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Good news! Israel has agreed to accept Biden’s ceasefire deal as long as it can keep fighting. This is from CNN:

Israeli statement on Tuesday indicated it was poised to formally sign up to the current ceasefire plan for Gaza, while at the same time maintaining the freedom to keep fighting. CNN

Can you see how absurd this is? It’s like the fat man who agrees to go on a diet as long as he can still eat as much as he wants. It’s nonsense.

A ceasefire is a ceasefire. It is the termination of hostilities and an end to the fighting. Period. Israeli’s lawyerly wordplay does not change the meaning of the word or twist it to fit Israel’s strategic agenda. It is semantical gymnastics intended to hoodwink the public.

We shouldn’t have to point this out, but the media appears to be pressing the issue by carefully rephrasing Israel’s deliberate misunderstanding of what “ceasefire” means. Now –in the last 24 hours– they have slightly modified their approach again to better conceal their trickery. Now, instead of saying that a ceasefire allows them “the freedom to keep fighting”, they’re saying that “the ceasefire plan enables its war goals.”

There’s a subtle difference, but the meaning is the same. Israel wants to continue slaughtering civilians while saying they are in compliance with the ceasefire. It boggles the mind to think they’d put so much effort into finding a benign phrase for ‘continuing the killing’.

So, what’s really going on behind this misleading language?

That’s easy. Israel wants it to look like they’re cooperating with the Biden-backed ceasefire deal while continuing their military operation in Gaza. That’s it in a nutshell. Take a look at this Tuesday article at Newsweek:

Amid conflicting narratives over U.S. President Joe Biden’s latest push for a ceasefire… an Israeli official has told Newsweek that the U.S. proposal aligns with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s goal of inflicting a lasting, decisive defeat against the Palestinian movement.

“Israel will not end the war before achieving all its war objectives: destroying Hamas’ military and governing capabilities, freeing all the hostages and ensuring Gaza doesn’t pose a threat to Israel in the future,” the Israeli official told Newsweek on background.

“The proposal presented enables Israel to achieve these goals and Israel will indeed do so,” the Israeli official said. Israel Official Says Biden Ceasefire Plan Allows IDF to Destroy Hamas, Newsweek

Obviously, the ceasefire proposal does NOT align with Netanyahu’s plan to keep fighting or it wouldn’t be a ceasefire. Right?

But the foofaraw over the meaning of “ceasefire” is just one of many cringe-worthy particulars linked to Biden’s ham-fisted Gaza policy. There’s also the administration’s wacko messaging problem. For example, on Tuesday:

Joe Biden announced that the ceasefire resolution (approved by the Security Council on Monday) was “Israel’s proposal.”

Also, on Tuesday, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said the ceasefire resolution was “Israel’s proposal.”

U.S. National Security Spokesperson John Kirby repeated the same claim that “This was an Israeli proposal.

And just to round it off, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the same thing in an interview with Wolf Blitzer adding that “Israel has already accepted this deal.”

Naturally, their claims were uncritically reiterated in all the media: This was an Israeli proposal.

But none of it was true. It was all lies.

And, just hours after Blinken made his case to the media, Netanyahu’s office issued the following statement:

“The claim that Israel agreed to end the war before achieving all its goals is a total lie,” …

As you can see, Netanyahu had no interest in pulling his punches. He basically read Blinken the ‘riot act’ in what-amounts-to a humiliating slapdown.

Now, you’d assume that if you had just been exposed to the world as a liar, you might show a bit of shame or remorse. But not Blinken. Without missing a beat, the mercurial Secretary tweaked his talking-points from “This is Israel’s deal” to ‘it’s all Hamas’ fault’, which is the blame-shifting narrative he is prattling today. Here he is on Twitter:

My message to governments and people throughout the region is this: If you want to alleviate the terrible suffering in Gaza, to get all the hostages home, to put Israelis and Palestinians on the path to durable peace — then press Hamas to say yes to the ceasefire. Anthony Blinken @SecBlinken

Yeah, because Hamas is the obstacle to peace. Got that?

Even Reuters is reporting that Hamas has accepted the ceasefire deal. And yet Blinken, Biden and the state department cronies continue to tell you that Hamas has not accepted the deal. Make it make sense! pic.twitter.com/WLjt25YAQc

— Sabby Sabs (@SabbySabs2) June 12, 2024

What Blinken fails to mention in his tweet is that Netanyahu never had any intention of accepting a ceasefire, in fact, he has said repeatedly that there will be no permanent ceasefire until Hamas is destroyed and the hostages are freed. There’s no wiggle-room in the Israeli position at all. Netanyahu and his lieutenants are more determined than ever to achieve their maximalist strategic objectives. And Blinken supports those objectives which is why he shifted his attention from Netanyahu (the real problem) to Hamas.

But you got to hand it to him, Blinken’s performance has been a remarkable display of diplomatic choreography. Think about it: He was sent to Israel to persuade the two warring parties to find common ground and end the hostilities. But after just one day of promoting Biden’s deal, he switched into full Zionist-mode by covering-up Netanyahu’s intransigence while scapegoating Hamas for virtually everything.

Whatever happened to the “honest broker” concept? Here’s Blinken again:

Hamas asked for changes in the hostage deal proposal – some are workable and some are unworkable. Hamas could have replied with one word – yes. Instead they presented more changes – some of them go further than their previous positions”@Megatron_ron

What changes?

Hamas has welcomed the Biden-backed ceasefire from the beginning as was reported by CNN, Reuters and many other news agencies. In the words of one Hamas official:

“We want a ceasefire,” (but) the “burden is on the Israeli side to implement this resolution.”

But now that Netanyahu has rejected the ceasefire, the media has to make it look like Hamas is the ‘bad guy’. This is from Axios:

Secretary of State Tony Blinken said Wednesday that Hamas has not accepted the U.S.-backed proposal for a hostage and ceasefire deal and presented “numerous changes” that go beyond its previous positions….

Israeli officials said on Tuesday that Hamas effectively rejected the proposal, which President Biden presented in a speech 12 days ago…. Speaking from Doha after meeting with the Prime Minister of Qatar, Blinken said: “Hamas proposed numerous changes to the proposal that was on the table. Some of the changes are workable and some are not.” Blinken says Hamas didn’t accept ceasefire deal, Axios

This isn’t even remotely true. It’s just more blame-shifting. Of course, Hamas wants a ceasefire. Does anyone seriously think they want to see another 30,000 Palestinians slaughtered by Israel. Of course, not. And their demands are modest and reasonable.

What does Hamas want? This is from NPR:

Hamas wants a guaranteed end to the war, removal of Israeli troops from the Egypt-Gaza border and a say in which Palestinian prisoners get released…. But Israel says it won’t agree to end the war until it ensures Hamas will no longer govern Gaza. NPR

These are not just reasonable demands; they are explicitly required under the Biden ceasefire proposal. And this is what the vast majority of Americans want too. (See chart below) They want an end to the fighting, an end to the killing, and an end to the genocide.

Only Israel opposes these measures. Only Israel sees some advantage to continuing the slaughter and mayhem. Only Israel wants more civilians to suffer and die. And, judging by his performance, Blinken’s sympathies align more with Israel’s than they do with the national security interests of the United States.

What’s clear is that Secretary Blinken is considerably more interested in shielding the intractable Netanyahu from blame and advancing the strategic interests of the Jewish state than he is with ending the butchery of innocent civilians or salvaging what’s left of America’s tattered reputation. Perhaps, he’s playing on the wrong team?

According to a recent survey conducted by Data for Progress, carried out from June 5-6, a majority of U.S. likely voters support the proposed ceasefire deal aimed at ending the war in Gaza.

The survey shows that a majority of voters express support for withholding military aid… pic.twitter.com/VU7OEsWZNP

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) June 13, 2024

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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

First published by Global Research on Christmas Day, December 25, 2015, this text provides a broad overview. (It has not been updated. It does not include the corona crisis and the Ukraine war).

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Everything is interrelated: war, terrorism, the police state, the global economy, economic austerity, financial fraud, corrupt governments, poverty and social inequality, police violence, Al Qaeda, ISIS, media disinformation, racism, war propaganda  weapons of mass destruction, the derogation of international law, the criminalization of politics, the CIA, the FBI, climate change,  nuclear war, Fukushima, nuclear radiation, crimes against humanity, The China-Russia alliance, Syria  Ukraine, NATO, false flags, 9/11 Truth, ….  

An overall understanding of  this Worldwide crisis is required: the last section deals briefly with reversing the tide of war, peace-making, instating social justice and real democracy.

This article includes a compendium of relevant citations (from my writings) pertaining to different dimensions of this  global crisis. Citations from other authors are indicated in italics. 

The hyperlinks in each of the paragraphs indicate the original source of the quotation.    

The Globalization of War. America’s Long War against Humanity 

1. The US has embarked on a military adventure, “a long war”, which threatens the future of humanity. US-NATO weapons of mass destruction are portrayed as instruments of peace.

2. Major military and covert intelligence operations are being undertaken simultaneously in the Middle East, Eastern Europe, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia and the Far East. The US military agenda combines both major theater operations as well as covert actions geared towards destabilizing sovereign states.

3. “[The] Five-year campaign plan [includes]… a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.”  General Wesley Clark in “Winning Modern Wars” (page 130)

4. In 2005, former Vice President Dick Cheney hinted, in no uncertain terms, that Iran was “right at the top of the list” of the “rogue enemies” of America, and that Israel would, so to speak, “be doing the bombing for us without being asked”, i.e without US military involvement and without us putting pressure on them “to do it”. This foreign policy stance still prevails under Obama.

9/11 and The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT)

5. The “war on terrorism” is a war of conquest. Globalization is the final march to the “New World Order”, dominated by Wall Street and the U.S. military-industrial complex.

6. September 11, 2001 provides a justification for waging a war without borders. Washington’s agenda consists in extending the frontiers of the American Empire to facilitate complete U.S. corporate control, while installing within America the institutions of the Homeland Security State.

7“The forbidden truth” is that Western governments including US, UK, France, NATO and Israel –while waging a self-proclaimed “Global War on Terrorism”– routinely provide covert support to the same terrorist entities which are the object of their “humanitarian wars” and “counter-terrorism operations”.

War and the Economic Crisis

8. In all major regions of the world, the economic recession is deep-seated, resulting in mass unemployment, the collapse of state social programs and the impoverishment of millions of people.

9. The economic crisis is accompanied by a worldwide process of militarization, a “war without borders” led by the United States of America and its NATO allies. The conduct of the Pentagon’s “long war” is intimately related to the restructuring of the global economy.

10. “The Pentagon’s ‘black’ operations, including the intelligence budgets nested inside it, are roughly equal in magnitude to the entire defense budgets of the UK, France or Japan, and ten percent of the total.” (Tom Burghardt)

11. An outright “economic war” resulting in unemployment, poverty and disease is carried out through the free market. People’s lives are in a freefall and their purchasing power is destroyed. In a very real sense, the last twenty years of global “free market” economy have resulted, through poverty and social destitution, in destroying the lives of millions of people.

12. Vast amounts of money wealth are acquired through market manipulation. Often referred to as “deregulation”, the financial apparatus has developed sophisticated instruments of outright manipulation and deceit.

13. With inside information and foreknowledge, major financial actors, using the instruments of speculative trade, have the ability to fiddle and rig market movements to their advantage, precipitate the collapse of a competitor and wreck havoc in the economies of developing countries.

14. What is at stake is a process of  “financial cleansing” whereby the “too big to fail banks” in Europe and North America (e.g. Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, et al ) displace and destroy lesser financial institutions, with a view to eventually taking over the entire “banking landscape”.

15. The underlying tendency at the national and global levels is towards the centralization and concentration of bank power, while leading to the dramatic slump of the real economy.

Greece: Austerity Measures

16. The creditors will use Greece’s multibillion debt obligations as means to  impose deadly macro-economic reforms which will serve to destabilize the national economy and further impoverish the population. These are referred to by the IMF as “policy conditionalities’, which enable the creditors to essentially dictate economic and social policy.

17. The creditors are largely interested in acquiring real wealth within the national economy, namely the acquisition of Greece’s national banking institutions, its public enterprises, its agricultural land, etc.

Disinformation, Media Propaganda and the CIA

21 Al Qaeda-ISIS concepts, repeated ad nauseam have potentially traumatic impacts on the human mind and the ability of normal human beings to analyze and comprehend the “real outside World” of war, politics and the economic crisis.

22. Al Qaeda constitutes a stylized, fake and almost folkloric abstraction of terrorism, which permeates the inner consciousness of millions of people around the World.

The Islamic State Caliphate Project (ISIS/ISIL/Daesh)

23 Those who ordered the bombing campaign are those who are behind the Caliphate Project.

24. The Islamic State militia, which is currently the alleged target of  a US-NATO bombing campaign under a “counter-terrorism” mandate, is  supported covertly by the United States and its allies.

25.  The ISIS terrorists are the foot soldiers of the Western alliance. While America claims to be targeting ISIS, in reality it is protecting ISIS. The air campaign is intent upon destroying Syria and Iraq rather than “going after the terrorists”.

26. A complex network of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations overseen by US and allied intelligence agencies has unfolded, extending across the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Western China, South and South East Asia.

27. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) is a creation of US intelligence. 

Washington’s “Counter-terrorism Agenda” in Iraq and Syria consists in Supporting the Terrorists.

28. The incursion of the Islamic State (IS) brigades into Iraq starting in June 2014 was part of a carefully planned military-intelligence operation supported covertly by the US, NATO and Israel.

29. Without Western support, according to Vladimir Putin, the terrorists would not have been able to gain control over entire regions of the country. “The so-called Islamic State [ISIS] has taken control of a huge territory. How was that possible? (Vladimir Putin’s speech to the Valdai Conference, October 2015)

Western Special Forces are Assisting the Terrorists in Syria

30. Western special forces and covert intelligence agents including British SAS, French Parachutistes, CIA, MI6  and Mossad have integrated rebel ranks.

31 Their activities are not limited to training. They are routinely involved in overseeing the conduct of terrorist operations on the ground together with Turkish and Qatari special forces, as well thousands of mercenaries recruited from Muslim countries.

32.The French have been actively involved in Syria since the outset of the insurgency on the ground in liaison with their US, British and Israeli counterparts. In February 2012, 13 French military officers were arrested in Homs pointing to the presence of foreign troops on Syrian soil inside rebel ranks.

America’s Allies: Support to the Islamic State by Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey

33 Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, et al.  have been involved in recruiting, training and financing Islamic terrorists.

34. A  large number of ISIS mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades.  (January 23, 2013)

35 The practice of beheading civilians by ISIS operative in Syria emanates from Saudi Arabia.. The ISIL’s practice of beheadings is part of the US sponsored terrorist training programs implemented in Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

Israel and the Islamic State

36 Netanyahu does not deny that his government’s support of the terrorists in Syria.  The IDF top brass has acknowledged that  “global jihad elements inside Syria” are supported by Israel

37 The State of Israel collaborates with the French authorities in the Charlie Hebdo counterterrorism operation,  while also supporting the two main terrorist entities in Syria: the Islamic State (ISIS) and Al Nusrah. 

The Criminalization of the State

38 The “Criminalization of the State”, is when war criminals legitimately occupy positions of authority, which enable them to decide “who are the criminals”, when in fact they are the criminals.

Wars of Aggression are in Violation of International Law  and the UN Charter

39  The US, France, Britain are the aggressor nations against Syria. They cannot under any circumstances invoke the Right of Self-defense.

40 In contrast, Syria is the victim of foreign aggression and has the Right to Self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter which states that: “Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of collective or individual self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations” ,

44. A good versus evil dichotomy prevails: a “Clash of Civilisations”. 

45. The West has a “Mission”: “We must fight against evil in all its forms as a means to preserving the Western way of life.” The perpetrators of war are presented as the victims.

52. A large share of the World’s oil lies in Muslim lands. The objective of the US led war is to steal and appropriate those oil reserves. And to achieve this objective, these countries  are targeted: war, covert ops, economic destabilization, regime change.

US-NATO Threatens Russia and China

53.The “Communist threat” of The Cold War era has been replaced by the worldwide threat of “Islamic terrorism”.

54. Whereas Russia and China have become capitalist “free market” economies, a first strike pre-emptive nuclear attack is nonetheless contemplated.

55. China and Russia are no longer considered to be “a threat to capitalism”.  Quite the opposite. What is at stake is economic and financial rivalry between competing capitalist powers.

56. The China-Russia alliance under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) constitutes a “competing capitalist block” which undermines U.S. economic hegemony.

57. In May 2014, the  Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) was  introduced in the US Senate (S 2277), calling for the militarization of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and the stationing of US and NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep

58. In Asia, the U.S. has contributed under its “Pivot to Asia” to encouraging its Asia-Pacific allies including Japan, Australia, South Korea, The Philippines and Vietnam to threaten and isolate China as part of a process of “military encirclement” of China, which gained impetus in the late 1990s.

64. “The conventional war would be lost by the US and the nuclear war is no alternative for anyone.  On the other hand, nuclear war would inevitably become global”

68 The Fukushima disaster in Japan has brought to the forefront the dangers of Worldwide nuclear radiation. The crisis in Japan has been described as “a nuclear war without a war”.

69. In the words of renowned novelist Haruki Murakami: “This time no one dropped a bomb on us … We set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives.”

78. The Azov Battalion -which “officially” displays the Nazi SS emblem is described by the Kiev regime as “a volunteer battalion of territorial defense”. It’s a National Guard battalion under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the equivalent of America’s Homeland Security.

79. The Azov battalion supported by its Western partners is not only involved in para-military operations in Eastern Ukraine. it is also running a Summer Camp military training project for young children as part of its broader training and Nazi indoctrination program.

80. With Svoboda and Right Sector political appointees in charge of national security and the armed forces, a real grassroots protest movement directed against the IMF’s deadly macroeconomic reforms, will in all likelihood be brutally repressed by the Right Sector’s “brown shirts” and the National Guard paramilitary led by Dmitri Yarosh, on behalf of Wall Street and the Washington consensus.

The Police State

81. Rather than addressing an impending social catastrophe, Western governments, which serve the interests of the economic elites, have installed a “Big Brother” police state, with a mandate to confront and repress all forms of opposition and social dissent.

82. The Department of Defense now authorizes the domestic deployment of US troops  in “the conduct of operations other than war”  including law enforcement activities and the quelling of “civil disturbances”.

83. The repeal of democracy is portrayed as a means to providing “domestic security” and upholding civil liberties.

84. An FBI department established in 2004 under the Bush administration was conducive to the integration of law enforcement and domestic spying. Its mandate was  essentially political, directed at curbing all forms of social and political dissent in America.

85. According to a 2004 Report of the Homeland Security Council, these domestic “conspirators” are said to be acting in coordination with “foreign terrorists”. The Report identified “domestic radical groups” and “disgruntled employees”.

The November 13, 2015 Paris Terror Attacks

86. The November 13 attacks were immediately followed by the enactment of a State of Emergency, the closing of France’s borders and the suspension of civil liberties as a means — according to president François Hollande– to safeguarding democratic values.

87. The tragic loss of life has been used by the Hollande government (with the support of the media) to harness the public into accepting the implementation of police state measures in the interest of French Republic, namely protecting France’s national security against an illusive self-proclaimed “Islamic State” based in Northern Syria, which happens to be a creation of US intelligence.

88. The measures also included procedures which enable the police to conduct arbitrary arrests and house searches without a warrant within the Paris metropolitan area opening up the development of a potential hate campaign directed against France’s Muslim population.

89. These drastic police state measures (including the repeal of habeas corpus) ordered by president Hollande were decided upon prior and in the absence of a police report.

Reversing the Tide of War, Building Peace, Democracy and Social Justice   

90 War propaganda has become increasingly pervasive. War is upheld as a peace-making operation.

Image:  War and Peace by Anthony Freda

91 When war becomes peace, the world is turned upside down. Conceptualization is no longer possible. An inquisitorial social system emerges. The consensus is to wage war. People can longer think for themselves. They accept the authority and wisdom of the established social order.

92 War however is not an inevitable process.

93 War can be prevented through mass social action.

94. The issue is not whether the war will inevitably take place but what are the instruments at our disposal which will enable us to shunt and ultimately disarm this global military agenda. 

95. War criminals occupy positions of authority. The citizenry is galvanized into supporting the rulers, who are “committed to their safety and well-being”. Through media disinformation, war is given a humanitarian mandate.

96. The legitimacy of war must be addressed. Antiwar sentiment alone does not disarm a military agenda. High ranking officials of the Obama administration, members of the military and the US Congress have been granted the authority to uphold an illegal war.

97. A significant segment of the antiwar movement has been co-opted. We are against war but we support the “war on terrorism”. We can rely on an ambiguous political discourse.

98. How does one effectively break the war and police state agendas?

99. Essentially by refuting the “war on terrorism” and America’s holy crusade against the “Islamic jihad” which constitute the very foundations of America’s national security doctrine.

100. Without the “war on terrorism”, politicians in high office do not have a leg to stand on. Once the Big Lie is fully revealed, their legitimacy collapses like a deck of cards.

101. How best to achieve this objective? By fully uncovering the lies behind the “war on terrorism” and revealing the fact amply documented that Western governments are supporting the terrorists, i.e. they are State sponsors of terrorism.

102. Media propaganda sustains the legitimacy of  “war on terrorism”. “Evil folks are lurking”, the jihad is said to be threatening the Western World

103. The corporate backers and sponsors of war and war crimes must also be targeted including the oil companies, the defense contractors, the financial institutions and the corporate media, which has become an integral part of the war propaganda machine.

Regime Change in the West 

104. What is required is a grass roots antiwar network, a mass movement at national and international levels, which challenges the legitimacy of the main military and political actors, as well as their corporate sponsors, and which would ultimately be instrumental in unseating those who rule in our name.

105. This is no easy task. The first step is to break the consensus, and that is done through what we might describe as counter-propaganda. It is in this context that Truth becomes a powerful weapon.

106. The construction of this type of network will take time to develop. Initially, it should focus on developing a firm antiwar stance within existing citizens’ organizations (e.g. trade unions, community organizations, professional regroupings, student federations, municipal councils, etc.). In many of these, organizations, however, –which include NGOs such as Amnesty International–, the leadership has been coopted; many of these organizations are generously funded by corporate foundations. In turn, since 2003, the antiwar movement in Western countries is virtually at a standstill.

107. Breaking the Lie means breaking a criminal project of global destruction, in which the quest for profit is the overriding force.

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First published by GR on June 6, 2024

Jacques Baud is a former member of Swiss strategic intelligence, a specialist in Eastern European countries and head of United Nations peace operations doctrine.

He was engaged in negotiations with top Russian military and intelligence officials right after the fall of the USSR.

Within NATO, he participated in programs in Ukraine and in particular during the Maidan revolution in 2014.

Watch his interview below with Nima R. Alkhorshid of Dialogue Works:

 

Below is an excerpt from his article, The Military Situation In The Ukraine, first published on Global Research in March 2022:

As a former head of analysis of Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness—but not astonishment—that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed “experts” who parade on our TV screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia—and Vladimir Putin—is irrational. Let’s take a step back.

…

On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.

…

In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun intense shelling the civilian population of Donbass, forcing Vladimir Putin to make a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem, or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.

If he decided to intervene, Putin could invoke the international obligation of “Responsibility To Protect” (R2P). But he knew that whatever its nature or scale, the intervention would trigger a storm of sanctions. Therefore, whether Russian intervention were limited to the Donbass or went further to put pressure on the West over the status of the Ukraine, the price to pay would be the same. This is what he explained in his speech on February 21. On that day, he agreed to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two Donbass Republics and, at the same time, he signed friendship and assistance treaties with them.

The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.

In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware.

In his speech of February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation: “demilitarize” and “denazify” the Ukraine. So, it was not a question of taking over Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it; and certainly not of destroying it.

From then on, our knowledge of the course of the operation is limited: the Russians have excellent security for their operations (OPSEC) and the details of their planning are not known. But fairly quickly, the course of the operation allows us to understand how the strategic objectives were translated on the operational level.

—Jacques Baud, The Military Situation In The Ukraine, 1 March 2022

 

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Consult Jacques Baud’s other articles on the subject:

Kharkov and Mobilization: “Tactical Victory for Ukraine, Strategic Victory for Russia”. Jacques Baud

By Jacques Baud, October 17, 2022

US, EU Sacrificing Ukraine to ‘Weaken Russia’: Former NATO Adviser Jacques Baud

By Jacques Baud and Aaron Mate, April 18, 2022

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The European Union’s reaction to the conflict in Ukraine indicates that the bloc does not pursue the peaceful objectives that were the basis of its creation, writes columnist Javier Melero for the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia. At the same time, European authorities are in negotiations to maintain the flow of gas through the important Russia-Ukraine pipeline, once again showing that Europe is committing economic suicide with its failed sanctions policy on Moscow.

“War has returned to Europe, and it would be appropriate to ask after the post-election euphoria how the EU reacts to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict,” Melero wrote.

By asking this question, the author emphasises that in public discussions in Europe no other option for resolving the conflict is considered, except “Russia’s unconditional surrender.” Based on this, he concludes that the EU does not act in accordance with declared peaceful objectives but serves the “sinister” interests of NATO and the USA.

“It seems to me that something doesn’t add up here and that Europe is playing a dark game. And these games, what’s even worse, end badly for it. And the conflict in Ukraine seems to be no exception,” concluded Melero.

Yet, even as the EU does not prioritise peace to instead serve Washington’s interests, the bloc is unable to wean itself off Russian energy, a demonstration that the economies and prosperity of the European continent is intrinsically interconnected and that the US-led sanctions have only had a boomerang effect. For this reason, European authorities are desperately in negotiations to maintain the flow of gas through the Russia-Ukraine pipeline even if the bloc tried to end Russian shipments.

The agreement covering this gas transit exchange expires at the end of this year, and with the ongoing Ukrainian conflict, most market watchers expect the flow to finally stop. However, European government and business officials are talking to their counterparts in Ukraine about how to maintain the flow of gas next year, according to people familiar with the matter interviewed on condition of anonymity by Bloomberg.

At the same time, one option that has been discussed is for European companies to buy and inject Azerbaijani gas into Russian gas pipelines bound for Europe, according to some sources. A plan to use Azerbaijani gas could, in theory, benefit Russia if it were set up as an exchange that would allow Moscow to ship its gas elsewhere.

Negotiations are in their early stages, and people familiar with the matter expect decisions only later this year, when the expiry date — and the onset of European winter — add pressure. Russia still sends around 15 billion cubic metres of gas a year to Europe, mainly to Slovakia and Austria, where Moscow is still a dominant supplier.

In Austria, Russian gas covered more than 80% of Austrian consumption for five consecutive months. Europe also imports Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) by ship and, despite frequent debates about whether it should do so, has never sanctioned Russian gas.

The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, believes that the bloc can resist the end of Russian transit through Ukraine without any major security risk, but some member states are less optimistic and fear a repeat of the energy crisis, writes Bloomberg.

Whilst Europe worries about another energy crisis, Russian revenues from oil and gas exports increased by 82.2% in the period between January and April, compared to the same period in 2023, reaching more than 4.2 trillion rubles. The growth comes despite sanctions imposed on Russia since the launch of its military operation in Ukraine in 2022, including an embargo on Russian oil transported by sea and a $60 per barrel price cap on other types of oil.

Moscow has repeatedly expressed its readiness for peace negotiations, but the Kiev authorities have introduced a ban on them at the legislative level. At the same time, the West ignores Kiev’s constant refusals to dialogue and instead encourages the continuation of war, even as Ukraine loses more territory and experiences a demographic collapse as millions have fled the country and hundreds of thousands are being killed in a futile war against Russia.

But as Melero highlighted, US-led NATO only has “sinister” designs. These designs have only be detrimental to European interests, making the complete servitude to Washington all the more bizarre, especially since before February 2022, French-led Europe spoke a brave game of European strategic autonomy from the US. The first opportunity to test Europe’s pursuit for strategic autonomy showed that this was only lip work by French President Emmanuel Macron and that ultimately the EU is the biggest loser in the Ukraine conflict after Kiev itself, and not Russia or even the US.

*

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

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“The biggest risk for nuclear war isn’t that either side will knowingly choose to enter into one, but that one will be set off by miscalculation, miscommunication or technical malfunction in the chaos and confusion of soaring tensions, as nearly happened numerous times during the last cold war. The higher tensions get, the more likely such an incident becomes, and the more hair-trigger everyone’s nuclear systems will be.” – Caitlin Johnstone [1]

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

On Thursday June 13, on the sidelines of the G7 summit in Italy, Volodymyr Zelensky and Joe Biden signed a landmark 10-year security deal supplying Ukraine with a range of military aid and training intended to protect the former Soviet republic from ongoing Russian attacks. The G7 in a separate deal also agreed to a $50 billion loan based on frozen Russian funds. [2]

Now, Zelensky, who still acts as the democratic president of Ukraine, even though his five year term expired recently, is now setting up a peace summit in Switzerland intended to move toward a “lasting peace” and draw up a ‘roadmap” on how to get both sides involved in the talks. Russia was not invited to participate. [3]

Russia is making substantial gains in Ukraine. Ukraine is running out of troops and are now allowing prison convicts to enter the battle on the front-lines. Is the U.S. admitting the situation is not going to their liking and preparing to revisit genuine negotiations with this most potent military force that is Russia’s?

Apparently not. In fact, the U.S. is doubling down on their war-stand. Late last month, for the first time since the Russian intervention in 2022, it was revealed that President Biden finally gave Ukraine permission to use U.S. supplied weapons to strike targets inside Russia. A provocative move that caused the Russian President to say, “This constant escalation can lead to serious consequences.” [4]

Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current chair of Russia’s security council, called the decision by Biden “a serious escalation of the conflict.” He also warned that it would be a crucial mistake to assume Russia would not use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine. He also spoke of the potential to use strategic nuclear weapons against hostile countries.[5]

“This is, alas, neither intimidation nor bluffing,” he said.[6]

Russia is countering by targetting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea. These together with NATO AWACS aircraft help  reconnaissance for guiding missiles aimed at Crimea and Zaporozhye in defense of Ukraine.[7]

On June 6, Western world leaders arrived in Normandy to salute the soldiers who put their lives on the line to secure victory over the Nazis – the victory which supposedly turned the tide on World War II. Mention was made of the Russians. But not of their own heroic efforts on the Eastern Front, which served to diminish Nazi forces in the West. The Russians were portrayed predominantly as the bad guys of our times. Ukraine leader Zelensky joined the ceremony. Russian leader Vladmir Putin did not.[8]

This episode of the Global Research News Hour spotlights the clear and present threat on the world stage and attempt to prepare listeners for what is coming in spite of the fake news and fake history put forward by the chicken-hawks of the hour.

In our first half hour, we speak with Canadian author and activist Yves Engler about the role of Canada in participating, possibly even fuelling the Russophobic bent of our NATO policy. Engler also talks about Prime Minister Trudeau’s participation in the D-Day event last week, and on his recent book tour across the West of Canada.

In our second half hour, we get to hear from former CIA analyst Larry Johnson. He recently returned from the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. He will talk about the state of affairs between Russia and NATO. He will also discuss BRICS+, and the blocking of military analyst and past guest Scott Ritter from leaving the United States by taking his passport.

Yves Engler is one of Canada’s foremost Canadian foreign policy critics and dissidents. He is the author of ten books on Canadian foreign policy including Canada’s Long Fight Against Democracy (with Owen Schalk) (2024) and Stand on Guard for Whom?: A People’s History of the Canadian Military (2021). His articles have appeared at globalresearch.ca, rabble.ca, canadiandimension.com, and on his own site yvesengler.com. 

Yves Engler’s June book tour can be found here.

Larry C. Johnson is a veteran of the CIA and the State Department’s Office of Counter Terrorism. He is the founder and managing partner of BERG Associates, which was established in 1998. Larry provided training to the US Military’s Special Operations community for 24 years. He has been vilified by the right and the left, which means he must be doing something right. You can also follow him on telegram (t.me/sonar https://t.me/sonar_21, Patreon and Substack  https://larrycjohnson.substack.com)

(Global Research News Hour Episode 436)

LISTEN TO THE SHOW

Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Transcript of Larry Johnson, June 12, 2024.

Global Research: So there have been a number of escalations from the side of NATO, and Russia has responded in similar terms. Just recently, a group of Russian ships, including a nuclear-powered submarine, arrived in Cuba earlier today.

What are your thoughts about these recent trends towards escalation?

Larry Johnson: A lot of times people are reading into events such as the arrival of the Russian ships, perhaps a little more than is there. And what I mean by that, you know, that trip was planned out, you know, some time ago. They just didn’t decide last week, hey, we’re going to Cuba, we’re going to show those Americans.

So part of it is the West reading into it and trying to actually portray a threat that’s not there. For example, they said, oh, the Russian submarine is off the coast of Miami. Well, yeah, there’s been a Russian submarine off the coast of the United States, the East Coast, West Coast, last 50 years, 60 years.

So, you know, we need to sort of step back from that kind of alarmism. Now, that said, you’re absolutely right about the rhetoric of the West in terms of these threats that they’re going to ramp up and basically encouraging Ukraine to strike deeper into Russia. Although, you know, Biden said they put some restraints on it, they can only hit around Belgorod.

Well, the reality is Ukraine has been attacking the people, the civilians in Belgorod for more than a year. So that’s not like that’s new. I think the real issue would be whether they were going to be able to launch any kind of effective attacks deeper inside Russia.

And to that extent, the Russians definitely put the world on notice, both Vladimir Putin, Sergei Lavrov, and the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Rybkov, all have said very, very clearly that the escalation of the West is foolish, it will be met with force, and that Russia will do anything that it needs to do to protect itself. And those in the West that think that Putin is bluffing or he’s weak are making a fatal mistake, or at least potentially fatal if they keep it up. Because I don’t think, you know, Russia’s not trying to escalate this into a massive nuclear war.

But, and, you know, the reality is the West is weak. The West doesn’t have the military capability to carry through on these threats. We’re deluding ourselves.

I mean, for goodness sake, you’ve got the British army can barely maintain a strength of 70,000, which is nothing. You know, that’s, no, the Russians have killed that many Ukrainians in the last two months. And so, you know, the British don’t have anything to offer, neither do the French.

The French have very limited military capability. The U.S. army total for worldwide 452,000 is the last number I saw. Compare that with Russia.

Russia’s got 1.3 million troops. So three times the size of what the United States is fielding. But go ahead.

GR: Yeah. I was wondering if, I mean, you’ve heard from what the politicians are saying, but I mean, you also have contacts within the military. And I’m just wondering, is there a significant difference in the way they relate the actions on the ground versus the way the politicians are? Because I don’t know, it seems like the military tend to have a more, you know, practical and an understanding of what’s going on.

LJ: No, I’d say they’re equally delusional. The ones that have their heads screwed on straight, that recognize how dangerous this escalation is, are generally sidelined. They’re not the voices that are listened to.

They’re shunted aside. So what, you know, you’ve got really the blind leading the blind in this case. They keep insisting that they can, you know, bully Russia, and they can’t.

You know, Russia has, you know, has done one thing that the United States has never done. And that it’s defeated foreign powers that have invaded. I guess you could say, we didn’t really defeat, we beat the British at the Battle of New Orleans in 1812, 1815.

But that was because the peace agreement had already been signed. So other than that, you know, the United States has lived in a sheltered life, frankly, as have the Canadians, and never faced invading armies and losing millions of citizens to those invading armies. So, you know, you look at what Russia endured with first the invasion by Napoleon, 1812, then followed by the Crimea War with France and England attacking the Russians, which the Russians lost that, followed by World War I, where Russia faced again invasion from Germany.

And then World War II, another invasion from the Nazis, followed by the, you know, United States and Western intelligence launching covert action, covert wars against the Russians, starting, you know, the late 1949, 1950. And it’s continued off and on over the last 50 years, 60 years. So, you know, it’s something the Russians are, you know, they’re accustomed to dealing with this.

And they and they take it seriously.

GR: Yeah. Yeah, I was wondering, could you get looking back at the recently in just in late May, Ukraine had struck the Russian missile in early warning sites, you know, it seemed like a natural target for the Ukrainians, I don’t think, but I know it could be a target for the US.

But the US and NATO are technically not at war with Russia. So, how do you read the Russians? Or how do you think the Russians are reading this tactic?

LJ: Well, I think the reports of those attacks were more of a Ukrainian, a joint Ukrainian Western intelligence, psychological operation, it was an information operation. Because number one, the Ukrainians really didn’t have a weapon, like the ATACMS, that could reach that far.

So, reportedly, this was attacked by a drone. And yet, the picture, the only picture that was ever, ever shown, looks like it was

photo-shopped. Then that that advanced that radar in Voronezh, where it’s located, there were lots of people around that could have, you know, put photos on social media, nothing showed up.

