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Liz Truss it not only ignorant with regard to nuclear weapons and their devastating impacts, she does not know the geography of the Russian Federation, claiming that Rostov on the Don as well as Voronezh belong to Ukraine; it’s like saying that Manchester belongs to Scotland:

Russia’s Kommersant newspaper quoted two diplomatic sources as saying that during their closed-door meeting on Thursday Lavrov had asked Truss if she recognised Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh – two regions in the south of the country where Russia has been building up its forces.

Kommersant said Truss replied that Britain would never recognise them as Russian, and had to be corrected by her ambassador. (Reuters report)

My message to the Conservative party, do not vote for an Ignoramus who could lead Britain and the World into the unthinkable, a nuclear war which threatens the future of humanity.

Michel Chossudovsky, August 26, 2022

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The United States Government is pressing Japan’s Government to revise its 1947 U.S.-created Constitution so as to eliminate its clause (Article 9) that prevents Japan from invading any country. The clause asserts that:

the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The reason for this change is that Japan could play a decisive role assisting America’s unofficial war against America’s World War II ally China, which country America’s Government wants to turn into a vassal-nation like Japan long has been (ever since 1945).

America especially wants Japan to invade China when and if China invades (so as to retake control over) the “Republic of China”, which is China’s province of Taiwan, which province Japan had conquered from China in 1895, and which province the United States Government in 1945 forced Japan to return to China, as part of Japan’s WW II surrender, which today’s U.S. Government now wants to reverse, so that China can now become captured by America as Japan was captured in 1945.

Only if Taiwan becomes separated from China can America defeat China, which would greatly advance America toward its goal of being the world’s hegemon, the first-ever all-encompassing global empire.

So: America has now 100% reversed its position during WW II, of opposing Japan and supporting China, to instead opposing China and supporting Japan. Removal of the peaceful-nation clause in the U.S.-written Japanese Constitution will be necessary for this purpose.

If America succeeds in restoring Japan’s “right of belligerency,” then here is why Japan would provide crucial assistance to the U.S. regime’s effort to grab Taiwan for the U.S. empire and so to conquer China:

On 9 June 2022, Salman Rafi Sheikh was the first person to make note of the fact that the U.S. imperial regime has instructed both of its two former WW II enemies, Germany and Japan, to re-arm, but, this time for America’s empire, instead of for their own.

(In other words: the U.S. regime’s view is that imperialistic fascism is okay if the empire is America, but NOT if the empire is Germany, or Japan.) He headlined “How Washington is Turning the Pacific into a New Theatre of NATO’s Conflict”, and noted that,

“Japan’s drive to arm itself has an interesting parallel in Europe, where Germany, too, has decided to massively increase its total defence spending to 100 billion euros. With Washington actively supporting these critical changes to establish powerful militaries around its core rival states – Russia and China [respectively] in Europe and Asia – new forms of conflict are likely to emerge, with prospects of major counter alliances on the horizon too.”

He went on to say:

Japan’s increasing defence budget comes on top of the full possibility of “interoperability” between the US and Japanese units, allowing the latter to “practice its forward-deployed attack capabilities.” What is extremely important to note here is that the core purpose of the “interoperability” is not defensive; it is offensive, which means that Japan’s so-called “pacifism” is nothing more than a rhetoric that Tokyo uses – and will continue to use – to mask its rapidly growing military preparedness against Russia and China.

That this process is being actively supported by the US is evident from the Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s announcement, on the sidelines of Biden’s Tokyo visit, to “drastically strengthen” its military capabilities.

According to a new economic policy draft released by the Kishida administration, the decision is a response to “attempts to unilaterally change the status quo by forces in East Asia, making regional security increasingly severe.” If this assessment sounds vague, it is by design to camouflage Japan’s rise as a new military power that can rival Russia and China as a US ally.

In fact, it is already acting as a US ally against Russia in the Russia-Ukraine conflict. In April, Japanese officials announced that they will send defence equipment – drones and protective gear – to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian military fight the Russian forces. While Japan’s Self-Defence Forces rules prohibit the transfer of defence products to other countries, Defence Minister Nobuo Kishi justified this transfer as “commercial” and “disused items.” More self-serving justifications will be invented to mask Japan’s so-called “pacifist militarization.”

Further tensions with Russia are likely to follow. In April, around the same time Tokyo announced increasing its budget, the Japanese government also shifted its stance on the Kuril islands.

In its 2022 Diplomatic Bluebook, Japan said that “The Northern Territories are a group of islands Japan has sovereignty over and an integral part of Japan’s territory, but currently they are illegally occupied by Russia.”

This description is a major diplomatic shift insofar as it raises the level of tensions surrounding what was previously disputed territory. Calling Russia an “illegal” occupier shows Japan just subscribing to the western narrative about the Russian “occupation” of Crimea.

In practical terms, by raising the temperature against Russia (and China as well), Japan is transforming itself into a front-line military ally of the US and NATO in this part of the world.

Japan’s militarization under the shadow of US support is also tied to how the US/West is increasingly projecting NATO not as a regional alliance; in fact, recent developments have shown how NATO is arrogating to itself a “global” role. In April, the UK’s foreign minister Liz Truss called for a “global NATO.” She added that NATO must have a “global outlook” to be able “ to pre-empt threats in the Indo-Pacific, working with our allies like Japan and Australia to ensure the Pacific is protected. And we must ensure that democracies like Taiwan are able to defend themselves.”

Japan is, thus, by default a logical extension of NATO’s global i.e., anti-Russia and anti-China, geo-politics. Tokyo’s decision to re-arm itself to acquire offensive capability is, thus, not tied to its own needs but to the ways the US is manufacturing a global anti-Russia and anti-China coalition to defeat them and sustain its own global hegemony.

On Sunday, 21 August 2022, Japan Times bannered “Japan weighs deploying over 1,000 longer-range missiles amid China tensions”, and reported that,

With an eye toward narrowing a cavernous “missile gap” with China, Japan is considering stockpiling more than 1,000 long-range cruise missiles, a report said Sunday, as tensions over Taiwan grow.

The Defense Ministry is looking to deploy its ground-launched Type-12 standoff missiles — and extend their range from around 200 kilometers (124 miles) to more than 1,000 km — mainly to its far-flung southwestern islands and the Kyushu region, the Yomiuri daily reported, citing unidentified government sources.

The envisioned weapons, which would also be ship- and air-launch capable, would put the Chinese and North Korean coasts within striking distance, the report added.

In order to acquire the weapons at an early date, the Defense Ministry could include requests for them when it unveils its initial budget proposal for fiscal 2023, which is expected to be released at the end of this month.

On August 24th, Russia’s RT headlined “Drawing the sword: Is Japan getting ready to move against China? Relations with Beijing are crucial for regional trade, but is Tokyo ready to put it all on the line over Taiwan and Washington’s favor?”, and opined that,

“Japan now makes it publicly known that the continued autonomy of Taiwan is critical to its own survival. Why? Because a reunification of the island with mainland China would result in Beijing gaining maritime dominance around all of Japan’s southwest periphery.”

Furthermore:

“Taiwan, once under the colonial rule of Japan, which annexed it from China, has also increased its pro-Japan sentiment significantly. Taiwan, once under the colonial rule of Japan, which annexed it from China, has also increased its pro-Japan sentiment significantly.”

Wikipedia’s article “China-Japan relations” makes quite clear that the national economies of China and Japan are highly dependent upon each other. Furthermore, if a reader understands that historically the winners of wars have received reparations payments from the war’s losers (who usually were the victim not the aggressor) the article makes quite clear that Japan has consistently been the aggressor and imperialist against China, which suffered enormously from Japan’s aggressions against China, and ended up losing not only those wars but those reparations-payments to the victor, each time (namely, these were China’s payments to Japan):

Japan’s compensation [edit]

From late 19th century to early 20th century, one of the many factors contributing to the bankruptcy of the Qing government was Japan’s requirement for large amount of war reparations. China paid huge amounts of silver to Japan under various treaties, including the Sino-Japanese Friendship and Trade Treaty (1871), Treaty of Shimonoseki (1895), the Triple Intervention (1895) and the Boxer Protocol (1901). After the First Sino-Japanese War in 1894–95, the Qing government paid a total of 200,000,000 taels of silver to Japan for reparations.^[76]

The Second Sino-Japanese War 1936-1945 also caused huge economic losses to China. However, Chiang Kai-shek waived reparations claims for the war when the ROC concluded the Treaty of Taipei with Japan in 1952. Similarly, when Japan normalized its relations with the PRC in 1972, Mao Zedong waived the claim of war reparations from Japan.^[77]

So: because the post-FDR U.S. Government, which has dominated the world since 1945, opposed China and supported Japan, WW II’s victor in that War was the new Truman-created (FDR-rejecting) U.S. imperial regime, which didn’t want its Japanese possession to become subjected to having to pay war-debts for Japan’s barbarisms (such as the Rape of Nanking against Chinese), Japan, yet again, got away with murder — mass-murder, of course — when WW II ended. Japan lucked-out, to become now a vassal-nation in the world’s new imperialistic fascist empire, of America, the U.S. empire; so, China, yet again, ate all its losses, instead of being compensated for any of them. Under the new Truman policy, China was being treated as an enemy, no longer as an ally (as it had been under FDR). This has been the U.S. regime’s policy ever since, and especially recently as that regime now tries to complete its all-inclusive global empire, or “hegemony,” by taking both China and Russia.

However, even Japan will suffer if it joins in America’s war against China. Here is why:

Japan is faced now with choosing between being a possession of Americans, and the U.S. regime’s main enforcer against Asians, in that win-lose global-imperialistic game; or, else, becoming, for the first time, an ally, actually, in an authentic win-win game, along with all other Asian countries, including and led by the largest of them all, China, which already is Japan’s top trading-partner, doing 23.47% of its combined imports and exports, as compared with its #2 trading-partner, America, which is 11.27%, less than half as much as with China. With America, the game would be worse (even IF Japan would win, which is doubtful), and the economic damage to the Japanese people would be immense (especially if China wins in that win-lose game, which outcome would not be unlikely; and, this time, the Japanese people WOULD be paying reparations in addition to their war-losses; so, it would be the most damaging defeat ever for Japan, far worse than WW II).

CONSEQUENTLY, FOR THE WELFARE OF BOTH THE CHINESE AND THE JAPANESE PEOPLE: Negotiators from both countries, plus from each of the region’s OTHER countries, must meet together at a comprehensive East-Asian Conference, to draw up a regional strategy for the coming Asia-dominated Century, repudiating and renouncing ALL empires, and ALL needless win-lose international games.

If this fails to happen (and reasonably soon), then a WW III will likely occur, and it will destroy the entire planet. The U.S. regime is set upon a course of world-conquest, which will end either now peacefully, or else soon with WW III. Japan will make the key decision. (I am expecting it to be for war, because Japan has been an obedient vassal-nation ever since 1945.)

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

Featured image: Japan is moving to remilitarize despite its pacifist constitution. Image: Shutterstock via The Conversation

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On 24 August, Ukraine celebrated her Independence Day. It also marked the dubious anniversary of six months of war; a war that could have been drastically shortened, tens of thousands of lives saved and peace installed – hadn’t it been for the relentless western / NATO provocations, and billions worth of Western weapons deliveries to Ukraine. The West pretends these killer weapons are destined to create peace – and would you believe the media are able to make most of the western world population believe in this nonsense. 

It is literally George Orwell’s 1984: “Peace is War and War is Peace;” Orwell’s classical Doublespeak, a language that deliberately obscures, disguises, distorts, or reverses the truth.

On that very day, the NYT brazenly reports, without any evidence whatsoever, that on “Ukraine’s Independence Day, a Russian attack killed at least 22 people and wounded 50, at a train station in eastern Ukraine, near Dnipro.”

The NYT continues, “But despite the missile strike, one of the deadliest on Ukraine’s railways in recent months, Ukraine stood defiant as the country celebrated its separation from the Soviet Union.” In a slickly produced address earlier in the day, President Volodymyr Zelensky declared Ukraine “reborn” six months after Russia invaded.

Such are the flagrant lies dished out to not only the American people. The European media are equally corrupted. At times even more so.

It gradually emerges that public support for Western interference – Western support of Ukraine – is fading by the day.

According to a Reuters / Ipsos poll released on 23 August, still 53% of US adults agree that Washington should support Kiev, “until Russian forces are withdrawn from territory claimed by Ukraine”. Those with doubts to continue pumping weapons into Ukraine, amount to 37%, and 18% oppose such “aid” altogether. Some 28% are undecided.

Forty percent of Americans now agree with the statement that “the problems of Ukraine are none of our business, and we should not interfere,” comparing with 31% when the same question was asked in April 2022.

The awakening might indicate that fewer and ever fewer people believe the mainstream propaganda – and especially the Zelenskyy statements. The truth of who is killing whom, and the truth about the corrupt and shamefully criminal Ukraine President, is slowly but surely seeping through the veil of deception.

In the case of the attack on the railway station, there is no doubt that the assault was launched by Ukraine’s forces on her own people, killing 22 of them and injuring at least 50. The figures are not verified. They are the ones reported by the “distinguished” NYT (25 August 2022).

Similarly, The Guardian reports (29 July 2022) that according to the Russian Defense Ministry, 40 prisoners were killed and 75 wounded in the attack on the prison in the frontline town of Olenivka. The prison was struck by Ukrainian forces with US-made Himars rockets. Yet, Ukraine was blaming Russia with the attack on its own people and with US-made weapons.

It would be hard to make believe more ludicrous statements. Yet, by telling half-truth or full-lies relentlessly and repeatedly the Western media (still) gets away with murder among most of its listeners. But – the Times are a-changing.

Russia from the beginning has followed – and keeps following – a strict policy of avoiding civilian casualties as best as possible.

These attacks on Ukraine’s own people are certainly not carried out by Russian forces, but rather by Ukrainian military, and / or their associated Nazi Azov Battalions.

They also killed without scruples tens of thousands of pro-Russian Ukrainians in the Donbas and northeastern Ukraine areas, since the US / Western-instigated 2014 Maidan Coup.

No doubt, the attacks were sanctioned by Zelenskyy. He follows clear instructions from NATO and the – unelected – European Council. That the EC under Ursula von der Leyen is an unelected and tyrannical executing branch of the Deep State or the “Dark elitist Cult”, is no longer a secret. Madame von der Leyen is a member of the WEF’s (World Economic Forum) Managing Council. Similarly, the relentless attacks on the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant in southern Ukraine, the largest in Europe, is constantly blamed on Russia, or even on President Putin personally by the Western media.

Again, the contrary is true. In order to prevent another Chernobyl-type nuclear disaster (26 April 1986), or worse, Russian troops have been occupying the Zaporozhye Plant since March 2022. They were worried, and rightly so, about a nuclear annihilation of much of Western Europe and Russia. Finally, on 19 August, Russia has shut down the plant to limit the worst of a potential disaster.

Moscow has warned that the continuing attacks could ultimately render the power plant inoperable and might even result in a major disaster, similar to Chernobyl. Kiev and some Western officials, however, have accused Russia of shelling the plant, despite the fact that it is controlled by Russia’s own troops.

As unquestioned Western support is waning, Western media ever so often report the Zelenskyy government’s accusations of Russia, but finish with the paraphrased observation that “it is difficult to verify the facts” – an own skin-saving-statement.

The next Biden Administration promised shipment of war material is of the order of an estimated US$ 3 billion. Is it part of the roughly US$ 50 billion already approved US war support to Ukraine – or is it apart?

Nobody keeps track. In any case, even Western media report that about 70% of the war material sent to Ukraine ends up on the black market. Only about 30% reaches the frontline – and Ukrainian soldiers who are totally unprepared to handle the sophisticated Western weaponry.

It is high time that the truth comes out – and the majority of the people see beyond the propaganda, see the most flagrant war crimes committed by Zelenskyy’s Ukraine – and stop supporting this war.

The sooner the West stops sending weaponry and tanks and most sophisticated war materials to Ukraine, the sooner peace may return.

If only PEACE were part of the Great Reset Agenda – and part of the UN Agenda 2030 and part of Klaus Schwab’s “4^th Industrial Revolution” – meaning the digitization, robotization, and absolute control of everything and every surviving human being. But PEACE, as we are still thinking humans conceive of it, is not part of the Reset Agenda.

But we are many and they are few. We may replace the Reset with the Peace agenda.

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

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

Featured image is from Rise Up Times

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Indian Foreign Minister S Jaishankar confidently boasted recently that the world has accepted India’s energy policy and bilateral relations with Russia. Jaishankar’s statement prompted US State Department spokesperson Ned Price to say that it is going to be a long-term proposition for New Delhi to reorient foreign policy away from Moscow – but despite the QUAD alliance, India is unlikely to abandon its relations with Russia.

When asked about India increasing its imports of Russian oil and fertilisers and potentially buying the Russian S-400 air defence systems, Ned Price said on August 24:

“It is not for me to speak about another country’s foreign policy. But what I can do is point out what we have heard from India. We have seen countries around the world speak clearly, including with their votes in the UN General Assembly against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine.”

“But we also recognise, as I was saying just a moment ago, that this is not flipping a light switch. This is something that, especially for countries that have historical relationships with Russia. Relationships that, as is the case with India, extend back decades, it is going to be a long-term proposition to re-orient foreign policy away from Russia,” he added.

Although the US and European Union have imposed heavy sanctions on Russia since the military operation in Ukraine began on February 24, India took the opportunity to instead raise oil imports from Russia, ignoring criticism from the West and refusing to go down the path of European self-sabotage.

Berlin recently approved a set of energy-saving measures for the winter which will limit the use of lighting and heating. Germany’s Economy Minister Robert Habeck told reporters that his country wanted to free itself “as quickly as possible from the grip of Russian energy imports.” Instead, Germany finds itself in a position of needing to lower energy use instead of behaving as the EU’s leading country.

Starting from September, public buildings, apart from hospitals and the like, will have heating at a maximum of 19C; public monuments and buildings will also not be lit up for aesthetic reasons; businesses could be banned from keeping their shops illuminated at night; private swimming pool heating could also be banned; and, coal and oil cargo will be given priority over passenger travel on railways.

“We have a shortage situation on the rails right now,” German Transport Minister Volker Wissing said. “That means that if additional fuel transports are temporarily necessary, we would have to prioritize them.”

This European self-sabotage, all for the sake of pretending to defend liberalism in the form of Kiev’s authoritarian regime and on instructions from Washington, is a situation that India wants to completely avoid as it continues to progress and develop into a major power.

In May, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia to become India’s second-biggest supplier of oil, behind Iraq, as refiners snapped up Russian crude available at major discounts. Indian refiners bought about 25 million barrels of Russian oil in May, ignoring all condemnation from the West and refusing to abandon its decades-old relationship with Moscow, especially as Indians do not forget the West’s endless support and backing of Pakistan.

Jaishankar stressed on August 23 that India had not been defensive about its purchases of Russian oil but made the US and others realize instead that the government had the “moral duty” to ensure that the people got the “best deal” – something that European governments do not concern themselves with.

Rather than capitulating to the endless pressures from the West, India has unapologetically steamed ahead with its bilateral relations with Russia. Cards based on Russia’s Mir payment system will soon be accepted at ATMs and Point-of-Sale terminals in India as discussions to construct a new financial system independent of the West, that can bypass sanctions on Russia, continue.

Russia also announced its intentions to build the next generation armoured vehicles and submarines in joint collaboration with India. This comes as the delivery of the second regiment of the S-400 missile defence system is already underway.

With India pushing ahead in strengthening relations with Russia in the energy, financial and military sector, the West is forced to exaggerate minor events as if it were a major shift in New Delhi’s foreign policy. Western media exaggerated the significance of India voting for the first time against Russia during a “procedural vote” at the United Nations Security Council on Ukraine. The 15-member UN body invited Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to address a meeting through a video tele-conference on August 24, something that was only opposed by Moscow and abstained by Beijing.

So far, New Delhi has abstained at the UNSC on Ukraine, with the recent vote being the only exception. This has annoyed the Western powers, led by the US, but this has not stopped them from making a big deal out of India voting to allow Zelensky to speak at the UNSC meeting. This of course does not reflect or signify any Indian foreign policy shift, but is rather a desperate attempt to portray non-existent cracks in New Delhi-Moscow ties. Instead, New Delhi will continue its decades-long cooperation with Moscow, one that has been long and fruitful.

It is recalled that Jaishankar said in June that “Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe’s problems are the world’s problems, but the world’s problems are not Europe’s problems.” Soon Europe will realize, especially Germany, that its energy and financial crisis, spurred on by an ill-thought out Russophobic policy, will certainly not be India’s problem, especially with winter just around the corner.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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In America these days, almost any information about North Korea, be it rumor, fake news, or just plain silly, becomes fodder for the mainstream media. From TMZ to The Guardian, reporters know there is an insatiable appetite for anything that puts Kim and his regime in a bad or crazy light.

But when it comes to South Korea, which hosts 28,500 American ground troops and the Pentagon’s largest military base outside of North America, U.S. media coverage is, shall we say, highly selective. That was made resoundingly clear on August 14, when Seoul was the scene for the largest public demonstration in decades against the U.S. military presence in South Korea.

Amazingly, not a word about the protest appeared in the U.S. media.

That Saturday, thousands of people chanting “this land is not a U.S. war base” demonstrated against Ulchi Freedom Shield, the first large-scale military exercises between U.S. and South Korean forces since 2017. The protests were organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), South Korea’s second-largest labor federation. They were joined by a range of progressive allies, including People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD), an influential citizen’s group founded in 1994.

Anti-US military protest, Seoul, South Korea, August 13, 2022. Screen grab via Chinese state supported media outlet CGTN/YouTube.com

“At a time when military tensions on the Korean Peninsula are escalating and there is no clue for inter-Korean dialogue, we are concerned that an aggressive large-scale military exercise will exacerbate the situation,” PSPD declared. “We once again urge the US and ROK governments to suspend the ROK-US joint military exercise and make efforts to create conditions for dialogue.” At the demonstration, protesters took direct aim at the heart of U.S. policy in Korea, with signs that read “No war rehearsal, No U.S.” and “No Korea-U.S.-Japan military cooperation.”

Outside of the Korean press, the only outlets to cover this massive showing against militarism were Iran’s Press TV and China’s CGTN, which provided extensive video of the mobilization. The single print story on the march appeared in Xinhua, China’s daily wire service. Neither the New York Times or the Washington Post, which often set the pace for U.S. press coverage of Asia, deemed the demonstration newsworthy.

Hypocrisy? Yes. As I put it in a sardonic tweet, “Every rumor, fake news, intelligence leak or eyebrow twitch about Kim Jong Un and North Korea gets star treatment in the US media.” Yet, when “thousands of SOUTH KOREANS” march in Seoul against US-ROK war games, “NOT ONE PEEP.” The contrast seemed to hit a nerve: by the weekend, nearly 6,000 Twitter users had “liked” my post and over 2,000 had retweeted it.

The contradictions were evident on Twitter itself. As it often does with countries we’re not supposed to like, it slapped a label on one of my posts about the demonstration, urging users to “stay informed” because “this Tweet links to a Iran state-affiliated media website.” With that warning, Twitter was effectively delegitimizing my own coverage of the demonstration.

To be fair, political rallies on the left and right are a common occurrence in South Korea; obviously, editors and reporters must make choices about what to cover. But in a country where a majority of its citizens support the presence of U.S. forces and a U.S. general has operational control over their army in times of war, a rally of several thousand citizens openly calling for a U.S. troop withdrawal is certainly newsworthy.

At the same time, the drills have been a hot topic for years. In 2018, with much of Washington opposed, they were downgraded to computerized simulations as a way to build trust during the denuclearization talks between President Donald Trump and North Korean Chairman Kim Jong Un. Those talks collapsed in 2019, primarily over Trump’s refusal to lift U.S. sanctions in return for a partial shut down of the North’s nuclear infrastructure.

This year, with North Korea regularly testing its long-range missiles, the new presidents in Washington and Seoul, Joe Biden and Yoon Suk Yeol, decided to resume the real-life exercises. The air, land, and sea drills, which in the past have mobilized around 50,000 South Korean and 17,500 U.S. soldiers, began on August 22 and wind up on September 1.

Sadly, the discrepancies in coverage reflect old patterns going back to the early days of the Cold War.

Editorial staffs of major U.S. newspapers and cable news shows (and now, Twitter’s upstart crew) are steeped in Cold War mythologies about the Korean War and largely reflect the viewpoint of Washington’s national security community. Currently, both parties see in the North a determined and dangerous long-term foe, and in the South a reluctant ally torn between loyalty to the United States and its expansive economic ties with China, America’s new nemesis. In this world, there is little room for coverage of South Korean trade unionists, leftists, and progressives who stand against the American consensus.

That mindset was recently on display at the Post when it praised South Koreans for electing Yoon, an inexperienced conservative hawk who said during his campaign that he might consider a pre-emptive strike on North Korea “to protect peace” on the peninsula. “South Korea makes a welcome turn toward the U.S. — just when it is really needed,” the headline crowed. The Post editorial also took a nasty swipe at former President Moon Jae-in, parroting right-wing talking points that he had “consciously” played down North Korea’s human rights record and “balked” at adding new batteries to the American THAAD missile deployment that has drawn Beijing’s ire.

For America’s papers of record, the failure to cover South Korea’s progressive left also reflects a failure of nerve. The KCTU and People’s Solidarity that organized this month’s antiwar demonstration have deep roots in the democratic movement of the late 1980s, when years of struggle culminated in the massive demonstrations of 1987 that forced the pro-U.S. generals who had ruled the South for 26 years to step aside. During that tumultuous era, both the Times and the Post offered extensive (and often outstanding) coverage of dissidents and government repression. But in recent years, they have been far more interested in covering North Korean defectors and warning the public (repeatedly) about a possible underground nuclear test than exploring the complex internal politics of South Korea.

Ironically, these papers are better prepared now to cover Korea than any time in the past 40 years. Since 2020, they have built large bureaus in South Korea and relocated their Asian news hubs from Hong Kong to Seoul, giving them an opportunity for first-class coverage of perhaps the most dynamic country in Asia. “Looking at a five, 10, 20 year horizon, [Seoul] just feels like it’s right in the middle of the action,” Stephen Dunbar-Johnson, the Times’sinternational president, recently told the Korea Joongang Daily.

But in this coverage, the opinions and views of all Koreans need to be heard. That is particularly true when dealing with an issue as critical as the U.S.-Korean alliance, which President Biden has called “a linchpin of peace, stability, and prosperity” but many Koreans now view as a barrier to their country’s future.

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***

If you want to prove that statement wrong, I think you’ll want to start by proving wrong one or more of these five points:

1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.
2. Not one single member has done so.
3. Ending U.S. participation would effectively end the war.
4. Despite the temporary truce, millions of lives depend on ending the war.
5. The passionate speeches in 2018 and 2019 by Senators and Representatives demanding an end to the war when they knew they could count on a veto from Trump have vanished during the Biden years chiefly because Party is more important than human lives.

Let’s fill these five points out a little:

1. A single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.

Here’s an explanation from the Friends Committee on National Legislation:

“Any member of the House or Senate, regardless of committee assignment, can invoke section 5(c) of the War Powers Resolution and get a full floor vote on whether to require the president to remove U.S. armed forces from hostilities. Under the procedural rules written into the War Powers Act, these bills receive a special expedited status that requires Congress to make a full floor vote within 15 legislative days of their introduction. This provision is especially useful because it allows members of Congress to force important debates and votes on the president’s use of military force and Congressional war authority.”

Here’s a link to the actual wording of the law (as the resolution was passed in 1973), and another (as part of existing law in 2022). At the first one, see section 7. At the other one, see section 1546. Both say this: when a resolution is thus introduced, the foreign affairs committee of the relevant house gets no more than 15 days, then the full house gets no more than 3 days. In 18 days or less you get a debate and a vote.

Now, it is true that the Republican House passed a law violating and effectively blocking this law in December of 2018 preventing any forcing of votes on ending the war on Yemen for the remainder of 2018. The Hill reported:

“‘Speaker [Paul] Ryan [(R-Wis.)] is preventing Congress from conducting our constitutional duty and once again, breaking the rules of the House,’ [Rep. Ro Khanna] said in a statement. [Rep. Tom] Massie added on the House floor that the move ‘violates both the Constitution and the War Powers Act of 1973. Just when you thought Congress couldn’t get any swampier,’ he said, ‘we continue to exceed even the lowest expectation.’”

According to the Washington Examiner:

“‘It’s kind of a chicken move, but you know, sadly it’s kind of a characteristic move on the way out the door,’ Virginia Democrat [and Senator] Tim Kaine told reporters of the House rule on Wednesday. ‘[Ryan is] trying to play Saudi Arabia’s defense lawyer, and that’s stupid.’”

As far as I can tell, either no such trick has been played since the dawning of 2019, or every single member of the U.S. Congress, and every single media outlet, is either in favor of it or deems it unworthy of reporting or both. So, no law has undone the War Powers Resolution. So, it stands, and a single member of the House or Senate can compel a speedy vote on ending U.S. participation in the war on Yemen.

2. Not one single member has done so.

We’d have heard. Despite campaign promises, the Biden Administration and Congress keep the weapons flowing to Saudi Arabia, and keep the U.S. military participating in the war. Despite both houses of Congress voting to end U.S. participation in the war when Trump had promised a veto, neither house has held a debate or a vote in the year-and-a-half since Trump left town. A House resolution, HJRes87, has 113 cosponsors — more than were ever obtained by the resolution passed and vetoed by Trump — while SJRes56 in the Senate has 7 cosponsors. Yet no votes are held, because the Congressional “leadership” chooses not to, and because NOT ONE SINGLE MEMBER of the House or Senate can be found who’s willing to compel them to. So, we go on asking.

3. Ending U.S. participation would effectively end the war.

It’s never been a secret, that the Saudi-“led” war is so dependent on the U.S. military (not to mention U.S. weapons) that were the U.S. to either stop providing the weapons or compel its military to cease violating all of the laws against war, never mind the U.S. Constitution, or both, the war would end.

4. Despite the temporary truce, millions of lives depend on ending the war.

The Saudi-U.S. war on Yemen has killed many more people than the war in Ukraine thus far, and the death and suffering continue despite a temporary truce. If Yemen is no longer the very worst place in the world, that’s principally because of how bad Afghanistan — its funds stolen — has become.

Meanwhile the truce in Yemen has failed to open roads or ports; famine (potentially aggravated by the war in Ukraine) still threatens millions; and historic buildings are collapsing from rain and war damage.

CNN reports that, “While many in the international community celebrate [the truce], some families in Yemen are left watching their children slowly die. There are around 30,000 people with life-threatening diseases requiring treatment abroad, according to the Houthi-controlled government in the capital Sanaa. Some 5,000 of them are children.”

Experts discuss the situation in Yemen here and here.

If the war has been paused, yet the peace needs to be made more stable, why in the world would Congress not vote to permanently end U.S. participation immediately? The urgent moral need to do so that Congress members spoke about three years ago was and still is all too real. Why not act before more children die?

5. The passionate speeches by Senators and Representatives demanding an end to the war when they knew they could count on a veto from Trump have vanished during the Biden years chiefly because Party is more important than human lives.

I would like to refer Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) to the following text and video from 2019 by Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) and Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.).

Congressman Pocan commented: “As the Saudi-led coalition continues to use famine as a weapon of war, starving millions of innocent Yemenis to near death, the United States is actively participating in the regime’s military campaign, providing targeting and logistical assistance for Saudi airstrikes. For far too long, Congress has refused to carry out its constitutional responsibility to make decisions regarding military engagement—we can longer stay silent on matters of war and peace.”

Frankly, Congressman, they can smell the BS from beyond Yemen. You all can stay silent for years and years. Not a single one of you can pretend the votes aren’t there — they were there when Trump was in the White House. Yet not a single one of you has the decency to even demand a vote. If this is not because the royal rear-end on the throne in the White House had a “D” tattooed on it, give us another explanation.

There is no pro-peace Congress Member. The species is extinct.

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Quale sia la catena di comando che ha pianificato e attuato l’attentato contro Dughin e sua figlia Daria, lo rivela indirettamente il giornale statunitense Los Angeles Times: “Dal 2015 la CIA addestra gli agenti dei servizi segreti ucraini in una struttura segreta negli Stati Uniti”.  Già nel dicembre 2021, su Grandangolo, la giornalista Daria Platonova riferiva: “I servizi di sicurezza hanno comunicato di aver individuato 106 agenti ucraini che stavano preparando attentati e stragi in 37 regioni della Russia. Oltre alla costante tensione sul piano politico e mediatico, dobbiamo oggi confrontarci anche con azioni di gruppi terroristici nel nostro paese, fortunatamente neutralizzati per tempo.” Su questo sfondo resta senza risposta la domanda di come sia stato possibile che l’auto di Daria, su cui è stata installata la bomba telecomandata, sia rimasta fino alla sera in un parcheggio incustodito con le telecamere non funzionanti. 

Maya Nogradi (regista, editor di Grandangolo) ci parla, in una emozionante testimonianza, della sua amica Daria. Ne emerge la figura di una giovane giornalista e analista geopolitica che svolgeva un ruolo sempre più significativo sia in Russia che a livello internazionale. Da questi e altri elementi si deduce che Daria sia stata non semplicemente vittima di un attentato diretto contro suo padre, ma anch’essa bersaglio primario dell’attentato.  Su Grandangolo del giugno di quest’anno, in un resoconto sul Forum economico internazionale di San Pietroburgo, ne riassumeva così il significato: “Il processo di de-dollarizzazione coinvolge tutto il mondo. Gli Stati Uniti e i loro satelliti europei perderanno inevitabilmente la guerra ibrida globale da loro scatenata”. Per questo il mainstream italiano e internazionale la accusava di “odio per l’Occidente”. 

Daria era una delle principali voci di quel mondo multipolare che l’Occidente considera una minaccia al suo predomimio e che combatte con ogni mezzo. È questa la causa di fondo della disastrosa crisi che si sta abbattendo sull’Europa in seguito all’aumento senza precedenti del prezzo del gas dovuto ai meccanismi speculativi della grande finanza. 

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***

August 11, 2022, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reversed its COVID-19 guidelines, thereby vindicating every “misinformation spreader” out there

The CDC is now advocating for taking personal responsibility and for everyone to decide for themselves “which prevention behaviors to use and when (at all times or at specific times), based on their own risk for severe illness and that of members of their household, their risk tolerance, and setting-specific factors”

The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status, stating, its “COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur.” They also admit natural immunity exists and works

Testing is now reserved for those who “are symptomatic, or have a known or suspected exposure to someone with COVID-19,” isolation is only for those who are symptomatic and have tested positive, and contact tracing is now restricted to health care settings and select “high-risk congregate settings”

The CDC’s about-face appears to be politically motivated, to give the Biden administration a “win” before the midterm elections. Post-election plans include “the biggest vaccination campaign in history,” so tyrannical overreaches may later resume, even as mounting data show the COVID shots are causing depopulation

*

Without fanfare, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, August 11, 2022, reversed all its COVID-19 guidelines. In fact, many have noted it appears the CDC wanted to bring as little attention to it as possible.¹ This is understandable, considering the new guidelines more or less admit the original rules were in error, without actually stating as much.

The new guidance is listed in the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) under the title, “Summary of Guidance for Minimizing the Impact of COVID-19 on Individual Persons, Communities, and Health Care Systems — United States, August 2022.”² As noted by Jeffrey Tucker, founder and president of the Brownstone Institute:³

“It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall in the brainstorming sessions that led to this little treatise. The wording was chosen very carefully, not to say anything false outright, much less admit any errors of the past, but to imply that it was only possible to say these things now.”

The CDC insists that while COVID-19 infection continues to be a reality around the world, “high levels of vaccine- and infection-induced immunity and the availability of effective treatments and prevention tools have substantially reduced the risk for medically significant COVID-19 illness … and associated hospitalization and death.”

Consequently, COVID countermeasures that create “barriers to social, educational, and economic activity” can be ditched and everything can go back to normal.

CDC Introduces Personal Responsibility

Considering how hard health officials have fought to segregate, bully, demonize and dehumanize people who didn’t agree with their tyrannical and irrational COVID measures over the past 19 months, the new guidelines are refreshing, but they’re still like a slap in the face. First and foremost, the CDC is now suddenly advocating for taking personal responsibility — for everything:⁴

Education and messaging to help individual persons understand their risk for medically significant illness complements recommendations for prevention strategies based on risk.”

Individual risk assessment and risk-based countermeasures are both something we “misinformation spreaders” have called for from the beginning. The risk is not identical for all; hence, risk reduction strategies should not be uniformly applied. Finally, 19 months late, the CDC agrees.

Under the subhead, “Protecting Persons Most at Risk for Severe Illness,” the CDC now takes a page straight out of The Great Barrington Declaration and recommends focused protection, meaning protecting those “at particularly high risk … because of older age, disability, moderate or severe immunocompromise, or other underlying medical conditions.”

Need anyone be reminded that doctors and scientists have been defamed and dragged through the mud for saying this? And Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and his former boss, Dr. Francis Collins, then-director of the National Institutes of Health, were the masterminds behind the effort to discredit and take down the authors of the Barrington declaration.⁵

CDC Reneges on Discrimination

The CDC is also giving up on discrimination based on COVID jab status:⁶ “CDC’s COVID-19 prevention recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status because breakthrough infections occur …”

They even admit that “persons who have had COVID-19 but are not vaccinated have some degree of protection against severe illness from their previous infection,” and therefore are not to be treated any differently than someone who has received the COVID jab. As noted by Tucker:⁷

“Remember when 40% of the members of the black community in New York City who refused the jab were not allowed into restaurants, bars, libraries, museums, or theaters? Now, no one wants to talk about that.

