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Part I: Widow of BBC Presenter Who Died After COVID Jab Says “No Alternative” But to Sue Astra-Zeneca, by Tara Cobham, The Independent, April 11, 2023 (Excerpts)
Part II: Is the BBC Responsible for mRNA Vaccine-relatedDeaths?,by Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, April 12, 2023
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PART I
by Tara Cobham
The Independent, April 11, 2023
BBC Radio Newcastle’s Lisa Shaw had her first jab in May 2021 and died just a week later
The widower of a BBC presenter who died after having the Covid vaccine has said he has been left with “no alternative” but to sue AstraZeneca.
BBC Radio Newcastle’s Lisa Shaw had her first jab in May 2021 and died just a week later.
In August of that year, Newcastle coroner Karen Dilks ruled the 44-year-old had died from a rare condition associated with the jab that induces swelling and bleeding on the brain, “vaccine-induced thrombotic thrombocytopenia”.
Her widower Gareth Eve said no one had “reached out” after he had attempted to “engage with the government, MPs and three prime ministers”.
He told the BBC:
“It’s not in my make-up to turn around and say I want to sue somebody but for almost two years we’ve tried to engage with the government and tried to engage with MPs since Lisa died and not one of them has reached out or engaged with us at all.
“Any engagement is fleeting at best so that’s the reason that we’re left with no alternative – if the government or AstraZeneca don’t want to engage with us then what else are we supposed to do?”
Mr Eve said he merely wanted “some sort of acknowledgement or recognition that these deaths have occurred”, adding: “We’re not crackpots or conspiracy theorists, we’re husbands and wives and family members who have lost somebody – that’s all it is.
Our thoughts today are with the family of the late BBC presenter Lisa Shaw.
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Introduction
What the above report by The Independent fails to acknowledge is that Lisa Shaw’s employer, namely the BBC was instrumental in providing legitimacy to the mRNA “killer vaccine”, through 24/7 reports intimating that the virus was more dangerous than the vaccine.
The BBC also withheld publication of official data pertaining to vaccine related deaths and adverse events, not to mention the outright censorship of prominent scientists and medical doctors.
The BBC’s Fear Campaign: “Why is the Virus Such a Threat”
A couple of weeks prior to the official launch of the mRNA vaccine in early November 2020, the BBC featured a timely report entitled:
“Why is the Virus such a Threat”.
The BBC describes(quoting and misquoting “scientific opinion”) how the virus had developed “a hit and run killer evolutionary tactic”, with a view to spreading the Covid-19 infection far and wide.
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BBC “Scientific Nonsense”
The unspoken objective of this report by BBC Science Correspondent James Gallagher was to “scare the British public”, whileindirectlypromoting acceptance of the Covid mRNA vaccine.
The article was based on the “authoritative voice” of Prof Lehner of Cambridge University, an Infectious Diseases Physician at Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge:
“A simple virus has brought life as we know it to a screeching halt.
We have faced viral threats before, including pandemics, yet the world does not shut down for every new infection or flu season.
So what is it about this coronavirus? What are the quirks of its biology that pose a unique threat to our bodies and our lives?
According to Lehner: In the early stages of an infection “the virus is able to deceive the body. … It [the virus] behaves like a ‘hit and run’ killer
The amount of virus in our body begins to peak the day before we begin to get sick. …
But it takes at least a week before Covid progresses to the point where people need hospital treatment.
“This is a really brilliant evolutionary tactic – you don’t go to bed, you go out and have a good time,” says Prof Lehner of Cambridge University.
So the virus is like a dangerous driver fleeing the scene – the virus has moved on to the next victim long before we either recover or die.
In stark terms, “the virus doesn’t care” if you die, says [Cambridge] Prof Lehner, “this is a hit and run virus”. ….
What rubbish! This frivolous BBC report personifies the so-called “virus that does not care”, with a view to creating panic, quoting the incautious statements of a Cambridge scientist, who’s on the payroll of Big Pharma’s Wellcome Trust.
In turn the “Hit and Run Virus” (rather than corrupt governments) is blamed for having “ordered the lockdown” (March 11, 2020), imposed on 190 countries, which has created economic and social havoc Worldwide.
Not only is this sensationalist report based on the results of the flawed PCR test —which does not detect the virus (ie. CoV-SARS-2), it is in blatant contradiction with the official WHO definition of Covid-19:
“The most common symptoms of COVID-19are fever, dry cough, and tiredness. … These symptoms are usually mild and begin gradually. Some people become infected but only have very mild symptoms. Most people (about 80%) recover from the disease without needing hospital treatment. Around 1 out of every 5 people who gets COVID-19 becomes seriously ill and develops difficulty breathing.”
According to both the WHO and the CDC, CoV-SARS-2 is not a dangerous virus. In may regards it is similar to seasonal influenza.
What is really dangerous is the Covid-19 mRNA Vaccine, which is portrayed by the media as a means to combating the virus.
Deep-seated Crisis Within the BBC
Charlie Walsham (pseudonym) describes “How the BBC lost its way on Covid”(Spectator, December 19, 2021)
I have been a BBC journalist for many years, … My despair about the BBC’s one-sided coverage of the pandemic though has been steadily growing for some time. And in early December [2021], as I listened to a BBC radio broadcast, I felt the corporation reach a new low.
During a morning phone-in show on 5Live the topic of discussion was Covid jabs and whether they should be mandated, or if punitive action should be taken against those who refuse them, such as imposing lockdowns on the unvaccinated. … I at least expected a balanced discussion.
This was wishful thinking on my part, as ‘Michael from Birmingham’ – a caller – was about to find out. Michael told the host he hadn’t been vaccinated because he didn’t trust ‘the data’ and cited historic incidents of documented corporate malfeasance by pharmaceutical giants to explain why he was concerned. … Yet instead of holding a reasoned debate with his concerned caller, the host immediately lost his temper, talked over Michael, implied he was a flat-earther and then muted him entirely.
It was an interaction that goes to the very heart of the dismal failure of BBC News. …The atmosphere in these BBC offices in the early days of the pandemic became comically oppressive.
… Before long, colleagues I respected, and who held sway over running orders, succumbed to the belief that lockdowns, social distancing and face coverings – the whole gamut of coronavirus measures – were the only viable route out of the crisis. Alternative strategies, even those backed by eminent scientists and medics, were dismissed as dangerous or the work of cranks without any effort being made to properly examine their ideas. …
Some people do experience mild to moderate symptoms after being vaccinated.[biased and nonsensical statement] This is not the disease itself, but the body’s response to the vaccine.
Common reactions that may affect more than one in 10 people and typically get better within days include chills, tiredness and aching muscles.
What about serious reactions?
It is rare to find that health problems occurring following a vaccine are actually caused by the vaccine itself. [absolute nonsense refuted by scientific evidence]. Events may be coincidental and unrelated to vaccination.
The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine has been linked to very rare cases of blood clots. This is not proof that the vaccine is to blame. [the incidence of blood clots resulting from the vaccine is amply documented] Covid infection itself can also make clots more likely and they can occur naturally too.
The chance of this happening to an individual is still extremely low,[Nonsensical statement] but as a precaution, younger age groups in the UK have been offered alternative Covid vaccines.
“Official sources, namely EudraVigilance (EU, EEA, Switzerland), MHRA (UK) and VAERS (USA), have now recorded many more deaths and injuries from the COVID-!9 “vaccine” roll-out than from all previous vaccines combined since records began.”
“The report is a bombshell. The vaccine was launched in mid-December 2020. By the end of February 2021, “Pfizer had already received more than 1,200 reports of deaths allegedly caused by the vaccine and tens of thousands of reported adverse events, including 23 cases of spontaneous abortions out of 270 pregnancies and more than 2,000 reports of cardiac disorders.”
The data from mid-December 2020 to the end of February 2021 unequivocally confirms “Manslaughter”. Based on the evidence, Pfizer had the responsibility to immediately cancel and withdraw the “vaccine”.
…
Pfizer’s Covid 19 Vaccine constitutes a Criminal Act. From a legal standpoint it is an “Act of Murder” applied Worldwide to a target population of 8 billion people.”
From the outset, the BBC has relentlessly spread disinformation on the Covid MRNA vaccine, despite ample evidence of its devastating health impacts.
Media disinformation coupled with censorship not to mention government coercion have resulted in a vaccine related upward trend in mortality and morbidity starting in early 2021.
It should be noted that the mainstream media have instructed their personnel to get vaccinated, or else.
Media propaganda including the BBC’s frivolous reports quoting “fake science” and waging a smear campaign against prominent scientists and medical doctors: Is it a criminal undertaking?
The media had the responsibility to inform the public that the Covid-19 mRNA vaccine is “a dangerous and toxic substance”. If the truth had been revealed, the upward movement in vaccine related deaths and injuries would not have occurred.
Our Thoughts Are with the Victims of the COVID-19 Vaxx.
I would suggest to Gareth Eve, that he should not only confront Astra-Zeneca and the British Health authorities but also the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) which from the very outset of the Covid Crisis in January 2020 has deliberately misled public opinion on behalf of Big Pharma.
For more details on the corona crisis and the mRNA vaccine, download my book (E-Book, pdf format, 15 chapters)
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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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***
After the brutal operation Blue Star launched by the Indian Army in 1984 at highly sacred Sikh religious place-the Golden Temple complex (Harmandir Sahib) in Amritsar, Punjab where their spiritual leader Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale had taken shelter, the international community had thought that perhaps Sikhs have become lethargic in connection with their demand for an independent state in the Indian Punjab, named Khalistan.
But, participation of almost 208,000 Sikhs in the Khalistan referendums held in the recent years in four countries—the huge number of Sikhs who voted in favour of an independent Khalistan reflected that their demand for and independent home land is gradually being accepted globally.
In this regard, some developments and moves show the Sikh diaspora-revival of the Khalistan movement which needs analysis.
On March 18 this year, prior to the launching of crackdown by the Indian police and paramilitary forces, section-144 was imposed, and mobile phone service was suspended in Sri Muktsar Sahib and Fazilka districts of the Indian Punjab.
Ever since Amritpal Singh Sandhu took over as the head of ‘Waris Punjab De’ after the death of its founder head named Deep Sidhu, state machinery started harassing him by cancelling arms licences of his guards and detaining his friends.
Police arrested a large number of Sikhs including members of ‘Waris Punjab De’ and Amritpal Singh.
Sikh diaspora has expressed serious concerns over this crackdown harassing the Sikh population in the Indian Punjab, elsewhere in India, including those living abroad.
Randeep Sarai, Member of Parliament in Canada said on Twitter:
“Deeply concerned about news reports coming out of Punjab, India. The suspension of internet services and restricted gatherings of more than 4 people in some areas.”
Deeply concerned about news reports coming out of #Punjab, India. The suspension of internet services and restricted gatherings of more than 4 people in some areas. We are closely following the situation.
Gagmeet Singh, Party leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada, stated:
“I am deeply concerned by reports that India has suspended civil liberties and imposed an internet blackout throughout the state of Punjab…These draconian measures are unsettling for many given their historical use to execute extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances during the 1984 Sikh Genocide…I am calling on [Canadian Prime Minister] Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government to immediately contact their Indian counterparts to express concern regarding the suspension of civil liberties and the safety of Canadians abroad.”
I am deeply concerned by reports that India has suspended civil liberties and imposed an internet blackout throughout the state of Punjab.
The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) condemned the security operations in Punjab to arrest Sikh leader, Bhai Amritpal Singh. Indian authorities have announced the mass suspension of internet services across Punjab citing a threat to “public order by incitement to violence. State-wide cordon and search operations are currently underway across Punjab”.
In a press release, WSO also said:
“We are also deeply concerned that the confusion around Bhai Amritpal Singh’s detention…may be used to orchestrate a false encounter and facilitate his extrajudicial murder…This tactic was commonly used by the Punjab police through the 80’s and 90’s to eliminate Sikh activists. We call on the Canadian Government to demand accountability from India and call for the immediate restoration of civil rights and internet services in Punjab.”
Tim S. Uppal Canadian Conservative Party deputy leader, Gurratan Singh, former Member of the Provincial Parliament, Author and poet Rupi Kaur as well as renowned Sikh persons living in Canada expressed serious concern over crackdown against Sikhs in India-gross human rights violations, remarking:
“Very concerned about reports coming out of Punjab, India…We are closely following the situation…mass arrests of Sikh activists…shut down of internet and text… crackdown on public gatherings…mass censorship of media. Let the Indian Government know that we condemn this repression. The whole world is watching”.
However, the targeting of Sikh youth in Punjab is once again causing huge concerns in the Sikh community across the world. In this context, Punjab Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann has been urged to stop deployment of army or paramilitary services.
Meanwhile, Sikh diaspora took to streets in London and gathered at Indian High Commission to deliver the note of protest to Indian envoy. Thus, one of the enraged Sikh pulled down Indian flag and replaced it with that of Khalistan. Indian government served a note of protest to UK High Commissioner in New Delhi.
In this connection, before Indian Prime Minister Narendar Modi spoke to British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, the Indian authorities called on the UK government to monitor groups like Sikhs For Justice (SFJ) who have been blamed by Indian for mobilising and radicalising thousands of Sikhs through Khalistan referendum voting across the western countries.
Indian police removed temporary security barricades outside the British High Commission in New Delhi.
It is mentionable that EU Sikhs held an anti-India protest demonstration in front of the Brussels Parliament in Brussels on March 27, 2023, calling on European Commission to challenge India’s massive security crackdown. The speakers on the occasion strongly denounced the Modi government for harassing the Sikh community in India.
Image: Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale (Licensed under Fair Use)
Similarly, the California state assembly passed a resolution on April 10, this year, which said that the Sikh community in the US had not yet recovered from the physical and psychological trauma of the riots, urging the US Congress to formally recognise the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in India as ‘genocide’, and to condemn the violence.
Police have accused Amritpal Singh, a 30-year-old preacher, and his aides of creating discord in the state, which is still haunted by the memories of an armed insurgency in the 1980s for an independent Sikh state called Khalistan. The insurgency had prompted a controversial military operation by the Indian government in 1984 which killed thousands of people.
Singh, who has said that he supports the Khalistan movement, captured national headlines in February, this year. He emerged in 2022 in Punjab and began leading marches calling for protecting the rights of Sikhs, who account for about 1.7 percent of India’s population. His speeches have become increasingly popular among supporters of the Khalistan movement.
Nevertheless, as regards the Sikh diaspora, the Sikhs are fighting for a separate homeland since 1947, but the movement gained impetus by the efforts of Sant Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale who was killed by Indian Army in 1984. Now, Amritpal Singh Sandhu revived the Khalistan movement, as he accelerated it.
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Sajjad Shaukat writes on international affairs and is author of the book: US vs Islamic Militants, Invisible Balance of Power: Dangerous Shift in International Relations.
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***
As I have previously documented at The Daily Bell, one of the major ongoing projects of the technocrat globalists at the WEF is to force the peasants to swap meat for mealworms, ostensibly for the sake of combatting “climate change.”
The likes of Bill Gates, the corporate media would have us believe, are sent from heaven to correct our abhorrent behavior.
To sell the mealworms to the public, the overlords saturate the corporate media with vegan propaganda. Their campaigns rely alternately on appeals to morality or health, depending on which tact suits them at the time.
“A heart surgeon who was a Seventh-day Adventist, a faith that encourages vegetarianism… described his experiences operating on patients who ate a plant-based diet, noting that their arteries were healthy and pliable. In contrast, he observed that the arteries of meat-eaters were so clogged with plaque from cholesterol build-up, the doctor said they felt ‘crunchy.”
The main problem with a lot of vegan discourse is that evangelists work backward from their philosophical (or in this case religious) moral stances to collect scientific evidence to support their conclusions.
In this article, the doctor doesn’t even provide any actual clinical data that might inform his position, instead vaguely citing the subjective aesthetic feel of patients’ arteries while he performs surgery on them.
CNN instructs pet owners to feed them insects for climate change
In addition to degenerate humans polluting the atmosphere with their meat-eating ways, CNN also wants to emphasize that:
pets play a significant role in the climate crisis… Their meat-heavy diet is the biggest contributor to their carbon pawprints, which requires an abundance of energy, land and water to produce. And the production of pet food emits huge amounts of planet-warming gases.”
“Come take your Gates-slop, Rover. It’s dinnertime.”
Climate experts understand that dogs and cats love eating asparagus, just like polar bears can’t swim according to Al Gore (they can swim for hundreds of miles, here in reality). Respect the Science™.
If Earth Goddess Gaia desires one thing above all, it’s kittens sacrificed at her altar. Killing Mittens for the Earth is loving, and liberal.
Does Bill Gates’ Lab Meat Cause Cancer?
While the self-satisfied techno-slaves are busy saving the Earth with Bill Gates’ Impossible Burger, they may well be giving themselves cancer in the process.
“The big honking asterisk is that normal meat cells don’t just keep dividing forever. To get the cell cultures to grow at rates big enough to power a business, several companies, including the big three, are quietly using what are called immortalised cells, something most people have never eaten intentionally. Immortalised cells are a staple of medical research, but they are, technically speaking, pre-cancerous and can be, in some cases, fully cancerous.”
In addition to dead kittens, cancer is also loving and liberal.
Laughable anti-meat propaganda study finds stupendous athletic advantage for vegans!
“How many deep knee bends can you do? One meat-eating athlete did more than 1,000, with the group as a whole averaging 383, but the plant-eating athletes creamed them, averaging 927. Even the sedentary vegetarians performed better than the meat-eating athletes; they averaged 535 deep knee bends.”
The study is flawed and essentially worthless for many reasons. Chief among them is the fact that it only included 49 participants. It relied solely on self-reporting. It also failed to account in any way whatsoever for protein intake, age of participants, their underlying health status, etc.
Vice demonizes dairy consumers: ‘Unsettling’
Vice “Culture Editor” Daisy Jones got the call that milk drinkers were to be smeared, so she got to work hallucinating a scene that (probably) never happened at a UK music festival.
“I was at Glastonbury last month, waiting for Diana Ross, when I spotted a grown man queuing up for somewhere called The Milk Stand. He propped his elbow against the bar, rubbed his goatee and went, “Just a carton of milk for me please, mate.” It was 28 degrees outside. And just as the opening chords of “I’m Coming Out” begun, I could see him out the corner of my eye, guzzling milk, little streams of white liquid cascading down his chin. And I thought: ‘Sorry? Are you okay?”
Jones goes on to compare dairy consumption to drinking semen:
“Why are you, as an adult, drinking white liquid which was made inside a body? And, worse, why are you drinking the white body liquid of cows specifically? You know what other liquids fit within that category? C** and discharge.”
It’s true that humans are the only animals that consume dairy post-infancy. But it’s also true that humans have been consuming dairy for literally six thousand years. We’ve been at it so long that we developed adult digestive enzymes to break down the lactose.
“milk has been nefariously co-opted and transformed into the preeminent symbol of both Neo-Nazis and the ‘alt-right.’”
Yep, even milk is racist!
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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.
Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
To fully appreciate the importance of the Covid Era to the Pharmaceutical Industry we revisit the “Future of Health Summit” held at the Milken Institute on Oct. 28-29, 2019.
The conference, hailed as an event to “[bring] together thought leaders and decision-makers to confront some of the world’s most significant health challenges by matching human, financial, and educational resources with the most innovative and impactful ideas”, convened “health experts” from across multiple disciplines.
The most notable discussion of this two-day affair occurred on the 29th at a workshop titled, “Making Influenza History: The Quest for a Universal Vaccine.” At this workshop a panel of powerful “health experts” gathered to discuss “scientific and technological prospects of an effective universal influenza vaccine.”
Featured speakers at this plenary session includedDr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Margaret Hamburg, former FDA commissioner; Bruce Gellin, President, Global Immunization, Sabin Vaccine Institute; Casey Wright, CEO, FluLab; Michael Specter, New Yorker staff writer and adjunct professor of bioengineering at Stanford University; and Rick Bright, the former director of HHS Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA).
The stated purpose of the discussion was, “the need for more funding for research, better collaboration between the private and government sectors, advances in technology in flu research and the goal of a universal flu vaccine.”
Outside the stated purpose, the substance of the meeting addressed the need for a radically new Pharmaceutical marketing model concentrating specifically on the dream of a revolutionary vaccine framework.
Looming over the disquisition was the unspoken but urgent need to address the current state of affairs within the Pharmaceutical Industry which, despite substantial revenues, has been experiencing a steady decline in rates of profit in recent years.
The cause for this existential crisis within the Pharmaceutical Industry has historically been placed on the exigencies of high development costs, lengthy clinical trials and soaring marketing expenditures.
For years one of the principal goals of the Pharmaceutical Industry has been to find a way to greatly reduce or altogether eliminate these ‘sunk’ costs.
It is particularly in the realm of new “blockbuster drugs” where Pharma has sought to change the development, regulatory and marketing landscape. Pharma relies heavily on these “blockbuster drugs” to remain profitable and appealing to investors.
According to the Pharma imperative anything that impedes the rapid commercialization of these new drugs, such as safety testing, is seen as cutting into their profits and a burden to be abolished.
It is these ‘high reward’ drugs which entice investors, enhance stock prices and generate huge profits. It is not an exaggeration to say that without these “blockbuster drugs” the Pharma Leviathan is reduced to a standard business enterprise.
To address these persistent problems two overall themes emerged at this meeting. The first highlighted the desire for a new way of producing vaccines that would reduce time and costs of vaccine production and commercialization.
Moderator Michael Specter kicked off the workshop by boldly stating that somehow the current system of vaccine development and procurement, seen as an antiquated medical model in need of a technological update, needs to be “blown up”:
“Why don’t we blow the system up? I mean obviously, we can’t just turn off the spigot on the system we have and then say, hey everyone in the world should get this new vaccine that we haven’t given to anyone yet. But there must be some way… that we grow vaccines mostly in eggs the way we did in 1947. We live in a world where I can download whatever song I want onto my phone on command and we grow vaccines the way we did 70 years ago.”
Specter’s reference to “blowing up the system” highlighted the desire for a new way of producing vaccines which would sidestep substantial capital investments required to bring new drugs to market.
Specter’s conflation of vaccine production with ‘downloadable songs’ is a conspicuous allusion to the “need” for vaccine production to ‘get up to speed’ from the old ‘egg-based model’ to the more technologically advanced mRNA delivery system.
A move towards an mRNA-based vaccine model would ‘allow’ the Industry to achieve this goal of ‘blowing up the system’, opening up the door for the mRNA delivery systems to become Pharma’s new vaccine model and subsequent cash cow.
Once approved and accepted the technology could be plugged in, enabling Pharma to go down the list of medical conditions and install new mRNA vaccines for each new ‘emerging’ disease – similar to a Windows update.
Once implemented, the mRNA delivery system could utilize a similar mechanism for each new mRNA vaccine against any pathogen in existence. Antiquated development processes, lengthy clinical trials and nettlesome regulations (and the time and costs that come with each of them) wiped out in the blink of an eye.
Rick Bright captured the spirit of the designs for a Pharmaceutical utopia suggesting such miscellaneous problems could be sidestepped if, “there were an urgent call for an entity of excitement that is completely disruptive and is not beholden to bureaucratic strings and processes.”
In accord with Bright’s sentiment Anthony Fauci lamented that the predicament facing them was that it would take at least a decade, “if everything goes perfectly”, to bring in a new type of vaccine, such as an mRNA vaccine.
From this dilemma arose the second theme of the discussion, the “need” for something new and more frightening to emerge, as the flu no longer created enough fear in the population to warrant such a “universal vaccine” and a wholesale change in the current system.
Anthony Fauci addressed this quandary:
“So we really do have a problem of how the world perceives influenza and it’s going to be very difficult to change that unless you do it from within and say, I don’t care what your perception is, we’re going to address the problem in a disruptive and in an iterative way because she does need both.”
The hauntingly prescient Rick Bright foreshadowed the coming storm in his response to Fauci’s proposition:
“But it is not too crazy to think that an outbreak of a novel avian virus could occur in China somewhere. We could get the RNA sequence from that to a number of regional centers if not local, if not even in your home at some point, and print those vaccines on a patch of (sic) self-administer.”
(In Part Two the entire session will be deconstructed at length, what that portends for Big Pharma’s business model and its investors and what that means for public health.)
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Michael Bryant is a freelance journalist/activist and researcher who presently focuses primarily on issues surrounding health freedom. His work has appeared on HealthFreedomDefense.org
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***
(Left) France, Champagne – Chef Laurent Fresnet, age 56, died suddenly April 3, 2023 (click here)
(Right) UK Chef Matt Halford, age 38, died suddenly March 18, 2023 (collapsed in walk-in chiller). (click here)
(Left) Royal Chef who cooked for QEII, Graham Newbould, age 66, died suddenly Mar. 2, 2023 (click here)
(Right) South African celebrity Chef Lentswe Bhengu-Mafoko, age 37 died Feb. 28, 2023 after “short illness” (click here)
(Left) Scotland – Chef Gary Goldie, age 48 died suddenly Jan. 2023 (click here)
(Right) Finnish Chef Antti Lukkari, age 29, died suddenly Jan. 6, 2023 from “sepsis” while on vacation (click here)
(Left) UK, Edinburgh – Michelin Star Chef Paul Kitching died Dec. 14, 2022 (click here)
(Right) NYC Chef Michael Ginor, age 59 died suddenly while competing in Ironman competition, Nov. 2022 (click here)
(Left) New York Chef and writer Julie Powell died suddenly of cardiac arrest on Oct. 26, 2022 (click here)
(Right) Scotland, Glasgow Chef Ross McComish, age 24, died suddenly Oct. 2022 (click here)
(Left) Japan – Chef of world’s 1st Michelin-starred ramen eatery, Yuki Onishi, age 43, died suddenly on Sep. 23, 2022
(Right) Phoenix – Chef Robert Jeoffrey Coonce died suddenly Oct. 30, 2022 (click here)
(Left) US, Florida – Chef Howard Kleinberg, age 46, star of TV series “Top Chef” died suddenly of heart attack in July 2022 (click here)
(Right) Zimbabwe, Harare – Chef Justin Muzerengi, age 50, died suddenly Jan. 2, 2023 (click here)
(Left) Boston Bruins Chef Keith Garman, age 33, died suddenly Oct. 2022 (click here)
(Right) UK, Oldham – Chef Stephen Coyne, age 43, died on June 28, 2022 (click here)
(Left) Australia, Sydney, Chef Kerby Craig, age 38, died suddenly in June 2022 (click here)
(Right) Chef Sarah Hijris, age 37, died suddenly from aggressive cancer in May 2022 (click here)
(Left) Chef Hideyuki Tanaka, age 40, died of brain hemorrhage on Apr. 17, 2022, collapsed after working out at the gym (click here)
(Right) St.Louis Chef Tom Coghill, age 58, died suddenly March 11, 2022 (click here)
(Left) Chef Cara Moroney, age 34, died in her sleep in her flat on Jan. 3, 2022 (click here)
(Right) Chef Charisha Davis-Nickens, age 36, died suddenly Dec. 16, 2021 (click here)
Chef Daniel Skipper, age 44, died of heart attack Dec. 2021 (click here)
Top Hong Kong Chef Mok Kit-keung, age 58, died suddenly Sep. 2021 (click here)
US, NY – Chef Bryah Gifford, age 42 died suddenly Aug 2021 (click here)
Jamaica – Chef Colin Hylton, age 61 died suddenly Apr 2021 (click here)
Dallas, Texas – Chef George Itoh died (stroke) April 25, 2021 (click here)
NY Chef Chay Ortiz, age 47, died suddenly March 2, 2021 (click here)
My Take…
I have not seen any explanation why so many chefs have been dying suddenly or unexpectedly in their 30s, 40s and 50s. Women and men.
Consequence of COVID-19 vaccine mandates? Something else?
“The working age population of United States has been poisoned” – Edward Dowd, former BlackRock Hedge fund Manager, after examining US Insurance data from 2020 to 2022 and seeing skyrocketing disabilities and deaths in the working age population that accepted COVID-19 vaccine mandates.
UPDATE: After writing this article I learned that SuperBowl Chef Connie Johnson died suddenly on April 13, 2023. She was 56 years old (click here)
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Dr. William Makis is a Canadian physician with expertise in Radiology, Oncology and Immunology. Governor General’s Medal, University of Toronto Scholar. Author of 100+ peer-reviewed medical publications.
Featured image is from Shutterstock
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
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***
Just yesterday I highlighted new concerns about ChatGPT artificial intelligence being merged into Google Earth satellite imagery for real-time global surveillance. This is of particular concern as the space wars are heating up with nations vying for military supremacy above earth as well as on it.
At the end of yesterday’s article I noted that the only question remaining is how AI is destined to be rolled into the response matrix of warfare, not just the intelligence-gathering aspect. Only a day later and we are getting a better indication of what might be intended.
The United States Central Command (CENTCOM) was established in 1983 and its role has been geographically widening ever since. However, it was the War on Terror that brought CENTCOM global and began the trend toward integrating high-tech systems into its operations. As Defense One reports below, CENTCOM’s current commander, Gen. Michael Kurilla, has been leading the way toward full AI integration into data analysis via drones. It appears that the next level is being explored as Kurilla has just hired the former director of Google Cloud AI, Andrew Moore. Perhaps most importantly, Moore previously worked on the highly controversial Project Maven, which we reported on here.
As you’ll see, the U.S. military continues to highlight their reasoning for these developments as simply a response to what their “adversaries” are already developing. However, anyone who has the least bit of familiarity with the history of the U.S. military-industrial complex would wisely question the origins of this AI arms race. While no explicit mention is made of the role that ChatGPT or other supercharged generative AI systems might play, the first-ever hiring of an “AI guru” does not bode well for those of us who have concerns about the rapid development of autonomous systems of warfare.
Andrew Moore, former director of Google Cloud AI, heads to CENTCOM to bring new approaches to data and innovation.
U.S. Central Command is hiring an AI advisor from Google to accelerate the adoption of emerging technologies across U.S. military services in the Middle East,Defense One has learned.
Andrew Moore has served as general manager and VP for the AI division of Google Cloud, where he was responsible for products such as Vertex AI platform, Contact Center AI, Anti Money Laundering AI, Vertex AI Computer Vision suite and AI applications in logistics, according to a press release viewed by Defense One.
Moore left Google in January to find projects and missions where he could have a big impact, he said in an exclusive interview. That led him to the Defense Department and CENTCOM, where he discussed the role that emerging technology could play with CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla.
“CENTCOM, as you know, it’s widely regarded as one of the most forward-looking technological [combatant commands]” he told Defense One.
The command has started several new efforts under Kurilla, including Scarlet Dragon Oasis, to show faster data synthesis. It has also done experiments with the Navy’s 5th Fleet to bring new data collection and analysis online through air and sea drones. Moore said he and Kurilla discussed new, “very very nimble techniques” in finding patterns in data that were coming out of Silicon Valley and the academic community, with the possibility of linking those communities to CENTCOM to find new things in the command’s data.
While much of the rest of the national security establishment is turning its attention to the Ukraine war and escalating tensions near Taiwan, Central Command is also a site of increased technology competition between the United States and China, albeit indirectly, Moore said.
Within the Middle East, several nations are already experimenting with AI. The United States and Central Command want to demostrate that countries can adopt and experiment with these emerging technologies in a way that both aligns with democratic values and produces return on investment. That will help the United States set up a contrast between the way it deploys technology and the way China does.
In “healthcare, manufacturing, financial technologies, retails, these are all industries in the United States and actually across the western world where there has—in the last few years—been a bottom up adoption of these kinds of AI technologies,” he said.
Moore has done some work on Project Maven, the Defense Department’s flagship AI program to automate the detection of items of interest in drone data, he said. “I think the Project Maven approach was a dramatic step forward towards…to adopting these practices where you put the power in the hands of people close to the actual mission.”
Enabling that same bottom-up approach by helping operators in CENTCOM develop and experiment with their own program and applications was also a huge draw, and will be an essential part of his work, he said.
Moore and Kurilla agree that approach is essential if the command is going to deploy new technologies faster than adversaries, he said. Moore learned that first-hand while developing AI tools for anti-money laundering operations, where every new innovation in catching launderers was quickly matched by the other side. The experience speaks to the hyper-dynamic nature of emerging technology in the Middle East, he said.
“You’re gonna see folks on the other side quickly find countermeasures” to what you deploy, he said. “You’ve got to be able to react quick. And so… what you want is to help the people actually using it to be able to fix it within hours, not with some sort of huge turnaround, waiting for some vendor to go back to their own internal systems to be released in three months. Hours.”
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Patrick Tucker is science and technology editor for Defense One. He’s also the author of The Naked Future: What Happens in a World That Anticipates Your Every Move? (Current, 2014). Previously, Tucker was deputy editor for The Futurist for nine years. Tucker has written about emerging technology in Slate, The Sun, MIT Technology Review, Wilson Quarterly, The American Legion Magazine, BBC News Magazine, Utne Reader, and elsewhere.
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***
One of the biggest obstacles we have faced in the last three years has been the difficulty in obtaining data by which to know the truth – data which has not been twisted, falsified, or kept secret. Collecting and compiling this crucial information has always been the job of government agencies. Of course, they are not being helpful in providing the population with data we need, which would contradict or undermine the government narrative and objectives.
For a reason I do not understand (since most governments worldwide are pushing the same agenda), there has often been more opportunity to obtain useful data from outside the US. In these articles, information from Australia paints a devastating picture of the destruction that the governments have wrought on their populations.
Exhibit A: (Excerpted from piece published today on The Expose, link below.)
Secret Australian Government Data confirms the Country suffered a devastating 5162% increase in Excess Deaths in 2022 compared to the height of the COVID Pandemic in 2020
Secret data, strangely given to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) by the Australian Government, confirms the first 38 weeks of the year 2021 saw a shocking 1,452% increase in excess deaths following the rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the same period in 2020.
Sadly, as the months passed, the situation only worsened.
By 2022, the nation was hit by a devastating blow following the repeat rollout of the Covid-19 injections, with a shocking 5,162% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of the year, compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020 which was the alleged height of the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.
But instead of the people of Australia being in shock and disbelief at this devastating increase in excess deaths, they are carrying on with their lives, none the wiser as to what has happened.
Why?
Because their Government and the Mainstream Media have so far refused to reveal the devastating truth, and are instead publishing and broadcasting propaganda and lies on a daily basis.
The data reveals the following:
Australia suffered 11,068 excess deaths in 2021 and then a shocking 22,730 excess deaths by week 38 of 2022. This is in stark contrast to 2020, when only 1,306 excess deaths were recorded during the alleged height of the Covid pandemic and prior to the rollout of the Covid injections.
This means Australia suffered a shocking 1,640% increase in excess deaths in just 38 weeks throughout 2022 compared to 53 weeks throughout 2020.
But if we compare the data available on excess deaths in 2022 against the first 38 weeks of 2020 and the first 38 weeks of 2021, we are able to reveal the true severity of the situation in Australia.
As we know, Australia suffered a shocking 22,730 excess deaths by week 38 of 2022.
But according to the same data provided by the Australian Bureau of Statistics to the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD), Australia suffered 6,706 excess deaths by week 38 of 2021, and only 432 excess deaths by week 38 of 2020.
This means Australia suffered a shocking 1,452% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of 2021 following the rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020, at the alleged height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and prior to the rollout of a single Covid-19 injection.
But the above numbers pale in comparison to the tragic situation that unfolded throughout 2022.
Australia suffered a shocking 5,162% increase in excess deaths in the first 38 weeks of 2022 following the repeat rollout of the Covid-19 injections compared to the first 38 weeks of 2020, at the alleged height of the Covid-19 pandemic, and prior to the rollout of a single Covid-19 injection.
These aren’t independent estimates. They are official Government of Australia authorized figures. And further figures published by the UK Government strongly suggest Covid-19 vaccination is the biggest contributing factor to this huge rise in excess deaths across Australia.
The very thing that you were told would end the alleged pandemic and put a stop to the alleged huge rise in deaths across the world in 2020, has ended up having the opposite effect.
Instead of reducing deaths, COVID vaccination has increased deaths exponentially.
Exhibit D: Exclusive: 2X higher death rate post-vax in Australia nursing home!
Steve Kirsch wrote in January: I invite every fact checker in the world to fact check me on this one. I have the name of the facility. It’s critically important that this be validated so that the world is informed of the risk.
And let’s see if these nursing home anecdotes are a fluke or the norm!
I’ve never had a nursing home that would share this data with me, they all clam up and cite HIPAA compliance as their (completely lame) excuse for not sharing mortality numbers, so I have a suspicion that I’m right.
Have you ever heard of a nursing home touting lower all-cause mortality post-vax? I haven’t. Let’s see if anyone has.
May it be G-d’s will that this glimpse of truth help open more eyes, that were closed until now.
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Featured image is from Notes from the Twilight Zone
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0, Year: 2022, PDF Ebook, Pages: 164, 15 Chapters
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
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***
Background
The European Economy is on the brink. The IMF has dire predictions for 2023 and for the foreseeable future. It states falsely the war in Ukraine as being responsible for the European economic decline, by creating energy shortages, food shortages, rising price, increasing interest rates – and more.
The IMF does not distinguish between what is artificially induced and what would be natural economic fluctuations.
Let’s look at the situation in a few European countries.
The UK economy: Flatlined in February 2023, no growth in GDP.
The UK has committed £2.3 billion in military assistance to Ukraine
One in four children in the UK are living in poverty (27%)
UK records western Europe’s highest inflation
Major UK supermarkets have started rationing the sale of some staple fruits and vegetables, including tomatoes (March 2023).
Germany: How the German economic machine broke down
Ukraine war ([self-made] energy crisis)
Supply-chain blockages
Aging workforce
End of the decades-long reign of Germany’s export-focused manufacturing
Ukraine aid: $14.2bn
France: GDP growth softened for a second successive time in quarter-on-quarter terms in Q4. They say, the weaker expansion was driven by the Ukraine war (energy), a contraction in private consumption.
Fixed investment and export growth declined.
Growth in public spending more than doubled.
Ukraine war assistance: $1.3bn
United States: Meanwhile, the US is profiting from this war when it comes to the European Union and Europe as a whole. Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer, because they say, Europe is forced to follow US mandates on “sanctioning” Russia and on supplying Ukraine with money and weapons, paid by the European tax-payers.
Why does Europe follow Washington’s orders like a herd of sheep?
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PressTV: Has the disruption caused by Putin’s war with Ukraine tipped several European economies into a recession, with inflation rocketing and a devastating squeeze on energy supplies?
Peter Koenig (PK):Not at all. President Putin has nothing, but zero to do with the European downfall.
What is happening in Europe, in one word, is suicide, Europe is committing willingly economic suicide.
When I’m saying “Europe”, I am not referring to the people of Europe. They are upset. This is one of the reasons they are in the streets or on strike, from France to Germany, to Italy to the UK to Greece – and more.
Europe is sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine in the form of weapons or so-called “budget support”. As a parenthesis, in the meantime we know where some of this budget support ends up – in the pockets of Mr. Zelenskyy and his cronies, as has been revealed by many mainstream media in the past few days. Zelenskyy and his buddies have embezzled at least US$ 400 million. Probably much more.
This is EU and US taxpayers money that could be spent at home, to create jobs, support social programs as the EU economy – and to a lesser degree also the US economy is falling into an abyss.
And this for a war which the west instigated – this must be clearly said and understood. President Putin has drawn a red line for many years, warning NATO not to move to Russia’s doorsteps, and Ukraine was the redline.
Just imagine, Russia would build military bases in Mexico or Central America. No need to talk about the consequences.
This war started of course much earlier than 24 February 2022. It started with the also Western instigated, US organized Maidan Coup of 22 February 2014 in Kiev (Ms. Victoria Nuland: “F*ck Europe”, remember?).
It was followed by two Minsk “Peace Agreements”, brokered by France and Germany with Ukraine, but was, to the surprise of everyone but Zelenskyy, according to Mme. Merkel’s – then German Chancellor – own and open admission a few months ago, never meant to be adhered to. Instead, it was meant to prepare and arm Ukraine for a much more serious war, a war of attrition with Russia, the one, we, the world, and especially Europe, are living now.
Imagine that kind of open treachery?! No laws, no respect. It is just unbelievable what the west has turned to and become. A nest of crime against humanity, hardly known in recent history. It screams for judgment, à la Nuremberg 2.0.
Now the US and NATO are literally fighting a proxy war through Ukraine against Russia, intent to kill as many Russians as possible and to weaken Russia.
For the last at least 100 years – at least since WWI – Russia / the Soviet Union has been in the crosshairs of the west, notably the US, to be conquered and dominated, not because of an ideology the west doesn’t like (in fact, these neocons couldn’t care less) but to take over this vast land area, about 17.1 million square kilometers, or 11% of the world’s land mass, because of its enormous riches in natural resources.
So far, they have miserably failed in two WWs and they will fail again this time, by destroying another country, the Ukraine.
PressTV:What is the general outlook for future of economy in the EU, particularly UK, France and Germany with the energy crisis and Ukraine war in the background?
PK:As long as the European Commission – as it is structured today – stays in power and as long as the key European leaders are “implants” of the World Economic Forum – WEF – and its backstage strongmen Financial Cult supporters, the outlook for Europe is bleak.
Just to name a few of the implants, so people around the world get an idea:
Ursula Von der Leyen, unelected President – accent on unelected
Olaf Scholz, German Chancellor, and before him, Angela Merkel
Emmanuel Macron, President of France
Mark Rutte, Netherlands…
And many more
They all display some dictatorial, some even tyrannical trends.
They are all graduates of the WEF’s Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL).
Not too long ago, Klaus Schwab had boasted that he and the WEF are proud having been able to infiltrate governments around the world with the WEF’s Young Global Leaders.
That says it all.
Currently I am staying in a country that has a WEF implant as President, Peru — Dina Boluarte is a WEF YGL. Maybe you have followed what has been happening in Peru since last 7 December when the Parliament, led by then VP, Boluarte, removed the elected President, Pedro Castillo, put him in prison without a trial. Yes, without a trial.
Ms. Boluarte has since assumed Presidency against countrywide protests and calls for immediate new elections (to no avail). She has Schwab’s and Washington’s support – and all the money and if needed military support that comes with it.
Under the WEF’s Global Leaders, justice has been eradicated. Not just in Peru. Look at Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Netherlands and not least, the European Union.
