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Ukraine’s new Mobilisation Law, which allows prisoners to join the army, will not help Kiev fill its ranks as the prison population is not even big enough to cover for one month’s losses in the war devastated country. Even more alarmingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, prison wardens are using changes in the mobilisation law as an opportunity to illegally extort money.
There are currently about 46,000 people in Ukrainian prisons and detention centres, which Ukrainian officials say is a pool that could enable the mobilisation of 10,000 to 20,000 prisoners. The whole prison population cannot be mobilised since the law prohibits those convicted of serious crimes, such as premeditated murder, rape and sexual violence, and crimes against national security from joining the Ukrainian military.
In any case, even if they could be recruited it would not solve Kiev’s immense manpower problems considering that the Ukrainian army suffers monthly losses of 50,000 personnel. At the same time, with information being so widespread today, including in prison, it is doubtful that there will be many willing to leave incarceration and go to the front where they face certain death by artillery, aerial bombs, drones, and other unrelenting means employed by Russian forces.
A law signed by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky allowing some Ukrainian convicts to serve in the army in exchange for the possibility of parole is seen by even Western analysts as a move that underscores Kiev’s desperate attempts to replenish its ranks after more than two years of war.
According to Kiev, about 4,000 prisoners submitted a request to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, and some of them have already gone to the front. Kiev even announced the creation of assault squads from the mobilised criminals, showing how critical the manpower issue has become.
After more than two years of special military operations, due to terrible trench battles, huge losses and defeats on the battlefield, the enthusiasm for enlisting in the army in Ukraine is declining. Even the head of the Main Intelligence Directorate of Ukraine, Kirill Budanov, previously admitted that in the first six months of the war, “everyone who wanted to” join the army already did and that now because Ukrainians are not motivated to serve and are trying to avoid mobilisation in every possible way, the forced mobilisation in Ukraine and new amendments in the law to allow for new recruits, including prisoners, will continue.
Forced or, rather, violent mobilisation has caused outrage in Ukraine. The facts show that practically there are no people willing to join the military since Ukrainians are not blinded by propaganda and fully understand that they are losing the war. It is evident that Ukrainians are not ready to face certain death and are desperately avoiding conscription, which is why the Kiev regime is using such cruelty during mobilisation – the brutal beatings in the centre of Kiev, the breaking of limbs in Kharkov, and much more, proving, first of all, that people do not want to go fight.
The Guardian recently accompanied Ukrainian military recruiter Pavlo Pimakho on the streets of Kiev’s Sviatoshyn district, and quoted him as saying,
“I don’t judge people who avoid the draft but I do feel offended. We stood in long queues desperate to volunteer, and these guys are trying everything to evade serving. All the brave people have already volunteered.”
The mobilisation law has also only deepened the problems with corruption in Ukraine. Oleg Tsvili, a human rights activist and head of the “NGO Defense of Prisoners of Ukraine,” indicates that employees of prison colony administrations extort money from convicts who want to join the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to have their request for mobilisation accepted for consideration. If the prisoner has no money, he is offered to pay after receiving his first salary as a soldier.
Ukraine’s controversial mobilisation law, which will, among other things, allow for the conscription of prisoners, came into force in May, since Kiev faces the challenge of increasing the number of troops amid a new Russian offensive in the direction of Kharkov, the country’s second largest city. As already observed, the prison population is nowhere near sufficient to alleviate Ukraine’s manpower struggle, and neither will be reducing conscription age by two years. For this reason, it can be expected that as the struggle deepens, Kiev will likely once again reduce the age limit and implement other desperate measures, which, once again, will not solve the manpower issue.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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“We were surprised at the performance of the hypersonic missiles that the Russians had employed.
We were surprised because they were not just effective in terms of speed, but they were unstoppable and accurate and precise.
So we know now that they have an arsenal of hypersonic missiles that are very lethal and effective, they are all high-end explosive conventional warheads, but obviously some of them can carry nuclear warheads if necessary.”
Watch Douglas Macgregor in the video below.
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Last Year on June 14, we commemorated Kari’s 100th birthday
Today June 14, 2024, one year later we celebrate Kari Polanyi Levitt’s 101st birthday.
The legacy of Kari Polanyi Levitt and her father Karl Polanyi will live forever.
While Kari’s health is fragile, more than ever she remains firm in her incisive understanding and analysis of world events, committed to national sovereignty and fundamental human rights.
She constitutes a powerful voice in the understanding and analysis of US hegemony and the global political economy.
Her first book published in 1970 entitled, Silent Surrender: The Multinational Corporation in Canada, predicted with foresight more than half a century ago, what is happening today.
“First published in 1970, Silent Surrender helped educate a generation of students about Canadian political economy. Kari Polanyi Levitt details the historical background of foreign investments in Canada, their acceleration since World War II, and the nature of intrusions by multinational corporations into a sovereign state”.
“And I think it has. It has happened. We have less sovereignty than we had some time ago.” (Kari Polanyi Levitt, June 30, 2021)
June 14, 2024. Long Live Kari Polanyi Levitt
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Few 20th-century thinkers have had such a lasting and profound influence as Karl Polanyi. “Some books refuse to go away — they get shot out of the water but surface again and remain afloat,” Charles Kindleberger, the economic historian, remarked about his masterpiece The Great Transformation. This remains truer than ever, 60 years since Polanyi’s death, and 80 since the book’s publication. As societies continue to wrestle the bounds of capitalism, the book arguably remains the sharpest critique of market liberalism ever written.
Born in Austria in 1886, Polanyi was raised in Budapest in a prosperous German-speaking bourgeois family. Even though the latter was nominally Jewish, Polanyi converted to Christianity — or, more precisely, to Christian socialism — early on. Following the end of the First World War, he moved to “red” Vienna, where he became an editor of the prestigious economics journal Der Österreichische Volkswirt (Austrian Economist), and an early critic of the neoliberal, or “Austrian”, school of economics, represented among others by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. After the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933, Polanyi’s views became socially ostracised, and he moved to England, and then to the United States in 1940. He wrote The Great Transformation while teaching at Bennington College in Vermont.
Polanyi set out to explain the massive economic and social transformations that he had witnessed during his lifetime: the end of the century of “relative peace” in Europe, from 1815 to 1914, and the subsequent descent into economic turmoil, fascism and war, which was still ongoing at the time of the book’s publication. He traced these upheavals back to a single, overarching cause: the rise of market liberalism in the early 19th century — the belief that society can and should be organised through self-regulating markets. For him, this represented nothing less than an ontological break with much of human history. Prior to the 19th century, he insisted, the human economy had always been “embedded” in society: it was subordinated to local politics, customs, religion and social relations. Land and labour, in particular, were not treated as commodities but as parts of an articulate whole — of life itself.
By postulating the allegedly “self-regulating” nature of markets, economic liberalism turned this logic on its head. Not only did it artificially separate “society” and “the economy” into two separate spheres, it demanded the subordination of society, of life itself, to the logic of the self-regulating market. For Polanyi, this “means no less than the running of society as an adjunct to the market. Instead of economy being embedded in social relations, social relations are embedded in the economic system”.
Polanyi’s first objection to this was moral, and was inextricably tied to his Christian beliefs: it is simply wrong to treat the organic elements of life — human beings, land, nature — as commodities, goods produced for sale. Such a concept violates the “sacred” order that has governed societies for much of human history. “To include [labour and land] in the market mechanism means to subordinate the substance of society itself to the laws of the market,” Polanyi argued. And in this sense, he was what we may call a “conservative socialist”: he opposed market liberalism not just on distributional grounds but also because it “attacked the fabric of society”, breaking down social and communitarian bonds, and breeding atomised and alienated individuals.
This relates to the second level of Polanyi’s argument, which was more practical: market liberals might have wanted to dis-embed the economy from society and create a fully self-regulating market, and went to great lengths to achieve this, but their project was always bound to fail. It simply cannot exist. As he writes in the opening of the book: “Our thesis is that the idea of a self-adjusting market implied a stark Utopia. Such an institution could not exist for any length of time without annihilating the human and natural substance of society; it would have physically destroyed man and transformed his surroundings into a wilderness.”
Human beings, Polanyi argued, will always react against the devastating social consequences of unrestrained markets — and struggle to re-subordinate the economy, to some degree, to their material, social and even “spiritual” wants. This is the source of his argument about the “double movement”: because attempts to disembed the economy from society inevitably invite resistance, market societies are constantly shaped by two opposing movements. There’s the movement to constantly expand the scope of the market, and the countermovement resisting this expansion, especially insofar as “fictitious” commodities are concerned, primarily labour and land.
“Attempts to disembed the economy from society inevitably invite resistance.”
This leads on to the third level of Polanyi’s critique, which dismantled the orthodox liberal account of the rise of capitalism. Precisely because there is nothing natural about the market economy, which actually represents an attempt to disrupt the natural order of societies, it can never emerge spontaneously — nor can it self-regulate. On the contrary, the state was needed to enforce changes in social structure and human thinking that allowed for a competitive capitalist economy. The proclaimed separation of state and market is an illusion, Polanyi said. Markets and trading in commodities are a part of all human societies, but in order to create a “market society”, these commodities have to be subject to a larger, coherent system of market relations. This is something that can only be accomplished through state coercion and regulation.
“There was nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by allowing things to take their course,” he wrote. “Laissez-faire was planned… [it] was enforced by the state.” Polanyi wasn’t just referring to the “enormous increase in continuous, centrally organised and controlled interventionism” needed to enforce the logic of the market, but also to the need for state repression to counter the inevitable reaction — the countermovement — of those bearing the social and economic costs of disembedding: families, workers, farmers and small businesses exposed to the disruptive and destructive forces of the market.
In other words, the support of state structures — to protect private property, to police the dealings of different members of the ruling class with each other, to provide services that are essential for the reproduction of the system — was the political prerequisite for the development of capitalism. And yet, paradoxically, market liberalism’s need for the state to function is also the main reason for its enduring intellectual appeal. Precisely because pure self-regulating markets cannot exist, its advocates, such as contemporary libertarians, can always claim that capitalism’s failures are due to the lack of truly “free” markets.
And yet, even Polanyi’s ideological enemies, neoliberals such as Hayek and Mises, were perfectly aware that the self-regulating market is a myth. As Quinn Slobodian has written, their aim was “not to liberate markets but to encase them, to inoculate capitalism against the threat of democracy”, by using the state to artificially separate the “economic” from the “political”. In this sense, market liberalism can be considered a political project as much as an economic one: a response to the entrance of the masses into the political arena from the late-19th century, as a result of the extension of universal suffrage — a development most militant liberals of the time were vehemently opposed to.
This project wasn’t just pursued at the national level but at the international one too, through the creation of the gold standard, which was an attempt to extend the logic of the allegedly self-regulating (but actually enforced) market to the economic relations between countries. This was an early globalist attempt to marginalise the role of nation-states — and their citizens — in the management of economic affairs. The gold standard effectively subordinated national economic policies to the inflexible rules of the global economy. But it also shielded the economic realm from the democratic pressures building as suffrage spread across the West, while at the same time offering a very effective tool to discipline labour.
However, the gold standard imposed such massive costs on societies, in the form of destructive deflationary policies, that the tensions created by the system eventually imploded. First, we saw the collapse of the international order in 1914, and then again following the Great Depression. The latter prompted the biggest anti-liberal countermovement the world had ever seen, as nations sought different ways to protect themselves from the destructive effects of the global “self-regulating” economy — including by embracing fascism. In this sense, according to Polanyi, the Second World War was a direct consequence of the attempt to organise the global economy on the basis of market liberalism.
The war was still ongoing when the book was published. Yet Polanyi remained an optimist. He believed that the violent transformations that had shook the world over the previous century had set the stage for the ultimate “great transformation”: the subordination of national economies as well as the global economy to democratic politics. He called such a system “socialism” — but his understanding of the term differed significantly from mainstream Marxism. Polanyi’s socialism wasn’t just the construction of a more just society, but the “the continuation of that endeavour to make society a distinctively human relationship of persons which in Western Europe was always associated with Christian traditions”. In this sense, he also emphasised the “territorial character of sovereignty” — the nation-state as the precondition for the exercise of democratic politics.
A bigger role for government needn’t necessarily take an oppressive form, according to Polanyi. On the contrary, he argued that freeing human beings from the tyrannical logic of the market was a precondition for “achiev[ing] freedom not only for the few, but for all” — freedom for people to start living rather than just surviving. The welfare-capitalist and social-democratic regimes implemented after the Second World War, though far from perfect, represented a first step in this direction. They partially de-commodified labour and social life, and created an international system that facilitated high levels of international trade while buffering societies from the pressures of the global economy. In Polanyian terms, the economy was, to some degree, “re-embedded” in society.
But this ended up engendering yet another countermovement — this time from the capitalist class. Beginning in the Eighties, the doctrine of market liberalism was resurrected in the form of neoliberalism, hyper-globalisation and a renewed attack on the institutions of national democracy — all done with the active support of the state. Meanwhile, in Europe, an even more extreme version of the gold standard was created: the euro. National economies were once again placed in a straightjacket. Just as under previous iterations of market liberalism, this old-new order impoverished workers and laid waste to our industrial capacity, public services, vital infrastructures and local communities. Polanyi would have argued that a backlash was inevitable — and indeed it came, beginning in the late 2010s, though the populist uprisings of the past decade also failed to replace the system with a new order.
The result is that, just as a century ago, the intrinsic contradictions of the “international liberal order” are once again leading to a breakdown of the system, and to a dramatic intensification of international tensions. If Polanyi were alive today, he probably wouldn’t be as optimistic as he was when he published his book. We are definitely in the midst of yet another “great transformation” — but the future it heralds couldn’t be farther from the democratic, co-operative international order he envisioned.
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US global power rests on a few key pillars, some of the most important of which are:
(A) Dollar dominance in trade,
(B) dollar dominance in investment and finance,
(C) physical (military) control on the supply of oil, and
(D) base agreements to further expand US military control in strategic (and oil producing) regions.
A key foundation for this global exercise of US power is the Saudi-US petro-dollar agreement from 1974.
Saudi Arabia has reportedly decided not to renew its 80-year petro-dollar deal with the U.S. This bad news for the US is censored in Western media, but is reported today by Times of India.
As a consequence, not only the dollar as the World’s dominating currency will be severely hit. US capital markets will also be hit, as the now expired US-Saudi deal required Saudi dollar-incomes to be recycled and reinvested in the USA, mainly as low-yield US bonds.
But even more, the US role as military “protector” of Saudi Arabia against Iran has now been revoked by Saudi Arabia.
Saudi Arabia has analyzed that Saudi security is best served by continuing peaceful collaboration with Iran – and that Saudi economic interests are best served by diversifying financial interests from the dollar to an unlimited range of other currencies and currency-equivalents.
The US-Saudi deal was for 50 years a corner stone of US global power – the main points of the now expired US-Saudi petrodollar agreementof 8 June 1974 were:
1. Exclusive Oil Pricing in US Dollars: Saudi Arabia agreed to price and trade oil exclusively in US dollars, which led to other oil-producing countries adopting the same practice, creating a robust global demand for the US dollar
2. Military Support and Security Guarantees: The US provided military support and security guarantees to Saudi Arabia, ensuring its stability and protection against external threats
3. Investment in US Assets: Saudi Arabia agreed to invest its oil revenues in US assets, primarily Treasury securities, which helped finance US deficits and stabilize the dollar
4. Petrodollar Recycling: The deal involved oil revenues from Saudi Arabia and other OPEC nations being reinvested in US Treasury Securities, providing the US with a consistent influx of capital to finance its deficits and maintain lower interest rates.
The deal expired on June 9, 2024, and there is no official confirmation of its renewal. Saudi Arabia has decided not to renew the agreement, which means it will now sell oil in multiple currencies, including the Chinese RMB, Euros, Yen, and Yuan, rather than exclusively in US dollars. See this.
All the above four points are now cancelled by Saudi Arabia – at a moment, when US thought they had Saudi Arabia in their pocket with a fake Israeli “peace-deal”.
Most amazing is that US global power has now diminished so much, that Saudi Arabia is at all able to let this US deal expire. Just a decade ago, any Saudi attempt at this would have been swiftly met with a US instigated palace-coup and the removal of the Saudi ruler. But not anymore – MBS is too strong for the US to do that.
The war in Ukraine, the genocide in Gaza, the fight for Taiwan, diplomatic backing in the UN – everywhere, the US is losing.
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Karsten Riise is a Master of Science (Econ) from Copenhagen Business School and has a university degree in Spanish Culture and Languages from Copenhagen University. He is the former Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of Mercedes-Benz in Denmark and Sweden.
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On Monday June 17, an extremely important event is happening in Alberta featuring a heavy hitting array of experts and medical professionals who have taken a stand against the turn towards medical dictatorship which our society has been subject to over the past few years.
The event in question is titled ‘An Injection of Truth’ (official website here) and although its nominal aim is to create a ban on the injection of children with experimental mRNA jabs, the content will tackle a much broader subject of the politicization of science, freedom and sovereignty as well.
This week, I spoke with conference organizer Mike Holmes about this event and the broader fight within Alberta. Please check out the 20 min program below, share, and if possible, arrange watch parties with networks in which you are active.
Additionally, the event organizers worked closely with film maker Jason Dahl to produce a brilliant 12 min film to accompany the conference which can be viewed freely below:
So if that doesn’t rev your engine, I don’t know what will. Get in touch with the conference organizers on the website (aninjectionoftruth.ca), get your tickets, set up watch parties, start organizing similar events, and get active.
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These are the words of Serbia’s President Aleksander Vucic. He ought to know. He is in the middle of it. He thinks Europe will be at war with Russia in “not more than three or four months,” if that long.
“Nearly 90 countries and organizations, half from Europe, have confirmed attending the Swiss-hosted Ukraine peace summit” to which Russia was not invited. This Conference sponsored by the Swiss Government (15-16 June, 2024) has the appearances of a somewhat chaotic public relations ploy rather than a peace initiative. In a bitter irony, the two Neo-Nazi parties of Ukraine’s so-called coalition government are actively supported by our governments.
The Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea.
On June 13-15, delegates from 90 countries will be meeting at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucern, in the context of a Peace Conference organized by the Swiss government to which Russia was not invited. This article addresses the history of the Ukraine war and more specifically WHO started this war.
Top-ranking Russian officials, including the current Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, expected the economic growth to be stable enough for the Eurasian giant to overtake Japan by 2030. However, what was supposed to happen in no less than six years, actually happened in less than six months.
Dr. Clare Craig gave her testimony to the UK People’s Vaccine Inquiry. She testified that the covid injections were both unsafe and ineffective. Reviewing data from Pfizer’s trial, the ONS, ambulance callouts and long-term sickness she demonstrated that to use the word “safe” to describe covid vaccines is a lie.
The European Parliament (EP) election results, which are not a surprise to those who follow the course of Europe closely, but are a surprise to many, actually reflect the footprints of the global conflict on the European continent. In particular, the results in France and Germany, the two core countries of the European Union (EU), or more accurately, the strong message given by the people of these countries to the political elites, showed that change in Europe is only a matter of time.
Os países ocidentais já não escondem a sua simpatia pelo neonazismo ucraniano. Os EUA e o Reino Unido estão a avançar rapidamente no processo de reabilitação global do nazismo. Recentemente, militantes fascistas ucranianos foram recebidos no parlamento britânico, e agora Washington autorizou o fornecimento de armas ao infame Regimento Azov, mostrando claramente que as milícias de extrema-direita são aliadas da OTAN no atual conflito.
De repente, os EUA e o Reino Unido decidiram normalizar o nazismo ucraniano. Há duas semanas, em Londres, uma delegação do Regimento Azov foi saudada com aplausos pelo Parlamento britânico. O ex-primeiro-ministro Boris Johnson fez um discurso chamando os milicianos fascistas de “heróis” e encorajando-os a atacar alvos dentro do território indiscutível da Federação Russa com armas britânicas. Por outras palavras, Johnson não só felicitou os neonazistas, como também os “autorizou” a matar russos fora da zona de conflito. Johnson também tirou uma foto com os soldados Azov segurando uma faixa com o símbolo Wolfsangel, “que foi usada por uma divisão Waffen-SS e várias unidades da Wehrmacht durante a Segunda Guerra Mundial”.
Em 11 de Junho, o Departamento de Estado dos EUA publicou uma revisão das suas diretrizes para o comércio de armas, levantando a proibição da venda de equipamento militar ao Regimento Azov. Há dez anos, a milícia fascista ucraniana foi oficialmente banida do comércio de armas dos EUA devido aos seus laços com o nazismo, bem como às violações dos direitos humanos cometidas durante as hostilidades em regiões de maioria russa. Agora, porém, as autoridades norte-americanas dizem que não há provas de que tais violações tenham realmente ocorrido, razão pela qual a proibição foi revertida.
Seria ingênuo acreditar que a “proibição” realmente funcionou. Washington sempre armou os militantes de Azov e todas as outras milícias neonazistas ucranianas. No entanto, até agora, este fornecimento de armas não era oficial. Os EUA venderam oficialmente armas ao Estado ucraniano, que depois as entregou individualmente aos batalhões fascistas. Agora, esta manobra legal já não é necessária, uma vez que Washington está abertamente pronto a fornecer armas ao Azov.
É interessante ver americanos e britânicos normalizando a existência de grupos neonazistas na Ucrânia. O Regimento Azov nunca disfarçou a sua ideologia racista de extrema-direita, sendo amplamente conhecido pela sua supremacia étnica e pela participação ativa no extermínio de cidadãos russos desde 2014. Após o início da operação militar especial, os principais responsáveis da brigada moderaram a sua retórica. , tentando “normalizar” o grupo entre a opinião pública ocidental. No entanto, muitos membros da milícia continuam a postar constantemente fotos nas redes sociais com tatuagens e símbolos neonazistas. Além disso, o Wolfsangel, ligado às SS, continua a ser o símbolo oficial da organização, o que mostra como a ideologia hitlerista faz de fato parte da mentalidade dos militantes de Azov.
Estas medidas dos EUA e do Reino Unido estão a ocorrer num contexto mais amplo de reabilitação nazista no Ocidente. Há alguns meses, um antigo oficial SS ucraniano foi recebido no parlamento canadiano com ovação e homenageado numa cerimônia pública. Ao mesmo tempo, na Europa, especialmente nas regiões orientais, continua a ser promovido um revisionismo histórico irresponsável, com países como a Polônia e os Bálticos a removerem monumentos aos heróis do Exército Vermelho e a reabilitarem figuras nazistas.
Ao mesmo tempo, desde 2022 os países ocidentais boicotam a resolução da ONU proposta pela Rússia que apela à condenação global do nazismo. Mais de 50 países alinhados com os EUA decidiram simplesmente não condenar o nazismo, afirmando que votar contra a resolução seria um gesto de solidariedade com a Ucrânia no conflito atual.
O nazismo já não é uma mera ferramenta de guerra do Ocidente contra a Rússia, mas está a caminho de se tornar a verdadeira ideologia de muitos Estados ocidentais. Isto é uma consequência directa da infame política de asilo para criminosos nazistas nos tempos pós-Segunda Guerra Mundial, quando os EUA e a Europa concederam amnistia a generais, políticos e cientistas alemães em troca de segredos militares e científicos. Muitos nazistas exilados em países ocidentais acabaram alcançando altos cargos na administração estatal, o que resultou na nazificação progressiva da mentalidade política ocidental.
Durante muito tempo, esta nazificação permaneceu oculta devido à memória global dos crimes da Alemanha na Segunda Guerra Mundial. Contudo, a Ucrânia tem sido a desculpa para que as tendências nazistas da OTAN se tornem públicas. A normalização e reabilitação do nazismo não é um simples efeito colateral do conflito atual, mas um verdadeiro projeto por parte do Ocidente para implementar a russofobia a nível global. Só uma vitória russa na operação militar especial e a reconfiguração da ordem geopolítica poderão deter o avanço do nazismo.
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Keeping Moscow in a subservient state was imperative, a problem that the current Russian leadership had to contend with even after Vladimir Putin became president. It took him and his team at least 10-12 years to cure the Eurasian giant of the (neo)liberal disease in the Kremlin, while the remnants of its power were purged only in 2020, when invaluable constitutional reforms brought back Russia’s sovereignty in full.
As we can imagine, every step in the removal of the exponents of this malignant influence made the political West seethe, resulting in escalating hostility that Moscow inevitably had to respond to at some point. Precisely this happened in early 2022, when the Eurasian giant could finally demonstrate its resurgent power. The special military operation (SMO) was the result of decades of work on restoring Russian sovereignty.
Once again, it all failed. The Kremlin managed to secure stability despite being forced to conduct the SMO against the entire political West. What’s more, Russia overtook Germany as the world’s fifth and Europe’s largest economy, a humiliating defeat for its Western rivals who expected quite the contrary. Berlin did much worse than in decades, while London’s economic performance was at its lowest in over 300 years. And yet, to “add insult to injury”, now even Western data shows that the initial estimates of Moscow’s economic performance were wrong and that it will actually be even better in 2024. Namely, the updated IMF’s forecast of 2.6% GDP growth doubles its previous assessment. According to the Financial Times, this increase of 1.5% is the largest for any economy featured in an update to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, released on January 30.
Top-ranking Russian officials, including the current Defense Minister Andrei Belousov, expected the economic growth to be stable enough for the Eurasian giant to overtake Japan by 2030. However, what was supposed to happen in no less than six years, actually happened in less than six months. According to the latest data, President Putin’s forecast of increased economic growth (over 3.5-4%) not only turned out to be true, but even conservative, although the mainstream propaganda machine attempted to portray it as “too overoptimistic”. However, the only thing that was actually too overoptimistic was the political West’s expectation that the sanctions would work. Namely, according to new updates of the World Bank, Russia has overtaken Japan as the world’s fourth largest economy in terms of GDP PPP (purchasing power parity).
As a metric of economy, it’s a far more suitable way to measure true economic might, unlike the overblown nominal GDP figures that serve only to feed the oversized ego of the US-led political West. It should be noted that less than 10 months after overtaking Germany, Russia also zoomed past Japan, leaving Westerners dumbfounded as to how a country they were told would “collapse under the weight of sanctions” and outright theft of its forex reserves managed to accomplish such a feat. Worse yet (for the political West), some sources estimate that the Eurasian giant currently has the fastest-growing major economy in the world. In addition, even Moscow’s updated projection of overtaking Tokyo (explicitly set for March 2025 by President Putin) turned out to be “too cautious”, as this was accomplished nearly a year earlier.
However, while the World Bank’s numbers for 2024 put Russia’s and Japan’s economies at $5.95 and $5.87 trillion respectively, the actual discrepancy might be far bigger. Namely, the World Bank also estimates that a whopping 39% of the Russian economy is in the shadows, while the same metric for Japan stands at 10%. In terms of GDP PPP, this would add $2.5 trillion to Russia’s $6.45 trillion PPP-adjusted economic size, which, although still far from India’s $14.6 trillion GDP, further widens the gap with Japan. Expectedly, this economic resurgence is also enabling Moscow to rebuild its Soviet-era military might, resulting in an unprecedented real defense budget of over half a trillion dollars. The political West, powerless to stop Russia’s recovery, now wants to launch a terror campaign to disrupt this.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
The Biden administration’s ceasefire resolution is a cynical fraud aimed at airbrushing Israel’s tattered image while laying the groundwork for the final expulsion of the Palestinian people. In truth, there won’t be a ceasefire because Netanyahu and his entire cabinet are adamantly opposed to ending the hostilities.
The Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea.
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the prescribed solution to runaway childhood ADHD and autism is going to be new patented wonder-drugs that the corporate state media will dutifully tout heavily until some serious side effects discovered years down the road lead to their recall.
While they are arresting peace activists for exercising first amendment rights they are making plans to host Netanyahu- a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.
Many of the organizations also announce that, thanks to your donations, they have provided hundreds of thousands or even millions of meals to starving Palestinians in Gaza. What they do not necessarily tell you is that they are doing this by purchasing food and medicine from the dwindling supplies inside Gaza.
Nearly 300 people were massacred at a refugee camp in central Gaza on June 7 under the guise of rescuing captives held by resistance forces since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7. It was later announced that four of those held were retrieved in what was promoted as a major military victory for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).
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Dr. Clare Craig gave her testimony to the UK People’s Vaccine Inquiry. She testified that the covid injections were both unsafe and ineffective. Reviewing data from Pfizer’s trial, the ONS, ambulance callouts and long-term sickness she demonstrated that to use the word “safe” to describe covid vaccines is a lie.
Dr. Clare Craig submitted her witness statement in her capacity as the co-chair of the Health Advisory and Recovery Team (HART), as well as a qualified doctor and diagnostic pathologist. You can read her comprehensive 102-page witness statement HERE. In the video below she gave her oral testimony.
In the first half of her testimony, Dr. Craig spoke about the “safety” of the covid injections. In the second half, she spoke about the “efficacy” of the vaccines followed by answering questions put to her by science journalist Will Jones. Below we have only noted remarks she made in the first half.
MHRA Fails to Perform Its Duties and Tells Lies
The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (“MHRA”) is an executive agency of the Department of Health and Social Care in the United Kingdom. It is responsible for ensuring that medicines and medical devices work and are acceptably safe for use in the UK.
People think of “vaccine” as a modern miracle Dr. Craig told the People’s Vaccine Inquiry. “The word is almost synonymous with ‘safe and effective’. However, what has been called covid vaccines are neither safe nor effective and should have been pulled from the market long ago,” she said.
The term “safe and effective” was first used to market thalidomide, Dr. Craig said. Thalidomide is a medication that was first introduced in the 1950s as a sedative and treatment for morning sickness in pregnant women. However, it was later found to cause severe birth defects in thousands of children born to mothers who took the drug during pregnancy. It was subsequently banned in most countries and its use was heavily restricted.
“After the thalidomide scandal when at least 5,000 babies had been damaged and at least 5,000 had died, the regulators introduced new rules,” Dr. Craig explained. “And those rules state that the word ‘safe’ could not be used without caveats.”
“The MHRA are responsible for implementing those rules, and they have utterly failed to do so,” she said. But worse still, the MHRA themselves have used the term in describing covid “vaccines.”
“And that was a lie,” Dr. Craig said.
The MHRA also failed to introduce an absolute safety threshold. This is the minimum level of safety that is considered acceptable or tolerable. It is the point at which a drug must be either suspended or withdrawn.
“They’ve also ignored all the evidence of harm on the basis of their belief that the benefits always outweigh the risks,” Dr. Craig said. “That was not always true, that was a lie,” she said.
And doctors who warned what the safety issues would be, “were threatened and shut down,” she said.
Pfizer Covered Up Harm in Its Trial Data
She spoke about the cover-up of harms noted in Pfizer’s covid “vaccine” trial. One participant developed pericarditis post-vaccination. “That illness was put down into the data as being a pneumonia, covid pneumonia, that was ‘test negative’,” Dr. Craig said.
“What that meant was it was not included in the safety data and because the test was negative it didn’t have to be included in the efficacy calculations either. So, it was effectively disappeared,” she said.
Twelve-year-old Maddie de Garay developed immune-mediated nerve damage throughout her body. However, her condition was described in Pfizer’s trial data as being functional abdominal pain. “So that was another lie,” Dr. Craig said.
“The accumulation of all these lies created the overall lie about the safety of these products,” she said.
The indications of harm continued. After the mass covid injection campaign began there were early indicators that these injections were harmful. “The surveillance systems which were designed to detect a problem sounded many alarms,” she said.
Illness and Death Were Treated Differently Before and After Vaccination
Before the rollout of the covid injections, if someone tested positive for covid then every symptom after that was considered a covid symptom. However, post-vaccination, the only symptoms that were considered to be related to the injection were a sore arm, a fever and gastrointestinal symptoms.
“Any hospitalisation after a covid positive test was a covid hospitalisation. But somebody who was hospitalised after the vaccine was almost always considered a coincidence,” she said.
“Anybody who died within 28 days of a covid positive test, was considered to be a covid death. Even when there were other conditions that contributed to that death. Whereas, anybody who died after a vaccine, if there was any other possible causation, that was put down on the death certificate,” she said.
“Neither approach is scientific or rational,” she added.
Adding to the spurious classification of covid and vaccine injuries, some doctors have actively been gaslighting people who have been vaccine-injured.
Some vaccinated people who developed cardiac or neurological symptoms of unknown cause “had their problems described as being due to anxiety by their doctors,” Dr. Craig said.
To add to the lies, “there are also doctors who have told patients that they’ve been vaccine injured but have refused to write it into their medical record,” she said.
Covid Injections Cause Systemic Harm
The surveillance systems for measuring harm from a drug are designed to detect rare events in a single organ of the body. “But these products have caused harm across the body,” Dr. Craig said. “The surveillance systems are not designed to pick up [ ] systemic effects.”
There are several reasons why covid injections cause harm all over the body.
Firstly, there are autoimmune diseases. The platforms are designed so that cells throughout the body express a foreign protein. After vaccination, the mRNA or DNA from covid injections enter cells. Once inside, they use the cells’ machinery to produce what is called the spike protein. The cells producing this foreign protein – the spike protein – on their surface are sacrificed as the immune system attacks them. “When you get that kind of organ damage, it looks like an autoimmune disease,” Dr. Craig said.
Additionally, the spike protein looks very similar to a human protein. “There’s about an 80% crossover,” Dr. Craig said. “That means there is also a risk of conventional autoimmune disease.”
Secondly, there is the vascular damage caused by the covid injections. We have blood vessels throughout our bodies so the vascular damage can cause harm in all sorts of ways, she said.
Thirdly, there is evidence of endotoxin contamination from the bacteria in the manufacturing process. Endotoxin can also cause harm throughout the body.
Fourthly, synthetic RNA, synthetic DNA contamination and mitochondrial damage can affect any cell in the body. There are also unknown proteins being produced which could lead to conditions such as amyloids, which again can affect numerous organs.
Alarm bells were ringing in data other than safety surveillance systems as well.
Until the rollout of the covid vaccines, ambulance callouts for life-threatening emergencies had been steady and predictable at around 2,000 per day. Since the mass covid injection campaigns began, there have been 2,500 per day, Dr. Craig said.
The skyrocketing numbers of people who can’t work because they have long-term illnesses also tell a story. The results of surveys show that the number of people who have long-term sickness has been around 2 million since 2012. “But since the vaccine rollout, this rocketed in spring 2021 and it’s now at 2.8 million,” she said. The USA data looks similar, she added.
Also in spring 2021, there was a rise in non-covid deaths. “This happened across the vaccinated world,” Dr. Craig said. “The claim that it was covid that was causing all this excess was a lie,” she testified.
So, what were people dying from?
“Non-covid cardiovascular deaths rose with the vaccine rollout and have been high ever since. And deaths in the young have been high ever since, particularly in the 50 to 64-year-old age bracket,” she said. “This is true in almost all [highly] vaccinated countries.”
In the UK, the excess deaths have been lower in London, in the black population and in lower socio-economic groups. “These were all groups that were vaccinated less,” Dr. Craig said. “And if you look regionally across the world, less vaccinated areas have had fewer excess deaths since 2022.”
ONS Cover-up and Lies
The UK Office for National Statistics (“ONS”) have claimed the unvaccinated have a higher covid mortality rate. Unvaccinated people also have a higher mortality rate for non-covid deaths which reveals a bias is incorporated into ONS data. The bias is because of a demographic difference between the vaccinated and non-vaccinated populations. “In all likelihood, the unvaccinated had a higher pre-covid mortality rate,” she said.