Also, universities, colleges, the military, and so on — which still have mandates in place — do you hear this? Everything you have done to hate on people, dehumanize people, segregate people, humiliate others as unclean, fire people and destroy lives, now stands in disrepute.

Meanwhile, as of this writing, the blasted US government still will not allow unvaccinated travelers across its borders! Not one word of the CDC’s turgid treatise was untrue back in the Spring of 2020. There was always ‘infection-induced immunity,’ though Fauci and Co. constantly pretended otherwise.

It was always a terrible idea to introduce ‘barriers to social, educational, and economic activity.’ The vaccines never promised in their authorization to stop infection and spread, even though all official statements of the CDC claimed otherwise, repeatedly and often.”

Testing, Isolation and Contact Tracing Rules Reversed

And what about rules relating to testing, self-isolation during illness and the whole tracking and tracing business? Out the window!

• Testing is now reserved for those who “are symptomatic, or have a known or suspected exposure to someone with COVID-19.” Testing of asymptomatic individuals is only suggested in “congregate settings” where medical care is limited, such as homeless shelters and correctional facilities, and in such instances, testing “should include all persons, irrespective of vaccination status.”
• Isolation is only for those who are symptomatic and have tested positive. Infected individuals can end their isolation after as little as five days, if they’ve been fever-free for at least 24 hours without the use of fever-lowering medication, but should continue wearing a mask or respirator when around others through day 10.
• Contact tracing is now restricted to health care settings and select “high-risk congregate settings.”

Is It a Political Ploy?

While I’m glad the CDC has reversed its tyrannical COVID measures to something sensible and more aligned with reality, the problem, as I see it, is threefold.

First, there’s the lateness of the hour. Any public health agency worthy of such a designation would have reached these conclusions two years ago. Instead, they spent more than two years engaged in an active search and destroy mission against those advocating for the same sensible guidelines the CDC is now suddenly adopting.

Secondly, the timing of these reversals smacks of political bias. Mid-term elections are fast approaching, and the most disliked White House administration in American history needs a “win.”

With the CDC backtracking on COVID measures, they now have certain bragging rights. “See, we brought life back to normal” — which brings us to problem No. 3, which is that this reversal may be nothing more than a malicious ploy to get us to let our guard down, only to be hit with another, even more draconian fear campaign after the elections.

Biggest Vaccination Drive in History Is Coming This Fall

While that might sound paranoid, it’s straight out of the handbooks of tyranny. The way you drive people crazy is not through consistent high-pressure tyranny, but through waves of it. The ups and downs, with each wave being more intensely repressive than the last, create confusion and foster fear and anxiety, which breeds an infantile kind of reliance on authority to just fix it.

Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at New York University, appears to agree. In an August 13, 2022, Substack article, he writes:⁸

“Just as the CDC pretends to have backed off, the NHS [the British National Health Service] reveals (to just a few) what’s really coming at us in the fall: ‘The biggest vaccination drive in history.’ Those who think the worst is over better think again — because it really won’t be over til [sic] WE end it …

[The] NHS alone is obviously not equipped, and certainly does not intend, to undertake the biggest vaccination drive in history — a drive that must, and will, be global, just like the orchestration of the entire COVID crisis, of which this coming drive will be the culmination (or, to quote Bill Gates, the ‘final solution’).

Nor … is it likely that this biggest vaccination drive in history will be mounted on the now-exhausted pretext of protecting all humanity from COVID-19 (or the flu). What’s it going to be, then? Monkeypox? HIV? COVID-20? Cancer? All of the above?

Whatever new threat(s) may be used to justify this final drive could never be as lethal as the psychopaths who planned it, and those entities that will not stop promoting it (even as the CDC pretends to have backed off).”

Prepare for Another Round of Gaslighting

Thacker also wonders whether the CDC’s revised guidelines may be nothing more than a political backstop to prevent Democrats from sliding into the abyss:⁹

“… with a majority of Americans unhappy with the President’s pandemic policies, perhaps the CDC is relying on ‘midterm science’ to guide their new appreciation for natural immunity?”

One reason for suspecting the CDC’s sudden turn-about is political in nature is the fact that it makes an absolute mess out of the carefully scripted COVID narrative, which is supposed to be in lockstep with governments and media around the world. As a result of the CDC trying to give Biden’s White House a “win,” media and Big Tech now face a massive conundrum.

Everything the CDC is now recommending was blasphemy punishable by public shaming, deplatforming and delicensing, all the way up to the day the CDC posted the new guidelines. Every COVID article and fact check ever written is now completely off-script, as are countless public statements made by public health officials.

There’s no answer to this dilemma, so they’re going to pretend it never happened and hope no one remembers what they said all those days, weeks or months ago. If you remind them, be prepared to be gaslighted with denials. Thacker writes:¹⁰

“The media’s forgetfulness of what they reported just last year on vaccines and prior infection is part of the pandemic’s Great Misremembering, a collective amnesia where we march in step to government messaging, while failing to recall prior statements and moments of glaring contradiction.

For example, when the media reported that the NIH’s Anthony Fauci was fully vaccinated and still got COVID-19, and then they misremembered to report his prior statement, ‘When people are vaccinated, they can feel safe that they are not going to get infected’ … To help everyone join the Great Misremembering, here are some incidents you must fail to recall.

… Late in the pandemic’s first year, a group of researchers released a statement called the ‘John Snow Memorandum’¹¹ that helped to shape American policy … Among the signatories was Rochelle Walensky, then a Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, and now the Director of the CDC.

‘Any pandemic management strategy relying upon immunity from natural infections for COVID-19 is flawed,’ reads the statement signed by the current CDC Director.

Yes, the very same person who runs the CDC that now tells us to not differentiate between vaccine and natural infection warned us early in the pandemic that any pandemic policy that relies on natural infection is flawed. As you read the CDC’s new guidance, please remember to misremember the memorandum previously signed by the current CDC Director.”

Which Vaccines Will Be Pushed Next?

While we don’t yet know how they’re going to scare the population into getting more experimental shots — now that COVID jab uptake has tanked and more than 112 million doses have had to be discarded for lack of demand^12,13 — we at least have an idea of what those shots are going to be.

August 15, 2022, the U.K. became the first country to approve Moderna’s new bivalent COVID booster, which contains both the original concoction and mRNA to target an already out-of-date Omicron variant.¹⁴ The rest of the world will undoubtedly follow suit.

The British NHS will start rolling out the new bivalent COVID jab September 5, 2022, starting with care home residents and other housebound individuals.¹⁵ The wider rollout will begin September 12, just one day shy of the end of primary elections in the U.S.¹⁶

Of course, the monkeypox vaccine is also being pushed on certain groups,¹⁷ and there’s the seasonal flu vaccine, so there are options when it comes to “picking your poison.”

So, while the good news is that the CDC is now on the hook for having vindicated all us “misinformation spreaders,” the bad news is that there’s more insanity coming, and there’s no telling exactly what form that will take as of yet.

It looks like we’ll have a short reprieve during the U.S. election period, to put a positive spin on the Biden administration’s handling of the pandemic, and whatever the new agenda is, it’ll be rolled out afterward. We do know it’ll involve “the biggest vaccine campaign in history,” though, which could get interesting, seeing how people have woken up in droves to the fact that the COVID shots are maiming and killing without providing any benefit.

The More COVID Shots, the Higher the Reinfection Rate

Evidence that COVID reinfection rates go up in tandem with the number of COVID shots administered is also mounting, which is turning former believers into skeptics. As reported by Icelander Thorsteinn Siglaugsson in a Daily Sceptic article published in mid-August 2022:¹⁸

“Does anyone still recall the excitement in late 2020 when the vaccines against COVID-19 were finally in sight? The trial results were excellent, promising an end to the pandemic in 2021 … I believed in the narrative myself … I even took part in an attempt to have one of the manufacturers arrange a population-wide trial in Iceland, similar to what Pfizer did in Israel. Today I’m very glad we didn’t succeed.

Soon it will be two years since the trial results were out … Data on infection, hospitalization and mortality already show vaccination not only failing to prevent those, but in some cases being counterproductive. In short, the vaccines have failed to deliver what we were promised.

And even worse, the skyrocketing rate of side effects may mean that for most people vaccination makes no or little sense. Still, it is for the most part forbidden to discuss this fact … As an example, it is forbidden to say COVID-19 vaccines may cause death, even if a quick search on the internet shows confirmed cases where there is no doubt about the causality.

It is forbidden also to share evidence showing higher infection rates among the vaccinated than the unvaccinated. It will therefore be interesting to see how those platforms will react to those who share the results of a new research letter published on August 3rd in Jama Network Open.¹⁹

The letter describes the result of a study which monitored for reinfection all Icelanders previously infected, during the Omicron wave, between December 1st 2021 and February 22nd 2022. The study shows a probability of reinfection of up to 15.1% among 18-29 year-olds, declining with age …

But the most interesting part is the comparison by vaccination status. It shows that for most age groups, those who have received two doses or more are more likely to become reinfected than those who have received no vaccination or one dose.”

Once the broad masses begin to accept the reality that more shots equal higher risk of COVID infection, how easy do you think it will be for government to convince them to take a bivalent COVID jab? And if resistance ends up being as high as I suspect it might be, come this fall, what measures might they take to, again, try to force people into compliance? Your guess is as good as mine.

COVID Shots Are Causing Depopulation

Another major hurdle in the plan to launch the biggest vaccination campaign in history is the evidence showing the COVID shots are already causing mass depopulation. As reported by The Exposé, August 7, 2022:²⁰

“COVID-19 vaccination is causing mass depopulation. This is an extremely bold claim to make. But unfortunately, this bold claim is backed up by a mountain of evidence contained in the confidential Pfizer documents and official Government data from around the world.”

Indeed, excess deaths have skyrocketed since the release of the COVID jabs, and the timing is so exact, it can’t be explained away. In the U.K., they’re now massaging data to try to hide it. As explained by The Exposé,²¹ the five-year average that deaths are now compared to are made up of mortality data from 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2021.

Excess deaths started climbing in 2021, after the rollout of the shots, and by including 2021 (rather than calculating a five-year average from 2015 to 2019, for accurate prepandemic figures), the excess mortality in 2022 appears closer to the five-year norm than it actually is. Excess deaths are also up in most of Europe, as illustrated in the graph²² below:

Eliminating confusion about the cause of these excess deaths are data comparing the mortality rates among those jabbed and the unjabbed. July 6, 2022, the British Office for National Statistics issued a report^23,24 showing the mortality rates per 100,000 are consistently lowest among the unvaccinated, in all age groups.

In the 18 to 39 age group, unvaccinated had a mortality rate of 14.1 per 100,000 during the month of May 2022, whereas those who got their first dose at least 21 days ago had a mortality rate of 42.6 per 100,000. The mortality rate for double-jabbed was 17.3 per 100,000 and triple-dosed had a mortality rate of 21.4 per 100,000.

As shown in the graph below, created by The Exposé,²⁵ the identical pattern repeats for every month, January through May 2022.

Infant Mortality Has Skyrocketed

The Exposé²⁶ also highlights data showing infant mortality is now far above the norm. In Scotland, official data show neonatal deaths were 119% higher in March 2022 than the annual norm. Live birth rates are also plummeting around the world.

In Germany, the birth rate for January through April 2022 was 11% lower than the seven-year prepandemic average. And the FDA, CDC and Pfizer can hardly be surprised, as Pfizer’s own documents show nearly all pregnant women who participated in its trial — for whom birth outcomes were available — lost their babies. Only one of 29 known birth outcomes were classified as “normal.” The remaining 28 miscarried.

The U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database also listed 4,113 fetal deaths following COVID injection as of April 2022.²⁷ Compare that to the fetal death reports for all other vaccines reported to VAERS in the last 30 years. That number is 2,239.²⁸

Animal research²⁹ published in August 2021, in which female rats were given the Pfizer jab (BNT162b2), also found it increased certain birth defects (extra ribs) by 295% compared to controls, and doubled preimplantation loss (i.e., fertilized ova that fail to implant). In other words, it doubled the risk of infertility. As noted by The Exposé:³⁰

“With this being the case, how on earth have medicine regulators around the world managed to state in their official guidance that ‘Animal studies do not indicate direct or indirect harmful effects with respect to pregnancy’? And how have they managed to state’It is unknown whether the Pfizer vaccine has an impact on fertility’?

The truth of the matter is that they actively chose to cover it up. We know this thanks to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request³¹ made to the Australian Government Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).”

You can read more about that in The Exposé’s July 19, 2022, article, “FOIA Reveals Pfizer & Medicine Regulators Hid Dangers of COVID Vaccination During Pregnancy After Study Found It Increases Risk of Birth Defects & Infertility.”³²

Final Thoughts

So, to wrap this up — yes, the CDC has vindicated truth tellers by reversing its COVID guidelines and basically adopting The Great Barrington declaration, but we’re nowhere near out of the woods yet. A major vaccination campaign is being planned for the fall, even as evidence mounts showing the shots are causing depopulation at a rate we’ve never seen before, outside of world war.

The shots are killing otherwise healthy working-age adults, they’re killing babies in the womb, and they’re causing infertility. They are, without a doubt, the most dangerous drugs ever made. So, enjoy this reprieve, but firm up your resolve to stand against another round of tyranny this fall.

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Notes

^1, 3, 7 Brownstone Institute August 14, 2022

^2, 4, 6 MMWR August 11, 2022; 71

⁵ STAT News December 23, 2021

⁸ Mark Crispin Miller Substack August 13, 2022

^9, 10 The Disinformation Chronicle August 16, 2022

¹¹ The John Snow Memorandum

¹² Washington Examiner May 26, 2022

¹³ NBC News June 6, 2022

¹⁴ Sky News August 15, 2022

¹⁵ Guernsey Press August 18, 2022

¹⁶ Election Calendar 2022

¹⁷ The Guardian July 24, 2022

¹⁸ Daily Sceptic August 15, 2022

¹⁹ JAMA Network Open 2022; 5(8): e2225320

^{20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30} The Expose August 7, 2022

²⁴ ONS.gov.uk Deaths By Vaccination Status, England July 6, 2022

²⁹ Reproductive Toxicology August 2021; 103: 28-35

^31, 32 The Expose July 19, 2022

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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

Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression

By Michel Chossudovsky

Year: 2022

Product Type: PDF File

Pages: 164 (15 Chapters)

Price: $11.50 

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***

The Washington Post reports that Xi Jinping personally asked President Biden to find a way to put off House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan. According to the Post’s account, Biden explained to Xi that the independent role of Congress made it impossible for him to stop her, even though US intelligence officials were (correctly) convinced that China would follow through on its warnings and make a forceful response.

China’s ambassador to the US said:

“We had warned that if Pelosi made the visit, there would be very serious consequences. China would firmly and forcefully respond. To our regret, the United States chose not to listen.”

Pelosi’s trip was not written in stone: She said she would not go if Biden explicitly asked her not to.

So Biden had an out, but:

“In the end, Biden never spoke to Pelosi about her trip despite Xi’s request . . . In an offhand comment, Biden told reporters shortly before Pelosi’s expected visit that military officials believed the trip was not a good idea.”

Now just imagine a different scenario:

Biden, concerned about China’s reaction to the visit, says to Xi:

“I will do my best to persuade her, out of respect for China’s sensitivity regarding Taiwan. But in return for her postponing her trip, I want your assurance that China’s military will stop air naval maneuvers that threaten Taiwan. And let’s plan on holding high-level military-to-military and diplomatic discussions to promote mutual security in the Taiwan Strait area.”

It was an engagement moment, prompted by the US national interest in competitive coexistence with China.

Would Biden “look weak” if he succeeded in stopping the trip? That’s the usual retort, but Biden could have responded to such a charge by pointing out that Taiwan’s security would not be undermined by the postponement, whereas Pelosi’s trip would force China to make a show of strength. Biden could readily point to the many ways his administration is supporting Taiwan: three recent military aid packages, Biden’s public comments upholding strong ties with Taiwan, and the array of security arrangements, such as the Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India), that are focused on any Chinese threat in the Asia Pacific.

A positive response to Xi was an opportunity to put US-PRC relations onto a more positive track at a time when those relations are rapidly deteriorating. At the least, Biden’s proposal would have tested Xi’s frequent assertions in support of improved relations.

One Chinese foreign policy expert recently wrote a lengthy defense of China’s Taiwan policy and a sharp critique of how the US is eroding the One China policy. Yet the expert ended not with a warning but with a suggestion that the two countries find common ground:

“On the Taiwan Strait issue, China and the United States need to further negotiate more practical and in-depth cooperation on confidence-building measures and crisis management at the strategic and technical levels, based on the two countries’ current crisis management mechanisms. The existing crisis management mechanisms of China and the United States mainly have three types of institutional arrangements: high-level interaction, dialogue and communication channels, and military rules of behavior.”

The article suggests that there are voices inside the policymaking apparatus in China that are open to dialogue even on Taiwan, the most important of Beijing’s core interests and ordinarily a subject closed to “external interference.”

Tensions in the Taiwan Strait will probably cool down in coming weeks. But the Pelosi trip has created new circumstances that do not bode well for moderating Taiwan’s role in US-China relations. More official US visits to Taiwan are in the offing, and in Congress the mood favors bipartisan efforts to upgrade Taiwan’s status.

Meantime, the Chinese military will continue testing Taiwan’s defenses, breaking with previous patterns that had avoided directly challenging Taiwan’s territorial waters and air space. As a Chinese military adviser said the other day, the strategy is to “close the door and beat the dog.”

Spiraling confrontations will end in open conflict unless Washington and Beijing seize diminishing opportunities for engagement.

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Mel Gurtov, syndicated by PeaceVoice, is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Portland State University and blogs at In the Human Interest.

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***

The Islamic Emirate’s spokesman said that the reported killing of the al-Qaeda leader Ayman al Zawahiri is an allegation and that the investigation has yet to be finalized.

Speaking at a press conference in Kabul today, Zabiullah Mujahid criticized the US, saying that drones flying in Afghan airspace belong to the US and have been discussed with the American side.

He said the Islamic Emirate considers this an aggression and the US should share its concerns with the Islamic Emirate.

Speaking of the US strike on Kabul, Mujahid said:

“It is still at the level of allegation. The results have yet to be clarified. The body has not been found there because of the rockets that targeted the area—the area is destroyed and nothing is left of it,” he said.

Mujahid said that the investigation has yet to be finalized.

“The results might never be finalized. Whenever negotiations between countries take place, this issue might be forgotten,” said Torek Farhadi, an international relations analyst.

*

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Featured image is from The Unz Review

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***

India Today’s latest nation-wide public opinion survey has three messages for the Narendra Modi government, and for the opposition: economy, economy and economy. For the ruling party, it rings an alarm bell much louder than the orchestrated noise around amrit kaal. For the opposition, this is both an opportunity and a responsibility.

This is not how everyone would read this survey. We read opinion polls for election forecast. As an ex-pollster, this troubles me. Any seats projection made in-between two elections must not be taken literally. The real stuff of a survey like the present one is what it tells us about trends in public opinion.

For the record, therefore, I must report that the latest round of India Today’s Mood of the Nation Survey (MOTNS), one of the longest standing barometers of public mood in our country, projects that if Lok Sabha elections were held between 15 to 31 July of 2022, the BJP would secure 283 seats (a little short of the 303 seats it won in 2019) and the NDA would bag 307 (much lower than its tally of 353 last time).

A methodological disquiet

But there are many reasons not to spend too much time on these numbers. One, because we must not take any seats forecast 20 months before elections too seriously. Two, because the survey was held before the Bihar turmoil. Although the pollsters make a valiant attempt to take this factor into account with a quick snap poll in the state. (They estimate a loss of 8 seats to the BJP and of 21 seats to the NDA as a result of Nitish Kumar’s switch-over).

I must record another reason for my discomfort. Beginning January this year, MOTNS has stopped doing face-to-face interviews at peoples’ homes. For the last six decades, this has been the time-tested gold standard methodology of survey research, and is still followed by credible institutions like the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS). Instead, C-Voter, the new agency that has taken over MOTNS, has shifted entirely to telephonic interviews. Now, it is well known that telephonic interviews are much cheaper and hence preferred all over the world. It is also true that mobile density is now quite high in India. Still, it is far from universal. And no matter how much you massage it with sophisticated statistical techniques, a telephonic survey is bound to leave out the citizens at the lowest rung and thus skew the responses.

It is particularly disappointing to note that India Today, a magazine that pioneered quality opinion polling in India, chose to be economic with transparency requirements and brush this methodological shift under the carpet in a coded language. (“This survey is based on CATI interviews of adult respondents across all segments”. Did you guess that CATI meant Computer Assisted Telephonic Interviews? Did you realise that researchers doing MOTNS had stopped visiting the homes of the respondents?). We get no information of the gender, caste or class profile of the sampled respondents who responded to telephone calls. Nor is there any break-up of key responses by different categories, even when you desperately need it (economic distress by economic class and gender or communal situation by religion, for example).

It’s economy, stupid

Notwithstanding these limitations, the survey offers a wealth of information, especially on broad trends of public opinion. The headline finding is unmistakable: “it’s economy, stupid”. The top three responses to the question, “What is the biggest problem India currently faces?” are: price rise (27 per cent), unemployment (25 per cent) and poverty (7 per cent). Economic problems are on top of everyone’s mind. And with good reasons, if you follow the official and unofficial data on the state of the economy. Price rise tops the chart, as it often does even if the recorded inflation is low, though the level is not unprecedented. Given the gloomy figures on employment, it should not come as a surprise that 56 per cent think the unemployment situation is “very serious” against just 9 per cent who say it is not.

Yet, I was surprised that people project their assessment of the present economic condition into the future as well. Survey research over decades has shown that Indians are optimists about future economic prospects, no matter how bad their current state of affairs. So, it came as a shock to me that as many as 34 per cent expect the country’s economy to get worse over the next six months, compared to 31 per cent who expect it to get better, a near reversal of the balance six months ago. I don’t recall any other recorded phase of economic pessimism in India, except just after the second phase of Covid.

As a survey researcher, I trust peoples’ responses on their household economic condition much more than their assessment of the country’s economy. You can be fooled into believing a rosy or dark picture about the nation’s economy, but not about your own or your family’s economic condition. India Today has been asking this direct question for the last six years: “how has your economic condition changed since Narendra Modi took charge as PM in 2014?” Note that the question names Modi and, given his continuing popularity, should load the answers in the positive direction. However, 36 per cent respondents report that their condition has deteriorated, compared to 28 per cent who report an improvement since 2014. The same is extended to the future: more respondents expect their own economic condition to worsen in the near future than those who expect betterment. These are terrible figures for any government, bad enough to get the government kicked out at the hustings.

From economy to politics

It all depends on whether people blame the government for their poor economic conditions or not. Here too, the news is not good for the Modi government. Positive rating of the government’s economic policies is now at 48 per cent, the lowest recorded in the last six years. Negative assessment is now at 29 per cent, the highest ever. When asked to name “biggest failure” of the NDA government, the top three mentions are economy related: price rise, unemployment, economic growth. To be sure, negative assessment of economic policy has not yet overtaken the positive evaluation. And the overall assessment of the government is still quite positive, thanks to public support for its handling of other issues like Kashmir, Ram Temple, corruption, and, surprisingly, Covid.  But with inflation and unemployment showing no signs of slowing down, the government has a lot to worry about.

Is this the beginning of the end of the Modi government? That would be a hasty and lazy conclusion. The PM’s personal popularity is still fairly high, even though the proportion of those who rate his work as poor or very poor has touched a new high. As yet no opposition leader comes anywhere close to him in the popularity rating. While there is a marked unease about the state of democracy – those who say democracy is in danger clearly outnumber those who don’t – there is no perceptible popular anger on the destruction of democratic institutions or curbs on freedom of speech. Indians get more worked up about hubris and vindictiveness of the government than about the niceties of liberal democracy.

As this column argued last week, there is little to support the idea that 2024 is a “done deal” for the ruling party. Such boasts and the media circus around it are nothing but mind-games that the BJP is adept at playing. Nor should we assume that the BJP is headed for a defeat. The changed electoral baseline after Bihar upheaval, and economic distress reported in this survey, clearly indicate that the electoral race is still open. The onus is now on the opposition to take up this historic responsibility.

*

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Yogendra Yadav is among the founders of Jai Kisan Andolan and Swaraj India. Views are personal.

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***

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***

UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has declared that she is ready and willing to kick off thermonuclear warfare should she take over as prime minister, stressing her hawkish bonafides as she seeks to replace Boris Johnson.

Appearing at a town hall event in Birmingham on Tuesday, Truss was asked how she would feel about ordering “global annihilation” in the event of a nuclear standoff with a foreign adversary.

“I won’t ask you if you would press the button, you’ll say yes, but faced with that task I would feel physically sick,” said host John Pienaar, who went on to ask: “How does that thought make you feel?”

“I think it’s an important duty of the prime minister and I’m ready to do that,” Truss replied, drawing applause from the audience. When Pienaar asked again how that decision would make her “feel,” she simply stated “I’m ready to do it.”

Liz Truss says she is 'ready' to make decisions about using nuclear warfare. #TimesRadio pic.twitter.com/ILnW7XQ1LY

— Times Radio (@TimesRadio) August 23, 2022

While no foreign state was mentioned by name during the exchange, Truss has been among the most bellicose British officials in her comments about the war in Ukraine, issuing a steady stream of hostile rhetoric toward Moscow while encouraging escalation at virtually every turn.

Despite serving as her country’s top diplomat, the foreign secretary has made little effort to seek out a diplomatic solution to the conflict, instead calling for Russia’s “defeat” on the battlefield regardless of the cost in Ukrainian blood.

With Prime Minister Boris Johnson preparing to leave office after announcing his resignation in July, Truss is now vying against former Finance Minister Rishi Sunak for the PM spot. While Johnson’s hawkish stance toward Russia may be hard to outdo – having visited Kiev multiple times in recent months to discourage a negotiated settlement to the war – his replacement appears set to continue London’s policies on the conflict regardless of who wins.

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Will Porter is assistant news editor at the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer at RT. Find more of his work at Antiwar.com and Consortium News.

Featured image: The ‘Baker’ nuclear weapon test is seen at Bikini Atoll, July 25, 1946; UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. (Credit: Pentagon; UK Prime Minister’s Office)

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

The West itself appears to be the party most harmed by the sanctions it has chosen to impose against Russia. As well known, the US, UK and EU are facing a wave of inflation with all-time highs. And in the same sense, the business world is collapsing in Western countries. The business losses with the end of participation of some Western companies in the Russian market are extremely significant and are causing serious problems for the economy of many countries, with losses accumulating exorbitant amounts.

It is estimated that American, European, British, and Japanese companies have already lost more than 70 billion dollars since February. The losses are a consequence of the packages of sanctions imposed by Western countries on Moscow in response to the start of the special military operation in Ukraine. Many corporations withdrew from Russia or had their activities frozen, losing insertion in the powerful market of consumption, work and raw materials offered by Russia.

As expected, the most affected sector is the energy one, whose losses are estimated at almost 55 billion dollars, generating a series of problems for Western societies. Relations between Russia and Western Europe in the energy sector have always been a central strategic point in the international economic balance and now seem more threatened than ever. However, other sectors are also in similar situations.

Agricultural commodity, food and tobacco markets achieve losses of almost 8 billion dollars. In the same sense, in the technology and IT sector, 5 billion dollars of losses have already been accumulated. And there is also the vital banking sector, whose side effects of anti-Russian financial coercive measures have already led to a loss of 3,7 billion dollars – most of this amount belonging to Société Générale, the only banking group to have left Russia completely so far.

With regard specifically to the energy sector, the European and British companies most affected were BP, Linde, Uniper and Total Energies, whose billions of dollars in assets were harmed as a result of the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline and other Russian-European projects of cooperation. The process of disintegration of the Russian and European energy markets will not be so easily completed, as it is necessary to reverse a scenario of decades of cooperation, which will undoubtedly take time.

For example, BP, which announced its unconditional withdrawal from the Russian market in February, still remains one of Rosneft’s main partners, owning 19.75% of its shares. However, the process of disintegration has progressively advanced. BP itself revealed a loss of more than 25 billion dollars due to the freezing of its activities in Russia, pointing to a scenario that indicates a path towards the end of the cooperation in the near future.

American and Japanese energy companies are heading in the same direction. ExxonMobil, Mitsui & Co and Mitsubishi Corporation were some of the companies that had the most losses in recent months, mainly as a result of the effects that the coercive measures had on the Sakhalin-I and Sakhalin-II projects. Obviously, other energy companies were also affected by the packages of sanctions, albeit on a smaller scale, showing a scenario of generalized losses for this sector’s businesses.

For Russia, however, the deficits are much smaller and almost never imply real losses, but market restructurings. In energy, Russian oil and gas production remains strong and active, unaffected by the departure of some Western companies. The withdrawal of these companies makes room for other markets, such as the Chinese and Indian, which are the ones that have stood out in the search for Russian oil and gas in recent months. Meanwhile, Western companies lose important sources of supply that will not be easily resolved.

As for market sectors in which Russian consumption was of interest to Western companies, there are even fewer losses. The corporations that withdrew from Russia left their physical production structures there, which could be used by Moscow, generating employment for the Russian population, internal circulation of capital and economic progress.

For example, McDonald’s lost more than one billion dollars with its adherence to anti-Russian measures, but its withdrawal from the local market made room for the nationalization of the company’s production structures, and a Russian national company was created to sell fast food for Russian citizens. The same is currently happening with other Western companies that have left the Russian market. In short, the West lost a rich consumer market and handed over to Moscow all the necessary means for Russians themselves to supply their population with such goods and services.

In practice, all these facts simply mean damage to Western business. Entrepreneurs do not appear to have been consulted by heads of state on whether or not sanctions were in their best interest. The measures were simply imposed unilaterally to meet NATO’s geopolitical plans, without considering the opinion of companies that generate jobs for Western citizens. Currently, there are still plans to completely ban the entry of Russian citizens into Europe, which according to estimates will generate losses of more than 20 billion euros, harming the entire European market.

In fact, western sanctions, if not reversed, will lead the world into a global recession in which the most affected will be the western countries themselves. To avoid this, the business sector must mobilize to demand an end to sanctions.

*

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Guest is Dr. Patrick Moore, co-founder & ex-President of Greenpeace and author. He has a BSc Biology and a PhD Ecology. Also director of co2coalition.org, a coalition that seeks to engage in an informed and dispassionate discussion of climate change, humans’ role in the climate system, the limitations of climate models, and the consequences of mandated reductions in CO2 emissions.

He strongly opposes the idea that there are too many people on earth since humanity is way better off today, than in the past centuries, thanks to science and innovations. He voices serious doubts on the CO2-caused climate change narrative dominating academia, politics and news & criticizes K. Schwab’s “Own nothing and be happy” doctrine.

This session also talks about what happened when Greenpeace grew: became a business with shifted priorities (money over ideals). Greenpeace also started to describe humanity as “enemies of the earth”.

Dr. Moore argues for a balance between taking from nature (which feeds us) and taking care of nature.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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***

During his fifty years as a painter, Canadian American artist Philip Guston created a body of work that stands out as among the most significant and daring of the twentieth century. His development as an artist involved several phases, and culminated with images notable for their dark, biting humor, distinct palette, unmistakable lexicon of objects, and concern with themes when taken together seem designed to heighten our uneasiness and have us question everything we thought we knew about painting. Perhaps the most important feature of these works, however, is their uncompromising interrogation of racism and white culpability, signaled by the persistent and discomfiting image of hooded Klansmen, or simply “hoods” as Guston referred to them. 

The Museum of Fine Art in Boston is presently hosting “Philip Guston Now,” a much-anticipated retrospective of Guston’s work. Comprised of seventy-three paintings and twenty-seven drawings, the exhibition reexamines an artist who began as a representational painter, but by the late 1950s was highly acclaimed as an abstract expressionist. Yet, notwithstanding the adoring critics, Guston ultimately declined to settle into his role as one of the country’s preeminent abstract artists.  His return to figuration was disparaged and ridiculed when the paintings first came before the public in his now infamous 1970 solo exhibition at New York City’s Marlborough Gallery. Despite fierce criticism, Guston insisted on confronting some of the most difficult and pressing questions our society continues to face. These paintings, preoccupied as they are with the nature of the self and its relationship to evil, violence, and bigotry are destabilizing, disruptive, and precisely for that reason they cannot afford to be overlooked.

Born in 1913, the son of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants who fled extermination in the pogroms of 1905, Guston was no stranger to racial hatred which he would encounter firsthand growing up in Los Angeles. Ku Kluxers first appeared in Guston’s work of the early 1930s, including a 1932 mural based on accounts he had read of the trial of the Scottsboro boys, nine Black youths falsely accused of rape in Alabama in the spring of 1931. A terrifying and brutal depiction of a Klansman whipping a roped black man, Guston’s mural was desecrated, along with several others, by a group “led by the chief of the Red Squad [a unit of the Los Angeles Police Department that went after Communists and strikers].”

Neither was Guston a stranger to tragedy: despondent and reduced to rag picking, his father hanged himself from the porch, and was likely discovered by Philip who had his tenth birthday only three days earlier. Ropes and porches will emerge in paintings such as If This Be Not I (1945) and Porch II (1947), both included in the current exhibition. The figures in these paintings are compressed, and flattened against each other, accentuating the overall sense of claustrophobia. They are also evocative of the Holocaust: in the lower left of If This Be Not I, a figure wearing the striped pajamas of the concentration camp is laying on his back, his head turned so that he looks vacantly at us from over his right shoulder, while his right hand slumps lifelessly beside a discarded light bulb (one of his favorite motifs).  In the figure’s left hand, he clutches a tin horn against his chest, perhaps suggesting an angel. The dangling rope of Porch II may refer to his father’s suicide; while a man hanging upside down, exposing the soles of his shoes, is an image that Guston will use in alluding to the Holocaust.

If This Be Not I (1945)

The early work demonstrates Guston’s mastery of a style informed by the great Mexican muralists (‘Los Tres Grandes’), the stylized forms of Giorgio de Chirico and Pablo Picasso, as well as the Italian Renaissance frescoes of Piero della Francesca, who painted “like a visitor to the earth… as though opening his eyes for the first time… without manner.” Guston in fact displayed Piero’s Flagellation of Christ (c. 1456-60) for much of his life: “I want to look at [it] when I have eggs and coffee in the morning or my drinks at night.” Something of Piero’s depiction of the violent flogging of Jesus is recognizable in a painting such as Martial Memory (1941), a scene of children fighting in costume (a theme to which Guston returned more than once): in this case, the children have paused momentarily, holding their weapons in the air, echoing Christ’s tormentors in the Flagellation.

Figurative painting was unequivocally set aside with the lush hues of Red Painting (1950), generally regarded as Guston’s first foray into pure abstraction, to which he would be wholly devoted for the next sixteen years. Unlike colleagues including Jackson Pollok (with whom Guston attended high school in Los Angeles), Guston painted with short rapid brushstrokes, working extremely close to the canvas. The results were rich, and visually enticing tapestries of color with touches reminiscent of Turner and especially Monet.

“Decisions to settle anywhere are intolerable,” Guston would write, “[U]nless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no right to exist at all – or is not even possible.” Having achieved international recognition for his abstract paintings, Guston forsook critical acclaim by returning to figuration, but in an entirely new, almost cartoon-like style informed by the aesthetic sensibilities he developed as an abstract artist. Although derided when they first appeared, it is the work from this third phase – characterized by the extensive use of his signature pinks and recurring objects, such as light bulbs, nails, shoes, clocks, and paintbrushes – for which Guston would be chiefly remembered.

The Studio (1969), a meta-self-portrait (that is, a painting of the artist painting a self-portrait) unabashedly announced Guston’s move away from abstraction and his return to figuration and representationalism. The uneasiness that this painting generates arises from Guston’s decision to present himself in a Klansman’s hood, working at his easel, holding a cigar with his left hand and a paintbrush in his right, as he creates a self-portrait of his hooded persona. Guston would say of the many hooded figures to follow, “They are self-portraits. I perceive myself as being behind the hood. … I almost tried to imagine that I was living with the Klan. What would it be like to be evil?”

Guston’s Web (1975) is as disturbing as any of the Klan paintings – and, in fact, the over-sized eye of the bean-shaped head (standing in for the artist himself) is itself shaped like the hoods of his Klansmen. The red rim of the eye and three-day stubble is suggestive of sleeplessness, which can be understood here not only in terms of insomnia as a medical condition, but also as a crucial metaphor for modern subjectivity under conditions of late capitalism. Guston’s cyclops is vigilant without seeing anything – it is like the vigilance of one who is chained to being, contracted to exist and unable to escape the anonymous il y a (or ‘there is’) as the philosopher Emanuel Levinas would put it.

Web (1975)

At the top of the painting, two black spiders spin their webs which partially ensnare Guston’s head if not his brain-shaped companion, a stand in for his wife Musa McKim, characteristically represented as a kind of sun rising or setting on the horizon. The spiders are weavers of time and fate – like the two women who busily knit their black wool, spinning the thread of each man’s life, at the entrance to the Company’s offices in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness (1899).

Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973) is among Guston’s most recognizable works – and it is replete with the objects that variously inhabit the paintings from this period: cigarettes, light bulbs, the soles of shoes; and once again the single massive and vigilant eye of the artist’s oval-shaped head. In this case, the painter is lying in bed, smoking a cigarette, covered up to his chin by a blanket, with a plate of french fries propped on his chest. Behind him is a disordered and motley collection of shoes, a can of brushes, and a disembodied hand with its index finger pointing to the wall on which it has drawn a vertical red line. This image touches on the inevitable question, who precisely is painting in this picture? Is the artist painting in his imagination as he lays in bed? The disembodied hand marking the wall in blood invariably recalls the mystic hand which appeared before Belshazzar as he feasted in his palace, as related in the Book of Daniel, and famously depicted by Rembrandt in Belshazzar’s Feast (1635).