Not to forget, Christine LaGarde. She literally runs the European Central Bank like a European Economic prison.
She has recently been recorded saying that not only Central Bank Digital Currency – or CBDC — is the future, but she added already now, paying for anything with 1000 Euros in cash is forbidden, it will be punished by fine – and even prison. Yes, you heard right, even prison.
This is economic tyranny.Under such tyranny no economy can thrive.
And more, the introduction of CBDC, if it happens, which I still doubt, would put an enormous brake on the economy of those countries that eliminate cash, or the traditional electronic transfer system because CBDC is only about control, absolute control. And no investor wants to be controlled to the last penny he spends.
Maybe the CBDC clowns don’t realize that. Or, alternatively, that is precisely what they want. The last straw to ruin western economy. It fits perfectly into Schwab’s / WEF’s Great Reset, alias UN Agenda 2030, “creative destruction”, to rebuild for a small elite, served by a limited number of transhuman serfs with chip implants so they can be made to act like robots – as Klaus Schwab had already predicted in a 2016 interview with the Swiss French TV. Unfortunately, that two-minute interview clip has since been “fact-checked” away.
You also mentioned the energy crisis, food shortages and massive inflation.
There is no real energy crisis.
Not buying already contracted gas from Russia — because Russia must be “sanctioned”, Washington says so – is nothing but a self-made energy crisis, or as I said before: economic suicide.
The energy crisis is entirely fake, has been fabricated in order to ruin the European economy – which, as mentioned before, is part and parcel of the Great Reset. Done on purpose by the EU / EC WEF implants.
The Great Reset is about destroying the current economy and resetting everything to zero; then starting anew, rebuilding with a massively reduced population under a global elite.
Most of the people, I believe would not like this, if they knew.
This interview is meant to spread this information to as many people as possible, so they may act, the way they feel they must act to survive.
We would not have an energy crisis in Europe if Europe would not be following like sheep the US model, would not have “sanctioned” Russia for the war in Ukraine – a war that was entirely instigated by Washington and NATO and stupidly followed by the EU.
Can you imagine, the purposefully suicidal Europe “sanctions” Russia by not buying Russia’s cheap energy, the energy that has been the engine for much of Europe’s economic success? This is “de-industrializing” Europe, especially Germany which now must buy energy from the US and elsewhere at double the price.
A huge colony of German business people and corporations do not like this scenario at all. There may be hope.
Interestingly, Mr. Putin in the past had often repeated, he for his side, would respect the energy supply contracts with Europe, whenever Europe is ready. These offers were of course ignored by Brussels and the EU leaders (orders from NATO and Washington), and never covered by the mainstream media.
And one more thing you should know: Washington / NATO destroyed the Nord Stream Pipelines in full accord and connivance with the German Chancellor and with Ursula Von der Leyen, the President of the European Commission. There is not the slightest doubt that at least these two corrupt criminals were in on the deal, maybe more.
PressTV:With the Strikes going on in the UK and France as well as the cost-of-living crisis in Germany, what is the solution for these governments in the short run?
PK: The short answer – these governments, UK, France, Germany et al. should resign immediately and call for new elections.
Shortages of food, goods, and service, as well as the so-called cost-of living crisis, also called inflation, have directly to do with the manufactured “shortage” of energy. It’s economics 101. When you reduce the offer but keep the demand, prices go up.
There are reports that in the UK, supermarket shelves ordinarily filled with fruit and vegetables are empty. Imagine what you could do with the billions sent to ultra-corrupt Ukraine to help kill people, and use these funds instead to buy food for the UK locals.
New elections by the people, for the people – not by the WEF.
You may bet, the strikes would stop, almost immediately.
And the manufactured chaos would also end instantly.
Democratically-elected new governments should listen to the people.
That’s why they are called “democracies”.
But as everybody can see, there is not a single country left in the so-called west which deserves the term “democracy”.
Not one. There is not a shred of democracy in the west – if there ever was.
Maybe newly people-elected governments should lean back and think, before they contemplate their own power, and instead think about how the power of the people can be implemented so that people, and not a small elite, prosper.
It is as good as guaranteed; this would make a drastic change for the better.
It would dismantle these unelected powerful structures like the WEF, and all the financial giants behind it, and would bring forward the will of the people – all that what is meant, when we talk about democracy.
And, of course, key for all this to become a success story is dismantling the entire US / CIA / Rockefeller created EU. A corrupt, dictatorial structure.
Yes, you heard correctly, the European Union was never a European idea.
PressTV: And finally, what should be done, in your viewpoint?
PK: The simplest, and especially in the medium to long run, the most effective solution would be what was mentioned already before:
Get rid of the European Commission
Dissolve the entire European Union – and get back, or rather jump forward, to the individual, autonomous and sovereign nation states we had until 2000 with their own individual currencies
Countries could make their own internal arrangements among themselves, including currency swap-agreements
And dedollarizing each country’s economy.
Every country’s own dedollarized currency would be a piece of freedom to ally with whomever they decide – Russia, China, even the US if they still felt it could be useful.
One thing is for sure, the economy would immediately reverse its trend – with excellent prospects for the European economy’s recovery and with a rapid economic growth.
And never, ever accept Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). It is the absolute control mechanism. It will be programmable, can be turned on or off, or even made to expire, according to your behavior. The reigning elite can let you starve, by cutting you off your – I repeat – YOUR money.
An economy can only thrive when it’s free.Yes, it needs regulation, but certainly not control by a tyrannic elite.
This would totally discourage investments and any other initiative.
And one more thing – the Future is in the East. Iran has already realized this and is doing well.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
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On Tuesday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov said that his country wants to know more details of the Brazilian initiative for peace in Ukraine.
“Regarding the Brazilian initiative, it is premature to assess it. We must have more information and details,” he said, adding that Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is precisely visiting the South American country to find out about the peace proposal.
“Any idea that takes Russia’s interests and concerns into account deserves attention,” the Kremlin spokesman pointed out.
Since the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine in 2022, Brazil has maintained a neutral position and rejected the imposition of sanctions imposed on Russia.
During his visit to Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, the Brazilian President Lula da Silva insisted on creating a “G20 for peace” in Ukraine with the participation of Latin American countries.
He also criticized the United States and the European Union for continuing to contribute to the continuation of the Ukrainian conflict.
“The decision to go to war was made by two countries. And now what we are trying to build is a group of countries that have nothing to do with war, that do not want war, that want to build peace in the world, so that we can talk to both Russia and Ukraine,” the Brazilian leader said.
On Monday, Lavrov arrived in Brazil as part of a Latin American tour that includes visits to Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. He handed Lula da SIlva a letter from President Vladimir Putin inviting him to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.
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Muslims, Christians and Jews have peacefully celebrated major religious holidays around the world during this month everywhere but in Jerusalem, the city sacred to all three Abrahamic faiths. Therethe Israeli government has curbed Muslim and Christian worship, Israeli colonists have exerted increasing pressure on Palestinian residents of the holy city and Israeli extremists have insulted and abused Christians and Muslims.
Latin Patriarch Pierbattista Pizzaballa declared that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu‘s hard right-wing government has encouraged extremists to harass Christian clergy and vandalise Church property, stepping up pressure on the region’s ancient Christian community to abandon Palestine to the Israelis.
“The frequency of these attacks, the aggressions, have become something new,” Pizzaballa told the Associated Press. “These people feel they are protected [and] that the cultural and political atmosphere now can justify, or tolerate, actions against Christians.”
Upon the proclamation of the state 75 years ago, Israel pledged to respect all faiths and allow freedom of worship. Israel has failed to honour this commitment. During this Easter season, Israel limited to 1,800 the congregation attending the holy fire ceremony on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre on the Saturday before Easter. Traditionally 10,000 people have taken part in this service in the vast church. The Israeli government claimed it instituted the limitation for safety reasons.
Nuns standing at the entrance of a church were spat upon by black-clad Orthodox Jews while Christians carrying a wooden cross to commemorate Jesus’ crucifixion were cursed by a Jewish man. Last month, a religious Jew attempted to torch a church and two Israeli teenagers destroyed crosses on graves at a Protestant church. All these incidents were filmed on phones or caught by security cameras.
One hundred years ago there were some 73,000 Palestinian Christians in Palestine, accounting for 10 per cent of the total, and 20 percent in Jerusalem. It was estimated in 2019 that the number had fallen to 2 per cent with only 2,000 Christians left in the Old City. Since Israel’s occupation covers three-quarters of this period, it is largely to blame for the exodus of Christians.
It is striking that the Western Christian world shows little or no interest in what is happening in Jerusalem where the Christian faith was born and first took root more than 2,000 years ago. US evangelical Protestants, who are highly influential on that country, largely support the right in Israeli and honour Israeli colonists and Jewish extremists. As the US is the only country which can exert influence on Israel, this leaves Palestinian Christians in the lurch.
Jerusalem’s Muslims are better off, largely because Muslims account for the 98 per cent of Palestinians. They have no option but to challenge Israel over official, colonist and extremist efforts to intrude in and take over Muslim places of worship, particularly Al Haram Al Sharif Mosque compound on the acropolis of Jerusalem.
On Friday, presumably the last in the holy month of Ramadan, some 250,000 worshippers entered Al Haram for prayers, filling Al Aqsa Mosque and the vast courtyard. Tens of thousands of West Bank Palestinians without hard-to-obtain Israeli permits to enter occupied Jerusalem were permitted to enter the city and Al Haram. While women and girls of all ages were allowed, males between the ages of 12 and 55 were banned. For most West Bank Palestinians Fridays in Ramadan are the only days they can visit the city and exercise their right to pray in al-Aqsa, the courtyard and nearby streets. This is not the freedom of religion Israel was bound to uphold.
Israeli police, border police and troops were clearly ordered to exercise maximum restraint last Friday, which was also celebrated across the region as Quds (Jerusalem) Day. This is because bad Israeli behaviour on April 5th generated widespread outrage and global bad publicity for Israel.
Before dawn on that day Israeli security forces raided the prayer hall in Al Aqsa where worshippers had locked the doors to spend the night in prayer and contemplation without being disturbed. The Israelis forcibly entered the mosque, firing tear gas and sponge tipped bullets and clubbing protesting Palestinians. Furnishings and stained-glass windows were broken.
In an attempt to defend al-Aqsa, angry Palestinians threw stones and threw firecrackers at the armed Israelis in helmets and bullet-proof vests. Three dozen Palestinians were injured and 400 were thrown to the ground with their hands tied behind their backs where they laid for hours until carted off for interrogation and possible detention. Was this the freedom of religion Israel is meant to uphold?
Fortunately, the entire scenario was caught on video by Palestinians while they were under attack and circulated widely on the Internet. Despite an international uproar over Israel’s brutal incursion, the Israeli security forces conducted a less dramatic and damaging raid the next morning.
The Israelis justified the raids by saying they had to prevent Palestinians from attacking Israeli religious zealots who were set to enter Al Haram or from throwing stones and firecrackers at devout Israelis praying at the “Wailing Wall”, the stone wall which supports the compound on one side. Jews believe this wall is the only surviving relic of the Second Jewish Temple erected on this site. It was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD during a Jewish rebellion.
The upshot of the row over the well documented April 5th raid was that non-Muslims were barred from entering al-Haram during the last 10 days of Ramadan and Israel permitted West Bankers continue visiting Jerusalem on Friday the 7th and 14th. Palestinians from Gaza are banned from visiting mosques and churches during holy days. This is not freedom of religion.
The April 5th exposure of Israeli brutality against Muslim Palestinians and weeks of protests against the plan of Netanyahu’s extremist- dominated Cabinet to pass legislation to undermine Israel’s supreme court has put his latest government in jeopardy. There are indications that he is trying to restrain coalition members for whom “restraint” is a forbidden word.
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Featured image: Msgr. Pierbattista Pizzaballa the day of his episcopal consecration (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)
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It’s sure to be a blood-soaked spring in Ukraine. Russia’s winter offensive fell far short of Vladimir Putin’s objectives, leaving little doubt that the West’s conveyor belt of weaponry has aided Ukraine’s defenses. Cease-fire negotiations have never truly begun, while NATO has only strengthened its forces thanks to Finland’s new membership (with Sweden soon likely to follow). Still, tens of thousands of people have perished; whole villages, even cities, have been reduced to rubble; millions of Ukrainians have poured into Poland and elsewhere; while Russia’s brutish invasion rages on with no end in sight.
The hope, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, is that the Western allies will continue to furnish money, tanks, missiles, and everything else his battered country needs to fend off Putin’s forces. The war will be won, according to Zelensky, not through backroom compromises but on the battlefield with guns and ammo.
“I appeal to you and the world with these most simple and yet important words,” he said to a joint session of Great Britain’s parliament in February. “Combat aircraft for Ukraine, wings for freedom.”
The United Kingdom, which has committed well over $2 billion in assistance to Ukraine, has so far refused to ship fighter jets there but has promised to supply more weaponry, including tank shells made with depleted uranium (DU), also known as “radioactive bullets.” A by-product of uranium enrichment, DU is a very dense and radioactive metal that, when housed in small torpedo-like munitions, can pierce thickly armored tanks and other vehicles.
Reacting to the British announcement, Putin ominously said he would “respond accordingly” if the Ukrainians begin blasting off rounds of DU.
While the UK’s decision to send depleted-uranium shells to Ukraine is unlikely to prove a turning point in the war’s outcome, it will have a lasting, potentially devastating, impact on soldiers, civilians, and the environment. The controversial deployment of DU doesn’t pose faintly the same risks as the actual nuclear weapons Putin and his associates have hinted they might use someday in Ukraine or as would a potential meltdown at the embattled Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility in that country. Still, its use will certainly help create an even more lethal, all too literally radioactive theater of war — and Ukraine will end up paying a price for it.
The Radioactive Lions of Babylon
Stuart Dyson survived his deployment in the first Gulf War of 1991, where he served as a lance corporal with Britain’s Royal Pioneer Corps. His task in Kuwait was simple enough: he was to help clean up “dirty” tanks after they had seen battle. Many of the machines he spent hours scrubbing down had carried and fired depleted uranium shells used to penetrate and disable Iraq’s T-72 tanks, better known as the Lions of Babylon.
Dyson spent five months in that war zone, ensuring American and British tanks were cleaned, armed, and ready for battle. When the war ended, he returned home, hoping to put his time in the Gulf War behind him. He found a decent job, married, and had children. Yet his health deteriorated rapidly and he came to believe that his military service was to blame. Like so many others who had served in that conflict, Dyson suffered from a mysterious and debilitating illness that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome.
After Dyson suffered years of peculiar ailments, ranging from headaches to dizziness and muscle tremors, doctors discovered that he had a severe case of colon cancer, which rapidly spread to his spleen and liver. The prognosis was bleak and, after a short battle, his body finally gave up. Stuart Dyson died in 2008 at the age of 39.
His saga is unique, not because he was the only veteran of the first Gulf War to die of such a cancer at a young age, but because his cancer was later recognized in a court of law as having been caused by exposure to depleted uranium. In a landmark 2009 ruling, jurors at the Smethwick Council House in the UK found that Dyson’s cancer had resulted from DU accumulating in his body, and in particular his internal organs.
“My feeling about Mr. Dyson’s colon cancer is that it was produced because he ingested some radioactive material and it became trapped in his intestine,” Professor Christopher Busby, an expert on the effects of uranium on health, said in his court testimony. “To my mind, there seems to be a causal arrow from his exposure to his final illness. It’s certainly much more probable than not that Mr. Dyson’s cancer was caused by exposure to depleted uranium.”
The U.S. Department of Defense estimated that American forces fired more than 860,000 rounds of DU shells during that 1991 war to push Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein’s military out of Kuwait. The result: a poisoned battlefield laced with radioactive debris, as well as toxic nerve agents and other chemical agents.
In neighboring southern Iraq, background radiation following that war rose to 30 times normal. Tanks tested after being shelled with DU rounds had readings 50 times higher than average.
“It’s hot forever,” explains Doug Rokke, a former major in the U.S. Army Reserve’s Medical Service Corps who helped decontaminate dozens of vehicles hit by DU shells during the first Gulf War. “It doesn’t go away. It only disperses and blows around in the wind,” he adds. And of course, it wasn’t just soldiers who suffered from DU exposure. In Iraq, evidence has been building that DU, an intense carcinogenic agent, has led to increases in cancer rates for civilians, too.
“When we were moving forward and got north of a minefield, there were a bunch of blown-out tanks that were near where we would set up a command post,” says Jason Peterson, a former American Marine who served in the first Gulf War. “Marines used to climb inside and ‘play’ in them … We barely knew where Kuwait was, let alone the kind of ammunition that was used to blow shit up on that level.”
While it’s difficult to discern exactly what caused the Gulf War Syndrome from which Dyson and so many other soldiers suffered (and continue to suffer), experts like Rokke are convinced that exposure to depleted uranium played a central role in the illness. That’s an assertion Western governments have consistently downplayed. In fact, the Pentagon has repeatedly denied any link between the two.
“I’m a warrior, and warriors want to fulfill their mission,” Rokke, who also suffers from Gulf War Syndrome, toldVanity Fair in 2007. “I went into this wanting to make it work, to work out how to use DU safely, and to show other soldiers how to do so and how to clean it up. This was not science out of a book, but science done by blowing the shit out of tanks and seeing what happens. And as we did this work, slowly it dawned on me that we were screwed. You can’t do this safely in combat conditions. You can’t decontaminate the environment or your own troops.”
Death to Uranium
Depleted uranium can’t produce a nuclear explosion, but it’s still directly linked to the development of atomic weaponry. It’s a by-product of the uranium enrichment process used in nuclear weapons and fuel. DU is alluring to weapons makers because it’s heavier than lead, which means that, if fired at a high velocity, it can rip through the thickest of metals.
That it’s radioactive isn’t what makes it so useful on the battlefield, at least according to its proponents. “It’s so dense and it’s got so much momentum that it just keeps going through the armor — and it heats it up so much that it catches on fire,” says RAND nuclear expert and policy researcher Edward Geist.
The manufacturing of DU dates back to the 1970s in the United States. Today, the American military employs DU rounds in its M1A2 Abrams tanks. Russia has also used DU in its tank-busting shells since at least 1982 and there are plenty ofaccusations, though as yet no hard evidence, that Russia has already deployed such shells in Ukraine. Over the years, for its part, the U.S. has fired such rounds not just in Kuwait, but also in Bosnia, Iraq, Kosovo, Syria, and Serbia as well.
Both Russia and the U.S. have reasons for using DU, since each has piles of the stuff sitting around with nowhere to put it. Decades of manufacturing nuclear weapons have created a mountain of radioactive waste. In the U.S., more than 500,000 tons of depleted-uranium waste has built up since the Manhattan Project first created atomic weaponry, much of it in Hanford, Washington, the country’s main plutonium production site. As I investigated in my book Atomic Days: The Untold Story of the Most Toxic Place in America, Hanford is now a cesspool of radioactive and chemical waste, representing the most expensive environmental clean-up project in history with an estimated price tag of $677 billion.
Uranium, of course, is what makes the whole enterprise viable: you can’t create atomic bombs or nuclear power without it. The trouble is that uranium itself is radioactive, as it emits alpha particles and gamma rays. That makes mining uranium one of the most dangerous operations on the planet.
Keep It in the Ground
In New Mexico, where uranium mines were primarily worked by Diné (Navajo People), the toll on their health proved gruesome indeed. According to a2000 study in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, rates of lung cancer in Navajo men who mined uranium were 28 times higher than in those who never mined uranium. The “Navajo experience with uranium mining,” it added, “is a unique example of exposure in a single occupation accounting for the majority of lung cancers in an entire population.”
Scores of studies have shown a direct correlation between exposure to uranium and kidney disease, birth defects in infants (when mothers were exposed), increased rates of thyroid disease, and several autoimmune diseases. The list is both extensive and horrifying.
“My family had a lot of cancer,” says anti-nuclear activist and Indigenous community organizer Leona Morgan. “My grandmother died of lung cancer and she never smoked. It had to be the uranium.”
One of the largest radioactive accidents, and certainly the least reported, occurred in 1979 on Diné land when a dam broke, flooding the Puerco River near Church Rock, New Mexico, with 94 million gallons of radioactive waste. The incident received virtually no attention at the time. “The water, filled with acids from the milling process, twisted a metal culvert in the Puerco and burned the feet of a little boy who went wading. Sheep keeled over and died, while crops curdled along the banks. The surge of radiation was detected as far away as Sanders, Arizona, fifty miles downstream,” writes Judy Pasternak in her book Yellow Dirt: A Poisoned Land and the Betrayal of the Navajo.
Of course, we’ve known about the dangers of uranium for decades, which makes it all the more mind-boggling to see a renewed push for increased mining of that radioactive ore to generate nuclear power. The only way to ensure that uranium doesn’t poison or kill anyone is to leave it right where it’s always been: in the ground. Sadly, even if you were to do so now, there would still be tons of depleted uranium with nowhere to go. A 2016 estimate put the world’s mountain of DU waste at more than one million tons (each equal to 2,000 pounds).
So why isn’t depleted uranium banned? That’s a question antinuclear activists have been asking for years. It’s often met with government claims that DU isn’t anywhere near as bad as its peacenik critics allege. In fact, the U.S. government has had a tough time even acknowledging that Gulf War Syndrome exists. A Government Accountability Office report released in 2017 found that the Veterans Affairs Department had denied more than 80% of all Gulf War illness claims by veterans. Downplaying DU’s role, in other words, comes with the terrain.
“The use of DU in weapons should be prohibited,” maintains Ray Acheson, an organizer for the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons and author of Banning the Bomb, Smashing the Patriarchy. “While some governments argue there is no definitive proof its use in weapons causes harm, it is clear from numerous investigations that its use in munitions in Iraq and other places has caused impacts on the health of civilians as well as military personnel exposed to it, and that it has caused long-term environmental damage, including groundwater contamination. Its use in weapons is arguably in violation of international law, human rights, and environmental protection and should be banned in order to ensure it is not used again.”
If the grisly legacy of the American use of depleted uranium tells us anything, it’s that those DU shells the British are supplying to Ukraine (and the ones the Russians may also be using there) will have a radioactive impact that will linger in that country for years to come, with debilitating, potentially fatal, consequences. It will, in a sense, be part of a global atomic war that shows no sign of ending.
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This article was first crossposted on GR in March 2022.
Today, the dangers of military escalation are beyond description.
What is now happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications. It could lead us into a World War III scenario.
It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.
Global Research condemns Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The archived webpage captured February 25, 2022 from 14:53 shows that NED granted $22,394,281 in the form of 334 awards to Ukraine between 2014 to the present. The capture at 23:10 the same day shows “No results found” for Ukraine. As of right now, there are still “No results found” for Ukraine.
Searching using “Ukraine” as a keyword (as opposed to a “Project Country” in the original captures) yields “No results found.” Searching for the titles of the funded projects listed in the last “intact” web capture yields no results.
Additionally, the current database search criteria have been restricted, previously funding from 2014 to present could be searched, currently only 2017 to present is searchable per the drop-down menus. There are multiple news reports before February 25 corroborating this $22,394,281 amount.
The NED played a pivotal role in helping to trigger the conflict with Russia by supporting two color revolutions directed against Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych—a potential successor to Volodymyr Zelensky if Russia wins.
The 2004 color revolution replaced Yanukovych with Viktor Yushchenko, who favored admitting Ukraine to NATO and adopted an International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment program that benefitted U.S. investors while cutting social programs.
A parallel approach was used during the February 2014 Maidan Square uprising which resulted in Yanukovych’s ouster—he had been reelected in 2010—and the advent of a pro-Western regime in Kyiv.
Preserving Fiction of an Unprovoked Russian Invasion
In 2020, the NED provided $4.6 million to Ukraine for purposes that included raising awareness of alleged human rights abuses by Russia in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, and fomenting opposition and resistance to Russia.
The large scope of the NED’s program makes clear the organization’s importance. However, with the Biden administration intent on preserving the fiction that the Russian invasion/counter-offensive was unprovoked, censorship and the deletion of records is necessary.
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Camilla Thompson contributed to the reporting.
Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].
2. Leschenko subsequently became a member of parliament where he lobbied for Ukraine’s closer integration with Europe. At the time, Leschenko joined the party of Ukraine’s fifth president Petro Poroshenko, but then supported neoliberal Volodymr Zelensky. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Leschenko compared Vladimir Putin to Adolf Hitler.
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Australia and the US will hold their largest bilateral exercise this year, with approximately 30,000 military personnel expected to participate.
The 14-day Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023 will be conducted from July 22 to August 4. Drills will be held in Queensland, the Northern Territory, New South Wales, and Western Australia.
Exercise Talisman Sabre
In its tenth iteration, Exercise Talisman Sabre will involve multi-domain firepower demonstrations, land combat, amphibious and airborne operations, and large-scale logistics.
The exercises will be administered across different defense and nondefense training areas.
Australian, US, and partner nation ships sail during Exercise Talisman Saber 2017. Photo: LSIS Helen Frank/Australian Ministry of Defence
“Talisman Sabre 2023 will be the largest ever iteration of the exercise in terms of both geographic span and also partner nation involvement,” Exercise Talisman Sabre Director Brig.Damian Hillsaid.
“Considerable planning has gone into a safe and productive exercise for all participants.”
“This year’s exercise will demonstrate our ability to receive large volumes of personnel and equipment into Australia from across the Indo-Pacific and stage, integrate and move them forward into the large exercise area.”
Bolstering Military Cooperation
Joining partner countries include Japan, the UK, Germany, Canada, France, Indonesia, Fiji, Tonga, Papua New Guinea, South Korea, and New Zealand.
Representatives from Singapore, Thailand, and the Philippines will be present to observe the exercise.
“Talisman Sabre is a practical demonstration of our enduring Alliance with the United States, through deepening cooperation in training and innovation,” Australian Deputy Prime MinisterRichard Marles stated.
“Australia is excited to host what will be the largest ever iteration of Talisman Sabre this year, involving more of our partner nations than ever before.”
“Talisman Sabre reflects a shared commitment to enduring relationships between trusted partners, and a stable Indo-Pacific through an upholding of the rules-based order.”
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Featured image: Australian warfighters firing machine guns during Exercise Talisman Saber 2017. Photo: CPL Mark Doran/Australian Ministry of Defence
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Just after Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, 2022, President Biden walked into the East Room of the White House and condemned the invasion with a barrage of adjectives: unprovoked, unjustified, brutal, without cause, premeditated, unnecessary. One of these quickly rose to prominence. Following Biden’s initial statement, government spokespeople, the mainstream media, professional pundits and many others routinely call the war in Ukraine “unprovoked.”
It is a well-chosen term, a rhetorical bon mot, and central to the official story that sole responsibility for the war in Ukraine belongs to Russia and Putin alone. It is also a term that gets continually reinforced by rampant speculation seeking the origin of the invasion in Putin’s brain: Is he insane? Terminally ill? Suffering form a messiah complex? Obsessed with reconstituting Tsarist Russia or the Soviet Union. Based on patchy, ambiguous or often no evidence, the list is potentially endless but always dubious.
The overriding function of presenting the war in Ukraine as a crime perpetrated by one country, even by one allegedly whacked-out leader, is to relieve the U.S., NATO and actors within Ukraine of even the slightest responsibility for the war. Russia and Putin are the only perpetrators; everyone else is either an innocent bystander or an unfortunate victim—so goes the official story.
A much-needed antidote to this story is provided by Benjamin Abellow’s recent book, How The West Brought War To Ukraine. Based on the critiques of a range of scholars, U.S. government officials and military observers, and on his own investigations and interpretations, Abelow shows in compelling detail how the official story misleads. His short, seventy-one-page book is a compendium of the many ways that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was provoked.
In the current political climate dominated by the official story, saying any such thing easily gets one tagged an apologist for Putin or Russia. Abelow makes clear, however, that he is a neither a fan of Putin nor a supporter of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Without specifying what they were, Abelow contends that Russia and Putin had alternatives to war. The implication, of course, is that these alternatives should have been pursued. Since they were not, considerable responsibility for the horrifying and condemnable war in Ukraine, insists Abelow, falls on Russia and Putin.
But Abelow departs from the official story by showing that others were also responsible for the war in Ukraine. Although beyond the scope of and never mentioned in Abelow’s book, these would include various political actors within Ukraine itself, all of whom have been amply and deftly explored in Richard Sakwa’s Frontline Ukraine. Abelow’s focus is on the many ways in which the war in Ukraine was provoked by the U.S. and NATO.
Here are a fraction of the provocations that Abelow examines:
During German reunification in 1990-91, U.S. and NATO officials assured Soviet leaders that NATO would never expand into Eastern Europe. Despite such initial assurances and subsequent Russian complaints about having been duped, NATO proceeded to expand right up to the borders of the Russian Federation. Western assurances were never reduced to writing, but their abrogation undermined Russian trust in Western promises. Many prominent diplomatic experts, including George F. Kennan, famous for formulating the Cold War policy of containing Communism, warned that disregarding Russia’s real security concerns and pushing NATO eastward was foolhardy and would likely lead to war.
As NATO expanded, the U.S. and NATO engaged in a variety of actions that Russian leaders would predictably see as militarily threatening. The U.S.withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic and the intermediate-range nuclear missile treaties, and then ignored Russian attempts to negotiate a bilateral moratorium on deployments. The U.S. deployed nuclear-capable missile launch systems in Romania and planned them for Poland and perhaps elsewhere. The U.S. and NATO conducted live-fire rocket exercises in Estonia to practice striking targets within Russia, and the U.S. and NATO conducted massive 32-nation military training exercises near Russia’s border.
In Ukraine specifically, the U.S. and NATO exacerbated the country’s internal divisions. The U.S. involved itself in the 2014 coup against the democratically elected President of Ukraine and in the choice of his replacement. Instead of pressing for a negotiated settlement between Ukraine’s post-coup government and pro-Russian autonomists in the Donbas, the U.S. poured armaments into Ukraine, stepped up military training of Ukrainian forces, and supported ultra-nationalist and anti-Russian (some Neo-Nazi) groups and militias,
Even on the precipice of war in late 2021, the U.S.and NATO refused to renounce plans to incorporate Ukraine into NATO. Indeed, the U.S. refused to even discuss the question.
Abelow makes two convincing points about these U.S. and NATO provocations:
First, if Russia had committed even some of the above actions above close to U.S.borders, the U.S. surely would have gone to war, even nuclear war, as it almost did during the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviets installed missiles in Cuba.
Second, but for these provocations by the U.S. and NATO, it is virtually inconceivable that Russia would have invaded Ukraine in 2022. The war in Ukraine, with all its horrors and its potential for escalating and spinning out of control, would not today be raging.
Abelow’s conclusion about the war in Ukraine is notable: “when all is taken into account, primary responsibility lies with the West, in particular with the United States.” I agree, but it is not necessary to go so far to recognize the importance of Abelow’s arguments. Any reader of Abelow’s book who is not irreversibly blinded by the official story has to see that responsibility for the war in Ukraine is at least shared.
This point is not of just historical interest. For the official story informs not just the question of how the war in Ukraine began but also of how it might be ended. Since the U.S., NATO and Ukrainian spokespeople persist in viewing Russia and Putin as the war’s sole perpetrators, they insist that the war cannot end until Russia is totally defeated, strategically weakened and forced to return all previously Ukrainian territory, including Crimea. Such goals are not only unrealistic, they block any serious effort to end the war through negotiations.
Realistically, the only alternatives to negotiations now are a long, simmering slog back and forth through Ukrainian fields and towns, a slog that will eventually grind down both sides and grind up their fighters and civilians, or another endless and escalating war that may spread uncontrollably beyond Ukraine and that may end us all in Nuclear Armageddon.
Despite its misleading nature and it ugly consequences, however, the official story is likely to persist. Erasing the official story and ending the war in Ukraine will require more than books like Abelow’s. It will require pushing peace initiatives like China’s (a topic for a future essay), which despite U.S. and NATO attempts to discredit it as biased toward Russia, is remarkably even-handed in seeing the war in Ukraine as a shared responsibility between Russia and the U.S. and NATO. Beyond that, ending the war in Ukraine will require sustained opposition by a growing peace movement, a peace movement that will surely find Abelow’s short book extremely useful.
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Frank T. Fitzgerald is a long-time social justice and peace activist and a retired sociology professor. He has written two books on the Cuban Revolution and numerous articles on politics and society. In recent years, he has worked as a non-veteran member of Veterans for Peace and as a member of the editorial board of the journal Science & Society. He can be reached at [email protected]
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Last year, we discussed the declaration of WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus that censorship was needed to combat what he called the “infodemic.” It was a jarring position given the censorship of experts and scientists who have now been vindicated in raising questions over mask protection to natural immunities to school closings to the origins of Covid 19. Nevertheless, U.S. Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf added his own voice to call for censorship. Califf declared that life expectancy rates are being suppressed due to “misinformation.” His call for action against ill-defined “disinformation” or “misinformation” is being echoed throughout the Biden Administration.
In a CNBC interview, Califf lashed out at “health misinformation” which he said was one of his top priorities to address through “specific authorities at FDA, FTC and other areas.”
Califf noted:
“You think about the impact of a single person reaching a billion people on the internet all over the world, we just weren’t prepared for that. We don’t have societal rules that are adjudicating it quite right, and I think it’s impacting our health in very detrimental ways.”
He does not elaborate on what would be those “societal rules” for “adjudication” of access to information. However, it holds a familiar ring for free speech advocates.
In recent months, the Twitter Files revealed an extensive and secret effort by the FBI and other agencies to censor citizens on social media. I testified on that effort. New emails uncovered in the ongoing Missouri v. Biden litigation reportedly show that the Biden Administration’s censorship efforts extended to Facebook to censor private communications on its WhatsApp messaging service.
We also know of backchannel communications with the CDC and other agencies. As officials like Califf call for continued crackdowns, there is no recognition of how the government worked to silence opposing views that have been vindicated in recent months.
For years, scientists faced censorship for even raising the lab theory as a possible explanation for the virus. Their reputations and careers were shredded by a media flash mob. The Washington Post declared this a “debunked” coronavirus “conspiracy theory.” The New York Times’ Science and Health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli was calling any mention of the lab theory “racist.”
When a Chinese researcher told Fox News that this was man-made, the network was attacked and the left-leaning PolitiFact slammed her a “pants on fire rating.”
The mask mandate and other pandemic measures like the closing of schools are now cited as fueling emotional and developmental problems in children. The closing of schools and businesses was challenged by some critics as unnecessary. Many of those critics were also censored. It now appears that they may have been right. Many countries did not close schools and did not experience increases in Covid. However, we are now facing alarming drops in testing scores and alarming rises in medical illness among the young.
The point is only that there were countervailing indicators on mask efficacy and a basis to question the mandates. Yet, there was no real debate because of the censorship supported by many Democratic leaders in social media. To question such mandates was declared a public health threat and what the WHO called our “infodemic.”
A lawsuit was filed by Missouri and Louisiana and joined by leading experts, including Drs. Jayanta Bhattacharya (Stanford University) and Martin Kulldorff (Harvard University). Bhattacharya previously objected to the suspension of Dr. Clare Craig after she raised concerns about Pfizer trial documents. Those doctors were the co-authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, which advocated for a more focused Covid response that targeted the most vulnerable population rather than widespread lockdowns and mandates. Many are now questioning the efficacy and cost of the massive lockdown as well as the real value of masks or the rejection of natural immunities as an alternative to vaccination. Yet, these experts and others were attacked for such views just a year ago. Some found themselves censored on social media for challenging claims of Dr. Fauci and others.
The media has quietly acknowledged the science questioning mask efficacy and school closures without addressing its own role in attacking those who raised these objections.
What is most striking about Califf’s comments is the failure to address how censorship in the last three years may have increased public health risks by suppressing opposing or dissenting scientific views. Indeed, just this week, a new British study came out directly refuting CDC guidance on masks and suggesting that, while not appreciably reducing the risk of serious Covid symptoms, masks may have caused health problems. Other studies have rejected the mask efficacy argument though this remains a matter of intense debate.
The point is that there is now a debate after social media companies allowed people to discuss these views and the media is no longer labelling dissenters as conspiracists or racists.
Before we continue to make these government efforts a top priority, we should have a public debate over the means used to combat misinformation and what constitutes misinformation. That should start with a full investigation of past government efforts to censor or blacklist individuals or groups.
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Featured image: Portrait of Robert M. Califf, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration under President Biden. (Licensed under the Public Domain)
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During the days leading up to Saturday April 15, there were indications of a possible showdown between the two official military structures in the Republic of Sudan.
The Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) both claimed in the days leading up to the proposed signing of yet another transitional agreement, that they were committed to a new democratic dispensation.
Nonetheless, beyond the public statements by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan of the SAF and his counterpart in what is often referred to as a paramilitary or militia formation, General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo (also known as Hemeti) of the RSF, there were large troop movements among both structures. The date originally slated for the signing of the agreement between the military and the designated civilian leadership was postponed until after April 6.
Although the RSF is described by some elements in the international press as a militia, its leader, General Hemeti, had been appointed as the second-in-command of the latest iteration of the militarily dominated Transitional Sovereign Council. Hemeti has been involved in negotiations with regional and foreign governments while appearing alongside General al-Burhan as the public face of the Sudanese state.
A combined effort by Hemeti and al-Burhan resulted in the toppling of the Sudanese Congress Party (SCP) administration of President al-Bashir in early April 2019. The former president remains in custody as the current security crisis worsens for the majority of the people living in the country.
The initial Sovereign Council represented a coalition of leaders from the Forces for Freedom and Change (FFC), which grew out of the demonstrations and rebellions beginning in December 1918, combined with the military leadership. During the period between the establishment of the original Sovereign Council in mid-2019 to the coup of December 2021 led by the military, an interim Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok served as a figurehead to the transitional structure.
After being held under house arrest by the Generals, Hamdok was reinstalled by the military as PM where he served for several weeks until he finally resigned. All during this period, the resistance committees continued to hold mass demonstrations demanding the immediate transition to civilian rule. The suppression by the military of the rights of mass organizations to hold demonstrations and participate equally within the national dialogue, made many people domestically and outside the country highly skeptical about the intentions of both the RSF and SAF.
After the announced postponement of the renewed political agreement, the power dynamics were such that fierce fighting erupted in key areas of Sudan, a nation with a population of 47 million. In the capital of Khartoum there are clashes surrounding the presidential palace, the military headquarters, international airport and other areas. There are also reports of clashes between the RSF and the SAF around the strategic Port Sudan on the Red Sea along with Merowe in the north of the vast country.
Several Egyptian Air Force personnel stationed at the airport in Merowe were detained by the RSF. There were claims that the home of the European Union (EU) envoy was attacked by the RSF, says the SAF in a press statement. A convoy of United States diplomatic personnel were also fired on in their vehicles during the third day of the fighting.
Sudanese speaking from inside the capital of Khartoum say that their power had been disconnected since April 15, the first day of the clashes. One woman said her household had a solar-powered battery which allowed the family to recharge their mobile phones.
There are critical shortages of food and water in the capital and other areas. Reports indicate that many hospitals have been evacuated due to safety concerns. There have been two failed attempts at a temporary ceasefire to allow a humanitarian corridor where the injured could leave the capital of Khartoum. Three employees of the World Food Program (WFP) were killed and two others were injured during clashes between the RSF and the SAF in the northern Darfur region.
In regard to the detention of the Egyptian Air Force technicians, Sudan Tribune said:
“The Rapid Support Forces announced on Wednesday (April 19) that the 27 military officers and technicians of the Egyptian Air Force, who were arrested in Merowe last Saturday, will be released as soon as possible. The RSF had stormed the military air base where the military trainees had been stationed five days prior. The RSF released a video on Wednesday showing an officer standing with two Egyptian officers and the other detainees sitting on the ground of a large room. The militia officer announced that all the detainees had been transferred to Khartoum and were unharmed. One of the Egyptian officers stated that they were safe and would return to their home country probably today. The RSF also released a statement confirming that all Egyptian military personnel present at the Merowe base are safe.”
Egypt has maintained a solid relationship with Sudan over the years. President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi is a former military leader who later ran and became head-of-state after leading a coup against the previous government of Muslim Brotherhood member President Mohamed Morsi. After the uprising of 2011, a national election was held the following year resulting in the ascendancy of Muslim Brotherhood. Morsi only served as president for one year until the coup in June 2013. Morsi was imprisoned where he died several years later.
The military forces in Egypt and Sudan are heavily entrenched in the administrative apparatus of the states. Therefore, it is not surprising that there has been tremendous resistance in Khartoum and Cairo against the realization of democratic rule.
Regional and International Implications of the Sudan Conflict
There has been considerable diplomatic attention paid to the Republic of Sudan by several African Union (AU) member-states for obvious reasons. Sudan prior to its partition in 2011 was the largest geographic nation-state on the continent.
The vast country shares borders with seven other African states making it a gateway to northern, eastern, and central regions of the continent. Sudan is rich with oil, natural gas and gold. The Port of Sudan on the Red Sea is the focus of a planned development project involving the Russian Federation. RSF leader and the former deputy within the military-dominated Transitional Sovereign Council, General Hemeti, traveled to Moscow in February 2022 where he held high-level discussions with the Russian Federation leaders.
A stable democratic and progressive government in Sudan could make a powerful contribution to the overall struggle for African unity and development. With the adoption of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) by many states throughout the continent, Sudan utilizing its natural wealth and strategic geographic location would play an indispensable role.
It is for this reason that the imperialist states and their allies within the Gulf region have over the years interfered in the internal affairs of the country. The previous President Omar Hassan al-Bashir had faced sanctions as well as indictments issued by the Netherlands-based International Criminal Court (ICC). Even prior to the ascendancy of al-Bashir as the head-of-state in 1989 as a result of a military coup, the U.S. sought to secure Sudan as a willing or unwilling partner in the desire to maintain global hegemony.
Under the previous U.S. administration of President Donald Trump, interim Prime Minister Hamdok during 2020 was pressured into accepting the “normalization” of relations between Khartoum and the State of Israel. This was done despite the constitutional prohibition of such relations based upon the Israel Boycott Act signed into law in 1958, just two years after the national independence of the country from British imperialism.
The establishment of diplomatic relations with Tel Aviv carried along with it pledges to not support terrorism. Sudan had been on the list of state sponsors of terrorism as defined by the U.S.
