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Will the U.S. be involved with negotiating with the Russians to bring peace to Ukraine, as did Kennedy in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis?

On June 12, three Russian ships and a nuclear-powered submarine arrived in Havana, Cuba. Having crossed the Atlantic, the ships performed maneuvers designed to enhance military capability, and have remained in Cuba through June 17.

Recently, President Vladimir Putin made a threat to supply unspecified countries with weapons capable of striking Kiev’s Western allies.

The Kazan nuclear-powered submarine is capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles, which have a range of up to 2,500 kilometers and can be equipped with nuclear warheads. Along for the ride are the Frigate Admiral Gorshkov, which is carrying new hypersonic Zircon missiles that are nuclear-capable, the Akademik Pashin refueling tanker, and Nikolay Chiker tugboat.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has portrayed Zircon as a potent weapon capable of penetrating any existing antimissile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000km (more than 620 miles).
While the visit to Cuba is not seen as a military threat to the U.S., and none of the vessels carry a nuclear war-head, it has brought back memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis involving the U.S. and Russia in Cuba.

Cuba is Russia’s most important partner in the Western Hemisphere from a geopolitical point of view, and both are critical of the U.S. sanctions imposed on each other, and the enlargement of NATO. Havana also backed Russia’s right to “self-defense” against NATO following its 2022 military operation in Ukraine.

In 1959, an uprising called the “26th of July Movement” led to the communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
In April 1961, a group of 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Castro invaded Cuba supported by artillery, mortars, tanks aircrafts and naval ships, all of which was provided and financed by the U.S.. This was one of a series of ‘regime change’ operations carried out by the U.S. which failed, such as the 2011 U.S.-NATO attack on Syria.

This incident came to be known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

Early 1961 saw the American Jupiter missiles being deployed in Turkey and mid-April saw the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. This had the USSR worried as it saw the U.S. planning something big.

Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR and Castro held a clandestine meeting in July 1962, and Khrushchev agreed to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba.

U.S. President John F. Kennedy was informed of the plans, and was advised to carry out an airstrike and invasion of Cuba, but he disregarded that advice and instead negotiated a deal which saw the USSR shelving its plans to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in exchange for an American assurance that Cuba would not be invaded.

The U.S. policy of increased NATO membership from 1992 onwards has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. In 1990, the U.S. gave assurances to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand, but U.S. President Bill Clinton broke that promise, and we are faced with the realization that it was the U.S. which provoked Putin to the February 2022 military operation in Ukraine in response to the threat of imminent NATO membership.

It took the negotiating skills of Kennedy to avert war in 1962, but today the U.S. is led by President Joe Biden who is against ceasefire negotiations in both Ukraine and in Gaza. Biden is a war-time President, who directly participates in both battlefields with funds, weapons, intelligence and the propaganda cranked out in Washington, which invented a narrative that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine and recreate a Soviet Empire.

In 2014, John J. Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor and one of the leading proponents of restraint in American foreign policy, explained why the Ukraine crisis is the west’s fault, and how it has provoked Putin.

On March 1, 2022 Mearsheimer was interviewed and said he still blames the U.S. for the crisis in Ukraine.

“He is not going to conquer all of Ukraine,” Mearsheimer said, of Putin.

Mearsheimer has argued that the U.S., in pushing to expand NATO eastward, has increased the likelihood of a nuclear war, and prompted Putin’s aggression toward Ukraine. Mearsheimer maintains his position that the U.S. is at fault for provoking him.

“I think all the trouble in this case really started in April, 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat,” said Mearsheimer.

The three-prong U.S. strategy in Washington includes EU expansion, NATO expansion, and turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy.

“When you’re a country like Ukraine and you live next door to a great power like Russia, you have to pay careful attention to what the Russians think, because if you take a stick and you poke them in the eye, they’re going to retaliate. States in the Western hemisphere understand this full well with regard to the United States,” said Mearsheimer.

Mearsheimer correctly projected that Russia did not seek to occupy Kiev, but would take Donbass.

“This is great-power politics, and what the Russians want is a regime in Kiev that is attuned to Russian interests. It may be ultimately that the Russians would be willing to live with a neutral Ukraine, and that it won’t be necessary for Moscow to have any meaningful control over the government in Kiev. It may be that they just want a regime that is neutral and not pro-American,” said Mearsheimer.

“The Ukrainians have a vested interest in paying serious attention to what the Russians want from them. They run a grave risk if they alienate the Russians in a fundamental way. If Russia thinks that Ukraine presents an existential threat to Russia because it is aligning with the United States and its West European allies, this is going to cause an enormous amount of damage to Ukraine. That of course is exactly what’s happening now. So my argument is: the strategically wise strategy for Ukraine is to break off its close relations with the West, especially with the United States, and try to accommodate the Russians. If there had been no decision to move NATO eastward to include Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbass would be part of Ukraine today, and there would be no war in Ukraine,” said Mearsheimer.

In March 2024, Mearsheimer was interviewed and said he considers “ridiculous” the idea that Ukraine will be able to take the offensive in 2024 or 2025.

“The real danger is that the Ukrainians are going to be defeated by the Russians over the course of this year and next year. That, I think, is the more likely outcome—that the Russians will just roll back the Ukrainians. The idea that Ukraine is going to launch some offensive in 2025 and turn the tide is delusional,” said Mearsheimer.

What if the war goes badly for Ukraine, and it faces being a dysfunctional state?

Mearsheimer fears the U.S. and NATO will be so humiliated they will attempt to intervene to rescue Ukraine, and this could lead to a nuclear exchange.

Mearsheimer predicts that the Russians will conquer more territory, perhaps “the four oblasts west of the four oblasts they control now or have annexed so far. And they may even take a bit more. And I think there would be nothing we could do to prevent that.”

In the end, the U.S. will be involved with negotiating with the Russians to bring peace to Ukraine, as did Kennedy in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy would not allow Soviet missiles on the U.S. border off Florida, and Putin will not allow NATO missiles on the Russian border in Ukraine.

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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

A cúpula do G7 sob a presidência italiana, organizada pelo governo Meloni na Puglia, proclama como sua prioridade “a defesa do sistema internacional baseado na força da lei”, declarando que “a guerra de agressão da Rússia contra a Ucrânia minou seus princípios e desencadeou uma crescente instabilidade, visível nos vários focos de crise”. Essa declaração é feita pelo G7, do qual 6 membros (EUA, Canadá, Grã-Bretanha, França, Alemanha e Itália) são as principais potências da OTAN, que deflagrou a guerra na Ucrânia contra a Rússia, à qual se soma o Japão, o principal parceiro da OTAN no Leste Asiático contra a China. A encenação idílica com a qual essa cúpula é apresentada não pode esconder o fato de que ela é, na verdade, uma cúpula de guerra. Os EUA assinaram um pacto militar de 10 anos com a Ucrânia, que está recebendo um empréstimo de US$ 50 bilhões do G7 para ajudá-la a comprar mais armas, um empréstimo que será pago com os juros acumulados sobre os US$ 300 bilhões de ativos russos congelados, a maioria depositada em bancos europeus. Ao mesmo tempo, os ministros da defesa dos 6 países do G7 da OTAN concordaram em fornecer à Ucrânia mais ajuda militar maciça e em alocar US$ 43 bilhões por ano para continuar alimentando a guerra no coração da Europa.

Na mira do G7 não está apenas a Rússia, mas toda a organização BRICS, este ano sob a presidência russa, ampliada de 5 para 10 membros e em desenvolvimento: mais de 30 países querem se juntar a ela. Já hoje, o produto interno bruto do BRICS excede o do G7 e as previsões para 2024-2029 indicam um crescimento econômico do BRICS, devido principalmente à China, de 44% em comparação com 21% do G7. Incapaz de impedir o desenvolvimento dos BRICS com instrumentos econômicos, o G7 procura manter o domínio com instrumentos de guerra.

O Papa Francisco foi convidado para o G7 na Apúlia para dar uma aparência de paz a essa cúpula bélica. Lá, o papa Francisco se reuniu com o presidente ucraniano Volodymyr Zelensky, sem dizer uma palavra sobre o fato de que ele está perseguindo a Igreja Ortodoxa Russa na Ucrânia, da qual a Igreja Ucraniana realizou um cisma, funcional para a guerra contra todas as coisas russas.

Manlio Dinucci

Artigo em italiano :

G7: Il Declino dell’Impero Americano d’Occidente

Tradução : Mondialisation.ca com DeepL

VIDEO (italiano) :

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ICC Arrest Warrant for Vladimir Putin for “Kidnapping Ukrainian Children”, Russia Accused of “Genocide-like Deportation” at the Switzerland Peace Conference

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, June 18, 2024

Starting in 2014, thousands of Donbass families including children were provided safe haven in Russia, as part of a humanitarian initiative under the auspices of  Moscow’s Ministry of Emergency Situations. Russian families have welcomed them and provided assistance. Many of the children who were provided safe haven in Russia are orphans whose parents were killed by the Azov Battalion.

The Failure of Switzerland’s Burgenstock “War-Peace Conference”, Russia Not Invited

By Peter Koenig, June 18, 2024

From the get-go, way back in the planning stage, the Swiss-sponsored Burgenstock Conference on Ukraine (15 and 16 June), was a failure. Why? Because there was no willingness by the “neutral” Swiss Government to invite Russia, the key partner for real Peace Talks, to the negotiating table.

Up to Half a Million NATO Soldiers Waiting to Enter Ukraine. “Offensive Oriented”, Preparing for “a Large Confrontation”. Drago Bosnic

By Drago Bosnic, June 18, 2024

Quoting a senior NATO official, the Defense Post reports that “[the alliance] countries have comfortably exceeded a target of placing 300,000 troops on high-readiness”. The mainstream propaganda machine insists these forces are there to allegedly “stave off any potential Russian attack”.

Child Deaths in VAERS — Much Higher Than Reported!

By Dr. William Makis, June 18, 2024

I have been able to confirm a lot of these deaths myself. Here are 182 post COVID-19 vaccine CHILD DEATHSs with “Age” left BLANK. It’s actually shocking how many VAERS reports of CHILD DEATHS there are, that don’t have the child’s age entered in the proper location.

St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) 2024: Marking the Rise of the Global South Century and Decline of Western Economies

By George Eliason, June 17, 2024

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual event bringing together global leaders, policymakers, and influential business figures, took place in St. Petersburg, Russia from June 5th to 8th, 2024. Attendees representing 130 countries and roughly 3 billion people worldwide attended. This year, SPIEF’s theme was “The Foundations of a Multipolar World – The Formation of New Areas of Growth.”

When the Lie Becomes the “Truth”

By Mark Taliano, June 17, 2024

How long did it take for “alternate” or legacy media journalists to finally acknowledge that there are no “moderate rebels” in Syria and that the West and its agencies support al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and beyond?

D-Day 2024. Diana Johnstone

By Diana Johnstone, June 17, 2024

Ceremonies were held last week commemorating the 80th anniversary of Operation Overlord, the Anglo-American landing on the beaches of Normandy that took place on June 6, 1944, known as D-Day.  For the very first time, the Russians were ostentatiously not invited to take part in the ceremonies. 

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From the get-go, way back in the planning stage, the Swiss-sponsored Burgenstock Conference on Ukraine (15 and 16 June), was a failure.

Why? Because there was no willingness by the “neutral” Swiss Government to invite Russia, the key partner for real Peace Talks, to the negotiating table.

This is not the first time that Russia was snubbed. Before and during the WEF Davos-circus in January 2024, a similar “peace” meeting was held, without Russia. Of course, it led to nothing – other than new condemnations and packages of sanctions against Russia. 

The usual. The WEF-crowd feels they have superior powers, so they can do whatever their rules tell them to do. Maybe they are not noticing that their power is gradually slipping away, like sand through a fist.

Group photo of attendees of the summit (Licensed under OGL 3). Click here for an enlarged view

In the case of the June 15/16 Conference, Switzerland eventually admitted that they acted on the behest of Mr. Volodymyr Zelenskyy, yes, the guy jetting around the western world begging for war billions; the man, who calls himself still President of Ukraine, even though his mandate expired more than three weeks ago. He canceled elections and simply stayed on. And the western world accepts him – Zelenskyy, the warrior-in-chief.

Was it that the Swiss listened to this green-yellow T-shirted [proxy] dictator, or were they squeezed by the unelected European Commissioner or even their bosses in Washington?

Obeying these days is part of the rules-based order. Down the drain with sovereignty and neutrality, let alone democracy. 

The so-called Peace Conference, really was a War Conference, as much of the talk was how to get more weapons and money to Ukraine to kill more people on both sides of the front. For example, Kamala Harris, representing President Biden, showed up with a half-a-billion dollar “gift”, or “loan”(?) for Mr. Zelenskyy.

“WAR is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.”

This is a quote from a 1935 speech and short book by Smedley D. Butler, a retired United States Marine Corps Major General and two-time Medal of Honor recipient. Based on his career military experience, Butler discusses how business interests commercially benefit from warfare.

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Even in the forefront of the Burgenstock summit, some of the more prominent mainstream Swiss and international news media, dared asking why spending all this effort and taxpayer’s money for naught, if Russia is not at the table. To no avail. They had to pull it through.

Originally some 160 delegations of countries and organizations were invited. In the end only slightly more than 90 showed up with about 52 heads of state. And among the most important ones of these “heads of state”, the more influential ones, left already in the evening of the first day, including Emmanuel Macron, Kamala Harris and Olaf Scholz. 

Either their time was too precious to waste the entire weekend on the Burgenstock, or they did not want to make commitments they could not refuse – or both. In any case, it shed light on what the conference really was — a congregation of a bunch of politically anti-Russia-aligned blah-blahers, who love listening to themselves and feeling important.

Also, in the forefront of the meeting, several influential leaders, including Brazil’s President Lula da Silva and Saudi’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman – and others – said that they would not attend the Swiss event, since nothing constructive could come of it, without the main player, Russia, being at the table.  

Earlier, Russia’s Foreign Minister, Sergey Lavrov, told the Swiss right to the face, that they are untrustworthy. An understatement.

The conference proceeded along divided lines; journalists as well as participants with an ever louder crescendo questioning the absence of Russia.

According to the NYT (15 June 2024), the star of the show, President Volodymyr Zelensky, had this to say as an explanation for Russia’s absence:

“There is no Russia here. Why? Because if Russia was interested in peace, there would be no war.”

That is a simple answer, far from reality, and far from the truth. It leaves out all the history on how the war was orchestrated by the west, with the preparations of the Maidan Coup on 22 February 2014. 

Remember Victoria Nuland, then Deputy Secretary of State in Charge of European affairs, in an overheard telephone conversation with the US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, saying something to the extent of

“F*ck the EU! We have spent 5 billion dollars during the last ten years to prepare this Coup”.

This coup was to bring Ukraine – arguably the resources-richest country in Europe, other than Russia, closer to Europe and ready to become a NATO base – one step further to Moscow. An outright provocation for Russia, one that President Putin from the moment of the Coup said – NATO would be a Red Line, not to cross.

NATO’s Secretary Stoltenberg himself, repeated in the past few months on several occasions that the war started with the Maidan Coup in 2014, thereby admitting that the west was the aggressor and “villain”, not Russia.

Russia’s intervention – not an invasion – was to salvage the Russian population of the Donbass area, which since 2014 was bombarded and attacked by Kiev’s Nazi Azov battalions, killing by February 2022, at least 14,000 people, of whom 70% were women and children.

These Russian-dominated provinces were not “annexed” as the West likes to say. They had their referenda and asked the Kremlin to be incorporated into the Russian Federation. Mr. Putin at first did not accept their request. But when he saw what happened in the eight years since the Coup, he reconsidered and accepted their demand.

Nazi-Kiev is following the same principles as does Nazi Zionist Israel – targeting children and women. The former are the next generation; the latter are the bearers of the next generation.

You may bet, this history and Azov-targeting was not discussed during the War Conference on the Burgenstock.

Maybe in the corridors by some of the more alert attendants, who still have a memory of historic events – and can add up cause and effect. 

According to RT of 16 June 2024, 12 countries attending the Swiss Summit on Ukraine have refused to sign the final communiqué. This is based on RIA Novosti’s report of Sunday evening.

Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud said earlier on Sunday that any meaningful progress toward a peaceful resolution to the conflict would require Russia’s participation.

Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer predicted that not all attendees would sign the declaration, because “it’s a question of the specific choice of words.” He was right. Now we know that the wording is anything but neutral. Many countries did not want to commit to propaganda.

According to the RIA Novosti list, Armenia, Brazil, India, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, and the UAE are among the states that did not sign the declaration, as well as four organizations, including the UN and OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). The 79 nations that did sign the joined declaration, include, Hungary, Serbia, Argentina, Türkiye, and Georgia, as well as four international bodies, joined Ukraine in endorsing the document.

The consensus of Hungary with the final report is a surprise knowing how President Orban made himself known as propagating abandoning the weapon and financial support for Ukraine, to stop the bloodshed. See this for more details.

See also this – just in: “Zelensky’s ‘peace conference’ will go down in history, but not in the way you might think.”

The final document was largely blaming Russia for causing “large-scale human suffering and destruction” and “creating risks and crises with global repercussions.”

It further calls for Ukraine’s territorial integrity “within internationally recognized borders” to be respected – specifically, the restoration of Ukrainian control over the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, as well as access to sea ports in the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov. 

As an unreported comment, it must be said that Russia took control of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant, because the plant’s safety was at stake for lack of appropriate maintenance. In addition, it is well documented that Ukraine sabotaging the plant, thereby poisoning the surroundings, including Russian territory, with highly toxic nuclear radiation. 

Was this ever mentioned during the Burgenstock sham event?

The final Conference Communiqué also demands the release of all prisoners of war through a “complete exchange,” and the return of “deported and unlawfully displaced” Ukrainian children.

On the “unlawfully [Alleged] deported 20,000 children from Ukraine”, Canada’s PM Justin Trudeau, a prime scholar of Klaus Schwab’s (WEF) Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL), said in a distorted lie-based propaganda showcase-interview that Russia must be held accountable for this genocide-like deportation of Ukrainian children.

Ukraine is also known as a major world hub for human trafficking, with focus on children. Could it be that the Russian “deported” children were saved by Russia from trafficking and abuse? How else could Russia have “stolen” 20,000 children from their parents? Think about it.

“Genocide-like Deportation of Ukrainian Children”

See this (first minute) with Trudeau who supports the Neo-Nazi regime

“Russia kidnapped thousands of Ukrainian kids, its genocide, it’s pure colonialism”

And then see where these children were sent. 

To an “Oppressive Deportation Camp” 

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Human Trafficking 

Ukraine is also known as a major world hub for human trafficking, with focus on children. Could it be that the Russian “deported” children were saved by Russia from trafficking and abuse? How else could Russia have “stolen” 20,000 children from their parents? Think about it.

Worldwide human trafficking, the bulk of which are children and women, is estimated at US$150 billion by the UN and the International Labor Office (ILO), competing with drug-trafficking and approaching the war racket. This figure is exceeded by a dark, unreported shadow number. See this for the human trafficking racket, almost competing with the War Racket. 

Early in the Conference, Swiss President Madame Viola Amherd, host of the conference, predicted that a follow-up conference may be necessary at which Russia should be present. For good reasons, she did not say that Switzerland should again host it.

Stay tuned. Remember, Mr. Putin has offered and invited many times to sit down at the negotiating table with ALL concerned parties. So far to no avail.   

Pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia propaganda will continue, until the time comes, when President Putin’s patience reaches a breaking point. 

Let us not even speculate what that could mean for the global west, notably Europe, especially if and when Macron and other NATO warrior-heads decide not only to send fighter jets to Ukraine, but also troops, and God forbid – nukes.

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

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

Featured image: Logo of the Summit on Peace in Ukraine, 15–16 June 2024 (From the Public Domain)

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We all know the problem of The Future of Food.

So, who’s ready for the solution?

Today on #SolutionsWatch, James examines regenerative agriculture, one of the solutions that is already being used to wean us off the industrialized factory farming system and back toward a healthy relationship with our food . . . and with the earth itself.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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When Russia launched its special military operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022, it became the active part of the Kremlin’s strategic counteroffensive against crawling NATO aggression.

At the time, President Vladimir Putin made it clear that anyone foolish enough to get directly involved would be met with consequences they’ve never experienced in their entire history. And indeed, nobody dared to get into a direct confrontation with Moscow. This forced the political West to find workarounds in order to provide indirect support for its favorite Neo-Nazi puppets. However, what started out with batches of ATGMs (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) ended up with heavy armor and even nuclear-capable fighter jets. In other words, NATO keeps probing Russia, testing its patience and willingness not to escalate the already highly volatile situation.

And yet, in recent months, the world’s most aggressive racketeering cartel has become more brazen than ever before. Its advanced ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) systems are being actively used for target acquisition and guidance of Western weapons delivered to the Kiev regime forces.

Luckily, through the use of its advanced SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems and world-class electronic warfare (EW), Russia is able to negate most of the advantages that the Neo-Nazi junta is getting in this way.

All this is making NATO leaders quite nervous, as they believe that Russia’s victory would have disastrous consequences for the collective West’s geopolitical standing. This is going so far that the mainstream propaganda machine is now openly advocating for NATO and Neo-Nazi junta-sponsored terrorist attacks across Russia (public schools included).

However, that’s not the end of it. Despite troubles in meeting their recruitment goals, countries of the political West are looking to accumulate large concentrations of troops along Russia’s borders. Estimates vary significantly, but at this very moment, there could be up to half a million NATO soldiers stationed in Eastern Europe alone, heavily armed and maintaining high battle readiness. According to Western military sources, there are no less than 300,000 troops stationed along the borders of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine. Quoting a senior NATO official, the Defense Post reports that “[the alliance] countries have comfortably exceeded a target of placing 300,000 troops on high-readiness”. The mainstream propaganda machine insists these forces are there to allegedly “stave off any potential Russian attack”. However, their composition tells a different story.

Namely, NATO forces in Eastern Europe rely on the same offensive-oriented approach that the belligerent alliance usually uses in its aggression against the world.

This means that there’s a significant focus on air superiority and rapid deployment of frontline troops, particularly airborne and special forces. It’s certainly a challenge to coordinate a dozen or so different countries in the region, particularly as they have highly diverging foreign policy frameworks. Namely, while the endemically Russophobic EU/NATO member states such as the Baltic republics and Poland are far more committed, others such as Slovakia and Hungary aren’t as thrilled to get into a confrontation with Russia. There are also those who don’t belong to either category, such as Romania, where the political leadership is decisively pro-EU/NATO, but the population is generally more ambivalent.

Interestingly, the belligerent alliance itself also admits that its forces in the area are offensive-oriented, albeit indirectly. Namely, NATO commanders are complaining that “the alliance faces shortfalls in key weaponry such as air defenses and longer-range missiles”, insisting there are “capability gaps” and “things that we don’t have enough of as an alliance at the moment and we need to tackle”. And while the lack of missiles is not exactly true (as evidenced by constant ATACMS deliveries to the Neo-Nazi junta), the complaint about SAM systems holds, as many of those have been delivered to the Kiev regime forces and haven’t proven to be very effective, despite all the war propaganda. Losses of “Patriot” SAMs and similar NATO-sourced air defense systems led to more “begmanding” from Volodymyr Zelensky and his entourage (although it was all futile for the most part).

However, once again, the admission that NATO forces lack enough SAM systems suggests that they are offensive-oriented. One of the most prominent Russian military experts, Konstantin Sivkov, also argues that these troops are there to get directly involved in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict. According to his assessment, the delivery of F-16s will serve as a cover for NATO air incursions, followed by land forces. Sivkov believes that at least five countries will take part in the operation and that they’ve already assembled 500,000 soldiers for this purpose. According to his estimates, this incursion could take place as early as August-September. Sivkov’s stellar career in the military (specifically the Soviet Navy), as well as the numerous positions he still holds in various domestic and international scientific institutions, imply that his warning should be taken very seriously.

Another clear indicator that the political West is preparing for a large-scale confrontation is the fact that the US House passed a bill automatically registering men aged 18-26 for the draft. And while American congressmen are insisting this measure serves “only to cut down on bureaucratic red tape and help US citizens avoid unnecessary legal issues”, the timing is far too peculiar. The draft, while mandatory, hasn’t been invoked in over half a century, particularly after the crushing defeat Vietnam inflicted on American occupation forces. This clearly indicates that the political West is becoming desperate to prevent Russia’s victory. However, as former US Army Colonel Douglas McGregor warned repeatedly, this will be met with a swift response from Russia, as its unrivaled hypersonic missiles will rain down and obliterate any large NATO troop concentrations.

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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.

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***

You could almost sense the smacking of lips, accompanied by the rubbing of hands.  The departure of Benny Gantz from the Israeli war cabinet, which had served as a checking forum against the conventional security cabinet, presented a perfect opportunity for those who felt his presence stifling.  In these febrile times, Gantz, the leader of the opposition National Unity party, passes as a moderate centrist and had been one of its three voting members, alongside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

The resignation was prompted by Netanyahu’s tardy attitude towards formulating a plan to end the war in Gaza.  Gantz had given him till June 8 to come up with something satisfactory, “a plan of action” that would include the normalisation of relations with Saudi Arabia and creating “an international civilian governance mechanism in Gaza”. 

“Unfortunately,” stated Gantz, “Netanyahu is preventing us from achieving real victory. So we are leaving the unity government.  With a heavy but full heart.”

According to Gantz, he joined the emergency coalition “because we knew it was a bad government.  The people of Israel, the fighters, the commanders, the families of the murdered, the casualties and the hostages needed unity and support like they needed air to breathe.”

In his resignation letter, Gantz musters praise for his own role and that of his party. 

“After the October 7 disaster, we set up together the emergency government.  Our joining was not under question at that difficult time… Our entrance contributed several achievements to the government… national unity and conveying a clear message to the international community as well as to our enemies.”

If the message had been one of a savage campaign littered with Palestinian corpses, the infliction of conditions of famine, the crushing of the Gaza strip, not to mention ignoring  political realities, then it was certainly conveyed.  If any moderate influence had been exerted on the part of Gantz and his colleagues, it was a statue yet to escape its marble confines.  Much of what he has proposed are distinctions without much difference.  He envisages the return of Israeli hostages still held by Hamas, the destruction and substitution of the organisation in Gaza, the return of residents of the north displaced from their homes and fortifying the US-led effort against Iran.

Secretary Antony J. Blinken meets with Israel’s War Cabinet in Tel Aviv, Israel, January 9, 2024. (Official State Department photo by Chuck Kennedy/Public Domain)

Fellow National Unity minister Gadi Eisenkot, who also resigned, explained that the cabinet led by Netanyahu was prevented from “making key decisions, which were needed to realize the war’s goals and improve Israel’s strategic position.”