Painting, Smoking, Eating (1973)

The prophet Daniel informs the Babylonian ruler that he was ‘weighed in the balance and found wanting’ – a stern judgement, and for Guston a kind of self-reproach with which he was not unfamiliar and that helps us to understand his departure from pure abstraction. As Guston would recall: “When the 1960s came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening in America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything-and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue?”

A great deal of controversy preceded this exhibition, which will travel from Boston’s MFA to the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, followed by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, and finally Tate Modern in London. In response to the “the racial justice movement that started in the US,” following the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, all four institutions intended to postpone the exhibition until 2024, according to their joint statement – a testament to Guston’s ability to unsettle and even shock audiences over forty years after his death.

Thankfully, the museums reversed their decision when a fierce backlash ensued. Guston’s daughter, Musa Mayer, pointedly observed: “My father dared to unveil white culpability… our shared role in allowing the racist terror that he had witnessed since boyhood, when the Klan marched openly by the thousands in the streets of Los Angeles… He understood what hatred was. It was the subject of his earliest works.” Indeed, one can hardly conceive of a more appropriate time to present the work of an artist whose paintings are not only a condemnation of evil, its banality and proximity, but a critical reflection on our collective responsibility for bigotry, antisemitism, and violence.

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Sam Ben-Meir is a professor of philosophy and world religions at Mercy College in New York City. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Shocking: UK Government Admits COVID Vaccinated Children Are 4423% More Likely to Die of Any Cause & 13,633% More Likely to Die of COVID-19 Than Unvaccinated Children

The Expose, August 13, 2022

The Next Generation Says Good-Bye to Ursula von der Leyen’s Europe

Dr. Eric Beeth, August 23, 2022

NATO-Russia Proxy War: Revealing Signs of a Fading America: Scott Ritter, Michael Hudson

Michael Welch, August 20, 2022

The Collapse of America: What History Teaches Us About the Rise and Fall of Empires. Prof. Alfred McCoy

Michael Welch, August 21, 2022

Whose Grain Is Being Shipped from Ukraine? America’s GMO Agribusiness Giants to Take Control of Ukraine Farmland

F. William Engdahl, August 19, 2022

Uncovering the Corona Narrative: Was Everything Carefully Planned? Analysis by Ernst Wolff

Ernst Wolff, August 20, 2022

The Crisis in Ukraine Is Not About Ukraine. It’s About Germany

Mike Whitney, August 13, 2022

The Planned Fall 2022 “Epidemics Tyranny”

Peter Koenig, August 18, 2022

Something Is Looming Geopolitically, and We Better Start Taking It Seriously

Sundance, August 22, 2022

Trends in Mortality and Morbidity in the Most Vaccinated Countries : Twenty-one Proven Facts

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A Letter to UK’s Chief Coroners Office on Disturbing COVID and COVID Vaccination Deaths

John O’Looney, August 20, 2022

As the COVID Myths Explode, Delusions Are Shattering: Our Exit from Subservience Leads to Nuremberg 2.0

Prof. Anthony J. Hall, August 22, 2022

They’re Killing our Children: Will There be Doctors and Public Health Officials Fleeing for the Exits?

Prof. Bill Willers, August 19, 2022

Amish Farm Under Threat From U.S. Federal Government for Refusal to Abandon Traditional Farming Practices

Jeremy Loffredo, August 23, 2022

An Engineered Food and Poverty Crisis to Secure Continued U.S. Dominance

Colin Todhunter, August 24, 2022

After Data Show Vaccinated at Higher Risk of Dying from COVID, Canadian Province Ends Monthly Reports

Dr. Julie Comber, August 22, 2022

Johns Hopkins University Confirms: You Can be “Vaccinated” with a PCR Test, Even Without Knowing

Weaver, February 16, 2022

Why Was Former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Estate Raided?

Peter Koenig, August 14, 2022

Israel Conquers the World

Philip Giraldi, August 23, 2022

The Dogma and History of Vaccination. Questioning “Germ Theory” is a Taboo

Michael Doliner, August 23, 2022

The Energy Crisis: A Cold Winter Ahead for Europe and Syria

By Steven Sahiounie, August 25, 2022

While the world has sympathy for the plight of Europeans facing a cold winter because of their energy crisis, Syrians have been suffering a lack of energy since 2011.  The European energy crisis is based partly on politics, but the Syrian energy crisis is caused exclusively by the US-NATO political attack on Syria for regime change.

Erdogan Repairs Syria Ties with Eye on Eurasianism

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, August 26, 2022

Erdogan has his finger on many pies — from the Balkans to North Africa and Persian Gulf to the Caucasus — but what concerns him most is the situation in Syria, which has serious implications as he prepares to seek a renewed mandate.  For Erdogan, Syria is like a Matryoshka doll — a set of problems of decreasing size placed one inside another. Who else but Putin could understand a Matryoshka doll better? 

“Economic Warfare” Directed Against China? The Shanghai “COVID Zero Tolerance Mandate”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 25, 2022

Most analysts and historians fail to understand that starting in the early 1980s, China has become a full fledged capitalist country. There are powerful US business interests including Big Pharma, major hi-tech companies, banking institutions which are firmly entrenched inside China. The United States has faithful allies within China’s business establishment as well as among academics, scientists, medical doctors who tend to be “pro-American”.

How US and Allied News-media Deceive the Public, to Believe What the Government Wants Them to Believe

By Eric Zuesse, August 25, 2022

One prominent way that the U.S. regime and its allies (or vassal-nations) deceive the public is by false headlines that often don’t even represent the news-report fairly or at all. A good recent example of this was a 23 August 2022 Reuters report headlined “Analysis: As Ukraine war drags on, Europe’s economy succumbs to crisis”.

Africa Is Not For Sale: Sixteen SADC African Nations Reject “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” (H.R. 7311)

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, August 25, 2022

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), during its 42nd Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government held on 17 and 18 August at Palais du Peuple (Parliament Building), vehemently expressed their collective opposition to a proposed United States law on countering Russian influence and activities in Africa.

Global Economic Depression: U.K. “Sharpest Economic Contraction” Since 1709. European Economies in Straightjacket

By Drago Bosnic, August 25, 2022

The United Kingdom is currently going through the sharpest economic contraction in the last 313 years. According to Reuters, this is the country’s worst recorded fall in output in more than three centuries. Since 2020, the UK broke this unflattering record multiple times, first after it faced the severe consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, then after the fallout of the suicidal anti-Russian sanctions started to kick in.

European Central Bank (ECB) Says Cash ‘Not Fit’ for Digital Economy, Dismisses CBDC Privacy Concerns

By Andrew Moran, August 25, 2022

In the digital economy, cash is no longer a useful tool, and a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the “only solution” to continue the existing monetary system, according to a new paper from the European Central Bank (ECB). The eurozone’s central bank recently published a paper titled “The Economics of Central Bank Digital Currency,” in which the authors assessed the implications for the financial system and examined data privacy and digital payments.

Woodstock ’99: Feeling the Heat

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, August 25, 2022

The documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 was most decidedly a depiction of a catastrophe. Watching the concert progress (or regress) from excitement to disaster was a spine-chilling experience. Over time the problems depicted in the film got unbelievably worse. The concert’s collapse into complete chaos as the hyped-up concert-goers set much of the event equipment on fire looked more like a depiction of hell on the walls of a medieval church.

The Legacy of Resistance to the Prison Industrial Complex. Nehanda Abiodun Enters the Struggle

By Abayomi Azikiwe, August 25, 2022

Since the early 1980s, the prison population in the United States has grown exponentially with African Americans, Latin Americans and other working class people making up the majority of those incarcerated in the dungeons of the world’s leading capitalist state. During the previous decade on September 9, 1971, several thousand inmates at the Attica Prison in New York State took control of the correctional facility to demand radical changes in the way people are treated while incarcerated.

Promising a ‘Full-Throated Investigation’ of Fauci, Senators Demand NIH, HHS Preserve All Related Documents, Communications

By Dr. Suzanne Burdick, August 25, 2022

Two U.S. senators on Tuesday — the day after Dr. Anthony Fauci announced plans to leave his government posts in December — formally requested the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services preserve all documents and communications related to Fauci.

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***

Yesterday, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke with Uzbekistan President Shavkat Mirziyoyev regarding the forthcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit in Samarkand on September 15-16. This must be the fourth or fifth time the two leaders confabulated over the upcoming event. One lost count! 

Putin and Mirziyoyev conceivably exchanged notes on a major event likely on the sidelines of the SCO summit — a meeting between Turkish President Recep Erdogan and his Syrian counterpart Bashar al-Assad signalling a breakthrough in the conflict in Syria. 

As I wrote recently — Russia-Turkey reset eases regional tensions— one major outcome of the meeting between Putin and Erdogan in Sochi on August 5 was that a reconciliation between Ankara and Damascus may be happening. On his return journey, Erdogan said he was going to contact Assad. Hardly anyone noticed, though, that Putin also invited Erdogan and Assad to participate in the upcoming SCO summit. 

Indeed, Mirziyoyev, who will be hosting the summit in Samarkand, has been in the know of it all through. Putin and Mirziyoyev have forged a close working relationship suffused with warmth and mutual respect that puts Tashkent back as the key capital in Russia’s Central Asian strategies, as has been the case historically dating back to the Tsarist era. 

Moscow has outclassed and outmanoeuvred the recent US attempts to stir up unrest in Central Asian region, whilst the Kremlin has one eye riveted on Ukraine. (The secretary of Russia’s Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, a longtime associate of Putin, lashed out last week at a meeting of SCO security tsars at US attempts to stage colour revolutions in Central Asia.) 

Coming back to Syria, western media missed the wood for the trees while assessing the Putin-Erdogan summit in Sochi. The leitmotif in Sochi was regional security in the Greater Middle East — the vast swathe stretching from Levant to the steppes of Central Asia and the Pamirs bordering Xinjiang. 

The Guardian came tantalisingly close to smelling the real story behind the 4-hour long “secretive meeting” at one-to-one level in Sochi, but lost the scent somehow after hearing that “Before the meeting began, Russian journalists noted that Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen leader who has sent forces under his command to both Syria and Ukraine, was in attendance.”

The Putin-Erdogan axis is riveted on a balancing of interests to ensure differences (which are aplenty) do not turn into disputes. Thus, Putin is unfailingly attuned to Erdogan’s concerns today which devolve upon the state of the Turkish economy and the upcoming presidential and parliamentary polls (the two are inter-related.)  

Erdogan has his finger on many pies — from the Balkans to North Africa and Persian Gulf to the Caucasus — but what concerns him most is the situation in Syria, which has serious implications as he prepares to seek a renewed mandate.  For Erdogan, Syria is like a Matryoshka doll — a set of problems of decreasing size placed one inside another. Who else but Putin could understand a Matryoshka doll better? 

For the Russian mind, the Matryoshka doll symbolises above all other values the search for truth and meaning. That is how Syria figures prominently in Putin’s cogitations with Erdogan. Packed inside the doll, one inside another, are: PKK and Kurdish separatism; US-Kurdish unholy alliance; Israeli footprints; Turkish-American discord (following the failed US-backed coup d’état in 2016) — all of which impact Turkey’s vital concerns. 

At Sochi, Putin could persuade Erdogan that the best way to address his concerns will be by engaging with Assad. Of course, Erdogan and Assad are no strangers to each other. The two families used to vacation together — until 2011 when Barack Obama and Joe Biden weaned Erdogan away. 

Fundamentally, there is a Turkish-Russian understanding that the strengthening of Syrian government’s sovereignty will strengthen regional security and that Ankara and Damascus have a common interest in fighting separatism and terrorism. Indeed, the natural corollary is that the longer the US occupation continues, the greater the danger of a “Kurdistan” consolidating in northern Syria. 

But the US is in no hurry to end its occupation, since the troops aren’t taking casualty; large scale smuggling of oil makes the occupation rather “self-financing” (like the ancient Roman legions); and the region also happens to be Syria’s most fertile river valleys. 

Erdogan’s security concerns in Syria are best addressed in cooperation with Damascus. As the first step in this direction, he publicly stated last week that destabilising the Assad government is not Turkish policy (anymore.)

Meanwhile, reports have appeared that a Turkish delegation of former ministers and diplomats led by the leader of the Patriotic Party (Vatan Partisi) Dogu Perincek plans to visit Damascus to hold talks with Assad for the restoration of Turkish-Syrian relations. Interestingly, Tehran has since called for the rebuilding of relations between Turkey and Syria.

Now, Perincek’s appearance makes this a demi-official Track 1.5 mission. Perincek is a seasoned politician with a Marxist pedigree, who was associated with both “Kemalists” and Kurdish PKK, had spent something like 15 years in jail during various periods until an intriguing prison release in 2014, and a makeover as fellow traveller of the Erdogan regime. 

However, one consistent trait in Perincek’s ideological make-up has been his advocacy of “Eurasianism”, namely, that Turkey should turn its back on  the Atlantic system, pursue an independent foreign policy and head toward Eurasia to work with the Russia-China axis. 

Without doubt, Perincek worked on receptive minds, as a belief was gaining ground within the Erdogan government that Western powers — the US, in particular — are trying to weaken and divide Turkey through their support of Kurdish separatism, whereas Russia and China scrupulously refrain from interference in Turkey’s internal affairs. 

Curiously, Perincek and Russian philosopher and ideologue Aleksandr Dugin have enjoyed a warm personal friendship over many years, cemented by their conviction that Russian nationalism and Turkish nationalism have a meeting point in the ideology of “Eurasianism”. They have met more than once. And, like Dugin, Perincek is also credited today with influence among the power circles surrounding Erdogan. 

A presentation of the “Eurasianist” perspective on the Syrian question is available in a most recent  interview by retired Lt. Gen. Ismail Hakki Pekin, former head of the Turkish Armed Forces’ Military Intelligence (2007-2011) who used to be the deputy chairman of Perincek’s party.  

It is possible to see Perincek’s influence in the Turkish foreign policy in the so-called Asia Anew initiative, which was unveiled at the annual Turkish Ambassadors’ Meeting in Ankara three years ago. 

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***

Last week’s Israeli army raids and closures of seven Palestinian civil society organisations based in the occupied West Bank cities of Ramallah and Al Bireh are the latest manifestation of a decades old Israeli campaign to remove influential Palestinian leaders, undermine Palestinian institutions and disrupt Palestinian unity.

Before dawn a week ago, Israeli forces broke into their offices, searched them, confiscated computers and files, and sealed their premises. Israel branded them “terrorist” and “unlawful”, alleging ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a leftist resistance group outlawed by Israel.

Israel’s latest victims cover a broad range of activities essential for the wellbeing of Palestinians struggling for existence under Israeli occupation. These are human rights defender Al Haq, prisoner support group Addameer, the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Bisan Centre for Research and Development, Defence for Children International, Palestine branch and the Union of Health Workers Committees which operates hospitals and clinics across the West Bank. The first six were banned as unlawful “terrorist” organisation last October and the seventh in 2020.

Adding insult to injury, Israel’s domestic security agency Shinbet followed up by summoning for questioning Khaled Quzmar, director of Defence for Children, who endured two hours of interrogation at Ofer military base, and  Shawan Jabari of Al Haq who refused to present  himself. The Al Haq caller made “threats of imprisonment and other measures if Al Haq continues its work,” which it has, by reopening its office and recalling staff.

The Gaza-based Palestinian Centre for Human Rights (PCHR) condemned the raids as an “assault” on these organisations and warned that such closures are part of the Israeli army’s “systematic policy” of eliminating Palestinian civil society due to the role it plays in “supporting the Palestinian resistance under occupation”. The PCHR argues that Israel has [tightened] “the screws” on such organisations since the Durban Conference against Racism held in 2001 in South Africa and Israel has escalated its efforts since Palestine “acceded to the International Criminal Court in 2015”. The PCHR demanded the international community intervene to reopen these civil society bodies, which the Palestinian Authority regards as “state institutions”.

The UN, European Union, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have criticised the move and nine European countries, Germany, Italy, France, Spain, Holland, Belgium, Ireland, Denmark and Sweden have expressed “deep concern” over the closures while even Israel’s best friend, the US, voiced “concern.” All said Israel had offered no evidence to justify its “terrorist” designation. None has proposed to exert pressure on Israel to reverse its bans and return the property of the raided organisations or punish Israel if it refuses. This means, once again, Israel will get away with a major assault on Palestinian civil society just as it escapes serious censure for its nightly arrest raids on West Bank Palestinian cities, towns and villages and military offensives against Gaza.

However, if Israel provides firm evidence to justify the closure of these organisations, action would be taken making it all too clear once again that double standards will apply on the case of the banned organisations while Israel will continue to enjoy impunity.

By raiding the organisations in Ramallah, the Israeli army also violated the terms of the 1995 Oslo II agreement, signed by Israeli Prime Minister Yizak Rabin and Palestinian Liberation Organisation Chairman Yasser Arafat. Ramallah is located in Area A, the 18 per cent of the West Bank under full Palestinian Authority control. Israeli citizens, colonists, and forces are banned from entering Area A. However, since Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s full scale invasion of the West Bank in 2002, its forces have conducted routine raids into Ramallah and environs Bethlehem, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarem, Qalqilya, Jericho, Nablus, 80 per cent of Hebron, and the 40 per cent of Al Bireh which is classified as Area A. Five per cent of this town is Area B, and 55 per cent as Area C.

In Area B, 22 per cent of the West Bank, the authority administers Palestinian enclaves while Israel has full security control.  Israel is meant to exercise total control over Area C, 60 per cent of the West Bank but in violation of Oslo II, Israel has extended the reach of its military to Area A, in defiance of the Palestinian Authority.

Israel does not confine its military raids to civil society organisations but also targets cultural centres and research organisations.  In July 2020, Israeli forces raided the Yabous Cultural Centre and Edward Said National Conservatory  of Music in occupied East Jerusalem and confiscated thousands of documents, files, computers and surveillance cameras. The military also entered the Beit Hanina home of Rania Elias and Suhail Khouri, the directors of the centres, seized files and arrested the couple.

Israel conducts drone and air strikes against cultural facilities in Gaza. In May 2021, Israel flattened two of the strip’s main bookshops and in 2018 Israel bombed the Said Al Meshal Cultural Centre in the Rimal neighbourhood of Gaza where musicians and artists practised and performed.

The most destructive raid conducted by Israel took place at the Arab Studies Society located in occupied East Jerusalem’s 1897 Husseini mansion, a graceful stone building of great historic importance and a symbol of the Palestinian presence in the city. The raid took place shortly after the death of Faisal Husseini, East Jerusalem’s leading Palestinian figure, who founded the Society in 1980 and moved it into Orient House in 1983. The Israelis carried away the library’s 17,000 books in English and Arabic as well as its collection of documents on Palestinian land ownership during the Ottoman era and British mandate period.  Israel’s aim was to deprive the Palestinians of proofs of their existence and ownership of the land Israel claims and colonises.

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Featured image is from PressTV

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***

The Biden administration has urged the Palestinian Authority not to pursue a vote at the UN Security Council on gaining full UN membership, stressing it will likely veto any such move, U.S. and Palestinian sources said.

Driving the news: The Palestinian Authority announced several weeks ago it will renew its push to gain full UN membership during the upcoming UN General Assembly meeting in New York.

• Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas wants to use this move to try to put the Israeli-Palestinian conflict back at the center of the international community’s attention and to break the current deadlock in the peace process.
• The possible UN bid is also a way for the PA and Abbas to try to win points domestically and get deliverables from the U.S. and the EU.

Behind the scenes: Several weeks ago, Palestinian Ambassador to the UN Riyad Mansour started quiet consultations in New York with Security Council members over a possible full membership bid, according to Palestinian, Israeli and U.S. sources.

• The Palestinians also discussed the issue with Biden administration officials, who raised strong reservations and said such a move won’t lead anywhere because of the veto, U.S. sources said.

Flashback: In November 2012, the Palestinians’ UN status was upgraded to non-member observer state, but this was done through a vote at the UN General Assembly where no country has veto power.

• Since then, Palestinian leaders tried several times to get a vote at the UN Security Council but never garnered enough support — nine of 15 members — to even hold a vote.

What they’re saying: PLO official and Palestinian Minister Hussein al-Sheikh confirmed there were talks with the Biden administration on the issue, but stressed that it is an ongoing discussion and the PA is still trying to convince countries to support it.

• A State Department spokesperson said the U.S. is committed to a two-state solution and is focused on trying to bring the Palestinians and Israelis closer together and create conditions for direct talks.
• “The only realistic path to a comprehensive and lasting peace is through direct negotiations between the parties. There are no shortcuts to Palestinian statehood outside direct negotiations with Israel,” the State Department spokesperson added.

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***

One prominent way that the U.S. regime and its allies (or vassal-nations) deceive the public is by false headlines that often don’t even represent the news-report fairly or at all. A good recent example of this was a 23 August 2022 Reuters report headlined “Analysis: As Ukraine war drags on, Europe’s economy succumbs to crisis”. The lie that the headline was designed to implant into readers’ minds was that the invasion of Ukraine by Russia didn’t merely contribute to “Europe’s economy succumbs to crisis,” but that when winter comes and Europeans will be experiencing an even worse economy, that will be largely if not mainly because the “Ukraine war drags on.”

Actually, Europe’s own sanctions against Russia have produced and are producing skyrocketing commodities-prices that Europeans are experiencing not just in fuels but in foods, and will increasingly experience during the winter when there will be an even bigger demand for the fuels that Russia more than any other supplier and had been selling to Europeans at lower prices than any other country — but, now, because of those sanctions that are imposed by Europe’s leaders, Russia’s fuels are banned from European markets. Europe’s leaders have imposed those sanctions, and Europe’s ’news’-media praised them; and, so, European citizens approved of those sanctions; but, now, Europeans are starting to feel the inevitable consequence of that policy: soaring commodities-prices, and declining economies.

On 9 May 2022, Russia’s RT News bannered “Europe’s biggest economy faces wave of bankruptcies — banking chief: Aggressive sanctions against Russia are sending financial shockwaves through Germany”. That was an honest headline and following news-report, which one won’t see in U.S.-and-allied ’news’-media. The opening was:

Germany will be battered with a wave of bankruptcies due to Ukraine-related sanctions against Russia, according to Commerzbank Chief Executive Officer Manfred Knof.

“The energy supply in Germany is at risk, supply chains are breaking down, we have high inflation,” Knof was quoted by the Handelsblatt daily as saying.

According to the executive, almost a third of Germany’s foreign trade has been impacted, forcing companies to navigate complex issues with customers, including surging commodity prices and supply-chain bottlenecks.

“We shouldn’t delude ourselves: the number of insolvencies in our markets will probably increase and the risk provisions of the banks with it,” Knof said.

Whereas the Reuters ’news’-report had a false headline, and their following news-report was incomprehensible about what is causing Europe’s economies to suffer — and the headline’s implication was that Vladimir Putin was to blame, and that Putin caused it when he made the decision on February 24th that (supposedly) caused Europe’s economic plunge — this news-report from Russia (unlike the Reuters one) had no need to lie. That’s the difference between propaganda versus news. Propaganda is fake ‘news’. Fake ‘news’ comes from the approved ‘news’-media.

Many people don’t even read beyond the headline. Far more people read the headline than actually read the news-report that is below it. And even people who don’t read beyond the headline get their mind imprinted by the impression that the headline suggests. So, headline-deception is a major technique of propaganda.

Anyone in The West who pays subscription-fees to receive ‘news’ from their Government-approved ‘news’-media is paying in order to be deceived by their Government. It might give people a ‘good feeling’ because it’s thought to be from ‘our Government’ even if in fact it is only from the ‘news’-media that are owned and controlled by the billionaires who fund the political campaigns of the winning political candidates, but those subscription-fees are actually buying poison — mind-poison.

Obviously, any news-medium that is publishing this article would never knowingly do such a thing. But all of the mainstream U.S.-and-allied news-media do it all the time, and they know what they are doing, and why.

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

Featured image is from OneWorld

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***

The Southern African Development Community (SADC), during its 42nd Ordinary Summit of Heads of State and Government held on 17 and 18 August at Palais du Peuple (Parliament Building), vehemently expressed their collective opposition to a proposed United States law on countering Russian influence and activities in Africa. The “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” adopted by the US House of Representatives directs the US Secretary of State to submit a strategy on Russia.

According the statement posted to its website, the 16-member regional bloc complained that the United States has made the African continent “the target of unilateral and punitive measures” and its Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee pushed the bill designed to stop President Vladimir Putin using Africa to bypass US sanctions and fund his war in Ukraine, as well as to protect African people from human rights violations by Russian mercenaries.

The SADC leaders have, therefore, reaffirmed their collective position of non-alignment towards conflicts outside the continent. The summit was held under the theme “Promoting Industrialization through Agro-processing , mineral beneficiation  and regional value chains for inclusive and resilient economic growth.”

“Africa Is Not For Sale. Africa is open for business not for sale or looting. We must defend what is ours and make sure that no one takes from us what is ours,” declared Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera at the summit, pointing to the bold stance against the scramble for Africa’s resources by external powers. “If the world wants what we have they must buy in a fair trade so that we use proceeds to build ourselves new cities, new universities, new infrastructure, industries and new programmes that lifts people out of poverty and vulnerability.”

President Chakwera urged African leaders and their people to build Africa and future generations not for those bent on looting its resources . He further touched on the need for Africa to define its destiny and chart a new independent course. That the resources of Africa remain in the hands of Africans but not to be stolen by some people. Let us stand up with one voice and tell the World, Africa is open for business but not for sale.

“It takes only Africans to build the African continent. No foreigners will develop the continent. We must not always look upon them because what they give us does not build anything but simply causes tension in the continent like they did in the past.” In that scathing speech, he further lambasted Western and Eastern countries that they must not just be in Africa to  steal but to build. There is no one outside Africa who can build it, not any European, Asian or American.”

Labeled as the “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” (H.R. 7311) was passed on April 27 by the House of Representatives in a bipartisan 419-9 majority and will probably be approved by the Senate which is evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans. This legislative measure is broadly worded enabling the State Department to monitor the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in Africa including military affairs and any effort which Washington deems as “malign influence.”

Russian military operations in Ukraine are in response to Washington and Wall Street’s efforts to expand the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) deeper into Eastern Europe as a direct threat to the interests of the Russian Federation and its allies. Two other bills have recently been passed to maintain and expand Pentagon military bases around the world along with providing an additional $40 billion to supply weapons to the Ukrainian government which is bolstered by neo-Nazi militias integrated into the armed forces.

During the early phase of the Russian special operations in Ukraine, many African states abstained from two United Nations General Assembly resolutions motivated by Washington to condemn the Russian government for its intervention in Ukraine while completely ignoring the level of fascist infiltration of Kiev military forces and the necessity of reaching a diplomatic solution to the burgeoning conflict.

African Heads-of-State, such as President Cyril Ramaphosa of the Republic of South Africa, have consistently argued that the African National Congress (ANC) led government in Pretoria will not support the Ukraine war along with the draconian sanctions instigated by the Biden administration. Ramaphosa has demanded that the U.S. State Department and White House support negotiations between Kiev and Moscow, which have been routinely undermined by Biden and his cabinet members.

Long before the February 24 invasion by the Russian armed forces, the U.S. has engaged in repeated threats against President Putin and the entire government based in Moscow demanding that it acquiesce to the expansion of NATO. Unprecedented sanctions with the stated aims of completely blocading Russia from the world economic system have largely failed to curtail the advances by Moscow in eastern Ukraine.

The “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” adopted by the US House of Representatives is a well-designed legislative measure broadly worded enabling the State Department to monitor the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in Africa including military affairs and any effort which Washington deems as malign influence.

The United States Congressional bill was approved by a wide margin that would target and punish African states that maintain political and economic relations with the Russian Federation. Labeled as the “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” (H.R. 7311) was passed on April 27 by the House of Representatives in a bipartisan 419-9 majority and approved by the Senate which is evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans.

On 2nd March at the United Nations General Assembly, with all 193 UN Member States in attendance, a total of 141 countries voted in favour of the resolution, which reaffirmed Ukrainian sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity. African representatives and their votes was considered very interesting. Some 17 African countries abstained from the vote at the UN General Assembly to deplore the Russian invasion of Ukraine while some other 28 countries in the continent voted in favour.

Among those abstaining from vote were South Africa, Algeria, Uganda, Burundi, Senegal, South Sudan, Mali and Mozambique. Others were Sudan, Namibia, Angola, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea, Central Africa Republic, Madagascar, Tanzania and Congo.

Eritrea was the only African country that voted against the resolution. Besides that however, Egypt, Tunisia, Nigeria, Kenya, Chad, Ghana, Gambia, Gabon, Rwanda, Cote d’Ivoire, Libya, Liberia, Djibouti, Mauritania, Somalia, Niger, Benim, Lesotho, Botswana, Zambia, Malawi, Mauritius, Comoros, Seychelles ,Cape Verde, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone and the Democratic Republic of Congo, among others, voted yes.

Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Guinea Bissau, Ethiopia, Eswatini were not in the room. Uganda said it abstained from the vote to uphold “neutrality” as the incoming chair of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM). NAM is a forum made up of 120 developing countries to assert their independence from the competing claims of the two superpowers.

In a tweet, Uganda’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Adonia Ayebare, said the country would continue to play a constructive role in the maintenance of peace and security both regionally and globally.

Shahid said the resolution reflected the international community’s grave concern about the situation in Ukraine. “I join member states in expressing concern about reports of attacks on civilian facilities such as residences, schools and hospitals, and of civilian casualties, including women, older persons, persons with disabilities, and children,” he said, citing the text. In practice, African countries hold similar views on the principles of sovereignty, independence, and territorial integrity, even including those that voted and those that abstained.

UN Secretary-General António Guterres stated he was duty bound to stand by the resolution and be guided by its call.

“The message of the General Assembly is loud and clear: End hostilities in Ukraine now. Silence the guns now. Open the door to dialogue and diplomacy now,” Guterres said, adding: “Looking ahead, I will continue to do everything in my power to contribute to an immediate cessation of hostilities and urgent negotiations for peace. People in Ukraine desperately need peace. And people around the world demand it.”

The SADC collectively aims at, among others, promoting sustainable and equitable economic growth and social economic development that will ensure poverty alleviation, improve the living standards of the people in Southern Africa. This 16-member organization was established in 1980. The member states are Angola, Botswana, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Eswatini, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, United Republic of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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While the world has sympathy for the plight of Europeans facing a cold winter because of their energy crisis, Syrians have been suffering a lack of energy since 2011.  The European energy crisis is based partly on politics, but the Syrian energy crisis is caused exclusively by the US-NATO political attack on Syria for regime change.

Syria has a milder climate than Europe; however, Aleppo, Homs, and Damascus have snow on the ground during part of every winter. Syrian residents have almost no electricity, and a shortage of cooking gas, home heating fuel, and gasoline.  Why are Syrians being collectively punished?  The US-EU sanctions have caused suffering in Syria where the middle class has become the newly poor, and the poor have become destitute.

The attack and destruction of Syria have been supported and funded by European leaders who represent the European citizens democratically.  It is no wonder Em Ahmed said, “Let them get a taste of their own medicine.”

Europeans are facing a cold winter 

Europe is the epicenter of a global energy crisis according to the International Energy Agency.

Syria has oil wells and gas wells, but the illegal occupation US military has been stealing the oil from the largest oil field and since August 11 it has delivered 537 oil tankers of looted oil to the US military base in Iraq.

Causes of the European energy crisis

The European Commission implemented a full ban on Russian coal in August, and Gazprom has cut back on pipeline flows to Europe. EU nations are preparing for a hard winter, while cutting gas consumption, boosting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) imports for storage, and in some cases restarting coal-powered plants.

The current energy crisis in Europe is caused by increased energy demands as the pandemic has allowed for an economic recovery phase, decreased wind power, limited gas sales by Russia on the spot market, limited gas supply from Norway, and past higher gas usage due to cold winter weather.

Europe has relied on Russian gas imports as they transitioned from coal to gas for electricity production. The US kept warning Europe that they should reduce its dependence on Russian gas, but it took the current conflict in Ukraine to make a change.

Experts have complained that Europe caused its energy crisis by failing to act quicker on a transition to renewables and form a coherent energy policy.  They feel fossil fuels have caused climate change, and renewable energy sources offer the best path to avoid future energy crises.

Europe had relied on Russian gas, but Russian gas cutoffs have affected European energy security. Russian gas amounted to about 40 percent of European imports, but Moscow has slashed the flow after Europe supported Ukraine.  Europe looked to Norway and North Africa to fill in the void, but the support didn’t materialize.

The Asian factor

Japan, South Korea, and China hold the key to Europe’s winter heating, as they are among the biggest importers of LNG, and their winter heating demands coincide with Europe’s. The three Asian countries have produced more energy from renewables: Japan and South Korea in solar power records, and China in hydropower. The post-pandemic economy recovery has seen Asian consumers competing with Europeans for gas, as there was a massive import of LNG to China.

“This is the most extreme energy crisis that has ever occurred in Europe,” said Alex Munton, an expert on global gas markets at Rapidan Energy Group, a consultancy. “Europe [is] looking at the very real prospect of not having sufficient gas when it’s most needed, which is during the coldest part of the year.”

Causes of the Syrian lack of energy

Syrians have about two to three hours of electricity every 24 hours.  This is caused by the destruction of power generating stations by terrorists, which cannot be repaired due to US-EU sanctions which prevent all infrastructure repairs, and the lack of fuel to be used to generate electricity, due to the US military occupation and looting of the main oil fields in the northeast.

Syrians are lacking gas for cooking, and gasoline and diesel for transportation, along with soaring food prices due to the currency devaluation amid hyperinflation.

In November 2021, Syria’s Internal Trade and Consumer Protection Minister Amr Salem blamed the US-EU sanctions for the suffering of the Syrian people, as the sanctions are hindering the import of petroleum products.  Before 2011, Syria was energy sufficient, producing enough of their gas for domestic use, and allowing for some export.  Now, with the US military stealing the oil since President Trump gave the order in 2019, Syria depends on imports, but the sanctions prevent even that.

In August 2021, the Syrian electricity ministry reported that the total direct and indirect losses of the electricity sector as a result of the war amounted to about 6.1 trillion Syrian pounds (24.4 billion U.S. dollars).

Before the conflict, Syria relied on 11 fossil-fuel power plants (oil and gas), while hydroelectric power came from three dams located on the Euphrates River. Attacks by terrorists destroyed four power stations, and dozens of pipelines, which has left the country with less than 15 percent of the electricity used in 2010.

In January 2012, the gas pipeline in Homs was attacked.  CNN reporter Arwa Damon and her crew were embedded with the Free Syrian Army, who was a Syrian armed militia following Radical Islam, and supported and weaponized by the US and the EU.  Damon was tipped off by the terrorists that they were going to blow up the pipeline, and she and her crew set up their camera ahead of time to capture the later explosion.  Damon was complicit in an act of terrorism that deprived innocent civilians of electricity.  This is the same CNN reporter who in 2014 bit a medic at the US Embassy in Baghdad while in a drunken attack on Charles Simon and Tracy Lamar, who later sued CNN for 1 million dollars in damages.

Coming cold

This winter in Europe may see rationing of energy, industrial shutdowns, and perhaps an economic meltdown.  Strikes already have erupted as spiraling prices and cost of living spikes cause households to struggle.

In Norway, the European Union’s biggest supplier of natural gas after Russia, mass strikes in the oil and gas industries recently forced companies to stop production, sending fear throughout Europe.

In Syria, the winter outlook is even bleaker, as the Syrian people are collectively punished for resisting the Radical Islamic overthrow of the Damascus government, and for fighting back against Al Qaeda and its allied militias who occupy Idlib today.  Syrians are still studying by candlelight.  Forgive them for not feeling too much sympathy for the Europeans who supported the terrorists who took their electricity away.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

The United Kingdom is currently going through the sharpest economic contraction in the last 313 years. According to Reuters, this is the country’s worst recorded fall in output in more than three centuries. Since 2020, the UK broke this unflattering record multiple times, first after it faced the severe consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, then after the fallout of the suicidal anti-Russian sanctions started to kick in.

Curiously, this contraction is a far larger decline than is the case in any other major Western economy, updated official figures showed on Monday. GDP (gross domestic product) fell by 11.0% in 2020, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said. This was a bigger drop than any of the ONS’s previous estimates and the largest fall since 1709, according to historical data hosted by the Bank of England.

The UK statistics experts regularly update GDP estimates as more data becomes available. The ONS’s initial estimates had already suggested that in 2020 the UK suffered its biggest fall in output since the “Great Frost” of 1709. But more recently the ONS had revised down the scale of the fall to 9.3%, the largest since just after World War One. According to Reuters, even before the latest revisions, the UK’s economic slump was the largest among the G7 countries, and the latest downward revision makes it worse than that of Spain, which recorded a 10.8% fall in economic output. However, the ONS advised against drawing direct comparisons with other Western economies, as most – with the likely exception of the United States – had “not yet undertaken the same type of in-depth revisions as the UK had.” The downward revision in GDP reflected lower contributions from healthcare and retailers than previously thought, the report says.

“The health service faced higher costs than we initially estimated, meaning its overall contribution to the economy was lower,” ONS statistician Craig McLaren said.

According to the report, the ONS had already factored in a fall in routine care provided by the UK’s troubled NHS (National Health Service) as it focused on treating COVID-19 patients and limiting the spread of the disease in hospitals. A closer look at the increased costs faced by individual retailers also led to a downward revision of the sector’s contribution, while factory output was revised up to take account of lower raw material costs. The UK economy bounced back sharply last year and recovered its pre-pandemic size in November 2021. But fast-rising inflation means the Bank of England expects the economy will slip back into recession later this year, the report concludes.