Hamdok had agreed to pay hundreds of millions of dollars from Sudanese government funds to the families of victims of terrorist attacks which did not even take place inside Sudan. All of these western-oriented foreign policy decisions would ultimately lead to loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), World Bank, among other western financial institutions.
Nonetheless, irrespective of which armed structures or bourgeois politicians that are favored by Washington, it will take a united front of the masses of Sudanese workers, farmers, youth and professionals to overturn military rule. The removal of the military as the principal governing unit within the state will provide the ability for a genuine democratic debate inside the country.
The regional organizations of East Africa along with the AU, EU, U.S. and United Nations are all calling for an immediate ceasefire in Sudan. In addition, these regional and international organizations have warned other states about providing support to either side in the conflict. A high-ranking military official in Sudan has accused two regional states of providing military assistance to the RSF without specifically naming them. (See this)
The eruption of the internal conflict within the Sudanese military structures should serve as a warning to the AU. Efforts to unify the continent and to “silence the guns” must continue to be a priority for the continent and its people.
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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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It’s been well over a month since the Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) Su-27SM3 masterfully downed a USAF MQ-9 “Reaper” drone that was spying on regions in southern Russia. The incident occurred on March 14, when the US drone flew just 70 km off the coast of Crimea. At the time, the VKS noted that the MQ-9 had its transponders off while heading toward Russian airspace in what was a clear violation of the agreed protocols for avoiding escalation. At the time, the Pentagon insisted that the drone was “merely conducting routine operations in international airspace over the Black Sea and posed no threat to anyone”. However, as it soon became clear, MQ-9 (presumably the latest Block 5 variant) was carrying out ISR (intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance) over critically important Russian military infrastructure.
This was certainly a red line for Russia, as it’s perfectly aware that the information acquired through ISR close to Russian airspace is shared directly with the Kiev regime, enabling precision strikes. At the time, top Russian officials such as Nikolai Patrushev, the Secretary of the Russian Security Council, stated that the incident proves the US is directly involved in the conflict. And indeed, this was certainly causing thousands of Russian military and civilian deaths even before February 24, 2022, because the Pentagon has been providing ISR to Kiev since 2014. Only a few days before the incident, the Neo-Nazi junta forces conducted numerous attacks on civilian settlements in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts (regions), killing and/or injuring hundreds.
The US warhawks were furious at the Biden administration for “allowing the Russians to shoot down our drones”. Some have even called for the Pentagon to “respond in kind”. Thankfully, there are still high-ranking officers in the US military that are perfectly aware of just how bad an idea that is, so these suicidal requests were promptly denied. What’s more, the latest reports indicate that Washington DC has not only drastically reduced the presence of its ISR platforms in areas close to Russia, but has even completely halted the flights of its extremely expensive RQ-4 “Global Hawk” spy drones, the data published by the Flightradar24 tracker website shows. According to its archive of tracks, the last time a US “Global Hawk” drone flew over the Black Sea was on March 21.
Since then, US drones based in Sicily haven’t approached even the Black Sea airspace, let alone the military installations in southern Russia. Before the start of Moscow’s counteroffensive against NATO aggression in Europe, the Pentagon flew approximately 10 ISR missions per month, spying on Russian troops in Crimea. During the March 21-April 20 period, US “Global Hawk” drones made only three flights from the airbase in Sicily, severely undermining the amount of real-time battlefield data they could provide to the Kiev regime. Worse yet, these missions were conducted from within Romanian airspace and at a distance of over 400 km from Crimea. This is beyond the range of “Global Hawk’s” systems, capable of receiving clear images of an area at a maximum range of 200 km.
“Following the incident with the American Reaper drone, which fell into the waters of the Black Sea on April 14, ‘Global Hawks’ made only two more flights over the Black Sea — on March 17 and March 21 — both at a range no closer than 140 kilometers from the southern coast of Crimea. Apparently, the US command considered further flights in this area impractical. On the one hand, the amount of information received by a drone at such a range is sharply reduced; on the other hand, after March 14, the American side faced the danger of losing such equipment, and a Global Hawk is several times more expensive than a Reaper and is loaded with the most advanced equipment,” a military expert told Sputnik.
Indeed, the Northrop Grumman RQ-4 “Global Hawk” drones are among the most expensive hardware in the US military. The latest Block 40 variant costs over $130 million apiece, a mind-boggling figure for a single drone. The aircraft is a HALE (high-altitude, long-endurance) ISR platform that provides direct support to US forces worldwide. It can fly for up to 36 hours at a range of up to 22,000 km, giving it an unprecedented loitering time and covering approximately 100,000 km² of any given surveyed area in a period of 24 hours. For reference, this is the size of South Korea or Iceland. RQ-4 “Global Hawk” is equipped with various ISR equipment such as radars, optical tracking systems and infrared sensors, all of which have been used extensively to spy on Russian forces in Ukraine.
Weapons such as the HIMARS (among others) are fed battlefield data directly from platforms such as the “Global Hawk”. This means that hundreds of civilian deaths and injuries caused by the aforementioned US weapons across the newly integrated Russian regions were entirely intentional, making them an unadulterated war crime. On the other hand, NATO ISR assets have also contributed to the vast majority of Russian military deaths, prolonging the conflict. The US and NATO don’t even need to fire a single bullet to kill Russian soldiers and civilians. However, while the Kiev regime forces are pulling the trigger, it is the political West’s “eyes” that are targeting them and even issuing commands. Considering these facts, downing NATO’s ISR platforms most definitely saves thousands of lives.
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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Сви чланци Глобалног истраживања могу се читати на 51 језику тако што ћете активирати дугме Преведи веб локацију испод имена аутора.
Да бисте добили дневни билтен Глобал Ресеарцх-а (изабрани чланци), кликните овде.
Кликните на дугме за дељење изнад да бисте е-поштом/проследили овај чланак својим пријатељима и колегама. Пратите нас на Инстаграму и Твиттеру и претплатите се на наш Телеграм канал. Слободно поново постављајте и делите чланке Глобалног истраживања.
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Франкфуртским вестима: Šta je pozadina “turneje” Sergeja Lavrova po Južnoj Americi?
ЖЈ: Куба, Никарагва, Бразил и Венецуела које посећује Сергеј Лавров су земље које, упркос грубом мешању, притисцима, уценама и санкцијама моћног северно-америчког суседа, воде суверену, принципиојелну и независну политику. Те земље су уједно пријатељи и важни дугорочни политички, економски партнери Русије. Верујем да ће посета Лаврова бити подстицај даљем прдубљивању и проширивању обострано корисне сарадње на билатералном и ширем међународном плану, посебно у оквиру ОУН и у другим глобалним и регионалним организацијама.
Бразил као најпространија и најмногољуднија земља ЛА је чланица БРИКС-а + који у августу одржава стратешки значајан самит у ЈАР, док је Венецуела један од највећих произвођача нафте на свету и чланица ОПЕК +. Готово је извесно да ће посета Лаврова бити и у функцији координације наступа и унутар тих интеграција чији је утицај на глобалне односе у великом замаху. Куба и Никарагва су глобални симболи издржљивости и отпора америчкој политици дестабилизације, изолације и снакција. Њима је подршка и помоћ Русије увек била од виталног значаја.
Франкфуртским вестима: Koliko će ova turneja opredeliti dalje globalne podele?
ЖЈ: Посета Лаврова утицајним земљама Латинске Америке уследила је после његове сличне турнеје водећим земљама Африке. И једне и друге чине важан део глобалне већине света која је опредељена за мултиполарни светски поредак заснован на равноправности, немешању у унутрашње послове и другим принципима Повење ОУН, чији су покретачи и носиоци Русија и Кина. Очекујкем позитивне ефекте ових посета на ширем међународном плану. Не бих рекао да је циљ глобалне већине којој ове земље припадају, продубљивање постојећих подела, већ афирмација равноправности, коегзистенције, демократизације и обострано корисног партнерства. Ове земље су против једностраних санкција, заплена туђих депозита и доминације било-које монете за убирање екстрапрофита.
Франкфуртским вестима: Da li Rusija pokušava da napravi “južni front” ili učvršćuje “antizapadni blok”?
ЖЈ: Сигурно је да Русија, али и земље Латинске Америке и Африке користе овакве посете да ојачају свој међународни положај и углед, да подстакну међусобну подршку, сарадњу и развој. Не верујем, међутим, да код било које земље глобалне већине постоји расположење за „фронтове“, или „блокове“. Оне су за коегзистенцију, слободни избор путева развоја, за мултиполарни, демократски међународни поредак, против хијерархије, шаблона, санкција или подела на „демократије“ и „ауторитарне“. На посете Лаврова гледам као израз активне, мулти-векторскске спољне политике вођене интересима светске силе. Притом, Русија користи једнако велики минули допринос деколонизацији и поверење земаља растуће моћи, грешке водећих сила тзв. колективног Запада – носилаца неоколонијализма, хегемонизма и униполарног поретка, као и растућу заинтересованост глобалне већине за односе равноправности, узајамно корисне сарадње и равномерног развоја.
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Напомена за читаоце: кликните на дугме за дељење изнад. Пратите нас на Инстаграму и Твиттеру и претплатите се на наш Телеграм канал. Слободно поново постављајте и делите чланке Глобалног истраживања.
Живадин Йованович является президентом Белградского форума “За мир равных”. Он является постоянным автором Global Research.
Истакнута слика: шеф дипломатије Русије Сергеј Лавров (лево) и боливијски Рохелио Маита, Каракас, Венецуела, 19. април 2023. | Фото: Твиттер/ @РогелиоМаита_Бо
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***
The U.S. corporate media’s first response to the leaking of secret documents about the war in Ukraine was to throw some mud in the water, declare “nothing to see here,” and cover it as a depoliticized crime story about a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman who published secret documents to impress his friends. President Biden dismissed the leaks as revealing nothing of “great consequence.”
What these documents reveal, however, is that the war is going worse for Ukraine than our political leaders have admitted to us, while going badly for Russia too, so that neither side is likely to break the stalemate this year, and this will lead to “a protracted war beyond 2023,” as one of the documents says.
The publication of these assessments should lead to renewed calls for our government to level with the public about what it realistically hopes to achieve by prolonging the bloodshed, and why it continues to reject the resumption of the promising peace negotiations it blocked in April 2022.
We believe that blocking those talks was a dreadful mistake, in which the Biden administration capitulated to the warmongering, since-disgraced U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and that current U.S. policy is compounding that mistake at the cost of tens of thousands more Ukrainian lives and the destruction of even more of their country.
In most wars, while the warring parties strenuously suppress the reporting of civilian casualties for which they are responsible, professional militaries generally treat accurate reporting of their own military casualties as a basic responsibility. But in the virulent propaganda surrounding the war in Ukraine, all sides have treated military casualty figures as fair game, systematically exaggerating enemy casualties and understating their own.
Publicly available U.S. estimates have supported the idea that many more Russians are being killed than Ukrainians, deliberately skewing public perceptions to support the notion that Ukraine can somehow win the war, as long as we just keep sending more weapons.
The leaked documents provide internal U.S. military intelligence assessments of casualties on both sides. But different documents, and different copies of the documents circulating online, show conflicting numbers, so the propaganda war rages on despite the leak.
The most detailed assessment of attrition rates of troops says explicitly that U.S. military intelligence has “low confidence” in the attrition rates it cites. It attributes that partly to “potential bias” in Ukraine’s information sharing, and notes that casualty assessments “fluctuate according to the source.”
So, despite denials by the Pentagon, a document that shows a higher death toll on the Ukrainian side may be correct, since it has been widely reported that Russia has been firing several times the number of artillery shells as Ukraine, in a bloody war of attrition in which artillery appears to be the main instrument of death. Altogether, some of the documents estimate a total death toll on both sides approaching 100,000 and total casualties, killed and wounded, of up to 350,000.
Another document reveals that, after using up the stocks sent by NATO countries, Ukraine is running out of missiles for the S-300 and BUK systems that make up 89% of its air defenses. By May or June, Ukraine will therefore be vulnerable, for the first time, to the full strength of the Russian air force, which has until now been limited mainly to long-range missile strikes and drone attacks.
Recent Western arms shipments have been justified to the public by predictions that Ukraine will soon be able to launch new counter-offensives to take back territory from Russia. Twelve brigades, or up to 60,000 troops, were assembled to train on newly delivered Western tanks for this “spring offensive,” with three brigades in Ukraine and nine more in Poland, Romania and Slovenia.
But a leaked document from the end of February reveals that the nine brigades being equipped and trained abroad had less than half their equipment and, on average, were only 15% trained. Meanwhile, Ukraine faced a stark choice to either send reinforcements to Bakhmut or withdraw from the town entirely, and it chose to sacrifice some of its “spring offensive” forces to prevent the imminent fall of Bakhmut.
Ever since the U.S. and NATO started training Ukrainian forces to fight in Donbas in 2015, and while it has been training them in other countries since the Russian invasion, NATO has provided six-month training courses to bring Ukraine’s forces up to basic NATO standards. On this basis, it appears that many of the forces being assembled for the “spring offensive” would not be fully trained and equipped before July or August.
But another document says the offensive will begin around April 30th, meaning that many troops may be thrown into combat less than fully trained, by NATO standards, even as they have to contend with more severe shortages of ammunition and a whole new scale of Russian airstrikes. The incredibly bloody fighting that has already decimated Ukrainian forces will surely be even more brutal than before.
The leaked documents conclude that “enduring Ukrainian deficiencies in training and munitions supplies probably will strain progress and exacerbate casualties during the offensive,” and that the most likely outcome remains only modest territorial gains.
The documents also reveal serious deficiencies on the Russian side, deficiencies revealed by the failure of their winter offensive to take much ground. The fighting in Bakhmut has raged on for months, leaving thousands of fallen soldiers on both sides and a burned out city still not 100% controlled by Russia.
The inability of either side to decisively defeat the other in the ruins of Bakhmut and other front-line towns in Donbas is why one of the most important documents predicted that the war was locked in a “grinding campaign of attrition” and was “likely heading toward a stalemate.”
Adding to the concerns about where this conflict is headed is the revelation in the leaked documents about the presence of 97 special forces from NATO countries, including from the U.K. and the U.S. This is in addition to previous reports about the presence of CIA personnel, trainers and Pentagon contractors, and the unexplained deployment of 20,000 troops from the 82nd and 101st Airborne Brigades near the border between Poland and Ukraine.
Worried about the ever-increasing direct U.S. military involvement, Republican Congressman Matt Gaetz has introduced a Privileged Resolution of Inquiry to force President Biden to notify the House of the exact number of U.S. military personnel inside Ukraine and precise U.S. plans to assist Ukraine militarily.
We can’t help wondering what President Biden’s plan could be, or if he even has one. But it turns out that we’re not alone. In what amounts to a second leak that the corporate media have studiously ignored, U.S. intelligence sources have told veteran investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that they are asking the same questions, and they describe a “total breakdown” between the White House and the U.S. intelligence community.
Hersh’s sources describe a pattern that echoes the use of fabricated and unvetted intelligence to justify U.S. aggression against Iraq in 2003, in which Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Sullivan are by-passing regular intelligence analysis and procedures and running the Ukraine War as their own private fiefdom. They reportedly smear all criticism of President Zelenskyy as “pro-Putin,” and leave U.S. intelligence agencies out in the cold trying to understand a policy that makes no sense to them.
What U.S. intelligence officials know, but the White House is doggedly ignoring, is that, as in Afghanistan and Iraq, top Ukrainian officials running this endemically corrupt country are making fortunes skimming money from the over $100 billion in aid and weapons that America has sent them.
According to Hersh’s report, the CIA assesses that Ukrainian officials, including President Zelenskyy, have embezzled $400 million from money the United States sent Ukraine to buy diesel fuel for its war effort, in a scheme that involves buying cheap, discounted fuel from Russia. Meanwhile, Hersh says, Ukrainian government ministries literally compete with each other to sell weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers to private arms dealers in Poland, the Czech Republic and around the world.
Hersh writes that, in January 2023, after the CIA heard from Ukrainian generals that they were angry with Zelenskyy for taking a larger share of the rake-off from these schemes than his generals, CIA Director William Burnswent to Kyiv to meet with him. Burns allegedly told Zelenskyy he was taking too much of the “skim money,” and handed him a list of 35 generals and senior officials the CIA knew were involved in this corrupt scheme.
Zelenskyy fired about ten of those officials, but failed to alter his own behavior. Hersh’s sources tell him that the White House’s lack of interest in doing anything about these goings-on is a major factor in the breakdown of trust between the White House and the intelligence community.
First-hand reporting from inside Ukraine by New Cold War has described the same systematic pyramid of corruption as Hersh. A member of parliament, formerly in Zelenskyy’s party, told New Cold War that Zelenskyy and other officials skimmed 170 million euros from money that was supposed to pay for Bulgarian artillery shells.
The corruption reportedly extends to bribes to avoid conscription. The Open Ukraine Telegram channel was told by a military recruitment office that it could get the son of one of its writers released from the front line in Bakhmut and sent out of the country for $32,000.
As has happened in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and all the wars the United States has been involved in for many decades, the longer the war goes on, the more the web of corruption, lies and distortions unravels.
The torpedoing of peace talks, the Nord Stream sabotage, the hiding of corruption, the politicization of casualty figures, and the suppressed history of broken promises and prescient warnings about the danger of NATO expansion are all examples of how our leaders have distorted the truth to shore up U.S. public support for perpetuating an unwinnable war that is killing a generation of young Ukrainians.
These leaks and investigative reports are not the first, nor will they be the last, to shine a light through the veil of propaganda that permits these wars to destroy young people’s lives in faraway places, so that oligarchs in Russia, Ukraine and the United States can amass wealth and power.
The only way this will stop is if more and more people get active in opposing those companies and individuals that profit from war–who Pope Francis calls the Merchants of Death–and boot out the politicians who do their bidding, before they make an even more fatal misstep and start a nuclear war.
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At an over-excited anti-imperialist website, there is a fresh burst of hype about BRICS de-dollarisation. This is the second time since January that Ben Norton has made spectacular predictions about the end of US$ hegemony. And even at CounterPunch yesterday, two otherwise sensible commentators – Richard Wolff and Ramzy Baroud – chimed in with uncritical endorsement of the BRICS as a potential vehicle to undermine yankee-centric imperialist power.
Also, anytime there’s turbulence in global finance and the $ can be attacked, there will be a raft of personal-finance commentators who make money from investment churn, as well as pro-gold investment sites, and these hucksters really love the BRICS as a challenger – but more on them later. And Steve Forbes and Jim O’Neill have chimed in with a dash of cold water. Can’t trust any of them, but see the next email.
There are obvious temptations to headfall down this slippery slope. The geopolitical situation today appears new and different because of the alleged upscaling of multipolarity. But it’s not easy to translate these fast-shifting political and territorial alliances into monetary and currency strengths. Indeed what I’m reading now is all too reminiscent of 2014 just after the BRICS’ Fortaleza summit, when ‘alternatives’ to the IMF and World Bank were announced. At that point, a few others of my old friends also drank the BRICS kool-aid in their desperate thirst for alternative financial arrangements.
And we can always count on Pepe Escobar to be the most excited lad:
Russia and China are showing to the Global South that what American strategists had in store for them – you’re going to “freeze in the dark” if you deviate from what we say – is no longer applicable. Most of the Global South is now in open geoeconomic revolt… the most important vector is that both China and Russia, each exhibiting their own complex particularities – and both dismissed by the West as unassimilable Others – are heavily invested in building workable economic models that are not connected, in several degrees, to the Western financial casino and/or supply chain networks.
I should repeat that – in part because I worked inside the Fed on-and-off, in Washington and Philadelphia, from 1981-85, at the time the chair, Paul Volcker, was felling more Africans through economic violence than did Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold combined – you can count on me to be near the head of the queue seeking the end of US$ hegemony.
But in the just same skeptical way that Yanis Varoufakis posed the problem in Havana a few weeks ago, would we really expect anything fundamentally different, from the BRICS?
“Our New Non-Aligned Movement will fail if we give it a narrow role of bringing together the G77 and the BRICS in opposition to the West. We need to beware not only the functionaries in Washington or London or Brussels, who work tirelessly so that nothing changes, but also government officials in the pocket of capitalists in the Global South, including China, who use the US trade deficit to exploit their people, their country, and then stash their dollarised surplus value within the circuits of Wall Street and the City of London.”
Unfortunately, the article below by Norton draws off a brief, superficial interview Dilma Rousseff gave a few days ago to yet another bland, unthinking CGTN reporter. The line of argument unfolds in the tradition of overenthusiastic lefties who view the world as a series of nation-state conflicts – especially featuring the Rest against the West – instead of as diverse interstate, intrastate, class, social and political-ecological struggles in the context of overall capitalist crisis tendencies.
The best Dilma could offer was this generalisation:
We need a mechanism – a so-called anti-crisis mechanism – which must be counter-cyclical and support stabilization. At the same time it is necessary to find ways to avoid foreign exchange risk and other issues such as being dependent on the single currency such as the US dollar. The good news is that we are seeing many countries choosing to trade using their own currencies. China and Brazil for instance are agreeing to exchange with RMB in the Brazilian Real at the NDB we have committed to it in our strategy for the period from 2022 to 2026. NDB has to lend 30 % in local currency and so 30 % of our loan book will be financed in the currencies of our member countries. That would be extremely important to help our countries avoid exchange rate risks and shortage in finance that hinder long-term investments else here.
Not mentioned is that there is already such an anti-crisis mechanism, the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA), which has not been used, and in any case it is ultimately just a way for the IMF to gain greater leverage since the CRA is tied to IMF ‘stabilisation’ packages which are pro-cyclical and ultimately destabilising.
As for the request for the NDB “to lend 30% in local currencies,” hang on, that means, firstly, 70% will be financed with Western currencies – typically the US$, which is extremely expensive unless the $ crashes, and yet with global financial instability underway it seems the $ is sticking to its relatively high post-2020 levels – and even the 30% in local currencies will not be provided in local interest rates, but instead be correlated to a rate consistent with expected devaluation (in relation to a basket of international currencies).
To maintain its international credit rating up, the BRICS NDB treasury would logically demand from borrowers much higher interest rates, in a period where we can expect four of the five BRICS to continue suffering currency depreciation. As the chart to the right shows, the Rupee went from 44/$ in 2008 to 75/$ in late 2021; and in the same period, the Ruble fell from 25/$ to 75/$; the Rand fell from 9/$ to 17/$; and the Real went from 2.2/$ to 5/$. Only the Renmimbi held steady.
As the blue area-graph below shows, the US$ was strongest in the 1980s, thanks to Volcker – and indeed had to be manipulated downwards by G7 finance ministers led by Baker and Brady in the U.S. And then it rose again during the 1998 Long Term Capital Management crash and the 2000-01 U.S. stock market dot.com collapse.
The collar bumped up again for the 2008 global financial meltdown. Then as the global commodity super-cycle ended in 2014-15 it spiked, as it did in 2020 with Covid lockdowns and in March 2022 with Putin’s Ukraine invasion.
The point is obvious: if there’s trouble in the world, even if it emanates from the U.S. as so many banking crises have, the $ gets a boost from investor flight to the supposedly safe $. Today, on an index basis that was 150 in 1985, the $ is still at 102, which is much higher than the average of the last 45 years, when it had dipped to as low as 72 on that index.
How about the sales of U.S. Treasury Bills by Beijing as an indicator? True, in January 2021, China owned $1.095 trillion of the total $28 trillion U.S. national debt – and last month the figure had dropped below $850 billion. But as was pointed out by Reuters, in reality China has been net buyers of $-denominated securities. The apparent decline in T-Bills was partly due to:
“valuation effects – recall that Treasuries had their worst year in decades last year – accounted for $114.4 billion, meaning the real decline in China’s holdings was ‘only’ $59.5 billion. This does not necessarily equate to outright selling. Some – probably most of it – was due to bonds maturing and not being reinvested. Meanwhile, China’s holdings of U.S. agency bonds last year rose by $50.9 billion and valuation effects accounted for $34.8 billion. This means the real increase was $85.9 billion, substantially more than the decline in Treasuries holdings. “Every holder of U.S. Treasuries in 2022 saw significant valuation losses. China’s losses are large but hardly unique,” said Brad Setser, an economist who is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Maybe the big story is there is no sign that China’s dollar holding portfolio has changed much. There has been no significant shift since 2015-16.”
Back to the question of whether BRICS Bank loans should be in US$ or in local currency. This is a point made long ago by a prior BRICS Bank president from India, K.V. Kamath. Here’s how I wrote it up in 2016:
According to the SA foreign ministry’s Dave Malcolmson, there is strong political will to engage in non-dollar lending. Malcolmsen (2016) reported to Parliament about a 2015 presentation by KV Kamath, the NDB President. Amongst the innovative features of the NDB, “The actual challenge in respect of loan payments for developing countries pertain moreover to that of the currency fluctuation which increases the loan repayment terms (usually in USD) rather than agreed interest rates for such loans. He emphasized the importance of raising loans in local currencies to lessen such a burden.” Yet in its first five years, the vast majority of the $8 billion in NDB loans were dollar denominated, even though these were mainly projects characterized by local-currency expenditures. There were minimal import requirements in loans for transportation (29 percent), energy (26 percent), water/sanitation/irrigation (22 percent), social infrastructure (15 percent), and cleaner production (8 percent).
The bigger dilemma, though, is whether the BRICS are reconstituting from their lowest point, a year ago, when Bolsonaro dragged the bloc down into ‘spalling’ territory, in the context of Putin’s indefensible invasion of Ukraine and ongoing Sino-Indian border conflicts. Here’s hype from Baroud:
As BRICS strengthens, it will have the potential to help poorer countries without pushing a self-serving political agenda, or indirectly manipulating and controlling local economies. As inflation is hitting many western countries, resulting in slower economic growth and causing social unrest, nations in the Global South are using this as an opportunity to develop their own economic alternative. This means that groups like BRICS will cease being exclusively economic institutions. The struggle is now very political…The BRICS countries, in particular, are leading the charge and are set to serve as the facilitator of rearranging the world’s economic and financial map.
This is Richard Wolff’s question:
Will some multinational new world order emerge and shape a new world economy? The most interesting possibility and perhaps the likeliest is that China and the entire BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) grouping of nations will undertake the construction and maintenance of a new world economy. The war in Ukraine has already enhanced the prospects of such an outcome by strengthening the BRICS alliance. Many other countries have applied or will soon apply for entry into the BRICS framework. Together, they have the population, resources, productive capacity, connections, and accumulated solidarity to be a new pole for world economic development. Were they to play that role, the remaining parts of the world from Australia and New Zealand to Africa, Europe, and South America would have to rethink their foreign economic and political policies. Their economic futures depend in part on how they navigate the contest between old and new world economic organizations.
The problem, as I just witnessed last week at the IMF/World Bank protests, is that the new BRICS are still tied into the “old world” mode of neoliberal corporate multilateralism. The failure by Russia to go through with its recent threat to offer an alternative as Bank President to Ajay Banga – Washington’s predator choice to replace the climate-denialist Trump appointee David Malpass – is just one indicator. Nor have the BRICS made any obvious attempt to change IMF/Bank lending policies or ideology. The BRICS Bank’s and Asian Infrastructural Investment Bank joining financial sanctions against Putin is another indicator of financial-imperial stickiness.
The one anti-imperialist move by a BRICS leader against finance, was Putin’s default on international debt last year, but he really did want to pay back those loans, but was – he claimed – prevented from doing so by western financial sanctions. The only other defaults on foreign debt by BRICS countries were by Boris Yeltsin in 1998, by Brazil’s Jose Sarney in 1987 and by SA’s PW Botha in 1985 – but in each case it was due to lack of immediate hard currency.
Back in 2016, here’s the way it looked when I wrote up these same points for Third World Network:
BRICS finance ministers regularly expressed dissatisfaction with the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) governance, notwithstanding having collectively spent $75 billion on the IMF’s recapitalization in 2012. To the surprise and disappointment of many BRICS supporters, however, the CRA actually empowers the IMF because, if a member country is in need of more than 30 percent of its borrowing quota it must first go to the IMF for a structural adjustment loan and conditionality before accessing more from the CRA. For South Africa, whose foreign debt rose from around $30 billion in 2003 to $150 billion a dozen years later – i.e., more than 40 percent of GDP, which puts it in the debt-crisis danger zone – this would mean that only $3 billion is available from the CRA before recourse to the IMF would be necessary. (In 1985, the last time this debt ratio was hit, the then leader of apartheid South Africa found it necessary to default on $13 billion in short-term debt payments coming due, to close the stock exchange and to impose exchange controls.)
Moreover, both the CRA and NDB are US dollar-denominated lenders, instead of establishing a fusion mechanism for their own monies: the real, ruble, rupee, renmimbi and rand. Such BRICS subservience would, remarked financier Ousmène Jacques Mandeng of Pramerica Investment Management in a Financial Times blog, ‘help overcome the main constraints of the global financial architecture. It may well be the piece missing to promote actual financial globalisation.’[1] As Brazil’s Ministry of Finance reminded in July 2015, the CRA ‘will contribute to promoting international financial stability, as it will complement the current global network of financial protection. It will also reinforce the world’s economic and financial agents’ trust.’[2]
Nevertheless, a great deal of the BRICS bloc’s credibility amongst progressive international political commentators rests upon aggressive rhetoric about potential global financial interventions. According to Horace Campbell, ‘Ultimately, in the context of the present currency wars, the CRA will replace the IMF as the provider of resources for BRICS members and other poor societies when there are balance of payments difficulties.’[3] Mark Weisbrot argued that the CRA ‘has the potential to break the pattern not only of US-EU global dominance but also of the harmful conditions typically attached to balance of payments support.’[4] According to Walden Bello, both the CRA and NDB ‘aim to break the global North’s chokehold on finance and development.’[5] Radhika Desai argues, ‘The BRICS are building a challenge to western economic supremacy.’[6] And after the Ufa summit, according to Mike Whitney of CounterPunch, ‘The dollar is toast. The IMF is toast. The US debt market (US Treasuries) is toast… Ufa marks a fundamental change in thinking, a fundamental change in approach, and a fundamental change in strategic orientation.’[7]
This wishful thinking is unfortunate not only because of the CRA’s provision that once the 30 percent quota on lending is breached an IMF agreement is required, thus providing a means of empowering and relegitimizing the IMF. Moreover, only CRA members (not other countries) get CRA access. Hence applause for the supposedly ‘alternative’ BRICS financial initiatives came logically from both Jim Yong Kim at the World Bank and Christine Lagarde at the International Monetary Fund. Likewise in 2015 more than 40 countries – including several from Europe including Britain – became founder-members of China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and it received endorsement from Kim, in the process foiling Barack Obama’s sabotage diplomacy.[8]
In these respects, following Marini, the BRICS are ‘collaborating actively with imperialist expansion, assuming in this expansion the position of a key’ bloc, whose own interests also rest in sub-imperialist stabilization of international financial power relations, for the advancement of their own regional domination strategies. If this was not the case, it would have been logical for the BRICS to instead have supported the Banco del Sur (Bank of the South). Founded by the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez in 2007 and supported by Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Uruguay, Banco del Sur already had $7 billion in capital by 2013.[9] It offered a more profound development finance challenge to the Washington Consensus, especially after Ecuadoran radical economists led by Pedro Paez improved the design. Instead, it was repeatedly sabotaged by more conservative Brazilian bureaucrats and likewise opposed by Pretoria, which refused to join it during the Mbeki era.
Read Ben Norton’s article on BRICS de-dollarization:
CGTN Interview with the new president of New Development Bank Dilma Rousseff
Transcript by CGTN
China and Brazil are members of the BRICS group, which established the New Development Bank in 2015 to fund development projects in emerging markets and developing countries. Now a former Brazilian president has become the new head of the multilateral bank. Wu Lei sat down with Dilma Rousseff to discuss her priorities during her term in office.
WU LEI CGTN Reporter: “As former president of Brazil, and economist who has been active in global development for a long time, what will be your priorities in terms of the NDB’s development in the coming years?”
DILMA ROUSSEFF President, New Development Bank: “It is very important to me that the New Development Bank, the bank of the BRICS, acts as a tool to support the development priorities of the BRICS and other developing countries.
We need to invest in projects that contribute to three fundamental areas. First, we need to support the countries with regards to climate change and Sustainable Development Goals. Second, we should promote social inclusion at every opportunity we have. And I believe we should finance their most critical and strategic infrastructure projects, and digital ones.
That said, we want to promote quality development.
Developing countries still don’t have the necessary infrastructure. They don’t have enough ports, airports and highways to meet their needs. And, many times, the ones they have are not adequate. They still have to build alternative and more modern models of transportation, for instance. I see China a country that has developed capability for alternative transportation at the scale and quality it needs. NDB has to support the other countries to also build their quality infrastructure as well, like high speed trains.
It is also very important to invest in technology and innovation. Invest in universities, for example. Our countries will not overcome extreme poverty if we don’t invest in education, science and technology.”
WU LEI CGTN Reporter: “What are some of the challenges the NDB faces now, given the current global situation? What role does the BRICS cooperation mechanism play?”
DILMA ROUSSEFF President, New Development Bank: “The world now is under the threat of high inflation and restrictive monetary policy, particularly in developed countries. Such monetary policy means a higher interest rate and, therefore, a higher probability of a reduction in growth and a higher probability of recession.
This presents an important question for the BRICS. We need a mechanism, a so-called anti-crisis mechanism, which must be countercyclical and support stabilization.
At the same time, it is necessary to find ways to avoid foreign exchange risk and other issues such as being dependent on a single currency such as the US dollar. The good news is that we are seeing many countries choosing to trade using their own currencies. China and Brazil, for instance, are agreeing to exchange with RMB and the Brazilian Real.
At the NDB, we have committed to it in our strategy. For the period from 2022 to 2026, NDB has to lend 30 percent in local currency, and so 30% of our loan book will be financed in the currencies of our member countries. That will be extremely important to help our countries avoid exchange rate risks and shortage in finance that hinder long term investments.”
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Patrick Bond, Professor, University of the Western Cape School of Government. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
Cometh the new platform, cometh new actions in law, the fragile litigant ever ready to dash off a writ to those with (preferably) deep pockets. And so, it transpires that artificial intelligence (AI) platforms, for all the genius behind their creation, are up for legal scrutiny and judicial redress. Certainly, some private citizens are getting rather ticked off about what such bots as ChatGPT are generating about them.
Some of this is indulgent, narcissistic craving – you deserve what you get if you plug your name into an AI generator, hoping for sweet things to be said about you. Things get even comical when the search platform is itself riddled with inaccuracies.
One recent example stirring interest in the Digital Kingdom is a threatened legal suit against the OpenAI chatbot. Brian Hood, Mayor of Hepburn Shire Council in the Australian state of Victoria, was alerted to inaccurate accusations about bribery regarding a case that took place between 1999 and 2004. It involved Note Printing Australia, an entity of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Hood had worked at Note Printing Australia and blew the whistle on bribes being made to foreign authorities. He was never charged with the crime itself. However, answers generated by ChatGPT suggested otherwise, including the claim that Hood was found guilty of the said bribery allegations.
In a statement provided to Ars Technica by Gordon Legal, the firm representing Hood, more details are given. Among “several false statements” returned by the AI bot are claims that Hood “was accused of bribing officials in Malaysia, Indonesia, and Vietnam between 1999 and 2005, that he was sentenced to 30 months in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of false accounting under the Corporations Act in 2012, and that he authorised payments to a Malaysian arms dealer acting as a middleman to secure a contract with the Malaysian Government.”
James Naughton, a partner at Gordon Legal, is representing Hood. “He’s an elected official, his reputation is central to his role,” stated the lawyer. “It would potentially be a landmark moment in the sense that it’s applying this defamation law to a new area of artificial intelligence and publication in the IT space.”
In March, Hood’s legal representatives wrote a letter of concern to OpenAI, demanding that they amend the outlined errors within 28 days, threatening a defamation action against the company in the event they refused to do so.
The question here is whether ChatGPT’s supposedly defamatory imputations might fall within the realm of liability. The bot’s functionality on generating facts is currently sketchy, and any user should be familiar with that fact. That said, opinions on the subject of reputational liability remain mixed.
Lawrence Tribe of Harvard Law School does not regard the notion as outlandish. “It matters not, for purposes of legal liability, whether the alleged lies about you or someone else were generated by a human being or by a chatbot, by a genuine intelligence or by a machine algorithm.”
Robert Post of the Yale Law School looks at the matter from the perspective of the communication itself. Defamation would not take place at the point the information is generated by the bot. It would only happen if that (mis)information was communicated or disseminated by the user. “A ‘publication’ happens only when a defendant communicates the defamatory statement to a third party.”
Not so, claims RonNell Andersen Jones of the University of Utah. “If defamatory falsehood is generated by an AI chatbot itself, it is harder to conceptualise this within our defamation law framework, which presupposes an entity with a state of mind on the other end of the communication.”
In terms of defaming a public figure, “actual malice” would have to be shown – something distinctly at odds in the ChatGPT context. Jones points us in a possibly different direction: that the function, or otherwise, of such a system could be seen through the prism of product liability.
Those based in the US might resort to Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, that most remarkable of provisions that provides internet service providers immunity from legal suits regarding content published by third parties on the site. The appeal of the section is evident by how many attacks have been made against it, be it from campaigning liberal celebrities with bruised reputations or Donald Trump himself.
But the original drafters of the law, Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden, and former Rep. Chris Cox, a California Republican, are of the view that chatbot creators would not be able to avail themselves of the protection. “To be entitled to immunity,” Cox suggested to The Washington Post, “a provider of an interactive computer service must not have contributed to the creation or development of the content at issue.”
When Ars Technica attempted to replicate the various mistakes supposedly generated by ChatGPT, they came up short. Ditto the BBC. This might suggest that the generated errors have been corrected. But over the next few weeks, if not months, expect a number of thick, all-covering disclaimers to ensure that AI bots such as ChatGPT are not subject to liability.
As a matter of fact, ChatGPT already has one: “Given the probabilistic nature of machine learning, use of our Services may in some situations result in incorrect Output that does not accurately reflect real people, places, or facts. You should evaluate the accuracy of any Output as appropriate for your use case, including by using human review of the Output.” Whether this satisfies technologically illiterate courts remains to be seen.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
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***
Relating to the situation in Ukraine, it can be revealing to look at perceptions of its ongoing developments from abroad. Even to non-military observers located hundreds of miles away, it has become increasingly clear as the current conflict continues unabated that this heavily favours the Russian military, with its much greater reserves of manpower and equipment than the NATO-supplied AFU.
In the western European state of the Republic of Ireland, where the author lives beside the capital city Dublin, this island nation has traditionally had friendly ties with the United States; in large part because of Ireland’s position on the map, at the very edge of western Europe where begins the Atlantic Ocean.
Across the Atlantic, the next countries within reach of Ireland are the US and Canada. In the not too distant past hundreds of thousands of Irish people, out of feelings of necessity, emigrated in ships to North America. Often it was those faced with difficult choices such as in the Great Famine years, 1845–52, during which more than 1 million Irish citizens perished out of a total population in 1845 of 8.5 million. (1)
Famine Memorial in Dublin (Licensed under the Public Domain)
For many the scenario was either starvation or moving overseas. The Irish population has still not fully recovered from the Great Famine, and today on the whole island (Republic and Northern Ireland) there is 7 million people.
The self-serving policies of Ireland’s powerful neighbour, Britain, made worse the effects of the famine, in which the Irish public was overly reliant on a single food source, the potato, whose crops in Ireland were failing in the mid-19th century. This was because of an airborne fungus-like microorganism that had originated in Latin America, and which was transported in vessels over the Atlantic to Europe (2). London could have reduced some of the suffering by importing food products to Ireland, but chose to act in a different manner.
The British authorities were obviously not the direct cause of the famine itself. A previous famine, that struck Ireland in the early 1740s, killed up to 20% of the country’s population, which was caused mainly by prolonged extreme cold which wiped out crops; per capita the “Great Frost Famine” killed more Irish residents than the later disaster.
Famines occur regularly in human history and have affected various nations, including major powers like Russia. The Irish and Russians may have more in common than they realise. The two countries have experienced hardships through famines and the actions of expansionist forces – Russia being subjected to invasion from the armies of conquerors such as Napoleon and Hitler, and Ireland suffering from the actions of British monarchies.
With present day events while the British, like the Americans and some other NATO states, have been fervent in providing military and technical assistance to Kiev, most Irish people prefer their country to maintain its normal position of strict neutrality. A survey from April 2022 revealed that 66% of Irish voters want the country to preserve its neutrality, and to resist joining entities like NATO. (3)
A majority of Irish (55%) also do not want the country to send military aid to Kiev, a policy which has continued. There have not been concerted displays of public support for the Zelensky regime, or for the Western-backed AFU. The absence of Ukrainian flags along Irish streets, including in Dublin’s many suburbs, tells its own story.
Having said that, the Irish on occasion have voiced considerable sympathy for Ukrainians, including majority support (70%) for Western sanctions (4). This can at least partially be explained by lack of historical awareness of the Ukraine crisis, and mainstream media bias.
The Irish press is concentrated mostly in the hands of a few liberal elites, who by their nature have positive attitudes towards US hegemony. There is little media criticism and scrutiny of NATO expansion to Russia’s frontiers, which has been an overwhelming cause behind the tensions regarding Ukraine, along with the Ukrainian army’s assaults against the Donbass region which have been taking place for years. The long-standing media failures relate to Irish and Western media in general.
The media censorship ensures that Irish citizens are poorly informed of Ukraine’s actual history, which must be the case in other western European countries and in North America. Ukraine is of course historically a Russian territory, dating back many generations into Russia’s long history as a state. The mass media in Ireland, supported by the liberals and globalists, also avoid encouraging debate concerning the neo-Nazi ideology present in Ukraine, along with the terrorist activities relating for example to far-right Ukrainian units such as the Azov, Aidar, Dnipro and Donbas battalions, etc.
The lack of discussion on these issues has meant that the neo-Nazism/terrorism, linked to the regime in Kiev, is not forefront in the public mind. However, Paul Murphy, an Irish member of parliament (MP) with the political alliance People Before Profit–Solidarity, has publicly criticised neo-Nazism in Ukraine, specifically the Azov Battalion which he described as “an openly racist fascist regiment” (5). Murphy refused to applaud Zelensky when the latter spoke online to the Irish parliament (the Dáil) in April 2022.
