDIAFAX FOTO

SDIS: In the S.O.S. Romania party I have established a Wise Men’s Council composed of the best specialists from different sectors, including science and military. The analysis was done with the help of, among others, a general specializing in technological weapons, the only one who was at the HAARP Center in Alaska: General Emil Streinu. I wish to inform your readers, the Serbian people, whom I feel very close to, and whom I esteem greatly for their courage and verticality, that HAARP is not even the last geophysical weapon system! Meanwhile, even more advanced weapons of this kind have appeared about which, however, I cannot speak, these being strictly secret and not yet revealed to the public.

The gas and oil pipelines were closed BEFORE the earthquake, the Turks probably learned they were going to be given a blow and wanted to avoid an even bigger disaster or maybe the earthquake-detecting equipment warned them.

There are such systems and we have in Romania the ones who announce the deep-sea earthquakes 50 seconds ahead. In fact, not a few voices in Turkey have admitted that it was an atypical earthquake. After my declaration reached all the meridians of the world, being very popular in Turkey, a lot of people have given me the right: this was an provoked earthquake! Moreover, Turkish intelligence agencies are investigating a foreign state involvement in causing earthquakes, and there is also an official statement to that effect.

VN: What are the intentions of those who used geophysical weapons?

SDIS: The use of geophysical weapons is the way of the global parallel state to stop the leaders who oppose their supremacy, such as the case of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but also the populations that are independent and show no dependence on the West.

You have known in Serbia the wrath of the West and the attacks of the evil NATO, to bomb you on Easter night, with the inscription of “Happy Easter” on the bombs! This is something you must never forgive and forget and a lesson must be given to these killers (me, for one, will not forget and will not forgive this moment)! Yet, you continue to have an independent and courageous policy, which is why you deserve all the admiration. I have always admired you for the verticality and the pride in defending your values and principles and, above all, the sovereignty and independence of Serbia, and I have praised you as an example many times to the Romanian people. But if in previous years, global power used conventional weapons to punish free countries, it has now shifted to a whole new level, and these attacks can no longer be countered. They can, at most, be avenged, with the same kind of weapons that the states have developed, but the citizens have not been informed.

Moreover, it is difficult and dangerous even to reveal about these weapons and to bring them to public attention, as I did through my declaration in the Romanian Senate on February 8. Whoever throws light on these dark machinations takes a big risk, a major risk (I assumed the same as Mr. General Streinu who had to go through three assassination attempts only last year)… Additionally, it is shocking for simple people who are not informed correctly when they have to face an irrefutable truth. But the Truth will set us free!

VN: How do you view the war in Ukraine and why will the Western elites not even hear the word truce or negotiations? 

SDIS: It depends on what you see in the West. The European West is being misled because it is run by incompetent and incompetent defendants, slaves of the U.S.A. and NATO, in fact with a slave mentality, without any principles, globalists who have not known normality in their life, the illustrious nothing-makers paid from the work and sweat of Europeans, while they live in the high and have no idea what is down.

But it is not only the European West, we are talking about the American Empire, which for most of the last 200 years has done nothing but destroy and rush upon independent and sovereign countries and annulate them altogether: Ursula Von Der “Lier” was not  crying for children in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, the Gulf, etc. (There are only a few small exceptions of the presidents of the United States who did not have wars and crimes during their office: for instance, Donald Trump, if he was now the president of the United States, we would not have such horrors in the world.)

In fact, no one jumped for those people. These Westerners, who believe they are empires, do not wish for peace, but they want to conquer new territories and resources. In fact, it is not the West, it is the globalist World Empire that wants to redivide countries and draw borders as it pleases him without taking into account history and peoples, as it is also trying to do in Kosovo or in our Translivania. When did the West seek peace? Didn’t the West stir up the first and second World War, and now it wants to throw us into the third? 

The globalist World Empire wants full submission and colonization, as it did in Africa, Asia and in the Americas, few hundreds years ago. The one who opposes must be punished, and if he does not calm down, even destroyed. And the West has never been able to hold on to Russia and the Slavic world. This is not the first time when they try to defeat Russia into an European colony. Napoleon tried, Hitler tried, and it meant their end.

This war is provoked by the West by encircling and gathering Russia in a snare, with NATO getting closer to Russia’s borders and arming and transforming Ukraine into an anti-Russian state. The West breaks pieces of your country, blocks your trade, puts you on all sorts of blacklists, surrounds you with military bases, and then reacts “innocently”:  but why did you get angry? But you, in Serbia, unfortunately, know these Western policies very well. I have said many times in Romania, in my public statements, that I cannot forget how NATO, who claims to be a defensive organization, bombed Serbia on Orthodox Easter in 1999, killing innocent citizens with bombs that read in English: Happy Easter!, meaning Happy Easter! Are these the people we should expect peace from?

There is a war against Orthodoxy in this respect, and it is not by chance that the Orthodox peoples are seen as enemies by the West, because they want to destroy the last living Church, which has maintained its traditions and spirituality unaffected by modern atheism!

This is not only a war against Russia, but also against Orthodoxy, the traditional family and ancient human values. It is a war that goes on all levels. Look at the pressure that is being put on you through Kosovo, just to force you to join the anti-Russian sanctions.

And from Vienna we are now receiving messages that Romania will be admitted to Schengen only if it recognizes Kosovo’s independence!

And Serbia is under attack now, as are all the countries that oppose Western hegemony, just as Turkey has been attacked! I promise you that I will oppose in Romania the recognition of Kosovo independence, because I know too well: Kosovo is Serbia! But to see what kind of blackmail the West practices against us, the Orthodox peoples! In fact, it is inciting the brothers to hate one another. We should be here an oasis of brotherhood and peace and Orthodox love. That bothers them. In fact, the Balkan Pole must be urgently restored, at all costs, in order to defend our countries, peoples, Orthodoxy, history, values, our memory and millennial principles.

The Balkans were always a force and always a powder keg. To escape from this force, the West destroyed the unity of the Balkans and instigated the citizens into interethnic wars. Divide et impera. Recognizing Kosovo would mean serious problems for Romania, but also for Spain and other states that have problems with areas that will become independent. All leaders of these small ethnic regions should understand that UNION MAKES POWER. Divided we are lost. Together we have a future!

How could the West seek peace since they have provoked this conflict and they are maintaining it by all means, political, diplomatic, economic and military? How can they get their hands on the agricultural land and huge resources of Ukraine if not by driving the inhabitants out of it and throwing the country into bankruptcy? How will Ukraine pay for the loans and support of the West? With all that it has and with all that it is! And, unfortunately, we also pay as collateral damage.

VN: Who needs a terrible war?

SDIS: I have said before: The globalist World Empire. First of all, the big international companies and investment funds, which are already master over everything Ukraine has, including over its country debts. Secondly, the global parallel state that can thus push its agenda further, subjecting populations, impoverishing them, and forbidding them the most basic rights in the name of war. Look at the censorship and abuses that exist in Europe in the name of war.

Look at the inflation, the impoverishment of the population. All that for the “noble” cause of war. Just as it was in plandemic (and I intentionally call the pandemic “plandemic” because it was a similar plan devised for the brutalization and subjection of citizens), the war serves the global parallel state on all levels: it grabs the resources, it rob the economies of the population through inflation, and it nullifies citizens’ rights. Let only one try to speak of peace! He is immediately blacklisted and turned into an “enemy of the people.” On the contrary, those who incite war, destruction, loss of human lives are “heroes.”

And it uses them to do something else: to produce weapons. They get rid of all the old weaponry they give to Zelensky, and they are producing large-scale new, state-of-the-art weaponry, just look in the USA how much money is given to the defense budget and how the Americans took to the streets to protest. I mean, there are so many poor, finished, homeless, starving people there, and you, the American state, are throwing money on weapons?

In addition, it uses the USA to destroys its competitors: The EU. THE UNITED STATES does not need the EU. But because at EU level we have only incapacitated and incompetent leaders, they do not realize that they have committed suicide, not only politically, but economically and socially, because the EU is self-dissolving, as it will happen with NATO. We live in a world upside down, where the obligatory official doctrine claims that peace is evil, while war is good! I do not submit to these directives and I took the risk of telling the truth!

VN: How do citizens and politicians in Romania view warfare. Are Romanians thinking of waging war in Ukraine against the Russians? 

SDIS: The citizens and politicians of Romania are on opposite sides, as many times in history. The Romanians do not wish the war, but only witness amazed at the way in which Ukraine persecutes our Romanian minority, closes our churches, persecutes our priests, and more recently destroys our Danube Delta. Romania welcomed the Ukrainian refugees with open arms and spent huge sums to accommodate them and give them services free of charge everywhere, although many of these refugees are richer than ordinary Romanians and defy public opinion in their luxurious cars, treating Romanians with contempt.

Instead of serving their people, Romanians politicians are the puppets of the globalist World Empire. Everything Brussels, NATO and the United States say is accomplished by our politicians without comment. If they are asked to involve Romania into the war, they execute immediatly, because they will not go to the front and their children will not be sent to die!

The Romanians do not wish the war, that is clear, and this is the message I receive from the hundreds of thousands of Romanians who write to me and talk to me on the street on my visits across the country.

Romanians do not want to hear about war or about their traitorous politicians, conducted from outside the country by masters who are willing to throw them into the war. I have reacted harshly every time the false rulers of Romania were on the verge of pushing Romania down this path, and so far I have managed to avoid this disastrous path, because the Romanians were on my side and supported me in my endeavors.

In fact, 4 days after the start of the war, we initiated the only global approach: Neutrality for Romania, the Peace of Bucharest, asking all the embassies of neighboring states and of belligerents, NATO member countries and Brussels to try to conclude peace in the People’s House from Bucharest, the Palace of Parliament.

Amazingly, the only country that received us, me and three other deputies who joined my approach (to understand: 4 out of 466 MPs), was the Russian Federation. Obviously, we were made ”people of Putin”, we were insulted, I was asked to be filed for high treason, I was and I still am banned on all main-stream TV channels in Romania. On March 8, 2022, we took Romanians to the streets and stopped the traitors from Romania’s leadership to send weapons to Ukraine. This has continued and continues to this day, and my replica is that if I am ”putinist”, because I want peace, then, because they want war, they are Hitlerist.