The second attack in Orsk, again, with a drone where the drone was, you know, shot down outside. So, this was, I mean, this was a dangerous move by Ukraine and the West. It’s almost as if they’re trying to provoke Russia into overreacting.

And Russia didn’t. Because these strategic radars are designed, there are six of them, and they’re designed to provide an early warning of intercontinental ballistic missiles. The Ukrainians claim damage that I think has not been verified by any kind of overhead photography, or any other photographic evidence.

But nonetheless, it underscores that Russia is in a position to use tactical nuclear weapons. You know, and where could it use it, for example, if as the reports published yesterday, day before yesterday, that the F-16s are going to be deployed into Romania, and then will be used in Romania to launch attacks on Russian positions in Ukraine and in Russia. The Russians could very well take that out with a tactical nuke, it would be a nuke that would actually probably three times the size of what destroyed Hiroshima.

Now, they’re only going to do that as a very last resort. But they’re not going to sit back and let the United States build up a presence with weapons systems that have the capacity to carry missiles, nuclear tip missiles, that could strike inside Russia. They’re not going to give the West the benefit of the doubt anymore.

GR: Well, if we are moving, it sounds like, I mean, we continue escalating, and I mean, we’re moving closer and closer effectively to World War III. And I don’t know if it’s something that could break out accidentally or deliberately, but in your view, compared to where we are now, what additional steps have yet to be taken before it becomes official? What yet has to happen before either Russia or a NATO head threatens their opponent directly?

LJ: I think what we see before that happens is the first sign would be if Russia now starts shooting down U.S. Predators, their owns in the Black Sea or U.S. surveillance aircraft, what aircraft is known as rivet joint. If they shoot those down, then that’s a clear sign that, hey, this is going to be moving to the next level.

Similarly, if they decide to take out satellites, critical military, U.S. military satellites, that would be another move towards, take us closer to a step towards war. Here’s the problem, Michael. The West does not have the military, the troop strength, or the reserves with weapon systems to pursue a war against Russia.

It simply doesn’t. And NATO itself is particularly weak in this regard. We’ve already had Turkey signal that they’re not going to participate in any kind of action towards Russia.

Well, that’s critical for NATO because Turkey represents the second largest army in NATO after the United States. So, there’s a lot of this, you know, chest-thumping and tough talk and belligerent threats from the West. That reminds me a lot, you know, if you’ve ever been at a bar and there’s some really drunk guy threatening to beat everybody up, but he can’t even get out of his chair, can’t even walk a straight line.

That’s the situation we are with the United States and the European allies.

GR: Larry Johnston, just last week, you were in St. Petersburg in Russia.

You were participating in the 27th St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, right?

LJ: Right. Yeah.

GR: Did you speak to or hear from any senior government officials there?

LJ: Oh, yes.

Yeah. And I asked, you know, I asked directly about, well, I got indirectly from Alexander Dugin. So, Dugin is quite famous as a leading philosopher.

You know, he’s been called Putin’s brain. That’s an unfair characterization. But Dugin is well plugged into the decision makers in Russia.

And, you know, we were sitting, I was sitting across the table from him and Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the foreign ministry. And I asked specifically about the change in rhetoric, the change in tone that I was hearing from Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov and others. And it was confirmed that, yes, no, there’s been a there’s been a definite change.

I would liken it to that scene in the movie Network, where the anchor, in his total frustration and rage, encouraged the audience to open their windows and yell out, I’m mad as hell, I’m not going to take it anymore.

GR: The network.

LJ: Yeah, the network.

And that was that was sort of, I think that’s where the Russians are right now.

GR: Wow.

LJ: But what’s fascinating with, you know, the West completely stayed away from this International Economic Forum.

There were one hundred and thirty six countries represented. There were over twenty five thousand people. It was and it ran like a Swiss watch.

It was so well organized, so well put together, but attention to details. And what is a reminder that China, United States, excuse me, China, Russia, India, Brazil, South Africa, they’re busy building an alternative financial system that is going to exclude the West. It’s not going to be dependent upon the West and in the regard.

Already, and most people in the West don’t pay attention to this. If you look at gross domestic product measured in terms of personal purchasing parity, what they call PPP. And that and all that means is, hey, you take your money, you take your US dollars, you take your Canadian dollars, you go out on the economy.

How much are you going to pay for a hamburger? How much are you going to pay for a carton of eggs? How much are you going to pay for a car? What’s it going to cost to go to a movie? What does it cost to to buy a new a new iPhone or a new cell phone of some sort? OK, and when they measure it in terms of what you can buy with your local currency right now, the top four countries in order are China’s number one, United States is number two, India is number three, and Russia is number four. So right off the top, the number one, number three, number four economies in the world measured in GDP have combined to oppose the United States. Germany and Japan have fallen behind and are continuing to fall behind and decline Russia.

So the West had better wake up because what was evident, Russia is not just flexing military muscle in Ukraine and working to destroy the Ukrainian military. Russia is building an economic alliance that is going to cover the global south.

It will be I think it will be the dominant economic power, really, for the remainder of the century. That’s where it’s headed.

GR: Well, yeah, I know that your your colleague, Scott Ritter, had planned to attend the same forum and…

LJ: right

GR: …presentation, but he had his passport taken away…

LJ: Correct

GR: …plane. So I was I mean, I wasn’t able to get in touch with him myself, but maybe maybe you could say a few words about him and how the war is also coming at the risk of not only of the people in Ukraine or people on the battlefield, but also of American citizens, you know, certain American citizens losing their rights.

LJ: Yeah, this was a deliberate provocation by the Biden administration.

So they issued the Biden administration, State Department, Anthony Blinken’s domain, issued a passport to Scott two years ago. Now, Scott has a criminal conviction in his past because of that criminal conviction. The two things are supposed to happen.

There’s supposed to be an identifying marker in his passport to that effect. And he has to notify State Department 30 days, 28 days before he travels out of the country. Well, Scott has done that.

You know, he’s travelled to Russia twice in the last two years prior to this. And each time he was notified State Department and the trip was allowed to go off without any problem. State apparently, for whatever reason, realized that the passport didn’t have the proper marking that they, State Department, had screwed up.

They were the ones who made the mistake. And instead of acting like normal people, where you say, hey, Mr. Ritter, we made a mistake. We have to, we need to take your passport back and reissue you a new one.

They made a big show of it because Scott was going to go to this international economic forum. And what was so stupid about it is if Scott had gone to that forum without this attack on him by the Biden administration, he would have gotten some coverage, but nothing like what he received as a consequence of that. It got, it got widespread news coverage, particularly outside the United States.

And that doesn’t, you know, all it does is further reinforce the image of people outside the United States that we’re a bully, that we don’t respect the law, that we’re all about force and coercion.

GR: And he got a chance to talk to the audience and to participate by video anyway, right?

LJ: Right. He did it.

It was, I don’t know if it was over Zoom or Skype or whatever, but he was up at 3.30 in the morning because the session, as I recall, was started at 10.30 and in St. Petersburg, so a seven hour difference between where Scott lives and where the session took place. But I actually, I attended that session and saw him and he did a fine job.

GR: Yeah.

If there’s one more question I’d like to ask you, I mean, while you were in St. Petersburg, there was most of the media attention in the United States and Canada was on the 80th anniversary of D-Day, just that last Thursday. And I mean, they were saluting the veterans for their service, but also they had this president, so-called President Zelensky, because, I mean, he didn’t get the actual run in the last election, they canceled and so on.

LJ: Right.

GR: But he’s currently serving as the president, being hosted. And Putin was, well, sorry, Zelensky was embraced by one of the veterans who hugged him. And, you know, so it was kind of odd, you know, seeing someone who put his life into fighting the Nazis, you know, treating this fellow who’s working with the Nazis as a hero.

But what do you make of that? I mean, is that part of an attempt to actually rewrite history?

LJ: Well, the United States and France can try to pretend all they want. What happened in World War II was different than what they’re claiming, that it was the West that triumphed over the Nazis, that Ukraine was somehow fighting, you know, in your own country, in Canada, you had people introduce that former Nazi member of the SS Waffen Battalion as fighting against the Soviets in World War II. Well, that was exactly right.

He was part of the Nazis. The Soviets were the ones who beat Nazi Germany, not the West. The West helped, but it was the Soviets, and particularly the Russians, who fought 80% of the German army during the course of that war, 80%.

And it was the Russians who suffered overwhelming casualties compared to the West. You know, in the United States, by contrast, the Russians lost 16 citizens for every 100 people in that war, whereas the United States lost a fraction, basically a 10th of a percent in the battle in Europe of all of its casualties compared to its population. So, you know, when you compare 27 million to 450, or actually, in the European theater, it was like 225,000, because there was others that died in the Pacific.

So, not even a comparison, and it really was a low-class move by the United States. At least Macron had the grace to invite Putin, recognizing that, you know, that battle against Nazi Germany was, it was a joint effort by the United States, by Britain, by the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, but the ones who bore the brunt of the burden of the war in defeating the Nazi army was the Soviet Union, and to not even acknowledge that and pretend otherwise. And then, as you correctly note, here’s Zelensky modern day embracing the Azov battalion, the right sector.

These guys are sporting Nazi tattoos, swastikas, SS, you know, the Toten, the death hat, and they embrace Mein Kampf. You know, they’re Hitler aficionados, and that’s who the West is aligning itself with. You know, that says volumes about the moral degeneracy that has taken hold in places like the United States.

GR: Well, Larry, I could see why you’re disliked by some people, both on the left and the right, for your views, but I certainly do thank you for sharing so much of your analysis and experience with our listeners.

LJ: Hey, Michael, I appreciate the opportunity. Thank you for the courtesy.

---

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“Laughing on the bus/Playing Games with the faces/She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy/I said, “Be careful his bowtie is really a camera.” – America by Paul Simon

Only people who listen to the chorus of reliable alternative media voices warning of the quickly growing threat of nuclear war have any sense of the nightmare that is approaching.  Even for them, however, and surely for most others, unreality reigns.  Reality has a tough time countering illusions.  For we are cataleptically slow-walking to WW III.  If it is very hard or impossible to imagine our own deaths, how much harder is it to imagine the deaths of hundreds of millions of others or more.

In 1915, amid the insane slaughter of tens of millions during WW I that was a shocking embarrassment to the meliorist fantasy of the long-standing public consciousness, Freud wrote:

It is indeed impossible to imagine our own death, and whenever we attempt to do so, we can perceive that we are in fact still present as spectators. Hence the psychoanalytic school could venture on the assertion that, at bottom, no one believes in his own death, or to put the same thing another way, that, in the unconscious, every one of us is convinced of his own immortality.

The growing lunacy of the Biden administration’s provocations against Russia via Ukraine seem lost on so many.  The long-running and deep-seated demonization of Russia and its President Vladimir Putin by U.S. propagandists has sunk so deep into the Western mind that facts can’t descend that deep to counteract it. It is one of the greatest triumphs of U.S. government propaganda.

A friend, a retired history professor at an elite university, recently told me that he can’t think of such matters as the growing threat of nuclear war if he wants to sleep at night, but anyway, he’s more concerned with the consequences of global warming. 

Readers at publications where my numerous articles about the nuclear war risk have appeared – the worst since the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 – have made many comments such as “nuclear weapons don’t exist,” that it’s all a hoax, that Putin is in cahoots with Biden in a game of fear mongering to promote a secret agenda, etc.  How can one respond to such denials of reality?

The other day I met another friend who likes to talk about politics.  He is an intelligent and a caring man.  He was sporting a tee-shirt with a quote from George Washington and quickly started talking about his obsessive fear of Donald Trump and the possibility that he could be elected again.  I told him that I despised Trump but that Biden was a far greater threat right now.  He spoke highly of Biden, and when I responded that Biden has been a warmonger throughout his political career and of course in Ukraine, was instigating the use of nuclear weapons, and was in full support of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians, he looked at me as if I were saying something he had never heard before.  When I spoke of the 2014 U.S. engineered coup d’état in Ukraine, he, a man in his sixties at least, said he was unaware of it, but in any case Biden supported our military as he did and that was good.  When I said Biden is mentally out of it and physically tottering, he emphatically denied it; said Biden was very sharp and fully engaged.  He said Trump was fat and a great danger and George Washington would agree.  I was at a loss for words.  The conversation ended.

A third friend, just back from living overseas for a year, flew back east from California to visit old friends and relatives.  He told me this sad tale:

There were experiences that troubled me very deeply during my visit that had nothing to do with all the death and final goodbyes I was immersed in.  My family I would say is pretty typical working class Democrat.  Liberal/progressive in social outlook.  Most are devout Catholics.  All are kind, generous very loving people.  What was troubling was that it was pretty much impossible to carry on a rational reasonably sane political conversation with all but a couple of them, as the “Trump Derangement Syndrome” symptoms were absolutely off the charts.  It was quite stunning actually.  It is almost as if Dementia-Joe isn’t even in office as they had no interest in discussing his many failings, because their entire focus was the orange haired clown.  If I had ten bucks for every time someone told me any one of the following NPR/PBS talking points I’d buy a nice meal for myself – (Trump will be a dictator if elected – Trump will prosecute his enemies if elected – Trump will destroy our democracy if he gets in – etc.)  Any and all attempts to question these narratives and talking points by bringing the behavior of the current administration into the conversation were met with befuddlement – as if people couldn’t believe that “I” wasn’t as terrified as they were by the “Trump-Monster” lurking in the shadows.

So I guess I’m sharing these thoughts with you Ed because it feels like I’m dealing with several different kinds of loss right now.  The more obvious “loss” associated with the physical death of loved ones – but I’m also mourning the intellectual and psychological death of living loved ones who have somehow become completely untethered from the “material realities” I observe on planet earth.  They can repeat “talking points” but can’t explain the evidence or reason that needs to be attached to those talking points for them to be anything but propaganda. Physical death is a natural thing – something we will all face – but this intellectual and spiritual death I am witness to is perhaps even more painful and disconcerting for me.  How do we find our way forward when reason, rational debate, evidence, and real-world events are replaced with fear – and rather irrational fears at that?

This intellectual and spiritual death that he describes is a widespread phenomenon.  It is not new, but COVID 19 with its lockdowns, lies, and dangerous “vaccines” dramatically intensified it.  It created vast gaps in interpersonal communication that were earlier exploited in the lead-up to the 2016 election and Trump’s surprising victory.  Families and friends stopped talking to each other.  The longstanding official propaganda apparatus went into overdrive.  Then in  2020 the normal human fear of death and chaos was fully digitized during the lockdowns.  Putin, Trump, the Chinese, sexual predators, viruses, space aliens, your next door neighbor, etc. – you name it – were all tossed into the mix that created fear and panic to replace the growing realization that the war on terror initiated by George W. Bush in 2001 was losing its power.  New terrors were created, censorship was reinforced, and here we are in 2024 in a country supporting Israeli genocide in Gaza and with a population blind to the growing threat of WW III and the use of nuclear weapons.

The communication gap – what my friend aptly describes as “this intellectual and spiritual death” – is two-sided.  On one hand there is simple ignorance of what is really going on in the world, greatly aided by vast government/media propaganda. On the other, there is chosen ignorance or the wish to be deceived to maintain illusions.

We are thinking reeds as Pascal called us, vulnerable feeling creatures afraid of death; we, who through the support of wars and violence of all sorts, care just enough to want to be deceived as to what we are doing by supporting wars that make so much blood that is inside other people get to the outside for the earth to drink since it is not our blood and we survive.

I could, of course, quote liberally from truth tellers down through history who have said the same thing about self-deception with all its shades and nuances. Those quotations are endless.  Why bother?  At some very deep level in the recesses of their hearts, people know it’s true.  I could make a pretty essay here, be erudite and eloquent, and weave a web of wisdom from all those the world says were the great thinkers because they are now dead and can no longer detect hypocrisy.

For the desire to be deceived and hypocrisy (Greek hypokrites, stage actor, a pretender) are kissing cousins. 

Grasping the theatrical nature of social life, the need to pretend, to act, to feel oneself part of a “meaningful” play explains a lot.  To stand outside consensus reality, outside the stage door, so to speak, is not very popular.   Despite the mass idiocy of the media’s daily barrage of lies and stupidities that pass for news on the front pages and newscasts of the corporate media, people want to believe them to feel they belong.

Yet D. H. Lawrence’s point a century ago still applies: “The essential America soul is hard, isolate, stoic, and a killer.  It has never yet melted.”

But this killer soul must be hidden behind a wall of deceptions as the U.S. warfare state ceaselessly wages wars all around the world. 

It must be hidden behind feel good news stories about how Americans really care about others, but only others that they are officially allowed to care about.  Not Syrians, Yemenis, Russian speakers of the Donbass, Palestinians, et al.  The terrorist nature of decades upon decades of U.S. savagery and the indifference of so many Americans go hand-in-hand but escape notice in the corporate media that are propagandists. The major theme of these media is that the United States government is the great defender of freedom, peace, and democracy.  Every once in a while, a scapegoat, one rotten apple in the barrel, is offered up to show that all is not perfect in paradise.  Here or there a decent article appears to reinforce the illusion that the corporate media tell the truth.  But essentially it is one massive deception that is leading many people to accept a slow walk toward WW III.

There’s a make-believe quality to this vast spectacle of violent power and false innocence that baffles the mind.  To see and hear the corporate masked media magicians’ daily reports is to enter a world of pure illusion that deserves only sardonic laughter but sadly captivates so many adult children desperate to believe.

Here’s an anecdote about a very strange encounter, one I couldn’t make up.  A communication of some sort that also has a make-believe quality to it.  I’m not sure what the message is.

I was recently meeting with a writer and researcher who has interviewed scores of people about the famous 1960s assassinations and other sensitive matters.  I only knew this person through internet communication, but he was passing my way and suggested that we meet, which we did at a local out-of-the-way cafe.  We were the only customers and we took our drinks out the back to a small table and chairs under a tree in the café’s large garden that bordered open land down to a river.  About 10 yards away a woman sat at a table, writing in a notebook that I took to be journaling of some sort.  

The researcher and I talked very openly for more than two hours about our mutual work and what he had learned from many of his interviewees about the assassinations.  Neither of us paid any attention to the woman at the table – naively? – and our conversation naturally revolved around the parts played by intelligence agencies, the CIA, etc. in the assassinations of the Kennedys and MLK, Jr. 

The woman sat and wrote.  Near the end of our two plus hours, my friend went inside the café, which had closed to new customers, to use the men’s room.  The woman called to me and said I hope you don’t mind but I overheard some of your conversation and my father worked for U.S. intelligence. 

She then told us much more about him, where he went to college, etc. or at least what she said she knew because when growing up he didn’t tell her mother, her, or siblings any details about his decades of spying.  But when she attended his memorial service in Washington D.C., the place was filled with intelligence  operatives and she learned more about her father’s secretive life.  Then, out of the blue, it burst out of her how he was obsessed with the high school he attended, one she assured us we probably never heard of (we were in Massachusetts) – Regis High School, a Jesuit scholarship prep school for boys in NYC.  To say I was startled is an understatement, since I went to Regis myself, and the anomalous “coincidence” of this encounter in the back garden of an empty café spooked my friend as well.  The woman told us more about her father until we had to leave.

I wondered if he wore a bowtie and if what just happened weren’t really so.

*

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

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

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

This analysis does not pretend to lay out “absolute truth.” Rather it’s my best effort at synthesizing in a concise format the key elements involved in my understanding of world events.

1.     The U.S. is a multiethnic nation formed from a confluence of indigenous Native American settlement, settlement and conquest by Europeans, a large influx of enslaved Africans, and later immigration from European, Asian, and African peoples of diverse nationalities up through today.

2.     The core of the U.S. were colonies of England along the Atlantic coast, with North, Central, and South America also the location of colonies of Spain, Portugal, France, England, and the Netherlands.

3.     Colonies were established elsewhere in the world all the way through to the 20^thcentury, with Germany and Italy also becoming colonialist powers, while Russia expanded in Eurasia and Japan in East Asia. Ancient indigenous civilizations worldwide were exploited or destroyed by the colonizing powers. The prime motive was the acquisition of wealth and resources.

4.     European expansion required a monetary system to enable its growth. During the Middle Ages, the Knights Templar ran the European monetary system but without Usury—i.e., charging of interest on loans. The Catholic Church ceased its prohibition on the MORTAL SIN of Usury around 1500. Fractional reserve banking was built on gold and silver from America and India/China with Usury-based banking assuring the accumulation of wealth by the owners of merchant banks. Jewish bankers were key players in this system.

5.     The system continues today, creating constant pressure for

1) massive public and private debt, constantly rolled over with new debt;

2) centralization of wealth;

3) an imperative for unceasing economic growth;

4) consolidation, monopoly, and gigantism;

5) increased velocity of spending;

6) inflation;

7) constant threat of bankruptcy and ruination;

8) financialization of all human activity with associated non-producing overhead;

9) constant imperative to cut costs resulting in environmental pollution, infrastructure collapse, and workforce oppression;

10) constant subjection to economic and organized crime today centering on drug trafficking;

11) political crime and unending propaganda and cover-ups; and 11) unceasing competition and warfare among nation-states orchestrated by the money-masters.

6.     All this was foreseen in the biblical parable of Jesus driving the money changers from the temple. It’s why they crucified him.

7.     Returning to America, for almost 200 years the English colonies grew, functioned, and prospered with indigenous forms of money, including Indian wampum, without a single bank. The passage by Parliament of the Currency Act of 1764, prohibiting issuance of paper money by the colonies, ended this era of financial sustainability and was the main cause of the American Declaration of Independence.

8.     The first U.S. bank, the Bank of North America, was chartered in 1781 in Philadelphia. This led to the First Bank of the United States that was used mainly to finance speculation by rich investors, most of them Dutch and British allied with the growing American merchant class, many of whom got rich in the slave and opium trades.

9.     Fractional reserve banking grew throughout the U.S., with economic growth fueled in part by sale of land confiscated from the Indians. The federal government was funded by customs duties from trade with most of its budget consumed by the army and navy. The War of 1812 completed the Revolution against England.

10.  The Southern slave states, in league with New York/British bankers and merchants, broke away from the Union in 1861. Lincoln fought the Civil War with cash directly issued from the Treasury known as Greenbacks. Lincoln was killed by a British-financed conspiracy, as were Presidents Garfield and McKinley.

11.  The Industrial Revolution took place after the Civil War with capital from U.S. and British banks, led by the Morgans and British Rothschilds. By 1900, the Money Trust controlled U.S. industry and adopted the gold standard. With the Rothschilds and their banking allies, they created the Federal Reserve in 1913 to finance Britain’s war to annihilate Germany.

12.  British gold and diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes had directed his executor, Lord Nathan Rothschild, to create a “secret society” to “recover America for the British Empire,” which was done through a century of world wars, with Britain providing the brains and America the muscle. The Zionist Jews were enlisted to help out by giving them Palestine. The idea of a Jewish-controlled Palestine had originated with the British government and was adopted by the Zionist Movement. 

13.  The immediate goal of the British Empire as it organized itself through the Rhodes/Rothschild/Milner “Round Table’ after 1900 was to control the Eurasian “Heartland” along the Mackinder Line running from the Baltic Sea through Eastern Europe, bisecting Ukraine, and terminating in Palestine. Conquest of this region, involving the destruction of Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and eventually Russia, has been the focal point for WWI, WWII, and what is rapidly becoming WWIII.

14.  In 1940-1941, the US Council on Foreign Relations, a Rockefeller-controlled entity modeled on Britain’s Chatham House, submitted a series of studies to the U.S. government that established a permanent policy of TOTAL U.S. military dominance over the entire world. This policy became the post-World War II national security state, setting up the CIA, NSA, etc., then later the Wolfowitz Doctrine of 1991 and today’s policy of “Full-Spectrum Dominance,” including cyberspace, outer space, etc. The Council on Foreign Relations was also a central actor in the JFK assassination and cover-up.

15.  World War II never ended. The policy of world military dominance has never been rescinded or modified. Note, however, that the U.S. military operates under the direction of the global financial elite. While U.S. military power is backed by dollar hegemony, the geopolitical power center resides in London.

16.  The entire mainstream media of the Collective West has been commandeered and controlled to propagandize for the Empire. The internet has produced a slight hiccup to this program, but citizen usage is under relentless attack, while at the same time being a tool for massive Deep State surveillance, “lawfare,” and population control

17.  The Zionists formed themselves into the Neocon faction that has run U.S. foreign policy on behalf of the London and New York-based financiers since the Reagan administration. One of their major projects was 9/11.

18.  The latest episode is the Anglo-American-Zionist Empire’s war against Russia in Ukraine, with Russia having been declared the enemy in the late 1940s after Germany was destroyed. The degree to which the government of Russia is complicit today in the overall globalist plan is unclear. The Zionists, meanwhile, are engaged in genocidal wars trying to create Greater Israel for their own purposes.

19.  Today the Empire is apparently being countered by Russia, Iran, China, and the Global South via BRICS+. This transition to multipolarity may itself be a project of global finance.

20.  Here and there are growing numbers of individuals who see what is going on and looking for a way out. The nations of the world, always subservient to global finance, are trying to stop this awakening by committing genocide against their own populations, through massive drug proliferation, malnutrition, and iatrogenic disease, and now through Covid and other coming “plandemics,” along with the “climate change” hoax.

21.  A globalist conspiracy for population reduction works in the background. The elite in their frustration would rather destroy the world than give up their addictions, vanity, and privileges, even though modern industry and technology could make a decent living possible for the entire world population.

22.  A central part of the scenario is control of nuclear weapons. A nuclear World War III remains a possibility. Running the show for the U.S. is Joe Biden’s handlers. His opponent, Donald Trump, shows no signs of being knowledgeable enough to turn the situation around and may be headed for prison. Robert Kennedy ignores the larger economic issues with a campaign that well may be a “limited hangout.” Whether there will even be a US in another decade is anyone’s guess.

23.  The “sin” that makes everything else possible is the Usury which enables a demiurgic force destructive of humanity.

24.  Renewal of human hopes is only possible starting with the level of individual human beings awakening to their spiritual potential. We must see what is going on, forcefully denounce abuses, and seek the Spirit within through the guidance available. All authentic traditional religions point to the potential for opening the doors within ourselves to this guidance.

“Every human enterprise must serve life, must seek to enrich existence on earth, lest man become enslaved where he seeks to establish his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), Translation by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Also see the Kober Press edition of The Book on the Living God here.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Three Sages.

Richard C. Cook is a co-founder and lead investigator for the American Geopolitical Institute.  Mr. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst with extensive experience across various government agencies, including the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he exposed the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Shuttle, documenting the event in his book “Challenger Revealed.” After serving at Treasury, he became a vocal critic of the private finance-controlled monetary system, detailing his analysis in “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an advisor to the American Monetary Institute and worked with Congressman Dennis Kucinich to advocate for replacing the Federal Reserve with a genuine national currency. See his new book giving a revisionist view of U.S. history: Our Country, Then and Now, Clarity Press, 2023.

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.

Introduction 

This article provides a brief summary on the history of US led wars against Russia and the Soviet Union.

It also provides a summary of the US Project to Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map: 204 atomic bombs, 66 cities. (September 15, 1945). 

 

 

1. Brief History. Chronology

 

1918-1920:  The first US and allied forces led war against Soviet Russia. 

This happened exactly two months after the October Revolution, on January 12, 1918, and it lasted for about 2 years. (scroll down, section 2 )

U.S Forces in Vladivostok, 1918

The Manhattan Project (1939-1945)

Initiated in 1939, with the participation of the UK and Canada. 

Development of the Atomic Bomb. (see Section 3 below)

Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa initiated in June 1941

February 1945: The Yalta Conference. The meeting of Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin.

Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin met at Yalta in early February 1945 largely with a view to negotiating the post war occupation of Germany and Japan. .

Churchill’s “Operation Unthinkable”

A Secret attack plan against the Soviet Union formulated by Winston Churchill in the immediate wake of the Yalta conference.

The plan called for a massive Allied assault on 1 July 1945 by British, American, Polish and German – yes German – forces against the Red Army. They aimed to push them back out of Soviet-occupied East Germany and Poland, …

Eventually in June 1945 Churchill’s military advisors cautioned him against implementing the plan,

It was scrapped in June 1945.

April 12, 1945: The Potsdam Conference.

President Harry Truman and Prime Minister Winston Churchill approve the atomic bombing of Japan.

The Bombing of Hiroshima And Nagasaki. 6-8 August 1945

September 15, 1945: WWIII Blueprint. “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”

A World War III Scenario formulated by the US War Department

A plan to  bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union with 204 atomic bombs, when the US and USSR were allies. The Secret plan  (declassified in 1975) formulated during WWII, was released less than two weeks after the official end of WWII on September 2, 1945 (scroll down)

1949: The Soviet Union announces the testing of its nuclear bomb.

.

2. The Forgotten War of 1918-20:

US and Allies Invasion of the Soviet Union 

 

From a historical standpoint the US  and its Allies have been threatening Russia for more than 105 years starting during World War I with the deployment of US and Allied Forces against Soviet Russia on January 12, 1918, (two months following the November 7, 1917 revolution allegedly in support of Russia’s Imperial Army).  

The 1918 US-UK Allied invasion of Russia is a landmark in Russian History, often mistakenly portrayed as being part of a Civil War. 

It lasted for more than two years involving the deployment of more than 200,000 troops of which 11,000 were from the US, 59,000 from the UK. Japan which was an Ally of Britain and America during World War I  dispatched 70,000 troops. 

US Troops in Vladivostok, 1918

US Occupation Troops in Vladivostok 1918

US and Allied Troops in Vladivostok in 1918

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3. The Dangers of Nuclear War

.

At no point since the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on August 6th, 1945, has humanity been closer to the unthinkable. All the safeguards of the Cold War era, which categorized the nuclear bomb as “a weapon of last resort”, have been scrapped.

Let us also recall the unspoken history of America’s doctrine pertaining to the conduct of nuclear war. 

Unknown to the broader public, the first U.S. Doomsday Blueprint of a nuclear attack directed against the Soviet Union was formulated by the US War Department at the height of World War II, confirmed by “Top Secret” documents on September 15, 1945 when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.

There is an element of political delusion and paranoia in the formulation of US foreign policy. The Doomsday Scenario against the Soviet Union has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for almost 80 years.

The Manhattan Project. “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” 

Barely six weeks after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the U.S. War Department released a Secret Plan on September 15, 1945 to  bomb 66 cities of the Soviet Union with 204 atomic bombs.

The September 1945 Plan was to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map” at a time when the US and the USSR were allies. 

Confirmed by declassified documents, Hiroshima and Nagasaki served as a “Dress Rehearsal” (see references: historical details and analysis below).  

The US threat of nuclear war against Russia was formulated more than 76 years ago in September 1945, when the US and the Soviet Union were allies.

It consisted in a “World War III Blueprint” of nuclear war against the USSR, targeting 66 cities with more than 200 atomic bombs.

This diabolical project under the Manhattan Project was instrumental in triggering the Cold War and the nuclear arms race.

 

Map of 66 Soviet Urban Strategic Areas to be Bombed with 206 atomic Bombs (Declassified September 1945)

 

Concluding Remarks

Had it not been for the September 1945 plan to  “wipe the Soviet Union off the map” (66 urban areas and more than 200 atomic bombs), neither Russia nor China would have developed nuclear weapons.

There wouldn’t have been a Nuclear Arms Race. 

***

For more details. and analysis, see the following articles:

“Preemptive Nuclear War”: The Historic Battle for Peace and Democracy. A Third World War Threatens the Future of Humanity

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 15, 2024

 

The Hiroshima Nagasaki “Dress Rehearsal”: Oppenheimer and the U.S. War Department’s Secret September 15, 1945 “Doomsday Blueprint” to “Wipe the Soviet Union off the Map”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, May 12, 2024

 

Video: Hiroshima-Nagasaki Dress Rehearsal. The Dangers of Nuclear War. Michel Chossudovsky with James Corbett

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett, June 02, 2024

 

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Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

First published on May 27, 2024

***

In a desperate attempt to stave off a humiliating defeat in Ukraine, “Secretary of State Antony Blinken has reportedly asked President Biden to greenlight Ukrainian missile strikes on targets deep inside Russia.” The change in policy will have no material impact on the ongoing ground war in Ukraine, although it could trigger a response that would put NATO in direct conflict with Moscow. In short, Washington’s looming defeat in Ukraine has compelled administration decisionmakers to implement a strategy that could precipitate a Third World War. This is from the New York Times:

Since the first American shipments of sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, President Biden has never wavered on one prohibition: President Volodymyr Zelensky had to agree to never fire them into Russian territory, insisting that would violate Mr. Biden’s mandate to “avoid World War III.”

But the consensus around that policy is fraying. Propelled by the State Department, there is now a vigorous debate inside the administration over relaxing the ban to allow the Ukrainians to hit missile and artillery launch sites just over the border in Russia — targets that Mr. Zelensky says have enabled Moscow’s recent territorial gains….

For months, Mr. Zelensky has been mounting attacks on Russian ships, oil facilities and electricity plants, but he has been doing so largely with Ukrainian-made drones, which don’t pack the power and speed of the American weapons… Now, the pressure is mounting on the United States to help Ukraine target Russian military sites,… with American-provided arms….

The United States is now considering training Ukrainian troops inside the country, rather than sending them to a training ground in Germany. That would require putting American military personnel in Ukraine, something else that Mr. Biden has prohibited until now. It raises the question of how the United States would respond if the trainers, who would likely be based near the western city of Lviv, came under attack. The Russians have periodically targeted Lviv, though it is distant from the main areas of combat….

The Russians… have been unsubtle in playing to American concerns about an escalation of the war. This week they began very public exercises with the units that would be involved in the use of tactical nuclear weapons, the kind that would be used on Ukrainian troops. Russian news reports said it was “a response to provocative statements and threats from Western officials against Russia.”…

The current exercises… are being dismissed as bluster and muscle-flexing….

In his interview with the Times, Mr. Zelensky dismissed fears of escalation, saying President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had already escalated the war. And he thought it unlikely that Mr. Putin would ever make good on his threat to unleash a nuclear weapon…. Inside the White House, a Debate Over Letting Ukraine Shoot U.S. Weapons Into Russia, New York Times

Let’s not mince words: Missile attacks on Russian territory is a flagrant act of aggression against the Russian Federation. It is an open declaration of war. The Biden administration is committing to a policy that will pit the United States against Russia in a war between two nuclear superpowers.

Why? Why is Biden doing this?

He’s doing this because the US is heavily invested in the outcome of the war in Ukraine, and Ukraine is losing the war quite badly. Here’s a short recap from combat veteran and military analyst Colonel Daniel Davis:

Trust me when I tell you that there is no chance that Ukraine will ever succeed in a war against Russia. There is no path to military victory for Ukraine. Period. It doesn’t matter whether we give them $60 billion or $120 billion or $200 billion. It won’t change anything, because the foundations on which the fighting power at the national level is built are irrevocably on the side of Russia. You can’t reverse the tide because you can’t change the basics.

Air power is on Russia’s side, air defense is on Russia’s side, military-industrial potential is on Russia’s side, enabling the production of a large amount of artillery, ammunition, the weapons themselves, drones, electronic warfare equipment and, above all, people are all on Russia’s side. Russia has more people and will always have more people… In my opinion, it is unreasonable to continue to hope that the Ukrainian side will be able to win if we give just a little more money, because it will not work….UKRAINE WILL NEVER WIN….Period. Retired US Army Lt. Col. Daniel Davis: I have over 20 years of military combat experience. Daniel Davis@peacemaket71

Not surprisingly, Davis’s views are shared by the vast majority of military experts who have been closely following events on the ground. The overall assessment of these experts is invariably the same: Ukraine is losing, and losing badly. There won’t be any reversal of momentum because—in every area of combat capability—Russia has a clear advantage. Ukraine doesn’t have the firepower, the aircraft, the tanks, the armored vehicles, the missiles, the heavy artillery, the air-defense systems, the munitions, the industrial capacity or the manpower to roll back the Russian army or to even stop the persistent Russian offensive. Simply put, Ukraine cannot and will not win. And, this is not just the view of men like Davis who think the fighting should stop immediately. It is also the view of globalist elites, like Richard Haass, who think the war should be prolonged. Haass is the president emeritus of the prestigious Council On Foreign Relations, and his views on Ukraine are likely shared by a large cross-section of wealthy elites who think there is something to gain by dragging the conflict out for another year or so. Take a look at this excerpt from a recent article by Haass and see if you can spot the similarities between his analysis and Davis’:

...what should Ukraine and its backers in the West seek to achieve? What should constitute success?

Some answer that success should be defined as Ukraine recovering all of its lost territory, to re-establish its 1991 borders…. This would be a serious mistake. Don’t get me wrong: re-establishing rightful, legal borders would be highly desirable, demonstrating that aggression is not acceptable. But foreign policy must be doable as well as desirable, and Ukraine is simply not in a position to liberate Crimea and its eastern regions through military force.