Also remaining silent when Zelensky appeared on the screen were the MPs Richard Boyd Barrett, Gino Kenny and Bríd Smith (6). Another Irish politician, Clare Daly, a member of the European parliament (MEP) for the Dublin constituency, has been critical of NATO and EU policies. Last summer, Daly was blacklisted by Kiev’s secret service who say she is favourable to Russia.
In February 2023 a Ukrainian “Edelweiss” unit was named by Zelensky, which again evokes images of Nazi Germany. In the first year (1933) of Hitler’s rule, an opera song was created with the dictator’s personal approval titled, “Adolf Hitler’s favourite flower is the simple Edelweiss” (German translation, Adolf Hitler’s Lieblingsblume ist das schlichte Edelweiss).
The song was sung by Harry Steier, a well-known, pro-Nazi opera tenor; it was a hit in Nazi Germany and popular among Hitler’s inner circle. Albert Speer, the Third Reich’s former Minister for Armaments, recalled how “From then on [1933] the edelweiss was officially ‘the Führer’s flower’” (7). While the edelweiss has been closely linked to Hitler, this flower was further used as a symbol by Wehrmacht and SS mountain regiments, like the Gebirgsjäger, light infantry Nazi mountain troops. Zelensky’s “Edelweiss” unit happens to be a mountain regiment as well.
Nazism in Ukraine is not a recent phenomenon, and even predates World War II. The Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), a terrorist militant group, was very closely aligned to Nazi ideology. The OUN had been founded in 1929, four years before Hitler came to power in Germany and when the German Nazi Party was a small organization. Stepan Bandera, a supporter of Nazism and himself a terrorist, joined the OUN at its outset in 1929. Upon the OUN’s establishment that year, it was headed by Yevhen Konovalets, a far-right military commander.
Bandera’s OUN and Nazi officials at joint Celebration dedicated to the establishment of Ukrainian Statehood in Western Ukraine, 7 July 1941. Occupied Eastern Poland. (Licensed under the Public Domain)
The Soviet leader Joseph Stalin said in November 1937 that Konovalets was “an agent of German fascism”. This was accurate because Konovalets was working for the Wehrmacht intelligence agency, the Abwehr (8). From the early 1920s, Konovalets had led a paramilitary terrorist faction called the Ukrainian Military Organization.
Bandera was rising rapidly through the OUN ranks, and had become its chief propaganda officer as far back as 1931. A decade later as the Third Reich was preparing its invasion of the USSR, Bandera, now the OUN’s leader, convened meetings with Nazi agencies (the Gestapo and Abwehr) relating to the development of Nazi Ukrainian brigades to fight against the Soviet Army. In the spring of 1941, Bandera’s OUN was receiving funding from the Third Reich and personal protection from the Gestapo and Abwehr.
The day after Nazi Germany’s attack on the Soviet Union began, 23 June 1941, Bandera wrote a letter to Hitler outlining his desire for an “independent Ukraine” under the Third Reich’s protection. A week later, 30 June, as German troops were invading the western USSR, Bandera declared Ukrainian independence and the OUN proclamation stated, “Glory to the heroic German army and its Führer, Adolf Hitler”. The OUN assisted in spreading Nazi propaganda among the local people, depicting Hitler as the “liberator” of Ukraine. Bandera’s “Minister of Foreign Affairs” Volodymyr Stakhiv also wrote a letter to Hitler, asking him to support “our ethnic struggle”. (9)
Bandera, along with his fellow Nazis and nationalists, participated in the genocidal activities of the SS death squads, killing many tens of thousands of civilians and prisoners-of-war (10).
Bandera’s dream was of a fascist Ukraine which could act according to its own wishes.
After World War II, Bandera and the OUN were supported by the Anglo-American intelligence services, the CIA and MI6. The MI6 admitted that Bandera had “a terrorist background” and possessed “ruthless notions” but continued to assist him. In 1949, the MI6 flew some of Bandera’s agents into western Ukraine. The MI6 first contacted Bandera in April 1948 through Gerhard von Mende, a Baltic German and unrepentant Nazi (11). Von Mende was collaborating too with the CIA. US army intelligence (the Counterintelligence Corps) had already shown an interest in working with Bandera in September 1945. (12)
In the 21st century, Bandera’s name has undergone continued rehabilitation in Kiev. On 22 January 2010, president Viktor Yushchenko awarded Bandera the title “Hero of Ukraine”. Petro Poroshenko, another former leader in Kiev, is likewise a supporter of Bandera. Poroshenko did his best to distort history on 20 June 2022 when he said, “Stepan Bandera never was a Nazi collaborator”.
This is not altogether surprising, when considering that the far-right had paved the way for Poroshenko to enter office in the first place. During mid-February 2014, neo-Nazi forces from organizations like Right Sector, Svoboda and Patriot of Ukraine occupied important buildings in Kiev, such as the Central Post Office and the State Committee for Television and Radio (13). Among them were militants wearing uniforms of the SS Galicia division, which had fought alongside the Nazis against the Soviet Union during World War II.
The above far-right groups then joined forces in Kiev – they were placed under the command of Dmytro Yarosh of the neo-Nazi Right Sector (14); and they subsequently stormed Kiev’s parliament building (Verkhovna Rada) on the night of 21 February 2014, forcing the legally elected president Viktor Yanukovych, whose life was in danger, to depart Kiev. A former professor at Columbia University in New York, Tarik Cyril Amar, acknowledged that the “extreme right” in Kiev had performed a “highly effective” role in the coup. (15)
Zelensky, who succeeded Poroshenko in May 2019, is also an admirer of Bandera and went so far as to place him in the bracket of Ukraine’s “indisputable heroes”. Zelensky said in April 2019, “There are indisputable heroes. Stepan Bandera is a hero for a certain part of Ukrainians, and this is a normal and cool thing. He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine” (16). During his election campaign in early 2019, Zelensky said he wanted Ukraine to join both NATO and the EU, and he has held the same opinions throughout his time in Kiev.
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This article was originally published on Geopolitica.RU.
Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Notes
1 “Scientists finally pinpoint the pathogen that caused the Irish Potato Famine”, Smithsonian Magazine, 21 May 2013
2 Ibid.
3 “Two thirds of voters support keeping Ireland’s neutrality in new poll”, The Irish News, 16 April 2022
4 Ibid.
5 “Paul Murphy TD condemns ‘openly racist’ battalion as he defends not applauding Ukraine leader”, Sunday World, 7 April 2022
6 Ibid.
7 Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (Simon & Schuster; Reissue edition, 1 June 1997) p. 47
8 Christopher Hale, Hitler’s Foreign Executioners: Europe’s Dirty Secret (The History Press, 11 April 2011) p. 143
9 Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st edition, 4 February 2019) p. 157
10 Ibid., p. 156
11 Richard Breitman, Norman J. W. Goda, Hitler’s Shadow: Nazi War Criminals, U.S. Intelligence and the Cold War (National Archives and Records Administration [ 2010]) p. 81
12 Ibid., p. 78
13 Bandeira, The World Disorder, p. 207
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 “Volodymyr Zelensky on Stepan Bandera: ‘He was one of those who defended the freedom of Ukraine’”, Le Canard Républicain, 13 March 2022
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From the very outset those crimes against the people of Serbia and Kosovo were committed on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. The KLA had extensive links to organized crime involved in drug trafficking. In the wake of the 1999 war, 24 years ago, a Mafia State was installed in Kosovo.
Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream.
Last week, I explained how economists and policymakers destroyed our economy for the sake of short-term corporate profits from jobs offshoring and financial deregulation. See this.
At present, it has become customary to speak of NATO’s expansion “towards Eastern Europe”, which, while effective, is a reductionist concept. The truth is that since the end of the bipolar world, the United States, believing itself to be the master of the world, has used NATO to expand throughout the planet.
Classified documents allegedly leaked by Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira have revealed that the US is closely spying on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and is not happy with his engagement with Moscow.
A federal judge today ruled in favor of oil giant ConocoPhillips by denying a motion for preliminary injunction brought by environmental groups as part of a lawsuit challenging the Willow project in Alaska’s Western Arctic.
Since 2021, the Israeli army has intensified its raids into West Bank towns, where detention and assassination operations are usually conducted by undercover special forces. Israeli soldiers would appear in Palestinian neighbourhood dressed like locals – including disguised as Muslim clerics, workers, journalists, or medics – to conduct highly secretive military operations.
A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI.
Declassified documents from 1998, when the UK and US bombed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, show Tony Blair was consistently informed military action was unlawful without UN authorisation. But he told parliament Britain had “the proper legal authority”.
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The United Nations Security Council room has been a scene of espionage.
The massive leak of a trove of highly classified US intelligence reports, described as one of the country’s most remarkable disclosures of secrets in the past decade, has also revealed a more surprising angle to the story.
Washington not only collected information from two of its adversaries, Russia and China, but also from close allies, including Ukraine, South Korea, Egypt, Turkey and Israel.
The United Nations, long watched by multiple Western intelligence agencies, was also one of the victims of the spying scandal that broke out this month.
According to the British public channel BBC, one of the reports from the US intelligence services recounts a conversation between the Secretary General, António Guterres, and his deputy, Amina Mohammed.
Guterres expresses his “dismay” at a call by the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, for Europe to produce more weapons and ammunition for the war in Ukraine.
The two senior UN officials also discussed a recent summit of African leaders, at which Amina Mohammed described Kenyan President William Ruto as “ruthless” and said: “I don’t trust him.”
In response to questions at the daily briefings, UN spokesman Stéphane Dujarric told reporters that “the secretary-general has been in this job for a long time, and in the public eye, and he is not surprised by the fact that that there are people spying on him and listening to his private conversations…”.
What does surprise him, he said, is “the malfeasance or incompetence that allows those private conversations to be distorted and made public.”
On a more global scale, virtually every major power is in the UN spy game, including the Americans, the Russians (and the Soviets during the Cold War era), the French, the British, and the Chinese.
During the height of the Cold War in the 1960s and 1970s, the UN was a veritable battleground for the United States and the now-defunct Soviet Union to spy on each other.
American and Soviet spies were known to hang out all over the building: in the committee rooms, in the press box, in the delegates’ lounge and, most importantly, in the UN library, which was a delivery point for sensitive political documents.
The extent of Cold War espionage at the United Nations was exposed in 1975 by a US Congressional Committee, named after Democratic Senator Frank Church, who chaired it while investigating abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Among the evidence presented to the Church Committee at the time was the revelation that the CIA had placed one of its Russian lip-reading experts in a press box overlooking the Security Council chamber, so that he could follow the movements of the lips of the Russian delegates, as they consulted each other in whispers.
Thomas G. Weiss, Distinguished Professor of Global Governance at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs who has written extensively on UN policy, told IPS that “it is not surprising that US intelligence services are spying on the 38th floor. It’s an old practice.”
“There’s almost nothing they don’t monitor,” he added, adding that it should be a relief that Washington “takes the UN seriously enough” to spy on it. “The rationale for surveillance would be more intriguing,” he said.
“Is the Secretary General pro-West (has criticized the Russian war), or pro-Russia (according to some rumors)?” could be one question the spies are trying to answer.
In his 1978 book, “A Dangerous Place,” Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a former United States envoy to the United Nations, described the cat-and-mouse game of espionage taking place in the bowels of the world body, and in particular in the UN library.
In October 2013, when Clare Short, Britain’s former Minister for International Development, revealed that British intelligence agents had spied on former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan (1997-2006), bugging his office just before the disastrous US invasion from Iraq in March 2003.
Upon learning this, the top UN leader was enraged that his talks with world leaders had been compromised.
As Short told the BBC, while talking to Annan on the 38th floor of the UN Secretariat building, he thought: “Oh my, there will be a transcript of this and people will know what he and I are saying.”
The United Nations, along with the 193 diplomatic missions of its member countries, housed in its glass-enclosed building in New York, have long been a veritable battleground for espionage, wiretapping and electronic surveillance.
As early as September 2013, then-Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, undoing diplomatic protocol, launched a withering attack on the United States for illegally infiltrating its communications network, surreptitiously intercepting phone calls, and breaking into the Brazilian Mission to the United Nations.
Justifying her public criticism, she told delegates that the problem of electronic surveillance goes beyond a bilateral relationship. It affects the international community itself, she remarked, and demands a response from it.
Rousseff launched her attack even as then-US President Barack Obama was waiting his turn to address the General Assembly on the opening day of the annual high-level debate. By tradition, Brazil is the first annual speaker, followed by the United States.
“We have made our disapproval known to the US government, and we demand explanations, apologies and guarantees that such procedures will never be repeated,” she said.
According to documents released by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, the illegal electronic surveillance of Brazil was carried out by the US National Security Agency (NSA).
The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that NSA technicians had managed to decrypt the UN’s internal videoconferencing system (VTC), as part of their surveillance of the world body.
The combination of this new ONU access and codebreak encryption led to a dramatic improvement in the quality of VTC data and the ability to decrypt VTC traffic, according to NSA agents.
In the article entitled “How the United States spies on Europe at the UN,” Der Spiegel claimed that, in a little less than three weeks, the number of decrypted communications increased from 12 to 458.
Subsequently, there were new espionage allegations, but this time the Americans were accused of using the UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) in Baghdad to intercept Iraqi security intelligence in an attempt to undermine, and perhaps overthrow, the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein.
The accusations, reported on the front pages of The Washington Post and The Boston Globe, only confirmed the longstanding Iraqi accusation that UNSCOM was “a den of spies”, mostly American and British.
Created by the Security Council immediately after the 1991 Gulf War, UNSCOM was mandated to eliminate Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and to destroy that country’s ability to produce nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
However, UNSCOM chief Richard Butler of Australia vehemently denied allegations that his inspection team in Iraq had spied on the United States. “We’ve never spied on anyone,” Butler told reporters.
Asked to respond to reports that UNSCOM may have helped Washington gather sensitive information on Iraq to destabilize Saddam Hussein’s regime, Butler replied: “Don’t believe everything you read in the press.”
At the same time, The New York Times carried a front-page story quoting US officials as saying that “American spies had worked undercover on UN weapons inspectorate teams to uncover secret Iraqi weapons programs.”
In an editorial, that newspaper stated that “using UN activities in Iraq as a cover for US espionage operations would be a sure way to undermine the international organization, embarrass the United States and strengthen Mr. Hussein.”
“Washington crossed a line it should not have crossed if it placed US agents on the UN team with the intent of gathering information that could be used for military strikes against targets in Baghdad,” the editorial said.
Samir Sanbar, a former UN Assistant Secretary General who headed its Department of Public Information, told IPS that tracking international officials has evolved with greater digital capability.
He added that what was mainly done by security officers expanded to become a public exercise.
At first, he said, some UN landmarks, such as the Delegates Lounge, were targeted by multiple countries, even with devices across the East River in Queens, or in the lounge adjacent to the UN garden and a short walk away. distance from permanent missions and residences of UN diplomats.
A senior UN official once said that the closer he got to the secretary-general’s residence, in the Sutton Place neighborhood, the more obvious the radio surveillance became.
As a climax, a personal memory: When the UN Correspondents Association (UNCA) held its annual awards ceremony in December 2013, one of the most prominent videos was a hilarious parody about clumsy spying attempts taking place inside the lowest levels, high of the Secretariat and even the offices of the 38th floor of the then Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (2007-2016).
When I took the floor, as one of the UNCA winners for my reporting and analysis for IPS, I gave the secretary general, who was standing next to me, some unsolicited advice: if you want to know if your phone line has been tapped, I jokingly told him, you just have to sneeze hard.
A voice on the other end would instinctively and politely reply: “Bless you.” “And you’ll know that your phone is bugged,” I said between laughs.
*
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Thalif Deen is IPS United Nations bureau chief and North America regional director, has been covering the UN since the late 1970s. A former deputy news editor of the Sri Lanka Daily News, he was also a senior editorial writer for Hong Kong-based The Standard. He has been runner-up and cited twice for “excellence in UN reporting” at the annual awards presentation of the UN Correspondents’ Association. A former information officer at the UN Secretariat, and a one-time member of the Sri Lanka delegation to the UN General Assembly sessions, Thalif is currently editor in chief of the IPS UN Terra Viva journal. Since the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, he has covered virtually every single major UN conference on population, human rights, environment, social development, globalization and the Millennium Development Goals.
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Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream. Just like the New York Times’ report from last month, this latest one from a collection of Northern European media outlets is therefore also nothing more than an information warfare provocation.
A joint “media investigation” by the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden just claimed that Russia has been using at least 50 civilian ships to spy on the North Sea for the past decade in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage sometime in the future. Kremlin spokesman Peskov denied these allegations and accused those countries of trying to distract from last September’s Nord Stream terrorist attack.
Screenshot from Politico
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh cited unnamed US administration sources to report in early February that Biden personally authorized that attack, which most folks already figured but it was nevertheless extremely newsworthy for this to come from someone as reputable like him. Around a month later, the New York Times (NYT) ran a story claiming to have uncovered the alleged culprit, which they said was a rogue group of people who weren’t connected to any government.
“The US’ Latest Disinfo Campaign About The Nord Stream Terrorist Attacks Was Preplanned”, however, since the argument can compellingly be made that the US planted the seeds of an alternative narrative to rely upon as a backup plan in the event that the truth started leaking out like it did in Hersh’s report. It’s within this context that the Scandinavian states’ “media investigation” was published, thus extending credence to similar concerns that it’s also nothing more than a distraction from that journalist’s work.
After all, those outlets claimed that Russia has supposedly been spying on the North Sea through these means for the past ten years, and it’s extremely unlikely that they suddenly stumbled upon relevant “evidence” in support of that conclusion at this particular point in time. Rather, they were almost certainly fed this information by those countries’ intelligence services, with possible input from NATO as a whole and/or its US leader.
It’s unclear whether there’s any truth to their report, but it wouldn’t be surprising if there’s at least a kernel thereof since it’s a clever way to spy on the NATO-controlled North Sea. That, however, doesn’t mean that this was being done in speculative preparation of possibly carrying out acts of sabotage there sometime in the future. This part of their report was probably included purely to revive the completely ridiculous narrative that Russia was the one responsible for the Nord Stream terrorist attack.
Whatever the purpose of Russia’s alleged spying in those waters may have been, it’s highly unlikely to have concerned sabotage except as an absolute last resort in the event of a conventional war with NATO. The reason behind this assessment is that only a state-level actor or a false flag “non-state” one connected to a state actor is capable of carrying out such acts, especially in waters that are completely controlled by and under the total surveillance of that US-led bloc, and doing so would be an act of war.
It’s with this in mind that Peskov’s denial should be taken seriously since it’s unrealistic to imagine that Russia is plotting impending acts of sabotage there that it would definitely be caught committing red-handed in the fringe scenario that this is attempted. This doesn’t mean that Moscow wasn’t possibly spying on NATO’s naval activities in the North Sea, but just that this wasn’t done for the purpose of plotting sabotage except as an absolute last if it ever formally went to war with that bloc.
Considering this, Scandinavia’s fake news about Russia was released at this particular point in time and specifically included the claim that Moscow is considering acts of sabotage in NATO-controlled waters so as to distract from Hersh’s report and revive the false story that the Kremlin blew up Nord Stream. Just like the NYT’s report from last month, this latest one from a collection of Northern European media outlets is therefore also nothing more than an information warfare provocation.
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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 frequent contributor to Global Research.
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***
The New York Times routinely tells bigger lies than the clumsy nonsense it published about weapons in Iraq. Here’s an example. This package of lies is called “Liberals Have a Blind Spot on Defense” but mentions nothing related to defense. It simply pretends that militarism is defensive by applying that word and by lying that “we face simultaneous and growing military threats from Russia and China.” Seriously? Where?
The U.S. military budget is more than those of most nations of the world combined. Only 29 nations, out of some 200 on Earth, spend even 1 percent what the U.S. does. Of those 29, a full 26 are U.S. weapons customers. Many of those receive free U.S. weapons and/or training and/or have U.S. bases in their countries. Only one non-ally, non-weapons customer (albeit a collaborator in bioweapons research labs) spends over 10% what the U.S. does, namely China, which was at 37% of U.S. spending in 2021 and likely about the same now despite the highly horrifying increases widely reported in the U.S. media and on the floor of Congress. (That’s not considering weapons for Ukraine and various other U.S. expenses.) While the U.S. has planted military bases around Russia and China, neither has a military base anywhere near the United States, and neither has threatened the United States.
Now, if you don’t want to fill the globe with U.S. weaponry and provoke Russia and China on their borders, the New York Times has some additional lies for you: “Defense spending is about as pure an application of a domestic industrial policy — with thousands of good-paying, high-skilled manufacturing jobs — as any other high-tech sector.”
No, it is not. Just about any other way of spending public dollars, or even not taxing them in the first place, produces more and better jobs.
Here’s a doozie:
“Liberals also used to be hostile to the military on the assumption that it skewed right wing, but that’s a harder argument to make when the right is complaining about a ‘woke military.’”
What in the world would it mean to oppose organized mass murder because it skews right wing? What the hell else could it skew? I oppose militarism because it kills, destroys, damages the Earth, drives homelessness and illness and poverty, prevents global cooperation, tears down the rule of law, prevents self-governance, produces the dumbest pages of the New York Times, fuels bigotry, and militarizes police, and because there are better ways to resolve disputes and to resist the militarism of others. I’m not going to start cheering for mass killings because some general doesn’t hate enough groups.
Then there’s this lie:
“The Biden administration touts the size of its $842 billion budget request, and in nominal terms it’s the largest ever. But that fails to account for inflation.”
If you look at U.S. military spending according to SIPRI in constant 2021 dollars from 1949 to now (all the years they provide, with their calculation adjusting for inflation), Obama’s 2011 record will probably fall this year. If you look at actual numbers, not adjusting for inflation, Biden has set a new record each year. If you add in the free weapons for Ukraine, then, even adjusting for inflation, the record fell this past year and will probably be broken again in the coming year.
You’ll hear all sorts of different numbers, depending on what’s included. Most used is probably $886 billion for what Biden has proposed, which includes the military, the nuclear weapons, and some of “Homeland Security.” In the absence of massive public pressure on a topic the public hardly knows exists, we can count on an increase by Congress, plus major new piles of free weapons to Ukraine. For the first time, U.S. military spending (not counting various secret spending, veterans spending, etc.) will likely top $950 billion as predicted here.
War profiteer-funded stink tankers like to view military spending as a philanthropic project to be measured as a percentage of an “economy” or GDP, as if the more money a country has, the more it should spend on organized killing. There are two more sensible ways to look at it. Both can be seen at Mapping Militarism.
One is as simple amounts per nation. In these terms, the U.S. is at a historic high and soaring far, far over the rest of the world.
The other way to look at it is per capita. As with a comparison of absolute spending, one has to travel far down the list to find any of the designated enemies of the U.S. government. But here Russia jumps to the top of that list, spending a full 20% of what the U.S. does per person, while only spending less than 9% in total dollars. In contrast, China slides down the list, spending less than 9% per person what the United States does, while spending 37% in absolute dollars. Iran, meanwhile, spends 5% per capita what the U.S. does, compared to just over 1% in total spending.
Our New York Times friend writes that the U.S. needs to spend more to dominate four oceans, while China need worry only about one. But here the U.S. desire to treat economic competition as a form of war blinds the commentator to the fact that a lack of war facilitates economic success. As Jimmy Carter told Donald Trump,
“Since 1979, do you know how many times China has been at war with anybody? None. And we have stayed at war. . . . China has not wasted a single penny on war, and that’s why they’re ahead of us. In almost every way.”
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Last week, I explained how economists and policymakers destroyed our economy for the sake of short-term corporate profits from jobs offshoring and financial deregulation. See this.
That same week Business Week published an article, “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It,” by Charles Kenny. Kenny expresses the view of establishment economists, such as Brookings Institute economist Justin Wolfers who wants to know “What’s with the political fetish for manufacturing? Are factories really so awesome?”
“Not really,” Kenny says. Citing Eric Fisher of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, Kenny reports that wages rise most rapidly in those states that most quickly abandon manufacturing. Kenny cites Gary Hufbauer, once an academic colleague of mine now at the Peterson Institute, who claims that the 2009 tariffs applied to Chinese tire imports cost US consumers $1 billion in higher prices and 3,731 lost retail jobs. Note the precision of the jobs loss, right down to the last 31.
In support of the argument that Americans are better off without manufacturing jobs, Kenny cites MIT and Harvard academic economists to the effect that there is no evidence that manufacturing tends to cluster, thus disputing the view that there are economies from manufacturers tending to congregate in the same areas where they benefit from an experienced work force and established supply chains.
Perhaps the MIT and Harvard economists did their study after US manufacturing centers became shells of their former selves and Detroit lost 25% of its population, Gary Indiana lost 22% of its population, Flint Michigan lost 18% of its population, Cleveland lost 17% of its population, and St Louis lost 20% of its population. If the economists’ studies were done after manufacturing had departed, they would not find manufacturing concentrated in locations where it formerly flourished. MIT and Harvard economists might find this an idea too large to comprehend.
Kenny’s answer to the displaced manufacturing workers is–you guessed it–jobs training. He cites MIT economist David Autor who thinks the problem is the federal government only spends $1 on retraining for every $400 that it spends on supporting displaced workers.
These arguments are so absurd as to be mindless. Let’s examine them. What jobs are the displaced manufacturing workers to be trained for? Why, service jobs, of course. Kenny actually thinks that “service industries–hotels, hospitals, media, and accounting–have taken up the slack.” (I don’t know where he gets media and accounting from; scant sign of such jobs are found in the payroll jobs reports.) Moreover, service jobs have certainly not taken up the slack as the rising rate of long-term unemployment and declining labor force participation rate prove.
Nontradable service sector jobs such as hotel maids, hospital orderlies, retail clerks, waitresses and bartenders are low productivity, low value-added jobs that cannot pay incomes comparable to manufacturing jobs. The long term decline in real median family income relates to the movement offshore of manufacturing jobs and tradable professional service jobs, such as software engineering, IT, research and design.
Moreover, domestic service jobs do not produce exportable goods and services. A country without manufactures has little with which to earn foreign exchange in order to pay for its imports of its shoes, clothing, manufactured goods, high-technology products, Apple computers, and increasingly food. Therefore, that country’s trade deficit widens as each year it owes more and more to foreigners.
A country whose best known products are fraudulent and toxic financial instruments and GMO foods that no one wants cannot pay for its imports except by signing over its existing assets. The foreigners buy up US assets with their trade surpluses. Consequently, income from rents, interest, dividends, capital gains, and profits leave US pockets for foreign pockets. It is a safe bet that Hufbauer did not include any of these costs, or maybe even the loss of US tire workers’ wages and tire manufacturers’ profits, when he concluded that trying to save US tire manufacturing jobs cost more than it was worth.
Eric Fisher’s argument that the highest wage growth is found in areas where higher productivity manufacturing jobs are most rapidly replaced with lower productivity domestic service jobs is beyond absurd. (Possibly Fisher did not say this; I’m taking Kenny’s word for it.) It has always been a foundation of labor economics that workers are paid the value of their contribution to output. Manufacturing employees working with technology embodied in plant and equipment produce more value per man hour than maids changing sheets and bartenders mixing drinks.
In my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West (2013), I point out the obvious mistakes in “studies” by Matthew Slaughter, a former member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, and Harvard professor Michael Porter. These academic economists conclude on the basis of extraordinary errors and ignorance of empirical facts, that jobs offshoring is good for Americans. They were able to reach this conclusion despite the absence of any visibility of this good, and they hold to this absurd conclusion despite the inability of a “recovery” (or lack of one) that is 4.5 years old to get off the ground and get employment back up to where it was six years ago. They hold to their “education is the answer” solution despite the growing percentage of university graduates who cannot find employment.
Michael Hudson is certainly correct to call economists purveyors of “junk economics.” Indeed, I wonder if economists even have junk value. But they are well paid by Wall Street and the offshoring corporations.
What the Brookings Institute’s Justin Wolfers needs to ask himself is: what is the redefinition of economic development? For my lifetime the definition of a developed economy is an industrialized economy. It has always been “the industrialized countries” that occupy the status of “developed economies,” contrasted with “undeveloped countries,” “developing countries,” and “emerging economies.” How is an economy developed if it is shedding its industry and manufacturing? This is the reverse of the development process. Without realizing it, Kenny describes the unravelling of the US economy when he describes the decline of US manufacturing from 28 percent of US GDP in 1953 to 12% in 2012. The US now has the work force of a third world country, with the vast bulk of the population employed in lowly paid domestic services. The US work force no longer looks like the work force of a developed country. It looks like third world India’s work force of three decades ago.
Kenny and junk economists speak of the decline of US manufacturing jobs as if they are not being offshored to countries where labor is cheap but replaced by automation. No doubt there has been automation, and more ways of replacing humans with machines will be found. But if manufacturing jobs are things of the past, why is China’s sudden and rapid rise to economic power accompanied by 100 million manufacturing jobs? Apple computers are not made in China by robots. If robots are making Apple computers, it would be just as cheap to make the computers in the US. The Chinese manufacturing workforce is almost the size of the entire US work force.
US companies employ Americans to market the products that are produced abroad for sale in the US. This is why US corporations employ Americans mainly in service jobs. Foreigners make the goods, and Americans sell them.
Economic development has always been about acquiring the capital, technology, business knowledge, and trained workforce to make valuable things that can be sold at home and abroad. US capital and technology are being located abroad, and the trained domestic workforce is disappearing from disuse and abandonment. The US is falling out of the ranks of the industrialized countries and is on the path to becoming an undeveloped economy.
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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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At present, it has become customary to speak of NATO’s expansion “towards Eastern Europe”, which, while effective, is a reductionist concept. The truth is that since the end of the bipolar world, the United States, believing itself to be the master of the world, has used NATO to expand throughout the planet. Proof of this is the signing of the AUKUS Treaty (Australia, United Kingdom and United States), the creation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) formed by Australia, India, Japan and the United States and the Five Eyes Intelligence Alliance (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia) as instruments of NATO’s military expansion in Asia and Oceania.
The same is happening in Latin America and the Caribbean, where the United States is initiating an aggressive expansion plan throughout all latitudes and longitudes of the region. The following three installments will provide data to confirm the above assertion.
Part I
At the end of last year, the United States had installed 12 military bases in Panama, 12 in Puerto Rico, 9 in Colombia, 8 in Peru, 3 in Honduras, 2 in Paraguay, as well as installations of this type in Aruba, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Cuba (Guantanamo), and Peru among other countries, at the same time that it is orienting its search for the total coverage of the land and maritime surface of the region.
In Argentine territorial waters and in the Malvinas Islands, which were usurped by the United Kingdom, there is a NATO presence integrated in a system formed by bases on the islands of Ascensión, Santa Elena and Tristán da Acuña which “guards” the entire Atlantic from the north to the Antarctic area.
According to a report of the US Department of Defense quoted by the Venezuelan portal Misión Verdad, since May 2022 the United Kingdom is forming a “strategic triangle of control” of the southern tip of South America. While south of the Malvinas, nuclear submarines are operating. In addition, “France and the United States regularly organize joint military maneuvers in the region”.
Richardson is presented her four-star flag by Army chief of staff General James C. McConville at her promotion ceremony, October 18, 2021 (Licensed under the Public Domain)
During the last few years, and especially after the arrival of Laura Richardson as head of the U.S. Armed Forces Southern Command in October 2021, the levels of Washington’s aggressive interference in the region have ostensibly increased. This coincided with the arrival to power of Joe Biden who has implemented an active policy of substitution of the traditional (and natural) protagonism of the State Department in diplomatic activity, which began to be occupied by the Pentagon, the National Security Council and even the CIA. An increasing number of officials from these agencies are occupying ambassadorial posts in Latin America and the Caribbean.
The U.S. strategy is aimed at strengthening its presence in the region. In perspective, the South Atlantic has become particularly important given its proximity to Antarctica, which is regulated by a treaty that ended in 1941, the Amazon, the planet’s main reserve of oxygen and biodiversity, and the triple frontier where the Guarani aquifer, the world’s largest water reservoir, is located.
This is what makes sense of the United States’ attempts to reinstate the cold war in the region, this time against China and Russia. This logic explains the decision to urge six Latin American countries to donate their Russian military equipment to Ukraine, excluding – of course – Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela from this request. Richardson warned that after China, Russia is the number two adversary of the United States in the region, stressing the great strategic value of the region for her country.
The U.S. general has called China a “malign state actor” after 21 of the 31 countries in the region have joined China’s Belt and Road initiative, at the same time as Beijing’s investment in critical infrastructure such as deep-water ports, space research or telecommunications, with 5G networks and the company Huawei, has increased.
Richardson highlighted the “protective” role that the United States will play in the region because being good neighbors means “taking care of each other” which “obliges” Washington to take charge of fighting against organized crime networks involved in human trafficking, drug smuggling, unregulated logging and illegal mining and especially “because it is a region rich in resources and rare earths, with the so-called Lithium Triangle that has 60% of the world’s reserves (in Argentina, Bolivia and Chile), a metal very necessary for technology”.
In the same way, Richardson has said that the United States is interested in oil (given the large reserves found in Guyana and the largest in the world in Venezuela) as well as copper and gold in the region, and that the United States is also preoccupied by the fact that oxygen and 31% of the Earth’s fresh water is found in the Amazon. For all these reasons -according to her- China, which has become the main trading partner of several countries in the region, must be kept at a distance.
This logic is part of the “integrated deterrence” strategy of the United States, a renewed form of the National Security Doctrine which proposes to bring together under the Pentagon’s leadership “all the civilian and military capabilities of governments, businesses, civil society and academia of the United States and all its allies”.
At the XV Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas held in Brazil in July 2022, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin presented this strategy to his peers in the region. Two months later, in September, Richardson insisted on it before 14 military chiefs at the South American Defense Conference.
The interest of the United States has a regional perspective based on the need for its control since 200 years ago when the Monroe Doctrine was enunciated. But in the global perspective, Latin American armed forces constitute a combative potential that cannot be underestimated. In 2018, Brazil had 334,000 active military personnel, Colombia had 200,000 and Argentina had 51,000.
NATO has 3.5 million active military and civilian personnel. According to the CELAG think tank, Brazil and Colombia alone would contribute more assets to NATO than the European members annexed in the 1990s. In this sense, it is worth making a comparison, considering that Argentina, for example, has assets similar to those of Bulgaria (24,800) and the Czech Republic (25,000) combined.
In order to better understand this situation and the intense imperial activity to control the Latin American and Caribbean space, it is worth reviewing the way in which the intervention of the United States and NATO has been materializing in some countries of the region:
Paraguay
The Master Plan for the Navigability of the Paraguay River is an initiative of the Paraguayan government to “maximize the use of this navigable waterway”, but it was the U.S. Ambassador Marc Ostfield who made the announcement. The work is being supported by U.S. capital and will be carried out thanks to the services of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which generated great concern in Argentina, which considers that such a decision will mean a control of the territory by foreign forces. Needless to say, the importance of the area, which is part of the La Plata Basin, the fifth largest fresh water reserve in the world in terms of extension, is obvious.
Likewise, Washington does not cease in its long-standing intentions to install a military base in the Triple Border (Argentina-Paraguay-Brazil), with the excuse of combating international terrorism and drug trafficking. In this context, attempts to militarize the region and change the “rules of the game” so that the United States can establish territories under its permanent control are considered extremely dangerous in Argentina. Likewise, some local political leaders have expressed concern that their region is being drawn into a logic of confrontation between the United States and China.
Although the Paraguayan government has said that the project involves “cooperation with specialists from the United States” which will include the study of the rivers, but does not contemplate cooperation of a military nature, the total subordination of Asunción to the United States casts doubt on this assertion. In geopolitical terms, it is also considered that Paraguay is the only country in South America that does not have relations with China.
Argentina
From the Argentine perspective, Asuncion’s decision to attract the U.S. armed forces to advance the navigability of the Paraguay River is related today to the growing food trade, which, in the context of the war in Ukraine, became strategic.
The purpose of the waterway is to allow the navigation of large vessels with large volumes of cargo 365 days a year, rectifying the route and eliminating islands and other obstacles. The presence of U.S. Army specialists gives the project a very different character from what was originally presented as a civilian project.
On the other hand, the United States has shown concern because the Argentine State intends to carry out a new bidding process for the dredging of the Paraná River (which receives waters from Paraguay) and some of the companies that will try to win it are of Chinese origin.
For the United States, the Triple Border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is of paramount importance. The Southern Command stated that it had identified sources of financing for “terrorist organizations” based in West Asia, mentioning the Lebanese Hezbollah and the Palestinian Hamas. To counter this alleged threat, a multilateral mechanism called 3+1 was created with the three South American countries and the United States.
Washington has also shown great interest in Argentine Patagonia. In that framework last August 8, the US ambassador in the country attended in the city of Neuquén (located about 1140 km southwest of Buenos Aires) a meeting with representatives of the most powerful oil corporations in the world.
Four years earlier, in 2018, the construction of various facilities was announced, in a fiscal property under the direction and financing of the U.S. Southern Command. Although its embassy in Argentina hastened to inform that the works were part of a “humanitarian aid” project whose objective was to improve Neuquén’s capacity to respond to natural disasters, Neuquén’s civil society has rejected such an idea, since it has been characterized by secrecy, lack of information and absence of communication regarding what Argentina has obtained in exchange for the cession of such territory in an area that is considered of high strategic value.
The project, characterized as a “camouflaged military base” according to a report by journalist Ariel Noyola Rodríguez published in the RT portal, is part of a continent-wide strategy that has been characterized as a novel form of military intervention in the region: the “Humanitarian Assistance and Natural Disaster Response” program, sponsored by the U.S. Southern Command,
On the other hand, it cannot be ignored in this analysis that part of the Argentine territory is occupied by NATO forces. Between 1500 and 2000 British military personnel are stationed in the Malvinas, some of them permanently, as well as the latest generation of fighter-bombers.
Part II
Colombia
As a “global partner” of NATO, Colombia enjoys privileged attention from the war alliance. As an expression of this, in recent times, the United States is making great efforts to install a naval base on Gorgona Island in the Colombian Pacific, which are not stopped in spite of the great rejection of scientists and civil organizations in the region that intend to safeguard a set of rights that would be violated. These organizations consider that the U.S. agency financing the works of the base (U.S. Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs) generates a loss of sovereignty since it would place the island under the power of another State.
According to the State Department, the Biden administration also contemplates the purchase of boat engines for an amount of 2.6 million dollars to improve the operational capacity of the Coast Guard on the island.
Piedad Córdoba, senator for the ruling Historic Pact, spoke out in early December against any U.S. interference in Colombia through the installation of military bases or through the deployment of its armed forces, and has asked President Petro to cancel the project. Córdoba has stated that it would be strange that the United States pays so much attention to a project like this, if it is not understood that for the United States the Pacific Basin region has a strategic character, which is “expressed through the deployment of the Fourth Fleet and the Southern Command with the installation of military bases, among them, the one on Gorgona Island”.
The senator also expressed the opinion that the concretion of the works in Gorgona, which in fact would mean the installation of the ninth U.S. military base in Colombia, could provoke similar damages to those occurred in the Philippines, Panama and Puerto Rico, where Washington has managed to install military bases.
Also in Colombia, at the beginning of December, the president invited the armed forces of the United States and NATO to the Amazon to cooperate in safeguarding the territory and combating drug trafficking. It was argued that the machinery, equipment and personnel brought in to carry out the work could be reused as “police to protect” the environment, changing the traditional logic of the fight against drugs. To this end, he proposed the use of U.S. Black Hawk helicopters to put out fires, arguing that such an action would symbolize a “complete change in what has always been U.S. military aid”.
In this context, at the end of August, during the government of Gustavo Petro, the armed forces of the United States and Colombia carried out joint exercises within the framework of NATO. In this context, Petro received General Richardson who made a five-day visit to the country. Richardson was full of praise for “our number one security partner in the region”, describing Colombia as the “hub of the entire southern hemisphere” which she said was “free and secure thanks to Colombia’s stabilization efforts”.
In this regard, Petro affirmed -whether with innocence or feigned ignorance is not known- that he had “achieved something: the conversation with NATO -of which we are members, although we have a very rare status, we are involved, I think we are the only Latin American country participating- to take this alliance to the care of the Amazon rainforest, providing technological collaboration in this”.
The struggle for the defense of the Amazon as a subject of military intervention
The idea of using the fight for the environment as an instrument of intervention is quite old. As early as 1989, Al Gore stated: “The Amazon is not your property. It belongs to all of us. In this vein, in 2019, in the midst of the fires in the Amazon, French President Emmanuel Macron called on the G7 countries to intervene: “It is an international crisis,” he said, which was echoed even by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, recalling his time as leader of a NATO member country. The Q&A social network Quora rhetorically queried, “Why doesn’t NATO invade Brazil to save the Amazon?”
But President Petro is not so naive as to assume that the U.S. and NATO have good intentions in the Amazon. He has publicly criticized the U.S. drug war policy by pointing out its obligations as the world’s largest consumer. Petro stated: “What I am trying to do is to take the dialogue with the United States to a different axis, which is the issue of the climate crisis and hence the importance of the Amazon rainforest. With the United States we have achieved the creation of the first military unit with Black Hawk helicopters”.
Richardson’s visit to Colombia was part of a tour of several countries in the region with the express purpose of counteracting the influence of China and Russia, and to promote the isolation of Nicaragua, Cuba and Venezuela.
In November Petro reported that French President Emmanuel Macron offered him “help” to preserve the Amazon. It should be recalled that France has an overseas department in French Guiana, bordering Brazil and just 500 kilometers from the mouth of the Amazon River. In this territory is located the launching base for spacecraft used by the country and by Europe. Without knowing the content of the offer or the counter offer to be granted by Colombia, the agreement between the two countries places France in a position of influence at both ends of the strategic basin.
Map of the Amazon River drainage basin with the Amazon River highlighted. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
Ecuador
Last December, the United States approved a law aimed at strengthening cooperation with Ecuador in defense matters. This instrument, called the Ecuador-U.S. Partnership Act 2022, is part of the U.S. National Defense Spending Authorization Act and follows the recently approved open skies agreement, with a view to reducing tariffs, increasing travel and trade and stimulating job creation related to air bridges between the two countries.