Israel watchers speculated on the significance of the move.  The Gantz gambit could well stimulate an early conclusion to the conflict.  On the other hand, his bluff could be called, enabling the hard right of the coalition to entrench themselves.

Shalom Lipner, non-resident senior fellow for Middle East Programs at the Atlantic Council, suggested that the resignation placed the PM “at the complete mercy of his right-wing and religious fellow travellers who – in the absence of Gantz’s fig leaf – will steer policy in a direction that is anathema to the Biden administration and puts Israel’s essential ties with the United States at risk.”   A bitter Israel Harel, writing in Haaretz, wondered what improvements might be made by Gantz’s departure.  Would it, for instance, encourage Netanyahu to behave more responsibly in the face of pressure from the likes of National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir?  Or weaken Hezbollah’s will?  Or “frighten Yahya Sinwar into giving up the life insurance the hostages are providing him?”

At first instance, Netanyahu urged Gantz to reconsider.

“Israel is in an existential war on multiple fronts,” the Israeli PM wrote on X.  “Benny, this is not the time to abandon the campaign – this is the time to join forces.”

On June 16, Netanyahu confirmed that the ship had sailed.  The six-member war cabinet, described by opposition leader Yair Lapid as a “shameful arena for settling scores, fighting and discussions that lead nowhere”, had outlived its fractious usefulness. 

“The cabinet was in the coalition agreement with Gantz at his request,” the PM is said to have told the Security Cabinet.  “As soon as Gantz left – there was no need for a cabinet anymore.” 

In its place, stated a spokesperson from the prime minister’s office, the security cabinet will simply meet with greater regularity, with Netanyahu holding ad hoc “security consultations” when needed.

Abolishing the war cabinet does serve one purpose. It prevents such nationalist demagogues as Ben-Gvir of Otzma Yehudit and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionist Party from adding their troubling names to the outfit.  Ben-Gvir had insisted on his addition, arguing that it was time to bring in ministers who “warned in real-time against the conception and viewpoint that everyone today accepts was wrong.”  He also argued against the secrecy of the war as prosecuted.

Both men, who have urged on even greater slaughter in Gaza and the eviction of Palestinians living there, remain members of the broader security cabinet.  And they have made no secret about their mixture of delight and loathing at Gantz’s departure.  “There is no less stately act than resigning from a government in time of war,” Smotrich haughtily declared.

For the moment, the scene is set for a war to go even more badly than it already has.  As Gaza starves and continues to be levelled, Israel’s politicians will be circling in anticipation of an election date.  Netanyahu’s primary goal till then, as it has been for some years: survive.

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected] 

Featured image: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli war cabinet in Tel Aviv, Israel, 22 March 2024 (From the Public Domain)

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***

Below is an excerpt from a report by Dr. Michael Nevradakis of the Children’s Health Defense, entitled “Number of Children Who Died After COVID Shots Much Higher Than VAERS Reports Indicate, Analyst Says.”

Fetal deaths and miscarriages, sudden cardiac arrest, sudden death and suicides — these are some of the causes of death listed in reports submitted to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) on children who received a COVID-19 vaccine.

Yet, these reports do not count toward the total number of child deaths listed in VAERS data because the victims’ ages are officially listed as “unknown,” according to VAERS analyst Albert Benavides.

Benavides reviewed the data for his website, VAERSAware.com, and provided links to many of these “unknown age” child death reports on his site.

VAERS data as of May 31 lists 197 child deaths following COVID-19 vaccination.

However, Benavides told The Defender, “There are approximately 418 properly documented deaths in children below age 18. There are an additional approximate 120 kid deaths where the summary narrative states ‘child, infant, neonate, baby.’”

Benavides identified these “unknown age” reports using an algorithm and “manual intervention.”

Click here to read the full article.

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My Take…

I have been able to confirm a lot of these deaths myself.

Here are 182 post COVID-19 vaccine CHILD DEATHSs with “Age” left BLANK.

It’s actually shocking how many VAERS reports of CHILD DEATHS there are, that don’t have the child’s age entered in the proper location.

WHO VigiAccess reports over 200,000 Pediatric Adverse Events after taking a COVID-19 Vaccine:

Child Deaths after COVID-19 Vaccine in the literature: (at least 4 child deaths in peer-reviewed papers with autopsy)

Example of death one day after Pfizer mRNA jab:

VAERS 1769327: “A 12-year old male patient received Pfizer mRNA on Aug. 19, 2021. The patient experienced unknown cause of death on Aug. 20, 2021, cardiac arrest.

Example of death 2 days after Pfizer mRNA jab with AUTOPSY confirming: 

VAERS 1859260: “A 12 year old male received second dose of Pfizer mRNA. It was reported that the patient passed away shortly after his second coronavirus vaccination. An autopsy was performed. “A 12 year old boy dies, two days after being inoculated for the secon dtime. Initial evidence suggests that death could be related to vaccination. According to the preliminary autopsy protocol, experts from “PRIVACY” considered the death likely to be due to vaccination.”

Australia – 9 Child Deaths in TGA Database

Conclusion 

538 Child Deaths in VAERS.

9 Child Deaths in Australian TGA

>200,000 Pediatric COVID-19 Vaccine Injuries in WHO VigiAccess.

Health Canada, Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer (CPHO) (Dr.Theresa Tam), Alberta Health Services, all claim “0 CHILD DEATHS” after COVID-19 Vaccination.

How many child deaths are “too many”?

How many dead children is it going to take to get these COVID-19 mRNA Vaccine products taken off the market?

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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***

The survey carried out by the QR company for the group Voto Latino – which promotes Biden’s re-election candidacy – confirms the decline in the support of the Hispanic community for the Democratic candidate, who, however, remains ahead in voting intention within that group over his rival, the Republican Donald Trump. Beyond the Latino vote, the former president leads Biden in the polls despite facing criminal charges, which he says are politically motivated.

According to the survey, reported by the newspaper El País, Biden would obtain 59% of the votes of Latinos in the states of Arizona, North Carolina, Nevada, Texas and Pennsylvania, while Trump would reach 39% of support.

However, support for the current president and Democratic candidate falls to 47% when respondents can choose among other presidential candidates beyond Trump, such as the so-called anti-establishment independent Robert F. Kennedy, who obtains 12% of the support. He is followed by African American activist Cornel West, with 3%; and Green Party standard-bearer Jill Stein, 2%, while 1% say they don’t know who they would vote for.

In this scenario, Trump is less affected than Biden, and his voting intention falls to only 34%.

“What we are seeing is not a significant shift to the right among Latino voters. Instead, there are many who are frustrated with a two-party system and are seriously considering voting for a third party,” said Voto Latino president María Teresa Kumar, according to El País.

According to the outlet, younger people and within the Latino electorate are the most inclined to turn their backs on Biden and consider other options, a radical change considering the overwhelming Democratic favouritism among Hispanics in recent decades.

The reason for this loss of support, Kumar explained to El País, is the advantage that Trump has over Biden in the perception of management of the economy, an issue that will be decisive in these elections, in a context of increasing cost of living and inflation. Voters say in the poll that the economy will be their main issue when choosing a candidate.

“’It is impossible to exaggerate the impact of inflation and the economy on the Hispanic electorate,’ says the survey. More than 35% of young Latinos claim to have applied for government aid in the last year and 52% admit to having had to postpone the purchase of a house or a car,” said the article.

The note also points out another problem for the Democratic campaign: the potential absenteeism of Latino voters, an electorate that is made up of millions of citizens and that is key for whoever seeks to prevail in the elections. According to the study, only 37% of Hispanics said they were enthusiastic about voting, a feeling that is greater among Republicans than Democrats, a party that has also recently registered a sharp drop-in support among other groups, such as young people, Arab-Americans and progressives due to the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s military operation in Gaza, according to several recent polls.

A CBS/YouGov poll found that 81% of respondents said the economy would be a major factor affecting their vote, making it the No. 1 issue, with inflation following with 75% and democracy with 74%. The same poll also found that the majority of potential voters in the US said that Trump’s criminal conviction was not a factor in how they would vote in November’s election.

Trump became the first current or former US president in history to be convicted of a crime after a jury on May 30 found him guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records, with the billionaire accusing the charges of being a politically motivated “witch hunt” that sought to hinder his chances of winning November’s race.

It is unsurprising that the majority of Americans place such little importance on the criminal charges when Biden’s economic policies, including the wasted tens of billions sent to Ukraine, has led to a once in a lifetime cost-of-living crisis. Under Biden’s watch, credit card debt has reached a record $1.1 trillion, with 60% of Americans now living paycheck to paycheck.

With such a decline in the quality of life that Americans have experienced, it is little wonder that there is a great longing for the return of Trump and why more are turning their back on Biden. This is epitimosed in the very fact that not even criminal charges can weaken Trump in the polls in the context of the great inability to afford necessities like food and housing.

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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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an annual event bringing together global leaders, policymakers, and influential business figures, took place in St. Petersburg, Russia from June 5th to 8th, 2024. Attendees representing 130 countries and roughly 3 billion people worldwide attended. This year, SPIEF’s theme was “The Foundations of a Multipolar World – The Formation of New Areas of Growth.”

Foreign companies are eager to access the Russian market’s potential, despite Western sanctions aimed at isolating Moscow.

Deals involve firms from Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, suggesting a pragmatic approach prioritizing commercial interests over politics and avoiding missed opportunities in Russia. The diversity of participants indicates many businesses recognize the risks of being left out of this lucrative market.

What should be a wakeup call for the global West is instead falling on deaf ears. While Washington and European capitals report declining economies, Russia, in spite of severe sanctions, continues to adapt and flourish.

Policymakers are not testing their countries’ long-term economic policies against the implications of the rise of multipolarism. Let’s consider the Green/degrowth policies favored by the Biden administration and former European economic powerhouses like Germany. They are not protecting the future of their people. 

SPIEF 2024 introduced concepts the Global South Century will move forward on driving the world economy while the American and European economies recede. Russia is positioning itself as a leader.

What Is the Global South?

“Take the 3.5 billion population of China, India, and the ASEAN countries, for example.

In 2000, only 150 million of these people enjoyed middle-class living standards. Today, the number has exploded to around 1.5 billion, double the total population of Western countries. And it is predicted to grow to 3 billion by 2030.”

If the Global South’s middle class are that large, who will be controlling the economy? At the same time, America will be deindustrializing and the sheer weight of debt will push most of the middle class into poverty. 

This is a far cry from what we see in the headlines. First, we were told the Russian economy would collapse under the sanction load. Later, it was; the growth we are seeing is temporary, even as Western economies faltered from being directly affected by the sanctions levied and cutting off the energy it needs to fuel industry.

In the same vein, we’re assured Ukraine is winning the war on the battlefield and Russia is reduced to going into battle in golf carts. All the while Ukraine needs more out of our treasuries and constant weapon deliveries that drained Western stockpiles to the point it will take 5 years to replenish.

While headlines read Moscow’s booming because of the Ukrainian war, they also state Russia’s economy is said to have slipped to 12th place globally.

What is the truth?

“By August 2023, it was reported that Russia overtook Germany as the fifth-largest economy based on purchasing power parity (PPP) GDP rankings. Recently impacted by shocks and the loss of cheap Russian gas, Germany has stagnated and fallen to sixth place in the World Bank’s ranking. PPP GDP accounts for local price differences, similar to The Economist’s Big Mac index comparing burger costs across countries.”

The World Bank revised Russia’s ranking, stating that Russia overtook Japan in 2021 and has maintained its position at number four since then. The previous calculations were based on 2017 data, now updated to reflect the 2021 figures.

This data is pre-war and supplants the notion Russia’s expanding economy is riding solely on a war economy bump. Russia is currently the fastest growing major economy in the world.

The St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) is heavily invested in the Global South’s growth, where developing countries are outpacing the West.

China and India, currently ranked first and third in PPP terms, are expected to also lead nominally in the coming decades. The fastest-growing economies are from the Global South.

Over 980 agreements worth a staggering $71. 87 billion were concluded at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in 2024, highlighting the immense opportunities that Washington and European Union planners are inadvertently leaving their own industries out of. 

The sheer volume of deals indicates a strong appetite among foreign companies to tap into the Russian market’s vast potential, even as Western nations impose sanctions and seek to isolate Moscow from the global economy. Notably, the agreements were not limited to traditional Russian allies or partners; they involved companies and investors from various regions, including Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. This diversity of participants suggests that many businesses are taking a pragmatic approach, prioritizing commercial interests over political considerations, and recognizing the risks of being left out of lucrative opportunities in the Russian market. 

How Russia Is Doing It, Lessons to Learn

Russia has shifted its economic model, investing heavily in areas like the military-industrial complex and civilian sectors through initiatives like National Projects 2. 1. This has benefited the country’s poorest regions, leading to a record low in Russia’s despair index – a measure of inflation, unemployment, and poverty. 

This is supposedly a time when Russia, according to Ukraine and the Biden administration is supposed to be conscripting soldiers they can’t arm or even feed?

This is supposed to be a time when battlefield casualty numbers for Russian soldiers are over 500,000 and climbing?

This defies logic and the evidence is plain to see. The Russian military is inundated with so many volunteers they can’t handle the inflow. If the battlefield deaths were what is being reported, this would be another story altogether. Civilians don’t volunteer for war if they are being sent into a meat grinder.

“It is certainly true that 88 per cent of the world population lives outside the West in what is now called the Global South. Arguably, many Global South countries across Latin America, Africa and Asia are no longer passive participants on the world stage, instead acting independently of the West in many ways.

It is equally notable that other forums and institutions of the Global South are gaining weight. The BRICS forum – comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa – was set up in 2009 as a counterpoint to the G7 club of nations, to criticism from some quarters that it was little more than ‘marketing’.

Yet, it is now clear that the BRICS is growing in clout. In 1980, the G7 accounted for about 50 per cent of the world’s GDP in purchasing power parity terms, while the BRICS countries – excluding Russia, then part of the Soviet Union – accounted for about 11 per cent.

Today, the G7 accounts for 30 per cent of the world’s GDP, while the BRICS countries account match it at around 30 per cent. Equally importantly, the membership of BRICS is growing dramatically, while the G7’s is stagnant.” Chatham House

What else are we being lied to about?

America’s Despair Index Problem

To put Russia’s record low in perspective, this US Joint Congressional report on the American despair index is shocking to the senses.

“Mortality from deaths of despair far surpasses anything seen in America since the dawn of the 20th century. (The trend for middle-aged whites reveals a more dramatic rise but only goes back continuously to 1959.) The recent increase has primarily been driven by an unprecedented epidemic of drug overdoses, but even excluding those deaths, the combined mortality rate from suicides and alcohol-related deaths is higher than at any point in more than 100 years. Suicides have not been so common since 1938, and one has to go back to the 1910s to find mortality from alcohol-related deaths as high as today’s.”

The gravity of this report titled Long-Term Trends in Deaths of Despair shows Washington has been out of touch with the needs of the American people for such a long time, they don’t remember Congress is supposed to be steering the ship and are hellbent on capsizing it for political gain and personal profit.

“The US national debt just hit a new all-time high of $34.667 trillion. New numbers from the Treasury Department’s Debt to the Penny system show the country’s national debt reached the milestone on Friday, May 31st.

The current law debt trajectory will reduce income growth by 12% over the next three decades and 13% annually by Fiscal Year (FY) 2049. 

Rapidly rising debt could reduce income growth by 33% over the next three decades and 42% annually by FY 2049. 

Rapidly rising debt would reduce projected income by about $14,500 per person in FY 2054, in today’s dollars.”

The CBO says the reduction in household income is due to “crowding out,” an economic theory that traces how high debt and deficits slow economic growth on national and individual level.

“…High debt and deficits carry significant risks and threats to the budget and the economy. 

High and rising debt hinders economic growth by crowding out investments, pushes up interest rates, strains the federal budget through rising interest payments, creates geopolitical challenges and risks, makes responding to new emergencies more challenging, imposes burdens on future generations, and increases the risk of a fiscal crisis.”

Russia’s wartime industry is simultaneously shifting to manufacture consumer goods. After a resolution, Moscow intends to have these new facilities and industries providing products to new partners, where the collective West will struggle to compete.

Putin stressed achieving this through enhancing domestic production and reducing import reliance, rather than trade barriers. 

The approach recognizes that sustainable growth requires more than protectionism. Russia will achieve long-term economic resilience through diversification and self-sufficiency, setting its economy up for long-term growth.

Conversely, the Biden and EU model stresses switching to carbon-neutral manufacturing decades before the technology and infrastructure are in place to do so. This is a sure recipe for long term austerity and more citizens giving up on the future.

The Russian president noted that the center of economic development was gradually shifting further eastwards and northwards

“The basis of the US economy is ‘cracking’ due to government debt and inflation, according to Putin. “It is an unequivocal problem for all holders of dollar assets,” the Russian president said. He further stated that the development center is shifting to Asia, and Russia needs to be closer.

According to the Russian leader, Peter the Great opened the window into Europe precisely because this is where development was seen. Well, no more.”

Or at least, not now.

What sanctions and the theft of Russian assets has shown the world is America can no longer be trusted. The days when the world’s economy is pegged on the American Dollar, which is the only thing propping up America today are over.

Would you trust your national assets, like gold for instance, with a bank that may or may not turn around and seize them? Of course not.

Countries with a combined population of over 3 billion people represented at SPIEF are divesting in American assets because of the above. Traditional trade done in US Dollars is shifting to local currencies.

As this economic decoupling accelerates the CBO report becomes the optimistic view. The reality is much starker because the report doesn’t consider the eventual loss of the Dollar’s status as the indispensable currency.

 The fact Americans are already facing the impact of this situation is disastrous and is a matter of policy. What policy?

Imagine the economy going so backwards that for any single item, there are only two producers. You still have freedom of choice between the two but the quality is constrained by state policy. Many of the things you took for granted growing up, become unavailable. 

While Russia, China, India, and the Global South enjoy the benefits of Capitalism and democracy which large middle classes demand, the collective West has no choice but to step away from it to address the new and harsher realities.

This isn’t a pro-Russia, pro-China, or India ideological statement. If left unchanged, this is the future unfolding before us.

As industry becomes restricted and labor markets overburdened with the perpetually unemployed, services people count on will roll back. All of this is the natural progression forward from the Paris Accords. It was never about the environment.

Green Growth Is “Degrowth” Policy as It Rolls Out

The EU spent $630 billion on replacing gas from Russia in 2021-2023. This amount is comparable to Europe’s total gas spending over the previous eight years.

At the September 12th, 2022 Yalta European Strategy conference September 12th, German Foreign Minister Analena Baerbock bluntly stated she didn’t care what the German people suffered over the next 10 years, they wouldn’t import Russian gas.

Within 10 days, Germany updated its security policy to include Russian gas purchases as dangerous to the state. Within 2 weeks, the Nord Stream explosions happened which cemented Baerbock’s Green Party green agenda in Germany and across Europe. 

For the German Greens, the Nord Stream explosions were a godsend that enabled them to start decoupling German industry from the economy as companies were forced to relocate to survive.

When you consider that Joe Biden’s Build Back Better program is a copy of Baerbock’s Green Party platform on economics and society, the concept of “degrowth” shows why it’s necessary for America and the West to push down their economies and get populations used to living on the brink.

 “German Greens have lengthy political experience with many ups and downs, becoming less compromising, more system focused, and more pragmatic in recent years. Paths to achieving ecological sustainability are now more readily understood in their social dimensions. Influenced by German activists and sustainability scholars who have made a degrowth turn to the subsistence orientation pioneered by German ecofeminists decades ago, German Greens incorporate strong concerns with equity, reducing over-consumption and modifying work.”

Degrowth doesn’t mean they want you to buy electric cars. They want to take electric cars away and the ability to purchase them. They want to destroy industries so products are no longer available. This was never about “saving” the planet. 

Degrowth means shrinking down major economies like America’s as close to the level of second-world economies as possible so there is social equity. There’s that word again.

Was destroying German industry necessary to support Ukraine? Or America’s? The question looms large because if Russia was wielding energy prices like a foreign policy sword, an orderly withdrawal to new sources would have supported economic stability.

If the question was “will” Russia do this? And it’s spot on, then once again, policymakers were lied to as well as the general public. Governments tore up the social contract with the “people” to support the common good in favor of something else. 

Russia offered long-term energy contracts that locked the price of energy at affordable levels. Europe and the US decided to pay spot pricing instead. The locked in prices and contracts specifying terms for deliverables negates the “Russia using energy as a diplomatic weapon” argument.

And yet, the global demand for oil continues to grow, mainly due to developing countries. Developing countries will be the main drivers of oil consumption in the coming decades. The President of Bolivia is discussing supplies of liquid hydrocarbons with Rosneft.

The global demand for technology, products, research, and skilled workers continues to grow. For America and Europe, the path they’re taking leads these countries to the sidelines as this policy develops. 

Russia, China, India, and the Global South will become the economic juggernauts driving the world while economically devolving green/degrowth agenda countries have less and less to offer.

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George Eliason is an American journalist based in Donbass. He has been interviewed by and provided analysis for RT, the BBC, and Press-TV.

His articles have been published in the Security Assistance Monitor, Washington’s Blog, OpedNews, the Saker, RT, and Global Research among others.

Featured image source

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Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

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Researchers looked at samples from 20 formulas made by well-known local and international brands, and found that six out of 20 formulas tested positive for five types of toxic heavy metals, including lead and aluminum

In May 2024, the FDA sounded the alarm on the Crecelac Infant Powdered Goat Milk Infant Formula, after tests revealed it was contaminated with Cronobacter, which can lead to life-threatening infections like sepsis and meningitis

U.S. lawmakers are also working on a new bill, dubbed The Baby Food Safety Act of 2024, that would direct the FDA to set maximum allowable limits for heavy metals in baby food and infant formula

Breast milk is still the best option for both infants and mothers. However, if you are unable to lactate, I recommend making your own homemade formula milk — recipes are included in this article

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The “breast versus bottle” debate has long divided concerned parents who only want the best nourishment for their child. Many parents who seek convenience often choose infant formula. Others, such as moms who cannot produce enough breast milk to satisfy their children, have no choice but to resort to formula milk.

So, to find out that most infant formulas sold today are contaminated with not just one, but FIVE toxic metals is not just alarming, but an eye-opener to just how unnatural and damaging these highly processed infant foods are.

Study on Infant Formulas Finds All Samples Contaminated with Heavy Metals

Published in May 2024, the study was a collaboration between two nonprofit organizations, GMOScience and Moms Across America.¹ Spearheaded by Michelle Perro, MD, Zen Honeycutt and Stephanie Seneff, Ph.D., the study aimed to determine the presence of toxic metals in several brands of infant formula.

The researchers tested 40 samples from 20 formulas made by well-known local and international brands, such as Enfamil, Gerber and Similac, to name a few. Some were labeled “Organic,” “Non-GMO,” “Grass fed” and “Hypoallergenic.” Most formulas were dairy-based, and only one was soy-based. Each formula was tested twice.

The study findings were alarming. Not only did all samples test positive for aluminum and lead, but the researchers also found that:²

• Six out of 20 formulas tested positive for all the heavy metals being tested
• 35% of the samples tested positive for cadmium, 55% were positive for mercury and 57% were positive for arsenic
• Four samples had mercury levels that were higher than the allowed limit in drinking water by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
• Cadmium levels in both samples of one formula are nearly twice higher than the allowed amount in drinking water
• The aluminum levels in a goat’s milk baby formula were at 41,000 ppb — this means it was 4,000 to 40,000 times higher than other metals in the formulas tested. It also exceeds the limits set by the FDA for the maximum safety level of aluminum for a preemie

Heavy Metals Can Cross Your Infant’s Underdeveloped Blood-Brain Barrier

The study authors, who released their findings on their podcast The New MDS (Mothers, Doctors and Scientists),³ emphasized the significance of this project and what it can mean for young children’s health. They mentioned that these toxic heavy metals can cross your child’s blood-brain barrier, which doesn’t fully develop until they’re 6 months old, which puts them at risk of cognitive health issues.

“Chronic exposure to these metals, even at low levels, can have cumulative effects on infants, potentially leading to developmental and neurological issues, carcinogenic, as well as initiating the development of chronic diseases later in life.

Given the [crucial] growth period in infants, even small amounts of toxic metals can have disproportionately large impacts as compared to adults,” they stated.⁴

They also noted that the heavy metal contamination from formula milk can have a cumulative effect. The levels can also increase during early infant growth, as well as when various nutrient deficiencies are present, such as iron and vitamin D deficiency.⁵ In a blog post, Anne Temple of Moms Across America commented:⁶

“[W]e are extremely dismayed by the results. We had hoped some formulas would be free from toxic and heavy metals, but they were not. We were shocked to see such high levels of toxic metal aluminum present in goat’s milk formula and urge the manufacturers and the FDA to immediately take action to resolve this issue.”

Even More Alarming — Infant Formula Tests Positive for Cronobacter

In late May 2024, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) sounded the alarm on another infant formula manufacturer after learning that it not only failed to comply with FDA regulations,⁷ but one of its products is contaminated with Cronobacter.^8,9

The Crecelac Infant Powdered Goat Milk Formula was voluntarily recalled by its Texas-based manufacturer Dairy Manufacturers Inc. after its samples tested positive for Cronobacter. This bacterium can cause life-threatening infections affecting the central nervous system and bloodstream, such as meningitis and sepsis.

Cronobacter infections are most common in infants younger than 2 months and can lead to complications like brain abscess, developmental delay and motor impairments. In the majority of cases, this infection can be fatal.¹⁰

Initial symptoms of this infection include poor feeding, temperature changes, irritability, jaundice, grunting breaths and abnormal body movements. So far, no illnesses related to the Crecelac recall have been reported,¹¹ though the FDA cautions parents and guardians to contact their health care provider and get immediate care if their child experiences these symptoms after consuming these infant formulas.¹²

New Bill Aims to Limit Harmful Heavy Metals in Baby Food

There is one good outcome that came from the GMOScience and Moms Across America study — the FDA is taking notice and has made encouraging statements regarding the regulation of heavy metals in infant formula.

U.S. lawmakers are also working on a new bill, dubbed The Baby Food Safety Act of 2024,¹³ that would direct the FDA to set maximum allowable limits for heavy metals in baby food, as well as to monitor and set standards for testing the final product. This will also allow them to establish mandatory recalls for food products that don’t meet the standards. According to a CNN article:¹⁴

“‘Parents want what’s best for their children, and they deserve peace of mind knowing the food they purchase for their babies and toddlers is safe,’ Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minnesota, said in a statement about the bill she is leading.

‘This legislation will boost food safety standards and require more complete testing by manufacturers to prevent heavy metals from poisoning our kids.’”

In recent years, there have been increasing instances of heavy metal contamination seen in baby foods. “A 2019 report from the advocacy group Healthy Babies Bright Futures said that 95% of baby foods from major manufacturers contained lead and a quarter of the foods contained all four heavy metals,” CNN reports.¹⁵

And just last year, the FDA issued a recall for three brands of fruit pouches after they were found to contain high lead levels.