The maths is unavoidable. Russia has too many soldiers and a wartime economy capable of producing large amounts of arms and ammunition. Despite sanctions, Russia has been able to ramp up its military-industrial base and has access to weaponry and ammunition produced in Iran and North Korea and to Chinese manufactured goods and technologies that contribute to the Kremlin’s war effort.

Another factor militating against a Ukraine effort to recapture its lands by force is that offensive operations tend to require much more in the way of manpower, equipment, and ammunition than do defensive efforts. This is especially so when defences have had the chance to build fortifications, as Russia has in much of the Ukrainian territory it occupies. Why Mounting another Counteroffensive in 2025 would be a Mistake, Novaya Gazeta

So, Haass openly admits that the war is a mismatch and that Ukraine cannot reasonably expect to retake the territory it has lost. He admits that “Russia has too many soldiers” (unlimited manpower) “a wartime economy capable of producing large amounts of arms and ammunition”(Unlimited industrial capacity) and “Russia… has access to weaponry and ammunition… that contribute to the Kremlin’s war effort.” (Unlimited weapons production) In short, Haass’s analysis is identical to Davis’s. They both agree on the fundamentals, that is, that Ukraine cannot and will not win.

But then the article takes an unusual turn, in which, Haass inexplicably draws the exact opposite conclusions from his analysis than Davis. It is an astonishing rhetorical sleight-of-hand that would make Svengali envious. Here’s what says after listing the numerous reasons why Ukraine will not win the war:

“Some answer that success should be defined as Ukraine recovering all of its lost territory, to re-establish its 1991 borders…. This would be a serious mistake.”

Think about that for a minute. So, according to Haass—winning the war no longer means winning the war. It does not mean retaking captured territory, it does not mean expelling the Russians from eastern Ukraine, and it does not mean prevailing in the ground war. It means, ‘what’ exactly?
Haass explains:

“What strategy… should Ukraine and its supporters pursue? First, Ukraine should emphasise the defensive, an approach that would allow it to husband its limited resources and frustrate Russia.

Second, Ukraine should be given the means — long-range strike capabilities — and the freedom to attack Russian forces anywhere in Ukraine, as well as Russian warships in the Black Sea and economic targets within Russia itself.Russia must come to feel the cost of a war it initiated and prolongs.

Third, Ukraine’s backers must commit to providing long-term military aid. The goal of all of the above is to signal to Vladimir Putin that time is not on Russia’s side and that he cannot hope to outlast Ukraine.Why Mounting another Counteroffensive in 2025 would be a Mistake, Novaya Gazeta

So, this is the new strategy? This is Plan B?

Yes, apparently. And look at what Plan B involves:

1. Hunkering down in a defensive posture
2. Using “long-range strike capabilities” to attack targets in Russia (Is this where Blinken got the idea?)
3. Pumping billions more into the Ukrainian ‘black hole’ to prolong a war that cannot be won.

In short, provoke, hector and inflict as much pain as possible on Russia for as long as it takes.

As long as what takes? What does that mean?

Haass explains that too:

An interim ceasefire almost certainly would not lead to anything resembling peace, which will likely have to wait for the arrival of a Russian leadership that chooses to end the country’s pariah status. That might not happen for years or decades.

Oh, so the real objective, is regime change. What a surprise!

This is more than just “moving the goalposts” (by changing the definition of “winning” a war). This is a revelation of the elite agenda, which looks beyond the fatuous propaganda about “unprovoked aggression” and focuses entirely on geopolitics, the driving force in international relations. In Haass’s mind, Ukraine is not a battlefield on which Ukrainian and Russian patriots sacrifice their lives for their countries. No. In Haass’s mind, Ukraine is the critical gateway to Central Asia which is expected to be the most prosperous region of the next century. Western plutocrats intend to be the main players in Central Asia’s development,(pivot to Asia) which is why they are trying to remove the biggest obstacle to western penetration, which is Russia. Once Russia has been weakened and rolled-back, Washington will be free to spread its military bases across Eurasia laying the groundwork for containing rival China through provocations, encirclement and economic strangulation.

That is why Haass’s definition of “success” is more flexible than ordinary people who evaluate these matters in terms of the enormous human suffering they cause. In the globalist view, these things are only of secondary importance. What really matters is power; raw, geopolitical power in the form of global hegemony. That is the ultimate strategic objective. Nothing else matters.

And that is why the Biden administration is about to approve the use of American-made long-range strike weapons to destroy targets on Russian territory. Because—even though it does not increase Ukraine’s chances of winning the war—it does help to advance the globalist geopolitical agenda which regards Ukraine as a mere springboard for launching attacks on Russia.

The elites are so drunk with hubris, they have convinced themselves that Putin will not see these missile-strikes on Russian territory as a declaration of war. Which they are.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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

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First published by GR on June 29, 2023

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Introduction

In this article, I will be focussing on the NeoCon agenda, largely inspired by The Project for the New American Century. (PNAC).

The Neocons exert control over foreign policy. They are involved in bribing and manipulating politicians and decision-makers. They have played a key role in defining nuclear doctrine on behalf of powerful financial interests.  

The PNAC has called for establishing “Superiority in Nuclear Weapons” (applied to Russia) coupled with a profit driven expansion of the military industrial complex.

The NeoCon agenda, as formulated by the PNAC (2000) follows in the footsteps of The Cold War “Truman Doctrine” In the words of George Kennan:

“The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic slogans, the better”

The NeoCons are not intent upon “Winning the War”.

Their agenda is to “Destroy Countries”.

It is a profit-driven agenda: “Destruction” leads to “Reconstruction”. 

What is at stake is the engineered economic and social destruction of sovereign nation states. The creditors are there to “pick up the pieces” and “appropriate real wealth”. 

The second part of this article will focus on the NeoCons’ agenda to “privatize countries” on behalf of the financial establishment. 

The privatization of Ukraine as an impoverished derelict Nation State has already commenced via the creation of the Ukraine Reconstruction Bank (URB) by BlackRock and JPMorgan. 

Ukraine is a country with a vast territory and tremendous resources. The proxy Kiev Regime has an unsurmountable external debt in the trillions which has been building up since the February 2014 EuroMaidan Neo-Nazi Coup d’Etat, instrumented by Washington. 

We are no longer in the realm of IMF “strongly economic medicine”.

What is unfolding is the corporate take over and appropriation of an entire country.

 

The Danger of Nuclear War 

The use of nuclear weapons is on the drawing board of the Pentagon. It has the support of the U.S State Department. 

Meanwhile legislation is being put forward in the U.S. Congress to initiate World War III. 

“Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced on June 22nd a Resolution which if passed and signed by President Biden, … would commit the U.S. as the head of NATO to launch, on behalf of NATO, war directly against Russia (See Eric Zuesse, Duran, June 20, 2023)

 
  click lower right corner for full screen

The NeoCon Agenda:

The Project for the New American Century 

The NeoCons are firmly behind the Ukraine agenda. 

The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) dominates US foreign policy on behalf of powerful financial interests. 

The PNAC dispels the planning of “consecutive” military operations: it describes:

America’s “Long War” as follows: 

“fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars”

The conduct of  “Simultaneous theater Wars” is the backbone of America’s hegemonic Agenda.

It’s a project of global warfare. The PNAC controlled by the NeoCons also dispels the holding of real peace negotiations. 

The Nuclear Agenda and Global Warfare

The PNAC was published at the height of the presidential election campaign in September 2000, barely 2 months prior to the November 2001 elections.  It has become the backbone of US foreign policy. It is the basis for the carrying out a hegemonic global warfare agenda, coupled with the imposition of a “Unipolar World Order”. 

Victoria Nuland who sits in the State Department, currently advising President Biden is the spouse of  PNAC’s Robert Kagan.

Why Does the Biden administration require a $1.3 trillion nuclear weapons program which is slated to increase to $2.0 trillion in 2030?

Superiority in Nuclear War is the backbone of the NeoCon agenda as expounded in the PNAC.

The objective is to “Maintain Nuclear Superiority”, specifically in relation to the US-Russia balance.

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The Post War Era 

The US has conducted numerous wars since the end of what is euphemistically called the post war era:

Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen… and now Ukraine. 

The unspoken objective is not to “win the war” but to engineer the destruction of entire countries, create political and social chaos, with a view to ultimately “picking up the pieces” and taking control of the national economies of sovereign nation states.

This agenda is also conducted through “regime change”, “color revolutions” and the concurrent demise and criminalization of the state apparatus coupled with “strong economic medicine” and the imposition of a soaring dollar denominated debt.

That is what happened in Vietnam. The Destruction of an entire country which was then “privatized” in the early 1990s: 

“Vietnam never received war reparations payments from the U.S. for the massive loss of life and destruction, yet an agreement reached in Paris in 1993 required Hanoi to recognize the debts of the defunct Saigon regime of General Thieu. This agreement is in many regards tantamount to obliging Vietnam to compensate Washington for the costs of war.”

And now what is ongoing in Ukraine is the outright privatization of an entire country.  

The Privatization of Ukraine

 

BlackRock, which is the World’s largest portfolio investment company together with JPMorgan have  come to the rescue of Ukraine. They are slated to set up the Ukraine Reconstruction Bank.

The stated objective is “to attract billions of dollars in private investment to assist rebuilding projects in a war-torn country”. (FT, June 19, 2023)

“… BlackRock, JP Morgan and private investors, aim to profit from the country’s reconstruction along with 400 global companies, including Citi, Sanofi and Philips. … JP Morgan’s Stefan Weiler sees a “tremendous opportunity” for private investors. (Colin Todhunter, Global Research June 28, 2023)

The Kiev Neo-Nazi regime is a partner in this endeavour. War is Good for Business. The greater the destruction, the greater the stranglehold on Ukraine by “private investors”:

“BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are helping the Ukrainian government set up a reconstruction bank to steer public seed capital into rebuilding projects that can attract hundreds of billions of dollars in private investment.” (FT, op cit)

The Privatization of Ukraine was launched in November 2022 in liaison  with BlackRock’s  consulting company  McKinsey, a public relations firm which has largely been responsible for co-opting corrupt politicians and officials Worldwide not to mention scientists and intellectuals on behalf of powerful financial interests. 

“The Kyiv government engaged BlackRock’s consulting arm in November to determine how best to attract that kind of capital, and then added JPMorgan in February. Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced last month that the country was working with the two financial groups and consultants at McKinsey.

BlackRock and Ukraine’s Ministry of Economy signed a Memorandum of Understanding in November 2023.

In late December 2022, president Zelensky and BlackRock’s CEO Larry Fink agreed on an investment strategy.

Ukraine Reconstruction: The London Conference Venue

Careful Timing (See Timeline Below). The Prigozhin-Wagner “Failed Coup” (June 23-24, 2023) was initiated on the day following the Ukraine Reconstruction Conference in London hosted by the Kiev Regime and His Majesty’s Government on June 21-22, 2023. Is it a coincidence?

“The Ukraine Development Fund remains in the planning stages and is not expected to fully launch until the end of hostilities with Russia. But investors will have a preview this week at a London conference co-hosted by the British and Ukrainian governments.

The World Bank estimated in March that Ukraine would need $411bn to rebuild after the war, and recent Russian attacks have driven that figure higher.

No formal fundraising target has been set but people familiar with the discussions say the fund is seeking to raise low-cost capital from governments, donors and international financial institutions and leverage it to attract between five and 10 times as much private investment.

BlackRock and JPMorgan are donating their services, although the work will give them an early look at possible investments in the country. The assignment also deepens JPMorgan’s relationship with a longstanding client.

What Ukraine needed, BlackRock advised, was a development finance bank to find investment opportunities in sectors such as infrastructure, climate and agriculture and make them attractive to pension funds and other long-term investors and lenders. JPMorgan was brought in partly for its debt expertise.

… most investors want to wait for the end of hostilities. “The important part is that Ukraine is already thinking ahead,” Weiler said. “When the war is over, they’re going to want to be ready and start the rebuilding process immediately.” (FT, 19 June, 2023, emphasis added)

The Ukraine Privatization Chronology 

November 2022. Contract with BlackRock and McKinsey, Ukraine Ministry of Economy

December 2022. Agreement between BlackRock CEO Larry Fink and President Zelensky

February 2023. JPMorgan Joins the BlackRock Reconstruction Bank Project

June 18, 2023. Africa Peace Initiative in Saint Petersburg, Statement by President Putin with regard the foiled peace negotiations of March 2022.

June 21-22, 2023. London conference pertaining to Ukraine Reconstruction Bank co-hosted by the British and Ukrainian governments.

June 23-24, 2023. The Prigozhin Wagner “Rebellion”

Concluding Remarks

All the major financial and political actors were in attendance at the Ukraine Reconstruction Conference in London. 

Ukraine is in the stranglehold of Big Money. BlackRock and JPMorgan.

Destruction is the Driving Force behind “Reconstruction”. 

Peace as well as “Cease Fires” are not “Good for Business”.

“Ukraine’s people desperately need a future based on welfare and peace, but in reality Ukraine is being driven towards the kind of huge indebtedness that leads to subservience and dominance.” (Bharat Dogra, Global Research, June 28, 2023)

The outcome is mass poverty and social devastation of an entire country, under the guise of “reconstruction”. 

Update: January 2024

In recent developments, slated for early 2024:  the State Property Fund of Ukraine plans to put up about 1,000 assets for privatization

The plan was outlined at the Six National Forum of SMB entitled

 “Development of SMB 2023: opportunities, sustainability and recovery” (December 2023)

There are no opportunities:  the mechanisms described suggest that these 1000 assets (or more) will be taken over. The small and medium sized businesses including agricultural and industrial SME will be wiped out. Many of these assets will be bought out at a negative price. 

Vitaliy Koval, Chairman of the State Property Fund of Ukraine, presented the 2024 SPFU plan. He emphasized that small and medium-sized business will be main beneficiary of this process.

 “We think that small and medium-sized business should be in the center of privatization process.

 

On December 13, 2023, the Six National Forum of SMB “Development of SMB 2023: opportunities, sustainability and recovery” was conducted under the auspices of the Ukraine Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the United Nations Development Programme in Ukraine. The Forum was held with the support of Switzerland and the Project “Strengthening of member business associations of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Ukraine”, implemented by UNDP in Ukraine.

According to Vitaliy Koval, in 2024 the Fund plans put up for privatization about a thousand objects that open up new opportunities for business. These assets will be auctioned, ensuring a fair and transparent process.

The transparent procedure coupled with rigged auctions are wrought with fraud and corruption. It’s akin to highway robbery: 

He invited business to cooperate in searching for assets for privatization.

“We invite you to become Ambassadors in searching for assets for privatization.

Many cities, towns and villages have dormant assets during 10-15 years. We wait your proposals for privatization and do the best that the way to transparent auction will be the shortest,” said Vitaliy Koval. (State Property Fund of Ukraine  emphasis added)

Il Vertice del G7 sotto presidenza italiana , organizzato dal Governo Meloni in Puglia, proclama quale sua priorità “la difesa del sistema internazionale basato sulla forza del diritto.”, dichiarando che “la guerra d’aggressione russa all’Ucraina ne ha intaccato i principi e ha scatenato una crescente instabilità, visibile nei diversi focolai di crisi”. Ciò viene dichiarato dal G7, di cui 6 membri (Stati Uniti, Canada, Gran Bretagna, Francia, Germania e Italia) sono le maggiori potenze della NATO , che ha fatto esplodere la guerra in Ucraina contro la Russia , alle quali si aggiunge il Giappone , maggiore partner della NATO in Asia Orientale contro la Cina. La messa in scena idilliaca, con cui viene presentato questo Vertice, non può nascondere il fatto che si tratta in realtà di un summit di guerra. Gli Stati Uniti hanno firmato un patto militare decennale con l’Ucraina, a cui viene concesso dal G7 un prestito di 50 miliardi di dollari per aiutarla a comprare altre armi, prestito che sarà rimborsato utilizzando gli interessi maturati sui 300 miliardi di dollari di beni russi congelati, per lo più depositati presso banche europee. I ministri della Difesa dei 6 paesi del G7 appartenenti alla NATO hanno contemporaneamente deciso di fornire all’Ucraina altri ingenti aiuti militari e di destinare 43 miliardi di dollari all’anno per continuare ad alimentare la guerra nel cuore dell’Europa.

Nel mirino del G7 non c’è solo la Russia ma l’intera organizzazione dei BRICS, quest’anno sotto presidenza russa, allargatasi da 5 a 10 membri e in ulteriore sviluppo: sono oltre 30 i paesi che vogliono entrare a farne parte. Già oggi il prodotto interno lordo dei BRICS supera quello del G7 e le previsioni del 2024-2029 indicano una crescita economica dei BRICS, dovuto in particolare alla Cina, del 44% a confronto del 21% del G7. Non potendo impedire con strumenti economici lo sviluppo dei BRICS, il G7 cerca di conservare il predominio con strumenti bellici.

Al G7 in Puglia è stato invitato Papa Francesco, per dare una parvenza di pace a questo vertice di guerra. Qui Papa Francesco ha incontrato il presidente ucraino Volodymyr Zelensky, senza dire una parola sul fatto che sta perseguitando la Chiesa Ortodossa Russa in Ucraina, da cui quella ucraina ha effettuato uno scisma , funzionale alla guerra contro tutto ciò che è russo.

Manlio Dinucci

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Papers reviewed: 

• 2021 Aug (Wong et al) – Pomegranate bioactive constituents target multiple oncogenic and oncosuppressive signaling for cancer prevention and intervention

• 2022 Feb (Cheshomi) – The effects of ellagic acid and other pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) derivatives on human gastric cancer AGS cells
• 2023 Jan (Teniente et al) – Anticancer Effect of Pomegranate Peel Polyphenols against Cervical Cancer
• 2023 Apr (Habchi et al) – Determination of the Antioxidant and Antiproliferative Properties of Pomegranate Peel Extract Obtained by Ultrasound on HCT-116 Colorectal Cancer Cell Line
• 2023 July (Rahman et al) – Pomegranate-specific natural compounds as onco-preventive and onco-therapeutic compounds: Comparison with conventional drugs acting on the same molecular mechanisms

2021 Aug (Wong et al) – Pomegranate bioactive constituents target multiple oncogenic and oncosuppressive signaling for cancer prevention and intervention 

• Research on pomegranate (Punica granatum L.), a fruit of the Punicaceae family, has shown enormous potential for cancer prevention and intervention
• In addition to a rich source of polyphenols in its juice, including flavonoids and ellagitannins, pomegranate also houses hundreds of other phytochemicals in its pericarp, seed, flower, bark, flowers and leaves.
• Pomegranate (Punica granatum, L.), a fruit-bearing deciduous large shrub or small tree, is a native of the Himalayas in northern India to Iran
  • Now cultivated globally, India and Iran are the leading pomegranate producing countries
  • In the United States, the primary production sites are the drier regions of Arizona and California
  • The shrub grows from 5 to 10 m in height
• Pomegranate fruit (classified as a large berry) ranges in color from light red to a green-yellow or purple. The fruit can be 5-20 cm in diameter, about 200-800 g in weight, grenade-shaped and crowned by the pointed calyx
  • It contains approximately 200-1400 white, red or purple arils embedded into a spongy, white membrane enveloped by exocarp.
• pomegranate fruit contains three parts:
  1. seeds (3% fruit weight) containing about 20% oil,
  2. juice (30% fruit weight) and
  3. peels (pericarp) that include interior network of membranes

• pomegranate fruit used for medicinal purposes in ancient cultures for centuries
• pomegranate fruits are widely consumed in fresh and beverage formsas juice as well as jam, jelly and wine
• pomegranate leaves are brewed as tea and dried seeds are used as spice
• pomegranate features prominently in various major world religions, such as Buddhism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism, and Zoroastrianism
• It represents a symbol of life, longevity, health, femininity, fecundity, knowledge, morality, immortality and spirituality
• In the Ancient Greek myth of Persephone’s abduction, the pomegranate, known as the “fruit of the dead,” signifies life and rebirth
• applications of pomegranate are expansive and have notable uses in both Ayruvedic and the Unani systems of medicine.

• In Ayurveda (India), pomegranate is regarded as a “pharmacy unto itself”

Bioactive Compounds

• Peel (pericarp) – half of the fruit weight, has important compounds – phenolics, flavonoids, ellagitannins, proanthocyanidin

  • phenolic acids (eg caffeic acid), ellagitannins
  • flavonoids: kaempfero, Quercetin, catechin, EGCG
• arils (edible parts) – 85% water, 11% sugars, 1.4% pectin, organic acids, anthocyanins
  • pomegranate juice – rich source of ellagic acid
• seeds – high concentration of lipids but lack polyphenols, have ellagic acid derivatives, triterpenoids, sterols
• leaves – contain ellagitannins, and various phytochemicals and flavone glycosides
• root – alkaloids
• bark – alkaloids, ellagitannins

• flowers – hydroxybenzoic acids, triterpenoids

Pomegranate and Cancer

Source: (2016 Ismail)

• Breast Cancer – extensively studied

  • fermented juice polyphenols have superior antiproliferative effect to fresh juice polyphenols
  • pomegranate fruit extract inhibits NF-κB activation
  • pomegranate fruit juice inhibits metastasis (EMT, adhesion, migration)
  • whole fruit extract induced Cancer Stem Cell differentiation and inhibited EMT and cancer cell migration, inhibited VEGF
  • ellagitannins have anti-aromatase activity in ER-positive breast cancer
  • pomegranate fruit extract enhances action of tamoxifen in sensitive and tamoxifen-resistant cells
  • fruit peel extract, containing ellagitannins and free ellagic acid (most abundant phenolic acid) showed antioxidant and proapoptotic effects (inhibit proliferation via cell cycle arrest & apoptosis)
  • pomegranate seeds (linolenic acids) decrease cell viability, inhibit VEGF
  • in vivo (mice) – fermented juice polyphenols 50% inhibition of breast ca lesions and pomegranate seed oil caused 90% reduction of breast tumors
    • pomegranate juice fed for 35 days reduced tumor size & volume (high apoptosis, inhibited VEGF, NF-κB, Akt, PI3k)
    • Expression of micro RNAs (miRNA) significantly reduced

 

• Colon Cancer – pomegranate juice (ellagitannins) and total pomegranate tannin extract have cytotoxic effects on in vitro colon cancer cells (cell cycle arrest, inhibited VEGF, NF-κB, Akt, PI3k, increased miRNA-126).
  • pomegranate peel polysaccharide – induced apoptosis of colon cancer cells
  • pomegranate peel punicalagin (ellagitannin) & ellagic acid – induced apoptosis, cell cycle arrest
  • pomegranate seed oil – in vivo – mice had reduced incidence of colon tumors
  • pomegranate peel extract – in vivo – rats had higher antioxidants, prevented colon tumor formation
  • pomegranate fruit extract – in vivo – rats had longer survival, lower tumor incidence and reduced carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA).

Summary for in vivo animal studies: 

• Breast cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, skin cancer, bladder cancer, prostate, ovarian
• Pomegranate: juice, peel extract, seed oil, emulsion
• Anti-cancer effects: reduced incidence, reduced tumor volume, size and weight
• Mechanisms: ↑Apoptosis, ↓proliferation, ↓NF-κB, ↓VEGF, ↓MMP

Human Clinical Trials

• There have been a dozen Human clinical trials
• Breast cancer – Phase I/II – pomegranate juice, drank it for 3 weeks – significant decline in estrone (promotes tumor growth) (mild effect)
• Colon cancer – Phase I/II – pomegranate extracts (ellagic acid, punicalagin, punicalin) (900mg/day for 15 days) – modulation of many micro RNAs (moderate effect)
• Prostate cancer – Phase II – pomegranate juice or extract (consumed daily up to 4 years) – significantly prolonged PSA doubling time, decreased PSA in 13% (mild effect)
  • 2014 Thomas et al – used a polyphenol rich whole food supplement (pomegranate whole fruit powder, turmeric, broccoli, green tea extract) for 6 month – significant suppression of rising PSA levels.
  • Conclusion: “Therapeutic potential of pomegranate in prostate cancer continues to be controversial”

Bioavailability

• ellagic acid – detected in plasma at 1hr after eating, gone by 4hr (halflife 0.7hr)
• ellagitannins – none detected in plasma at 1hr after eating but…
  • ellagitannins released ellagic acid in the jejunum, metabolized to urolithins which persist for long periods of time (may be responsible for therapeutic effects)
• “major pomegranate phytochemicals are absorbed from the gastrointestinaltract and become bioavailable”
• “main metabolic products of ellagitannins appear to be urolithins which are formed by gut microflora and the difference in gut microflora also explain the contrasting concentrations and the rate of formation in individuals”
• “metabolites of ellagitannins may be responsible for the long-term therapeutic effects of pomegranate, including its anticancer potential”

Safety

• pomegranate juice consumption in prostate cancer patients – no adverse effects
• pomegranate peel extract up to 3 gram doses – no adverse effects
• mild side effects include nausea, diarrhea

Conclusion 

• “Known as “a phytochemical reservoir of heuristic medicinal value”, pomegranate has acquired a prominent role in traditional medicines for the treatment of various disorders”
• “The full potential pomegranate in cancer prevention and therapy as well as itsmolecular targets in cancer are not completely understood”
• “pomegranate’s phytochemicals not only act synergistically with its own phytochemicals, but also with other phytochemicals and even with other established chemotherapeutic drugs to confer superior anticancer action to that of any single compound”
• “many studies reported no significant differences between pomegranate-treated and placebo groups. Yet subsequent subgroup analysis has reported significant effect with pomegranate therapy, thus suggesting that certain population of cancer patient may benefit more from pomegranate’s therapeutic activity”
• “Few clinical studies are conducted with limited sample size and cancer endpoints”

2022 Feb (Cheshomi) – The effects of ellagic acid and other pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) derivatives on human gastric cancer AGS cells

• pomegranate fruit juice (PFJ), thanks to its rich polyphenolic composition, can have anti-cancer activity against several human malignancies such as prostate, colon, liver, and breast cancer
• pomegranate peel extract (PPE) – also has a high content of polyphenolic compounds and therefore, it can induce cell death in various cancers including breast, melanoma, and colon
• ellagic acid – as one of the main polyphenols in PFJ and PPE, can have significant anti-tumor effects on different human cancers including bladder, blood, breast, cervical, colorectal, liver, pancreas, and prostate cancer
  • ellagic acid caused more drastic changes in expression of desired genes than PFJ or PPE (dose dependent)
  • ellagic acid increases expression of p53
  • ellagic acid significantly alters expression of all studied genes, while PPE only affects some.
  • ellagic acid could exhibit an anti-inflammatory effect through down-regulating iNOS, TNF-α, and IL-6 via NF-κB inhibition
  • in vivo (gastric cancer mice) – ellagic acid suppressed tumor growth and reduced final tumor volume in a dose-dependent manner
  • there are higher levels of ellagic acid in peel than in juice
• Conclusion: “Our results revealed that in the case of gastric cancer, EA in comparison to PFJ and PPE, had far more significant anti-cancer effects in several aspects such as apoptosis induction, reducing cell migration, altered expression of genes associated with programmed cell death, reduced expression of inflammatory genes, as well as inhibition of tumor growth in mice.”

2023 Jan (Teniente et al) – Anticancer Effect of Pomegranate Peel Polyphenols against Cervical Cancer

• Pomegranate peel extract is an excellent source of polyphenols, such as punicalagin, punicalin, ellagic acid, and caffeic acid
• These phenolic compounds have antineoplastic activity in in vitro models of cervical cancer through the regulation of cellular redox balance, induction of apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, and modulation of signaling pathways

• pomegranate peel has a significant amount of protein, polysaccharides, minerals (calcium, phosphorus, magnesium, potassium, sodium), and phenolic compounds such as flavonoids (catechin, epicatechin, quercetin, rutin, kaempferol, hesperidine, anthocyanins, procyanidins), hydrolyzable tannins (pedunculagin, punicalin, punicalagin), and phenolic acids (gallic, ellagic, vanillic, caffeic, ferulic, cinnamic, p-coumaric acids)
• Punicalagin (PCN), a hydrolyzable tannin present in pomegranate peel, provides numerous beneficial properties and is associated with anticancer activity in in vitro models because it intervenes in the cell cycle, proliferation/survival signals, and catabolic processes such as apoptosis and autophagy
  • authors observed an increase in ROS generation and alterations in mitochondrial membrane potential, causing a cytotoxic effect on cervical cancer cells.
  • Also downregulated expression of NF-kB and upregulated expression of p53 mRNA, stimulating apoptosis
  • Punicalagin showed dose dependent inhibition of viability of HeLa cells, due to cell cycle arrest, apoptosis.
• Punicalin – another hydrolyzable tannin – demonstrates various therapeutic properties, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, hepatoprotective, antiviral, antibacterial, and anticancer activities
  • treatment with punicalin in conjunction with ellagic acid (EA) (extracted and purified from pomegranate peel) had a dose-dependent cytotoxic and antiproliferative effect on HeLa cells.
  • inhibited Akt/mTOR pathway
• Gallic acid (GA) is a polyphenol found in the peel and arils of pomegranate.
  • has potent antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimutagenic, and anticancer activities
  • causes increase in ROS, decrease in Akt, EGFR
• ellagic acid – another polyphenol found in pomegranate peel
  • ellagic acid causes dose and time dependent decrease in viability of cervical cancer cells
  • increase in ROS and DNA damage (cell death), increase in p53 and p21.
• Caffeic acid (CA) is a phenolic compound found in pomegranate peel and juice
  • Different studies have reported its antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antihypertensive, antidiabetic, and anticancer properties
  • cell cycle arrest, apoptosis
  • metformin + caffeic acid – synergistic antimetastatic effect.
• chlorogenic acid – another polyphenol (also found in coffee beans)
  • when combined with other polyphenols, apoptotic effect was more significant than by itself.
• Delphinidin (DPN) is an anthocyanidin found in the peel, arils, and juice of pomegranate.
  • Its anticancer activity has been observed in liver, breast, ovarian, lung, and cervical cancer cell lines
  • dose dependent apoptotic effect
• Conclusion: ”pomegranate peel polyphenols seem to be a viable alternative for the prevention and treatment of cervical cancer.”
• “Recent studies have demonstrated that pomegrante peel polyphenols, independently or in combination with other compounds or drugs, possess antiproliferative activities in cervical cancer models through the induction of apoptosis, cell cycle arrest, inhibition of DNA synthesis, and modulation of different signaling pathways”

2023 Apr (Habchi et al) – Determination of the Antioxidant and Antiproliferative Properties of Pomegranate Peel Extract Obtained by Ultrasound on HCT-116 Colorectal Cancer Cell Line 

• industrial processing of pomegranate fruits results in huge amounts of by-products, such as the pomegranate peels, which are regarded as waste in the food industry.
• beside the pomegranate fruit itself, this non-edible part of pomegranate has been shown to be rich in bioactive molecules that are responsible for bio activities, such as antimicrobial, antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer activities
• tests in this study showed presence of phenols, flavonoids, terpenoids, sterols and steroids, alkaloids, reducing sugars, and proteins in ethanolic extracts of pomegranate peels
• phenolic compounds (total of 8) and flavonoids (total of 6) in pomegranate peelsare able to scavenge free radicals, and their abundance in an extract contributes to its antioxidant activity.
• pomegranate peel extracts – in colorectal cancer, down-regulate the Wnt pathway, inhibit stem cells, inhibit angiogenesis, inhibit migration, etc.

• Conclusion: “pomegranate peel, which is considered as a food-waste, is rich in bioactive molecules that are effective for the treatment of colorectal cancer.”

 

2023 July (Rahman et al) – Pomegranate-specific natural compounds as onco-preventive and onco-therapeutic compounds: Comparison with conventional drugs acting on the same molecular mechanisms

• Pomegranate was first planted in what is now Iran, but it has also been grown in Northern India and across the Mediterranean area for a very long time
• Because of the presence of hydrolyzable substances in huge quantities, such as anthocyanins and tannins in pomegranate seeds, they are easily digested and have powerful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant qualities
• Pomegranate antioxidant and polyphenol combinations seem to offer a larger range of activity against a variety of free radicals
• Pomegranate anthocyanins are known to have a much higher level of antioxidant activity compared to the antioxidants found in green tea and red wine
• Pomegranate juice’s polyphenolic concentration gives it more antioxidant action compared to green tea and red wine
• Peel, mesocarp, and arils include hydroxybenzoic acids, gallagyl esters, gallotannins, anthocyanins, ellagitannins, and hydroxycinnamic acids.
• “Because most of the phenolic compounds in pomegranate fruit are concentrated in the peel and pericarp, commercial juices produced by squeezing the whole fruits contain large quantities of gallic acid, punicalagin, and ellagic acid, in comparison to hand-squeezed smoothies made from the arils alone”
• Punicalagin, the most frequent pomegranate ellagitannin, ranges from 11 to 20 g/kg in the peel and mesocarp and 4–565 mg/L in the juice
  • Punicalagin and ellagic acid are the principal phenolic components in the peel extract.
  • Punicalagin is also the primary component in the pomegranate juice
  • Punicalagin inhibits NF-κB, mTOR and MAPK pathways
• ellagitannins – pomegranate’s antioxidant action is connected to its polyphenolic compounds, especially ellagitannins
  • bioavailability of dietary ellagitannins is not properly elucidated
  • ellagitannins absorption, plasma clearance, and urolithin metabolites excretion is prolonged for two days following pomegranate juice consumption
  • these compounds exhibited antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities
  • Animal models absorb urolithin metabolites, which accumulate in the colon, prostate, and other tissues
• Pomegranate fruit, juice, seed, and seed oil were all found to be beneficial.
• Punicalagin and ellagic acid are the principal phenolic components in the peel extract, inhibit mTOR pathway
• “Pomegranate is an excellent source of polyphenols, including ellagitannins like punicalagin and punicalin and flavonoids like quercetin and kaempferol”
• “Pomegranate juice is also a good source of flavonoids. The compounds punicalagin and punicalin, which may be found in both the juice and the peel of pomegranate, have the ability to block the AKT pathway in cancer cells
• breast cancer – Pomegranate seed oil and fermented fruit extracts were shown to reduce the number of tumors produced during in vivo investigations on mammary organ culture in mice
  • Cell growth was shown to be inhibited by ellagic acid, ursolic acid, luteolin
• colon cancer – ellagitannin and urolithin impede colon cancer cell growth.
  • achieved by cell cycle arrest and blocking MAPK pathway
• Conclusion: “Oral pomegranate extract alters cancer-related molecular markers, validating preclinical results. However, it has been shown in several randomized controlled studies that pomegranate treatment does not significantly outperform placebo. Later subgroup research showed that pomegranate treatment might help certain cancer patients more than others”
• “In vivo and in vitro testing pointed to the safety of pomegranate products.”

My Take…

Pomegranate is a fruit that is very rich in cancer fighting compounds.

It seems the Pomegranate peel extract has the most anti-cancer polyphenols, although the pomegranate fruit juice and pomegranate seed oil have many anti-cancer bioactive compounds as well.

The topic is quite complicated and medical literature very difficult to digest.

In an “Alternative Cancer Treatment” plan, Pomegranate fruit juice fits into the category “Bioactive Compounds – food” while Pomegranate peel extract is in the “Bioactive Compounds – supplements” category.

 

 

The animal and in vitro studies show very dramatic anti-cancer effects, while the human trials show only mild or modest anti-cancer effects so far.

Best studied cancers with human trials: breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer.

In vivo mouse studies: Breast cancer, prostate cancer, colon cancer, lung cancer, liver cancer, skin cancer, bladder cancer, ovarian, cervical, thyroid cancer.

In vitro cell studies: pancreatic, oral, leukemia, gastric, renal, endometrial, gliomas.

For maximum benefit, you want to consume either the pomegranate peel extract or pomegranate whole fruit juice (rather than juice made from arils only).

Another interesting product is the pomegranate seed oil.

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

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***

On Thursday, June 13th, constituents of 45 MPs paid visits to their riding offices, demanding that they call for a full and immediate arms embargo on Israel. The delegations — part of a national #ArmsEmbargoNow Day of Action — carried giant versions of the #ArmsEmbargoNow statement for MPs to sign.

Constituents rallied, chanted, and called on their MPs to do everything in their power to cut the flow of weapons to and from Israel, from Yellowknife to Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Esquimalt-Saanich-Sooke to Central Nova, and Victoria to Saint John-Rothesay.

A number of delegations were met by police or private security as they attempted to deliver the sign-on letter to their elected representatives; others found that their MP’s staff had closed the office for the day in response to the announcement of their visit.

As of July 14th, 20 of 155 Liberal, 22 of 24 NDP and both Green MPs have signed-on to an abbreviated version of the statement, which acknowledges the catastrophe caused by Israel’s ongoing assault on Gaza, and calls on the Canadian government to impose a full and immediate arms embargo on Israel.

Five Liberal MPs, Yasir Naqvi (Ottawa Centre), Sean Casey (Charlottetown), Chad Collins (Hamilton East—Stoney Creek), Julie Dzerowicz (Davenport), and Helena Jaczek (Markham), broke rank from the party line and signed-on to the statement in the days leading up to the national #ArmsEmbargoNow Day of Action. MP Jaczek signed on just hours before a protest at her office was scheduled to occur.