All this is intended to be understood as a trade promotion strategy, but the resources committed by the United States (US$858 billion) will be under the jurisdiction of the Department of Defense, which clearly establishes its orientation.
Earlier, in September of last year, General Richardson also visited Ecuador where she met with President Lasso and led the South American Defense Conference Southdec 2022 for two days, in order to coordinate “mechanisms for the fight against organized crime and drug trafficking”.
Uruguay
Last February 3, the outstanding Uruguayan political analyst Julián González Guyer published in the magazine Brecha de Montevideo an article in which he informed that the US Coast Guard Cutter (USCGC) Stone, the most modern vessel of the US Coast Guard would enter the port of Montevideo for 10 days.
According to the article, the US vessel would remain in Uruguayan waters for ten days under the argument of “carrying out training exercises in search and rescue operations at sea and control of jurisdictional waters with the National Navy”. But in reality the objectives of the USCGC Stone are different, namely “to obtain information about the South Atlantic and, in particular, the activity of Chinese fishing vessels in the area”.
This is the second trip of the vessel to Uruguay, after the first one, made two years before to carry out “patrolling and support activities for the interdiction of illegal fishing in the waters of Guyana, Brazil and Uruguay”, although the scheduled visit to Argentina was cancelled.
On this occasion, as on the previous one, the public explanation about the objectives of the visit has been surrounded by contradictions between what has been reported by the national government and the U.S. Embassy in Montevideo.
González Guyer concludes by pointing out that while the learning that the Uruguayan Navy could have obtained is insignificant, the US ship would have gathered “a significant volume of information about our coasts, jurisdictional waters and adjacent areas. Also, about our Navy and its officers”.
For several decades, the Uruguayan Navy has been trained by the United States to act as a force dedicated to “protect” the entrance to the Río de la Plata, giving privileged space to the U.S. Navy in this aspect. The two visits of the Stone to Uruguay in such a short period of time can be inscribed in this logic.
But along with this, the Stone developed patrol missions in the South Atlantic, together with three other ships, establishing in fact a greater control over a strategic triangle in the South Atlantic and the Strait of Magellan between Montevideo, Malvinas and the 3rd Naval Zone of the Chilean Navy based in Punta Arenas.
Part III
Guatemala
Although in 2021 the US Congress issued a decree prohibiting the delivery of funds to the armies of Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras until there were improvements in the fight against corruption, the Department of Defence used a subterfuge to circumvent this decision by using an item that is not restricted.
The donation of J8 military vehicles that the US gave to the Guatemalan government to combat drug trafficking was actually used to provide perimeter protection to private security agents who burned down peasant farmers’ houses in El Estor, Izabal, in 2021. This donation was registered in the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programme, which is the largest military assistance programme approved by Congress. Likewise, in 2018, the government of Jimmy Morales used them to intimidate the US embassy itself and the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), which emerged from an agreement between the UN and the country’s authorities.
A few years later, the US Congress limited donations of vehicles to the Guatemalan army, given the history of their use. In the current government of Alejandro Giammattei, nine Democratic congressmen asked the Biden administration for explanations, but the response was silence in the face of the US armed forces’ decision to strengthen the Guatemalan army.
In this context, on 13 October, the US embassy in Guatemala City announced the donation of 95 vehicles, including trucks, vans and motorbikes, valued at US$4.4 million. According to the website Prensa Comunitaria, the source of this money is a Department of Defense (DOD) budget line approved in 2019, during the administration of former president Donald Trump.
In a commentary written by researcher Adam Isacson on the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA) website, he states that “the grant was funded through a DOD foreign military capacity building authority established in 2017 as Section 333 of Title 10 of the United States Code”.
A Congressional Research Service (CRS) report dated March 2022 makes it known that “The FY 2021 operations budget prohibits aid to Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras, while conditioning 50% of other State Department security-related appropriations to these countries on their governments combating corruption, protecting Human Rights, and addressing other congressional concerns.”
Isacson claimed that “a DOD programme was being used to provide a category of assistance that Guatemala cannot receive through the State Department’s main military assistance programme”, as an alternative budget was used to fund Guatemala’s military by bypassing congressionally mandated limitations that the DOD disregarded and disregarded.
Panama
In October last year, General Richardson arrived in Panama on her second trip to the country in less than five months. On this occasion, the reason for the visit was to hold a “bilateral security meeting”. On her first trip of the year, in June, the head of the Southern Command discussed security issues and the regional migration crisis with the Panamanian authorities. She also participated in the High Level Security Dialogue (HLSD) between Panama and the United States, which was held in that country.
The migration issue was at the centre of the deliberations at a time when Panama was facing a migration crisis. In the context, only a few days earlier, a new policy had come into force in the United States that legalised the expulsion of Venezuelan nationals who attempted to enter through the land border with Mexico or who had arrived irregularly in Panama.
On this issue, the director of Panama’s National Migration Service (SNM), Samira Gozaine, reported that they were “clamouring to the US embassy to help us, to assist us economically as they do with other countries. For the US, the migration crisis generated by its own policies has become a great opportunity for intervention and “legal” interference in the internal affairs of the countries of the region.
Brazil
During a visit to Brazil in September last year, General Richardson stated that there was an “outline” of a joint military force between her country and Brazil with helicopters to – allegedly – fight fires in the Amazon jungle.
According to Uruguayan analyst Luis Vignolo, “the information went unnoticed, perhaps not coincidentally, while the mainstream media looked in other directions”. But the truth is that there were strong military rapprochements between the two countries during the government of Jair Bolsonaro. Three months earlier, during the IX Summit of the Americas, held in Los Angeles, California, between 6 and 10 June, Brazil and the United States announced a bilateral rapid response group to combat deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, for which a high-level working group made up of authorities from both countries was created.
Deforestation in the Maranhão state of Brazil, 2016 (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)
By way of background, in August 2019, Donald Trump had designated Brazil as an “extra-NATO preferential ally of the United States” to the delight of Bolsonaro and his vice-president, retired general Hamilton Mourão. According to Vignolo, “Mourão referred in this context to the role of the Brazilian armed forces as a guarantee against the seizure of power by those he considers enemies, in what could be considered a warning against the opposition to the right-wing government”.
The violent eruption of fascist gangs a few days after Lula’s inauguration -just as had happened two years earlier in Washington with the prominence of Trump supporters- and the attitude of the armed forces to the event, seemed to set the tone for how the military would behave in the performance of Lula’s presidential duties, generating a threat accepted by the most reactionary sectors of the US establishment and by important sectors of its armed forces that consider their Brazilian counterparts to be important allies for the strategic control of the region.
Lula will have to confront US and European interests over the Amazon, especially now that his “shift” towards centrist positions has brought him closer to the Democratic Party that controls the US administration and European social democracy, which governs in countries like Germany and Spain, with whom he has established privileged ties that could facilitate the rapprochement of their armed forces to Brazil for a supposed “sustainable management” of the Amazon. In fact, Lula has already invited them to “invest” in ecologically sustainable projects in the region and has assured that this will be done with respect for Brazilian sovereignty. However, there is little detail on this.
The well-informed analyst and writer Andrew Korybko, who has done a lot of research on ‘hybrid wars’, has warned that ‘a fraction of the PT could be used by the US for its meddling purposes’. He has also expressed the view that US intervention in Brazil will not cease under the new Lula government, but will change form, taking on a kind of “radical destabilisation” to provide pretexts for NATO to intervene and ‘save’ a politically handcuffed Lula”.
Korybko believes that “all the elements for a total destabilisation of Brazil are in place, given the structural problems of the economy, the low parliamentary weight of the ruling party and the serious polarisation on the streets between Bolsonaro’s supporters and Lula’s supporters”.
Bolivia
The secessionist plan in Bolivia is longstanding. It had a moment of realisation after the US-backed coup against President Evo Morales in 2019 and has recently resurfaced in the form of a violent “civic strike” organised by a fascist paramilitary group in the department of Santa Cruz which is part of the Bolivian Amazon that constitutes 43% of the national territory.
The main operator of US policy against Bolivia has been Mark Falcoff, the Bush administration’s Latin America adviser. In his article ‘Bolivia’s Last Days’, published in American Outlook in May 2004, Falcoff ‘predicted’ the ethnic division of Bolivia following the wave of popular uprisings that led to the overthrow of President Sánchez de Lozada in 2003.
In his article, Falcoff notes that: ‘… it is a fundamental fact about Bolivia to know that it is a society divided along two great fault lines: race and geography’. Falcoff contrasts the situation in “Andean, poor, drug-crop-producing, violent, underdeveloped and levantistic Bolivia with prosperous Santa Cruz, which generated 51 per cent of the country’s income and received only ‘a small percentage’ of the profits generated by oil and gas”.
Falcoff therefore recommended a new Constitution that should “remedy the need to decentralise authority and resources” accompanied by “a true attempt at a federal solution, with a regional redistribution of resources and a rational energy policy”.
The plan that led to the coup d’état against Evo Morales and the recent fascist attempt to repeat it were part of this logic, although operational modifications have now been made without changing the objective of overthrowing the government. In the Pentagon’s sights – as General Richardson has openly made known – are the gigantic lithium deposits, which are not in the country’s Amazonian region, but in the Andean highlands. The exploitation and subsequent industrialisation of lithium by non-US foreign companies is causing concern in Washington, which is not relenting in its attempts to destabilise the country.
Peru
On 18 January 2023, Peruvian President Dina Boluarte and Prime Minister Alberto Otárola sent a letter to José Daniel Williams, President of the Peruvian Congress, requesting approval to authorise “the entry of naval units and foreign military personnel with weapons of war into the interior of the Republic”. This should be read as the entry of US military forces at a time of large mobilisations against the government that has overthrown President Pedro Castillo and usurped power, which has been resisted by important sectors of the population who have been subjected to strong repression. These actions have had the open and clear support of the US embassy and government.
Mexico
At the last minute, as this work in three instalments was coming to a close, information arrived that two representatives of the US Republican Party, Dan Crenshaw and Michael Waltz, presented a document to their country’s Congress to authorise the Armed Forces to carry out operations against Mexican cartels, without the acceptance of the US government.
In fact, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador rejected the possibility of the United States deciding “who is the good guy and who is the bad guy”, assuming itself to be the “government of the world”, with the power to intervene by force in any country on the planet.
Conclusions
To conclude, it is worth bearing in mind that the adoption by the United States of its new military concept of “integrated deterrence”, in which it expresses supposedly “shared values” with Latin America that in reality do not exist, is aimed at incorporating the countries of the region into its global war against China and Russia.
This “integrated deterrence” is a sort of pooling of the resources of the countries of the Americas to fight a supposedly common enemy. Washington calls for “unity” to confront the enemy it has unilaterally defined as the enemy, which is not necessarily the same as Latin America and the Caribbean, which should rather opt for neutrality and the search for peace.
The head of the Southern Command said it very precisely in Ecuador when she stated that “China’s advance is a national security problem”. She added that the United States and Latin America and the Caribbean should “work together as a team, playing our respective positions in a harmonious and highly effective way to resolve this problem”.
As has been seen, the instruments are varied, the actions manifest different dimensions and characteristics, but all aim to keep the region subject to Washington’s strategic control.
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***
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.” — George Washington
What the police state wants is a silent, compliant, oblivious citizenry.
What the First Amendment affirms is an engaged citizenry that speaks truth to power using whatever peaceful means are available to us.
Speaking one’s truth doesn’t have to be the same for each person, and that truth doesn’t have to be palatable or pleasant or even factual.
We can be loud.
We can be obnoxious.
We can be politically incorrect.
We can be conspiratorial or mean or offensive.
We can be all these things because the First Amendment takes a broad, classically liberal approach to the free speech rights of the citizenry: in a nutshell, the government may not encroach or limit the citizenry’s right to freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly and protest.
This is why the First Amendment is so critical.
It gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of retaliation, arrest or incarceration.
Nowhere in the First Amendment does it permit the government to limit speech in order to avoid causing offense, hurting someone’s feelings, safeguarding government secrets, protecting government officials, discouraging bullying, penalizing hateful ideas and actions, eliminating terrorism, combatting prejudice and intolerance, and the like.
When expressive activity crosses the line into violence, free speech protections end.
However, barring actual violence or true threats of violence, there is a vast difference between speech that is socially unpopular and speech that is illegal, and it’s an important distinction that depends on our commitment to safeguarding a robust First Amendment.
Increasingly, however, the courts and the government are doing away with that critical distinction, adopting the mindset that speech is only permissible if it does not offend, irritate, annoy, threaten someone’s peace of mind, or challenge the government’s stranglehold on power.
While protecting people from stalking is certainly a valid concern and may be warranted in this particular case, the law does not require speech to be a “true threat” in order to be criminally punished. The Supreme Court has defined a “true threat” as “statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group of individuals.”
Indeed, Colorado’s stalking law is so broad that a person can be charged with stalking for repeatedly contacting, surveilling or communicating with an individual in such a way that a reasonable person would feel serious emotional distress.
In the absence of any substantive guidelines on what constitutes a true threat on social media, such laws could empower the government to misinterpret any speaker’s intent and meaning in order to criminalize legitimate political speech that is critical of government officials and representatives.
The Rutherford Institute has taken on the case, warning that the ramifications of it going unchallenged could render anyone who quotes the Bible a criminal if it makes a listener feel unsafe or threatened or judged.
This is what it means to criminalize free speech: it turns those who exercise their free speech rights into criminals.
This criminalization of free speech, which is exactly what the government’s prosecution of those who say the “wrong” thing using an electronic medium amounts to, was at the heart of Elonis v. United States, a case that wrestled with where the government can draw the line when it comes to expressive speech that is protected and permissible versus speech that could be interpreted as connoting a criminal intent.
The case arose after Anthony Elonis, an aspiring rap artist, used personal material from his life as source material and inspiration for rap lyrics which he then shared on Facebook.
For instance, shortly after Elonis’ wife left him and he was fired from his job, his lyrics included references to killing his ex-wife, shooting a classroom of kindergarten children, and blowing up an FBI agent who had opened an investigation into his postings.
Despite the fact that Elonis routinely accompanied his Facebook posts with disclaimers that his lyrics were fictitious, and that he was using such writings as an outlet for his frustrations, he was charged with making unlawful threats (although it was never proven that he intended to threaten anyone) and sentenced to 44 months in jail.
The question the U.S. Supreme Court was asked to decide in Elonis was whether his activity, in the absence of any overt intention of committing a crime, rose to the level of a “true threat” or whether it was protected First Amendment activity.
Despite the Supreme Court’s ruling in Elonis, Corporate America has taken the lead in policing expressive activity online, with social media giants such as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube using their formidable dominance in the field to censor, penalize and regulate speech and behavior online by suspending and/or banning users whose content violated the companies’ so-called community standards for obscenity, violence, hate speech, discrimination, conspiracy theories, etc.
The fallout is as one would expect.
The internet has become a forum for the government—and its corporate partners—to monitor, control and punish the populace for speech that may be controversial but is far from criminal.
Everything is now fair game for censorship if it can be construed as hateful, hurtful, bigoted or offensive provided that it runs counter to the established viewpoint.
In this way, the most controversial issues of our day—race, religion, sex, sexuality, politics, science, health, government corruption, police brutality, etc.—have become battlegrounds for those who claim to believe in freedom (of religion, speech, assembly, press, redress, privacy, bodily integrity, etc.) but only when it favors the views and positions they support.
In more and more cases, the government is declaring war on what should be protected political speech whenever it challenges the government’s power, reveals the government’s corruption, exposes the government’s lies, and encourages the citizenry to push back against the government’s many injustices.
Indeed, there is a long and growing list of the kinds of speech that the government considers dangerous enough to red flag and subject to censorship, surveillance, investigation and prosecution: hate speech, conspiratorial speech, treasonous speech, threatening speech, inflammatory speech, radical speech, anti-government speech, extremist speech, etc.
In recent years, the government has used the phrase “domestic terrorist” interchangeably with “anti-government,” “extremist” and “terrorist” to describe anyone who might fall somewhere on a very broad spectrum of viewpoints that could be considered “dangerous.”
You see, the government doesn’t care if you or someone you know has a legitimate grievance. It doesn’t care if your criticisms are well-founded. And it certainly doesn’t care if you have a First Amendment right to speak truth to power.
It just wants you to shut up.
Yet no matter what one’s political persuasion might be, the right to disagree with and speak out against the government is the quintessential freedom. When exercised regularly and defended vigorously, these First Amendment rights serve as a bulwark against tyranny.
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***
Classified documents allegedly leaked by Air National Guardsman Jack Teixeira have revealed that the US is closely spying on UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and is not happy with his engagement with Moscow.
Several documents detail Guterres’ communications, including one that accuses him of “undermining” efforts to take action against Russia over its invasion of Ukraine. The document addresses his communications with Moscow regarding the grain deal that unlocked Ukraine’s Black Sea ports.
To broker the deal between Moscow and Kyiv, the UN agreed to help facilitate the export of Russian fertilizer and grain, which has been hindered by Western sanctions despite exemptions for agricultural goods.
The document reads:
“UN Secretary-General Guterres is taking steps to accommodate Russia in an effort to protect the Black Sea Grain Initiative (BSGI), which he considers a pivotal UN success and key to addressing global food insecurity, and his actions are undermining broader efforts to hold Moscow accountable for its actions in Ukraine.”
The document was likely written either in late February or early March before Russia and Ukraine agreed to extend the grain deal on March 18. It says in early February, Guterres “urged Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in a letter to renew the BSGI before its term expires on March 18 and Guterres emphasized his efforts to improve Russia’s ability to export, even if that involves sanctioned Russian entities or individuals, according to FISA-derived signal intelligence.”
Leaked document that shows US intelligence on Guterres
Signal intelligence refers to information obtained by intercepting communications. In response to the revelation that the US was spying on Guterres, his spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told Al Jazeera that he is “not surprised by the fact that people are spying on him and listening in on his private conversations.”
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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.
April 19th, 2023 by Center For Biological Diversity
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***
A federal judge today ruled in favor of oil giant ConocoPhillips by denying a motion for preliminary injunction brought by environmental groups as part of a lawsuit challenging the Willow project in Alaska’s Western Arctic. The ruling allows construction activities planned for the remaining three weeks of the construction season, including constructing roads and a gravel mine as a first step toward developing a massive oil-extraction operation.
The road construction and gravel mining plans are slated for high-density caribou winter habitat, which will disturb the herd and affect hunters in the area. The request was part of a lawsuit filed last month by Earthjustice on behalf of Defenders of Wildlife, Friends of the Earth, and Greenpeace USA, and by the Center for Biological Diversity and Natural Resources Defense Council.
In the lawsuit, the environmental groups said the Interior Department’s March 13 approval of the Willow project was unlawful because it failed to consider reasonable alternatives, such as limiting the project’s harm to the climate and the most environmentally sensitive areas in the Western Arctic. The Interior Department also failed to adequately consider the greenhouse gas emissions from future fossil fuel extraction that the project would make possible.
This project is the beginning of widespread fossil fuel extraction that ConocoPhillips has planned for the region, which could contain up to 3 billion barrels of oil in addition to the 600 million barrels in the Willow project area. Willow alone is expected to produce 260 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions over 30 years.
The groups issued the following statements in response to today’s ruling:
“It’s heartbreaking that ConocoPhillips has been allowed to break ground on Willow before the court has fully assessed whether the project is lawful,” said Kristen Monsell, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “But this case isn’t over, and we’ll keep fighting to protect struggling Arctic wildlife and our climate from this disastrous project. We’re hopeful we’ll get the Willow project’s approval thrown out once again.”
“Although the White House and Department of Interior were not persuaded to stop Willow despite the advocacy of more than 5 million individuals, we are now using the power of the law to restore some balance. While this particular round of the legal challenge did not produce the outcome we had hoped for, our court battle continues,” said Erik Grafe, deputy managing attorney in Earthjustice’s Alaska Regional Office. “We will do everything within our power to protect the climate, wildlife, and people from this dangerous carbon bomb. Climate scientists have warned that we have less than seven years to get it right on climate change, and we cannot afford to lock in three decades of oil drilling that will only serve to open the door to more fossil-fuel extraction.”
“Today’s decision is a disappointment, but we remain undeterred,” said Nicole Whittington-Evans, Defenders of Wildlife’s Alaska Program director. “We remain committed to protecting the western Arctic and look forward to the court’s full consideration of the Willow project, including its impacts to polar bears threatened with extinction and massive carbon emissions that will worsen the climate crisis for decades to come.”
“We are disappointed that the court decided to allow development of this dangerous carbon bomb while our litigation plays out,” said Hallie Templeton, legal director for Friends of the Earth. “However, the fight has just begun. We are confident in our claims that the administration failed to fully assess the range of environmental, social and economic damages that Willow will have. From harming local caribou herds and subsistence communities to fueling the climate crisis, the federal government must revisit its decision to greenlight this disastrous project.”
“Allowing ConocoPhillips to bulldoze forward with construction of the largest oil and gas project on public lands before the lawsuits are settled is needlessly destructive,” said Natalie Mebane, climate campaign director at Greenpeace USA. “As the largest historical emitter of greenhouse gas emissions, the U.S. cannot afford Willow or any new oil and gas projects if we’re going to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis. New projects will take years if not decades to complete. They do nothing to meet current energy needs. It will only deepen our dependence on expensive fossil fuels while destroying our climate, harming our health, and polluting communities.”
“Willow is a climate bomb that would lock in decades more dependence on fossil fuels, at the very time we need to shift to cleaner energy options,” said Ann Alexander, a senior attorney at Natural Resources Defense Council. “It would do irreparable harm to irreplaceable resources. It has no place in our energy future. Its approval was unlawful. We look forward to making that case before the Court.”
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Featured image: Caribou graze on the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. (Photo: USFWS/Flickr cc)
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***
On a calm Wednesday morning, Allam Abdulhaq was cleaning his small shop in the Mreij Street in Nablus, in the occupied West Bank, when he found himself in the middle of a violent Israeli undercover raid.
It took him a few moments before he realised that a group of telecommunication workers that had arrived in his neighbourhood moments earlier was in fact an Israeli forces unit preparing to detain Palestinian fighter Mohammed Hamdan.
The raid, on 22 March, came as part of a series of similar Israeli military raids into various West Bank towns and neighbourhoods that aimed to detain or assassinate wanted Palestinian resistance fighters.
Many of these raids resulted in the killing of several Palestinians, in what Palestinian officials have described as a series of “massacres“.
In a trembling voice, Abdulhaq recalled the events of that morning.
“I saw two young men dressing like workers of the telecommunication or the electricity company. They were carrying equipment and their clothes were covered in dust and dirt,” the 55-year-old shop owner said in a trembling voice as he recalled the events of that morning.
“One of them spoke to his colleague in Arabic then bought a bottle of water. A few moments later, a car with a ladder strapped to its roof arrived and four men got out. They asked the two young men: ‘Ready?’. They responded, ‘Yes, ready’.
“The four then headed to the delivery company in front of my shop, and the other two remained near my shop.
“A few minutes passed before Hamdan came running out of the company, followed by the four men who pointed their guns at him and shot him, then started yelling and cursing him using obscene words.”
While Abdulhaq was watching the incident unfold, the two young men pointed their guns to his head, forcing him to turn his back on the scene.
However, he tried to take a look to see if Hamdan, who was shot in the thigh, was still alive.
“I thought that it was a family problem or some kind of row, until military reinforcements arrived in a bus that was carrying undercover agents and Israeli forces. Only then did I realise that what was going on was a military raid to detain a wanted Palestinian man,” Abdulhaq told Middle East Eye.
Three weeks after the raid, Abdulhaq seems to still be in shock.
“I was terrified. I have diabetes and I was in a miserable state, so my brother, who is a doctor, called an ambulance,” he recalled.
“I cannot forget the voice of Mohammed Hamdan shouting as he was being detained: ‘Say hello to my daughters’. I cannot get him out of my mind.”
Disguised to assassinate
Since 2021, the Israeli army has intensified its raids into West Bank towns, where detention and assassination operations are usually conducted by undercover special forces.
Israeli soldiers would appear in Palestinian neighbourhood dressed like locals – including disguised as Muslim clerics, workers, journalists, or medics – to conduct highly secretive military operations.
The undercover forces have since managed to enter Palestinian towns using trucks and vehicles that carried names of Palestinian companies and food factories, or cars with Palestinian number plates.
Surprisingly, most of the raids were conducted at peak hours in overcrowded markets and neighbourhoods, turning them into battlefields.
One month before the undercover raid in Nablus, on 22 February, Israeli forces stormed the city and killed 11 Palestinians.
Disguised as clergy and holding prayer rugs in which they had hid their weapons, Israeli undercover forces entered a crowded market, and headed to the Grand Salahi Mosque, according to eyewitness accounts.
The special forces then left the mosque and moved towards a nearby building where Palestinian fighters were said to be located, before they were joined by large military reinforcements.
The house was besieged, and missiles were fired at the building, while Israeli snipers were spotted in the vicinity.
An Israeli military helicopter was also seen hovering over the city.
Undercover in broad daylight
Three weeks later, on 16 March, a similar raid was conducted in the West Bank city of Jenin, although with some variations.
On a busy Thursday afternoon on Abu Baker street, where Jenin’s central market is usually crowded before the weekend, four gunmen alighted from a vehicle and opened fire at the crowd of shoppers and pedestrians, as they targeted two Palestinian resistance fighters.
The two men – identified as Nidal Khazem, 28, and Youssef Shreim, 29 – had left the Jenin camp that day, where they had been in hiding, to visit a barber shop and a sweet shop in the city.
They were on a motorcycle when they were killed, along with two others, including a 16-year-old boy. Twenty three others were also wounded in the raid, according to the Palestinian health ministry.
“Everyone was screaming and crying and running everywhere. Women and children were terrified, while men were trying to protect us and get us inside the shops to avoid being shot,” said Sora Abu al-Rob, who was leaving a dental clinic when the incident occurred.
“I decided to go back to the clinic. I thought that maybe it would be safer than the street. But the clinic’s window was directly overlooking the roof of the opposite building, where resistance fighters hid behind water tanks and clashed with the special forces.”
Abu al-Rob and other patients in the clinic took shelter from the shooting in one of the corridors.
Before visiting the clinic, Abu al-Rob had met with friends she had not seen in seven months.
“We walked in the city’s neighbourhoods and talked about how much we love it, and about the intimacy we feel being in it. But this intimacy vanished in the blink of an eye, and turned into fear and horror,” she recalled.
“[When the shooting started] I tried to reach out to my friends to make sure they were ok, but I could not,” she said.
“[Military] raids are nothing new to the Palestinian people, but they are usually conducted on the outskirts of cities and neighbourhoods.
“What made it horrific that time was the fact that it occurred in the middle of an overly crowded market.”
Following the incident, Abu al-Rob said in a Facebook post:
“This is a scene that we do not get used to, no matter how many times it occurs. These grieving voices do not disappear with time. This huge loss does not fade with time. Rather, they generate fear, hatred, long revenge, and perhaps…a little hope.”
‘You’re a Palestinian, you’re a target’
As soon as a raid begins, Mohammed Ordonia, a football coach and photographer, puts on his paramedic suit and rushes to the field to treat the wounded.
In such events, Ordonia says that he and his fellow paramedics “forget the fear” as their first concern and priority becomes “saving lives”.
The 28-year-old paramedic and several of his colleagues, who were part of a medical relief team of 25, were present in the the Bab al-Saha area in Nablus the day of the 22 February raid.
“We had been dispersed across multiple areas to ensure that we could respond to any injury cases throughout the areas of clashes,” Ordonia told MEE.
“We treated a large number of wounds caused by live bullets, rubber bullets, and tear gas canisters.”
Ordonia said that during military raids, Israeli forces do not differentiate between paramedics, civilians, and resistance fighters.
“You’re a Palestinian, you’re a target. Paramedics are always in the occupation’s bank of targets,” he added.
His fellow paramedic, Hamza Abu Hajar, was seriously wounded in the liver and spleen while he was trying to treat a wounded Palestinian in December.
“I do not stop thinking of what would happen if I were to be in his place one day,” Ordonia said. “But once we receive the call to save the wounded, and the moment I wear my paramedic suit, I perform ablution and pray, then I rush to the field. At that moment, these thoughts stop, and I forget about death.”
In many cases, ambulances are targeted by Israeli gunfire or prevented from evacuating the wounded and reaching the hospitals.
“Many of the wounded arrive in private cars rather than ambulances. In such events, the youth of the camp, who also resist the occupation, work as paramedics,” said Nawal Anboussi, a public relations officer at the Ibn Sina Hospital, adjacent to Jenin camp.
The aftermath of grief
Away from street battles, a different type of battlefield takes place in hospitals during raids.
“As soon as the raid begins, the hospital near the scene of the incident prepares to receive the wounded. Doctors from all departments are called upon to ensure that they are fully equipped to receive and treat all injuries, working tirelessly to save lives,” Anboussi said.
The emergency rooms become crowded with victims and their families who rush to the hospitals to see whether their sons are among the victims, and whether they are alive.
The wounded arrive one after another, leaving doctors exhausted in their attempts to save those who are seriously wounded. Their voices can be heard echoing throughout the hospital, calling for blood donations, or asking nurses to transfer the wounded to operating rooms or intensive care units.
“Relatives of the wounded wait in the emergency department, not knowing if their fathers, brothers or sons would survive. But the harshest scene I have experience was when I comforted a mother of a seriously wounded young man, telling her that he was going to survive, only to know, ten minutes later, that he had passed away,” Anboussi recalled.
“There are only a few moments between the hope of survival and the fear of loss.”
Last year, Anboussi took part in shrouding Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh after she was assassinated by Israeli forces, an experience she still cannot believe she had lived through.
“I was shocked by what happened, and as I was shrouding her, I still could not believe it. Everyone who saw me that day told me that I appeared to be unwell.”
A few hours after each military raid, and after the special forces retreat, doctors continue to perform their utmost to save the wounded, while the dead are mourned and buried.
The entire city usually falls into a state of deep grief, and shops close down as most West Bank cities observe a general strike.
Military funerals are held for resistance fighters who are killed during clashes with Israeli forces to honour their struggle against the occupation, and scores of residents go to the streets to attend funerals, chanting for Palestine and the victims, and threatening the Israeli occupation with retaliation.
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Featured image: A graffiti of Naji al-Ali’s Handala on the West Bank separation wall
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A new study from Sweden showed that a previously healthy woman developed symptoms of “microwave syndrome” shortly after a 5G cell tower was installed 60 meters — nearly 200 feet — from her apartment.
According to the study, published April 10 in the Annals of Clinical and Medical Case Reports, the 52-year-old woman developed “severe health problems” — including “unbearable” pain, headache, dizziness, loss of immediate memory, confusion, fatigue, anxiety, nose bleeds and issues with her lungs, stomach and urinary system.
The woman temporarily relocated to another home with low radiation levels and no 5G exposure, at which point almost all of her symptoms disappeared. When she moved back to her apartment, the symptoms returned.
The study’s findings mirror the results of two prior case reports, conducted by the same researchers, which showed that non-ionizing radiation from 5G — well below levels allowed by authorities — can cause health problems in individuals with no prior history of electromagnetic sensitivity, the authors said.
The case reports’ lead author, Dr. Lennart Hardell — an oncologist and world-leading scientist on cancer risks with the Environment and Cancer Research Foundation — said the symptoms seen in the three case reports first appeared when a 3G or 4G tower was replaced by a 5G tower, indicating that 5G radiation is “devastating” for some individuals for whom it leads to “a whole range of medical problems,” he said.
Hardell and co-author Mona Nilsson measured “extremely high” microwave radiation levels — much higher than levels recommended by scientists — outside and inside the woman’s apartment.
They included a drawing that showed the location of the cell tower (A) in relation to the woman’s apartment (B).
On the woman’s balcony, they measured 2,5000,000 μW/m2 (microwatts per square meter) as the peak value — the highest reading the meter could register, an indication that the radiation level may have been even higher, they said.
Inside the apartment, they measured a peak value of 758,000 μW/m2 with sharp variations — or pulses — over one minute, which they displayed in a graph.
Credit: Lennart Hardell and Mona Nilsson
“These measurements are very alarming,” said Nilsson, managing director of the Swedish Radiation Protection Foundation. “They confirm the concerns raised by hundreds of scientists that 5G would lead to an increase in exposure to microwave radiation — which has already been proven harmful at levels lower than governmental limits.”
It’s not just 5G’s high radiation levels that are problematic — it’s the highly repetitive nature of the pulsating 5G signal that harms people’s health, the authors said.
“In medicine, you have a recovery period,” Hardell said. “It takes [the] cellular system time to recover from something that’s bad for it.”
For instance, he said, research on radiation treatment for fighting cancer has shown that the radiation has a stronger biological effect when one treatment is given in the morning and one in the afternoon — rather than just once a day — because cells do not have time to recover.
“Here we have the same problem,” Hardell added.
Complete ‘darkness and silence’ on part of the media
The researchers determined that medical problems surfaced when people were “passively exposed” in their own homes, Hardell emphasized.
“That’s not to be tolerated in a democratic society, in my view,” he said. “The deployment of 5G needs to be stopped and the 5G existing stations need to be dismantled.”
The study coincides with the Biden administration’s April 12 launch of a $1.5 billion telecommunications “innovation fund” to “help to ensure that the future of 5G and next-gen wireless technology is built by the U.S. and its global allies and partners.”
Hardell — who has conducted epidemiological research on environmental toxins since the 1970s — said when he was publishing the world’s first case reports on the health effects of Agent Orange “people were actually mad” that large herbicide companies were spraying the chemicals in forests.
“The media was on their toes and really reported about all these things, which led to more studies,” he said.
But that’s not the case with 5G, he said. “There is complete darkness and silence in the media about this problem … the governments ignore this completely, and there is no political or media pressure on politics to do anything about this.”
Hardell said it is “almost forbidden” in Sweden to discuss or publish about the health implications of 5G, he added.
Industry profits — not public demand — driving expansion of 5G
Nilsson said it’s “madness” for a society to expose the public to 5G radiation without an established track record of safety.
The 5G rollout is driven by the telecommunication industry’s desire for profits, she said. “That’s the driving force. It’s not the public demand.”
“We need to dismantle and reduce the use of this wireless technology because it’s clearly harmful … and we need to start looking at alternatives and use more of the cabled internet and cabled communication, which is safe,” Nilsson added.
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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.
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***
A newly-released court filing raises grave questions about the relationship between Alec Station, a CIA unit set up to track Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and his associates, and two 9/11 hijackers leading up to the attacks, which was subject to a coverup at the highest levels of the FBI.
Obtained by SpyTalk, the filing is a 21-page declaration by Don Canestraro, a lead investigator for the Office of Military Commissions, the legal body overseeing the cases of 9/11 defendants. It summarizes classified government discovery disclosures, and private interviews he conducted with anonymous high-ranking CIA and FBI officials. Many agents who spoke to Canestraro headed up Operation Encore, the Bureau’s aborted, long-running probe into Saudi government connections to the 9/11 attack.
Despite conducting multiple lengthy interviews with a range of witnesses, producing hundreds of pages of evidence, formally investigating several Saudi officials, and launching a grand jury to probe a Riyadh-run US-based support network for the hijackers, Encore was abruptly terminated in 2016. This was purportedly due to a byzantine intra-FBI bust-up over investigative methods.
When originally released in 2021 on the Office’s public court docket, every part of the document was redacted except an “unclassified” marking. Given its explosive contents, it is not difficult to see why: as Canestraro’s investigation concluded, at least two 9/11 hijackers had been recruited either knowingly or unknowingly into a joint CIA-Saudi intelligence operation which may have gone awry.
‘A 50/50 chance’ of Saudi involvement
In 1996, Alec Station was created under the watch of the CIA. The initiative was supposed to comprise a joint investigative effort with the FBI. However, FBI operatives assigned to the unit soon found they were prohibited from passing any information to the Bureau’s head office without the CIA’s authorization, and faced harsh penalties for doing so. Efforts to share information with the FBI’s equivalent unit – the I-49 squad based in New York – were repeatedly blocked.
In late 1999, with “the system blinking red” about an imminent large-scale Al Qaeda terror attack inside the US, the CIA and NSA were closely monitoring an “operational cadre” within an Al Qaeda cell that included the Saudi nationals Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar. The pair would purportedly go on to hijack American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.
Al-Hazmi and al-Midhar had attended an Al Qaeda summit that took place between January 5th and 8th 2000, in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The meeting was secretly photographed and videotaped by local authorities at Alec Station’s request although, apparently, no audio was captured. En route, Mihdhar transited through Dubai, where CIA operatives broke into his hotel room and photocopied his passport. It showed that he possessed a multi-entry visa to the US.
A contemporaneous internal CIA cable stated this information was immediately passed to the FBI “for further investigation.” In reality, Alec Station not only failed to inform the Bureau of Mihdhar’s US visa, but also expressly forbade two FBI agents assigned to the unit from doing so.
“[I said] ‘we’ve got to tell the Bureau about this. These guys clearly are bad…we’ve got to tell the FBI.’ And then [the CIA] said to me, ‘no, it’s not the FBI’s case, not the FBI’s jurisdiction’,” Mark Rossini, one of the FBI agents in question, has alleged. “If we had picked up the phone and called the Bureau, I would’ve been violating the law. I…would’ve been removed from the building that day. I would’ve had my clearances suspended, and I would be gone.”
On January 15th, Hazmi and Mihdhar entered the US through Los Angeles International Airport, just weeks after the foiled Millennium plot. Omar al-Bayoumi, a Saudi government “ghost employee” immediately met them at an airport restaurant. After a brief conversation, Bayoumi helped them find an apartment near his own in San Diego, co-signed their lease, set them up bank accounts, and gifted $1,500 towards their rent. The three would have multiple contacts moving forward.
In interviews with Operation Encore investigators years later, Bayoumi alleged his run-in with the two would-be hijackers was mere happenstance. His extraordinary practical and financial support was, he claimed, simply charitable, motivated by sympathy for the pair, who could barely speak English and were unfamiliar with Western culture.
The Bureau disagreed, concluding Bayoumi was a Saudi spy, who handled a number of Al Qaeda operatives in the US. They also considered there to be a “50/50 chance” he – and by extension Riyadh – had detailed advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks.
That remarkable finding wasn’t known publicly until two decades later, when a tranche of Operation Encore documents were declassified upon the Biden administration’s orders, and it was completely ignored by the mainstream media. Don Canestraro’s declaration now reveals FBI investigators went even further in their assessments.
A Bureau special agent, dubbed “CS-3” in the document, stated Bayoumi’s contact with the hijackers and support thereafter “was done at the behest of the CIA through the Saudi intelligence service.” Alec Station’s explicit purpose was to “recruit Al-Hazmi and Al-Mihdhar via a liaison relationship”, with the assistance of Riyadh’s General Intelligence Directorate.
A most ‘unusual’ CIA unit
Alec Station’s formal remit was to track bin Laden, “collect intelligence on him, run operations against him, disrupt his finances, and warn policymakers about his activities and intentions.” These activities would naturally entail enlisting informants within Al Qaeda.
Nonetheless, as several high level sources told Canestraro, it was extremely “unusual” for such an entity to be involved in gathering intelligence and recruiting assets. The US-based unit was run by CIA analysts, who do not typically manage human assets. Legally, that work is the exclusive preserve of case officers “trained in covert operations” and based overseas.
“CS-10”, a CIA case officer within Alec Station, concurred with the proposition that Hazmi and Mihdhar enjoyed a relationship with the CIA through Bayoumi, and was baffled that the unit was tasked with attempting to penetrate Al Qaeda in the first place. They felt it “would be nearly impossible…to develop informants inside” the group, given the “virtual” station was based in a Langley basement, “several thousand miles from the countries where Al Qaeda was suspected of operating.”
“CS-10” further testified that they “observed other unusual activities” at Alec Station. Analysts within the unit “would direct operations to case officers in the field by sending the officers cables instructing them to do a specific tasking,” which was “a violation of CIA procedures.” Analysts “normally lacked the authority to direct a case officer to do anything.”
“CS-11”, a CIA operations specialist posted to Alec Station “sometime prior to the 9/11 attacks” said they likewise “observed activity that appeared to be outside normal CIA procedures.” Analysts within the unit “mostly stuck to themselves and did not interact frequently” with others. When communicating with one another through internal cables, they also used operational pseudonyms, which “CS-11” described as peculiar, as they were not working undercover, “and their employment with the CIA was not classified information.”
The unit’s unusual operational culture may explain some of the stranger decisions made during this period vis a vis Al Qaeda informants. In early 1998, while on a CIA mission to penetrate London’s Islamist scene, a joint FBI-CIA informant named Aukai Collins received a stunning offer: bin Laden himself wanted him to go to Afghanistan so they could meet.
Collins relayed the request to his superiors. While the FBI was in favor of infiltrating Al Qaeda’s base, his CIA handler nixed the idea, saying, “there was no way the US would approve an American operative going undercover into Bin Laden’s camps.”
Similarly, in June 2001, CIA and FBI analysts from Alec Station met with senior Bureau officials, including representatives of its own Al Qaeda unit. The CIA shared three photos of individuals who attended the Kuala Lumpur meeting 18 months earlier, including Hazmi and Mihdhar. However, as an FBI counter-terror officer codenamed “CS-15” recalled, the dates of the photos and key details about the figures they depicted were not revealed. Instead, the analysts simply asked if the FBI “knew the identities of the individuals in the photos.”
Another FBI official present, “CS-12”, offers an even more damning account. The Alec Station analysts not failed to offer biographical information, but falsely implied one of the individuals might be Fahd Al-Quso, a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole. What’s more, they outright refused to answer any questions related to the photographs. Nonetheless, it was confirmed that no system was in place to alert the FBI if any of the three entered the US – a “standard investigative technique” for terror suspects.
Given Hazmi and Mihdhar appeared to be simultaneously working for Alec Station in some capacity, the June 2001 meeting may well have been a dangle. No intelligence value could be extracted from inquiring whether the Bureau knew who their assets were, apart from ascertaining if the FBI’s counter-terror team was aware of their identities, physical appearances, and presence in the US.
Quite some coverup
Another of Canestraro’s sources, a former FBI agent who went by “CS-23,” testified that after 9/11, FBI headquarters and its San Diego field office quickly learned of “Bayoumi’s affiliation with Saudi intelligence and subsequently the existence of the CIA’s operation to recruit” Hazmi and Mihdhar.