“When you take out that bias, the difference [between mortality rates] disappears,” she said. “So, to claim that the difference would be due to a vaccine, would be a lie.”
“In fact, that gap in mortality between the vaccinated and unvaccinated has not stayed steady. Over time the mortality in the vaccinated has increased and the gap has shrunk. When that happened, the ONS stopped publishing the data,” she added.
“It’s clear these products were far from safe,” she said.
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Featured image is from The Expose
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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The West’s Ukrainian proxy war against Russia continues to go badly with Russian advances on all fronts and big Ukrainian troop losses.
Even worse, those who are the most belligerent political leaders (Biden, Macron and Sunak) are losing votes at home.
French President Macron lost badly in the European elections with the National Rally garnering twice as many votes as Macron’s Renaissance party. This has led to Macron calling a snap general election and there is talk of his resignation as President if he does not win.
In Hungary and Italy – two of the most anti-war countries – the incumbents won easily, although Hungary’s Orban lost seats while Italy’s Meloni gained seats. In Europe fewer than 10% think Ukraine can win the war and the majority think either Russia will win or there will be a compromise peace settlement. See this.
In the UK the Conservative party, firmly following the US neocon line on Ukraine and authorising its weapons to be used against Russian territory, is heading for a historically large defeat in the July 4th general election.
A Reminder of the Cuban Missile Crisis
While voters in the West (prospective peace-makers Trump and Robert F Kennedy in the USA are far more popular than warmonger Biden) express their fears about an escalation to an outright Russia-NATO war, recent moves by the Russian navy both recall the 1963 Cuban Missile crisis and remind the Americans of the equivalence of Russia in Cuba then and NATO in Ukraine today!
At the time Russia’s missiles in Cuba (within a few minutes flight of Washington DC) put the world on the edge of nuclear war. John F Kennedy stood firm and the missiles were withdrawn but this month, after some years of closer co-operation between Moscow and Havana a group of ships of the Russian Navy has arrived in Cuba. They include the frigate Admiral Gorshkov, as well as the nuclear submarine Kazan which is capable of carrying Zircon hypersonic missiles.
Boosting the War
The Biden administration’s decision to allow Ukraine to use long range US weapons to target Russian territory to defend the Kharkov area is causing Russia to counter by targeting the American strategic reconnaissance UAV RQ-4 Global Hawk operating in the Black Sea.
They together with NATO AWACS aircraft, have provided constant reconnaissance for the guidance of NATO missiles targeted at Crimea and the Zaporozhye region by NATO forces in the name of Ukraine.
Such US military decisions could lead to a dangerous escalation and the prospect of direct Russian/American military confrontation.
This follows the Ukraine/American drone attack on the most sensitive Russian nuclear Early Warning System at Armavir. As Dr. Theodore Postol of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology wrote:
The drones were guided to their targets using US aerial and satellite reconnaissance (they have to take multiple evasive actions in the course of their flights to evade Russian radar systems, and this can only be supplied via real-time targeting information provided by the US). The operators of the drones were likely mercenaries trained in the US or out-of-uniform US troops. Russia knows this and so it considers this a US attack on its nuclear Early Warning System.
The attack was reckless beyond comprehension. ANY such attacks against the EWS system used to protect Russia from a nuclear attack can justify, under Russian law, a nuclear retaliatory strike.
Justifying the gravest doubts about Biden’s frequent claims that the USA does not want war with Russia, NATO has published plans for transporting troops across western Europe in the event of a war with Russia: see this.
France recently announced it will deploy military trainers to Ukraine and donate Mirage 2000 fighter jets – and training their Ukrainian pilots. NATO allies, including Belgium, Norway, Denmark and the Netherlands, committed to dispatching about 80 U.S.-made F-16 fighters to Ukraine.
If these F16s are stationed in Ukraine they will be easy targets on the ground but if they are flown from neighbouring countries like Romania then those airfields could be targeted and trigger a NATO response under the mutual defence clause Article 5.
Countries Supplying Weapons to Strike Russian Territory
Given the blatant interventions of NATO countries not only with weapons systems but with trained operatives on the ground in Ukraine and targeting and missile guidance systems President Putin is considering an equivalent involvement in other parts of the world.
“We are thinking that if someone thinks it is possible to supply such weapons to a war zone to strike our territory and create problems for us, why do we not have the right to supply our weapons of the same class to those regions of the world where there will be strikes on the sensitive facilities of those countries that are doing this against Russia? We will think about this.”
There are several possibilities including North Korea (attacks on South Korea) and Iran (attacks on the UK in Cyprus or US gulf fleet).
Ukraine Mutiny
A video has appeared which gives a snapshot of the Ukraine army’s mobilisation, loss of troops, lack of training, low morale and disloyalty. Three Ukrainian soldiers are talking on a train:
We had 20% of the brigade left, the rest were dead. They wouldn’t even let us take their bodies.
(Another voice): Because they didn’t want to pay for them.
(Another voice): People are caught in the street and pushed to fight but they don’t know how to fight. And that’s it. No equipment, no ammunition, no arms. I tell you frankly if it were up to me I think so my brothers I think so we would go to Kiev with the Russians and all this would have been over a long time ago.
The madness of this war grows as inadequate political players become more hysterical by the day. Only voters can put an end to this grave crisis. In elections in 2024 they are at last reacting.
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The statistics tell the story: if you live in America in 2024, chances are you know someone with a kid who has been diagnosed with ADHD and/or autism. They’re also likely to be prescribed heavy-duty pharmaceutical drugs like Adderall to cope.
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the prevalence of autism among U.S. children has risen significantly in recent years. While 6.7 in 1,000 children were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in 2000, that number had risen to 27.6 in 1,000 children by 2020. This means that currently 1 in 36 children in the U.S. get diagnosed with ASD, up from 1 in 150 children 20 years ago.
The reasons for this increase in prevalence are not fully understood and likely complex. Some possible factors that have been proposed include better awareness and screening for autism, changes in diagnostic criteria and environmental or genetic factors. Regardless of the reasons, this rise in the number of children with autism highlights the importance of early identification and intervention to help children with ASD reach their full potential.”
Acolytes of The Science™ will simply claim over and over that the reason there appears to be more autism at an ever-increasing clip is that doctors are just getting better at diagnosing it.
The reason, for instance, they’ll claim, that autism is virtually non-existent in populations that pass on vaccines for kids and all other manner of modern pharmaceutical interventions, like the Amish, is that their autism simply isn’t diagnosed properly.
If the claim is that their rates of autism are comparable to the general population — which these apologists necessarily would have to claim; why wouldn’t they have the same rates if there is no environmental contaminant driving it? — they would have you believe the Amish are just too stupid to recognize that ten percent of their kids have autism. They just don’t notice their kids are all screwed up, a secret that’s also hidden from everyone else, because there’s not a doctor there to diagnose them.
Does that pass the smell test for you?
It doesn’t for a growing number of people with common sense year over year, who watch their kids get sicker and sicker and injected more and more often.
As of 2024, per CDC guidelines, parents are cajoled into injecting their babies no fewer than twenty times over with this and that vaccine by the time they’re six months old. And the party’s just getting started by then.
“Approximately 1 in 9 U.S. children have ever received an ADHD diagnosis (11.4%, 7.1 million children) and 10.5% (6.5 million) had current ADHD. Among children with current ADHD, 58.1% had moderate or severe ADHD, 77.9% had at least one co-occurring disorder, approximately half of children with current ADHD (53.6%) received ADHD medication, and 44.4% had received behavioral treatment for ADHD in the past year; nearly one third (30.1%) did not receive any ADHD-specific treatment…
Pediatric ADHD remains an ongoing and expanding public health concern, as approximately 1 million more children had ever received an ADHD diagnosis in 2022 than in 2016.”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and predict the prescribed solution to runaway childhood ADHD and autism is going to be new patented wonder-drugs that the corporate state media will dutifully tout heavily until some serious side effects discovered years down the road lead to their recall.
A lawsuit bonanza will ensue, at which time the companies that pushed it may or may not be required to pay minor restitution, but it won’t matter to them because they’ll have made ten times — a hundred times, a thousand times — more in profit than they’ll ever pay in damages.
Weak apologies will be made — who could have predicted? — and no one will go to jail or even be fired. In fact, the most aggressive and reckless pushers will be rewarded with C-Suite positions and cushy jobs at NIH.
And the American public will be back to square one, only sicker and more desperate than before.
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Native peoples suffered from infectious diseases after contact with European colonists, but it wasn’t because they had no immunity against the diseases brought over. Nutritional decline and environmental disruptions are what led to increased disease susceptibility in Native populations
Diseases such as smallpox and measles only became prevalent after traditional diets and lifestyles were disrupted
Early European explorers did not report diseases among Native Americans until the mid-18th century, after the introduction of sugar, white flour, coffee, tea and alcohol had weakened Native American health
Modern children are at risk due to nutrient-deficient diets and vaccination practices weakening the immune system
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I have long believed that native peoples — in the Americas, in Africa and in the South Seas — began to suffer from infectious disease as soon as they came in contact with European colonists. In fact, many have asked me how such healthy people could succumb to disease so quickly.
My answer — and not a very good one — was that in traditional cultures that had not had contact with infectious disease, the people did not need to build a strong immune system during growth, so that the nutrient-dense diet could be vectored into building a strong body, keen eyesight and good hearing; and I theorized that having never consumed sugar and therefore not needing a supercharged pancreas to produce a lot of insulin, these people were much more vulnerable to the effects of sugar when they consumed it.
This explanation is just another version of the “immunologic inadequacy” and “lack of genetic resistance” arguments that allow doctors and public health officials to ignore the main cause of disease, whether in the Old or New Worlds: malnutrition.
Malnutrition as a Cause of Infectious Disease
I recently learned that native peoples did not contract infectious disease immediately on contact with the Europeans. For example, fishermen and early explorers visited the northeastern waters along the Atlantic coast during the 15th and 16th centuries, yet we have no historical commentary on the existence of disease or epidemics among the aboriginal peoples during that time.
According to Raymond Obomsawin, in his document “Historical and Scientific Perspectives on the Health of Canada’s first Peoples (2007),” “Since the prime purpose of this early contact was to commercially exploit natural resources, any visible evidence of the physical weakness or sickness of the indigenous inhabitants would surely have excited some keen interest.” Instead these early reports marveled at the Native American’s good health and robust constitution.
Obomsawin notes that the first recorded outbreaks of infectious disease in Native Americans living in the Ottawa Valleys occurred between 1734 and 1741.
Champlain established the first European settlement at Quebec on the St. Lawrence River over 100 years earlier, in 1608, and it wasn’t until the 1800s that smallpox, measles, influenza, dysentery, diphtheria, typhus, yellow fever, whooping cough, tuberculosis, syphilis and various other “fevers” became prevalent in the aboriginal population.
By the mid-18th century, Native American life had succumbed to serious disruptions. As a result of intensive trapping, the game populations had dwindled, seriously affecting the availability of food and skins to make clothing and footwear. During this period sugar, white flour, coffee, tea and alcohol arrived on trading ships, which the colonists traded to the Indians for furs.
The same pattern prevailed on the West Coast, where the salmon fisheries became significantly depleted by the mid-1800s. These northwest peoples spoke of “disease boats” or “pestilence canoes,” the Spanish and British seagoing vessels that arrived with increasing frequency.
They brought smallpox, but also the foods that made them vulnerable to smallpox. An early 100-foot sailing cargo vessel could transport as much as 800,000 pounds of “goods” — or maybe we should say “bads.”
Tribal peoples largely dependent upon the buffalo were not affected until the early 1870s, when the animals became depleted through exploitation and deliberate campaigns to kill off the herds upon which they depended.
The Transformation of Aboriginal Health
According to a Canadian government report, “The transformation of Aboriginal people from the state of good health that had impressed travelers from Europe to one of ill health … grew worse as sources of food and clothing from the land declined and traditional economies collapsed.
It grew worse still as once mobile peoples were confined to small plots of land where resources and opportunities for natural sanitation were limited. It worsened yet again as long-standing norms, values, social systems and spiritual practices were undermined or outlawed.”
Regarding Plymouth colony, the Pilgrims were not the first Europeans in the area. European fishermen had been sailing off the New England coast, with considerable Native American contact, for much of the 16th and 17th centuries, and trading for beaver skins commenced in the early 1600s, prior to the arrival of the Pilgrims in 1620.
In 1605, the Frenchman Samuel de Champlain made an extensive and detailed map of the area and the surrounding lands, showing the Patuxet village (where the town of Plymouth was later built) as a thriving settlement.
In 1617 to 1618, just prior to the arrival of the Mayflower, a mysterious epidemic wiped out up to 90% of the Indian population along the Massachusetts coast. History books blame the epidemic on smallpox, but an analysis has concluded that it may have been a disease called leptospirosis.1(Even today, leptospirosis kills almost 60,000 people per year.)
Both wild and domestic animals can transmit leptospirosis through their urine and other fluids; rodents are the most common vector, and the beaver is a rodent. During springtime, both male and female beavers secrete a sticky, pungent substance called castoreum to attract other beavers, often depositing it in small “scent mounds” near the runways leading into their lodges.
Trappers used castoreum to scent their traps in order to catch the beavers and also traded it with the Europeans, who valued it as a base for flower-scented perfumes. Perhaps this early instance of disease was a kind of Beaver Revenge, spread by the leptospirosis organism in their castoreum — payback for exploitation of their species, for hunting them almost to extermination!
Anyway, the point is that the infectious diseases that caused so much suffering did not arrive until after a period of nutritional decline; and fear and despair almost certainly played a role.
Most Infectious Deaths Attributed to Lack of Water
When disease broke out in a village, the afflicted often found themselves abandoned by those still healthy, so they had no one to care for them. Unable to get water for themselves, they typically died of thirst. This may explain why the death rates during outbreaks were so much higher for the Native Americans (typically 90%) than for Europeans (typically 30%).
This is not to say that exposure to new microorganisms does not play a role in causing epidemics of infectious disease — but these new organisms are not likely to cause disease in well-nourished individuals with strong immune systems.
Modern Diet Is Nutrient-Deficient
Now let’s fast forward to today. We have a population of children who are extremely poorly nourished. Both bad diet and the practice of vaccination can weaken the immune system. (See Tom Cowan’s book “Vaccines, Autoimmunity, and the Changing Nature of Childhood Illness” for an explanation of how vaccinations depress rather than enhance the immune system.)
And thanks to the practice of vaccination, we are also seeing the emergence of new and more virulent forms of diseases like measles and pertussis. Dr. Cowan and many others are predicting a resurgence of massive epidemics, outbreaks of infectious disease against which modern medicine will be helpless.
Dear parents, please be forewarned and protect your children in advance — feed them nutrient-dense foods, especially foods rich in the fat-soluble activators, and just say no to vaccines.
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Sally Fallon Morell is author of the best-selling cookbook “Nourishing Traditions” and many other books on diet and health. She is the founding president of the Weston A. Price Foundation (westonaprice.org) and a founder of A Campaign for Real Milk (realmilk.com). Visit her blog at nourishingtraditions.com.
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As the world watched on social media and responded in outrage, US corporate media, once again, provided cover for the perpetrators of Israel’s genocide.
Source: FAIR
Over the Memorial Day weekend, Israel bombed starving Gazan refugees crowded in tents in Rafah, where Israel had told them to go. As Jeffrey St. Clair (CounterPunch, 5/31/24) wrote, leaflets dropped in Rafah a few days before told them to go to “Tel al-Sultan through Beach Road,” an area set up by the UNRWA refugee agency and designated a UN humanitarian safe zone. The leaflet added, “Don’t blame us after we warned you.”
Nevertheless, without warning, Israel hit the camp with at least eight missiles spreading fire though the encampment of plastic tents (Quds News, 5/26/24). Some refugees burned to death, mostly women and children, leaving them dismembered and charred.
Image: CounterPunch (5/31/24): “When the Israeli bombs strafed the safe zone, the plastic tents caught fire, sending flames leaping two meters high, before the melting, blazing structures collapsed on the people inside, many of them children who’d just been tucked in for the evening.”
The world saw the terror of the massacre on international and social media. Images showed the area of the strike engulfed in flames as Palestinians screamed, cried, ran for safety and sought to help the injured. “They told people to move there then killed them,” Richard Medhurst (5/28/24) posted.
A boy cries in horror and fear as he watches his father’s tent burn with him inside. A man holds up the body of his charred, now-headless baby, wandering around, not knowing what to do or where to go. An injured, starving child convulses in pain as a medic struggles to find a vein for an IV in her emaciated arm (Al Jazeera, 5/27/24).
Al Jazeera (cited by Quds News, 5/26/24) quoted a Civil Defense source: “We believe that the occupation army used internationally prohibited weapons to target the displaced in Rafah, judging by the size of the fires that erupted at the targeted site.”
US news media reported the tent massacre, some more truthfully than others. But most establishment media repeated Israel’s false claims that it was an accident, weaving disinformation messaging into toned-down descriptions of the scene. With confused syntax, they omitted words like “genocide,” “massacre” and “starvation.” Most left out the language of international law that is best able to explain the unprecedented crimes against humanity that Israel is committing. Corporate reporting left the tent massacre devoid of context and empathy, ignored actions that need to be taken, and ultimately facilitated the ongoing Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
Embedded with an Illegal Invasion
When NBC News (5/28/24) reported from Gaza that “Israeli tanks reached the city center for the first time, according to NBC News‘ crew on the ground,” it failed to say that the NBC crew was embedded with Israel’s invading force.
Image: By being embedded with Israeli forces, NBC (5/28/24) presented news literally from the IDF point of view.
The same sentence continued that Israel was “defying international pressure to halt an offensive that has sent nearly 1 million people fleeing Rafah.” But Israel was not just “defying…pressure”; it was in violation of a direct order from the International Court of Justice ICJ to halt its attack on Rafah. Yet NBC reporters rode into Rafah with an army that was ignoring international law to commit further genocide in Gaza.
Compare NBC’s words to those used by Ramy Abdu (5/26/24), chair of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, who posted: “In the deadliest response to the International Court of Justice’s decision, the Israeli army targeted a group of displaced persons’ tents in Rafah, killing approximately 60 innocent civilians so far.”
In a post, Francesca Albanese (5/26/24), UN special rapporteur for human rights in Palestine, included International actions that needed to be implemented:
The #GazaGenocide will not easily end without external pressure: Israel must face sanctions, justice, suspension of agreements, trade, partnership and investments, as well as participation in int’l forums.
Such sanctions are rarely discussed in establishment media, but are becoming more urgent, given the New York Times report (5/29/24) that Israel intends to extend the genocide through the remainder of 2024. Though the Times reported on the global outrage and demonstrations against the Rafah massacre, the words “genocide” and “massacre” were not used, nor was there any mention of the possibility of sanctions against Israel.
Targeting ‘Hamas,’ Not Civilians
Instead of sourcing the International Criminal Court, the International Court of Justice or any humanitarian actors in the region, NBC (5/28/24) quoted a UN Security Council spokesperson:
Israel has a right to go after Hamas, and we understand this strike killed two senior Hamas terrorists who are responsible for attacks against Israeli civilians…. But as we’ve been clear, Israel must take every precaution possible to protect civilians.
Israel’s claim that it killed two Hamas leaders became the rationale for the strike, which was repeated extensively on corporate media. Over NBC‘s images of burning tents and killing scenes, the header read, “Dozens killed in Gaza tent camp in an airstrike targeting two Hamas commanders.”
The dead were connected to Hamas whenever possible. At the bottom of the video, the subtitles listed numbers of dead, followed with, “according to the emergency services in Hamas-run Gaza.”
Human rights attorney and Rutgers academic Noura Erakat (5/27/24) exposed the attempt to link murdered children to Hamas. Over the picture of a burned baby, she posted these harsh words:
Have you ever seen a burnt baby? Can you imagine her final, gaping screams? And all Israel had to tell you was “Hamas,” so you look at her and shrug. Your willful ignorance is genocidal.
CounterPunch (5/31/24) quoted Jeremy Konyndyk, former head of disaster relief for US Agency for International Development, saying, “Bombing a tent camp full of displaced people is a clear-cut, full-on war crime” who added, “Even if Hamas troops were present, that does not absolve the IDF of the obligation to protect civilians. It does not turn a tent camp into a free fire zone.”
‘A Tragic Incident’
On NBC (5/28/24), under the footage of the burning horrors of Rafah, the chyron read, “Netanyahu: Deadly Strike a Tragic Incident.”
In response to Israel’s “accident” claim, journalists, activists and social media users, including Rep. Rashida Tlaib, reacted with incredulity and withering criticism of those who asserted it. That was the reaction Axios reporter and CNN analyst Barak Ravid (5/27/24) received when he posted, “Breaking: Netanyahu says the airstrike in Rafah on Sunday was ‘a tragic mistake,’ and adds that it will be investigated.” Katie Halper (5/27/24) replied to Ravid with, “Nice to see you using your position as a journalist to do comms for the Israeli government.”
This was intentional. You don’t accidentally kill massive amounts of children and their families over and over again and get to say, “It was a mistake.” Genocidal maniac Netanyahu told us he wants to ethnically cleanse Palestinians.
She ended with the question, “When are you going to believe him?”
Sana Saeed (5/27/24), media critic for Al Jazeera+, posted the front pages of four print publications that repeated Netanyahu’s accident claim. The New York Times used “Tragic Accident,” while “Tragic Mistake” was preferred by Time magazine, Forbes and the AP. Over the headlines, she called them “propagandists for genocide masquerading as journalists.”
‘What Israel Shared with Us’
But CNN (5/28/24) seemed to be vying for Most Valuable Propagandists by elaborating on the unlikely details offered by the IDF to describe the official Israeli version of what happened. It began with Netanyahu speaking to the Knesset: “Despite our best effort not to harm those not involved, unfortunately a tragic error happened last night. We are investigating the case.”
After four paragraphs of details of the massacre—“burned bodies, including those of children, could be seen being pulled by rescuers from the wreckage”—CNN returned to the justifications. The long, breathless chain of details began:
A US official told CNN Monday that Israel had told the Biden administration it used a precision munition to hit a target in Rafah, but that the explosion from the strike ignited a fuel tank nearby and started a fire that engulfed a camp for displaced Palestinians and led to dozens of deaths.
But the claims could not be confirmed; “It’s what Israel shared with us,” the official said.
But the attack on Rafah was in no way a single “precision” “hit,” as numerous sources reported that multiple bombs hit the camp. And Al Jazeera (5/27/24) reported that Israeli drone strikes also hit the Kuwaiti Hospital, the only functioning hospital in the area, killing two medics. It also pointed out that no notice to evacuate came before the strike.
Ever-changing Disinformation
In an X post (5/27/24), Intercept co-founder Jeremy Scahill noted the shifting narrative coming from Israel:
Netanyahu now admits Israel carried out the horrifying bombings that incinerated human beings in Rafah last night and turned a refugee camp into hellfire. I assume all the people who claimed it was actually a failed Hamas rocket attack will now rush to correct themselves.
As we observed after the flour massacre (FAIR.org, 3/22/24), Israel’s string of differing false statements immediately following a massacre is an IDF propaganda strategy designed to confuse and delay. Focusing on changing falsities distracts from the massacre and turns the cameras away from the horrible images of US-supplied weapons slaughter. In this way, massacres become normalized.
Repeating and discussing the ever-changing Israeli disinformation of denial, discussing weapons and official statements, also allows US corporate media to avoid easily observed patterns of Israel’s ongoing massacres, in addition to drawing public attention away from the suffering. But on social media, the raw footage and cries of outrage by users indicate that the manufactured emotional distance collapses online.
Some users expressed extreme distress after prolonged viewing of such imagery. One Palestinian organizer (5/27/24) said:
I’m shaking uncontrollably since last night. I can’t get the beheaded baby that was burned alive. The woman’s screaming out of my head. The decomposed bodies of babies out of my head. The girl whose body was stuck to a wall. Hind’s final message to PRCS…. And now. How do you watch all this and not feel your soul dead?
The daughter of Palestinian refugees posted (5/27/24):
The flour massacre, the tents massacre, the hospital massacre, the refugee camp massacre, the “safe corridor” massacre, the endless massacres, in homes, on the streets, in tents, on foot— eight months of massacre after massacre after massacre.
Another user (5/27/24) asked, “Why do so many Israeli mistakes involve launching multiple missiles at people they’ve assured are in safe zones?”
‘Willful Media Blackout’
It was the Israeli newspaper Haaretz (2/29/24) that exposed US corporate media reporting as repeated propaganda in a piece titled, “In Netanyahu’s Israel, the Rafah Horror Was Neither ‘a Mishap’ nor Exceptional.” The editorial scoffed at the use of “tragic mishap” to describe the “horrific incident.” It observed that “it took Netanyahu 20 hours to produce the disgraceful statement, which, as usual, lacked any shred of regret over the death of ‘noncombatants.’”
Haaretz derided the “willful media blackout regarding the scope of death and destruction over the last eight months.” Skeptical about the assertion that “it was not expected to cause damage to noncombatant civilians,” the paper observed that, if true, “this involves an ongoing failure at the strategic level.”
Image: LA Progressive (6/7/24): “In response to this massacre…the best US spokespeople could muster was to urge Israel to be ‘transparent’ about the assault.”
By May 29, US corporate media began to report extensively that the Israeli bombs dropped on Rafah that burned Palestinian refugees alive were made in the US. A munitions fragment was filmed by Palestinian journalist Alam Sadeq, and was posted on X (5/27/24) by former US Army explosive expert Trevor Ball two days earlier. Much was made of the fact that the ordinance was smaller than the usual 2,000-pound bombs used to destroy Gaza, and were the preferred bombs the Biden administration had sent to Israel.
As the New York Times (5/29/24) put it, “US officials have been pushing Israel to use more of this type of bomb, which they say can reduce civilian casualties.” The lengthy report included a drawing of the bomb, the details of its manufacture, and assertions that its use by Israel indicated they tried to kill fewer civilians. Gone were any mention of the “tragic mistake,” and the “exploded fuel tank,” forgotten as yesterday’s fake news.
But a lengthy back-and-forth about how the fire could have started failed to point out the obvious, which comes only at the very end when a retired US Air Force sergeant observes, “When you use a weapon that’s intended as precision and low–collateral damage in an area where civilians are saturated, it really negates that intended use.”
As Israel’s atrocities continue to mount in Gaza, the LA Progressive (6/7/24) wrote that though Biden claimed to care about the loss of civilian life in Gaza, and that an Israeli attacked on Rafah would be a “red line,” “events of the past weeks have demonstrated that none of these claims are in fact true.” It added that a month ago, Hamas agreed to an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire agreement “that looked a lot like the ceasefire agreement now being promoted by the Biden administration,” but Israel responded by rejecting that agreement as well.
In addition, Israel closed off the border area between Israel and Egypt, cutting off any aid or supplies from coming into famine-ravaged Gaza. The authors concluded, “What has transpired is a horrifying series of massacres against civilians, which the Biden administration continues to try to downplay, excuse and explain away.”
Over the last eight months, US establishment media have helped Biden “explain away” such atrocities. They have not stopped repeating Israel’s propaganda, and have acted as willing conduits for Israeli disinformation. It is past time they stopped doing so, and started reporting on what is actually happening on the ground in Gaza, not through the eyes of the IDF.
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Robin Andersen teaches media studies at Fordham University. (Follow her @MediaPhiled).
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Aleksandar Vučić is the President of Serbia. He gave a television interview which I mentioned on last night’s Hal Turner Radio Show, wherein he states plainly “We will have World War within three to four months, maybe sooner.” Clips from that interview appear below – watch it.
He went on to say his people are being told to check their flour, sugar, and food supplies, and prepare.
He outlines very clearly, what is at stake for the collective West as it relates to the ongoing Ukraine-Russia conflict, and how if the West loses, it falls apart politically and loses respect of the entire world, but if Russia loses, their country “will no longer exist as it is shaped today.” With the stakes so high for both sides, a massive collision and war seems now to be “unavoidable.”
For MONTHS, I have warned readers of this website and listeners to my radio show, that this conflict was going to go “wild weasel” and result in what I personally believe, will be actual nuclear war.
I have suggested, advised, cajoled, and even implored you to get emergency water, emergency food, extra medicine that you need to live, and other “preps” like flashlights for every room in the house, spare batteries for them, a first aid kit with bandages to treat wounds or injuries, a generator to supply electric to your refrigerator so your food won’t go bad if the electric grid goes down, spare fuel for that generator, COMMUNICATIONS GEAR like CB or HAM radio, to talk with locals and be able to hear news from around the world by shortwave (HAM).
I have been regularly ridiculed as “Chicken Little – the Sky is falling.” People have lambasted me as promoting “fear porn” and offering stories as “click bait” even though there are no ads on this site for which I get any revenue!
Many people have flatly DENIED REALITY for months, have ignored my warnings and have done nothing. Now, the President of Serbia is telling everyone just how bad things are getting.
If you don’t start getting the emergency supplies you will need, then you and your family will be shit-out-of-luck when the fighting starts – because millions of other morons, who also did nothing, will all be running to the stores trying to get food and supplies. The store shelves will be picked clear within hours. Just like what happens when a hurricane is going to make landfall, and all the morons who didn’t do anything because they wanted to see where it would come ashore, all run out to get supplies at the last minute. Store shelves are emptied and they are out of luck.
Here are excerpts from the Serbian President’s interview. PLEASE listen to him and take action to prepare for what’s coming.
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I was arrested again inside of Congress for speaking out against US-backed genocide.
Myself and others were brutally tackled and carried out of the room by Capitol Police. I was charged with “crowding, obstructing, or incommoding” for speaking out and holding a sign as the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense testified in Congress for more money for the endless US war machine.
While they are arresting peace activists for exercising first amendment rights they are making plans to host Netanyahu- a war criminal with an actual arrest warrant from the International Criminal Court.
For decades, people following CODEPINK’s lead have been protesting inside the halls of Congress. The year before October 7, there were a handful of us protesting the bloated military budgets and the US warmongering. I was arrested several times on my own, but since October, dozens of us have been arrested in Congress, hundreds in DC, and thousands across the US and the world for Palestine.
The sustained energy and activism are the result of the 40,000+ thousands of Palestinians murdered, millions being starved and displaced, their land, water, and air poisoned, and neighborhoods, hospitals, schools, and refugee camps demolished.
The real criminals are the ones we are protesting against–the ones literally sitting directly in front of us inside the hearing room–and should be the ones arrested, charged, and found guilty for the war criminals they are funding and supporting and the war crimes they are committing.
Any of us speaking and acting out on the side of justice know we are taking risks. We see it as our duty as people in the US in solidarity with and inspired by the Palestinian people facing and resisting this horror.
As I await my court date, I think of the people I spent the night with at the DC detention facility. Just this year, there have been 5 deaths inside the D.C. jail. The dozen or so women in there reminded me that poverty is a policy choice and our carceral, systemically racist state perpetuates harm and cycles of violence.
According to the US Center for Palestinian Rights in Washington DC, for this year alone (before our additional billions of aid weresent), $15,596,311 to Israel’s weapons could instead fund 451,735 households with public housing, 1,322,199 children receiving free or low-cost healthcare, 41,490 elementary school teachers, 10,818,505 households with solar electricity produce, and 100,563 students with their loan debt canceled.
The fight against US militarism is one where the climate, feminist, Indigenous, economic, and racial justice movements are all uniting around right now. And as it deepens and strengthens, we must become more organized as we escalate while we continue to make those in power uncomfortable.
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Olivia DiNucci is an anti-militarism and climate justice organizer based in Washington DC.
This article was written more than 8 years ago, focussing on the Azov Battalion’s Neo-Nazi Children’s Summer Training Camps. The extensive crimes committed against Ukrainian children are barely acknowledged by our governments and the media,
In the words of the late John Pilger (May 1, 2023) referring to Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi regime:
“The rise of fascism in Europe is uncontroversial. Or ‘neo-Nazism’ or ‘extreme nationalism’, as you prefer. Ukraine as modern Europe’s fascist beehive has seen the re-emergence of the cult of Stepan Bandera, the passionate anti-Semite and mass murderer who lauded Hitler’s ‘Jewish policy’, which left 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews slaughtered. ‘We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,’ a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews. (John Pilger, May Day 2023)
The tacit support of Neo-nazism in Ukraine by Western governments is not a recent post World War II phenomenon. The history of both World War II and “the inter-War period” (1918-1939) has a direct bearing on today’s Neo-nazism.
This multibillion dollar debt payed a key role. Hitler’s Election Campaign was endorsed by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England:
“On January 4th, 1932, a meeting was held between British financier Montagu Norman (Governor of the Bank of England), Adolf Hitler andFranz Von Papen (who became Chancellor a few months later in May 1932). At this meeting, an agreement on the financing of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP or Nazi Party) was reached.
This meeting was also attended by US policy-makers and the Dulles brothers, something which their biographers do not like to mention.”
The Azov Battalion’s Children’s Summer Training Camps
These innocent Ukrainian young kids trained and indoctrinated in the Azov summer camp in 2014-2015 are now (2023) adolescents, in their mid to late teens, recruited by the Nazi Azov Battalion to “Fight The Russians”.
A 2017 NBC Report entitled “Ukraine’s Hyper Nationalist Summer Camp for Kids” documents the existence of the Summer camps, where kids of 9 years old are recruited and later enlisted in the Azov Battalion.
“In 2014, a group of armed Ukrainian civilians known as the Azov Battalion banded together to fight pro-Russian separatists for control of the country. Three years later, they’ve been absorbed by the National Guard of Ukraine, and when they’re not engaged in the ongoing conflict, they run an annual children’s summer camp featuring pro-Ukrainian campfire songs, rigorous military drills, and a hardline stance on national identity.”
The NBC report confirms that the Nazi Azov Battalion was integrated into Ukraine’s National Guard (in fact it was not in 2017 but several months following EuroMaidan in November 2014). The National Guard is under the jurisdiction of Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, which has the mandate (in coordination with the Ministry of Defense) of waging military operations against the separatist provinces of Donesk and Luhansk. The Azov Battalion is now part of the recently created “Offensive Guard”.
The NBC report is careful not to associate the Azov Battalion with Nazism. They are called Ultra-Nationalists. There is ample evidence that these Summer camps are intent upon instilling Nazi ideology in young children. See report below.
And Ukraine’s Nazi Azov Battalion has been generously supported from the outset by both the U.S. and Canada. This a crime against humanity, a crime against Ukrainian children, who are now adolescents recruited to fight in Kiev’s counteroffensive.
On June 15-16, 2024, 2024 delegates from 90 countries will be meeting at the Bürgenstock resort near Lucerne, in the context of a Peace Conference organized by the Swiss government to which Russia was not invited.
Our governments not only refuse to invite Russia to this event, their fake peace-making endeavour consists in supporting Ukraine’s 21st Century Neo Nazi regime.
Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 13, 2024
Zelensky is Jewish. He supports the Nazi Azov Battalion, the two Nazi parties, which have committed countless atrocities against the Jewish community in Ukraine.
He belongs to a Russian-Jewish family. He was brought up as a native Russian speaker, who until recently was not fluent in Ukrainian.
Video: NBC’s Short Documentary. Does not Refer to Nazism
Introduction
Unknown to most Americans and Canadians, the US government is channeling financial support, weapons and training to a Neo-Nazi entity –which is part of The Ukraine National Guard– The Azov Battalion (Батальйон Азов). Canada and Britain have confirmed that they also are providing support to the National Guard.