“We urge our Senators and Representatives from both sides of the aisle to remember that toxins are not partisan. Heavy metals, pesticides, and contaminants damage a baby’s development, impair their ability to function, and prevent them from fulfilling their potential regardless of their parent’s political party. It is imperative that our politicians come together to support this bill,” according to the Moms Across America website.

Most Infant Formulas Are Actually Junk Food

These findings aren’t at all surprising, considering that infant formulas are among the most highly processed food products made for children today, and are prone to contamination. According to Dairy Reporter,¹⁶ “The [Cronobacter] bacterium is naturally found in the environment and may end up in formula if it comes in contact with contaminated surfaces or has been improperly stored.”

What’s more, infant formulas are made with junk ingredients that contribute nothing to your child’s health. Just take a look at the list of ingredients of one infant formula that’s “highly recommended” in the U.S.:

Corn syrup solids, safflower oil, sucrose, soy oil — No wonder childhood obesity in the U.S. is now rising at alarming rates. One study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that formula milk made with corn syrup solids is associated with increased obesity risk in the first five years of life, in a dose dependent manner.¹⁷

Plus, the vegetable oils used in these products are loaded with omega-6 fats, particularly linoleic acid, the most damaging ingredient that contributes to most degenerative diseases today.

Babies nourished with formula milk are also more likely to rapidly gain weight and in excess — another risk factor for obesity both during childhood and in adulthood.¹⁸ One study, published in the npj Metabolic Health and Diseases, noted:¹⁹

“While infant formula is designed to provide all the necessary nutrients for infant growth and development, it has been linked with infant hospitalizations and infections, childhood obesity, and lowered levels of docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), an important fatty acid related to brain development.”

Breastmilk Is Still the Healthiest Food for Babies

This isn’t the first disaster in recent years involving infant formula. In 2022, the FDA shut down Abbott Nutrition’s facility in Sturgis, Michigan, after five infants were reportedly sickened with Cronobacter and Salmonella infections.²⁰ Two of the babies died. As a result of this shutdown, a severe formula milk shortage was experienced all across the U.S.

Were breastfeeding the norm, then parents wouldn’t be in a panic over these disastrous events. Many children would also enjoy better health overall. Unfortunately, many mothers still turn to formula milk, as it not only offers greater freedom, but also because there’s been a stigma associated with breastfeeding. For many years, breastfeeding in public has been frowned upon, and has been even considered “shameful.”

Many mothers would defer to the bottle rather than be called out for “exposing themselves” in public — a ridiculous notion, as this is in fact the most natural, healthiest food you can offer your child.

Breast Is Best for Both Babies and Moms

The growing awareness of the science behind the “breast is best” campaign has led to increasing rates in breastfeeding in the U.S. In 1971, only 24% of mothers initiated breastfeeding after childbirth;²¹ this rose to 81% in 2016.²² However, a study²³ notes that 60% mothers still stop breastfeeding sooner than planned.

But halting breastfeeding could cause your child to miss out on various health benefits, most of which continue well into adulthood. From a nutritional science point of view, there’s simply no dispute that breast milk is the optimal food for newborns and young infants.

For one, breastfeeding has been associated with a lower risk of being overweight and obese.²⁴ Not only does exclusive breastfeeding prevent the early introduction of foods that may trigger weight gain, but it also establishes a healthy gut microbiome, which is key for lifelong health. According to the Global Breastfeeding Collective:²⁵

“Breastfeeding helps populate the child’s body with ‘good’ bacteria from his or her mother, which provide protection against excessive weight gain. Breastmilk contains hormones and other biological factors involved in the regulation of food intake that may help shape the long-term physiological processes responsible for maintaining energy balance.

Feeding of infant formula by bottle may interfere with a child’s recognition of satiety and thus lead to overeating.”

Adults who were breastfed during infancy were also found to have a 26% lower risk of becoming overweight or obese, as well as a lower risk of Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease.²⁶ Mothers who breastfed also experienced profound benefits, such as:

• Quicker recovery from childbirth — It helps return the uterus to normal size and reduces postpartum bleeding²⁷
• Reduced risk of breast and ovarian cancer²⁸
• Faster weight loss after childbirth — Producing milk burns approximately 450 extra calories each day, which helps mobilize visceral fat stores.
• Reduced risk of cardiovascular disease²⁹
• Reduced risk of postpartum depression³⁰
• Closer bond between her and her child, even beyond infancy³¹

Make Your Own Infant Formula at Home

If you are a new mother and still lactating, then breastfeeding would be the best choice for both you and your child. However, moms who didn’t breastfeed from the start, or who have stopped for weeks or months, may find it difficult to go back to breastfeeding, as you cannot restart lactation at will.

Your next-best option then is to make your own infant formula using raw milk. In the video above, health and nutrition educator Sarah Pope of the Healthy Home Economist demonstrates how to make the formula created by Mary Enig, Ph.D., which was published in the book, “Nourishing Traditions.” There are a couple of caveats with Pope’s recipe, though:

My Preferred Healthy Homemade Infant Formula

I’ve made adjustments to Pope’s recipe and have applied the necessary substitutions mentioned above. This milk-based recipe will make 36 ounces of infant formula, although if you need to make large batches to last several days, you can do so — just make sure to freeze the finished product.

If Your Child Cannot Tolerate Milk Proteins, Try This Meat-Based Formula

Many symptoms of milk intolerance are caused by A1 casein, a type of lectin associated with leaky gut and autoimmune disorders. Casein A2 is the normal protein in milk, present in sheep, goat, water buffalo and some Jersey cow milk. Unfortunately, most cows today are casein A1 producers.

For babies who cannot tolerate milk, Pope recommends this hypoallergenic infant formula recipe, which uses meat instead.

*

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Notes

^1, 6 Moms Across America, May 21, 2024

^2, 4, 5 GMOScience, May 2024

³ GMOScience, The New MDS

⁷ Dairy Reporter, May 30, 2024

^8, 11, 16 Dairy Reporter, June 5, 2024

^9, 10, 12 U.S. FDA, May 31, 2024

¹³ Amy Klobuchar, May 9, 2024

^14, 15 CNN, May 9, 2024

¹⁷ Am J Clin Nutr. Oct 6, 2022;116(4):1002-1009

¹⁸ Matern Child Nutr. July 2018; 14(3): e12602

¹⁹ npj Metabolic Health and Disease, December 13, 2023 volume 1, Article number: 2, Introduction

²⁰ U.S. FDA February 17, 2022 (Archived)

²¹ Am J Public Health. December 2003; 93(12): 2000–2010, The Fall and Rise of Breastfeeding Initiation Rates

²² CDC Archive, August 22, 2016 (Archived)

²³ Front Public Health. 2023; 11: 1256432. Introduction

²⁴ BMC Pediatrics, 2022, volume 22, Article number: 347

^25, 26 Global Breastfeeding Collective, Breastfeeding Advocacy Brief, Page 2

²⁷ Cleveland Clinic, July 17, 2023

²⁸ Medical Daily, January 14, 2013

²⁹ Journal of the American Heart Association 2017

³⁰ International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 2012;43(3):243

³¹ American Psychological Association, October 30, 2017

³² Weston A. Price Foundation Homemade Baby Formula

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***

How long did it take for “alternate” or legacy media journalists to finally acknowledge that there are no “moderate rebels” in Syria and that the West and its agencies support al Qaeda and ISIS in Syria and beyond?

How long did it take for Westerners to realize that the current Zionist genocide against Palestinians was planned in advance and is currently being realized, that it was never about Hamas?

How long did it take for Westerners to realize that Nazism and genocidal ethnic  nationalism drive the anti-Russian hatreds and military policies in post-coup Kiev?

In each case it took far too long, and the War Lies still persist. Why? One reason is that journalists seeking employment enter the Ring of Mainstream Lies, play the military-intelligence game, and empower Confusion Inc., all hallmarks of colonial war propaganda.

The notion embraced by some that there are “two truths” about Syria, or Gaza, or Ukraine is nonsense. It is Orwellan “doublethink.”

There is evidence-based truth and there is legacy/mainstream/colonial media masquerading as truth.

Suggesting there is equivalency between the Truth and the Lie ultimately empowers the Lie.

Unfortunately, the task of displacing the truth, of making it invisible, is easier when the messengers themselves are obliterated.

Syrian Basma Qaddour, co-author of Voices from Syria, Second Edition, details Western/Zionist-supported terrorist assassinations of Syrian journalists and media personnel:

On August 11, 2011, terrorists killed the journalist Ali Abbas, who was the head of news department at the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA), through opening fire on him at his house in “Jdaydet Artoz” area in Damascus countryside.

In December 4, 2012, an armed terrorist group killed a 60-year-old journalist Naji As’ad, who was working for the state-run Tishreen Newspaper, near his house after he returned from his work.

On March 26, 2013, a rocket fired by terrorist groups, who had occupied the Eastern Ghouta of Damascus for 7 years, hit the headquarters of SANA, killing 4 workers there.

In May, 27, 2013, terrorist groups killed the reporter of the Syrian Al-ikhbaria TV Channel near Al-Qusair town in Homs countryside.

On October 2018, explains Qaddour, the Syrian Journalists Union presented a list including the names and photos of 46 Syrian journalists, who were killed by terrorist groups in Syria:

 

 

Al Jazeera reporter Hind Khoudary  reports similar crimes occurring right now in Gaza, claiming that  (Western-supported)  Zionists have murdered about 142 (1) reporters since October 7.

According to the “Government Media Office” the number of “journalist martyrs” has now risen to 151 “martyrs”.

The story in Ukraine is hauntingly similar, a CIA/NATO hit list, Myrotvorets,  includes such notables as Eva Bartlett, Scott Ritter, Roger Waters, Diane Sare, Geoff Young, John Mearsheimer, Senator Ron Paul, former Presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard, and many others. The Western-supported nazi junta accuses them of being “traitors” and “Russian propagandists”

At a September 7 press conference, Ritter lamented that US tax dollars subsidizing Ukraine are “being used to target and intimidate American citizens voicing their constitutional rights to freedom of speech.” (2) 

Meanwhile, assassination, torture, kidnapping and arrest of those opposing Nazism, parallel fascism and Washington’s destruction of Ukraine have been commonplace. (3)

When the Truth is obliterated, and the Lie becomes the “Truth”, Hate is so much easier to fabricate. And Hate is a prerequisite for more war and misery.

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

Notes

1. Mark Taliano, “Empire of Lies Murders the Truth in Gaza and Beyond.” GLobal Research. 31 May, 2024. (Empire of Lies Murders the Truth in Gaza and Beyond – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization)Accessed16 June,2024.  see also: https://t.me/mustafaalbayed/25434
2. Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Ukrainian ‘Hit List’ Publishes Names and Addresses of Alleged ‘Russian Propagandists’: Turns Out To Be Based Not in Ukraine But in Langley VA Where CIA Headquarters Is Located.” Covert Action Magazine, 19 September, 2022. (Ukrainian “Hit List” Publishes Names and Addresses of Alleged “Russian Propagandists:” Turns Out To Be Based Not in Ukraine But in Langley VA Where CIA Headquarters Is Located – CovertAction Magazine) Accessed 16 June, 2024.
3. Max Blumenthal and Esha Krishnaswamy, ” ‘One less traitor’: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition.” 17 April, 2022. (“One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition – The Grayzone) Accessed 16 June, 2024. see also: Is Zelensky disappearing and murdering Ukrainian citizens? (substack.com)

Featured image is from the author

---

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Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

***

To all the people of Gaza I send you my deepest love and sympathy on the death of your beloved family and friends who have been murdered by the Israeli military in its ongoing war on Gaza.

I also send my deepest sympathy to all the many thousands of Palestinians who have been injured and maimed, many of whom have not been able to access medical help due to the killing of medical staff and bombing by Israel of many hospitals.

I cannot begin to understand the depth of your pain on the loss of those you love. I can only say ‘I am sorry – please forgive me that I did not do enough to help stop this madness of military violence which cruelly took away the ones you love.’

I am aware that in Gaza today there is famine and Palestinian children are dying of starvation. Aware too that whilst Israel refuses to open borders to allow food into Gaza, one in three Gazan children suffer malnutrition and if there is no immediate policy change by Israel, thousands and thousands of children will be starved to death! This ongoing genocide by Israel is being played out on all our television screens around the world.

Also whilst Palestinians are dying of bombing and starvation, made refugees yet again,  and being bombed and murdered in refugee tents, (with weapons made and paid for by USA and Europe), Israel builds new roads, watchtowers, and new military structures in Gaza in preparation of its land grab, of yet more Gazan land ensuring that the people of Gaza will be well and truly locked into the biggest prison camp courtesy of the US,  Britain, France, Germany, etc.

These countries have sold out on human rights and democracy continuing to provide weapons, money and political credibility to Israel, which has militarily murdered over 36,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, whilst lecturing the rest of the world on the need for human rights and democracy.  Shame indeed!

But Palestinians can take hope from the millions of extraordinary wonderful men, women, teenagers, students, children around the world who have followed their hearts and responded with love in action, demanding the genocidal actions of Israel to stop, and countries like USA, Britain, Germany stop colluding with Israel.

From South Africa, that rightly and courageously took Israel to the ICJ-International Court of Justice on a charge of Genocide, and the ICJ, that have charged the Israeli and Palestinian leaders for war crimes. So too students throughout the US standing against Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

The people of the world have stood and will continue to stand in solidarity with Palestinians in spite of the fact that many government leaders are not reflecting the will of their people.

I believe a democratic free Palestine is possible if the West drops its double standards, stops financing and arming a land grab, ethnic cleansing, colonization, and genocide of the Palestine people by the Israeli government.

Palestinian children have a right to live and be protected from violence, poverty, starvation, just as we demand for our children wherever we live.  This continuing massacre of the holy innocents by Israel military is a war crime and those responsible for such barbaric genocidal acts on the little children must be held accountable before international law.

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Mairead Corrigan Maguire, co-founder of Peace People, is a member of the TRANSCEND Network for Peace Development Environment. She won the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her work for peace in Northern Ireland. Her book, The Vision of Peace, (edited by John Dear with a foreword by Desmond Tutu and a preface by the Dalai Lama) is available from www.wipfandstock.com. She lives in Belfast, Northern Ireland. See: www.peacepeople.com.

Featured image source

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On May 30, the World Health Organization announced that Rafah’s last remaining hospital, the Al-Helal al-Emirati Hospital, had gone out of service. The destruction of the southern Gaza city’s health care system, which comes after more than two dozen hospitals across the Strip have completely shut down as a result of Israel’s assault, encapsulates the human toll of the intensifying Israeli military operation in Rafah.

Far from the “limited” invasion that Israel’s leaders proclaimed, Israeli forces are currently occupying the heart of the city and remain in control of the Rafah Crossing and Philadelphi Corridor, while airstrikes continue to pummel camps for displaced families. Since Israel’s incursion began on May 6, more than 1 million Palestinians have fled Gaza’s last refuge.

In addition to the Emirati Hospital, the Abu Yousef al-Najjar Hospital and the Kuwaiti Hospital have been forced to cease all functions in recent weeks. With several smaller clinics closing too, all that remains to serve Rafah’s sick and wounded is two small field hospitals in the coastal area of Al-Mawasi — one run by the United Arab Emirates, and the other by the International Medical Corps — which are ill-equipped to deal with the scale of suffering among those unable or unwilling to flee the city.

With Israel’s ground invasion continuing to advance toward western Rafah, these remaining clinics may also soon be forced to evacuate. And while a trickle of seriously wounded patients had been leaving Gaza via the Rafah Crossing for treatment abroad, nobody has been able to escape the Strip since Israel occupied the crossing.

Muhammad Zaqout, the Gaza Health Ministry’s director general of hospitals, told +972 that staff at Rafah’s hospitals evacuated “because they feared a repeat of what happened at Nasser Medical Complex and Al-Shifa Hospital.” Israeli forces besieged and raided both hospitals in recent months, in Khan Younis and Gaza City respectively; after their withdrawal, mass graves containing hundreds of bodies were found at both sites.

“Hospitals in Tel al-Sultan [western Rafah] are being bombed by missiles and Quadcopter drones,” Zaqout explained. “The Indonesian field hospital was damaged, and the doctors there were terrified.” According to Gaza’s Health Ministry, nearly 500 healthcare workers have been killed as a result of Israel’s attacks across the Strip since October.

The field clinics that remain open, Zaqout added, “do not have advanced equipment to receive patients with serious injuries,” who must instead be transferred to the European Hospital near Khan Younis. This journey, he said, “requires an ambulance for an hour or more due to the long distance, the presence of [Israeli] tanks, and the continuous bombing of the city.”

Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, Zaqout noted, is slowly starting to receive new patients again after having been forced to shut down during Israel’s raids on the complex. But it, too, is able to admit only a small number of the wounded who are transported from Rafah.

According to Zaqout, the situation is similarly desperate in northern Gaza amid continuing Israeli military operations: with Al-Shifa and Kamal Adwan Hospital both out of commission, Al-Ahli Hospital is the only major medical facility offering some services.

‘The Israeli Army Does Not Exclude Medical Personnel from Its Attacks’

Dr. Rima Sadiq, 29, worked at the Kuwaiti Hospital until it was forced to close on May 28. “We received a large number of casualties during the first days of the military operation,” she said. “The bombing never stops. With every [attack], we received at least 10 [patients with] injuries of varying severity. All injuries require treatment and follow-up, and the presence of a hospital near [the wounded] saves lives.”

Sadiq explained that the staff were eager to continue working to serve the city’s residents but they ultimately had no choice but to abandon the hospital. As Israel’s bombardment intensified, staff feared for their own lives and the lives of their patients, as well as the potential damage to medical devices and equipment.

“The situation has become very dangerous,” she said. “Two paramedics were martyred during their work to transport the wounded. The Israeli army does not exclude medical personnel from its [attacks]. We are all at risk of being targeted or arrested.”

“There are patients who were forced to leave the hospital in poor condition who require follow-up,” Sadiq continued. “Field hospitals are unable to receive large numbers [of patients] due to their clinical capacity and lack of treatments.” The lack of food, she added, only worsens their conditions and prevents a full recovery.

Yet just as the ability of Rafah’s health services to treat the wounded declines, the need is becoming ever greater. As Israel’s ground assault intensifies, so have the army’s attacks on Palestinians who remain in the city — including in areas it had designated as “safe zones” such as Al-Mawasi and Tel al-Sultan.

Around 45 Palestinians were killed in a single attack on a refugee camp on the night of May 26, when much of the encampment was engulfed in flames and many burned to death inside their tents. Another attack two days later on tents in Al-Mawasi killed 21.

‘We Saw Tents Catching Fire and Children Burning Inside’

Marwa Asraf, 38, witnessed the attack on Al-Mawasi. Originally from Beit Hanoun in the north, Asraf was displaced to Al-Mawasi with six of her family members. “What we are experiencing in this area is terrifying,” she told +972. “We do not feel safe at all. Shells and missiles are falling continuously.”

At the time of the Al-Mawasi bombing, Asraf had gone to search for water for their family. “I left my children with their father and grandmother,” she recounted. “Suddenly, I heard the sound of an explosion and then the screams of the displaced people. I fell to the ground from the intensity of the sound. I was crying. I thought that my children had been bombed.

“I started running mindlessly, and left the water jug on the ground,” Asraf continued. “I returned to the tent and found my children crying. Their grandmother was crying, too; she told me that my husband Ahmed ran toward the tents to check on the wounded, and that she was very concerned for him. I did not believe that my children were okay. One displaced person staying near us was killed when shrapnel entered the tent.

“This situation is very tiring,” she went on. “We are tired of being displaced from the northern Gaza Strip, for eight months, and we are waiting to return to our homes. We were a little reassured because we were in a ‘safe area,’ but whoever says that is a liar. We lost more than seventy people, including women and children, while they were in their tents.”

Beyond its emotional cost, Asraf explained, constantly relocating with her family has taken a financial toll. “We need to hire a taxi to take us to a new place every time we have to move. We spent all our money during this war just to buy basic necessities. Now I very much regret [leaving] the north. I wish I had stayed there and died in my home instead of here in the area they said was safe.”

Riyad Rawida, 43, was also displaced to Al-Mawasi from his home in the center of Rafah. He fled with 20 of his relatives after they spotted Israeli tanks penetrating the Zoroub roundabout area, approaching Tel al-Sultan. “We began to hear shelling and clashes,” he recalled. “We saw people leaving their homes and fleeing to Al-Mawasi. Tel al-Sultan became almost empty. We had no choice.”

Unlike the vast majority of Gaza’s displaced residents, this was the first time Rawida and his family had been forced to flee their homes. “It was difficult for us — we were in our homes from the beginning of the war for more than seven and a half months. Many [Israeli] statements reassured us that the area was safe, and that the world rejected any Israeli military operation in Rafah. But the army broke those lines and attacked the city, gradually advancing toward the western areas.

“Now we are in Al-Mawasi and we are afraid of being targeted at any moment, as happened in the tents last week,” he continued. “There is no safety at all. I fear for my children. The tents do not protect anyone. In Tel al-Sultan, we saw the tents catching fire and children burning inside them. The situation in Rafah is dangerous, the streets are empty, and unfortunately life has stopped here.”

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Ruwaida Kamal Amer is a freelance journalist from Khan Younis.

Featured image: Israeli airstrike on an apartment building in Rafah, the last refuge in southern Gaza. Photo credit: MENAFN 

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***

In the past two weeks alone, Israel has perpetrated three massacres in Gaza that managed to shock the world and trigger widespread condemnation.

Flooding social media were scenes that the head of Unrwa called “hell on earth” and Doctors Without Borders described as “apocalyptic“.

A raging inferno engulfing a camp for displaced Palestinians, a headless child, dismembered limbs, and scores of maimed and burnt bodies appeared against a soundtrack of explosions and the piercing screams of terrified women and children.

Even those who have closely followed the daily horror show in Gaza over the last eight months – the mass civilian casualties and total destruction of its infrastructure – could not fathom the savagery of dropping a 110kg bomb on plastic tents.

Yet for US officials, the 26 May Rafah tent massacre, which killed 45 people and injured more than 200 others, did not cross President Joe Biden’s “red line” for halting weapons shipments.

With no accountability, Israel has continued its genocidal campaign in Gaza unabated – as part of a settler colonial project to eliminate native Palestinians that began seven decades ago.

The following week, on 6 June, an Israeli air strike on al-Sardi Unrwa school killed around 40 displaced Palestinian civilians, including children. Two days later, on 8 June, the Nuseirat camp was brutally assaulted by land and air, killing 274 Palestinians.

The harrowing attacks have placed a spotlight on the role of US-supplied weapons and munitions in perpetrating a war that has killed at least 37,296 Palestinians and injured more than 85,000 others since 7 October 2023.

Indeed, US weapons shipments are key to Israel’s genocidal violence – and they reveal the sprawling network of the US military war machine that connects settler colonial and militarist violence on two occupied lands, Okinawa and Palestine.

Shared Weapons Systems

All three recent strikes on Palestinian civilians in Gaza were carried out using US-manufactured weapons.

Both weapons experts and images captured revealed that the explosives used in Rafah and the UN school were US-made GBU-39 small-diameter bombs (SDB). The GBU-39 is a 110kg guided air-to-surface munition manufactured by defence contractor Boeing since 2005.

According to the US Air Force’s fact sheet, the F-15E Strike Eagle is the only aircraft outfitted with the SDB weapons system. Future platforms designated for SDBs include the F-16 Fighting Falcon, F-117, B-1 Lancer, B-2 Spirit, F-22 Raptor, and the F-35 Lightning II.

The SDB is one of several weapons used in the Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Golden Horde programme, which was launched in 2021.

Intended to advance Networked, Collaborative and Autonomous (NCA) weapons capabilities, the programme uses two weapons systems: the Collaborative Miniature Air-Launched Decoy (CMALD) and the Collaborative Small Diameter Bomb I (CDSB-I), the latter being a modified version of the GBU-39 SDB.

Since 7 October, the US and Israel have worked on various deals to manage the exchange of weapons like the SDB and the aircraft systems to carry them.

In January, the two nations signed a massive arms deal that included the supply of F-35 and F-15 fighter jets, the two systems equipped or designated for the SDB weapons system. In April, the US Congress approved an additional $26bn in aid to Israel, including $5bn to bolster air defences and bundle weapons shipments.

‘Arsenal of Democracy’

One weapon that has been frequently mentioned since Israel declared war on Gaza has been the Joint Direct Attack Munition, or JDAM for short.

Manufactured by Boeing, JDAM was developed in 1993 after the Gulf War and uses GPS locators to counter the effects of dust clouds in targeting systems. It can convert unguided “dumb bombs” to guided “smart bombs”, meaning that the bombs can be remotely controlled and navigated.

The Israeli military has relied on it in Gaza since October and has killed hundreds of Palestinians in densely populated areas.

The US military first released JDAM in a fleet squadron drop by the Hornet fighter aircraft, which launched from the USS Kitty Hawk in Yokosuka, Japan and deployed to Okinawa, Japan’s fifth largest island, on 22 August 1999.

Since its deployment, it has been used in all US wars abroad, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Yemen, and has been sold to Ukraine in 2023 for use against Russia.

In two incidents last October, Israel deliberately targeted civilian populations and residences in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah with JDAM bombs.

JDAM bomb fragments were found following Israeli air strikes on 10 October and 22 October, both of which resulted in the deaths of many civilians.

Recent protests against Israel’s war in Gaza on US college campuses caused the Biden administration to delay the sending of JDAM units to Israel despite the US government’s continued support for Israeli military assaults.

On 7 May, Republican Congresswoman Ann Wagner of Missouri called on Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to speed up the delivery of JDAMs because they are manufactured in her St Louis district.

During Blinken’s testimony before the House Foreign Affairs Committee on 22 May, Wagner doubled down on her demand that the Biden administration send 6,500 JDAMs to Israel. If weapons sales to Israel were paused, she insisted, her constituents’ livelihoods and their ability to pay for daycare, car payments, or mortgages would be threatened. Wagner further assertedthat the US weapons industry is the “arsenal of democracy”.

Lethal Weapons Supply

The US uses its massive network of military bases worldwide to store its weapons and aircraft, including at the Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa, Japan.

In April 2023, the US deployed a squadron of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Lighting II fighter jets to replace Boeing’s F-15s that are gradually being phased out. The newly released jets first arrived at Kadena, the largest US base in Asia.

This network of US military bases is one way that Japan has circumvented Article 9, or the “pacifist clause”, of its post-World War Two constitution.

Written by the US following the Japanese surrender, the Japanese constitution included a pacifist clause, currently in debate, that explicitly bans the sale or transfer of weapons to any state engaged in active warfare, such as Israel. It further prohibits the deployment of the Japanese military into active combat zones.