However, “senior FBI officials suppressed investigations” into these matters. “CS-23” alleged, furthermore, that Bureau agents testifying before the Joint Inquiry into 9/11 “were instructed not to reveal the full extent of Saudi involvement with Al-Qaeda.”
The US intelligence community would have had every reason to shield Riyadh from scrutiny and consequences for its role in the 9/11 attacks, as it was then one of its closest allies. But the FBI’s eager complicity in Alec Station’s coverup may have been motivated by self-interest, as one of its own was intimately involved in the unit’s effort to recruit Hazmi and Mihdhar, and conceal their presence in the US from relevant authorities.
“CS-12”, who attended the June 2001 meeting with Alec Station, told Canestraro that they “continued to press FBI Headquarters for further information regarding the subjects in the photographs” over that summer. On August 23rd, they stumbled upon an “electronic communication” from FBI headquarters, which identified Hazmi and Mihdhar, and noted they were in the US.
“CS-12” then contacted the FBI analyst within Alec Station who authored the communication. The conversation quickly became “heated”, with the analyst ordering them to delete the memo “immediately” as they were not authorized to view it. While unnamed in the declaration, the FBI analyst in question was Dina Corsi.
The next day, on a conference call between “CS-12”, Corsi, and the FBI’s bin Laden unit chief, “officials at FBI headquarters” explicitly told “CS-12” to “stand down” and “cease looking” for Mihdhar, as the Bureau intended to open an “intelligence gathering investigation” on him. The next day, “CS-12” emailed Corsi, stating bluntly “someone is going to die” unless Mihdhar was pursued criminally.
It was surely no coincidence that two days later, on August 26th, Alec Station finally informed the FBI that Hazmi and Mihdhar were in the US. By then, the pair had entered the final phase of preparations for the impending attacks. If a criminal probe had been opened, they could have been stopped in their tracks. Instead, as foreshadowed by the officials in contact with “CS-12,” an intelligence investigation was launched which hindered any search efforts.
In the days immediately after the 9/11 attacks, “CS-12” and other New York-based FBI agents participated in another conference call with Bureau headquarters. During the conversation, they learned Hazmi and Mihdhar were named on Flight 77’s manifest. One analyst on the line ran the pair’s names through “commercial databases,” quickly finding them and their home address listed in San Diego’s local phone directory. It turned out they had been living with an FBI informant.
“CS-12” soon contacted Corsi “regarding information on the hijackers.” She responded by providing a photograph from the same surveillance operation that produced the three pictures presented at the June 2001 meeting between Alec Station and FBI agents; they depicted Walid bin Attash, a lead suspect in Al Qaeda’s 1998 East Africa US Embassy bombings and its attack on the USS Cole.
Corsi was unable to explain why the photo was not shown to FBI agents earlier. If it had been, “CS-12” claims they would have “immediately linked” Hazmi and Mihdhar to bin Attash, which “would have shifted from an intelligence based investigation into a criminal investigation.” The FBI’s New York field office could have then devoted its “full resources” to finding the hijackers before the fateful day of September 11, 2001.
Alec Station operatives fail upwards
Alec Station’s tireless efforts to protect its Al Qaeda assets raises the obvious question of whether Hazmi and Mihdhar, and possibly other hijackers, were in effect working for the CIA on the day of 9/11.
The real motives behind the CIA’s stonewalling may never be known. But it appears abundantly clear that Alec Station did not want the FBI to know about or interfere in its secret intelligence operation. If the unit’s recruitment of Hazmi and Mihdhar was purely dedicated to information gathering, rather than operational direction, it is incomprehensible that the FBI had not been apprised of it, and was instead actively misdirected.
Several FBI sources consulted by Canestraro speculated that the CIA’s desperation to penetrate Al Qaeda prompted it to grant Alec Station the power to recruit assets, and pressured it to do so. But if this were truly the case, then why did Langley refuse the opportunity to send Aukai Collins – a proven deep cover asset who had infiltrated several Islamist gangs – to penetrate bin Laden’s network in Afghanistan?
One alternative explanation is that Alec Station, a powerful rogue CIA team answerable and accountable to no one, sought to infiltrate the terror group for its own sinister purposes, without the authorization and oversight usually required by Langley in such circumstances. Given that Collins was a joint asset shared with the FBI, he could not be trusted to participate in such a sensitive black operation.
No member of Alec Station has been punished in any way for the supposed “intelligence failures” that allowed 9/11 to go ahead. In fact, they have been rewarded. Richard Blee, the unit’s chief at the time of the attacks, and his successor Alfreda Frances Bikowsky, both joined the CIA’s operations division, and became highly influential figures in the so-called war on terror. Corsi, for her part, was promoted at the FBI, eventually rising to the rank of Deputy Assistant Director for Intelligence.
In a perverse twist, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the CIA’s torture program found that Bikowsky had been a key player in the agency’s black site machinations, and one of their chief public apologists. It is increasingly clear that the program was specifically concerned with eliciting false testimony from suspects in order to justify and expand the US war on terror.
The public’s understanding of the 9/11 attacks is heavily informed by testimonies delivered by CIA torture victims under the most extreme duress imaginable. And Bikowsky, a veteran of the Alec Station that ran cover for at least two would-be 9/11 hijackers, had been in charge of interrogating the alleged perpetrators of the attacks.
The veteran FBI deep cover agent Aukai Collins concluded his memoir with a chilling reflection which was only reinforced by Don Canestraro’s bombshell declaration:
“I was very mistrustful about the fact that bin Laden’s name was mentioned literally hours after the attack… I became very skeptical about anything anybody said about what happened, or who did it. I thought back to when I was still working for them and we had the opportunity to enter Bin Laden’s camp. Something just hadn’t smelled right…To this day I’m unsure who was behind September 11, nor can I even guess… Someday the truth will reveal itself, and I have a feeling that people won’t like what they hear.”
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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.
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Joe Biden’s administration keeps boasting about how successful international sanctions have been in punishing Russia for invading Ukraine. But that boast is increasingly hollow, both with respect to the extent of international unity and the success of the sanctions. Instead of being a success story, the U.S.-led sanctions campaign against Russia is fast becoming another example of a chronically failed tactic.
The administration’s propaganda about widespread global support relies primarily on 2 resolutions condemning the invasion that the UN General Assembly approved, one in March 2022 and the other in February 2023. However, both resolutions were purely symbolic, toothless measures. They did not commit member states to take any action. Nevertheless, more than one-fifth of the UN members, including such key players as China, South Africa, and India, defied Washington’s pressure and cast negative votes or abstentions.
A more graphic and substantive indication of the unwillingness of countries not already in Washington’s geopolitical orbit to join the crusade against Moscow is their refusal to impose economic sanctions. Except for the NATO bloc and long-standing U.S. security dependents in East Asia, the global map is nearly devoid of countries that have adopted punitive measures. Such absence of support throughout the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America is especially striking.
Western sanctions have damaged Russia’s economy, but they have been decidedly less effective than Washington’s boasts would imply. After a brief, sharp decline, the Ruble has become one of the stronger currencies internationally, making a mockery of President Biden’s prediction that it would soon become “the rubble.” Russia also remains a key export power in terms of both energy and food. Indeed, the Kremlin has been markedly successful in shifting its exports from European markets to those in other regions. Most notably, it has replaced Saudi Arabia as China’s largest source of oil and natural gas. Collaboration on that issue is just one sign of an emerging bilateral alliance between the Asian giants – a development that gives US military planners nightmares.
The faltering of the U.S.-led strategy of economic sanctions against Russia should not come as a surprise. Similar campaigns have a long track record of being an ineffective foreign policy tool. North Korea has not capitulated to Washington’s demands despite massive economic pressure since the middle of the twentieth century. US sanctions against Cuba, now in their seventh decade, and against Iran, now in their fifth decade, have produced similar frustrations for US policymakers.
The seminal scholarly work of Gary Hufbauer, Jeffrey Schott, and Kimberly Ann Elliott, Economic Sanctions Reconsidered, documented how sanctions rarely achieved their policy goals. More recent editions of the book confirm the conclusion with even greater certainty. Sanctions inconvenience the targeted regime – and create substantial suffering for innocent people in that country – but they seldom compel the regime to capitulate or even make major concessions. As Hufbauer, Schott, and Elliott demonstrate, that outcome is especially true when the issue at stake is a high-priority matter for the country’s political leadership.
The habitual ineffectiveness of sanctions is reason enough to reject such a policy option, but their pervasive cruelty should be an even more compelling reason. Unfortunately, US and other Western officials seem oblivious or callous about that problem. The ongoing sanctions against Russia have undoubtedly injured tourist shop owners in Saint Petersburg, where cruise ships now are barred from stopping. Yet how driving a middle-age seller of nesting dolls into bankruptcy is supposed to compel Vladimir Putin to cease his war against Ukraine remains a mystery.
Undoubtedly the most shocking example of insensitivity about the collateral damage that economic sanctions inflict was a comment that Madeleine Albright made in the mid-1990s. CBS 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl cited accounts that the U.S.-led international sanctions against Iraq, still in effect years after the Persian Gulf War, had cost the lives of 500,000 Iraqi children. When asked if the policy had been worth such a price, Albright responded: “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” It was a stunningly callous comment, but there is little evidence that Albright’s successors in either Republican or Democratic administrations have adopted a more enlightened attitude.
Continuing to impose economic sanctions that inflict suffering on innocent civilians is a policy unworthy of a decent country. The United States and NATO need to abandon that course with respect to Russia and the other targets of Washington’s wrath.
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Ted Galen Carpenter is a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute and a senior fellow at the Libertarian Institute. He also served in various policy positions for 37 years at the Cato Institute. Dr. Carpenter is the author of 13 books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs. His latest book is Unreliable Watchdog: The News Media and U.S. Foreign Policy (2022).
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Declassified documents from 1998, when the UK and US bombed Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, show Tony Blair was consistently informed military action was unlawful without UN authorisation. But he told parliament Britain had “the proper legal authority”.
Tony Blair and his closest advisers were consistently informed by British legal advisers in 1997 and 1998 that attacking Iraq would not be lawful – but still went ahead in authorising four days of bombing in December 1998.
The declassified British documents at the National Archives show Blair was already set on taking military action against Saddam Hussein’s regime throughout 1998 in the absence of legal arguments to justify it.
The Labour prime minister’s dismissal of legal objections to his 1998 bombing campaign – known as Operation Desert Fox – was a direct precursor to his stance over the invasion of Iraq five years later in 2003, which was also deemedillegal.
The four-day bombing campaign on Iraq from 16 to 19 December 1998 by the US and British militaries sought to degrade Iraq’s ability to store and produce weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq’s dictator Saddam Hussein had invaded Kuwait in 1990 and used chemical weapons against Kurds in northern Iraq in 1988. During much of 1998, he was refusing to provide full access to international inspectors who had been mandated by the UN in 1991 to monitor and remove Iraq’s biological, chemical and missile capabilities.
US president Bill Clinton was widely criticised for ordering the December bombing as a distraction from the ongoing impeachment proceedings against him over sexual harassment charges and his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
‘Essential precondition’
The British files show Blair was told for over a year before the 1998 bombing that using force in Iraq would only be lawful if a new UN Security Council resolution were to be passed saying Saddam was in “material breach” of Iraq’s previous commitments.
Blair’s private secretary, John Holmes, informed his boss on 12 November 1997 that British law officers and foreign secretary Robin Cook “are convinced we have a serious problem about using force unless the Security Council declares that Iraq is in ‘material breach’ of previous resolutions. That may be unattainable.”
Holmes’ minute also indicated some of Blair’s own thinking.
He wrote to Blair:
“The lawyers will also be inclined to fuss constantly about how far whatever force we use is related to Iraq’s offence and proportionate. Like you, I have doubts about how far international law can really be used in the way the lawyers want to use it… but it will be very hard to dismiss the legal arguments altogether”.
Holmes then added that “it is probably sensible to prepare to deploy British forces” but cautioned that “we will need a careful press line”.
Two days later, on 14 November, the prime minister was expressly told by John Morris, the Attorney General, that “an essential precondition” to using force would be a Security Council “statement”.
Morris’s only qualification was that “exceptional circumstances could arise” where the international community as a whole, in the absence of a statement, agreed that Iraq “had in effect repudiated the ceasefire and that a resort to force…was the only way to ensure compliance with the ceasefire conditions”.
Holmes, who went on to become an ambassador and then chair of the Electoral Commission, told Blair on the same day: “As I have said before, we can regard these legal arguments as misplaced but they cannot be ignored. The resignation of a Law Officer, if it came to that, would be pretty bad. They therefore need to be kept on board”.
But then he also added: “We must certainly try to consult them before we do anything serious, if at all possible, even if you have to override their views”.
‘Sound legal basis’
As military planning to strike Iraq continued into 1998, ministers considered the legality of allowing US aircraft to bomb the country using the British-occupied island of Diego Garcia, a military base in the Indian Ocean.
The Attorney General again wrote to Blair on 12 February reaffirming that “the lawfulness of attacking specific targets in Iraq also depends on there being a sound legal basis for the use of force”.
Michael Pakenham, the chair of the Joint Intelligence Committee, told Holmes: “The Law Officers are declining to give clearance to the targeting plans because, as set out in the Attorney General’s minute of 12 February to the prime minister, they do not feel that they are yet in a position to pronounce on the lawfulness of the overall operation”.
Pakenham then added: “it would be helpful if the prime minister could have a private word with the Law Officers”.
Blair penned a personal note to John Holmes on this bundle of papers, saying: “I still find the law officers advice unconvincing”.
He added: “There must at the very least be an argument that the S.C. [Security Council] has agreed there is a breach. The only issue is can we use force and why not if it is the only way to compliance.”
‘New resolution’
Also on 12 February 1998, the Foreign Office’s legal adviser, Sir Franklin Berman, weighed in. He wrote to his department’s senior civil servant stating: “The only valid claim to employ force (in this case) is under the authority of the Security Council…My view is that a new resolution in suitable terms is a sina qua non”.
He added: “The Ministerial Code requires Ministers to comply with the law, including international law…I cannot believe that Ministers would wish to order British servicemen into action unless their legal advisers were able to assure them that it was legally justifiable”.
Letter from Sir Franklin Berman to Foreign Office Permanent Undersecretary, 12 February 1998, in National Archives, PREM 49/294/1
Blair was again told of the Foreign Office view two days later, on 14 February, in a meeting with his Solicitor-General Charles Falconer.
He told Blair that in the Foreign Office “some lawyers argued very strongly that it would be the first time since 1956 that the UK had used force without the backing of the Security Council Resolution” – referring to Britain’s ill-fated invasion of Egypt over Suez.
“Some lawyers might feel strongly enough to resign”, Falconer warned Blair, since they might be expected to implement decisions “that they believed were incompatible with international law”.
According to the minutes of the meeting, Blair replied saying “he could not believe that there was not an alternative case to be made, even if the issue was not clear-cut”.
‘Preferable’
Five days later, on 19 February, Blair, Cook and defence secretary George Robertson attended a briefing by Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) Sir Charles Guthrie and Air Marshal John Day on “targeting plans for operations against Iraq”.
The minutes note that the “CDS mentioned that he was worried about the legal side; he hoped this could be sorted quickly”.
The minutes then state: “The prime minister noted that the legal advice was that securing another SCR [Security Council Resolution] was preferable.”
It added: “The key issues, though, were whether Saddam was in breach of SCRs [Security Council resolutions] and whether force was a legitimate response to that breach…The prime minister concluded that…he did not want to have everything depending on securing a further Resolution”.
In fact, Blair had been told by then that a further resolution was essential, not preferable. His last comment implied that he would be prepared to use military force without such a resolution – which is indeed what happened later in the year.
‘Exceptional circumstances’
One note in the bundle of papers – which is undated but likely to be from February 1998 – appears to be from officials ahead of a meeting between Blair and Attorney General John Morris. It suggests how Blair pressed Morris to legally justify the use of force.
Headlined “Speaking Notes for the Prime Minister: Iraq – The Legal Position”, it begins by saying: “I fully appreciate that the legal basis for use [sic] of military force against Iraq must be properly assessed before force is authorised”.
It refers to Morris’s memo of 14 November 1997 pointing out that it “helpfully indicated” there could be “exceptional circumstances” in which the use of force could be justified without a Security Council statement. It then says: “I trust that you can confirm now that my description of what would constitute ‘exceptional circumstances’ is correct”.
In the note, the justification for claiming that “exceptional circumstances” were prevailing was that Saddam Hussein was in breach of various Security Council resolutions – essentially, the argument Blair eventually relied on in attacking Iraq in December of that year.
The files that have been declassified do not appear to contain the minutes of that meeting.
‘The bottom line’
The problem for Blair and his officials – in 1998 as in 2003 – was that they knew UN member states, especially the permanent five on the Security Council, would not endorse a resolution citing a “material breach”.
As Cook’s principal private secretary, Dominick Chilcott, wrote to Holmes on 16 February 1998, neither France nor Russia would support such a resolution authorising the use of force. “The negative implications for international support if we resort to military action without a new resolution would be serious”, Chilcott warned.
None of this stopped Blair and military action appeared imminent by late February.
On 20 February, a top secret note written by David Fisher in the Cabinet Office noted the US was “currently planning a 40 hour campaign involving several waves of attacks” including using cruise missiles and B52 bombers flying from Diego Garcia.
It was assumed the UK would participate: “We assess that of the 23 UK tactical aircraft involved in the operation we may lose one UK aircraft”, Fisher noted. Yet military action was not undertaken in February.
In July 1998, Michael Pakenham wrote a confidential note entitled “The Legal Use of Force”. He said the Foreign Office legal team was continuing to advise that “the bottom line remains that in most foreseeable circumstances, a Resolution of the UN Security Council is required before the use of such force can be authorised”.
He added that “acting against UN principles or without UNSCRs [UN Security Council resolutions] may in the short term meet some immediate need but is in the long term wholly contrary to our interests”.
‘Hard to avoid hitting him’
Tensions continued throughout 1998 and on 14 November Blair authorised striking Iraq but British and US forces were stood down at the last minute as Saddam agreed to permit inspections.
“In my view, it is clear that Iraq would not have retreated from this confrontation unless it had been faced with the credible threat of force”, Blair wrote to his EU opposite numbers.
Just before Iraq’s climb-down, the prime minister had held a meeting with Cook, Robertson and Guthrie in which he affirmed: “The time had now come for military action to be taken against Iraq”.
There was no direct discussion of legal issues, according to the minutes of that meeting, except that it was agreed to justify the use of force “not because he [Saddam] was in technical breach of UN Resolutions but because he posed a real and imminent threat to peace and security in the region”.
This was a de facto acknowledgement that the threshold demanded by Britain’s legal advisers – new Security Council authorisation – had not been met.
A Cabinet Office note of 20 November 1998, less than a month before the bombings, stated that: “At present, the legal basis for military action in the event of further non-cooperation would rest on the Security Council’s ‘flagrant violation’ language in UNSCR [UN Security Council Resolution] 1205”.
This resolution was adopted at the UN on 5 November and condemned Iraq’s failure to act consistently with previous UN resolutions. It did not, however, authorise the use of force.
Blair wrote to former foreign secretary David Owen on 7 December, referring to the climbdown of 14 November saying: “If there is a next time, I will have no hesitation in ordering the use of force once again.”
In one of numerous telephone calls with Clinton in the following week, Blair told him on 11 December that “if he [Saddam] refused more inspections this weekend, it would be hard to avoid hitting him”.
Wave of attacks
Five days later, the US and UK struck Iraq in a wave of air attacks. Almost 100 sites were attacked by US and British aircraft, with cruise missiles fired from US navy ships and B-52 bombers.
The bombing was widely criticised. Even General Peter de la Billiere, a former head of the SAS who commanded British forces in the 1991 Gulf war, questioned the political impact of the bombing campaign, saying aerial bombardments were not effective in driving people into submission, but tend to make them more defiant.
When Blair announced military action to parliament on 17 November, he said: “I have no doubt that we have the proper legal authority, as it is contained in successive Security Council resolution documents”.
This was misleading as he had been consistently advised that further UN authorisation was needed permitting the use of force.
Thus British officials justified their action by claiming that other UN resolutions passed in 1998 revived the authorisation to use force provided in Resolution 678, a remnant of the Gulf War passed eight years earlier, in 1990.
But since these other resolutions did not explicitly authorise the use of force, the UK argument was a spurious one. The 1998 bombing was supported in the 15-member Security Council only by the US, Japan and Portugal.
Five years later, in 2003, the UK and US relied on the same resolution – 678 – to justify their invasion when they again failed to secure a further Security Council resolution authorising the use of force.
Special relationship
The files suggest Blair in 1998 was motivated more by maintaining relations with the US than by upholding international law, as in 2003.
In a meeting with his senior advisers on 15 November 1998 the prime minister said that if the US pressed ahead with military action against Iraq even after the initial climb-down, the UK should still participate “in view of the extreme damage that would otherwise be caused to US/UK relations”.
On the same day, Clinton told Blair on the phone that military action against Iraq “might have to be used”. Blair replied saying he agreed and that Clinton “could count on our support throughout”.
If Saddam was unwilling to cooperate, “we would have to enforce our will”, Blair said, adding “even if there were some differences between us on the legal front”.
This was significant in that the files show US officials, unlike those in the UK, believed they had legal justification to strike Iraq. Blair was intimating to the US president he was prepared to override British legal concerns.
Blair mentioned this to Clinton the day following legal advice from his Attorney General, John Morris, saying a Security Council statement was “an essential precondition” to using force.
By early 1998, as Washington and London were also close to striking Iraq, Blair told Solicitor-General Charles Falconer on 14 February that “it was inconceivable that we would refuse the Americans the use of the base at Diego Garcia. At the very least this had to be legally possible”.
The government has not declassified all the files relating to this period. It is keeping secret several of the Iraq files from the prime minister’s office, including threedocumentfolders covering the the end of 1998 and early 1999.
Tony Blair was approached for comment.
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Mark Curtis is the editor of Declassified UK, and the author of five books and many articles on UK foreign policy.
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Currently, we are witnessing a phenomenon, largely ignored or misinterpreted in the Western media, a phenomenon which some had thought unthinkable in 21st Century Europe, namely, an open and direct attack by a regime on a religious denomination with the aim of destroying it. As stated in the petition presented recently on this site, the Canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church (which has the largest number of followers) has been faced with a campaign of delegitimisation, bullying, humiliation and destruction/violent takeover of its properties by the unrecognized “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” backed by the SBU (Ukrainian Security Service). As spun by the anti-Russian Western media, this wave of religious destruction, indeed extermination, is a consequence of Russian “aggression”. This of course is not only fallacious but represents a conscious attempt to protect the spiritual descendants of the criminals who have been attacking Russian and Serb Orthodoxy for over half a century.
The same thing happened in the West’s break up of Yugoslavia when In December 2019 Montenegro’s parliament passed a law titled “On freedom of religion,” the legislation gave a portion of the Serbian Orthodox Church’s property to the canonically non-recognized Montenegrin Orthodox Church, which was created in 1993. The Serbian Orthodox Church effectively lost the right to all of its buildings that were built before 1918.
The Russian Special Operation in the Ukraine has given rise to a myriad analyses and speculations about the essence of the conflict. Many analysts favour geopolitical (e.g. the mastery of the Eurasian landmass, ocean-rimmed vs. land-based empires), unipolarity vs. multipolarity, economic (dollar’s dominance, oil, war for resources), political (rise of China, India and the “Third world”, future of neoliberal “democracy”, threat to world peace), military (hybrid and next-generation warfare) and cultural interpretations (weaponisation of artificial national identities).
All of these factors are of critical importance but underneath all of these layers of explanation lies another cause, which while almost completely ignored by most experts and commentators is of great significance – the religious element. For the purpose of this short essay, I shall call this factor “psycho-religious disposition”.
Although dismissed by modern thinkers as a vestigial superstition and primitivism of previous ages, it is the religious dimension that allows one to connect the dots and place the conflict in a proper historical context. One’s psycho-religious disposition is not confined to religious beliefs and church attendance. It is a psychological disposition that is jointly formed by deep civilizational influences and by the dominant religion to which a person is exposed. In the case of Russia, this has created a mentality or a national psyche that is warm (if not demonstrative), non-materialistic and spiritual. At the same time though, the experience of many wars and tragedies has resulted in a certain toughness and ability to endure the unendurable. A good description of this uniquely Russian moral psychology was given by the Scottish geologist Sir Roderick Impey Murchison who had conducted extensive research into the geology of Russia. In 1853, speaking at a rally against Britain’s participation on the Crimean war, he said:
“Even as Russia expands her possessions at the expense of her neighbouring colonies, unlike the other colonial powers she gives to these her new acquisitions more than she takes from them (italics mine). This is not because it is driven by some kind of philanthropy or anything like that.
The original aspirations of all empires differ little, but wherever a Russian man appears, everything miraculously takes an entirely different direction.The moral norms developed by the Eastern Slavs since pre-Christian times do not allow the Russian person to violate someone else’s conscience and infringe on the property which does not belong to him by right.
More often out of an ineradicable sense of compassion rooted in him he is ready to give up his last shirt than to take it away from someone else. Therefore, no matter how victorious the Russian weapons may be, in purely mercantile terms, Russia always loses.”
Thus Murchison described the Russian understanding of religion and morality. In general, while the Russian empire pursued earthly goals, its essence was not extermination, enslavement or forced religious conversion but a live-and-let-live attitude which has ensured that today almost 200 ethnic groups co-exist peacefully in Russia, having preserved their languages and customs.
It is this combination of old Slav traditions (connected to ancient India) and Orthodox Christianity that has compelled the Russians to stand up against hegemony and tyranny many times in their history and defend their country against massive invasions from both the East and in particular the West.
Despite being Caucasian and largely “European”, the Russians have always been treated with suspicion and disdain by the West. A pathological combination of fear, hatred and contempt has coloured Western attitudes ever since the Western Slavs were cleansed from Germanic lands starting in 8th Century N.E.
The Russian people refused to bow before the Teutonic knights and Roman Catholic priests. They also stubbornly refused to worship Mammon – the two unforgivable sins in the eyes of an increasingly expansive and “mercantilist” West. I do not intend to idealise Russia, only to offer hints as to why it has been the target of three crusades in the last 100 years. The first one began in 1914 and was motivated by the Austro-German ambition to curtail Russia’s influence in the Balkans and neutralise it as a great power. It could be said that this crusade was led by “Central Europe” – as Germany and Austria-Hungary liked to describe themselves. The religious character of this war was reflected in the full support of Pope Pius X for the Austro-German war aims, inhuman crimes of the Roman Catholic Austrians against Orthodox Serbs and Ruthenians as well as the establishment of a wholly artificial Ukrainian state by the German General Staff, based on a manufactured Galizian Uniate nationalism which provides the black thread connecting all three genocidal invasions.
The second crusade in 1941 (which was even named after a crusading Holy Roman emperor Friedrich Barbarossa) involved a Franco-German European Reich led by a Roman Catholic—Adolf Hitler (note the growth of the Crusading power relative to 1914). The consequences of this, probably the greatest crime in modern history (60 million dead of whom up to 30 million were Slav), are well known. The stirrings of Ukrainian nationalism of 1918 transmogrified into an orgy of mass slaughter and terror by the followers of a Uniate Fuehrer Stepan Bandera and his henchmen. The 13th Waffen SS Division Galizien was blessed by the leader of the Ukrainian Uniates, Andrey Sheptytsky. The horrific slaughter of approximately 100,000 Poles of Volyn has been erased from the collective memory of the current Polish establishment which leads the world in Catholicism-inspired Russophobia.
Although in 1945 it seemed that the evil of Nazism had been defeated forever, the Crusade against Soviet Russia continued unabated with the death of Franklin Roosevelt. In a couple of years, the United States took over the role of the crusading empire from Hitler’s Germany. A largely Roman Catholic CIA took over the Ukrainian and Western Byelorussian terror networks with the help of Reinhardt Gehlen and continued the campaign of the destabilisation of Russia by all methods short of war. MI6 was involved too since most of the Nazi Galizien veterans had been sent to England following the intervention of Pope Pius XII who described them as “good Catholics”, and then to Canada. Further, the British controlled the Prometheus stay-behind networks in the Baltics and elsewhere.
In other words, World War II never ended. It only went underground as long as the Soviet Union existed. This “Cold war” was given “spiritual” leadership by the Vatican and especially Pius XII and John Paul II. The former was labelled “Hitler’s Pope” by English Catholic historian John Cornwell and the latter was directly involved in Ronald Reagan’s CIA’s anti-Soviet operations in Poland. Together with assorted Austro-German politicians (Waldheim, von Habsburg, Kohl, Kinkel and Genscher), he played a pivotal role in the destruction of Yugoslavia which resulted in a total cleansing of the remaining Serbs from Croatia in 1995. The key development in this interlude was a gradual rapprochement between the former enemies—Anglo-Americans and Germans—which would enable the next Crusade.
To the naïve among us, it appeared that the animosities of the 20th Century would peter out with the fall of the Soviet Union. It was not to be. The Western stay-behind networks took over the Baltic states, Poland and the Ukraine where Banderite extreme nationalism started to raise its ugly head again.
The rabidly Russophobic Ukrainian emigres in Canada became active in infiltrating the newly independent country and preparing it for integration into the EU in NATO. Thanks to Rodney Atkinson, we know that the EU is practically a copy of Hitler’s Europe whose expansion to the Russian borders was made possible by the American military backing provided through NATO. Both organisations were stuffed with rehabilitated Nazis and both grew like aggressive tumours on the back of a weakened, supine Russia.
The growing threat to Russian security became acute in 1999 when NATO unconscionably and illegally attacked Yugoslavia and bombed it for 78 days. Aside from the suffering and death inflicted on the people of this country, the invasion was important for two reasons. First, Germany invaded a country for the first time since World War II and second, a Slav Orthodox country was attacked by a united West—also for the first time. This time, German Europe was led by the Americans and the British who exhibited extraordinary zeal in punishing the Serbs by creating a malignant quasi state called Kosovo on Serb territory. This was the key moment in world history which elucidated the process underlying the increasing anti-Russian and anti-Serb belligerence. From two “Central Powers”, Russia’s enemy expanded to include most European countries and finally—the entire West (plus vassals).
Why did all this happen given that the West faced a different Russia each time: an Empire, a socialist federation and finally, a capitalist one?As Russia contracted, its enemy expanded throughout the century, and it became clear as early as 1999, that no matter what form Russia took, its existence was unacceptable to the West.
This raises the question of what is “the West”? Simply, it is an amalgam of Roman Catholicism and a defanged, purposeless establishment Protestantism which has long ceased to “protest” against Catholic imperialism and has happily joined forces with its arch enemy in order to fight Russia—which never acted as an aggressor towards it. The symbiotic relationship between the two Western interpretations of Christianity can be understood only as a form of the Stockholm syndrome on the part of the Protestants as well as the increasing affinity of the Anglo-Americans for Catholic Nazism as a potent anti-Communist force. Either way, the “united West” is a frightening prospect for anybody who loves freedom and abhors tyranny.
To support my thesis, NATO has been advancing towards Russian borders only to reach the lines occupied by Hitler’s forces in the summer of 1941. This it achieved by using the Ukrainian Nazis and Uniates as the core of its proxy force which finally came to power via a CIA-funded coup in 2014. That year marked the beginning of the third and in my view, last, Crusade. The West started equipping, training and propagandising the Ukrainians (who are mainly of Russian descent) into a frenzy of anti-Russian hate. “Einsatztruppen” drafted from the Uniate (Orthodox who seek union with Rome) west of the Ukraine were sent to the Donbas to kill and terrorise civilians. While even the lethargic Russians started to realise that they must prepare for the inevitable, a tragic stab in the back came from the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew (the nominal leader of World Orthodoxy) who in 2019 granted autocephaly to the unrecognised schismatic “Orthodox Church in Ukraine” thus completing his work on weakening the Russian Orthodox Church and the Canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church which he had begun decades ago.
The religious essence of this conflict was revealed recently. The following picture has been widely circulated on social media. On the door of one of the churches forcibly taken over by the SBU and the nominally Orthodox schismatics, a new statement of the Nicene Creed (The Symbol of Faith of Orthodox Christians) was displayed. Here is the original statement of the Nicene Creed formatted to correspond to that in the picture below:
I believe in one God, the Father, the Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible;
And in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only-begotten Son of God, begotten of the Father before all ages; Light of Light, true God of true God, begotten, not created, of one essence with the Father, through Whom all things were made;
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from the heavens and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and became man;
Crucified for us under Pontius Pilate, He suffered and was buried;
Rising on the third day according to the Scriptures,
And ascending into the heavens, He is seated at the right hand of the Father;
And coming again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
His Kingdom shall have no end; (missing from the Ukrainian version)
And in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life,Who proceeds from the Father, Who together with the Father and the Son is worshiped and glorified, Who spoke through the prophets;
In one, holy, catholic (in the sense of universal), and apostolic Church;
I acknowledge one baptism for the remission of sins;
I expect the resurrection of the dead;
And the life of the age to come. Amen.
Point 9 of the Creed (shown as point 8 in the picture) contains the infamous Filioque clause—the trigger for the Great Schism between Eastern and Western Christianity. Specifically, the clause states (in Ukrainian): I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the Creator of life, Who proceeds from the Father and from the Son (compare with the highlighted statement in the original). Orthodox churches do not accept “and from the son” (Filioque) suggesting that Bartholomew’s fake Orthodox Church is a crypto-Papist project, a weapon with which to destroy Orthodoxy in the Ukraine by turning the schismatic Orthodox church into an adjunct of the Vatican. The meaning is clear and confirms my contention that the aim of the united West is to crush Russia and that the important part of that aim is the conversion “with fire and sword” of the Orthodox Slavs who are naturally sympathetic towards Russia.
Bartholomew’s and the Vatican’s crusade fought by NATO weapons and Ukrainian bodies has cost hundreds of thousands of lives and threatens to ignite a global nuclear war. This crusade led by the millennial enemies of Russia and Orthodoxy will be the last one. The Russian people and those who love justice must not allow the evil of religious Nazism to keep festering in the West as a permanent threat not only to Russia but to the people of the West themselves.
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***
As I write, the world is on the edge of nuclear and humanitarian crises after a year of the Ukraine “proxy” war with Russia. No single event can be seen as the sole cause, but the most dramatic lurch in the story was the “Revolution of Dignity” in Ukraine in November 2013 to February 2014, notably the horrific massacre of protesters and police in Maidan (Independence) Square on February 20, 2014.
Without dismissing the large sectors of Ukrainian society with legitimate grievances against corruption and stagnation, this was a bloody coup d’état, engineered largely by the U.S. over years with parts played by NATO puppets and local proxies. Viktor Yanukovych was elected in internationally recognized fair elections, and new elections were planned to occur within a year. But powerful interests and a large section of the public believed it could not wait as he could not be trusted. And he was chased out of the country like a hunted animal.
And, like all “color revolutions,” despite the underlying legitimate grievances, it was no true upheaval or revolution at all, it was simply local elites of the same class switching their allegiances to another external power. As Ukrainian political researcher Volodymyr Ishchenko describes, four groups gained power after the violent 2014 coup: “the oligarchic opposition, the NGOs, the far right and Washington-Brussels.”[1]
Many protesters congregated in Maidan Square from late November to February, sparked by the governments reticence to agree to the EU association agreement and its clauses on economic reform. Initially peaceful, the protests experienced periodic escalations in violence, often precipitated when things were settling down.
But it was the sniper attack of February 20, 2014, that was the crucial event that pushed things over the edge and led to the violent overthrow of the government, the consolidation of elements of fascist power in the government, and snowballed into the annexation of Crimea, a civil (and proxy) war in Donbas and the 2022 Russian “invasion” or “Special Operation Z,” depending on which side of the prism one is. The official and Western-implied view is that it was Yanukovych, or perhaps Russian-backed snipers, behind the massacre, yet those events received barely any coverage and no conclusive investigation or trial has occurred.
Who were the snipers? Who trained them? Who paid them? Who planned it? Who ordered it? Who benefited? Who covered it up and why?
Maidan shooters in the upper floors of the Maidan-occupied Music Conservatory Building on the morning of February 20, 2014. [Credit: Eygeniy Maloletka]
The Liberal-Fascist Alliance: Imperial Terrorism
Before we look at the influence of U.S. soft power on events, it is essential to consider the history of U.S. support of fascist and nationalist groups during the Cold War, including the recruitment of hundreds of Nazis in the Reinhardt Gehlen organization to develop the German Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND)[2] and the use of diaspora Croatian and Ukrainian nationalists-fascists as spies and covert actors.[3]
This dual track of elite power—using both soft social democratic or liberal and hard fascist hands—is neither new nor a U.S. invention. For example, the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht in 1919 by fascist Freikorps were pursuant to orders of Gustav Noske of the Social Democratic Party.[4]
Mark Twain was so taken aback at the “banditry” of Teddy Roosevelt, William Randolph Hearst and Henry Cabot Lodge’s vile lurch into global imperialism that he suggested the flag should be changed into black and white stripes with skull and crossbones replacing the stars.[5] One hundred and twenty years later, and perhaps as many million people killed in aggressions of regime change and counterinsurgency since, the comparison to piracy seems a quaint anachronism.
Uncle Sam says to the Filipinos: You choose—school teacher or soldier? We will dominate you either way. A centerfold in Puck by Udo Keppler, published November 1901. [Source: loc.gov]
When your modus operandi is anti-communism, fascists are your best friends. In fact, the rabid anti-communism was and is itself a front for corporate imperialism, and its true aim was and is to crush any resistance, whether it is indigenous sovereignty or an uncooperative local elite.
In the recent post-war U.S. context, in parallel to the “left-hand” overt and covert support of center-left political actors—a sort of “democracy washing”—there were simultaneous “right-hand” covert recruitments of fascist militias across the world. In Europe (and Turkey), for example, there were (are?) the Operation Gladio-type military-intelligence “stay-behind operations” that also apparently practiced a “strategy of tension” terrorism under U.S.-NATO control.[6]
Similar imperial terror strategies of sabotage, death squads, torture and propaganda were also used in Asia (e.g., the CIA’s Edward Lansdale/General Thé’s terrorist bombing campaign in Saigon 1952–53,[7] Operation Phoenix in Vietnam and similar operations earlier in the Philippines and Indonesia), Latin America (e.g., funding, training and intelligence support for police, military and paramilitaries in Operation Condor counterinsurgency in the Southern Cone and death squads in Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador) and the Middle East, such as Shah-era SAVAK torture and assassination and the use of so-called Mujahadeen, Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda and ISIS-ISIL mercenary-terrorist groups in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.[8]
The CIA-led bombing campaign in Saigon 1952–53, carried out by Cao Dai Buddhist-Catholic-nationalist General Trinh Minh Thé’s Li An Minh army and managed by Edward Lansdale, the “Quiet American.” [Source: laboratoireurbanismeinsurrectionel.blogspot.com]
Lest we forget, the Homeland is no exception to imperial aggression, and counterinsurgency (including provocateurism and terror) was and is rife; the FBI’s COINTELPRO was the enemy of any group even hinting at challenging the power structure and would not hesitate to intimidate, incarcerate or assassinate (most often in overzealous police raids as in Fred Hampton’s case), especially when their targets got geopolitically wise; its PATCON agents (including a German BND agent)[9] riddled and provoked the right-wing militia movement in the 1990s; the CIA’s Operation CHAOS along with Army intelligence monitored hundreds of thousands of anti-war activists and infiltrated, rattled and incited thousands of organizations; and the FBI’s GOON squads terrorized and neutralized the American Indian Movement.[10] Once one understands that the priority is counterinsurgency—elite power protecting itself—and not public or national safety, the violence and illegality of these operations are indefensible. And this is perhaps only the tip of a vast and disturbing iceberg, not to mention the links almost always found, when one takes the time to dig, between intelligence agents and terrorist acts on even cursory research of an event.
Back to foreign policy: in the end, to win a client-state against the interests of the majority of its citizens, a final push of terror, shock and violence is often needed for both regime change and—once a state is a client—to protect the regime with counterinsurgency operations. Once the masses are terrorized and traumatized or disenfranchised, it is much easier to maintain the status quo, and the elites might consider the country “stabilized.”
But the goons and dragoons that do the dirty work of empire are largely only pawns, radicalized with weaponized nationalism to face killing and death without squinting in the service of empire. Meanwhile, safely a few steps detached and hidden behind the façade of liberalism or feigned benevolence and endless trails of front organizations, the power players keep their hands clean and faces out of sight. These psychotic puppeteers use their psychotic puppets as agents of chaos, division and terror against the masses and their enemies.
In Ukraine, you do not have to look far to see an 80-year history of U.S. meddling with fascist groups for their own ends. The oldest is the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) which was formed in the 1920s, made up the 14th Waffen SS Division during World War II, and its Bandera OUN-B branch. After OUN head Stepan Bandera was killed in 1959, Yaroslav Stetsko became its leader and, like many fascist-nationalist leaders across Eastern Europe, was chosen by U.S. intelligence—initially military intelligence, later the CIA—as their man to fight communism by any means necessary and, ultimately, like all of these brainwashed psychos, as a tool of U.S. imperialism.[11]
More recent groups are the Ukrainian National Assembly—Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO), founded in the 1990; its 2013 offshoot, Right (Pravy) Sector, founded by Dmytro Yarosh; and Svoboda, formed from the OUN.
All of these ultra-nationalist groups and more were supported by U.S. politicians and agencies before the coup, were present at Maidan, and formed the leadership and majority of the “Maidan self-defense.” Svoboda—supported by the U.S.—had already gained 10% of the vote by 2012, no doubt thanks to a savvy political grooming of their leader and violent anti-Semite Oleh Tyahnybok.[12] After the coup, Svoboda and Right Sector leadership gained prominent positions in Poroshenko’s post-coup government. Svoboda’s new politicians, for example, included Oleksandr Sych as Vice Premier for Economic Affairs, co-founder Andriy Parubiy as Secretary of the Security and National Defense Committee, as well as ministers for education, agriculture, and the environment.[13]
Source: Photo courtesy of the author
One can also see “Gladio-B” parallels in the use of jihadists, mujahadeen and “moderate rebels” in the 1980s to the present, and some consider the training, funding and arming of neo-fascists more recently as a “Gladio-C.” (As a report by the Counter Extremism Projectstated in an April 2020 report on Ukraine: “In 2019, right-wing extremism effectively replaced jihadi terrorism as the number one threat to internal/homeland security of the countries of the broader West.”)[14]
In many of these projects there have been accusations of assassination and terrorism, including “false-flag” operations that blame an atrocity or outrage on the target in order to increase state authority, destabilize and weaken enemies, precipitate invasion or intervention, drive the permanent war economy and marginalize left-wing (or more correctly, “non-aligned”) politics.