But we don’t know what the future will bring upon us, because the pressures on Romania are increasing, and with its current coward leaders, the fate of the country is at stake. I will fight to the end, at the cost of my life if necessary, to stop Romania from being drawn into this war! To see how much pressure there are, the last two TV stations that still have the courage to invite me to speak have just been fined because of my presence in their studio, so they are trying to shut me down from all sides because I am the only Romanian politician who fights against the war and wants to keep his country away from the conflict.

VN: You were also against forced vaccination. How do you view the consequences of the pandemic today?

SDIS: Forced or coercive vaccination was part of the plan of subjection and control of the population, but also of nullifying public debate and the critic and civic spirit of the people. Congratulations to all those who have resisted pressure and who have been a model of freedom for the whole world, as is the case with your great tennis player Novak Djokovic, who is a world hero for his courage and a symbol of Serbia that has resisted Western pressure. There was a joke in Romania that Djokovic and I would be cousins! 

Now it is shown that vaccination kills and there are more and more cases of so-called “sudden deaths”, plus other negative consequences that time will confirm. I fought against vaccination in Romania and kept many Romanians from this scourge, and now those who were skeptical about the information I had and about my public warnings have started to give me justice. Unfortunately, as soon as the critical mass of citizens was formed to reject criminal policies in the plandemia, the global parallel state pushed things to war so that they could have another way of subduing people and making them forget about the pandemic.

For my actions against restrictions, abuses and forced vaccination in the pandemic, I have suffered unimaginable repercussions, from physical violence in Parliament, in the street from the police force, with the guards in hospitals (because I saved people from forced intubation and because of my intervention they are still alive), to parliamentary sanction. I am the only MP in the democratic world (if you can call this a democracy!) sanctioned for political statements and opinions, with the lifting of the right to represent the Senate in official actions for 3 months – which I annulled in court. I am also the most fined Romanian citizen: 30.000 euro the value of the fines. They tried to take my house, they threatened my children, they tried to build a criminal case against my son.

Also, they sent an Italian journalist expert in NATO troops, Goracci, to frame me into a criminal file, I was attacked in my own cabinet, my husband defended me from the so-called journalists employed by RAI 1 television and now he is being in a trial and they try to convict him. I have myself over 13 criminal cases for thwarting the fight against diseases and stopping vaccination.

My son was kicked out of the football team and was not allowed to play in the Romanian Cup, despite the fact he is a professional footballer and the list is long, my 10-year-old girl was forced to move to a private school, because she was no longer accepted to the public state schools, etc.

I don’t regret anything! The consequences of the plandemic in Romania are not like in the West, because we were few voices that woke people up and did not let them go into the hospitals and convince them to not get vaccinated, and all those who took care of themselves at home survived.

In Romania, the true vaccination percentage is 12.5%, those who are declared vaccinated are only on paper. Even the doctors are not able to see the consequences. We do not know what the vaccine contains, but only that the great Nobel Prize-winning physician Luc Montagner was right: the vaccinated will die in great numbers. I wish that at least the vaccinated children were vaccinated with water, not with this experimental vaccine.

After those years of horror, which reminded of the Nazi period, we have some terrible memories: black plastic bags in which people were thrown and then put directly into the grave without a religious service, without a family nearby, which was considered contact and had to stay in isolation, children who died suffocated from the muzzle, because that object was not a mask, who developed allergies and lung diseases from it, people killed with days in hospitals, intubated in vain, I discovered myself how they are killed and fill in hundreds of criminal complaints.

Elderly people fined for going to buy a bread, children destroyed because of the online school, children who committed suicide because of the state of emergency when people were forced to stay in the house, elderly people killed in elderly homes, children forcibly vaccinated in the placement centers because no one could defend them. All that Nazi experiment remained in our memory, repeating some terrible times from the past, obviously in another form, with other unconventional weapons.

VN: You have Serbian roots, who do you have in Serbia and do you visit our country?

SDIS: My name is IOVANOVICI, and my father is from Macedonia, from Skopje. My paternal grandparents were refugees, and they fought against the system, they have hidden their origins so that they could not be found, I did not know much about them, and I do not know the language. My parents divorced when I was one year old. I have never visited either Macedonia or Serbia, although I would like it very much. I can only say that I admire you from my heart for not letting yourself to be trampled, for reacting and defending Orthodoxy. I would like the Church in Romania to have the same attitude as your Church when there were the parades of promiscuity in Belgrad. I hope to be able to visit both Serbia and Macedonia this year. 

Until then, I admire your tenacity and your love of land and people! A proud people like all the peoples of the Balkans should be! And honestly, I will pick you up a ball on the net: Let’s rebuild the Balkan Pole! Unite we will win!

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Polls show that public trust in the scientific establishment has suffered immensely in the wake of Covid. That’s prompted many to ask questions about conflicts of interest. Today, with the help of a watchdog group, we look at the issue of government scientists collecting royalty payments from pharmaceutical companies for discoveries made while working on your dime.

Transcript

Adam Andrzejewski: So our data shows at OpenTheBooks.com that every single year, NIH doles out $32 billion in federal grant-making to 56,000 entities. And that basically buys you the entire American health care space.

Adam Andrzejewski of the watchdog group Open The Books says the National Institutes of Health, or NIH, accumulates great influence with the power to decide which scientists and projects get all those taxpayer billions.

Adam Andrzejewski: Buys you a lot of friends, buys you a lot of allies, and there’s great incentive to stay on the establishment narratives that NIH disseminates on public health policy.

And he says there’s reason to question who or what is influencing those policies.

Under a 1984 law known as Bayh-Dole, government scientists have a unique arrangement. They can collect royalties from pharmaceutical companies for discoveries they make while working for us.

Andrzejewski: So here’s how the third-party royalty complex works. You have a government scientist funded by taxpayers, and they work in a government lab that’s also funded by taxpayers. And when they have an invention, they have a special situation. The NIH, National Institutes of Health, then licenses that invention —

Sharyl: An invention meaning a drug or a device?

Andrzejewski: — yes, or therapeutic, to the private sector. And the private sector then pays royalties back to NIH. NIH then distributes those royalties on a split, a royalty split schedule, back to the scientist.

Details of those royalty payments to government scientists are kept as strictly held secrets.

Republican Senator Rand Paul tried to pry some of them loose when questioning Dr. Anthony Fauci, then head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Sen. Rand Paul: Can you tell me that you have not received a royalty from any entity that you ever oversaw the distribution of money and research grants?

Anthony Fauci: Um, well first of all, let’s talk about royalties

Paul: That’s the question. No, that’s the question (Crosstalk) Have you ever received a royalty payment from a company that you later oversaw money going to that company?

Fauci: You know, I don’t know as a fact, but I doubt it.

Paul: It’s not just about you. Everyone on the vaccine committee — have any of them ever received money from the people who make vaccines? Can you tell me that? Can you tell me if anybody on the vaccine approval committees ever received any money from (Crosstalk)… people who make the vaccines?

Fauci: Sound bite number one, are you gonna let me answer a question? Ok. So let me give you some information. First of all, according to the regulations, people who receive royalties are not required to divulge them even on their financial statement, according to the Bayh-Dole Act.

Sharyl: And he literally told Congress more or less, “It’s none of your business. I don’t have to tell you these things,” which is pretty surprising because it would seem to be important.

Andrzejewski: So during the pandemic, I think the American people started to ask the question, “Just how close is big government to big pharma?”

Open The Books sued to try to get some of the hidden answers. That lawsuit unearthed 3,000 pages of royalty payments to NIH scientists from 2010 to 2021. During that time, 2,407 government scientists received $325 million in secretive royalty payments, averaging out to more than $135,000 each.

But much is left unknown. NIH redacted or blacked out key details.

Andrzejewski: We don’t know who paid it. We don’t know how much each individual scientist received. We can only see their names and count the number of times that each scientist received a payment. And they also redacted the invention, the license number or the patent number.

Sharyl: How does this stand, do you think, to impact the work the government does on behalf of public health? What conflicts arise?

Andrzejewski: So every single one of those individual, third-party royalty payments has the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Take the example of Covid vaccines. Andrzejewski says the first Covid vaccine to get government approval was Pfizer’s, which happens to be part of an NIH royalty-sharing agreement.

Sharyl: Does that mean NIH helped invent the vaccine and then licensed some of the technology to Pfizer?

Andrzejewski: Yes.

Sharyl: What does that imply?

Andrzejewski: Right, exactly. The NIH invented certain aspects of the vaccine that was licensed to Pfizer. When they developed it, they have to pay that royalty. And so, and so NIH was receiving tens of millions of dollars from Pfizer on those royalty payments.

Sharyl: What are the outstanding questions to be answered in sort of the big picture, not about the individual scientists, but from a public standpoint?

Andrzejewski: We need to be able to follow the money. Unelected bureaucrats are running the entire American health care complex without any scrutiny. They’re basically telling the American people, “Sit down, shut up, pay up. We’ll run things.” And that’s not how the federal government is supposed to operate.

Sharyl (on-camera): By the way, Fauci has refused to quantify all of his personal royalty payments, but has implied they are very small.

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

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

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

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Censorship is never innocent, made worse for its strained good intentions.  For those responsible for setting and policing such policies, the inner judge comes out, stomping on assumed meanings, interpreting and removing things to ensure the masses are not corrupted. Children’s stories and tales have not been exempted from this train of revision, expurgation and adjustment.

In modifying the language of children’s texts, a number of agents come into play: concerned parents, worried authorities, and the considerations that reflect the temper and mores of the time.  Publishers, keen to ensure a wider readership, feel pressure to alter the original text to stay modern and trendy.

In 1853, Charles Dickens took the illustrator and former friend George Cruickshank to task in an essay “Frauds on the Fairies” for meddling with fairy tales through incorporating a temperance message.  “We have lately observed with pain the intrusion of a Whole Hog of unwieldy dimensions into the fairy flower-garden.”  It was vital, Dickens warned, to respect fairy tales, most notably in the utilitarian age Britain found itself in.