The Azov Battalion -which “officially” displays the Nazi SS emblem– (below left) is described by the Kiev regime as “a volunteer battalion of territorial defense”. It’s a National Guard battalion under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the equivalent of America’s Homeland Security.
Officially based in Berdyank on the Sea of Azov, the Azov battalion was formed by the regime to fight the opposition insurgency in the Donbass region. (Eastern and Southern Ukraine).
Military Training of Young Children to fight the Russians
The Azov battalion supported by its Western partners is not only involved in para-military operations in Eastern Ukraine. According to reports including the Kyiv Post (Ukraine mainstream media), it is running a Summer Camp military training project for young children as part of its broader training and indoctrination program.
According to RT:
“The camp was established to show the children that there are things in life besides school and mobile devices and to “give them our love,” Oleksii, a platoon commander in the Azov battalion and instructor at the camp, told Ukrainian ICTV channel. “One has to be strong; has to be courageous to defend the territorial integrity of our motherland,” he added.” (RT report)
Western media sources (quoted by the Kyiv Post) confirm that children as young as six years old (see images below) are participating in the Azov Summer Camp located in the Vodytsya district outside Kyiv.
The text on the banner reads: Iдея B Нації, сила В тобі: broadly translated: The Idea of the Nation, The Power within You
The above photos confirm that many of the children are in fact young kids rather than adolescents.
The Kyiv Post –which blames the Western media for its biased coverage– nonetheless acknowledges the diabolical nature of the military training project:
… this particular camp is run by the Azov Battalion founded by lawmaker Andriy Biletsky, its former commander. Located in the wooded area of Kyiv’s Pushcha Vodytsya district, kids at this summer camp aren’t just playing soldiers – they’re getting actual military training from soldiers who have fought on the front line in Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Named Azovets, the camp has been the subject of negative coverage in the Russian media, pro-Russia websites and even U.K. tabloid The Daily Mail.
“Neo-Nazi summer camp: Ukrainian kids taught to shoot AKs by Azov battalion members (PHOTOS),” reads Kremlin-controlled RT’s headline for its story about the camp.
“Shocking pictures from inside neo-Nazi military camp reveal recruits as young as SIX are being taught how to fire weapons (even though there’s a ceasefire),” reads the headline in the Daily Mail’s sensationalized and inaccurate article. (Kyiv Post, August 29, 2015)
While the Kiev regime denies that Azov is a Neo-Nazi entity, the logos of both the Azov batallion as well as the Avovets Summer Camp (displayed on the Summer Camp T shirts) bear the symbol of the Nazi SS Wolfsangel with shadows of “the Nazi Black Sun” in the background.
Wolfsangel logo on the T Shirts with SS Reich’s division symbol
The Kyiv Post article describes in detail the nature of the “Neo-Nazi Summer Camp”. What the reports confirm is that an entity under the jurisdiction of Ukraine’s National Guard (financed by the Ukraine Ministry of internal Affairs) is training and indoctrinating small children in the art of warfare:
The Azovets summer camp accepts children of Azov Battalion members, as well as kids from Kyiv’s nearby Obolon district and further afield. It opened on June 22, runs weeklong programs of activities for groups of 30 to 40 kids. Officially, it is for children aged from nine to 18, but there are kids as young as seven there. A few of the kids had already attended it for several weeks in a row.
What makes the camp most controversial is that it’s run by Azov fighters, some of whom have been labeled as far-right supporters and neo-Nazis. Critics say the battalion’s symbol is an inverted Wolfsangel that has oblique but uncomfortable associations with Nazism.
In previous interviews with Ukrainian media, Biletsky says the symbolism is misunderstood. The letters “N” and “I” make up Azov’s insignia, which he says stand for “national idea.”
Biletsky founded a neo-Nazi group in Ukraine called the Social-National Assembly, and there certainly are neo-Nazis among the battalion’s ranks, some sporting Nazi tattoos. Some media have reported that up to 20 percent of Azov’s fighters are neo-Nazis, though the battalion’s press officers are always at pains to emphasize that Azov, as a military formation, does not share the ideology of its founder Biletsky, or indeed have any ideology other than fervent patriotism.
When the Kyiv Post visited the Azovets camp on Aug. 19 the kids were busy with a range of activities, including stripping down and assembling AK-47 assault rifles, target practice (with air guns), tackling assault courses, and practicing combat poses and patrolling. They also take part in various sports and games, do rappelling and climbing, and practice other more traditional scouting and woodcraft skills like tying knots.
“I’ve been here only for three days, but I’ve realized that it’s not a camp where you just play games. We’re getting military training here,” one of the kids at the camp told the Kyiv Post.
Out in the forest next to the camp, a group of kids was getting some weapons safety advice from an Azov trainer.
“Do you know what would happen if you kept your fingers on the trigger? If it were a real gun, you could kill your comrades. So, don’t do it!” the trainer barks.
“Yes sir!” the kids answer.
The children then practice medically evacuating wounded soldiers from the battlefield.
The militaristic atmosphere at the camp, including strict discipline, has plainly influenced some of the children.
“I got my hair cut really short yesterday,” says one boy. “Just because I want it. I look more like a soldier now.”
Two older kids, who, like many of the children at the camp, have taken noms de guerre (Medic and Physicist) in imitation of Ukraine’s real soldiers, said they now wanted to join the Azov Battalion.
“I want to defend my homeland. There are comrades who support my idea. I think that if it’s necessary, I will fight,” 17-year old Physicist told the Kyiv Post.
The children at the camp are organized into four groups, depending on their age, with each group overseen by a trainer and caregiver. The camp’s day starts early, at 7 a.m. sharp, and ends at 11 p.m. The children sleep in tents.
Access to Azov’s own website and supporting websites was closed off to the public last September when the battalion was integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine, but the camp has a page on the Russian social network Vkontakte (https://vk.com/tabir.azovec) where it is promoted, and where people can apply to become volunteers, or contact the camp to send their children there.
“The Mission of the Camp: To form the Ukrainian of a new era – a patriot, who is ready to actively participate in building and defending Ukraine,” the page’s description reads.
…
The military-patriotic songs that the children sing every day as a part of the camp’s program do seem to be one of the more popular activities for the kids. Late at night, sitting around a blazing campfire, they belt out their favorites – patriotic songs dating back to Ukraine’s previous struggles for independence in the early- to mid-20th century.
The Kyiv Post listened to the words of one of the songs. Its lyrics were about Ukrainian soldiers defeating their enemies.
Today that enemy is Russia. A boy who sits on a log softly whispers: “I want that this war will end and we will kill all the Russians.” (Kyiv Post, August 29, 2015, emphasis added)
This diabolical endeavor, which incites hate by innocent children against ethnic Russians as well as opponents of the Kiev regime is broadly supported by US military aid channelled to the Ukraine National Guard via the Ministry of Internal Affairs. The MIA coordinates the “anti-terrorism operation” (ATO) in Donbass.
While the US Congress has adopted amendments to its “Department of Defense Appropriations Act of 2015.” to block the training of the Azov battalion’s Neo-Nazis, in practice the money trickles down.
Moreover, in addition to military aid channelled under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon, the California National Guard has established a partnership with the Ukraine National Guard, which includes the Azov Battalion:
“The California–Ukraine State Partnership Program (SPP) Mission [under the auspices of the California National Guard] is to promote democracy, free market economies and military reform, by establishing long-term institutional affiliations … The California – Ukraine partnership directly supports both the goals of the US Ambassador to Ukraine and Commander, U.S. European Command. … (Office of Defense Cooperation (ODC), Chief: LTC Tracey D. Rueschhoff)
Scroll down for Selected Images of the Azov Battalion “Freedom Fighters”
These are the people who are training Ukrainian kids to handle AK 47s at the Neo-Nazi Summer Camp. Its all for a good cause: “the flowering of democracy” in the words the New York Times.
Imagine what would happen if the California National Guard were to display swastika-like symbols on its uniforms.
California National Guard, October 2013. Firefighting in Southern California
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“HUNGER CATASTROPHE IN GAZA – DONATIONS NEEDED” cries Mercy Corps.
“URGENT: STARVATION IN GAZA: ALL GIFTS MATCHED FOR GAZA” shouts Rescue.org.
These and many other appeals from international relief organizations have motivated untold numbers of compassionate and generous souls to open their purses. You may be among them. If so, you may have thought that these organizations are delivering food, medicine and other relief supplies to Gaza. But they are not.
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) confirms that not a single truck with relief aid has crossed the border from Egypt to Gaza since Israeli troops captured the Rafah border crossing on May 7, 2024, more than a month ago. Until then, the Rafah crossing was the only one open. Today, roughly 1800 mostly large 18-wheel trucks, each carrying up to 12 tons of supplies, are backed up into the Sinai Desert, waiting for Israeli permission to enter. Some have been there for months. And some of those trucks belong to the relief organizations. But they, like all the others, are not getting in.
Many of the organizations also announce that, thanks to your donations, they have provided hundreds of thousands or even millions of meals to starving Palestinians in Gaza. What they do not necessarily tell you is that they are doing this by purchasing food and medicine from the dwindling supplies inside Gaza.
The bottom line is that your money is reaching the relief organization’s operations in Gaza, but food, water and medical supplies are not. The amount of food in Gaza is dwindling, and Israel is allowing only a tiny trickle to enter by isolated air drops, a single delivery by sea and occasional vehicles through the Erez crossing between Gaza and Israel. For a pre-October 7th population of 2.3 million, this is nothing.
As the supplies shrink inside Gaza, the prices rise, and your donations increase the prices further. The same applies to all the needs of the population. More money chasing fewer goods. At some point, no amount of money will buy food or medicine in Gaza. Already, Palestinians are dying of starvation, malnutrition and diseases caused by reduced resistance. These are not often reported, because they are not victims of violent slaughter, and because the hospitals, clinics and mortuaries that would have reported them to the Ministry of Health – who would have tallied them – no longer exist. The Ministry of Health barely exists, while the weak die anonymously, buried by their families and communities. Some estimates of such casualties are already in the hundreds of thousands.
It’s not that the relief agencies are not performing a worthwhile service. They are enabling increasingly scarce supplies to reach larger numbers of destitute people while they last. But they will not last, and the relief organizations are unable to bring additional supplies. Furthermore, they are mostly failing to be forthright with you by reporting these facts. Instead, they are projecting an image of success, with the result that you might think that they are maintaining a lifeline when in fact Gaza is heading to complete depletion of the few resources that remain.
This is what Israel intends. If the food is distributed equitably, a large proportion of the population will survive until the day there is nothing left. Then everyone will starve at the same time, and the genocide will be accomplished quickly with the last loaves of bread costing $1000 apiece. And the humanitarian relief organizations will not have warned you.
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Paul Larudee is a retired academic and current administrator of a nonprofit human rights and humanitarian aid organization. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Yazan al-Kafarna is one of the latest to die of hunger and malnutrition in Gaza since the start of the war on 7 October (Screengrab/X)
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Nearly 300 people were massacred at a refugee camp in central Gaza on June 7 under the guise of rescuing captives held by resistance forces since the beginning of the Al-Aqsa Storm on October 7.
It was later announced that four of those held were retrieved in what was promoted as a major military victory for the Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF).
Nonetheless, the deaths of at least 274 Palestinians were reported by western media sources as a necessary by-product of the purported successful military operation. This follows the same pattern of coverage by the corporate and government-controlled news agencies which are based in the imperialist states and their satellites.
Official figures from the Palestinian Health Ministry based in Gaza indicate that more than 37,000 people have been killed since the intensified aerial bombardments and ground operations. In addition to those killed, tens of thousands more have been wounded and injured as the entire population of 2.3 million remain displaced and imperiled.
Hospitals, schools, neighborhoods, religious institutions, refugees and internally displaced camps have been subjected to massive bombing, shelling and raids. The Israeli government and the United States have repeatedly blamed Hamas and other resistance movements for the initiation of this latest phase of the war as well as their refusal to accept the terms laid down by Washington and Tel Aviv for a ceasefire.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has made numerous trips to the West Asia and North Africa regions supposedly seeking to negotiate a settlement. However, the administration of President Joe Biden consistently says that its commitment to the settler-colonial state now occupying Palestine is “ironclad”. This commitment to the security of the State of Israel includes massive shipments of warplanes, guns and bombs.
In addition to the supply of arms, U.S. military and intelligence support to Tel Aviv is critical to the ongoing genocide in Gaza. This was revealed recently when the Islamic Republic of Iran retaliated against the targeted assassinations of several diplomatic and military officials from Tehran who were in Damascus, Syria assisting that government which has been under siege since 2011 by the imperialist states and their allies in the country.
Consequently, it was not surprising when several news agencies reported the U.S. role in this recent massacre which has been condemned by various organizations and governments throughout the world. In an effort to redirect the attention from the genocidal actions of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and the Pentagon, the U.S. submitted a resolution to the United Nations Security Council on June 10 which passed with only one abstention from the Russian Federation. (See this)
However, it is quite obvious that the Biden administration and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu do not want a meaningful ceasefire after more than eight months of bombing and shelling. The White House and the U.S. Congress are continuing to supply weapons and diplomatic cover for the Zionist state.
“An American cell in Israel supported the efforts to release the Israeli captives, working with Israeli forces on the operation, a U.S. official told CNN. The official referred to a U.S. team that’s been in place supporting Israel since 7 October with information gathering about the captives.
That team, composed of special operations, military, and intelligence personnel working out of the embassy in Jerusalem, has been in Israel since the war began, The Washington Post reported. Since then, it has shared with Israeli counterparts information about captives’ potential location gleaned from U.S. drone surveillance over Gaza, communications intercepts and other sources, said the people familiar with the matter.”
In another report on the June 8 massacre in Nuseirat, the Lebanese-based Al Mayadeen Television network cited western sources as confirmation of the Pentagon involvement in the killing of 274 people in central Gaza. This represented the continuation of the collaboration between the Pentagon and the IDF in the latest genocidal onslaught.
“The Israeli occupation forces launched on Saturday (June 8) numerous airstrikes on the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza, which led to the death of at least 210 Palestinians and injury of 400. A team of American experts stationed in Israeli-occupied lands supported the Israeli military in retrieving the four captives by giving information and other logistical support, according to one American official, who spoke anonymously to discuss the delicate operation.
A senior Israeli official told the NYT that the U.S. and UK have been in ‘Israel’ throughout the war on Gaza, assisting Israeli intelligence in gathering and analyzing information about the captives, some of whom are citizens of both countries. Two Israeli official sources cited that U.S. military officers gave the occupation information regarding the captives retrieved Saturday.”
Consequently, the label placed upon the head of the imperialist camp is correct. The term “Genocide Joe” is a clear reflection of U.S. policy towards the Palestinians.
Blinken’s claim in his latest shuttle diplomacy throughout the region that the U.S. is supplying the most aid to the people of Gaza is outrageous. In reality, the Biden administration is supporting every genocidal act against the Palestinians carried out directly by the armed forces of the State of Israel.
In many areas of Gaza, people are experiencing famine due to the lack of adequate food supplies and clean drinking water. People are drinking water taken from the Mediterranean Sea. Consuming water which is not desalinated can result in serious health problems among all age groups within the population.
Palestinians in Gaza are largely dependent upon canned food supplied by aid agencies which also contain high sodium content. The unhealthy and limited food available in most parts of Gaza only compounds the existing humanitarian and public health crisis.
In regard to the health crisis, as a whole the physicians, nurses, medical technicians, ambulance drivers and others are being targeted by the Israeli military forces. It is nearly impossible to provide any effective healthcare treatment for gunshot injuries, shrapnel wounds from bombs, the systematic torture of civilians alongside maternity services and treatment for other diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, cancers and heart problems.
U.S. Administration Cannot be Trusted as Honest Brokers in Peace Efforts
Blinken told the international press in the aftermath of the U.S.-sponsored Security Council resolution for a ceasefire based upon the terms set by Washington that all votes are in for the commencement of a ceasefire except for Hamas. This statement is not only absurd, it is an insult to the Palestinian people since they do not have a vote within the United Nations.
A vote within the UN General Assembly in May was designed to enhance the status of Palestinian representation within the international body. However, the Biden administration is not in support of the creation of a genuinely independent and sovereign Palestinian state and therefore it remains clear that the U.S. government is in favor of maintaining the status quo.
The official policy of U.S. imperialism solidarizes with that of the settler-colonial state in Tel Aviv which is determined to eliminate the resistance to the occupation in Gaza and throughout the entire length and breadth of Palestine. In order to wipe out the resistance to the occupation requires the ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinian people.
These facts have created a situation where the students and other sectors of the U.S. population are seizing spaces on college campuses to establish encampments in solidarity with the Palestinians. The students are demanding the full disclosure and divestment of all financial holdings in the settler-colonial state now occupying Palestine.
Consequently, the only real manner to address the Palestinian question is within the areas of mass demonstrations and electoral support for initiatives which express dissatisfaction with U.S. foreign policy towards Palestine. These methods of opposition to the genocide have gained far more political traction than the efforts designed to appease Zionism and imperialism.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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[This was originally published by Geoengineeringwatch in 2021.]
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Featured image: Nyon, Switzerland. Photo credit: Romain Silvestre
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Biden: Israel is offering a ceasefire.
Israel: We’re not.
Biden: I negotiated this ceasefire
Israel: There’s no ceasefire agreement.
Biden: The ceasefire will begin soon.
Israel: It won’t.
Rinse and repeat. @Pimso B
The Biden administration’s ceasefire resolution is a cynical fraud aimed at airbrushing Israel’s tattered image while laying the groundwork for the final expulsion of the Palestinian people. In truth, there won’t be a ceasefire because Netanyahu and his entire cabinet are adamantly opposed to ending the hostilities. There’s not even any gray area here. After the US-drafted resolution was passed on Monday, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office delivered a terse statement saying the following:
“The claim that Israel agreed to end the war before achieving all its goals is a total lie,” says the PMO….
The full document, argues Netanyahu’s office, would show that “Israel will not end the war until all its conditions are met — that is, fighting until Hamas is eliminated, returning all of our hostages, and ensuring that Gaza never again represents a threat to Israel.” (Times of Israel)
Repeat: “Israel will not end the war until all its conditions are met — (and) until Hamas is eliminated.”
So, what was the point of pushing through a ceasefire resolution when it had zero chance of being implemented? Was it just a publicity stunt?
And, why is Secretary of State Anthony Blinken –not only saying that Israel supports the proposal– but that Israel actually had a hand in crafting its language. Here’s Blinken on Monday:
“First, let me be very clear, Israel has accepted the proposal, in fact, they were critical in putting it forward. It is the official position of the Israeli government, the prime minister. So, the only party that has not said ‘Yes’ is Hamas. That’s who everyone is waiting on. That’s who the Palestinians are waiting on, it’s who the Israelis are waiting on, and it’s who the hostages and the hostage families are waiting on. It’s who the entire region and the entire world are waiting on. So, we’ll see, does Hamas want to end this war that it started or not? We’ll find out. But it’s clear that virtually the entire world has come together in support of the proposal. So, the only question is will Hamas say ‘Yes’? @AssalRad
This is a total fabrication and Blinken knows it:
Israel has NOT accepted the proposal
Israel was NOT “critical in putting the ceasefire resolution forward”
The ceasefire resolution is NOT “the official position of the Israeli government (and) the prime minister.”
These are baldfaced lies, and very stupid lies at that, because they can be easily checked and disproved. Take a look:
Repeat: “In a preemptive response to the UN Security Council’s decision, Netanyahu says, “We will not agree to any deal that leads to ending the war.”
Netanyahu’s position is crystal clear and has been for a long time: The rampage will continue for the foreseeable future. So, why is Blinken deliberately misleading the public? What is the objective here? This is from CNN just hours after the resolution was approved by the UNSC:
Israel has vowed to persist with its military operation in Gaza, saying it won’t engage in “meaningless” negotiations with Hamas, shortly after the United Nations Security Council overwhelmingly approved a US-backed ceasefire plan intended to bring an end to the eight-month war…
(Israel’s) senior diplomat (Reut Shapir Ben-Naftaly) said the war would not end until all hostages were returned and Hamas’ capabilities were “dismantled,” accusing the Palestinian militant group of using “endless negotiations… as a means to stall for time.”
Her comments came after 14 of the 15 UNSC council members voted in favor of Monday’s US-drafted resolution, with only Russia abstaining – the first time the council has endorsed such a plan to end the war…..
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is on a diplomatic trip to the Middle East, said Tuesday that in a meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu the Israeli leader “reaffirmed his commitment” to the current proposal to secure a ceasefireand hostage release, which is still awaiting an answer from Hamas. Blinken said that he got an explicit assurance from Netanyahu that he continues to support the deal, and will accept it if Hamas agrees to what is on the table. …
Can you see how ridiculous and Orwellian this is? Israel will agree to a ceasefire as long as it has “the freedom to keep fighting”. Huh? In case you’re wondering, the definition of “ceasefire” is “a suspension of fighting.” Therefore, we must assume that if the fighting continues, there is no ceasefire.
By the way, Hamas has already agreed to the terms of the ceasefire which is another blow to Blinken’s crazy plan to try to make Israel look like the peacemaker. Here’ more from CNN:
Hamas welcomed the adoption of the UNSC resolution, saying in a statement it was ready to engage with mediators to implement measures such as the withdrawal of Israeli forces from Gaza, prisoner exchange, returning residents to their homes and the “rejection of any demographic change or reduction in the area of the Gaza Strip.” …
The Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said the Palestinian Authority – which governs the Israeli-occupied West Bank – welcomed the deal as a “step in the right direction.”…
“We want a ceasefire,” (but) the “burden is on the Israeli side to implement this resolution.”
“The proof is in the pudding. We will see who are the ones who are interested to see this resolution to become a reality and those who are obstructing it and want to continue the war of genocide against our people,” he added. CNN
It’s worth noting, that just a few days ago, Israeli diplomats met with US envoy Linda Thomas-Greenfield to express their opposition to the Biden ceasefire resolution. The Israelis even objected to it being called a “ceasefire”. They preferred the less permanent-sounding phrase a “cessation of hostilities.”
Israel also objected to “the updated draft’s call for both sides to fully implement the latest hostage deal proposal. The earlier version only called on Hamas to accept the proposal.” (Times of Israel)
Israel also objected to a clause in the resolution that “rejects any attempt at demographic or territorial change in the Gaza Strip”. (which suggests that the native population could face ethnic cleansing.) The Israeli envoy also wanted to omit any mention of America’s “unwavering commitment to achieving the vision of a negotiated two-state solution… consistent with international law and relevant UN resolutions, and in this regard stresses the importance of unifying the Gaza Strip with the West Bank under the Palestinian Authority.”
The two-state framework is rejected by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, which has also worked to weaken the PA, likening the governing body to Hamas.
So, if Israel had expressed its opposition to a ceasefire so forcefully just days earlier, then why did the members of the Security Council believe that they (Israel) had suddenly changed their mind?
It makes no sense.
The only country that wasn’t duped by the ceasefire hoax was Russia who abstained from the vote on a US-proposed resolution. In explaining why Russia chose to abstain, Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia said the following:
We have a number of questions about the American draft resolution, in which the Council welcomes a certain “deal” whose final contours are still unknown to anyone save the mediators themselves. The information circulating in open sources is quite contradictory. The sponsors have not informed the Security Council of the details of the agreements. We are essentially being offered to buy “a pig in a poke”.
There was no negotiations process as such on the draft resolution. The sponsors offered variations of the final text, in effect demanding that Security Council members sign up to them under time pressure.
Hamas has been called to accept the so-called “deal”. But there is still no clarity as to whether Israel has formally agreed, as stipulated in the resolution, to the “deal” proposed by President Biden, given numerous statements by Israel on continuing the war until Hamas is completely defeated. What exactly did Israel agree to? Perhaps we are going to hear the answer to that question today from the Israeli representative?
We are convinced that the Security Council should not subscribe to agreements with vague parameters, without guarantees of their implementation on the ground, and also without any clear understanding of how the parties feel about them. In essence, the Council is giving carte blanche and endorsing a plan whose details it does not know. The parameters listed in the three paragraphs are not the details. Since the escalation in Gaza began, the Council has already adopted three resolutions whose implementation remains only on paper. This one may become the fourth. Explanation of vote by Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia after UNSC vote on a US-proposed draft resolution on Gaza, ru
In short, the Russian envoy to the UN saw through Blinken’s absurd scam and refused to play-along. Now we can see he did the right thing. Now we can see that the administration was trying to rig the Security Council vote by suggesting that Israel supported measures that Israel did not support. That may have helped to pass the resolution, but it didn’t help to put pressure on Netanyahu or force him to end the hostilities in Gaza. Instead, the whole matter has rebounded on the administration and made it look like they will engage in all manner of counterproductive skulduggery in order to get their way.
And what is it that the administration wants?
Well, apparently, they want a ceasefire. Apparently, the deepening isolation and reputational damage has gotten so bad that western elites are ready to throw in the towel. As President Biden said “it’s time for this war to end.”
But if the Biden administration is serious about a ceasefire, then they should have the courage to stand up and say so, instead of manipulating outcomes at the Security Council.
They need to suspend the weapons shipments and cut off the funding pronto. That is the only language Netanyahu and his cadres understand.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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Israel hasn’t just crossed the Biden administration’s pretend “red lines” in Gaza. With its massacre at Nuseirat refugee camp at the weekend, Israel drove a bulldozer through them.
On Saturday, an Israeli military operation to free four Israelis held captive by Hamas since its 7 October attack on Israel resulted in the killing of more than 270 Palestinians, many of them women and children.
The true death toll may never be known. Untold numbers of men, women and children are still under rubble from the bombardment, crushed to death, or trapped and suffocating, or expiring slowly from dehydration if they cannot be dug out in time.
Many hundreds more are suffering agonising injuries – should their wounds not kill them – in a situation where there are almost no medical facilities left after Israel’s destruction of hospitals and its mass kidnap of Palestinian medical personnel. Further, there are no drugs to treat the victims, given Israel’s months-long imposition of an aid blockade.
Israelis and American Jewish organisations – so ready to judge Palestinians for cheering attacks on Israel – celebrated the carnage caused in freeing the Israeli captives, who could have returned home months ago had Israel been ready to agree on a ceasefire.
According to reports, the bloody Israeli operation in central Gaza may have killed three other captives, one of them possibly an American citizen.
In comments to the Haaretz newspaper published on Sunday, Louis Har, a hostage freed back in February, observed of his own captivity:
“Our greatest fear was the IDF’s planes and the concern that they would bomb the building we were in.”
He added: “We weren’t worried that they’d [referring to Hamas] do something to us all of a sudden. We didn’t object to anything. So I wasn’t afraid they’d kill me.”
The Israeli media reported Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallantdescribing Saturday’s operation as “one of the most heroic and extraordinary operations I have witnessed over the course of 47 years serving in Israel’s defence establishment”.
The chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court is currently seeking an arrest warrant for Gallant, as well as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, for war crimes and crimes against humanity. The charges include efforts to exterminate the people of Gaza through planned starvation.
State Terrorism
Israel has been wrecking the established laws of war with abandon for more than eight months.
At least 37,000 Palestinians are known to have been killed so far in Gaza, though Palestinian officials lost the ability to properly count the dead many weeks ago following Israel’s relentless destruction of the enclave’s institutions and infrastructure.
Israel has additionally engineered a famine that, mostly out of view, is gradually starving Gaza’s population to death.
The International Court of Justice put Israel on trial for genocide back in January. Last month, it ordered an immediate halt to Israel’s attack on Gaza’s southern city of Rafah. Israel has responded to both judgments by intensifying its killing spree.
In a further indication of Israel’s sense of impunity, the rescue operation on Saturday involved yet another flagrant war crime.
Israel used a humanitarian aid truck – supposedly bringing relief to Gaza’s desperate population – as cover for its military operation. In international law, that is known as the crime of perfidy.
For months, Israel has been blocking aid to Gaza – part of its efforts to starve the population. It has also targeted aid workers, killing more than 250 of them since October.
But more specifically, Israel is waging a war on Unrwa, claiming without evidence that the UN’s main aid agency in Gaza is implicated in Hamas “terror” operations. It wants the UN, the international community’s last lifeline in Gaza against Israel’s wanton savagery, permanently gone.
By hiding its own soldiers in an aid truck, Israel made a mockery of its supposed “terrorism concerns” by doing exactly what it accuses Hamas of.
But Israel’s military action also dragged the aid effort – the only way to end Gaza’s famine – into the centre of the battlefield. Now Hamas has every reason to fear that aid workers are not what they seem; that they are really instruments of Israeli state terrorism.
Nefarious Motive
In the circumstances, one might have assumed the Biden administration would be quick to condemn Israel’s actions and distance itself from the massacre.
Instead, Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, was keen to take credit for the mass carnage – or what he termed a “daring operation”.
He admitted in an interview on Sunday that the US had offered assistance in the rescue operation, though he refused to clarify how. Other reports noted a supporting British role, too.
“The United States has been providing support to Israel for several months in its efforts to help identify the locations of hostages in Gaza and to support efforts to try to secure their rescue or recovery,” Sullivan told CNN.
Sullivan’s comments fuelled existing suspicions that such assistance extends far beyond providing intelligence and a steady supply of the bombs Israel has dropped on the tiny Gaza enclave over the past few months – more than the total that hit London, Dresden and Hamburg combined during the Second World War.
A Biden official disclosed to the Axios website that US soldiers belonging to a so-called American hostages unit had participated in the rescue operation that massacred Palestinian civilians.
Additionally, footage shows Washington’s floating pier as the backdrop for helicopters involved in the attack.
The pier was ostensibly built off Gaza’s coast at huge cost – some $320m – and over two months to bypass Israel’s blocking of aid by land.
According to Axios, citing a U.S. administration official, the American hostages unit in Israel assisted in the release of the four Israeli captives in Gaza.
Footage published by an Israeli occupation soldier confirms Israel's use of the American temporary pier in central Gaza… pic.twitter.com/GJJp1ZSA7T
Observers argued at the time that it was not only an extraordinarily impractical and inefficient way to deliver aid but that there were likely to be hidden, nefarious motives behind its construction.
Its location, at the midpoint of Gaza’s coast, has bolstered Israel’s severing of the enclave into two, creating a land corridor that has effectively become a new border and from which Israel can launch raids into central Gaza like Saturday’s.
Those critics appear to have been proven right. The pier has barely functioned as an aid route since the first deliveries arrived in mid-May.
The pier soon broke apart, and its repair and return to operation was only announced on Friday.
Now the fact that it appears to have been pressed into immediate use as a beachhead for an operation that killed at least 270 Palestinians drags Washington even deeper into complicity with what the World Court has called a “plausible genocide”.
But like the use of the aid truck, it also means the Biden administration is joining Israel once again – after pulling its funding to Unrwa – in directly discrediting the aid operation in Gaza when it is needed most urgently.
That was the context for understanding the World Food Programme’s announcement on Sunday that it was halting the use of the pier for aid deliveries, citing “safety” concerns.
‘Successful’ Massacre
As ever, for western media and politicians – who have stood firmly against a ceasefire that could have brought the suffering of the Israeli captives and their families to an end months ago – Palestinian lives are quite literally worthless.
The German Chancellor Olaf Scholz thought it appropriate to describe the killing of 270-plus Palestinians in the freeing of the four Israelis as an “important sign of hope”, while the British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak expressed his “huge relief”. The appalling death toll went unmentioned.
Imagine describing in similarly positive terms an operation by Hamas that killed 270 Israelis to liberate a handful of the many hundreds of medical personnel kidnapped from Gaza by Israel in recent months and known to be held in a torture facility.
The London Times, meanwhile, breezily erased Saturday’s massacre of Palestinians by characterising the operation as a “surgical strike”.
Media outlets uniformly hailed the operation as a “success” and “daring”, as though the killing and maiming of around a thousand Palestinians – and the serial war crimes Israel committed in the process – need not be factored in.
BBC News’ main report on Saturday night breathlessly focused on the celebrations of the families of the freed captives, treating the massacre of Palestinians as an afterthought. The programme stressed that the death toll was “disputed” – though not mentioning that, as ever, it was Israel doing the disputing.
The reality is that the savage “rescue” operation would have been entirely unnecessary had Netanyahu not been so determined to drag his feet on negotiating the captives’ release, and thereby avoid jail on corruption charges, and the US so fully indulgent of his procrastination.
It will also be very difficult to repeat such an operation, as Haaretz’s military correspondent Amos Harel noted at the weekend. Hamas will learn lessons, guarding the remaining captives even more closely, most likely underground in its tunnels.
The remaining captives’ return will “probably occur only as part of a deal that will require significant concessions”, he concluded.
Leveraging Murder
Benny Gantz, the politician-general who helped oversee Israel’s eight-month slaughter in Gaza inside Netanyahu’s war cabinet and is widely described as a “moderate” in the West, resigned from the government on Sunday.
Although ostensibly the dispute is over how Israel will extricate itself from Gaza over the coming months, the more likely explanation is that Gantz wishes both to distance himself from Netanyahu as the Israeli prime minister faces possible arrest for crimes against humanity and to prepare for elections to take his place.
The Pentagon and the Biden administration see Gantz as their man. Having him out of the government may give them additional leverage over Netanyahu in the run-up to a US presidential election in November in which Donald Trump will be actively trying to cosy up to the Israeli prime minister.
The focus on Israeli politicking – over US complicity in the Nuseirat massacre – will doubtless provide a welcome distraction, too, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken tours the region. He will once again wish to be seen rallying support for a ceasefire plan that is supposed to see the Israeli captives released – a plan Netanyahu will be determined, once again, to stymie.
Blinken’s efforts are likely to be even more hopeless in the immediate wake of the Biden administration’s all-too-visible involvement in the killing of hundreds of Palestinians.
Washington’s claim to be an “honest broker” looks to everyone – apart from the reliably obedient western political and media class – as even more derisory than usual.
The real question is whether Blinken’s serial diplomatic failures in ending the slaughter in Gaza are a bug or a feature.
The stark contradiction in Washington’s position towards Gaza was exposed last week during a press conference with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller.
He suggested that the aim of Israel and the US was to persuade Hamas to dissolve itself – presumably by some form of surrender – in return for a ceasefire. The group had an incentive to do so, said Miller, “because they don’t want to see continued conflict, continued Palestinian people dying. They don’t want to see war in Gaza.”
Even the usually compliant western press corps were taken aback by Miller’s implication that a crime against humanity – the mass killing of Palestinians, such as took place at Nuseirat camp on Saturday – was viewed in Washington as leverage to be exercised over Hamas.
But more likely, the seeming contradiction was simply symptomatic of the logical entanglements resulting from Washington’s efforts to deflect from the real goal: buying Israel more time to do what it is so well advanced doing already.
Israel needs to finish pulverising Gaza, making it permanently uninhabitable, so that the population will be faced with a stark dilemma: remain and die, or leave by any means possible.
The same US “humanitarian pier” that was pressed into service for Saturday’s massacre may soon be the “humanitarian pier” that serves as the exit through which Gaza’s Palestinians are ethnically cleansed, shuttled out of a death zone engineered by Israel.
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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net
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“It was theatrical the way it was carried out. Why did they do it that way?
It is born in the nature of sending a message to people like all of us, who are dissidents in terms of what the federal government’s foreign policy looks like.