In 2014, then-prime minister, Shinzo Abe, revised Japan’s arms policy to allow the sale of individual weapons components, defence technology, and equipment rather than fully assembled products.

However, a series of political manoeuvres in December 2023 by current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, expanded Japan’s ability to export arms further, allowing it to send finished weapons such as the surface-to-air Patriot guided missiles produced in Japan and used in countries like Israel and Ukraine.

Through its licensing agreements with eight countries, including the US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Sweden, and Norway, Japan has helped bolster the global war machine. Japan can now replenish US weapons stockpiles, which in turn furnish Israel’s stock of fighter aircraft and missiles.

Following Ukraine’s footsteps, in 2022, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) bought Israeli and US-made attack drones to deploy in Okinawa that could be used in actual warfare against a potential Chinese threat.

Just this week, Japan and the US held their first talks to enact a new framework that will deepen their defence-industrial collaboration to replenish US stockpiles of anti-tank weapons.

This comes after the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement in Japan, which has gained strength amid Israel’s genocide in Gaza, forced Japanese companies to break their ties and “strategic partnership” with the Israeli defence contractor Elbit Systems.

Despite mounting popular pressure, however, the Japanese government has continued to militarise and increase its own arsenal while playing the role of a US puppet in serving its imperialist interests.

Kishida’s remarks before Congress in April only reinforced this image, particularly his tone-deaf praise of the US’s “indispensable” role in world governance and policing.

These weapons supply networks and international arms agreements are just some of the ways Japan has supported the expansion of the US military machine since 1945.

Land Theft and Dispossession

The current genocide in Gaza continues a long history of Israeli occupation, dispossession and displacement of Palestinians that stretches back to the Nakba in 1948.

Just as the State of Israel was built on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, in the Ryukyu Islands, Okinawans also face the brutality of settler violence.

The Japanese annexation of the once sovereign Ryukyu Kingdom in 1879 introduced Japanese imperialism to the islands, which led to their militarisation under the Japanese emperors.

The 82-day Battle of Okinawa, fought between the US military and the Imperial Japanese Army in 1945, resulted in 150,000 Okinawan civilian deaths – a quarter of the population – and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Okinawans.

In the aftermath of the war, Japan’s Emperor Hirohito brokered a deal that sold Okinawa and handed administrative control of the prefecture to the United States Civil Administration of the Ryukyu Islands.

During the American occupation of Japan from 1945 to 1972, a land acquisition law allowed US forces to confiscate land from its owners, furthering the systematic dispossession of Okinawans. This blatant land theft became locally known as “Bulldozers and Bayonets“.

The legacies of these dispossessions continue today. Although Okinawa constitutes only 0.6 percent of Japan’s total land mass, it hosts more than 70 percent of the US military facilities in the country.

The US military’s land seizures established the foundations for its network of military bases in Asia and the Pacific. Throughout the Cold War, the US reshaped the image of Okinawa, referring to it as the “Keystone of the Pacific” for its strategic location.

That discourse continues today, with Kadena Air Base being recognised as the “lynchpin” of US power in Asia. The base is home to the US Air Force’s 18th Wing, which operates fighter jets like the F-15 Eagle, the F-22 Raptor, and now the F-35.

Throughout the nearly 80 years of US military occupation, the US has used Okinawa to store much of its inventory, including the use of Kadena as a strategic bombing station for the B29 and B47 bombers during the Korean War and, in recent years, as a station for the F-15s used in the Gulf War.

A recent public opinion poll has once again shown that the majority of Okinawans oppose US military bases. Yet despite decades of protest and a vocal anti-base movement, the people’s will is ignored, and Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands more broadly continue to be used as an inventory and supply station for the US military.

Beyond the US, Okinawa’s enduring struggles represent the legacy of Japan’s colonisation of the former Ryukyu Kingdom. On 23 June, Okinawans will commemorate “Irei no hi”, Okinawan Memorial Day, to remember those killed in 1945.

Free Okinawa, Free Palestine

Just days after Okinawans solemnly mark a historical massacre, the US will lead defence training exercises on military-occupied lands nearly 8,000km away across the Pacific.

Touted as the largest international maritime exercise, Rim of the Pacific, or Rimpac, serves as a showroom for the latest US military weaponry.

This summer, from 26 June to 2 August, 29 countries are invited to bomb the occupied Kingdom of Hawaiʻi, including at Pohakuloa Training Area, a US military base, on the island of Hawaiʻi.

Among them are Japan and South Korea, which are forming a trilateral partnership with the US and participating in joint military exercises known as “Freedom Edge“.

Other repressive states like Sri Lanka, which has committed widespread human rights abuses, and Israel, which stands accused of genocide in the International Court of Justice, are also invited to Rimpac ostensibly as potential customers.

But perhaps most disappointing is the participation of Chile, home to the largest Palestinian population outside of the Arab world with roughly half a million, in the Rimpac exercises destroying the lands and oceans around Hawaiʻi.

A petition for 27 countries to withdraw from Rimpac and end cooperation with the US and Israel over Gaza garnered over 8,100 signatures from more than 70 organisations and 92 countries.

The shared experience of settler-colonial dispossession, particularly the role of the US, helps explain why many Okinawans support a free Palestine and why Palestinian doctor Salim Anati observed that “both Palestine and Okinawa are under the same situation of occupation”.

A poster connecting two occupied lands is displayed at a Gaza solidarity encampment at the University of California, San Diego, on 1 May 2024 (Wendy Matsumura)

 

The dedicated struggle that both Indigenous people have waged against military occupation and colonialism even sparked the recent “Okinawa to Palestine” liberation movement.

The calls for self-determination are only getting louder and more determined, with many believing that the fates of both peoples are ultimately intertwined.

From Okinawa to Palestine, everyone has the right to live in dignity and freedom from settler-colonial occupation and the violent military network that enables it.

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Adam Miyashiro is Professor of Literature at Stockton University in New Jersey and teaches courses in medieval literature and postcolonial studies.

Nozomi Nakaganeku-Saito is an Assistant Professor of English and Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies at Amherst College. Her research focuses on the impacts of US militarism and Japanese settler colonialism on Okinawa and the role of literature and storytelling in (re)shaping relations to land/air/sea by centring Indigenous perspectives. Her scholarship can be found in American Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, and the Journal of Asian American Studies.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

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***

For more than eight months, Israel’s US-backed assault on Gaza has killed tens of thousands of civilians. It has levelled Gaza’s buildings and infrastructure to such a degree that it is noticeable from space. 

Under the rubble, along with an untold number of people still unaccounted for, saturated with toxic matter and unexploded ordinances, lies whatever pretence remained of the United States as a country that upholds its obligations under international law – including, but especially, the prevention and punishment of genocide.

It’s not a revelation to say that international law is applied unequally. We know the international rules-based order created in the wake of World War II favours the victors of that war. 

The five veto-endowed permanent members of the UN Security Council are a snapshot of the world in 1946; who was rewarded, who was punished, and some consideration for regional representation (ie China). 

Still, it honestly feels a little shocking to see this laid so bare. 

It’s as if an employer put out an ad that read: “Hiring men who will golf with me and people I have to hire because I owe someone a favour.” Imagine a bouncer came out and said: “Hot, rich, and famous people only. Everyone else, you’re ruining the vibe.” 

We know people are treated differently, that exceptions are made for the powerful – but generally speaking, the pretence remains intact: everyone has, if not a fair shot, a shot.   

Saying the Quiet Part Loud

In a recent interview, International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor Karim Khan told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour:

“I’ve had some elected leaders speak to me and be very blunt. ‘This court is built for Africa and thugs like Putin,’ was what one senior leader told me.” 

Khan gave this interview on the heels of announcing he was seeking arrest warrants for three Hamas leaders, along with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. It marks the first time an American ally has been targeted by the international criminal tribunal; this is apparently all it took for the quiet part to be said very much out loud.

I always assumed the US would try to maintain some level of plausible deniability around the equal application of international law – that it would respect the judgements of international courts while avoiding their jurisdiction, if only because its stated commitment to the promotion and protection of human rights, rule of law, and democratic principles plays such an important role in justifying its interventionist foreign policy. 

American exceptionalism, as it applies to international relations, would seem to require the pretence, however thinly worn, that despite its failings, the US is ultimately a force for good in the world. 

If it is simply a rogue nation acting outside the law and using its immense power to undermine the system for no other reason than its own (and its allies’) self-interest, what are we left with? What then becomes of the international rules-based order? 

This feels like a big concession to be making for an ally credibly accused of genocide. There is no plausible deniability to fall back on when we can all see the crimes Israel is committing; when we see the weapons and money the US continues to send, the red lines drawn and then crossed. 

There is no plausible deniability to fall back on when people the world over have borne witness to the unimaginable suffering of Palestinians in Gaza every day for more than eight months; when the consensus opinion among legal experts and international humanitarian groups is that Israel is committing genocide. The International Court of Justice has repeatedly ordered provisional measures against Israel, citing an urgent need to protect Palestinians in Gaza from the plausible risk of genocide. 

Israeli Fan Fiction

And yet, US President Joe Biden’s spokespeople stand at the White House podium day in and day out, sharing what sounds like Israeli fan fiction, as reporters ask them serious and pointed questions. 

In the Biden administration’s fictionalised world, every documented horror perpetrated against the civilians of Gaza – babies, aid workers, doctors, journalists, ambulance drivers, zip-tied patients with IVs still in their arms excavated from mass graves – all of it, they tell us, Israel is investigating and can be trusted to do so. 

It doesn’t matter that Israel has never legitimately carried out any such investigation. They haven’t even (at least publicly) investigated what happened on 7 October. 

In this world, we’re told the ICC doesn’t have jurisdiction, because Israel’s independent judiciary can be trusted to hold its leaders accountable for atrocity crimes – as if we aren’t all watching Netanyahu preside over a genocide to avoid personal accountability for much (much) lesser crimes. As if, prior to being interrupted by 7 October, this government wasn’t specifically working to take away the judiciary’s independent authority to review government actions. 

In fact, the only real example of accountability we’ve seen was Israel’s recent decision to phase out its use of the Sde Teiman detention facility. This was because of a CNN report that detailed the extreme use of torture against detainees held without charge, trial, or access to the Red Cross, including being tied to electric chairs and having hot metal rods put up their anus. 

Hypocrisy Exposed 

It’s not even gaslighting. These White House news conferences are more like very dark, absurdist performance pieces. Remember the Iraqi information minister during the US invasion of Iraq in 2003? He’d be out there talking to the cameras, denying there were any American tanks in Baghdad, when you could see and hear them approaching behind him. It’s like that, but more repetitive, and with less charisma and humour.

Gaza, and the broader Palestinian cause, has exposed the hypocrisy of western governments in ways it’s hard to imagine coming back from. We’ve seen anti-democratic repression of peaceful protests, and of academic and artistic freedoms; and a McCarthyite blacklisting of people who advocate for Palestinian liberation. 

There is a very real possibility that Donald Trump will be re-elected president in November if young people don’t turn out for Biden because of his full-throttled support for this genocide (and because the Democratic Party chooses not to replace him). If that happens, then the pretence of American democracy itself could end up buried beneath the rubble. 

Again, I think it’s worth underscoring: this is a very big price to pay for an ally that takes your money and does not appear to respect you. 

Perhaps looking back, Gaza will come to be seen as what marked the beginning of the end of American exceptionalism, and in its place, we’ll see a reordering that puts the Global South and the Global North on equal footing. None of this is to say that the ideals upon which American exceptionalism is claimed – democracy, liberty and equality – are not still a very worthy pursuit. But their pursuit is not a justification for exemptions from the application and consequences of international law. 

In this post-exceptionalist world, perhaps pretence will finally be dispensed with, and we can all finally admit that the US is in fact the world’s biggest thug. 

*

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

Jess Salomon is a comedian who has appeared on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Prior to comedy, Jess was an international lawyer. She worked at the U.N. International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Canadian Department of Justice. She has written for Haaretz, The Montreal Gazette and Vice.

Featured image: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream- by Mr. Fish

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***

In a recent lecture, Nobel Laureate physicist John Clauser exposed how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) models and analyses, which are relied upon by politicians and activists to support claims of a ‘climate crisis’, do not meet basic standards of scientific enquiry. Clauser received his Nobel prize in 2022 for the observational measurement of quantum entanglement and understands well the problem of distinguishing a physical signal from background noise.

Clauser shows that, when corrected for the IPCC’s error prone arithmetic and statistics, the observational data do not support the power imbalance claimed to be responsible for global warming. Furthermore, the outputs of climate models are at variance with the observational record. Clauser discusses the roles of convection, clouds and their variability in providing a negative feedback mechanism, and proposes that this acts as a thermostat that stabilises surface temperatures. Clauser’s conclusion is that claims of a ‘climate crisis’ lack scientific substance and that Net Zero policies are an unnecessary hindrance.

Figure 1. Schematic representation of the global mean energy budget of the Earth. Numbers indicate best estimates for the magnitudes of the globally averaged energy balance components, together with their uncertainty ranges (5%-95% confidence), representing climate conditions at the beginning of the 21st Century. Note that amounts are expressed in terms of power flux (Watts per square metre or W/m²), which equals energy per second per unit area (Joules/s/m²). (Source: IPCC AR6 WG 1 report p.934)

Clauser’s talk is available on YouTube. However, there is merit in reviewing the physics arguments that draw on the observational data about atmospheric energy flows to refute the notion of an anthropogenic global warming (AGW) induced climate crisis.

Energy Flows in the Climate System

It is useful to start with a simplified depiction of the solar energy flow that reaches the Earth, its transformation by the Earth’s climate system and the resulting (mostly thermal) energy flow that leaves the Earth’s atmosphere. This is shown in Figure 1, taken from a recent IPCC report.

The IPCC diagram shows an energy imbalance, being the difference between the incoming visible and UV solar radiation 340 W/m², less the amount reflected (100 W/m²), less the outgoing infra-red (IR) thermal radiation (239 W/m²). The claimed imbalance at the Top of the Atmosphere is 0.7 W/m² (give or take 0.2) and the IPCC asserts that this is driving the continuing warming of the climate system.

Table. 1. Top of Atmosphere Energy Flows. Energy flows at the top of the Earth’s atmosphere, with their errors as per Figure 1. The balance is calculated from its components.

The radiation measurements necessary for this calculation are carried out at different wavelengths by instruments carried by satellites, and observational errors are inevitable. Combining the uncertainty ranges in the incoming, reflected and outgoing streams shown in Table 1, by using the standard statistical Root Mean Square rule, shows that the error margin in the calculated imbalance is actually 3 W/m², some 15 times greater than the 0.2 W/m² error margin claimed by the IPCC. In short, there is no observedenergy imbalance. The claimed imbalance of 0.7 W/m² is swamped by observational error, and, from a scientific perspective, it is described by Clauser as a “fudge”.

Natural Variability

Importantly, the IPCC treatment understates the natural variability of the solar energy flow that penetrates the climate system. One key element driving this variation is ‘albedo’, the proportion of sunlight that is reflected by clouds or the surface. The extent of cloud cover, which typically covers about two-thirds of the Earth’s surface, is actually quite dynamic, and as a consequence, albedo varies from month to month in a range of 0.275 to 0.305. Clauser estimates that the resulting monthly variation in reflected energy spans the range (95-105 W/m²). Clauser observes that this fluctuating monthly pattern is not well replicated by the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) computer models used by the IPCC, which must therefore be missing key aspects of the physics of clouds.

This is significant because the natural variability introduced to the climate system by variations in clouds and albedo dwarfs the effect of secondary greenhouse gases such as CO₂. Moreover, the relative stability of the Earth’s climate system in the face of these swings in the solar energy input indicates that there are negative feedback mechanisms at work.

Surface Heat Flows and the Nature of Atmospheric Equilibrium

Before returning to the subject of clouds, some more comments on the energy flows depicted in Figure 1 are in order. In thermodynamics it is crucial to distinguish between energy and heat. The First Law of Thermodynamics states that energy is conserved. The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that entropy never decreases, and this in turn entails that heat only flows from hotter to colder objects and never the reverse. In order to understand the physics of atmospheric processes it is necessary to take this directionality of heat flows into account. Thus, the ‘greenhouse gases down surface’ energy flux (339-347 W/m²) shown in the IPCC diagram does not actually represent a heat flow; rather it simply acts to counter a portion of the ‘up surface’ energy flux (395-400 W/m²), with the result being that the rate of surface cooling by radiation is determined by the difference (56 +/-5 W/m²). We can use this insight to put the balance of heat flows at the surface into perspective, as shown in Table 2.

Table. 2. Surface Heat Flows. Downward (upward) heat flows at the Earth’s surface are shown along with their errors. Radiant heat is the net of the surface up and surface down energy fluxes in Figure 1.

The general circulation climate models in use today were inspired by the work of Nobel Prize winning physicist Syukuro Manabe, who in 1967 introduced the paradigm of the atmospheric system as being in a radiative convective equilibrium¹. It can be seen from Table 2, that the convective flow of latent and sensible heat is twice as important as radiation in cooling the Earth’s surface. Manabe’s incorporation of convection marked a distinct improvement on the earlier generation of radiative models. One can, however, ask if a predilection for trying to understand atmospheric dynamics purely in terms of radiation, rather than convective heat flows, still persists within the climate modelling community, and whether this is at the root of the continuing inability of climate models to match observation.

Radiative Forcing and Negative Feedbacks

The early work by Manabe, recently confirmed in refined calculations carried out by Happer and van Wjngaarden², describes the impact of greenhouse gases in terms of ‘radiative forcing’, that is to say, their transient impact on the Top of Atmosphere (ToA) energy balance. Both calculate that the radiative forcing due to a doubling of CO₂ leads to around 3 W/m² reduction in the outgoing thermal radiation in clear skies. Applying the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, according to which black body radiation increases as the fourth power of temperature (measured in degrees Kelvin), tells us that the radiating sources in the atmosphere would need to increase in temperature by about 0.75°C to produce extra compensating radiation. The key question for climate physics is, what is the compensating ground surface temperature response required in order to restore the thermal radiation at the ToA?

The 27 CMIP climate models in use by the IPCC incorporate an Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity (ECS) with a range of 1.8°C to 5.6°C increase in ground surface temperature per doubling of CO₂³. This is between 2.5 and 7.5 times higher than the temperature response 0.75°C in the atmosphere, implying the presence of some very substantial positive feedback mechanisms incorporated in the CMIP models that multiply the initial forcing.

Clauser makes the general observation, based on Le Chatelier’s principle, that a complex physical system in equilibrium typically contains multiple negative feedback mechanisms that act to oppose rather than amplify forcing and questions the basis of the IPCC’s supposed positive feedbacks.

Indeed, it is far easier to identify negative feedback mechanisms than it is to identify positive feedbacks. Table 3 sets out the obvious negative feedbacks in response to a surface temperature increase of 1°C, that follow by the application of basic physics to the heat flows in Figure 1.

Table. 3. Feedback Responses to Surface Temperature Increase. Solar reflection by clouds estimated at 7% increase in 75 W/m². Evaporation estimated at 7% increase in 82 W/m². Surface thermal increase based on Stefan-Boltzmann Law applied to increase in surface temperature from 15°C to 16°C.

The Clausius-Clapeyron relation entails that the saturated water vapour content of air increases by 7% for an increase in temperature of 1°C from the current global average around 15°C. Based on this, the IPCC estimates a positive feedback of 1.3 W/m² due to increased water vapour content of the atmosphere and the consequent absorption of surface radiation. However, as Clauser points out, the Clausius-Clapeyron relation must also lead to comparable increases in evaporation, cloud formation and rainfall, along with the accompanying transfer of latent heat (of evaporation of water) away from the ground surface. The consequent negative feedbacks act to offset radiative forcing. In particular, (a) the effect of increased solar reflection by clouds has a direct impact on the ToA energy balance, and (b) the physics of convection entails that heated air expands, acquires buoyancy and rises to the Tropopause (at around 11 km altitude), while releasing its extra heat as thermal radiation to space. While some of the surface thermal radiation will be absorbed in the atmosphere, it is manifest from Table 3 that the identified negative feedbacks dwarf the positive feedback calculated by the IPCC.

Clauser points out that the amount of negative feedback from clouds depends not only on their extent, but also on their distribution over the Earth’s surface and on their reflectivity. Most clouds are formed by the strong absorption of sunlight by the oceans, where the cooling impact of reflection from clouds is greater than over land. Taken together, the thermal, convective and cloud negative feedbacks combine to provide a thermostat mechanism that stabilises the temperature of the Earth’s surface against forcing, regardless of whether this originates from variability in solar insolation (for example, due to changes in cloud cover) or from the effect of greenhouse gasses. Clauser estimates a combined negative net feedback strength in the range 7-14 W/m² per 1°C, consistent with the magnitudes in Table 3.

If we assume an overall net negative feedback of (10) W/m² per 1°C at the surface, in the middle of Clauser’s range, this would be three times greater than the radiative forcing from a doubling of CO₂ in clear skies of 3 W/m², so the surface temperature increase necessary to offset the radiative forcing would imply an ECS of only 0.3°C. With this level of negative feedback, the ECS range of 1.8°C to 5.6°C used by the IPCC overestimates the effect of CO₂ by a factor of between 6 and 19 times.

Equivalently, under this range of negative feedbacks, the ECS range of 1.8°C to 5.6°C would imply that an increase in heat flux from the surface of between 18-56 W/m² is required to compensate for a mere 3 W/m² radiative forcing in the atmosphere. Where does the remainder of the heat flux go? The First Law of Thermodynamics entails that this energy cannot disappear, and the Second Law of Thermodynamics entails that heat in the atmosphere can only transfer to a cooler surface (i.e., radiate out to space). The IPCC climate models appear to violate either the First or Second Laws of Thermodynamics, possibly both.

Conclusions

In conclusion, Clauser argues that the negative feedback mechanisms in the Earth’s climate system stabilise temperatures against warming due to increases in radiative forcing. As a corollary, there is no CO₂ induced anthropogenic global warming climate crisis. The negative feedbacks similarly serve to stabilise surface temperatures against cooling. Such a thermostatic mechanism that draws on the thermodynamic properties of water can explain how a water-rich planet such as the Earth has been hospitable to life throughout history.

The climate narrative promulgated by the IPCC and its advocates is based on poor statistics, the flawed cherry-picking of data and an incomplete treatment of physical mechanisms, which includes ignoring important negative feedbacks.

An analysis of negative feedbacks implies that the 50% increase in CO₂ from pre-industrial times (280 ppm) to the current level (420 ppm) is plausibly the cause of only about 0.15°C of global warming.

A physics explanation of the Earth’s observed historic warming and cooling cycles and the warming observed since the 1970s has to look to the variability induced by the many other natural mechanisms discussed in the climate literature, such as solar cycles, orbital/lunar cycles, cloud variability, ocean cycles, volcanoes, ozone variability, urban heat islands and so on. These are beyond the scope of this note.

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Dr. Rudolph Kalveks is a retired executive. His PhD was in theoretical physics.

Notes

1. S. Manabe and R. T. Wetherald, Thermal Equilibrium of the Atmosphere with a Given Distribution of Relative Humidity, J. Atmos. Sci. 24, 241 (1967). 
2. van Wijngaarden, W.A. and Happer, W., 2020. Dependence of Earth’s Thermal Radiation on Five Most Abundant Greenhouse Gases. arXiv preprint arXiv:2006.03098. 
3. Zelinka, M.D., Myers, T.A., McCoy, D.T., Po‐Chedley, S., Caldwell, P.M., Ceppi, P., Klein, S.A. and Taylor, K.E., 2020. Causes of higher climate sensitivity in CMIP6 models. Geophysical Research Letters, 47(1), p.e2019GL085782. 

Featured image is from TDS

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***

On March 1st, 2024, Elon Musk tweeted on his social media platform ‘X’ referring to an ABC TV news report,

“People, who get their news from legacy TV, live in a fake alternate reality.” (‘legacy’ = the long-lasting impact of particular events, actions, etc. that took place in the past)

People who get their news from legacy TV live in a fake alternate reality.

Those so-called “toughest reforms” would have made invasion-level migration permanent.

That diabolical “Border Bill” deserved to die and shame on those who supported it. https://t.co/Ow2kCeAJJF

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 1, 2024

For much of the past week, Western TV News has featured a Second World War anniversary ‘Glorious D-day’ celebration hailing the U.S., British Commonwealth and Canadian amphibious invasion of France on June 6, 1944 as leading to the defeat of Nazi Germany.Political leaders praised the veterans still alive as having successfully fought for ‘freedom!’ Estimated Allied Forces D-day casualties were about 10,000, with 4,000 confirmed dead. [1]

It is agonisingly sad to imagine those, who got killed on D-day following orders to wade forward into the firing line of German gun emplacements, but living in true reality would mean knowing that the Russians, (who were not invited to the D-day celebrations), had, at great human cost, already defeated Germany the year before D-day, during the cataclysmic battles of Stalingrad [2] and Kursk [3] in February and August of 1943, and were by D-day 1944 pushing toward Berlin liberating Nazi concentration camps on the way. [4]

In Western Legacy TV News Fake Alternate Reality:

Americans, with British Help, Defeated
Hitler’s Nazi German Armed Forces

In Reality, The Red Army won World War II.

The Red Army won World War II.  The cost to the Soviets was between 9 million and 11 million military deaths.  Adding in the Russian civilian deaths, the Soviet Union won the war at the cost of between 25 million and 27 million Soviet lives. By contrast total American military deaths in all of WWII were approximately 219,723 (2,715 in North Africa,183,588 in Europe, and 108,504 in Asia) [5]

On December 5, two days before, the United States entered World War Two, the Red Army had begun it’s successful enormous winter counter-offensive ending the Nazi siege of Moscow.  As early as June 1942 the Soviet Union had urged its American and British allies to open a second front in Western Europe. It would take the US and UK another two years to finally launch the invasion of France. Meanwhile, the Red Army took the brunt of German military might and millions died in the genocidal race war waged by the Nazis on the Eastern Front.[6]

Stalingrad

From 23 August 1942 to 2 February 1943, Germany and its allies fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad (now Volgograd) in Southern Russia. With fierce close-quarters combat and heavy air raids, it was one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million total casualties. 