The UK is hardly the only Western power with severe economic output problems. The European Union, which the UK formally left on 31 January 2020, is also going through a tremendously difficult economic and financial crisis. This is also affecting many other countries around the globe, regardless of whether their economies are more or less integrated with those of other European countries or the EU itself. Sanctions aimed against Russia are already wreaking havoc in many, if not most Western economies.

Although the political West was initially confident the sanctions would work, in time, the belligerent power pole started losing this misplaced self-confidence. As the Kiev regime kept suffering defeats, and despite a massive media campaign to portray it as winning, people in the West became less enthusiastic. This worsened after sanctions started affecting the West more than Russia itself. Western leadership tried spinning the narrative, claiming sanctions supposedly had no boomerang effect, but that “Russia’s unprovoked, brutal invasion” was the reason behind everyone’s troubles. In June, an LA Times column, authored by Doyle McManus described his experience after visiting Europe. The columnist was in Italy to see how sanctions affected life in Europe:

“It wasn’t hard to find the effects. You’re unhappy about $5 a gallon for gas? Try $8. ‘It’s painful filling the tank,’ my friend Roberto Pesciani, a retired teacher, moaned. Utility bills? The cost of natural gas is four times higher in Italy than in the US. ‘Heating prices are up. Grocery prices are up. Everything’s going up,’ Pesciani said. The worries go beyond inflation. Italy’s foreign minister, Luigi Di Maio, warned recently that Russia’s blockade on Ukraine’s grain exports could spark a global bread war, producing famine in Africa and a new wave of migrants heading for Europe. ‘The problem with sanctions on Russia is that they will only work if they hurt us too,’ Pesciani observed.”

If we ignore false narratives, such as the supposed “blockade” of Ukrainian ports by the Russian Navy, the problems mentioned in this short interview are currently plaguing tens or likely hundreds of millions of people in Europe. As a result, the so-called “Ukraine unity myth” is slowly but surely starting to crumble in most Western states, particularly EU members.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

Recently, some American pro-war activists wrote a letter entitled “U.S. must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late”, in which they advocate an increase in aid to Kiev so that the situation of the conflict is reversed. The authors believe that the conflict is at a turning point and that aid must be provided now in order for Russia to be defeated. However, military experts disagree with this argument and say that there is no reason to try to prolong the fighting.

Despite all the difficulties the Western world has faced as a result of the conflict in Ukraine, many people still insist that aid to Kiev must continue – and increase – until Moscow is defeated. The main rhetoric of the pro-war militants is that Russia would not just win the conflict in Ukraine but would expand its operation to other countries in Europe, which is why it needs to be defeated now – which they consider possible by sending arms to Kiev.

“For the U.S. and NATO, that time is now — and the place is Ukraine, a large country whose population understands that its choice is either defeating Putin or losing their independence and even their existence as a distinct, Western-oriented nation. With the necessary weapons and economic aid, Ukraine can defeat Russia. If it succeeds, our soldiers are less likely to have to risk their lives protecting U.S. treaty allies whom Russia also threatens. What does defeat for Putin look like? The survival of Ukraine as a secure, independent, and economically viable country”, the authors of the open letter asking more weapons to Ukraine say.

In fact, this rhetoric is absolutely unfounded in all its points. First, there is no reason to believe in an expansion of the Russian special military operation to NATO countries. Moscow just started military incursions into Ukraine because Kiev left no other alternative with its continuous policy of killing Russian citizens, but there is currently no equivalent situation in other countries. However, more important than that is to note the lack of realism on the part of the pro-Western militants in believing in the possibility of “defeating” Russia, despite the current stage of the conflict.

Russia did not mobilize all of its military power to attack Ukraine, but the small portion of the Russian forces sent to the operation was efficient in annihilating Ukrainian main bases of resistance. At the current stage of the conflict, there is no possibility of reversing the military situation. Kiev is defeated and only postpones the inevitable decision to surrender because it continues to receive Western weapons, guaranteeing a kind of “survival”, prolonging the battles indefinitely, even without a chance of victory.

This is the assessment of any expert who analyzes the case honestly and without ideological emotions. For example, Douglas Macgregor, war veteran and former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, believes that the sending of weapons will not bring any positive change to Kiev due to the human capital deficit, both quantitative (with the low number of active Ukrainian soldiers), and qualitative (considering the tactical and operational inability of these fighters to reverse the conflict and even their lack of instruction in using the weapons they receive from the West).

With that, the weapons would only serve to prolong, not to effectively change the current military situation. He also claims that even if Kiev were to achieve major victories, the absence of human capital would not allow it to rebuild its troops after the long battles, while Russia, whose current combat mobilization represents only a small fraction of its military potential, would have the ability to recover quickly and thus regain the positions eventually lost.

“The hard truth is the introduction of new weapon systems won’t change the strategic outcome in Ukraine. Even if NATO’s European members, together with Washington, D.C., provided Ukrainian troops with a new avalanche of weapons, and it arrived at the front instead of disappearing into the black hole of Ukrainian corruption, the training and tactical leadership required to conduct complex offensive operations does not exist inside Ukraine’s 700,000-man army. In addition, there is an acute failure to recognize that Moscow would react to such a development by escalating the conflict. Unlike Ukraine, Russia is not currently mobilized for a larger war, but it could do so quickly”, he says.

Macgregor claims that the letter written by the pro-war militants “reinforces the failure” of Ukraine. For him, the conflict is at a decisive moment, in which it must be ended, not prolonged. He still believes that the reasons that led to this conflict – NATO’s incursions on the Russian border – were disastrous and unnecessary and that Western countries should give up further provocations against Moscow. The best solution, he says, is to support the Austrian model of neutrality as a solution for Ukraine before the country is completely destroyed.

“Ukraine’s war with Russia is at a decisive point. It is time to end it. Instead, the authors of the letter seek to reinforce failure. They are demanding a deeply flawed strategy for Ukraine that will lead in the best case to Ukraine’s reduction to a shrunken, land-locked state between the Dnieper River and the Polish border (…) Expanding NATO to Russia’s borders was never necessary and has become disastrous for Europe. The longer the war with Russia lasts the more likely it becomes that the damage to Ukrainian society and its army will be irreparable. Neutrality on the Austrian model for Ukraine is still possible”, he adds.

In fact, this opposition of opinions reflects the old debate between realists and warmongers. Anyone who really understands war and military strategy knows that there is no other solution than the neutralization of Ukraine and the end of Western expansionism. Those who think through liberal idealism, however, advocate fighting “to the last Ukrainian”.

Prolonging the conflict is not good for either side: it increases the destruction in Ukraine, perpetuates the suffering of the people, raises the expenses of western countries and forces Russia to mobilize a greater part of its military forces.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter.

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***

The Center for Biological Diversity, Department of the Interior and National Marine Fisheries Service reached an agreement today that requires the agencies to re-examine the risks and harms to whales and other endangered species from continued oil and gas drilling in federal waters off California.

Today’s agreement resolves a lawsuit filed by the Center earlier this year following a October 2021 oil spill from a subsea pipeline off Huntington Beach.

“We’re glad federal officials have agreed to reconsider offshore drilling’s harms to California’s amazing but vulnerable marine creatures,” said Kristen Monsell, oceans legal director at the Center. “Decade after decade, oil spill after oil spill, the federal government has failed to properly examine how offshore drilling threatens endangered whales and other animals. A comprehensive, science-driven analysis should show that drilling off California is just too risky to wildlife and our climate and must be phased out.”

Under the agreement’s terms, the agencies must complete a new analysis that accounts for new information related to the recent oil spill. They must consider how offshore-drilling activity affects newly designated critical habitat for Pacific humpback whales and consider implementing certain mitigation measures, such as requiring oil and gas vessels to slow down to avoid striking and killing whales and other animals.

The Trump administration completed the existing Endangered Species Act analysis for oil and gas activity off California’s shores in 2017. It was the first consultation on drilling activities off California completed in more than 30 years.

That Trump-era analysis concluded that drilling off the state’s coast would not adversely affect threatened and endangered whales, sea turtles or other species. It based its conclusion on the assumption that an oil spill is unlikely and that if it did occur it would be limited to 8,400 gallons. The Center’s lawsuit highlighted how last year’s oil spill off California, which was several times larger than the Trump-era estimate, renders that whole analysis unlawful.

The Center’s lawsuit also asserted that the existing analysis is not based on the best available science. The analysis failed to consider new information on the threat to whales of being hit by ships engaged in oil and gas activity; it also didn’t consider how existing oil drilling worsens the climate crisis and affects newly designated critical habitat for humpback whales.

The agreement requires the agencies to complete the new analysis within one year.

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More than ever before in American history people are no longer able to trust their leaders in government, industry and the media. Rather than put our confidence in official positions of power and influence, there is a better way to concentrate our focus. That is, we should allow history, independent science and substantiated facts to be our arbiters.

For example, at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in early 2020, it was understandable that we lacked sufficient, objective information to make informed judgments and decisions. All of the data about the new coronavirus strain and its spread was derived and disseminated from official sources. Therefore, we had to rely upon the reputation of the professional institutions and the believability of so-called experts to guide us.

Without being political, partisan or biased, we can now review the official narrative and determine what was true, false and remains unproven. We were told there were enormous numbers of deaths among the elderly to justify emergency measures to rapidly develop novel drugs and new vaccines. However, the evidence shows the opposite. The vast majority of deaths in hospitals, critical care centers and nursing homes were people who died from pre-existing comorbidities that may have been complicated by SARS-2 infection. In addition, the earlier accepted course of treatment – quarantine and oxygen therapy – was shown to be largely ineffective and, in fact, further complicated rising mortality rates.

Moreover, if a patient in hospice care with terminal cancer or COPD became infected, the death would have been ruled Covid-19.  This manipulation of cause-of-death certificates presented an image that the virus was far more lethal than it actually was. Only about 7 percent of reported Covid deaths can actually be associated with the virus as the primary cause.

Many medical professionals have reported that the PCR diagnostic test used throughout the world was remarkably flawed with very high rates of false positives. it has been known for a couple decades that PCR is an unreliable diagnostic tool for infectious diseases. Had we not relied on PCR, the case rate would never have warranted such a hysteric reaction. In the absence of novel drugs targeting the SARS-2 virus specifically nor a vaccine, health officials held firm to the story that there was no effective treatment. Infected people should return home and quarantine themselves until their condition worsens. The reality is that there were multiple highly effective drugs and therapeutic protocols that could have been prescribed but weren’t. As a result, hundreds of thousands of lives were lost unnecessarily. Worst, this may have been the first time in American medicine when large numbers of orthodox physicians and medical experts, the large majority who are pro-vaccine, were attacked, ridiculed and cancelled for suggesting early treatment with FDA approved off-label drugs such as hydroxychoroquine and ivermectin. Any doctor who spoke out was fair game.

Locking down entire cities and quarantining large numbers of presumably infected people did nothing to stop the pandemic. Such brash measures miscalculated the long-term consequences. Throughout the pandemic depression and anxiety, suicides, alcohol consumption and drug overdoses reached record highs.

In addition, all of the propaganda about the Covid vaccines being safe and effective was indisputably erroneous. Clearly when the major institutions that create and execute national health policies are repeatedly wrong and misguided, the public quickly loses trust. These public health debacles, as well as other issues, cost taxpayers enormous sums. The latest is a $40 billion aid package to dump into the Ukrainian government’s losing war with Russia. It is unfathomable that supporting a nation militarily and economically, which has been ranked as the most corrupt in Europe, would take precedence over the severe crises in the domestic economy. Congress’ aid package becomes all the more ludicrous and egregious when we take into account the US’s increasing inflation, skyrocketing energy costs and widespread shortages in infant formula.

Americans will recognize money spent wisely and their own interests when it produces positive results. However, now we witness the majority of expenditures failing to resolve problems; rather bailouts more often than not further enrich billionaires and private corporate interests. Instead of resolving any of the country’s serious struggles, the media on behest of the government distracts us with warring debates of critical race theory and gender politics.

As a consequence of decades of consistent budgetary and domestic failures, one does not need to be an oracle to envision the future. All that is necessary is to examine our constraints and foibles. We are now facing a perfect storm of pain, suffering and destruction: financial inequality and poverty, global warming, environmental migration, and disease pandemics.  Yet when any reasonable person questions what can be done, we are told we are fine and the best and brightest are on hand to solve our problems. However, in no small measure, it was the best and brightest during the past 60 years who were the architects for the crises we face today.

We need to step back to have a purview of the larger picture in order to observe what we as individuals can do to prevent or mediate the catastrophes we will all face. This begins by reaching agreement that those in power are the structural problem and can never come up with satisfying solutions.

An optimist will say that our socio-political and ecological conditions will improve, as long as the right candidate is elected to sit in the Oval Office. Since the nation is so viciously divided between clashing ideologies, this is wishful thinking. The pessimist, on the other hand,  reflects back upon the previous administrations since Eisenhower and declares nothing fundamental will change. It will only worsen. The climate optimist says that they are lucky their home has not been swept away in a flood, burnt to the ground from a wildfire or leveled by a hurricane. For the moment their lives are safe so everything will be fine in the future. The pessimist focuses on the reality about what happens when we lack a national or worldwide Marshall Plan to curb our impending climate-induced crises.

Throughout the US, people are waking up to a once in a lifetime experience that our body-politics are built upon a fragile foundation held together with scotch tape and paper clips. Others are waking up to the reality that they may be evicted from their homes and apartments tomorrow. About 75 percent of restaurants and bars closed during the pandemic will never reopen again. Yet the sole message fed to us daily by the mainstream media is that the only important issue on hand is to remain fearful of a virus, get tested, and keep up with your Covid-19 vaccine boosters.

Governors, state legislators and mayors contribute to the collective hysteria and are determined to pass bills to impose strict penalties on those who resist. Google, Facebook, Twitter and Wikipedia do their best to ensure that no medical experts, advocates or common citizens with data or facts on social platforms contradict the official health policies and narratives.

In the meantime, the nightly news, depending upon the political ideology of the network, airs politicized rhetoric and images of Washington’s spin for that day to keep the masses paralyzed in a state of fear and helplessness. If the average person asks what are the top ten or so issues that our nation should be focused upon, barely anything found in the mainstream media would be on that list.

Why?

It is not as complex or as unfathomable as it might appear on the surface. The basis of Ockham’s Razor is that to cut through the fat and get at the meat, the correct answers are usually the simplest.  We might begin by acknowledging that we are a nation divided but we have always been divided to some degree; however it has never been as purulent and hostile as today. The uniqueness of our society has been our diversity, languages, cultures and accents, and its ethnic and racial differences.  America’s dialectic has been one that inspires to become acquainted with these differences, such as southern hospitality, the Pacific Northwest’s relaxed and playful lifestyle, the quiet reserve and rural persona of the Midwest and the frenetic professional energy to succeed in the Northeast and California. Perhaps we appreciate each other in more ways than we consciously realize. Historically, when it was necessary to unite together, we did so as a nation – the world wars and the Great Depression are but two examples.

If we were to ask the average person in the 1930s what their priorities were, they would not be much different than today: a living wage, a home, food to feed the family and educational opportunities. Families wanted their children to be educated and succeed in ways the parents were unable.

There have always been conflicting attitudes towards social order or how the nation should be governed. But today what we are observing is not concerted efforts to advance improvements for how we govern ourselves, but rather we are retreating backwards into tribalism, identity politics and a new class warfare. No one can predict where this conflict and confusion will ultimately lead.

Identity politics, the effort for groups based upon race, social status, gender or religion to create exclusive political alliances founded on groupthink, has found its scriptures in both the Left and the Right. On the Left we find the insane rationale that if one is born Caucasian then racism is built into your genetic inheritance. There can be no escape from this curse, no redemption or purification by fire regardless of how much public service one performs for the greater good. On the Right we have the identity politics of white supremacism, anti-Semitism, and a fascist Christian evangelicalism built upon medieval superstitions.

Melanie Phillips gives us a clearer understanding for why we should not rely upon those pundits who believe that either conservative or liberal truths will save us from ourselves. Despite disagreeing with Phillips on many of her other socio-political positions, we believe she correctly identifies the fundamental flaws in contemporary liberalism being institutionalized across our campuses and within the Democrat party. First, it is unable to establish a hierarchy of values and morals. For example, if one refuses to say that any lifestyle or culture is better than another, then it cannot be said that liberalism is better than conservatism or any other ideology.  Consequently, faux liberalism cannot legitimately defend the very principles upon which it defines itself: freedom of speech and religion, tolerance, gender and class equality, etc.  It contradicts its own principles and removes the dignity of the individual, which is at the heart of liberalism and serves as its moral backbone. What we are witnessing therefore in modern liberalism, according to Phillips, is “the strong dominating the weak,” and this is a “libertarian ideology that suppresses the facts” that contradict it. It is therefore an ill-liberal ideology.

Sadly we find highly educated people supporting these irrational beliefs as well as elected officials in both parties. On the Left are the college educated young adults who are highly sensitive and were raised in protected bubbles with the beliefs they are exceptional and entitled. These are the ones demanding complete fealty to gender politics. On the Right are the disgruntled working class and disenfranchised dropouts of society who value a perverted Libertarian ideal built upon gun ownership.   And both have their allies in the mainstream media — MSNBC on the Left and Fox on the Right – to provide a bullhorn to the larger public.

Both true liberalism and true conservatism, which at one time could share a constructive dialogue together, have morphed into their polar opposites: an irrational faux enlightenment of liberalism versus a neo-fascist traditionalism that is petrified of the future and wants to turn back the clock.  The current speed being measured of the melting of the Arctic and Greenland, and the recent breaking up of the Antarctic ice sheets will sooner rather than later be experienced up and down the Atlantic coastal cities and the Gulf. Nobody in government is addressing this far greater threat than a virus that seems no more dangerous than a bad seasonal flu.

More than ever be

Amidst all of the noise of protest, identity classes and coronavirus panic a laundry list of more serious issues are either being ignored or completely drowned out by the cacophony of overtly emotional hyena cries. How much attention is being given to the 66 million Americans now food insecure or the 2 million who don’t have clean drinking water. Four in ten Americans, 132 million, are conservatively financially broke. Obesity is the health risk most associated with Covid deaths; 40 percent of American adults, 20 years and over, are clinically obese and another 72% are overweight. What is being done to free our federal health agencies from the grip of the junk food industry’s lobbying? Nothing. To make matters worse, 44 million Americans are uninsured and an additional 38 million have inadequate health insurance. Approximately a quarter of the population has health coverage well below the standards of any other developed nation. How much of this gross neglect has contributed to the US having the highest percent of world Covid deaths?

And should it not surprise us that the ideological clashes have become so vile and contemptible? But the underlying problem does not reside with the camps facing each other on opposite sides of the street. Rather our educational system is a disgrace. Forty-three million American adults (21%) are illiterate or functionally illiterate according to the National Center for Educational Statistics. How much of our neglected educational system, and legislations’ disdain for teachers, is contributing to the civil war many analysts fear is brewing?

We have a president who seems to have a stronger ambition to be the president of Ukraine to battle those nasty Russians rather than deal our domestic crises that are ripping the citizenry apart and leading the nation to third world status. The alternative was a buffoon in pathological denial about climate change and chased the wildest conspiracy series. Daily, new studies are being reported that indicate the climate crisis is far worse than earlier forecasts presumed. Instead of worrying about Central American climate migrants trying to enter the country, we should be preparing for the massive migrations that will be happening within our borders. Last year half a million Oregon residents, about a tenth of the state’s population, were given evacuation warnings due to the increasing pace of wildfires. This is just the beginning

If anyone believes that the US is economically capable of tackling these problems without a catastrophic blowback, they are delusional. The US’ total debt now stands at $91 trillion. Total personal debt is $23 trillion. Unfunded government liabilities at an astronomical $169 trillion.  This is a financial tsunami that can only be curbed by keeping the dollar printing machines rolling 24-7 until doomsday. The competency of our government’s economists must be questioned. The Biden administration was completely wrong in predicting the impact of sanctions against Putin. No one in Washington seems to have even considered that Russia’s economy might be much stronger and resilient than assumed. Nor did they seem to even consider that Putin would win Washington’s economic war of contrition, which it clearly is. After three months of sanctions, Russia has now emerged as the world’s strongest economy and the ruble has emerged as a hard global currency. With the majority of nations thumbing their nose at the US sanctions, America is rapidly losing its role as a world leader.

The big question is whether we have the capability, let alone the willingness, to relinquish our personal dogmas and then individually and collectively step outside of the malignant atmosphere of negativity, hatred and virtue-shaming and begin to address real future threats?  Urgently the future needs to be re-envisioned. It might be based upon the Great Reset being orchestrated by Davos and the global elite. However, the foundation and elitist values upon which a Reset is being built upon are the very failures of neoliberal capitalism that has brought the US and the international community to its current impasse of self-destruction. Nor can we look back at the past. It is history. Neither our modern conservatism nor liberalism as they are now ideologically identified would have a constructive role. Both are terribly outdated, decrepit and utterly corrupt.

Bertrand Russell remarked that “science is what you know, philosophy is what you don’t know.” Yet science doesn’t, nor can it ever, provide the truth of an entire picture. It can only tell us about distinct parts. In that context, we must begin to investigate what we don’t know in order to arrive at a consensus of truth for saving the planet and ourselves.

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

In the digital economy, cash is no longer a useful tool, and a central bank digital currency (CBDC) is the “only solution” to continue the existing monetary system, according to a new paper from the European Central Bank (ECB).

The eurozone’s central bank recently published a paper titled “The Economics of Central Bank Digital Currency,” in which the authors assessed the implications for the financial system and examined data privacy and digital payments.

A CBDC, such as a digital euro, would be the “only solution” to facilitate a “smooth continuation” of the present monetary system, the researchers concluded. Amid debate that CBDCs would limit the credit supply and be a disruptive force in financial markets, the paper rejects those concerns as unfounded.

Digital money is critical in a digital economy, the ECB noted. Since “cash is losing its appeal as efficient means of payment,” a CBDC is a necessary tool to install. While the research identifies drawbacks of instituting a uniform digital monetary system, such as the sluggish pace of settlements, market developments, and adoption, the paper notes that “a digital update of cash” is crucial to advancing “the two-layer system of public and private money.”

Ultimately, cash possesses “large economic costs without clear benefits,” so “it is by construction not ‘fit’ for the digital age.”

Digital money might generate privacy concerns, the authors warn. However, researchers point to a “privacy paradox”: consumers will emphasize the importance of privacy in surveys, but they will give away personal data for free or in exchange for small rewards.

“From a public policy perspective, these observations warrant further scepticism concerning the ability of market forces to reach efficient levels of privacy protection,” the report notes.

The paper also rejects cryptocurrencies and stablecoins, calling them a “threat to monetary sovereignty.” It welcomed President Joe Biden’s digital asset working group to put together a regulatory framework for the crypto sector, as well as the myriad of other regulations being considered worldwide.

“These proposals would bring new forms of digital money into the regulatory perimeter and help to address some of the major concerns related to monetary sovereignty and financial stability,” the paper states.

The Rise of CBDCs

Across the globe, many governments and central banks have been studying CBDCs as a potential successor or complement to physical money.

In January, for example, the Federal Reserve released a discussion paper titled “Money and Payments: The U.S. Dollar in the Age of Digital Transformation.” It examined the pros and cons of a possible U.S. CBDC.

While delivering his semiannual monetary policy report to Congress in June, Fed Chair Jerome Powell recommended that a digital dollar is “something we need to explore as a country” that “should not be a partisan thing.”

“It’s a very important potential financial innovation that will affect all Americans,” he told the House Committee on Financial Services. “Our plan is to work on both the policy side and the technological side in coming years and come to Congress with a recommendation at some point.”

He added that if the United States were to create a digital dollar, it would need to be issued by the federal government and not by a private institution.

“One question around CBDCs is do we want a private stablecoin to wind up being the digital dollar? I think the answer is no,” Powell said. “If we’re going to have a digital dollar, it should be government-guaranteed money, not private money.”

Congress is requesting faster action on a digital dollar. A bipartisan group of members of Congress has urged the Fed to speed up work on a CBDC.

“With countries around the world competing to deploy digital versions of their own currencies, America can’t be left behind,” Waters said in a statement in May before a hearing on the advantages and risks of CBDCs.

Last month, ECB President Christine Lagarde championed a digital euro, stating that digitizing the official currency in 19 of the 27 member states of the European Union can “achieve” stability and public access.

A digital euro would complement cash rather than replace it, according to Lagarde. She also pointed out that a CBDC would only be successful if it addressed the needs of consumers and businesses and ensured that privacy safeguards were established from the beginning.

That, Lagarde co-wrote in a blog post, ensures that a digital euro “serves as an anchor for the whole payment system.”

US, Europe Take on Digital Yuan?

But while the United States and Europe might be attempting to take the lead on such a critical issue in the global monetary system, market analysts note that advanced economies might be responding to action by China.

After seven years of intensive study, the People’s Bank of China (PBoC) unleashed the digital yuan in 2021. The e-yuan is a CBDC that is trying to replace a portion of the cash presently in circulation, as fewer Chinese consumers use physical money. It’s estimated that cash represented about one-quarter of point-of-sale transactions in 2020, down from nearly 75 percent in 2012.

Some aver that Beijing is seeking to dismantle the global currency system, but officials say otherwise.

While speaking at a Shanghai forum in December 2020, former PBoC head Zhou Xiaochuan noted that technology is the main goal, not currency supremacy. However, Richard Turrin, author of “Cashless: China’s Digital Currency Revolution,” told CNBC in March that a digital yuan could challenge the U.S. dollar in international trade settlements in the next decade.

“Remember, China is the largest trading country, and you’re going to see digital yuan slowly supplant the dollar when buying things from China,” he said. “If we go about five to 10 years out, yes, the digital yuan can play a significant role in reducing the dollar’s usage in international trade.”

The yuan has become one of the most popular currencies in cross-border transactions in 2021, representing 2.7 percent of global payments, the highest level in six years, according to January statistics from the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunications (SWIFT). The U.S. dollar accounted for more than 40 percent of international transactions.

Any attempt to dethrone the U.S. dollar as the chief international reserve currency would take time. According to the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Currency Composition of Official Foreign Exchange Reserves (COFER) data, dollars accounted for nearly 60 percent of reserves in the first quarter of 2022. The yuan represented less than 3 percent.

Do CBDCs Offer Risks?

But while many public policymakers are ebullient over the prospect of CBDCs, critics acknowledge that there are many drawbacks.

The primary risk for CBC is an erosion of privacy. Whether by the federal government or law enforcement agencies, every consumer’s financial transaction can be monitored by the state. As with China’s nationwide credit score system, experts warn that it isn’t hard to see the government imposing digital money to facilitate the institution of social monitoring programs.

“The end of cash and the insta-analysis of financial transactions enable surveillance, state control, and, eventually, social engineering on a scale never thought possible,” Human Rights Foundation chief strategy officer Alex Gladstein notes. “When the government can take financial privileges away for posting the wrong word on social media, saying the wrong thing in a call to parents, or sending the wrong photo to relatives, individuals self-censor and exercise extreme caution.

“In this way, control over money can create a social chilling effect.”

Another factor is the faster adoption of monetary policies, especially in times of crisis such as the coronavirus pandemic.

“The switch also simplifies the execution of monetary policy–the central bank can immediately change supply by issuing or canceling codes in its own accounts,” wrote Ajay Mookerjee at the Harvard Business Review. “And by paying interest on CBDC holdings, however, the central bank can directly transmit monetary policy to households, instead of influencing commercial deposit rates through the rates it offers banks on their reserve accounts with the central bank.”

Although proponents contend that it could support the financial system, the World Bank has warned that it actually threatens the “financial integrity” of today’s banking infrastructure.

“The introduction of CBDC could disrupt the existing financial-intermediation structure. In addition, depending on design and country context, CBDC could pose risks to financial stability, financial integrity, data protection and privacy, and cyber resilience,” the World Bank explained in its “South Asia Economic Focus” report in April.

In the end, CBDCs could turn out to be a costly investment that fails to achieve anything of substance, the Center for European Reform says.

“Without widespread adoption, a CBDC will be an expensive failure, and will do little to advance central banks’ goals,” senior research fellow Zach Meyers stated. “The EU shouldn’t be distracted by the prospect of a digital euro—which may sound impressive and exciting, but may give Europeans few benefits they can’t enjoy already.”

With more nations assessing CBDCs and other markets already implementing it into the fabric of their economies, a monetary experiment may be unfolding in real time.

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Andrew Moran covers business, economics, and finance. He has been a writer and reporter for more than a decade in Toronto, with bylines on Liberty Nation, Digital Journal, and Career Addict. He is also the author of “The War on Cash.”

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***

The execution of a search warrant on the home of former President Donald Trump has brought to mind a dark and dangerous side of law enforcement. The idea of government agents rummaging through the private possessions on the private property of anyone against that person’s will brings back the specter of British soldiers knocking down doors in colonial America.

Their most notorious invasion of private property was a subterfuge, perpetrated by the British Parliament, which sought to remind colonists that the king could enter their homes through his soldiers whenever he wished.

In 1765, Parliament enacted the Stamp Act, which required government stamps — they were actually inked images of government seals, more akin to what is seen when a rubber stamp is used — on all papers in the possession of the colonists. This included letters, financial and legal documents, newspapers, pamphlets, even posters intended to be nailed to trees. To facilitate the enforcement of the Stamp Act, Parliament enacted the Writs of Assistance Act.

Much like America’s Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, the Writs of Assistance Act permitted British agents to obtain search warrants for the homes of colonists based on governmental need and without identifying the name or address of the homeowner or even the object sought by the search.

These were general warrants. They were limitless in scope, as they authorized the bearer to search wherever he wished and seize whatever he found. Some students at the College of New Jersey — now called Princeton University — calculated that it cost more for the British government to enforce the Stamp Act than was generated in revenue from the sale of the stamps. We now know that power, not revenue, was the goal of this dreaded law.

The violent colonial reaction to the enforcement of the Stamp Act led to its repeal by Parliament after just one year. But the Writs of Assistance Act — allowing the execution of general warrants — stayed in force until the British left in 1781. And general warrants were not outlawed until the ratification of the Fourth Amendment in 1791.

The Fourth Amendment was written to protect that quintessentially American right to be left alone. The violation of the right to be left alone usually implicates two fundamental liberties — the right to privacy and the right to own property.

Privacy is a natural right because there are aspects of human existence and personal behavior that are not subject to the government. Natural rights come from our humanity. The natural right to own property has three aspects — the right to use the property, the right to alienate (lease, pledge or sell) it, and the right to exclude whomever and whatever the owner wishes — including the government.

As natural rights stem from our humanity, they may only be violated when we give them up or waive them by our violation of someone else’s natural rights. When James Madison wrote the Fourth Amendment, he rejected the waiver standard and instead chose the easier-for-the-government probable cause standard as the sole element justifying a government assault on property rights.

The government claims it can examine your emails, bank accounts, medical and legal records at will merely because it claims you have waived your interest in them by placing them in the custody of others. This is, of course, farcical. Those custodians have a legal duty to keep your records private. Yet, to get physically onto your property in defiance of your will, the government must meet Madison’s probable cause standard.

That standard requires a showing to a neutral judge that it is more likely than not that a crime has been committed and that it is more likely than not that evidence of that same crime can be found in the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized. These standards come directly from the language of the amendment itself.

Does the probable cause standard adequately protect property rights? It does not. That standard involves a weighing and balancing test pitting the nature of property ownership against the government’s claimed need for evidence. It weighs the harm to property rights caused by a government invasion as against the harm to the government by denying it the fruits of its planned invasion.

The very concept of weighing a natural right against a government need is totalitarian. The government needs whatever it wants, whereas our rights are inalienable unless we waive them. A natural human right always supersedes a government wish. Thus, the only standard that morally justifies government invasion of private property is waiver by the violation of another’s natural rights.

For example, if a bank robber runs into his house with the stolen loot, he has waived his property rights in the house until he has been arrested and the loot retrieved, as he has violated the natural rights of the depositors in the bank and the bank’s right to exclude him from its property. If the government cannot demonstrate waiver and a violation of a natural right, then the property owner — even if he is the sought-after bank robber — can morally exclude the government from his property.

Because privacy and property ownership are inalienable rights and the government is an artificial creation based on a monopoly of force, when the government wants to enter upon private property against the will of the owner, and it seeks a warrant from a judge, the owner’s natural rights and the government’s needs can never be in equipoise.

Even when the government seeks to demonstrate waiver, the government should be presumed to be wrong, and every inference and bias should be drawn against it because the essence of government is the negation of liberty.

If we take rights seriously — which the government never does — natural rights are inalienable. Governmental needs change with the political winds.

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***

The documentary Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 was most decidedly a depiction of a catastrophe. Watching the concert progress (or regress) from excitement to disaster was a spine-chilling experience. Over time the problems depicted in the film got unbelievably worse. The concert’s collapse into complete chaos as the hyped-up concert-goers set much of the event equipment on fire looked more like a depiction of hell on the walls of a medieval church.

The concert, designed to emulate the 30th anniversary of the original 1969 concert, was held in the former Griffiss Air Force Base in upstate New York, USA, with many popular acts of the time such as DMX, Limp Bizkit, Korn, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Alanis Morissette, Kid Rock, Metallica, and Creed.

The festival was held from July 22-25, 1999, and the heat was estimated to be 38°C (100°F) with little shade and swathes of concrete and asphalt magnifying the hot conditions. Very little shade and not enough grass meant that some festival-goers were even forced to camp on the asphalt.

Image: Bassist Tim Commerford (left) of Rage Against the Machine burns the American flag onstage during “Killing in the Name” at Woodstock ’99.

While the first couple of days went fairly well the atmosphere declined after the Saturday night performance by Limp Bizkit. Fans who were already frustrated by the price gouging of water and food began to tear plywood off the walls and the audio tower. Thousands of candles, distributed during the day for a candlelight vigil, were used to start bonfires. By the time the last band had finished on stage the festival site looked post-apocalyptic with troopers and police moving the concert-goers away from the stage. The whole debacle had seen overflowing toilets, sexual assaults, ATMs and semi-tractor trailers looted and destroyed, three deaths and over 5,000 medical cases reported.

The bands were accused of inciting violence. Limp Bizkit’s vocalist Fred Durst shouted out during their performance: “We already let all the negative energy out. It’s time to reach down and bring that positive energy to this motherfucker. It’s time to let yourself go right now, ’cause there are no motherfuckin’ rules out there.” The crowd were already a hyped-up, heaving mass of jumping, crowd-surfing and moshing humanity moving to the music which soon turned to violence and destruction of the event site itself. In other words, this was mass catharsis on a grand scale, an iconic symbol of the power of one large event to symbolise the contemporary feelings of a frustrated generation freed from the ‘rules’.

Image: Promotional poster designed by Arnold Skolnick. Originally, the bird was perched on a flute.

Woodstock ’69

The original 1969 Woodstock similarly freed the audience-goers from the ‘rules’ of the time as the hippie generation smoked pot, took psychedelic drugs, and even lived in communes outside of the established system. What became known as the counterculture movement of the 1960s was formed in opposition to the US involvement in the Vietnam War and left “a lasting impact on philosophy, morality, music, art, alternative health and diet, lifestyle and fashion.”

However, this counterculture also contained more serious elements that threatened the status quo itself. Young people were getting involved in revolutionary anarchist and socialist movements. Many gravitated towards the New Left: “a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, gender roles and drug policy reforms.” Others became involved in the political forms of Marxism and Marxism–Leninism, such as the New Communist movement  which “represented a diverse grouping of Marxist–Leninists and Maoists inspired by Cuban, Chinese, and Vietnamese revolutions. This movement emphasized opposition to racism and sexism, solidarity with oppressed peoples of the third-world, and the establishment of socialism by popular revolution.” According to historian and NCM activist Max Elbaum, the movement had an estimated 10,000 cadre members at its peak influence.

With opposition growing to the Vietnam war in 1968 and student demonstrations taking place in Poland [March 1968 protests] and in France [May 1968 campus uprisings] the New Left ideology began to filter into music and cinema.

In 1967 Jean-Luc Godard directed the film La Chinoise about a group of young Maoist activists in Paris, and in 1968 the Beatles released their song ‘Revolution’ which contained the lyrics, “But if you go carrying pictures of Chairman Mao / You ain’t gone make it with anyone anyhow”. The activism of the time was also reflected in the Rolling Stones single of 1968, ‘Street Fighting Man’.

Turn on, tune in, drop out

By the time the Woodstock festival came around in 1969, the themes of love and peace were combined with Timothy Leary’s “Turn on, tune in, drop out”, an evocation to look into oneself (with the use of psychedelic drugs) rather than to look outwards and change society.

The importance of Woodstock is its iconic value as a symbol of revolt for a generation, as Elvis Presley, for example, was seen in the 1950s. One event, one individual, or one band can become elevated to a symbolic level representing something radical and even revolutionary to the people who were there, (and the people who wish they had been there). This can also be seen in the Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99 interviewees who said that despite the chaos, they would go again, and that it had been the event of their lives. The huge numbers of fans involved in each concert, from 200,000 to 400,000 people, give these events cultural legitimacy and something to aspire to despite the fact that on an ideological level they work against the possibility of real change. ‘Dropping out’ in ’69 or catharsis in ’99 may have been satisfying in their times but little has changed politically since then. Is it time now for a mass music festival celebrating identity politics as the new revolution in cultural thinking, and the ultimate in divide and rule politics?

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

Featured image: A poster of the miniseries Trainwreck: Woodstock ’99.

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***

Since the early 1980s, the prison population in the United States has grown exponentially with African Americans, Latin Americans and other working class people making up the majority of those incarcerated in the dungeons of the world’s leading capitalist state.