It is for them to say that “this could happen to any of you.””
Watch the interview below of Philip Giraldi with Judge Andrew Napolitano.
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This study examines the role of the far right in the Euromaidan in Ukraine, primarily in the Maidan massacre and other key cases of violence. The involvement of far-right organizations in these crucial events in the Ukrainian and world politics has been politicized and polarized in Ukraine, the West, and Russia.
This study analyzes various data sources, such as online live streams and TV broadcasts, videos, broadcasts of the Maidan massacre trials, the database of court decisions in Ukraine, media reports, and field research on the Maidan. The findings reveal that radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations had significant but minority representation among the Maidan leadership and protesters. However, the analysis shows that the far-right organizations and football ultras played a key role in political violence such as attempting to seize the presidential administration and the parliament. It reveals involvement of the Right Sector in violent clashes with the Berkut special police force during the highly publicized dispersal of Maidan protesters on November 30, 2013. The Right Sector and Svoboda had crucial roles in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government, in particular, in the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police.
Research Question and Divergent Narratives Concerning the Contemporary Far Right in Ukraine
The main purpose of this article is to examine the role of the far right in Ukraine during the Euromaidan and the Maidan massacre. These events are the most significant and the most controversial ones in politics in Ukraine since its independence in 1991. They also affected the politics of other countries, such as Russia and the United States, as well as international politics. They ultimately led or contributed to various extent to the Russian annexation of Crimea, the civil war in Donbas, Russian military intervention, the conflict between Russia and the West, and the Ukrainian-conflict related impeachment hearings against the US President Trump (Black & Johns, 2016; Katchanovski, 2015a, 2016a; Kudelia, 2016; Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Sakwa, 2015; Sakwa, 2015).
The research question of this study is as follows: What was the involvement of the far right in the Euromaidan and the Maidan massacre?
This issue has a direct bearing on understanding the origins of the conflict in Ukraine and conflict between Russia and the West from an academic perspective. In contrasts to their historical antecedents, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, the far-right in contemporary Ukraine has not been well researched and the number of the academic studies examining the far right, especially their involvements in the Euromaidan and the Maidan massacre is very limited. This issue is also important because of sharply divergent narratives propagated by the governments and the media in Ukraine and the West on the one hand, and Russia on the other hand. The governments and the mainstream media in Western countries, the Maidan opposition, and then the Maidan government in Ukraine generally either presented the role of the far right in the Euromaidan as marginal or ignored the issue. Euromaidan has been typically presented as a democratic and peaceful mass-protest movement which was led by pro-Western parties and overthrew the authoritarian and pro-Russian government in a revolution, which was often called as the “Revolution of Dignity.”
The governments and the mainstream media in Ukraine and the West, with a few exceptions, attributed major cases of violence during the Euromaidan to the Viktor Yanukovych government, the government forces, government-hired “titushki,”or agents provocateurs working for Yanukovych or the Russian government.
Specifically, they almost universally attributed the violent dispersal of Euromaidan protesters on November 30, 2013 to a Yanukovych order and presented it as one-sided violence by the Berkut special police force against peaceful student protesters.
Similarly, the killings of Maidan protesters in January and February 2014 were almost universally attributed to the orders of Yanukovych, his internal affairs and security ministers, government snipers, and/or Berkut special police force. Other major cases of violence, such as attacks on the presidential administration on December 1, 2013, the parliament on January 2014, the parliament and the headquarters of the Party of Regions on February 18, 2014 were blamed on agents provocateurs or far right organizations acting as agents provocateurs for the Yanukovych government or the Russian government.
For instance, Open Society Institute (OSI) documents, that were hacked and made public, apparently by the Russian intelligence, revealed that the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine at least partially agreed with a statement by George Soros that the Right Sector was a Russian FSB plot aimed at destabilizing Ukraine.[1] In a letter signed by many researchers, journalists and other commentators were asked to refrain from commenting on the far right in Ukraine during the Euromaidan. This petition was accompanied by a statement claiming that Dmytro Korchynsky, the leader of a far right Bratstvo organization in Ukraine, was in fact a Russia-linked provocateur in “supposedly far right attack”of the presidential administration on December 1, 2013.[2] However, there is no reliable evidence to support such claims. Besides, these radical nationalist and neo-Nazi organizations formed their own military formations and fought on the Maidan government side during the war in Donbas.
In contrast, Russian and separatist politicians and the media, former President Yanukovych and members of his government after the Euromaidan often labeled the Euromaidan as a “fascist coup”and the Maidan government as a “fascist junta”organized by the U.S. government. Sergey Lavrov, the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Russian Federation, stated that the Russian government had evidence that the Right Sector coordinated “sniper” shootings” during the Maidan massacre and it was claimed that the U.S. government maintained contacts with the Right Sector during the Euromaidan and that the U.S. representatives visited the Right Sector location from which this organization coordinated the shootings. However, no evidence to verify these claims has been made public by the Russian government.[3]
A certain exception was an intercepted and leaked telephone conversation, apparently by the Russian intelligence, between the European Union (EU) foreign affairs chief and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Estonia discussing evidence provided by Maidan medics that the Maidan massacre was staged by some elements of the Maidan opposition.[4] However, these elements were not identified during this conversation, and therefore it was not clear whether the far right was mentioned in the intercepted conversation.
The Russian media often exaggerated or misrepresented the role of the far right in these events. For instance, Russia Today (RT) and Komsomolskaya Pravda, incorrectly described advancing Maidan protesters on February 20, 2014 as the Right Sector, while NTV wrongly claimed that the special Berkut special police force members were in fact disguised Right Sector provocateurs because they allegedly wore yellow armbands.[5] However, different parties of conflicts were often engaged in propaganda and disinformation, and this concerns Ukraine, including the Euromaidan and the Maidan massacre (Black & Johns, 2016; Boyd-Barrett, 2016; Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Sakwa, 2015)
Some studies on the Ukrainian far right during the Euromaidan focused on numerical strength and electoral support for the far-right parties and ignored other aspects of the influence of the radical nationalist and neo-Nazi parties, specifically their roles in the political violence, such as the Maidan massacre (see, e.g., Risch, 2015). Some previous studies attributed the Maidan massacre to various government units, such as the Berkut special police force, Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Alfa snipers, and the Omega unit of the Interior Troops or considered that they were likely involved, while ignoring or dismissing as unlikely the involvement of the far right in this massacre (Marples & Mills, 2015; Onuch & Sasse, 2016; Wilson, 2014). Such conclusions, however, were based on uncritical acceptance of Maidan politicians’ statements and media reports without systematic analysis of evidence.
Some scholars cited presence of a few Jews in the Right Sector as an evidence of its relative tolerance; however, they were not representative of its membership and leadership (Onuch & Sasse, 2016, p. 578). A number of studies argued that red and black flag and “Glory to Ukraine. Glory to the heroes!”slogan, which were adopted by Maidan leaders and protesters, originated, respectively, in Cossack times and in the Ukrainian Peoples Republic before they were used by the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) (Onuch & Sasse, 2016, p. 576; Risch, 2015, p. 143). However, the flag and the greeting in the forms adopted by far-right organizations, such as the Right Sector, during the Euromaidan were derived from the flags and the greeting of the Bandera faction of the OUN. This greeting was first adopted and used along with a fascist-style hand salute as the party greeting of the Bandera faction of the OUN.
It was modeled on similar greetings accompanied by hand salutes of other fascist and semi-fascist parties, including the Nazi Party in Germany. There is no reliable and corroborated evidence of the use of the greeting in a form of the greeting before it was adopted by the OUN in slightly different form and then in its current form by the Bandera faction of the OUN (Katchanovski, 2014; Rudling, 2011).
Some other studies on the far right reached different conclusions.
A quantitative research on the mass protest actions revealed that Svoboda party was the most active organization in pro-Maidan protests, while the Right Sector was the most active organization in violent events in Ukraine during the Euromaidan (Ishchenko, 2016). Other studies concluded that the far right played a key role in the attacks of the parliament in January and on February 18, 2014 and in seizures of regional administrations in Western and Central Ukraine during the Euromaidan (Katchanovski, 2015b, Kudelia, 2016).
Svoboda activists with party flags on their way to a pro-EU rally on European Square, Kyiv, November 2013 (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)
A comprehensive study concluded that the Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police was a successful false flag operation conducted covertly by the elements of the Maidan opposition in order to overthrow the Yanukovych government and seize power in an asymmetric armed conflict (Katchanovski, 2015b, 2016b). These findings were replicated by Hahn (2018). However, these studies did not take into account newly available evidence, which was made public during the ongoing Maidan massacre trial.
The Maidan massacre trial and the investigation by the Prosecutor General Office of Ukraine revealed various evidence that protesters were massacred by snipers in Maidan-controlled buildings on February 20. The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters, with whose shooting Berkut policemen were charged, testified at this trial and the investigation that they were shot from Maidan-controlled buildings, in particular, the Hotel Ukraine or that they witnessed snipers there and were told about them by other protesters during the massacre (Katchanovski, 2015b, 2018).
The official forensic investigations which were made public at the Maidan massacre trial revealed that on February 20 the absolute majority of the protesters were shot from side and back directions and from top to bottom directions, while videos and photos of the massacre showed them facing the Berkut special police force on the same ground level. In January 2015, a forensic ballistic examination conducted upon the request of prosecution concluded that bullets extracted from killed protesters did not match the bullet samples from any Kalashnikov assault rifle which members of the Berkut special police force were then armed. The findings of this computer-based ballistic examination and results of the other 40 ballistic examinations were reversed in a couple of ballistic examinations conducted manually in the very end of the investigation. Such unexplained reversals which contradicted other evidence, such as testimonies of wounded protesters and results of forensic medical examinations, suggested that the findings of the new examinations of bullets were unreliable and likely falsified. The forensic ballistic examinations also found that many protesters were killed on February 18–20 by hunting pellets and expanding hunting bullets, in particular, with caliber that did not match calibers of weapons used by the special police company, whose members were charged with killings these protesters (See Katchanovski, 2018).
Government ballistic experts in at least seven on-site investigative experiments determined that Maidan protesters were killed and wounded from Maidan-controlled buildings. But the investigation did not employ ballistic experts to determine bullet trajectories in the absolute majority of the cases and did not do this even after the Maidan massacre trial ordered such examinations, specifically determining whether these trajectories were from the Maidan-controlled buildings. No evidence of orders by then President Yanukovych, his internal affairs and security service ministers, or police and security service commanders to massacre unarmed protesters has been revealed by the trials and the investigations or made public by the prosecution or the media. But despite the evidence, the government investigation denied the existence of snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings (Katchanovski, 2018).
A U.S. architecture company argued in the 3-D model created for Maidan victims’ lawyers that three Maidan protesters were killed from Berkut sectors. However, the wound locations of the killed Maidan protesters in the 3-D model did not match the wound locations in the autopsy reports, which were used in this simulation to determine the locations of the shooters and published on the its website.[6] A study by Katchanovski (2018) showed that their wounds locations in this 3-D model were moved sideways and made from top to bottom to nearly horizontal in order to fit Berkut positions, while actual locations of entry and exit wounds pointed toward Maidan-controlled buildings.
Snipers on a roof during clashes in Kyiv, 18 February 2014 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Bandeira (2019, pp. 206–207), Cohen (2018), Hahn (2018), Katchanovski (2016b, 2018), and Lane (2016) noted the far-right involvement in the false flag Maidan massacre of the protesters and the police. However, they did not focus on this specific issue comprehensively. Kudelia (2018) also found that the violence was initiated by the far-right Maidan protesters, who killed and wounded many policemen, but argued based on government investigation that the Berkut special police force then massacred unarmed protesters in response to such provocation.
This study focuses on the involvement far right organizations in the violence during the Euromaidan in Kyiv, primarily in the massacre of the Maidan protesters and the police on February 18–20, 2014 and in the dispersal of protesters by the Berkut police on November 20, 2013. These events are selected because they were turning points, respectively, in the violent overthrow of the Yanukovych government and the start of the mass anti-government protests.
They are also important because the Euromaidan is presented by the Western and Maidan governments, the media in the West and Ukraine, and many researchers, primarily, non-academic ones, as a nonviolent mass protest and a popular democratic revolution against the undemocratic government, which massacred the Maidan protesters on February 18–20, 2014 and violently dispersed the peaceful protest of students on November 30, 2013. The involvement of the far right in these crucial cases of violence is often ignored, denied, or attributed without evidence to Yanukovych government or Russian government agent provocateurs.
This article does not examine other issues of the far-right involvement in the Euromaidan and in the violence in other regions of Ukraine during the Euromaidan, with the exception of the massacre in Khmelnytskyi. These issues are analyzed by other scholars (see Ishchenko, 2018a).
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“Take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties.” — James Madison
James Madison, often referred to as the “Father of the Constitution,” once predicted that the Bill of Rights would become mere “parchment barrier,” words on paper ignored by successive generations of Americans.
How right he was.
Although Madison initially felt that the inclusion of a bill of rights in the originally ratified Constitution was unnecessary to its success, Thomas Jefferson persuaded him that “a bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, & what no just government should refuse, or rest on inferences.”
The Bill of Rights drafted by Madison—the first ten amendments to the Constitution—was a document so revolutionary at the time that it would come to be viewed as the epitome of American liberty. The rights of the people reflected in those ten amendments encapsulated much of Madison’s views about government, the corrupting influence of power, and the need for safeguards against tyranny.
Madison’s writings speak volumes to the present constitutional crisis in the country.
Read them and weep.
“The accumulation of all powers, Legislative, Executive, and Judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.” — James Madison
“The people are the only legitimate fountain of power, and it is from them that the constitutional charter, under which the several branches of government hold their power, is derived.” — James Madison
“If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” — James Madison
“A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home.” — James Madison
“Wherever the real power in a Government lies, there is the danger of oppression.” — James Madison
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance: And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” — James Madison
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”— James Madison
In the years since the founders laid their lives on the line to pursue the dream of individual freedom and self-government, big government has grown bigger and the rights of the citizenry have grown smaller.
However, there are certain principles—principles that every American should know—which undergird the American system of government and form the basis of our freedoms.
The following seven principles are a good starting point for understanding what free government is really all about.
First, the maxim that power corrupts is an absolute truth. Realizing this, those who drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights held one principle sacrosanct: a distrust of all who hold governmental power. As James Madison proclaimed, “All men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.” Moreover, in questions of power, Thomas Jefferson warned, “Let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” As such, those who drafted our founding documents would see today’s government as an out-of-control, unmanageable beast.
The second principleis that governments primarily exist to secure rights, an idea that is central to constitutionalism. In appointing the government as the guardian of the people’s rights, the people give it only certain, enumerated powers, which are laid out in a written constitution. The idea of a written constitution actualizes the two great themes of the Declaration of Independence: consent and protection of equal rights. Thus, the purpose of constitutionalism is to limit governmental power and ensure that the government performs its basic function: to preserve and protect our rights, especially our unalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and our civil liberties. Unfortunately, the government today has discarded this principle and now sees itself as our master, not our servant. The obvious next step, unless we act soon, is tyranny.
The third principle revolves around the belief that no one is above the law, not even those who make the law. This is termed rule of law. Richard Nixon’s statement, “When the President does it, that means it is not illegal,” would have been an anathema to the Framers of the Constitution. If all people possess equal rights, the people who live under the laws must be allowed to participate in making those laws. By that same token, those who make the laws must live under the laws they make.
Fourth, separation of powers ensures that no single authority is entrusted with all the powers of government. People are not perfect, whether they are in government or out of it. As history makes clear, those in power tend to abuse it. The government is thus divided into three co-equal branches: legislative, executive and judicial. Placing all three powers in the same branch of government was considered the very definition of tyranny. The fact that the president today has dictatorial powers would have been considered an offense to every principle for which the Framers took their revolutionary stand.
Fifth, a system of checks and balances, essential if a constitutional government is to succeed, strengthens the separation of powers and prevents legislative despotism. Such checks and balances include dividing Congress into two houses, with different constituencies, term lengths, sizes and functions; granting the president a limited veto power over congressional legislation; and appointing an independent judiciary capable of reviewing ordinary legislation in light of the written Constitution, which is referred to as “judicial review.” The Framers feared that Congress could abuse its powers and potentially emerge as the tyrannous branch because it had the power to tax. But they did not anticipate the emergence of presidential powers as they have come to dominate modern government or the inordinate influence of corporate powers on governmental decision-making. Indeed, as recent academic studies now indicate, we are now ruled by a monied oligarchy that serves itself and not “we the people.”
Sixth, representation allows the people to have a voice in government by sending elected representatives to do their bidding while avoiding the need of each and every citizen to vote on every issue considered by government. In a country as large as the United States, it is not feasible to have direct participation in governmental affairs. Hence, we have a representative government. If the people don’t agree with how their representatives are conducting themselves, they can and should vote them out. However, as the citizenry has grown lazy and been distracted by the entertainment spectacles of modern society, government bureaucrats churn out numerous laws each year resulting in average citizens being rendered lawbreakers and jailed for what used to be considered normal behavior.
Finally, federalism is yet another constitutional device to limit the power of government by dividing power and, thus, preventing tyranny. In America, the levels of government generally break down into federal, state and local branches (which further divide into counties and towns or cities). Because local and particular interests differ from place to place, such interests are better handled at a more intimate level by local governments, not a bureaucratic national government. Remarking on the benefits of the American tradition of local self-government in the 1830s, the French historian Alexis de Tocqueville observed: “Local institutions are to liberty what primary schools are to science; they put it within the people’s reach; they teach people to appreciate its peaceful enjoyment and accustom them to make use of it. Without local institutions a nation may give itself a free government, but it has not got the spirit of liberty.”
These seven vital principles have been largely forgotten in recent years, obscured by the haze of a centralized government, a citizenry that no longer thinks analytically, and schools that don’t adequately teach our young people about their history and their rights.
Yet here’s the rub: while Americans wander about in their brainwashed states, their “government of the people, by the people and for the people” has largely been taken away from them.
The answer: get un-brainwashed.
Learn your rights.
Stand up for the founding principles.
Make your voice and your vote count for more than just political posturing.
Never cease to vociferously protest the erosion of your freedoms at the local and national level.
Most of all, do these things today.
If we wait until the votes have all been counted or hang our hopes on our particular candidate to win and fix what’s wrong with the country, “we the people” will continue to lose.
Whether we ever realize it not, the enemy is not across party lines, as they would have us believe. It has us surrounded on all sides.
Even so, we’re not yet defeated.
We could still overcome our oppressors if we cared enough to join forces and launch a militant nonviolent revolution—a people’s revolution that starts locally and trickles upwards—but that will take some doing.
It will mean turning our backs on the political jousting contests taking place at all levels of government and rejecting their appointed jesters as false prophets. It will mean not allowing ourselves to be corralled like cattle and branded with political labels that have no meaning anymore. It will mean recognizing that all the evils that surround us today—endless wars, drone strikes, invasive surveillance, militarized police, poverty, asset forfeiture schemes, overcriminalization, etc.—are not of our making but came about as a way to control and profit from us.
Ultimately, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, it will mean refusing to be divided, one against each other, by politics and instead uniting behind the only distinction that has ever mattered: “we the people” against tyranny.
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A França parece cada vez mais isolada na sua decisão de intervir diretamente no conflito ucraniano. Nem mesmo as grandes potências ocidentais estão dispostas a confrontar abertamente Moscou no campo de batalha, dada a elevada probabilidade de uma guerra catastrófica surgir como resultado de tal medida. Agora, Berlim já está a sinalizar que não apoiará a medida francesa.
Segundo o jornal alemão Welt am Sonntag, o governo alemão prepara-se para recusar publicamente o seu apoio à iniciativa militar anti-russa da França. O meio de comunicação, citando fontes familiarizadas com assuntos de Estado, afirma que as autoridades francesas estão a pressionar vários membros da OTAN a cooperarem no envio de tropas para a Ucrânia. Os relatórios mostram que o chefe do Estado-Maior do exército francês, General Thierry Burkhard, escreveu uma carta apelando aos EUA e a pelo menos 10 outros países da OTAN para se juntarem a Paris na intervenção na Ucrânia.
A Alemanha, contudo, não foi incluída na carta do general francês, dizem as fontes. Isto significa que as autoridades alemãs provavelmente já deixaram claro, em segredo, aos seus homólogos franceses que não estão interessados em participar diretamente no conflito com a Rússia. Segundo as fontes, durante as negociações em Bruxelas, a Alemanha, juntamente com outros países como Itália e Espanha, descartou a possibilidade de enviar tropas para a Ucrânia. Se a pressão continuar, espera-se que a Alemanha faça uma declaração pública negando ajuda à França.
Na verdade, a proposta francesa não parece ser popular no seio da OTAN. Poucos países demonstraram interesse em cooperar com o envio de tropas. Inicialmente, os soldados franceses não seriam alocados em unidades de combate reais, mas em centros de treinamento e comando. Além disso, os franceses teriam a missão de “proteger” áreas estratégicas em cidades-chave como Odessa e Kharkov, tentando dissuadir a Rússia de avançar nestas regiões.
Contudo, nada disto é suficiente para disfarçar a grave escalada iniciada pela França. Colocar tropas no terreno é entrar oficialmente na guerra, independentemente da função para a qual as tropas sejam enviadas. Na prática, Paris tenta conciliar dois cenários inconciliáveis: entrar em guerra com a Rússia e evitar uma resposta dura de Moscou. Obviamente, Paris não quer enfrentar as consequências de uma guerra direta com a Rússia, mas ao mesmo tempo Macron quer continuar a propagar a sua imagem de “líder e defensor da Europa”. Este cenário poderia facilmente terminar em tragédia.
Na verdade, Macron não está a agir ingenuamente. Ele certamente tem um plano por trás de sua perigosa ideia de enviar tropas. Dado o elevado número de mercenários franceses mortos pelas forças russas na Ucrânia, é muito provável que haja pressão na sociedade francesa para fornecer uma explicação para as perdas. Muitos destes soldados não são exatamente mercenários, mas sim comandos regulares franceses que lutam pelos interesses da OTAN na Ucrânia, usando o rótulo de “mercenários” para disfarçar o intervencionismo ocidental. O governo francês precisa de dar à sociedade uma explicação sobre a razão pela qual tantos cidadãos franceses estão a morrer nas linhas da frente – e, aparentemente, Macron tomou a pior decisão possível para “explicar” estas mortes.
É possível que o verdadeiro propósito do envio de tropas seja “legalizar” as mortes de mercenários. Assim, Macron poderia simplesmente dizer que as perdas ocorreram durante as hostilidades diretas entre o exército francês e as forças russas, fornecendo uma explicação para as famílias dos soldados mortos. Não há, no entanto, nada de racional ou estratégico em tal movimento. Ao disfarçar o envolvimento francês já existente, Macron estaria a provocar uma guerra total, colocando em risco a arquitetura de segurança global. No entanto, ele aparece cada vez mais isolado na sua proposta, tendo a iniciativa sido rejeitada por outros estados.
A única esperança de evitar que a interferência francesa se transforme numa guerra aberta reside na própria Rússia. Os russos provaram repetidamente ser o lado racional no conflito, já que Moscou está realmente disposto a evitar a escalada. A Rússia não quer entrar em guerra diretamente com a OTAN, embora a aliança atlântica já esteja a tomar medidas no sentido da intervenção direta – não só com a iniciativa de Macron, mas também com outros movimentos recentes, como a autorização de ataques transfronteiriços. Claramente, existe um cenário em que a OTAN quer a guerra e a Rússia a evita.
É claro que os russos farão o seu melhor mais uma vez para evitar o pior cenário, mas é importante que o Ocidente compreenda que em algum momento a paciência russa poderá esgotar-se. Moscou não está interessado em iniciar um conflito aberto, mas já deixou claro que qualquer soldado francês na Ucrânia é um alvo legítimo.
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China’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning has agreed to attend next month’s Ukrainian peace conference in Switzerland with one proviso, that Russia be invited. Mao said that Beijing supports the “timely convening of an international peace conference that is recognized by both the Russian and Ukrainian sides.”
That sounds reasonable, after all, one would expect that peace negotiations would include the representatives of the warring parties. But that is not the case here. And while more than 90 countries have confirmed that they will attend the upcoming meetings, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has excluded the one nation whose presence might make a difference — Russia.
[Update; Russia has not been invited. And China has decided not to attend]
Naturally, many analysts are puzzled by Zelensky’s omission which precludes any possible settlement or end to the hostilities. Simply put, the fighting will continue until Russia and Ukraine conduct bilateral negotiations and reach an agreement.
So, what is going on here?
What’s going on is that Zelensky is perpetrating a fraud. Clearly, there is no intention to strike a deal with Russia or to end the fighting. How could there be, after all, Russia wasn’t invited. So, we must assume that the peace conference will be used for some other purpose, like demonizing Putin or drumming up more support for the war.
What that tells us is that neither Zelensky nor his handlers in Washington have abandoned the idea of inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia. They’re not throwing in the towel and they’re certainly not looking for areas of mutual compromise. No. They’re merely exploring more creative ways of garnering support for their failed crusade. That’s what the so-called ‘peace conference’ is all about, luring more recruits to the Ukraine bandwagon.
We should mention, however, that Russia knows exactly what Zelensky is up-to and has no illusions about where all this is headed. Check out this short clip from an interview with Russian FM Sergey Lavrov:
The Swiss conference is being convened with the sole purpose of addressing Zelensky’s peace formula in the form of an ultimatum. It is not accidental that the Swiss themselves, including Swiss diplomats, are saying that the conference will focus not on “building bridges” for peace, but on supporting Ukraine.
Josep Borrel said the peace formula was the only initiative under discussion. (Note: Other peace initiatives by China, Brazil, and the Arab League are all being ignored.)
We have access to information that is not normally intended for public use. In late April, discussing the Swiss conference with foreign ambassadors in Kiev… Zelensky spent most of the time rambling almost hysterically and incoherently, and pleading for support for his peace formula as a means of forcing Russia on its knees. Whenever a person does not feel the need to control themselves, they tend to speak the truth. Those who are now being courted and pressed into coming to Switzerland, creating a crowd, and posing for a “family photo” in order to be able to then bloviate about broad-based support for Zelensky’s peace formula, should be aware of the place they are being lured into. They are expected to support an ultimatum that will then be presented to Russia. This is ridiculous.
President Vladimir Putin spoke about this quite recently. These games, just like other foreign policy moves by our Western partners who have lost their diplomatic skills, have nothing to do with diplomacy. Sergey Lavrov, Russian Foreign Minister Press Conference
So, the Russians aren’t taken in by this nonsense, they know it’s a scam. They also know that the whole thing was probably concocted by the Intel agencies in concert with their media consultants. Just like they know the meetings will probably be used to shore up Zelensky’s tattered image while, once again, dragging Russia through the mud. We’ve seen it all before. But the reality is that the more time that’s wasted on these public relations fiascos, the more the carnage piles up on battlefields in the East. And that’s the real tragedy, that Zelensky continues to play these stupid games while his countrymen are slaughtered in droves for no apparent reason. Maybe he should stop the performance art long enough to fix the problem? Maybe he should think seriously about peace?
Is that possible?
It is possible.
Imagine for a minute, if Zelensky was sincere in wanting to end the war. How much effort and sacrifice would it really take?
Not much. Yes, he would be opposed by Washington and by the far-right uber-nationalists in his government, but the actual price he would pay in terms of blood and treasure would be negligible. True, he’ll never recapture Crimea or the Donbas (roughly 20% of Ukraine’s former landmass) but that’s the price of waging a two year-long war with Russia. Putin can’t be blamed for that. (Remember, Zelensky was prepared to sign a peace agreement with Putin one month into the war, but Boris Johnson scotched the deal.) In any event, those territories are gone forever. The point is to salvage what is left of Ukraine before its borders shrink even more. This is what Zelensky should be focused on; preserving what’s left of his country while he still can. The longer the war drags on, the more likely Ukraine will either be partitioned or transformed into an uninhabitable wasteland. The time to act is now.
The good news is that Putin is ready to deal. Despite the misinformation in the West, he wants to put this mess behind him. He wants to end the war.
And Putin’s demands are not unreasonable. He just wants assurances about Russia’s security, which means he won’t allow NATO missile-sites on his western border. That is a demand that Zelensky can meet at no cost to himself.
What else does Putin want?
This may surprise you, but the deal Putin seeks with Zelensky can be reduced to just one word: Neutrality. Ukraine must be a neutral state which means that it must not become a member of a major military bloc like NATO, because NATO is a hostile, anti-Russian, military alliance that has prosecuted wars of aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan and Libya. It is a menace that must be prevented from putting its bases, combat troops or weapons systems on Russia’s border. Period. Just as the United States would never allow China to place missile systems on Mexico’s northern border, NATO cannot be allowed to place Washington’s missiles on Russia’s border. It’s the same thing.
Zelensky believes that Ukraine ‘has the right’ to make whatever security arrangements it thinks best serve its national interests. That sounds like a reasonable proposition, but it’s not. Because in practical terms, Ukraine’s determination to join NATO has made Ukraine less safe, in fact, the probability of Ukraine’s membership in NATO has brought the country to the brink of annihilation. So, if Zelensky’s intention was to increase Ukraine’s national security, then he has compelling proof that he made the wrong decision.
Here’s a good rule of thumb for any smaller and less powerful nation that shares a border with a nuclear superpower: Don’t do things that scare your neighbor. Do not do things that make your neighbor feel threatened. And—most of all—do not threaten to join hostile anti-Russian alliances that regularly express their deeply-felt contempt and loathing for Russia. That is the fast-track to annihilation. If Zelensky did not know that before, he should certainly know it by now. Check out this excerpt from an article at Geopolitical Monitor:
Ukraine is not exactly a stranger when it comes to the notion of neutrality. In the aftermath of the fall of the Soviet Union, the country expressed an intention in its declaration of state sovereignty of 1 July 1990 to become a permanently neutral state that would shun participation in military blocs and show a commitment to denuclearization. This largely nonaligned status resulted in a vacillating foreign policy, which nonetheless appeared to be conducive to the pursuit of amicable relations with both the European Union (EU) and Russia, before being ultimately abandoned in December 2014 in the aftermath of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the start of the Donbas war. In February 2019, with the overwhelming approval of the Verkhovna Rada (the Parliament of Ukraine), the Ukrainian constitution was amended, setting the country on a course toward full membership in the EU and NATO. Nonetheless, in late March 2022 Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was still prepared to discuss the possibility of Ukraine taking a neutral position as part of a potential peace deal with Russia to halt the invasion. A Neutral Ukraine Is Not the Answer,Geopolitical Monitor
Let’s review: When Ukraine made its declaration of state sovereignty in July 1990, it pledged to be “a permanently neutral state.” And while it remained committed to that neutral status there was no hostility between Moscow and Kiev. But as soon as the United States toppled Ukraine’s government in the 2014 coup, Ukraine moved to renounce its neutrality, which is when all their problems began. What’s clear is that independent Ukrainian leaders did not choose to abandon neutrality. That decision was made in Washington by neocons who wanted to move their globalist army closer to Russia’s border. This isn’t speculation, this is what happened. NATO lied about ‘not moving one inch east” after the reunification of Germany and continued to push eastward until they were right on Russia ‘s doorstep. Finally—after being shoved into a corner—Russia pursued the only option available and pushed back. Russia launched its Special Military Operation (SMO) on February 24, 2022.
Of course, many people still think that Putin wants to rebuild the Soviet empire and that Ukraine is just the first step in a long march across Europe. Fortunately, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg dispelled that fiction in a press conference in September, 2023. Here’s what he said:
“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
“The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
“So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite. He has got more NATO presence in eastern part of the Alliance and he has also seen that Finland has already joined the Alliance and Sweden will soon be a full member.
“This is this is good for the Nordic countries. It’s good for Finland and Sweden. And it’s also good for NATO. And it demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he’s getting the exact opposite.” Putin invaded Ukraine to stop NATO, says NATO chief, YouTube
So, Putin did not go to war to rebuild the Soviet empire. He went to war to prevent a hostile, anti-Russia, military coalition from plopping itself on his border where their missiles could strike Moscow in less than 7 minutes.
Was that unreasonable of him?
Of course, not. He was simply acting is his country’s best interests on a matter of critical (existential) importance. Check out this short 1-minute video of John Mearsheimer who makes the same point:
“… Let me put it differently, Ukraine—according to its Constitution and its Declaration of Sovereignty in 1990—was a neutral country. It abandoned neutrality in December 2014. Just think about that. So, if we had left it alone, Ukraine would be intact today including Crimea. (And) all these dead people would not be dead.” John Mearsheimer, Would Neutrality Have Prevented the War, You Tube
For Zelensky, the choice could not be clearer. Ukraine is either going to be neutral or it’s going to be obliterated. The choice is his to make. But one thing is certain, Russia is not going to live with a gun to its head. We know that now.
*
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.
He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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The following article was first published by Global Research on December 22, 2023.
The war in the Middle East is edging towards Escalation. War Propaganda is the driving force. The official 9/11 consensus has created a counter-terrorism mandate embedded in US Foreign Policy.
America’s “Global War on Terrorism” is not categorized as an outright “act of war” within segments of the peace movement.
Also, the 9/11 doctrine accuses Muslim countries of waging a “civilizational war of Islam against the West”.
Michel Chossudovsky, February 6, 2024
***
Introduction. The 9/11 False Flag and the 2023 Middle East War
This article which focusses on the 9/11 False Flag is of utmost significance to our understanding of the ongoing Israel-U.S. genocide against Palestine as well as the broader U.S. hegemonic war against the broader Middle East.
On September 11, 2001, Afghanistan was identified as a “state sponsor of terror”, without a shred of evidence. The 9/11 attacks were categorized as an act of war against America by an unnamed foreign power.
It was a “False Flag” which consisted in blaming Afghanistan of having attacked America. “The Right to Self Defense” was put forth. The US-NATO aggressor was portrayed as the victim.
9/11: A Historical Landmark in U.S. Military Doctrine (2001- )
The alleged 9/11 “Attack on America” was instrumental in justifying the implementation of so-called “counter-terrorism” operations (aka wars) against ALL Muslim countries, nowextending over a period of more than 20 years. (2001 onwards).
In the present context (2023), The 9/11 False Flag has a bearing on the evolving US-NATO-Israel 2023 “Humanitarian War” against Palestine and the Middle East War, which is predicated on the concept of “Self Defense” against alleged terrorist attacks by Muslim Countries.
What Happened on September 11, 2001?
“A few hours after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, the Bush administration concluded without supporting evidence, that “Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda organisation were prime suspects”.
CIA Director George Tenet stated that bin Laden has the capacity to plan “multiple attacks with little or no warning”
Image (right). George Tenet with G. W. Bush and Dick Cheney
Secretary of State Colin Powell called the attacks “an act of war” and President Bush confirmed in an evening televised address to the Nation that he would “make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these acts and those who harbor them”.
Former CIA Director James Woolsey pointed his finger at “state sponsorship,” implying the complicity of one or more foreign governments. In the words of former National Security Adviser, Lawrence Eagleburger, “I think we will show when we get attacked like this, we are terrible in our strength and in our retribution.”