The latest victim of this lack of respect, albeit one posthumously affected, is Roald Dahl, whose books for children have drawn unwanted attention from a wretched consultancy in conjunction with veteran publisher Puffin Books.  Evidently not feeling anyone capable within their ranks, Puffin Books decided to retain Inclusive Minds, which claims to “offer a range of services to help people engaged in all aspects of children’s literature build a new, more inclusive world.”

This all took place in step with the announcement in September last year that the streaming company Netflix had bought the Roald Dahl Story Company for the princely sum of £500 million.  The contract is reportedly the biggest content deal of its kind, a fact no doubt helped by the company’s observation that Dahl’s books have sold more than 300 million globally and been translated into 63 languages.  “Netflix and The Roald Dahl Story Company,” the company announced, “share a deep love of storytelling and a growing global fan base.  Together, we have an extraordinary opportunity to write multiple new chapters of these beloved stories, delighting children and adults around the world for generations to come.’

With the mantra of inclusivity heavy at Puffin Books, in addition to the “growing global fan base”, the publishing outfit faced a fundamental problem.  Any position on being inclusive reaches a tipping point where it must exclude.  And at Inclusive Minds, there are “Inclusion Ambassadors” who constitute a network of advisors with a nose for sensitivity and a mind for removing the uncomfortable.  “The network,” Inclusive Minds goes on to say, “offers book creators a chance to connect with ‘experts by experiences’ at the very earliest stage in the book creation process.”

With the razors ready to modernise (read purge) any of Dahl’s texts, a number of words came in for the chop.  A focus was placed upon gender, race, mental health and weight.  “Enormously fat” was adjusted to being merely “enormous”, in reference to the gluttonous character of Augustus Gloop in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  Oompa-Loompas were transformed into “small people”, with words such as “titchy” and “tiny” excised.

In “Witches”, an “old hag” became the less offensive “old crow”.  Other patently silly changes included removing “black” in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” in favour of “murderous, brutal-looking” tractors.  The three sons, for some reason, become three daughters, while the Cloud-Men in “James and the Giant Peach” become Cloud People.

Many of these changes are not cosmetic, constituting a direct alternation of the author’s meanings and intentions.  Matilda’s reading of Rudyard Kipling, for instance, is considered inappropriate to the sensitivity police.  Far better to make her read Jane Austen instead of that bard of British imperialism.

These changes prompted novelist Salman Rushdie, himself all too familiar with the mortal dangers of censorship, to suggest that Puffin Books and the Dahl estate reel in shame.  It was sporting of him to do so, given Dahl’s own lack of sympathy for Rushdie’s treatment at the hands of murderous Islamic fanatics for the publication of The Satanic Verses.

Brendan O’Neill, writing in The Spectator, was adamant that Dahl had been culturally vandalised, being “well and truly Ministry of Truthed.”  The fun in the texts had been redacted, confined to “the memory hole.”

PEN America chief executive Suzanne Nossel was also “alarmed at news of ‘hundreds of changes’ to venerated works by [Dahl] in a purported effort to scrub the books of that which might offend someone.”  Those wishing to “cheer specific edits to Dahl’s work should consider how the power to rewrite books might be used in the hands of those who do not share their values and sensibilities.”

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory original cover.jpg

During his life, Dahl was also the subject of attention from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) for language used in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.  The 1964 text originally described the Oompa-Loompas as African “pygmies”.  In sympathy with the NAACP, Dahl rewrote the text for the second US edition, turning the Oompa-Loompas into white dwarves with origins in fictional Loompaland.

Ironically enough, Dahl’s agent convinced the author to change Charlie’s identity, who was originally intended to be a black boy.  The reason was crude but simple: making Charlie white would be more appealing to readers.

Amidst the protests against the latest rewrites and cuts, Penguin Random House, which owns Puffin Books, announced that it would publish the “classic” versions alongside the new editions, enabling readers “to choose which version of Dahl’s stories they prefer.”  That’s just what the children need.

Puffin Books should have already heeded the lessons of previous failed efforts to run rewritten texts for contemporary audiences.  Efforts in 2010 to subject the Famous Five series of Enid Blyton to “sensitive text revisions” failed.  These included alterations of “awful swotter” to “bookworm”, and “tinker” with “traveller”.  The publisher Hachette had to concede in 2016 that the project had not worked.

This latest affair prompted a suggestion from Philip Pullman on Radio 4 on February 20.  Let the passage of time judge the works, rather than the officials of the age.  Eventually, they may go out of print, leaving room for other authors and their stories to enchant a new readership.  In Dahl’s case, that time is a considerable way off.  A salient lesson, then, to avoid overly paid and ill-informed consultancies and respect children’s stories.

*

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

Featured image: Dahl in April 1954 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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***

Nota Bene 

This may well be the most important article I’ll write in 2023.

In this article, I publicly reveal record-level vax-death data from the “gold standard” Medicare database that proves that:

  1. The vaccines are making it more likely that the elderly will die prematurely, not less likely
  2. The risk of death remains elevated for an unknown period of time after you get the shot (we didn’t see it return to normal)
  3. The CDC lied to the American people about the safety of these vaccines. They had access to this data the entire time and kept it hidden and said nothing.

If there is one article for you to share with your social network, this is the one.

Executive summary 

Isn’t it a shame that none of the world’s governments make the vaccination-death records publicly available? My claim is that if they did that, it would end the debate instantly and prove to the world that the vaccines are unsafe. So that’s why they keep it locked up.

But apparently there is one whistleblower who is interested in data transparency.

Last night, I got a USB drive in my mailbox with the Medicare data that links deaths and vaccination dates. Finally! This is the data that nobody wants to talk or even ask about.

I was able to authenticate the data by matching it with records I already had. And the analysis that I did on the data I received matches up with other analyses I have received previously.

The nice thing about this Medicare data is that nobody can claim that it is “unreliable.” Medicare is the unassailable “gold-standard” database. It’s the database that the CDC never wants us to see for some reason. They never even mention it. They pretend it doesn’t exist. So you know it is important.

Do you want to know what it shows?

It shows that these shots increase your risk of dying and once you get shot, your risk of dying remains elevated for an unknown amount of time. And that’s in the very population it is supposed to help the most!

Now you know why the CDC, which has always had access to the Medicare records, has never made them publicly available for anyone to analyze to prove that the vaccines are safe. Because the records show the opposite. That’s why they keep the data hidden from view and it’s why they NEVER talk about it.

Today, in this article, you will finally get to see what nobody outside the HHS has ever seen before: the “gold standard” Medicare records, i.e., the truth. You can analyze it yourself.

You’ll soon see for yourself why the CDC will never release this data and why the mainstream press is NEVER EVER going to ask to see the data: because it would reveal they lied to people and killed over 500,000 Americans by recommending they take an unsafe “vaccine.”

The bottom line is this:

When there is no data transparency, there is a high chance that the government is lying to you.

After all, if the data supported their narrative, they’d be tripping all over themselves to release the data. When it doesn’t support the narrative, they simply never talk about it and pretend it doesn’t exist and tell the press never to ask about it.

So you already know how this is going to end. Very badly. For Biden, the CDC, the FDA, the mainstream medical community, the mainstream press, and Congress. They all will have egg on their face because they never asked to see the data.

The “misinformation spreaders” will have been proven right with the government’s own “gold standard” database. It’s payback time.

Acknowledgements 

I had Clare Craig of the HART Group look this over for any flaws. She liked it.

Professor Norman Fenton had a look as well and he didn’t find anything amiss either.

This doesn’t mean there aren’t any flaws, but it just means that there aren’t any obvious flaws. If you find a mistake, let me know in the comments.

Why this article is so important 

If nobody can explain how the “slope goes the wrong way,” then this should be GAME OVER for the vaccination program because we are using their own “gold standard” database to prove that the vaccines are not safe and that they lied to us.

Unless I made a serious error, there is no rock big enough for them to hide under on this one. No excuses. No attacks. It’s basically bulletproof. The results simply cannot be explained if the vaccines are safe. And the numbers are huge. You don’t need a peer reviewed study on this one.

The Medicare data that I received 

It’s in Excel, there are over 114,000 records, and you can download it here.

While I would have liked to receive the merge of all death records and vaccination records of everyone in the US, the data I did receive, when properly analyzed, is sufficient to prove the point that the vaccines are increasing your risk of death.

Limitations

Be sure to read the About tab for caveats about the data. It will help if you read and understand this article before you look at the records.

Medicare Data Nota Bene

Note that the scatter plots below were produced from a much larger set of Medicare records than the ones you can download. The plots from the records I received are included in the Excel spreadsheet and are consistent with the plots in this article which are the higher quality plots (and which contain dose 2 and 3 plots).

Overview of how to analyze the Medicare records

Because we only have vax-death records of people who have died (rather than the full set of records that any truly honest government would supply), we have to analyze the data in a certain way to understand what is going on.

This is a new way to look at the data so let me give you the bird’s eye overview first.

The main thing is that in Jan 2021 we have a double whammy of death: from COVID and seasonality (older people die more in winter).

Figure 0. Days to death from Dec 15, 2020 for everyone in Medicare in Connecticut (vaxxed and unvaxxed). Each bar is a 5 day period. The point of this graph is to show that the COVID outbreak exacerbated the slope since you are seeing effects of seasonality PLUS the waning part of a COVID outbreak. This is why there is a 40% drop from peak values.

So if the vaccine does absolutely nothing, we’ll see the slope of the histogram of the deaths per day curve go dramatically down in the first quarter as COVID and seasonality effects diminish. Then it will flatline for a time until seasonality picks up again in winter or there is another big COVID outbreak. The drop could be as much as 40% from the peak value (e.g., from 536 to 324) in Figure 0.

If the vaccine is PERFECT, we’ll see the same slope go down, but not as much because we’ll just see seasonality effects going down (since nobody is dying from COVID). It will then remain perfectly flat until it picks up again in winter. See Figure 1 below for what the “deaths per week” curve should look like for a perfect vaccine.

The main point is this: if the vaccine isn’t causing harm, the slope will go down and remain flat.

What I will be doing below is calculating the days until death from shot #1 if and only if shot #1 was given in Q1 of 2021. So that histogram should look very similar to Figure 1. It’s going to be smoothed somewhat since the shot was given over a quarter (rather than on a single day), but since most of the vaccine in Q1 was delivered in the first half of January, the curve will be pretty similar to Figure 1, but it will start to flatline a couple of weeks sooner.