During the previous decade on September 9, 1971, several thousand inmates at the Attica Prison in New York State took control of the correctional facility to demand radical changes in the way people are treated while incarcerated.

Less than three weeks prior to the Attica Rebellion on August 21, George L. Jackson (1941-1971), was martyred during an escape attempt from San Quentin prison in California. One year earlier on August 7, 1970, George Jackson’s younger brother, Jonathan Jackson, just 17-years-old at the time, was killed along with William Christmas and James McClain. Jonathan Jackson had walked into a Marin County, California courtroom where Christmas, McClain and Ruchell Cinque Magee were on trial. Christmas, Magee and McClain were given weapons by Jonathan Jackson as they took Superior Court Judge Harold Haley, prosecutor Gary Thomas and three jurors hostage.

Image: George Jackson and Angela Davis (AP Photo/Wally Fong)

As they walked the hostages outside the courthouse and into a rented van, other law-enforcement officers opened fire on the vehicle killing Jackson, McClean, Christmas and Judge Haley. Ruchell Magee was wounded and was the only survivor among the armed guerrillas. These events were covered widely in the corporate press. Later that same year, George Jackson would publish his book of prison letters entitled “Soledad Brother.”

Angela Davis, at the time a member of the Communist Party, was terminated from her teaching position at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) during 1969. The then Governor Ronald Reagan deliberately interfered with the administration of colleges and universities throughout the state. The year before in 1968, the longest student strike in U.S. history took place at San Francisco State College, where an alliance led by African Americans, fought pitched battles to make sure the institution did not function on a normal basis. The SFSC strike of 1968-69 included at one point the faculty union which was under attack by the board of regents and Reagan.

Davis later became involved with the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee in 1970 and worked with Jonathan Jackson in political and legal efforts to exonerate his older brother George. Law-enforcement and media sources claimed that the guns utilized in the Marin County rebellion led by Jonathan Jackson were registered in the name of Angela Davis.

As prosecutors in Marin County focused on Davis as a suspect in an alleged conspiracy, the professor and activist went underground for two months. She was captured and imprisoned in October 1970. An international political and legal process would result in her acquittal on all charges by the summer of 1972.

It was the African American inmates which led the Attica insurrection in 1971 after being politicized by the numerous organizations operating on the outside including the Black Panther Party (BPP), Nation of Islam and the Young Lords Organization (YLO). The advent of the movement for Civil Rights and Black Power during the 1960s attracted thousands of youth activists who were committed to total freedom within their lifetimes.

Nehanda Enters the Struggle for Black Liberation

One such young person was Nehanda Abiodun of New York City. Abiodun had been politicized through the housing struggles in West Harlem which opposed the expansion of Columbia University that would displace African Americans. Her parents were activists and would have a profound influence on Nehanda’s political trajectory.

Abiodun studied at Columbia University and worked as an organizer for the West Harlem Community Organization (WHCO). During her tenure with the WHCO, she and other co-workers realized that the injustices they were fighting stemmed from the inherent racist and exploitative system of U.S. capitalism. As the years passed she was influenced by the emerging BPP.

While working at a methadone clinic in New York during the period of widespread heroin addiction among Black and Brown peoples, she realized that other methods of addressing the drug crisis were needed. She would join the efforts of Dr. Mutulu Shakur at the Hamilton Hospital clinic in the Bronx during the late 1970s. The clinic which utilized acupuncture and other methods to treat substance abuse, posed a direct threat to the federal government sponsored methadone maintenance programs. The clinic at Hamilton was closed by the City of New York in 1978.

Later Dr. Shakur would reopen a clinic in Harlem in defiance of the city administration. The people around the acupuncture clinic were treated for drug addiction, however, there was a political education component which taught the impoverished patients that their conditions were rooted in the history of racism and capitalism in the U.S.

After the liberation from maximum security prison in New Jersey of Black Liberation Army (BLA) cadre Assata Shakur on November 2, 1979, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and local law-enforcement agencies began dragnet operations against members and supporters of several revolutionary organizations including the BLA, the Republic of New Africa, Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization.

When a Brink’s armed robbery was carried out on October 20, 1981, in an area north of NYC resulting in the deaths of one security guard and two Nyack, New York police officers, the FBI and state authorities began to arrest members of the organizations working with the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA). The BLA, Weather Underground and the May 19th Communist Organization were targeted for death and incarceration.

Abiodun went underground during this period and eventually would surface in the Republic of Cuba during the early 1990s. She was granted political asylum along with Assata Shakur and other activists from the U.S. who were being pursued by federal and local police agencies.

In an interview with Abiodun she discussed her political life:

“In 1982 a federal warrant was issued for my arrest for violating the Rico Racketeering and Conspiracy laws. I choose to go underground for political reasons and while living clandestinely I learned how important it is to struggle from a position of love and not hate. It was the love of humanity, freedom and justice that were the dictates that led me to where I was then, and the love given from comrades that kept me mentally and spiritually healthy when I thought that I would die from a broken heart because of being separated from my family. And be assured that it is that same kind of love that has given me the resolve to continue daily in our quest for freedom. I recognize how blessed I am to have so many beautiful people in my life that genuinely care for me, individuals who are willing to make the sacrifices needed to carry on the traditions of principled struggle.”

Her work in Cuba included the promotion of young artists influenced by the hip hop movement in the U.S. and internationally. She along with Assata Shakur represented the legacy of the Black Liberation Movement and its victories. In 2019, Abiodun died in Cuba leaving a profound history of local, national and global struggles.

Prison Industrial Complex Continues to Grow in the U.S.

Since the 1970s and 1980s, the number of people incarcerated in the U.S. has continued to be a cause for concern for the African American liberation struggles. A series of laws and policy measures have resulted in the rapid expansion of the prison population.

These laws and measures include the growth in the numbers of police officers; draconian local, state and federal legislation which have stiffened penalties for crimes; the further deterioration of public school systems in rural, suburban and urban areas leaving millions uneducated and prone to arrest and imprisonment; federal programs which provide military grade weapons to local and state police agencies therefore encouraging the use of deadly force; an escalation in illicit narcotics use which has captured millions in a cycle of dependency and criminalization.

In an entry published by the Sentencing Project website it emphasizes that:

“The United States is the world’s leader in incarceration. There are 2 million people in the nation’s prisons and jails—a 500% increase over the last 40 years. Changes in sentencing law and policy, not changes in crime rates, explain most of this increase. These trends have resulted in prison overcrowding and fiscal burdens on states to accommodate a rapidly expanding penal system, despite increasing evidence that large-scale incarceration is not an effective means of achieving public safety.”

These grim statistics confirm what Nehanda Abiodun, Assata Shakur, George and Jonathan Jackson, among many others, have illustrated through their writings and activism. The existence of mass incarceration is clearly related to the racist, capitalist and imperialist system of the U.S. and its allies around the globe. Until these realities are transformed, the process of social containment and exploitation which the prison system represents will remain as a major impediment to the realization of liberated and just society.

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

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The 2022 annual transparency report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reveals the FBI has been surveilling millions of American citizens — without warrants or proper cause

Between December 2020 and November 2021, the FBI scoured private emails, texts and other electronic communications of 3.4 million U.S. residents, without obtaining a single warrant. Between December 2019 and November 2020, just under 1.3 million Americans were surveilled in this manner

There’s also been a sharp uptick in the number of times government officials asked for the identity of individuals surveilled to be revealed, a practice known as “unmasking”

Supposedly, FBI agents were looking for signs of potential terrorist activity. They also sought to prevent hacking attacks. In the process, they violated the constitutional privacy rights of millions, and considering the hacking attacks that have occurred anyway, this mass surveillance doesn’t seem to be achieving its stated aim

Two attorneys and two journalists are suing former CIA director Mike Pompeo in Spanish High Court for illegally surveilling them and copying private data from their electronic devices and passports while they were visiting Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian Embassy. The agency is also listed as a defendant, for purposes of forcing them to expunge all collected records

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In the aftermath of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) unprecedented August 8, 2022, raid¹ on former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Florida, many are starting to question the FBI’s actions, not just in this case, but in a more general sense.

What’s become clear through this raid is that the FBI has been weaponized to hunt down and neutralize political opposition. On the surface, Republicans appear to be the target, but more specifically, the target is really anyone who disagrees with and wants to stop what we now know is a global coup by an unelected technocrat elite.

The raid on the former president shows that no one is safe from government overreach (or more precisely, the overreach of a government captured by the globalist cabal). This is made all the more disturbing by the fact that the FBI has been surveilling millions of American citizens — without warrants or proper cause.

Public assurances aside, the agency has repeatedly been caught acting lawlessly (the FBI-infiltrated kidnapping plot of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer being just one of the more recent examples²), and that lawless behavior is a piece of evidence that suggests it’s been captured by powers that do not have the welfare of American citizens at heart.

FBI Illegally Spies on Millions of Americans

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the FBI is violating Americans’ privacy “on an enormous scale.” As reported by Bloomberg,³ the 2022 annual transparency report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) reveals the FBI, between December 2020 and November 2021, scoured private emails, texts and other electronic communications of some 3.4 million U.S. residents, without obtaining a single warrant.

Between December 2019 and November 2020, just under 1.3 million Americans were surveilled in this manner. The report also notes there’s been a sharp uptick in the number of times government officials asked for the identity of individuals surveilled to be revealed, a practice known as “unmasking.”

Supposedly, FBI agents were looking for signs of potential terrorist activity and sought to prevent hacking attacks. But in so doing, they violated the constitutional privacy rights of millions, and considering the hacking attacks that have occurred anyway, this mass surveillance doesn’t seem to be achieving its stated aim.

Privacy Rights Help Prevent Tyrannical Overreaches

While some say you have nothing to worry about if you’re not doing anything wrong, that old adage has long since worn out because, again, we’re dealing with an agency whose job it is to take out political opponents. You don’t need to do anything illegal or criminal to be targeted for neutralization.

“Wrong-think” is now a “crime” in and of itself, so you better believe that privacy matters. You do not want the FBI to rifle through your personal correspondence. They will find something, some sentence, some idea, some opinion, with which to hang you, figuratively speaking.

Just look at Dr. Simone Gold. She’s now serving a prison sentence over what amounts to medical opinion. She didn’t do anything criminal or illegal. She’s a political prisoner.

But by “political prisoner,” I’m not exclusively referring to opponents of the Democrat Party. The true political opposition parties in this day and age are the technocratic Great Reset insiders (who have infiltrated all political parties) on one side, and the rest of us, who see the playbook and don’t want to submit to their planned slave system, on the other.

Congress Must Protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment Rights

In response to the ODNI’s report, Ashley Gorski, a senior attorney with the ACLU’s National Security Project stated:⁴

“Today’s report sheds light on the extent of these unconstitutional ‘backdoor searches,’ and underscores the urgency of the problem. It’s past time for Congress to step in to protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights.”

According to Bloomberg,⁵ the “authority” used to surveil Americans by the millions was Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA). It’s set to expire at the end of 2023, unless Congress renews it. Clearly, they shouldn’t, as it’s being grossly misused.

“Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime,” Lavrentiy Beria, Joseph Stalin’s secret police chief, once said.⁶ Beria oversaw the expansion of Stalin’s gulags for political dissidents, and bragged he could prove criminal conduct by anyone, anywhere. Framing innocent people is nothing new. It’s not even all that difficult, especially if you have access to everything a person has ever said, thought or done.

CIA Sued Over Fourth Amendment Rights Violations

The Central Intelligence Agency is also making headlines, and for the same disturbing reason. As reported by Newsweek,⁷ the CIA illegally surveilled and recorded Julian Assange’s conversations with American attorneys, journalists, doctors, celebrities and at least one U.S. Congressman while holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to avoid extradition.

The CIA also obtained copies of visitors’ passports, photographs of the IMEI and SIM card numbers in their cell phones (which allows devices to be identified on any network and are essential for surveillance targeting), as well as copies of the private data from their phones and other electronic devices brought into the embassy.

Passports and electronic devices had to be handed over to security guards and could not be brought inside. Unbeknownst to visitors, everything was then meticulously photographed and copied in their absence.

Four Americans who visited Assange are now suing then-CIA director Mike Pompeo in Spanish High Court, seeking damages for violation of their Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure. The agency as a whole is also listed as a defendant, for the purpose of forcing them to expunge all collected records.

Plaintiffs include two New York attorneys on Assange’s legal team, and two American journalists who interviewed him. Lead plaintiff, attorney Margaret Kunstler, told Newsweek:⁸

“As a criminal attorney, I don’t think that there’s anything worse than your opposition listening in on what your plans are, what you intend to do, on your conversations. It’s a terrible thing. It’s gross misconduct. I don’t understand how the CIA … could think that they could do this. It’s so outrageous that it’s beyond my comprehension.”

Attorneys aren’t the only ones bound by confidentiality. Doctors and journalists also rely on confidential relationships with patients and sources, so the arbitrary copying of everything on their private devices is a gross privacy violation against any number of individuals they may have had interactions with.

CIA Crossed Lines That Shouldn’t Be Crossed

The four plaintiffs are also seeking damages against UnderCover Global, a Spanish security firm that provided embassy protection. The lawsuit was launched after whistleblowers from the firm came forward, admitting they illegally spied on Assange’s visitors, copied their passports and electronic devices, and then passed everything on to the CIA.

UnderCover Global CEO David Morales allegedly was being paid “substantial sums of money to share surveillance data with the CIA.” According to Newsweek:⁹

“Legal experts, including a former senior intelligence official, told Newsweek that the allegations in the lawsuit, if proven, show the CIA crossed lines drawn to protect American citizens from surveillance by overzealous intelligence agencies.”

According to Tim Edgar, professor at Brown University and former deputy privacy and civil liberties officer for the ODNI, the copying of visitors’ cell phone data is particularly difficult to defend.

“That seems to me like a very excessive amount of collection,” he told Newsweek. “What’s the expected intelligence value from that? It’s a high bar to justify. If it’s just everyone who visited Assange, then it’s not like you have a specific reason to look at a particular phone.”

During one visit, actress Pamela Anderson wrote down her email and Apple ID passwords to get help with technical security from Assange. A photograph of the slip of paper with her passwords and PIN numbers was given to the CIA.

This hardly seems justifiable from a national security standpoint. It smacks of perversion, really, and one wonders how many CIA agents have sifted through Anderson’s private messages for no other reason than pure titillating entertainment.

Seizure of Privileged Material Makes Fair Trial Impossible

But getting back to more serious matters, the CIA’s blanket data collection “may make it impossible for Assange to get a fair trial,” attorney Richard Roth, another plaintiff in the lawsuit, told Newsweek. Making matters even worse, when Assange was arrested by British police in April 2019, the embassy turned over all of Assange’s legal papers and computers to the U.S. Department of Justice. As noted by Roth:¹⁰

“When a federal prosecutor comes after a lawyer with a search warrant and seizes their devices, there are multiple layers of review and protection for privileged lawyer-client communications. None of that happened here. They just grabbed everything.”

When done in accordance to law, a court will typically appoint a special master, someone who is independent from the prosecuting government, to make sure privileged communications, such as lawyer-client communication, are segregated from the communication handed over to the prosecution.

Alphabet-Soup Agencies and The Great Reset

Since the beginning of the COVID pandemic, we’ve seen ever more egregious overreaches by government. Intelligence agencies have gone so far as to slap a “domestic terrorist” label on anyone who expresses an opinion that counters the narrative directed by the globalist cabal. This is why privacy rights must be protected at all costs.

In August 2021, former assistant secretary for Homeland Security Juliette Kayyem proposed putting all unvaccinated Americans on a no-fly list. Doctors who speak out against the medical tyranny that is COVID standard of care are being stripped of their medical licenses.

Global organizations such as the International Grand Committee on Disinformation (IGCD), which consists of “an international array of legislators, policy advisers, and other experts,” are working together to end free speech worldwide, and every click, comment and online search can and will be used against you.

The digital identity they want to roll out depends on the same kind of intrusive mass surveillance the FBI and CIA have been caught doing, but covering every person on the planet, and without any legal barriers impinging on the kind of information they can gather about you.

In the end, if the technocratic cabal gets their way, you won’t even be able to use a public toilet without a compliance passport giving you the green-light.¹¹ That’s already the case in China, as you can see in the video below.

China🇨🇳
No green QR code ( Covid app ), no public toilet for you pic.twitter.com/7PwwXICNTG

— Songpinganq (@songpinganq) July 25, 2022

Tell Congress to Rein in Out-of-Control Surveillance Powers

Surveillance powers have always been sold to us as something that will protect us. It’s high time to realize we’ve been sold a lie. All the surveillance acts are, in fact, being used against us, and for all we know, that’s what they were intended for all along.

After all, The Great Reset didn’t emerge out of nothing, overnight. It’s a plan that’s been in the works for decades, and the digital surveillance network required for it to function as an “open-air prison” has been built up around us for just as long.

We were fooled into thinking it was for our own good, for our protection, but it’s not. It’s to ensure we won’t have the ability to rebel when the final pieces of the Great Reset plan are put into place.

As suggested by Gorski with the ACLU, we need to urge members of Congress to step in and revoke or severely restrict government surveillance powers, and reaffirm the absolute supremacy of the U.S. Bill of Rights. These are rights that cannot be taken from us, come hell or high water — or deep state billionaires with egos the size of Mount Everest.

The way things look, many government agencies — including the FBI and CIA — also need to be dismantled, and only put back together if absolutely necessary, and if so, in new, more limited forms with greater public oversight and more checks and balances.

Make no mistake, this is the highest-stakes game in human history. We’re facing nothing short of the enslavement of all of humankind, and our intelligence agencies are proving — through their questionable, biased and often lawless actions — which side they’re really on.

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Notes

¹ Fox News August 8, 2022

² Biz Pac Review August 16, 2022

^3, 4, 5 Bloomberg April 29, 2022

⁶ Oxford Eagle May 9, 2018

^{7, 8, 9, 10} Newsweek August 15, 2022

¹¹ Sociable November 23, 2020

Featured image is from Mercola

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Two U.S. senators on Tuesday — the day after Dr. Anthony Fauci announced plans to leave his government posts in December — formally requested the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services preserve all documents and communications related to Fauci.

Two U.S. senators on Tuesday — the day after Dr. Anthony Fauci announced plans to leave his government posts in December — formally requested the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) preserve all documents and communications related to Fauci.

Fauci on Monday said he will retire as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden in December to pursue “the next chapter” of his career.

In a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) demanded Becerra “immediately confirm” that HHS is preserving all records related to Fauci and  Dr. Francis Collins, who was director of the NIH from August 2009 to December 2021.

“This request applies to all documents, records, memoranda, research, correspondence, or other communication or any portion thereof relevant to any involvement of Dr. Fauci or Dr. Collins,” the letter stated.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), in a letter to Lawrence Tabak, D.D.S., Ph.D., acting director of the NIH, asked Tabak to “ensure the preservation of all documents and communications within Dr. Fauci’s possession related to his tenure at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).”

Marshall stressed that it is “imperative” that all HHS workers are made aware of their “legal responsibilities to collect, retain, and preserve all documents, communications, and other records in accordance with federal law.”

He also reminded Tabak of his obligation, as the head of HHS, to ensure the preservation of all records and that any employee “who conceals, destroys, or attempts to conceal or destroy a federal record may be subject to fine and imprisonment for up to three years.”

Marshall pointed out that HHS previously refused to provide information to Congress:

“HHS and component agencies, including NIH in particular, continue to obstruct numerous congressional investigations through refusal to provide responsive information.

“In addition to withholding information from Congress, private parties note that NIH refuses to comply with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests until forced to do so by court order.”

Marshall went on to list “recent egregious examples” of NIH’s failure to meet record-keeping requirements and said that “even one” such example “should instigate immediate oversight action by HHS.”

Marshall’s letter outlined four “notable recent concerns” with NIH’s record-keeping, including past accusations that NIH destroyed records, potential conflicts of interest within the HHS Office of Inspector General, NIH’s practice of “self-policing” and NIH’s failure to ensure required reporting of clinical trial results.

‘Fauci’s resignation will not prevent full-throated investigation into origins of pandemic’ — Rand Paul

Paul, in his letter to Tabak, also emphasized the need to preserve NIH documents for investigation purposes.

Paul wrote:

“This information is critical to ensure that Congress has access to information necessary to conduct proper oversight regarding events that took place during Dr. Fauci’s tenure with the agency.

“Specifically, I request you preserve all records, e-mail, electronic documents, and data created by or shared with Dr. Fauci during his tenure at NIH that relate to COVID-19 including, but not limited to, NIAID-funded coronavirus research.”

In an email today, Paul told The Defender:

“Dr. Fauci misled the American people on public health guidance throughout the pandemic, lied to Congress under oath, and funneled tax dollars to fund dangerous research in communist China.

“The American people deserve transparency and accountability from the NIH regarding the COVID-19 pandemic regardless of Dr. Fauci’s future employment plans.”

On Monday, Paul tweeted, “Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak.”

Fauci’s resignation will not prevent a full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic. He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak.

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) August 22, 2022

For more than a year, Paul has advocated for a thorough investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and pushed for a criminal investigation of Fauci, whose NIAID research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China Paul suggested may have been involved in creating the virus.

Following up on a threat he made in mid-July of 2021, Rand sent an official criminal referral on Fauci to the U.S. Department of Justice on July 26, 2021.

Paul asked Attorney General Merrick Garland to investigate Fauci for allegedly lying to Congress when he said the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

The week before he sent the official criminal referral, Paul asked Fauci if he wanted to retract the statement he made to Congress during a May 11 hearing. Paul said,

“Dr. Fauci, knowing that it is a crime to lie to Congress, do you wish to retract your statement of May 11, where you claimed the NIH never funded gain-of-function research and move on?”

Fauci replied he would not retract the statement and was adamant he never lied before Congress.

However, Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson said on June 2, 2021, that evidence showed Fauci was “implicated in the very pandemic he had been charged with fighting.”

Emails obtained by BuzzFeed via the Freedom of Information Act show “Fauci supported the grotesque and dangerous experiments that appeared to have made COVID possible,” Carlson said.

The emails, which date back to the early winter of 2020, show Fauci was worried the public would think COVID-19 originated at the Wuhan lab. Why?

“Possibly because Tony Fauci knew perfectly well he had funded gain-of-function experiments at that very same laboratory,” Carlson said.

The emails showed Fauci and other top virologists shared an article from ZeroHedge suggesting COVID-19 was a man-made bioweapon. Despite it being a “plausible explanation,” said Carlson, ZeroHedge was banned from social media.

Carlson said:

“Until recently, you were not allowed to suggest that COVID might be man-made. Why couldn’t you suggest that? The fact checkers wouldn’t allow it. Why wouldn’t they? Because Tony Fauci assured the tech monopolies that the coronavirus could not have been manmade. And so the tech monopolies shut down the topic.”

NIAID has, for years, provided grants to the EcoHealth Alliance and others to conduct gain-of-function research on coronaviruses, as The Defender previously reported.

In March 2021, the Wuhan lab deleted mentions of its collaboration with the NIAID/NIH and other American research partners from its website. It also deleted descriptions of gain-of-function experiments on the SARS virus, according to Dr. Joseph Mercola.

“The NIH/NIAID has funded GOF [gain-of-function] research to the tune of at least $41.7 million,” Mercola said. “Up until 2014, this research was conducted by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina.”

After 2014, when federal funding of gain-of-function research was banned, the research was funneled to the Wuhan lab via the EcoHealth Alliance.

Mercola added:

“In August 2020, the NIAID announced a five-year, $82-million investment in a new global network of Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases that will conduct GOF experiments to ‘determine what genetic or other changes make [animal] pathogens capable of infecting humans.’”

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Fairfield, Iowa.

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A record-breaking drought has caused some rivers in China – including parts of the Yangtze – to dry up, affecting hydropower, halting shipping, and forcing major companies to suspend operations.

A nationwide drought alert was issued on Friday as a long-running and severe heatwave in China’s heavily populated south-west was forecast to continue well into September.

The loss of water flow to China’s extensive hydropower system has sparked a “grave situation” in Sichuan, which gets more than 80% of its energy from hydropower.

On Sunday the provincial government declared it was at the highest warning level of “particularly severe”, with water flow to Sichuan’s hydropower reservoirs dropping by half. The demand for electricity has increased by 25% this summer, local media reported. The reduction in hydropower has also reportedly affected downstream populations, including Chongqing city and Hubei province.

Last week Sichuan suspended or limited power supply to thousands of factories and rationed public electricity usage due to the shortage. Toyota, Foxconn and Tesla are among companies reported to have temporarily suspended operations at some plants over the last fortnight. On Sunday the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported plans to restart production this week had been postponed.

The Yangtze is the world’s third largest river, providing drinking water to more than 400 million Chinese people, and is the most vital waterway to China’s economy. It is also crucial to the global supply chain, but this summer it has reached record-low water levels, with entire sections and dozens of tributaries drying up. Water flow on the Yangtze’s main trunk is more than 50% below the average of the last five years. Shipping routes in the middle and lower sections have also closed, the SCMP reported.

Across the affected regions of China authorities are rushing to ensure water and power supply, as the region approaches harvest season for water-intensive crops such as rice and soy. On Sunday, authorities discharged 980m cubic metres of water from reservoirs in an effort to replenish lower levels of the river, state media said.

The drought has affected at least 2.46 million people and 2.2m hectares of agricultural land in Sichuan, Hebei, Hunan, Jiangxi, Anhui and Chongqing. More than 780,000 people have needed direct government support because of the drought, according to China’s ministry of emergency management. Drinking water has been trucked in to areas where residential supplies have completely dried up. High temperatures in July alone caused direct economic losses of 2.73bn yuan (£340m), affecting 5.5 million people, the emergency ministry said last week.

In the city of Chongqing the water level dropped to reveal previously submerged Buddhist statues thought to be about 600 years old.

Around the world major rivers are drying up as record-breaking heatwaves take a devastating toll, including the Rhine and the Loire in Europe, and the Colorado River in the US.

Bernice Lee, chair of the advisory board at the Chatham House sustainability accelerator in London, said societies including China have remained “unprepared and underprepared” for high-impact, low-probability events like extreme droughts and heatwave.

“Looking to the future, as the frequency of extreme weather events looks set to grow, the future could be even more bleak.”

Dr Faith Chan, the head of the school of geographical sciences at the University of Nottingham in Ningbo, said China was committed to climate change adaptions and preparing for climactic extremes.

“But it is very difficult to say what is the long-term effect on the economy by the extreme weather. For the short term, electricity use is heavily consumed and stressed,” Chan said.

Chinese authorities have repeatedly attributed the drought and heatwave to the climate crisis. Chen Lijuan, the chief forecaster of the country’s national climate centre, last week described the combined heatwave and drought as a “pressure cooker”.

“We have to face the fact that similar heatwaves will occur frequently in the future … it will become a new normal,” Chen said.

However, the immediate impact on electricity supplies has put pressure on Beijing’s climate change commitments. Last week the vice-premier Han Zheng said the government would step up support for coal-fired power production.

Warnings are in place for continued high temperatures and low rain. A red heat warning – the highest level of alert – was issued for the 10th consecutive day on Sunday for large swathes of the country.

Click here to read the full article.

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***

Up to 33 million tons of crops are lost each year to drought. A severe drought in the spring and summer of 2001 stretched across 17 provinces and left 23 million people short of drinking water and damaged 73 million acres of farmland. Hundreds of sheep and cattle died of dehydration.

A severe drought on Guangxi in 2004 produced withered crops and massive power losses due to lack of water for hydro power generation. More than 1,100 reservoirs went dry. In neighboring Guangdong Province 1 million people didn’t have enough drinking water. The drought was partly the result of typhoons failing to strike the region.

The worst drought in 50 years struck Guangdong Province in 2005. The drought was especially bad because it struck during the rice planting season and was exacerbated by high water usage. The drought affected the power supply and in some places factories only operated during the night because that was the only time electricity was available.

China’s state meteorologists have blamed an increase in the number of extreme weather events in recent years on climate change. But the drought has been intensified by massive deforestation and the pollution and depletion of water resources caused by China’s heady pursuit of economic growth, said Ma Jun, author of “China’s Water Crisis”. “There is such a tight eco-balance now that whenever we have a problem with a natural climate phenomenon, it causes a big disaster. We don’t have much extra capacity to absorb the impact,” he said. [Source: Dan Martin, AFP, March 29, 2010]

Drought in China in 2006 and 2007

The worst drought in more than century struck southwest China and Sichuan in the summer of 2006. Chonquing suffered repeated heat waves, record highs of 44.5̊C and hardly any rain in July or August. In the grain producing areas of Sichuan huge swath of farmland withered after rainfall in the rainy season in early summer was the lowest since 1947. The water levels of the Yangtze were the lowest in the past century.

The drought cost more than $1.1 billion in crop damage in Sichuan, Guizhou, Hubei, Hunan, Zhejiang, Anhui and Jiangxi Provinces. More than 5 million tons of sweet potatoes and beans were lost, 11 million hectares of mostly rice, corn and tobacco were destroyed or damaged.

The drought affected all of China. In Guangdong a salt tide caused in part by a dropping water table affected drinking water supplies. In Inner Mongolia well water ran out and goats and sheep were fed from tanker trucks. Horses and cattle starved. For a time 18 million people nationwide had no access to clean drinking water.

The area around the Yangtze River suffered a severe drought in 2007. In some places water levels of the river dropped to their lowest levels since records began 142 years ago. Between October and December 2007 forty ships ran aground in the main course of the river. The drought was also severe in large areas of the normally wet south. Reservoirs and rivers shrunk and supplies of drinking water fell to alarmingly low levels.

Drought in Southwest China in 2009 and 2010

A severe drought in the southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, Sichuan and Guizhou in 2009-2010 was the worst there in over a century. In areas of the normally wet region there was hardly any rain for months. Reservoirs were empty; river beds were dry; hillsides and terraces normally full of crops looked like deserts; the rich soil was like rock; people got sick from drinking contaminated water. It seem liked half the people in some parts of the region spent most of their day carrying water with shoulder poles from distant wells to their homes or fields. More than 90 percent of the hydro power stations in Guizhou, the worst-hit province, were not operating.

One farmer told AFP his family barely had enough water to drink water to drink and was forced to go weeks without bathing. To get water for his chestnut and walnut trees the farmer trekked long distance and carries back water on a shoulder pole. Damages to his crops has cut his earnings by 80 percent. “I’m 64, and this is the driest I have ever seen it,” said another farmer, who lost half his crop and half his income. “My biggest fear is that if it continues to be so dry , the impact on the harvest will be severe.”

According to government estimates 60 million were affected and 18 million people and 11 million livestock were short of water. Total economic costs exceeded $3 billion. Some blamed global warming. Others said that deforestation and depletion of water sources by economic activity were involved. To help he Chinese government dug thousands of wells, trucked in drinking water and carried out emergency water diversion projects. Clouding seeding efforts were futile.

Dan Martin wrote AFP,

“The drought plaguing Yunnan, Guizhou and Sichuan provinces, the Guangxi region and the mega-city of Chongqing has been called the worst in a century. It has devastated crops, fueled price rises and highlighted China’s chronic water problems. Since last September, rainfall has been less than half the normal levels, turning much of normally temperate Yunnan into a bone-dry environmental disaster zone of evaporating reservoirs and shrivelled rivers.”[Source: Dan Martin, AFP, March 29, 2010]

“Terraced fields that should be bursting green with winter crops instead resemble dusty deserts, their normally rich soil hard as rock. Everywhere in the countryside, men and women in conical hats carry precious water in buckets balanced on bamboo poles across their shoulders, often for long distances. The government says more than 60 million people are affected, with more than 18 million people and 11 million livestock short of drinking water – numbers that grow daily.”

“Sudden shortages of economically vital sugar, rice, tea, and fresh flowers have driven up prices, and the drought zone’s rich hydroelectric resources are dwindling. State media this week said 90 percent of hydropower stations in the worst-hit province, Guizhou, were paralysed. This comes just as the government is struggling to rein in inflation and prevent it tripping up the country’s robust economic recovery. While the full economic damage remains to be seen, with the government already putting direct losses at nearly three billion dollars, the human impact is clear.”

Drought in 2009-2010 in Yunnan

Reporting from Qixingcun in Yunnan Province in late March 2010, Dan Martin wrote AFP, “In Yunnan alone, hundreds of reservoirs vital to rural communities have dried up or will do soon, state media have said. Tap water is cut off in many areas and illnesses have been reported as thirsty villagers drink unsafe reservoir water. The state media have been full of stark images of desperate villagers sitting amid the cracked beds of dried-up reservoirs. China has dealt for millennia with the alternating curses of drought and flood, but the severity of this dry spell is on everyone’s lips.” [Source: Dan Martin, AFP, March 29, 2010]

”Peasant farmer Dong Guicheng wakes up every morning hoping for rain, but each day a crippling drought instead brings more disappointment and desperation….Dong treks daily to a dwindling reservoir to fetch scarce water for his walnut and chestnut trees, which have seen almost no rain for half a year. His family has barely enough to drink, he hasn’t bathed for weeks, and Dong says the damage to his crops could cut his earnings by 80 percent this year.” “I am very worried,” Dong said, as he and his wife Dao Haiyan filled a rusty tank with water from the reservoir before carting it to their home two kilometers (one mile) away. “If there continues to be no rain I will have no income. The impact has been too big for words,” he said, shaking his fist skywards.

“I’m 64, and this is the driest I have ever seen it,” said Cai Yichang, a farmer who lives near the Yunnan city of Yiliang. Scanning sand-colored terraced fields that should be green, Cai has had to plant a smaller crop of onions and has been unable to plant his spring corn, a blow likely to halve his roughly 20,000 yuan (S$4,116) annual income. “My biggest fear is that if it continues to be so dry, the impact on the harvest will be severe,” he said, in between drags of tobacco on a large water pipe.

The government says it has rushed drinking water to the region, launched emergency water diversion projects and dug thousands of wells. But the impact on the ground has been as negligible as the rain, said Dong. “The government? They haven’t taken any measures. We just have to rely on ourselves to take the water to the fields,” said Dong, whose troubles are compounded by rising vegetable prices, which he said had more than doubled.

Affects of the Drought in Southwest China in 2009-2010

The soil on roughly 30,000 square miles of farmland was too dry to plant crops, the vice minister of water resources, Liu Ning, said last Wednesday. Around 24 million people were short of water. Agriculturallosses already total $3.5 billion.[Source: Michael Wines, New York Times, April 4, 2010]

As of April 2010, many areas have not had rain since at least October. In some places in Luliang County, about 70 miles east of Yunnan’s capital, Kunming, no rain has fallen since August. There many wells dried up completely and one family well that normally has 33 feet of water during the dry season only had a foot. Hong Kong’s major newspaper, The South China Morning Post, reported last month that many adults had left villages in Guangxi, and that many of those who remained behind were elderly residents and children who had difficulty finding drinking water.

The government stepped in by rationing drinking water to millions, digging 1,600 emergency wells and shooting silver iodide into the air in a marginally successful rainmaking effort. In mid-March, China’s premier, Wen Jiabao, made a three-day tour of Yunnan, including Luliang County, to pledge government help and urge new water-conservation efforts.

The drought’s effects also reached beyond China, stirring up tensions with its neighbors over energy and environmental concerns. China’s southern neighbors sharply questioned whether the drought’s effect on the Mekong River — at its lowest in a half-century — had been worsened by dams along its upper reaches, known as the Lancang, in western Yunnan. The hydroelectric dams there store water that otherwise would flow naturally in wet and dry seasons. The Chinese deny the charge and say that they released dammed water during this dry season to raise the Mekong’s level.

Environmentalists have raised other questions. Wang Yongchen, the senior environmental writer for China National Radio, asked in a March journal article in Beijing whether the reservoirs and rapid industrialization had permanently changed the climate in Yunnan. She said that the wholesale replacement of Yunnan’s forests with plantations — especially thirsty rubber and eucalyptus trees — may have lowered the region’s water table, dried the atmosphere and worsened water shortages.

Effect of Drought in Southwest China in 2009-2010 on Farmers

In Luliang County in Yunnan Province, farmers that sold their harvest of winter wheat for $585 in normal years were lucky to sell their meager crop for $30. A farmer named Huang Jianxue, told New York Times, “It’s only good for the pigs,” brushing perhaps six or eight wheat kernels from a stunted stalk that, in a normal year, would hold dozens. [Source: Michael Wines, New York Times, April 4, 2010]

Huang crops and animals were starved for water. He had to borrow money to send his 7-year-old son and 12-year-old daughter to school. Getting for work in the city was not an option as he can not read, and leaving his family would wipe out any chance to plant crops should the rains return. With virtually no money from the spring harvest, he said, his only plan to repay his debt is to kill the family pig and sell the meat.

Michael Wines wrote in the New York Times,

“A several-hour tour of Luliang County on Sunday suggested the drought had struck in patchwork fashion. Residents said some reservoirs were dry basins of cracked mud, while others could be seen filled with water and surrounded by green crops.” In Shizikou village “verdant acres of rapeseed plants and other crops lined a dirty-looking river that had been tapped for irrigation.”

“But yards away from the river, 44-year-old Liu Hong said her entire wheat crop had grown only about a foot high before dying for lack of water, wiping out the $440 she had hoped to earn. Liu said she had been forced to borrow more than $700 from a local bank to send her two sons to high school. I don’t know what will happen if I can’t repay it, she said. And just down the road, 38-year-old Zhang Weixing’s crop of wendou, a type of pea used to make noodles, was so shrunken that his family was harvesting it to use as seeds rather than food. A crop that brought $440 in a normal year would be lucky to fetch $15 this time, he said.”