Meanwhile, parroting official statements, the Western media mantra had approved the launching of “punitive actions” directed against civilian targets in the Middle East. In the words of William Saffire writing in the New York Times:
“When we reasonably determine our attackers’ bases and camps, we must pulverize them — minimizing but accepting the risk of collateral damage” — and act overtly or covertly to destabilize terror’s national hosts”.(Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, September 12, 2001)
NATO’s “Collective Defense Clause” and the October 7, 2001 Invasion of Afghanistan
“The tragic death of thousands of Americans on 9/11 allegedly instrumented by Al Qaeda (with the support of an unnamed foreign power) was used as a pretext and a justification for launching the first phase of the Middle East Central Asian War, which consisted in the bombing and occupation of Afghanistan.” Michel Chossudovsky, Who is Osama bin Laden, September 12, 2001)
The decision of the Atlantic Council to invoke Article V (officially confirmed in late September), was conducive to the US-NATO bombing and invasion of Afghanistan which commenced on October 7 2001, four weeks after the tragic events of 9/11.
The invasion of Afghanistan had been on the drawing board of the Pentagon months prior to 9/11. The September 11 attacks were used as a pretext and a justification to invade and occupy Afghanistan.
Moreover, military analysts and the media were instructed not to reveal the fact that you do not plan a large scale theater war thousands of miles away in a matter of 25 days. Impossible. (from September 12- October 7, 2001)
The forbidden truth (known and documented) is that Osama bin Laden was a US “intelligence asset” and that his precise whereabouts prior and in the immediate wake of 9/11 were known to the US government.” ( Michel Chossudovsky, More Troops to Afghanistan)
The U.S. led war against Afghanistan consists essentially of two interrelated stages.
The second stage, unfolded with the US-NATO October 7, 2001 invasion of Afghanistan four weeks after 9/11, following the decision of the Atlantic Council to Invoke Article 5 of the Washington Treaty.
The Criminal Invasion of Afghanistan and the “Just War” Narrative
The October 7 2001 invasion was heralded as “A Just War” by Professor Richard Falk, renowned scholar, professor of International and Humanitarian Law at Princeton and anti-war activist.
The statement of Professor Richard Falk, who is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) formulated in the immediate wake of 9/11 — published four days after the commencement of the US-NATO bombing campaign– was intent upon providing legitimacy to America’s war on Afghanistan:
“I have never since my childhood supported a shooting war in which the United States was involved, although in retrospect I think the NATO war in Kosovo achieved beneficial results. The war in Afghanistan against apocalyptic terrorism qualifies in my understanding as the first truly just war since World War II.
“The perpetrators of the September 11 attack cannot be reliably neutralized by nonviolent or diplomatic means; a response that includes military action is essential to diminish the threat of repetition, to inflict punishment and to restore a sense of security at home and abroad.
The extremist political vision held by Osama bin Laden, which can usefully be labeled “apocalyptic terrorism,” places this persisting threat well outside any framework of potential reconciliation or even negotiation for several reasons: Its genocidal intent is directed generically against Americans and Jews;
its proclaimed goal is waging an unconditional civilizational war –Islam against the West– without drawing any distinction between civilian and military targets; it has demonstrated a capacity and willingness to inflict massive and traumatizing damage on our country and a tactical ingenuity and ability to carry out its missions of destruction by reliance on the suicidal devotion of its adherents.” (Richard Falk, The Nation, Defining a Just War, October 11, 2001, 4 days after the invasion of Afghanistan, emphasis added).
Note the emphasis on:
“genocidal intent against Americans and Jews”
as part of an alleged
“civilizational war of Islam against the West”.
Palestine 2023: Is It Not “The Other Way Round”? What We Are Witnessing Is “The Genocidal War of the West Against Muslim Countries.”
Osama bin Laden’s “Apocalyptic Terrorism” has provided a justification for the waging of America’s “Global War on Terrorism”, i.e. the numerous post 9/11 U.S. led “humanitarian wars” and “counter-terrorism operations” against Muslim countries (with the support of Israel) in the course of the last 22 years, which have resulted in millions of deaths.
A holy crusade was launched against the Muslim World of approximately 50 countries and one quarter of the World’s population.
In turn, “Counterterrorism” has been used in the course of the last twenty years as a justification for the establishment of U.S. military bases in Africa, the Middle East and South-East Asia.
The unspoken objective of “counter-terrorism” is to confiscate and appropriate the extensive oil and gas reserves of Muslim countries.
“The Just War”
Professor Richard Falk is a life-long anti-war activist. He is renowned for his commitment to the rights of Palestinians and his courageous stance against the Israeli government. In February 2001, Professor Falk was appointed by the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) to serve in the Inquiry Commission pertaining to the occupied Palestinian territories.
In March 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) appointed Professor Richard Falk as UN Special Rapporteur pertaining to human rights in the Palestinian occupied territories.
Professor Falk’s statement entitled “Defining A Just War, Ends and Means” was formulated 8 months following his OHCR February 2001 appointment to serve in the Palestine Inquiry Commission. In a February 2001 Interview, Falk raised the question as to whether Palestinians have a “Right to Resistance”:
“The [UN OHCR] team will consider two major issues, he said. “One is evaluating whether the conditions of occupation are such as to give the Palestinians some kind of right of resistance,” said Falk. “And if they have that right, then what are the limits to that right?”
“We must ask specific questions, such as what kinds of weapons were used?” he said. “And how does one interpret and understand the vulnerability of children? For example, the Palestinians contend that the Israeli army targeted children, and the Israeli army says Palestinians used children as human shields.” (Princeton University Report, February 2001, (emphasis added)
According to Falk –referring to the role of Osama bin Laden’s– “apocalyptic terrorism” is marked by the conduct of
“an unconditional civilizational war of Islam against the West”.
This statement by Richard Falk constitutes a misunderstanding as to what happened on 9/11. 9/11 was a False Flag.
The evidence presented below documents the alleged role of Bin Laden in the September 11, 2001 attacks, which provided the pretext and the justification to wage war not only on Afghanistan but also against numerous Muslim countries (in the aftermath of 9/11), under the mantle of America’s “Global War on Terrorism”.
There Was No Evidence that Afghanistan Had Attacked America on 9/11
The Taliban government through diplomatic channels had offered on two occasions (September and October 2001) to enter into negotiations with regard to the extradition of Osama Bin Laden. President G. W. Bush is on record for having refused to negotiate with the Afghan government regarding the Taliban Offer “to Hand Over Bin Laden to Washington”.
screenshot of BBC report, December 21, 2018 .
Why was George W. Bush reluctant to negotiate the extradition of Osama bin Laden? The Bin Laden- Bush family relationship?
What Happened on September 10, 2001?
1. Poppy G.H.W. Bush Senior Meets Osama’s Brother Shafiq at The Ritz Carlton Hotel on September 10, 2001
One day before the 9/11 attacks, as well as on the morning of 9/11, the dad of the sitting President of the United States of America, George Herbert Walker Bush was meeting none other than Shafiq bin Laden, the brother of the alleged terror mastermind Osama bin Laden. Sounds absurd?
According to The Washington Post:
“It didn’t help that as the World Trade Center burned on Sept. 11, 2001, the news interrupted a Carlyle business conference at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel here attended by a brother of Osama bin Laden [Shafiq bin Laden]. Former president Bush [senior], a fellow investor, had been with him at the conference the previous day. (Greg Schneider, Pairing the Powerful With the Rich, Washington Post, March 16, 2003)
2. Osama is Hospitalized in Rawalpindi, Pakistan on September 10, 2001
Confirmed by Dan Rather, CBS News,Osama bin Laden had been admitted to a Pakistani Military hospital in Rawalpindi on the 10th of September local time, less than 24 hours before the terrorist attacks.
“Pakistan intelligence sources tell CBS News that bin Laden was spirited into this military hospital in Rawalpindi for kidney dialysis treatment.
On that night, says this medical worker who wanted her identity protected, they moved out all the regular staff in the urology department and sent in a secret team to replace them. She says it was treatment for a very special person.” (CBS, For more details see this)
This CBS report casts doubt on the official narrative to the effect that Osama bin Laden was responsible for coordinating the 9/11 attacks. It would be impossible for Osama bin Laden to enter a Pakistani military hospital unnoticed. His whereabouts were known.
“How on earth could Bin Laden have coordinated the attacks from his hospital bed in a heavily guarded Pakistani military hospital located in Rawalpindi.
Bear in mind that the Combined Military Hospital Rawalpindi (under the adminstration of the Pakistani military) exclusively “provides specialised treatment to Army personel and their immediate family”.
Osama bin Laden must have had some connections in the Pakistani military or intelligence to be admitted to the hospital. He was, according to Dan Rather’s CBS report, provided with “treatment for a very special person”.
If the CBS report by Dan Rather is accurate and Osama had indeed been admitted to the Pakistani military hospital on September 10, 2001, courtesy of America’s ally, he was in all likelihood still in hospital in Rawalpindi on the 11th of September, when the attacks occurred. (Michel Chossudovsky, September 10, 2010)
Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed in the wake of 9/11 that the whereabouts of Osama bin Laden remained unknown: “It is like looking for a needle in a stack of hay”.
U.S. Foreign Policy in the Wake of 9/11. What is the Meaning of Al Qaeda in Arabic?
In the wake of 9/11, The Just War Concept has become embedded in U.S. Foreign Policy. It constitutes an anti-Muslim narrative of going after the alleged Al Qaeda “Islamic terrorists” who have (since the early 1980s) been routinely recruited by US intelligence.
What is the meaning in Arabic of Al Qaeda?القاعِدة
It’s “The Base”, namely the Computer Database of the Islamic Mujahideen ( Reagan’s “Freedom Fighters”) recruited by the CIA.
“When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages.
The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this.
But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive the ‘TV watcher’ to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money. (Major Pierre-Henri Bunel, World Affairs, Delhi, emphasis added)
The above statement by Major Bunel, was confirmed by the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook (shortly before his passing) in a pointed article in The Guardian:
“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan.
Al-Qaeda, literally “the database”, was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. (Robin Cook, The Guardian, July 8, 2005, see also archive, emphasis added)
Ronald Reagan meets the Mujahideen in the Oval Office (1980s)
The “Just War Concept” was among several narratives including “Counter-Terrorism” directed against Islamic Jihadists, “Responsibility to Protect”, “Exporting Democracy”, “Humanitarian Wars”, etc. (See video interview below)
Video: Michel Chossudovsky and James Corbett
The Criminalization of War
The Just War Concept provides a green light to wage “humanitarian wars” against Muslim countries. It is the antithesis of “a real peace movement”, which consists in what Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, former Prime Minister of Malaysia defined as “The Criminalization of War” first formulated in Kuala Lumpur in December 2005.
Under “The criminalization of war” agenda all wars of aggression are categorized as criminal undertakings, with the exception of “Self-Defense” (which today describes the Resistance of Palestine against the Israeli led invasion).
Under International law, there is no such thing as “A Just War”. From a legal standpoint, “DefiningThe Just War” formulated prior to the invasion of Afghanistan is in contradiction with the Geneva Convention (IV).
Richard Falk denies the hegemonic nature of U.S. foreign policy:
“Another form of antiwar advocacy rests on a critique of the United States as an imperialist superpower or empire. This view also seems dangerously inappropriate in addressing the challenge posed by the massive crime against humanity committed on September 11.
Whatever the global role of the United States –and it is certainly responsible for much global suffering and injustice, giving rise to widespread resentment that at its inner core fuels the terrorist impulse– it cannot be addressed so long as this movement of global terrorism is at large and prepared to carry on with its demonic work.
These longer-term concerns –which include finding ways to promote Palestinian self-determination, the internationalization of Jerusalem and a more equitable distribution of the benefits of global economic growth and development–must be addressed.
Of course, much of the responsibility for the failure to do so lies with the corruption and repressive policies of governments, especially in the Middle East, outside the orbit of US influence. A distinction needs to be drawn as persuasively as possible between inherently desirable lines of foreign policy reform and retreating in the face of terrorism.” (Richard Falk, Defining a Just War, The Nation, October 11, 2023, emphasis added)
With. regard to the above quotation, is it not “the other way round”? Many of the governments “inside” rather than “outside” the orbit of US influence are corrupt. Why? Because their leaders are threatened, coopted and/or bribed by Washington.
With regard to the so-called “movement of global terrorism”, see the National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), (signed by President Reagan) which de facto authorized stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen.
The promotion of “Radical Islam” was a deliberate CIA initiative (NSDD 166) which in the wake of 9/11 has served as justification to waging a “Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and sub–Saharan Africa.
“The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings….
Published in the dominant Afghan languages of Dari and Pashtun, the textbooks were developed in the early 1980s under an AID grant to the University of Nebraska-Omaha and its Center for Afghanistan Studies. The agency spent $51 million on the university’s education programs in Afghanistan from 1984 to 1994“, (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
It should be understood, that the “Before” and “After” Analysis Applies to the numerous Muslim Countries which have been the object of America’s “Humanitarian Warfare” agenda including Iraq, Syria, Libya, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, among others which have been the object of US-NATO bombings, invasions, “counter terrorism” and “regime change” operations in the wake of September 11, 2001.
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Just as Trump is the first US President to be convicted by a jury, Hunter Biden is the first son of a sitting president to be convicted of a federal felony.
This conviction of Hunter Biden leaves me unsettled, as does his likely pending conviction for federal income tax evasion.
The real issue is the information on Hunter Biden’s laptop that the FBI was able for awhile to suppress and brand as “Russian disinformation.”
This is under US law obstruction of Justice by the FBI.
All responsible should, if US law is still enforceable, be arrested, indicted, and prosecuted. It would be justice to see the FBI in the dock after all the innocent people the corrupt organization has put there.
The laptop information is the real issue.
It shows that the Bidens are a crime family and that Hunter was marketing abroad his father’s influence as Vice President and as President.
It seems clear that Biden senior, “the Big Guy,” received payments from the influence peddling.
Yet, not only did the corrupt FBI and whore media cover this up, the Justice (sic) Department directed attention away from the major crime by focusing the prosecution on minor issues. Hunter is convicted of lying on his handgun purchase statement by hiding the fact that he was a drug user, and Hunter most likely will be convicted of income tax evasion as he and his accountants could not report income from influence peddling without launching a federal case that would cast a net over father Biden.
MAGA Republicans are delighted with the verdict as it spreads the criminal accusation into the Democrat camp. MAGA Republicans do not realize that they are being manipulated and diverted from the main issue into a subsidiary issue.
Decades ago the Nobel prize-winning economist George Stigler pointed out that government is a private, not public, organization.
Political campaign contributions purchase Congressional votes for special interest enrichment, and federal regulatory agencies are captured by the private industries that they are suppose to regulate, thereby serving private and not public interests.
Fauci at NIH, for example, served the profits of Big Pharma’s Covid “vaccine” at the expense of the lives and health of millions of people.
Today all sorts of American politicians are serving Israel’s interest at the expense of Palestinian lives and the honor and integrity of the US government.
The same politicians are serving the profits of the military/security complex by widening the conflict in Ukraine and fomenting war with Russia, Iran, and China that could easily end in the extinction of life on earth.
There is no doubt that Stigler was right. I watched and experienced it during my quarter century in Washington. The public’s interest never enters into Washington’s concern.
There is no such thing as the “public interest.”
In the Western world government is merely a tool of the greed of private interests. Voting cannot overturn this high level of corruption.
Founding Father Thomas Jefferson said that periodically the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants.
It remains to be seen if Americans are up to the task of preserving liberty.
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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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The ashes had barely settled on a Rafah tent camp incinerated by an Israeli airstrike before the next, gorged massacre presented itself for posterity’s gloomy archive. It was intended as a golden operation and had been months in the making. The rescue of four Israeli hostages, the killing of three others (bound to happen for the expertly inclined), and the massacre of over 274 Palestinians at the Nuseirat refugee camp were the end result.
The logistics that led to the bloodbath had been rehearsed with detail verging on the manic. Many a vengeful mind was at play. Two buildings were constructed for training purposes. Participants involved the special counter-terrorism unit Yamam, Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet, and members of the Israeli Defence Forces. An enormous casualty rate would have already been contemplated given the remarks of IDF spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari.
“We understood that in those apartments with those guards, daytime will be the ultimate surprise.”
The lies barely have time to fledge. First, the numbers. Hagari could only count “dozens”, and “knew of less than 100”. He conceded to not knowing how many of such a reduced number were civilians. Israel’s Foreign Minister, Israel Katz, was happy to soften the carnage in attacking his country’s detractors. “Only Israel’s enemies complained about the casualties of Hamas terrorists and their accomplices.”
Then came the praise, manifold, effusive. The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant cooed with satisfaction, calling the effort “one of the most extraordinary operations”. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu merely offered the following morsel: “Israel does not surrender to terrorism.”
Furthermore, no civilian trucks, claimed the IDF, were used in the operation. Yet undercover vehicles were apparently deployed, one very much resembling those used by Israel to traffic commercial goods into Gaza; another being a white Mercedes truck packed and stacked with furniture and miscellaneous belongings typical of the dislocated and dispossessed. Disgorged from the latter, Palestinian eye-witness accounts noted men in plainclothes and some 10 heavily armed soldiers ready for mischief. The commencement of firing signalled the start of the butchery.
The UN Special Rapporteur of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Francesca Albanese, was certain. The IDF, she stated with exasperation, had “perfidiously” hidden “in an aid truck”. This constituted “‘humanitarian camouflage’ at another level.” While expressing relief at the rescue of four hostages, the enterprise “should not have come at the expense of at least 200 Palestinians, including children, killed and over 400 injured by Israel and allegedly foreign soldiers”.
In time, it became clear that the mission, venerated for its secrecy and praised for its planning, had not caught the Hamas guards responsible for three male hostages by surprise. They duly engaged the Yamam operatives. “Immediately, it became a war zone,” reservist brigadier general Amir Avivi toldThe Washington Post. The Israeli air force commenced indulgent fire. Death reigned at Nuseirat for some 75 minutes, concealed by the now standard refrain by the IDF: “Aircraft struck dozens of military targets for the success of the operation.”
Other, more tormented descriptions seemed closer to the mark. The Interceptnoted the observations of a Palestinian witness by the name of Suhail Mutlaq Abu Nasser. “The area turned to ashes… I couldn’t find my wife and started calling out to those around me to ensure they were still alive.” The account goes on to document the use of armed quadcopter drones, the presence of tank tracks, the hovering of Apache attack helicopters, the targeting of homes by missiles. Camp resident Anas Alayyan was also convinced that the entire military operation by Israeli forces did not fall short of a mass execution.
There is a pattern here, a murderous ratio justified by that most elastic yet horrific of reasons: self-defence. The hostage rescue will go down a treat in Israel. The names of those captured by Hamas on October 7 will be anointed in Israeli mythology: Noa Argamani, Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, Shlomi Ziv. But at what cost to those around them?
In addition to the slaughter, some indication of the aftermath is provided by Al Jazeera. “The wounded were taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in Deir el-Balah, an already overwhelmed facility.” Medics are found to be in utter despair.
The scale of killing on this score also raises troubling issues with Israel’s closest ally. Despite some political grumbling in the ranks, the Biden administration remains steadfast in support. The deaths in Rafah were still excusable because, in the words of US State Department spokesperson, Matthew Miller, Israel had not engaged in “a military operation on the scale of those previous operations [in Khan Younis and in Gaza City].”
The hefty death toll of Palestinian civilians in the Nuseirat operation was of lesser concern to President Joe Biden than the welfare of Israeli hostages. Speaking in Paris, Biden welcomed “the safe rescue of four hostages that were returned to their families in Israel. We won’t stop working until all the hostages come home and a ceasefire is reached.”
The sanguinary episode at Nuseirat is hard to stomach, even by Biden’s rubbery standards. It stands to reason. The entire operation had the buttressing of what the New York Timesreported to be “intelligence and other logistical support” from the United States. Two Israeli intelligence officials also confirmed that “American military officials in Israel provided some of the intelligence about the hostages rescued Saturday.” And let us not forget murderous military hardware, readily supplied from US defence companies. It follows that the lives of Israeli hostages, dubbed “diamonds” by their rescuers, are invaluable, the precious stones of Israeli-US policy. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are mere coal dust.
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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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It is difficult to imagine Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad accepting a hostage exchange deal that does not meet their immutable demand, which is a lasting ceasefire linked to a total Israeli withdrawal from Gaza. This, for them, is nonnegotiable, but for Benjamin Netanyahu and his hard-line coalition partners, an end to the war in this way can only mean defeat.
Sunday’s announcement by former defense minister and member of the War Cabinet Benny Gantz that he is resigning because Netanyahu has failed the Israeli public, including the families of the captives, and has never been able or willing to spell out a day-after plan for Gaza has compounded pressure on the government to call for early elections.
Assuming that the war will end soon or drag on for another few weeks or months, Israel will be looking for a way to declare victory. But even then, the question will be this: victory over whom and at what price? The political cost of the war, both domestically and abroad, is phenomenal. And then what comes next? The war will leave the entire population of Gaza, about 2 million people, homeless and battling a chronic humanitarian crisis for decades. Running this enclave will become an insurmountable challenge for any administration.
The deliberate destruction of Gaza in the most barbaric of ways can only mean that Israel was not going after Hamas but the Palestinians. Gaza has no more hospitals, universities, schools, residential areas, parks, stadiums or anything that denotes civilian life, including a society, culture and even cemeteries. This is a plan to drive people into extinction.
The war has dispatched Israel, the Palestinians, the region and the whole world back to the pre-1948 era, as if the last 75 years have meant nothing. The Palestinians remain stateless and under occupation and Israel is yet to decide what it wants to be in this region.
The war on Gaza will not deliver answers. But it will bring these fundamental questions to the forefront. We all know where the Palestinian people stand: they want to end the occupation — by any means possible — and claim their right to self-determination. They have tried to do this through both national struggle and peace negotiations. Both have failed to deliver.
And while it is easy to blame the victims for missing opportunities, a few have dared point the finger at Israel itself for derailing agreements and violating international law. An appeasement policy led by the US brought us to the Oct. 7 watershed moment.
But the real question is, what does Israel want to do with the Palestinians? It has killed more than 37,000 of them in Gaza — so far — and destroyed most of the enclave. By the time the war ends, Gaza will have become unlivable, according to experts. Will Israel withdraw? Or will it occupy the Strip indefinitely? What about the Palestinians there? What future awaits them?
Suppose one believes that the Gaza war, with all the atrocities and horrors, will summon a new vigor to find a lasting peace in historical Palestine. In that case, one should look back at the evolution of the Israeli body politic in the last two decades. Netanyahu’s long era in Israeli politics has empowered the far right — a toxic mix of ethnoreligious neofascists who openly talk about annexing the West Bank, colonizing Gaza and burying the Palestinians once and for all.
Netanyahu had hoped to use those who used to be on the fringe of Israeli politics to secure a majority in the Knesset. But now he has become their hostage. Similar to his, their agenda now occupies the center of the Israeli stage.
Netanyahu and his far-right partners do not want to give the Palestinians anything. They openly state that Oslo is over, the Palestinian Authority will be defunded and the UN Relief and Works Agency will be banned, as the momentum to annex most of the West Bank is at its height. The two-state solution is anathema to the far right. In the final phase, as Vladimir Jabotinsky and later Meir Kahane preached, the transfer of Palestinians will ensure complete Jewish control of the land.
We do not hear a rebuttal from the far right’s political rivals. Gantz, Yair Lapid, Avigdor Lieberman and Yoav Gallant, all potential successors of Netanyahu and his cronies, are all openly against the two-state solution. They are against giving up any territory in the West Bank, not to mention the Syrian Golan Heights. East Jerusalem is a red line for all. So, what are the Biden administration and its Western allies talking about when they declare they are behind a two-state solution?
The Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas have radicalized Israeli society even further. The Israeli left is no more. The so-called doves have been marginalized by a new generation of Israeli politicians. Netanyahu has claimed that there is no Palestinian peace partner. Still, in reality, it is the Palestinians who today cannot find an Israeli politician who presents himself as a partner for peace.
When the Gaza war is finally over, Israelis will face this question: what to do with the Palestinians? One has to understand that there is a Zionist master plan and that, after decades of intermittent wars and uprisings, that plan remains on target. Netanyahu and his extremist partners are clear about the objective; for them, this is an existential struggle: one ethnostate in all of historical Palestine — and maybe beyond.
Since the late 1980s, the concept of the land-for-peace deal, evolving into the two-state solution, had been a bipartisan US roadmap aimed at resolving what the Arab-Israeli conflict was then. But Donald Trump’s election changed all that. The core of the Republican Party is now aligned with Israel’s far-right agenda. Republican lawmakers are openly distancing themselves from the two-state solution for ideological, religious or selfish political reasons. The Democratic Party is divided and the Gaza war has splintered its ranks.
If anything good has come out of the war on Gaza, it is this: the Palestine cause is now universal. Israel has become a pariah state facing accusations of genocide. Its top government leaders may soon be indicted for war crimes. Global public opinion has shifted against it. A grassroots movement in Western colleges and universities is here to stay. Israel’s Western allies must choose between upholding international law and siding with a rogue state.
The Zionist agenda is under attack, but locally it is still on course. The systemic colonization of the West Bank is picking up speed. The situation in the West Bank is about to explode at any moment. The specter of a regional war is hovering over the Middle East.
Where Israel goes from here concerning the Palestinians is likely to be answered by the outcome of future Israeli elections. Israelis will have to choose, and their choice will determine where the rest of the world and the region go from there.
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Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman. X: @plato010
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After 21 years working at the UN Development Programme in Gaza, Basel Nasser now faces the task of assisting his birthplace on a scale unlike anything he has ever experienced before.
Eight months into Israel‘s military offensive in the Palestinian enclave, more than 37,000 residents have been killed, nearly 85,000 injured and most of its population of more than two million displaced by strikes and a ground offensive that have destroyed more than half of its buildings.
“The numbers don’t even remotely reflect the reality,” Mr Nasser told The National before taking part in the UN emergency conference on Gaza’s humanitarian needs, hosted by Jordan at the Dead Sea on Tuesday.
As Minister of Relief Affairs in the Palestinian Authority‘s newly appointed government – a position created in light of the war in Gaza – Mr Nasser is already planning for the rehabilitation of Gaza and its people once the war ends.
Unlike previous conflicts between Israel and Hamas in the coastal strip, “virtually the entire population of Gaza will require aid” this time, he said.
He pointed out that the death toll provided by Gaza’s health authorities does not include those who have died from hunger or from the lack of proper medical care in the Strip.
Gaza’s residents have faced acute food shortages created by strict Israeli controls on the delivery of aid since the war began, with UN and aid groups warning that the territory faces the risk of famine.
There are no fully functioning hospitals after most were destroyed in raids and bombardments by the Israeli military, while the few that are still in partial service struggle with shortages of medical supplies and fuel to run their generators.
Israel dropped about 70,000 tonnes of explosives on the Gaza Strip between the start of the war on October 7 and April 24, according to the Geneva-based Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor.
In addition to the grim human toll, damage to infrastructure totalled more than $18.5 billion by January, according to a World Bank and UN estimate.
Mr Nasser said the Palestinian government has put together an emergency plan for Gaza which will require at least $1.13 billion in assistance over the first six months after the fighting ends, as part of a larger project for relief and recovery.
The plan includes providing food, water and cash assistance for 300,000 families, and temporary shelters and other essentials for 30,000 families, as well as treatment for the ill and injured and psychological and psychosocial support for traumatised residents.
Teachers and temporary schools will be provided to allow children to resume their education, either remotely or in person.
“The matter requires sufficient funding,” Mr Nasser said. “If every person in Gaza was fed with just $5 a day, that’s $11 million a day for the entire population.”
Unimpeded access to the territory, which has been under an Israeli blockade since Hamas seized control in 2007, will also be vital, including for machinery and materials need for reconstruction.
“The removal of rubble, which in and of itself is a mammoth task, will require intervention from private and public contractors both in Gaza and the occupied West Bank and the total free movement of machinery and equipment in and out of the strip,” Mr Nasser said.
The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, said on Monday that more than half of all buildings in Gaza had been destroyed, citing data from the UN Satellite Centre.
The task of reconstruction could take “up to 20 years”, even if funding was immediately available and with unrestricted access to the territory, said Mr Nasser.
“There is damage from the 2014 war that has not yet been repaired,” he said.
However, the question remains whether the Palestinian Authority will oversee Gaza’s postwar recovery, as both Israel and Hamas, a rival of the Fatah political faction that controls the PA, are both opposed to this.
Still, Mr Nasser takes hope from the inclusion of eight members from Gaza, including himself, in the authority’s 22-member cabinet.
“This is a strong indicator that the Palestinian Authority and the government will exert all efforts to take all the responsibilities to provide services, manage the relief, recovery and reconstruction process, and unify the Palestinian public institutions in the Gaza strip and the West Bank,” he said.
For Mr Nasser, who was trapped in Gaza for the first 40 days of the war before being allowed to leave – thanks to his Canadian passport – psychological support for Gazans will be a crucial part of the territory’s rehabilitation.
“I was traumatised after only 40 days of war – but it has now already been months. There will be a lot of work to be done on that front,” he said.
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Featured image: Palestinian Minister of State for Relief Affairs Basel Nasser expects the reconstruction of Gaza to take up to 20 years. Nada AlTaher / The National
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On May 27, Israel “apologised” for the 45 Palestinian deaths resulting from its bombing raid on a “humanitarian zone” in Rafah. This backhanded apology conveyed more insult than atonement. As Israeli apologies, even insincere ones, are rare, it’s worth examining this one’s background.
The bombing occurred just two days after the International Court of Justice ordered Israel to stop its assault on Rafah, citing the dangers to civilian life and humanitarian aid delivery. The International Criminal Court prosecutor had also just declared his intent to request arrest warrants for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and defense minister Yossi Gallant on charges of war crimes committed during the assault on Gaza.
Compounding Israeli embarrassment were the decisions by Spain, Ireland and Norway to recognise the State of Palestine and supportive statements for the ICC warrant request from France and Germany. Many European countries also issued swift and firm denunciations of the Rafah attack.
Unsurprisingly, the initial Israeli response was immediate and excessive. The ICJ was called “a moral outrage”. Israeli commentators denounced the court in racist terms, noting the percentage of judges from Muslim-majority or “third world” countries. The EU countries recognising Palestine were compared to Nazis and their action termed antisemitic. The greatest torrent of abusive language came in response to the ICC request for warrants. Justice Minister Levin referred to the request as “one of the biggest moral disgraces in human history”. Netanyahu narcissistically said the charges against him were “directed against all of Israel” and “an example of the new antisemitism”. He further deflected saying:
“With what chutzpah do you dare compare Hamas…and the soldiers of the IDF who are fighting a just war that is unparalleled with a morality that is unmatched?”
Netanyahu’s foes Benny Gantz and Yair Lapid called the request “a crime of historic proportions” and “unforgivable”.
This bullying through excessive language is Israel’s traditional response to criticism, an attempt to verbally pummel critics into submission while shoring up supporters.
Then came the decision to bomb Rafah, perhaps Israel demonstrating that they were undeterred by criticism. After, Israel described the attack as using “precise munitions based on precise intelligence”. Appearing aware of the attack’s possible repercussions, Israelis seemed to test their critics’ tolerance, threading the needle of compliance with international law and bowing to US concerns about civilian casualties.
Of course, the initial bombing was not precise, with 22 deaths reported. The fires ignited by the blast ravaged an adjacent area, burning to death 45 Palestinians.
Confronted by growing international outrage, the Israelis followed their normal practice of “deny, lie, and obfuscate”. They claimed that the death toll was exaggerated and the attack precise; then said the site wasn’t in a “protected zone”, a false claim, as a few days prior they’d expanded the zone to include the area they bombed. Then they denounced Hamas targets for “hiding out” among civilians. Adding an element of confusion, they suggested that the fire might have started if the bomb blast ignited a nearby Hamas arms cache. No evidence was presented (or needed) because with that obfuscation Israel felt it had cast doubt on its responsibility, shifting the blame back to Hamas.
Failing to dampen international rage, the Israelis made a rare choice: “apologise.” They could see world opinion turning against them. Despite the Biden administration’s hesitation to condemn their crossing his ever-moving red line, they know how precarious their position is in the US. With Netanyahu hoping to address Congress and facing Democratic boycott of his remarks, action was needed.
Hence, the decision to apologise, and what a backhanded apology it was. Netanyahu announced:
“Despite our efforts not to hit them, there was a tragic mishap. We are investigating the incident.” Adding insult to injury, he continued, “For us it’s a tragedy; for Hamas it’s a strategy,”
echoing the hurtful, racist comment of former prime minister Golda Meir:
“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We can never forgive them for making us kill their children.”
The apology’s insincerity was demonstrated a few days later when Israel bombed another Rafah refugee encampment, killing 21 Palestinians.
As if to greenlight more such attacks, despite growing worldwide and domestic condemnation of these mass killings, the Biden administration announced it would not take any action against Israel. They are satisfied with Israel’s precautions to avoid civilian deaths and its investigation of their actions in Rafah. Netanyahu plays to an audience of one so that’s enough for the bombings to continue.
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James J. Zogby is president of the Washington-based Arab American Institute.
Featured image: Israel’s prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. (Photo: Valeriano Di Domenico / WEF)
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Dietary protein is crucial for building and repairing body tissues, influencing everything from muscle growth to the function of enzymes and hormones
Nine essential amino acids must be obtained from the diet as your body cannot synthesize them
Animal proteins provide not only essential amino acids but also nutrients that are essential for health, such as vitamin B12, retinol and taurine, which support brain, heart, and muscle function
Adults generally need about 1 gram of protein per pound of their ideal body weight daily to support optimal muscle protein synthesis
Collagen, which makes up about 30% of your body’s protein, is essential for maintaining the strength and flexibility of tissues like skin, bones and joints, so approximately one-third of your daily protein intake should be in the form of collagen
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Dietary protein is essential for building and repairing tissues, including muscles and organs. It’s also required for the proper functioning of enzymes, hormones, and your immune system.
Essential, Nonessential and Conditionally Essential Amino Acids
Made up of amino acids, proteins serve as the building blocks of your body. While there are hundreds of amino acids in nature, humans only use about 20 of them to make the proteins our bodies need. Those 20 proteins include:
Five of these — alanine, asparagine, aspartic acid, glutamic acid, and serine — are considered nonessential amino acids because your body can make them, although you can also get them from foods.
Another six — arginine, cysteine, glutamine, glycine, proline, and tyrosine — are described as conditionally essential. This is because, while your body can make them if you’re healthy, during times of illness, stress or intense physical activity, your body’s ability to produce these amino acids may not be sufficient to meet your needs, making it necessary to get them through your diet.
There are also nine essential amino acids, which you must get from food as your body cannot make them. These include histidine, isoleucine, leucine, lysine, methionine, phenylalanine, threonine, tryptophan, and valine. Dietary sources for these essential amino acids include meat, fish, eggs, and dairy, as well as some plant-based options like legumes.
Why You Need Protein
Muscle mass optimizes you for longevity, and dietary protein, especially animal-based protein, is essential for muscle maintenance and muscle building. The greater your muscle mass, the higher your survivability against all diseases, including cancer. Cachexia, for example — the loss of muscle mass — accounts for 20% of all cancer deaths.1
One of the reasons for this is because muscle acts as a reservoir for amino acids, which are crucial during illness when your body’s demand for them increases. Additionally, muscle regulates metabolism and is integral for glucose disposal, which helps you manage conditions like diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Your muscle also interfaces with your immune system.