“Today’s actions put MPs who still have not signed on to the demand for a two-way arms embargo with Israel on notice: When Parliament rises later this month, you can expect your constituents to continue raising the demand at barbecues, picnics, and other public events throughout the summer. We aren’t going on holiday until Canada imposes a full arms embargo on Israel, and you will have no peace in your ridings until Palestine is free,” said Emma Jackson of the Palestine Solidarity Network.

The #ArmsEmbargoNow statement, first published on May 7th, urges the Canadian government to fulfill its legal and moral obligations to do everything in its power to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the serious risk of genocide and from grave violations of human rights and humanitarian law perpetrated by Israel in its ongoing assault on and siege of Gaza, including putting an immediate end to the trade of arms and military technology with Israel. The statement has been endorsed by more than 400 Palestinian associations, labour unions, faith institutions, human rights and environmental organizations, and community groups across Canada.

The full list of MP signatories is available on the #ArmsEmbargoNow website here.

In parallel to this initiative, the Bloc Québecois, which holds 32 seats in Parliament, has sent a letter to Foreign Affairs Minister Melanie Joly, asking that “the Government of Canada temporarily suspend all trade in arms and military technology with Israel.”

Previously, in March, the NDP had put forward a non-binding motion in Parliament that called on Canada to “suspend all trade in military goods and technology with Israel.” Fearing a split in the Liberal caucus, the Trudeau government negotiated a watered-down version of the motion, including a clause that would “cease the further authorization and transfer of arms exports to Israel to ensure compliance with Canada’s arms export regime…” That version passed with 204 MPs in favour and 117 against. It was moved by the NDP with the support of the Bloc Québécois, Greens, and almost all Liberal MPs, including Prime Minister Trudeau and Foreign Affairs Minister Joly. Only the Conservatives and three other MPs voted against it.

At the time, Minister of Foreign Affairs Melanie Joly made a verbal commitment to pause approvals of future export permits of military equipment bound for Israel. However, it is not publicly verifiable that the Government has taken concrete steps to do so, and Global Affairs Canada has confirmed that it has continued to allow the export of military goods to Israel under permits authorized before January 8th, 2024. Crucially, Canada also continues to sign contracts to buy weapons and technology from Israeli arms companies, which the non-binding motion passed in March does not prohibit, just as it fails to close the loopholes that permit Canadian companies to export weapons components to Israel via the United States. The campaign for MPs to publicly support the #ArmsEmbargoNow statement was initiated to address these major shortcomings and to renew the momentum for a real and comprehensive arms embargo on Israel.

“Israel’s assault on Gaza has killed more than 37,200 Palestinians. It is blocking aid, manufacturing a humanitarian disaster and causing children to starve. The Canadian government must take meaningful action to stop this now. It has all the policy tools it needs to sanction Israel and impose a two-way arms embargo, including the Special Economic Measures Act. It must stop obfuscating, and take the very concrete action it is capable of to end its complicity with Israel’s genocidal actions in Gaza,” said Niall Clapham Ricardo, Special Operations Coordinator for Independent Jewish Voices Canada.

“We recognize that ending Canadian arms exports to Israel may impact some workers in the arms industry,” said Simon Black of Labour Against the Arms Trade. “That’s why labour unions, and friends of labour in Parliament, are urging the government to work with unions representing these workers to develop plans for a just transition that secures their livelihoods. Workers do not want to be complicit with Israel’s genocidal violence.”

Last Saturday, Israel carried out a military operation in the Nuseirat refugee camp to free four Israeli hostages and killed more than 270 Palestinians, including at least 64 children. Hundreds more were injured.

“The massacre in Nuseirat is yet another horrific example of Israel’s devaluation of Palestinian lives, one of so many we have witnessed over its more than eight month-long military assault on and siege of Gaza, and in which the Canadian government remains deeply complicit as long as it continues to engage in the arms trade with Israel,” said Rachel Small with World BEYOND War. “MPs from all parties must join their constituents in demanding an arms embargo now to end the flow of all weapons to and from Israel.”

Accounts from Delegation Members

Davenport

“When Davenport for Palestine reps met with Julie Dzerowicz last week, she was initially reluctant to formally support a two-way embargo. We laid out a clear argument about Canada’s ongoing complicity in Israel’s genocide and about how our weapons trade continues to violate both domestic and international law. We emphasized the heartbreak and anger of our communities as we witnessed massacre after massacre, for eight unbearable months. And we were able to point to a very mobilized base in her riding. We could say with confidence that over 300 constituents had emailed asking her to sign the statement, and that dozens had called and visited the office in the previous week alone. We could say, “If you don’t sign, we’ll have a thousand people at your office next Thursday,” and she knew it was true. The community organizing we’d been doing for months matters–it is a powerful force, and Julie signed on the next day. Now we’re sending our members and supporters to other ridings in the GTA to support our neighbours as they push their own MPs to join the call!” – Johanna Lewis, Davenport for Palestine

Brampton East

“Today a small group of residents arrived at Maninder Sidhu’s office, MP of Brampton East, to invite him to sign on to the Arms Embargo Now statement as his colleague Brampton Centre MP Shafqat Ali has done. But when we arrived, we found that his office was closed to the public, and property management proceeded to harass and threaten us. They claimed we had vandalized private property by using scotch tape to hang posters, and that we were trespassing by trying to go to the office of our elected official. After we had made it clear we were leaving, management continued to film us and followed us to our vehicles, tore down our posters, and threatened to call the police. We have been calling our MP for months. We have sent emails and even dropped off pamphlets at his office. Still he has ignored us, Maninder Sidhu has been silent for months. Shame on him for trying to silence his constituents instead of representing us and taking action to end the violence against his own constituents’ family members in Gaza”. – Cara DeSantis, Brampton 4 Ceasefire

Vancouver Granville

“Since we started organizing in late 2023, the growth of VanGran4Palestine’s grassroots movement – with close to 300 engaged citizens in our WhatsApp group, 1,500+ subscribers to our mailing list, and over 3,000 followers on Instagram – has been astonishing. We have used our collective power to push our MP Taleeb Noormohamed much farther than he would otherwise go. When people lead politicians follow.

Over the past six months, we’ve led Taleeb to facilitate meetings for Palestinian Canadians and help expedite processing of PR applications both in and outside of his constituency. He attended our town hall and left to rousing chants of “VOTE YES” to the NDP’s Opposition Day Demands. And while the Liberal Party might have completely watered down these demands in order to agree to them, it was Taleeb that brought them on board, realizing the tide was turning on the Party.

Today, we visited his riding office to demand that he support a full and immediate arms embargo on Israel. We arrived with a large-sized Arms Embargo Now statement, ready for him to sign. We have left it there for him, along with a canvas filled with personal messages from his constituents, making it clear that we will continue to push him to do everything in his power to make the Canadian government cancel existing export permits, close all export loopholes, stop all planned purchases of Israeli weapons, and implement a two-way Arms Embargo on Israel.”

– Atiya Jaffar, Vancouver-Granville for Palestine

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Featured image: Protest outside MP Julie Dabrusin’s office. Photo by Catherine Cachia

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***

According to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mr. Shia Sudani, Syria and Turkey are moving closer to a possible normalization of relations which were broken after the U.S.-NATO attack on Syria for regime change which began in 2011.

Before 2011, Turkish President Recip Tayyip Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were close, and Erdogan famously addressed his counterpart in Damascus as ‘brother’. The two countries shared a long and safe border with business and tourism benefits for both sides. After Erdogan supported the U.S. side in the war on Syria, which utilized international terrorists passing through Turkey as a transit point on their way to fight in Syria, the relationship was broken.

Syria successfully resisted the attack orchestrated by U.S. President Barack Obama but has not recovered fully due to U.S. sanctions imposed. Now, it appears Syria may be close to a restored relationship with its neighbor to the north, as both countries share the same interest in a secure border and the elimination of terrorist groups and paramilitary separatist groups.

SCF’s Steven Sahiounie interviewed Dr. Nidal Kabalan, journalist, political analyst, and former Syrian Ambassador to Turkey.

Steven Sahiounie (SS): Recently, the Iraqi Prime Minister said he hopes to announce a deal between Turkey and Syria to normalize their relationship. In your opinion, what is the groundwork necessary for this to materialize?

Dr. Nidal Kabalan (DNK): Syria’s conditions for normalizing relations with Turkey, which have been relaid by President Assad to the Iraqi Prime Minister, Mr. Shia Sudani, are identical to what has been relayed to previous mediators, such as the Russians and the Iranians. Top of the list is a solid commitment by Turkey to withdraw its occupying forces from parts of Syria, a cessation of support by Turkey to various terrorist groups operating in Idlib and other parts of the country, Ankara’s help in returning Idlib to the control of the Syria state, as well as control over the strategic M4 highway linking the coastal cities with Aleppo and other northern towns, Ankara’s help in lifting illegal and unilateral sanctions which have crippled the Syria economy for over a decade now, reopening legal border crossing points between Syria and Turkey, especially Bab al-Hawa, these are the main conditions that Damascus has long put forward as the basis for normalizing relations with Turkey.

SS: Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, commanded by Mohammed al-Julani, is occupying Idlib. In your view, how will this terrorist group be dealt with, and who will clear out Idlib?

DNK: As far as Hayat Tahrir al-Sham and other groups in other parts of the country, they will have to be dismantled by politics or force, as a precondition for stability and security in the country. Joint efforts by Syria, Turkey, Iraq, Iran, and probably Russia in fighting all terrorist groups that have wreaked havoc in Syria for almost 14 years are a necessity for stability and security in the country.

SS: The SDF, the Kurdish militia aligned with the U.S., had planned to hold elections on June 11, but have postponed them due to threats from Turkey. In your view, will the SDF repair its relationship with Damascus?

DNK: As far as the SDF is concerned, Syria and Turkey could cooperate in removing all armed aspects of the Kurdish militias that have been plundering the wealth of Syria, particularly gas and oil in the northern and northeastern parts of Syria with the help of the Americans, who have been exploiting Syrian gas and oil, and smuggling oil into Iraq, and from there into other parts of the region and the world. Any separatist entity that the Kurdish organizations, militias, and parties have been trying to form in the north of the country will have to be dismantled.

One topic that has enjoyed a consensus between Turkey, Syria, Iran, and Iraq is removing the possibility of any separatist Kurdish entity in this part of the region, so some solution through negotiations.

SS: North of Aleppo is under the occupation of Turkish forces aligned with terrorists. If Turkey restores their relationship with Syria, how will Turkey deal with those terrorists who have been trying to overthrow the Syrian government?

DNK: For the political aspect of the crisis that could be initiated, but any separatist Kurdish entity in this part of Syria, or the region, is a taboo and shall not be permitted by all parties concerned. Other parts of Syria occupied by Turkish forces, or pro-Ankara militias north of Aleppo will have to go through mediation politics or military force and full control of the Syrian state of those territories is a non-negotiable condition for any normalization of ties between Damascus and Ankara.

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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. 

Featured image is from MD

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***

Vaccines often cause various side effects, making it hard to identify common causes. Neurologist Andrew Moulden discovered that vaccines frequently trigger microstrokes, which can lead to a myriad of acute and chronic diseases

Forgotten research from the 1960s, shows that blood cell clumping is a root cause of many diseases — a belief also shared by Chinese Medicine

Colloidal chemistry and zeta potential science reveal that positive charges around blood cells cause clumping. Agents with concentrated positive charges, such as aluminum and the COVID spike protein, are especially problematic

Improving the physiologic zeta potential benefits a wide range of acute and chronic illnesses. A strong case can be made that many conventional and holistic therapies work in part by enhancing zeta potential

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Many medical problems stem from the diagnostic approach of physicians, especially with complex illnesses, which are often misdiagnosed and lead to ongoing patient struggles.

Complex conditions can present with varied symptoms across patients and resemble other illnesses (e.g., fibromyalgia vs. chronic fatigue syndrome). In turn, poorly trained physicians often default to psychiatric explanations, overlooking the true causes.

Vaccine injuries have a wide range of symptoms and hence have confused doctors for over 200 years (with many doctors in the past labeling them as “encephalitis”).¹ Presently, I believe three main mechanisms underlie the myriad of vaccine injury:

My focus was drawn to the zeta potential concept once I realized that many of the mysteries of COVID-19 (and later the COVID-19 vaccines) were due to the spike protein being extremely disruptive to the body’s zeta potential. I now believe that patient outcomes would significantly improve if the medical system prioritized the zeta potential.

Andrew Moulden 

Andrew Moulden³ was a Canadian neuroscientist and doctor specializing in neuropsychiatry. During his clinical training, he noticed young children showing subtle neurological signs of strokes that his colleagues missed. Over time, he found these strokes often occurred soon after vaccination and could lead to severe neurological disorders like autism.

Note: Vaccine injury reports as far back as the early 1800s contain the same signs Moulden noticed.⁴

Moulden realized that the subtle stroke signs doctors look for in adults should also be assessed in children. Because these strokes in infants are often missed, many conditions are misdiagnosed or attributed to unknown causes. One scientific challenge is making “invisible” issues visible. In neurology, disruptions in brain function, often due to impaired blood flow, can reveal stroke locations through careful physical examination.

Moulden found that cranial nerves in the brainstem, particularly in watershed areas with less redundant blood supply, were vulnerable to strokes. These strokes, caused by impaired blood flow, often due to increased blood thickness, were missed in infants, leading to conditions misdiagnosed or attributed to unknown causes. Key cranial nerves indicating vaccine-caused microstrokes include:

Once you know how to look for these symptoms (e.g., a loss of smooth eye motion), they are very easy to spot, and you will gradually become aware of how far reaching the neurological damage that results from vaccination can be (as any part of the brain can be affected).

Moulden’s work also suggested strokes were also occurring in other watershed areas of the body, such as internal organs and speech centers. Evidence included:

• Autopsy studies showing strokes in internal organs of children with congenital rubella.
• Similar disease processes in teenagers and adults after HPV or anthrax vaccination.
• One of the most striking examples was the children of soldiers who received the anthrax vaccine¹⁰ and were born without limbs¹¹ (thalidomide was also notorious for doing this by blocking the formation of new blood vessels).¹²
• Neurodegenerative processes in the elderly¹³ and psychiatric disorders being linked to cranial nerve damage.

Note: A major issue in conventional medicine is the failure to recognize that neurological damage can lead to psychiatric issues.¹⁴ Consequently, emotional changes in patients with nervous system injuries are often misattributed as the cause rather than a symptom of their illness.

Moulden thus began exploring what universal response was leading to these microstrokes and how they could be treated. From this, he produced three videos describing the problem (which can be viewed here). Unfortunately, shortly before releasing a second series on the solutions for these injuries, he died under suspicious circumstances. However, we now have many clues as to what Moulden discovered. 

Blood Sludging

In the medical world, a long-standing puzzle revolves around how small insults to the body can lead to widespread illness or even death. One key factor in this equation is blood sludging, a phenomenon observed for centuries where the blood clumps together and thickens under certain disease conditions. Melvin Knisely, Ph.D.,¹⁵ in the mid-20th century made critical discoveries about this phenomenon.

Knisely’s research, particularly with malaria-infected monkeys, revealed that certain severe illnesses could trigger significant blood sludging,¹⁶ starting in small vessels and eventually spreading to larger ones, which was typically fatal (unless prevented with the anticoagulant heparin). This thickening of blood can be likened to traffic jams, disrupting the body’s natural blood-flow, and eventually leading to gridlock (death).

Additionally, he discovered that this sludging could be seen externally through the eyes, providing a non-invasive way to assess this process throughout the body.

From this, he discovered the greatest blood sludging was seen in critically ill hospital patients — something Pierre Kory MD also observed with point-of-care ultrasound, as once micro clots within the IVC¹⁷ became echogenic (visible), patients died shortly after.

Knisely’s grading scale for blood sludging severity correlated with disease prognosis, highlighting its clinical significance.

After learning of this, we attempted to replicate Knisely’s microscope and have been able to see the same sludging he observed 80 years ago in his patients. This video, for example was taken from the eyes of a COVID-19 vaccine-injured patient:

Zeta Potential

When particles are placed in water, one of three things can happen:

• They don’t mix (e.g., oil floats to the top, sand sinks to the bottom).
• They dissolve (e.g., salt).
• They form a colloidal suspension (e.g., milk) in which each particle is repelled from the other and evenly distributed.

In the case of colloidal suspensions, their stability is determined by what causes their particles to come together (gravity separating things by weight, the inherent molecular attraction between objects),¹⁸ and what pushes them apart.

The first method (zeta potential) refers to the charge difference between the water ions (that coat the charged ions) and the charge of the surrounding water.

Because electrical repulsion due to zeta potential is easier to control, it is typically the factor focused on when trying to improve colloidal dispersion (e.g., to eliminate blood sludging).

One of the most effective agents for reducing zeta potential is aluminum (which explains why it’s frequently used to separate organic matter from water in sewage plants or to clot wounds). Moulden thus concluded aluminum’s widespread use in vaccines likely accounted for many of their side effects. Similarly, consider the effect the COVID-19 vaccine’s spike protein has on the blood.¹⁹

The key thing to understand about zeta potential is that when its repulsion no longer suffices to overcome the attractive forces in a colloidal system, it will clump together, initially in small clumps (termed agglomerations), and then as the zeta potential worsens, form larger clumps.

Note: The normal zeta potential of a red blood cell is around -15.7 millivolts.²⁰ Additionally, as red blood cells age, they lose their negatively charged sialic acid,²¹ which worsens their zeta potential.

Thomas Riddick, a pioneer in this field,²² discovered that the body maintains blood zeta potential near the agglomeration threshold so it can clot in case of bleeding.

With further study, Riddick found the degree of blood sludging or loss of physiologic zeta potential significantly varied from person to person (due to modern life disrupting it), and Knisely’s grading scale for blood flow in the eyes could be used to accurately predict who was at risk of an arrhythmia, a stroke, or a fatal heart attack.

Most importantly, Riddick discovered that once the colloidal dispersion of the blood was fixed, heart arrhythmias normalized and circulatory problems greatly improved. For reference, this is the scale Knisely and Riddick (and now us) used to evaluate blood flow in the eyes.

Note: I believe Knisely’s observations of profound blood sludging in the eyes of severely ill hospital patients account for why IV saline (which improves zeta potential) so frequently benefits people who are sick enough to require hospitalization.

Likewise, Knisely also observed that certain agents, such as hydroxychloroquine, reversed blood sludging. This led him to suspect a significant degree of the anti-malarial benefit of hydroxychloroquine actually arose from it reducing blood sludging; I also suspect this property may account for hydroxychloroquine’s value in treating autoimmune conditions and COVID-19 (both conditions linked to poor zeta potential).

Riddick gradually discovered blood sludging was widespread in America and eventually concluded our food and water supply were contaminated with positive ions that were destructive to zeta potential. He attributed this to:

• Potassium being replaced by sodium in processed foods.
• Aluminum being used in municipal water systems.
• Aluminum kitchenware.
• Aluminum being added to many foods (e.g. most salt has aluminum added to keep it from caking).
• Many medications (e.g., antacids) are full of aluminum and other problematic metals.
• Many foods are stored in metal cans (acidic foods leach these metals).

Riddick also performed experiments that showed consuming water stored in aluminum significantly impaired microcirculation. Sadly, we are now witnessing a trend of storing water in aluminum cans. For this reason, I will never drink anything from an aluminum can (fortunately, a few zeta-potential restoring bottled water brands still exist).

Note: The first head of the FDA fought to stop aluminum from entering general use but was muscled out by industry.²³

Lastly, in addition to these, I also believe vaccines, EMFs, certain chronic infections, and humans no longer being electrically grounded to the Earth²⁴ are significantly impairing humanity’s zeta potential.

Note: As mentioned above, a case can also be made impaired zeta potential creates autoimmunity (e.g., aluminum causes both, and Chinese medicine believes blood stasis leads to autoimmunity).

Vaccines, Microbes and Zeta Potential

Riddick also concluded that bacterial metabolism of proteins lowers their zeta potential by decarboxylating them. Many sewage treatment systems (e.g., septic tanks) work under this principle, as over time, decarboxylation (which removes negative charges) destroys the colloidal stability of the organic matter suspended in wastewater, causing it to sludge at the bottom.

Riddick next assessed how zeta potential changed in humans during acute infections. Much like Knisely had observed in the eyes of his acutely ill patients, Riddick consistently observed a decrease in physiologic zeta potential during an infectious condition.

These observations were important because they provided a means to explain why the elderly (who cannot tolerate a further drop in their zeta potential) are so much more vulnerable to infections like influenza. Sadly, it also likely explains their greater susceptibility to vaccine injuries (e.g., I once admitted a patient to the hospital who suffered a classic zeta-potential collapse from a pneumococcal vaccine).

Lastly, many microbes carry positive charges, which allow them to adhere to the negatively charged surfaces of the body. These hence cause them to disrupt zeta potential once they’ve sufficiently reproduced in the body.

This is a major problem in Lyme disease and chronic mold toxicity, which in part explains why therapies for those diseases often fail unless something (e.g., treating zeta potential) is also done to address the fluid stagnation they create (particularly within the lymphatics).

Fortunately, there are many ways to address this. Ozone, for instance oxidizes those charges, and I believe this accounts for the dramatic improvements sometimes observed after one receives an oxidative therapy.

Similarly, a 2022 paper²⁵ that showed the spike protein directly impaired blood cell zeta potential also found that ivermectin dispersed blood cells the spike protein had clumped together (which may explain the instantaneous normalization of vital signs sometimes seen after ivermectin is given to severely ill hospital patients).

Protein Misfolding

Since folded proteins are essentially colloidal suspensions, ions that disrupt zeta potential can also cause protein misfolding and denaturing (something that also happens to egg whites when they are heated in a pan). I believe this is a key reason why the plaques found in Alzheimer’s disease (which are misfolded proteins) are found to contain aluminum.^26,27

Note: Since the clearance of Alzheimer’s plaques depends upon the brain’s glymphatic system,²⁸ it is also possible that the improvement in cognitive decline that is frequently seen after improving zeta potential is due to improved cranial blood flow or cranial venous and lymphatic drainage.

Likewise, the COVID spike protein (produced by the vaccines) has been linked to protein misfolding diseases such as CJD, amyloidosis, and unusual fibrous²⁹ (amyloid) clots embalmers have found within the vaccinated, which appear to result from misfolded blood proteins the body can’t break down.

Conclusion

Healthy fluid circulation is essential for health, and the zeta potential concept begins to explain why so many different conditions can lead to similar symptomatology. In the case of vaccines, this model explains why:

• Vaccines consistently cause harm.
• There is so much variability in vaccine injuries.
• Vaccine damage is cumulative, as existing impairment of the microcirculation (and other fluid circulations) will progressively worsen with each successive vaccine.
• Many infectious diseases can sometimes cause similar (but not as severe) injuries as vaccines.

The zeta potential concept profoundly changed my medical practice, and I now believe that many effective holistic therapies (e.g., EDTA chelation) work in part because they can restore physiologic zeta potential. Thank you for reading, and I sincerely hope the knowledge here can benefit you in the same way it has many of our patients.

Author’s note: This is an abbreviated version of a full-length article. For the entire read with much more specific details and sources, please click here.

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A Midwestern Doctor (AMD) is a board-certified physician in the Midwest and a longtime reader of Mercola.com. I appreciate his exceptional insight on a wide range of topics and I’m grateful to share them. I also respect his desire to remain anonymous as he is still on the front lines treating patients. To find more of AMD’s work, be sure to check out The Forgotten Side of Medicine on Substack.

Notes

¹ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, May 10, 2024

² The Forgotten Side of Medicine, June 24, 2024

³ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, March 31, 2024

⁴ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, July 24, 2023

⁵ Wikipedia, Abducens nerve

⁶ Wikipedia, Facial nerve

⁷ Wikipedia, Bell’s palsy

⁸ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, June 15, 2022

⁹ Wikipedia, Trochlear nerve

¹⁰ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, February 16, 2023

¹¹ Children’s Health Defense, November 9, 2020

¹² Wikipedia, Thalidomide

¹³ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, July 20, 2023

¹⁴ The Forgotten Side of Medicine, December 22, 2023

¹⁵ Wikipedia, Melvin H. Knisely

¹⁶ Angiology, 1964 Sep;15:411-6

¹⁷ Wikipedia, Inferior vena cava

¹⁸ Wikipedia, Van der Waals force

¹⁹ International Journal of Vaccine Theory, Practice, and Research, 2022;2:2

²⁰ Exp Parasitol. 2012 Jun;131(2):245-51

²¹ Biologia, 2013;68:762–765

²² Journal Awwa, 1961, Aug;53:8

²³ Harvey W. Wiley, 1929 (Archived)

²⁴ Earthing, 2019, November

²⁵ International Journal of Molecular Science, 2022 Dec; 23(24): 15480

²⁶ Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2011;23(4):567-98

²⁷ Journal of Alzheimer’s Disease, 2020;73(4):1627-1635

²⁸ Wikipedia, Glymphatic system

²⁹ Bioscience Reports 2021 Aug 27;41(8):BSR20210611

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The UN Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) has warned of “catastrophic” environmental and health risks in the besieged Gaza Strip amid an accumulation of waste in populated areas in the besieged enclave.

“As of 9 June, over 330,000 tons of waste have accumulated in or near populated areas across Gaza, posing catastrophic environmental & health risks,” UNRWA said in a statement on Thursday. “Children rummage through trash daily.”

The UN agency reiterated its call for an immediate ceasefire:

“Unimpeded humanitarian access and ceasefire now are crucial to restore humane living conditions.”

As of 9 June, over 330,000 tons of waste have accumulated in or near populated areas across #Gaza, posing catastrophic environmental & health risks. Children rummage through trash daily

Unimpeded humanitarian access + #CeasefireNow are crucial to restore humane living conditions pic.twitter.com/sn6hS6K1P9

— UNRWA (@UNRWA) June 13, 2024

It earlier said Palestinians in Gaza “have gone through relentless suffering for over 8 months,” emphasizing that “Nowhere is safe. Conditions are deplorable. Food, water & medical supplies are far from being enough.”

Aid Mission Struggles

In its latest Situation Report, UNRWA said that between June 1 – June 6, out of the 17 coordinated humanitarian assistance missions to northern Gaza, eight (47 percent) were facilitated by Israeli authorities, three (18 percent) were denied access, four (23 percent) were impeded, and two (12 percent) were canceled, “due to operational or security reasons.”

Citing the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), UNRWA said that in addition, out of the 74 coordinated humanitarian assistance missions to areas in southern Gaza, the Israeli authorities facilitated 52 (70 percent), three (four percent) were denied, 12 (16 percent) were impeded, and seven (10 percent) were canceled.

“Many missions classified as impeded experienced extended delays, with some delays reaching up to nine hours at sensitive and insecure locations, placing humanitarian personnel at increased security risks,” the report said.

Staggering Death Toll

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, 37,232 Palestinians have been killed, and 85,037 wounded in Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza starting on October 7.

Moreover, at least 11,000 people are unaccounted for, presumed dead under the rubble of their homes throughout the Strip.

Palestinian and international organizations say that the majority of those killed and wounded are women and children.

The Israeli war has resulted in an acute famine, mostly in northern Gaza, resulting in the death of many Palestinians, mostly children.

The Israeli aggression has also resulted in the forceful displacement of nearly two million people from all over the Gaza Strip, with the vast majority of the displaced forced into the densely crowded southern city of Rafah near the border with Egypt – in what has become Palestine’s largest mass exodus since the 1948 Nakba.

Israel says that 1,200 soldiers and civilians were killed during the Al-Aqsa Flood Operation on October 7. Israeli media published reports suggesting that many Israelis were killed on that day by ‘friendly fire’.

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From Russia’s perspective, the success of any Chinese-facilitated talks on Ukraine ahead of and at November’s G20 Summit in Rio is dependent on the Swiss ones’ failure, hence its total opposition to this weekend’s event and anger at all those of its partners like India who send even low-level representation.

RT earlier reported on a Japanese broadcaster’s claim that the draft joint statement which was prepared for this weekend’s Swiss talks on Ukraine won’t call for the withdrawal of Russian forces from all the territories claimed by Kiev and will also likely omit any mention of restoring Ukraine’s territorial integrity. It’ll instead allegedly only focus on “the safety of nuclear power plants, food security, the release of prisoners and the return of children evacuated by Russia from the conflict zone.”

Russia still opposes these talks despite their reportedly scale-backed agenda as proven by what Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told Izvestia:

“They are trying to lure representatives of the Global South there by such rather primitive means, putting not Zelensky’s formula, which is actually in the organizers’ plan, to the fore, but secondary issues. You are for food security, for the safety of nuclear power plants, you support the exchange of prisoners, right? All right, then come and let’s talk.”

He also said that

“These are absolutely ridiculous underhand games, they can be seen with the naked eye. It is already clear that this is a waste of time, a kind of action whose value is zero, but which is being used to the maximum to maintain the anti-Russian psychosis.”

Grushko’s harsh rhetoric mirrors former President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s, who tweeted late last month that all the countries which attend those talks are essentially taking Kiev’s side over Moscow’s.

It’s unimportant to Russia that the agenda has reportedly been scaled back since all that matters is that these talks are being held without its participation in the first place. Previous rounds of discussions on this conflict in Saudi Arabia didn’t elicit such a strong reaction, however, even though Russia also wasn’t there either. This observation makes one wonder what’s really driving Russia’s angry response to these latest ones since there isn’t any precedent for what its top representatives are saying about them.

It can’t be known for sure, but it might be that Presidents Putin and Xi agreed to promote a parallel non-Western peace process on Ukraine during the Russian leader’s trip to China last month. That would explain why China decided not to attend the Swiss talks, for which it was praised by Russia, while also unveiling a joint six-point consensus with this year’s G20 host Brazil. This sequence of events unfolded after President Putin’s visit, thus prompting speculation that it was coordinated with him.

From Russia’s perspective, the success of any Chinese-facilitated talks on Ukraine ahead of and at November’s G20 Summit in Rio is dependent on the Swiss ones’ failure, hence its total opposition to this weekend’s event and anger at all those of its partners like India who send even low-level representation. The decision has apparently been made to capitalize upon their failure to give momentum to the talks that China and Brazil might soon jointly organize with Russia’s endorsement.

The fewer Global South countries that participate in the Swiss talks and the more thy participate in the potential Sino-Brazilian ones will discredit the former while lending greater legitimacy to the latter. Some of them that earlier committed to attending the Swiss talks are reportedly backing out at the last minute while Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi confirmed that more Global South states are endorsing his country’s joint peace consensus with Brazil. The writing is thus on the wall for what’ll likely come next.

With this in mind, Russia’s continued opposition to the Swiss talks in spite of their reportedly scaled-back agenda makes sense, though it would have been better had Medvedev and Grushko not used such harsh language in their statements about them. Their sharp words risk inadvertently offending those of Russia’s close Global South partners like India that’ll still attend this weekend’s event. Hopefully those countries won’t be excluded from the potentially forthcoming Sino-Brazilian peace talks as punishment.

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

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

Featured image is from the author

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Since the 1980s, the 85-mile stretch of the Mississippi River that connects New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, has been known as “Cancer Alley.” The name stems from the fact that the area’s residents have a 95 percent greater chance of developing cancer than the average American. A big reason for this is the concentration of industrial facilities along the corridor — particularly petrochemical manufacturing plants, many of which emit ethylene oxide, an extremely potent toxin that is considered a carcinogen by the Environmental Protection Agency and has been linked to breast and lung cancers. 

But even though the general risks of living in the region have been clear for decades, the exact dangers are still coming into focus — and the latest data show that the EPA’s modeling has dramatically underestimated the levels of ethylene oxide in southeastern Louisiana. On average, according to a new study published on Tuesday, ethylene oxide levels in the heart of Cancer Alley are more than double the threshold above which the EPA considers cancer risk to be unacceptable.

To gather the new data, researchers from Johns Hopkins University drove highly sensitive air monitors along a planned route where a concentration of industrial facilities known to emit ethylene oxide are situated. The monitors detected levels that were as many as 10 times higher than EPA thresholds, and the researchers were able to detect plumes of the toxin spewing from the facilities from as many as seven miles away. The resulting measurements were significantly higher than the EPA and state environmental agency’s modeled emissions values for the area. 

“From over two decades of doing these measurements, we’ve always found that the measured concentrations of pretty much every pollutant is higher than what we expect,” said Peter DeCarlo, an associate professor at Johns Hopkins University and an author of the study. “In the case of ethylene oxide, this is particularly important because of the health risks associated with it at such low levels.”

There is no safe level of ethylene oxide exposure. The EPA calculates exposure thresholds for various chemicals by assessing the level at which it causes an increased incidence of cancer. For ethylene oxide, the EPA has determined that breathing in nearly 11 parts per trillion of the chemical for a lifetime can result in one additional case of cancer per 10,000 people. The higher the concentration, the higher the risk of cancer. 

DeCarlo and his team found that, in three quarters of the regions where they collected data, ethylene oxide levels were above the 11 parts per trillion threshold. On average, the level was roughly 31 parts per trillion. In some extreme cases, they observed area averages above 109 parts per trillion. The findings were published in the peer-reviewed academic journal Environmental Science & Technology. The study was funded in part by Bloomberg Philanthropies, which launched a campaign in 2022 to block the construction and expansion of new petrochemical facilities.

“We definitely saw parts per billion levels at the fence line of some of these facilities, which means people inside the fence line — workers, for example — are getting exposed to much, much higher concentrations over the course of their day,” DeCarlo said. 

Ethylene oxide is emitted from petrochemical manufacturing and plants that sterilize medical equipment. Earlier this year, the EPA finalized rules for ethylene oxide emissions from both types of facilities. The rule that applies to the manufacturing facilities in Louisiana requires companies to install monitors and report data to the EPA and state environmental agency. If the monitors record concentrations above a certain “action level,” companies will be required to make repairs. The rule is expected to reduce emissions of ethylene oxide and chloroprene, another toxic chemical, by 80 percent. Companies have two years to comply. 

Heather McTeer Toney, who heads the campaign against petrochemical facilities at Bloomberg Philanthropies, told Grist in an email that the new measurements provide a baseline understanding as the EPA’s new regulations take effect. “The EPA’s new rule was necessary but should only be the start of how we begin to make things right here,” she said. “I’m hopeful to see levels go down, but the data suggest we have a long way to go.” 

Tracey Woodruff, a professor studying the impact of chemicals on health at the University of California in San Francisco, said that the study “affirms that EPA is doing the right thing to regulate” ethylene oxide and that the agency “needs to improve their modeling data.” The levels identified by the researchers are 9 times higher than those estimated by the EPA’s models.

For residents in the area, the study’s findings confirm their lived experience. Sharon Lavigne, the founder of Rise St. James, a community organization battling the expansion of the petrochemical industry in St. James Parish, told Grist that the study “is a step in the right direction” and helps the community get a deeper understanding of what they’re being exposed to. But ultimately, without accountability and follow-through, monitoring data will do little to help her family and neighbors. 

“These monitors are good, but in the meantime, people are dying,” she said.

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Naveena Sadasivam is a Senior Staff Writer of Grist.

Featured image: Cattle graze next to the Huntsman plant in Geismar, a town near St. Gabriel. (David Grunfeld/The Times-Picayune and The Advocate/Source)

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Despite soaring fatalities, massive devastation and rising famine in Gaza, the Biden administration continues to arm and protect Israel from criticism and condemnation. The US claims its UN Security Council resolution is aimed at getting Hamas to agree to a ceasefire, captive swap, massive injection of humanitarian aid into Gaza as a first step in halting Israel’s war and proceeding toward the “two-state solution” of a Palestinian state alongside Israel. Hamas has welcomed the resolution, but Israel insists that the war will continue until Hamas is eliminated. It remains to be seen if the Biden administration will exert pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to abide by the resolution.

Israel believes it can treat Gaza as it pleases without repercussions from the US, the sole global power capable of leveraging Israel to do so. Due to its refusal to rein in Israel so far, the administration has become complicit in Israel’s alleged war crimes, including abuses of children.

On June 7, the anniversary of the launch of the eight-month war, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres added Israel to the “blacklist” of countries that harm children during armed conflict, joining Somalia, Myanmar, Afghanistan, Nigeria and others. Israel’s UN ambassador Gilad Erdan called this a “shameful decision” which is “outrageous and wrong”. He said the Israeli army “is the most moral in the world”. Israeli leaders await warrants from the International Criminal Court for alleged war crimes in Gaza while the International Court of Justice is examining charges that Israel as a country is committing genocide in Gaza.

Nearly 37,000 Palestinians have been killed, including more than 15,500 children, according to Gaza’s media office. At least 8,000 Gazans remain missing, most believed to be under the rubble of buildings brought down by US super-bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes.