But as serious as the drought was, it affected only about 6 percent of China’s farmland and a tiny portion of its 1.3 billion people. The impact on inflation and food supplies in China as a whole were minimal.

Drought in Northern China in 2009

A severe drought struck parts of northern and central China in 2008 and 2009. The drought hit wheat growing areas in Henan and Anhui Provinces particularly hard. The government declared an emergency. Wheat prices rose and concerned were raised about out of work migrant workers returning home to find they can’t make a living at farming either.

The drought deprived 3.46 million people of adequate drinking water and affected 9.5 million hectares of farmland, An effort was made to bring irrigation water to agricultural areas deprived of water by diverting water from the Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. Irrigated water nourishes 60 percent of the winter wheat farmland and a third of all the farm land affected. In the Beijing area and elsewhere thousands of cloud seeding rockets and shells were fired to bring precipitation.

The worst drought in 60 years struck parts of northern China stretching from Jilin Province to Inner Mongolia in the summer of 2009, leaving 4.6 million people and 4.1 million head of livestock short of water.

The drought not only devastated China’s best wheat farmland, it also emptied the wells that provide clean water to industry and to millions of people. More than 18,000 square miles of farmland was labeled by the Chinese Agriculture Ministry. Northern China grows three-fifths of China’s crops and houses more than two-fifths of its people. [Source:Michael Wines, New York Times, February 24, 2009]

The drought occurred during the global economic crisis and peaked as millions of migrant workers who lost their jobs as a result of factory closings and construction shutdowns were returning from the cities to places where farming is the main source of income. Government officials were worried that water shortages and failed crops would raise the prospect of unrest among jobless migrants.

The national government increased spending on drought relief by about $44 million and announced plans to speed up the provision of annual grain and farm subsidies worth another $13 billion. Authorities also opened dam sluices, draining reservoirs toirrigate dry fields; dispatched water trucks to thousands of villages with dry wells; and bored hundreds of new wells. Newspapers reported the launching of thousands of rocket shells filled with silver iodide ro induce rain. Snow that fell on Drought-stricken Beijing were said to be the result of such efforts.

Effect of Drought in Northern China in 2009 on Farmers

Michael Wines wrote in the New York Times: “In the hamlet of Qiaobei in China’s wheat belt, a local farmer, Zheng Songxian, scrapes out a living growing winter wheat on a vest-pocket plot, a third of an acre carved out of a rocky hillside. He might have been expected to celebrate being offered the chance to till new land this winter. He did not.” [Source:Michael Wines, New York Times, February 24, 2009]

“Normally, the new land he was offered lies under more than 20 feet of water, part of the Luhun Reservoir in Henan Province. But this winter, Luhun has lost most of its water. And what was once lake bottom has become just another field of winter wheat, stunted for want of rain. Zheng, 50, stood in his field on a recent winter day, in one hand a shrunken wheat plant freshly pulled from the earth. I think I’m going to lose at least a third of my harvest this year, he said. If we don’t get rain before May, I won’t be able to harvest anything.”

“Zheng said his wheat was usually a foot tall by mid-February. But this year his field more resembled a suburban lawn in need of mowing, with clumps of wheat barely two inches high. Irrigation for such a small plot, he said, is too costly. We have a well up the hill, he said, but you have to pay 50 yuan every time you pump water, and you need to do it three times before you can harvest. The total of 150 yuan would be more than $20. So Zheng is hoping for rain, and counting on his two sons and daughter, who have jobs in nearby towns, to make up the money lost from crop failure.”

“In a neighboring village of 1,900, Zhailing…wells already strained by falling groundwater levels have effectively run dry, and many farmers have written off their wheat. Even regular day water is not guaranteed. How can we talk about anything for our crops? said Shi Shegan, the Communist Party secretary for the village.”

“The county-level chief of local drought-relief efforts, Gong Xinzhen, is determinedly upbeat about the situation. The county has bought 100 pumps to draw water from streams and wells, he said, and workers have handed out $15,000 worth of plastic bags for citizens to haul water from distant taps. Seven trucks are hauling water to communities like Zhailing where water has run out. Shi applauds the government’s hard work. But he also notes that when his village was built 14 years ago, one could sink a new well and haul water up by the bucketful. Now, he said, wells sunk 100 feet deep get mere trickles and can be tapped only once or twice a day.”

Winter Drought in Northern China in 2010-2011

The winter of 2010-2011 was the driest in perhaps 200 years in parts of China, which is the world’s largest wheat producer. This prompted worries that China might need to increase sharply its usually modest wheat imports, at a time when world food prices were already surging. Supplies were tight after bad weather in other producers, including Russia and Australia. Beijing launched a $1 billion emergency campaign of cloud-seeding and expanded irrigation.

Keith Bradsher wrote in the New York Times, “By January 2011, around 2.2 million people were facing water shortages as a result of droughts in southern, eastern and central China. Winter in China’s wheat belt is usually fairly dry. But this winter was so dry that it provoked considerable concern, from government offices in Beijing to the grain markets of Chicago. [Source: Keith Bradsher, New York Times, March 7, 2011]

“Some of the driest areas are close to Beijing, which has had no appreciable precipitation since Oct. 23, although there were brief snow flurries on Dec. 29. If the drought lasts 11 more days it will match one in the winter of 1970-71 as the longest since modern record keeping started in 1951, according to government meteorologists…In some places fields so dry large cracks appeared in the dirt. Particularly hard hit have been Hebei Province, which is next to Beijing…The dirt in farmers’ fields has become bone dry and is easily lifted by breezes, coating trees and houses in fine dust.” [Source: Keith Bradsher, New York Times, February 3, 2011]

The U.N. food agency issued a rare “special alert — on Feb. 8 warning of the drought’s effects on the wheat crop and even on drinking water for people and livestock. Wheat futures in Chicago, already high because of extreme heat last summer in Russia, surged even higher when the food agency issued its alert, jumping 2 percent in a day. On Monday, wheat prices edged down 0.3 percent in early trading after word spread of China’s recent damp weather.

Drought Fuels Inflation and Has Global Implications

The severe drought in northern fueled inflation and alarming China’s leaders. Keith Bradsher wrote in the New York Times, “President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao separately toured drought-stricken regions and have called for “all-out efforts” to address the effects of water shortages on agriculture…Rising food prices were a problem even before the drought began, prompting the government to impose a wide range of price controls in mid-November. The winter wheat crop has been parched since then in northern China while unusually widespread frost has hurt the vegetable crop in southern China. [Source: Keith Bradsher, New York Times, February 3, 2011]

“Food prices have been rising around the world, a result of weather problems in many countries, like the unusual heat wave in Russia last summer. High food prices have been among the many reasons for protests in Egypt and elsewhere in the Arab world. But even a prolonged drought in China appears highly unlikely to cause acute food shortages. China has spent years accumulating very large government reserves of grain and also has $2.85 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, giving it virtually unlimited ability to import food as long as major grain producers do not limit exports.”

“When commodity prices last surged in 2007 and 2008, however, at least 29 countries sharply curbed food exports in attempts to prevent domestic food prices from rising as quickly as world prices. And if China does become a large importer of wheat — it imports a lot of soybeans but tries to be essentially self-sufficient in rice and other grains for national security reasons — then it could push up world prices and make it harder for poor countries to afford food imports. Higher food and energy prices are spreading to other parts of China’s economy, contributing to broader inflation. Prices rose 4.6 percent in 2010, according to the consumer price index. The government has cushioned the effects of rising food prices by encouraging provinces and cities to sharply raise the minimum wage, which has been climbing 18 percent a year in Guangdong Province, in southern China.

“Accelerating inflation in China is starting to show up in the prices that American companies pay for imports from China. After years of showing little change, a United States Bureau of Labor Statistics index of average import prices suddenly jumped 0.3 percent from September to October, then jumped the same amount in November and again in December.”

In the end Rain and snow during late February and early March ” together with a huge irrigation effort, “saved much of the wheat crop in northern China from drought, Chinese and international agricultural and meteorological experts said…Days of snow and rain across the heart of China’s wheat belt in northern Henan and western Shandong provinces…The precipitation arrived at just the right moment, experts said, as vulnerable wheat planted last autumn was coming out its winter dormancy and needed to grow or it would die.” [Source: Keith Bradsher, New York Times, March 7, 2011]

Yangtze Delta Drought in 2011

On the drought that struck central China in the winter and spring of 2011, Jonathan Watts wrote in The Guardian, it is the — worst drought that parts of the Yangtze delta have experienced for more than 100 years…

“Even for a country that is used to drought, this year’s arid spell has been shocking because of its duration and location: the Yangtze region is usually considered one of the lushest in China. But Asia’s greatest river is shrinking and shallowing, along with many of the lakes around it. Shanghai is in its longest dry spell for 138 years, according to People’s Daily. Further upstream, Hunan is suffering the worst drought since 1910, affecting water supplies for 1.1 million people and 157 urban areas.”[Source: Jonathan Watts, The Guardian, June 1, 2011]

“Television bulletins and newspapers are filled with images of dead fish, stranded ships and dry river beds. Hydropower production has been slashed and vast swaths of paddy fields are parched. The Three Gorges dam has been forced to cut hydropower generation and open its sluice gates to provide more water to downstream areas.

Recent cloudbursts — some precipitated by weather-modifying techniques — have raised hopes that the rainy season may finally have arrived. But the China Meteorological Administration forecasts a short, sharp — and possibly dangerous — flood season, amid a long, hot summer.

Another problem: “China is running out of cloud-seeding shells after pounding the skies with a massive barrage to ease the Yangtze delta drought. One of the country’s biggest manufacturers of the weather-modifying ordnance said its warehouses were empty despite raising production by 30 percent , operating on weekends and adding two hours to shift times.

Jiangxi Gangsi is one of the nation’s biggest makers of cloud-seeding shells. Company managers told the Guardian that they have struggled to meet a surge of demand during an unusually hot, dry spring. “There is demand but not enough supply. This year is special,” said Gu Jiangjun, a sales manager. “We normally produce 3,000 shells a month but now we are aiming for 4,000 to 5,000.” Agency officials encouraged local governments to make continued use of weather-modifying techniques. “We attach great importance to artificial rainfall in the effort to ease the drought,” said the administration’s vice director, Chen Zhenlin.

Droughts in the 2020s

In December 2021, China’s major southern cities Guangzhou and Shenzhen warned of impending severe water shortages lasting into next spring as the East River, a tributary of Guangdong’s Pearl River, was hit by Guangdong province’s most severe drought in decades. Reuters reported: Authorities in both cities are asking citizens to reduce water consumption, with rainfall between January to October this year down by a quarter compared to average levels over the last decade. The inflow of water into the East River Basin, a major supply of water for both cities, was around 50-60 percent its usual level. The company in charge of Guangzhou’s water supply is taking emergency measures to deal with increased salt tides, where the water supply becomes increasingly saline due to a lack of fresh water, it said. Hong Kong also imports much of its water from the East River. [Source: Reuters, December 8 2021]

In 2020, Yunnan Province and the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau in southwest China experienced its worst drought in a decades, affecting more around 1.5 million people. Xinhua reported: As of April 15, 1.48 million people and 417,300 large domestic animals faced drinking water shortage, and 306,667 hectares of crops were damaged, according to the provincial water conservancy department. Some 100 rivers in the province were cut off, 180 reservoirs dried up, and 140 irrigation wells had an insufficient water supply, figures of the department showed. [Source: CGTN, Xinhua News Agency, April 18, 2020]

The Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau saw an uneven and lesser amount of precipitation in 2019 and 2020. In the two days of March 29 to 30, there had been seven cases of forest fires in Yunnan Province. The province poured 546 million yuan (around 77.1 million U.S. dollars) in drought relief, mobilizing 1.13 million people and 131,100 water-loaded vehicles to irrigate the farmland and providing drinking water to thirsty people and livestock.

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Text Sources: New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Times of London, National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, Newsweek, Reuters, AP, Lonely Planet Guides, Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Featured image: Drought-burned trees / Image Sources: Gary Braasch, Xinhua, ESWN environmental news

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Europe is facing its worst drought in at least 500 years, with two-thirds of the continent in a state of alert or warning, reducing inland shipping, electricity production and the yields of certain crops, a European Union agency has said.

The August report of the European Drought Observatory (EDO), overseen by the European Commission, said that 47 percent of Europe is undergoing warning conditions, as moisture in the soil dries out and 17 percent of the region is on a state of alert as vegetation is affected.

“The severe drought affecting many regions of Europe since the beginning of the year has been further expanding and worsening as of early August,” the report said, adding that the western Europe-Mediterranean region was likely to experience warmer and drier than normal conditions until November.

Much of Europe has faced weeks of baking temperatures this summer, which worsened the drought, caused wildfires, set off health warnings, and prompted calls for more action to tackle climate change.

This Copernicus Sentinel-2 satellite image shows how part of the Po River in Italy has significantly shrunk between June 2020 and June 2022. Image processed by ESA.

The current drought appeared to be the worst in at least 500 years, assuming final data at the end of the season confirmed the preliminary assessment, the Commission said in a statement on Tuesday.

Summer crops have suffered, with 2022 yields for grain maize set to be 16 percent below the average of the previous five years and soybean and sunflowers yields set to fall by 15 percent and 12 percent respectively.

Hydropower generation has been hit and other power producers affected due to water shortages that feed cooling systems.

Low water levels have hampered inland shipping, such as along the Rhine river, with reduced shipping loads affecting coal and oil transport.

The EDO said mid-August rainfall may have alleviated conditions but in some cases, it had come with thunderstorms that caused further damage.

The observatory’s drought indicator is derived from measurements of precipitation, soil moisture and the fraction of solar radiation absorbed by plants for photosynthesis.

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Featured image: People take a stroll on the river bed of the Waal as water levels dropped because of drought in Nijmegen, Netherlands [Peter Dejong/AP Photo]

US Secretary of State Blinken Returns Empty Handed from Africa Tour

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Fauci’s Resignation ‘Good News for America’

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All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Fauci’s Resignation ‘Good News for America’

by Andrew Thornebrooke, The Epoch Times

Following Dr. Anthony Fauci announcing his resignation, Republicans have vowed Congressional investigations into his conduct if they win majority in the House and Senate in November, with many being critical of his leadership decisions and lack of transparency through the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Fauci announced on Monday he will resign from his post as director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in December, after more than 50 years working in government.

“He better have plenty of time on his hands come January, because we’re going to be wanting to talk to him,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.) during an Aug. 22 interview with Steve Lance on NTD, a sister media outlet of Epoch Times.

Carter said that, should Republicans gain majority control of the oversight and investigation committees after the upcoming midterm elections, the GOP would make it a priority to investigate whether Fauci mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic or willfully mislead the public about the virus.

Fauci’s tenure, Carter said, had been marred by inconsistency and flip-flopping on vital issues, such as the origins of the virus.

Statement by Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

I am announcing today that I will be stepping down from the positions of Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief of the NIAID Laboratory of Immunoregulation, as well as the position of Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden. I will be leaving these positions in December of this year to pursue the next chapter of my career.

It has been the honor of a lifetime to have led the NIAID, an extraordinary institution, for so many years and through so many scientific and public health challenges. I am very proud of our many accomplishments. I have worked with — and learned from — countless talented and dedicated people in my own laboratory, at NIAID, at NIH and beyond. To them I express my abiding respect and gratitude.

Over the past 38 years as NIAID Director, I have had the enormous privilege of serving under and advising seven Presidents of the United States, beginning with President Ronald Reagan, on newly emerging and re-emerging infectious disease threats including HIV/AIDS, West Nile virus, the anthrax attacks, pandemic influenza, various bird influenza threats, Ebola and Zika, among others, and, of course, most recently the COVID-19 pandemic. I am particularly proud to have served as the Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden since the very first day of his administration.

While I am moving on from my current positions, I am not retiring. After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field. I want to use what I have learned as NIAID Director to continue to advance science and public health and to inspire and mentor the next generation of scientific leaders as they help prepare the world to face future infectious disease threats.

Click here to read the full statement.

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Defense Department Inspector General has released its long-awaited report on what the Biden Administration left behind in Afghanistan. It is an unbelievable list of equipment left to the Taliban.

I opposed the long war in Afghanistan, so I was not among those critical of Trump or Biden in pushing to leave the conflict. However, no one has ever explained why the Biden Administration left this equipment in Afghanistan as opposed to removing it or destroying it.

While the collapse of the Afghan government was rapid in the final days, the government had many months to prepare for the scheduled withdrawal. Yet, it took no steps to remove or destroy this equipment. Instead, it elected to leave this arsenal intact to the Taliban.

The ground vehicle inventory alone was worth about $4.12 billion. In addition, the U.S. military lost $923.3 million worth of military aircraft and $294.6 million in aircraft munitions.

The Taliban was instantly made one of the best equipped militaries in the world due to this windfall gift by the Biden Administration.

While the report says that “some” of the aircraft were “demilitarized and rendered inoperable during the evacuation,” most of this equipment was left read to use, including 316,260 small arms, including sniper rifles, machine guns and grenade launchers that were worth $511.8 million.

I do not understand how this clear and unimaginable blunder has gone unaddressed. No one was fired. There is not even any evidence of discipline of any kind. The Biden Administration decided to give the Taliban billions in weapons rather than destroy them. Yet, there seems little more than a shrug and a yawn from Congress and the press.

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Support for Ukraine is crumbling not only among the population. Aid pledges from European countries are also falling rapidly.

The Institute has developed its own tool to measure the support provided by Western countries to Ukraine. The Ukraine Support Tracker is a database that tracks the financial, military and humanitarian assistance provided to Ukraine.

The tracker showed that for the month of July, support for Ukraine was crumbling. There were practically no further pledges of aid.

The tracker records the support services from a total of 40 countries. It differentiates into three categories: military, humanitarian and financial support. He also differentiates between promised aid and aid actually provided. In addition to the EU, the United States and Great Britain, data from Turkey, Australia, Norway, South Korea, New Zealand, China, India, Taiwan and Switzerland are also included.

Data for July shows that Ukraine’s six largest European countries have not made any further commitments. Only Norway has promised Ukraine further support in the form of financial aid of one billion euros.

However, the decline is in line with the trend: the promised support services had already fallen significantly in June. On the other hand, the data also showed that aid actually provided was increasing slightly. This means that the gap between promised aid and aid actually provided has been somewhat reduced.

Christoph Trebesch, head of the team compiling the Ukraine Support Tracker, pointed out that while Germany, for example, did not pledge any new weapons in July, it did deliver some of the weapons it had previously pledged in that month.

So far, according to the data, the US and Great Britain in particular have proven to be very reliable supporters of Ukraine. Germany ranks third with Canada and Poland. This also corresponds to the thesis that the US in particular has an interest in a war that lasts as long as possible.

The Kiel Institute noted that the EU Commission regularly verbally supports large support packages. But then there are often delays at state level. This unreliability is problematic for Ukraine. It said nothing about whether the declining support commitments also indicated that the West expected the war to end soon, or is perhaps even working towards trying to end it.

In July, the six largest EU countries, including Germany and France, made no new promises to Kyiv at all. This is the first time since the beginning of the special operation that such a situation has arisen, according to Politico. Last week in Copenhagen, Western allies decided to give Kyiv $1,5 billion. But, as the article stated, this is a “minor” sum compared to what had previously been promised to Ukraine.

According to data from the Kiel Institute, the volume of military aid to Ukraine from European countries has been on a downward trend since April.

The Kiel Institute for the World Economy (Institut für Weltwirtschaft, or IfW) is an independent, non-profit economic research institute and think tank based in Kiel, Germany. In 2017, it was ranked as one of the top 50 most influential think tanks in the world and was also ranked in the top 15 in the world for economic policy specifically. German business newspaper, Handelsblatt, referred to the Institute as “Germany’s most influential economic think tank”, while Die Welt, stated that “The best economists in the world are in Kiel”.

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Worldwide reports, including from Sri Lanka, the U.K, Australia, Japan and North America were gathered to demonstrate how masks have created environmental pollution that is injuring and killing wildlife

Mindless mask mandates increase your risk of death, weaken the immune system, encourage dehydration, increase headaches, decrease cognitive precision and promote facial alkalinization

Wearing surgical masks increases your daily inhalation of microplastics, while studies have demonstrated that mask wearing does not lower your risk of contracting viral illnesses, including flu and COVID-19

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Yet another way in which masks have created problems is the environmental pollution that is injuring and killing wildlife.^1,2,3 Experts have estimated that 129 billion face masks and 65 billion gloves were used and discarded each month during the pandemic. In 2020, research also suggested that 1.6 billion disposable masks from mindless mask mandates ended up in the ocean.⁴

But it’s not just the whole masks and gloves that have created a significant environmental problem. Although the bottled water crisis is a leading source of environmental plastic pollution, the new mask crisis is slated to outpace it. The scientists in one paper⁵ published in Frontiers of Environmental Science and Engineering wrote:

“… there is no official guidance on mask recycling, making it more likely to be disposed of as solid waste. With increasing reports on inappropriate disposal of masks, it is urgent to recognize this potential environmental threat.”

Masks are not being recycled. Yet, their material makes it likely they persist and accumulate in the environment. Most disposable surgical masks contain three layers — polyester outer layer, a polypropylene or polystyrene middle layer and an inner layer made of absorbent materials such as cotton.

Polypropylene is one of the most problematic plastics, as it’s widely produced, responsible for a large accumulation of waste in the environment, and is a known asthma trigger.⁶ The researchers noted⁷ that once masks are subjected to solar radiation, the degradation of polypropylene slows dramatically and leads to persistence and accumulation.

But, before the masks even break down in the environment, they are causing significant damage to wildlife, especially the bird population. You don’t have to be a bird enthusiast to understand that birds are uniquely important to the balance of the environment.

They are pollinators, they disperse seeds and they recycle nutrients.⁸ They are predators, scavengers and ecosystem engineers. Injuries and falling populations will have a unique and significant impact on an ecosystem on which we rely for our survival.

COVID Face Masks Devastating Wildlife

Researchers used social media images to identify the effect personal protective equipment waste has had on wildlife, including disposable masks and gloves. Information from the online citizen science project, Birds and Debris,⁹ and Dalhousie University reveal the devastation to wildlife, especially birds.

Birds and Debris has been collecting images across social media for four years. The project is part of the North Highland College UHI and the University of the Highlands and Islands. According to The Telegraph, Dr. Alex Bond, one of the researchers from the Natural History Museum in London, called human debris a “global issue.”

They have fielded reports from Sri Lanka, the U.K, Australia, Japan and North America since the start of the pandemic. Bond told the Telegraph that almost all the images they have collected have involved masks. Images depict elastic tangled around bird’s legs or birds injured after trying to consume the mask.

Of the 114 reports, 93% were face masks. Images have shown nine dead animals in direct contact with personal protective equipment, but the fate of most animals is unknown. Since the pandemic, the team has recorded 114 incidents in 23 countries. The paper¹⁰ gathered information from social media searches, reports from the citizen science database Birds and Debris, and unpublished reports from colleagues.

The sightings were verified by contacting the observers. The researchers believe that this data underestimates the number of animals that have been harmed by the debris triggered by the pandemic. They went on to write:¹¹

“Widespread use and insufficient infrastructure, combined with improper waste management have resulted in an emerging category of litter. With widespread presence in the environment, such items pose a direct threat to wildlife as animals can interact with them in a series of ways.

It is crucial that we identify opportunities to improve our waste management infrastructure, so that we can prevent similar leakages during the inevitable future pandemics.”

Mindless Masking Raises the Risk of Death and More

It is called “mindless masking” since wearing the mask increases your risk of death, and as we discuss below, there is no scientific evidence that wearing a mask can reduce your risk of getting COVID. German physician Dr. Zacharias Fögen was unable to find published evidence that masking effectively reduced the severity of the disease or had an influence on case fatality.¹²

He began gathering demographic data from the state of Kansas to analyze the effect of wearing a mask using data in counties where masks were mandated and those that didn’t. The results suggested that masking was not innocuous. In fact, it may present a greater threat than the infection, making it a “debatable epidemiological intervention.”¹³

The death rate in counties where masks were mandated was 85% higher than in those where they were not. After accounting for confounding factors, the mortality rate remained 52% higher. On further analysis, he wrote, “this study determines that over 95% of this effect can solely be attributed to COVID-19.”¹⁴

In other words, while other pathogens or CO2 build-up could have weakened the immune system, it was COVID-19 that caused the rise in deaths in counties where masks were mandated. He named this the Foegen effect, referring to the reinhalation of viral particles trapped in droplets and deposited on the mask, which worsens outcomes.¹⁵

Fögen noted two large studies had found similar results with case fatality rates. In other words, the studies found a positive link between masking and death. The first was published in the journal Cureus,¹⁶ which found no association between case numbers and mask compliance, but a positive association with death and mask compliance.

The second study¹⁷ was published in PLOS One, which revealed an association between negative COVID outcomes and mask mandates across 847,000 people in 69 countries. One report¹⁸ focused on the health and safety of wearing masks and proposed the potential of permanent fibrotic lung damage caused by inhaling fibrous nanoparticles. The author explained:¹⁹

“There are real and significant dangers of respiratory infection, oral health deterioration and of lung injury, such as pneumothorax, owing to moisture buildup and also exposure to potentially harmful levels of an asphyxiant gas (carbon dioxide [CO2]) which can cause serious injury to health.”

Public Health Officials Ignore Two Years of Data

Jeffrey Anderson, past director of the Bureau of Justice Statistics at the U.S. Department of Justice, makes several salient points after the San Diego, California school board once again took up the mindless mask mandate for school children, decreeing that children who do not wear face coverings would be barred from the classroom.

An August 2022 evaluation of the CDC and Census Bureau figures show that 99.99% of children in California and Florida have not died of COVID — “either because they haven’t gotten it, or because they’ve gotten it and survived it.”²⁰ And yet the two states approached masking completely differently, where California regularly imposed mindless masking and Florida has not. The statistic holds true throughout the U.S.²¹

Anderson notes that public health experts have thoroughly embraced masking, based on reasoning expounded by Seán Muller that “‘the failure of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to provide supportive evidence’ that masks work to reduce viral transmission.”^22,23 Muller goes on to propose that “a statistically significant finding from a high quality RCT (the ‘gold standard’)” should not be the basis for decision making.

Rather “mechanism-based reasoning” should be used that does not require scientific knowledge but rather an application of his own reasoning.²⁴ Muller then argues that “from the perspective of the history of medical science that this logic relies only on a fairly simple germ theory of disease. And it places the burden of proof on those who would argue against recommending face masks.”

In other words, there may not be scientific evidence that mask wearing works, but it makes sense that it does … so if you want to stop wearing masks you must prove they don’t work, and I don’t have to prove that they do work. On the surface, one 2021 study from Bangladesh seems to show that masks do work.

Yet, as Anderson describes,²⁵ after Ben Recht, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the University of California, Berkeley computed the numbers from data the researchers released, they didn’t add up. It turns out that in a group of 178,322 who wore masks and 163,861 who did not, 20 more people without a mask got COVID, which is a 0.08% difference.

The researchers wrote this was “clear evidence that surgical masks lead to a relative reduction in symptomatic seroprevalence of 11.1%.”²⁶ The difference between the two risk percentages is the difference between relative risk reduction and absolute risk reduction. After further analysis of the study, Anderson writes, “these tiny differences register as statistically significant only because of myriad questionable methodological choices.”²⁷

Problems Ignored When Mandating Masks

The mainstream media touted the results as evidence for mask wearing. Yet, as Anderson writes,²⁸further analysis of the data found more interesting figures.

• No statistical significance that masks work under the age of 40
• For people in their 40s, cloth masks work but not surgical masks
• People in their 50s should wear surgical masks and not cloth masks

The researchers distributed red and purple masks to the participants of the study. When Recht analyzed the data, he found “cloth purple masks did nothing, but the red masks ‘work,’” and added, “Indeed, red masks were more effective than surgical masks!” Anderson concludes, “When a study starts producing findings like these, its results start to look like random noise.”²⁹

The fear-mongering prevalent during the mask mandates encouraged people to overlook much of the data and research that challenged the idea that masks might slow the spread of the virus. Some began asking if the masks were effective against the COVID-19 virus, why were they not being treated as a biohazard?³⁰

If there were millions of masks contaminated with SARS-CoV-2, would they not present a danger after being thrown out in the garbage and eventually released into the environment? One preprint study³¹ posted August 7, 2021, found that mask wearing could:

• Promote facial alkalinization
• Encourage dehydration, which enhances barrier breakdown and raises the risk of bacterial infection
• Increase headaches and sweating
• Decrease cognitive precision, which can lead to medical errors

According to a study³² by Chinese scientists posted in January 2021, wearing a face mask can increase your daily inhalation of microplastics. In April 2022,³³ a team of scientists from Hull York Medical School published findings that showed 39 microplastic particles in 11 of 13 lung tissues sampled during lung surgery.

According to the lead scientist, microplastics have been found in autopsies in the past, but this is the first study to demonstrate they are found in the living. Interestingly, these microparticles were also found in the lowest parts of the lungs, which researchers had once thought they could not possibly reach.³⁴

The researchers found the subjects had 12 types of microplastics and the most abundant were polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene terephthalate (PET).³⁵ This finding points to the recent ubiquitous use of blue surgical masks during the pandemic as PP is the most used plastic component in those masks.

No Benefit Found in COVID-Specific Mask Trial

While multiple studies published before the pandemic demonstrated masks were not effective against viral transfer, U.S. public health experts lobbied hard for mask mandates. This was a driving force in the plastic pollution that has devastated the environment and is injuring and killing wildlife.³⁶ As is portrayed in this short, humorous video, many went along with masking to get along.

Many of the past studies evaluated the efficacy of masking against the flu virus. The first COVID-19-specific randomized controlled surgical mask trial was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The data from this study confirmed past findings, showing that:³⁷

• Masks may reduce your risk of SARS-CoV-2 infection by as much as 46%, or they may increase your risk by 23%
• The vast majority — 97.9% of those who didn’t wear masks, and 98.2% of those who did — remained infection free

The conclusions were made on the analysis of data from 4,862 people who completed the study. Among mask wearers, 1.8% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, compared to 2.1% among controls. When they removed the people who reported not adhering to the recommendations to use masks, the results were the same — 1.8%, which suggests adherence does not make a significant difference.

Among those who reported wearing their face mask “exactly as instructed,” 2% tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 compared to 2.1% of the controls. So, essentially, economies, lives, and the environment have been destroyed to protect a tiny minority from a positive PCR test, which means little to nothing.

Evidence that masks are not effective against viral particles has been published for many years. In addition to the research reviewed above, here’s a sample of what else you’ll find when you start searching for data on face masks as a strategy to prevent viral infection:

• Surgical masks and n95 masks perform about the same — A 2009 study³⁸ published in JAMA compared the effectiveness of surgical masks and N95 respirators against the seasonal flu in a hospital setting; 23.6% of the nurses using surgical masks got the flu and 22.9% of those who wore N95 masks got influenza.
• Cloth masks are far worse than medical masks — A 2015 study³⁹ of healthcare workers showed cloth masks had the highest rate of influenza-like illness and laboratory-confirmed respiratory virus infections when compared to medical masks or controls who used standard practices, including occasional medical masks.
• No significant reduction in flu transmission in a community setting — A policy review paper⁴⁰in 2020 that reviewed “the evidence base(d) on the effectiveness of nonpharmaceutical personal protective measures … in non-healthcare settings” concluded, based on 10 randomized controlled trials, that there was “no significant reduction in influenza transmission with the use of face masks …”
• Risk reduction may be due to chance — In 2019, a review⁴¹ of interventions for flu epidemics published by the World Health Organization concluded the evidence for face masks was slim, and “the evidence was insufficient to exclude chance as an explanation for the reduced risk of transmission.”
• Mask or no mask, same difference — A meta-analysis and scientific review⁴² led by respected researcher Thomas Jefferson, cofounder of the Cochrane Collaboration, posted on the prepublication server medRxiv in April 2020, found that, compared to no mask, mask wearing in the general population or among health care workers did not reduce influenza-like illness cases or influenza.

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Notes

^1, 4, 9 The Telegraph, August 5, 2022

² Daily Mail, July 29, 2022

^3, 36 Science of the Total Environment, 2022;848

⁵ Frontiers of Environmental Science and Engineering, 2021;15(6)

⁶ European Respiratory Journal, 1994;7(2)

⁷ Frontiers of Environmental Science and Engineering, 2021;15(6) page 1 right col para 2, 11 lines up from the bottom

⁸ Annals of the New York Academy of Science, 2008;1134

¹⁰ Science of the Total Environment, 2022;848 Abstract

¹¹ Science of the Total Environment, 2022;848 Abstract and Conclusion last sentence 50% DTP

¹² Medicine, 2022;101(7)

¹³ Medicine, 2022;101(7) Abstract para 4

¹⁴ Medicine, 2022;101(7) Abstract

¹⁵ Daily Skeptic, May 2, 2022

¹⁶ Cureus, 2022;14(4)

¹⁷ PLOS|One, 2021, doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0252315

¹⁸ Health, Safety and Wellbeing Report in respect of Civil Proceedings April 9, 2021 Summary of Conclusions

¹⁹ Health, Safety and Wellbeing Report in respect of Civil Proceedings April 9, 2021 Summary of Conclusions 6.1 page 16

^{20, 21, 22, 25, 27, 28, 29} City-Journal, August 8, 2022

²³ Nature Public Health Emergency Collection, 2021;43(2)

²⁴ Nature Public Health Emergency Collection, 2021;43(2) Numbers in 1st subhead

²⁶ Science, 2021;375(6577)

³⁰ Twitter, Smile Free

³¹ medRxiv, August 7, 2021

³² Yahoo News, January 1, 2021

^33, 34 Hull York Medical School, April 6, 2022

³⁵ Western Standard, April 17, 2022

³⁷ Annals of Internal Medicine, doi.org/10.7326/M20-6817

³⁸ JAMA 2009;302(17):1865

³⁹ BMJ Open, 2015;5(4)

⁴⁰ Emerging Infectious Diseases May 2020; 26(5)

⁴¹ WHO.int 4.3 Face Masks

⁴² medRxiv, 2020; doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.30.20047217

Featured image is from The Weather Network

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In an open letter entitled “U.S. must arm Ukraine now, before it’s too late” 20 notable American advocates for the war against Russia in Ukraine argue that the conflict has reached a decisive moment. To win, the authors insist, Ukrainian forces need an abundance of new equipment, including the constant resupply of ammunition and spare parts for artillery platforms, short- and medium-range air defense systems to counter Russian air and missile strikes, and ATACMS munitions fired by HIMARS with the 300km range necessary to strike Russian military targets anywhere in Ukraine or Crimea.

Meanwhile, the initial flood of equipment and ammunition from Washington’s European Allies into Ukraine has been reduced to a trickle. Daniel Fiott, a European defense analyst at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, complained, “Ukraine needs hardware, not hot air.” Equally important, refugee fatigue is setting in across Europe.

Germans and Hungarians lost their patience with the unrelenting influx of refugees into Europe some time ago, but now the Poles are reaching the saturation point. Polish households confront serious economic headwinds. Poland has one of Europe’s highest inflation rates—15.6 percent in July—caused in part by the war in Ukraine. As conditions worsen in the fall and winter, it is not hard to imagine enormous public pressure on Berlin, Warsaw, Prague, Paris, and Rome to end the war in Ukraine.

The hard truth is the introduction of new weapon systems won’t change the strategic outcome in Ukraine. Even if NATO’s European members, together with Washington, D.C., provided Ukrainian troops with a new avalanche of weapons, and it arrived at the front instead of disappearing into the black hole of Ukrainian corruption, the training and tactical leadership required to conduct complex offensive operations does not exist inside Ukraine’s 700,000-man army. In addition, there is an acute failure to recognize that Moscow would react to such a development by escalating the conflict. Unlike Ukraine, Russia is not currently mobilized for a larger war, but it could do so quickly.

American military and civilian leaders routinely ignore the historical record and its lessons. Most importantly, they ignored the criticality of human capital in uniform that frequently constitutes the margin of victory in war.

On June 22, 1941, the German Wehrmacht launched its invasion of Russia with more horses than tanks. For the most part, the German ground forces were composed of Great War-style infantry divisions dependent on horse-draw logistics and artillery. The German soldiers were indisputably excellent, but only a minority were equipped with the firepower, mobility, and armored protection needed for warfare in Eastern Europe.

Of the millions of German soldiers who marched into Russia, roughly 450,000 to 500,000 were assigned to Germany’s mobile armored force, the offensive striking power that rapidly crushed its Polish, British, Dutch, Belgian, and French opponents. These soldiers were the best of the best with the lion’s share of the modern equipment.

It took four years, from 1939 to 1943, to wear down this core element to the point where large-scale German offensives were no longer possible. The critical data point to remember is that 55,000 German officers had been killed in action by October.

These German officers were among the best and most experienced officers in the army. They performed the brilliant maneuvers that brought the ill-equipped Wehrmacht to the gates of Moscow in a war on three fronts—Western Europe, the Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe. They led it through the offensives that culminated in the battles of Kursk and El Alamein.

A similar problem plagued the Luftwaffe. German industry could provide modern jet fighters, but the Luftwaffe could no more replace the losses of its best pilots than the German Army could replace its best officers.

Meanwhile, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto understood the importance of human capital in uniform better than anyone. Yamamoto not only wanted to strike and annihilate the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor but also wanted to seize the Hawaiian Islands, declaring, “To defeat the U.S. Navy we must kill its officers.” Yamamoto understood how long it took to train and prepare officers for the Navy. Ultimately, Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor allowed U.S. forces to kill off the best the Imperial Japanese armed forces had in the air and at sea.