Once you understand these concepts, you are ready for the details.

For people in Medicare, there is a strong seasonality effect on the death rate

For the elderly, there is a strong seasonality of deaths. They are high in the winter and low in the summer. The difference between peaks and troughs is around 20%. This data is from the CDC for ages 65-84:

Figure 1. This is the weekly death counts from 2015-2019 summed over all US states for ages 65-84. This was created using a visualization on the CDC website using this dataset. Epidemiologists are very familiar with this effect. There are no surprises here. The peak is 256K, the trough is 213, so there is a 17% seasonality drop in deaths from the peak.

What this means is if you got the shot in Q1 of 2021, and you look at the days until death, if the vaccines are safe, you should find that it will go lower in time and then turn upwards.

But what we find is the opposite.

The control group for 2021

Figure 2 shows the deaths by week in 2021 for all states ages 65-84. Note that the rates drop for the first 11 weeks and stabilize.

In 2021, there is a steeper drop than normal because of COVID adding to the drop:

Figure 2. This is the weekly death counts summed over all US states for 2021. This is essentially the control graph. This was created using a visualization on the CDC website using this dataset. Epidemiologists are very familiar with this effect. There are no surprises here. The deaths drop for the first 11 weeks of the year then stabilize. The peak is 81K, the trough is 50K so there is a 39% combined drop from peak to trough.

The vaccine program was initiated on Dec 14, 2020, and peaked in the third week of Jan 2021 for people in this age group:

Figure 3. Connecticut vax rollout schedule for <80 Medicare participants peaked in weeks 3 and 4 of 2021. Each bar is a week

This means that if we limit our “days from shot #1 to death” analysis to people who got their first vaccine in Q1 of 2021, if the shot is harmless, we should see the rate of deaths dropping for at least 9 weeks after the shot, and then remaining flat for the next 15 weeks before turning upward. This is because about half the shots got delivered before week #3 (11-2=9)

The charts show the slope goes up instead of down

As we noted in the previous section, if the first shot is given in Q1, the number of days after the shot until you die should go down for at least 9 weeks and then stabilize for the next 15 weeks per the seasonality described in the previous section. So a safe vaccine would look like Figure 2

But it doesn’t. It goes up! That’s the problem.

Figure 4. This shows days until death from Shot #1 where shot #1 was given in Q1 2021 to Medicare recipients under 80. Every single day is a dot on this graph. What is supposed to happen is the line is supposed to slope DOWNWARD due to seasonality. If nothing “bad” is going on, this should look like a weighted moving average of Figure 2 (using the weights in Figure 3). As you can see, the slope goes the wrong way. Note that the increase in risk is still present after 2 years from the initial value at day 50, but at least it’s not getting any worse over time. NB: The graph drops off starting at 660 days out because we run out of months to die (since the shot is given in Q1 and the person must die before Feb 1, 2023).

Similarly, if we restrict our analysis to the first shot given in Q2 (most of which would have been given in April), we see the same problem. The slope should be flat for around the first 15 weeks after the shot is given (we are starting in a flat period (week 13) and we have about 15 weeks of flat deaths after that. Yet the slope is going up when it is supposed to be flat.

Figure 5. Same as Fig. 4 except we restrict shot #1 to be given in Q2. Not that the peak shifts since seasonality does not move. The drop off is now starting at 570 since we are now giving the shot a quarter later.

The same wrong slope happens with shot #2

The same problem happens with the second shot. About 75% of the people in Medicare were injected with shot #2 prior to April 15, 2021.

Here’s what the shot #2 injection schedule looked like in Connecticut:

Figure 6. Shots 1 and 2 were quickly rolled out to the Medicare community with most everyone getting fully vaccinated in Q1 of 2021. This is from Medicare data from Connecticut.

Therefore, we should have seen a downward slope in the beginning and we are seeing the opposite again.

Figure 7. This chart is days till death from Shot #2 given that shot #2 was delivered in 2021. Since most of the shot #2 were delivered in Q1 2021, you should see a strong downward slope here as well. You don’t. The slope goes the wrong way for shot #2 too. That’s inexplicable.

The same wrong slope happens with shot #3 too

Most people in Medicare got shot #3 in October, 2021. So we should see an upward trend for about 60 days (due to seasonality and another COVID wave), and then it should fall dramatically.

It doesn’t. It remains flat. That’s problematic. It suggests that if you lived until shot #3, it will still increase your risk of dying, just not as much as the earlier shots.

This chart would have been more useful had the Dose 3 vax window been narrowly restricted. Stay tuned…

Figure 8. Shot #3 delivered in 2021. Most people in Medicare got their booster in October 2021, so we’d expect the slope to go down after 60 days. That doesn’t happen. The slop remains flat which is problematic.

This is the most damaging chart I’ve seen

Figure 9. Number of days died after dose #2 if you just got dose #2. So there is a rapid fall off at Day 200 which is people opting for Dose #3 and beyond. But I realized later that fewer than 50% opted for >2 shots. So we can raise the baseline by 2X and get a conservative estimate of steady state. This allows us to clearly see that the shots elevated your risk of death by around 50% for at least the first 200 days after the shot. This is a DISASTER and it’s also going to be impossible for the CDC to explain away.

This is a chart of people who just got two shots and no more. At first, I dismissed it because if you got 3 or more shots, you’d leave the group so the flat part starting at day 400 isn’t a valid steady state number because the size of the cohort changes due to the “no other shots” criteria.

But then I did a calculation using the Connecticut data and found that when there were 23,259 deaths from Dose #2, there were only 10,557 deaths from Doses #3 onwards. So this suggests to me that fewer than half the people in Medicare opted for the jabs.

Then I confirmed in USA FACTS that fewer than half the people who got shot #2 got any of the boosters (68% vs. 33%).

So if we simply take our 200 deaths per day flatline number from the chart above and adjust it for the people who left the cohort (i.e., double it to 400 steady state deaths per day), we can see that the first 200 days, we had a 50% increase in the rate of death (600 per day) vs. the 400 per day rate after 1 year (which itself might be elevated from normal).

This is a complete disaster no matter how you look at it.

The good news here is that it shows if you stop the shots, it appears your risk lowers after a year.

As you can see from this chart, if you keep on with the shots, as half the people did, your risk of death remains elevated!

Figure 10. This is the same as Figure 9, but here we do NOT have the restriction that you didn’t get any more shots. The number of deaths remains elevated due to the fact that half the people opted for subsequent shots. If nobody opted for any more shots after shot #2, we would have expected the curve to flatline at around 400 deaths / day.

Shot #4 elevates your risk as well, for the few that took it

People in Medicare got up to 7 total shots. That’s really stunning.

For example, in Connecticut, the numbers are: 31170, 23259, 8902, 1428, 217, 9, 1. So only 1 person got a 7th shot.

Here’s the graph for people who got Shot #4:

Figure 11. The fourth shot increases your risk of death too. People get the fourth shot late in 2022 so it drops off after day 100.

So people got shot #4 in 2022 which is why the graph falls quickly after day 200 (you simply run out of time to die). But you can see the same elevation in risk happening after this shot as well.

Death curve for the unvaccinated

James Surowiecki said was confused by this article because I didn’t include the unvaccinated.

I purposely didn’t include that chart because it would be confusing.

But if James was confused because I didn’t include it, I’ll include it with a big caveat.

The problem with the Medicare data is that the unvaccinated are a mix of people with vaccination and no vaccination so it is not pure. This is because Medicare patients went to a pharmacy to get their free vax and it wasn’t recorded in the Medicare records. This is why half the Medicare records don’t have any vax info at all. For Connecticut for example, there were 57,297 records of people in Medicare who died since Dec 14, 2020 and 26,092 had no vaccine records.

Also, people migrate from the unvaccinated group to the vaccinated group at an unknown rate (even Medicare doesn’t know the rate) which makes it problematic to use. That’s why I didn’t include it.

But since James was confused about this, I’ve now added the unvaccinated Medicare records from CT to the excel file (since those are the only unvaxxed records I have right now).

The plot is below. As you can see, the slope is downwards, just like you’d expect. No surprises.

Hopefully, James is less confused now.

Figure 13. The death curve for the unvaxxed in CT. This was added to the dataset you can download. This shows the deaths per day since Dec 15, 2020 for people in CT with no vax records who are in Medicare and < 80. Compare this with Figure 0 above (Figure 0 is ALL deaths whereas this is just the unvaxxed deaths).

Medicare reference data on the shots

This table may be helpful to some people.

For example, James Surowiecki posted this on Twitter:

I’m not sure which way it is “ludicrous.” Is he surprised that so many got the shot or so few? And what is his reference?

From the Medicare numbers above, 37.3M got Shot #1 and 24.4M got shot #2. So in Medicare, there was a 35% drop from first jab to second jab, likely due to significant side effects experienced after the first shot. So 26% dropped off in Connecticut which is lower than expected. There will always be deviation from the mean.

Even more Medicare data: cardiac events following vaccination

Below is a graph of people with an ICD10 code of I2xxx to I5xxx, showing the number of days from the date of the COVID vax to the time of the cardiac event.

This is NOT normal. This should be a flat line. There is no way they can explain this way.

Here are the percentages of the total number of events over 365 days that occurred on day 0 through day 7 after the shot: 4.5% 2.8% 2.4% 2.2% 2.2% 2.2% 2.3% 2.1%.

More importantly, why isn’t the CDC releasing this data? It’s in Medicare and they can easily pull it. What is wrong with them? It seems as if they are protecting the vaccine instead of the American people, doesn’t it?

Figure 12. Cardiovascular events (ICD10 codes I2xxx-I5xxx) should occur evenly over time if the vaccines are safe. The fact that this graph is not flat is a HUGE problem. NOBODY can explain that. This graph is standalone self-explanatory. No control group needed on that one. The y value at x=365 is .037%. So all events over 365 days were normalized to a percentage for this plot. Sp 4.5% of the total number of cardiac events in the ICD10 categories above within 365 days of a jab occurred on the day of the injection.

The Tableau visualizer

You can play with the data here thanks to Albert Benavides.