As Italian fascist and convicted bomber Vincenzo Vinciguerra said in 1992 of CIA-NATO Operation Gladio’s strategy of tension that killed hundreds in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s: “You were supposed to attack civilians, women children…innocent people outside of the political arena for one simple reason: To force the Italian public to turn to the state…turn to the regime and ask for greater security.”[15] It is the elite’s covert use of military, intelligence, police and paramilitary fascist might to maintain control in so-called liberal democracies.
As well as state terrorism, these sleeper cell “stay-behind networks” also perform sabotage operations, and there is no doubt that equivalent forces are still active and under CIA-DIA-NATO direction in most enemy states, including Russia and Belarus.[16] And it seems such cells were activated there before the Russian attack of February 24, 2022.
Mainstream media, particularly recently, claim Ukraine as a legitimate democracy, with the defense that the parliamentary vote is less right wing than other European nations. However, the continued co-opting of fascists into state power by other means, and reverence for fascist heroes such as Stepan Bandera, speaks of deeper roots. For example, in the early 1990s, officials from the Ukraine Defense Ministry attended an SS Galician Division reunion in Kyiv, whilst a similar reunion occurred in Lviv, endorsed by the city council and celebrated with the renaming of a street after Stepan Bandera, one that ironically had been called Peace Street.[17]
More recently, as part of a tsunami-level neo-liberal PR campaign, the fascist brown is liberally whitewashed by both internal players seeking political power and the external U.S. and EU power-brokers not wanting their pawns weakened. It is important to look for blips in this whitewashing to see behind the propaganda to the true power of fascists in Ukraine. When you rule by fear, you do not need to be large in number, only in the right positions to create, validate and use that fear.
The fact that Zelensky is Jewish is often mentioned by the naïve or deceptive as an obvious sign that “Ukraine can’t be that fascist.” But this ignores the strange bedfellows of money and power politics, particularly in a region that has been pumped full of aid, gas money, corrupted investment and propaganda for decades, and has long been a battleground between the U.S. and Russia as well as between a large minority of Ukrainians and Russia.
Behind Zelensky and many of the notorious nationalist-fascist militias in the Donbas war, such as the Azov Battalion, is Ihor Kolomoisky, the PrivatBank and Burisma-linked billionaire.
Not only is he accused by the U.S. Department of Justice of millions in fraud and embezzlement, but Federal Court records show a far greater level of embezzlement that triggered a recession in Ukraine: “Between 2006 and 2015, more than $4.45 billion was transferred without any apparent effort by the banks or the government to stem the movement of dollars as the oligarch and his partners acquired an enormous [U.S.] real estate portfolio.”[18] Yet, for the most part, the government, Deutsche Bank and mainstream media continue to look the other way. “He might be a totally corrupt oligarch with no morals, but he’s our guy!”
Apart from the shared source of income, Ukrainian politicians have had very real threats of assassination from the neo-fascists, and I believe they continue to take them seriously.
Like other post-Soviet countries, Ukrainian civic activists, largely working for or influenced by U.S. and EU-funded NGOs, can hold what can seem a paradoxical combination of nationalist, neo-liberal and pro-EU views.[19] For example, during the 2013-14 protests, the EuroMaidan press—a George Soros-funded media central to the movement—published a piece defending even clearly hard-line fascists such as Dmytro Yarosh and their violence as a necessary force for change. Paradoxical views, like cognitive dissonance, are a sign that you are being manipulated.
A sort of “my bully is the good bully” moral ambiguity, and a recipe for escalation and disaster. This willingness to co-opt extremism (or be co-opted by extremists) even extends to ISIS-trained Jihadi fighters of the Sheikh Mansur Brigade, who came fresh from Syria and were managed by the Right Sector in the war in Donbas.
Even more broadly, liberals seem not to grasp nor have memory of basic geopolitics, the “offensive realist” or realpolitik view as openly decreed by many prophets of U.S. imperial policy like Zbigniew Brzezinski, George Kennan, Robert Gates, Alexander Haig and the neocons of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC)—let alone the covert action, soft power and slick PR that hides realpolitik behind a façade of a surreal Disney-on-the-Deathstar show.
They are trapped by their own privilege, a framing by corporate media, and in the naïve belief that their leaders practice what they preach as their billion-dollar PR campaigns turn darkness into light. I call it the “propagandascope.”
In this insane view, complete acquiescence to U.S./NATO/West/North—whatever you want to call the neo-liberal empire—is called “neutrality”; there are no other ways of living; history is over and resistance is futile. And because of its righteousness, its professed liberal values—its true sole value being elite profit motive—it is an inevitable and manifest destiny, as the unprecedented powerbrokers of the first American century, like the Dulles brothers and Henry Luce—all sons of Presbyterian ministers—believed. America, god and the free market.
Soft-Power Imperialism
“In a counterinsurgency situation the primary sources of insurgent strength are not a strong military organization and its technological industrial support, but the sources of discontent of the people within the nation, and thus, the people themselves.” — Special Operations Research Office, 1962 [20]
The greatest trick of empire is to hide in plain sight; the main aims of empire are to protect itself, neutralize its threats and to grow. Its main weapon for all of this is psychology—the appeal of virtue on one side, the threat of fear and anger on the other—and the most powerful form of this is the political use of atrocity to control the population.
After the exposures of clandestine imperialism of the CIA, et al., in the 1970s’ congressional investigations, and related whistleblowing from greats like Philip Agee (who incidentally offers an excellent, concise description of soft power in this 2005 interview), John Stockwell and Ralph McGehee, the CIA’s political action methods of imperialism evolved to overt soft power methods of NGOs, as neo-liberalism and spin took hold after the 1970s scandals and Vietnam failure.
The New Cold War started as the last one was ending, with a U.S. drive for global unipolar “benevolent” hegemony, later termed “full-spectrum dominance.” USAID began Ukraine projects in 1991 and recently described its interventions there as a 30-year partnership that “helped establish a vibrant and independent media, an active civil society, and a broader entrepreneurial class.”
This groundwork and astroturfing ensures that development is toward the American beacon and sphere of influence in terms of politics, economics, military, national security, civil society, labor, academia, culture and media; most importantly, it is intended that markets and resources (such as gas) are opened for U.S. and European multinational corporate exploitation.
As more and more soft-power influence has developed through countless and ever-multiplying USAID, State Department, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) as well as European and the “philanthropic” projects of George Soros [whose International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) has been in Ukraine since 1989] and Pierre Omidyar, events in Ukraine escalated under Obama and through State Department -eocons such as Victoria Nuland and their Military-Industrial connections.
Nuland is the ex-CEO of war hawk Democratic think tank Center for a New American Security (CNAS) and wife of PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan. Might as well call them all Republocrats or Demublicans, especially when it comes to imperial foreign policy.
Soft power includes political, diplomatic, cultural and media influence to co-opt civic and political leaders and capture the hearts and minds of the people. The darker side of this is sanctions, weaponizing aid (including IMF aid) as leverage as well as covert actions such as sabotage, provocateurism, assassinations and other “destabilizations” to create a society rotten-ripe for regime change. We will discuss the soft power apparatus developed in Ukraine in more detail in part II
Regime Change
John Pilger interviews Duane Ramsdell “Dewey” Clarridge, ex-head of CIA Latin America Division, on U.S. policy of regime change. [Source: vimeo.com]
Regime change requires an infiltration of society by the flow of (largely U.S. taxpayer) money to build infrastructure and cultural and political influence in a target state over years. In current USAID Orwellian parlance, these soft-power projects are called “stabilization and transition,” i.e., destabilization and regime change.
The local effect of each dollar and each project amplifies and is amplified by the level of public discontent, the weakness of local government and the level of opposition control of local and international media. Although color revolutions are largely an information war of hearts and minds, where the government is legitimate and has significant local support, brutal tactics of insurgency are ultimately needed for regime change.
The main strategies of regime change are:
Soft power: Provide weaponized aid, development, humanitarian assistance and media to win public opinion, ideology and culture.
Political co-opting: Co-opt and unite opposition, ideally including military leaders.
Political grooming: Train and fund a new generation of overt agents of change, the future political leaders (e.g., the World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders” program).
Covert Action/Black operations: Train and fund covert agents of change (often fascist or extremist) to do the dirty work of insurgency and counterinsurgency.
Narrative control: Develop a sympathetic media.
Economic warfare: Diplomatic isolation, sanctions and sabotage to “make the economy scream.”[21]
Mobilization: Organize mass protests and PR with media control, while also warning that “there will be blood.”
Provocateurism: Goons and dragoons of power engineer provocation, confrontation, outrage and chaos and the soft arm controls the media analysis through immediate (social media), short (mainstream news) and long term (NGO reports and books).
Assassination of key political leader or false flag targeting opposition leader or public citizens.
Denial and cover-up via censorship, propaganda and narrative bias. It helps if you built the whole mediasphere.
Approximate stages of regime-change tactics.[Source: Courtesy of the author]
Dominique Fonvielle, who spent 15 years as an analyst with France’s foreign secret service, Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure (DGSE), described the following steps of regime change to German filmmaker Susanne Brandstaetter in 2003:[22]
Identify opposition forces to destabilize ruling regime (need to be credible and influential)
Effective propaganda to smear the ruling regime
Prepare (convincing) future head of state and staff
Create revolutionary milieu
Spark a revolution/coup.
The methods of covert action for taking power with insurgency or securing power with counterinsurgency are ultimately the same: targeting a group of people to neutralize them by getting information, ruining their reputation and disrupting their function.
The U.S. foreign policy machinery is entirely geared to grind down countries that resist its drive for political and economic domination. Coups are planned well in advance and cost a lot of money.
A key mid-level operator of the Ukraine 2014 coup, Victoria Nuland, estimated that the U.S. had spent $5 billon on civic, political and media projects in Ukraine from 1991 to the end of 2013, and I presume this does not include astronomical budgets for military, paramilitary or covert actions; private oligarch NGOs like those of Soros, Omidyar, Gates and Thiel; nor does it include behind-the-scenes deals or the carrot-and-stick use of IMF and World Bank loans and diplomatic pressure on NATO allies that, regardless, aim to drive neo-liberal economic reform and the looting of public resources and infrastructure.
Nuland announced her figure proudly at a U.S.-Ukraine Foundation meeting in 2013, with a large Chevron sign next to her. Did Ukrainians on the street not see this? Or did they not see it for what it was?
The Americans have moreover completely deceived the Ukrainian people and the Ukrainian government with regard to the completely unrealistic victory of Ukraine in this war, in my opinion, because in any case the big loser in this war is Ukrainian population itself and also as a consequence Europe with all the crisis in which it was engulfed by the will of the politicians. — Pierre de Gaulle, grandson of Charles de Gaulle, December 2022[23]
Like most regime-change operations, the 2014 coup involved a two-edged (Gladio) sword approach: one side soft, neo-liberal, political and “diplomatic”; the other side hard, dirty, bloody and fascist. The former co-opts the public’s genuine liberal aims and grievances against economic conditions, authoritarian tendencies and corruption. The latter is covert action; generally outsourced to local extremists and non-local private mercenaries, training and hiring extremists to do the dirty work when needed.
In Ukraine’s case, it is clear fascist extremists were involved by the prominent position as “Maidan security” provoking violence and in the post-coup government positions they were rewarded with after the coup. The far-right Svoboda (originally the “Socialist-Nationalist Party”), Right Sector, Azov Battalion and C14. The Azov Battalion, dismissed by NATO media as a minor aberration, post-coup became an official branch of the Ukraine Army numbering tens of thousands.
It is also clear fascists were involved in escalating the violence, and are proud of the muscle they flexed—C14 head Yevhen Karas recently proclaimed that the 2014 “Revolution of Dignity” would have been a “gay parade” if not for the instrumental role of neo-Nazis. The moderates and many liberal-progressive activists considered groups like Svoboda as the only party of action, making a deal with the devil, and some insisted at the time, such as the EuroMaidan Press (funded by Soros’s IRF) that the Nationalist fascists such as Dmytro Yarosh are needed to protect citizens from the state violence of leaders like Yanukovych; “Someone who is ready to risk his life so I can live in freedom and peace—can`t be a bad guy. It’s that simple.”[24]
Strange bedfellows (and tragic naïveté), indeed.
The fascist psychos and ultra-nationalist ideology also became emboldened as the “anti-terrorist operation” evolved into the Donbas war. The initial wave of regular Ukrainian soldiers lacked a desire, when it came to it, to kill their siblings and cousins in the east in 2014. And so, later in the year, Azov, et al., took over and the ideology was spread in parallel to the de-Russianizing of Ukrainian identity.[25]
Ultimately, for imperial advance, the nationalist extremists ready to die serve as a destabilization grenade, exploited by local and foreign oligarchs as henchmen to protect their interests and to destroy and bleed their enemies, who are conveniently many in form. For the foreign elite, if this chaos and terror also destroys the local population and country, so be it. As long as access to energy and other valuable resources at least does not fall into enemy hands, the military industry oligarchs can make billions off the endless war. Should peace come after all is destroyed, so be it; there are also billions to be made in rebuilding projects along with excellent PR opportunities.
False-Flag Attacks
There are many documented and admitted examples of false-flag attacks,[26] where an atrocity is used to provoke increased authority and loss of civil liberties, a military intervention or regime change. The basic profile is:[27]
Highly emotive event: Spectacular and traumatic
Media bonanza: Instant media saturation with widespread coverage
Sham investigation: Case is quickly closed, with a scapegoat/patsy identified with group being demonized; and cover-up
Political reaction: Dramatic government/group reaction:
a) Erosion of rights/civil liberties for “safety”
b) Military action or invasion
c) Regime change—fake revolution masqueraded as a democratic uprising.
As they are black operations ordered and sanctioned by powerful groups, with the media on their side, and strict compartmentalization and plausible deniability, evidence is hard to come by unless there are whistleblowers. Even then, such dark actors are easy to discredit, or can be silenced with threats, blackmail or assassination. It pays to look for:
The desired intent before the event
The reaction after the event
Who wanted this?
Who benefited? Which government, group, company or organization?
If not enough people die, if not enough blood flows, the people will never stand up for themselves. —Gheorghe Ratiu, head of domestic intelligence in Romania’s Departamentul Securității Statului “Securitate” 1986-1989[28]
There are many types of “big shock” atrocity that can provoke the reaction needed for a coup or military intervention, ranging from those that occur with no foreign manipulation other than the white propaganda that makes it well known, to false-flag black operations that create the event(s) and control the media interpretation. The effect is magnified by use of controlled media—the propaganda multiplier. Where there is no incident that can be publicized or propagandized to provoke outrage, the most effective provocation is a false flag, laying blame on the target government.
Whether or not instigated by an insurgent, opposition or external agent, poisonings, such as the Yuschenko poisoning and the “Orange Revolution”; assassinations, such as that of Rafic Hariri and the “Cedar Revolution” in Lebanon; bombings, such as Israel’s Lavon affair in Egypt, 1954; chemical attacks (e.g., Douma, Syria, April 2018); and other provocations and atrocities are used to achieve public and political momentum for regime change.
Protest provocation can be used by or against a host government, i.e., for counterinsurgency or insurgency, respectively. Regime-change (i.e., insurgent) protests are increased by soft-power means and PR, but uglier methods of agent provocateurs and paramilitaries are used to bring serious conflict, outrage and a sense of chaos and illegitimacy of the target government that can only be quenched by a volte-face or military intervention. However, to frame the atrocity in favor of insurgency/the opposition, the (majority) media must be under control, to fan the flames of justice or revenge and to manage a cover-up. This requires co-ordination of social media campaigns, local news networks and amiable/compliant international media, NGOs, commentators, foreign governments and academia to form a propaganda multiplier, which takes years of investment and development by the imperial government. We will discuss the Ukraine imperial mediasphere later.
But let’s first look at some historical events with similarities to what happened in February 2014 in Kyiv: paramilitaries, terrorists or mercenaries randomly firing on crowds to provoke insurgency.
Syria 1982
Hama uprising, February 3, 1982: After years of terror campaigns and brutal reprisals, Muslim Brotherhood snipers ambushed a government soldier’s patrol and their commander, Abu Bakr (Umar Jawwad), declared Jihad against the Ba’athist Assad regime. The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) estimated a few months later that 2,000 died over the three-week battle, including soldiers, jihadists and civilians. [29] Many subsequently suggest much higher numbers, particularly of civilians. The jihadists, desiring an Islamic state, were well-funded and well-armed, with U.S. weapons, communications equipment and the backing of U.S.-allied Jordanians, Christian Lebanese and Iraqis. [30]
Although not firing on a protest and not obviously a false flag, it was a foreign-funded insurrection, and the foreign media blamed the Syrian government almost exclusively for the bloodshed, ignoring the opposition violence (a common theme). As the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA; if you haven’t heard of them, the largest of intelligence agencies, it is because they are better at their job than the others) report stated in 1982: “Even if the plan were not successful the Hama rebellion could become a symbolic rallying point for future anti-government activities.” As in many other interventions before and since, extremists are used as a “battering ram” or “chaos agents” to foment regime change, and the association is either denied or whitewashed by the control of the media.
Romania 1989
Possibly along with the use of snipers in Moscow in 1993, Romania—December 1989—appears to be a rare example of a co-U.S. and Soviet black operation involving “unknown snipers” to get rid of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s regime blocking European reunification. Remember this was when team USA was negotiating “fixing” the Soviet economy and both sides viewed Ceaușescu as the main barrier to progress. It is telling that this was the most violent of the initial post-communist transitions.
More than 1,000 people died around late December 1989, most by random shootings including those by snipers, across the country, the vast majority after the Ceaușescus were arrested on December 22, 1989. The murderous chaos distracted from the coup itself and led to a desperate desire for stability and authority and quick international validation of and, ironically, sympathy for Ion Iliescu’s new National Salvation Front government.
The snipers were called “unknown terrorists” for years but the repeated recent prosecutions against the Consiliul Frontului Salvării Naționale (Council of the National Salvation Front, CFSN) regime that took power after the Romanian coup of 1989 indicate the local coup plotters had substantial support from Moscow, Budapest and Washington. Ion Iliescu (who became president), Gelu Voican Voiculescu, Iosif Rus and Emil (Cico) Dumitrescu have been repeatedly indicted for crimes against humanity for provoking the “psychosis” that led to the killings—a strangely evasive and medieval way to describe intentional massacre.[31]
A more accurate charge would be complicity (along with the U.S., Hungary and Soviets) in being psychos that ordered mass random assassinations, distributed weapons to anyone with a trigger finger and pumped the country full of fear-inducing propaganda in order to provoke more psychosis, i.e., false-flag state terrorism.
During the brief mock trial that preceded the Christmas Day 1989 executions of Nicolae and Elena Ceaușescu—which were simply accepted as an inevitable and natural course of events in the global media—there are interesting statements by an unidentified military “judge” and the “defendants” themselves about the identity of the “terrorists” still causing chaos around the country:[32]
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Mr. President, I would like to know something: The accused should tell us who the mercenaries are. Who pays them? And who brought them into the country?
PROSECUTOR: Yes. Accused, answer.
CEAUSESCU: I will not say anything more. I will only speak at the Grand National Assembly.
And, later:
CEAUSESCU: You as officers should know that the government cannot give the order to shoot. But those who shot at the young people were the security men, the terrorists.
ELENA CEAUSESCU: The terrorists are from Securitate.
PROSECUTOR: The terrorists are from Securitate?
ELENA CEAUSESCU: Yes.
The Ceaușescus are obviously not incriminating themselves in stating the terrorists are members of Securitate. Rather, coup plotters included members of the government, army and Securitate.
The new regime was promoted before and after the coup in Western media—particularly, of course, by Radio Free Europe—and CIA reports from 1982 and 1985 make it clear that Ion Iliescu was their chosen replacement for Ceaușescu years before the coup.[33]
And so—anointed by the interventionist god of free-market consumerism—he immediately took power on December 22nd, with his first statement that same day clearly stating the country’s new position as completely supportive of U.S./NATO and Soviet agendas, i.e., pro-free-market reform and European reunification.[34] Roadblock cleared. Although, just to keep the path completely clear, the terrorist destruction continued for another week.
On December 24, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock met with Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Ivan Aboimov. They agreed they were both in favor of supporting the “new leadership of Romania”—only two days old and (one would imagine) ill-defined to them unless they are privy to magical foresight or privileged information.
Matlock’s main priority in the conversation was to know if the Soviets would intervene to support the new regime, in humanitarian or military aid, to which Aboimov replies in the affirmative. Matlock then asks if they would consider intervening militarily, to which he replied in the negative, stating that the Soviets gladly henceforth hand over Brezhnev’s policy of eastern sphere intervention to the Americans.[35]
This last point is focused on almost as a distraction in the literature as if it were a profound wisecrack, referring both to the shift to a unipolar world and a barb at the U.S. invasion of Panama. But more to the point is that it is clear from the transcript that they are completely on the same page regarding getting rid of Ceaușescu and bringing in the coup plotters, which means they must at least know who these people are, what they are planning and that they unreservedly approve of them. Matlock is likely focused on the intervention policy as it is a contingency of the strategy of insurgency tension to provoke international intervention. As it turns out, this was not required, perhaps as the horrendous chaos subdued any dissent or counterrevolution.
Susanne Brandstaetter’s excellent 2003 documentary, Checkmate: Strategy of a Revolution, exposes Western intelligence and U.S. State Department involvement in Romania 1989, with direct interviews with protesters, CIA agents, Romanian intelligence, CIA and French DGSE officers, as well as a revealing interview with Miklós Németh, Hungarian prime minister at the time. No wonder many Romanians have always suspected large foreign complicity.[36]
In it, Dominique Fonvielle says that paramilitaries were trained in Hungary and Germany, and were smuggled into the country in small groups to be ready for provocation of protests and “paramilitary actions” (presumably including sniper attacks).[37] There were also reports of Russian “tourists” entering in larger numbers in the days before the protests.[38]
Also in the film, Németh—somewhat coy and sheepish, yet also clearly enjoying the reminiscing and salacious topic—confirms there were paramilitary training camps with U.S. personnel in Austria, Germany and Hungary. More precisely, the ex-head of domestic Securitate, Gheorghe Ratiu states that they were U.S.-led camps providing training in provocateurism and guerrilla operations in Traiskirchen, Austria; Zirndorf, Germany [presumably the Pinder Barracks]; and Bicske and Budapest, Hungary. Most likely there were others.
Ratiu also claims in Checkmate that, from early in the protests in Bucharest, a faction of the army simply started handing out weapons to the general public, leading to many fear-induced shootings and killings between civilians, the army and Securitate. As with snipers, the purpose was to maintain fear and insecurity until the new authority of Ion Iliescu’s new US- and NATO-approved National Salvation Front government was in place. Pushing chaos on the public creates a pushback for authority. Although this chaos is often blamed on a “power vacuum,” this is a myth as Iliescu picked up the reins immediately after Ceaușescu was deposed, according to his co-conspirator and army chief (who, conveniently for his Hungarian handlers, spoke Hungarian), General Victor Stanculescu.
This is all pretty convincing. But if, like me, you prefer straight-talking witnesses and whistleblowers over mealy-mouthed diplomats and spooks—especially the brutal and perhaps not very bright militarist ones that do not even see what is wrong with violent imperialist intervention—we can look to Major Craisor-Constantin Ionita’s 2001 thesis submitted for a master’s degree in Military Studies at the U.S. Marine Corps Command and Staff College in Quantico, Virginia.[39]
Titled “The Influence of International Law Upon Military Operation on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT) During Romanian Revolution, December 1989,” it is an unexpected description of the revolution as a foreign-sparked coup by NATO, Hungary and (perhaps under a sense of naïve obligation to the U.S. as the new dictators of its mafia-neo-liberal future) Russia. Notably, he states that it was GRU Military Intelligence, not the KGB, that was involved in the Russian arm, which aligns with diplomatic cables of the time indicating that the KGB had (or would only give) terrible intelligence for Gorbachev during the “coup-volution.”[40]
Ionita, now a researcher at the National Defence University of Romania, contends that:
Large numbers of “tourists” came into Timisoara from Hungary and Yugoslavia just before the beginning of the revolution. They were former refugees who had received training for “diversionary operations.”
Gorbachev described his role in the Romanian Revolution and in the execution of the Ceaușescus in the media—particularly in the January-February 1990 issue of Europemagazine (Bruxelles).
“After the Gorbachev-Bush meeting at Malta (the beginning of December 1989), professional people from the GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence), were prepared to start a revolution in Romania’s principal cities. Their role was only as a spark to start the revolutionary fire, already existent in cities. The strategic objective was to overthrow [Ceaușescu]. The operational objectives were the Communist Party buildings in Romania’s principal cities.” “Only as a spark” is an interesting and ambiguous qualifier that I do not believe would stand up in any court of law.
International media played a key role, especially American Freedom Europe and Voice of America, and the British BBC with “a vigilant campaign against [Ceaușescu], carefully observing psychological and moral influence of Romanians living in cities.” Amplified by Hungarian media, they “tried to create a hostile mood against the communist regime, to encourage dissidents and to incite a revolt within cities.”
The CIA set up the “Trust Organization” in early December to encourage and support dissident movements in Eastern Europe, and destabilize the communist regimes in these countries, including Romania.
Meanwhile, NATO countries increased their embargo against those countries that did not implement democratic reform.
“At the same time of [Ceaușescu]’s attempted escape, three ‘dissident persons,’ selected by Moscow to replace him, were helped by ‘professionals’ to occupy T.V. and Radio central stations”—Ion Iliescu, a Gorbachev friend and future President, Nicolae Militaru, a GRU agent and future Minister of National Defense, and Petre Roman, future Prime Minister.
The terrorists’ plan was to sow confusion and get the military fighting the Securitate necessitating Warsaw Pact intervention. They also successfully disabled the air defense system.
Finally:
At the beginning of [the] revolution it was thought that foreign agents and spy agencies, who wanted to destroy the communist ideals, started and supported the people revolt in Timisoara. That assessment led to the right of the military personnel to use deadly force in self-defense, their unit’s defense and defense of buildings under protection against any hostile act. In the midst of crowd there were some 300-400 revolutionary professionals trained by foreign countries (USSR, Hungary, NATO countries) to increase the popular revolt. If the civilians used rocks, “Molotov cocktail” (incendiary bottles), chains, and metallic balls to seize administrative and political buildings, these professionals handled white and fire armament.[41] Due to their actions, soldiers were killed and soldiers opened fire against civilians.
On the contrary, CIA-friendly commentators still suggest it was fiercely loyal Securitate groups—particularly the Unitatea Specială de Luptă Antiteroristă (USLA) anti-terror squad—perhaps with the help of (always convenient) “Arab Terrorists,” who terrorized Bucharest for days, including attacks on embassies.[42] The main evidence supporting this is from UK, U.S. and Canadian embassy cables during the period and some declassified CIA reports that identify the terrorists as loyalists aiming for a Ceaușescu counterrevolution, despite his being deposed politically on December 22 and mortally on December 25. How this also squares with the strictly “need to know” basis of black operations, as well as the clear benefit of attacking prominent westerners in provoking and validating a crisis, is unclear.
Lastly, one wonders if the Hungarian-Bolivian terrorist, jackal, murderer, intelligence agent and ex-BBC journalist Eduardo Rózsa-Flores was involved in Romania 1989 as he was involved in false flags and murders, fighting for Croatia in the Yugoslavian civil war only a couple of years later. According to leaked Hungarian secret service files, the KGB and Hungarian secret service trained Rózsa-Flores was doing provocateurist work in Budapest in September 1989, and was planning a Romanian trip with anti-communist activist and director Roland Antoniewicz, who claims he was unaware of Rózsa-Flores’s undercover role.[43]
Venezuela 2002
Caracas April 11, 2002. Nineteen killed and scores injured, with a key part played by snipers (and some police loyal to Caracas mayor and U.S. puppet Alfredo Peña) firing at pro-government and opposition protesters as well as, at some points, police. This was a plan in the failed coup of military leaders, supported by the U.S., Venezuelan elite and anti-Chávez media [see Angel Palacio’s 2004 documentary Llaguno Bridge: Keys to a Massacrefor more].[44]
That the violence was planned is apparently evidenced by the practice run recording for CNN’s Otto Neustaldt, where the generals denounced the violence that was yet to occur. Later that month, Venezuelan Congressman Roger Rondon accused Ambassador Charles Shapiro and two U.S. military attachés of involvement and stated that two foreign gunmen, one American and the other Salvadorean, were detained by security police but were “given some kind of safe conduct” and disappeared.[45]
Many other suspects were released during the short reign of the de facto government, including seven suspected snipers arrested in the Hotel Ausonia – and more than 60 pro-Chávez supporters were killed in the protests for his release, which received very little outcry in the mainstream and foreign press.
Thailand 2010
April 10, 2010: “Red shirt”/United Front for Democracy Against Dictatorship protesters, supporters of Dubai-based, U.S.-backed billionaire ex-prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, convened at Bangkok’s “Democracy Monument.” Mysterious gunmen embedded with the protesters used sniper fire and grenades to create chaos and kill six soldiers and a colonel. Thai troops returned fire: 25 died and 840 were injured.
CNN initially did not report that protesters were armed, then conceded two months later that there were “men in black firing automatic weapons on April 10.”[46] The international spokesman for the redshirts admitted in a Reuters interview about the recent “vibrant”(!) protests, that the men armed with AK47s and M16s in black were ”a secret unit within the army that disagrees with what’s going on.”[47]
And he continues, apparently without irony, “Without them, the black-clad men, there would have been a whole lot more deaths and injuries.” Although these violent and soft “change agents” appear local, the insurgent opposition movement is U.S.-backed as Thailand is too close to China for Washington’s liking. It will take a leak to discover exactly how but there are countless examples from which to extrapolate.
Syria 2011
March 17-18, 2011: The violence in Syria started in a small town near the Jordanian border, Daraa, with a series of demonstrations and reports of snipers killing both demonstrators and security forces. The vast majority of Western media (CNN, NYT, Al Jazeera, AP, etc.) ignored the police/security force deaths and reported most all deaths as civilian. In fact, as reported by Israeli, Lebanese and Indian news sites, most of the initial deaths were police, and multiple government buildings and the SyriaTel phone company building were also torched.
This bias set the tone for the rest of the reporting on Syria that followed, continuing to deny that there was an Islamist armed insurrection, let alone that they were supporting it with the aim of weakening Assad [48] and instead blaming provocateurism on “secret police” trying to foment a reaction to allow a larger crackdown. Similar events followed over the next month, with snipers firing on crowds “in the coastal cities of Banias, Jabla and Lattakia, in the central industrial city of Homs and in towns close to Damascus, Harasta, Daraya and Duma.” The effect described by one witness was that “Anger is rising, the street is boiling.”
An Al Jazeera correspondent reported at one incident in Douma in April 2011 that “it was an incredibly chaotic scene, and it seems as though pretty much everyone down here in the southern part of the country is now carrying weapons. It is unclear who was firing at whom, that’s part of the confusion.[49] Yet no media were acknowledging that there was an armed insurrection occurring, who they were, where the weapons came from or where their bullets were going.
Was it foreign-backed armed terrorists or “government snipers” killing soldiers and civilians? Or both? The fact that the DIA stated in a 2012 Department of Defense Information Report that their intent was to destabilize Syria and install an Islamic state in eastern Syria—and hence why they continue to fund, arm and train Islamist extremists to this day—suggests the snipers were most likely a U.S. strategy of regime change, escalating the ongoing conflict that has so far caused half a million deaths, millions injured and more than six million refugees.
Yemen 2011
March 18, 2011 (the same day as the violence in Daraa, Syria), 53 protesters were killed in Sanaa, Yemen, and hundreds injured, by rooftop snipers.[50] Did President Saleh al-Ahmar think his U.S.-Saudi backing would allow him to get away with such an insane “crackdown” on protests? Or were these insurrectionist snipers? Why such a complete non-reaction from the U.S. and West, when the same month they declared war on Libya, to “protect [Libyan] civilians and meet their basic needs”? Such is the difference between a client and non-client state. It is always telling where the media projects its amnesic newsfeed gaze.
One “Western official” quoted in the UK’s Telegraph in 2011 said, “It is not in the West’s best interests to see this degenerate into a Libya-style conflict that would play into the hands of Islamist militants, which is why it would be better for Saleh to go sooner rather than later.” Well, Saleh indeed soon went, but the degeneration occurred regardless, to cause a war and a humanitarian disaster as the Houthis rose to power.
Nicaragua 2018
Nicaragua has been a focus of U.S. ire ever since the Sandinistas came to power in 1979. The U.S. tried to push things again in 2018, in an extremely volent but failed coup attempt, also backed by the Catholic Church and local elite trade groups, focusing on youth groups, social media and the “propaganda multiplier” and some provocative protesting, sabotage and terror involving paid delinquents. There are also accusations of police violence and Sandinista thuggery, though it seems the deaths were near equal in terms of pro- and anti-government members of the public and at least 20 police were killed in 2018.
Riding a wave of soft-power foreign-funded NGOs and anti-government media, the violence escalated quickly, starting with student protests on April 18th sparked—somewhat obscurely—by changes in social security reforms: “a 1% rise in worker contributions, the 3.5% rise in employer contributions (over time) and a 5% cut in the benefit which was also a trade-off for expanded medical coverage.”[52]
Snipers were certainly involved. As lleana Lacayo told Amnesty International: “Most of the deaths that occurred in the country…are carefully aimed shots, a single shot fired with precision at the head or jugular or chest, they are shots that aim to kill and they are fired by professionals.”[53]
The Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights (CENIDH) reported in May that 36 people died of gunshot wounds between April 19 and May 2, and 22 of these were by head, neck or chest shots. Opposition media reported that, between April 19 and July 3, there were 309 deaths, and 127 (41.5%) of these deaths were due to direct, single shots to the head, neck and chest.[54] And, as Barbara Moore states in the LA Progressive:
There are other reports of snipers targeting police. For example, on July 8, two police officers—Faber López Vivas and Hilario de Jesús Ortiz Zavala—were killed and two others wounded by sniper fire in Jinotepe. [56] A U.S. resident reported to Barbara Larcom of the Alliance for Global Justice:
The vast majority of the violence by local and mainstream international media was blamed on Nicaraguan police, claiming they fired indiscriminately into crowds and that they armed pro-government mobs. Amnesty International claimed in its May 2018 report that the government had “a strategy of indiscriminate repression with intent to kill not only in order to completely smash the protests, but also to punish those who participated in them.”[58] Yet there is ample evidence of extreme violence and murder committed by the protesters that was ignored by even “progressive” international media.
Opposition protester at tranque in Masaya. [Source: thegrayzone.com]
A key event, very similar to the events in Venezuela in 2002, was the pro- and anti-government marches with separate routes in Managua on Mother’s Day, May 30. Before the marches, as in Caracas 2002, opposition leaders repeatedly stated in the media that violence and deaths would occur. Only after the marches, when a group of opposition protesters ventured off route toward the Sandinista post-march concert, did violence occur. Setting up a roadblock near Dennis Martínez National Stadium, they encountered police and gunfire began. Eight died, including two Sandinistas.
One report on this day by a collaboration among the Argentine Forensic Anthropology Team (EAAF), the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI), and the Organization of American States (OAS) involved a model with forensic and acoustic analysis of social media by the spooky New York Times-friendly SITU Research consultancy—whose involvement in official narrative Maidan massacre research we will discuss in Part III.
In tandem with many NGOs and “independent experts”—if you are bored, try a game where you search each expert in this report and see if you can find one without a direct link to USGOs or NGOs—SITU concluded, despite the lack of evidence identifying the shooters,[59] that police snipers were responsible for the death of three of the protesters during the clashes and that this was “part of the systematic repression of civilian demonstrations.”[60]
This analysis omitted any media incriminating opposition protesters, despite the mass of such media and other evidence of protester violence. It also ignores shooting at Sandinistas and the well-reported presence of opposition protester weapons and guns as well as the possibility of a false flag as in Caracas 2002.
One has to dig into the middle of the full (500-page) GIEI report to read, “Lastly, these scenes show the presence of four armed individuals among the protesters, but the National Police and the pro-government media did not report any attacks perpetrated by protesters during these initial moments.”[61] It is worth noting that the report, which discusses violence from April 18 to May 30, 2018, mentions multiple instances of witnesses reporting unidentified snipers.
Other “Unknown Snipers”
Other examples include Lithuania 1992; Russia 1993, when Yeltsin’s counterrevolution made use of snipers; Iran 2009; Kyrgyzstan June 2010; Tunisia January 2011; and Egypt and Libya, also in 2011.[62]
During the siege of Sarajevo 1992-1996, there were multiple false-flag attacks, including cease-fire shelling, bombing and sniper fire. Recently declassified Canadian UN cables, for example, state that Bosniak and foreign Mujahadeen fighters (flown in by the United States) were “not above firing on their own people or UN areas.”[63] In a very different context, although only one person died, the still “unsolved” case of the murder of British police officer Yvonne Fletcher outside the Libyan Embassy in London in 1984 also appears to fit the prototype of an intelligence-linked false-flag murder during protests by an “unknown sniper.” Around the same time, the Operation Gladio-linked Brabant random murders in supermarkets in Belgium in 1982-1985 appear to be state false-flag terrorism that killed dozens.
State Terror, Imperialism and Control
All events personal and political can be understood as a dynamic of power. The problem is—as we have discussed and as the above examples of state terror make clear—power hides itself masterfully, not least as it protects itself in counterinsurgency and projects itself in insurgency.
What it hides most are its most effective tools: covert action including propaganda, terrorism, assassination and sexual blackmail; and its sole purpose, the amoral pursuit of elite greed. In the face of such barbaric political reality, one has to consider case-by-case whether a terrorist attack, mass killing or shooting—whether the weapon is a bomb, gun, knife, poison, vehicle or saboteur’s wrench—serves a directly or indirectly useful political purpose, not least for imperial propaganda. As ex-Securitate domestic chief Gheorghe Ratiu said, if there is a political desire for regime change, there must be sufficient blood and outrage for the public to want it.[64] If there is not, it must be created, in reality or in the minds of the public via the media. Blood that is the sacrificial fuel for Martin Luther’s “wheels of history”; blood that shocks, paralyzes and traumatizes, creating the martyrs of progress, progress toward the manipulative, threatening but comforting arms of elite power.
Reviewing the above cases, some patterns emerge. Lots of effort, time and money is needed both to nurture the network of dissidents and opposition prior to a push for regime change and to ensure the media coverage is controlled during and after the event. The imperial strategy for regime-change insurgency (“revolution,” if you believe them) is essentially the same as the strategy for counterinsurgency, i.e., it centers on soft-power networks, political training, propaganda and control of media, galvanized by a strategy of tension precipitated by provocateurs and paramilitary guerrilla tactics such as random snipers. We can call them the strategies of insurgent and counterinsurgent tension.
Inside the client-states of the empire, atrocity—including torture, assassination and random terror and fear—is used for counterinsurgency and control. This has been well documented in the U.S.-installed, trained and controlled Latin American and Asian military regimes as well as in the client-states of Europe since the Second World War. Italy’s “years of lead” of the 1970s and 1980s have been well-documented as a part of U.S.-controlled counterinsurgency via NATO-CIA’s Operation Gladio, also involving elements of other elite supranational networks such as Le Cercle and local elite networks like the Masonic Propaganda 2 group.[65]
Hundreds were killed in bombings and shootings, the socialist left was neutralized, marginalized, co-opted and vilified and Aldo Moro was assassinated as he tried to bridge social democrat and democratic socialist parties, all to push the politics to the center right, within the supranational neo-liberal empire under U.S. control through the CIA and NATO (with some history of MI6 and DIA involvement). Anyone who suggests there was any national sovereignty motivating these machinations is delusional or deceptive.
Similar Gladio/“stay-behind” operations are known in all NATO countries, for example, the “strategy of tension” random Brabant killings of Belgium in 1982-1985 and the horrific Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, Michel Nihoul, Paul Vanden Boeynants and Marc Dutroux pedophile-murder-blackmail network both appear linked to the Belgian Gladio network.
Although the latter involved the largest national scandal in modern Belgian history, culminating in the White March of more than 300,000 grieving and outraged citizens in Brussels on October 20, 1996, the elite criminals completely squashed any investigation, via typical counterinsurgency measures of media control, co-optation, smearing, obstruction, distraction, threats and murder. On this scale, one can only sense that the price is the Belgian soul.
If Gladio is new to you, I recommend starting with Arthur Rowse’s 1994 article in CovertAction Quarterly (No. 49) entitled “Gladio: The Secret U.S. War to Subvert Italian Democracy”; Philip Willan’s Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy(1991/2002); Allan Francovich’s stunning 1992 three-part BBC documentary; and Daniele Ganser’s pivotal 1995 bookNATO’s Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe; and exploring other elements on the Wikispooks website and elsewhere (with a caution for limited hangouts).
More recently, continuous with the near ubiquitous links to intelligence seen in “terror attacks,” the former commissioner of Spanish Police, José Manuel Villarejo, stated in the country’s high court in 2021 that the vehicle attacks of Barcelona in summer 2017, which killed 13 and wounded 130, were intended by the National Intelligence Center (CNI), to give Catalonia “a little scare” before their independence referendum.[66]
We will not explore the common debate of state terror as to whether the elite’s political-military-intelligence apparatus made it happen or let it happen on purpose, or as blowback (unintended consequences) or errors of surveillance in anti-terror infiltration operations (i.e., a “sting-gone-wrong”). In this case and in many others, it seems the terror is intentional and has many political benefits, not least a fearful and divided populace, leaving us mere pawns on the devil’s chessboard.