Writing in the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz, columnist Gideon Levy cited UNICEF, the UN children’s agency, as reporting that 17,000 children “have lost at least one of their parents; 3,000 have lost as least one limb. Nine out of ten children in the Gaza Strip suffer from ‘acute nutritional deficiency’”.

The lack of nutritional food has been caused by Israeli limitations on the entry of clean water, food, medicine and fuel supplies. The US-funded Famine Early Warning Network (FEWS NET) said it is “possible but not likely” than famine was taking place in northern Gaza as early as April but was impossible to document because of hostilities. FEWS NET said that Palestinians living in Rafah and the south are also suffering from the disruption of supplies because the main crossing from Egypt for humanitarian goods has been closed since Israel mounted its Rafah offensive on May 6.

Instead of insisting Israel open multiple crossings and flood Gaza with food, medical supplies and fuel to power hospitals, de-salination plants and sewage facilities, President Joe Biden opted for the sea corridor between the Cypriot port of Larnaca and Gaza. He ordered the US military to install a massive floating pier complex off the coast of Gaza. This is meant to receive ships carrying 90-150 lorry loads of essential supplies daily to aid agencies operating in Gaza. This is far below the essential 500-600 daily loads to rescue Gaza’s children and their starving families.

In its initial days of operation, the project delivered 569 tonnes of aid but none of this quickly reached Gazans in need. A reporter for The Economist Gregg Carlstrom posted on X, “The pier took two months and $320 million to build, lasted 12 days, and delivered less than 60 trucks’ worth of food” before it broke.

The pier connected to Gaza was swept away and damaged by a rough sea. The pieces were saved and towed to Israel’s Ashdod Port where the pier was repaired and returned to the Gaza shore, allowing for the flow of aid to com-mence. However, the World Food Programme (WFP) chief Cindy McCain, a Biden appointee — said the agency had “paused” its distribution of aid entering from the pier project because of insecurity onshore.

Her decision followed Israel’s military June 8th operation to free four Israeli hostages which killed 274 Gazans, wounded nearly 900 and levelled areas of Nuseirat refugee camp. She said WFP warehouses had been “rocketed” and a staff member injured. This amounts to another setback for Biden’s pet project which was never going to bring enough food and medicine to Gaza’s hungry, frightened children.

The destruction of the strip’s healthcare system means that chidlren are not receiving care to recover from injuries, starvation and mental distress. Malnutrition causes both physical and mental stunting while unaddressed trauma can create lifelong mental illness and depression.

Last week, UNICEF said Gaza is among the worst places in the world for children. The agency reported that severe malnutrition has had a “catastrophic impact” on 90 per cent of Gaza’s infants and toddlers and their families. By March, the population of 2.3 million suffered from “high levels of acute food insecurity, with half the population expected to face catastrophic conditions” next month.

A joint document from the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) and the WFP warned that unless hostilities halt, relief agencies gain full access, assistance is stepped up, and essential services are restored, “over a million people, half the population of Gaza, are expected to face death and starvation by mid-July.” Gaza and Sudan head the list of the world’s critical hunger “hotspots”.

FAO Director QU Dongyu said, “Acting ahead of crises can save lives, reduce food shortages and protect livelihoods at a much lower cost than a not timely humanitarian response.”

McCain stated, “Once a famine is declared, it is too late, many people will have already starved to death. In 2011 in Somalia, half of the 250,000 people “who died of hunger perished before famine was officially declared. The world failed to heed the warnings at the time”. McCain added, “We have proven solutions to stop these crises in their tracks, but we need the resources and the political will to implement them at scale before more lives are lost.”

Let us see whether the Biden administration has the courage and political will to ensure that Israel agrees to and implements the US Security Council resolution.

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Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in a restricted bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

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Israeli soldiers were filmed firing a trebuchet, a lever to throw projectiles used during ancient and mediaeval warfare, along the Lebanese border. 

Footage circulated on social media showed troops launching incendiaries across the border using a trebuchet, in an attempt to burn Lebanese vegetation and thickets. 

The Israeli army confirmed on Thursday that the footage was genuine, but said the weapon would not be used widely. 

“This is a local initiative and not a tool that has come into widespread use,” the military said in a statement. 

“The area on the Lebanese border is characterised by boulders, thickets, and dense thorn vegetation, which poses a challenge to the IDF forces deployed in defence.”

The trebuchet first appeared in China in the fourth century BCE, with the ability to throw projectiles further than earlier forms of artillery. It could also carry and launch heavier projectiles than standard catapults.

It lost its relevance in the 15th century with the advent of gunpowder artillery. 

Israeli media suggested that launching projectiles into Lebanon was aimed at exposing Hezbollah fighters using the dense foliage as cover in the area. It could also be in preparation for a ground invasion. 

Since the beginning of hostilities along the Lebanese border, ongoing since the start of Israel’s war on Gaza in October 2023, Israeli troops have reportedly used Molotov cocktails, incendiary drones, and white phosphorous to set bushes in Lebanon on fire. 

Footage circulating on social media shows Israeli soldiers using a trebuchet to launch incendiaries at Lebanon. pic.twitter.com/PYMyCZcOWM

— Emanuel (Mannie) Fabian (@manniefabian) June 13, 2024

Israeli forces have unlawfully dropped white phosphorus munitions on densely populated areas in southern Lebanon, Human Rights Watch warned recently.

Lebanon faces high risks of wildfires due to Israeli attacks, mainly due to the use of white phosphorous, according to a report in L’Orient Today. 

Wildfires broke out in several southern villages last month, following artillery shelling and white phosphorus attacks, the report said.

Northern Israel also experienced intense forest fires following a surge of rocket and drone strikes from Lebanon. 

On Wednesday, Israeli air strikes hit a convoy of trucks in Lebanon’s Hermel region near the border with Syria, killing several people. It was the northernmost strike on Lebanon since the war began. 

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Featured image: Israeli troops filmed using a trebuchet to throw projectiles into a large thicket area along the Lebanon border (Screengrab/X)

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Ukraine’s new Mobilisation Law, which allows prisoners to join the army, will not help Kiev fill its ranks as the prison population is not even big enough to cover for one month’s losses in the war devastated country. Even more alarmingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, prison wardens are using changes in the mobilisation law as an opportunity to illegally extort money.

There are currently about 46,000 people in Ukrainian prisons and detention centres, which Ukrainian officials say is a pool that could enable the mobilisation of 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners. The whole prison population cannot be mobilised since the law prohibits those convicted of serious crimes, such as premeditated murder, rape and sexual violence, and crimes against national security from joining the Ukrainian military.

In any case, even if they could be recruited it would not solve Kiev’s immense manpower problems considering that the Ukrainian army suffers monthly losses of 50,000 personnel. At the same time, with information being so widespread today, including in prison, it is doubtful that there will be many willing to leave incarceration and go to the front where they face certain death by artillery, aerial bombs, drones, and other unrelenting means employed by Russian forces.

A law signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky allowing some Ukrainian convicts to serve in the army in exchange for the possibility of parole is seen by even Western analysts as a move that underscores Kiev’s desperate attempts to replenish its ranks after more than two years of war.

According to Kiev, about 4,000 prisoners submitted a request to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and some of them have already gone to the front. Kiev even announced the creation of assault squads from the mobilised criminals, showing how critical the manpower issue has become.

After more than two years of special military operations, due to terrible trench battles, huge losses and defeats on the battlefield, the enthusiasm for enlisting in the army in Ukraine is declining. Even the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, previously admitted that in the first six months of the war, “everyone who wanted to” join the army already did and that now because Ukrainians are not motivated to serve and are trying to avoid mobilisation in every possible way, the forced mobilisation in Ukraine  and new amendments in the law to allow for new recruits, including prisoners, will continue.

Forced or, rather, violent mobilisation has caused outrage in Ukraine. The facts show that practically there are no people willing to join the military since Ukrainians are not blinded by propaganda and fully understand that they are losing the war. It is evident that Ukrainians are not ready to face certain death and are desperately avoiding conscription, which is why the Kiev regime is using such cruelty during mobilisation – the brutal beatings in the centre of Kiev, the breaking of limbs in Kharkov, and much more, proving, first of all, that people do not want to go fight.

The Guardian recently accompanied Ukrainian military recruiter Pavlo Pimakho on the streets of Kiev’s Sviatoshyn district, and quoted him as saying,

“I don’t judge people who avoid the draft but I do feel offended. We stood in long queues desperate to volunteer, and these guys are trying everything to evade serving. All the brave people have already volunteered.”

The mobilisation law has also only deepened the problems with corruption in Ukraine. Oleg Tsvili, a human rights activist and head of the “NGO Defense of Prisoners of Ukraine,” indicates that employees of prison colony administrations extort money from convicts who want to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to have their request for mobilisation accepted for consideration. If the prisoner has no money, he is offered to pay after receiving his first salary as a soldier.

Ukraine’s controversial mobilisation law, which will, among other things, allow for the conscription of prisoners, came into force in May, since Kiev faces the challenge of increasing the number of troops amid a new Russian offensive in the direction of Kharkov, the country’s second largest city. As already observed, the prison population is nowhere near sufficient to alleviate Ukraine’s manpower struggle, and neither will be reducing conscription age by two years. For this reason, it can be expected that as the struggle deepens, Kiev will likely once again reduce the age limit and implement other desperate measures, which, once again, will not solve the manpower issue.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

“We were surprised at the performance of the hypersonic missiles that the Russians had employed.

We were surprised because they were not just effective in terms of speed, but they were unstoppable and accurate and precise. 

So we know now that they have an arsenal of hypersonic missiles that are very lethal and effective, they are all high-end explosive conventional warheads, but obviously some of them can carry nuclear warheads if necessary.”

Watch Douglas Macgregor in the video below.

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***

Last Year on June 14, we commemorated Kari’s 100th birthday

Today June 14, 2024, one year later we celebrate Kari Polanyi Levitt’s 101st birthday.

The legacy of Kari Polanyi Levitt and her father Karl Polanyi will live forever. 

While Kari’s health is fragile, more than ever she remains firm in her incisive understanding and analysis of world events, committed to national sovereignty and fundamental human rights. 

She constitutes a powerful voice in the understanding and analysis of US hegemony and the global political economy.

Her first book published in 1970 entitled, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, predicted with foresight more than half a century ago, what is happening today.

“First published in 1970, Silent Surrender helped educate a generation of students about Canadian political economy. Kari Polanyi Levitt details the historical background of foreign investments in Canada, their acceleration since World War II, and the nature of intrusions by multinational corporations into a sovereign state”.

“And I think it has. It has happened. We have less sovereignty than we had some time ago.” (Kari Polanyi Levitt, June 30, 2021)

June 14, 2024. Long Live Kari Polanyi Levitt

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Few 20th-century thinkers have had such a lasting and profound influence as Karl Polanyi. “Some books refuse to go away — they get shot out of the water but surface again and remain afloat,” Charles Kindleberger, the economic historian, remarked about his masterpiece The Great Transformation. This remains truer than ever, 60 years since Polanyi’s death, and 80 since the book’s publication. As societies continue to wrestle the bounds of capitalism, the book arguably remains the sharpest critique of market liberalism ever written.

Born in Austria in 1886, Polanyi was raised in Budapest in a prosperous German-speaking bourgeois family. Even though the latter was nominally Jewish, Polanyi converted to Christianity — or, more precisely, to Christian socialism — early on. Following the end of the First World War, he moved to “red” Vienna, where he became an editor of the prestigious economics journal Der Österreichische Volkswirt (Austrian Economist), and an early critic of the neoliberal, or “Austrian”, school of economics, represented among others by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. After the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, Polanyi’s views became socially ostracised, and he moved to England, and then to the United States in 1940. He wrote The Great Transformation while teaching at Bennington College in Vermont.

Polanyi set out to explain the massive economic and social transformations that he had witnessed during his lifetime: the end of the century of “relative peace” in Europe, from 1815 to 1914, and the subsequent descent into economic turmoil, fascism and war, which was still ongoing at the time of the book’s publication. He traced these upheavals back to a single, overarching cause: the rise of market liberalism in the early 19th century — the belief that society can and should be organised through self-regulating markets. For him, this represented nothing less than an ontological break with much of human history. Prior to the 19th century, he insisted, the human economy had always been “embedded” in society: it was subordinated to local politics, customs, religion and social relations. Land and labour, in particular, were not treated as commodities but as parts of an articulate whole — of life itself.

By postulating the allegedly “self-regulating” nature of markets, economic liberalism turned this logic on its head. Not only did it artificially separate “society” and “the economy” into two separate spheres, it demanded the subordination of society, of life itself, to the logic of the self-regulating market. For Polanyi, this “means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system”.

Polanyi’s first objection to this was moral, and was inextricably tied to his Christian beliefs: it is simply wrong to treat the organic elements of life — human beings, land, nature — as commodities, goods produced for sale. Such a concept violates the “sacred” order that has governed societies for much of human history. “To include [labour and land] in the market mechanism means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market,” Polanyi argued. And in this sense, he was what we may call a “conservative socialist”: he opposed market liberalism not just on distributional grounds but also because it “attacked the fabric of society”, breaking down social and communitarian bonds, and breeding atomised and alienated individuals.

This relates to the second level of Polanyi’s argument, which was more practical: market liberals might have wanted to dis-embed the economy from society and create a fully self-regulating market, and went to great lengths to achieve this, but their project was always bound to fail. It simply cannot exist. As he writes in the opening of the book: “Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark Utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.”

Human beings, Polanyi argued, will always react against the devastating social consequences of unrestrained markets — and struggle to re-subordinate the economy, to some degree, to their material, social and even “spiritual” wants. This is the source of his argument about the “double movement”: because attempts to disembed the economy from society inevitably invite resistance, market societies are constantly shaped by two opposing movements. There’s the movement to constantly expand the scope of the market, and the countermovement resisting this expansion, especially insofar as “fictitious” commodities are concerned, primarily labour and land.

“Attempts to disembed the economy from society inevitably invite resistance.”

This leads on to the third level of Polanyi’s critique, which dismantled the orthodox liberal account of the rise of capitalism. Precisely because there is nothing natural about the market economy, which actually represents an attempt to disrupt the natural order of societies, it can never emerge spontaneously — nor can it self-regulate. On the contrary, the state was needed to enforce changes in social structure and human thinking that allowed for a competitive capitalist economy. The proclaimed separation of state and market is an illusion, Polanyi said. Markets and trading in commodities are a part of all human societies, but in order to create a “market society”, these commodities have to be subject to a larger, coherent system of market relations. This is something that can only be accomplished through state coercion and regulation.

“There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course,” he wrote. “Laissez-faire was planned… [it] was enforced by the state.” Polanyi wasn’t just referring to the “enormous increase in continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism” needed to enforce the logic of the market, but also to the need for state repression to counter the inevitable reaction — the countermovement — of those bearing the social and economic costs of disembedding: families, workers, farmers and small businesses exposed to the disruptive and destructive forces of the market.

In other words, the support of state structures — to protect private property, to police the dealings of different members of the ruling class with each other, to provide services that are essential for the reproduction of the system — was the political prerequisite for the development of capitalism. And yet, paradoxically, market liberalism’s need for the state to function is also the main reason for its enduring intellectual appeal. Precisely because pure self-regulating markets cannot exist, its advocates, such as contemporary libertarians, can always claim that capitalism’s failures are due to the lack of truly “free” markets.

And yet, even Polanyi’s ideological enemies, neoliberals such as Hayek and Mises, were perfectly aware that the self-regulating market is a myth. As Quinn Slobodian has written, their aim was “not to liberate markets but to encase them, to inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy”, by using the state to artificially separate the “economic” from the “political”. In this sense, market liberalism can be considered a political project as much as an economic one: a response to the entrance of the masses into the political arena from the late-19th century, as a result of the extension of universal suffrage — a development most militant liberals of the time were vehemently opposed to.

This project wasn’t just pursued at the national level but at the international one too, through the creation of the gold standard, which was an attempt to extend the logic of the allegedly self-regulating (but actually enforced) market to the economic relations between countries. This was an early globalist attempt to marginalise the role of nation-states — and their citizens — in the management of economic affairs. The gold standard effectively subordinated national economic policies to the inflexible rules of the global economy. But it also shielded the economic realm from the democratic pressures building as suffrage spread across the West, while at the same time offering a very effective tool to discipline labour.

However, the gold standard imposed such massive costs on societies, in the form of destructive deflationary policies, that the tensions created by the system eventually imploded. First, we saw the collapse of the international order in 1914, and then again following the Great Depression. The latter prompted the biggest anti-liberal countermovement the world had ever seen, as nations sought different ways to protect themselves from the destructive effects of the global “self-regulating” economy — including by embracing fascism. In this sense, according to Polanyi, the Second World War was a direct consequence of the attempt to organise the global economy on the basis of market liberalism.

The war was still ongoing when the book was published. Yet Polanyi remained an optimist. He believed that the violent transformations that had shook the world over the previous century had set the stage for the ultimate “great transformation”: the subordination of national economies as well as the global economy to democratic politics. He called such a system “socialism” — but his understanding of the term differed significantly from mainstream Marxism. Polanyi’s socialism wasn’t just the construction of a more just society, but the “the continuation of that endeavour to make society a distinctively human relationship of persons which in Western Europe was always associated with Christian traditions”. In this sense, he also emphasised the “territorial character of sovereignty” — the nation-state as the precondition for the exercise of democratic politics.

A bigger role for government needn’t necessarily take an oppressive form, according to Polanyi. On the contrary, he argued that freeing human beings from the tyrannical logic of the market was a precondition for “achiev[ing] freedom not only for the few, but for all” — freedom for people to start living rather than just surviving. The welfare-capitalist and social-democratic regimes implemented after the Second World War, though far from perfect, represented a first step in this direction. They partially de-commodified labour and social life, and created an international system that facilitated high levels of international trade while buffering societies from the pressures of the global economy. In Polanyian terms, the economy was, to some degree, “re-embedded” in society.

But this ended up engendering yet another countermovement — this time from the capitalist class. Beginning in the Eighties, the doctrine of market liberalism was resurrected in the form of neoliberalism, hyper-globalisation and a renewed attack on the institutions of national democracy — all done with the active support of the state. Meanwhile, in Europe, an even more extreme version of the gold standard was created: the euro. National economies were once again placed in a straightjacket. Just as under previous iterations of market liberalism, this old-new order impoverished workers and laid waste to our industrial capacity, public services, vital infrastructures and local communities. Polanyi would have argued that a backlash was inevitable — and indeed it came, beginning in the late 2010s, though the populist uprisings of the past decade also failed to replace the system with a new order.

The result is that, just as a century ago, the intrinsic contradictions of the “international liberal order” are once again leading to a breakdown of the system, and to a dramatic intensification of international tensions. If Polanyi were alive today, he probably wouldn’t be as optimistic as he was when he published his book. We are definitely in the midst of yet another “great transformation” — but the future it heralds couldn’t be farther from the democratic, co-operative international order he envisioned.

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***

US global power rests on a few key pillars, some of the most important of which are:

(A) Dollar dominance in trade,

(B) dollar dominance in investment and finance,

(C) physical (military) control on the supply of oil, and

(D) base agreements to further expand US military control in strategic (and oil producing) regions.

A key foundation for this global exercise of US power is the Saudi-US petro-dollar agreement from 1974.

Saudi Arabia has reportedly decided not to renew its 80-year petro-dollar deal with the U.S. This bad news for the US is censored in Western media, but is reported today by Times of India.

As a consequence, not only the dollar as the World’s dominating currency will be severely hit. US capital markets will also be hit, as the now expired US-Saudi deal required Saudi dollar-incomes to be recycled and reinvested in the USA, mainly as low-yield US bonds.

But even more, the US role as military “protector” of Saudi Arabia against Iran has now been revoked by Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has analyzed that Saudi security is best served by continuing peaceful collaboration with Iran – and that Saudi economic interests are best served by diversifying financial interests from the dollar to an unlimited range of other currencies and currency-equivalents.

The US-Saudi deal was for 50 years a corner stone of US global power – the main points of the now expired US-Saudi petrodollar agreement of 8 June 1974 were:

1. Exclusive Oil Pricing in US Dollars: Saudi Arabia agreed to price and trade oil exclusively in US dollars, which led to other oil-producing countries adopting the same practice, creating a robust global demand for the US dollar

2. Military Support and Security Guarantees: The US provided military support and security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, ensuring its stability and protection against external threats

3. Investment in US Assets: Saudi Arabia agreed to invest its oil revenues in US assets, primarily Treasury securities, which helped finance US deficits and stabilize the dollar

4. Petrodollar Recycling: The deal involved oil revenues from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations being reinvested in US Treasury Securities, providing the US with a consistent influx of capital to finance its deficits and maintain lower interest rates.

The deal expired on June 9, 2024, and there is no official confirmation of its renewal. Saudi Arabia has decided not to renew the agreement, which means it will now sell oil in multiple currencies, including the Chinese RMB, Euros, Yen, and Yuan, rather than exclusively in US dollars. See this.

All the above four points are now cancelled by Saudi Arabia – at a moment, when US thought they had Saudi Arabia in their pocket with a fake Israeli “peace-deal”.

Most amazing is that US global power has now diminished so much, that Saudi Arabia is at all able to let this US deal expire. Just a decade ago, any Saudi attempt at this would have been swiftly met with a US instigated palace-coup and the removal of the Saudi ruler. But not anymore – MBS is too strong for the US to do that.

The war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the fight for Taiwan, diplomatic backing in the UN – everywhere, the US is losing.

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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

On Monday June 17, an extremely important event is happening in Alberta featuring a heavy hitting array of experts and medical professionals who have taken a stand against the turn towards medical dictatorship which our society has been subject to over the past few years.

The event in question is titled ‘An Injection of Truth’ (official website here) and although its nominal aim is to create a ban on the injection of children with experimental mRNA jabs, the content will tackle a much broader subject of the politicization of science, freedom and sovereignty as well.

This week, I spoke with conference organizer Mike Holmes about this event and the broader fight within Alberta. Please check out the 20 min program below, share, and if possible, arrange watch parties with networks in which you are active.

Additionally, the event organizers worked closely with film maker Jason Dahl to produce a brilliant 12 min film to accompany the conference which can be viewed freely below:

Click here for the event details

So if that doesn’t rev your engine, I don’t know what will. Get in touch with the conference organizers on the website (aninjectionoftruth.ca), get your tickets, set up watch parties, start organizing similar events, and get active.

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This article was originally published on The Canadian Patriot.

Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review, Senior Fellow at the American University in Moscow, and Director of The Rising Tide Foundation. He has authored three volumes of the Untold History of Canada book series and four volumes of the Clash of the Two Americas. He hosts Connecting the Dots on TNT Radio, Breaking History on Badlands Media, and The Great Game on Rogue News.

Bombshell: Japan’s Former Minister of Internal Affairs Apologizes to the Unvaccinated: ‘You Were Right, Vaccines Are Killing Millions of Our Loved Ones’

Sean Adl-Tabatabai, June 11, 2024

Video: 17-year-old Australian Lung Transplant Patient Was Killed for Being Unvaccinated

Dr. William Makis, June 11, 2024

Video: Bill Gates Caught Telling Inner Circle ‘Global Famine’ Will Make Elites ‘God-Like’

The People’s Voice, June 11, 2024

Dr. Francis Boyle Provides Affidavit: COVID 19 mRNA Nanoparticle Injections Are Biological Weapons and Weapons of Mass Destruction

Dr. Joseph Sansone, June 10, 2024

Psychiatrist of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Commits Suicide

Michael K. Smith, June 7, 2024

“We designed mRNA to kill” – CIA Whistleblower?

Peter Koenig, June 5, 2024

After 3 Years of Censorship; Mainstream Media Now Confirms that “COVID Jabs May be to Blame for Increase in Excess Deaths”

Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 8, 2024

German Government Admits There Was No Pandemic

Baxter Dmitry, June 11, 2024

Everything About Israel Is Fake

Caitlin Johnstone, June 11, 2024

Bombshell Video: 9th Circuit Court Rules COVID-19 mRNA Injections Are Not “Vaccines”.

Jim Hoft, June 11, 2024

Three Canadians Doctors Died at Same Hospital in Ontario

Dr. William Makis, June 7, 2024

D-DAY, 1944:  Essential Historical Context

Dr. Jacques R. Pauwels, June 8, 2024

The Twilight of the Western Settler Colonialist Project in Palestine

Amir Nour, June 9, 2024

“The Train Has Left the Station and No One Can Stop It”. Europe Will be at War with Russia. Serbia’s President A. Vucic

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, June 13, 2024

Is Government Your God? Is Fake Science Your God? How Can We Escape the Matrix?

Mark Keenan, June 10, 2024

Biden Plan: Rebuilding Gaza to Erase Palestine

Manlio Dinucci, June 9, 2024

Evil Can Destroy the World. Paul C. Roberts

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, June 10, 2024

Giving Ukraine Missiles to Shoot Into Russia Is a Declaration of War

Mike Whitney, June 8, 2024

US-NATO Threats Ignore ‘Red Lines’ in Ukraine

Sara Flounders, June 12, 2024

From Napoleon and Hitler to … Biden, Macron and Stoltenberg! West’s New Russian Campaign

Dimitris Konstantakopoulos, June 7, 2024

“The Train Has Left the Station and No One Can Stop It”. Europe Will be at War with Russia. Serbia’s President A. Vucic

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, June 13, 2024

These are the words of Serbia’s President Aleksander Vucic. He ought to know. He is in the middle of it. He thinks Europe will be at war with Russia in “not more than three or four months,” if that long.

Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Government Is Supported by the International Community. Adolph Hitler Is “The Torchbearer of Democracy” in Ukraine

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 12, 2024

“Nearly 90 countries and organizations, half from Europe, have confirmed attending the Swiss-hosted Ukraine peace summit” to which Russia was not invited. This Conference sponsored by the Swiss Government (15-16 June, 2024) has the appearances of a somewhat chaotic public relations ploy rather than a peace initiative. In a bitter irony, the two Neo-Nazi parties of Ukraine’s so-called coalition government are actively supported by our governments.

The Madness of War. Another Cuban Missile Crisis? USA and France Court Global War. Rodney Atkinson

By Rodney Atkinson, June 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea.

The Smoking Gun: Who Started the War. Was It Russia or Was It US-NATO? NATO Confirms That the Ukraine “War Started in 2014”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 12, 2024

On June 13-15, delegates from 90 countries will be meeting at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucern, in the context of a Peace Conference organized by the Swiss government to which Russia was not invited. This article addresses the history of the Ukraine war and more specifically WHO started this war. 

Russia Overtakes Japan as World’s Fourth Largest Economy

By Drago Bosnic, June 13, 2024

Top-ranking Russian officials, including the current Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, expected the economic growth to be stable enough for the Eurasian giant to overtake Japan by 2030. However, what was supposed to happen in no less than six years, actually happened in less than six months.

It’s Clear the COVID Vaccines Are Unsafe. Dr. Clare Craig’s Testimony to UK’s People’s Vaccine Inquiry

By Dr. Clare Craig and Rhoda Wilson, June 13, 2024

Dr. Clare Craig gave her testimony to the UK People’s Vaccine Inquiry. She testified that the covid injections were both unsafe and ineffective. Reviewing data from Pfizer’s trial, the ONS, ambulance callouts and long-term sickness she demonstrated that to use the word “safe” to describe covid vaccines is a lie.

End of the EU Dream: Disengagement from Reality. America’s War Against Europe

By Barış Hasan, June 13, 2024

The European Parliament (EP) election results, which are not a surprise to those who follow the course of Europe closely, but are a surprise to many, actually reflect the footprints of the global conflict on the European continent. In particular, the results in France and Germany, the two core countries of the European Union (EU), or more accurately, the strong message given by the people of these countries to the political elites, showed that change in Europe is only a matter of time.

Os países ocidentais já não escondem a sua simpatia pelo neonazismo ucraniano. Os EUA e o Reino Unido estão a avançar rapidamente no processo de reabilitação global do nazismo. Recentemente, militantes fascistas ucranianos foram recebidos no parlamento britânico, e agora Washington autorizou o fornecimento de armas ao infame Regimento Azov, mostrando claramente que as milícias de extrema-direita são aliadas da OTAN no atual conflito.

De repente, os EUA e o Reino Unido decidiram normalizar o nazismo ucraniano. Há duas semanas, em Londres, uma delegação do Regimento Azov foi saudada com aplausos pelo Parlamento britânico. O ex-primeiro-ministro Boris Johnson fez um discurso chamando os milicianos fascistas de “heróis” e encorajando-os a atacar alvos dentro do território indiscutível da Federação Russa com armas britânicas. Por outras palavras, Johnson não só felicitou os neonazistas, como também os “autorizou” a matar russos fora da zona de conflito. Johnson também tirou uma foto com os soldados Azov segurando uma faixa com o símbolo Wolfsangel, “que foi usada por uma divisão Waffen-SS e várias unidades da Wehrmacht durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial”.

Em 11 de Junho, o Departamento de Estado dos EUA publicou uma revisão das suas diretrizes para o comércio de armas, levantando a proibição da venda de equipamento militar ao Regimento Azov. Há dez anos, a milícia fascista ucraniana foi oficialmente banida do comércio de armas dos EUA devido aos seus laços com o nazismo, bem como às violações dos direitos humanos cometidas durante as hostilidades em regiões de maioria russa. Agora, porém, as autoridades norte-americanas dizem que não há provas de que tais violações tenham realmente ocorrido, razão pela qual a proibição foi revertida.

Seria ingênuo acreditar que a “proibição” realmente funcionou. Washington sempre armou os militantes de Azov e todas as outras milícias neonazistas ucranianas. No entanto, até agora, este fornecimento de armas não era oficial. Os EUA venderam oficialmente armas ao Estado ucraniano, que depois as entregou individualmente aos batalhões fascistas. Agora, esta manobra legal já não é necessária, uma vez que Washington está abertamente pronto a fornecer armas ao Azov.

É interessante ver americanos e britânicos normalizando a existência de grupos neonazistas na Ucrânia. O Regimento Azov nunca disfarçou a sua ideologia racista de extrema-direita, sendo amplamente conhecido pela sua supremacia étnica e pela participação ativa no extermínio de cidadãos russos desde 2014. Após o início da operação militar especial, os principais responsáveis ​​da brigada moderaram a sua retórica. , tentando “normalizar” o grupo entre a opinião pública ocidental. No entanto, muitos membros da milícia continuam a postar constantemente fotos nas redes sociais com tatuagens e símbolos neonazistas. Além disso, o Wolfsangel, ligado às SS, continua a ser o símbolo oficial da organização, o que mostra como a ideologia hitlerista faz de fato parte da mentalidade dos militantes de Azov.

Estas medidas dos EUA e do Reino Unido estão a ocorrer num contexto mais amplo de reabilitação nazista no Ocidente. Há alguns meses, um antigo oficial SS ucraniano foi recebido no parlamento canadiano com ovação e homenageado numa cerimônia pública. Ao mesmo tempo, na Europa, especialmente nas regiões orientais, continua a ser promovido um revisionismo histórico irresponsável, com países como a Polônia e os Bálticos a removerem monumentos aos heróis do Exército Vermelho e a reabilitarem figuras nazistas.

Ao mesmo tempo, desde 2022 os países ocidentais boicotam a resolução da ONU proposta pela Rússia que apela à condenação global do nazismo. Mais de 50 países alinhados com os EUA decidiram simplesmente não condenar o nazismo, afirmando que votar contra a resolução seria um gesto de solidariedade com a Ucrânia no conflito atual.

O nazismo já não é uma mera ferramenta de guerra do Ocidente contra a Rússia, mas está a caminho de se tornar a verdadeira ideologia de muitos Estados ocidentais. Isto é uma consequência directa da infame política de asilo para criminosos nazistas nos tempos pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando os EUA e a Europa concederam amnistia a generais, políticos e cientistas alemães em troca de segredos militares e científicos. Muitos nazistas exilados em países ocidentais acabaram alcançando altos cargos na administração estatal, o que resultou na nazificação progressiva da mentalidade política ocidental.

Durante muito tempo, esta nazificação permaneceu oculta devido à memória global dos crimes da Alemanha na Segunda Guerra Mundial. Contudo, a Ucrânia tem sido a desculpa para que as tendências nazistas da OTAN se tornem públicas. A normalização e reabilitação do nazismo não é um simples efeito colateral do conflito atual, mas um verdadeiro projeto por parte do Ocidente para implementar a russofobia a nível global. Só uma vitória russa na operação militar especial e a reconfiguração da ordem geopolítica poderão deter o avanço do nazismo.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : US and UK rehabilitate Nazism and arm fascist militias in Ukraine, InfoBrics, 13 de Junho de 2024.

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

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For decades, the political West was resting on its laurels after “winning” the (First) Cold War. It also expanded the tentacles of its malignant power projection to every corner of the world, including Russia itself, where liberal exponents of US/EU/NATO implanted themselves in the Kremlin, ensuring that Moscow’s economic might is ruined, so that the Eurasian giant can never recover, let alone return to superpower status. Keeping Russia down was one of the crucial aspects of the infamous Wolfowitz Doctrine and one of the first documents published by the abominable Clinton administration. This unequivocally imperialist strategy that even many Americans thought was too much ended up killing millions of people across the globe and perpetuated an unprecedented aggression against the world that lasts to this very day.

Keeping Moscow in a subservient state was imperative, a problem that the current Russian leadership had to contend with even after Vladimir Putin became president. It took him and his team at least 10-12 years to cure the Eurasian giant of the (neo)liberal disease in the Kremlin, while the remnants of its power were purged only in 2020, when invaluable constitutional reforms brought back Russia’s sovereignty in full.

As we can imagine, every step in the removal of the exponents of this malignant influence made the political West seethe, resulting in escalating hostility that Moscow inevitably had to respond to at some point. Precisely this happened in early 2022, when the Eurasian giant could finally demonstrate its resurgent power. The special military operation (SMO) was the result of decades of work on restoring Russian sovereignty.

In its aftermath, the political West insisted that Russia was finished. The economy was supposed to be in tatters, while the Kremlin was even expected to default after much of its foreign exchange (forex) reserves were frozen (i.e. stolen) by Western banks. After all this failed, the US-led belligerent power pole tried to impose the laughable price cap on Russian oil, one that even some of the most prominent Western nations tried to circumvent, including Japan and even the pathologically Russophobic United Kingdom. As for the United States, it continued buying Russian commodities while criticizing everyone else who did. Still, through its Kiev regime puppets, the political West launched a virtual total war on Moscow in an attempt to disrupt its economic activity and cause as much damage as possible without engaging it directly.

Once again, it all failed. The Kremlin managed to secure stability despite being forced to conduct the SMO against the entire political West. What’s more, Russia overtook Germany as the world’s fifth and Europe’s largest economy, a humiliating defeat for its Western rivals who expected quite the contrary. Berlin did much worse than in decades, while London’s economic performance was at its lowest in over 300 years. And yet, to “add insult to injury”, now even Western data shows that the initial estimates of Moscow’s economic performance were wrong and that it will actually be even better in 2024. Namely, the updated IMF’s forecast of 2.6% GDP growth doubles its previous assessment. According to the Financial Times, this increase of 1.5% is the largest for any economy featured in an update to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, released on January 30.

Top-ranking Russian officials, including the current Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, expected the economic growth to be stable enough for the Eurasian giant to overtake Japan by 2030. However, what was supposed to happen in no less than six years, actually happened in less than six months. According to the latest data, President Putin’s forecast of increased economic growth (over 3.5-4%) not only turned out to be true, but even conservative, although the mainstream propaganda machine attempted to portray it as “too overoptimistic”. However, the only thing that was actually too overoptimistic was the political West’s expectation that the sanctions would work. Namely, according to new updates of the World Bank, Russia has overtaken Japan as the world’s fourth largest economy in terms of GDP PPP (purchasing power parity).

As a metric of economy, it’s a far more suitable way to measure true economic might, unlike the overblown nominal GDP figures that serve only to feed the oversized ego of the US-led political West. It should be noted that less than 10 months after overtaking Germany, Russia also zoomed past Japan, leaving Westerners dumbfounded as to how a country they were told would “collapse under the weight of sanctions” and outright theft of its forex reserves managed to accomplish such a feat. Worse yet (for the political West), some sources estimate that the Eurasian giant currently has the fastest-growing major economy in the world. In addition, even Moscow’s updated projection of overtaking Tokyo (explicitly set for March 2025 by President Putin) turned out to be “too cautious”, as this was accomplished nearly a year earlier.

In other words, much unlike the atrocious Bidenomics, what the bne IntelliNews calls Putinomics turned out to be far more effective, particularly considering the fact that Russia is waging a defensive war against the entire US-led political West. According to the bne IntelliNews report, the Kremlin’s policies are “spurring growth in a new Putinomics”. Apart from the resurgence of investment in defense, “Putin has also launched the National Projects 2.1 program to invest into the civilian economy as well and improve the quality of life for the average Russian, as he made clear in his recent guns and butter speech”. The report further posits that, as a result of Putinomics, “Russia’s poorest regions have been the biggest winners and as bne IntelliNews recently reported, the country’s despair index has fallen to its lowest level ever this year”.