Soviet forces are estimated to have suffered 1,100,000 casualties, 478,000 to 478,741 killed and approximately 40,000 civilians died. [7]

The German defeat at Stalingrad was the turning point of the war on the Eastern Front, in the war against Nazi Germany overall, and of the entire Second World War. [8]

German and Axis casualties were enormous: 68 German, 19 Romanian, 10 Hungarian and 10 Italian divisions were mauled or destroyed. That represented 43% of Axis forces in the east. After Stalingrad, the Red Army had the initiative, and the Wehrmacht was in retreat. Germany’s Sixth Army had ceased to exist, and the armed forces of Germany’s European allies, except Finland, had been shattered. In a speech on 9 November 1944, Hitler himself blamed Stalingrad for Germany’s impending doom. The destruction of an entire army, the largest killed, captured, wounded figures for Axis soldiers, during the war, and the foiling of Germany’s grand strategy gave the battle at Stalingrad global significance.[9]

Kursk

On 4 July 1943, Germany attacked Soviet forces around the city of Kursk, which became the site of the largest tank battle in history involving some 6,000 tanks, 2,000,000 troops, and 4,000 aircraft. German forces  exhausted themselves against the Soviets’ deeply echeloned and well-constructed defenses and then faced the Soviet counterattackThe Battle of Kursk marked the end of German offensive capability on the Eastern Front [10]

While at Kursk in Russia, 6,000 tanks and more than 2,000,000 men battled, on July 9, 1943, an American seaborne assault by the U.S. 7th Army, involving only 150,000 troops, 3,000 ships and 4,000 aircraft landed on the southern coast of Sicily.[11]

A Very Belated ‘D-Day’ (Operation Overlord) at Normandy June 6, 1944

A fleet of some 6,900 vessels landed the assault forces of slightly more than 156,000 men, Americans, British and Canadians on five beaches,

By the time the Allies did open this Western front in Normandy in June of 1944, the eventual defeat of Nazi Germany had already been established by the Red Army victories at Stalingrad (August 1942-February 1943) and Kursk (July-August 1943) the year before. At Stalingrad Germany had lost its Sixth Army and four allied armies of over 400,000 men. Meanwhile, at Kursk Germany  had lost thirty divisions (over 500,000 men) including seven Panzer divisions equipped with the new Panther and Tiger tanks, 1,500 tanks, 3,000 guns and 3,500 warplanes. (Thus, while the war was being won and whole German armies destroyed at great human cost to the Soviet Red Army during the month of July at Kursk, the Americans, British and Canadians in the same month had been invading a weakly defended Sicily.

Throughout most of World War II, the U.S. and the British faced 10 German divisions combined. The Soviets were facing more than 200 German divisions. The Germans lost approximately 1 million men on the Western front. They lost 6 million on the Eastern front. There is reason why Churchill said the Red Army tore the guts out of the German war machine. However, that’s not what Americans learn.[12]

The success of the Allies after Normandy was largely due to the Germans having been already weakened badly because of the pummeling they had taken from the Russian Army, and were at the time of the D Day landing in retreat across Europe ahead of the vast Red Army, which was then liberating the concentration camps. Majdanek on July 22–23, later that summer the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers.

By the time Allied troops came ashore on June 6, 1944 the Russians had already fought three years of devastating war on the Eastern Front, taking and inflicting appalling casualties. The enormous and pivotal battles of Stalingrad and Kursk had been fought and won.

In addition, the greatest Soviet campaign began 17 days after D-Day.

Following the defeat of Nazi Operation Zitadelle, the Soviets launched counter-offensives employing six million men along a 2,400-kilometre (1,500 mi) front as they drove the Germans westwards.

Operation Bagration, the Red Army offensive into Byelorussia from June 23 to August 19, 1944, resulted in the destruction of 28 of 34 divisions of the German Third Panzer, Fourth, and Ninth Armies of Army Group Center. The gutting of German forces in the East liberated the last parts of the Soviet Union and positioned the Red Army on the Vistula River, just across from Warsaw and within striking distance of Berlin. [13]Operation Bagration Was a Colossal Victory for the Red Army

– the Soviet destruction of German Army Group Centre – was, arguably, the single most successful military action of the entire war. This vital Soviet offensive was launched just after Allied troops had landed in Normandy, and it is symptomatic of the lack of public knowledge about the war in the East that whilst almost everyone has heard of D-Day, few people other than specialist historians know much about the Soviet Operation Bagration. Yet the sheer size of Bagration dwarfs that of D-Day. [14] Despite the recent Allied landing at Normandy, the German army retained over 235 divisions in the East, in comparison with roughly 85 in the West.[15]

On January 27, Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz.

February 13-14, the U.S. continuously bombed Dresden killing 160,000 German civilians. RAF and USAF air raids devastated Dresden, By this period, Soviet forces had crossed the Oder River and were closing in on Berlin. [14]

Examples of Western Press Admissions of the Falsification of History

Newsweek, June 6, 2019

‘NORMANDY LANDING DID NOT HAVE A DECISIVE IMPACT ON THE OUTCOME OF WORLD WAR II’ BY DAVID BRENNAN [16] .]

Source

Business Insider, 6/5/2019

Russia says D-Day memorials are part of a ‘false’ history of World War II meant to airbrush out the Soviet Union by Bill Bostock, Jun 5, 2019 [17

Source

Peoples World, 6/6/2019

“Let’s not leave the Soviet Union out of our D-Day history – On the 75th Anniversary of D-Day today, but who bore the brunt of the battles to defeat fascism in World War II? … Still another Soviet battle that surpassed D-Day happened after D-Day itself: Operation Bagration.” [18]

Source

Why Did The Second World War Happen?

In Reality

In reality it was America’s great corporations investing in, and joint venturing with, Hitler’s poor and totally disarmed Nazi Germany that made World War Two, Hitler’s invasion of Russia and the multi-nation Holocaust possible. [See Anthony Sutton’s ‘Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler,’ 1976, available to read at https://www.voltairenet.org/IMG/pdf/ ] [18A]

The true source of the Second World War was American industrial might empowering a rabid Adolf Hitler and his Nazi thugs in what had been a disarmed Germany. Hitler’s strident call for Germany to expand into the revolutionary communist Soviet Union was silently or tacitly approved as was much of Hitler’s rabid condemnation of Jews by America’s wealthy  investing in and joint venturing with Nazi Germany. [19]

Reality in 1929

A Colonial Powers Exploited World Mismanaged Into the Deeper Suffering of the Great Depression

The World Controlling Capitalist Colonial Powers Found Themselves In Dreadful Circumstances   

With the world of the plundering Colonial Powers deep in the chaos of the Great Depression, a disastrous failure of rule by the banks of the capitalist countries, the United States internally threatened by local organisations of socialists, communists, anarchists, unionists and unpaid veterans, Nazi Germany was to be made into a loaded gun pointed, to be eventually fired, at the intolerably economically successful [20] socialist Soviet Union, which had become a beacon of light for those calling for the overthrow of failed capitalism and plundering colonialism.

Hitler’s uncompromisingly lethal condemnation of communism and his threatening the very existence of Wall Street’s archenemy, socialist Soviet Union, would have to have impressed many of the US and European wealthy, whose racist capitalist colonial rule of most of the world was threatened by socialist fervour and riots at home for its failure to have prevented the ongoing Great Depression with tens of millions suffering even from lack of food. Newsreels of massive and violent riots in many US cities can be seen on YouTube at ‘Riots Across America – The Great Depression.’  This author was really struck by the massive violence seen in these newsreels of that time.

The rearming of Germany made possible Hitler’s invasions of twenty-two countries and brought world war to Asia, for Japan would not have dared to attack and declare war on the United States of America without it being able to count on an alliance with an awesomely powerful rearmed Nazi Germany, plus Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania and Finland, which all declared war on the USA immediately after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Target of the Western Sponsors of the Nazi War Machine

The real target for the Western sponsors of the Nazi war machine was an attack on the Soviet Union in order to destroy, in their view, the source of international revolutionary socialism. In the 1930s, the very existence of capitalism was teetering on the edge amid the Great Depression, massive poverty and seething popular discontent in the US, Britain and other Western countries. The entire Western capitalist order was under imminent threat from its own masses. This is the historical context for the Western-backed rise of European fascism. [Quoted from ‘World War II Continues… Against Russia,’ Finian Cunningham PressTV, 5/10/2014]

The Second World War and the Holocaust, which made the rich speculators of Wall Street owned America the sole world superpower, is estimated to have taken the lives of 70 to 85 million men, women and children. Within this total were the 25 to 27 million citizens of the Soviet Union, which had been the obvious target in the rearming of Germany of a consensus among the wealthiest American and European capitalists. A further plus for Wall Street was the outcome that left half the cities of Wall Street’s designated archenemy, socialist model USSR, lying in ruins.

The beyond imagination great multi-nation genocide that included the Holocaust must be laid at the feet of wealthy profit scheming speculative investors in war headquartered mostly in lower Manhattan, New York City.

When we recall films and photos of skies filled with warplanes, of seas filled with warships and of thousands of tanks engaged in deadly conflict on land bringing death, destruction and misery to hundreds of innocent millions, we best remember that a lot of upper class people in business suits were elatedly counting their enormous blood-soaked profits from investments in the manufacture of weapons, munitions, uniforms, and coffins.

All War Crimes Committed Made Possible by the Rearming of Germany

All the monstrous beyond description inhuman Nazi German crimes, the crimes that have been attributed to Stalin and those committed by the US and Britain in fire bombing civilians in German and Japanese cities, happened during the world war that was made possible by the enthusiastic rearming of an insanely dangerous Nazi Germany.

This was done to protect and continue invested capital rule over most of humanity by the unjustly wealthy in the Western colonial empires then threatened by the economic calamity of the Great Depression that had been created by their own financial malfeasance.

Soldiers Fought and Died Gm. Ford, Itt. Ge. Made $

Both at the Allied Normandy landing and three years earlier during the Nazi invasion of Russia, many, or often nearly most, disabled Nazi tanks were found to have GM motors. When American GIs invaded Europe in June 1944, they did so in jeeps, trucks and tanks manufactured by the Big Three motor companies in one of the largest crash militarisation programs ever undertaken. It came as an unpleasant surprise to discover that the enemy was also driving trucks manufactured by Ford and Opel — a 100 percent GM-owned subsidiary — and flying Opel-built warplanes. [See “Ford and GM Scrutinized for Alleged Nazi Collaboration,” Washington Post, Michael Dobbs, 11/30/1998.]

The following is excerpted from a report printed by the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary in 1974:

“The activities of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler prior to and during World War II…are instructive. At that time, these three firms dominated motor vehicle production in both the United States and Germany. Due to its mass production capabilities, automobile manufacturing is one of the most crucial industries with respect to national defense. As a result, these firms retained the economic and political power to affect the shape of governmental relations both within and between these nations in a manner which maximised corporate global profits. In short, they were private governments unaccountable to the citizens of any country yet possessing tremendous influence over the course of war and peace in the world. The substantial contribution of these firms to the American war effort in terms of tanks, aircraft components, and other military equipment is widely acknowledged.” Less well known are the simultaneous contributions of their foreign subsidiaries to the Axis Powers. In sum, they maximised profits by supplying both sides with the materiel needed to conduct the war.

After the cessation of hostilities, GM and Ford demanded reparations from the U.S. Government for wartime damages sustained by their Axis facilities as a result of Allied bombing… Ford received a little less than $1 million, primarily as a result of damages sustained by its military truck complex at Cologne. “General Motors… was paid $32 million by the U.S. government for damages sustained to its German plants.”

During the post-WW II war era, the mega immense profits deriving from Wall Street’s dominance of the world’s crippled industry and commerce continued unabated for decades, while its military and clandestine CIA operations tore through innumerable unfortunate populations of non-Caucasian majority humanity in former colonies in maintenance of unjust predatory investments under the guise of anti-communism.

Through America’s formidable grip over international media, CIA overseen monopolised Western mainstream media[21]have inculcated such a heroism for America’s role in the defeat of Hitler (whose war Americans facilitated in the first place), that the world seems to have accepted all the US led post war neo-colonial genocide as somehow more or less forgivable, widely accepting capitalist media misrepresentation of communism as evil.

The media implanted deception that it was American soldiers, helped by the British, who defeated Hitler has so dramatically portrayed Americans as ‘good guys,’ that the neocolonial Western genocide they have led throughout the Third World has been somehow excusable, as if the mass murder taking the lives of many millions of innocent men, women and children was carried off with good intentions. US world reach propaganda has hailed the millions of American soldiers, who invaded Korea and the French colonies of Indochina and dozens of Third World nations, which had been colonies occupied by European or US military, as anti-communist heroes. ‘Better dead than red’ was a slogan repeated with bravado to counter demonstrations against these undeclared wars.

Best not to lose sight of the reason behind the arming of Hitler’s Nazi Wehrmacht having been anti-communism or anti Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in protection of colonial capitalism’s hegemony during its brutal wholesale systematic economic misadventure, the Great Depression.

In today’s world of instant global communication and the wide distribution of cell phone and social networking, The former militarily occupied colonies, recently still referred to as the ‘3rd World’ or ‘Developing Nations,’ previously as the ‘Underdeveloped World,’ and earlier as the ‘Undeveloped World,’ now show signs of slowly unifying themselves as a ‘Global South’ and ‘Majority Humanity.’*

A Global South Awakening Awareness of Reality?

Today’s hegemonic Western Colonial Powers had their powerful satellite powered U.S. monopolised media televise an effusive show of celebrating their second gigantic war between themselves, which had deadly involved, as had their first gigantic war between themselves, most all ‘their’ militarily colonised nations world-wide.

The former militarily occupied colonies, recently still referred to as the ‘3rd World’ or ‘Developing Nations,’ previously as the ‘Underdeveloped World,’ and earlier as the ‘Undeveloped World,’ now show signs of slowly unifying themselves as a ‘Global South’ and ‘Majority Humanity.’ *

Citizens of the nations of the Global South watch Western TV without forgetting the crimes against humanity suffered under the military of these European empires and their off shore descendent empires. * The media of their former colonial masters’ constantly remind viewers, listeners and readers, that the governments of most Europeans, of Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders and Israelis still appear to demand hegemony to go on exploiting peoples of Majority Humanity politically and economically when not militarily. *

This Global South must easily see through much of the racist West praising itself for having fought for freedom,* a freedom that excluded colonially enslaved and plundered peoples of Majority Humanity.*

***

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Jay Janson is an archival research peoples historian activist, musician and writer; has lived and worked on all continents; articles on media published in China, Italy, UK, India, in Germany & Sweden Einartysken,and in the US by Greanville Post, Dissident Voice; Global Research; Information Clearing House; Counter Currents; Minority Perspective, UK,and others; now resides in NYC; First effort was a series of articles on deadly cultural pollution endangering seven areas of life emanating from Western corporate owned commercial media published in Hong Kong’s Window Magazine 1993; Howard Zinn lent his name to various projects of his; Weekly column, South China Morning Post, 1986-87; reviews for Ta Kung Bao; article China Daily, 1989. Is coordinator of the Howard Zinn co-founded King Condemned US Wars International Awareness Campaign, and website historian of the Ramsey Clark co-founded Prosecute US Crimes Against Humanity Now Campaign, https://prosecuteuscrimesagainsthumanitynow.blogspot.com/which contains a history of US crimes in 19 nations from 1945 thru 2012.

Notes

[*] only a well traveled author’s observation

[1] Estimates of Soviet Russian military casualties at Stalingrad: 478,741 killled, 650,878 for a total of 1.13 million casualties and tens of thousands of Russian civilians were killed.

[2] AP News, June 6, 2024. https://apnews.com/article/dday-wwii-france-invasion-military-b02d03fa11f66767a521a3b01357a89a      3. Approximate casualties at Kursk: Soviets 785,584; Germans between 50,000 and 200,000. Total Tanks and Self-Propelled Guns Lost : Russian 6,064, German 1,500; aircraft lost both sides total: 3,000. Post-war analyses by historians such as Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Eastern Front 1943-1944.

[3] Approximate casualties at Kursk: Soviets 785,584; Germans between 50,000 and 200,000. Total Tanks and Self-Propelled Guns Lost : Russian 6,064, German 1,500; aircraft lost both sides total: 3,000. Post-war analyses by historians such as Karl-Heinz Frieser, The Eastern Front 1943-1944.

[4] Germany and the Second World War: Volume VIII: The Eastern Front 1943-1944: The War in the East and on the Neighbouring Fronts: Volume VIII: May 16, 2017 · by Karl-Heinz Frieser (Editor) 4.8 8 ratings. https://www.amazon.com/Germany-Second-World-War-Neighbouring/dp/0198723466

[5] U.S. Department of Defence Records

Website: National WWII Museum

Encyclopaedia Britannica:

Website: Britannica on Soviet Casualties

The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union, 1941-45: A Documentary Reader by Alexander Hill: Routledge, June 13, 2008

[6] The Eastern Front during World War II was the site of immense brutality and loss of life. The conflict between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union resulted in millions of deaths, both military and civilian. The Nazis waged a genocidal campaign, targeting not only Soviet soldiers but also civilians, including Jews, Roma, and others deemed undesirable by the Nazi regime.

The Second World War on the Eastern Front – 1st Edition – Lee Baker – www.routledge.com

[7] “Battle-of-Stalingrad,” (brittanica.com)

[8] P.M.H. Bell, Twelve Turning Points of the Second World War,(Yale University Press, New Haven and London), 2011, p 104;

[9] Beevor, Antony (1998). Stalingrad. {London: Viking). ISBN 978-0-14-103240-5.

[10] David M. Glantz, (1986). “Soviet Defensive Tactics at Kursk, July 1943”. Combined Arms Research Library. CSI Report No. 11. Command and General Staff College, pp.149-59. OCLC 278029256. Archived from the original on 6 March 2008. Retrieved 15 July 2013.

[11] “Invasionof Sicily”history.com, updated :August 21, 20original Nov. 18, 2009

[12] Peter Kuznick, “Mythology of America as Liberator,” The Real News Network, 6/9/2019)

[13] (“Operation Bagration And The Destruction Of The Army Group Center,” by Peter R. Mansoor, Hoover Institution) 

[14] Peter Kuznick, D DAY: MYTHOLOGY OF AMERICA AS LIBERATOR FEEDS TRUMP’S MILITARISM, The Real News Network, June 9, 2019, (Peter Kuznick is Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, DC. He and Oliver Stone co-authored The Untold History of the United States.)]

[15] Peter R. Mansoor Operation Bagration And The Destruction Of The Army Group Center (Hoover Institution) June 24, 2019 – Peter Mansoor, colonel, US Army (retired), is the General Raymond E. Mason, Jr. Chair of Military History at Ohio State University https://www.hoover.org/research/operation-bagration-and-destruction-army-group-center

[16] ”Russia Trolls West on D-Day: ‘Normandy Landing Did Not Have a Decisive Impact on the Outcome of World War II” BY DAVID BRENNAN 6/6/19 https://www.newsweek.com/russia-d-day-troll-normandy-anniversary-75-nazi-allies-victory-1442493

[17] https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-claims-d-day-memorials-effort-to-pretend-ussr-didnt-win-wwii-

[18] June 6, 2019 10:06 Am Cst  BY JOHN WOJCIK https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/lets-not-leave-the-soviet-union-out-of-our-d-day-history/

Anthony Sutton was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution from 1968 to 1973.) and an economics professor at California State University, Los Angeles.

[19] Nazi Party leader Adolph Hitler in his 1925 published autobiographical manifesto Mein Kampf had emphasized Germany’s need for ‘Lebensraum’ (‘living space’), insisting that Germany’s 19th century motto ‘Drang Nach Osten’ (‘push to the East,’ a slogan designating German expansion into Slavic lands), must become a reality.

This was strikingly proclaimed by Hitler in his book Mein Kampf, which by 1939 had sold 5.2 million copies in eleven languages. [3]

“The National-Socialist movement must attempt to remove the  disproportion between the number of our population and the size of  our territory to secure for the German people the soil that is due to them  on this earth. And this action is the only one that can justify a sacrifice  of blood before God and our German posterity. . . . “

[20] The prospering revolutionary Soviet Union had become an inspiration and model for revolutionary organizing against capitalism and colonialism across the world.  Actually, though by 1928, the Soviet Union had made an amazingly rapid recovery from the ravages of the First World War and from a horrible civil war promoted by invasions of twelve capitalist nations, its agricultural production had not recovered from war’s devastation and there were still terrible famines throughout the 1930s.

[21] “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the C.I.A,” December 26, 1977, New York Time

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***

Israel Lost the Balance in Lebanon

Israel TV7 has reported that Israeli plans for attacking South Lebanon have been ready for months – plans where the Israeli Airforce would play a “key role”- in other words, fearful of going in with boots, Israel would do a usual, and with little effect (!), namely bombing Hezbollah.

But the go-ahead has been missing – even though Israeli politicians including Netanyahu and the defense minister under public pressure have stated clearly that Israel will impose a “normal” situation in the North either politically (a pipedream) or militarily – but that has been postponed and postponed.

Israel’s latent threat to do like previously, and bomb and kill 35,000 civilians in Beirut is no longer credible – because with 170,000 missiles, Hezbollah can respond likewise and kill large numbers of Israelis inside Israel. Thus a deterrence has been acquired by Hezbollah.

Israel getting tired and losing support –  Hezbollah getting stronger and more audacious. The balance which has been talked about in Lebanon, where both parties wanted to keep a lid on escalation, has come to an end.

When one party feels strong enough (Hezbollah, now with open backing from Iran) or doesn’t see any other way out (Israel), things will escalate and explode.

Israel TV7 just reported how Israel instead of wider actions in Lebanon, has focused on targeted killing (by bombing) of key Hezbollah operatives, in order not to provoke a larger escalatory response from Hezbollah. This Israeli Gambit has coming to an end – Hezbollah won’t take it anymore. Therefore, Hezbollah’s recent response over was an unprecedented barrage with 150 missiles and 30 drones on Wednesday 12 June 2024. See this.

The day after, Hezbollah launched more than 100 additional drones and missiles. We must remember that “patience” is also a function of how strong or weak a party is – a party which sees itself as strong has less “patience” and will react more forcefully to lesser transgressions than a weak party.

Israel TV7 also just reported, how Hezbollah not only in number of missiles, but also geographically, has been expanding its missiles attacks on northern Israel the past weeks or months. Previously, it was mostly the northernmost and eastern part of Israel’s north. Now, Hezbollah strikes all of Northern Israel from the Mediterranean over to the Golan Heights, and all the way down to the strategic port and economic center of Haifa. 

Hezbollah is also beginning to attack and destroy Iron Dome missile defenses. Israel simply doesn’t have enough air defense – when Iran attacked with some 550 missiles, ships from US, UK, and France intercepted a large part of them, some say up to 50%. Israel cannot rely on US, UK; and France forever stationing high-value ships off their coast to protect what Israel itself alone cannot protect. Then compare 550 missiles from Iran with newly 350 from Hezbollah – that is something. And Israel even had hours and quarters of hours to react, from the missiles and drones were launched in Iran until they arrived in Israel. Due to the vicinity of Lebanon, missiles from Hezbollah give Israel much shorter time, only a few minutes, to react.

Hezbollah is pressing Israel harder … and harder.

The escalation to a large war between Israel and Hezbollah is coming.  

And there will be no ceasefire in Gaza to defuse the escalation. Blinken is just running around in a fool’s errand. Israel wants to continue its rampage in Gaza, and Hamas won’t release its only bargaining chip for 6 weeks of silent starvation. Once Israel fights a full war with Hezbollah, Iran has promised to support Hezbollah and “let Hell lose on Israel“. 

We are heading towards a full regional war. Recent developments only confirm that the train is locked on track to a big conflict; Israel just killed another Hezbollah operative.

The IDF confirms carrying out a strike against a Hezbollah operative in southern Lebanon’s Aitaroun this morning.

A video released by the military shows the strike against the operative riding a motorcycle.

כלי טיס תקף מוקדם יותר היום מחבל של ארגון הטרור חיזבאללה במרחב עיתרון שבדרום לבנון.

בנוסף, צה״ל תקף בירי ארטילרי במרחב עיתרון.

בהמשך לשיגורים לעבר מירון הבוקר, זוהו שתי נפילות במרחב יחידת הבקרה האווירית שבאיזור מירון, אין נפגעים ואין פגיעה בכשירות היחידה pic.twitter.com/EquLmDZd4a

— צבא ההגנה לישראל (@idfonline) June 15, 2024

—Emanuel Fabian, 15 June 2024, The Times of Israel

We are awaiting Hezbollah’s response to the latest Israeli killing of a Hezbollah “operate”. Don’t expect Hezbollah’s answer to de-escalate. Israel cannot handle this. The US cannot either.

Going for the Kill – of Israel

I believe that Hezbollah (and Iran) now go for the kill – of Israel. Not in one fell swoop, but gradually. Cautiously, step-by-step. Note that Israel has completely lost its most valuable military asset, namely deterrence. 

• Israel lost its deterrence against Hamas on 8 Oct. 2023. On 7 October 2023, Hamas proved that it was able and willing to strike big on Israeli territory, and that nothing Israel has been able to do, can stop Hamas. Bye-bye Israeli deterrence. 
• Israel lost its deterrence against Iran on 13-14 April 2024. On 13 April 2024, Iran took escalatory domination over Israel by sending 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, and 120 ballistic missiles – a massive total of 320 units – on Israel. And Iran threatened to send “10 times more” if Israel retaliated. This is called “escalatory dominance”, and Iran – not Israel – has got it. Israel couldn’t respond with more than a hiccup.
• Israel now lost its deterrence even against Hezbollah on Wednesday 12 June 2024. Meanwhile, Hezbollah has widened its attacks on northern Israel to the whole area from Haifa to the Golan Heights. On 12 June 2024, Israel also lost deterrence against Hezbollah. On that day, Hezbollah sent more than 200 missiles on Israel. Hezbollah didn’t say it aloud, but the message from Hezbollah was, that “Hezbollah has got 170,000 more of these air weapons, if Israel retaliates”. When Israel the day after responded with some airstrikes in Lebanon, Hezbollah the day after again proved its point and reinforced its message of escalatory dominance and sent an additional 100 drones onto Israel. Once again, like Iran, Hezbollah proved to Israel that Hezbollah – not Israel – has got escalatory dominance. If Israel dares kill scores of civilians in Beirut, like Israel did in 2006 (the Dahiya doctrine), Hezbollah has got over a hundred thousand more missiles to do the same in Israel. After that latest message from Hezbollah to Israel, Israel seems to have understood the point, and Israel merely responded by killing a single unnamed Hezbollah “operative” in an air attack – once again, the Israeli equivalent to a hiccup. See this.

Israel couldn’t deter any of these adversaries from an historically unprecedented large-scale attack directly on Israel. And Israel hasn’t been able to restore deterrence since. At the same time, Israel has made it clear to all of its “friends” in the Region, that Israel will never accept a Palestinian state – a condition without which all further talks with Israel become meaningless.

Israel’s security cooperation with Egypt and Saudi Arabia is cracking up.

Saudi Arabia would like to have a security and economic cooperation with Israel, the US, and a Palestinian state, but without a Palestinian state, and with Israel’s insistence on killing countless civilians in Gaza, this is just not possible, no matter how much Israel’s elite tells itself that the surrounding Arab élites “don’t care” for Hamas or the Palestinians. As for security, Saudi Arabia doesn’t need US or Israel, as Saudi Arabia is finding its own solutions with Iran, backed up by China and Russia.