Additional confirmation the vaccines are deadly

See my newly updated article on the UK data, which now includes US Mortality’s latest analysis:

Basically, even the flawed UK data still has a huge signal they couldn’t hide: there is a bigger killer than COVID and NOBODY can figure out what it is! Isn’t that odd?

Joel Smalley’s analysis of the UK data is superb as well. Even with the flaws relative to the unvaccinated, by focusing on the vaccinated, he can show they are dying at a disproportionately high rate.

The US data is looking really bad. For example, this tweet shows the more a state vaccinates, the greater the number of COVID deaths. Whoops!!! I thought it was supposed to reduce the number of COVID deaths!

Ed Dowd’s data, beautifully presented in his book “Cause Unknown,” is also hard for anyone to refute. How are working people 18-64 suddenly dying at a higher rate than non-working people in America right after the vaccine mandates hit? Nobody can explain that one.

Ed’s conclusions are the same as mine. So now you have two very powerful, but completely different datasets that are easy to explain if the vaccines are dangerous and impossible to explain using any other hypothesis.

And of course my favorite example is the VAERS excess deaths. How can there possibly be over 16,000 reported in VAERS if nothing is going on? The only vaccine with excess deaths is the COVID vaccine. All the other vaccines show the same number of excess deaths as in prior years. The argument that the COVID vaccines were rolled out to 100X more people than a normal vaccine is ridiculous. For example, the flu vaccine was given to at least 33% of the Medicare recipients so maybe you can argue a factor of 3X at most. So there is no way to explain the excess deaths which are effectively over 640,000 for a 41 underreporting factor.

The 640,000 number for the first two years of the vax rollout was validated in Mark Skidmore’s paper (which was published in a peer-reviewed journal) along with personal communications with Mark. Mark used polling and found a large number of deaths in 2021. Note that people are trying to get Mark’s paper retracted because they said it is unethical to ask people about vaccine deaths. Apparently, it’s OK to ask about COVID deaths, but it’s unethical to ask the exact same question about vaccine deaths. Also, they objected to the statement about who funded the study and wanted a complete bio of the funder. Mark has written over 70 papers published in the scientific literature and he’s never seen anything like these objections. The paper could easily note these, but they seem more interested in having the paper retracted because they don’t like the result. This is how science works. You can watch my interview with Mark Skidmore here so you can see first hand how science is manipulated with ridiculous objections when they don’t like what you find. I just learned that his university is now also investigating him. His crime? He reported survey results that go against the narrative.

Could there be an error in the queries?

No. I replicated the shot #1 charts myself and you can see them yourself in the Excel charts (which are drawn from the record-level data).

Is there any other way to explain away these results?

Not that I’m aware of.

I’d like to see someone try though. It would be fun to see the attempts.

Of course, you could interpret the upward slope as “See, the vaccine is saving COVID lives in the short term, that’s why the slope goes up over time as it wears off” but that is simply preposterous.

Nobody has ever claimed the vaccine reduces all cause mortality below baseline. There is no clinical trial showing that and there is no known mechanism of action whereby introducing a pathogen into your body will reduce all-cause mortality.

The only claim they make now is that the vaccine reduces COVID deaths. Fine. Let’s say that the vax is perfect and reduces every single COVID death, then the slope must still be downwards due to seasonality as we said before. But it’s not.

That is why all these pro-vaccine people are upset about this data: because they can’t explain it. So they will have to ignore it and hope that nobody reads my article.

So if you share this article, you won’t let them get away with it.

UPenn Professor Jeffrey Morris tries to attack my piece: Epic fail

Jeffrey Morris wrote “temporal HVE” on Twitter:

But this is simply a hand-waving dismissal of all this work with no evidentiary support whatsoever. HVE refers to the “healthy vaccinee effect.” His “theory” is that the healthiest people get the vaccine first and since those people aren’t likely to die soon, it causes the slope to go upwards. The second part of the effect is that if you are dying from terminal cancer and will be dead in 3 days, you’re unlikely to want to get a COVID shot to protect you from dying from COVID. So people “self-select” out of the vax program if they know they are going to die.

But in our case, there was a mass vaccination effort for all Medicare patients and they were all vaccinated ASAP come December.

What Professor Morris can’t explain is why the slope is even more distinct for people who got their shots in March 2021. Those would be the “stragglers” and thus less healthy, yet the upward slope is even more pronounced than in January. So his “explanation” just doesn’t fit the data. Nice try, no cigar.

Furthermore, here are the days to death numbers for the flu and pneumococcal shots in Medicare patients. Nobody has ever seen these charts before either.

See how the lines are all FLAT for the same study on these vaccines??

If you look closely, you can see that there is a slight rise in the slope for a few days after the shot only. That’s the HVE effect. It’s small and very short lived. It is NOTHING like what we see for the COVID vaccines.

Also note that anyone taking these shots isn’t planning on dying the day of the shot (why take the shot if you are going to die?).

Yet they do die on the same day of the shot, in massive numbers. Why is that? Because these “safe vaccines” kill people; that’s why there is a huge spike on Day 0.

This is another reason why the CDC never shows you the Medicare data: it would reveal that other vaccines are deadly as well (and kill more than 1 person per million which is the threshold for safety).

On February 26, I sent Professor Morris an email. He needs either to believe the Medicare data or discredit it. If he wants to discredit it, it would imply that all US government data on COVID is bogus. If he believes it, then he has to accept what it says, which is that the vaccines are increasing your risk of death.

I said he can’t have it both ways. Which path will he take?

I’ll update this article if I hear back.

If the CDC wants to prove I’m wrong, it’s easy: simply make the Medicare death-vaccination record-level data publicly accessible.

We need to stop holding the data hostage.

If the CDC wants to prove I’m wrong, the best way to do that is to publicly release all the data as specified in this article. That would be in the public interest.

Will they do that? No way. Never. They will come up with excuse after excuse why they can’t do this.

And that tells you EVERYTHING you need to know.

Summary

The record-level vax-death Medicare data I received is now publicly available. Now, for the very first time, you can analyze it yourself.

It shows the vaccines increase the risk of death for the elderly and that these risks appear to remain persistently elevated. It’s anyone’s guess for how long.

So now you know why the CDC never showed us the Medicare data. And now you know why the medical community and mainstream media never asked to see it and never will. They had it the whole time and kept it from public view so they wouldn’t create “vaccine hesitancy.”

If you think public health officials don’t hide the data, you should read this tweet from Chris Martenson where the Australian health authorities admit that they covered up vaccine deaths because they “didn’t want to undermine public confidence” in the vaccine. Get it?

If you think public health officials in the US want to see all the safety data even for just themselves, you should watch my video of Stanford Professor Grace Lee calling the Palo Alto Police on me when I tried to ask her if she wanted to see the safety data from the Israeli Ministry of Health.

Basically, the health authorities in the US run the other way when you try to confront them with data showing they are wrong. The proof is on that video. I tried to show the top CDC outside official world-class data collected by top scientists hand-picked by the Israeli health authorities. And her response to my offer to see the data was to call the cops.

Finally, if your doctor still tells you to take the shot, ask her to first explain to you why the slope in the Medicare data goes the wrong way before you get the shot. Have her explain to you why all these charts in this article are “normal.” And let us all know what she says in the comments.

*

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

  • Posted in English
  • Comments Off on Game Over: Medicare Data Shows the COVID Vaccines Increase Your Risk of Dying

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***

In the August 2022 James Gill paper titled “Autopsy Histopathologic Cardiac Findings in 2 adolescents following the second COVID-19 vaccine dose” (click here), two teenage boys died in their sleep within the first week after receiving the 2nd Pfizer COVID-19 mRNA vaccine dose. Both boys were pronounced dead at home.

Sudden deaths of Canadian children have skyrocketed in recent months. I have tracked these deaths since November 2022, when healthy Canadian children began to die from influenza, strep, myocarditis, blood clots, strokes, sudden deaths while playing sports and sudden deaths in their sleep (!)

I have been overwhelmed with the sheer number of these sudden deaths recently and this will be my last report of this kind.

The COVID-19 mRNA vaccine status in many of these tragic cases is unknown. Some of these children were mandated to have COVID-19 mRNA vaccines to play sports or attend University or College. While it is unknown in how many of these cases mRNA toxicity played a major factor, even ONE child death due to mRNA vaccine damage and injury, is one death too many.

Due to the aggressive, unscientific and unethical rollout of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in Canadian children in 2021 and 2022, parents must be on guard for COVID-19 mRNA vaccine toxicity, which has been implicated in severe damage to the immune system, heart, brain, kidneys, liver, endocrine system, reproductive organs, as well as autoimmune diseases and cancers.

Analysis…

My Take…

There is no question that sudden and unexpected Canadian pediatric deaths are accelerating. During Canada’s flu season in November & December 2022, many kids struggled with the usual childhood infections such as influenza, strep, meningitis and a number of healthy kids died from infections that they should never have died from.

I believe that COVID-19 mRNA vaccine injury to the immune system played a major role in at least some of these deaths. 13 kids died from influenza, 4 from strep and 2 from meningitis (that we know of). Many provincial governments (including Ontario) refused to release any information on the deaths of children due to influenza in late 2022. The governments knew something was very wrong and they stayed quiet.

What is even more alarming, however, are 56 sudden deaths in children ages 12-19. This is the age group that is dangerously over-vaccinated with COVID-19 mRNA, with 84% Canadian children having 1 dose and 80% having two doses.

I believe COVID-19 mRNA vaccines are playing a major role in many of these sudden deaths of Canadian children ages 12-19, and this is a public health emergency that can no longer be ignored, and must be investigated immediately.

Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland halted COVID-19 mRNA vaccines in children under 18 a long time ago. They clearly know something Canadian politicians and Canadian doctors don’t.

COVID-19 mRNA vaccines should never have been rolled out in Canadian children of any age. They must be halted immediately.

*

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

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***

The real purpose of ninety nine percent of the available media out there is designed to help us ignore the truth. Not just mainstream media – all media.

First for those who may be unfamiliar with the concept of unlimited hangout – a definition.

That this Covid pandemic and the responses to it – and a whole host of hot button issues – were designed to manufacture our consent is the case. This is what this essay will address in the best shorter unlimited hangout I can manage. More complete descriptions of all the unlimited hangouts will require longer forms.