In war and peace, human capital is everything. Sadly, Washington places almost no value on it, eagerly lowering standards of admission for soldiers and officers. If this attitude persists, and it probably will, relaxed standards will catch up with America’s military when our forces finally confront a capable opposing force in battle.

John Adams, second president of the United States, observed, “Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” Adams is still right.

Ukraine’s war with Russia is at a decisive point. It is time to end it. Instead, the authors of the letter seek to reinforce failure. They are demanding a deeply flawed strategy for Ukraine that will lead in the best case to Ukraine’s reduction to a shrunken, land-locked state between the Dnieper River and the Polish border. These are results of misguided policies originating in the 1990s under the Clinton administration, which drove Russia into political isolation from Europe and forged Moscow’s alliance with Beijing.

Expanding NATO to Russia’s borders was never necessary and has become disastrous for Europe. The longer the war with Russia lasts the more likely it becomes that the damage to Ukrainian society and its army will be irreparable. Neutrality on the Austrian model for Ukraine is still possible. If Washington insists on perpetuating Ukraine’s war with Russia, the neutrality option will vanish, NATO’s fragile “coalition of the willing” will collapse, and Ukraine will become the new “sick man of Europe” and remain a catalyst for future conflict.

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Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.

Featured image is from The Libertarian Institute

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At the end of its annual summit in Madrid in late June, NATO adopted a new strategic concept. The guidance document is the eighth of its kind since the founding of the alliance in 1949. It radically breaks with the three previous post-Cold War security briefs, however, which observed that “the Euro-Atlantic area is at peace” because “the threat of a conventional attack against NATO territory is low.” In the eyes of NATO, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has changed that calculus, claiming that the military organization can no longer discount the possibility of an assault on sovereign NATO states. Continuing the same cryptic language, the new strategic concept concludes that the Euro-Atlantic area now is “not at peace,” in spite of no NATO member being in a state of war with Russia.

Behind this word play, a more dangerous policy change has been codified in the document. Since the adoption of the Harmel Report in 1967, NATO has always officially included diplomacy in one form or another (with political dialogue and strategic partnership being interchangeable labels) as one of its “core” or “fundamental” tasks. The “NATO 2030” report from November 2020, for instance, unequivocally stated that “NATO should continue the dual-track approach of deterrence and dialogue with Russia.”

In the new strategic concept, the core tasks have been purged of the need for diplomacy, except for one or two throw-away lines about “meaningful and reciprocal political dialogue” about arms control issues buried in the middle of the text. Rather, in addition to its original function of deterrence and defense, NATO now fully embraces “crisis prevention and management,” which it has spearheaded since the 1990s with its legally dubious and morally questionable interventions in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Libya; and “cooperative security,” referring to NATO’s enlargement in Eastern Europe and its Partnership for Peace cooperation with countries in ever further-away regions, including the Black Sea, the Middle East, North Africa, and even the Indo-Pacific, which the British have been pushing to include in a “global NATO.”

Russia was the first country to sign up for the Partnership for Peace program back in 1994. The new NATO doctrine, however, states that Russia can no longer be considered a partner “in light of its hostile policies and actions.” The strategic concept ignores the fact that NATO’s enlargement and new core tasks, which the alliance adopted after the Cold War in an effort to justify its continued existence, have likewise long been seen as hostile in Moscow, nor does it offer any reflection on how the new policies might have contributed to the current unpeaceful “strategic environment.” Instead, it hails the “historic success” of NATO’s expansion in terms of space and substance and insists that the alliance “does not seek confrontation and poses no threat to the Russian federation.”

The logic behind this reasoning is that NATO’s enlargement, or its Partnership for Peace program for that matter, is an outflow of the West’s innocent and well-meant efforts to spread its values of liberal democracy around the world. New member states joined the alliance in a voluntary capacity, after all. In a sense, this logic holds true. It is difficult to see how extending a war guarantee to East European and Balkan nations contribute to the security of Western Europe, let alone the United States. And from Clinton to Bush and Obama, NATO’s Open Door policy has been couched in a Wilsonian rhetoric of the United States as a benign hegemon. Joe Biden, too, steered last year’s NATO conference in Brussels in the direction of proclaiming a global fight between democracy and authoritarianism.

What proponents of this Wilsonian liberalism fail to realize, however, is that their benevolent actions might antagonize other nations. Now, NATO apologists, like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, argue that if the alliance had not expanded eastward, Vladimir Putin would have been even bolder in his imperial ambitions. But as John Mearsheimer pointed out back in 2014, there is virtually no evidence that Putin aimed to incorporate Crimea before the Maidan coup. Rather, his offensive foreign policy in Ukraine since 2014, culminating in the 2022 invasion, is one of reaction to NATO creeping up to Russia’s borders. Bringing Ukraine into the NATO fold has long been a big fat redline for Russia, and we crossed it.

First of all, West-European officials promised the Soviets after the fall of the Berlin Wall that NATO’s borders would not move “one inch” eastward. But then all former Warsaw Pact countries and even some former Soviet Republics were incorporated in the 1990s and early 2000s. In addition to the evidence the National Security Archive assembled on this issue a few years ago, recent archival research has once again confirmed these broken promises.

Next, in 2008, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned American diplomats that further NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, would constitute a “potential military threat.” William J. Burns, who is now the CIA chief but at the time served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia, translated Lavrov’s message succinctly in a diplomatic cable: “Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.” He further gave voice to the opinion of State Department experts, who warned that “the strong division in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war.” The Bush administration ignored these warnings and pushed for the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine at a summit in Bucharest, where the alliance codified that “these countries will become members of NATO.” Ultimately, war followed in both countries, in Georgia in 2008, and in Ukraine in 2014. In the process, Russia annexed Crimea and supported a separatist war in the Donbass, which dragged on in protracted fashion until the 2022 invasion.

After 2014, Ukraine started to become a de facto member of NATO, which bolstered the Ukrainian regime to take a tough stance against Russia. In 2017, Trump decided to sell “defensive weapons” to Kyiv. Other NATO countries got in on the act, shipping weapons to Ukraine, training its military and teaming up with it in joint air and naval exercises. In June 2021, a British destroyer sailed through the Black Sea in an effort to shore up support for Ukraine, precipitating a diplomatic stand-off with Russia. NATO was undeterred, however, because a total of 32 countries participated in a major naval exercise in the Black Sea one month later.

In response, Russia decided to engage in coercive diplomacy, much like the Obama administration had done to get Iran to sign on to the 2015 nuclear deal. Putin amassed troops on the Ukrainian border, demanding guarantees that no offensive missiles would be installed in Eastern Europe and Ukraine not to join NATO. When the crisis was not solved diplomatically, Russia invaded Ukraine. Up until recently, there was hardly any diplomatic intercourse between Washington and Moscow in order to resolve the conflict. The UK’s Boris Johnson, too, “urged against negotiations” during a trip to Kyiv in April. Other NATO members, such as France, Germany, Italy and Hungary, have warmed to negotiations. But as long as there is no bigger push to re-establish diplomacy as a core task of the military alliance, Wilsonian rhetoric is likely to continue to make the world unsafe.

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Bas Spliet is a historian and PhD candidate at the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He writes about a variety of topics from a historical angle. Find all his work on (Re)writing history, his Substack website. He is also on Twitter @BSpliet. You can e-mail him at [email protected].

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***

There’s a saying that “the victor writes history”. Standing in the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, the question arises: Who wrote the history of the Vietnam War we were taught in Australia?

The grounds of the museum open with a collection of United States military vehicles — a UH 1 Huey Helicopter, F-5A Fighter plane, M48 Patton Tank, A-1 Skyraider Bomber and a A-37 Dragonfly Bomber — and other tools of war. Absent is any glamourisation.

For the Vietnamese people, it was the War of Resistance Against America, and the museum tells the story of what they went through to achieve victory. Before the US invaded Vietnam, the French were doing their best to maintain Indochina as a colony. The people gave all they had to finally gain freedom and independence from foreign powers.

The entrance to the museum, which houses exhibits from the international anti-war movement. Photo: Aaron Monopoli

The ground floor tells the story of those around the world who wanted peace in Vietnam: Anti-war posters, images of people protesting and standing in solidarity with the Vietnamese adorn the walls. This exhibit gives off hope and shares positivity. When things got so dark and destructive for the Vietnamese, so many people were on their side, and the number of people who were anti-war kept growing.

On the first floor, the exhibits are confronting. The room entitled “Agent Orange Consequences in the American war of aggression in Vietnam” shows the human cost of the war for generations of Vietnamese and Americans. Agent Orange — a herbicide and defoliant chemical deployed by the US military during the war to destroy forests and crops — was an agent of death and torture for the living and the unborn. Images show babies born with birth defects next to those living through Agent Orange attacks.

The next exhibit features a display of war crimes, photographed by various people. To see a modern war documented in a way that highlights its atrocities hits the heart. There is no sign of Vietnam chest beating or gloating over its victory. The war crimes exhibition shares the loss, grief, pain and suffering the Vietnamese population went through to gain their liberation.

Another room contains the story of the weapons used in the war and their consequences. A pilot drops a bomb and flies away, while a person becomes another unrecognisable body.

The reality of the war entered people’s lives outside of Vietnam through images. The stories that those with guns couldn’t tell were told by photographers and filmmakers. Shocking images of the war flowed out of Vietnam and entered the international media, helping the peace movement to grow. Eventually, the war became untenable for the US and its allies to continue.

Outside the building are examples of the “tiger cages” created for Vietnamese prisoners of war. There was barely enough room to move, prisoners were left out in the weather, and treated in inhumane ways by the invaders.

The War Remnants Museum contains immense horrors captured in images, but also tells the story of the people who risked their lives to share the experiences of an oppressed people fighting for their liberation. It also tells the story of people’s solidarity around the world against a powerful nation using war to control a people.

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Featured image: ‘Mother’ – a sculpture commemorating the sacrifices of the Vietnamese people. Photo: Aaron Monopoli

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***

Next summer, Kosovo will host a massive NATO field exercise, with preparations already underway. The Kosovo Security Forces (KSF) will participate with two regiments in the exercises that are not only aimed at pressuring Serbia, but also Russia. The facts are that the actions of NATO in the Balkans, most particularly the US, is focussed around the construction of Kosovo’s statehood as an independent entity from Serbia.

The participation of the KSF in these exercises is unsurprising because their forces have been present in previous exercises. By the West equipping and building the KSF, NATO and the US are trying to ensure Kosovo’s survival and security. For Serbian leaders in Belgrade though, this is an alarming development, especially as it is an attempt to resolve the issue with Kosovo in a non-peaceful manner.

With this in consideration, it cannot be overlooked that perhaps the US wants violence to breakout in the heart of the Balkans to once and for all resolve Kosovo’s separation from Serbia, particularly at a time when Russia is already occupied with its own military operation in Ukraine.

Holding a NATO exercise in Kosovo is a big challenge for the institutions in Belgrade in a legal, diplomatic, security and military sense. The problem, however, is that leading NATO members approach the statehood of Kosovo as if it were a country with complete international recognition, which does not correspond to reality. In fact, in recent years, several countries have reversed their recognition of Kosovo’s independence, hence the need to disseminate and propagate information about NATO’s upcoming exercises in Kosovo so far in advance.

Kosovo’s authorities, as well as the leading countries of NATO and the EU, want to make it known that nothing can be expected from the strategic goals proclaimed by Serbia in any negotiations between Belgrade and Pristina. Therefore, according to the West, Serbia should accept Kosovo as an independent state. In this way, the ultimate goal of all negotiations is to form pressure against Serbia.

These exercises are not only a direct type of pressure against Serbia, but also Russia. In other words, the message to Belgrade is that it should not resist too much against the West’s demands regarding Pristina’s efforts to integrate the Serbian-dominated region of ​​northern Kosovo into the composition of the partially recognised state.

The West is signalling to Russia that it has no chance of expanding its influence in the Balkans, despite the friendly relations Belgrade has with Moscow. This is because the West wants to shape Serbia in a way that adheres to the interests of the Western alliance. For this reason, there are parallel pressures against the Serbian-dominated entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republika Srpska, as well as in Kosovo. This is effectively in order for the West to end Serbian national interests, which Russia has always supported.

By building NATO and American bases in Albania and trying to cover all territories with NATO forces, it shows that the Western alliance is working hard to ensure that the Balkans does not fall under so-called Russian-influence.

The Kosovo Army will participate in “Defender Europe 23” with two regiments, and during this exercise, the KSF infantry at the regimental level will demonstrate its capacities. “Defender Europe” is an annual exercise led by the US, in which troops from different countries participate. The exercise aims to increase the readiness of US, NATO and partner armies.

This year, “Defender Europe” was held in Albania with American troops landing in the port of Durrës, which was announced as the largest military exercise in the Western Balkans region. About 28,000 soldiers from 26 allied and partner countries participated in the exercise, and it took place in seven different bases in the countries of the region.

These exercises have always been held with a sight of the US forcing its European allies to go to war with Russia. Deciding to host such provocative exercises in the heart of the Balkans, especially in a territory which does not even have its independence recognised by all NATO members, only signals for Serbia to capitulate, recognise Kosovo’s independence, and end its Russophilia.

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

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***

Agroecology — sustainable farming that works with nature, rather than depleting nature — is the solution to global hunger, poverty and climate change, Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., told Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on a recent episode of “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast.”

Agroecology — sustainable farming that works with nature, rather than depleting nature — is the answer urgently needed to address global hunger, poverty and climate change, according to Vandana Shiva, Ph.D., environmental activist, author and founder of Navdanya International.

Shiva told Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., on a recent episode of “RFK Jr. The Defender Podcast”:

“Asset management companies go to an indebted company and say, ‘Give us your forest and your mountains, and here’s the money to pay your debt.’

“Because we are in a debt crisis, this kind of new enslavement will increase unless we rise up and say, ‘Nature’s not for sale.’”

Shiva’s latest book, “Agroecology and Regenerative Agriculture: Sustainable Solutions for Hunger, Poverty, and Climate Change,” provides evidence-based solutions for pressing crises in global ecology, agriculture and public health.

She told Kennedy she became an environmentalist when she realized corporations that sold chemicals and “poisons” wanted to own seeds and were promoting GMOs (genetically modified organisms) in order to patent the seeds.

“I happened to be at a meeting where they were talking about this 1987,” she said. “That’s when I said, ‘No, the seed must be saved. We cannot allow the poison cartel to be the owners of life and take royalties from the farmers.’”

Shiva and Kennedy discussed how the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation pushed industrial agriculture on Indian farmers under the “so-called ‘green revolution,’ which really means “chemical farming,” Shiva said.

Kennedy pointed out that the green revolution “was a brainchild of the Rockefeller Foundation and a way to supplant local subsistence, traditional agriculture with chemically-based agriculture, heavy-duty pesticides, heavy-duty carbon-based fertilizers, big machinery etc. with the claim that ‘we’re going to feed the world.’”

“[Agriculture] has been taken over … by the Gates Foundation,” Kennedy said, which “has pushed people into starvation with these methods of bringing in Kraft food and McDonald’s and Cargill, and these big corporations that he has invested in — and Monsanto, of course, where he is one of the biggest investors — to create supply chains and to force those governments to force upon their people chemically based agriculture that enrich corporations in which he personally is invested.”

“Bill Gates launched Gates Ag One,” Shiva said, which promotes “one agriculture for the world” and serves as a platform for manifesting two of Gate’s “favorite dystopian visions” of “farming without farmers” — through the robotization of farming — and “food without farms,” through the manufacture of “fake food.”

“You can’t do ‘one agriculture for the world’ through biodiversity, with different climates. You can only do it through total industrialization mechanization,” she said.

According to Shiva, total industrialization mechanization would threaten the survival of all forms of life — people, plants, animals, insects, microorganisms — and the Earth herself.

People, she said, must resist this.

“We need partners everywhere, in every field — including the conventional farmers,” she said.

She added:

“Ecological farmers, regenerative farmers must join hands with anyone who is on the land, because anyone who is on the land can start taking care of the land and not participate in the destructive warlike activities.”

Shiva told Kennedy,

“In a crumbling world where there are ‘cost-of-living marches’ everywhere,” where people aren’t being able to pay for food and rent, the “BlackRocks and the Vanguards and the asset management companies” are looking to control $4 trillion worth of financial assets.

People must send the message that “our world is not for sale,” she said.

Shiva and Kennedy also discussed how agroecology produces more nutritious food than a “One Ag” monoculture design.

“Our work shows that the more you enrich biodiversity, you intensify biodiversity rather than toxics and chemicals. You actually have more nutrition,” she said.

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is an independent journalist and researcher based in Fairfield, Iowa.

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***

United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited three African Union (AU) member-states during early August in an attempt to enhance the presence of Washington on the continent.

This tour came amid an escalation of tensions between the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China in regard to their relations with Washington.

Blinken first visited the Republic of South Africa where he had a joint meeting with Naledi Pandor, his diplomatic counterpart. Pandor reiterated the views of the African National Congress (ANC) government which has refused to denounce Moscow over its special military operation in Ukraine.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated that the U.S. should encourage a diplomatic resolution to the war in Ukraine. This view is at extreme variance with that of the administration of President Joe Biden which has sent billions of dollars in military equipment and other support aimed at continuing the war.

Biden and Secretary of State Lloyd Austin have called for the weakening and removal of the government of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Biden administration has imposed unprecedented draconian sanctions against Moscow, forcing U.S.-based firms to leave the country and making it even more difficult for nations around the world to conduct trade with Russia.

Historically during the period of the Soviet Union, the socialist state supported the national liberation movements and progressive governments on the continent during the 1950s through the 1980s. Those states in Eastern Europe which were allied with the Soviets also participated in providing scholarships, military training and joint economic projects.

As hundreds of U.S.-based corporations and the Pentagon provided direct economic, intelligence and military support to the racist apartheid system prior to the democratic breakthrough of April 1994, the socialist countries including the Soviet Union, the Comecon sector, China, Cuba, Yugoslavia, among others, were diplomatically and materially bolstering the struggle to win independence and non-capitalist development.

Since the ascendancy of the ANC to power in South Africa in May 1994, successive administrations have sought to rebuild and sustain normal relations with Washington and its allies. However, there are issues which have continued to divide Pretoria and Washington.

Ukraine is not the only point of disagreement involving geopolitical positions. South Africa has remained a staunch proponent of Palestinian liberation along with calls for the departure of the Kingdom of Morocco which has occupied the Western Sahara for more than four decades. In contrast, the administrations in the U.S. since 1948 have provided unconditional diplomatic, material, military and public relations support to the State of Israel. In regard to the Western Sahara question, the previous administration of President Donald Trump recognized the “sovereignty” of Morocco over the political, military and economic control of the Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic (SADR), the provisional government representing the Western Sahara, previously a colony of Spain until the 1970s.

In an article authored by Elliot Smith published by CNBC, it notes that:

“The underlying purpose of the trip — Blinken’s second since President Joe Biden’s administration took office — will be to try to contain Russian and Chinese geopolitical influence on the continent, according to Alex Vines, director of the Africa program at Chatham House. ‘South Africa is a country which doesn’t have a good relationship with the United States. The party of government, the African National Congress, regularly issues declaration communiques criticizing the United States, and so the effort there is how to improve the relationship and at least have a more constructive dialog with South Africa,’ Vines told CNBC on Monday (Aug. 8). He suggested that this is the reason why South Africa is Blinken’s first port of call, and that particular attention will be paid to aligning the two countries’ perspectives on Russia’s war in Ukraine. ‘There’s a big difference between how Pretoria sees the Russia-Ukraine issue, and Washington,’ Vines added.”

Beyond an emphasis on the economic trade between the two countries, there was no progress in regard to convincing South Africa to move closer to Washington’s policies toward Palestine and Ukraine. Pretoria is a member of the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) Summit which meets on a regular basis to enhance diplomatic and economic cooperation independent of the complete domination of Washington and Wall Street.

Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the U.S. Legacy of Imperialism

After leaving South Africa, Blinken landed in Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC. This visit came just weeks after the attempts by the former colonial power of Belgium to recalibrate relations with the Congolese government.

When the DRC gained independence in June 1960, the U.S. and Belgium worked closely together to overthrow the administration of revolutionary Pan-Africanist leader Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba, who was later assassinated in January of 1961. The remains of Lumumba were just returned from Brussels after more than sixty years.

Blinken expressed his concern over rising conflict on the border between the DRC and neighboring Rwanda, also a former Belgian colony. In the east of the DRC, the rebel M23 organization has reportedly increased their attacks which have impacted civilians. The United Nations Peacekeeping Forces of more than 17,000 soldiers in the DRC known as MONUSCO, has drawn the ire of the civilian population in recent months due to the worsening security situation.

According to the DRC mission statement it emphasizes:

“MONUSCO took over from an earlier UN peacekeeping operation – the United Nations Organization Mission in Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUC) – on 1 July 2010. It was done in accordance with Security Council resolution 1925 of 28 May to reflect the new phase reached in the country. The new mission has been authorized to use all necessary means to carry out its mandate relating, among other things, to the protection of civilians, humanitarian personnel and human rights defenders under imminent threat of physical violence and to support the Government of the DRC in its stabilization and peace consolidation efforts.”

However, demonstrations led by local residents in and around Goma erupted in recent weeks demanding the withdrawal of the MONUSCO forces which are largely composed of soldiers from numerous African and Asian states. A report published by the New Humanitarian said of the situation in eastern DRC:

“Prior to the protests, MONUSCO had drawn up a withdrawal plan that envisaged a 2024 departure date contingent on security improvements in DRC. But the upswell of anger has led the Congolese government to announce it is re-evaluating that plan.

The current protests come amid a rebellion by the M23 armed group that has captured parts of the eastern province of North Kivu. Protesters say MONUSCO has shown inaction and failed to clearly acknowledge alleged Rwandans backing for the group.”

Blinken in his talks with DRC President Felix Antoine Tshisekedi indicated that the U.S. was concerned about the continuing instability in the eastern region and would raise the issue with neighboring Rwanda. Although Rwanda has denied that it is supporting the M23 rebel groupings, this issue became the central focus of interactions during the last leg of the Blinken tour.

Rwandan Press Criticizes White House Africa Policy

Even prior to the arrival of Blinken to Kigali, the state media in Rwanda had published an open letter penned scholars from the continent and North America to the U.S. Secretary of State related to the situation on the border with Eastern DRC as well as the prosecution and imprisonment Paul Rusesabagina, who the government accuses of supporting rebel groups in opposition to the administration of President Paul Kagame. Rusesabagina was the subject of the U.S. film “Hotel Rwanda” that portrayed the businessman as being sympathetic to the victims of the 1994 genocide.

The New Times said of the letter to Blinken:

“Regarding the crisis in Eastern DR Congo, they invite him to adopt a holistic approach considering the political, economic, and socio-cultural ramifications of the Congolese situation. On the case of Mr. Rusesabagina, the African and U.S. scholars remind the Secretary of State that the lives of Rwandan citizens matter as much of those of American citizens.”

A week after Blinken’s departure from Rwanda, Veronica Mbaye wrote in the New Times pointing out the contradictory character of Washington’s foreign policy saying:

“Whatever residue of faith persisted after George Bush lied about mass destruction weapons existing in oil-rich Iraq, as an excuse to invade the country and cause decades-long instability, was exhausted during the Barack Obama years. Obama, who ran a successful campaign by feigning an impeccable moral core (which I suppose Americans did want to see in him to prove they were not racist) positioned himself as anti-war, only to line the pockets of gun lobbyists and drop bombs on innocent Syrian children when elected. As Antony Blinken will recall, having served as Obama’s close aide for years, the Obama Administration orchestrated the assassination of an African leader on African soil, despite the full awareness that it would send Libya and the entire region into deathly, dehumanizing turmoil. So frankly, I am dazed and amazed that a single American, State official or not, would think their act is convincing when claiming to have the interests of the Africans they so casually kill at heart.”

Therefore, the Blinken second Africa tour passed with no fanfare in the U.S. corporate and government-controlled media. These developments are indicative of the failure of U.S. imperialism to shift its foreign policy orientation to meet the contemporary issues of the 21st century.

From Bush, Obama, Trump to Biden, Washington has maintained its commitment to world hegemony over the majority of the people now living within the oppressed nations and geo-political regions. It is up to the African workers, farmers and youth in alliance with the international proletariat to bring into existence a world devoid of inequality and economic exploitation.

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

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***

Guest is Deborah Conrad, Hospitalist Physician Assistant and PR spokesperson. She has won a physician excellence award during the pandemic. And was then later declared “a disgrace” when she spoke up for safety and the harm she was seeing from these vaccines.

This session is about what she saw when the vaccines were rolled out in her hospital and how she came to know about VAERS.

• About her experience as a hospitalist PA (for 18 years), her role in leadership and what happened to her when she started to speak up about the required VAERS reporting that wasn’t being done or educated to them.
• About how, one day, she was walked out of the hospital, publicly humiliated in front of her peers, for standing up.
• How the FDA, CDC and the NY State Department of Health ignored her warnings and pleas for help
• How the VAERS representatives were unable to help her and
• How rigged the system actually is to make the vaccines look “safe and effective.”

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

The Next Generation Says Good-Bye to Ursula von der Leyen’s Europe

By Dr. Eric Beeth, August 23, 2022

The EU’s support of the Zelensky regime will only prolong the war in Ukraine. Approximately 50,000 young Ukrainians soldiers have died since February 24^th, 2022, and many more have been maimed or are suffering from PTSD.

US Ramping Up Drone Strikes in the Middle East and Africa

By Drago Bosnic, August 23, 2022

Drone strikes have been an integral part of US aggression against the world for over two decades now. These strikes have been the mainstay of joint military-intelligence black ops, especially in the Middle East and Africa. From the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Libya, US strikes drones have been sowing death and destruction, ever so euphemistically called “spreading freedom and democracy.”

Unseen Heat: Is this the ‘End Game’ of the Climate?

By Marc Vandepitte, August 23, 2022

We are experiencing a very hot and dry summer. Some people quite like it and for our governments there is nothing wrong yet. But actually, we should sound a big alarm. According to experts, if we do not change course soon, we risk ending up in the ‘climate end game’. In the meantime, the orchestra on the Titanic is continuing to play.

The Many Lives of Ayman al-Zawahiri

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 23, 2022

Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead – or so we are told.  Al-Qaida’s chief and successor to the slain Osama bin Laden, he was deemed the chief ideologue and mastermind behind the audacious September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.  On July 31, he was supposedly killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, while standing on his balcony.

Israel Conquers the World

By Philip Giraldi, August 23, 2022

I have to confess a certain liking for Russian President Vladimir Putin. No, it’s not over his actions in Ukraine, nor his authoritarian tendencies domestically. It is due to the fact that he sometimes articulates the hypocrisy of foreign countries and leaders in a pithy and take-no-prisoners fashion. He has lately been brave enough to compare and contrast what the Russian military has been accused of in Ukraine with what Israel has been doing to Gaza.

Amish Farm Under Threat From U.S. Federal Government for Refusal to Abandon Traditional Farming Practices

By Jeremy Loffredo, August 23, 2022

Miller’s Organic Farm, located in the remote Amish village of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, has been around for almost 30 years. The farm supplies everything from grass-fed beef and cheese, to raw milk and organic eggs, to dairy from grass-fed water buffalo and all types of produce, all to roughly 4,000 private food club members who pay top dollar for high quality whole food.

The FBI’s Gestapo Tactics: Hallmarks of an Authoritarian Regime

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, August 23, 2022

With every passing day, the United States government borrows yet another leaf from Nazi Germany’s playbook: Secret police. Secret courts. Secret government agencies. Surveillance. Censorship. Intimidation. Harassment. Torture. Brutality. Widespread corruption. Entrapment. Indoctrination. Indefinite detention.

Behind the Political Assassination of Daria Platonova Dugina

By Manlio Dinucci and Zero Hedge, August 23, 2022

The attack in Moscow that resulted in the death of journalist Daria Platonova was primarily aimed at her father, Alexander Dugin, philosopher, creator of the modern school of geopolitics, head of the Department of Sociology of International Relations at Moscow’s Lomonosov State University, and founder of the International Eurasian Movement.

The US Must Compensate Burn Pit Victims in Iraq Too

By Carly A. Krakow, August 23, 2022

On August 10, United States President Joe Biden signed the PACT Act, aiding approximately 3.5 million American veterans with severe medical conditions linked to toxic exposure to burn pits during service, including in Iraq and Afghanistan. Open air pits of military waste, sometimes as large as football fields, are burned to destroy munitions, chemicals, plastics, and medical and human waste, typically using jet fuel.

What Did the West Promise Russia on NATO Expansion?

By Ted Snider, August 23, 2022

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin complained, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are those guarantees?”

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Driving back to my office one September evening last year, I stopped to snap a shot of this enormous poster adorning the side of the EU Berlaymont building. (See photo). 

At first sight, I thought it was announcing a dystopian future of European children receiving some kind up “upgrade” every year from the profusely touted experimental genetic products developed by companies like BioNTech with swathes of money flowing in from dual-use bio-warfare programs scattered around the globe and augmented by bio-interconnectivity fanatics supported by actors who tend to cluster around organizations like the World Economic Forum.

It turned out to be a public announcement of an ambitious project, +/- 820 billion Euros that the EU is borrowing over a long period (starting end of May 2020), to help compensate for the enormous losses European citizens had endured during the covid season that started in March 2020.

No doubt it will be reimbursed to players on the international financial markets like BlackRock or Vanguard by Europeans paying taxes, including future carbon emission taxes and the hypothetical gains of deploying 5G and linking all of Europe into cyber-clouds of information to the glee of big tech like Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple (GAFA).

But my first gut feeling was unfortunately a prescient hint of what was in the pipeline of horrible developments we all need to put an URGENT end to.  This will  be the task of our Next Generation of Europeans, and you can read the writing on the wall by listening to this 11-year-old girl in the UK.

Video

On December 1, 2021, three weeks after European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen got back from her meeting at The Atlantic Council in Washington, where she charmed Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla by giving him the “Distinguished Business Leadership Award” for the Greek-American Veterinarian’s bold moves that led to his company’s massive financial success (which her husband also profits from) – she expressed her relief at Pfizer-BioNTech having paediatric doses of the new experimental genetic product to inject into Europe’s 5 to 12 year-olds by mid-December ’21.

Ever since, I’ve been unable to come to terms with how this mother of 7 children, a former General Practitioner, could sink into public-office corruption so deeply that she lost all track of her well-trained doctor’s ingrained oath to do no harm, and proceeded to promote experimental genetic injections of innocent children to the benefit of her friends in the political and business world.

I was surprised to find out that she lives in a flat adjacent to her official office situated in one of the top floors of that pictured Berlaymont building during the week. More recently she has been seen around the Brussels institutions loudly supporting President Volodymyr Zelensky’s insistent and vociferous demands to help arm Western Ukrainians during a hot civil war against the Eastern Russian-speaking minority supported by Russia.  On February 24^th, Russia initiated a special military operation aimed primarily at militarily neutralizing Western Ukraine that was gearing up for a more full-fledged attack on the Russian-speaking East. The second stated goal of this operation was to “denazify” the Ukraine. Though not an issue commonly encountered in Europe, Ukraine’s history is littered with Stepan Bandera followers whose animosity towards the Russians is legendary.

US Career Ambassador Victoria Nuland explained in 2014 that the US had gifted $5 billion over the preceding two decades to help the Ukraine join the Atlantic block.  It is conceivable that a large chunk of this kind of money came out coffers like the “Black Eagle Trust”, an American political action fund set up under President Truman to fight communism. Apart from corrupting political processes in favour of US (politician) friendly outcomes, this type of fund also distributes hard currency and gold to Gladio type NATO secret armies. In (Western) Ukraine, money can have flowed to strengthening an inherent strongly nationalistic perception of itself, and, via certain oligarchs, funding an array of Nazi ideology inspired fighting groups (more than thirty so-called volunteer battalions like Aidar and Azov).

When it comes to the former USSR republic with whom the country used to be fully integrated, the Russians may understandably wish to discourage a Stepan Bandera type uprising as this movement is neither good for democracy in the Ukraine nor fruitful for maintaining good neighbourly relations with its (often Russian speaking) Ukrainian brothers and sisters. Prior to the US backed Maidan uprising of 2014, 70% of Ukraine’s economic exchange was with Russia, and most Ukrainian soldiers had a solidary sentiment for their Russian comrades.  (A recent video interviews the motivations of the soldiers who joined the Azov “Warriors of Light”, watch below)

Before Mrs Ursula von der Leyen literally moved into the Berlaymont Building, I remember seeing the announcement of a big event that also adorned the building: the European Union had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for six decades of advancement of peace, reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe ten years prior, in October of 2012.

Many of my patients work in the European Union, and while they took great pride in that prestigious prize at the time, they feel very differently about the current President of the EU.

After 60 years of advancement on peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights, Ursula von der Leyen’s gung-ho stance on the US-installed “post-Maidan” Nazi-supported Ukrainian government was a bad slip for Europe.  It is self-evident that Europe should have been much more pro-active and protective of the Minsk agreements, rather than arming Ukraine to the teeth, and to encourage them (especially their Nazi friendly elements) to take back the rebellious Lugansk, Donbas and Crimea regions.  Ursula von der Leyen and Josep Borell have both declared that Ukraine’s war against “the Russian invaders” is Europe’s war. In who’s name are they speaking? For Europe or for NATO?  Is that the same? In any case, they do not represent my choice of representatives, and certainly not the next generation of EU citizens.

In essence, Russia is an Eastern neighbour that Europe has every good reason to stay on good terms with, but with NATO being controlled from Washington, Europe has been gradually goaded into creating its own Iron Curtain to separate itself from its Eastern neighbour. In so doing, it sabotaged its access to one of the most exciting expanding economic markets of the coming decades.

The EU’s support of the Zelensky regime will only prolong the war in Ukraine. Approximately 50,000 young Ukrainians soldiers have died since February 24^th, 2022, and many more have been maimed or are suffering from PTSD.

Where are the European peace-brokers, these Nobel-Prize-winning leaders in the advancement of peace, reconciliation, democracy and human rights?

The Ukraine war of 2014-2022 could have been avoided had Europe been more careful not to let Washington and London stir the pot.  Awarding itself the Nobel Peace Prize gave off a false sense of wisdom and security. To this day, no wise leader has stood up for the true interests of Europe – which, as Olof Palme or Charles De Gaulle would have pointed out, are not necessarily in line with US interests. Today’s generation, including the current bungling President of the EU, has not only missed many important opportunities for reconciliation with its critically important eastern neighbour but has managed to burn its bridges to the future powerhouse of its economy. We will soon be the ones begging for a chance to re-establish a buoyant economy, but there are no easy or fast solutions to reverse the course after so much harm has been done.

Together with our next generation, we will have ample time to reflect on what we did wrong.  We must commence this process urgently.

The head of the European Union delivering a prize from “The Atlantic Council” in Washington should ring alarm bells as to what geo-political territory we are on. Giving it to a personal acquaintance after placing a multibillion-dollar order with his company using European taxpayers’ money, should raise the alert level to red. It’s entirely possible that Mrs Ursula von der Leyen’s intentions were authentic, aiming to secure what she believed were somewhat effective vaccines for the European market. She may also consider digital-covid certificates to be a wonderful invention leading to financial streamlining, with long-term economic benefits for Europe as the World Economic Forum would have her believe.

The trouble is that it is we Europeans who are paying the price – not only with our tax money, but more worrisomely with our personal bodily integrity and our collective health.

Furthermore, the planned cashless and QR-code-embedded society would strip Europeans of any physical autonomy while subjecting them to information technology algorithms (GAFA!) and 5G dependent accessories like mobile phones and computers.

Though she perhaps doesn’t know it, the EU President is selling off European citizens like a herd of cattle while the World Bank chucks in a good billion Euros ensuring the Digital ID with your “bio-security” up-grades against newly found or invented bioweapons will be required to do your shopping. Ursula von der Leyen appears to believe the propaganda that the purveyors of Digital Access to her citizens, like the sales slogan of Pfizer “Science Will Win”, but no one is taking responsibility for what happens to the physical and mental health of the individuals in her herd who, no doubt, have a totally different concept of what benefits best their own health and wellbeing.

Nowhere can you see her dangerously delusional behaviour more clearly than when this medical doctor-turned-politician cries out that she is relieved that the (experimental gene-therapy) shots from Pfizer are finally available for 5-year-old toddlers.

These last covid-years have shown us the kind of society our next generation will rightfully reject:

• Bodily harm from unsafe medicines: all of the agencies and medical ethics institutions that were silent while the purveyors of the covid “scamdemic” played out their “expertise” should be carefully audited from top to bottom to make sure they never again allow anything as toxic as these often-mandated mRNA shots, and the economically suicidal “Lock-Downs”.
• Pharmaceutical companies whose business model consists of making dangerous diseases and then making millions purporting to protect us from the bio-toxic agents they themselves hold patents on. (For example: Moderna, which had never made an approved vaccine in its history, developed its covid shot based on a patent it already held on the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in 2016).
• Non doctors who insist they know better than you do about your personal health. Take the French billionaire CEO of Moderna, Stéphane Bancel, who recently said he expected his “vaccines” to be offered like yearly “up-grades” on iPhones. Bancel, of course, is not a doctor, as is true of the other expert on “up-grades”, the computer nerd turned worldwide vaccination “expert” Bill Gates.  The head of the World Health Organization who likes to call himself Doctor Tedros is not a physician either. Mr Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus is a former member of a guerrilla organization who got promoted to the top “medical” position of the World as a result of having been the protégé of a computer nerd – the very same Bill Gates who decided that the whole world needed to be vaccinated because it benefits his philanthropist business and the stake holders, he promised money and information access to.
• World Economic Forum trained politicians who have manipulated the masses into paying the “Stake Holders” pawns of the WEF, of which there are many. A People’s Court Nuremburg-2 trial has been set in motion by attorney Reiner Füllmich to publicly document the WEF’s crimes against humanity, such as criminally mandating experimental genetic treatments without sufficient safety or efficacy data against a virus that has undergone lethal and illegal “Gain of Function” enhancement for emergence into the human population. (See the March 2016 article by University of North Carolina Chapel Hill PhD Microbiologist Ralph S Baric “SARS-like WIV1-CoV poised for human emergence”).
• Other politicians, who have a track record of corruption within their political career, or who pushed for clearly totalitarian and unfounded measures during the covid period to spread fear and punish citizens who did not want to take the so-called ‘safe and effective’ anti-covid shots.
• Just as German civil servants are warned not to use Facebook and Gmail as this information is filtered by the US NSA, all European citizens should follow suit and be very wary of everything that could be compromised by Big Tech.