The commitments to peace from both sides of Iran-Saudi are becoming long-term binding – Iran asks for infrastructure loans from the Arab development bank, that is, from Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia wants to participate in the Iranian mega-port and BRI project in Chabahar, together with Russia, China, and India.

That Saudi Arabia doesn’t need US “security guarantees” anymore, was underscored when Saudi Arabia didn’t extend the 1974-agreement with US, which was both a petro-dollar agreement, but also a US security-guarantee agreement. And as for economics, Saudi Arabia will trade oil in all currencies not just dollars, and get finance for its big infrastructure projects from, of course, China.

Hezbollah, as a consequence, is now taking down Israel, possibly in a Regional war with support openly or covertly not only from Iran, but importantly also from several regional “friends” of US-Israel like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Türkiye.

There will be no ceasefire. There will be no Two-State-Solution. Israel has a lot of resources, this will take long, but it won’t stop.

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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.

The Decline of the West. The G7 “War Summit”. Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, June 17, 2024

The G7 Summit under the Italian presidency, organized by the Meloni Government in Puglia, proclaimed as its priority “the defence of the international system based on the force of law”, declaring that “the Russian war of aggression on Ukraine has undermined its principles and has unleashed growing instability, visible in the various crisis hotspots.”

Coalition Government: A Test for South Africa’s Democracy

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, June 17, 2024

Despite the alarming struggle for control and influence among South African political parties, the African National Congress (ANC) headed by Cyril Ramaphosa has finally constituted a broad coalition government, contentiously designed to contain rising tension and to integrate rival opposition forces such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Inkatha Freedom Party into its fold.

America and Britain Rehabilitate Nazism and Arm Fascist Militias in Ukraine

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, June 17, 2024

Western countries are no longer hiding their sympathy for Ukrainian neo-Nazism. The US and the UK are rapidly advancing the process of global rehabilitation of Nazism. Recently, Ukrainian fascist militants were welcomed into the British parliament, and now Washington authorized the supply of weapons to the infamous Azov Regiment, clearly showing that far-right militias are NATO’s allies in the current conflict.

Israel Lobby’s Control Over America Grows Ever Stronger

By Philip Giraldi, June 16, 2024

Support for Israel in the media is also contrived and essentially phony, going beyond slanting stories and ignoring the Palestinians. It is generally and imposed from the top down.

The US’ “Security Pact” With Kiev Regime: Ukraine NATO Membership No longer Contemplated. WWIII “Could Break Out Through Miscalculation”

By Andrew Korybko, June 16, 2024

Zelensky celebrated his country’s new security pact with the US on Thursday as “bring[ing] our relations to the level of a true alliance”, but the reality is that it’s just a consolation for the US not approving Ukraine’s NATO membership, which would give it much more meaningful mutual defense commitments.

Cuban Missile Crisis Revisited. Escalations… The U.S., Canada, and NATO Provoking World War III

By Michael Welch, Yves Engler, and Larry Johnson, June 16, 2024

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?

Acting As If It Weren’t Really So. “Ignorance of What Is Really Going On…” “The Nightmare Which Is Approaching”. Edward Curtin

By Edward Curtin, June 16, 2024

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.

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***

War always commands its own appeal.  It has its own frazzled laurels, the calling of its own worn poets tenured in propaganda.  In battle, the poets keep writing, and keep glorifying.  The chattering diplomats are kept in the cooler, biding their time.  The soldiers die, as do civilians.  The politicians are permitted to behave badly.

With Ukraine looking desperately bloodied at the hands of their Russian counterparts, the horizon of the conflict had seemingly shrunk of late.  Fatigue and desperation had set in.  Washington seemed more interested in sending such musically illiterate types as the Secretary of State Antony Blinken to Kyiv for moral cuddling rather than suitably murderous military hardware.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, mindful of the losses inflicted on his own side in the conflict, thought it opportune to spring the question of peace talks.  On June 14, while speaking with members of the Russian Foreign Ministry, he floated the idea that Russia would cease combat operations “immediately” if Ukraine abandoned any aspirations of joining NATO and withdrew its troops from the regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia.

Rather than refrigerate the conflict into its previous frozen phase, Putin went further.  It would end, provided that Kyiv accepted Moscow’s sovereign control over the four regions as “new territorial realities”.  Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine would also be afforded protections; sanctions imposed by Western states would be lifted. 

“Today,” he stated, “we have put forward another concrete, genuine peace proposal.  If Kyiv and Western capitals reject it as they have in the past, they will bear political and moral responsibility of the ‘continuation of the bloodshed.’”

He further added that, as soon as Ukraine began withdrawing its military personnel from Donbas and Novorossiya, with an undertaking not to join NATO, “the Russian Federation will cease fire and be ready for negotiations.  I don’t think it will take long.”

Length and duration, however, remain the signal attributes of this murderous gambit.  Ukraine’s defeat and humbling is unacceptable for the armchair strategists in the US imperium, along with their various satellites.  NATO’s obsessive expansion cannot be thwarted, nor can the projection of Washington’s influence eastwards from Europe.  And as for the defence contractors and companies keen to make a killing on the killings, they must also be considered.

This was unpardonable for the interests of the Biden administration.  The Washington War Gaming Set must continue.  Empires need their fill, their sullied pound of flesh.  Preponderance of power comes in various forms: direct assault against adversaries (potentially unpopular for the voters), proxy enlistment, or the one degree removed sponsorship of a national state or entity as a convenient hitman.  Ukraine, in this sense, has become the latter, a repurposed, tragic henchman for US interests, shedding blood in patriotic gore.

In keeping with that gore, US President Joe Biden, in announcing a funding package for Ukraine from the G7 group, promised that “democracies can deliver”.  The amount on the ledger: $US50 billion.  “We are putting our money to work for Ukraine, and giving another reminder to Putin that we are not backing down.”  That particular amount is derived from frozen Russian assets outside Russian territory, most of it from the Russian Central Bank amounting to US$280 billion.  The circumstances of such freezing will, in future, be the subject of numerous dissertations and legal challenges, but that very fact suggests that Ukraine’s allies are tiring from drawing from their own budgets.  We support you, but we also hate to see the money of our taxpayers continually splurged on the enterprise.

Biden’s remarks from the Hotel Masseria San Domenico in Fasano have a haunting quality of repetition when it comes to US support for doomed causes and misguided goals.  The fig leaf, when offered, can be withdrawn at any given movement: South Vietnam, doomed to conquest at the hands of North Vietnam; Afghanistan, almost inevitably destined to be recaptured by the Taliban; Kurds the Marsh Arabs, pet projects for US strategists encouraged to revolt only to be slaughtered in betrayal.

Thus goes Biden:

“A lasting peace for Ukraine must be underwritten by Ukraine’s own ability to defend itself now and to deter future aggression anytime […] in the future,” Biden explains, drawing from the echo of Vietnamisation and any such exultation of an indigenous cause against a wicked enemy.   

The idea here: strengthen Ukrainian defence and deterrence while not sending US troops.  In other words, we pay you to die.

The NATO disease, poxy and draining, rears its head.  Weapons and ammunition are to be provided to Ukraine along with the expansion of “intelligence-sharing” and training while “enhancing interoperability between our militaries in line with NATO standards”.  Money is to be put into Ukraine’s own defence industry so that they can duly “supply their own weapons and munitions”.  In the floral bouquet, a cautionary note is appended.  “In terms of longer range of weapons into the interior of Russia we are not changing our positions.”  Killing is always a matter of quantum, and calculation.  The note for Kyiv is clear: use the weapons but do so carefully.

As for the logistics of finance, US national security adviser Jake Sullivan is already voicing concerns about the complexity of the funding venture.  “The simple proposition is we got to put these assets to work.  The complex proposition is how you do that specifically.”

While Putin has turned his nose up at the UN Charter in its solemn affirmation of the sovereignty of states, Washington has taken its own wrecking ball to the text.  It has meddled, fiddled and tampered with the internal affairs of states while accusing Russia of the very same thing.  Spiteful of history and its bitter lessons, it has employed such saboteurs as former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to undertake such tasks, poking the Russian Bear while courting and seducing the Ukrainian establishment.  The horror is evident for all to see, and unlikely to halt.

*

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Email: [email protected]

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***

The sudden deaths of children ages 12-15 continue and no one is even attempting to investigate these deaths.

May 11, 2024 – Scotland – 14 year old Corbin Jones was playing soccer when he fell ill and collapsed and died.

May 2, 2024 – Singapore – 14 year old Isaac Loo collapsed after 10 min during a 2.4km run and died suddenly from “swelling of the brain.”

Apr. 3, 2024 – Schnecksville, PA – 15 year old Talia Shumway died unexpectedly at her home on April 3, 2024 She was enrolled in a nursing program at LCTI (Lehigh Career & Technical Institute).

April 2, 2024 – Belfast, Northern Ireland – 13 year old Sofia Forgione died from “Sudden Death Syndrome” when she died in her sleep.

Mar. 12, 2024 – Moline, IL – 13 year old Sampson Sprague died of a massive brain bleed.

Mar. 5, 2024 – Ireland -12 year old Saoirse Ruane died after her lung cancer came back.

Feb. 27, 2024 – Elmhurst, IL – 14 year old Reilyn Willow Ramsay died suddenly & unexpectedly on Feb.27, 2024 She was an athlete on the track team for York High School.

Feb. 24, 2024 – Spain – 15 year old soccer cadet Alejandro Padín, died suddenly on Feb. 24, 2024.

Feb. 22, 2024 – Italy – 12 year old soccer player Andrea Vincenzi died from pneumonia and cardiac arrest.

Feb. 18, 2024 – Brazil – 12 year old Rhyan dos Reis Garcia had a cardiac arrest at school and died a few days later.

Feb. 17, 2024 – Johnson City, TN – 14 year old cheerleader Charlee Blackburn died from a “sudden illness” “A sickness that started as strep throat continued escalating over the course of three days” “We have no idea what happened.”

Click here to read all cases.

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My Take…

On May 10, 2021, FDA amended use authorization for Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine to include children ages 12-15.

Here are some characteristics of these recent 56 deaths in children ages 12-15.

20 were athletes:

• 9 soccer players
• 4 football players
• 3 basketball players
• 2 runners
• 1 gymnastics
• 1 cheerleader

Causes of death:

• 10 cardiac arrests
• 5 died in sleep
• 5 died from cancer
• 4 brain bleeds
• 3 infection (?)
• 1 stroke
• 1 aortic dissection

Activities when sudden death occurred

• 5 were playing soccer
• 4 died at home
• 3 died at school, 1 died on school bus, 1 died in car on way home
• 2 were playing football
• 2 were playing basketball
• 2 were running (up to 5km)
• 2 were playing outside
• 1 was in phys ed class
• 1 was swimming
• 1 was doing gymnastics
• 1 was recording tiktok videos

Cancer deaths are increasing in this age group. 

Damaged blood vessels and clots are still a major issue 3 years into the rollout. Brain bleeds are far too common, there should be none in a sample of this size.

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

Featured image is from COVID Intel

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***

 

 

 

Despite the alarming struggle for control and influence among South African political parties, the African National Congress (ANC) headed by Cyril Ramaphosa has finally constituted a broad coalition government, contentiously designed to contain rising tension and to integrate rival opposition forces such as the Democratic Alliance (DA) and Inkatha Freedom Party into its fold.

However, expert analysis and narratives indicated that despite this first step towards advancing the main political and economic achievements of the ANC and the roadmap for sharing power in the next government, and at the same time, given the latest emerging political model in the country there are diverse internal and external implications for South Africa.

In this conversation, Samir Bhattacharya, a research associate at Observer Research Foundation (ORF) discusses importance of the political reconfiguration and aspects of its implications. Bhattacharya also provides insights for understanding the common intricacies in the latest developments after the first parliamentary sitting on 14th June 2024 and South Africa’s relations with Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union (AU).  Here are the interview excerpts:

Kester Kenn Klomegah (KKK): ls ANC slippery slope in South Africa’s politics is an expected evolutionary process?

Image: Samir Bhattacharya (Source: KKK)

Samir Bhattacharya (SB): When the results of the seventh national election in South Africa were announced in May 2024, it was not shocking that the ruling African National Congress (ANC) had lost its absolute majority for the first time since its 1994 transition to democracy. It witnessed a steady decline in its share of the vote since 1999. However, every time, it managed to secure a majority. Last time, in 2019, it got about 57.5 per cent vote share. But this time, the vote share dropped abysmally low to 40.2%.

As of present, the African National Congress (ANC) has called for a coalition of national unity in which all parties are welcome to join and take part in governing alongside the ANC. It is anticipated that the cabinet posts will be distributed according to the number of seats each party won. Currently, the coalition’s members include the main opposition party, the centrist Democratic Alliance (DA), and the Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP). The vote shares for the DA and IFP were 22% and 4%, respectively.

This may be a boon in disguise since it will force parties on opposing sides of the aisle to cooperate. Since each party represents a different set of electors, it can foster social solidarity amongst disparate elements of society.

Nevertheless, South Africa lacks a legislative or constitutional structure that would dictate the manner in which the proposed unity government must be constituted. Furthermore, the parties radically different and occasionally incompatible points of view may result in ideological conflicts and deadlock in policy. Moreover, if this gap grows, the coalition can disintegrate, leading to political instability.

KKK: As the current situation stands, what signals and implications of the latest development offer for South Africa, and generally for Africa?

SB: President Ramaphosa has undoubtedly received a startling reality check after the election result, as his party was not able to secure an absolute majority in parliament. Furthermore, this setback can have an impact on the stability or course of his government during his second term. The primary reason is that the ruling ANC, despite being way ahead than any of its rival parties, has lost its commanding majority and will depend on other parties to keep the government running.

Truly, the recent election of South Africa was quite chaotic, and it witnessed the proliferation of several new political parties. More than 50 political parties participated, highest number of parties fighting in the election in South African history. While most of them wanted to topple the ANC government, except the four major parties, none even had any national level ambition or vision. They were mostly restricted to highly localised issues and expected to draw some blood from weakened ANC. 

There was no shared leadership or agenda among these parties. Additionally, they have incredibly different and frequently conflicting beliefs about governance. For instance, even though DA agreed to join the coalition, it firmly opposes both the National Health Insurance (NHI) Bill, which would provide universal healthcare for all, and the ANC’s black empowerment program, which aims to give black people a stake in the economy as a response to their exclusion during the apartheid era. Meanwhile radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party and newly formed uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party endorse nationalising the country’s mines and seizing of white-owned land without compensation. The IFP, on the other hand, is a conservative, pro-Israel, pro-West party that is extremely hostile to the migrants.

Within the ANC, there are also internal divisions. The liberal lot, which has been the party’s main force since its founding but has now mellowed into a moderate social democrat fraction that currently has the majority, is more inclined to support business interests than to pursue drastic economic reforms. Forming an alliance with the official opposition DA is acceptable to this segment. But, the left wing, which has been historically moulded by the Tripartite Alliance between the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party, will attempt to exert more influence, either under Jacob Zuma’s leadership or through the radical leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), should either of them choose to join the coalition.

KKK: And what possible impact do you think this would have on its future foreign policy, and considering at the fact that South Africa is a member of Southern African Development Community (SADC) and African Union (AU)?

SB: Foreign policy is rife with ideological divisions, just like domestic concerns. The agenda that the DA seeks is pro-Western. On the other hand, the recently formed MK party, led by former President Jacob Zuma, is anti-Western and pro-BRICS. MK and Malema’s EEF, in contrast to DA, both support Russia.

Moving forward, the next administration will need to give the country’s foreign policy issues serious attention, chief among them being the delicate balancing act between the West, China, and Russia. Despite being geographically distant, the metastasising war in Ukraine has had a substantial impact on South Africa, particularly in terms of food security. At a deeper level, the incoming administration must develop a realistic foreign policy agenda that inspires confidence among investors. The main goal of South African foreign policy must still be to revive the country’s economy, but it must do it without openly favoring one country over another. Due to its close ties to all of the superpowers and the BRICS countries, South Africa’s nonalignment approach to international affairs is unlikely to alter in the current environment. 

In response, external actors working with South Africa’s coalition government will be required to exercise some patience and remain flexible. In fact, given the extreme ideological division within, it would become increasingly challenging to adopt a coherent policy stance. However, they need to keep in mind that South Africa still finds strength in its democratic system, which remains a cornerstone of stability and inclusivity. Due to its participation in numerous international issues and membership in groups such as the G20 and BRICS, South Africa is a significant global player. It has lately surpassed Nigeria to become the largest economy on the African continent.

South Africa also plays a major role in a number of international platforms and problems. South Africa received international recognition for its action in January when it approached the International Court of Justice (ICJ), filing a case against Israel. But the DA’s alignment with Western perspectives, its backing of Israel, and its strategic uncertainty about the Palestinian cause might have a significant impact on South Africa’s foreign policy, especially with regard to Palestine. However, a partnership between the ANC and Malema’s EFF would bolster South Africa’s opposition to Israel and increase its voice in several international fora.

In conclusion, it goes without saying that the election outcome and its fallout will be closely watched not only in South Africa and throughout the continent but also globally. This uncertainty is primarily caused by the difficulties in interpreting any prospective change in South African foreign policy and whether the coalition government would significantly alter or reframe its stance and policies in light of various global occurrences. The functional elements of the coalition will become more apparent in the days to come. After all, the devil is always in the details. Nevertheless, this would be a test for South Africa’s democracy because a stable South Africa would be important for its citizens as well as for the rest of the continent.

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), Weekly Blitz and InDepthNews, is now a regular contributor to Global Research. He researches Eurasia, Russia, Africa and BRICS. His focused interest areas include geopolitical changes, foreign relations and economic development questions relating to Africa. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

Featured image: African National Congress logo (Licensed under Fair Use)

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*** 

It sure is a crazy coincidence how western politicians and media always start urgently telling us about an invisible epidemic of left wing antisemitism every time western military ties to Israel are subjected to widespread public scrutiny.

It’s getting bad, and it will likely get worse.

The mass media are filling up with op-eds and cable news segments about how antisemitic leftist anti-genocide protesters are becoming. 

Instagram progressive Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez recently hosted two virulent Zionists in a livestream where the three spent their time concern trolling about the rise of antisemitism in left-wing activist circles.

Whoever runs Joe Biden’s presidential Twitter account for him is tweeting about “horrific acts of Antisemitism” by demonstrators, citing four incidents which were demonstrably not in the least bit antisemitic.

Every single part of this is incorrect.
1. Protest criticized the weaponization of 10/7 to justify death
2. Only 1 person (of 4) were Jewish
3. Faculty aren't getting attacked??
4. Someone made a joke that Zionists would probably want to leave a car full of Palestine supporters

— Talia Jane ❤️‍🔥 (@taliaotg) June 14, 2024

These same false claims about antisemitic activity by protesters are being used by US officials like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries to push through the “Countering Antisemitism Act”, a bill which would give the White House new powers to “counter the spread of antisemitism online” (read: government internet censorship to promote US and Israeli information interests).

And it’s so important that people who are new to this understand we’ve already seen this “crisis of antisemitism on the left” song and dance before; they ran the exact same script a few years ago in the UK to kill the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, who supports Palestinian rights. It’s the exact same bad faith concern trolling op where the whole political-media class suddenly starts pretending to believe something that is transparently ridiculous in order to protect an agenda of the empire.

It’s also important that everyone understand that every part of this is 100 percent cynical manipulation. The people pushing this narrative are fully aware that it is false. Everyone knew Jeremy Corbyn was a lifelong anti-racist who didn’t have an antisemitic bone in his body. Everyone knew there was no crisis of antisemitism in the Labour Party. But they pretended to believe otherwise because they didn’t want to see socialism and anti-imperialism gain a political foothold in the UK. The same thing is happening in the US and throughout the west right now regarding protests against the genocide in Gaza.

Step one: define criticism of Israel as “antisemitism”

Step two: threaten social media companies with punishment if they allow “antisemitism”

Step three: effectively censor all criticism of Israel.

This is Twitter files on steroids. https://t.co/Qypu0Aqe3g

— Briahna Joy Gray (@briebriejoy) June 15, 2024

So when you see people aggressively rejecting the concern trolls on this issue, that’s why. They’ve seen this schtick before, and they know how politically devastating it can be. They’ve seen how it can be used to suck all the oxygen away from real discourse about real things and funnel it all into this insanely vapid, idiotic conversation about a problem that exists nowhere outside the imaginations of the people talking about it. It’s a deeply evil, disgusting thing to do, especially now in 2024 when it’s being done to facilitate an active genocide.

There is no crisis of antisemitism on the left. It is not happening. The people pushing this narrative know it is not happening. Even the claim that anti-semitic incidents overall are on the rise is highly dubious, given that the figure everyone always cites for this claim comes from the Anti-Defamation League, who after October 7 began categorizing pro-Palestine rallies as antisemitic incidents — including rallies organized and attended by Jewish groups.

People get into left-wing politics exactly because they oppose racism and injustice. Nobody who actually understands the pro-Palestine movement sincerely believes all these peaceniks and commies have suddenly morphed into Jew-hating Nazis in contradiction of their entire worldview. They might pretend to believe this is a real thing that is actually happening in order to advance a political agenda, but they won’t actually believe it.

There’s plenty of hatred for Jews to be found on the extreme right, where the ideological inability to acknowledge capitalism and western imperialism as the source of today’s ills leaves a void for blame that will be filled by anything from Jews to immigrants to Satanic pedophile cabals to drag queens. But it’s always the lefties who get the overwhelming brunt of the antisemitism accusations, because their pro-peace, pro-justice, anti-colonialist, anti-racist activism makes them an obstacle to the information interests of Israel and the murderous empire which supports it.

We saw it with Corbyn, and we’re seeing it again today. 

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***

It takes a lot to get the diplomats of the Middle East to agree on anything. The behaviour of one man over the last eight months of the war in Gaza has, however, forged a consensus rare among such a group: Antony Blinken cannot be trusted. 

The US secretary of state’s powers of turning reality on its head have raised the eyebrows of even practised cynics. It is a complaint that resounds from Doha to Amman, Cairo, Tel Aviv and Ankara. 

Blinken is currently engaged in what one of his predecessors, James Baker, called “dead cat diplomacy”. Baker’s pupil, Aaron David Miller, wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “The objective is not to reach a deal but to ensure if it fails, the dead cat is on other’s doorstep.”

The more this plays out, more it resembles what my former boss James Baker called dead cat diplomacy. The objective is not to reach a deal but to ensure if it fails, the dead cat is on other's doorstep. Even if a deal is reached, likely won't go beyond phase 1 for that reason. https://t.co/MaPBQzAydM

— Aaron David Miller (@aarondmiller2) June 12, 2024

The dead, or dying, cat of the moment is a ceasefire deal in Gaza that holds. 

Indisputably, Hamas is closer to accepting this deal than Israel is. The evidence for this is mounting. Hamas signed a ceasefire deal presented by Egypt and Qatar, under the gaze of CIA Director Bill Burns, which would have ensured a permanent halt to the war. 

When Israel and the US walked away from it, Hamas welcomed the principles declared in President Joe Biden’s speech, in which he urged Israel to accept a “full and complete ceasefire”. It had the same reaction to the US-sponsored UN resolution. 

Those principles are clear: that a permanent ceasefire should exist after an initial exchange of hostages; that there should be a full withdrawal of Israeli troops; that the people of Gaza should be free to return to their homes; that there should be no change in the territory or demography of Gaza; and that its people should have full access to humanitarian aid, alongside reconstruction efforts.

Sticking Point

Israel disagrees with each and every one of these principles. It has said consistently that no ceasefire should prevent the achievement of its war aims, which include the dismantlement of Hamas as a military power and as a government of Gaza. It continues to block aid through its land border crossings and has no intention of lifting the siege, especially after the war ends.

More critically, it has made no commitment to sticking to a ceasefire should negotiations between the first and second phases of the prisoner and hostage exchange fail. 

This is the crux of the matter. There has been only one substantive issue preventing a ceasefire deal since the first exchange of prisoners and hostages last November.

Israel has yet to give any official response to either Biden’s speech or the UN resolution. Blinken is doing all the talking for it. How curious, then, that Blinken, on his latest Middle East tour, placed all the blame on Hamas for not yet accepting the deal. 

The talks are stuck on Israel’s refusal to accept an upfront commitment to a permanent ceasefire. It is on Israel that Blinken should be applying all of Washington’s pressure.

And yet, Blinken declared: “Israel accepted the proposal as it was” – a comment that flies in the face of repeated public statements from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu casting doubt on the deal, in addition to recent remarks from National Security Adviser Tzachi Hanegbi, who said it would take another seven months to destroy the military and governing capabilities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

“Hamas could have answered with a single word – yes,” Blinken said, surpassing himself in a brazen attempt to turn the truth on its head. 

Hamas has now given its formal response, and Middle East Eye has seen a copy of that reply.

There are changes to the document, which are not, as it claims, minor – although they are more compatible with what Biden and the UN resolution said, than the Israeli position is. Hamas has included the Philadelphi Corridor in the list of areas that Israeli forces should withdraw from in the first 42-day stage of the deal. It also insists that prisoners to be released by Israel are in accordance with Hamas’s list, which includes high-profile resistance leaders such as Marwan Barghouti.

Shielding Israel

The most substantial change is to the wording of paragraph 14, which deals crucially with the transition from stage one to stage two, and the key question of whether any party can withdraw unilaterally from this process and go back to war. 

Paragraph 14 used to say that the temporary cessation of violence would continue into stage two “so long as the negotiations on the conditions for implementing stage 2 of this agreement are ongoing”, and that the guarantors of the deal would make “every effort to ensure that those indirect negotiations continue until both sides are able to reach agreement”.

The revised version from Hamas says the temporary ceasefire would continue “until a sustainable calm” is announced, by which is meant a full cessation of military activities on both sides, and that negotiations would continue until the two parties reach an agreement on an exchange of prisoners. 

In addition, Hamas now demands that Israel lift its 17-year siege of Gaza and withdraw all its forces in the initial stage of the ceasefire deal.

These key changes address the meaning and substance of Biden’s speech and the UN resolution. But Israel will be implacably opposed to them, as they mean that once the first set of hostages and prisoners has been released, Israel will not be able to back out of a permanent ceasefire. 

It does not take a genius to see that shielding an Israel that has no intention of abiding by Biden’s words, let alone the UN’s, is not doing anything to advance US goals. 

These are clear: Biden’s overwhelming personal political interest as an ageing president, seeking re-election while not always being able to read his teleprompter, is to shut this war down as soon as possible. He has even more interest in doing so before it spreads, as it shows every sign of doing, to Lebanon and then the wider region. 

Blinken is doing the opposite. He is letting Washington get dragged ever deeper, and with more direct military involvement, into a regional quagmire of Netanyahu’s creation. 