Because the real problem here for humanity is that we are now under the dictates of the Fourth Reich – promoted as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. As all totalitarianism does, it has crept in oh so gradually, unannounced and hidden in plain sight. We humans like the proverbial frogs in boiling water are blissfully unaware until it is too late.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution Is the Fourth Reich

There is only one way out of the traps set by this Fourth Reich – disguised as the Fourth Industrial Revolution – and that is to fully become aware of the master plan. Once we see the smirking and ugly deceptions used to manufacture our consent – displays fashioned by master manipulators – and what they actually represent – we are highly unlikely to offer our consent.

You will find that those entities which have come out and described the Fourth Industrial Revolution as The Fourth Reich have been removed from the internet. It is in where our would be masters of the universe act to remove our content where we know we have touched a nerve. Where we have touched a nerve we have learned something important.

The Master Manipulators and the Limited Hangout

Because the intent of these serially abusive master manipulators is to obtain your consent by either affirmation or by capitalizing on our human sympathies. Human sympathies predispose us to listen to what we think are reasoned arguments presented by those sympathetic to our cause.

The problem here is that through the work of these master manipulators most of those we regard as sympathetic to our cause are not. Many of those who appear as sympathetic to our cause are being used by the more powerful and are in fact gaining personally from their roles as the real master charlatans here.

Essentially, either knowingly or not, these sympathetic figures become the decoys for the master manipulators. Framed as rebels with a cause they serve to muddy the dialog and further manufacture our consent. In other words, by thinking we are participating in actual dissent, we are in actuality taking part in what is called a limited hangout.

A limited hangout is designed to entrap us in a rather sophisticated framework known to be used as part of the psychological operations used by intelligence operatives. In these limited hangouts we are furnished with part of the truth but almost never allowed a real glimpse at the actual truth of the matter.

In other words we may be offered some veiled references to the world economic forum, to the pandemic & vaccines, to the war in Ukraine, to the criminal enterprise represented by Hunter Biden, to the real facts of Volodymyr Zelensky – but be carefully kept from realizing the real threat represented by the title of this essay.

How Politics Is Used to Deceive

In addition our political frameworks are used to manipulate us. We may believe we have a political force to rely on which is seriously standing in opposition to these totalitarian manipulators. What we are likely to discover is that there is not an existing political solution – that in effect the political solution is being held as yet another side show to manufacture our consent.

In the United States we have two political parties. On one side – the conservative side – we have the Democrats – framed as the bad guys – and the Republicans – framed as the good guys. We also have the opposite. On the liberal side – those who hold that the Democrats are the good guys and the Republicans are the bad guys. You will find reasoned, heart felt arguments on either side.

A large majority of the population will fall for this ploy – thinking their side represents a way out. Unfortunately however this serves to further entrap us in the matrix. By being immersed in what we believe is reasoned political discourse we are effectively prevented from engaging with the larger issues.

Using Political Hot Button Issues to Deceive and Entrap Us

Similarly issues are concocted all around to entrap us in limited hangouts of different kinds. In this case unrestricted harmful immigration policies entrap us in useless dissent. In the case of the United States we have the influx of drugs and lawlessness to distract us from the truth. What we maybe don’t see is that this kind of immigration has been used all across the planet to distract people – quite effectively – from seeing the master plan.

Another very effective strategy is to promote such highly personally disturbing practices as the transgender philosophy foisted on children. Through the promotion of such sickening practices – which disturb us at fundamental levels of our human sympathies – we are quite effectively entrapped.

A full discussion of transgender ideology and how it is used as a political hot button issue is found in the article here.

They come for the children we cry. And we engage in questioning why they would do this and in how to stop those who are behind this. Lost in the hue and cry of speaking for these children and against their tormentors we are once again entrapped in a limited hangout. This limited hangout is highly effective as it gains our sympathies so well. Without answering our question as to why powerful forces would do this we remain lost.

The essential question – as elsewhere – is to ask why this is being done. The tactic of going after the children is very effective as a political tool to entrap our engagement. Much like the effects of using a pandemic and arguments over vaccines and medical treatment it fully engages our sympathetic energy as a hot button side show.

Promoting the sexualization of our children and the transgender medical mutilation involved horrifies us – and well it should. Similarly to how the deathly practices were used connected to the pandemic and vaccines there is a similar issue here. These are used as hot button issues designed to further deceive.

Both attack the each individual’s psychological integrity and that of the social institutions they rely on – the family and ultimately the entire community – destroying all. That is the strategy in a nutshell.

Our tormentors use methods of attack which work to destabilize the individual and the social forces which sustain that individual. Attack, divide and destroy the family. The breakdown of the family works to destroy the community and eventually the nation state and the planet.

The 500 Ton Gorilla – The Fourth Reich

This is what we have here. An international force of which we are effectively kept unaware and distracted from acknowledging through the use of highly effective psychological operations.This would take many books to accurately parse and describe. Essentially though for the purposes of this essay I will define this in very simple terms.

Framed as the Fourth Industrial Revolution by a body known as the World Economic Forum. I believe most readers are at least aware by now of this body – sufficiently so that they can look into it themselves by going to the WEF website.

What may not be immediately apparent without some digging however is how entrenched and threatening this organization and partners really are. Like a huge and almost unimaginable spiders web it exists as a real collusion designed to manufacture our consent and then to insure it before we truly understand what has hit us.

I am not going into further detail here as all is readily understandable with a bit of applied attention to the facts. I have written of it fairly extensively in other essays and intend to collate those writings to be more accessible.

The overwhelming goal here is to point out the necessity of moving beyond any limited hangouts to recognize exactly what we are dealing with. We need to be wrestling with the 500 Ton Gorilla here rather than being distracted by properly identifying the various parts.

As long as we settle for limited hangouts we will lose. There is only one effective way of removing the wind from the sails of our tormentors. This must be a planetary understanding of the real threat here. We must recognize the degree to which they have already manufactured our consent and then stand against it. That it must move well beyond these limited hangouts is a given. Those who are working on these hot button issues are very important – as are the issues involved. But we have no hope of confronting the 500 Ton Gorilla without acting as one unified force against tyranny.

The Power of Understanding the Unalienable Rights of the Individual

Although for Americans there are such guides as the US Constitution, Bill of Rights and the rest this unified force must go well beyond the aims of our now much defiled nation state. For the government of these United States has done irreparable damage to our name and to our intended purposes. These forces has damaged each of us as well by committing their dastardly deeds in our names.

But we are not alone here because all other governments across the world are also deeply involved in the nefarious aims of this Fourth Industrial Revolution. Any cause against the Fourth Reich must exist well above and beyond these nation states. Purely national forces have now declared themselves to be additional limited hangouts designed to further muddy the waters and to entrap our sympathies.

For the first time in human history the human cause is the only important issue. The ability of we as the human species to stand against totalitarianism will either stand or fall here. If these dreams of American founding fathers are recognized here it may be because their ultimate intent was a human cause and never intended to entrap us in these limited hangouts.

As Thomas Paine wrote:

Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favor; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. As a long and violent abuse of power, is generally the Means of calling the right of it in question (and in Matters too which might never have been thought of, had not the Sufferers been aggravated into the inquiry) and as the King of England hath undertaken in his OWN RIGHT, to support the Parliament in what he calls THEIRS, and as the good people of this country are grievously oppressed by the combination, they have an undoubted privilege to inquire into the pretensions of both, and equally to reject the usurpation of either. In the following sheets, the author hath studiously avoided every thing which is personal among ourselves. Compliments as well as censure to individuals make no part thereof. The wise, and the worthy, need not the triumph of a pamphlet; and those whose sentiments are injudicious, or unfriendly, will cease of themselves unless too much pains are bestowed upon their conversion. The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR…

Thomas Paine 1776

It will not be easy. It will require nerves of steel and courage beyond imagining. It will require the deliberate laying down of our prejudices for the good of everyone. It will require that we arrive at the understanding once and for all that it is indeed we the people who are the powerful forces here. It will require that we reach an understanding of how such forces as this Fourth Reich arise to gain such power.

It will require that we define and fashion together a world council of free peoples who – free of manipulation by centralized governments and corporate entities – maintain a locally managed and decentralized nested series of councils. Only by decentralized bodies inclusive of all and devoted to free speech and the unalienable rights granted each individual by their creator may this be accomplished.

It will be by the planetary recognition of the real fundamental power of each of us – protected by a real understanding of the majesty of these unalienable rights – that this will be possible.

Instead of those tin foil hats we may only need instead our real thinking caps. The real barriers will exist in rooting out the residual traumas we each have absorbed from this manipulation which has kept us divided. To do this means educating each other to an understanding of true interdependence. Interdependence is the fundamental unit of real health and wealth. We can only be as healthy as a species – and as individuals and families – within a larger healthy ecosystem of which we are a part.

It will take everything we have and more. But the alternative – that these forces of the Fourth Reich should win – is unthinkable.

We are under direct attack by the ascendancy of this Forth Reich – known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution. While protecting our own psychological & physical integrity and that of our families as best we can we cannot afford to ignore the presence of that 500 Ton Gorilla – the World Economic Forum & partners and the unique brand of modern totalitarianism they represent.

*

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

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

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

“This was a premeditated terrorist attack on European critical infrastructure (Nord Stream),” says @wallacemick, member of the European Parliament (MEP).

“I find it, frankly, jaw-dropping that the EU is not asking questions as to who is responsible,” says MEP Clare Daly.

Watch the video below.

*

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***

The lesson learned, and largely ignored, is that the government Americans vote for every two and four years does not “represent” them.

East Palestine is the lesson du jour. So long as it remains in the corporate media’s “news cycle,” coverage will downplay the federal government’s decision to ignore the poisoning of thousands of people, not only in East Palestine but across Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Joe Biden does not believe this disaster warrants a reaction. He has not traveled to East Palestine. Biden’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, waited more than two weeks to travel there, and only to shore up the government’s image as responsive and caring, which it is not.

The fact of the matter is, the government does not care about your welfare or protecting you from psychopathic profit-centric corporations. It has nothing but contempt for those, not of the billionaire class, the bankers, CEOs of transnational corporations, and attached lobbyists passing out fiat dollars to keep the crony capitalist game moving along—until it falls off a cliff, as it will soon enough.