However, while the World Bank’s numbers for 2024 put Russia’s and Japan’s economies at $5.95 and $5.87 trillion respectively, the actual discrepancy might be far bigger. Namely, the World Bank also estimates that a whopping 39% of the Russian economy is in the shadows, while the same metric for Japan stands at 10%. In terms of GDP PPP, this would add $2.5 trillion to Russia’s $6.45 trillion PPP-adjusted economic size, which, although still far from India’s $14.6 trillion GDP, further widens the gap with Japan. Expectedly, this economic resurgence is also enabling Moscow to rebuild its Soviet-era military might, resulting in an unprecedented real defense budget of over half a trillion dollars. The political West, powerless to stop Russia’s recovery, now wants to launch a terror campaign to disrupt this.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Biden’s Ceasefire Fiasco

By Mike Whitney, June 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s ceasefire resolution is a cynical fraud aimed at airbrushing Israel’s tattered image while laying the groundwork for the final expulsion of the Palestinian people. In truth, there won’t be a ceasefire because Netanyahu and his entire cabinet are adamantly opposed to ending the hostilities.

The Madness of War. Another Cuban Missile Crisis? USA and France Court Global War. Rodney Atkinson

By Rodney Atkinson, June 13, 2024

The Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea.

Autism and ADHD Rates Explode, Public Health™ Establishment Shrugs

By Ben Bartee, June 13, 2024

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the prescribed solution to runaway childhood ADHD and autism is going to be new patented wonder-drugs that the corporate state media will dutifully tout heavily until some serious side effects discovered years down the road lead to their recall.

They’re Arresting the Wrong People Inside U.S. Congress

By Olivia DiNucci, June 13, 2024

While they are arresting peace activists for exercising first amendment rights they are making plans to host Netanyahu- a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

Did You Donate to Send Food to Gaza? Think Again. Crisis of Relief Operations. Starvation

By Dr. Paul Larudee, June 13, 2024

Many of the organizations also announce that, thanks to your donations, they have provided hundreds of thousands or even millions of meals to starving Palestinians in Gaza. What they do not necessarily tell you is that they are doing this by purchasing food and medicine from the dwindling supplies inside Gaza.

Pentagon Involved in Nuseirat Refugee Camp Massacre. “Genocide Joe”

By Abayomi Azikiwe, June 13, 2024

Nearly 300 people were massacred at a refugee camp in central Gaza on June 7 under the guise of rescuing captives held by resistance forces since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7. It was later announced that four of those held were retrieved in what was promoted as a major military victory for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

The Smoking Gun: Who Started the War. Was It Russia or Was It US-NATO? NATO Confirms That the Ukraine “War Started in 2014”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 12, 2024

On September 7, 2023, NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg  in a presentation to the European Parliament, formally acknowledged that: “the war didn’t start in February last year [2022]. It started in 2014.” Speaking on behalf of NATO, what this statement implies is that US-NATO was already at war in 2014. It also tacitly acknowledges that Russia did not “initiate the war” on Ukraine in February 2022. 

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Dr. Clare Craig gave her testimony to the UK People’s Vaccine Inquiry. She testified that the covid injections were both unsafe and ineffective. Reviewing data from Pfizer’s trial, the ONS, ambulance callouts and long-term sickness she demonstrated that to use the word “safe” to describe covid vaccines is a lie.

The People’s Vaccine Inquiry was launched yesterday. So far Dr. Jonathan Engler, Dr. Ros Jones, Dr. Dean Patterson, Dr. Liz Evans, Patrick Fagan, Nick Hunt and Dr. Clare Craig have submitted evidence. They are encouraging other experts to submit their witness statements, which can be done using THIS email link.

Dr. Clare Craig submitted her witness statement in her capacity as the co-chair of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART), as well as a qualified doctor and diagnostic pathologist. You can read her comprehensive 102-page witness statement HERE.  In the video below she gave her oral testimony.

People’s Vaccine Inquiry: Dr Claire Craig, Pathologist (23 mins)

In the first half of her testimony, Dr. Craig spoke about the “safety” of the covid injections.  In the second half, she spoke about the “efficacy” of the vaccines followed by answering questions put to her by science journalist Will Jones.  Below we have only noted remarks she made in the first half.

MHRA Fails to Perform Its Duties and Tells Lies

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom.  It is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe for use in the UK.

People think of “vaccine” as a modern miracle Dr. Craig told the People’s Vaccine Inquiry.  “The word is almost synonymous with ‘safe and effective’.  However, what has been called covid vaccines are neither safe nor effective and should have been pulled from the market long ago,” she said.

The term “safe and effective” was first used to market thalidomide, Dr. Craig said. Thalidomide is a medication that was first introduced in the 1950s as a sedative and treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women. However, it was later found to cause severe birth defects in thousands of children born to mothers who took the drug during pregnancy.  It was subsequently banned in most countries and its use was heavily restricted.

“After the thalidomide scandal when at least 5,000 babies had been damaged and at least 5,000 had died, the regulators introduced new rules,” Dr. Craig explained. “And those rules state that the word ‘safe’ could not be used without caveats.”

“The MHRA are responsible for implementing those rules, and they have utterly failed to do so,” she said. But worse still, the MHRA themselves have used the term in describing covid “vaccines.”

“And that was a lie,” Dr. Craig said.

The MHRA also failed to introduce an absolute safety threshold. This is the minimum level of safety that is considered acceptable or tolerable.  It is the point at which a drug must be either suspended or withdrawn.

“They’ve also ignored all the evidence of harm on the basis of their belief that the benefits always outweigh the risks,” Dr. Craig said.  “That was not always true, that was a lie,” she said.

And doctors who warned what the safety issues would be, “were threatened and shut down,” she said.

Pfizer Covered Up Harm in Its Trial Data

She spoke about the cover-up of harms noted in Pfizer’s covid “vaccine” trial.  One participant developed pericarditis post-vaccination.  “That illness was put down into the data as being a pneumonia, covid pneumonia, that was ‘test negative’,” Dr. Craig said.

“What that meant was it was not included in the safety data and because the test was negative it didn’t have to be included in the efficacy calculations either.  So, it was effectively disappeared,” she said.

Twelve-year-old Maddie de Garay developed immune-mediated nerve damage throughout her body.  However, her condition was described in Pfizer’s trial data as being functional abdominal pain. “So that was another lie,” Dr. Craig said.

“The accumulation of all these lies created the overall lie about the safety of these products,” she said.

The indications of harm continued.  After the mass covid injection campaign began there were early indicators that these injections were harmful. “The surveillance systems which were designed to detect a problem sounded many alarms,” she said.

Illness and Death Were Treated Differently Before and After Vaccination

Before the rollout of the covid injections, if someone tested positive for covid then every symptom after that was considered a covid symptom.  However, post-vaccination, the only symptoms that were considered to be related to the injection were a sore arm, a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms. 

“Any hospitalisation after a covid positive test was a covid hospitalisation.  But somebody who was hospitalised after the vaccine was almost always considered a coincidence,” she said.

“Anybody who died within 28 days of a covid positive test, was considered to be a covid death.  Even when there were other conditions that contributed to that death.  Whereas, anybody who died after a vaccine, if there was any other possible causation, that was put down on the death certificate,” she said.

“Neither approach is scientific or rational,” she added.

Adding to the spurious classification of covid and vaccine injuries, some doctors have actively been gaslighting people who have been vaccine-injured.

Some vaccinated people who developed cardiac or neurological symptoms of unknown cause “had their problems described as being due to anxiety by their doctors,” Dr. Craig said.

To add to the lies, “there are also doctors who have told patients that they’ve been vaccine injured but have refused to write it into their medical record,” she said.

Covid Injections Cause Systemic Harm

The surveillance systems for measuring harm from a drug are designed to detect rare events in a single organ of the body.  “But these products have caused harm across the body,” Dr. Craig said. “The surveillance systems are not designed to pick up [ ] systemic effects.”

There are several reasons why covid injections cause harm all over the body.

Firstly, there are autoimmune diseases. The platforms are designed so that cells throughout the body express a foreign protein. After vaccination, the mRNA or DNA from covid injections enter cells. Once inside, they use the cells’ machinery to produce what is called the spike protein. The cells producing this foreign protein – the spike protein – on their surface are sacrificed as the immune system attacks them. “When you get that kind of organ damage, it looks like an autoimmune disease,” Dr. Craig said.

Additionally, the spike protein looks very similar to a human protein. “There’s about an 80% crossover,” Dr. Craig said. “That means there is also a risk of conventional autoimmune disease.”

Secondly, there is the vascular damage caused by the covid injections.  We have blood vessels throughout our bodies so the vascular damage can cause harm in all sorts of ways, she said.

Thirdly, there is evidence of endotoxin contamination from the bacteria in the manufacturing process.  Endotoxin can also cause harm throughout the body.

Fourthly, synthetic RNA, synthetic DNA contamination and mitochondrial damage can affect any cell in the body.  There are also unknown proteins being produced which could lead to conditions such as amyloids, which again can affect numerous organs.

People’s Vaccine Inquiry: Dr. Clare Craig, Pathologist (timestamp 5:28)

Other Indicators of Vaccine Harms

Alarm bells were ringing in data other than safety surveillance systems as well.

Until the rollout of the covid vaccines, ambulance callouts for life-threatening emergencies had been steady and predictable at around 2,000 per day. Since the mass covid injection campaigns began, there have been 2,500 per day, Dr. Craig said.

The skyrocketing numbers of people who can’t work because they have long-term illnesses also tell a story.  The results of surveys show that the number of people who have long-term sickness has been around 2 million since 2012.  “But since the vaccine rollout, this rocketed in spring 2021 and it’s now at 2.8 million,” she said.  The USA data looks similar, she added.

People’s Vaccine Inquiry: Dr. Clare Craig, Pathologist (timestamp 7:08)

Also in spring 2021, there was a rise in non-covid deaths. “This happened across the vaccinated world,” Dr. Craig said.  “The claim that it was covid that was causing all this excess was a lie,” she testified.

So, what were people dying from?

“Non-covid cardiovascular deaths rose with the vaccine rollout and have been high ever since.  And deaths in the young have been high ever since, particularly in the 50 to 64-year-old age bracket,” she said.  “This is true in almost all [highly] vaccinated countries.”

In the UK, the excess deaths have been lower in London, in the black population and in lower socio-economic groups.  “These were all groups that were vaccinated less,” Dr. Craig said. “And if you look regionally across the world, less vaccinated areas have had fewer excess deaths since 2022.”

ONS Cover-up and Lies

The UK Office for National Statistics (“ONS”) have claimed the unvaccinated have a higher covid mortality rate.  Unvaccinated people also have a higher mortality rate for non-covid deaths which reveals a bias is incorporated into ONS data.  The bias is because of a demographic difference between the vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations. “In all likelihood, the unvaccinated had a higher pre-covid mortality rate,” she said.

“When you take out that bias, the difference [between mortality rates] disappears,” she said. “So, to claim that the difference would be due to a vaccine, would be a lie.”

“In fact, that gap in mortality between the vaccinated and unvaccinated has not stayed steady.  Over time the mortality in the vaccinated has increased and the gap has shrunk. When that happened, the ONS stopped publishing the data,” she added.

“It’s clear these products were far from safe,” she said.

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The West’s Ukrainian proxy war against Russia continues to go badly with Russian advances on all fronts and big Ukrainian troop losses.

Even worse, those who are the most belligerent political leaders (Biden, Macron and Sunak) are losing votes at home.

French President Macron lost badly in the European elections with the National Rally garnering twice as many votes as Macron’s Renaissance party. This has led to Macron calling a snap general election and there is talk of his resignation as President if he does not win.

In Hungary and Italy – two of the most anti-war countries – the incumbents won easily, although Hungary’s Orban lost seats while Italy’s Meloni gained seats. In Europe fewer than 10% think Ukraine can win the war and the majority think either Russia will win or there will be a compromise peace settlement. See this.

In the UK the Conservative party, firmly following the US neocon line on Ukraine and authorising its weapons to be used against Russian territory, is heading for a historically large defeat in the July 4th general election.

A Reminder of the Cuban Missile Crisis

While voters in the West (prospective peace-makers Trump and Robert F Kennedy in the USA are far more popular than warmonger Biden) express their fears about an escalation to an outright Russia-NATO war, recent moves by the Russian navy both recall the 1963 Cuban Missile crisis and remind the Americans of the equivalence of Russia in Cuba then and NATO in Ukraine today!

At the time Russia’s missiles in Cuba (within a few minutes flight of Washington DC) put the world on the edge of nuclear war. John F Kennedy stood firm and the missiles were withdrawn but this month, after some years of closer co-operation between Moscow and Havana a group of ships of the Russian Navy has arrived in Cuba. They include the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, as well as the nuclear submarine Kazan which is capable of carrying Zircon hypersonic missiles.

Boosting the War

The Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea.

They together with NATO AWACS aircraft, have provided constant reconnaissance for the guidance of NATO missiles targeted at Crimea and the Zaporozhye region by NATO forces in the name of Ukraine. 

Such US military decisions could lead to a dangerous escalation and the prospect of direct Russian/American military confrontation.

Threat to Russia’s Nuclear Attack Warning System

Source

This follows the Ukraine/American drone attack on the most sensitive Russian nuclear Early Warning System at Armavir. As Dr. Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote:

The drones were guided to their targets using US aerial and satellite reconnaissance (they have to take multiple evasive actions in the course of their flights to evade Russian radar systems, and this can only be supplied via real-time targeting information provided by the US). The operators of the drones were likely mercenaries trained in the US or out-of-uniform US troops. Russia knows this and so it considers this a US attack on its nuclear Early Warning System.

The attack was reckless beyond comprehension. ANY such attacks against the EWS system used to protect Russia from a nuclear attack can justify, under Russian law, a nuclear retaliatory strike.

Justifying the gravest doubts about Biden’s frequent claims that the USA does not want war with Russia, NATO has published plans for transporting troops across western Europe in the event of a war with Russia: see this.

France recently announced it will deploy military trainers to Ukraine and donate Mirage 2000 fighter jets – and training their Ukrainian pilots. NATO allies, including Belgium, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, committed to dispatching about 80 U.S.-made F-16 fighters to Ukraine. 

If these F16s are stationed in Ukraine they will be easy targets on the ground but if they are flown from neighbouring countries like Romania then those airfields could be targeted and trigger a NATO response under the mutual defence clause Article 5.

Countries Supplying Weapons to Strike Russian Territory

Given the blatant interventions of NATO countries not only with weapons systems but with trained operatives on the ground in Ukraine and targeting and missile guidance systems President Putin is considering an equivalent involvement in other parts of the world.

“We are thinking that if someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to strike our territory and create problems for us, why do we not have the right to supply our weapons of the same class to those regions of the world where there will be strikes on the sensitive facilities of those countries that are doing this against Russia? We will think about this.”

There are several possibilities including North Korea (attacks on South Korea) and Iran (attacks on the UK in Cyprus or US gulf fleet).

Ukraine Mutiny

A video has appeared which gives a snapshot of the Ukraine army’s mobilisation, loss of troops, lack of training, low morale and disloyalty. Three Ukrainian soldiers are talking on a train:

We had 20% of the brigade left, the rest were dead. They wouldn’t even let us take their bodies.

(Another voice): Because they didn’t want to pay for them.

(Another voice): People are caught in the street and pushed to fight but they don’t know how to fight. And that’s it. No equipment, no ammunition, no arms. I tell you frankly if it were up to me I think so my brothers I think so we would go to Kiev with the Russians and all this would have been over a long time ago.

The madness of this war grows as inadequate political players become more hysterical by the day. Only voters can put an end to this grave crisis. In elections in 2024 they are at last reacting.

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Sputnik Africa

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The statistics tell the story: if you live in America in 2024, chances are you know someone with a kid who has been diagnosed with ADHD and/or autism. They’re also likely to be prescribed heavy-duty pharmaceutical drugs like Adderall to cope.

Via Statista (emphasis added):

“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of autism among U.S. children has risen significantly in recent years. While 6.7 in 1,000 children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2000, that number had risen to 27.6 in 1,000 children by 2020. This means that currently 1 in 36 children in the U.S. get diagnosed with ASD, up from 1 in 150 children 20 years ago.

The reasons for this increase in prevalence are not fully understood and likely complex. Some possible factors that have been proposed include better awareness and screening for autism, changes in diagnostic criteria and environmental or genetic factors. Regardless of the reasons, this rise in the number of children with autism highlights the importance of early identification and intervention to help children with ASD reach their full potential.”

Acolytes of The Science™ will simply claim over and over that the reason there appears to be more autism at an ever-increasing clip is that doctors are just getting better at diagnosing it.

The reason, for instance, they’ll claim, that autism is virtually non-existent in populations that pass on vaccines for kids and all other manner of modern pharmaceutical interventions, like the Amish, is that their autism simply isn’t diagnosed properly.

If the claim is that their rates of autism are comparable to the general population — which these apologists necessarily would have to claim; why wouldn’t they have the same rates if there is no environmental contaminant driving it? — they would have you believe the Amish are just too stupid to recognize that ten percent of their kids have autism. They just don’t notice their kids are all screwed up, a secret that’s also hidden from everyone else, because there’s not a doctor there to diagnose them.

Does that pass the smell test for you?

It doesn’t for a growing number of people with common sense year over year, who watch their kids get sicker and sicker and injected more and more often.

As of 2024, per CDC guidelines, parents are cajoled into injecting their babies no fewer than twenty times over with this and that vaccine by the time they’re six months old. And the party’s just getting started by then.

Via Journal of Clinical Child & Adolescent Psychology (emphasis added):

“Approximately 1 in 9 U.S. children have ever received an ADHD diagnosis (11.4%, 7.1 million children) and 10.5% (6.5 million) had current ADHD. Among children with current ADHD, 58.1% had moderate or severe ADHD, 77.9% had at least one co-occurring disorder, approximately half of children with current ADHD (53.6%) received ADHD medication, and 44.4% had received behavioral treatment for ADHD in the past year; nearly one third (30.1%) did not receive any ADHD-specific treatment…

Pediatric ADHD remains an ongoing and expanding public health concern, as approximately 1 million more children had ever received an ADHD diagnosis in 2022 than in 2016.”

I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the prescribed solution to runaway childhood ADHD and autism is going to be new patented wonder-drugs that the corporate state media will dutifully tout heavily until some serious side effects discovered years down the road lead to their recall.

A lawsuit bonanza will ensue, at which time the companies that pushed it may or may not be required to pay minor restitution, but it won’t matter to them because they’ll have made ten times — a hundred times, a thousand times — more in profit than they’ll ever pay in damages.

Weak apologies will be made — who could have predicted? — and no one will go to jail or even be fired. In fact, the most aggressive and reckless pushers will be rewarded with C-Suite positions and cushy jobs at NIH.

And the American public will be back to square one, only sicker and more desperate than before.

*

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This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Substack. Also, keep tabs via Twitter.

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***

Native peoples suffered from infectious diseases after contact with European colonists, but it wasn’t because they had no immunity against the diseases brought over. Nutritional decline and environmental disruptions are what led to increased disease susceptibility in Native populations

Diseases such as smallpox and measles only became prevalent after traditional diets and lifestyles were disrupted

Early European explorers did not report diseases among Native Americans until the mid-18th century, after the introduction of sugar, white flour, coffee, tea and alcohol had weakened Native American health

Modern children are at risk due to nutrient-deficient diets and vaccination practices weakening the immune system

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I have long believed that native peoples — in the Americas, in Africa and in the South Seas — began to suffer from infectious disease as soon as they came in contact with European colonists. In fact, many have asked me how such healthy people could succumb to disease so quickly.

My answer — and not a very good one — was that in traditional cultures that had not had contact with infectious disease, the people did not need to build a strong immune system during growth, so that the nutrient-dense diet could be vectored into building a strong body, keen eyesight and good hearing; and I theorized that having never consumed sugar and therefore not needing a supercharged pancreas to produce a lot of insulin, these people were much more vulnerable to the effects of sugar when they consumed it.

This explanation is just another version of the “immunologic inadequacy” and “lack of genetic resistance” arguments that allow doctors and public health officials to ignore the main cause of disease, whether in the Old or New Worlds: malnutrition.

Malnutrition as a Cause of Infectious Disease

I recently learned that native peoples did not contract infectious disease immediately on contact with the Europeans. For example, fishermen and early explorers visited the northeastern waters along the Atlantic coast during the 15th and 16th centuries, yet we have no historical commentary on the existence of disease or epidemics among the aboriginal peoples during that time.

According to Raymond Obomsawin, in his document “Historical and Scientific Perspectives on the Health of Canada’s first Peoples (2007),” “Since the prime purpose of this early contact was to commercially exploit natural resources, any visible evidence of the physical weakness or sickness of the indigenous inhabitants would surely have excited some keen interest.” Instead these early reports marveled at the Native American’s good health and robust constitution.

Obomsawin notes that the first recorded outbreaks of infectious disease in Native Americans living in the Ottawa Valleys occurred between 1734 and 1741.

Champlain established the first European settlement at Quebec on the St. Lawrence River over 100 years earlier, in 1608, and it wasn’t until the 1800s that smallpox, measles, influenza, dysentery, diphtheria, typhus, yellow fever, whooping cough, tuberculosis, syphilis and various other “fevers” became prevalent in the aboriginal population.

By the mid-18th century, Native American life had succumbed to serious disruptions. As a result of intensive trapping, the game populations had dwindled, seriously affecting the availability of food and skins to make clothing and footwear. During this period sugar, white flour, coffee, tea and alcohol arrived on trading ships, which the colonists traded to the Indians for furs.

The same pattern prevailed on the West Coast, where the salmon fisheries became significantly depleted by the mid-1800s. These northwest peoples spoke of “disease boats” or “pestilence canoes,” the Spanish and British seagoing vessels that arrived with increasing frequency.

They brought smallpox, but also the foods that made them vulnerable to smallpox. An early 100-foot sailing cargo vessel could transport as much as 800,000 pounds of “goods” — or maybe we should say “bads.”

Tribal peoples largely dependent upon the buffalo were not affected until the early 1870s, when the animals became depleted through exploitation and deliberate campaigns to kill off the herds upon which they depended. 

The Transformation of Aboriginal Health

According to a Canadian government report, “The transformation of Aboriginal people from the state of good health that had impressed travelers from Europe to one of ill health … grew worse as sources of food and clothing from the land declined and traditional economies collapsed.

It grew worse still as once mobile peoples were confined to small plots of land where resources and opportunities for natural sanitation were limited. It worsened yet again as long-standing norms, values, social systems and spiritual practices were undermined or outlawed.”

Regarding Plymouth colony, the Pilgrims were not the first Europeans in the area. European fishermen had been sailing off the New England coast, with considerable Native American contact, for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, and trading for beaver skins commenced in the early 1600s, prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.

In 1605, the Frenchman Samuel de Champlain made an extensive and detailed map of the area and the surrounding lands, showing the Patuxet village (where the town of Plymouth was later built) as a thriving settlement.

In 1617 to 1618, just prior to the arrival of the Mayflower, a mysterious epidemic wiped out up to 90% of the Indian population along the Massachusetts coast. History books blame the epidemic on smallpox, but an analysis has concluded that it may have been a disease called leptospirosis.¹(Even today, leptospirosis kills almost 60,000 people per year.)

Both wild and domestic animals can transmit leptospirosis through their urine and other fluids; rodents are the most common vector, and the beaver is a rodent. During springtime, both male and female beavers secrete a sticky, pungent substance called castoreum to attract other beavers, often depositing it in small “scent mounds” near the runways leading into their lodges.

Trappers used castoreum to scent their traps in order to catch the beavers and also traded it with the Europeans, who valued it as a base for flower-scented perfumes. Perhaps this early instance of disease was a kind of Beaver Revenge, spread by the leptospirosis organism in their castoreum — payback for exploitation of their species, for hunting them almost to extermination!

Anyway, the point is that the infectious diseases that caused so much suffering did not arrive until after a period of nutritional decline; and fear and despair almost certainly played a role.

Most Infectious Deaths Attributed to Lack of Water

When disease broke out in a village, the afflicted often found themselves abandoned by those still healthy, so they had no one to care for them. Unable to get water for themselves, they typically died of thirst. This may explain why the death rates during outbreaks were so much higher for the Native Americans (typically 90%) than for Europeans (typically 30%).

This is not to say that exposure to new microorganisms does not play a role in causing epidemics of infectious disease — but these new organisms are not likely to cause disease in well-nourished individuals with strong immune systems.

Modern Diet Is Nutrient-Deficient

Now let’s fast forward to today. We have a population of children who are extremely poorly nourished. Both bad diet and the practice of vaccination can weaken the immune system. (See Tom Cowan’s book “Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness” for an explanation of how vaccinations depress rather than enhance the immune system.)

And thanks to the practice of vaccination, we are also seeing the emergence of new and more virulent forms of diseases like measles and pertussis. Dr. Cowan and many others are predicting a resurgence of massive epidemics, outbreaks of infectious disease against which modern medicine will be helpless.

Dear parents, please be forewarned and protect your children in advance — feed them nutrient-dense foods, especially foods rich in the fat-soluble activators, and just say no to vaccines.

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Sally Fallon Morell is author of the best-selling cookbook “Nourishing Traditions” and many other books on diet and health. She is the founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org) and a founder of A Campaign for Real Milk (realmilk.com). Visit her blog at nourishingtraditions.com.

Note

[1] The Lancet, vol 3, issue 12, P757-771, Dec 2003

Featured image is from Mercola

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***

As the world watched on social media and responded in outrage, US corporate media, once again, provided cover for the perpetrators of Israel’s genocide. 

Source: FAIR

Over the Memorial Day weekend, Israel bombed starving Gazan refugees crowded in tents in Rafah, where Israel had told them to go. As Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch, 5/31/24) wrote, leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before told them to go to “Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” an area set up by the UNRWA refugee agency and designated a UN humanitarian safe zone. The leaflet added, “Don’t blame us after we warned you.”

Nevertheless, without warning, Israel hit the camp with at least eight  missiles  spreading fire though the encampment of plastic tents (Quds News, 5/26/24). Some refugees burned to death, mostly women and children, leaving them dismembered and charred.

Image: CounterPunch (5/31/24): “When the Israeli bombs strafed the safe zone, the plastic tents caught fire, sending flames leaping two meters high, before the melting, blazing structures collapsed on the people inside, many of them children who’d just been tucked in for the evening.”

The world saw the terror of the massacre on international and social media. Images showed the area of the strike engulfed in flames as Palestinians screamed, cried, ran for safety and sought to help the injured. “They told people to move there then killed them,” Richard Medhurst (5/28/24) posted.

A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm (Al Jazeera, 5/27/24).

Al Jazeera (cited by Quds News, 5/26/24) quoted a Civil Defense source: “We believe that the occupation army used internationally prohibited weapons to target the displaced in Rafah, judging by the size of the fires that erupted at the targeted site.”

US news media reported the tent massacre, some more truthfully than others. But most establishment media repeated Israel’s false claims that it was an accident, weaving disinformation messaging into toned-down descriptions of the scene. With confused syntax, they omitted words like “genocide,” “massacre” and “starvation.” Most left out the language of international law that is best able to explain the unprecedented crimes against humanity that Israel is committing. Corporate reporting left the tent massacre devoid of context and empathy, ignored actions that need to be taken, and ultimately facilitated the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

Embedded with an Illegal Invasion

When NBC News (5/28/24) reported from Gaza that “Israeli tanks reached the city center for the first time, according to NBC News‘ crew on the ground,” it failed to say that the NBC crew was embedded with Israel’s invading force.

Image: By being embedded with Israeli forces, NBC (5/28/24) presented news literally from the IDF point of view.

The same sentence continued that Israel was “defying international pressure to halt an offensive that has sent nearly 1 million people fleeing Rafah.” But Israel was not just “defying…pressure”; it was in violation of a direct order from the International Court of Justice ICJ to halt its attack on Rafah. Yet NBC reporters rode into Rafah with an army that was ignoring international law to commit further genocide in Gaza.

Compare NBC’s words to those used by Ramy Abdu (5/26/24), chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, who posted: “In the deadliest response to the International Court of Justice’s decision, the Israeli army targeted a group of displaced persons’ tents in Rafah, killing approximately 60 innocent civilians so far.”

In a post, Francesca Albanese (5/26/24), UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, included International actions that needed to be implemented:

The #GazaGenocide‌ will not easily end without external pressure: Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.

Such sanctions are rarely discussed in establishment media, but are becoming more urgent, given the New York Times report (5/29/24) that Israel intends to extend the genocide through the remainder of 2024. Though the Times reported on the global outrage and demonstrations against the Rafah massacre, the words “genocide” and “massacre” were not used, nor was there any mention of the possibility of sanctions against Israel.

Targeting ‘Hamas,’ Not Civilians

Instead of sourcing the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or any humanitarian actors in the region, NBC (5/28/24) quoted a UN Security Council spokesperson:

Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians…. But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.

Israel’s claim that it killed two Hamas leaders became the rationale for the strike, which was repeated extensively on corporate media. Over NBC‘s images of burning tents and killing scenes, the header read, “Dozens killed in Gaza tent camp in an airstrike targeting two Hamas commanders.”

Source

The dead were connected to Hamas whenever possible. At the bottom of the video, the subtitles listed numbers of dead, followed with, “according to the emergency services in Hamas-run Gaza.”

Human rights attorney and Rutgers academic Noura Erakat (5/27/24) exposed the attempt to link murdered children to Hamas. Over the picture of a burned baby, she posted these harsh words:

Have you ever seen a burnt baby? Can you imagine her final, gaping screams? And all Israel had to tell you was “Hamas,” so you look at her and shrug. Your willful ignorance is genocidal.

CounterPunch (5/31/24) quoted Jeremy Konyndyk, former head of disaster relief for US Agency for International Development, saying, “Bombing a tent camp full of displaced people is a clear-cut, full-on war crime” who added, “Even if Hamas troops were present, that does not absolve the IDF of the obligation to protect civilians. It does not turn a tent camp into a free fire zone.”

‘A Tragic Incident’

On NBC (5/28/24), under the footage of the burning horrors of Rafah, the chyron read, “Netanyahu: Deadly Strike a Tragic Incident.”

In response to Israel’s “accident” claim, journalists, activists and social media users, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, reacted with incredulity and withering criticism of those who asserted it. That was the reaction Axios reporter and CNN analyst Barak Ravid (5/27/24) received when he posted, “Breaking: Netanyahu says the airstrike in Rafah on Sunday was ‘a tragic mistake,’ and adds that it will be investigated.” Katie Halper (5/27/24) replied to Ravid with, “Nice to see you using your position as a journalist to do comms for the Israeli government.”

And Tlaib (5/27/24) commented:

This was intentional. You don’t accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, “It was a mistake.” Genocidal maniac Netanyahu told us he wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.

She ended with the question, “When are you going to believe him?”

Sana Saeed (5/27/24), media critic for Al Jazeera+, posted the front pages of four print publications that repeated Netanyahu’s accident claim. The New York Times used “Tragic Accident,” while “Tragic Mistake” was preferred by Time magazine, Forbes and the AP. Over the headlines, she called them “propagandists for genocide masquerading as journalists.”

‘What Israel Shared with Us’

But CNN (5/28/24) seemed to be vying for Most Valuable Propagandists by elaborating on the unlikely details offered by the IDF to describe the official Israeli version of what happened. It began with Netanyahu speaking to the Knesset: “Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night. We are investigating the case.”

After four paragraphs of details of the massacre—“burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage”—CNN returned to the justifications. The long, breathless chain of details began:

A US official told CNN Monday that Israel had told the Biden administration it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths.

But the claims could not be confirmed; “It’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said.

But the attack on Rafah was in no way a single “precision” “hit,” as numerous sources reported that multiple bombs hit the camp. And Al Jazeera (5/27/24) reported that Israeli drone strikes also hit the Kuwaiti Hospital, the only functioning hospital in the area, killing two medics. It also pointed out that no notice to evacuate came before the strike.

Ever-changing Disinformation

In an X post (5/27/24), Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill noted the shifting narrative coming from Israel:

Netanyahu now admits Israel carried out the horrifying bombings that incinerated human beings in Rafah last night and turned a refugee camp into hellfire. I assume all the people who claimed it was actually a failed Hamas rocket attack will now rush to correct themselves.

As we observed after the flour massacre (FAIR.org, 3/22/24), Israel’s string of differing false statements immediately following a massacre is an IDF propaganda strategy designed to confuse and delay. Focusing on changing falsities distracts from the massacre and turns the cameras away from the horrible images of US-supplied weapons slaughter. In this way, massacres become normalized.

Repeating and discussing the ever-changing Israeli disinformation of denial, discussing weapons and official statements, also allows US corporate media to avoid easily observed patterns of Israel’s ongoing massacres, in addition to drawing public attention away from the suffering. But on social media, the raw footage and cries of outrage by users indicate that the manufactured emotional distance collapses online.

Some users expressed extreme distress after prolonged viewing of such imagery. One Palestinian organizer (5/27/24) said:

I’m shaking uncontrollably since last night. I can’t get the beheaded baby that was burned alive. The woman’s screaming out of my head. The decomposed bodies of babies out of my head. The girl whose body was stuck to a wall. Hind’s final message to PRCS…. And now. How do you watch all this and not feel your soul dead?

The daughter of Palestinian refugees posted (5/27/24):

The flour massacre, the tents massacre, the hospital massacre, the refugee camp massacre, the “safe corridor” massacre, the endless massacres, in homes, on the streets, in tents, on foot— eight months of massacre after massacre after massacre.

Another user (5/27/24) asked, “Why do so many Israeli mistakes involve launching multiple missiles at people they’ve assured are in safe zones?”

‘Willful Media Blackout’

It was the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2/29/24) that exposed US corporate media reporting as repeated propaganda in a piece titled, “In Netanyahu’s Israel, the Rafah Horror Was Neither ‘a Mishap’ nor Exceptional.” The editorial scoffed at the use of “tragic mishap” to describe the “horrific incident.” It observed that “it took Netanyahu 20 hours to produce the disgraceful statement, which, as usual, lacked any shred of regret over the death of ‘noncombatants.’”

Haaretz derided the “willful media blackout regarding the scope of death and destruction over the last eight months.” Skeptical about the assertion that “it was not expected to cause damage to noncombatant civilians,” the paper observed that, if true, “this involves an ongoing failure at the strategic level.”

Image: LA Progressive (6/7/24): “In response to this massacre…the best US spokespeople could muster was to urge Israel to be ‘transparent’ about the assault.”

By May 29, US corporate media began to report extensively that the Israeli bombs dropped on Rafah that burned Palestinian refugees alive were made in the US. A  munitions fragment was filmed by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq, and was posted on X (5/27/24) by former US Army explosive expert Trevor Ball two days earlier. Much was made of the fact that the ordinance was smaller than the usual 2,000-pound bombs used to destroy Gaza, and were the preferred bombs the Biden administration had sent to Israel.

As the New York Times (5/29/24) put it, “US officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.” The lengthy report included a drawing of the bomb, the details of its manufacture, and assertions that its use by Israel indicated they tried to kill fewer civilians. Gone were any mention of the “tragic mistake,” and the “exploded fuel tank,” forgotten as yesterday’s fake news.

But a lengthy back-and-forth about how the fire could have started failed to point out the obvious, which comes only at the very end when a retired US Air Force sergeant observes, “When you use a weapon that’s intended as precision and low–collateral damage in an area where civilians are saturated, it really negates that intended use.”

As Israel’s atrocities continue to mount in Gaza, the LA Progressive (6/7/24) wrote that though Biden claimed to care about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and that an Israeli attacked on Rafah would be a “red line,” “events of the past weeks have demonstrated that none of these claims are in fact true.” It added that a month ago, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement “that looked a lot like the ceasefire agreement now being promoted by the Biden administration,” but Israel responded by rejecting that agreement as well.

In addition, Israel closed off the border area between Israel and Egypt, cutting off any aid or supplies from coming into famine-ravaged Gaza. The authors concluded, “What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians, which the Biden administration continues to try to downplay, excuse and explain away.”

Over the last eight months, US establishment media have helped Biden “explain away” such  atrocities. They have not stopped repeating Israel’s propaganda, and have acted as willing conduits for Israeli disinformation. It is past time they stopped doing so, and started reporting on what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, not through the eyes of the IDF.

*

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Robin Andersen teaches media studies at Fordham University. (Follow her @MediaPhiled).

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***

Aleksandar Vučić is the President of Serbia. He gave a television interview which I mentioned on last night’s Hal Turner Radio Show, wherein he states plainly “We will have World War within three to four months, maybe sooner.” Clips from that interview appear below – watch it.

He went on to say his people are being told to check their flour, sugar, and food supplies, and prepare.