Only one party benefits from a continuous war in Gaza and a new front opening up in Lebanon, and that is the Religious Zionist extreme right. Netanyahu cannot abandon that party. Benny Gantz’s defection from the war cabinet would be nothing politically next to Itamar Ben Gvir’s exit. The moment that happens, Netanyahu knows he has a challenger for the leadership of the ruling right-wing coalition.

That Sinking Feeling

Accordingly, Netanyahu has responded to every failed round of negotiations by going on the military offensive. 

After his rejection of the ceasefire deal hammered out during the debacle in Cairo and Doha, and amid the increasing possibility of being served with an international arrest warrant for war crimes, his response was to launch the offensive on Rafah.

Here again, the Israeli national interest called for caution. He showed no hesitation in jettisoning the support of the Egyptian army, which if he thought about things strategically, as a real leader should, he would realise that Israel will need after this conflict is over.

Egypt’s generals could make life painful along Israel’s eminently porous 200-kilometre border with Sinai, by releasing the brakes they apply on the drug smugglers and warlords who roam the desert. 

Instead, Netanyahu has humiliated them – and adding insult to injury, deprived them of a personal source of hard currency by closing the Rafah border and occupying the Philadelphi corridor.

The unwritten understanding between them was that any such closure would be temporary. But Netanyahu has now broken that understanding too, leaving the generals with egg on their face. Not a wise thing to do, in this region. 

Similarly, Netanyahu’s response to Biden’s speech was to launch a hostage rescue in Nuseirat camp, whose beneficial effects on domestic public opinion lasted all of 24 hours. 

Wild jubilation at the release of four hostages – Israeli networks interrupted their recorded programmes on Shabbat to go live – gave way to sober reflection on the total cost of this operation.

It was not repeatable. It was not a replacement for negotiations. Israel lost a special forces police officer in the extraction, and if Hamas is to be believed, three other hostages as well.

State of Chaos

But more puzzling still was the US claiming a decisive role in the hostage release. As the Palestinian death toll soared past 270, you might have expected National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan to distance himself from such a disaster. He did the opposite, taking credit for what he termed a “daring operation”.

The exact part that US intelligence or their hostage release team played in this operation is not known. Israeli helicopters were, however, captured on camera taking off and landing on the beach, a few metres from the pier the US Navy built to provide aid for Gaza. 

Centcom, the US military command that oversees the Middle East, said that while Israel used an area south of the US-built pier as a landing zone, “the humanitarian pier facility, including its equipment, personnel, and assets were not used in the operation to rescue hostages”.

But a US defence official, speaking with Middle East Eye, said Israel’s use of the beach, with the pier a stone’s throw away, “implies we were part of it”.

Furthermore, the US would have been notified of Israel’s exfiltration plan via the beach because it maintains an air defence system at the pier.

US cooperation with a hostage release operation that killed more than 270 Palestinians, and possibly also a further group of hostages, puts US policy on hostage release in a state of total chaos. 

Its policy goal is to persuade Israel of the obvious truth that the hostages themselves, and their families, scream often and loudly about: the only killer of hostages is Israel’s continuing bombardment. 

US military involvement in such a murderous operation does the opposite. “Israel’s argument has always been that it doesn’t need a ceasefire to rescue hostages,” Frank Lowenstein, the former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations in the Obama administration, told MEE. “The rescue operation is likely to deepen Israel’s resolve on that.”

US Weakness

This is not in US interests. Netanyahu is perfectly logical in his conclusion that Biden is weak and getting weaker by the month.

He is fundamentally unable or unwilling to apply a brake to Israel’s offensive. He threatened very publicly to withhold heavy bombs for Netanyahu’s offensive on Rafah. Netanyahu went ahead with it anyway, and Biden backed down.

Channel 13 recently reported that “significant progress” had been reached towards “understandings” that would allow the suspended shipment to arrive in Israel in the near future: “Within the framework of the understandings being developed between Washington and Tel Aviv, Israel will be forced to make commitments to Washington that it will not attack with certain bombs that will be supplied by the Biden administration, in populated areas, including populated areas in Rafah.”

So Israel can have the heavy bombs Biden promised to withhold, and continue with the operation in Rafah that Biden warned it not to proceed with.

At every stage in this eight-month war, US diplomacy has showed its weakness, and it bears a heavy responsibility for where this has now landed both Israel and US forces in the region. 

As things stand, and with the active complicity of Blinken, the gap between Israel and Hamas will not be bridged, even though the truth is that that the gap between the US and Israel is much larger than that between the US or the UN and Hamas.

Both Hamas and the US, and the 13 other members of the UN Security Council that voted for the resolution, want an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Israel is in a minority of one in making sure that does not happen, knowing that neither Blinken nor Biden has the political capital left to stop it. 

A New Low

To carry on the war in Gaza is to ensure that the escalation of the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah will continue, with each side striking deeper into each other’s territory. The surest method of de-escalation on the northern border is to secure an immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

I cannot think of any other time during the 76 years of this bitter conflict, when an Israeli leadership has been so obdurate in pursuing war aims that are unachievable – and a US president so weak and powerless to stop it.

James Baker or George Shultz were giants of diplomacy and resolve compared with the likes of Blinken. 

I previously thought that the combination of Netanyahu and former President Donald Trump had brought the situation to an all-time low. But I was proved wrong; worse was to come.

All the concessions Israel got during Trump’s presidency – the Golan Heights, the moving of the US embassy to Jerusalem, the Abraham Accords – pale into insignificance compared with the backing Biden has given Israel to pursue and continue its war on Gaza with this savagery, and for this long. 

It proved to be the combination of Netanyahu and a Democratic president that led this conflict to its most dangerous and murderous moment.

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David Hearst is co-founder and editor-in-chief of Middle East Eye. He is a commentator and speaker on the region and analyst on Saudi Arabia. He was the Guardian’s foreign leader writer, and was correspondent in Russia, Europe, and Belfast. He joined the Guardian from The Scotsman, where he was education correspondent.

Featured image: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Tel Aviv, Oct. 12, 2023. – Secretary Antony Blinken on X

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The World Health Organization (WHO) reported on 13 June that Israel’s genocidal war on Palestinians in the Gaza Strip has resulted in over 8,000 children under the age of five suffering from severe malnutrition.

Among the 8,000 children under the age of five identified and provided treatment for acute malnutrition, 1,600 were afflicted with severe acute malnutrition, commonly referred to as severe wasting, which is the most fatal form.

At a press briefing held in Geneva on 12 June, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that a significant segment of Gaza’s population faces near-famine conditions due to the devastation caused by the Israeli war. Ghebreyesus also went on to specify that

“there have already been 32 deaths attributed to malnutrition, including 28 among children under five years old.”

UNICEF announced on 11 June that up to 3,000 children are at risk of “dying before their families’ eyes” as they continue to be deprived of access to food and treatment in southern Gaza.

The conditions in Rafah, where over a million were displaced and had sought shelter since the start of the war, have significantly worsened since Israel’s operations on the southernmost city over the past month, forcing the displaced to flee yet again and complicating efforts for aid and humanitarian services.

Earlier this month, the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) revealed that it had ceased operations at all its shelters and most services for Palestinians in Rafah due to the escalating Israeli assault.

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On June 4, a coalition of active-duty service members, veterans and G.I. rights groups launched a campaign called Appeal for Redress V2 to encourage military personnel to tell Congress to stop funding genocide in Gaza. Israel’s genocidal operation, now in its ninth month, has killed more than 37,000 Palestinians and wounded nearly 85,000.

The campaign is sponsored by Veterans For Peace (VFP), the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, About Face: Veterans Against the War and the Center on Conscience & War. It is modeled after the 2006 Appeal for Redress issued during the occupation of Iraq. During that campaign, almost 3,000 active-duty, Reserve and Guard personnel sent protected communications to their members of Congress urging an end to the wars and occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Appeal for Redress V2 was formulated to help G.I.s directly tell their representatives that they oppose U.S. support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

“We will not stand by silently while genocide unfolds,” Senior Airman Juan Bettancourt, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, stated at a June 4 press conference announcing the campaign. “We refuse to be complicit” in the “unspeakable carnage,” said Bettancourt, who is seeking separation from the U.S. military as a conscientious objector.

Kathleen Gilberd, executive director of the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild and my coauthor for Rules of Disengagement: The Politics and Honor of Military Dissent, told Truthout there has been an increase in the number of applications for conscientious objection (CO) and other types of honorable discharge from the military.

“Many military personnel have serious objections to the U.S. support for Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians,” Gilberd said.

According to a June 3 statement from Bill Galvin, counseling director at the Center on Conscience and War,

“Almost all of [the CO applicants] cite the carnage in Gaza as something that their conscience would not allow them to ignore. Some have expressed feeling complicit in the violence.”

Gilberd noted the significance of these protests, saying:

“As in the Vietnam War, Iraq War and Afghanistan War, G.I. resistance is a powerful force for peace. The National Lawyers Guild’s Military Law Task Force and our allies stand in support of these military dissenters and resisters.”

Senior Airman Larry Hebert, who recently conducted a hunger strike in front of the White House in solidarity with the people of Gaza, noted at the press conference that,

“Genocide didn’t start on October 7.” He added: “It’s been going on for 76 years. It’s time for it to come to an end.”

Hebert was referring to the 1947-48 Nakba, when 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their land in the process of creating the state of Israel. Hebert said the groups sponsoring the Appeal for Redress are calling for a ceasefire, an end to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory, and protection of the human rights of Palestinians and their right to self-determination.

“I have been taught that honor and integrity are pivotal to being a soldier,” Army Sergeant Johnson said in the June 3 press release. “It hurts me to my core that the same country that instilled these values in me would proudly support a genocide.” He added, “It is our duty as service members to uphold Geneva Conventions and international law. That is why I am pleading for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and for humanitarian aid to be distributed throughout the entire Gaza Strip.”

Will Hopkins, former executive director of Veterans For Peace, said at the press conference it was “absolutely unconscionable” that U.S. money has been used to kill more than 14,000 children in Gaza.

“The Appeal for Redress, initiated by military personnel, provides an important, protected way for service members to tell their members of Congress that they oppose the U.S.’s funding and support of Israel’s genocide in Gaza,” Gilberd told Truthout. “It is literally the tip of an iceberg of military dissent about the war and the U.S.’s role.” She cited the significance of individual, small, silent protests — in addition to bold and public acts of refusal.

Indeed, some of the speakers at the press conference honored the memory of Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force who set himself on fire on February 25 outside the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C. to protest Israel’s genocide and U.S. complicity in it. He livestreamed the act, stating,

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide” before he lit himself on fire, repeatedly yelling “Free Palestine!” as the flames engulfed him.

Major Harrison Mann, a Jewish officer who worked for the Defense Intelligence Agency, recently resigned from the U.S. Army over what he called the United States’ “nearly unqualified support for the government of Israel,” which he says has “enabled and empowered the killing and starvation of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians.”

Mann went public with his resignation in May after the State Department issued a report concluding it was “reasonable to assess” that Israel had used U.S. weapons in ways “inconsistent” with international law. Shortly after that report was published, the Biden administration decided to send Israel $1 billion more in weapons and ammunition.

The Appeal for Redress

“We know many young people join the military out of necessity to get their needs met. But they are not obligated to contribute to genocide and unjust, unlawful wars that go against their conscience,” said Shiloh Emelein, U.S. Marine Corps veteran and operations director of About Face: Veterans Against the War, in the Appeal’s June 3 press release. “You do have rights, you do have options to object, and there’s a large community of post-9/11 veterans ready to welcome you.”

The Appeal for Redress employs the language of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says,

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” (emphasis added).

“Though their rights are somewhat limited by military law, service members can still speak out about their beliefs and protest the travesty of this war,” Gilberd said. Department of Defense Instruction 1325.06 protects the First Amendment rights to free speech and protests.

Moreover, a federal statute, 10 U.S. Code § 1034, says,

“No person may restrict a member of the armed forces in communicating with a Member of Congress or an Inspector General.”

Bill Galvin said at the press conference that military personnel have the right to be politically engaged as long as they’re off duty, off base and out of uniform and make clear they’re not speaking on behalf of the military. They can’t show disrespect to the chain of command, including the commander-in-chief.

The Appeal for Redress warns service members that they could face illegal retaliation by their command; the letter could be used against them in a court-martial for civil disobedience; and they could be punished if they reveal classified information without permission, make threats, use “contemptuous words” about chain of command (including the president) or make “disloyal” statements.

This courageous effort by service members and veterans follows in a long tradition of dissent in the U.S. military, from Vietnam to Iraq to Afghanistan. The G.I. movement during the Vietnam War was integral to ending that war.

U.S. Provision of Weapons to Israel Violates Several U.S. Statutes

These active-duty service members oppose U.S. funding of Israel’s genocide both because it’s immoral and because U.S. government employees are violating several federal statutes when weapons are shipped to Israel.

In a February 11 letter to the U.S. State Department, Veterans For Peace urgently demanded that the State Department “immediately suspend ongoing shipments of military weapons and munitions” from the U.S. to Israel. VFP also demanded “that the consideration of approvals of prospective shipments be terminated immediately.”

The VFP letter cited violations of the Foreign Assistance Act, Arms Export Control Act, Leahy Laws, Conventional Arms Transfer Policy, U.S. War Crimes Act and the Genocide Convention Implementation Act. Those laws prohibit the transfer of weapons and munitions when there is credible evidence that the arms will be used by the country to commit, or aggravate the risk that the country will commit, war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions, and other serious violations of international humanitarian law or international human rights law.

The letter quoted the sworn declaration of Josh Paul that was filed in the Defense for Children International–Palestine v. Biden lawsuit in which Palestinians sued President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin for failure to prevent genocide and complicity in genocide. Paul served as director of congressional and public affairs in the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs before resigning in October 2023 in protest of U.S. arms transfers to Israel.

“I believe it is clear that the U.S. government is failing not only to execute the due diligence required under existing U.S. laws, but is actively creating and utilizing processes that help insulate Israel from accountability or sanctions in accordance with existing U.S. laws and policies,” Paul wrote in his declaration in the lawsuit. “The failure to execute meaningful due diligence or adequately apply existing U.S. laws permits the unfettered flow of military assistance to Israel forces with minimal oversight that leads to unnecessary civilian harm, gross violations of human rights, and impunity for violations of international law.”

Meanwhile, on June 6, Israeli airstrikes on a United Nations-run school in central Gaza killed at least 40 people with explosive weapons provided by the United States. The school was sheltering about 6,000 displaced Palestinians, UNRWA Commissioner General Philippe Lazzarini said.

And on June 8, Israeli occupying forces, with U.S. support, killed at least 274 people, including dozens of children, and injured nearly 700 in a raid to rescue four hostages held by Hamas.

The same day, tens of thousands of people demonstrated at the White House in Washington, D.C. to protest the use of U.S. weapons and diplomatic support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

The organizers of the Appeal for Redress encourage civilian supporters to share the appeal with their networks so that it reaches a larger number of service members.

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Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Assange Defense and Veterans For Peace. A member of the bureau of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers, she is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues. 

Featured image: Self-immolation of Aaron Bushnell (Licensed under Fair Use)

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G7 countries have increased military spending to record levels while slashing humanitarian aid to help people affected by war, Islamic Relief says as G7 leaders meet in Italy for their 50th annual summit (13-15 June).

Military expenditure by G7 nations surged to $1.2 trillion last year, an increase of 7.3% on the year before¹ and 62 times what they spent on all humanitarian aid responding to wars and disasters.

Meanwhile G7 contributions to humanitarian aid appeals for the biggest global crises dropped from $27.5 billion in 2022 to $20.1 billion last year² – a 27% cut and just 1.6% of what was spent on military last year.

With conflict, security and immigration high on this week’s G7 Summit agenda, Islamic Relief is calling on the bloc to invest more in helping people whose lives have been destroyed and uprooted by war. The summit comes as the killing and displacement of civilians in places such as Gaza and Sudan continues unabated, and the number of conflict-related deaths has reached the highest level in three decades³.

Islamic Relief is also calling for G7 nations – and other governments – to end arms sales to states where there are serious risks of international law being violated, such as Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Shahin Ashraf, Islamic Relief’s head of global advocacy, says: “From Gaza to Sudan, Ukraine to Myanmar we see millions of lives destroyed by war. The humanitarian needs today are greater than ever before, so it’s scandalous that many wealthy G7 nations are cutting aid while spending more than ever before on weapons. Too many governments are putting far more resources towards acquiring weapons of war than helping those suffering the deadly impacts of conflict. More must be invested in eradicating poverty and fostering peace and development, not fuelling war and destruction.”

The trend in G7 countries increasing military spending while cutting humanitarian aid is mirrored by other governments, with global military expenditure increasing to $2.44 trillion last year – a rise of 6.8% from the year before – according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).

While some of the discussions at the G7 summit focus on restricting immigration into rich developed nations, most people displaced by conflict remain in war-torn countries and impoverished neighbouring countries. After more than a year of brutal war, Sudan is now the world’s biggest displacement crisis with over 10 million people – about a quarter of the population – now forced from their homes. The vast majority of people fleeing the violence in Sudan remain in the country, with many receiving aid from local communities, youth groups and mosques.

Shahin Ashraf says: “As rich nations increasingly shut their borders and cut aid, in places like Sudan it is heartening to see the generosity of some of the world’s poorest communities taking displaced people into their homes and sharing their food and water with them. But they need more international support, especially from the wealthiest countries.”

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Notes

¹ Based on Islamic Relief analysis of data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI)

² Based on Islamic Relief analysis of data from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

³ New research by the Peace Research Institute Oslo (Prio) shows that deaths, including those of civilians, from civil conflicts and battles worldwide between 2021-2023 rose to the highest levels in 30 years.

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Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.

What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation. 

Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

A Bilateral Peace Agreement is required.

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First posted on Global Research on March 1, 2022

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Notes from a 1991 meeting prove that the US, UK, France, and Germany assured the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand east. It’s part of a growing body of evidence that the West broke its promise to Russia.

A newly discovered document provides more evidence that Western governments broke their promise not to expand NATO eastward after German reunification.

Notes from a 1991 meeting between top US, British, French, and German officials confirm that there was a “general agreement that membership of NATO and security guarantees [are] unacceptable” for Central and Eastern Europe.

Germany’s diplomatic representative emphasized that the Soviet Union was promised in 1990 that “we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe” river, in eastern Germany.

The document, which was formerly classified as secret, comes from the British National Archives.

It was made widely known this February by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, but was actually first published by US political scientist Joshua Shifrinson in 2019.

Well, here's something: German Foreign Ministry official explaining in March 1991 that NATO "made it clear" to Sovs it wouldn't expand "beyond the Elbe" and so couldn't "offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others." Validates my @Journal_IS thesis: https://t.co/jLjHPTCrS0! pic.twitter.com/f5bO8okZYz

— Josh Shifrinson (@shifrinson) August 11, 2019

The document describes a meeting between senior officials from the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Germany in the city of Bonn on March 6, 1991.

The subject of the gathering was “Security in Central and Eastern Europe.”

German diplomat Jürgen Chrobog is quoted in the notes saying,

“We had made it clear during the 2+4 negotiations that we would not extend NATO beyond the Elbe. We could not therefore offer membership of NATO to Poland and the others.”

The 2+4 negotiations were talks in 1990 that allowed for the reunification of Germany, featuring capitalist West Germany and socialist East Germany (the 2) along with the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and France (the 4).

Chrobog’s comments in the notes, therefore, confirm that the Western powers had promised the USSR in 1990 that they would not expand NATO eastward after German reunification.

Further clarifying this fact, the document adds that there was a “general agreement that membership of NATO and security guarantees [are] unacceptable” for countries east of Germany.

NATO has added 14 member states east of Germany since end of First Cold War

Since the end of the First Cold War and the overthrow of the Soviet Union,14 countries in Central and Eastern Europe have joined the US-led NATO military alliance – all countries east of Germany, in flagrant violation of the promise not to expand.

In 1999, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO.

In 2004, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined as well.

In 2009, Albania and Croatia joined.

In 2017, Montenegro joined.

In 2020, North Macedonia joined.

NATO has also discussed the possibility of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, and Ukraine joining in the future.

In December 2021, the Russian Federation demanded that NATO agree to a series of security guarantees, including a promise not to add any more members. The United States and NATO rejected Moscow’s demands.

Map of NATO expansion

More evidence that NATO broke its promise not to expand east of Germany

The newly discovered 1991 diplomatic record is part of a growing body of evidence that the Russian government’s accusation that NATO broke its promise is indeed correct.

As Multipolarista previously reported, declassified documents from the governments of the United States, Britain, France, Germany, and the former Soviet Union and Russian Federation prove that NATO pledged not to expand east.

The National Security Archive at George Washington University in Washington, DC published records showing that US Secretary of State James Baker reassured Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev “not once, but three times” that NATO would expand “not one inch eastward,” in a February 9, 1990 meeting.

Baker admitted that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.”

US Secretary of State Blinken claimed the military alliance “NATO never promised not to admit new members.”

This is a lie contradicted by multiple Western government documents, showing NATO promised the USSR not to expand "one inch eastward" past Germanyhttps://t.co/X6sSXLDngV

— Geopolitical Economy Report (@GeopoliticaEcon) January 27, 2022

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With funds equivalent to just 2.9 percent ($35.7 billion) of their combined annual military spending, Group of Seven (G7) countries could help end world hunger and solve the debt crisis in the Global South, reveals new Oxfam analysis ahead of the G7 Summit in Borgo Egnazia, Italy.

Eradicating world hunger in all its forms would require $31.7 billion more from donors, and Oxfam estimates that the G7’s fair share of debt relief efforts for the world’s poorest countries is equivalent to $4 billion, for a total of $35.7 billion.

“Governments are finding their pockets run deep to fund war today, but when it comes to stopping starvation they are suddenly broke,” said Oxfam International’s Head of Inequality Policy Max Lawson.

“We’re talking about a small commitment with the potential for huge impact. Imagine a world where no one goes to bed hungry and where countries in the Global South can put money into public schools and hospitals instead of debt interest payments. The G7 not only has the means, but the moral and strategic imperative to make this happen,” said Lawson.

Hunger is rising rapidly in many places, including Somalia, Guatemala, Yemen and Kenya, with devastating consequences. Over 281 million people are now grappling with severe hunger and malnutrition. Gaza is facing one of the most severe hunger crises in the world, caused by Israel’s ongoing onslaught and siege of the enclave. People are already in extreme suffering and dying of starvation and treatable diseases. These deaths will increase at a faster rate unless a ceasefire is forged and full humanitarian access and safe distribution are allowed.

Oxfam is calling on the G7 to reiterate its demand on Israel to implement the recent ruling of the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to halt military operations in Rafah and allow the access of humanitarian aid into Gaza.

The G7 must also ensure their economic policies and agreements with Israel are not financially enabling potential genocide in Gaza. Under the Genocide Convention and international humanitarian law, states are obliged to take all political, economic, and military countermeasures within their power to prevent genocide. This includes immediately halting exports of arms and munitions that might risk use in war crimes or facilitate potential genocide. It goes beyond complicity; states are obligated to act to prevent genocide.

“The G7’s collective failure has basically given the Israeli military a free pass to commit terrible atrocities against Palestinian people. G7 leaders must do everything in their power to make sure there is an immediate and permanent ceasefire to stop the death and destruction. They also need to ensure full and permanent access of humanitarian aid through all ground crossings, and the release of all hostages and unlawfully detained Palestinian prisoners,” said Lawson.

“The G7 must also deploy all diplomatic efforts to stop further escalation in Lebanon and Yemen —should regional instability escalate into all-out war, the devastation will spare no one,” said Lawson.

Oxfam’s analysis also shows that despite G7 countries owing low- and middle-income countries $15 trillion in unpaid aid and funding for climate action, they are demanding that Global South pay $291 million a day in debt repayments and interests.

In May, Pope Francis said cancelling the debts of countries unable to repay them is “a matter of justice”, and outlined his vision for the Catholic Church’s 2025 Jubilee. Low- and middle-income countries are now spending nearly a third of their budgets on servicing debts ―as much as on public education, healthcare and social protection combined.

The G7 summit comes on the heels of Brazil’s historic proposal to tax the super-rich globally under their G20 Presidency. With the inequality gap widening, there has been mounting pressure on world leaders to increase taxes on the richest people and corporations. G7 finance ministers last month pledged to “work constructively with the Brazilian G20 Presidency,” and “to increase our efforts aimed at progressive and fair taxation of individuals.”

Oxfam estimates that higher and fairer taxes on millionaires and billionaires in G7 countries could raise over $1 trillion a year. The G7 is home to 1,211 billionaires (about 45 percent of the world’s billionaires) with a combined wealth of $8 trillion. Their wealth has grown in real terms by 74 percent over the past decade.  

“Families are struggling to get food on the table, our tax systems are making the rich richer, and the solution is glaringly obvious. The G7 needs to commit to global efforts, championed by the Brazilian G20 Presidency, to increase the tax paid by billionaires and the super-rich,” said Lawson.

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***

Back in September 2017 I wrote an article for the Unz Review site entitled “America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars” with the subtitle “Shouldn’t they recuse themselves when dealing with the Middle East?”

The article focused on the fact that most of the individuals and groups in the US that were agitating for war with Iran in particular were Jewish and most did not hide their loyalty to Israel, headed then as now by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

I argued that it was a mistake to have Jews managing America’s relationships in the Middle East in particular as some of them certainly would experience a conflict of interest that would inevitably not be beneficial to the United States. And, one might add, that in spite of that tie that binds with a foreign government, no pro-Israel group has ever been compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938 which would provide some transparency on finances and concerning direct contacts with the Israeli government or its Embassy in Washington. The end result of all that is to make it extremely easy to use money, which the Zionist billionaires have in abundance, to corrupt the US government process on behalf of an apartheid state that is no ally in reality and does not have values that fit well with what was once American democracy.

If measured by comments received on it on the Unz site, the article on the ethnic advocacy promoting America’s Wars turned out to be the most popular that I have ever written and it was picked up widely online and in various publications both in the US and abroad. Inevitably, however, it produced a backlash from Israel’s many friends and within 24 hours there was added an update to the original online posting. It read “On the morning of September 21st Phil Giraldi was fired over the phone by The American Conservative, where he had been a regular contributor for fourteen years. He was told that ‘America’s Jews Are Driving America’s Wars’ was unacceptable. The TAC management and board appear to have forgotten that the magazine was launched with an article by founder Pat Buchanan entitled “Whose War?” which largely made the same claims that Giraldi made about the Jewish push for another war, in that case with Iraq. Buchanan was vilified and denounced as an anti-Semite by many of the same people who are now similarly attacking Giraldi.”

The TAC malignancy who did the actual firing was particularly miffed by my assertion in the article that prominent Jews, like Bill Kristol, who appear regularly on television to advocate hardlines against Iran and others while articulating a “threat to America” when they are actually acting on behalf of Israel should appear above a label that reads something like “Jewish and an outspoken supporter of the state of Israel.” I added that it would be kind-of-like a warning label on a bottle of rat poison – translating roughly as “ingest even the tiniest little dosage of the nonsense spewed by Bill Kristol at your own peril.”