The residents of East Palestine are outraged that Biden refused to send FEMA in response to a corporate-caused crime against humanity. As a comparison, consider FEMA’s response to Hurricane Katrina.

“The storm flooded New Orleans, killed more than 1,800 people, and caused $100 billion in property damage,” writes Chris Edwards. “The storm’s damage was greatly exacerbated by the failures of Congress, the Bush administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the Army Corps of Engineers.”

Many Americans have arrived at the conclusion the government is incompetent, corrupt, and unable to respond effectively to natural and manmade disasters. In fact, the problem is far worse than mere incompetence and bureaucratic red tape.

FEMA actively blocked the emergency response to the disaster. FEMA turned away doctors volunteering their services at emergency facilities. FEMA blocked rescue flights headed to New Orleans. FEMA denied the Red Cross acess. FEMA turned away trucks from Walmart loaded with water. FEMA and the Bush administration seriously aggravated the human catastrophe in New Orleans.

It is absurd to think all these “failures” were the result of mismanagement and stupidity. The fact of the matter is, the federal government simply did not consider Katrina and the lives of mostly poor in the Ninth Ward worthy of a humanitarian response. George Carlin was correct: the government doesn’t give a f*#@ about you. It has other priorities. At the time of Katrina, the top priority was killing people in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Now the priority is kickstarting WWIII. Forget about Joe and Pete, they are mouthpieces and apologists for crimes of the state. East Palestine—or Flint, where polluted drinking water has gone unresolved for almost a decade—is not worthy of a response. Ohio is a “red state,” and partisan politics define the uniparty.

Ukraine is not about people. It’s about saving the USG-dominated Empire.

Russia and China are capable challengers, never mind their own problems with corruption and authoritarianism. Russia has said on numerous occasions it will respond with nuclear weapons if confronted by an existential threat.

Lloyd Austin, boss of Murder Incorporated, has specifically stated the objective is to balkanize Russia. It is eager to confront China in its own backyard. For the ruling elite, this competition is the only issue of concern. The people are only needed during elections and, as sacrificial lambs, during manufactured wars.

The lesson of East Palestine and Ukraine is that your welfare is irrelevant to the state. However, through its miseducation system and corporate media, the crony capitalist state has managed to indoctrinate and brainwash millions of people into believing government exists to help them. The excuse is that the government is a bureaucratic dinosaur unable to respond. It’s true, the state is a dinosaur. However, as should be obvious to all, there is scant evidence bureaucrats and statist apparatchiks actually care about you and your family.

They serve a predatory crony capitalist state and its “stakeholders” (large corporations, banks). This is fascism, or corporatism, as Benito Mussolini called it. Fascism is antithetical to individualism. It considers people to be little more than pawns to be used and discarded in pursuit of global hegemony, the process of swindling humanity out of its birthright, and turning the planet into a control freak slave gulag “where you will own nothing” and will be at the mercy of psychopathic killers.

*

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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.

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The Essence of Evil

February 27th, 2023 by Dr. Emanuel Garcia

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***

I have probably used the word ‘evil’ more, in these last three years of “Corona Fascism”, than I had hitherto ever employed the term. It has been my way of attempting – not so successfully, as I will show – to explain how so many people can have been so blithely subjected to the genocide we are experiencing now, with its attendant consequences – consequences that include the subversion of long-standing ethical and medical principles, the inversion of the meaning of formerly well-understood concepts such as vaccination, and the facile depredation of human rights by State powers.

The perpetrators of the universal lockdowns, the imposition of useless masks, the destruction of businesses and livelihoods by these measures and then by the mandates to be inoculated with an unnecessary and dangerous medical intervention – these perpetrators are the people I call evil; and I call evil also those who, knowing better – doctors, for example – went and continue to go along with the horrific charade.

In a recent essay, Naomi Wolf writes that ‘the madness we saw unveiled since 2020 could not have been brought about by normal history, or by ill-intentioned individuals, using human agency’.

And in a recent book Matthias Desmet declares that this madness and the totalitarian measures that shut down the entire globe in short order were not the result of a conspiracy of power-mongers but rather of an organically developing process.

I disagree wholeheartedly.

There is no need to invoke the powers and principalities of another world to explain what occurred, nor is there any reason to dismiss the overwhelming  evidence that the globe followed a narrow and consistent set of harmful and demonstrably unscientific policies precisely because it was highly organized and coordinated by a relatively small group of overlords.

With every day more and more data confirm that the covid inoculations are ineffective and highly dangerous and should never have passed muster during clinical trials. This did not happen by accident, fate, chance, organic development or supernatural visitation: it happened because people in power made the call to kill.

Unless and until we accept the fact that the institutions that have purported to have our well-being at heart have betrayed us, and that political leaders and national governments – like that in New Zealand –have  actively colluded to harm their citizenry, we will be all the more subject to enslavement, control and, stripped of autonomy, consigned to a living if not actual death.

A particularly apposite example of evil comes to mind, one that I have cited before, which involves a local healthcare practitioner who, after having received his first covid inoculation, developed severe cardiac symptoms. Unable to traverse his living room without extreme discomfort and shortness of breath, he consulted a cardiologist who supported his application for an exemption from further jabs. The then-Director General of Health, Ashley Bloomfield, ostensibly a physician, dismissed the cardiologist’s recommendation and without ever examining the person in question refused to grant an exemption. Bloomfield, who has since been awarded with a knighthood, ironically enough, insisted that unless this person received further injections he would not be able to practice in his healthcare role.

What good doctor would have taken such a course? What doctor would have purposefully mandated a further dose of a substance that had already been shown to have caused significant harm? How else to explain this as anything but an act of evil? How else to explain a government’s active suppression of any early and actual treatment of covid except as an act of evil? How to explain why the Medical Council of New Zealand continues to persecute doctors for having prescribed Ivermectin, for having expressed caution about the covid injections, for insisting on individualized treatment approaches to their patients, for warning about the potential hazards of an mRNA jab, for questioning lockdowns and masks and daring to extol natural immunity?

But there is something lacking when evil is invoked as an explanatory concept, because evil itself has as many guises as there are individuals: its manifestations are wildly and unpredictably accomplished, and its tools are seemingly limitless.   G. K. Chesterton informs us that the very Devil himself can quote Scripture for his purpose, and, furthermore,  Shakespeare writes, through his character Banquo:

‘The instruments of darkness tell us truths,

Win us with honest trifles, to betray’s

In deepest consequence’ (Macbeth, Act 1, Scene 3).

Humankind is often celebrated for characteristics that distinguish it from the animal kingdom: language, art, and science. Its great accomplishments are held as shining exemplars of a special status.  There is, however, another distinguishing feature, which is scarcely mentioned: the human capacity for gratuitous cruelty.

Animals murder when they are hungry and revert to peaceable ways when they are sated.  We humans behave otherwise.  For me, it is this capacity for – if not an outright addiction to – gratuitous destruction that constitutes the very kernel of evil.

We see it in small ways when out of the blue an acquaintance may hurl an unnecessary barb another’s way, and in large ways when people in positions of great power have wielded that power to slaughter millions. The well-known genocides perpetrated by Hitler, Stalin and Mao, the wholly unnecessary use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to incinerate hapless civilians and, now, the manipulation of the secrets of the human genome to unleash a murderous so-called vaccination that has resulted in phenomenal ‘excess mortality’ – these all spring from the same root.

Within the breasts and hearts and minds and souls of every human being resides the neverending struggle between the forces of good and the forces of gratuitous destruction.  When the Power Elites conspire to manipulate, they depend upon recruiting our darker drives. Like many I was shocked by the vehemence of self-styled progressives and liberals – like Professor Noam Chomsky – who called for punishing the unjabbed –  healthy people who posed no danger except to arbitrary State authority.

The impulse to do harm purely for the fun, the delight, the wonder of it … this execrable inborn trait, seems rooted in the human need for action. Heavens, no matter how wonderfully described, are boring. Real nirvana is achieved only in those grandiose moments when sadistic and sexual pleasures are merged into one unending fantasy of omnipotently destructive bliss.  It is this kind of infantile and quintessentially human condition to which the Technocratic Singularity, offered by those who have co-opted the ever more condensed and ever more potent tools of digital power, aspires.

As Shakespeare’s Mark Antony declaims over the body of the assassinated Julius Caesar:

‘The evil that men do lives after them;

The good is oft interred with their bones’ (Julius Caesar, Act 3, Scene 2)

Perhaps here is revealed a significant truth that helps us to understand the apparently relentless and unquenchable thirst to kill: in the profoundest depths of the unconscious mind, only evil grants man immortality.

We humans nonetheless have the capacity to love, to show compassion, and to engage in cooperative enterprises of great beauty, every bit as exciting, to my mind, than the theatrical banality of murder, annihilation and control.

We ourselves have the choice to submit to the blandishments of gratuitous harm, as Cain did when he murdered his undeserving brother Abel, or to cultivate our better selves.

Over these past three years I have met many good people who  have chosen wisely. We shall prevail.

*

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand. Visit his substack at https://newzealanddoc.substack.com/

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Daily Sceptic


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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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

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The End Of The Arms Control Era

February 27th, 2023 by Joe Shanley

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***

In his state of the union address on Tuesday, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced the suspension of the New START Treaty, which limits the number of deployed nuclear warheads. “The Defense Ministry and Rosatom must make everything ready for Russia to conduct nuclear tests. We will not be the first to proceed with these tests, but if the United States goes ahead with them, we will as well.” The suspension is not a termination, and the choice to suspend rather than withdraw opens up the possibility for future reinstatement.

What is most significant is this marks the end of the last remaining arms control treaty between Russia and the United States.

As it stands, there are no existing written agreements between the two largest nuclear powers to limit their arms build up, launch time, and magnitude of destruction.

Below is a brief overview of the advent and demise of arms control.

Before The Treaties

Ever since the first atom bombs were dropped on Japan there were discussions of arms control in the new age of atomic weapons. The Baruch Plan of 1946 was an attempt to get an international coalition to regulate atomic energy and its failure resulted in the first arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Soviets obtaining the bomb in 1949 solidified the danger of the new rivalry.