The Case for Animal Protein
In terms of diet, skeletal muscle requires high-quality dietary protein, ideally animal protein, to stimulate muscle protein synthesis. Skeletal muscle requires branched-chain amino acids — leucine, isoleucine and valine — which are most abundant in meat.
Unlike plant proteins, animal sources also provide nutrients like vitamin B12, retinol (vitamin A) and creatine, bioavailable iron, carnitine, and carnosine, all of which are important for muscle growth and health in general.
Animal-based protein sources also contain taurine,2 a semi-essential amino acid that is important for:
Healthy brain function3
Heart health4
Healthy muscle function5
Bile salt formation6
Antioxidant defenses7— Taurine protects your antioxidant status by neutralizing hypochlorous acid,8 diminishing the generation of superoxide by the mitochondria,9 and minimizing oxidative stress,10 including mitochondrial oxidative stress induced by toxins11
According to a 2023 study,12,13 taurine plays an important role in longevity and healthy aging. Oral supplementation with taurine increased the median healthy lifespan of mice by 10% to 12%. Taurine also helps rebuild damaged collagen fibers14 and can help ease anxiety by increasing glycine and GABA.15
Taurine is a byproduct of the sulphureous amino acids cysteine and methionine (technically a sulfonic acid), and is only found in animal foods. Examples of taurine-rich foods include seafood, organic grass fed red meat and dairy products, and organic poultry.
Finding Your Ideal Protein Intake
As a rule, protein should make up about 15% of your daily calories. More specifically, most adults need about 0.8 grams of protein per pound of ideal body weight (the weight you would ideally be, not necessarily the weight you are now), or for Europeans, approximately 1.76 grams of protein per kilo.
For example, if your ideal weight is 135 pounds, your protein requirement would be 108 grams. Divided into two meals, that would be 54 grams per meal. For reference, there’s approximately 7 grams of protein in each ounce of steak, so a 5-ounce steak would give you 35 grams of high-quality protein. For children, the average amount per meal is around 5 to 10 grams, while young adults typically can get away with 20 grams per meal.
For most normal-weight adults, 30 grams per meal is really the minimum you need to stimulate muscle protein synthesis.
Comparison with Conventional Advice
For comparison, conventional dietary advice recommends a daily intake of 1.65 to 1.76 grams of protein per pound of actual bodyweight (as opposed to ideal weight), or for Europeans, 0.75 to 0.8 grams per kilo. Using this metric, the average adult woman is said to need about 45 grams of protein per day, and men about 56 grams.16
While the gram per pound is higher, the total grams of protein recommended ends up being much lower because they’re basing it on actual weight, which in most people is primarily excess fat weight, not muscle. Basing your intake on ideal weight is more likely to bring you closer to your real needs.
Many are starting to realize that the conventional recommendation for protein may be inadequate though. As reported by The Guardian,17 this guideline is based on a studies trying to determine the minimum protein requirements needed to prevent malnutrition, which is different from the requirement to thrive:
“A new technique for establishing protein needs has been developed, catchily called the indicator amino acid oxidation method. ‘It suggests the minimum protein intake for thrive mode, not just to prevent malnutrition, is about 1g to 1.2g per kilogram of body weight per day.’
‘As a woman in my 40s,’ says [British dietitian Linia] Patel, ‘as my hormones decrease I will lose muscle mass. The 1g of protein will help me prevent that, not the 0.75g …
For bulky rugby players, the protein recommendation is ‘about 2g per kg in body weight per day, and they’re at the top of what the American College of Sports Medicine recommends’ …
[F]rom our late 70s we need a protein boost up to about 1g per kg of bodyweight, daily … [E]lderly people need a little bit more to slow the natural reduction in muscle mass. An older person who’s trying to be active might need 1.4g per kg.”
Make Sure You’re Getting Enough Collagen
Once you have calculated your overall protein requirement, make sure one-third of that is in the form of collagen. Collagen is the most common and abundant of your body’s proteins, accounting for about 30% of the total protein in your body.
One of its primary purposes is to provide structural support and strength to your tissues, such as skin, bones, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage18,19,20 by allowing them to stretch while still maintaining tissue integrity. As such, collagen is crucial for repairing soft tissue, muscle, and connective tissue.
Connective tissues include tendons, ligaments, cartilage, and fascia, which tend to get weaker and less elastic with age. Connective tissue injuries are also problematic since there’s very little blood supply in connective tissue, which slows down recovery. Other lesser-known health benefits of collagen supplementation include:
Deeper sleep due to its glycine content21
Reduced joint pain and stiffness,22 including osteoarthritis pain23
Improved gut health and digestion, thanks to the presence of glycine24
Improved blood pressure and reduced cardiovascular damage25
Improved glucose tolerance26
Reduced inflammation and oxidative damage, as glycine inhibits the consumption of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). NADPH is used as a reductive reservoir of electrons to recharge antioxidants once they become oxidized
Collagen Is Important for Muscle Functionality
Also, while collagen does not contribute directly to muscle growth, it plays a supportive role by contributing to the overall health and functionality of muscles and connective tissues. For example, collagen:
Supports the health and strength of tendons and ligaments — By strengthening these connective tissues, collagen helps maintain the integrity and elasticity necessary for muscles to function effectively and grow.
Facilitates injury recovery — Building muscle often involves rigorous physical activity that can sometimes lead to injuries. Collagen is vital for the repair of connective tissues and can accelerate recovery from muscle injuries by promoting quicker regeneration of muscle fibers and connective tissue.
Enhances joint health — Regular strength training and muscle building can put a strain on joints. Collagen helps maintain the cartilage that cushions joints and may reduce the risk of joint deterioration and pain. Healthier joints support more consistent and intensive workouts.
Improves muscle elasticity — Collagen contributes to the elasticity and hydration of tissues. With better muscle elasticity, there is a lower risk of injuries during workouts, allowing for more effective muscle engagement and growth over time.
Aids in muscle contraction — Collagen contains several amino acids, such as glycine and proline, which are important for the synthesis of creatine in the body. Creatine is a compound that provides energy for muscle contractions and is often supplemented to increase muscle mass and improve exercise performance.
Why Red Meat Cannot Provide All the Protein You Need
The primary amino acids in collagen — glycine, proline and hydroxyproline — make up the matrix of connective tissue. As you can see in the chart below, red meat contains very little of these amino acids, so eating only muscle meat will not provide enough amino acids to allow you to build strong connective tissue and maintain bone strength.
Importantly, collagen contains higher amounts of specific amino acids with anti-inflammatory and other healing properties, while red meat is higher in amino acids that promote inflammation.
Collagen also helps protect your cells against stress. During stress, cysteine and tryptophan are released in large quantities, and these amino acids have antimetabolic effects. Glycine, on the other hand, has cell-protective, antistress effects.27 As such, many degenerative and inflammatory diseases can be ameliorated by eating more gelatin and/or collagen-rich foods.
Red meat contains far higher levels of the antimetabolic amino acids cysteine and tryptophan, which you want less of if you struggle with degenerative and/or inflammatory conditions. Life extension studies have shown that tryptophan and cysteine restriction produce a greater life extension than calorie restriction, which is rather remarkable.28
Bone Broth Is an Ideal Collagen Source
Homemade beef bone broth is an ideal source of collagen, and using a pressure cooker, you can whip up bone broth in as little as two to four hours. The devil’s in the details though.
When cooking broth, you want to make sure the bones are as organic as possible, as the bones of animals raised in concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) tend to be contaminated with heavy metals, which leach out during cooking.
Some bones are also better sources of collagen than others. Chicken feet and the knuckle bones (knee joint) of cows are particularly high in collagen and are therefore excellent choices for making bone broth.
Prevent Muscle Breakdown with Carbs
On a final side note, the stress hormone cortisol drains the amino acids, the protein, from your tissues, thereby decreasing bone density and muscle mass. So, while making sure you’re eating enough protein is important, you also want to eat enough healthy carbs to prevent the destruction of muscle from excess cortisol.
Consuming carbs as part of your post workout meal will decrease cortisol and allow you to recover faster. Research has shown that including carbs in your post-workout meal decreases cortisol levels by 11% (relative to the peak cortisol level measured during exercise). Meanwhile, not including carbs can increase cortisol by 105%.29
The reason for all this is because when you don’t have enough glucose to fuel the mitochondria, when you deplete your glycogen level, then stress hormones — adrenaline and cortisol — are released to trigger endogenous production of glycogen.
Those stress hormones are pathologic, and if they’re continuously released at high levels to compensate for insufficient glucose, it will accelerate disease and premature death.
According to a recent meta-analysis, a single strength workout will decrease muscle glycogen levels by 24% to 40%.30 Just three sets of 12 reps performed to muscular failure resulted in a 26.1% decrease in muscle glycogen levels.31
So, it’s important to consume healthy carbs after your workout to replenish your glycogen stores. Your muscles rebuild when you’re in a rest and digest state, not in a state of fight or flight.
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June 12th, 2024 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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A new report by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) warns that a Canadian public official tasked with countering racism has demonstrated a harmful and malicious pattern of spreading misinformation against supporters of Palestine, and is calling for her to be replaced. Titled “Defaming the Pro-Palestine Movement,” the report examines the public commentary of Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism, and finds that her office has consistently spread false information to demonize Canadians protesting Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. CJPME’s report recommends that Lyons should be replaced in her position with someone able to combat antisemitism in an intersectional manner, without reproducing anti-Palestinian racism.
“It is unacceptable for a public official responsible for anti-racism work to be consistently spreading anti-Palestinian racism,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “We have no confidence in Lyons’ ability to distinguish between criticism of Israel and genuine antisemitism, as she appears to see no difference between the two. Her actions embolden hatred and incitement against young people who are rightfully protesting genocide. It is clear that she cannot continue in this public role,” added Bueckert.
On Saturday, Canada published its renewed federal anti-racism strategy without any mention of anti-Palestinian racism, thus failing to provide resources to combat the harm caused by the Special Envoy.
CJPME’s report examines the social media commentary of Special Envoy Lyons between October 2023 and March 2024 to demonstrate how she has consistently spread false claims about pro-Palestine activists, misrepresenting protests, slogans, and pro-Palestine positions as antisemitic. For example, Lyons has often falsely alleged that pro-Palestine protests targeted Jewish individuals or institutions while ignoring the organizers’ actual goals or rationale. Similarly, Lyons has misinterpreted the Arabic term “Intifada” and popular slogans like “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” to paint them as inherently and exclusively antisemitic, further suggesting that these forms of speech should be prosecuted by police. Lyons has even put forward the view that Canada’s December 2023 vote for a ceasefire at the United Nations General Assembly was antisemitic, even though it reflected a mainstream political view against war.
The report also finds that a significant part of Special Envoy Lyons’s role includes collaboration with Israeli officials. CJPME believes that this collaboration is particularly problematic at a time when Israel’s genocidal actions are being investigated by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and as the International Criminal Court is about to issue arrest warrants against Israeli leaders for war crimes and crimes against humanity. This collaboration includes meeting with Israeli President Herzog, whose genocidal comments were referenced by the ICJ in its initial ruling, and with Israel’s far-right Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli, who leads a covert foreign influence campaign targeting Canadians with racist and anti-Muslim content.
“As Parliament investigates foreign interference and influence, it is outrageous that the Special Envoy is simultaneously collaborating with the far-right Israeli Minister who is behind a covert op targeting Palestinian- and Muslim Canadians with racist messages and disinformation. This is completely unacceptable. Canadians are rightfully concerned that the office of the Special Envoy is using public funding to defend Israel’s interests, rather than being used to combat domestic racism and white supremacy,” said Bueckert.
CJPME’s report concludes that Special Envoy Lyons’ behaviour shows a pattern of anti-Palestinian racism. Not only has Lyons consistently conflated legitimate criticism and protest of Israel’s structurally racist policies with antisemitism, but she routinely advocates for nearly all types of protest to be shut down or even prosecuted. CJPME argues that this behaviour is reproducing harm against Palestinian Canadians and their supporters, especially the racialized young people who are the most involved in pro-Palestine protests. CJPME is also troubled about Lyons’ authorship of a pending IHRA guidebook, which threatens to further conflate criticism of Israel with antisemitism. As CJPME’s report concludes, “An approach to anti-racism in Canada cannot prevent Palestinians and their supporters from advocating for their own rights or naming the forms of racism and oppression that they face, whether here in Canada or within territories controlled by Israel.”
“Rather than fighting antisemitism, the Special Envoy is leading a McCarthyite push to force Canadian institutions to support Israel and Zionism, while discouraging Palestinians from speaking up about their experiences of systemic racism in Israel and Canada. Her push to force institutions to adopt IHRA is a clear threat to free expression and Charter rights in Canada,” said Bueckert.
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A new problem has emerged in the ranks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine: fuel theft, writes the Ukrainian portal Strana citing military personnel. However, all the cases cited by the outlet focus on low-ranking military personnel rather than where most of the corruption is being committed – by the upper echelons of the Kiev regime.
“Fuel theft has become one of the acute problems of corruption in the Armed Forces of Ukraine at almost all levels,” the Strana article says.
It is noteworthy that fuel has become a new real currency among the military. A Ukrainian official told the portal one of the schemes used. According to him, a huge amount of fuel is stolen from the country’s Army every month and is attributed to “combat operations.”
“If the unit is in the first line, fuel is delivered to the second line by refuelers. [The vehicles] are refueled, documents are handed over. The commander is obliged to account for fuel consumption in detail after rotation. But in reality, fuel consumption on the front line during a battle with the equipment is impossible to calculate accurately. This is the basis for the schemes and falsifications,” the military explained.
The Ukrainian military also said that the command is aware of the situation and is monitoring the process. As a result of these schemes, the stolen fuel becomes a bonus to the salary, concluded the soldier.
In the court registry, Strana found dozens of cases related to the theft of fuel and revealed some of them.
One of the court cases is about how a driver of a military tanker drained 1,200 litres of diesel fuel from it, which, as he later admitted in court, he planned to sell for 50 hryvnia ($1.24) per litre. Another case describes how a soldier dumped 500 litres of diesel fuel, whilst another court case describes how the senior combat medic of an air assault battalion created an entire group that specialised in fraud.
In all the cases cited by Strana, it only concerned lower ranking military personnel, meaning that the true scope of corruption is much larger since the main perpetrators are high-ranking officials, who are expanding their real estate portfolio, including Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky. The situation is so out of control that the US, hardly itself a bastion of transparency and honesty, is directly intervening to stop, or at least try limit the amount of corruption.
Brent Neiman, deputy undersecretary for international finance who returned from a visit to Ukraine earlier this month, said in a speech that Kiev needs to “reduce the likelihood for conflicts of interest and corruption.” This is especially important for the Biden administration in the lead up to the US Presidential elections in November since Ukraine has received hundreds of billions in financial support from the US and other Western countries.
“To this end, budget assistance from the United States, Europe, and the International Financial Institutions is designed to help support Ukraine in undertaking a number of priority reforms,” Neiman added.
Zelensky was initially elected on an anti-corruption platform in 2019, but instead the former comedian has now placed himself at the top of the corruption pyramid. To distract from his own deeply entrenched involvement in corruption, Zelensky fired Ivan Bakanov, former head of the State Security Service, in July 2022, as proof of their efforts to crack down on graft, as well as other top officials, including Agriculture Minister Mykola Solsky, who recently forced to resign after being implicated in a corruption case, and Ilya Vityuk, a high-ranking official in the SBU intelligence service, who was sacked on May 1.
The West has poured hundreds of billions into Ukraine even though the country is considered one of the most corrupt countries in Europe. The reality of Ukraine’s deeply entrenched corruption has always been known by the West, but there was a naïve belief that the war would somehow magically end the issue, rather than viewing it for what it actually was, a grand opportunity to siphon even more money out of the economy and military and into private hands.
With the European Parliamentary elections over and now global attention shifting to the upcoming US presidential elections, undoubtedly the billions of dollars Washington has sent to Ukraine, which the Council on Foreign Relations believes is $175 billion, will become a major talking point and one that former President Donald Trump will use to attack President Joe Biden and his reckless policies on Ukraine since much of that money was wasted on a futile war effort or was unaccounted for. For this reason, Washington is desperately trying to push Zelensky into cracking down on all corruption, but this will not be achieved since the Ukrainian president himself is deeply involved.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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On Monday, Hezbollah announced it shot down an Israeli Drone, the Hermes 900, over southern Lebanon. The Lebanese resistance group used air defense weapons to down the drone which fell in the vicinity of al-Rehan mountain in Jezzine District.
Hezbollah poses the largest military threat to Israel, according to Israeli and regional security experts.
In 2006, Hezbollah successfully defended an all-out assault by Israel and has only grown stronger since then by greatly expanding their weapons and technologies.
Hezbollah has said the day fighting in Gaza stops will be the day fighting in southern Lebanon will stop, referring to a possible ceasefire.
Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse has interviewed Khalil Harb, a freelance Beirut-based journalist, former managing editor of the Lebanese daily Al-Safir, and has worked for the Associated Press and the Lebanese An-Nahar newspaper.
Steven Sahiounie (SS): Israeli officials are threatening Lebanon that this summer is going to be a hot summer, and they mean war. In your opinion, can the Israeli military handle a war with Lebanon, and with the current war in Gaza?
Khalil Harb (KH): It is no secret that Israel has a huge military arsenal and exceptional destructive capacity, thanks to the continuous Western support for it for more than 70 years. Regarding the ability to launch a major strike on Lebanon, this possibility is not excluded, but it is important to point out that the ability to launch a major strike does not necessarily mean having the ability to wage a major war. Israel is literally caught in a quagmire in Gaza, and it is difficult to imagine that it can wage a war on a new front, a larger front, a front more dangerous than Gaza. As time passes, the resistance in Lebanon reveals a new qualitative weapon. In the past few days, it revealed its use, for the first time ever, of surface-to-air missiles on Israeli warplanes that were violating the skies of Lebanon.
Elbit Hermes 900 & Elbit Hermes 450 UAVs in formation (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
It is true that several advanced Israeli drones were shot down in the past months, including the Hermes 450 and Hermes 900, but this is the first time that the “Islamic Resistance in Lebanon” has announced the firing of surface-to-air missiles at Israeli aircraft, which means that a new page has been opened in the confrontation, after Israel was distinguished by its overwhelming superiority over Lebanon (and all its opponents) with its air force.
Until now, the resistance in Lebanon is still committed to the geographical extent of its military response within the Israeli entity, which does not exceed 15 kilometers. It is not clear whether a comprehensive war will break out, but what is certain is that the resistance has the necessary missile capabilities to inflict significant damage on the Israeli interior in what is known as the “Gush Dan” area, which is considered the economic and financial nerve and human concentration. The question is: Is Israel willing to risk such possibilities?
SS: Lebanon is going through a massive economic crisis, which could be helped by a regional peace agreement. If there was a peace agreement between Israel and the Palestinians, such as the two-state solution, would Lebanon be included?
KH: I am not a supporter of those who say that “peace” with Israel brings economic prosperity. If the question means the economic gains that Lebanon could reap from a peace settlement like this, then I prefer to describe them as crumbs of benefits. The repeated American promises to Lebanon to obtain electricity through arranging cooperation with Egypt and Jordan in this context have been heard by the Lebanese for years… that is, before October 7, 2023, and Washington has been obstructing for years any cooperation in the field of energy with China, Iran and others. Keeping the Lebanese people in need, and shortages in the field of electricity allows officials of successive American administrations to make empty promises like these, or to portray them as if they were great gains that would come from the promised peace.
SS: The European Union and the United States are putting massive pressure on Lebanon over the Syrian refugees. In your opinion, how will Lebanon solve this problem, and will it affect the political crisis in Lebanon?
KH: The best, easiest and logical way to address the issue of displaced Syrians in Lebanon is through direct communication and coordination between the governments of Beirut and Damascus. There is no alternative to that. They are the two countries directly concerned with this issue, which is turning into an internal crisis in Lebanon and raising tensions. But the problem is that Washington and some European Union countries want two things: first, to try to keep Damascus isolated and prevent communication and cooperation with it in its geographical surroundings, and second, to continue exploiting the card of the displaced Syrians to weaken and aggravate the internal situation in Lebanon, but without causing it to explode, and also to keep Syria and its regime in the appearance of a unsecure and unstable state, thus obstructing the return of the displaced to their homeland.
SS: Lebanon has been without a president for over two years. In your opinion, what will it take for they various Lebanese political parties to elect a president, and what is the role of the West in this process?
KH: From afar, the best way to resolve the issue of the vacuum in the presidency in Lebanon is to prevent the American “conditions” and some Arab countries, such as Saudi Arabia, from imposing them on Lebanon to determine the criteria for the new president. The fear of some Lebanese leaders of angering the Americans and Saudis, who enjoy humiliating influence in Lebanon, by reaching a settlement on the issue of the presidency, prevents progress on this issue. The pretext is always the “Iranian scarecrow.” Some in Washington, Riyadh, and Beirut are betting on a president who will be hostile to Hezbollah, or perhaps less friendly with the party.
SS: There is increasing pressure on the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah internationally, and domestically, because of their operations against the Israelis. What is your take on the situation on the ground, and what might happen later?
KH: As long as Israel wages its war in this way against Gaza and against the Palestinians in general, the front on which Hezbollah is fighting will not calm down. This is at least what the party says in whispers and in public. Hezbollah is convinced that Israel’s victory in the Gaza war means that the entire region will enter a more dangerous and bloody phase. This party considers that its entry into this battle to relieve pressure on Gaza as much as is available, is practically a defense of Lebanon itself. This conviction has not changed in 8 months, and I do not imagine it will change soon.
With the reckless lunatic Netanyahu in power in Israel, there is no hope of either goodness or peace. As for the internal situation in Lebanon, Hezbollah realizes, as many do, that no resistance throughout history has enjoyed popular consensus around it. Look at how there was division in some European societies even in the face of the Nazi occupation of Europe. Through the experiences of Hezbollah and the resistance factions before it in Lebanon, the Lebanese were never united around the resistance. Hezbollah also realizes this, and therefore, I believe, there is no choice for Lebanon.
The theory of “Swiss neutrality” does not hold true here, and is not applicable. We are next to the last dangerous occupying state in the world, ruled by extremists who want to “exterminate” the Palestinians and Arabs in general and view them with clear racism. Watch their political and ideological discourse in the words of their senior officials, theoreticians and religious leaders.
The dilemma facing Israel now, in my opinion, is that it realizes that igniting a major war in the region means that it will be the Hundred Years War.
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After the assassination attempt on Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico, authors at InfoBRICS (myself included) argued that this certainly wasn’t a “lone gunman” type of thing, but something far more sinister and (geo)political. Expectedly, such hypotheses were immediately rejected as supposed “conspiracy theories” and nearly all Western social media platforms would “fact-check” these views into oblivion, resulting in “negative points” (i.e. banning and shadow banning) for anyone who “dared” promoting them. And yet, soon after the EU/NATO-sponsored assassination attempt on PM Fico, the troubled bloc’s Enlargement Commissioner Oliver Varhelyi called Georgian Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze to tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he’s next if Tbilisi doesn’t change its anticolonial stance. I wonder how Facebook and the likes will “fact-check” that.
And yet, if you thought this was bad, just wait ’till you hear about the most recent threats that are now appearing in various outlets of the mainstream propaganda machine. But before we delve deeper into this, I’d like to remind our respected readers of a very similar “fact-checking” that happened back in late March, when another NATO-sponsored act of terror took place. Namely, we all remember the monstrous Crocus City Hall massacre, when hundreds of Russian civilians were ruthlessly murdered by Islamic radicals. However, soon after the terrorist attack, I argued that, even if we don’t take the abhorrent glee of the Neo-Nazi junta into account, evidence suggested its involvement was virtually guaranteed. And once again, this view was also exposed to endless “fact-checking”. This is where we get to the latest threats to Russia, yet another smoking gun of who was behind the Crocus City Hall massacre.
Namely, the Daily Express is now reporting that the Kiev regime could “launch terror campaign, bombing schools if Russia wins the war”. Quoting an “expert”, the British tabloid says that “Ukraine’s plan is more terrifying for Vladimir Putin than a conventional war because he could lose power very quickly in Russia”. The very first thing any sensible reader would notice is that the word “terror campaign” is thrown quite casually, as if it were the most “normal thing ever”. Then this plan is presented as “terrifying for Vladimir Putin”, as he could “lose power”. In other words, the Daily Express wants us to just forget about the fact that bombing schools and murdering civilians (in this case schoolchildren, obviously) is a monstrous act of terrorism that cannot possibly be justified by anything and focus entirely on deposing “evil” Putin. Who in their right mind would even think to “rationalize” such disturbing views?
However, that’s precisely what the infamous British tabloid is effectively trying to do. The “expert” it interviewed, Nicholas Drummond, says that “Ukraine is planning terrorist activity which would see Russian schools and other civilian infrastructure targeted”.
The Daily Express also tried justifying this by using the mainstream propaganda machine’s usual trope about Russia supposedly “targeting Ukraine’s residential areas consistently in the war”, while “Ukraine has been limited to striking Russian territory close to the border”, with “Belgorod, a city just 25 miles from the border, has seen the most Ukrainian attacks in the last year”. Obviously, the British tabloid is completely ignoring the fact that the Neo-Nazi junta has been murdering the people of Donbass for over a decade at this point and that its forces are now also targeting even the areas they lost in the initial stages of the special military operation (SMO).
“But Ukraine is planning much more damaging attacks. Ukrainians could launch terrorist activity in Russia, including the bombing of schools. I think any strikes will be restricted to the border regions because strikes deep into Russia would be a big escalation. Ukraine will want to conduct terrorist activity in Russia… if Russia wins in Ukraine or is given any kind of victory, I think Ukraine will conduct a counterinsurgency campaign inside Russia, and that would be much more devastating than anything we have seen on the frontlines. It will be really unpleasant. The terrorist activity would include bombing schools, bombing infrastructure… that would begin in earnest if any peace deal was imposed on Zelensky”, Drummond told the Daily Express, adding: “They are absolutely planning these kinds of attacks now. No question. I think this is more terrifying for Putin than a conventional war, because if Ukrainians unleash this terror campaign in Russia, he will lose power very quickly because people will say ‘you are not doing enough to stop it’.”
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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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The results of the EU elections are causing despair among liberal activists around the world. Irresponsibly, some biased analysts claim that Europe is becoming “fascist” or “going far right”, without taking into account that it is precisely the nationalist and conservative parties that are showing an alternative to the European wave of Nazi-backing in Ukraine.
Millions of Europeans recently voted in their parliamentary elections. Preliminary results show a huge growth of conservative and nationalist right-wing groups. In France, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally party received more than 30% of the vote, while Macron’s party got 15% only – which led the president to act dictatorially in response to the result, dissolving the National Assembly.
Similarly, in Germany, Scholz’s Social Democratic Party received only 14%, while the AfD reached around 15% and the CDU-CSU coalition, which is also right-wing, reached about 30%. According to liberal analysts, the rise of the European right is a symptom of “fascism”. With biased opinions, liberal experts claim that there is a far-right phenomenon in Europe, threatening democracy across the continent. However, the explanation for the results may be different.
Right-wing parties almost always show a more “patriotic” stance and concern for national interests. This aspect often makes them critical of real problems currently affecting all of Europe, such as mass immigration and the economic and energy crisis resulting from sanctions. Some of these right-wing parties, such as Germany’s AfD, also show an interesting geopolitical understanding, advocating for an end to military support for Ukraine and for European neutrality in the conflict, as well as resuming relations with Russia.
In practice, rather than a “fascist wave”, the Europeans’ choice for the right seems to indicate a real reaction to fascism – which has been growing stronger in Europe for a long time. In their Russophobic madness and subservience to the US and NATO, European states agreed to participate in a plan to promote neo-Nazism in Ukraine, the consequences of which have reached unacceptable levels. Currently, Europe is in a serious economic and energy crisis, undergoing an advanced process of deindustrialization, just because the EU decided to adhere to irrational sanctions imposed by the US against Russia. Obviously, ordinary people do not want to participate in this madness and so they react in the only way they can: by voting in opposition to the governments.
Strange as it may seem, the self-proclaimed “liberal” and “democratic” parties are the political groups that are currently most fomenting fascism in Europe. These parties have fully embraced the pro-NATO establishment, while maintaining a stance in favor of the EU’s full alignment with the US. The result is the reactive growth of Euroskepticism and the adoption of the conservative right as a political alternative.
In fact, conservatism itself is an important point to emphasize. The US and NATO control not only EU’s politics, but also its culture. Currently, liberal, democratic and left-wing parties in the EU are fully aligned with the American cultural agenda – the so-called “woke agenda”. Topics such as LGBT, queer and others have become central to the hegemonic parties in Europe, which obviously causes outrage among ordinary people with a conservative mindset. In practice, traditional values have become an important political key to the growth of the right in Europe.
It is not difficult to understand what ordinary Europeans want. Their intentions can be summed up in a mix of social justice and traditional values. Ordinary people do not care about what is happening in Ukraine – they just want to have enough energy and food to live well, without financial difficulties. In the same vein, European workers want a reform of the migration policy, since the native workforce of the continent is being massively replaced by cheap, sometimes semi-slave, labor of immigrants and refugees.
It is also necessary to remember the situation in rural areas. Since last year, almost all of Europe has been experiencing a serious wave of protests due to the EU’s irresponsible policy of importing Ukrainian grains. In order to “help” the Kiev neo-Nazi regime, European countries have been buying cheap Ukrainian agricultural products, leading the native European farmers out of business. Of course, as a reaction, peasants tend to vote for opposition parties, which often criticize the support for Ukraine and the similarly unpopular “green agendas”.
In the end, the rise of the right in Europe must be seen in light of the crisis in the EU establishment. The hegemonic parties have irrationally decided to adhere to NATO’s plans, going so far as to foment Nazism in Ukraine and participate almost directly in a war against Russia. The turn of ordinary people to the right is not a popular embrace of extremism, but a reaction to NATO fascism.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram.
U.S. efforts to dismember Russia appear to have utterly failed. Economic sanctions, price caps, the protracted war on Russia’s border and tens of billions of dollars, along with hundreds of U.S. and other NATO member troops sent as trainers, plus mercenary contractors can’t hold the corrupt Ukrainian military machine together.
As Russia sees its window to Europe walled up, the country has been turning eastwards. The press conference took place on the margins of the Saint-Petersburg Economic Forum, a major event that used to attract scores of world leaders, including those of Finland, France, Germany and Japan, as well as UN Secretaries Generals and Presidents of the European Commission.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is planning to install a permanent special envoy to Kyiv as a new envoy post. This has to do with “institutionalizing” some of “the bilateral support that has flowed to Ukraine”, says US ambassador to Kyiv, Julianne Smith. At the same time, last week, Biden made it (again) abundantly clear that Ukraine is not to become a NATO member.
During the previous years, and more specifically the last few months, the intensity of a putrid smell of war has increased to the point where apocalypse could be just around the corner. More and more talks of war, a fear-mongering discourse, the projection of a hot (nuclear) WWIII – hitting Central Europe the third time in just over hundred years, is dominating the mainstream and even non-mainstream media.
The 500 million souls left on Earth following the great depopulation will not only be easily controlled, according to Gates, they will also yearn for the level of control that the elites can currently only dream about. With total control of the food supply, farm land, seed banks, and genetically modified soil microbes, Gates has positioned himself to carry out a false flag worse than 9/11.
According to the Daily Mail, the Sydney hospital treating Dazelle said, her lack of a Covid vaccination was a factor in her not being put on the lung transplant waiting list. A hospital spokesperson told the Daily Mail, their ‘policies and guidelines wouldn’t support transplantation’ of an unvaccinated person.
It can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.
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The EU elections over June 6 to June 9 have presented a chaotically merry picture, certainly for those on the right of politics. Not that the right in question is reliably homogeneous in any sense, nor hoping for a single theme of triumph. A closer look at the gains made by the conservative side of politics, along with its saltier reactionary wings, suggests difficulty and disagreement.
In any case, papers such as The Economist were hopelessly pessimistic about the post-Eden fall, which may suggest that democracy, in all its unpredictable nastiness, is working. The lingering nature of the Ukraine War, the obstinate, enduring presences of such nationalists as Marine Le Pen in France and Viktor Orbán in Hungary, all pointing to “a period of political rudderlessness”. In truth, the rudders are being replaced.
In France, Le Pen has managed to point the gun of discontent at the centre of bureaucratic control and (hideous word) governance. The two prominent targets: President Emmanuel Macron and Paris. She has been aided by the fact that Macron has been inclined to pack key positions in government with loyal, reliable Parisians. Last February, François Bayrou, an early Macron enthusiast and Justice Minister, found it hard to accept that 11 of the 15 important ministers in the government were from the Paris area. This revealed a “growing lack of understanding between those in power and the French people at the grassroots level”.
On June 9, Le Pen proved had every reason to gloat, with the gains made by her party sufficiently terrifying French President Emmanuel Macron to dissolve parliament and call an election. Parties of the far-right came first in Austria, tied for top billing in the Netherlands and came in as runners-up in Germany (where Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democrats were savaged) and Romania.
The party of Italian Prime Minister, Georgia Meloni, also did well, winning 28.9% of the country’s vote in the elections. Predicted to get 24 seats in the European Parliament, the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) have done a shedding act on neo-fascism in favour of a smoother image, while still insisting that Europe’s identity had to be defended “from every cultural subjugation that sees Europe renounce its history to adopt that of others.” Such messaging has come with slick shallowness on social media, including such posts as those featuring “L’Italia cambia l’Europa” (“Italy changes Europe”), or the voter instruction to “scrivi Giorgia” (“write Giorgia”) on their ballot.
Meloni’s march was so significant as to compel EU Commission chief, Ursula von der Leyen, to become a salivating groupie for the right – of sorts. Her sharp policies on migration have drawn the approval of Meloni. Speaking at April’s Maastricht Debate, organised by POLITICO and Studio Europa Maastricht, von der Leyen openly expressed her interest in linking arms with Meloni’s European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR).
The Italian PM has found herself to be an object of much political interest, indispensable to the chess pieces of Europe’s political manoeuvrings. Italy’s reactionary flame has become, for instance, a matter of much interest to Le Pen. To the Italian newspaper, Corriere della Sera, Le Pen emphasised her insistence that a hard-right bloc of parties in the European Parliament could be formed, overcoming the current division between her Identity and Democracy (ID) group and that of Meloni’s ECR.
That said, any union of faux liberal types such as von der Leyen with those of the hard right of Europe is unlikely to be a fragrant one. Von der Leyen has taken heavy shots at Le Pen’s Rassemblement National (National Rally), excoriating its pro-Russian position along with those of Germany’s AfD and Poland’s Konfederacja. “They are Putin’s puppets and proxies and they are trampling on our values.” The promise to Meloni: if you want my dour, camouflaged conservatism, forget the otherreactionaries.
What was telling was that the young, having voted in 2019 for parties of the left such as the Greens, had had a change of heart. In May an Ipsos poll revealed that 34% of French voters under the age of 30 were keen to vote for the 28-year old leader of the National Rally in the European Parliamentary elections. In Germany, the 22% of Germans between 14-29 were keen to plump for Alternative for Germany (AfD), just under double from what was registered in 2023.
For Albena Azmanova of the University of Kent, this presents a curious predicament for those on the progressive side of politics (is there such a thing anymore?). Dissatisfaction that would normally be mined by progressives for political advantage is being left over to the opposite wing of politics. “The left is failing to harness that discontent, although its trademark issues – poverty and unemployment – are now more salient for voters than the far right’s flagship of ‘immigration’.”