He outlines very clearly, what is at stake for the collective West as it relates to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, and how if the West loses, it falls apart politically and loses respect of the entire world, but if Russia loses, their country “will no longer exist as it is shaped today.”   With the stakes so high for both sides, a massive collision and war seems now to be “unavoidable.”

For MONTHS, I have warned readers of this website and listeners to my radio show, that this conflict was going to go “wild weasel” and result in what I personally believe, will be actual nuclear war.

I have suggested, advised, cajoled, and even implored you to get emergency water, emergency food, extra medicine that you need to live, and other “preps” like flashlights for every room in the house, spare batteries for them, a first aid kit with bandages to treat wounds or injuries, a generator to supply electric to your refrigerator so your food won’t go bad if the electric grid goes down, spare fuel for that generator, COMMUNICATIONS GEAR like CB or HAM radio, to talk with locals and be able to hear news from around the world by shortwave (HAM).

I have been regularly ridiculed as “Chicken Little – the Sky is falling.”  People have lambasted me as promoting “fear porn” and offering stories as “click bait” even though there are no ads on this site for which I get any revenue!

Many people have flatly DENIED REALITY for months, have ignored my warnings and have done nothing.  Now, the President of Serbia is telling everyone just how bad things are getting.

If you don’t start getting the emergency supplies you will need, then you and your family will be shit-out-of-luck when the fighting starts – because millions of other morons, who also did nothing, will all be running to the stores trying to get food and supplies.  The store shelves will be picked clear within hours.  Just like what happens when a hurricane is going to make landfall, and all the morons who didn’t do anything because they wanted to see where it would come ashore, all run out to get supplies at the last minute.  Store shelves are emptied and they are out of luck.

Here are excerpts from the Serbian President’s interview. PLEASE listen to him and take action to prepare for what’s coming.

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***

I was arrested again inside of Congress for speaking out against US-backed genocide.

Myself and others were brutally tackled and carried out of the room by Capitol Police. I was charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” for speaking out and holding a sign as the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense testified in Congress for more money for the endless US war machine.

While they are arresting peace activists for exercising first amendment rights they are making plans to host Netanyahu- a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.

For decades, people following CODEPINK’s lead have been protesting inside the halls of Congress. The year before October 7, there were a handful of us protesting the bloated military budgets and the US warmongering. I was arrested several times on my own, but since October, dozens of us have been arrested in Congress, hundreds in DC, and thousands across the US and the world for Palestine.

The sustained energy and activism are the result of the 40,000+ thousands of Palestinians murdered, millions being starved and displaced, their land, water, and air poisoned, and neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps demolished.

The real criminals are the ones we are protesting against–the ones literally sitting directly in front of us inside the hearing room–and should be the ones arrested, charged, and found guilty for the war criminals they are funding and supporting and the war crimes they are committing.

Any of us speaking and acting out on the side of justice know we are taking risks. We see it as our duty as people in the US in solidarity with and inspired by the Palestinian people facing and resisting this horror.

As I await my court date, I think of the people I spent the night with at the DC detention facility. Just this year, there have been 5 deaths inside the D.C. jail. The dozen or so women in there reminded me that poverty is a policy choice and our carceral, systemically racist state perpetuates harm and cycles of violence.

According to the US Center for Palestinian Rights in Washington DC, for this year alone (before our additional billions of aid weresent), $15,596,311 to Israel’s weapons could instead fund 451,735 households with public housing, 1,322,199 children receiving free or low-cost healthcare, 41,490 elementary school teachers, 10,818,505 households with solar electricity produce, and 100,563 students with their loan debt canceled.

The fight against US militarism is one where the climate, feminist, Indigenous, economic, and racial justice movements are all uniting around right now. And as it deepens and strengthens, we must become more organized as we escalate while we continue to make those in power uncomfortable.

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Olivia DiNucci is an anti-militarism and climate justice organizer based in Washington DC.

Featured image is by Celâl Güneş/CODEPINK

First published by Global Research in August 2015

Short Introductory Note on The History of Nazism 

This article was written more than 8 years ago, focussing on the Azov Battalion’s Neo-Nazi Children’s Summer Training Camps. The extensive crimes committed against Ukrainian children are barely acknowledged by our governments and the media,

In the words of the late John Pilger (May 1, 2023) referring to Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi regime:

“The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism’, as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy’, which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews. (John Pilger, May Day 2023)

The tacit support of Neo-nazism in Ukraine by Western governments is not a recent post World War II phenomenon. The history of both World War II and “the inter-War period” (1918-1939) has a direct bearing on today’s Neo-nazism.

The unspoken truth is that the hegemonic role of Wall Street and the American dollar in the wake of World War I was the driving force behind the development of Nazi Germany. The Treaty of Versailles (signed in 1919) required Germany to pay 132 billion gold marks (US$33 billion at the time) in reparations.

This multibillion dollar debt payed a key role. Hitler’s Election Campaign was endorsed by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England:  

“On January 4th, 1932, a meeting was held between British financier Montagu Norman (Governor of the Bank of England), Adolf Hitler and Franz Von Papen (who became Chancellor a few months later in May 1932). At this meeting, an agreement on the financing of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or Nazi Party) was reached.

This meeting was also attended by US policy-makers and the Dulles brothers, something which their biographers do not like to mention.”

(For more details See Yuri Rubtsov, May 14, 2016)

The Azov Battalion’s Children’s Summer Training Camps  

These innocent Ukrainian young kids trained and indoctrinated in the Azov summer camp in 2014-2015  are now (2023) adolescents, in their mid to late teens, recruited by the Nazi Azov Battalion to “Fight The Russians”.

A 2017 NBC Report entitled “Ukraine’s Hyper Nationalist Summer Camp for Kids” documents the existence of  the Summer camps, where kids of 9 years old are recruited and later enlisted in the Azov Battalion.

“In 2014, a group of armed Ukrainian civilians known as the Azov Battalion banded together to fight pro-Russian separatists for control of the country. Three years later, they’ve been absorbed by the National Guard of Ukraine, and when they’re not engaged in the ongoing conflict, they run an annual children’s summer camp featuring pro-Ukrainian campfire songs, rigorous military drills, and a hardline stance on national identity.”

The NBC report confirms that the Nazi Azov Battalion was integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard (in fact it was not in 2017 but several months following EuroMaidan in November 2014). The National Guard is under the jurisdiction of Ukraine’s Ministry of  Internal Affairs, which has the mandate (in coordination with the Ministry of Defense) of  waging military operations against the separatist provinces of Donesk and Luhansk. The Azov Battalion is now part of the recently created “Offensive Guard”. 

The NBC report is careful not to associate the Azov Battalion with Nazism. They are called Ultra-Nationalists. There is ample evidence that these Summer camps are intent upon instilling Nazi ideology in young children. See report below. 

And Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion has been generously supported from the outset by both the U.S. and Canada. This a crime against humanity, a crime against Ukrainian children, who are now adolescents recruited to fight in Kiev’s counteroffensive. 

On June 15-16, 2024, 2024 delegates from 90 countries will be meeting at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucerne, in the context of a Peace Conference organized by the Swiss government to which Russia was not invited.

Our governments not only refuse to invite Russia to this event, their fake peace-making endeavour consists in supporting Ukraine’s 21st Century Neo Nazi regime.

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 13, 2024

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Zelensky is Jewish. He supports the Nazi Azov Battalion, the two Nazi parties, which have committed countless atrocities against the Jewish community in Ukraine.  

He belongs to a Russian-Jewish family. He was brought up as a native Russian speaker, who until recently was not fluent in Ukrainian.

For details see: 

Video: A Jewish-Russian Proxy President: Zelensky Transformed into a Nazi.

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky and Silview Media, September 24, 2023

Video: NBC’s Short Documentary. Does not Refer to Nazism

 

 

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Introduction

Unknown to most Americans and Canadians, the US government is channeling financial support, weapons and training to a Neo-Nazi entity –which is part of The Ukraine National Guard– The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов). Canada and Britain have confirmed that they also are providing support to the National Guard.

The Azov Battalion -which “officially” displays the Nazi SS emblem– (below left) is described by the Kiev regime as “a volunteer battalion of territorial defense”. It’s a National Guard battalion under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the equivalent of America’s Homeland Security. 

Officially based in Berdyank on the Sea of Azov, the Azov battalion was formed by the regime to fight the opposition insurgency in the Donbass region. (Eastern and Southern Ukraine).  

Military Training of Young Children to fight the Russians

The Azov battalion supported by its Western partners is not only involved in para-military operations in Eastern Ukraine. According to reports including the Kyiv Post (Ukraine mainstream media), it is running a Summer Camp military training project for young children as part of its broader training and indoctrination program.

According to RT:

“The camp was established to show the children that there are things in life besides school and mobile devices and to “give them our love,” Oleksii, a platoon commander in the Azov battalion and instructor at the camp, told Ukrainian ICTV channel. “One has to be strong; has to be courageous to defend the territorial integrity of our motherland,” he added.” (RT report)  

Western media sources (quoted by the Kyiv Post) confirm that children as young as six years old  (see images below) are participating in the Azov Summer Camp located in the Vodytsya district outside Kyiv.

The text on the banner reads: Iдея B Нації, сила В тобі:  broadly translated: The Idea of the Nation, The Power within You

The above photos confirm that many of the children are in fact young kids rather than adolescents.

The Kyiv Post –which blames the Western media for its biased coverage– nonetheless acknowledges the diabolical nature of the military training project:

… this particular camp is run by the Azov Battalion founded by lawmaker Andriy Biletsky, its former commander. Located in the wooded area of Kyiv’s Pushcha Vodytsya district, kids at this summer camp aren’t just playing soldiers – they’re getting actual military training from soldiers who have fought on the front line in Russia’s war against Ukraine.

Named Azovets, the camp has been the subject of negative coverage in the Russian media, pro-Russia websites and even U.K. tabloid The Daily Mail.

“Neo-Nazi summer camp: Ukrainian kids taught to shoot AKs by Azov battalion members (PHOTOS),” reads Kremlin-controlled RT’s headline for its story about the camp.

“Shocking pictures from inside neo-Nazi military camp reveal recruits as young as SIX are being taught how to fire weapons (even though there’s a ceasefire),” reads the headline in the Daily Mail’s sensationalized and inaccurate article. (Kyiv Post, August 29, 2015)

While the Kiev regime denies that Azov is a Neo-Nazi entity, the logos of both the Azov batallion as well as the Avovets Summer Camp (displayed on the Summer Camp T shirts) bear the symbol of the Nazi SS Wolfsangel with shadows of “the Nazi Black Sun” in the background.

Wolfsangel logo on the T Shirts with SS Reich’s division symbol

Recruitment of Child Soldiers

The Summer Camp training program constitutes the first stage of the recruitment of child soldiers in derogation of international law.

Invariably, the recruitment of child soldiers implies a training program which familiarizes young children with the use of light automatic weapons.

The military trainers are part of the Azov paramilitary dispatched to the Summer Camp (see the Nazi SS insignia on his uniform below):

© vk.com/tabir.azovec

The Kyiv Post article describes in detail the nature of the “Neo-Nazi Summer Camp”. What the reports confirm is that an entity under the jurisdiction of  Ukraine’s National Guard (financed by the Ukraine Ministry of internal Affairs) is training and indoctrinating small children in the art of warfare:

The Azovets summer camp accepts children of Azov Battalion members, as well as kids from Kyiv’s nearby Obolon district and further afield. It opened on June 22, runs weeklong programs of activities for groups of 30 to 40 kids. Officially, it is for children aged from nine to 18, but there are kids as young as seven there. A few of the kids had already attended it for several weeks in a row.

What makes the camp most controversial is that it’s run by Azov fighters, some of whom have been labeled as far-right supporters and neo-Nazis. Critics say the battalion’s symbol is an inverted Wolfsangel that has oblique but uncomfortable associations with Nazism.

In previous interviews with Ukrainian media, Biletsky says the symbolism is misunderstood. The letters “N” and “I” make up Azov’s insignia, which he says stand for “national idea.”

Biletsky founded a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine called the Social-National Assembly, and there certainly are neo-Nazis among the battalion’s ranks, some sporting Nazi tattoos. Some media have reported that up to 20 percent of Azov’s fighters are neo-Nazis, though the battalion’s press officers are always at pains to emphasize that Azov, as a military formation, does not share the ideology of its founder Biletsky, or indeed have any ideology other than fervent patriotism.

When the Kyiv Post visited the Azovets camp on Aug. 19 the kids were busy with a range of activities, including stripping down and assembling AK-47 assault rifles, target practice (with air guns), tackling assault courses, and practicing combat poses and patrolling. They also take part in various sports and games, do rappelling and climbing, and practice other more traditional scouting and woodcraft skills like tying knots.

“I’ve been here only for three days, but I’ve realized that it’s not a camp where you just play games. We’re getting military training here,” one of the kids at the camp told the Kyiv Post.

Out in the forest next to the camp, a group of kids was getting some weapons safety advice from an Azov trainer.

“Do you know what would happen if you kept your fingers on the trigger? If it were a real gun, you could kill your comrades. So, don’t do it!” the trainer barks.

“Yes sir!” the kids answer.

The children then practice medically evacuating wounded soldiers from the battlefield.

The militaristic atmosphere at the camp, including strict discipline, has plainly influenced some of the children.

“I got my hair cut really short yesterday,” says one boy. “Just because I want it. I look more like a soldier now.”

Two older kids, who, like many of the children at the camp, have taken noms de guerre (Medic and Physicist) in imitation of Ukraine’s real soldiers, said they now wanted to join the Azov Battalion.

“I want to defend my homeland. There are comrades who support my idea. I think that if it’s necessary, I will fight,” 17-year old Physicist told the Kyiv Post.

The children at the camp are organized into four groups, depending on their age, with each group overseen by a trainer and caregiver. The camp’s day starts early, at 7 a.m. sharp, and ends at 11 p.m. The children sleep in tents.

Access to Azov’s own website and supporting websites was closed off to the public last September when the battalion was integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine, but the camp has a page on the Russian social network Vkontakte (https://vk.com/tabir.azovec) where it is promoted, and where people can apply to become volunteers, or contact the camp to send their children there.

“The Mission of the Camp: To form the Ukrainian of a new era – a patriot, who is ready to actively participate in building and defending Ukraine,” the page’s description reads.

…

The military-patriotic songs that the children sing every day as a part of the camp’s program do seem to be one of the more popular activities for the kids. Late at night, sitting around a blazing campfire, they belt out their favorites – patriotic songs dating back to Ukraine’s previous struggles for independence in the early- to mid-20th century.

The Kyiv Post listened to the words of one of the songs. Its lyrics were about Ukrainian soldiers defeating their enemies.

Today that enemy is Russia. A boy who sits on a log softly whispers: “I want that this war will end and we will kill all the Russians.” (Kyiv Post, August 29, 2015, emphasis added)

( To read the full article by Kyiv Post staff writer Faina Nakonechnaya click here )

US Military Aid

This diabolical endeavor, which incites hate by innocent children against ethnic Russians as well as opponents of the Kiev regime is broadly supported by US military aid channelled to the Ukraine National Guard via the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The MIA coordinates the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in Donbass.

While the US Congress has adopted amendments to its “Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2015.” to block the training of the Azov battalion’s Neo-Nazis, in practice the money trickles down.

Moreover, in addition to military aid channelled under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon, the California National Guard has established a partnership with the Ukraine National Guard, which includes the Azov Battalion:

“The California–Ukraine State Partnership Program (SPP) Mission [under the auspices of the California National Guard] is to promote democracy, free market economies and military reform, by establishing long-term institutional affiliations … The California – Ukraine partnership directly supports both the goals of the US Ambassador to Ukraine and Commander, U.S. European Command. …  (Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC), Chief: LTC Tracey D. Rueschhoff)

Scroll down for Selected Images of the Azov Battalion “Freedom Fighters” 

These are the people who are training Ukrainian kids to handle AK 47s at the Neo-Nazi Summer Camp. Its all for a good cause: “the flowering of democracy” in the words the New York Times.

Imagine what would happen if  the California National Guard were to display swastika-like symbols on its uniforms.

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“HUNGER CATASTROPHE IN GAZA – DONATIONS NEEDED” cries Mercy Corps. 

“URGENT: STARVATION IN GAZA: ALL GIFTS MATCHED FOR GAZA” shouts Rescue.org.

These and many other appeals from international relief organizations have motivated untold numbers of compassionate and generous souls to open their purses. You may be among them. If so, you may have thought that these organizations are delivering food, medicine and other relief supplies to Gaza. But they are not.

The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirms that not a single truck with relief aid has crossed the border from Egypt to Gaza since Israeli troops captured the Rafah border crossing on May 7, 2024, more than a month ago. Until then, the Rafah crossing was the only one open. Today, roughly 1800 mostly large 18-wheel trucks, each carrying up to 12 tons of supplies, are backed up into the Sinai Desert, waiting for Israeli permission to enter. Some have been there for months. And some of those trucks belong to the relief organizations. But they, like all the others, are not getting in. 

Many of the organizations also announce that, thanks to your donations, they have provided hundreds of thousands or even millions of meals to starving Palestinians in Gaza. What they do not necessarily tell you is that they are doing this by purchasing food and medicine from the dwindling supplies inside Gaza.

The bottom line is that your money is reaching the relief organization’s operations in Gaza, but food, water and medical supplies are not. The amount of food in Gaza is dwindling, and Israel is allowing only a tiny trickle to enter by isolated air drops, a single delivery by sea and occasional vehicles through the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. For a pre-October 7^th population of 2.3 million, this is nothing.

As the supplies shrink inside Gaza, the prices rise, and your donations increase the prices further. The same applies to all the needs of the population. More money chasing fewer goods. At some point, no amount of money will buy food or medicine in Gaza. Already, Palestinians are dying of starvation, malnutrition and diseases caused by reduced resistance. These are not often reported, because they are not victims of violent slaughter, and because the hospitals, clinics and mortuaries that would have reported them to the Ministry of Health – who would have tallied them – no longer exist. The Ministry of Health barely exists, while the weak die anonymously, buried by their families and communities. Some estimates of such casualties are already in the hundreds of thousands. 

It’s not that the relief agencies are not performing a worthwhile service. They are enabling increasingly scarce supplies to reach larger numbers of destitute people while they last. But they will not last, and the relief organizations are unable to bring additional supplies. Furthermore, they are mostly failing to be forthright with you by reporting these facts. Instead, they are projecting an image of success, with the result that you might think that they are maintaining a lifeline when in fact Gaza is heading to complete depletion of the few resources that remain. 

This is what Israel intends. If the food is distributed equitably, a large proportion of the population will survive until the day there is nothing left. Then everyone will starve at the same time, and the genocide will be accomplished quickly with the last loaves of bread costing $1000 apiece. And the humanitarian relief organizations will not have warned you.

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This article was originally published on Dissident Voice. 

Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Yazan al-Kafarna is one of the latest to die of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October (Screengrab/X)

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Nearly 300 people were massacred at a refugee camp in central Gaza on June 7 under the guise of rescuing captives held by resistance forces since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7.

It was later announced that four of those held were retrieved in what was promoted as a major military victory for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).

Nonetheless, the deaths of at least 274 Palestinians were reported by western media sources as a necessary by-product of the purported successful military operation. This follows the same pattern of coverage by the corporate and government-controlled news agencies which are based in the imperialist states and their satellites.

Official figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry based in Gaza indicate that more than 37,000 people have been killed since the intensified aerial bombardments and ground operations. In addition to those killed, tens of thousands more have been wounded and injured as the entire population of 2.3 million remain displaced and imperiled.

Hospitals, schools, neighborhoods, religious institutions, refugees and internally displaced camps have been subjected to massive bombing, shelling and raids. The Israeli government and the United States have repeatedly blamed Hamas and other resistance movements for the initiation of this latest phase of the war as well as their refusal to accept the terms laid down by Washington and Tel Aviv for a ceasefire.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made numerous trips to the West Asia and North Africa regions supposedly seeking to negotiate a settlement. However, the administration of President Joe Biden consistently says that its commitment to the settler-colonial state now occupying Palestine is “ironclad”. This commitment to the security of the State of Israel includes massive shipments of warplanes, guns and bombs.

In addition to the supply of arms, U.S. military and intelligence support to Tel Aviv is critical to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. This was revealed recently when the Islamic Republic of Iran retaliated against the targeted assassinations of several diplomatic and military officials from Tehran who were in Damascus, Syria assisting that government which has been under siege since 2011 by the imperialist states and their allies in the country.

Consequently, it was not surprising when several news agencies reported the U.S. role in this recent massacre which has been condemned by various organizations and governments throughout the world. In an effort to redirect the attention from the genocidal actions of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Pentagon, the U.S. submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council on June 10 which passed with only one abstention from the Russian Federation. (See this)

However, it is quite obvious that the Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do not want a meaningful ceasefire after more than eight months of bombing and shelling. The White House and the U.S. Congress are continuing to supply weapons and diplomatic cover for the Zionist state.

According to an article published in the Egyptian-based Al Ahram:

“An American cell in Israel supported the efforts to release the Israeli captives, working with Israeli forces on the operation, a U.S. official told CNN. The official referred to a U.S. team that’s been in place supporting Israel since 7 October with information gathering about the captives.

That team, composed of special operations, military, and intelligence personnel working out of the embassy in Jerusalem, has been in Israel since the war began, The Washington Post reported. Since then, it has shared with Israeli counterparts information about captives’ potential location gleaned from U.S. drone surveillance over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources, said the people familiar with the matter.” 

In another report on the June 8 massacre in Nuseirat, the Lebanese-based Al Mayadeen Television network cited western sources as confirmation of the Pentagon involvement in the killing of 274 people in central Gaza. This represented the continuation of the collaboration between the Pentagon and the IDF in the latest genocidal onslaught.

Al Mayadeen noted in one article that:

“The Israeli occupation forces launched on Saturday (June 8) numerous airstrikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which led to the death of at least 210 Palestinians and injury of 400. A team of American experts stationed in Israeli-occupied lands supported the Israeli military in retrieving the four captives by giving information and other logistical support, according to one American official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the delicate operation.

A senior Israeli official told the NYT that the U.S. and UK have been in ‘Israel’ throughout the war on Gaza, assisting Israeli intelligence in gathering and analyzing information about the captives, some of whom are citizens of both countries. Two Israeli official sources cited that U.S. military officers gave the occupation information regarding the captives retrieved Saturday.” 

Consequently, the label placed upon the head of the imperialist camp is correct. The term “Genocide Joe” is a clear reflection of U.S. policy towards the Palestinians.

Blinken’s claim in his latest shuttle diplomacy throughout the region that the U.S. is supplying the most aid to the people of Gaza is outrageous. In reality, the Biden administration is supporting every genocidal act against the Palestinians carried out directly by the armed forces of the State of Israel.

In many areas of Gaza, people are experiencing famine due to the lack of adequate food supplies and clean drinking water. People are drinking water taken from the Mediterranean Sea. Consuming water which is not desalinated can result in serious health problems among all age groups within the population.

Palestinians in Gaza are largely dependent upon canned food supplied by aid agencies which also contain high sodium content. The unhealthy and limited food available in most parts of Gaza only compounds the existing humanitarian and public health crisis.

In regard to the health crisis, as a whole the physicians, nurses, medical technicians, ambulance drivers and others are being targeted by the Israeli military forces. It is nearly impossible to provide any effective healthcare treatment for gunshot injuries, shrapnel wounds from bombs, the systematic torture of civilians alongside maternity services and treatment for other diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cancers and heart problems.

U.S. Administration Cannot be Trusted as Honest Brokers in Peace Efforts

Blinken told the international press in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution for a ceasefire based upon the terms set by Washington that all votes are in for the commencement of a ceasefire except for Hamas. This statement is not only absurd, it is an insult to the Palestinian people since they do not have a vote within the United Nations.

A vote within the UN General Assembly in May was designed to enhance the status of Palestinian representation within the international body. However, the Biden administration is not in support of the creation of a genuinely independent and sovereign Palestinian state and therefore it remains clear that the U.S. government is in favor of maintaining the status quo.

The official policy of U.S. imperialism solidarizes with that of the settler-colonial state in Tel Aviv which is determined to eliminate the resistance to the occupation in Gaza and throughout the entire length and breadth of Palestine. In order to wipe out the resistance to the occupation requires the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.

These facts have created a situation where the students and other sectors of the U.S. population are seizing spaces on college campuses to establish encampments in solidarity with the Palestinians. The students are demanding the full disclosure and divestment of all financial holdings in the settler-colonial state now occupying Palestine.

Consequently, the only real manner to address the Palestinian question is within the areas of mass demonstrations and electoral support for initiatives which express dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy towards Palestine. These methods of opposition to the genocide have gained far more political traction than the efforts designed to appease Zionism and imperialism.

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

Featured image is from the author

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Biden: Israel is offering a ceasefire.
Israel: We’re not.
Biden: I negotiated this ceasefire
Israel: There’s no ceasefire agreement.
Biden: The ceasefire will begin soon.
Israel: It won’t.
Rinse and repeat. @Pimso B

The Biden administration’s ceasefire resolution is a cynical fraud aimed at airbrushing Israel’s tattered image while laying the groundwork for the final expulsion of the Palestinian people. In truth, there won’t be a ceasefire because Netanyahu and his entire cabinet are adamantly opposed to ending the hostilities. There’s not even any gray area here. After the US-drafted resolution was passed on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office delivered a terse statement saying the following:

“The claim that Israel agreed to end the war before achieving all its goals is a total lie,” says the PMO….

The full document, argues Netanyahu’s office, would show that “Israel will not end the war until all its conditions are met — that is, fighting until Hamas is eliminated, returning all of our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza never again represents a threat to Israel.” (Times of Israel)

Repeat: “Israel will not end the war until all its conditions are met — (and) until Hamas is eliminated.”

So, what was the point of pushing through a ceasefire resolution when it had zero chance of being implemented? Was it just a publicity stunt?

And, why is Secretary of State Anthony Blinken –not only saying that Israel supports the proposal– but that Israel actually had a hand in crafting its language. Here’s Blinken on Monday:

“First, let me be very clear, Israel has accepted the proposal, in fact, they were critical in putting it forward. It is the official position of the Israeli government, the prime minister. So, the only party that has not said ‘Yes’ is Hamas. That’s who everyone is waiting on. That’s who the Palestinians are waiting on, it’s who the Israelis are waiting on, and it’s who the hostages and the hostage families are waiting on. It’s who the entire region and the entire world are waiting on. So, we’ll see, does Hamas want to end this war that it started or not? We’ll find out. But it’s clear that virtually the entire world has come together in support of the proposal. So, the only question is will Hamas say ‘Yes’? @AssalRad

This is a total fabrication and Blinken knows it:

Israel has NOT accepted the proposal

Israel was NOT “critical in putting the ceasefire resolution forward”

The ceasefire resolution is NOT “the official position of the Israeli government (and) the prime minister.”

These are baldfaced lies, and very stupid lies at that, because they can be easily checked and disproved. Take a look:

“The only obstacle for peace” pic.twitter.com/TSokI0zpa0

— Alonso Gurmendi (@Alonso_GD) June 10, 2024

Repeat: “In a preemptive response to the UN Security Council’s decision, Netanyahu says, “We will not agree to any deal that leads to ending the war.”

Netanyahu’s position is crystal clear and has been for a long time: The rampage will continue for the foreseeable future. So, why is Blinken deliberately misleading the public? What is the objective here? This is from CNN just hours after the resolution was approved by the UNSC:

Israel has vowed to persist with its military operation in Gaza, saying it won’t engage in “meaningless” negotiations with Hamas, shortly after the United Nations Security Council overwhelmingly approved a US-backed ceasefire plan intended to bring an end to the eight-month war…

(Israel’s) senior diplomat (Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly) said the war would not end until all hostages were returned and Hamas’ capabilities were “dismantled,” accusing the Palestinian militant group of using “endless negotiations… as a means to stall for time.”

Her comments came after 14 of the 15 UNSC council members voted in favor of Monday’s US-drafted resolution, with only Russia abstaining – the first time the council has endorsed such a plan to end the war…..

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is on a diplomatic trip to the Middle East, said Tuesday that in a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the Israeli leader “reaffirmed his commitment” to the current proposal to secure a ceasefireand hostage release, which is still awaiting an answer from Hamas. Blinken said that he got an explicit assurance from Netanyahu that he continues to support the deal, and will accept it if Hamas agrees to what is on the table. …

But an Israeli statement on Tuesday indicated it was poised to formally sign up to the current ceasefire plan for Gaza, while at the same time maintaining the freedom to keep fighting… Israel vows to press on in Gaza after UN Security Council approves ceasefire proposal, CNN

Can you see how ridiculous and Orwellian this is? Israel will agree to a ceasefire as long as it has “the freedom to keep fighting”. Huh? In case you’re wondering, the definition of “ceasefire” is “a suspension of fighting.” Therefore, we must assume that if the fighting continues, there is no ceasefire.

By the way, Hamas has already agreed to the terms of the ceasefire which is another blow to Blinken’s crazy plan to try to make Israel look like the peacemaker. Here’ more from CNN:

Hamas welcomed the adoption of the UNSC resolution, saying in a statement it was ready to engage with mediators to implement measures such as the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, prisoner exchange, returning residents to their homes and the “rejection of any demographic change or reduction in the area of the Gaza Strip.” …

The Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said the Palestinian Authority – which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank – welcomed the deal as a “step in the right direction.”…

“We want a ceasefire,” (but) the “burden is on the Israeli side to implement this resolution.”

“The proof is in the pudding. We will see who are the ones who are interested to see this resolution to become a reality and those who are obstructing it and want to continue the war of genocide against our people,” he added. CNN

It’s worth noting, that just a few days ago, Israeli diplomats met with US envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield to express their opposition to the Biden ceasefire resolution. The Israelis even objected to it being called a “ceasefire”. They preferred the less permanent-sounding phrase a “cessation of hostilities.”

Israel also objected to “the updated draft’s call for both sides to fully implement the latest hostage deal proposal. The earlier version only called on Hamas to accept the proposal.” (Times of Israel)

Israel also objected to a clause in the resolution that “rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip”. (which suggests that the native population could face ethnic cleansing.) The Israeli envoy also wanted to omit any mention of America’s “unwavering commitment to achieving the vision of a negotiated two-state solution… consistent with international law and relevant UN resolutions, and in this regard stresses the importance of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”

According to the Times of Israel:

The two-state framework is rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has also worked to weaken the PA, likening the governing body to Hamas.

So, if Israel had expressed its opposition to a ceasefire so forcefully just days earlier, then why did the members of the Security Council believe that they (Israel) had suddenly changed their mind?

It makes no sense.

The only country that wasn’t duped by the ceasefire hoax was Russia who abstained from the vote on a US-proposed resolution. In explaining why Russia chose to abstain, Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said the following:

We have a number of questions about the American draft resolution, in which the Council welcomes a certain “deal” whose final contours are still unknown to anyone save the mediators themselves. The information circulating in open sources is quite contradictory. The sponsors have not informed the Security Council of the details of the agreements. We are essentially being offered to buy “a pig in a poke”.

There was no negotiations process as such on the draft resolution. The sponsors offered variations of the final text, in effect demanding that Security Council members sign up to them under time pressure.

Hamas has been called to accept the so-called “deal”. But there is still no clarity as to whether Israel has formally agreed, as stipulated in the resolution, to the “deal” proposed by President Biden, given numerous statements by Israel on continuing the war until Hamas is completely defeated. What exactly did Israel agree to? Perhaps we are going to hear the answer to that question today from the Israeli representative?

We are convinced that the Security Council should not subscribe to agreements with vague parameters, without guarantees of their implementation on the ground, and also without any clear understanding of how the parties feel about them. In essence, the Council is giving carte blanche and endorsing a plan whose details it does not know. The parameters listed in the three paragraphs are not the details. Since the escalation in Gaza began, the Council has already adopted three resolutions whose implementation remains only on paper. This one may become the fourth. Explanation of vote by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia after UNSC vote on a US-proposed draft resolution on Gaza, ru

In short, the Russian envoy to the UN saw through Blinken’s absurd scam and refused to play-along. Now we can see he did the right thing. Now we can see that the administration was trying to rig the Security Council vote by suggesting that Israel supported measures that Israel did not support. That may have helped to pass the resolution, but it didn’t help to put pressure on Netanyahu or force him to end the hostilities in Gaza. Instead, the whole matter has rebounded on the administration and made it look like they will engage in all manner of counterproductive skulduggery in order to get their way.

And what is it that the administration wants?

Well, apparently, they want a ceasefire. Apparently, the deepening isolation and reputational damage has gotten so bad that western elites are ready to throw in the towel. As President Biden said “it’s time for this war to end.”

But if the Biden administration is serious about a ceasefire, then they should have the courage to stand up and say so, instead of manipulating outcomes at the Security Council.

They need to suspend the weapons shipments and cut off the funding pronto. That is the only language Netanyahu and his cadres understand.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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

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***

 

 

Israel hasn’t just crossed the Biden administration’s pretend “red lines” in Gaza. With its massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp at the weekend, Israel drove a bulldozer through them.

On Saturday, an Israeli military operation to free four Israelis held captive by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the killing of more than 270 Palestinians, many of them women and children.

The true death toll may never be known. Untold numbers of men, women and children are still under rubble from the bombardment, crushed to death, or trapped and suffocating, or expiring slowly from dehydration if they cannot be dug out in time.

Many hundreds more are suffering agonising injuries – should their wounds not kill them – in a situation where there are almost no medical facilities left after Israel’s destruction of hospitals and its mass kidnap of Palestinian medical personnel. Further, there are no drugs to treat the victims, given Israel’s months-long imposition of an aid blockade.

Israelis and American Jewish organisations – so ready to judge Palestinians for cheering attacks on Israel – celebrated the carnage caused in freeing the Israeli captives, who could have returned home months ago had Israel been ready to agree on a ceasefire.

Videos even show Israelis dancing in the street.

According to reports, the bloody Israeli operation in central Gaza may have killed three other captives, one of them possibly an American citizen.

In comments to the Haaretz newspaper published on Sunday, Louis Har, a hostage freed back in February, observed of his own captivity:

“Our greatest fear was the IDF’s planes and the concern that they would bomb the building we were in.”

He added: “We weren’t worried that they’d [referring to Hamas] do something to us all of a sudden. We didn’t object to anything. So I wasn’t afraid they’d kill me.”

The Israeli media reported Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant describing Saturday’s operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defence establishment”.

The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently seeking an arrest warrant for Gallant, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges include efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza through planned starvation.

State Terrorism

Israel has been wrecking the established laws of war with abandon for more than eight months.

At least 37,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed so far in Gaza, though Palestinian officials lost the ability to properly count the dead many weeks ago following Israel’s relentless destruction of the enclave’s institutions and infrastructure.

Israel has additionally engineered a famine that, mostly out of view, is gradually starving Gaza’s population to death.

The International Court of Justice put Israel on trial for genocide back in January. Last month, it ordered an immediate halt to Israel’s attack on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. Israel has responded to both judgments by intensifying its killing spree.

In a further indication of Israel’s sense of impunity, the rescue operation on Saturday involved yet another flagrant war crime.

Israel used a humanitarian aid truck – supposedly bringing relief to Gaza’s desperate population – as cover for its military operation. In international law, that is known as the crime of perfidy.

For months, Israel has been blocking aid to Gaza – part of its efforts to starve the population. It has also targeted aid workers, killing more than 250 of them since October.

But more specifically, Israel is waging a war on Unrwa, claiming without evidence that the UN’s main aid agency in Gaza is implicated in Hamas “terror” operations. It wants the UN, the international community’s last lifeline in Gaza against Israel’s wanton savagery, permanently gone.

By hiding its own soldiers in an aid truck, Israel made a mockery of its supposed “terrorism concerns” by doing exactly what it accuses Hamas of.

But Israel’s military action also dragged the aid effort – the only way to end Gaza’s famine – into the centre of the battlefield. Now Hamas has every reason to fear that aid workers are not what they seem; that they are really instruments of Israeli state terrorism.

Nefarious Motive

In the circumstances, one might have assumed the Biden administration would be quick to condemn Israel’s actions and distance itself from the massacre.

Instead, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, was keen to take credit for the mass carnage – or what he termed a “daring operation”.

He admitted in an interview on Sunday that the US had offered assistance in the rescue operation, though he refused to clarify how. Other reports noted a supporting British role, too.

“The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery,” Sullivan told CNN.

Sullivan’s comments fuelled existing suspicions that such assistance extends far beyond providing intelligence and a steady supply of the bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny Gaza enclave over the past few months – more than the total that hit London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during the Second World War.

A Biden official disclosed to the Axios website that US soldiers belonging to a so-called American hostages unit had participated in the rescue operation that massacred Palestinian civilians.

Additionally, footage shows Washington’s floating pier as the backdrop for helicopters involved in the attack.