We’ve come a long way from the “duck and cover drills” that were popular in the 50’s, where the fear was instilled in every child’s head as they all shot under their school desks at a moment’s notice in preparation for an atom bomb attack. That fear was not entirely unwarranted—the real threat of a nuclear war with Russia wasn’t just possible, it defined the cold war.

Mutually assured destruction was coined by Donald Brennan with the acronym M.A.D. to ironically describe the reality of complete annihilation by the attacker and defender in a nuclear war. But it wasn’t a joke—with the advent of ballistic missile submarines, it became a doctrine of our national security policy.1

As the Cuban Missile Crisis taught us, we could not sustain a world like this. It was only a matter of time, through malfeasance or ineptitude, that a geopolitical dispute would lead us to MAD. Before any treaties limiting the scope and scale of nuclear arms were implemented, it was the good faith of world leaders that had kept this possibility at bay.

The First Treaties

The first of these treaty negotiations began in the late 1960’s with what became the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty (ABM) under Nixon, which was put in place to limit the arms race build up by limiting air-defense systems. A build of of ABMs were seen to instigate an arms race to deter the effectiveness of the defenders missile interception systems by overwhelming them. Two ABM systems were allowed with 100 anti-ballistic missiles on each site.

In the 80’s, Reagan and Gorbachev both wanted to move beyond the policy of MAD. The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), which has been in negotiations for over a decade, was finally signed by the two leaders in 1987, banned all ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and missile launchers with ranges of 500–1,000 kilometers (310–620 mi) (short medium-range) and 1,000–5,500 km (620–3,420 mi) (intermediate-range). This effectively eliminated the threat of nuclear attacks in Europe. Among the proposals for the INF Treaty was the phasing out of all nuclear weapons, which Gorbachev was ready to do. However, the negations outlined in the treaty as it existed were as far as Reagan was willing to go.2

Gorbachev and Reagan sign the INF Treaty.

President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev signing the INF Treaty in the East Room of the White House.

The Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) signed in 1990 limited the amount of military equipment an alliance could build up on the continent. 20,000 tanks and 20,000 artillery pieces were allotted to each side, including how much military buildup was allowed on the “flanks” of nations. This treaty greatly weakened Russia with the breakup of the Warsaw Pact. A Soviet Era treaty, it underwent several modifications in the post-USSR period, including the former Soviet Republics and the “flank” rules.

Then, in a rare moment of clarity in post USSR relations, came the START Treaty in 1991 under the George H. Bush administration, which limited the number of ICBM’s to 1,600 and nuclear warheads to 6,000. Massive amounts of warheads and other weapons were destroyed, as well as years of mutual inspections between Russia and The United States.

Soon after START II, a treaty that banned the use of multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles (MIRVs) on ICBMs was later negotiated, and even went as far as to be ratified by Russia. The treaty was conditional on the U.S. staying in the ABM treaty, and when Washington pulled out of that treaty on ABM, all START II negotiations were suspended.

In 1955 at the Geneva Conference, Dwight D. Eisenhower first suggested a treaty of non-combatant planes to fly over enemy territory to ensure trust through aerial surveillance flights. In 1992, George Bush Sr. successfully negotiated the Open Skies Treaty of which 34 countries signed. Finally, planes could fly over distant countries to ensure they were not building up arms and following international protocols.

USSR Breakup

The dissolution of the USSR saw the largest nuclear stockpile in the world fall into the hands of numerous republics overnight. 35,000 nuclear warheads were redistributed into countries like Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and other former Soviet Republics. “Perhaps the most astonishing fact about the past twenty years is something that did not happen” wrote Harvard professor Graham Allison. One by one, they were sent back to Russia, dismantled and decommissioned.

Ukraine, embroiled in war today, would have been the 3rd largest nuclear power if it were not for disarmament in the 1990s. The Clinton administration had convinced the leaders of Ukraine that nuclear weapons would not deter Russian aggression, but rather incentivize it. The prompt and complete denuclearization of Ukraine was completed in exchange for security promises.

Missile silo in the Central Ukraine for a SS-24 missile

Missile silo in the Central Ukraine for a SS-24 missile

But this time was not without it’s moments. January 25, 1995 saw a high altitude Norwegian missile exercise that was detected by the Russian Air defense system. The trajectory was on course for Moscow. Russian President Boris Yeltsin was handed a brief case with the nuclear codes in them and in a matter of minutes had to make a decision. If this test had been done with missiles from the INF treaty, the amount of time that Yeltsin would’ve had to make his decision would go from 30 minutes to about 5 minutes. In all likelihood, the INF treaty had saved the world from mutually assured destruction. Without arms control, it would be a world gone MAD.

The 2000s: Withdrawal and Suspension

The late 90’s had seen the deterioration of U.S.-Soviet relations over conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia and Kosovo, with a brief reprieve after the cooperation in military operations following the 9/11 attacks. But Bush’s war on terror and the fear of another attack caused him to suspend the ABM treaty in 2001, deeming it unnecessary in the post-USSR age and defending that anti-ballistic missile systems were necessary “to protect our people from future terrorist or rogue state missile attacks.”3

Anti-ballistic missile defense was never fully functional, intercepting 11 out of 19 missiles in a recent test.4

They cost hundreds of billions of dollars to maintain and suffer from program management issues.5,6

As writer James M Acton states: “No U.S. test has ever involved a target missile traveling at the speed necessary to reach the lower 48 states from North Korea. No test ever has involved a salvo of two or more incoming ICBMs or has appeared to have included realistic countermeasures, such as decoys shaped like real warheads.”7

In recent years, Russia and China have introduced a range of new ICBMs that are designed to counter U.S. missile defense systems. Putin has stated that these items are a response to the U.S. pulling out of the ABM treaty.

The Conventional Forces In Europe Treaty went through several reformations in the 90’s to accommodate for the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in Eastern Europe and the balance of alliances. In 2007, the U.S. established military bases in Romania and Bulgaria which Moscow claimed was a breach of the treaty. NATO disputed this claim by stating the U.S. bases were not permanent. However, the Washington Times confirmed from a senior U.S. official the agreement allowed for permanent bases.8

The U.S. still has military bases there to this day. Russia formally withdrew from the treaty in 2014.

The “Russian Reset” that the Obama Administration employed with Russia was a geostrategic policy intended to ease tensions between Russia and the international community following the 2008 Russo-Georgian War. During this time, they negotiated the New START treaty, which calls for halving the amount of nuclear missile launchers. The Russian Reset was short lived, and tensions soon reignited with the Maidan Coup and the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation in 2014.

Post-Maidan Uprising

During Trump’s first few years in office, his administration was attacked with constant Kremlin collusion allegations. The administration responded with a heavier hand to look tough towards Russia, often hastily and irrational. Arms control treaties were collateral damage of that campaign.

In 2018, the U.S. State Department released a report that Russia was violating the INF treaty with their SSC-8 missile. Russia responded by re-asserting that the missile was within compliance standards of the New START. They went on to strike back at the U.S., claiming that the European missile defense launch system could be used to fire cruise missiles in violation of the treaty.9

Trump responded by abruptly withdrawing from the treaty, much to the surprise of other NATO countries.

9M729 (SSC-8) | Missile Threat

Test launch of the Russian SCC-8 Missile, accused of violating the INF Treaty

The Open Skies Treaty, while negotiated in 1992, did not go into effect until 2002. In August of that year, the first Russian planes would fly over the U.S. in accordance with the treaty. U.S. planes flew over Russia later that year. But the international community would soon place a double standard on Russia. In 2006, Latvia suspended flights over it’s territory for one month for NATO ministers visiting the country. In April of 2008, several religious holidays lined up to create a shortage of hotels for visiting groups and Russia asked for a one-week delay in overhead flights. The U.S. accused Russia of violating the terms of the treaty, while Latvia received no such condemnation.

In 2017, a Russian plane flew over Washington DC, and this was too much for the legislators in Washington to swallow. The Defense Appropriation Law of 2018 banned the use of public funds for the Open Skies Program unless the president certified that Russia has complied with all American wishes regarding the treaty. Congress had given Trump a choice: concede with letting the treaty expire or look more like he’s cozying up to Russia. In May of 2020 Trump gave the required 6 months notice to withdraw. Putin soon followed suit. Russia formally withdrew from the treaty in December of 2021.

The End of the Arms Control Era:

The final nail in the coffin for the arms control era took place this week with NATO demanding that Russia return to the implementation of the New START Treaty with inspections of their nuclear defense facilities. Inspections have been paused since 2020 from COVID-19, but with the request to return Putin responded “It is a kind of theatre of the absurd…we know that the West is directly involved in the Kiev regime’s attempts to strike at our strategic aviation bases….and now they want to inspect our defense facilities? In the current conditions of confrontation, it simply sounds insane.”

Putin suspending the New START with no end to the proxy war in Ukraine in sight marks the end of the arms control era, or at least, this era. Not only are there no limiting treaties, there are no talks happening between Russia and the United States. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken has had only one documented meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov since the start of the Russian invasion last February, and that meeting was over a prisoner exchange.

John Kennedy phoning with Nikita Khrushchev during those fateful days in 1962 saved us. Ronald Reagan’s relationship with Mikhail Gorbachev negotiated the end of the Soviet Union and the historic nuclear arms control treaties that led us into the post-USSR era. Bill Clinton’s relationship with Boris Yeltsin allowed for the dismemberment of the thousands of nuclear weapons that were left in the former Soviet Republics after it’s collapse.

But today, there are no consistent lines of communication between Russia and the United States, and no arms control treaties.

Thus ends the arms control era.

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Notes

1. http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/cold-war/strategy/strategy-mutual-assured-destruction.htm

2. https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/01/ronald-reagans-disarmament-dream/422244/

3. https://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/12/20011213-4.html

4. https://carnegieendowment.org/2021/12/13/u.s.-exit-from-anti-ballistic-missile-treaty-has-fueled-new-arms-race-pub-85977

5. https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2021-01/56949-MissileDefenseReview.pdf

6. https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-21-314.pdf

7. No. 4

8. https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2006/apr/24/20060424-121528-1841r/

9. https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty

Featured image is from Oriental Review

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