An unanticipated phenomenon has manifested: younger voters in France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany and Finland folding at the ballot box for parties of the right and far right. The pendulum has well and truly swung. Europe’s right, bulked by the young, is on the march.
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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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There has been ample coverage of a marathon press conference held by Vladimir Putin for heads of foreign and Russian press agencies earlier this month. Predictably, most attention was drawn to his answer to a British journalist as to possible use of nuclear weapons in the current tug-of-war with the West. What attracted less notice was the setting: the world’s northernmost skyscraper built on the outskirts of Saint-Petersburg by the Gazprom, Russia’s prime hydrocarbons conglomerate. Both the site and the time of the event can tell us much about the country and its evolving place in the world.
The skyscraper is named Lakhta Centre, after the former village where it is built. It was from Lakhta that a gigantic granite rock was hauled eight kilometres to the centre of the city in 1769-70 to become the pedestal of the majestic statue of Peter the Great, the city’s founder. Poet Alexander Pushkin called it the Bronze Horseman in his eponymous poem, and this is how the monument has since been referred to by locals and visitors alike.
Straight from the press conference, Putin went to visit Pushkin’s lycée as part of the celebration of the poet’s 225th birthday. During the visit, Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s former culture minister, showed his boss a 19th century map of the Russian Empire, with the Ukraine as its integral part. Medinsky, one may recall, headed the Russian delegation in peace negotiations in 2022, the process abruptly aborted by the Ukrainian side, reportedly under British and American pressure.
It is in the same poem that Pushkin coined another expression, which became a current idiom: “a window to Europe”. Indeed, Peter founded the city as an opening to European ideas, culture, science, and technology. The Bronze Horseman was conceived by Étienne Maurice Falconet, recommended to the then empress Catherine the Great, by Denis Diderot, who spearheaded the French Enlightenment. In fact, much of the city was originally built by French, Italian and Swiss architects.
The 462-meters-high skyscraper was also built by a European architect, Tony Kettle of Scotland. The tower overlooks the Gulf of Finland and symbolizes the city’s creative vocation as a window to Europe. But thousands of sanctions imposed on Russia since 2014 have severed most links with the rest of Europe. Nowadays, a plane trip to Helsinki, Finland, that used to take 52 minutes lasts nearly ten hours, with a transfer in Istanbul. The new iron curtain is a lot more solid than its cold war predecessor. Under Stalin, at the height of the Korean War, trains connected Russia to most European countries. Under Brezhnev, while Americans fought Soviet-equipped Vietnamese soldiers, regular flights were inaugurated between Moscow and New York.
As Russia sees its window to Europe walled up, the country has been turning eastwards. The press conference took place on the margins of the Saint-Petersburg Economic Forum, a major event that used to attract scores of world leaders, including those of Finland, France, Germany and Japan, as well as UN Secretaries Generals and Presidents of the European Commission.
This year, the forum attracted as many participants as before, over 21 000 from 139 countries, but mostly from the Global South, or the world majority. Fewer Western participants took part, as Western sanctions disrupted normal economic relations and Western governments discouraged participation. In one so far unique case, three armed uniformed Customs and Border Protection officers stopped an American en route to Istanbul and Saint-Petersburg from boarding the plane in New York and seized his passport, apparently on the order of the U.S. Department of State.
The forum in Saint-Petersburg embodies the current evolution of the world. What was initially meant as a means of punishing Russia by cutting it off from its usual partners in the West, has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. According to the World Bank, Russia’s economic growth this year is higher than in the rest of Europe. Moreover, economic dynamism can be found in the eastern part of the Eurasian continent, while its western lands, most of them members of the European Union, experience economic slowdown.
It is ironic that this pivot to the East is highlighted by an event taking place in Saint-Petersburg, a city almost as far from Russia’s eastern borders as it is from Montreal and New York. An erstwhile window to Europe has become an enticing gateway to Asia.
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This article was originally published on Pressenza.
Yakov M. Rabkin is Professor Emeritus of History at the Université of Montréal. His publications include over 300 articles and a few books: Science between Superpowers, A Threat from Within: a Century of Jewish Opposition to Zionism, What is Modern Israel?, Demodernization: A Future in the Past and Judaïsme, islam et modernité. He did consulting work for, inter alia, OECD, NATO, UNESCO and the World Bank. E-mail: [email protected]. Website: www.yakovrabkin.ca
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Lakhta Center at night (Image by Wikipedia)
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The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is planning to install a permanent special envoy to Kyiv as a new envoy post. This has to do with “institutionalizing” some of “the bilateral support that has flowed to Ukraine”, says US ambassador to Kyiv, Julianne Smith. At the same time, last week, Biden made it (again) abundantly clear that Ukraine is not to become a NATO member.
One should keep in mind that back on 21 December 2022, during a joint press conference in Washington, when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky visited the US, Biden had already been clear enough on the limits of Washington’s willingness to be there for Ukraine. The American’s replies must have been a cold shower to his Ukrainian counterpart: when asked about sending more powerful weapons to Kyiv, Biden said that doing so “would have a prospect of breaking up NATO”, and “breaking up the EU and the rest of the world.” Moreover, according to him, his Atlantic Alliance allies were “not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third world war.” Then, he went on to “reassure” the Ukrainian president right next to him, by telling that “as I said, Mr. President, you don’t have to worry — we are staying with Ukraine as long as Ukraine is there”, in an unintendedly amusing remark that inadvertently almost paraphrased the famous cruel joke about Americans being willing to fight “to the last Ukrainian”.
One could perhaps add “to the last European.” It is true that the US has reportedly secretly sent long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, which has made use of them, but one should not make that much of it – according to Mark Galeotti, head of the consultancy Mayak Intelligence and honorary professor at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, this is no game-changer. The overall American attitude is increasingly one about “let the Europeans spend more, and do the fighting.” Many voices within the American establishment have indeed been calling for European troops (“not NATO”) being deployed in Ukraine – which is more than just rhetoric.
In an interview to TIME last week, Biden claimed that Washington did spend “a lot of money in Ukraine”, but, trying to downplay it, he argued “Europe has spent more money than the United States has, collectively. Europe has spent more money in taking on Russia.” According to TIME’s own fact-checking, the EU has provided Kyiv with more than $107 billion dollars in assistance (military, humanitarian, financial etc). The US congress, in comparison, has authorized Washington to send Ukraine up to $175 billion (much more than $107 billion, therefore) – however, thus far, has sent only about $81 billion, which, in any case, is already, for a single country, close enough to what the European Union has sent collectively.
In the same interview, asked about what the “endgame” for Ukraine looks like, the US President had this to say:
“Peace looks like making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine. That’s what peace looks like. And it doesn’t mean NATO, they are part of NATO, it means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries, where we supply weapons so they can defend themselves in the future. But it is not, if you notice, I was the one when—and you guys did report it at TIME—the one that I was saying that I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine.”
One might remember that, in December 2023, Oleksiy Goncharenko, a member of Rada (the Ukrainian parliament), in a series of Telegram posts, claimed that US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was pressuring European diplomats to cease any talks about Ukraine joining NATO. His allegations could not be verified, but are in line with Biden’s latest remarks on the matter.
Much has been made of former US President Donald Trump’s rhetoric point about not going to rescue European nations who fail to meet the Alliance’s defense spending duties. During a February rally, he did say “You didn’t pay? You’re delinquent? No, I would not protect you. In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want. You gotta pay. You gotta pay your bills.” Rhetoric aside, Biden has a similar attitude in terms of making clear that the American role should, to some extent, limit itself to funding and arming its allies. Such funding in any case has also become the target of much criticism domestically, amid corruption accusations.
In the same TIME interview Biden added, quite surprisingly, that
“I spent a month in Ukraine when I was a Senator and Vice President. There was significant corruption. There was a circumstance that was really difficult.”
Indeed, according to TIME, Biden has traveled six times to the Eastern European country as a Vice President, which is more than any previous President or Vice President. His out of the blue mentioning of corruption there (a true problem) is quite ironic, considering that the issue has a lot to do with him and his family personally – something which had been deemed by some a “conspiracy theory” before but, more recently, has been covered by major media outlets across the political spectrum. In fact it’s been an issue since at least 202, with scandals surrounding the American President’s special envoy to (now gone) Nord Stream 2. Biden’s supposed signs of senility have become, quite openly, a hot political issue, not to mention an embarrassment to his Democrat Party (this was even a topic touched upon during his interview with TIME itself). Those corruption remarks perhaps could be interpreted while keeping that context in mind.
To sum it up, the West’s plan for Ukraine seems to be something like: “not NATO – but kind of NATO”. I wrote before on how French President Emmanuel Macron is on record saying deploying European forces (“not NATO”) to Ukraine is a possibility. In a way, this is already a reality, as admitted by NATO’s Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who stated that “several NATO allies have men and women in uniform at the embassies” (in Ukraine), while claiming they are merely “giving advice.”
Stoltenberg also announced that NATO countries have air defense systems ready to be sent to the Eastern European country. He stressed NATO members have the “right” to “help” Ukraine, however, according to him, this does not make the Alliance itself a party to the conflict.
I’ve described this logic as a Schrödinger’s cat kind of reasoning: it is all about coming up with a coalition of NATO members which, however, is not NATO, somehow. In this context, installing a new NATO special envoy to Ukraine is not just a consolation prize, but adds to this ambiguous approach that is about giving it to Kyiv without giving too much (in any case giving enough to trigger Moscow national security concerns) – and of course adds to tensions, thereby increasing the risk of conflict escalation.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Front lines are collapsing for the Ukrainian army, whole units surrendering. Top commanders are fired. Faced with complete disarray of the U.S.-NATO instigated war in Ukraine, U.S. militarists are doubling down.
According to the Ukrainian constitution, President Volodymir Zelensky’s term in office is over. But he remains in power by martial law. This has led Ukrainian workers to hold strikes and work stoppages. But this news is ignored in the Western media.
A national truckers’ work slowdown inside Ukraine moved traffic to a 5-mile-an hour crawl and halted grain exports based on national anger at the expanded draft mobilization made by Zelensky, now an unelected president. (yahoonews.com, May 18)
Ukraine’s combat units are so severely understaffed that the government would have to triple its mobilization in order to continue the current level of fighting, according to Eric Ciaramella, former U.S. National Intelligence Council official. The draft can’t fill the current gap, nor can even kidnapping men off the streets.
U.S. Failure on Two Fronts
U.S. efforts to dismember Russia appear to have utterly failed. Economic sanctions, price caps, the protracted war on Russia’s border and tens of billions of dollars, along with hundreds of U.S. and other NATO member troops sent as trainers, plus mercenary contractors can’t hold the corrupt Ukrainian military machine together.
At the same time, on the world stage the one strategic ally of the U.S. in Western Asia, Israel, has utterly failed in its genocidal war on Gaza. Both setbacks mean that U.S. political dominance is being challenged in fundamental ways.
U.S. strategy toward Russia aimed to partition and dismember the country, destabilize the border and block China’s Belt and Road development plans in Central Asia.
U.S. strategists considered all these steps crucial in preventing People’s China from surpassing the U.S. economically. The opposite has happened. What imperialist strategists have warned about for decades and sought to prevent is now the reality.
China and Russia’s relations of intense cooperation and a merge of common interests is unfolding steadily. This was further cemented during the very warm state meeting between China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on May 16.
That means U.S.-NATO plans are in total disarray. Rather than reconsider their strategy, which has brought setbacks and defeats in Ukraine and for Israel in Gaza, this has led to an ominous escalation in U.S. military threats.
The threat to dangerously escalate the war in Ukraine arises from the plans to give Ukraine high-speed missiles and allow the Kyiv regime to use the weapons to strike inside Russia. This threat is not just from a single statement or one delivery of weapons.
The statements promoting strikes with the U.S.-supplied weapons to targets inside Russia are being made directly by President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, U.S. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who is a former prime minister of Norway, but acts as if he were a U.S. official.
Ukraine at Center of 75th Anniversary NATO Summit
NATO officials are frantic that Ukrainian defense lines of Kharkov, the second-largest city in Ukraine, located in the northeast of the country, are about to fall.
Kharkov is a majority Russian-speaking city. It is the industrial, energy, science, rail and transport hub. It lies east of the Dnieper River on the Donetsk-Donbass Canal. Kharkov is the key industrial center still under Ukrainian control east of the Dnieper River.
According to a May 16 New York Times article, fear of Kharkov’s imminent collapse is what is driving U.S. threats. This loss is decisive in any control of Ukraine’s east, including the entire Donbass industrial region.
Adding to the urgency is that at the 75th Anniversary NATO Summit, July 9-11 in Washington, D.C., NATO plans to unveil a “Security Package” for Ukraine involving 32 countries’ bilateral agreements with Ukraine. These bilateral agreements would serve as a bridge for Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
Ukrainian entry into NATO would allow Kyiv to invoke the alliance’s collective defense clause, potentially triggering a broader regional conflict with Russia. During an April visit to Kyiv, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg vowed that “Ukraine will become a member of NATO.” (defensenews.com, June 3)
All these elaborate plans would be dashed if Ukrainian defense lines crumbled before the NATO Summit in Washington, D.C. This 75th anniversary NATO Summit is a grand plan to showcase U.S. and Western imperialist dominance.
NATO’s Long-range Missiles Target Russia
NATO’s dangerous escalation is galloping forward on several fronts.
Stoltenberg was explicit:
“We are giving weapons to Kyiv and consider them Ukrainian from this moment, so Ukraine can do whatever it wants with these arms, in part, strike at Russian territory where it deems necessary.” (bne IntelliNews, May 31)
Previously, the United States, Germany and other NATO members had forbidden the Ukrainian military from using the weapons delivered to them to strike targets inside Russia.
In the past, the Ukrainian military command had violated NATO’s official statements and used U.S. Stinger air defense missiles, M142 HIMARS, MLRS and other multiple launch rockets to strike the Belgorod region of Russia. The Russian Army’s air defense forces destroyed more than 10 missiles in the sky over Belgorod and displayed the U.S. stamped shells.
Weeks ago, the British government allowed Ukraine to use its long-range Storm Shadow missile systems for attacks anywhere in Russia. Now France and Germany have taken the same position as Britain. The Storm Shadow cruise missile has a range of over 180 miles, triple the range of the missiles Ukraine has used until now.
French President Emmanuel Macron further escalated the threat by stating the West must not exclude sending NATO ground troops to Ukraine.
On May 27, Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s armed forces, announced that he signed an agreement to allow French military instructors into the country. He urged other Western countries to join the French initiative.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov noted that French instructors, along with other representatives of military and special services of European countries, were already functioning in Ukraine. On June 4, Lavrov went a step further and warned that French military forces in Ukraine would be a “legitimate target for Russian forces.” (AP news, June 4)
The threats and the actual attacks are escalating. On May 26, Ukrainian drones targeted a second long-range military radar site deep inside Russia, over 900 miles from the closest territory held by Kyiv’s forces. This is an early warning radar designed to detect hypersonic ballistic missiles and aircraft up to 6,200 miles away. Russia is a major nuclear power. (Reuters, May 27)
Internationally, many voices are sounding the alarm. Such attacks are of the most extreme danger, because the slightest targeting slip up, a misinterpretation of instructions, a rogue operator on the ground, could lead to a global conflagration.
These attacks require a satellite-based military network that Ukraine does not have. Only U.S. and NATO forces under U.S. command are capable of conducting such attacks against Russia.
Divisions Appear Inside NATO
Divisions within the U.S. commanded and dominated NATO military alliance are appearing. Frustration and failure are intensifying the infighting even among members of the G7 and major NATO participants.
Many NATO countries’ leaders, reacting to mass pressure from below, have already sharply expressed opposition to U.S. total support of Israel’s genocidal campaign against Palestine.
Italy’s Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini objected to Stoltenberg’s call for allies to lift restrictions on using Western-supplied weapons against targets in Russia. “It is out of the question to lift the ban on Kyiv to strike military targets in Russia. … We want peace, not the antechamber of World War III” (Ukrainian Pravda, May 27)
Italian Foreign Minister Antonia Tajani reinforced this position:
“We will send no Italian soldier to Ukraine, and the military tools that Italy sends are used inside Ukraine. We are working for peace.” (Italian news agency Ansa, as reported by European Pravda, May 25)
On May 28, Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo told Biden during talks in Washington, D.C., that he rules out the use of Belgium’s weapons, including F-16 fighter jets, outside Ukraine. To reinforce his point, De Croo reminded the reporters that the bilateral security agreement Belgium signed with Ukraine means,
“We are sending 30 F-16s, and we will thus become the biggest supplier of fighter aircraft for the Ukrainian air force. But the agreement is very clear. It is about fighter aircraft that can be used by the Ukrainians on Ukrainian territory.” (belganewsagency.eu, May 31)
Phony ‘Peace Summit’
Zelensky’s effort to call a “Peace Summit” on June 15 and 16 in Lucerne, Switzerland, exposes Ukraine’s dwindling support. The “Peace Summit” bars Russian participation. The effort is so flimsy that not even Biden is bothering to attend.
In desperation, Zelensky has blamed China’s decision not to participate as the reason other countries are ignoring the phony event.
Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed the Lucerne summit, saying, “This conference in Switzerland has no meaning. The only meaning it can have is to try to preserve this anti-Russian bloc which is in the process of crumbling.”
Silence continues to prevail in Western corporate media regarding the four negotiation offers made by President Putin in the past two weeks.
RAND Corporation: ‘Pour it on’
The Rand Corporation, a powerful think tank for the major military industries, confirms the cynical calculations that justify war profits, regardless of the danger.
U.S. escalation will push the Europeans to ante up, the Rand article said. Even more ominous: “From a narrow U.S. perspective, greater U.S. involvement is an opportunity to test new capabilities and gain experience helping a partner facing a numerically superior foe. Such experience could be very relevant for helping Taiwan resist Chinese aggression.” (Rand, May 22, defenseone.com, “How to win in Ukraine: pour it on, and don’t worry about escalation”)
Russia Warns NATO
President Putin delivered Russia’s strongest warning to date against the NATO escalation. He chose a meeting in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, with top Uzbek officials. With 37 million people, Uzbekistan is the second most populous country of the former Soviet Union.
The Russian delegation to Tashkent included nearly half of the key Russian government ministers, heads of regions and Cabinet ministers from both Russia and Uzbekistan. It was held to move forward with joint plans of industrial cooperation, energy and infrastructure.
At a large press conference following the meetings, Putin said,
“Long-range precision weapons cannot be used without space-based reconnaissance. … Final target selection and what is known as launch mission can only be made by highly skilled specialists who rely on this technical reconnaissance data. It can happen without the participation of the Ukrainian military.
“Launching other systems, such as ATACMS, for example,” Putin continued, “also relies on space reconnaissance data. Targets are identified and automatically communicated to the relevant crews. … The mission is put together by representatives of NATO countries, not the Ukrainian military. This unending escalation can lead to serious consequences. If Europe were to face those serious consequences, what will the United States do, considering our strategic arms parity? It is hard to tell.
“Presidential election is coming soon, and the current authorities want to confirm their status as an empire. Many in the United States do not like this, do not want to be an empire and bear the imperial burden.” (For the entire news conference, seeen.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/74132)
General Ivan Timofeev, Director of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC), warned:
“NATO is spending ten times as much as Russia — if not more — on defense. It’s certainly a dangerous scenario.” (Tass, May 30)
This enormous expenditure is not sufficient to save the Ukrainian government, built on a U.S. orchestrated coup in 2014, from total collapse.
Rather than reassess their deteriorating global position, U.S. strategists seem determined to put the fate of the world at risk.
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Citing the “principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution” that international humanitarian law demands military forces obey, the United Nations’ top human rights office on Tuesday said the raid conducted at Nuseirat refugee camp in Gaza by the Israel Defense Forces over the weekend may amount to a war crime.
The IDF conducted the operation at the camp in the central Gaza Strip in order to free four Israeli hostages who were kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, and Jeremy Laurence, spokesperson for the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) told reporters their release was “clearly very good news.”
But the OHCHR, Laurence said, is “profoundly shocked at the impact on civilians of the Israeli forces’ operation,” which killed at least 274 Palestinians, including 64 children and 57 women, according to the Palestine Red Crescent Society.
“The manner in which the raid was conducted in such a densely populated area seriously calls into question whether the principles of distinction, proportionality, and precaution—as set out under the laws of war—were respected by the Israeli forces,” said Laurence in a statement.
Actions by both the IDF and Hamas, he added, “may amount to war crimes.”
As it has since beginning its bombardment of Gaza in October in retaliation for a Hamas-led attack on southern Israel, the IDF blamed the civilian casualties on Saturday on the militant group, saying the hundreds of deaths were the result of Hamas operating in the densely populated Nuseirat camp.
But while Laurence said the OHCHR was “deeply distressed” by Hamas’ capture of hostages and its operating in densely population areas, Rutgers Law School professor Adil Haque concurred with the office that Israel is obligated to protect civilian lives in Gaza regardless of Hamas’ conduct.
“The fact that your adversary is breaking international humanitarian law does not change your obligations,” Haque told The Washington Post. “The foreseeable harm to civilians was disproportionate to the legitimate aim of rescuing the four hostages.”
Eyewitnesses and aid groups have said the attack began in broad daylight and started after IDF soldiers entered the camp in a humanitarian aid truck. The operation was carried out with jets, drones, and tanks and included strikes in the vicinity of a maternity clinic that has been converted to a hospital to help care for people wounded in Israeli attacks since October.
Paramedic Abdel Hamid Ghorab told the Post he witnessed “random and continuous bombing in the vicinity of the hospital with unprecedented intensity.”
“All they cared about was carrying out the operation, even if it was at the expense of all these lives,” said Ghorab.
Israeli lawyer Michael Sfard told the Post that the 274 casualties “is enough to raise questions about whether the use of fire was indiscriminate,” which would be a violation of international humanitarian law.
“Was the air power used on a prospected military objective, or was it a random, indiscriminate use of bombardment in a very densely populated area?” he asked.
As the OHCHR made its statement, Writers Against the War on Gaza condemned The New York Times‘ publication of “a whitewashed puff piece on the Nuseirat refugee camp massacre,” authored by former IDF soldier Ronen Bergman, which they said was aimed at dehumanizing Palestinian civilians while including no context about potential war crimes by the IDF.
“The framing of this article, typical of New York Times coverage of the massacre, foregrounds four (alive) Israelis over hundreds of dead Palestinians, and presents the IDF as swashbuckling heroes,” the group wrote on the X account of its project, The New York War Crimes. “This prefigures the reader to accept the justification for IDF butchery.”
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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Julia Conley is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Featured image: Palestinians survey the debris after Israeli warplanes attacked the Nuseirat camp [Ashraf Amra/Anadolu]
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Following the dismissal earlier this year of a federal lawsuit accusing senior Biden administration officials of failing to prevent Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Monday began hearing an expedited appeal by Palestinian plaintiffs in the case.
Arguing that U.S. leaders “have a legal duty to prevent, and not further,” genocide, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) first filed a lawsuit last November in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in Oakland on behalf of the rights groups Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P) and al-Haq, as well as a group of individual Palestinians in Gaza and the United States.
“Genocide can never be a legitimate foreign policy choice,” CCR senior staff attorney Katie Gallagher argued during Monday’s proceedings.
The suit—which names President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin as defendants—seeks to force the U.S. administration to stop “providing further arms, money, and diplomatic support to Israel” as it wages a war of annihilation in which more than 132,000 Palestinians have been killed, maimed, or left missing; nearly 90% of Gaza’s population has been forcibly displaced; and at least hundreds of thousands of people are starving.
Palestinian American writer Laila al-Haddad, a plaintiff in the case, lost her aunt and three of her cousins to a November Israeli airstrike on a United Nations school in the Jabalia refugee camp that killed more than 30 people.
“I promised my surviving family members in Gaza that I would do everything in my power to advocate on their behalf,” al-Haddad wrote in an article published Monday by The Nation.
“Although I knew the case would be an uphill battle, I testified to make a record of Israel’s horrific slaughter of my family, the displacement and dispossession and starvation of the surviving members, the deliberate destruction of my hometown and everything that sustains life there, and ethnic cleansing of my people,” she continued.
“As a Palestinian, I struggle to balance the disgust and impotence I feel knowing that my tax dollars are being used to kill my family members in Gaza with an urgency to do everything in my power to demand an end to this administration’s complicity in genocide,” al-Haddad added.
U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Whiteruled on January 31 that the case fell “outside the court’s limited jurisdiction” and rejected the suit on technical grounds—even as he wrote that “the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law.”
On February 27, the 9th Circuit Court granted a motion by CCR and co-counsel at Van Der Hout LLP to expedite plaintiffs’ appeal amid soaring Palestinian civilian casualties and destruction wrought by Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Last week, 9th Circuit Judge Ryan Nelsonrecused himself from the new case following pressure from plaintiffs who questioned his impartiality after he visited Israel in March with 13 other federal judges on a trip sponsored by the World Jewish Congress meant to convince U.S. jurists of the legality of Israel’s Gaza onslaught.
Genocide is defined under the 1948 Genocide Convention as killing or causing serious physical or psychological harm to members of a group, “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group,” or “forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
At least hundreds of jurists and genocide experts around the world concur that Israel is committing genocide in Gaza. The International Court of Justice is currently weighing a genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa and backed by more than 30 nations and regional blocs. Last month, International Criminal Court Prosecutor Karim Khansaid he is seeking to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders for alleged crimes including extermination.
Numerous Israeli government leaders have expressed clear genocidal intentions and deployed dehumanizing characterizations of Palestinians, including “human animals.” At the same time, the Israeli military has bombed civilian areas and infrastructure, including by using chemical weapons, and deprived Palestinians of everything necessary for human life, including water, food, electricity, fuel, and medicine. Those statements of intent—when combined with mass killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, and the total siege and closure creating conditions of life to bring about the physical destruction of the group—reveal evidence of an unfolding crime of genocide.
The Biden administration has provided Israel with billions of dollars in military aid and arms and ammunition sales, as well as diplomatic cover in the form of United Nations Security Council vetoes and genocide denial, as its forces continue to obliterate Gaza 248 days after the Hamas-led attacks on October 7 that left more than 1,100 Israelis and foreign nationals dead—at least some of whom were killed by so-called “friendly fire“—and over 240 others taken hostage.
Click here to watch the video on X
“The U.S. courts have an opportunity in front of them: Judges can choose to take a minimal step towards allowing DCI-P and the other plaintiffs to have a chance at holding the Biden administration accountable for its role in the genocide of Palestinians, or they can sit back and refuse to carry out checks on the executive branch,” DCI-P advocacy officer Miranda Cleland wrote in an opinion piece published Friday by Middle East Eye. “It is a choice, quite literally, between life and death.”
“Israeli forces, emboldened by the so-called ironclad support of the Biden administration, have killed on average more than 60 Palestinian children every day since October 7,” she continued. “That’s more than 15,000 children who won’t go back to school, or play with their friends, or hug their parents ever again. Those 15,000 children will not grow up and live in a free Palestine.”
“If the U.S. courts continue to green-light Biden’s impunity, more Palestinian children and their families will pay the price,” Cleland added. “It is a price that I, alongside many other voters in the U.S., are not willing to accept.”
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Brett Wilkins is a staff writer for Common Dreams.
Os resultados das eleições na UE estão a causar desespero entre os ativistas liberais de todo o mundo. Irresponsavelmente, alguns analistas tendenciosos afirmam que a Europa está a tornar-se “fascista” ou a “indo para a extrema-direita”, sem ter em conta que são precisamente os partidos nacionalistas e conservadores que estão a mostrar uma alternativa à onda europeia de apoio nazista na Ucrânia.
Milhões de europeus votaram recentemente nas suas eleições parlamentares. Os resultados preliminares mostram um enorme crescimento de grupos conservadores e nacionalistas de direita. Em França, o partido Reunião Nacional de Marine Le Pen recebeu mais de 30% dos votos, enquanto o partido de Macron obteve apenas 15% – o que levou o presidente a agir de forma ditatorial em resposta ao resultado, dissolvendo a Assembleia Nacional.
Da mesma forma, na Alemanha, o Partido Social Democrata de Scholz recebeu apenas 14%, enquanto a AfD atingiu cerca de 15% e a coligação CDU-CSU, que também é de direita, atingiu cerca de 30%. Segundo analistas liberais, a ascensão da direita europeia é um sintoma do “fascismo”. Com opiniões tendenciosas, os especialistas liberais afirmam que existe um fenômeno de extrema-direita na Europa, que ameaça a democracia em todo o continente. No entanto, a explicação para os resultados pode ser diferente.
Os partidos de direita mostram quase sempre uma postura mais “patriótica” e preocupação com os interesses nacionais. Este aspecto torna-os frequentemente críticos em relação aos problemas reais que afetam actualmente toda a Europa, como a imigração em massa e a crise econômica e energética resultante das sanções. Alguns destes partidos de direita, como a AfD da Alemanha, também mostram uma compreensão geopolítica interessante, defendendo o fim do apoio militar à Ucrânia e a neutralidade europeia no conflito, bem como a retomada das relações com a Rússia.
Na prática, em vez de uma “onda fascista”, a escolha dos europeus pela direita parece indicar uma reação real ao fascismo – que tem vindo a fortalecer-se na Europa há muito tempo. Na sua loucura russofóbica e subserviência aos EUA e à OTAN, os estados europeus concordaram em participar num plano para promover o neonazismo na Ucrânia, cujas consequências atingiram níveis inaceitáveis. Atualmente, a Europa está numa grave crise econômica e energética, passando por um avançado processo de desindustrialização, só porque a UE decidiu aderir às sanções irracionais impostas pelos EUA contra a Rússia. Obviamente, as pessoas comuns não querem participar nesta loucura e por isso reagem da única forma que podem: votando contra seus respectivos governos.
Por mais estranho que possa parecer, os partidos autoproclamados “liberais” e “democráticos” são os grupos políticos que mais fomentam atualmente o fascismo na Europa. Estes partidos abraçaram plenamente o establishment pró-OTAN, mantendo ao mesmo tempo uma posição a favor do alinhamento total da UE com os EUA. O resultado é o crescimento reativo do euroceticismo e a adoção da direita conservadora como alternativa política.
Na verdade, o próprio conservadorismo é um ponto importante a enfatizar. Os EUA e a OTAN controlam não só a política da UE, mas também a sua cultura. Atualmente, os partidos liberais, democráticos e de esquerda na UE estão totalmente alinhados com a agenda cultural americana – a chamada “agenda woke”. Temas como LGBT, queer e outros tornaram-se centrais para os partidos hegemônicos na Europa, o que obviamente causa indignação entre as pessoas comuns com uma mentalidade conservadora. Na prática, os valores tradicionais tornaram-se uma importante chave política para o crescimento da direita na Europa.
Não é difícil compreender o que querem os europeus comuns. As suas intenções podem ser resumidas numa mistura de justiça social e valores tradicionais. As pessoas comuns não se importam com o que está acontecendo na Ucrânia – elas apenas querem ter energia e alimentos suficientes para viver bem, sem dificuldades financeiras. Na mesma linha, os trabalhadores europeus querem uma reforma da política de migração, uma vez que a mão-de-obra nativa do continente está a ser massivamente substituída por mão-de-obra barata, por vezes semi-escrava, de imigrantes e refugiados.
É também necessário recordar a situação nas zonas rurais. Desde o ano passado, quase toda a Europa tem vivido uma grave onda de protestos devido à política irresponsável da UE de importação de cereais ucranianos. Para “ajudar” o regime neonazista de Kiev, os países europeus têm comprado produtos agrícolas ucranianos baratos, levando à falência os agricultores europeus nativos. É claro que, como reação, os camponeses tendem a votar nos partidos da oposição, que frequentemente criticam o apoio à Ucrânia e as igualmente impopulares “agendas verdes”.
No final, a ascensão da direita na Europa deve ser vista à luz da crise no establishment da UE. Os partidos hegemônicos decidiram irracionalmente aderir aos planos da OTAN, chegando ao ponto de fomentar o nazismo na Ucrânia e de participar quase diretamente numa guerra contra a Rússia. A viragem das pessoas comuns para a direita não é uma adesão popular ao extremismo, mas uma reação ao fascismo da OTAN.
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Globalist billionaire Bill Gates has been caught telling his inner circle that a devastating “global famine” is the next step in the elite’s indomitable march towards total global domination.
The 500 million souls left on Earth following the great depopulation will not only be easily controlled, according to Gates, they will also yearn for the level of control that the elites can currently only dream about.
With total control of the food supply, farm land, seed banks, and genetically modified soil microbes, Gates has positioned himself to carry out a false flag worse than 9/11.
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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.
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.
Israel is so fake that its far right minister of national security Itamar Ben-Gvir has been stoking religious tensions by encouraging militant Zionists to pray on the Temple Mount — known to Muslims as Al-Aqsa. This is an illustration of how phony Israel and its political ideology are because Jews were historically prohibited from praying at the Temple Mount under Jewish law; a sign placed there in 1967 and still upheld by Israel’s Chief Rabbinate reads, “According to Torah Law, entering the Temple Mount area is strictly forbidden due to the holiness of the site.” It’s just this weird, evangelical Christian-like thing that Zionists have started doing in contravention of their own traditions and religious texts to advance their nationalist agendas.
“‘Prayer’ on the Temple Mount is 100% a Zionist invention in total contravention of Jewish law. Jews don’t step foot onto the Temple Mount, let alone ‘pray’ there. That’s why the sign below is posted at the entrance non-Muslims use.
“Ben Gvir publicly announced this in order to provoke a reaction to use as a pretext to restrict and expel Muslims from the site, explode Jerusalem and the West Bank, and expand the regional war.
“Ben Gvir holds Netanyahu hostage. Together, they’re leading Israel to self-destruction.”
There’s no authentic spirituality in such behavior. It has no roots. No depth. No connection. It’s the product of busy minds with modern agendas, with nothing more to it than that.
Israel is so fake that Zionists artificially resurrected a dead language in order for its people to have a common “native” tongue for them to speak, so that they could all LARP as indigenous middle easterners together in their phony, synthetic country.
Israel has no real culture of its own; it’s all a mixture of (A) organic Jewish culture brought in from other parts of the world by the Jewish diaspora, (B) culture that was stolen from Palestinians (see “Israeli food”), and (C) the culture of indoctrinated genocidal hatred that is interwoven with the fabric of modern Zionism. The way Israel has become a Mecca of electronic dance music points clearly to an aching cultural void that its people are trying desperately to fill with empty synthetic pop fluff.
Even international support for Israel is fake, manufactured astroturf that has to be enforced from the top down, because it would never organically occur to anyone that Israel is something that should be supported.
The phenomenally influential Israel lobby is used to push pro-Israel foreign policy in powerful western governments like Washington and London. Just yesterday US Representative Thomas Massietold Tucker Carlson that every Republican in Congress besides himself “has an AIPAC person” assigned to them with whom they are in constant communication, who he describes as functioning “like your babysitter” with regard to lawmaking on the subject of Israel.
The Israel lobby exists with the full consent of the western imperial war machine and its secretive intelligence cartel, because western military support for Israel is also phony and fraudulent. The western empire whose strategic interests directly benefit from violence and radicalism in the middle east pretends it’s constantly expanding its military presence in the region in order to promote stability and protect an important ally, but in reality this military presence simply allows for greater control over crucial resource-rich territories whose populations would otherwise unite to form a powerful bloc acting in their own interests. The Israel lobby is a self-funding consent manufacturer which helps the empire do what it already wants to do.