Indeed, it is the wealthy and influential beyond belief Jewish diaspora and its non-stop lying and corruption that sustains the fictitious narrative of Israel as a “land without people for a people without a land.” Australian journalist Caitlin Johnstone observes that

“Everything about Israel is fake. It’s a completely synthetic nation created without any regard for the organic sociopolitical movements of the land and its people, slapped rootless atop an ancient pre-existing civilization with deep roots. That’s why it cannot exist without being artificially propped up by nonstop propaganda, lobbying, online influence operations, and mass military violence.”

My point in revisiting the past is that seven years ago one would never have imagined the control that the Jewish Lobby has since obtained over the US foreign policy as well as over many domestic policies largely thanks to the alarmingly pro-Israel measures that have been advanced by an ignorant and reckless Donald Trump followed by the totally mindless and heedless Joe Biden. Biden has a majority of Jews occupying senior positions in his administration and it is fair to say that Jews are at the controls for Middle Eastern policy as well as what is playing out in Ukraine. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is little more than a spokesman and advocate for Israel as he made clear when he arrived in Israel after the Hamas attack and announced that “I come before you as a Jew…” and followed that up with his family holocaust history, though he failed to mention that his stepfather worked for Robert Maxwell, a leading Israeli spy. And let’s not forget about Congress, where pro-Israel fanatics have taken complete control (with the sole exception of Tom Massie) of the Republican Party. This control is exercised through over the top political donations and favorable media coverage dependent on one’s supportive view of Israel. A story is currently circulating indicating that Miriam Adelson, Israel-born heiress to the Sheldon Adelson multi-billion dollar casino fortune, has offered Trump $100 million as a political campaign contribution if he will promise to enable Israeli annexation of all of historic Palestine after he wins the November election.

Some congressmen have revealed that when they first surfaced as political candidates a representative of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) would casually drop by and determine their viewpoint on the Middle East. In some cases, would-be legislators would be asked to sign a statement pledging full and uncritical support of Israel no matter what it does. And we have recently learned that Israel runs major secret intelligence operations using fake personas on social media spreading pro-Israeli stories to influence decision making and maintain control of the US government. Beyond that, according to Massie, who told Tucker Carlson, every Republican in Congress besides himself “has an AIPAC person” assigned to them with whom they are in constant communication, whom he describes as functioning “like your babysitter” to make sure that no one hesitates when it comes to policies impacting on Israel. One assumes that this consists of AIPAC or Anti-Defamation League (ADL) provided interns who spy on the officials lest they deviate from their pledged loyalty to the Jewish state. I would call such activity foreign espionage connected to incitement to commit treason that should be exposed like the rat poison metaphor cited above. These monsters promoting a foreign country’s interests are not really our friends and are not out to do anything beneficial for the American people.

Support for Israel in the media is also contrived and essentially phony, going beyond slanting stories and ignoring the Palestinians. It is generally and imposed from the top down. Since October outlets like The New York Times, CNN and CBC have been denounced through staff leaks regarding demands from their top executives, who are often Jewish, that they slant their Gaza coverage to support the narratives favored by Israel. There have been resignations in government over the Israeli genocide being supported by Biden and Briahna Joy Gray has just been fired by The Hill for mildly criticizing Israel while co-hosting the show “Rising”, a fate that every media employees must understand lest they share Gray’s fate if they are insufficiently supportive of the Zionist entity. Israel’s support from Hollywood and other celebrities is similarly forced. A Hollywood marketing firm has had to explain a newly leaked email that instructed the firm’s employees to “pause on working with any celebrity or influencer or tastemaker posting against Israel.”

Other new developments on the Israel front that have emerged in the past seven years include the attacks on freedom of speech and association, the development of pro-Israel legislation at state and local levels which deny government benefits and jobs to citizens who support peaceful boycotts of Israel, and the ultimate abomination the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which is seeking to criminalize any criticism of the Jewish state. The Act is just one aspect of how the power of organized Jewish groups over the government and media is shaping the kind of society that Americans will be living in in the near future. It will be a society devoid of several fundamental constitutional rights, like free speech, due to deference to the preferences of one tiny demographic.

Upcoming elections have also been targeted by the “Lobby,” with Jewish groups raising hundreds of millions of dollars to carry out attacks on candidates considered to be anti-Israeli. The Zionist inspired heavy hand of government and of America’s educational institutions has also been observed recently in the arrests and other punishments to include blocking of employment opportunities and canceling degrees to students protesting against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians. Jewish counter-protesters, sometimes violent as in the recent case of UCLA, are as a rule not punished and their student groups are untouched while pro-Palestinians groups are banned from campus.

Sometimes the leaning over backwards to please the Israelis is completely ridiculous. Congress is currently seeking to pass a bill that would punish the Maldives for blocking travel to the islands for Israeli passport holders while the war in Gaza continues. US Democratic Congressman Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey is leading efforts to pressure the government of the Indian Ocean tourist hotspot. Gottheimer, known to be one of Congress’s most aggressive Israel firsters, is seeking bipartisan support in developing the legislation which will be called the Protecting Allied Travel Here (PATH) Act. The legislation could block any US aid or assistance to the Maldives until Israelis again have permission to visit the country. Gottheimer argued that “taxpayer dollars shouldn’t be sent to a foreign nation that has banned all Israeli citizens – one of our greatest democratic allies.” He also added predictably that the Maldivean move was “antisemitic”.

So, in my humble opinion we have been increasingly getting screwed relentlessly by Israel in spite of much of the punishment taking place out in the open, but the hapless wretches in Congress are too weak and terrified by the Jewish lobby to do anything about it. And now we have war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu showing up at the end of July for another round of pandering and groveling plus cheering and bowing by the Joint Session of that very same Congress that has done so much to give Bibi and tools and money enabling him to kill 35,000 Palestinians, mostly civilians, and counting. It is a disgrace and when the world sits back and reckons what has happened and determines who is to blame the chickens will inevitably come home to roost. America the Pariah. It almost rhymes.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

On the face of it, it’s hard to make sense of the rift within Israel’s government over the “day after” in Gaza, which led Benny Gantz to quit the coalition on Sunday. In a press conference announcing his decision, Gantz accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “preventing … real victory” by failing to present a viable plan for the Strip’s post-war governance.

Gantz, who joined the government and war cabinet after October 7 as a minister without portfolio, has been urging Netanyahu for months to lay out his “day after” plan. The prime minister, who has a personal and political interest in prolonging the war, has so far refused to produce one; instead, he has only repeatedly insisted that he rejects both the continued existence of a “Hamastan” and its replacement with a “Fatahstan” run by the Palestinian Authority (PA).

Yet Gantz doesn’t have a viable plan either. His proposal — replacing Hamas with an “international civilian governance mechanism” that includes some Palestinian elements, while maintaining overall Israeli security control — is so far-fetched that its practical significance is to continue the war indefinitely. In other words, exactly what Netanyahu and his far-right allies want.

The same can be said of Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who was Gantz’s closest ally in the war cabinet. Gallant reportedly walked out of a security cabinet meeting last month when other ministers castigated him for demanding that Netanyahu rule out prolonged Israeli civilian or military control over Gaza. But the defense minister’s alternative proposal is essentially the same as Gantz’s: to establish a government run by non-Hamas “Palestinian entities” with international backing — which no Palestinian, Arab, or international actors will accept. 

It’s true that Gantz and Gallant have also demanded that Netanyahu prioritize a deal with Hamas to bring back the hostages, while the prime minister is dragging his feet. But this apparent disagreement also collapses under scrutiny: any deal would entail a significant, if not complete, Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and a months-long, if not permanent, ceasefire. Such a scenario would result in one of two possibilities: a return to Hamas rule, or the reimposition of the PA — both of which are unacceptable to Gantz and Gallant on the one hand, and Netanyahu and his far-right allies on the other.

So why does the Israeli right see the fundamentally incoherent proposals of Gantz and Gallant as an existential threat? The answer goes far deeper than disagreements over the question of Gaza’s “day-after.” What Gantz and Gallant are implicitly acknowledging, and Netanyahu and his allies refuse to admit, is that Israel’s decades-old “separation policy” has collapsed in the wake of the October 7 attacks. No longer able to maintain the illusion that the Gaza Strip has been severed from the West Bank and thus from any future Palestinian political settlement, Israel’s leaders are in a bind.

From Separation to Annexation

Israel’s separation policy can be traced back to the early ’90s, when, against the backdrop of the First Intifada and the Gulf War, the government began imposing a permit regime on Palestinians that limited travel between the West Bank and Gaza. Such restrictions intensified during the Second Intifada and culminated in the aftermath of Israel’s “disengagement” from Gaza in 2005 and Hamas’s subsequent rise to power.

Most Israelis thought that Israel had left Gaza and therefore no longer bore any responsibility for what happened in the Strip. The international community largely rejected this stance and continued to view Israel as an occupying power in Gaza, but the Israeli government consistently shirked its responsibility for the enclave’s residents. At most, the government was willing to grant Palestinians travel permits to enter the West Bank or Israel on special humanitarian grounds.

When Netanyahu returned to the premiership in 2009, he worked to entrench the separation policy. He expanded the rift between Gaza and the West Bank by channeling funds to the Hamas government in the Strip, based on the belief that dividing the Palestinians geographically and politically would limit the possibility of an independent Palestinian state. 

This, in turn, has paved the way for Israel to annex part or even all of the West Bank. When Yoram Ettinger, the Israeli right’s demographic “expert,” was asked in 2021 how he would deal with the fact that between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea there are roughly the same number of Jews and Palestinians, he explained that “Gaza is not in the game and is not relevant … The area in dispute is Judea and Samaria.”

David Friedman, the pro-annexation U.S. ambassador appointed by Donald Trump, agreed that after the withdrawal from Gaza, only the question of the West Bank remained relevant. “The evacuation [of Israelis] from Gaza had one salutary effect: it took 2 million Arabs out of the [demographic equation],” he said in 2016. By removing Gaza from the conversation, the former ambassador explained, Israel could maintain a Jewish majority even if it annexed the West Bank and granted citizenship to its Palestinian residents.

A Strategic Power Vacuum

One of Hamas’s stated reasons for the October 7 attack was to shatter the illusion that Gaza is a separate entity, and to return the Strip and the entire Palestinian cause back to history. In this, it has undoubtedly succeeded.

However, even after October 7, Israel has largely continued to ignore the connection between Gaza and the West Bank, as well as its centrality to the Palestinian struggle as a whole. Israel has consistently refused to articulate a coherent plan for the “day after” because doing so necessarily requires addressing the Strip’s status within the broader Israeli-Palestinian context. Any such discussion fundamentally undermines Israel’s carefully cultivated separation policy.

In addition to its utter brutality, Israel’s current assault on Gaza differs in important ways from previous wars. Never before has Israel allowed a territory under its military control to go essentially ungoverned. When the Israeli army first occupied the West Bank and Gaza in 1967, it immediately established a military government that assumed responsibility for the civil administration of the lives of the occupied residents. When it occupied southern Lebanon in 1982, it didn’t dismantle the existing Lebanese government; after establishing a “security zone” in 1985, Israel handed over responsibility for civilian affairs to a local militia.

This stands in stark contrast to the current operation. Despite the fact that Israel effectively controls large parts of Gaza, Israel treats Gaza’s 2.3 million residents as though they are living in a vacuum. 

For obvious reasons, Israel sees the Hamas government that ruled the Strip for 16 years as illegitimate — but it doesn’t view the PA, which administers parts of the West Bank, as a suitable alternative. Such a scenario would fully undermine Israel’s separation policy: the same Palestinian entity would govern both occupied territories, and Israel would face greater pressure to negotiate the establishment of a Palestinian state. 

So long as the power vacuum in Gaza exists, the right can achieve what it wants: the war can continue, Netanyahu can prolong his time in office, and there can be no real possibility of opening peace negotiations, which even the Americans now seem eager to restart. The messianic-nationalist right also wants to maintain this limbo because it opens the door to the possibility of so-called “voluntary migration” of Palestinians from Gaza, which is National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir’s ultimate wish, or to the “total annihilation” of Gaza’s population centers, which is Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich’s goal. Both believe that red-roofed Israeli settlements lie at the other end of this period of limbo.

Two Visions for Gaza

The army, however, seems tired of this vacuum. For them, it promises only endless fighting with no achievable goal, burnout among soldiers and reservists, and a mounting confrontation with the Americans, with whom Israel’s defense establishment has a uniquely close relationship. The invasion of Rafah only heightened the army’s displeasure. 

Israel’s takeover of the Rafah Crossing with Egypt has further undermined the idea that it has no responsibility for what happens in Gaza. Gallant correctly recognized that control of the Rafah Crossing and the Philadelphi Corridor have brought Israel closer to establishing a military government in the Strip: without intending to, and certainly without admitting it, Israel appears on the precipice of governing Gaza like it governs the West Bank.

Gantz and Gallant have reacted to this situation similarly. Both are in close contact with the United States, and are also more exposed to pressure from the hostages’ families whose support continues to grow among the Israeli public. Both understand very well that the continued refusal of Netanyahu, Ben Gvir, and Smotrich to discuss the “day after” prevents any possibility of reaching a deal for the hostages’ release, and sentences them to a slow and certain death in Hamas’ tunnels.

Gallant and Gantz’s proposals for Palestinian rule are not serious, and cannot be accepted by any respected Palestinian, Arab, or international body. But they are enough to challenge the preferences of Netanyahu, Smotrich, and Ben Gvir for eternal limbo, to provoke their unholy rage, and to undermine the stability of the government.

Gantz and Gallant’s statements also express an unconscious admission that Israel currently faces only two real possibilities. The first is a settlement that recognizes Gaza as an integral part of any Palestinian political entity, which would involve the return of the PA and the establishment of a united Palestinian government. The alternative is a war of attrition, which the messianic right hopes will end with the expulsion or annihilation of the Palestinians, but which will more likely end just as the First Lebanon War did: an Israel withdrawal under sustained military pressure and the entrenchment of a skilled guerrilla force on Israel’s border.

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Meron Rapoport is an editor at Local Call.

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***

Neither the US nor Russia wants Ukraine in NATO, each for different reasons, yet the US wants to continue militarizing Ukraine so that it can keep waging NATO’s proxy war on Russia while Russia wants to demilitarize Ukraine in order to end Ukrainian-emanating NATO proxy threats to its security.

Zelensky celebrated his country’s new security pact with the US on Thursday as “bring[ing] our relations to the level of a true alliance”, but the reality is that it’s just a consolation for the US not approving Ukraine’s NATO membership, which would give it much more meaningful mutual defense commitments. The full text can be read here while the fact sheet can be read here, and upon doing so, the reader will learn that the US is simply formalizing the support that it’s been giving Ukraine since February 2022.

There’s no obligation for the US to dispatch troops to Ukraine if it enters into another round of hostilities with Russia sometime after the ongoing one finally ends. To be sure, NATO’s Article 5 doesn’t obligate the same either, but the US would be under much more pressure to directly aid Ukraine if it were an official military ally, which is why Russia was always so strongly opposed to that country’s membership. The latest pact therefore just maintains Ukraine’s role as NATO’s anti-Russian proxy.

As was observed in mid-January after Ukraine reached its first such agreement with the UK, “Ukraine’s Hoped-For ‘Security Guarantees’ Aren’t All That They Were Hyped Up To Be”. The precedent established by that pact set the stage for all those that followed, including this latest one with the US. The bombshell that Biden dropped in early June about how peace in Ukraine “doesn’t mean NATO, they are part of NATO”, leaves no doubt that the US prefers keeping that country outside of the bloc.

From the American perspective, Ukraine has much more strategic utility functioning as NATO’s anti-Russian proxy than as an official military ally which the US would then feel pressured to directly support in the event of another conflict with Russia due to the public’s interpretation of Article 5’s commitments. In other words, NATO’s proxy war on Russia through Ukraine would end if that country joined the bloc, but from Russia’s perspective, Kiev could unilaterally resume it in order to provoke a serious crisis.

Neither the US nor Russia wants Ukraine in NATO, each for different reasons, yet the US wants to continue militarizing Ukraine so that it can keep waging NATO’s proxy war on Russia while Russia wants to demilitarize Ukraine in order to end Ukrainian-emanating NATO proxy threats to its security. It’s the natural friction between these two’s goals that’s driving the ongoing conflict, which is expected to drag on since they’re unable to achieve their maximum objectives but also don’t want to curtail them either.

NATO can’t strategically defeat Russia through Ukraine due to its loss in the “race of logistics”/“war of attrition”, which now sees Russia producing three times as many shells at one-quarter of the cost, so it can only settle for perpetuating the proxy war until Russia achieves a breakthrough. As for Russia, it can’t fully demilitarize Ukraine since NATO could conventionally intervene to asymmetrically partition the country if a breakthrough occurs, thus keeping part of Ukraine militarized under NATO’s umbrella.

Nevertheless, the aforementioned scenario could lay the basis for a ceasefire agreement if NATO forces remain west of the Dnieper while Ukraine withdraws its heavy weaponry over the river to demilitarize the eastern bank that politically remains under Kiev’s control. Russia might consider the massive buffer zone which would be created in the latter’s wake to be an acceptable compromise on its maximalist objective of demilitarizing all of Ukraine so long as NATO tacitly recognizes its new borders.

Although NATO is loath to take responsibility for any part of Ukraine due to the US wanting to avoid creating the fait accompli of that country’s membership in the bloc, it might settle for this “sphere of influence” on those terms after all that it’s invested thus far than risk losing it. The US’ newly clinched security deal with Ukraine also increases the odds of this happening since there’s now more pressure than ever on the US to prevent Russia from inflicting a strategic defeat on NATO through Ukraine.

Ukraine’s de facto membership in NATO, which would occur if part of the country came under its control in the asymmetrical partition scenario that was described, would still pose the same strategic dilemma that the US and Russia both wanted to avert by keeping it outside of the bloc for different reasons. It would therefore be incumbent on the US to force its proxy to withdraw its heavy weaponry deeper inside Western Ukraine in order to reduce the chances of it unilaterally striking Russia to provoke a crisis.

Returning to each side’s perspective that was earlier touched upon, the US’ compromise would be to abruptly halt its proxy war and tacitly recognize Russia’s new borders, while Russia’s would be to accept that part of Ukraine will remain militarized but only in exchange for a massive buffer zone. While this trade-off is rational and pragmatic, it can’t be taken for granted that their policymakers have the political will to pursue it, let alone that they’re even aware of this proposal to begin with.

There’s also the danger that World War III could break out by miscalculation during the brief partition phase of this scenario if it’s carried out ad hoc between NATO, Russia, and Ukraine. That’s why it’s imperative for a truly neutral third party like India to help coordinate the first’s intervention up to the Dnieper, the second’s restraint in not maximally exploiting the breakthrough that could trigger the aforesaid, and the third’s withdrawal of heavy weaponry over the river in that event.

Best-case scenarios rarely transpire so it would likely be that the sequence of events mentioned above would largely play out ad hoc, though with a select group of countries individually working to convey each side’s red lines to the other in order to help control mutual escalations. If NATO crosses the Dnieper or Russia exploits its breakthrough to once again march on Kiev or even Odessa, then their counterpart might escalate in self-defense (falsely perceived in NATO’s case) and thus provoke a serious crisis.

It’s only if NATO-Russian tensions remain manageable in the breakthrough-intervention scenario that the Ukrainian part could come into play with the bloc then ordering Kiev to withdraw its heavy weaponry over the river in order to complete the country’s asymmetrical partition by creating a massive buffer zone. That said, NATO might not make such an order or Kiev could refuse, in which case Russia would likely continue advancing until NATO crosses the Dnieper or Ukraine withdraws its heavy weaponry.

Circling back to the lede, while the US’ security pact with Ukraine is indeed consolation for not approving its NATO membership, this deal paradoxically increases the possibility that Ukraine will become a de facto NATO member despite the US wanting to avoid that through these means. The US would be more pressured than ever to approve a conventional NATO intervention if Russia achieves a breakthrough instead of risk losing all of Ukraine, which could result in part of it coming under NATO’s control.

By formalizing the US’ existing support for Ukraine, which is aimed at perpetuating NATO’s proxy war on Russia, the US raises its reputational stakes in the conflict to the point where it couldn’t accept Russia inflicting a strategic defeat on it by fully demilitarizing Ukraine. It’s therefore more likely than ever to either directly intervene if Russia achieves a breakthrough or at least authorize its NATO allies to so, thus escalating everything towards uncertain ends that can either result in a ceasefire or World War III.

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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.

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During late May, the Nigerian Labor Congress (NLC) called upon its members to stay away from work in order to demand a raise in the minimum wage and for a price cut in the cost of electricity.

In recent years the rate of inflation in this West African state has skyrocketed to the point where today the exchange rate stands at 1,503 in the local currency, the Naira, to one United States dollar.

Although the Federal Republic of Nigeria is the most populous state on the African continent with 218.5 million people and is rich with crude oil and natural gas, the country is reeling from what workers describe as “starvation wages.” Costs for fuel and electricity have accelerated since the government of President Bola Tinubu eliminated subsidies after taking office in 2023. The annual rate of inflation in Nigeria is calculated at 33%. (See this)

A campaign for raising the minimum wage has been met with strong resistance by the Tinubu administration along with various state governments throughout the vast country. The NLC and the Trade Union Congress (TUC) issued an ultimatum in late May saying if the government did not take immediate measures to raise the wages of workers, they would call for a general strike.

In a memorandum from the Secretary General of the NLC, Emmanul Ugboaja, to all of its affiliates issued on June 2, called for a nationwide strike until their demands were met. The message to the workers read in part:

“This is to inform you of the commencement of the proposed indefinite nationwide strike beginning on Monday, June 3, 2024, as a result of the failure of the Nigerian state to agree on a new national minimum wage and subsequently pass it into law before the end of this month as they were notified; reverse the hike in electricity tariff without consulting the stakeholders as required by the law to N225/kwh back to N66/kwh and to stop the apartheid categorization of Nigerian electricity consumers into bands.” 

NLC President Joe Ajaero told the national government that the unions wanted a definitive signed agreement. He said that they would not accept a verbal assurance through a phone call or letter.

Similar labor actions were carried out during October of 2023. However, due to the continuing rise in the cost of living, the agreements reached with the federal government eight months ago are now meaningless.

Ajaero in a statement to the media stressed that:

“As of today, there is no minimum wage for Nigerian workers. Technically, the minimum wage had expired on the 18th of April. As of now, we are operating without any law backing up the minimum wage. They were talking about a 100 per cent increase. That is what they have offered, but the 100 per cent increase amounts to one loaf of bread per day for 30 days. They (the government) are not looking at the quality or the value of what they are offering to us…. If we take even the N600,000 we are proposing today, by next week, it will not make any impact. So, we have to look at them holistically and see what we can do to save the working class in Nigeria. We are not doing a strike that will be one month without a bite. I’m not sure where you have labor centers in a country embarking on a strike for one month and you don’t listen to them.” 

In conjunction with the NLC and TUC, other unions in critical sectors of the national economy had notified their members to comply with the strike. These labor organizations included the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG); National Union of Electricity Employees (NUEE); Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN); and National Union of Banks, Insurance and Financial Institutions Employees (NUBIFIE).

This is the fourth strike since the Tinubu administration took office. As a result of these industrial actions, the power grid was shut down along with the main airports inside the country.

Government offices, schools and banks were closed between June 3-4. Although domestic flights were grounded, international flights continued to fly in and out of the country.

Despite these declarations from the union leadership, after one day, the NLC and the TUC suspended their strike saying they would continue discussions with the government over the period of one week. This deadline expired on June 10 without an agreement which is acceptable to the workers.

The government promised to increase the minimum wage. However, the actual pledge by the federal government amounts to approximately $40 U.S. dollars per month.

Impact of Nigerian Economic Crisis on Other Regional States

Nigeria provides countries in the West Africa region with power supplies which are vital to the normal functioning within these states. Due to the necessity of carrying out maintenance on the natural gas pipelines and power grids, Ghana, Benin, Togo and other states have been inflicted with reductions and outages.

Popularly described as “load shedding”, the Ghana government announced that over the next three weeks, the country would be impacted by cuts to the electrical power supplies.

In a report published by the Nigerian Chronicle, the infrastructural problems in the country will affect the capacity of regional states to provide regular service to their populations. This article notes:

“Power outages are anticipated to endure for three weeks in parts of Ghana due to a scarcity of supply from Nigeria. According to a statement from the state electricity company, the cause of the temporary stoppage was maintenance work at an unnamed Nigerian gas supplier. Ghanaians have experienced years of frequent power outages, and they even have their own term, ‘dumsor,’ which means on and off in the Akan language. Power demand has consistently increased over the last two decades, owing to rising urbanization and population development. The state-owned power company in Ghana has announced that load-shedding will be used to distribute available supply as efficiently as feasible. ‘We wish to assure the public that we are collaborating with other stakeholders… to ensure minimal impact of the reduction in gas supply on consumers,’ the Electricity Company of Ghana said on Thursday (June 13) in a joint statement with the Ghana Grid Company. The companies promised to handle the disruptions effectively so that important services were not disrupted during the period of reduced gas supply. It comes just two months after President Nana Akufo-Addo stopped electricity supplies to Togo, Burkina Faso, and Benin due to supply issues. Power shortages have worsened in recent years as the country faces its worst economic crisis in a decade.” 

These problems undoubtedly are hampering economic and public activities throughout the West Africa region. If industrial sites and other institutions such as small businesses, schools and healthcare facilities do not have adequate power supplies, it will have broad implications for these societies as a whole.

Even though the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the 15-member regional organization, says it is committed to greater cooperation and integration, these objectives appear to be far from realization. Western imperialist influence within leading ECOWAS states represents a major impediment to resolving the problems related to power supplies to the entire region.

In recent months, three Sahel states, Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger, have withdrawn from ECOWAS due the threats made against the military governments which took power away from imperialist-backed political leaders. These administrations have formed an Alliance of Sahel States and have refused to return to the ECOWAS grouping despite the lifting of sanctions.

During 2023, Tinubu of Nigeria was encouraged by France and the U.S. to mobilize a regional military force to invade neighboring Niger to reinstall the overthrown imperialist-backed administration of President Mohamed Bazoum. However, public opposition throughout the West Africa region to such a scheme doomed the interventionist proposal to failure.

Consequently, the only real solution to the regional economic crises is a firm break with the dependency upon the western capitalist governments. The African Union (AU) 2063 plan for integration and economic development cannot be achieved absent of continental planning independent of imperialist domination.

*

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

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***

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).

***

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

 

---

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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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.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (only available in desktop version).

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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

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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)

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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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

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.

Featured image source

 

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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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First published on May 27, 2024

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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.