The pier was ostensibly built off Gaza’s coast at huge cost – some $320m – and over two months to bypass Israel’s blocking of aid by land.

According to Axios, citing a U.S. administration official, the American hostages unit in Israel assisted in the release of the four Israeli captives in Gaza.

Footage published by an Israeli occupation soldier confirms Israel's use of the American temporary pier in central Gaza… pic.twitter.com/GJJp1ZSA7T

— Quds News Network (@QudsNen) June 8, 2024

Observers argued at the time that it was not only an extraordinarily impractical and inefficient way to deliver aid but that there were likely to be hidden, nefarious motives behind its construction.

Its location, at the midpoint of Gaza’s coast, has bolstered Israel’s severing of the enclave into two, creating a land corridor that has effectively become a new border and from which Israel can launch raids into central Gaza like Saturday’s.

Those critics appear to have been proven right. The pier has barely functioned as an aid route since the first deliveries arrived in mid-May.

The pier soon broke apart, and its repair and return to operation was only announced on Friday.

Now the fact that it appears to have been pressed into immediate use as a beachhead for an operation that killed at least 270 Palestinians drags Washington even deeper into complicity with what the World Court has called a “plausible genocide”.

But like the use of the aid truck, it also means the Biden administration is joining Israel once again – after pulling its funding to Unrwa – in directly discrediting the aid operation in Gaza when it is needed most urgently.

That was the context for understanding the World Food Programme’s announcement on Sunday that it was halting the use of the pier for aid deliveries, citing “safety” concerns.

‘Successful’ Massacre

As ever, for western media and politicians – who have stood firmly against a ceasefire that could have brought the suffering of the Israeli captives and their families to an end months ago – Palestinian lives are quite literally worthless. 

The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz thought it appropriate to describe the killing of 270-plus Palestinians in the freeing of the four Israelis as an “important sign of hope”, while the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his “huge relief”. The appalling death toll went unmentioned.

Imagine describing in similarly positive terms an operation by Hamas that killed 270 Israelis to liberate a handful of the many hundreds of medical personnel kidnapped from Gaza by Israel in recent months and known to be held in a torture facility.

The London Times, meanwhile, breezily erased Saturday’s massacre of Palestinians by characterising the operation as a “surgical strike”.

Media outlets uniformly hailed the operation as a “success” and “daring”, as though the killing and maiming of around a thousand Palestinians – and the serial war crimes Israel committed in the process – need not be factored in.

BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought. The programme stressed that the death toll was “disputed” – though not mentioning that, as ever, it was Israel doing the disputing.

The reality is that the savage “rescue” operation would have been entirely unnecessary had Netanyahu not been so determined to drag his feet on negotiating the captives’ release, and thereby avoid jail on corruption charges, and the US so fully indulgent of his procrastination.

It will also be very difficult to repeat such an operation, as Haaretz’s military correspondent Amos Harel noted at the weekend. Hamas will learn lessons, guarding the remaining captives even more closely, most likely underground in its tunnels.

The remaining captives’ return will “probably occur only as part of a deal that will require significant concessions”, he concluded.

Leveraging Murder

Benny Gantz, the politician-general who helped oversee Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza inside Netanyahu’s war cabinet and is widely described as a “moderate” in the West, resigned from the government on Sunday.

Although ostensibly the dispute is over how Israel will extricate itself from Gaza over the coming months, the more likely explanation is that Gantz wishes both to distance himself from Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister faces possible arrest for crimes against humanity and to prepare for elections to take his place.

The Pentagon and the Biden administration see Gantz as their man. Having him out of the government may give them additional leverage over Netanyahu in the run-up to a US presidential election in November in which Donald Trump will be actively trying to cosy up to the Israeli prime minister. 

The focus on Israeli politicking – over US complicity in the Nuseirat massacre – will doubtless provide a welcome distraction, too, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours the region. He will once again wish to be seen rallying support for a ceasefire plan that is supposed to see the Israeli captives released – a plan Netanyahu will be determined, once again, to stymie. 

Blinken’s efforts are likely to be even more hopeless in the immediate wake of the Biden administration’s all-too-visible involvement in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians.

Washington’s claim to be an “honest broker” looks to everyone – apart from the reliably obedient western political and media class – as even more derisory than usual. 

The real question is whether Blinken’s serial diplomatic failures in ending the slaughter in Gaza are a bug or a feature. 

The stark contradiction in Washington’s position towards Gaza was exposed last week during a press conference with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller. 

He suggested that the aim of Israel and the US was to persuade Hamas to dissolve itself – presumably by some form of surrender – in return for a ceasefire. The group had an incentive to do so, said Miller, “because they don’t want to see continued conflict, continued Palestinian people dying. They don’t want to see war in Gaza.”

Even the usually compliant western press corps were taken aback by Miller’s implication that a crime against humanity – the mass killing of Palestinians, such as took place at Nuseirat camp on Saturday – was viewed in Washington as leverage to be exercised over Hamas.

But more likely, the seeming contradiction was simply symptomatic of the logical entanglements resulting from Washington’s efforts to deflect from the real goal: buying Israel more time to do what it is so well advanced doing already. 

Israel needs to finish pulverising Gaza, making it permanently uninhabitable, so that the population will be faced with a stark dilemma: remain and die, or leave by any means possible.

The same US “humanitarian pier” that was pressed into service for Saturday’s massacre may soon be the “humanitarian pier” that serves as the exit through which Gaza’s Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, shuttled out of a death zone engineered by Israel.

*

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

Featured image: An image of Al-Nuseirat refugee camp in the Middle Area of Gaza during Israel bombardments on Saturday 8 June 2024. The deadly Israeli attacks reportedly killed at least 270 Palestinians and left about 700 wounded according to the local health authorities. (© MSF)

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“It was theatrical the way it was carried out. Why did they do it that way?

It is born in the nature of sending a message to people like all of us, who are dissidents in terms of what the federal government’s foreign policy looks like.

It is for them to say that “this could happen to any of you.””

Watch the interview below of Philip Giraldi with Judge Andrew Napolitano.

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Featured image is from InfoBrics

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Abstract

This study examines the role of the far right in the Euromaidan in Ukraine, primarily in the Maidan massacre and other key cases of violence. The involvement of far-right organizations in these crucial events in the Ukrainian and world politics has been politicized and polarized in Ukraine, the West, and Russia.

This study analyzes various data sources, such as online live streams and TV broadcasts, videos, broadcasts of the Maidan massacre trials, the database of court decisions in Ukraine, media reports, and field research on the Maidan. The findings reveal that radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations had significant but minority representation among the Maidan leadership and protesters. However, the analysis shows that the far-right organizations and football ultras played a key role in political violence such as attempting to seize the presidential administration and the parliament. It reveals involvement of the Right Sector in violent clashes with the Berkut special police force during the highly publicized dispersal of Maidan protesters on November 30, 2013. The Right Sector and Svoboda had crucial roles in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government, in particular, in the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police.

Research Question and Divergent Narratives Concerning the Contemporary Far Right in Ukraine

The main purpose of this article is to examine the role of the far right in Ukraine during the Euromaidan and the Maidan massacre. These events are the most significant and the most controversial ones in politics in Ukraine since its independence in 1991. They also affected the politics of other countries, such as Russia and the United States, as well as international politics. They ultimately led or contributed to various extent to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention, the conflict between Russia and the West, and the Ukrainian-conflict related impeachment hearings against the US President Trump (Black & Johns, 2016; Katchanovski, 2015a, 2016a; Kudelia, 2016; Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Sakwa, 2015; Sakwa, 2015).

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***

 

 

“Take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.” — James Madison

James Madison, often referred to as the “Father of the Constitution,” once predicted that the Bill of Rights would become mere “parchment barrier,” words on paper ignored by successive generations of Americans.

How right he was.

Although Madison initially felt that the inclusion of a bill of rights in the originally ratified Constitution was unnecessary to its success, Thomas Jefferson persuaded him that “a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, & what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.”

The Bill of Rights drafted by Madison—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—was a document so revolutionary at the time that it would come to be viewed as the epitome of American liberty. The rights of the people reflected in those ten amendments encapsulated much of Madison’s views about government, the corrupting influence of power, and the need for safeguards against tyranny.

Madison’s writings speak volumes to the present constitutional crisis in the country.

Read them and weep.

“The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison

“The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.” — James Madison

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” — James Madison

“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” — James Madison

“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” — James Madison

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” — James Madison

“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”— James Madison

In the years since the founders laid their lives on the line to pursue the dream of individual freedom and self-government, big government has grown bigger and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.

However, there are certain principles—principles that every American should know—which undergird the American system of government and form the basis of our freedoms.

The following seven principles are a good starting point for understanding what free government is really all about.

First, the maxim that power corrupts is an absolute truth. Realizing this, those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights held one principle sacrosanct: a distrust of all who hold governmental power. As James Madison proclaimed, “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” Moreover, in questions of power, Thomas Jefferson warned, “Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” As such, those who drafted our founding documents would see today’s government as an out-of-control, unmanageable beast.

The second principle is that governments primarily exist to secure rights, an idea that is central to constitutionalism. In appointing the government as the guardian of the people’s rights, the people give it only certain, enumerated powers, which are laid out in a written constitution. The idea of a written constitution actualizes the two great themes of the Declaration of Independence: consent and protection of equal rights. Thus, the purpose of constitutionalism is to limit governmental power and ensure that the government performs its basic function: to preserve and protect our rights, especially our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the government today has discarded this principle and now sees itself as our master, not our servant. The obvious next step, unless we act soon, is tyranny.

The third principle revolves around the belief that no one is above the law, not even those who make the law. This is termed rule of law. Richard Nixon’s statement, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal,” would have been an anathema to the Framers of the Constitution. If all people possess equal rights, the people who live under the laws must be allowed to participate in making those laws. By that same token, those who make the laws must live under the laws they make.

Fourth, separation of powers ensures that no single authority is entrusted with all the powers of government. People are not perfect, whether they are in government or out of it. As history makes clear, those in power tend to abuse it. The government is thus divided into three co-equal branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Placing all three powers in the same branch of government was considered the very definition of tyranny. The fact that the president today has dictatorial powers would have been considered an offense to every principle for which the Framers took their revolutionary stand.

Fifth, a system of checks and balances, essential if a constitutional government is to succeed, strengthens the separation of powers and prevents legislative despotism. Such checks and balances include dividing Congress into two houses, with different constituencies, term lengths, sizes and functions; granting the president a limited veto power over congressional legislation; and appointing an independent judiciary capable of reviewing ordinary legislation in light of the written Constitution, which is referred to as “judicial review.” The Framers feared that Congress could abuse its powers and potentially emerge as the tyrannous branch because it had the power to tax. But they did not anticipate the emergence of presidential powers as they have come to dominate modern government or the inordinate influence of corporate powers on governmental decision-making. Indeed, as recent academic studies now indicate, we are now ruled by a monied oligarchy that serves itself and not “we the people.”

Sixth, representation allows the people to have a voice in government by sending elected representatives to do their bidding while avoiding the need of each and every citizen to vote on every issue considered by government. In a country as large as the United States, it is not feasible to have direct participation in governmental affairs. Hence, we have a representative government. If the people don’t agree with how their representatives are conducting themselves, they can and should vote them out. However, as the citizenry has grown lazy and been distracted by the entertainment spectacles of modern society, government bureaucrats churn out numerous laws each year resulting in average citizens being rendered lawbreakers and jailed for what used to be considered normal behavior.

Finally, federalism is yet another constitutional device to limit the power of government by dividing power and, thus, preventing tyranny. In America, the levels of government generally break down into federal, state and local branches (which further divide into counties and towns or cities). Because local and particular interests differ from place to place, such interests are better handled at a more intimate level by local governments, not a bureaucratic national government. Remarking on the benefits of the American tradition of local self-government in the 1830s, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed: “Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty.”

These seven vital principles have been largely forgotten in recent years, obscured by the haze of a centralized government, a citizenry that no longer thinks analytically, and schools that don’t adequately teach our young people about their history and their rights.

Yet here’s the rub: while Americans wander about in their brainwashed states, their “government of the people, by the people and for the people” has largely been taken away from them.

The answer: get un-brainwashed.

Learn your rights.

Stand up for the founding principles.

Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.

Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.

Most of all, do these things today.

If we wait until the votes have all been counted or hang our hopes on our particular candidate to win and fix what’s wrong with the country, “we the people” will continue to lose.

Whether we ever realize it not, the enemy is not across party lines, as they would have us believe. It has us surrounded on all sides.

Even so, we’re not yet defeated.

We could still overcome our oppressors if we cared enough to join forces and launch a militant nonviolent revolution—a people’s revolution that starts locally and trickles upwards—but that will take some doing.

It will mean turning our backs on the political jousting contests taking place at all levels of government and rejecting their appointed jesters as false prophets. It will mean not allowing ourselves to be corralled like cattle and branded with political labels that have no meaning anymore. It will mean recognizing that all the evils that surround us today—endless wars, drone strikes, invasive surveillance, militarized police, poverty, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, etc.—are not of our making but came about as a way to control and profit from us.

It will mean “voting with our feet” through sustained, mass civil disobedience.

Ultimately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it will mean refusing to be divided, one against each other, by politics and instead uniting behind the only distinction that has ever mattered: “we the people” against tyranny.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from the Public Domain

A França parece cada vez mais isolada na sua decisão de intervir diretamente no conflito ucraniano. Nem mesmo as grandes potências ocidentais estão dispostas a confrontar abertamente Moscou no campo de batalha, dada a elevada probabilidade de uma guerra catastrófica surgir como resultado de tal medida. Agora, Berlim já está a sinalizar que não apoiará a medida francesa.

Segundo o jornal alemão Welt am Sonntag, o governo alemão prepara-se para recusar publicamente o seu apoio à iniciativa militar anti-russa da França. O meio de comunicação, citando fontes familiarizadas com assuntos de Estado, afirma que as autoridades francesas estão a pressionar vários membros da OTAN a cooperarem no envio de tropas para a Ucrânia. Os relatórios mostram que o chefe do Estado-Maior do exército francês, General Thierry Burkhard, escreveu uma carta apelando aos EUA e a pelo menos 10 outros países da OTAN para se juntarem a Paris na intervenção na Ucrânia.

A Alemanha, contudo, não foi incluída na carta do general francês, dizem as fontes. Isto significa que as autoridades alemãs provavelmente já deixaram claro, em segredo, aos seus homólogos franceses que não estão interessados ​​em participar diretamente no conflito com a Rússia. Segundo as fontes, durante as negociações em Bruxelas, a Alemanha, juntamente com outros países como Itália e Espanha, descartou a possibilidade de enviar tropas para a Ucrânia. Se a pressão continuar, espera-se que a Alemanha faça uma declaração pública negando ajuda à França.

Na verdade, a proposta francesa não parece ser popular no seio da OTAN. Poucos países demonstraram interesse em cooperar com o envio de tropas. Inicialmente, os soldados franceses não seriam alocados em unidades de combate reais, mas em centros de treinamento e comando. Além disso, os franceses teriam a missão de “proteger” áreas estratégicas em cidades-chave como Odessa e Kharkov, tentando dissuadir a Rússia de avançar nestas regiões.

Contudo, nada disto é suficiente para disfarçar a grave escalada iniciada pela França. Colocar tropas no terreno é entrar oficialmente na guerra, independentemente da função para a qual as tropas sejam enviadas. Na prática, Paris tenta conciliar dois cenários inconciliáveis: entrar em guerra com a Rússia e evitar uma resposta dura de Moscou. Obviamente, Paris não quer enfrentar as consequências de uma guerra direta com a Rússia, mas ao mesmo tempo Macron quer continuar a propagar a sua imagem de “líder e defensor da Europa”. Este cenário poderia facilmente terminar em tragédia.

Na verdade, Macron não está a agir ingenuamente. Ele certamente tem um plano por trás de sua perigosa ideia de enviar tropas. Dado o elevado número de mercenários franceses mortos pelas forças russas na Ucrânia, é muito provável que haja pressão na sociedade francesa para fornecer uma explicação para as perdas. Muitos destes soldados não são exatamente mercenários, mas sim comandos regulares franceses que lutam pelos interesses da OTAN na Ucrânia, usando o rótulo de “mercenários” para disfarçar o intervencionismo ocidental. O governo francês precisa de dar à sociedade uma explicação sobre a razão pela qual tantos cidadãos franceses estão a morrer nas linhas da frente – e, aparentemente, Macron tomou a pior decisão possível para “explicar” estas mortes.

É possível que o verdadeiro propósito do envio de tropas seja “legalizar” as mortes de mercenários. Assim, Macron poderia simplesmente dizer que as perdas ocorreram durante as hostilidades diretas entre o exército francês e as forças russas, fornecendo uma explicação para as famílias dos soldados mortos. Não há, no entanto, nada de racional ou estratégico em tal movimento. Ao disfarçar o envolvimento francês já existente, Macron estaria a provocar uma guerra total, colocando em risco a arquitetura de segurança global. No entanto, ele aparece cada vez mais isolado na sua proposta, tendo a iniciativa sido rejeitada por outros estados.

A única esperança de evitar que a interferência francesa se transforme numa guerra aberta reside na própria Rússia. Os russos provaram repetidamente ser o lado racional no conflito, já que Moscou está realmente disposto a evitar a escalada. A Rússia não quer entrar em guerra diretamente com a OTAN, embora a aliança atlântica já esteja a tomar medidas no sentido da intervenção direta – não só com a iniciativa de Macron, mas também com outros movimentos recentes, como a autorização de ataques transfronteiriços. Claramente, existe um cenário em que a OTAN quer a guerra e a Rússia a evita.

É claro que os russos farão o seu melhor mais uma vez para evitar o pior cenário, mas é importante que o Ocidente compreenda que em algum momento a paciência russa poderá esgotar-se. Moscou não está interessado em iniciar um conflito aberto, mas já deixou claro que qualquer soldado francês na Ucrânia é um alvo legítimo.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : France isolated in its proposal to send troops to fight Russiai, InfoBrics, 10 de Junho de 2024.

Imagem : InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, jornalista, pesquisador do Center for Geostrategic Studies, consultor geopolítico.

Você pode seguir Lucas Leiroz em: https://t.me/lucasleiroz e https://twitter.com/leiroz_lucas

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China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has agreed to attend next month’s Ukrainian peace conference in Switzerland with one proviso, that Russia be invited. Mao said that Beijing supports the “timely convening of an international peace conference that is recognized by both the Russian and Ukrainian sides.”

That sounds reasonable, after all, one would expect that peace negotiations would include the representatives of the warring parties. But that is not the case here. And while more than 90 countries have confirmed that they will attend the upcoming meetings, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has excluded the one nation whose presence might make a difference — Russia.

[Update; Russia has not been invited. And China has decided not to attend] 

Naturally, many analysts are puzzled by Zelensky’s omission which precludes any possible settlement or end to the hostilities. Simply put, the fighting will continue until Russia and Ukraine conduct bilateral negotiations and reach an agreement.

So, what is going on here?

What’s going on is that Zelensky is perpetrating a fraud. Clearly, there is no intention to strike a deal with Russia or to end the fighting. How could there be, after all, Russia wasn’t invited. So, we must assume that the peace conference will be used for some other purpose, like demonizing Putin or drumming up more support for the war.

What that tells us is that neither Zelensky nor his handlers in Washington have abandoned the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. They’re not throwing in the towel and they’re certainly not looking for areas of mutual compromise. No. They’re merely exploring more creative ways of garnering support for their failed crusade. That’s what the so-called ‘peace conference’ is all about, luring more recruits to the Ukraine bandwagon.

We should mention, however, that Russia knows exactly what Zelensky is up-to and has no illusions about where all this is headed. Check out this short clip from an interview with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov:

The Swiss conference is being convened with the sole purpose of addressing Zelensky’s peace formula in the form of an ultimatum. It is not accidental that the Swiss themselves, including Swiss diplomats, are saying that the conference will focus not on “building bridges” for peace, but on supporting Ukraine.

Josep Borrel said the peace formula was the only initiative under discussion. (Note: Other peace initiatives by China, Brazil, and the Arab League are all being ignored.)

We have access to information that is not normally intended for public use. In late April, discussing the Swiss conference with foreign ambassadors in Kiev… Zelensky spent most of the time rambling almost hysterically and incoherently, and pleading for support for his peace formula as a means of forcing Russia on its knees. Whenever a person does not feel the need to control themselves, they tend to speak the truth. Those who are now being courted and pressed into coming to Switzerland, creating a crowd, and posing for a “family photo” in order to be able to then bloviate about broad-based support for Zelensky’s peace formula, should be aware of the place they are being lured into. They are expected to support an ultimatum that will then be presented to Russia. This is ridiculous.

President Vladimir Putin spoke about this quite recently. These games, just like other foreign policy moves by our Western partners who have lost their diplomatic skills, have nothing to do with diplomacy. Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister Press Conference

So, the Russians aren’t taken in by this nonsense, they know it’s a scam. They also know that the whole thing was probably concocted by the Intel agencies in concert with their media consultants. Just like they know the meetings will probably be used to shore up Zelensky’s tattered image while, once again, dragging Russia through the mud. We’ve seen it all before. But the reality is that the more time that’s wasted on these public relations fiascos, the more the carnage piles up on battlefields in the East. And that’s the real tragedy, that Zelensky continues to play these stupid games while his countrymen are slaughtered in droves for no apparent reason. Maybe he should stop the performance art long enough to fix the problem? Maybe he should think seriously about peace?

Is that possible?

It is possible.

Imagine for a minute, if Zelensky was sincere in wanting to end the war. How much effort and sacrifice would it really take?

Not much. Yes, he would be opposed by Washington and by the far-right uber-nationalists in his government, but the actual price he would pay in terms of blood and treasure would be negligible. True, he’ll never recapture Crimea or the Donbas (roughly 20% of Ukraine’s former landmass) but that’s the price of waging a two year-long war with Russia. Putin can’t be blamed for that. (Remember, Zelensky was prepared to sign a peace agreement with Putin one month into the war, but Boris Johnson scotched the deal.) In any event, those territories are gone forever. The point is to salvage what is left of Ukraine before its borders shrink even more. This is what Zelensky should be focused on; preserving what’s left of his country while he still can. The longer the war drags on, the more likely Ukraine will either be partitioned or transformed into an uninhabitable wasteland. The time to act is now.

The good news is that Putin is ready to deal. Despite the misinformation in the West, he wants to put this mess behind him. He wants to end the war.

And Putin’s demands are not unreasonable. He just wants assurances about Russia’s security, which means he won’t allow NATO missile-sites on his western border. That is a demand that Zelensky can meet at no cost to himself.

What else does Putin want?

This may surprise you, but the deal Putin seeks with Zelensky can be reduced to just one word: Neutrality. Ukraine must be a neutral state which means that it must not become a member of a major military bloc like NATO, because NATO is a hostile, anti-Russian, military alliance that has prosecuted wars of aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. It is a menace that must be prevented from putting its bases, combat troops or weapons systems on Russia’s border. Period. Just as the United States would never allow China to place missile systems on Mexico’s northern border, NATO cannot be allowed to place Washington’s missiles on Russia’s border. It’s the same thing.

Zelensky believes that Ukraine ‘has the right’ to make whatever security arrangements it thinks best serve its national interests. That sounds like a reasonable proposition, but it’s not. Because in practical terms, Ukraine’s determination to join NATO has made Ukraine less safe, in fact, the probability of Ukraine’s membership in NATO has brought the country to the brink of annihilation. So, if Zelensky’s intention was to increase Ukraine’s national security, then he has compelling proof that he made the wrong decision.

Here’s a good rule of thumb for any smaller and less powerful nation that shares a border with a nuclear superpower: Don’t do things that scare your neighbor. Do not do things that make your neighbor feel threatened. And—most of all—do not threaten to join hostile anti-Russian alliances that regularly express their deeply-felt contempt and loathing for Russia. That is the fast-track to annihilation. If Zelensky did not know that before, he should certainly know it by now. Check out this excerpt from an article at Geopolitical Monitor:

Ukraine is not exactly a stranger when it comes to the notion of neutrality. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the country expressed an intention in its declaration of state sovereignty of 1 July 1990 to become a permanently neutral state that would shun participation in military blocs and show a commitment to denuclearization. This largely nonaligned status resulted in a vacillating foreign policy, which nonetheless appeared to be conducive to the pursuit of amicable relations with both the European Union (EU) and Russia, before being ultimately abandoned in December 2014 in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas war. In February 2019, with the overwhelming approval of the Verkhovna Rada (the Parliament of Ukraine), the Ukrainian constitution was amended, setting the country on a course toward full membership in the EU and NATO. Nonetheless, in late March 2022 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was still prepared to discuss the possibility of Ukraine taking a neutral position as part of a potential peace deal with Russia to halt the invasion. A Neutral Ukraine Is Not the Answer, Geopolitical Monitor

Let’s review: When Ukraine made its declaration of state sovereignty in July 1990, it pledged to be “a permanently neutral state.” And while it remained committed to that neutral status there was no hostility between Moscow and Kiev. But as soon as the United States toppled Ukraine’s government in the 2014 coup, Ukraine moved to renounce its neutrality, which is when all their problems began. What’s clear is that independent Ukrainian leaders did not choose to abandon neutrality. That decision was made in Washington by neocons who wanted to move their globalist army closer to Russia’s border. This isn’t speculation, this is what happened. NATO lied about ‘not moving one inch east” after the reunification of Germany and continued to push eastward until they were right on Russia ‘s doorstep. Finally—after being shoved into a corner—Russia pursued the only option available and pushed back. Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022.

Of course, many people still think that Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet empire and that Ukraine is just the first step in a long march across Europe. Fortunately, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg dispelled that fiction in a press conference in September, 2023. Here’s what he said:

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.

“The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.

“So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.

“This is this is good for the Nordic countries. It’s good for Finland and Sweden. And it’s also good for NATO. And it demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.” Putin invaded Ukraine to stop NATO, says NATO chief, YouTube

So, Putin did not go to war to rebuild the Soviet empire. He went to war to prevent a hostile, anti-Russia, military coalition from plopping itself on his border where their missiles could strike Moscow in less than 7 minutes.

Was that unreasonable of him?

Of course, not. He was simply acting is his country’s best interests on a matter of critical (existential) importance. Check out this short 1-minute video of John Mearsheimer who makes the same point:

“… Let me put it differently, Ukraine—according to its Constitution and its Declaration of Sovereignty in 1990—was a neutral country. It abandoned neutrality in December 2014. Just think about that. So, if we had left it alone, Ukraine would be intact today including Crimea. (And) all these dead people would not be dead.” John Mearsheimer, Would Neutrality Have Prevented the War, You Tube

For Zelensky, the choice could not be clearer. Ukraine is either going to be neutral or it’s going to be obliterated. The choice is his to make. But one thing is certain, Russia is not going to live with a gun to its head. We know that now.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

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

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On September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was identified as a “state sponsor of terror”, without a shred of evidence. The 9/11 attacks were categorized as an act of war against America by an unnamed foreign power.

It was a “False Flag” which consisted in blaming Afghanistan of having attacked America. “The Right to Self Defense” was put forth. The US-NATO aggressor was portrayed as the victim.

9/11: A Historical Landmark in U.S. Military Doctrine (2001- )

The alleged 9/11 “Attack on America” was instrumental in justifying the implementation of so-called “counter-terrorism” operations (aka wars) against ALL Muslim countries, now extending over a period of more than 20 years. (2001 onwards).

In the present context (2023), The 9/11 False Flag has a bearing on the evolving US-NATO-Israel 2023 “Humanitarian War” against Palestine and the  Middle East War, which is predicated on the concept of “Self Defense” against alleged terrorist attacks by Muslim Countries.

What Happened on September 11, 2001?

“A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that “Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects”.

CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan “multiple attacks with little or no warning”

Image (right). George Tenet with G. W. Bush and Dick Cheney

Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks “an act of war” and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at “state sponsorship,” implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, “I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution.”

Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra had approved the launching of “punitive actions” directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times:

“When we reasonably determine our attackers’ bases and camps, we must pulverize them — minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage” — and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror’s national hosts”.(Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, September 12, 2001)

NATO’s “Collective Defense Clause” and the October 7, 2001 Invasion of Afghanistan

On September 12, 2001, less than 24 hours after the attacks, at a meeting of the Atlantic Council in Brussels, NATO invoked for the first time in its history “Article 5 of the Washington Treaty – its collective defence clause” declaring the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center (WTC) and the Pentagon “to be an attack against all NATO members:

“The tragic death of thousands of Americans on 9/11 allegedly instrumented by Al Qaeda (with the support of an unnamed foreign power) was used as a pretext and a justification for launching the first phase of the Middle East Central Asian War, which consisted in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan.” Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, September 12, 2001)

The decision of the Atlantic Council to invoke Article V (officially confirmed in late September), was conducive to the US-NATO bombing and invasion of Afghanistan which commenced on October 7 2001, four weeks after the tragic events of 9/11.

The U.S. led war against Afghanistan consists essentially of two interrelated stages.

The first stage tagged as the Soviet-Afghan War started at the height of the Cold War in 1979  was a carefully planned military and intelligence operation led by the United States, which consisted in recruiting and financing the “Islamic brigades” (Mujahideen)  including Osama bin Laden. 

The second stage, unfolded with the US-NATO October 7, 2001 invasion of Afghanistan four weeks after 9/11, following the decision of the Atlantic Council to Invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty. 

The Criminal Invasion of Afghanistan and the “Just War” Narrative

The October 7 2001 invasion was heralded as “A Just War” by Professor Richard Falk, renowned scholar, professor of International and Humanitarian Law at Princeton and anti-war activist.

The statement of Professor Richard Falk, who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) formulated in the immediate  wake of 9/11 — published four days after the commencement of the US-NATO bombing campaign– was intent upon providing legitimacy to America’s war on Afghanistan: 

“The perpetrators of the September 11 attack cannot be reliably neutralized by nonviolent or diplomatic means; a response that includes military action is essential to diminish the threat of repetition, to inflict punishment and to restore a sense of security at home and abroad. 

The extremist political vision held by Osama bin Laden, which can usefully be labeled “apocalyptic terrorism,” places this persisting threat well outside any framework of potential reconciliation or even negotiation for several reasons: Its genocidal intent is directed generically against Americans and Jews;

its proclaimed goal is waging an unconditional civilizational war –Islam against the West– without drawing any distinction between civilian and military targets; it has demonstrated a capacity and willingness to inflict massive and traumatizing damage on our country and a tactical ingenuity and ability to carry out its missions of destruction by reliance on the suicidal devotion of its adherents.”  (Richard Falk, The Nation,    Defining a Just War, October 11, 2001, 4 days after the invasion of Afghanistan, emphasis added).

Note the emphasis on: 

“genocidal intent against Americans and Jews”

as part of an alleged

“civilizational war of Islam against the West”.

Palestine 2023: Is It Not “The Other Way Round”? What We Are Witnessing Is “The Genocidal War of the West Against Muslim Countries.”

Osama bin Laden’s “Apocalyptic Terrorism” has provided a justification for the waging of America’s “Global War on Terrorism”, i.e. the numerous post 9/11 U.S. led “humanitarian wars” and “counter-terrorism operations” against Muslim countries (with the support of Israel) in the course of the last 22 years, which have resulted in millions of deaths. 

A holy crusade was launched against the Muslim World of approximately 50 countries and one quarter of the World’s population. 

In turn, “Counterterrorism” has been used in the course of the last twenty years as a justification for the establishment of U.S. military bases in Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia.

The unspoken objective of “counter-terrorism” is to confiscate and appropriate the extensive oil and gas reserves of Muslim countries. 

“The Just War”

Professor Richard Falk is a life-long anti-war activist. He is renowned for his commitment to the rights of Palestinians and his courageous stance against the Israeli government. In February 2001, Professor Falk was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to serve in the Inquiry Commission pertaining to the occupied Palestinian territories.

In March 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Professor Richard Falk as UN Special Rapporteur pertaining to human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories.

Professor Falk’s statement entitled “Defining A Just War, Ends and Means” was  formulated 8 months following his OHCR February 2001 appointment to serve in the Palestine Inquiry Commission. In a February 2001 Interview, Falk raised the question as to whether Palestinians have a “Right to Resistance”:  

“The [UN OHCR] team will consider two major issues, he said. “One is evaluating whether the conditions of occupation are such as to give the Palestinians some kind of right of resistance,” said Falk. “And if they have that right, then what are the limits to that right?”

“We must ask specific questions, such as what kinds of weapons were used?” he said. “And how does one interpret and understand the vulnerability of children? For example, the Palestinians contend that the Israeli army targeted children, and the Israeli army says Palestinians used children as human shields.” (Princeton University Report, February 2001, (emphasis added) 

According to Falk –referring to the role of Osama bin Laden’s– “apocalyptic terrorism” is marked by the conduct of

“an unconditional civilizational war of Islam against the West”. 

This statement by Richard Falk constitutes a misunderstanding as to what happened on 9/11. 9/11 was a False Flag.

I should underscore, however, that in recent statements on Palestine, Professor Falk’s critique of the Netanyahu government goes against his earlier “Just War” stance formulated in the immediate wake of 9/11. 

The evidence presented below documents the alleged role of Bin Laden in the September 11, 2001 attacks, which provided the pretext and the justification to wage war not only on Afghanistan but also against numerous Muslim countries (in the aftermath of 9/11), under the mantle of America’s “Global War on Terrorism”. 

There Was No Evidence that Afghanistan Had Attacked America on 9/11

Why was George W. Bush reluctant to negotiate the extradition of Osama bin Laden? The Bin Laden- Bush family relationship?

What Happened on September 10, 2001? 

1. Poppy G.H.W. Bush Senior Meets Osama’s Brother Shafiq at The Ritz Carlton Hotel on September 10, 2001

One day before the 9/11 attacks, as well as on the morning of 9/11, the dad of the sitting President of the United States of America, George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting none other than Shafiq bin Laden, the brother of the alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. Sounds absurd? 

According to The Washington Post:

2. Osama is Hospitalized in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on September 10, 2001

Confirmed by Dan Rather, CBS News, Osama bin Laden had been admitted to a Pakistani Military hospital in Rawalpindi on the 10th of September local time, less than 24 hours before the terrorist attacks. 

This CBS report casts doubt on the official narrative to the effect that Osama bin Laden was responsible for coordinating the 9/11 attacks. It would be impossible for Osama bin Laden to enter a Pakistani military hospital unnoticed. His whereabouts were known.

U.S. Foreign Policy in the Wake of 9/11. What is the Meaning of Al Qaeda in Arabic?

The above statement by Major Bunel, was confirmed by the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (shortly before his passing) in a pointed article in The Guardian:

The Criminalization of War

Richard Falk denies the hegemonic nature of U.S. foreign policy:

“Another form of antiwar advocacy rests on a critique of the United States as an imperialist superpower or empire. This view also seems dangerously inappropriate in addressing the challenge posed by the massive crime against humanity committed on September 11.

Whatever the global role of the United States –and it is certainly responsible for much global suffering and injustice, giving rise to widespread resentment that at its inner core fuels the terrorist impulse– it cannot be addressed so long as this movement of global terrorism is at large and prepared to carry on with its demonic work. 

These longer-term concerns –which include finding ways to promote Palestinian self-determination, the internationalization of Jerusalem and a more equitable distribution of the benefits of global economic growth and development–must be addressed.

Of course, much of the responsibility for the failure to do so lies with the corruption and repressive policies of governments, especially in the Middle East, outside the orbit of US influence. A distinction needs to be drawn as persuasively as possible between inherently desirable lines of foreign policy reform and retreating in the face of terrorism.”  (Richard Falk, Defining a Just War, The Nation, October 11, 2023, emphasis added)

With. regard to the above quotation, is it not “the other way round”? Many of the governments “inside” rather than “outside” the orbit of US influence are corrupt. Why? Because their leaders are threatened, coopted and/or bribed by Washington. 

With regard to the so-called “movement of global terrorism”, see the National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), (signed by President Reagan) which de facto authorized  stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen.

To read the full text of NSDD 166, click image below.

 

The promotion of “Radical Islam” was a deliberate CIA initiative (NSDD 166) which in the wake of 9/11 has served as justification to waging a “Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and sub–Saharan Africa. 

The number of CIA sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000. USAID generously financed the process of religious indoctrination, largely to secure the demise of secular institutions and the collapse of civil society:

“The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings….

Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994“, (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)

 

“Before” and “After” a US Led “Humanitarian War”

Selected excerpts from 

America’s “Just War” against Afghanistan: Women’s Rights “Before” and “After” America’s Destructive Wars.

suggest you access full article

It should be understood, that the “Before” and “After” Analysis Applies to the numerous Muslim Countries which have been the object of  America’s “Humanitarian Warfare” agenda including Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, among others which have been the object of US-NATO bombings, invasions, “counter terrorism” and “regime change” operations in the wake of September 11, 2001. 

 

Afghanistan “Before”

Afghanistan “After” 

The Fate of Women and Children