Support for Israel in the media is also phony and imposed from the top down. Since October outlets like The New York Times, CNN and CBC have been finding themselves fighting off scandals due to staff leaks about demands from their executives that they slant their Gaza coverage to benefit the information interests of Israel. Briahna Joy Gray was just fired by The Hill for being critical of Israel as co-host of the show “Rising”, a fate that all mass media employees understand they will share if they are insufficiently supportive of the empire’s favorite ethnostate.
Israel’s support from celebrities is similarly forced. A newly leaked email from influential Hollywood marketing and branding guru Ashlee Margolis instructs her firm’s employees to “pause on working with any celebrity or influencer or tastemaker posting against Israel.” As we discussed recently, celebrities are also naturally disincentivized from criticizing any aspect of the western empire by the fact that their status is dependent on wealthy people whose wealth is premised upon the imperial status quo.
Support for Israel on social media is likewise notoriously phony. For years Israel has been pioneering the use of social media trolls to swarm Israel’s critics and promote agendas like undermining the BDS movement. After the beginning of the Gaza onslaught Israel spent millions on PR spin via advertising on YouTube, Instagram and Facebook, and The New York Timeshas just confirmed earlier reports that Israel has been targeting US lawmakers with fake social media accounts to influence their policymaking on Israel.
In truth, nobody really organically supports Israel. If they’re not supporting it because their lobbyists and employers told them to, they’re supporting it because that’s what they were told to support by the leaders of their dopey political ideologies like Zionism, liberalism and conservatism, or by the leaders of their dopey religions like Christian fundamentalism. It’s always something that’s pushed on people from the top down, rather than arising from within themselves due to their own natural interests and ideals.
Israel is not a country, it’s like a fake movie set version of a country. A movie set where the set pieces won’t even stand up on their own, so people are always running around in a constant state of construction trying to prop things up and nail things down, and scrambling to pick up things that are falling over, and rotating the set pieces so that they look like real buildings in front of the camera. Without this constant hustle and bustle of propagandizing, lobbying, online influence ops, and nonstop mass military violence, the whole movie set would fall over, and people would see all the film crew members and actors and cameras for what they are.
Clearly, no part of this is sustainable. Clearly, something’s going to have to give. Those set pieces are going to come toppling down sooner or later; it’s just a question of when, and of how high the pile of human corpses needs to be before it happens.
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Dazelle Peters, a 17-year-old Leukemia-sufferer who was reportedly denied a life-saving lung transplant after refusing to receive FIVE Covid vaccines, has died.
According to the Daily Mail, the Sydney hospital treating Dazelle said, her lack of a Covid vaccination was a factor in her not being put on the lung transplant waiting list.
A hospital spokesperson told the Daily Mail, their ‘policies and guidelines wouldn’t support transplantation’ of an unvaccinated person.
‘Vaccination status against various infections is a critical part of this assessment in order to ensure optimal prospects of survival post-transplant,’ a St Vincent’s hospital spokesperson said. (source)
Despite saying she was ‘sorry’ to learn of Dazelle’s situation Assistant Health Minister Ged Kearney had advised ‘the Australian Government is unable to intervene in clinical decisions’.
Mr Kearney’s response was in reply to a letter sent to her by outspoken Liberal MP Russell Broadbent, who raised both the plight of Dazelle and Victorian mum Vicki Derderian, who is being denied a heart transplant for refusing the jabs.
‘The priority and treatment given to an individual is ultimately a clinical decision made by the treating hospital and transplant teams involved,’ Ms Kearney’s letter stated.
However, it clarified there is no official mandate barring the unvaccinated from getting transplants.
The Guidelines do not prevent a patient who has not received a Covid-19 vaccination from being placed on a transplant waitlist,’ Ms Kearney stated.
Ms Kearney said the states are ultimately responsible for transplant practices.
‘Each state and territory is responsible for the delivery of the jurisdictional health services, including hospital and transplantation services,’ it read.
Dazelle’s family say that while the consulting surgeon described Dazelle as a ‘complex’ case he also said she needed to ‘do the right thing’ and get the vaccines, which take nine months to administer, to keep other patients and staff safe.
Australia joins Canada in a race to the bottom as 2 unvaccinated Canadians were murdered by local health officials in 2023 for being unvaccinated:
May 22, 2023 – Sudbury, Ontario – 35 year old Garnet Harper died after being denied a kidney transplant for being unvaccinated, leaving behind wife and five children. (click here)
Aug. 25, 2023 – Sheila Annette Lewis was denied access to the lung transplant list by corrupt Alberta Health Services Executives and Judges in Alberta, Canada.
My Take…
I work in a large Cancer Centre (Cross Cancer Institute, Edmonton, Alberta) and I have been involved in many life and death decisions.
Make no mistake, Dazelle was murdered in a premeditated manner via a decision that was made all the way up the bureaucratic ladder. This was not a decision made by her treating doctor, Dr. Mark Benzimra (who was guaranteed protection by his bureaucratic bosses including the medical board).
The decision to murder Dazelle was made at the highest bureaucratic levels – the policians simply gave the green light and a promise they wouldn’t intervene.
In Canada, Lung Transplant patient Sheila Annette Lewis was murdered by Alberta’s top health officials: Alberta Health Services Executives Dr.Verna Yiu and Dr.Francois Belanger, their lawyer Mark Jackson and four Alberta Judges – Justice Paul Belzil, Justice Frederica Schutz, Justice Michelle Crighton and Justice Dawn Pentelechuk.
“Lewis’s lawyer said her client was informed in June 2021 that she had to be vaccinated in order to remain on the transplant list. Pejovic said that forced Lewis to make an agonizing decision. “
The top healthcare bureaucrat in Alberta at the time was AHS CEO Dr.Verna Yiu.
AHS CEO Dr.Verna Yiu also implemented an illegal COVID-19 Vaccine mandate on all of Alberta’s 105,000 healthcare workers on Aug.31, 2021.
Dr.Verna Yiu is also directly responsible for murdering many of my 2456 Alberta Cancer patients at Cross Cancer Institute from 2016 to 2022.
As a reward for all her crimes against humanity (and all the vulnerable Cancer patients, COVID patients and Transplant patients she helped murder), she was appointed Vice President of University of Alberta on Jan. 1, 2024.
Unvaccinated patients are murdered to serve as an example of non-compliance.
These decisions have nothing to do with medicine or science.
COVID-19 mRNA Vaccines are already causing Lung Transplant rejection in some cases. From 2022 paper by Alsunaid et al:
So why would health officials take the risk of murdering an unvaccinated patient?
Well, first, there is NO RISK. Everyone involved in the murder is guaranteed protection. Dr.Benzimra was guaranteed protection. He will never have to worry about his job or license. He will be taken care of very well.
Every doctor and nurse who killed unvaccinated patients in the hospitals, with lethal protocols including Remdesivir, was guaranteed protection ahead of time.
Every health worker who euthanized a Long Term Care resident with Midazolam and Morphine and recorded it as a COVID death, was guaranteed protection.
In Canada, and now in Australia, murder is legal.
But it has to be in the service of an ideology or narrative.
In these cases, these murders of unvaccinated patients are carried out deliberately, in a premeditated manner, in order to send a message that the penalty for non-compliance IN THE FUTURE, is DEATH.
The objective of the murder is to send a message to the rest of the population: comply or die. And by getting Judges involved, they make it clear to us that they can get away with this any time. And do it to anyone.
This is one of many reasons why it is not possible to “move on” from COVID.
Not only has justice not been served, there has been a complete perversion and inversion of Justice.
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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.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
Reviews
This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon
In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia
In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig
Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac
A reading of Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late. You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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Zimbabwean President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa, during a special meeting on the sidelines, St. Petersburg International Economic Forum held on 5 to 8 June, with President Vladimir Putin, underscored the development of relations between Russia and Zimbabwe, highlighted possible spheres of bilateral cooperation and, most importantly, Zimbabwe’s position within the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
According to Mnangagwa,
“the West has just begun consolidating its power in Zambia, our next neighbour. You know, there was a time when Zambia and Zimbabwe were one; it was called Northern and Southern Rhodesia. It was made one by the British, but they are now separate. And the Americans are consolidating their power in that country, both in terms of security and in terms of financial support to Zambia.”
Within the context of the great power competition, Mnangagwa further explained that its neighbours, Zambia and Malawi, are very heavily supported by the West. But in spite of that, Zimbabwe’s economic growth is the fastest growing economy in the region, in spite of being isolated by the Americans.
“We feel we have better relations with the people who respect us, not the persons who look down upon us. We are anxious to have more comprehensive and concentrated relations with Russia. And there is a lot that we can open for the Russian Federation to participate in our economy, especially in the mining sector and agriculture,” emphasized Mnangagwa.
That Zimbabwe is one of the few countries in Southern Africa that is regarded as anti-West. It was previously “disregarded as an isolated island in Southern Africa,” the Zimbabwean leader informed Putin. Mnangagwa suggested that as the relations are critically important, it is necessary to make them more comprehensive and share its emerging challenges.
“We received food allocations last year, and we have received cooperation in the military and security sector. That alone, as you continue to do so, we continuously become isolated in our region,” he underlined.
Image: President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa
Mnangagwa referred to President Vladimir Putin as “my dear brother” and said Russia was a consistent ally of Zimbabwe. Mnangagwa rained praises on Putin for defending the independence and territorial integrity of Russia.
“It is regrettable and unacceptable that the collective West continues to peruse hegemonic tendencies that blatantly violate the sovereign equality of nations, justice and fairness,” Mnangagwa later told the business forum. Still Zimbabwe was “open for business”, he maintained frankly.
Mnangagwa’s speech in St. Petersburg has sparked criticisms across the media in southern Africa. For instance, Tendai Ruben Mbofana, a social justice advocate and research writer, in an article, wrote that the southern African region has, by and large, been regarded as a peaceful place.
It came as a huge shock watching a video of Zimbabwe President Emmerson Dambudzo Mnangagwa moaning to his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, over what he perceived as Zambia’s close alliance with the United States.
In his remarks – which I am sure have sent shockwaves not only across the region but the entire African continent (if not the world) – Mnangagwa appeared to be begging for military support for Putin to ostensibly counter ‘Zimbabwe’s loneliness’ in the region.
In his pitiful display, he seemed to paint a picture of a Zimbabwe under possible threat from the United States using Zambia as a launching pad. Surely, on what ridiculous basis would Mnangagwa assume or even conclude that the United States would want to attack Zimbabwe?
Save for a few conflict zones – such as Mozambique, Angola, and the DRC – we have avoided stoking the flames of war. This is particularly so as it pertains to inter-nation conflict. Of course, countries such as Rwanda and Burundi (although not southern African states) have repeatedly been fingered in sponsoring cross-border wars in SADC member DRC.
Southern African region has been known for maintaining peace and stability by any means necessary – even if that meant states turning a blind eye to gross injustices perpetrated in their neighbors against their populations. As a matter of fact, Zimbabwe is one of those countries that has benefited immensely from this ‘see no evil, hear no evil, and say no evil’ policy of SADC.
Granted, the United States, on April 26, 2022, established its military Africa Command (AFRICOM) in Zambia. However, it should be noted that this is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a military base.
AFRICOM in Zambia is merely an office set up in the US Embassy in Lusaka to assist the Zambian forces in the United Nations Multidimensional Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA). As can he clearly determined this is neither a military base nor Zimbabwe the target. Similarly, Zambia itself has never indicated a desire to engage with Zimbabwe in any military hostilities.
This then poses a crucial questions. Why did Mnangagwa say what he said to Putin? For what reason did he make it appear as though Zimbabwe was under threat from the US using Zambia? Does he now hate Hichilema so much that he will do anything to ‘punish’ him for his bold stance – including launching a military attack against Zambia?
Nonetheless, there were never signs of any desire on Zambia’s part to wage war or take any other action against Zimbabwe. Yet we have hardly lifted a hand against the kleptomaniac oppressive regime. Here we have, though, our head of state seemingly pleading with the Russians to offer military assistance to the regime in apparent readiness with a war with Zambia, according to Tendai Ruben Mbofana.
Mnangagwa’s statement has potentially positioned Zimbabwe as a regional security threat. This may demand the immediate intervention of the SADC Organ on Politics, Defense, and Security – which is, interestingly, currently chaired by Zambia. In fact, this may also require an extraordinary summit of the SADC heads of state to discuss this possible danger to the region.
Russia-Zimbabwe relations were established a long time ago when it was struggling for political independence which it finally gained on 18 April 1980. Zimbabwe, with roughly 15 million people as per 2022 census, is a landlocked country in southern Africa. In southern African region, it is the biggest trading partner of South Africa. Zimbabwe is one of the members of the Southern African Development Community (SADC).
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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.
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It can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.
Ukrainian Air Force head of aviation Sergey Golubtsov told US state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in an interview over the weekend that Kiev plans to store some of its F-16s in NATO states for reserve and training purposes. While this might sound like a pragmatic policy, particularly since it would deter Russia from destroying its entire fleet since President Putin recently mocked speculation about him plotting to attack NATO as “bullshit”, it actually raises the risk of World War III.
To explain, although US Air Force chief Frank Kendell claimed last summer that the F-16s are “not going to be a game-changer” for Ukraine and Golubtsov himself confirmed in his latest interview that they’re “not a panacea and we do not wear rose-colored glasses”, both downplay the nuclear dimension. President Putin brought it up earlier this spring when he noted that “F-16 aircraft can also carry nuclear weapons, and we will also have to heed this while organising our combat operations.”
The Russian leader also warned that “we would see them as legitimate targets if they operate from the airfields of third countries, no matter where they are located.” Mutual mistrust between Russia and the US is at a record low and continues falling by the week, made all the worse by Ukraine’s recent attack(s) against Russia’s early nuclear warning systems that might have been tacitly approved by America. This comes as the US is playing a dangerous game of nuclear chicken with Russia.
It’s with all this in mind that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrovsaid last month that
“We cannot help but consider the supply of these (F-16) systems to the Kiev regime as a deliberate signaling action by NATO in the nuclear sphere.”
He added though that his country’s recent tactical nuclear weapons exercises might “bring some sense” to NATO and deter them from crossing the ultimate red line. Judging by what Golubtsov just said, however, the US wants to up the ante in its game of nuclear chicken.
What’s meant is that Russia can’t know whether any attacking F-16 are nuclear-equipped, especially if one of them from Ukraine’s “reserve” based in NATO states takes off from there and carries out a mission without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield. From the Kremlin’s viewpoint, it could appear that a nuclear-equipped and NATO-piloted F-16 is preparing to carry out a first strike. In response, Russia might preemptively destroy the base from which it departed, with or without a tactical nuke.
The New York Times already cited an unknown number of Biden’s unnamed advisors to report that the US and Ukraine’s priorities are diverging, warning that “Ukraine has nothing left to lose from escalating with Russia” while “Mr. Biden does”. It therefore can’t be ruled out that Zelensky might task one of his pilots with carrying out a mission directly from NATO territory without first stopping at a Kiev-controlled airfield in order to provoke Russia into striking the base from which it departed in self-defense.
Seeing as how Denmark approved of Ukraine using their donated F-16s to strike inside of Russia’s universally recognized territory, which followed its NATO peers approving of Ukraine using other arms to do the same, this is a frighteningly real scenario that the US might be powerless to stop. The only way to prevent it is for the US to force its partners not to allow Ukraine to store its F-16s on their territory, but Biden likely doesn’t have the political will since he fears accusations that he’s afraid of President Putin.
The West’s most ideologically radicalized anti-Russian hawks and their media proxies could also claim that coercing Ukraine to store all of its F-16s inside the country runs the risk of Russia destroying them and therefore making a total waste of NATO’s months-long preparations for this latest escalation. This could be seized upon by his political opponents at home ahead of November’s elections so it’s unlikely that he’d want to take the chance of turning more voters against him with this so-called “stupid policy”.
Of course, the knife also cuts both ways, and his opponents could also claim that the most “stupid policy” is actually him letting Ukraine store F-16s in NATO states since that raises the risk of World War III as was explained in this analysis. Seeing as how these the US and Ukraine’s leading Air Force officials don’t even consider these arms to be a “game-changer” or a “panacea” by their own respective admissions, they shouldn’t even be fielded in the first place due to this irresponsible risk.
Nevertheless, the F-16s will now inevitably be used after all the time and investment that went into training Ukrainian pilots, not to mention the media hype over all these months. The decision has already been made to store some of them in NATO states so it remains to be seen whether Zelensky is truly willing to risk it all by authorizing a mission for attacking Russia directly from one of those bases. He has the motive and opportunity, which is why it wouldn’t be surprising if he gave it a shot in desperation.
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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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France appears increasingly isolated in its decision to intervene directly in the Ukrainian conflict. Not even major Western powers are willing to openly confront Moscow on the battlefield, given the high likelihood of a catastrophic war arising as a result of such a move. Now, Berlin is already signaling that it will not support the French move.
According to the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag, the German government is preparing to publicly refuse its support for France’s anti-Russian military initiative. The outlet, citing sources familiar with state affairs, claims that French officials are pressuring several NATO members to cooperate in sending troops to Ukraine. Reports show that the French army’s chief of staff, General Thierry Burkhard, wrote a letter calling on the US and at least 10 other NATO countries to join Paris in intervening in Ukraine.
Germany, however, was not included in the French general’s letter, the sources say. This means that German officials have most likely already made it clear, in secret, to their French counterparts that they are not interested in directly participating in the conflict with Russia. According to the sources, during negotiations in Brussels, Germany, along with other countries such as Italy and Spain, ruled out the possibility of sending troops to Ukraine. If the pressure continues, Germany is expected to make a public statement denying aid to France.
In fact, the French proposal does not seem to be popular within NATO. Few countries have shown interest in cooperating with the sending of troops. Initially, the French soldiers would not be allocated to actual combat units, but to training and command centers. In addition, the French would have the mission of “protecting” strategic areas in key cities such as Odessa and Kharkov, trying to dissuade Russia from advancing in these regions.
However, none of this is enough to disguise the serious escalation initiated by France. Putting troops on the ground is officially entering the war, regardless of which unit the troops are deployed to. In practice, Paris is trying to reconcile two irreconcilable scenarios: going to war with Russia and avoiding a harsh response from Moscow. Obviously, Paris does not want to face the consequences of a direct war with Russia, but at the same time Macron wants to continue propagandizing his image as “leader and defender of Europe.” This scenario could easily end in tragedy.
Indeed, Macron is not acting naively. He certainly has a plan behind his dangerous idea of sending troops. Given the high number of French mercenaries killed by Russian forces in Ukraine, it is very likely that there is pressure in French society to provide an explanation for the losses. Many of these soldiers are not exactly mercenaries, but regular French commandos who fight for NATO’s interests in Ukraine, using the label of “mercenaries” to disguise Western interventionism. The French government needs to give society an explanation to why so many French citizens are dying on the front lines – and apparently, Macron has made the worst possible decision to “explain” these deaths.
It is possible that the real purpose of sending troops is to “legalize” the deaths of mercenaries. Thus, Macron could simply say that the losses occurred during direct hostilities between the French Army and Russian forces, providing an explanation for the families of the dead soldiers. There is, however, nothing rational or strategic about such a move. By disguising the already existing French involvement, Macron would be provoking an all-out war, putting the global security architecture at risk. Nevertheless, he appears increasingly isolated in his proposal, with the initiative being rejected by other states.
The only hope of preventing French interference from turning into open war lies with Russia itself. The Russians have repeatedly proven to be the rational side in the conflict, as Moscow is actually willing to avoid escalation. Russia does not want to go to war with NATO directly, even though the Atlantic alliance is already taking steps towards direct intervention – not only with Macron’s initiative, but also with other recent moves, such as authorizing cross-border strikes. Clearly, there is a scenario in which NATO wants war and Russia avoids it.
Of course, the Russians will do their best once again to avoid the worst-case scenario, but it is important for the West to understand that at some point Russian patience may run out. Moscow is not interested in starting an open conflict, but it has already made it clear that any French soldier in Ukraine is a legitimate target.
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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.
Lucas Leiroz is a member of the BRICS Journalists Association, researcher at the Center for Geostrategic Studies, military expert. You can follow Lucas on X (former Twitter) and Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Nourish Cooperative is a farm cooperative that provides fresh, whole foods, such as low-PUFA eggs, raw milk, and “needle-free” grass fed and/or corn- and soy-free meat
On November 3, 2023, 15 of their corn- and soy-free, low-PUFA hogs were seized due to a misunderstanding on processing
On May 28, 2024, the cooperative was raided, and over $90,000 worth of product was put under “cease and desist” by the state of Michigan
The raid took place over the course of about four to five hours, and started with four government employees arriving in a government marked car, including a human food inspector, an animal food inspector and two dairy inspectors
Nourish Cooperative is fighting back to protect traditional foods and the right to access these healing products from small farms
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There is a lot of fearmongering circulating in mainstream media about the “Avian Influenza”. In parallel to the fearmongering, there has been a large increase in the number of inspections and surveillance. Creating fear would certainly help better maintain control of the food system, wouldn’t it?
On Tuesday, May 28th, our farm co-op was randomly “inspected” (raided), and over $90,000 worth of product was put under “cease and desist” by the state of Michigan, including all raw dairy. As this is an evolving story, I will share what we know to be true thus far.
Nourish Cooperative is a farm cooperative that my sister, Sarah, and I started with a few other first generation regenerative farmers in September 2023. After several years of a steadily increasing demand for our farm fresh products (such as our raw milk, sourdough, and “needle-free” grass fed and/or corn- and soy-free meat), we simply could not keep up with the demand ourselves, which led us to create a “cooperative” (co-op) of several small, local regenerative farms.
Our goal is to produce the highest quality food possible while working with Mother Nature through the use of regenerative agriculture practices. This cooperative grew faster than we could ever imagine, and with that, I suppose, more problems arose, inevitably. If interested, you can read more about Nourish Cooperative here.
First, 15 Hogs Stolen — ‘Their Lives Went to Waste’
Our first stint with the government happened last fall on November 3, 2023 when 15 of our corn- and soy-free, low-PUFA hogs were seized right before my eyes due to a misunderstanding on processing. I was forced to put the 15 hog carcasses in the back of our pickup truck, pour used motor oil on them, and then drive them to a nearby landfill and pay to dispose of 2000+ pounds of hog carcasses.
I will never forget the smell at the top of that landfill! This was devastating — not only was thousands of dollars worth of product *literally* destroyed, but the lives of these animals went to waste. We could have used them ourselves, donated them, or fed them to our animals.
That’s a huge issue for us — we take pride in the methods in which we (and all of our farm partners) farm — rotationally grazing our animals to fresh pasture near daily, living as Mother Nature intended so they can express their innate instincts ensuring they have the closest to “natural” lives they can possibly live during their time on earth.
To know that they lived and died for no reason other than to sit in a landfill so the government could make a point — that hurt. And it hurt our spirit for a period of time, too. Thinking: Is this even worth it? Are we in over our heads?! There seems to be a block at every step of the way, when you’re trying to raise food traditionally, organically, and unadulterated.
But we persevered, which is how Nourish Cooperative expanded to carry not only various different types of meat and unique products (such as gelatin-rich bone broths and traditionally made sourdough products), but various types of raw dairy as well, including sheep, goat, and A2A2 cow dairy products such as raw milk, cheese, kefir, cream, butter, yogurt, and so on.
Most of us in the health space are familiar with the troubling laws around raw dairy, and we’re aware that raw dairy sales are heavily regulated, even illegal, in most if not all states.
This is where things get super confusing, as the laws differ by state, and in Michigan, where our co-op is located, the law states that one way to sell raw dairy is to establish a herd-share and require customers to pick up their dairy from your farm. Another option in Michigan is to sell your raw dairy as a pet food supplement, which is the route we decided to take.
All Raw Dairy — $90,000 Worth of Product — Seized
Raw cheese is actually a little simpler. One thing all states do have in common is that raw cheese, made in a legitimate, inspected facility, that’s aged for at least 60 days, is legal to sell and buy (7 CFR § 58.439). This is why you can buy raw cheese in stores such as Walmart and Meijer. It’s not illegal, yet, on May 28th, around 1 PM EST, all of this came into question for us.
During the raid of our cooperative, all raw dairy was placed under seizure — in total, over $90,000 worth of product. What this means is that these products (all milk, cheese, butter, etc.) were counted and tagged, and that we are not allowed to sell, use or even move these products without a government official present.
So no using these products for our personal use, no giving these products to our animals — simply put, these products have to remain where they were, unless we choose to discard of them, and in that case, a government official would need to be present to ensure we discarded of them appropriately, to their standards (which basically means, they’d need to go to literal waste). Remember the pig situation I mentioned …? Talk about deja vu, in the worst way possible.
Keep in mind, this was a Tuesday, the day after Memorial Day, and business was going as usual. We had over 350 orders to pack up and ship out to our cooperative members and their pets, the majority of which included raw dairy (sold as a pet food supplement).
The raid took place over the course of about four to five hours, and started with four government employees arriving in a government marked car, including a human food inspector, an animal food inspector, and two dairy inspectors.
The inspectors spoke to the highest in the chain of command available at our farm, which was Brandon, our head of operations (and Sarah’s fiancé). Brandon informed the government employees that he did not feel comfortable showing them around the facility since it was not his place, and gently pointed towards the farm’s “NO TRESPASSING” signs.
However, since Nourish Cooperative has a “Food Warehouse License” in Michigan, they notified us that they’re allowed to show up and inspect at any time, and requested to be shown around our facility.
Five-Hour ‘Inspection’ Leads to Cease and Desist Letter
What began to unfold over the next four to five hours was these four inspectors, going through our fridges and freezers, tossing products around, and deciding that all of our raw dairy and a few other products were placed under seizure. Including the raw cheese.
The issue they had with the raw cheese was that the plant number was “not identifiable” on the label. However, Brandon read off the plant number to the inspectors directly from the label in front of them, and this information was also given to the main human food inspector the week prior verbally during a phone call.
So, we provided the plant number where our cheese is made … but they said they couldn’t read it on their own. Even if the font size was too small, why did the product have to be put “UNDER SEIZURE”?
Figure 1. Nourish Cooperative cheese label.
UPDATE = the cheese was released from seizure eight days later on Thursday, June 6th after the plant number was again communicated and the legality of raw aged cheese for human consumption was proven through 7 CFR § 58.439.
As for the other raw dairy products (like milk and butter) sold as a pet food supplement, we were told that the entire situation started as a label miscommunication. We were told that there were some issues with our labels since we did not specify what pet the product was for, and did not include serving suggestions. (For example, for dogs, feed two tablespoons.)
Our labels were submitted in March and our check was cashed for a pet food license. But, instead of going back and forth with us to help us get our labels approved, there was the surprise inspection, and immediate seizure of all products.
We have made the suggested changes, and resubmitted the labels for approval the evening of the inspection, but now we are all of a sudden being told that it is illegal to sell raw dairy as pet food.
“Michigan does not permit the sale of raw milk for human or animal consumption, therefore relabeling the products will not fully correct the (label) violations cited.”
Hmmm I am not so sure about this. For example, in the past week I have called over 10 pet food stores throughout the state of Michigan who sell raw goat milk for pets.
Talk about selective enforcement? Despite this being an unannounced “regular inspection,” this group of government officials arrived with a pre-prepared Cease and Desist letter (unless they printed it in their car), and asked Brandon to sign this letter. Brandon declined saying he was not in the position to sign.
Truthfully, we are kind of in limbo right now and have no information on how to proceed forward (despite making the suggested label changes).
We cannot touch any of the products (raw milk, raw butter, raw cream, raw cottage cheese, etc.) that are still under seizure (only the raw cheese cease and desist order was removed). We can’t eat it ourselves. And we can’t feed it to our animals. All of this product will go to waste!
The most unfortunate part of all of this is that for many of our farm partners, our co-op is their only market — they rely on our market to make a living. So, how are they supposed to pay their bills? What do they do with all of the product?
We’ve been able to help dozens of small farmers improve their farming practices, expand their operations, and make enough income to actually be farmers and quit their off-farm jobs. (Did you know that 96% of farm households derived some of their income from off-farm sources in 2019?1Meaning, many farmers require other jobs to support their farm.)
You Have a Right to Access Real, Healing Foods
As a co-op, we shouldn’t have to black market real, healing foods (which, to be clear, we are not doing — we have attempted to comply with the law and regulations every step of the way) or, as consumers, have to bend over backwards to try to source these products. Starting Nourish allowed these farmers to focus on farming (the right way), and actually make a living doing so. We hope to continue to provide this opportunity to other small farmers as the co-op continues to grow.
Just as unfortunate, our co-op members rely on us for these foods. Many of our members have food allergies or sensitivities, or other health conditions, that require them to source pure, unadulterated foods. Or they just choose to source the highest quality food available because it makes them feel good, and they want to support regenerative agriculture and small farmers.
While these members are buying the raw dairy for their pets, they obviously can do as they please with these products. It is not up to us to decide what someone does with their dairy.
Our members are upset, and they’re fired up at the same time. The support that’s rolled in from members of Nourish and beyond is incredible to see; more and more people are choosing to source their foods from small farmers, raising food the traditional way, and we don’t see why there should be so many obstacles to do so.
(Well, we do understand, as Big Ag spends millions of dollars each year on lobbying to ensure the rules and regulations make it so that it is very hard to be a small farmer or co-op in their centralized system.)
Regardless, we must work within the framework we are given, and even though it may not make sense to us, or to our co-op members, there are ways in which we can move forward — and we are hopeful we will be able to fully back in business soon.
Since May 28th, we’ve had to stop selling all raw dairy products (except raw cheese which is again available for sale) and other products seized by the government, but we are still providing grass fed meats (beef, yak, lamb), and corn- and soy-free, low-PUFA chicken and pork, as well as raw pet food chubs, pure Michigan maple syrup, raw honey, and a few other products on our website.
Fight for Your Right for Nourishment
We ship these products all across the United States. While the website shows we are currently closed and not taking new members, we are diligently working on opening up more spots for incoming members, so if you would like to join Nourish, please reach out to our customer service by clicking here with a request to make your membership active, or with any other questions you may have.
If you would like to support our co-op during this challenging time, to help us recover from the $90,000 product loss, and help us cover our mounting legal fees, we have an ongoing GiveSendGo fundraiser in which you can support us by clicking below.
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Ashley Armstrong is the cofounder of Angel Acres Egg Co., which specializes in low-PUFA (polyunsaturated fat) eggs that are shipped to all 50 states (join waitlist here), and Nourish Cooperative, which ships low-PUFA pork, beef, cheese, A2 dairy and traditional sourdough to all 50 states.
Kazuhiro Haraguchi, the former Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs, has become the first major politician to apologize to the unvaccinated for the tsunami of deaths occuring among the vaccinated population.
In a contentious case involving the Health Freedom Defense Fund and other plaintiffs versus the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the court acknowledged the plaintiffs’ claim that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do not meet the traditional definition of vaccines because they do not prevent the spread of the virus but only mitigate symptoms.
After 1948 the US had “lost China to communism” and policies were undertaken in Washington to reinstate their authority over China, with territories like Tibet identified as target areas. The CIA and to a lesser extent the US military helped to instigate anti-Chinese insurrections in Tibet, such as occurred from 1956 in the Kham and Amdo areas in the eastern part of the Tibetan Plateau.
Israel is often described by analysts in the Arab media as an army that has a state rather than a state that has an army. Support for military measures designed to entrench and expand Zionist political and territorial control of historic Palestine has been a characteristic of the Israeli public since the entity’s violent establishment on 78 percent of Palestine in 1948.
On March 24th, this journalist exposed how London was at the forefront of efforts to launch a ground invasion of Yugoslavia, during NATO’s illegal March-May 1999 bombing campaign.
We were born into a soul-killing system – a matrix of institutional political and financial control. Consider the events of recent times: a fake pandemic, orchestrated wars, communism under a cloak of climate change policy and UN Agenda 2030, etc.
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In a contentious case involving the Health Freedom Defense Fund and other plaintiffs versus the Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD), the court acknowledged the plaintiffs’ claim that the COVID-19 mRNA vaccines do not meet the traditional definition of vaccines because they do not prevent the spread of the virus but only mitigate symptoms.
The case revolved around the LAUSD’s COVID-19 vaccination policy, which required all employees to be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 by a specified deadline.
The case, brought by the Health Freedom Defense Fund and several individuals, argues that the LAUSD’s vaccination mandate interferes with their fundamental right to refuse medical treatment. The plaintiffs assert that the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines merely mitigate symptoms rather than prevent infection or transmission, which they claim does not align with the traditional definition of a vaccine.
In its decision, the 9th Circuit highlighted that the district court had misapplied the precedent set by Jacobson v. Massachusetts, which upheld mandatory smallpox vaccinations due to their effectiveness in preventing disease spread. The court noted that the plaintiffs’ claims, taken as true at this stage, suggest that the COVID-19 vaccines do not effectively “prevent the spread” of COVID-19, thereby warranting further consideration of their allegations.
The Gateway Pundit previously reported that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) had modified the definition of “vaccine” to include the mRNA shots.
So, look at what the CDC did. Here’s the definition the CDC used on 26 August 2021:
Vaccine– “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease.”
Vaccination– “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”
Rather than admit the COVID-19 vaccine is not working as advertised, the CDC took a page out of Orwell’s 1984 and opted for new spin language.
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’85 years of glacier growth & stability in East Antarctica’, the study states. ‘Ice-sheet wide mass balance estimates start[ed] in late 1970s…have exhibited either an overall mass gain or been relative unchanged’
Climatedepot.com reports: Nature Communications: Our results demonstrate that the stability and growth in ice elevations observed in terrestrial basins over the past few decades are part of a trend spanning at least a century, and highlight the importance of understanding long-term changes when interpreting current dynamics. … However, in Antarctica, the scarcity of historical climate data makes climate reanalysis estimates before the 1970s largely uncertain10,23, and observed trends cannot clearly be distinguished from natural variability24,25.
Currently, the earliest ice-sheet wide mass balance estimates start in the late 1970s3,6,7, and since then all the sub-regions examined in this study have exhibited either an overall mass gain or been relative unchanged.
…
Regardless of potential climatic changes, our results indicate that the glacier in Kemp and Mac Robertson Land and along Ingrid Christensen Coast, have accumulated mass during the past 85 years which inevitably have mitigated parts of the more recent mass loss from the marine basins in East Antarctica and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). This positive accumulation trend and positive mass balance is anticipated to persist as snowfall is expected to increase over the entire EAIS in the next century54,55, and ice sheet modeling studies project positive mass balance estimates in all three sub-regions across all future RCP scenarios56. Lastly, we determine frontal changes of 21 glaciers from 1937 to 2023 (Table S1 and Fig. S11). From the 85 years of observations, we find two distinct regional patterns; one of constant glacier surface elevations and one of ice thickening.
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Having cut his teeth in the mainstream media, including stints at the BBC, Sean witnessed the corruption within the system and developed a burning desire to expose the secrets that protect the elite and allow them to continue waging war on humanity. Disturbed by the agenda of the elites and dissatisfied with the alternative media, Sean decided it was time to shake things up. Knight of Joseon (https://joseon.com)
ereignty and fundamental human rights. 
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What is the meaning in Arabic of Al Qaeda?