The majority of Swedes communicate by Facebook every day, and Facebook censors and manipulates its pages according to geo-political algorithms that the Atlantic Council approves. When citizens’ spontaneous conversations get tweaked in this dictated way, and Reuters and AFP only send out the news that its owners and diverse “stakeholders” want you to hear, it becomes child’s play to influence the collective consciousness of the Swedes who, after a long history of a surprisingly benevolent democracy, do not realize that their governmental institutions are being compromised.

When you look at Sweden’s citizens wanting to join NATO, a collective ‘defence’ pact that has recently participated in several wars of choice after Article 5 was set into effect based on the unproven claim that Al Qaeda attacked the U.S. on 9/11, one has to wonder what would make that country give up its long-standing principles of non-alignment and neutrality.  Sweden’s NATO member neighbour Denmark went 200 years without war before Sept. 11^th 2001.  Trying hard to live up to its NATO obligations, Denmark lost, per capita, more soldiers in the scandalous and unnecessary post-9/11 “wars on terror” than the US lost in the entire Vietnam War.

• The media that hyped the covid fear, and made sure to censor any news of effective treatment against it – except those “efficient and safe” “preventions” that the government and Big Pharma told them to glorify.
• This is the same media that pushes only the Western Atlanticist version of the war in the Ukraine, while those journalists accurately reporting on war crimes from the Donbas are criminalised* by European governments, and all Russian channels, as well as the official Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, have been silenced throughout Europe. How can European citizens become informed in this type of biased and controlled media environment?  (*See Max Blumenthal interview of German freelance journalist Alina Lipp July 13^th 2022)
• As the 21^st Anniversary of the 9/11’s State Crime Against Democracy (SCAD) draws near, we must remind our European youth that the West has still not seriously investigated the killing of 3,000 citizens in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania on Sept 11^th 2001.

Since the real criminals have so far gotten away with such a heinous SCAD, they and the media that assisted them in the cover up will be emboldened to do further harm if we do not collectively decide to expose the obvious lies that they keep perpetuating regarding these events. We will need some kind of ‘Truth and Reconciliation Commission’ to free ourselves, as a people, from the overflowing septic tank of lies that keeps Europeans beholden to a false picture of reality, making common sense and truthful discourse a quasi-impossibility.

• No self-respecting engineer or University academic should accept the blatant impossibility that Atlantic Council member Philipp Zelikov penned in the Report of the 9/11 Commission he headed — that two planes brought down three steel-framed skyscrapers on Sept. 11^th. [1]
• No Medical University would allow experimental genetic treatments to be pushed on its students or population of childbearing age in the future. Any University or medical institution that has done so needs to be thoroughly scrutinized, to ensure that this never happens again.

The avalanche of totalitarian absurdities we have been forced to live through during these last two covid years have the silver lining that people are awakening to the fact that there is something rotten under the roof of that Berlaymont building, and these absurdities have only been possible due to the heavy hand of the GAFA (Google Amazon Facebook Apple type Big Tech) and the media that follow a corrupt elite’s chosen doxa to influence how we see reality.

• Also, the absence of a true forensic criminal investigation into the massive 9/11 State Crimes Against Democracy 21 years ago has still today a weakening effect on the European people’s capacity to think clearly, and to make decisions based on reality and common sense.

Let us together warmly welcome this Next Generation Europe. After such a close call with totalitarianism of the past, let us resurrect the Europe we used to know and cherish.

To do this, we will need to clear away the nefarious influences, misconceptions and outright lies that had rendered the present European generation unable to make the best decisions for our own Future.

Next Generation Europe, HERE WE COME!!

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Dr. Eric Beeth is a General Practitioner working in Brussels Belgium. He has contributed to Global Research on medical matters, but with the current increase in deceitful provocations that the even many of his well-liked high ranking patients do not seem to understand, he takes the 11^th of the month off from his medical duties, to inform the elites about the criminal “inside job” nature of September 11^th 2001.  Most citizens are well aware of this, but apparently not the elite, and not the journalists, as they have vested so much of their credibility in denying what is self-evident for a 10-year-old with an intuitively correct understanding of the laws of Physics.  Journalists and decision makers in Brussels who would like to have more information are welcome to contact Dr. Beeth at [email protected].

Note

[1] For more background information on the advancement of inquiry into the events of 9/11: check the Lawyers’ Committee for 9/11 Inquiry, Richard Gage’s web site, and Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

Architect Richard Gage gave a presentation in Indianapolis on July 9^th 2022 analysing parallels that exist between the two events, 9/11 and covid, and how these events changed the world politically, culturally, economically and geo-politically.

COVID UPDATE: What is the truth? (Dr. Russel Baylock, April 22, 2022) https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9062939

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Drone strikes have been an integral part of US aggression against the world for over two decades now. These strikes have been the mainstay of joint military-intelligence black ops, especially in the Middle East and Africa. From the mountains of Afghanistan to the deserts of Libya, US strikes drones have been sowing death and destruction, ever so euphemistically called “spreading freedom and democracy.”

These drones, first used only for ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) missions, were modified for rudimentary strike roles and were first tested in former Yugoslavia, laying the groundwork for their later usage in various US invasions. The strikes were massively expanded under Barack Obama, with thousands being approved by his administration. After Donald Trump came to power, he officially reduced the number of drone strikes, although they now became more specific, with US intelligence services getting even more involved. However, since Joe Biden took office, it seems the trend has now been reversed and US drones are coming back in full force.

On August 19 conflict monitors drew attention to a series of US strikes in Somalia, which have escalated significantly in the last couple of months. These attacks have gained little to no attention in the US corporate mass media despite resulting in the deaths of more than 20 people.

“If you were unaware that we were bombing Somalia, don’t feel bad, this is a completely under-the-radar news story, one that was curiously absent from the headlines in all of the major newspapers this morning,” wrote Kelley Beaucar Vlahos, a senior adviser at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Last Wednesday, Dave DeCamp, writing for AntiWar reported that the US AFRICOM (Africa Command) launched its second strike on Somalia in less than a week. AFRICOM claims the attack, which occurred in Beledweyne, “had killed 13 fighters belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Somali militant group al-Shabaab, and that no civilians were harmed.” AFRICOM claims drone strikes also killed four al-Shabaab members in three separate operations near Beledweyne on August 9, two fighters near Labi Kus on July 17, and five militants in a June 3 bombing outside Beer Xani.

All of the aforementioned strikes have taken place since President Biden approved the redeployment of hundreds of special forces to Somalia in May, reversing an earlier withdrawal decision under the administration of former President Donald Trump. DeCamp noted that Trump’s withdrawal from Somalia merely “repositioned troops in neighboring Djibouti and Kenya, allowing the drone war to continue. But Biden has launched significantly fewer strikes in Somalia compared to his predecessor.”

According to the London-based Airwars monitoring group, US forces have targeted Somalia at least 16 times since Joe Biden took office, killing between 465 and 545 supposed militants. On March 13, a single US drone strike reportedly killed up to 200 alleged militants. Airwars claims there were civilian casualties in just one of the drone attacks under the Biden administration, conducted in June 2021. The attack on the southern town of Ceel Cadde killed a woman named Sahro Adan Warsame and seriously injured five of her children, according to local media reports. US forces have carried out at least 260 strikes in Somalia since 2007. The Pentagon has so far admitted killing five civilians and wounding 11 others, but Airwars claims 78-153 civilians, including 20-23 children, have died in US attacks.

“Bottom line, it’s been a long time since the United States was not bombing Somalia,” wrote Vlahos. “This comes after a particularly bloody period during the [so-called War on Terror] in which the CIA was using the country to detain and torture terror suspects from across North Africa. Whether this has ultimately been a good thing for the country or for the broader security of the region, one need only to look at the continued instability and impoverishment of the people,” she added, “and of course, the persistent presence of al-Shabaab itself.”

In addition to Somalia, recent reports indicate that US drones have been reactivated over Libya as well. The US shows no intention of stopping these strikes, with most now being relegated to intelligence services, such as the infamous CIA, with minimal civilian oversight. Many experts believe the indiscriminate use of these drones is a major, if not the key contributor to the overall instability across the troubled regions in which they’re deployed, as the terrorist activity which they’re allegedly there to stop is only exacerbated as a result.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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Ayman al-Zawahiri is dead – or so we are told.  Al-Qaida’s chief and successor to the slain Osama bin Laden, he was deemed the chief ideologue and mastermind behind the audacious September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.  On July 31, he was supposedly killed in a drone strike in Afghanistan’s capital, Kabul, while standing on his balcony.

Terrorism and security pundits, whose views are best considered from afar with stern scrutiny, are predictably speculating that the killing will have some effect on al-Qaida but are incapable of showing how.  Vanda Felbab-Brown at Brookings is convinced that “his death with have a negative strategic and demoralizing impact on al-Qaida” though gives no inkling of how this might be so.  Even by her own admission, Zawahiri was not “involved in daily tactical al-Qaida planning”.

The lack of US counter-terrorism capabilities, not to mention officially stationed personnel in Afghanistan, is no problem for Felbab-Brown.  She admires the US forces for still getting the job done, if it can be put as crudely as that.  This killing was an “impressive show of the effectiveness and persistence of US counterterrorism efforts”.  Scorn is also reserved for the Taliban, who seemed to be playing host and continuing old habits of supping from the same bowl.

President Joe Biden also took pride in noting that such killings could be executed at a distance, and without the need for an ongoing US garrison.  “When I ended our military mission in Afghanistan almost a year ago, I made the decision that after 20 years of war, the United States no longer needed thousands of boots on the ground in Afghanistan to protect America from terrorists who seek to do us harm.”

In November 2020, another commentator from the Brookings stable, Daniel Byman, wrote something almost identical in flavour to that of Felbab-Brown.  Zawahiri had, on that occasion, had another one of his death flourishes, reportedly expiring in Afghanistan from “natural causes”.

Byman was keen to speculate.  “If Zawahri is dead, where will al-Qaida go next and what kind of movement will Zawahri’s successor inherit?”  With classroom authority, Byman opined that, “Leaders matter tremendously for terrorist groups, especially jihadi ones, which often rise and fall based on the fortunes of their emir.”

As things transpired, the leader in question was very much alive and kicking and reports of his death had been embarrassingly exaggerated.  He appeared in a video message celebrating the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan, released on September 11, 2021.

The al-Qaida leader certainly has form.  In August 2008, Zawahiri’s fate was of such interest to CBS News as to prompt a bold pronouncement.  He was said to be in “severe pain” and in need of urgent treatment for injuries sustained in a strike.  Lara Logan, the CBS News chief foreign affairs correspondent, had supposedly secured a letter written by local Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud making that point.  The injuries were said to be so critical that the leader was “possibly dead”.  Logan acknowledged that there had been “false death rumours” floating around previously about the al-Qaida figure, but no denials had been issued from Pakistan, the US or al-Qaida websites.  Not exactly formidably deductive.

Zawahiri has encountered death yet again, this time at the end of a drone strike on a safe house in Kabul.  But things were far from clear.  Former head of the National Directorate of Security in Afghanistan, Rahmatullah Nabil, claimed it was “an American strike on IS-K” (Islamic State-Khorasan Province) that took place on July 31.  Not so, according to Amrullah Saleh, former Afghan vice-president, who attributed responsibility to the Pakistani Airforce.

The Taliban followed up, with spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid confirming that the strike had, in fact, been the work of a US drone.  “Such actions are a repetition of the failed experiences of the past 20 years and are against the interests of the US, Afghanistan and the region,” Mujahid added.

US President Joe Biden duly issued his video-briefing corroborating the attack.  Not that this necessarily clarified matters regarding Zawahiri.  John Kirby, National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, admitted that no DNA evidence had been obtained.  Cockily, he asserted that, “based on multiple sources and methods that we’ve gathered information from, we don’t need it.”

The pattern of killings and assassinations gloried in, only to be revised or disproved later, is very much part of the counterterrorist manual.  US officials have indulged in this before, notably in the context of Osama bin Laden.  At a certain point in time, it became irrelevant whether he lived or otherwise.  The figure had died on so many occasions as to become a simulacrum, existing in an absurdist drama known as terrorism studies and “counter-terrorist operations”.  At best, the obsession with capturing and killing him provided the personal touch, an individual whose targeting gave reassurance that wrongs could somehow be righted by disposing of him in extrajudicial fashion.

Bin Laden’s slaying by the Navy Seals in May 2011 had a cinematic element and, in a rather fitting way, reconciled his dead-yet-not-dead existence to celluloid.   The White House Situation Room showed President Barack Obama and his officials glued to the screen as the events in Abbottabad, Pakistan unfolded.  Ghoulish reality television unfolded before an audience grimly transfixed, horrified and entertained.

Like his predecessor felled by US bullets, Zawahiri’s demise hardly changes the dynamic of the terrorist franchise he led.  Killing such a man is not quite the equivalent of doing away with the manager of a banking branch, but the principle has a similarity to it.  Such entities will continue to thrive, fed by the very forces that often claim to suppress them.  Adherents will always be found; the hangman will never be disappointed.

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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: Dr. Ayman al-Zawahri in an photograph taken by Hamid Mir, who took this picture during his third and last interview with Osama bin Laden during November 2001 in Kabul. Dr. al-Zawahri was present at the interview where he acted as translator for bin Laden. (Licensed under CC BY SA 3.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

Close strategic partnership between Russia and China has been the mainstay of their relationship for decades. The US has been trying to disrupt this successful partnership ever since, especially as Russia started regaining its strength, but the incessant belligerent actions of the imperialist thalassocracy have pushed the two (Eur)Asian superpowers even closer. This cooperation is manifold, but its space component is particularly concerning for the US, as it has serious security implications. The Pentagon is worried that the US “might not be able to match the united financing and know-how” of Moscow and Beijing.

“The two countries’ space cooperation, including in the military realm, has become inextricable since 2018 and works against U.S. interests,” said Kevin Pollpeter, senior research scientist at the CNA think tank’s China Studies Division. “I don’t think we can separate China and Russia. I just don’t think that’s possible,” Pollpeter said in response to a question from Air Force Magazine following a panel discussion on China-Russia space cooperation at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

“While the countries do not have completely overlapping security concerns, they do share a strong desire to counter U.S. leadership, including in outer space,” he said. “What we need to do is, we need to mitigate whatever problems that relationship may cause for us. The two countries’ military space cooperation includes the areas of ballistic missile defense, space debris monitoring, and satellite navigation. The resulting exchange has included technology transfer, weapons sales, combined exercises, and compensating measures,” Pollpeter added.

In 1989, the US imposed sanctions on China, targeting Beijing’s defense and space industry. China looked to Russia for the necessary technology transfers and by 1997, the two countries started regular cooperation in space. Russia had the know-how, but its space industry was faced with severe funding shortages.

“…a number of embargoes that took place made [China] increasingly more reliant on Russia as a potential source of technology, particularly for dual use and defense,” said Pollpeter. “…China started looking more to Russia, and Russia started looking more to China for help with supporting their own space program.”

China also began cooperating with Russia on ballistic missile defense after the US unilaterally withdrew from the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty in 2019. In the immediate aftermath of the withdrawal, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia would assist China in creating a ballistic missile early warning system. At the time, Putin said that China was perfectly capable of creating such a system itself, but that it would take longer, so Russia decided to aid Beijing in enhancing its strategic security in light of aggressive US moves in the Asia-Pacific region.

“There appears to be some sort of technology transfer going on,” Pollpeter added. “There’s been joint exercises – the Aerospace Security 2016 and 2017 involved joint air and missile defense planning and coordination.”

According to Pollpeter, another area of cooperation, space debris monitoring, “may sound innocuous,” but he claims “it has security implications.”

“If you have a space debris monitoring system, then you actually have a space domain awareness or space surveillance system,” he said. “This very much has a military role in helping China and Russia better monitor U.S. movements up in space.”

The US Space Force is particularly concerned about how “little is known about the satellite navigation cooperation between the two nations.” According to Pollpeter, other than the fact that there are compatibility and interoperability between the Russian and Chinese equivalents to GPS, the GLONASS and BeiDou navigation systems, nothing else is known about the security component of this cooperation. What is supposedly known is “the presence of augmentation stations in each other’s countries and performance monitoring,” Pollpeter claims.

“What they really want to do, then, is demonstrate that in a world where the U.S. and China could come into military conflict, they have an alternative,” he said. “They don’t have to rely on BeiDou exclusively. They also have the Russian system.”

As China doesn’t publicly discuss its space defense capabilities, Pollpeter claims it’s currently unknown which level of cooperation have Moscow and Beijing reached in this regard.

“A lot of it’s so opaque that when you get into something like counterspace, they’re not going to discuss that,” he said. “What China is developing is a capability that really is designed to threaten the United States space architecture from the ground all the way up to geosynchronous orbit.”

Existing agreements indicate close Chinese and Russian cooperation on launch vehicles, rocket engines, space planes, lunar and deep space exploration, remote sensing, electronics, space debris, satellite navigation and communication. Pollpeter thinks the US Space Force cannot halt the China-Russia cooperation, but it could do more to mitigate its effects.

“There’s really little we can do to separate the two countries, especially [on] the space side,” he said. “The distrust and, let’s say, to some extent, animosity of both countries towards the U.S. sort of precludes, at this point, that any of those efforts can be successful.”

As the US state-run space sector kept falling behind, private companies, the most prominent certainly being SpaceX, started closely cooperating with the US military. Both Russia and China have been responding to the US militarization of space by enhancing their own capabilities, both separately and jointly. While China started deploying pilotless spaceplanes, Russia is building land-based laser weapons to counter US space threats and is also launching its own spacecraft to track US space assets.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

I have to confess a certain liking for Russian President Vladimir Putin. No, it’s not over his actions in Ukraine, nor his authoritarian tendencies domestically. It is due to the fact that he sometimes articulates the hypocrisy of foreign countries and leaders in a pithy and take-no-prisoners fashion.

He has lately been brave enough to compare and contrast what the Russian military has been accused of in Ukraine with what Israel has been doing to Gaza.

He has done so by asking a series of questions that together demonstrate the hypocrisy of Washington and of some Europeans over what constitutes war crimes or crimes against humanity.

The questions were:

“First, are there any sanctions against Israel for the murder and destruction of innocent Palestinian women and children? Second, are there any sanctions against the United States for killing and destroying lives of innocent women and children in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Cuba, Vietnam, and even stealing their diamonds and gold? And third, were there any sanctions against the US and France over the killing of Muammar Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya?”

Russia, of course, has been on the receiving end of sanctions and boycotts and even official theft of the money that it had in US and European banks. It has also had to deal as well with military support provided by NATO to the Volodymyr Zelensky regime in Ukraine. Last month the US Senate unanimously passed a ridiculous nonbinding resolution declaring Russia to be a “state sponsor of terrorism,” which, if endorsed by the White House, would inevitably lead to still more sanctions and increasing aid to Zelensky and his corrupt cronies in an openly declared attempt to weaken Russia and bring down Putin. It would also mean that a future functional diplomatic relationship between Moscow and Washington would become impossible. Implicit in Putin’s questions is the clear accusation that there is a double standard on what constitutes national security. The West supports military resistance by Ukraine against Russia but does not support the right of the Palestinians to defend themselves when attacked by Israel, as took place on August 5^th, an unprovoked attack that killed inter alia 17 Palestinian children.

The Russian Foreign Ministry followed-up with a statement first posted on its Egyptian Embassy social media accounts. The statement included a screenshot of a tweet Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid posted April 3^rd on the claimed killing of civilians in the Ukrainian town of Bucha, attributed by Lapid and the western media to Russian forces. Lapid declared “It is impossible to remain indifferent in the face of the horrific images from the city of Bucha near Kiev, from after the Russian army left. Intentionally harming a civilian population is a war crime and I strongly condemn it.” The Russian post observed how one might “Compare Yair Lapid’s lies about [Ukraine] in April and attempts to place blame and responsibility on [Russia] for the deaths of people in Bucha brutally murdered by the Nazis with his calls in August for bombing and strikes on [Palestinian] land in the Gaza Strip. Isn’t that a double standard, complete disregard and contempt for the lives of Palestinians?”

The point about a double standard is particularly relevant as Ukraine, which claims to be enduring a brutal Russian assault replete with war crimes, has openly endorsed Israel’s bombing and shooting of the unarmed Palestinians. Two weeks ago, Ukrainian Ambassador to Israel Yevgen Korniychuk expressed his full support for Tel Aviv, saying “As a Ukrainian whose country is under a very brutal attack by its neighbor, I feel great sympathy towards the Israeli public. Attacks on women and children are reprehensible. Terrorism and malicious attacks against civilians are the daily reality of Israelis and Ukrainians and this appalling threat must be stopped immediately.”

Korniychuk’s odd, and manifestly false, comment takes reality and turns it upside down. But nevertheless, to be sure, Israel’s recent bloody assault on Gaza did not earn it much favor from a global audience that has become tired of the Jewish state’s belligerency and self-serving flood of disinformation. A number of human rights organizations and even some churches responded by declaring Israel to be an “apartheid state.” Some critics of the Israelis have also been pleased to observe that ordinary voters in the US Democratic Party in particular have moved away from knee-jerk support of Israel and have accepted that it is racist and undemocratic. Even a considerable number young Jews, many of whom have protested against the Israeli automatic resort to gunfire and bombs in suppressing the Palestinians, have broken with their parents over the issue of what constitutes the legitimate “right” of Israel to “defend itself.”

Israel is far from defeated, however, and it has struck back in the time-honored fashion, using the Jewish diaspora and its vast wealth to buy up or leverage the media, to corrupt politicians at all levels, and to propagate a narrative that always depicts Jews sympathetically as perpetual victims. That narrative relies on the so-called holocaust and the slogan “never again” to generate the moral authority and outrage that makes the entire otherwise unsustainable imposture work.

What might be plausibly described as an International Jewish Conspiracy directed from the Israeli government’s Ministry of Strategic Affairs and from the think tanks, banks and investment houses on Wall Street and K Street is working hard to make it illegal to criticize Israel and is enjoying considerable success. Israel’s recent and continuing slaughter of Gazans and West Bank villagers has not induced the thoroughly controlled governments and media outlets that the Jewish state dominates that there is anything seriously wrong going on between the Israelis and Palestinians, only business as usual.

Israel appears to be winning its war against the Palestinians (and let’s not forget the Iranians) where it matters most, among the power brokers in both the US and elsewhere. Witness for example the reaction of the US government to the killing of the Gazans. President Joe Biden declared that Israel has a “right to defend itself,” the standard line also parroted by Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi. Thirty-four congressmen meanwhile signed on to a letter calling on the United Nations to disband a UN Commission of Inquiry (COI) into Israel following recent controversial remarks by one of the commission’s members. The COI was set up to investigate possible Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity in the occupied territories and Gaza.

The signatories particularly objected to what the always vigilant Anti-Defamation League has described as anti-Semitic statements by COI member Miloon Kothari, an Indian human rights expert and investigator. In a podcast Kothari observed that Israel routinely “practiced apartheid and settler colonialism against the Palestinians,” before rejecting criticism of his commission as the work of the Jewish lobby that controls the media, saying “We are very disheartened by the social media that is controlled largely by the Jewish lobby or specific NGOs,” adding that “a lot of money is being thrown at trying to discredit the commission’s work.”

Jewish power particularly in the anglophone world was also on display recently in Canada. The painfully politically correct Justin Trudeau regime has succumbed to the example set by Germany and several other European states in enshrining the official Jewish organizations’ perpetual victim narrative in the Canadian Criminal Code, s. 319. Henceforth

(2.1) Everyone who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes antisemitism by condoning, denying or downplaying the Holocaust

• (a) is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years; or
• (b) is guilty of an offence punishable on summary conviction.

So, from now on in Canada, if you question the claimed facts surrounding the approved so-called holocaust narrative you can be sent to prison for two years. So much for free speech or the right to challenge disinformation.

Finally, in Britain, the two contenders for the position of Prime Minister replacing the disgraced Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, and Rishi Sunak, the chancellor, were boasting of their pro-Israel credentials over the very weekend when Israel was killing more than fifty Palestinians, including 17 children, while wounding scores more. Truss and Sunak played the Israel/Jewish card big time, with Truss asserting that “The UK should stand side by side with Israel, now and well into the future. As Prime Minister, I would be at the forefront of this mission.” Truss has also hinted that she would follow the Zionist stooge Donald Trump’s lead in moving the British Embassy to Jerusalem and she has supported a Free Trade Agreement between the UK and Israel, which would primarily benefit the Israelis. She has also declared that any criticism of Israel is rooted in anti-Semitism, a popular line that is also being extensively promoted in the United States.

The two dominant parties in the UK’s parliamentary system are the Conservatives (Tories) and Labour. Both parties have organized “Friends of Israel” groups that have as members a majority of parliamentarians, including more than four out of every five Tories, who currently form the government. Recently, the Labour Party ousted leader Jeremy Corbyn because he dared to express sympathy for the Palestinians and replaced him with Keir Starmer, who is as close to Israel and the powerful British Jewish community as, well… choose your metaphor. For what it’s worth, Truss, Sunak and Starmer all support a hard line against Russia in Ukraine and also advocate putting extreme pressure on Iran, Israel’s declared regional enemy. They also all support using the British veto in the United Nations to protect the Jewish state against critics.

In 2001, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon angrily admonished his colleague Shimon Peres, who was arguing that Israel should heed US calls for a cease fire, saying “I want to tell you something very clear, don’t worry about American pressure on Israel. We, the Jewish people, control America, and the Americans know it.” It now appears that the US, Canada, and Great Britain, joined by other anglophone states like Australia and New Zealand, are riding on the same horse when it comes to sacrificing actual national interests to pander to a foreign nation which can rightly be regarded as both a habitual war criminal and manifestly racist. The British and Canadian politicians on both sides of the aisle have now become like their American counterparts in allowing themselves to be corrupted by money and media influence, making an uncritical and near total commitment to Israel the defining issue in any political campaign for high office.

Modern Jewish power as a global phenomenon is a cancer that was in a certain sense made in America and has spread worldwide. But, fortunately, the smearing of critics as anti-Semites is beginning to wear thin. As Chris Hedges observed in March 2019 “The Israel Lobby’s buying off of nearly every senior politician in the United States, facilitated by our system of legalized bribery, is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. The lobby’s campaign of vicious character assassination, smearing and blacklisting against those who defend Palestinian rights…is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact. Twenty-four state governments’ passage of Israel Lobby-backed legislation requiring their workers and contractors, under threat of dismissal, to sign a pro-Israel oath and promise not to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement is not an anti-Semitic trope. It is a fact.”

It should also be a fact that Americans are beginning to rally against their government being manipulated by the unregistered insidious agents of a foreign government, but that will have to wait presumably. For the moment, Israel and its fifth column have key elements in both government and in the public space in their iron grip. It might require something like a revolution to loosen that.

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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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***

Miller’s Organic Farm, located in the remote Amish village of Bird-in-Hand, Pennsylvania, has been around for almost 30 years.

The farm supplies everything from grass-fed beef and cheese, to raw milk and organic eggs, to dairy from grass-fed water buffalo and all types of produce, all to roughly 4,000 private food club members who pay top dollar for high quality whole food.

The private food club members appreciate their freedom to get food from an independent farmer that isn’t processing his meat and dairy at U.S. Department of Agriculture facilities, which mandates that food be prepared in ways that Miller’s Organic Farm believe make it less nutritious.

Amos Miller, the farm’s owner, contends that he’s preparing food the way God intended — but the U.S. government doesn’t see things that way.

They recently sent armed federal agents to the farm and demanded he cease operations. The government is also looking to issue more than $300,000 in fines — a request so steep, it would put the farm out of business.

This is an attack on Amish religious freedom just 150 miles from Washington D.C.

Making it even more independent, Miller’s farm also doesn’t use gasoline or fertilizer, and therefore the war between Ukraine and Russia isn’t affecting his bottom line, unlike every other farming competitor in the country.

Miller isn’t dependent on big industry players or the government, and he’s providing healthy food to his community the way he believes God intended. The government is trying to intimidate his operation and shut it down.

If you believe the Amish should have the right to exercise their religious beliefs and their ability to provide healthy food to their community, sign our petition at LeaveThemAlone.com and I’ll personally deliver it to the U.S. Federal Eastern District Court of Pennsylvania.

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***

In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin complained, “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them. But I will allow myself to remind this audience what was said. I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr. Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: ‘The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee.’ Where are those guarantees?”

Putin was quoting correctly. He might have added, as we know from newly declassified documents, that Woerner also “stressed that the NATO Council and he are against the expansion of NATO (13 out of 16 NATO members support this point of view).” The NATO Secretary General also assured the Russians on July 1, 1991 that, in an upcoming meeting with Poland’s Lech Walesa and Romania’s Ion Iliescu, “he will oppose Poland and Romania joining NATO, and earlier this was stated to Hungary and Czechoslovakia” (document 30).

Many have accused Putin of historical revisionism and denied that the West ever promised Russia that, if a unified Germany were permitted to join NATO, NATO would not expand east. But, as these three quotations from the highest level of NATO show, the declassified documents firmly establish that NATO was lying when it said in a 2014 report that “No such pledge was made, and no evidence to back up Russia’s claims has ever been produced.”

Secretary of State James Baker has also insisted no such promise was made. On February 9, 1990, Baker famously offered Gorbachev a choice:

“I want to ask you a question, and you need not answer it right now. Supposing unification takes place, what would you prefer: a united Germany outside of NATO, absolutely independent and without American troops; or a united Germany keeping its connections with NATO, but with the guarantee that NATO’s jurisdiction or troops will not spread east of the present boundary?”

Baker has been dismissive of this statement, categorizing it as only a hypothetical question. But Baker’s next statement, not previously included in the quotation but now placed back in the script by the documentary record, refutes that claim. After Gorbachev answers Baker’s question, saying, “It goes without saying that a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable,” Baker replies categorically, “We agree with that” (document 6).

There are four other declassified statements that now solidify the evidence against Baker’s claim. The most important is Baker’s own interpretation of his question to Gorbachev at the time. At a press conference immediately following this most crucial meeting with Gorbachev, Baker announced that NATO’s “jurisdiction would not be moved eastward.”

The second is that, while Baker was meeting with Gorbachev, Deputy National Security Adviser Robert Gates was asking the same question of KGB leader Vladimir Kryuchkov in clearly non-hypothetical terms. He asked Kryuchkov what he thought of the “proposal under which a united Germany would be associated with NATO, but in which NATO troops would move no further east than they now were?” Gates then added, “It seems to us to be a sound proposal” (document 7).

The third is that, on the same day, Baker posed the same question to Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Eduard Shevardnadze. He asked if there “might be an outcome that would guarantee that there would be no NATO forces in the eastern part of Germany. In fact, there could be an absolute ban on that.” How did Baker intend that offer? In Not One Inch, M.E. Sarotte reports that in his own notes, Baker wrote, “End result: Unified Ger. Anchored in a changed (polit.) NATO – whose juris. would not be moved eastward!” According to a now declassified State department memorandum of their conversation, Baker had already in this conversation assured Shevardnadze that “There would, of course, have to be ironclad guarantees that NATO’s jurisdiction or forces would not move eastward” (document 4).

Finally, according to a declassified State Department memorandum of the conversation, on still the same busy day, Baker told Gorbachev and Shevardnadze, not in the form of a question at all, that “If we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east” (document 5).

Thought these are Secretary of State Baker’s most important assurances, they are not his only assurances. On May 18, 1990, Baker told Gorbachev in a meeting in Moscow, “I wanted to emphasize that our policies are not aimed at separating Eastern Europe from the Soviet Union” (document 18). And, yet again, on February 12, 1990, the promise is made. According to notes taken for Shevardnadze at the Open Skies Conference in Ottawa, Baker told Gorbachev that “if U[united] G[ermany] stays in NATO, we should take care about non-expansion of its jurisdiction to the East” (document 10).

Baker’s assurances to Gorbachev and Shevardnadze were confirmed and shared by the State Department who, on February 13, 1990, informed US embassies that “[t]he Secretary made clear that. . . we supported a unified Germany within NATO, but that we were prepared to ensure that NATO’s military presence would not extend further eastward.”

A 1996 State Department investigation by John Herbst and John Kornblum not only became official US policy but, according to Sarotte “because of the official imprimatur and the broad distribution . . .helped shape American attitudes toward the controversy of what, exactly had been said. . . .” Herbst and Kornblum concluded that the assurances that were given had no legal force. They were able to make this judgment by separating the verbal promises from the written documents that make “no mention of NATO deployments beyond the boundaries of Germany.”

The investigation did not deny that spoken assurances had been made. And no Russian official has ever claimed that they were written in the documents; in fact, they have regretted that they were not. But written agreements can be broken too, and the US record on keeping written promises is not much better than its record on keeping spoken ones, as Trump’s breaking of the JCPOA Iran nuclear agreement and Biden’s frequent violations of the joint communiqués signed with China regarding Taiwan testify. That record led Putin to complain on December 21, 2021 that “we know very well that even legal guarantees cannot be completely fail-safe, because the United States easily pulls out of any international treaty that has ceased to be interesting to it. . . .”

The distinction that Herbst and Kornblum rely on is an act of legal sophistry. In “Deal or No Deal? The End of the Cold War and the U.S. Offer to Limit NATO Expansion,” Joshua R. Itzkowitz Shifrinson argues that verbal agreements can be legally binding and that “analysts have long understood that states do not need formal agreements on which to base their future expectations.” Verbal agreements are the foundation of diplomacy. Shifrinson argues that informal deals are important to politics and that they were particularly important to diplomacy between the US and Russia during the Cold War. As examples, he cites the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis through informal verbal agreements and the “Cold War order [that] emerged from tacit US and Soviet initiatives in the 1950s and 1960s that helped the two sides to find ways to coexist.” Verbal agreements between the US and Russia “abounded during the Cold War,” Shifrinson says. Trusting spoken promises made in 1990 was nothing new.

Furthermore, verbal agreements, Shifrinson points out, “can constitute a binding agreement provided one party gives up something of value in consideration” of what the other party promised in return. Gorbachev certainly understood Baker’s promises in this way, as he agreed to allow a unified Germany to be absorbed by NATO in return for the “ironclad” guarantee that NATO would expand no further east. It was only after these talks with Baker that Gorbachev agreed to German reunification and ascension to NATO. The “not one inch” promise was the condition for Gorbachev agreeing to a united Germany in NATO. In his memoir, Gorbachev called his February 9 conversation with Baker the moment that “cleared the way for a compromise.”

And the promises made by Baker were not the only promises made to Russia. Assurances came from the highest level of NATO and from Robert Gates, who, unlike Baker and NATO never deceived about his promises. In July 2000, Gates criticized “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward [in the 1990s], when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”

The same promises were made by the leaders of several other nations. On July 15, 1996, now foreign minister Yevgeny Primakov, who had “been looking at the material in our archives from 1990 and 1991,” declared, according to Sarotte, that “It was clear . . . that Baker, Kohl and the British and French leaders John Major and François Mitterrand had all ‘told Gorbachev that not one country leaving the Warsaw Pact would enter NATO – that NATO wouldn’t move one inch closer to Russia.”

Importantly, those same promises were made by German officials. West German chancellor Helmut Kohl met with Gorbachev the day after Baker on February 10. He assured Gorbachev that “naturally, NATO could not expand its territory to the current territory of the GDR [East Germany].” Clearer still, he told Gorbachev that “We believe that NATO should not expand its scope” (document 9). Simultaneously, West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher was pointedly telling Shevardnadze that “For us, it is clear: NATO will not extend itself to the East.”

On March 5, 1991, British Ambassador to Russia Rodric Braithwaite recorded in his diary that when Russian Minister of Defense Dmitry Yazov had expressed that he was “worried that the Czechs, Poles and Hungarians will join NATO,” British Prime Minister John “Major assure[d] him that nothing of the sort will happen” (document 28). When Yazov specifically asked Major about “NATO’s plans in the region,” the British Prime Minister told him that he “did not himself foresee circumstances now or in the future where East European countries would become members of NATO” (document 28). On March 26, 1991, British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd informed Soviet Foreign Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh that “there are no plans in NATO to include the countries of Eastern and Central Europe in NATO in one form or another” (document 28). In a July 2016 article, Braithwaite wrote that “US Secretary of State James Baker stated on 9 February 1990: “We consider that the consultations and discussions in the framework of the 2+4 mechanism should give a guarantee that the reunification of Germany will not lead to the enlargement of NATO’s military organization to the East”.

The clarity of the documentary record is still relevant today because it indicates that when Russia talks of a final red line at NATO expansion into Ukraine and right up to Russia’s border and of Western promises that neither NATO jurisdiction nor forces would expand beyond Germany’s borders, they are not engaging in historical revisionism as the West accuses but are expressing real existential fears and expressing legitimate expectations that the West will keep the promises they made in exchange for Russia keeping the promise it made in those 1990 and 1991 negotiations.

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Ted Snider has a graduate degree in philosophy and writes on analyzing patterns in US foreign policy and history.

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