The ultimate dark lessons of the above examples are that state terrorism is a real and powerful tool of imperial insurgency and counterinsurgency; it has been used in many countries (including inside the U.S.) for many years; and, although the empire has supranational elements, even wealthy client-states of the U.S. have ultimately been at the behest of their Atlantic master, largely via networks of the military and intelligence. Regime change and strategy of tension counterinsurgency operations involve countless examples of well-documented state terrorism.
They require atrocity, the ultimate psyop of control; provocation to desperate pleas for external or internal justice and protection from or by authority depending on who the perceived threat is.
Whether or not an atrocity is a false-flag provocateurist covert action, the cause and details, as far as much of the public is concerned, are effectively irrelevant next to the control of the media by those in power, who prescribe or sanction the acceptable analysis.
As this is amplified in the emotive moments after an atrocity, and forges in the public’s psychic framework, it then enters legacy and is lost to imperialist amnesia, even where vague lingering doubt remains. Any subsequent critical analysis is then fighting against fixed or disappearing neural (and digital) networks and suffocating in the mounting layers of silt from the dirty, rich and ceaseless river of propaganda.
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Jim Cole is an editor and researcher. He can be reached at [email protected].
Notes
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Stephen Kinzer, The True Flag: Theodore Roosevelt, Mark Twain, and the Birth of American Empire (Henry Holt and Company, 2017).
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Checkmate: Strategy of a Revolution.
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‘White arms’ are non-explosive weapons such as: knives, daggers, swords, bayonets, clubs, axes, spears, slings, bows, and crossbows.
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Checkmate: Strategy of a Revolution.
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Featured image: Anti-government protesters clash with police in Kyiv on February 20, 2014. [Source: nbcnews.com]
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First published on October 31, 2022, following the US-NATO sabotage of Nord Stream on September 26-27, 2022
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As the crisis worsens, the “Goldman Sachs government”, the powerful US investment bank, is strengthening in Europe: that is, the appointment of politicians belonging to the financial elite to high government positions. After Mario Draghi as head of the Italian government, another “Goldman Sachs man”, Rishi Sunak, is put in charge of the British government: an expert in hedge funds, he married the daughter of an Indian billionaire who put him in charge of one of his financial companies. He has a similar career to French President Emmanuel Macron, who trained in the US investment Rothschild bank.
These and other politicians, who at the same time hold key positions in the European Union, drag Europe into the abyss of crisis by playing Washington’s game. Eurozone inflation marks another record hitting 10% in September. At the origin, there is a huge increase in gas prices, caused by the sanctions on Russia. Low-priced Russian gas is increasingly being replaced in the EU by expensive US liquefied natural gas (LNG) based on the reference price of the Amsterdam Stock Exchange controlled by a large US financial company.
At the same time, Italy is prevented from importing cheap oil and gas from Libya, as the Italian government “recognizes” and finances the Tripoli puppet government and declares the real Libyan government in Benghazi, “illegal”. In the interview conducted by Michelangelo Severgnini, an important political exponent of Benghazi – Abdul Hadi Al-Huweej, former Foreign Minister of the Al-Thani Government, and secretary of the Libyan Future Party – declares that the Benghazi government can supply Italy with oil and gas at prices much lower than market prices and can offer Italian companies great job opportunities in Libya.
Hence the need for Italy on the one hand to abolish sanctions on Russia and reopen Russian gas imports, and on the other to make an economic agreement with Benghazi. To do this, Italy needs to come out of military, economic, political, media, and ideological war – that is overwhelming our lives: a vital objective of the ITALY OUT OF WAR Campaign which, launched a few days ago, is gathering growing support.
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This article was originally published on byoblu.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
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Brussels is punishing Belgrade for not signing the agreement in Ohrid by allowing separatist Albanian authorities in Pristina to hold local elections in Serbian-majority northern Kosovo. The European Union is allowing the election despite Serbs not participating in them because the Community of Serb Municipalities (ZSO) has not been formed yet.
Effectively, the EU is disappointed by the non-participation of Serbian political parties in the northern Kosovo elections which are scheduled for April 23. The EU spokesperson said that it is the duty of Pristina and Belgrade to prioritise the return of Kosovo Serbs to institutions at the central and local level. However, the Serbian List and other parties representing Serbs in Kosovo declared that they will not participate in the mayoral elections if the ZSO is not formed before that.
This is a flagrant violation of the most basic human rights as the Serbian people cannot choose their own representatives through an institution, such as the ZSO, in their own indigenous homeland. The EU wants to destroy the idea of the ZSO or establish such a zone where Serbs cannot independently choose their representatives. This is a clear violation of democratic rights.
Serbian representatives left all Kosovo institutions in November last year, including positions in the Government and Assembly of Kosovo, as well as those in the judiciary and in the Kosovo Police. This was due to the Albanian separatist government’s decision to re-register cars.
The EU and its partners claimed in November that they are committed to de-escalating tensions and that the Serbs should fulfill their obligations and return to local institutions, adding that it is imperative to return to a situation in which Kosovo Serbs actively participate in local authorities, the police, and the judiciary.
“We call on Serbia and Kosovo Serb representatives to respect their Dialogue obligations and return to the Kosovo institutions to fulfil their duties, including in the Police, Judiciary and local administrations,” the EU said, adding that “the EU also calls on Kosovo to start immediately steps to establish the Association/Community of Serb Majority Municipalities.”
“The Kosovo Assembly has ratified the Brussels Agreement and Kosovo’s Constitutional Court ruled that the Association/Community needs to be established. Therefore, its establishment is a binding legal obligation for Kosovo. Continued failure to implement this obligation undermines the principle of Rule of Law and damages Kosovo’s reputation and credibility,” the statement added.
Although the ZSO was agreed by the Brussels Agreement all the way back in 2013 and confirmed by the European proposal and the annex from Ohrid, there has been no progress on the issue.
European Union spokesman Peter Stano said on April 18 that the EU has formed a Joint Monitoring Committee to oversee the implementation of the Agreement on Normalisation of Relations and that a new round of high-level dialogue will be held on May 2 in Brussels.
For their part, the US State Department, when asked about the implementation of the agreement made in Ohrid on March 18, stated that they expect both parties to fulfill their obligations and implement earlier agreements from the dialogue, including the Community of Municipalities with a Serbian majority.
Yet, this is only a faux concern for Washington as the Albanian separatists are implementing what the Americans call terror tactics – they create a new problem right before some agreements in order to talk about that problem, and then when they de-escalate that problem, they say it is a concession and expect a favour in return.
Separatist institutions in Kosovo actively allow Serbians to be terrorised. In this way, it is evident that any conventions on human rights, that are supposedly defended by Western Europe and the US, do not apply to the Serbs of Kosovo. All this occurs under the watchful eye of the NATO-led KFOR, the United Nations Protection Force, and the European Union Rule of Law Mission in Kosovo.
However, the truth is that there is no will in the West, above all the US, to prevent Pristina from such behaviour. At the same time though, they want to close the Kosovo issue, which is why they are trying to impose the Franco-German plan by force. The plan suggests UN membership for Kosovo, without opposition from Serbia. In return, Serbia would receive more EU funds and a fast track to bloc membership. However, not only is this unacceptable for Serbs, but it would be in direct violation of Serbia’s constitution, which explicitly rejects the recognition of Kosovo.
Due to Belgrade’s refusal to give up on its historic homeland, the EU is now punishing the Serbs by allowing separatist authorities to conduct elections in Serbian-majority municipalities and without the participation of Serbs.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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If anyone was expecting a new tilt, a shine of novelty, a flash of independence from Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong’s address to the National Press Club on April 17, they were bound to be disappointed. The anti-China hawks, talons polished, got their fill. The US State Department would not be disturbed. The Pentagon could rest easy. The toadyish musings of the Canberra establishment would continue to circulate in reliable staleness.
In reading (and hearing) Wong’s speech, one must always assume the opposite, or something close to it. Whatever is said about strategic balance, don’t believe a word of it; such views are always uttered in the shadow of US power. From that vantage point, Occam’s Razor becomes a delicious blessing: nothing said by any Australian official in foreign policy should ever be taken as independently relevant. Best gaze across the Pacific for confirmation.
In Wong’s address, the ill-dressed cliché waltzes with the scantily clad platitude. “When Australians look out to the world, we see ourselves reflected in it – just as the world can see itself reflected in us.” (World, whatever you are, do tell.)
The basis for this strained nonsense is, at least, promising. Variety can, paradoxically, generate common ground. “This is a powerful natural asset for building alignment, for articulating our determination to see the interests of all the world’s peoples upheld, alongside our own.” Mightily aspirational, is Wong here, though such language seems pinched from the Non-Aligned Movement of the Cold War, one that Australia, US policing deputy of the Asia-Pacific, was never a part off. No informed listener would assume otherwise.
Like a lecture losing steam early, she finally gets to the point of her address: “how we avert war and maintain peace – and more than that, how we shape a region that reflects our national interests and our shared regional interests.” It does not take long to realise what this entails: talk about “rules, standards and norms – where a larger country does not determine the fate of the smaller country, where each country can pursue its own aspirations, its own prosperity.”
That the United States has determined the fate of Australia since the Second World War, manipulating, interfering and guiding its politics and its policies, makes this statement risible, but no less significant. We are on bullying terrain, and Wong is trying to pick the most preferable bully.
She can’t quite put it in those terms, so speaks about “the regional balance of power” instead, with Australia performing the role of handmaiden. She dons the sage’s hat, consumes the shaman’s herbal potion, insisting that commentators and strategists have gotten it wrong to talk about “great powers competing for primacy. They love a binary. And the appeal of a binary is obvious. Simple, clear choices. Black and white.”
It takes one, obviously, to know another, and Senator Wong, along with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, have shown little resistance to the very binary concept they supposedly repudiate. Far from opposing it, we might even go so far as to see their seduction by US power as a move towards the unitary: there is only one choice for the Canberra cocktail set.
Much of the speech seems trapped in this register. It rejects the “prism of great power.” It abhors the nature of great powers scrapping and squawking over territories. And yet, Wong is keen to point the finger to one great power’s behaviour: unstainable lending, political interference, disinformation, reshaping international rules and standards.
Finally, the dastardly feline is out of the bag – and it is not the United States. “China continues to modernise its military at a pace and scale not seen in the world for nearly a century with little transparency or assurance about its strategic intent.”
Oh, Penny, if only you could understand the actual premise of AUKUS and the US modernising strategy, given that Washington’s defence budget exceeds those of the next nine powers combined. Yes, you do say that a conflict over Taiwan “would be catastrophic for all”, but there is nothing to say what will restrain you, or your colleagues, from committing Australia to such a conflict. Given that the Albanese government has turned up its nose at war powers reform that would have given Parliament a greater say in committing national suicide, confidence can hardly be brimming.
The assessment of Australia’s own role in international relations is not just off the mark but off the reservation. “We deploy our own statecraft toward shaping a region that is open, stable and prosperous. A predictable region, operated by agreed rules, standards and laws. Where no country dominates, and no country is dominated. A region where sovereignty is respected, and all countries benefit from a strategic equilibrium.”
To this, one is reminded of the remarks of former Australian Prime Minister Paul Keating, who describes Wong’s alms-for-the-poor routine as, “Running around the Pacific Islands with a lei around your neck handing out money”. This could hardly count as foreign policy. “It’s a consular task. Foreign policy is what you do with the great powers: what you do with China, what you do with the United States.”
Much of the speech inhabits the realm of the speculative. Wong is delusionary in assuming that regional states will accept Australia’s observance of the Treaty of Rarotonga, whatever the stance taken by the AUKUS pact members. Otherwise known as the South Pacific Nuclear Free Zone Treaty, Wong has revealed Australia’s ambivalence in observing its provisions. For one, she is on record as accepting the position that the US need not confirm whether nuclear-capable assets visiting Australia have nuclear weapons. She merely says that Washington “confirmed that the nuclear-powered submarines visiting Australia on rotation will be conventionally-armed.”
This hardly squares with the assessments of her own minions in the Department of Trade and Foreign Affairs, who have confirmed that Australia will accept the deployment of nuclear weapons on its soil as long as they are not stationed.
The last word should be left to that great critic of the Albanese tilt towards Washington’s military-industrial pathology. “Wong,” observed Keating, “went on to eschew ‘black and white’ binary choices but then proceeded to make a choice herself – extolling the virtues of the United States, of it remaining ‘the central power’ – of ‘balancing the region’, while disparaging China as ‘intent on being China’, going on to say ‘countries don’t want to live in closed, hierarchical region, where rules are dictated by a single major power to suit its own interests’. Nothing too subtle about that.” The Washington establishment will be delighted.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]
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Below is the carefully documented article by Peter Schwarz entitled:
Kosovo Liberation Army Leader Hashim Thaçi on Trial for War Crimes
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Introductory Note by Michel Chossudovsky
The crimes committed by Hashim Thaci had been ordered by US-NATO. The KLA was supported by the CIA and Germany’s BND (Bundes Nachrichten Dienst).
From the very outset those crimes against the people of Serbia and Kosovo were committed on behalf of the Atlantic Alliance. The KLA had extensive links to organized crime involved in drug trafficking. In the wake of the 1999 war, 24 years ago, a Mafia State was installed in Kosovo.
The bombing of Yugoslavia ceased on June 10th. On that same day 10, June 1999, the US decided to establish in Kosovo its US military base Camp Bondsteel which constitutes “the largest and the most expensive foreign military base built by the US in Europe, since the Vietnam War”.
And then 21 years later, the Hague Prosecutor stated that Hashim Thaci (who had served as a proxy US-NATO “Prime Minister” and “President” of Kosovo) was a “war criminal”. His links to NATO, the Pentagon and the US State Department (including Madeleine Albright) were simply not mentioned.
M. Albright and H. Thaci, 1998
In 1999, while the bombings of Yugoslavia were ongoing, segments of the European and American “Left” including Znetand Democracy Now among others had portrayed the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), as “Freedom Fighters” pointing to their so-called Marxist-Leninist roots:
“I am sympathetic to the argument that says that if people want to fight for their rights, if they are not asking others to do it for them, then they ought to be provided with the weapons to help them succeed. Such an argument seemed to me persuasive with respect to Bosnia.”
“Michel Chossudovsky, a professor of economics at the University of Ottawa, has set out the most meticulous frame-up in a piece entitled “Freedom Fighters Financed by Organised Crime”, which has been doing the internet circuit. Full of half-truths, assumptions and innuendoes about the KLA’s alleged use of drug money, Chossudovsky’s article seeks to discredit the KLA as a genuine liberation movement representing the aspirations of the oppressed Albanian majority. …
Media censorship was applied.The fact that the KLA leader was on the Interpol list was casually dismissed or ignored. My article Kosovo “Freedom Fighters” Financed by Organized Crime, April 1999, was turned down by Le Monde diplomatique, with which I had been actively collaborating since the early 1990s.
With regard to the Indictment of Hashim Thaci.: He was “a paid killer” acting on behalf of his sponsors. The KLA led by Hashim Thaci was relentlessly supported by NATO and the US military.
My thoughts are with people of the former Yugoslavia, whose country was destroyed and dismantled by US-NATO.
US-NATO war crimes are amply documented, The 70 page “indictment”against Hashim Thaci should be used to indict US-NATO for extensive crimes against humanity.
Michel Chossudovsky, March 26, 2023, April 19, 2023
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From March 24 to June 9, 1999, NATO bombed Serbia for 77 days. It was the first major war on European soil since the Second World War—even this fact is suppressed and denied today in view of the war in Ukraine.
War propaganda was in full swing at the time: NATO was laying waste to Serbian cities in order to defend “human rights” and to stop the “ethnic cleansing” Serbia was accused of carrying out in Kosovo. Greens, liberals and pseudo-left groups, who only a few weeks before had been invoking pacifism, eagerly took up this propaganda and switched to the war camp with flying colours. In Germany, the Greens and Social Democrats organised the first military combat mission involving German armed forces since Hitler’s defeat in 1945.
Image is licensed under Creative Commons
Now, the man whom Joe Biden embraced in 2009 and called the “George Washington of Kosovo” is facing a special court as a war criminal. On Monday, the trial of Hashim Thaçi, the co-founder and spokesman of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and later Kosovo’s foreign minister, head of government and president, began in The Hague.
The 70-page indictment accuses Thaçi and three other high-ranking KLA members—Kadri Veseli, Rexhep Selimi and Jakup Krasniqi—of being responsible for more than a hundred murders and numerous other war crimes in 1998 and 1999. All four are accused of having personally participated in threatening or abusing prisoners. The prosecution has handed over 56,000 documents to Thaçi’s defence lawyers that prove these accusations.
The indictment describes in detail the brutality with which the KLA acted against Serbs, Roma and other non-Albanians. Kosovo Albanians who opposed their policies and supported Thaçi’s rival Ibrahim Rugova, who advocated a peaceful solution to the conflict with Serbia, were mercilessly persecuted. The KLA ran numerous detention centres where several hundred inmates were held and, according to witnesses, abused with torture, mock executions and death threats.
Victims were beaten with guns, baseball bats, metal tools and wooden sticks and tortured using electric shocks or feigned drowning. Other prisoners and family members had to watch the torture or were forced to abuse one another. Others were shot by the dozens.
The killings continued even after NATO forced Kosovo to secede from Serbia and stationed its 50,000-strong Kosovo Force (KFOR) there. The KLA took revenge on Serbs, Roma and Rugova supporters, dozens of whom were murdered. Thaçi, whose wartime name was “The Snake,” was considered their strong man.
The Thaçi trial is an object lesson in imperialist war propaganda, which stops at no lie to camouflage its predatory and criminal aims. This applies not only to the war in Yugoslavia at the time but also to today’s war in Ukraine.
Here, too, criminals are celebrated as freedom fighters—who, like the members of the Azov Battalion, wear Nazi insignia and for eight years persecuted all those in eastern Ukraine who spoke Russian or had sympathies for Russia. Here, too, politicians—who hang on the apron strings of oligarchs and Western puppet masters, or like Ukraine’s President Zelensky unscrupulously send tens of thousands of young soldiers to their deaths for NATO’s goals—are glorified as democrats and freedom fighters.
The positive and negative signs are simply reversed. For example, for nine years, not a day has gone by without the media proclaiming that Russia’s annexation of Crimea was a violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which was unacceptable under international law and historically unprecedented. But the immediate objective of the 1999 NATO war was to force Kosovo’s secession, which was indisputably part of Serbian territory under international law. After the war it was placed under international administration, and in 2008, against Serbia’s declared will, it proclaimed its state independence, which was immediately recognised by the US and most European states.
With the secession of Kosovo, a destitute province with 1.8 million inhabitants, the imperialist powers completed the division of Yugoslavia into seven powerless petty states completely dependent upon them. Above all, Serbia, traditionally politically and culturally linked to Russia, was thus to be isolated and weakened.
Hashim Thaçi played a key role in this criminal enterprise. In 1999, Madeleine Albright and Joschka Fischer, the foreign ministers of the US and Germany, invited the KLA spokesman to the Rambouillet Conference, where he provided NATO with the alibi for bombing Yugoslavia.
Monument to Serbs killed by “KLA” in Mitrovica (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
It was already known at the time that Thaçi’s KLA was carrying out terrorist attacks against Serbian targets and political opponents and financed itself through criminal enterprises, such as trafficking in drugs, women and human organs. The CIA had even classified the KLA as a terrorist organisation before NATO enlisted its services and reclassified it as a “liberation movement.”
After NATO forced the secession of Kosovo, it relied on Thaçi and the KLA to maintain “peace and order” there. After independence, Thaçi became foreign minister, prime minister and finally president of the new country, establishing a corrupt and criminal oligarchic regime.
While many Serb politicians were arrested and hauled before The Hague War Crimes Tribunal, Thaçi and the KLA leaders were under American and European protection. In Kosovo itself, they spread a climate of fear.
“Almost no one dared to testify against KLA veterans,” the Frankfurter Allgemeine described the situation in Kosovo after the Yugoslav war. “And those who did take the risk fared badly: Inexplicable car accidents with fatal outcomes, ‘suicides’ and sniper attacks could be the result.”
The Chief Prosecutor of The Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla Del Ponte, also reported intimidation and terror in her memoirs published in 2009: “Witnesses were so fearful and intimidated that they were afraid to even talk about the presence of the KLA in some areas, let alone actual crimes.”
Those who spoke anyway put their lives in danger and had to be taken to other countries with their families, Del Ponte reports. Even members of the KFOR force and some Hague Tribunal judges were afraid of attacks.
The situation only changed when Swiss lawyer Dick Marty presented a comprehensive report on KLA crimes in 2011. Marty did this on behalf of the Council of Europe, to which 47 states belong and which is independent of the European Union.
The EU then appointed its own special investigator. It chose US lawyer John Clint Williamson, who was considered “credible” because he had co-authored the indictment against Serb leader Slobodan Milošević. After more than two years, Williamson concluded that Marty’s accusations were solidly substantiated.
Now the EU felt compelled to set up a special court in The Hague, formally part of Kosovo’s judicial system but staffed by foreign judges and prosecutors and financed by European funds.
The special court investigated for over five years without any charges being brought. Presumably the whole thing would have fizzled out had it not been for conflicts between the US and the EU.
Richard Grenell, appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019 as special envoy for negotiations between Serbia and Kosovo, worked closely with President Thaçi, while the EU leaned on his rival, head of government Albin Kurti. When Thaçi was about to leave for a summit meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić at the White House in Washington in June 2020, the Special Court published the indictment. Thaçi had to cancel the trip and resign.
The fact that the trial finally opened two and a half years after the indictment was published does not at all mean that Thaçi will eventually be convicted. According to the presiding judge, the trial is expected to last several years. The accused are being defended by top US law firms. And several prominent individuals, including the NATO Supreme Commander in the Yugoslav war Wesley Clark and the former French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, are expected to testify in support of Thaçi.
But even Thaçi’s lawyers do not deny that the crimes described in the indictment took place. They are pursuing a familiar defence strategy from the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi war criminals: The KLA units had indeed committed crimes, but Thaçi, founding member, commander and official spokesman of the KLA, had known nothing about them!
In any case, the trial of Thaçi has already shattered the lies with which the Yugoslav war was justified. The WSWS had already categorically rejected this “clumsy and cynical propaganda campaign,” pointed out the real reasons for the war and campaigned for the building of an antiwar movement of the international working class based on a socialist programme.
An article posted in the WSWS on May 24, 1999 titled “Why is NATO at war with Yugoslavia? World Power, Oil and Gold” [1], stated: “Once the fraudulent claims of the NATO spokesmen and the falsifications of the media are stripped away from this war, what remains? A naked aggression by imperialist countries against a small federation, in which the official reasons given for the onslaught serve as a smokescreen.”
The article linked the Yugoslav war to US plans to dominate the Eurasian landmass and warned: “The potential for a conflict with Russia, it should now be clear, has actually increased over the past ten years.” This warning has since been dramatically borne out.
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Note
[1] David North, A Quarter Century of War: The US Drive for Global Hegemony 1990-2016, Oak Park, MI: Mehring Books, 2016, p. 123
Several former military and intelligence professionals have contacted me and voiced similar doubts about the pat story being circulated regarding National Guard Airman Jack Texeira and the allegations that he removed TOP SECRET documents from a SCIF, photographed them and then posted them to a gamer chat. They all agree, something is not right. The media account does not make sense.
Dr David Kelly was a weapons inspector working under the auspices of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), and an expert in the field of biological weapons. He expressed doubts about the weapons of mass destruction claims found in the U.K. intelligence dossier “Iraq Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation”, published on January 30, 2003 and used as the basis of Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council.
At first sight you may wonder what do Ursula Von der Leyen and McKinsey and Pfizer have in common? The answer is: Corruption. Utmost corruption. Madame Von der Leyen, unelected President of the European Commission (EC) has several corruption scandals on her neck.
Thousands of children were killed by the Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion (which is supported by US-NATO). Fleeing the war zone to save your children is tagged by the I.C.C. as “deportation”. Starting in 2014, thousands of Donbass families including children were provided safe haven in Russia, as part of a humanitarian initiative under the auspices of Moscow’s Ministry of Emergency Situations.
In mid-February 2023, I reported that the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty. President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That is how a constitutional democracy is supposed to work.
Electronic warfare (EW) is one of the most important aspects of modern military capabilities and is often the litmus test of how advanced the state and its armed forces are. It’s part of the “invisible” and yet extremely intense battle that we usually cannot see directly.
The new president of the BRICS Bank has revealed that the Global South-led bloc is advancing toward de-dollarization, gradually moving away from use of the US dollar. The New Development Bank plans to give nearly one-third (30%) of its loans in the local currencies of the financial institution’s members.
Future historians may say that the most significant event of 2023 had nothing to do with Donald Trump, other 2024 presidential candidates, or even the war in Ukraine. Instead, the event with the most long-term significance may be one that received little attention in the mainstream media — Saudi Arabia’s movement toward accepting currencies other than the US dollar for oil payments.
On March 13th, the Biden administration unveiled its $842 billion military budget request for 2024, the largest ask (in today’s dollars) since the peaks of the Afghan and Iraq wars. And mind you, that’s before the hawks in Congress get their hands on it.
This article by Professor James Petras first published by GR in August 2016 brings to the forefront the ongoing conflict between the US and China.
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China and the United States are moving in polar opposite directions: Beijing is rapidly becoming the center of overseas investments in high tech industries, including robotics, nuclear energy and advanced machinery with collaboration from centers of technological excellence, like Germany.
In contrast, Washington is pursuing a predatory military pivot to the least productive regions with collaboration from its most barbaric allies, like Saudi Arabia.
China is advancing to global economic superiority by borrowing and innovating the most advance methods of production, while the US degrades and debases its past immense productive achievements to promote wars of destruction.
China’s growing prominence is the result of a cumulative process that advanced in a systematic way, combining step-by-step growth of productivity and innovation with sudden jumps up the ladder of cutting edge technology.
China’s Stages of Growth and Success
China has moved from a country, highly dependent on foreign investment in consumer industries for exports, to an economy, based on joint public-private investments in higher value exports.
China’s early growth was based on cheap labor, low taxes and few regulations on multi-national capital. Foreign capital and local billionaires stimulated growth, based on high rates of profit. As the economy grew, China’s economy shifted toward increasing its indigenous technological expertise and demanding greater ‘local content’ for manufactured goods.
By the beginning of the new millennium China was developing high-end industries, based on local patents and engineering skills, channeling a high percentage of investments into civilian infrastructure, transportation and education.
Massive apprenticeship programs created a skilled labor force that raised productive capacity. Massive enrollment in science, math, computer science and engineering universities provided a large influx of high-end innovators, many of whom had gained expertise in the advanced technology of overseas competitors.
China’s strategy has been based on the practice of borrowing, learning, upgrading and competing with the most advanced economics of Europe and the US.
By the end of the last decade of the 20th century, China was in a position to move overseas. The accumulation process provided China with the financial resources to capture dynamic overseas enterprises.
China was no longer confined to investing in overseas minerals and agriculture in Third World countries. China is looking to conquer high-end technological sectors in advanced economics.
By the second decade of the 21st century Chinese investors moved into Germany, Europe’s most advanced industrial giant. During the first 6 months of 2016 Chinese investors acquired 37 German companies, compared with 39 in all of 2015. China’s total investments in Germany for 2016 may double to over $22 billion dollars.
In 2016, China successfully bought out KOKA, Germany’s most innovative engineering company. China’s strategy is to gain superiority in the digital future of industry.
China is rapidly moving to automate its industries, with plans to double the robot density of the US by the year 2020.
Chinese and Austrian scientists successfully launched the first quantum-enabled satellite communication system which is reportedly ‘hack proof’, ensuring China’s communications security.
While China’s global investments proceed to dominate world markets, the US, England and Australia have been trying to impose investment barriers. By relying on phony ‘security threats’, Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May blocked a multi-billion dollar Chinese investment-heavy nuclear plant (Hinckley Point C). The pretext was the spurious claim that China would use its stake to “engage in energy blackmail, threatening to turn off the power in the event of international crises”.
The US Committee on Foreign Investment has blocked several multi-billion dollar Chinese investments in high tech industries.
In August 2016 Australia blocked an $8 billion-dollar purchase of a controlling stake in its biggest electricity distribution network on specious claims of ‘national security’.
The Anglo-American and German empires are on the defensive. They increasingly cannot compete economically with China, even in defending their own innovative industries.
In large part this is the result of their failed policies. Western economic elite have increasingly relied on short-term speculation in finance, real estate and insurance, while neglecting their industrial base.
Led by the US, their reliance on military conquests (militaristic empire-building) absorb public resources, while China has directed its domestic resources toward innovative and advanced technology.
To counter China’s economic advance, the Obama regime has implemented a policy of building economic walls at home, trade restrictions abroad and military confrontation in the South China Sea – China’s strategic trade routes.
US officials have ratcheted up their restrictions on Chinese investments in high tech US enterprises including a $3.8 billion investment in Western Digital and Philips attempt to sell its lighting business. The US blocked ‘Chen China’s planned $44 billion takeover of Swiss chemical group ‘Syngenta’.
US officials are doing everything possible to stop innovative billion dollar deals that include China as a strategic partner.
Accompanying its domestic wall, the US has been mobilizing an overseas blockade of China via its Trans-Pacific-Partnership, which proposes to exclude Beijing from participating in the ‘free trade zone’ with a dozen North America, Latin American and Asian members. Nevertheless, not a single member-nation of the TPP has cut back its trade with China. On the contrary, they are increasing ties with China – an eloquent comment on Obama’s skill at ‘pivoting’.
While the ‘domestic economic wall’ has had some negative impacts on particular Chinese investors, Washington has failed to dent China’s exports to US markets. Washington’s failure to block China’s trade has been even more damaging to Washington’s effort to encircle China in Asia and Latin America, Oceana and Asia.
Australia, New Zealand, Peru, Chile, Taiwan, Cambodia and South Korea depend on Chinese markets far more than on the US to survive and grow.
While Germany, faced with China’s dynamic growth, has chosen to ‘partner’ and share, up-scale productive investments, Washington has opted to form military alliances to confront China.
The US bellicose military alliance with Japan has not intimidated China. Rather it has downgraded their domestic economies and economic influence in Asia.
Moreover, Washington’s “military pivot” has deepened and expanded China’s strategic links to Russia’s energy sources and military technology.
While the US spends hundreds of billions in military alliances with the backward Baltic client-regimes and the parasitical Middle Eastern states, (Saudi Arabia, Israel), China accumulates strategic expertise from its economic ties with Germany, resources from Russia and market shares among Washington’s ‘partners’ in Asia and Latin America.
There is no question that China, following the technological and productive path of Germany, will win out over the US’s economic isolationist and global militarist strategy.
If the US has failed to learn from the successful economic strategy of China, the same failure can explain the demise of the progressive regimes in Latin America.
China’s Success and the Latin American Retreat
After more than a decade of growth and stability, Latin America’s progressive regimes have retreated and declined. Why has China continued on the path of stability and growth while their Latin American partners retreated and suffered defeats?
Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and Ecuador, for over a decade, served as Latin America’s center-left success story. Their economies grew, social spending increased, poverty and unemployment were reduced and worker incomes expanded.
Subsequently their economies went into crisis, social discontent grew and the center-left regimes fell.
In contrast to China, the Latin American center-left regimes did not diversify their economies: they remained heavily dependent on the commodity boom for growth and stability.
The Latin American elites borrowed and depended on foreign investment, and financial capital, while China engaged in public investments in industry, infrastructure, technology and education.
Latin American progressives joined with foreign capitalist and local speculators in non-productive real estate speculation and consumption, while China invested in innovative industries at home and abroad. While China consolidated political rulership, the Latin American progressives “allied” with strategic domestic and overseas multi-national adversaries to ‘share power’, which were, in fact, eagerly prepared to oust their “left” allies.
When the Latin commodity based economy collapsed, so did the political links with their elite partners. In contrast, China’s industries benefited from the lower global commodity prices, while Latin America’s left suffered. Faced with widespread corruption, China launched a major campaign purging over 200,000 officials. In Latin America, the Left ignored corrupt officials, allowing the opposition to exploit the scandals to oust center-left officials.
While Latin America imported machinery and parts from the West; China bought the entire Western companies producing the machines and their technology – and then implemented Chinese technological improvements.
China successfully outgrew the crisis, defeated its adversaries and proceeded to expand local consumption and stabilized rulership.
Latin America’s center-left suffered political defeats in Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay, lost elections in Venezuela and Bolivia and retreated in Uruguay.
Conclusion
China’s political economic model has outperformed the imperialist West and leftist Latin America. While the US has spent billions in the Middle East for wars on behalf of Israel, China has invested similar amounts in Germany for advanced technology, robotics and digital innovations.
While President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s “pivot to Asia” has been largely a wasteful military strategy to encircle and intimidate China, Beijing’s “pivot to markets” has successfully enhanced its economic competitiveness. As a result, over the past decade, China’s growth rate is three times that of the US; and in the next decade China will double the US in ‘robotizing’ its productive economy.
The US ‘pivot to Asia’, with its heavy dependence on military threats and intimidation has cost billions of dollars in lost markets and investments. China’s ‘pivot to advanced technology’ demonstrates that the future lies in Asia not the West. China’s experience offers lessons for future Latin American leftist governments.
First and foremost, China emphasizes the necessity of balanced economic growth, over and above short-term benefits resulting from commodity booms and consumerist strategies.
Secondly, China demonstrates the importance of professional and worker technical education for technological innovation, over and above business school and non-productive ‘speculative’ education so heavily emphasized in the US.
Thirdly, China balances its social spending with investment in core productive activity; competitiveness and social services are combined.
China’s enhanced growth and social stability, its commitment to learning and surpassing advanced economies has important limitations, especially in the areas of social equality and popular power. Here China can learn from the experience of Latin America’s Left. The social gains under Venezuela’s President Chavez are worthy of study and emulation; the popular movements in Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina, which ousted neo-liberals from power, could enhance efforts in China to overcome the business- state nexus of pillage and capital flight.
China, despite its socio-political and economic limitations, has successfully resisted US military pressures and even ‘turned the tables’ by advancing on the West.
In the final analysis, China’s model of growth and stability certainly offers an approach that is far superior to the recent debacle of the Latin American Left and the political chaos resulting from Washington’s quest for global military supremacy.
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The following is a list of select excerpts from the March 31, 2023 episode of the Global Research News Hour. The show featured a conversation with Dr. David Halpin, who along with a committee of medical doctors contested the claim that Dr. David Kelly took his own life.
Dr David Kelly was a weapons inspector working under the auspices of the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), and an expert in the field of biological weapons. He expressed doubts about the weapons of mass destruction claims found in the U.K. intelligence dossier “Iraq Its Infrastructure Of Concealment, Deception And Intimidation”, published on January 30, 2003 and used as the basis of Colin Powell’s February 5, 2003 presentation to the United Nations Security Council.
This suggests a concerted attempt to conceal murder, a crime pointing to high people in power in Great Britain.
Select quotes from the interview with Dr. David Halpin:
“It is interesting to note that (Justice Roper’s) judgement took 19 pages and he had it prepared already before Hearing which lasted about 4-5 hours with quite a large lunch break / lunch adjournment. So, quite extra-ordinarily he prepared his judgment from the papers and not from the Hearing. That’s the first thing to observe. I was asked if I wanted to appeal – expensive exercise – and I wasn’t even sure whether that was possible over the Christmas period. We let it lie. But I haven’t given up! I have continued thinking about Dr. Kelly, because I think that lies should be challenged, and the whole damned thing is a lie!”
. . .
“He had written 82 emails, and one of them was to his daughter Rachel who he was very fond of – he had three daughters – and he talked about going down the next day in his village of Southmore to show Rachel where a mayor had had a new foe. And this was a message of joy, really. And he was addressing his daughter who lived just a few miles away in Oxfordshire. HE also said in the email that he’d been booked on a flight back to Iraq nine days later and he was looking forward to that. So this was NOT the picture of a man who had been so distressed by the Hearing of the Foreign Affairs Committee on the Tuesday, two days before that he had felt that life wasn’t worth living. There was no indication that he was suicidal.”
. . .
“Dr. Hunt produced a report on the 19th of July – a post-mortem report – he analyzed his findings. He reported them no doubt into a recorder at the end of the autopsy. It took him about four hours finishing after midnight. We have never seen that report! Mr. Gardiner – Nicholas Gardiner the Oxford Coroner said at the time that Dr. Hunt would have to revise his post-mortem report in a later statement then in is recorded. We’ve never seen that. I’ve asked for it. But it is unlawful. Any pathologist must always record and present the sequence of his thoughts and recording and what is recorded in regard to his thought and findings. That has not happened. And that is one of the major deficiencies in the so-called Hutton Inquiry.”
. . .
“(Lord Hutton) was charged into the inquiry into the circumstances surrounding the death of Dr. David Kelly. The circumstances surrounding. It turned out in fact that the Hutton Inquiry focused a great deal on the BBC and Gilligan and in fact rounded on the BBC and exonerated one of the worst governments we’ve had in this country, in fact in our history. And intent on a genocidal war based on lies. That’s the fact of it. So Lord Falconer chose Lord Hutton, no doubt with some egging on by Blair, who by that time had arrived in Tokyo having received the congressional Gold Medal with vast adulation in Washington.”
. . .
“Kelly was phoned by Peter Beaumont of the Observer newspaper, and Peter Beaumont asked him what his view of this was…In essence, he said, “the machines are what the Iraqis say they are. They are machines for producing hydrogen for the balloons laying about artillery guns.”…He discounted that there was any malign purpose in these two machines, which in fact ironically had been sold to the Iraqis for a high price by British Aerospace. So you can imagine – I can easily imagine – that the sofa Cabinet, Blair, Mandelson, Powell, Campbell, and all the other psychopaths sitting there sipping their wine, would have in fact had brown trousers when they had that teletape or email of what Kelly had said. Kelly was going off message, and in fact he’d been off message for some time. I think when he went to Kuwait in May, I am fairly certain he was being scrutinized very carefully, and being kept, shall we say, on a leash. And I think when the time came when probably America said, “it’s time for Kelly to be silenced.”
. . .
“That old dream, what I call a nightmare, of a larger Israel, from the brook of the Nile to the Euphrates was still in the mind. And it was there in fact it was put in a clear picture by Oded Yinon in 1982. And what was in that? The destruction first of Iraq…Syria next I think it was, then of Libya, and of all other Arab entities or nations. No mention was made of any loss of blood. But it was quite clearly in the dream – in the nightmare – that this should happen. And it’s been happening. The game has in fact been was one of the more recent targets. But we have to see it wasn’t a war for oil that was a factor. It was a war for Eretz, Israel.”
. . .
“If you look at the images, the burning of his trunk tails off from the flanks, as it would do if he was irradiated. And I am certain, absolutely certain, that Ali … he was made armless and scarred terribly in his trunk by an enhanced radiation weapon as designed by Cohen at Livermore Laboratories, a man who regarded the weapon as humane! Now the enhanced radiation weapon or the neutron bomb is, I think, owned by the Chinese, by the Russians, probably by the Israelis, and certainly by the Americans, and was owned I think by the British and is said to be disowned. It is a remarkable weapon. It produces a vast flux of neutrons which destroyed tissues, but do not destroy material. So concrete and metal survive, but tissues are frazzled terribly.”
. . .
“We’re talking about a force of about 30,000 men, so called elite troops. And the question remains whether a neutron weapon was not exploded beneath ground and caused the death – the mass death – of the Republican Guard. This is an hypothesis, but this blogger raised the issue, where did the Republican Guard go to, what happened to them when they were fighting the invaders themselves beneath the surface of the Baghdad Airport in the most elaborate catacomb probably constructed by an American or a British contractor.”
. . .
“It was quite likely that Kelly might have known that a neutron weapon had been used. Now, if he knew that, and if was learned about a war which was constructed on the lie that Saddam still had weapons of mass destruction, and it was discovered that the coalition of the willing led by U.S. and its poodle the UK, and on behalf, I believe, in large part Israel, if it was widely known that weapons of mass destruction had been used by the coalition of the willing, you can imagine that the world would have been turned on the Bushes and the Blairs and their collaborators with fierce vehemence. I’m sure of that. So I think this was a second reason why Kelly might have had to be eliminated.”
. . .
“But what was happening day by day following the March 22, 2003, was of utmost importance to the public psyche. People they respond to immediacy. They get into a flurry when things are happening. The media then drop it and soon people forget about it. But I’m quite certain that if it came out that they’d used a WMD in Iraq that would have blown up Blair’s government. I think they would have been made to resign within days, I think, even with the damnable Tories opposing them.”
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In mid-February 2023, I reported that the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program
Within days, fact checkers tried to debunk the idea that individual people are being tracked, or that these data could be misused by government or third parties
COVID “vaccination” status was not considered a private medical matter at all during 2021 and 2022, yet mainstream media now want you to believe that your COVID jab status is protected by medical privacy laws
Your medical data are not nearly as private as you think. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is rife with exemptions when it comes to your privacy. Federal agencies such as Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, are exempt from the privacy clauses and can access identifiable data — especially if there’s an outbreak of infectious disease, be it real or fictitious
Government agencies and a number of third parties or “covered entities” can also use a number of loopholes to re-identify previously de-identified patient data
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In mid-February 2023, I reported that the U.S. government has secretly been tracking those who didn’t get the COVID jab, or are only partially jabbed, through a previously unknown surveillance program designed by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.1
Within days, fact checkers were burning the midnight oil trying to debunk the idea that individual people are being tracked, or that these data could be misused by government or third parties.
Strangely enough, the most egregious “misinformation” example USA Today’s fact checker could find was a social media post that “generated nearly 200 likes in less than a month.”2 Two hundred likes? To most influencers, that’s nothing, especially not over the course of 30 days.
Why is USA Today stressing over a post with 200 likes? Seems a bit panicky if you ask me. Reuters also came out with a fact check and, like USA Today, Reuters claimed there was a lack of “context:”3
“New diagnostic codes that describe a patient as under-immunized against COVID-19 were introduced to help doctors identify patients potentially at risk for more-severe COVID and to help health officials track vaccine effectiveness and mortality statistics, among other public health questions, not for U.S. government tracking of unvaccinated individuals, as some are claiming online.
The codes in an individual’s medical record, like all personal health information, are protected by U.S. privacy law and could only be analyzed at the group or population level uncoupled from individual identities …”
Your Medical Records Are Far From Private
As is so often the case, the fact checkers are the ones taking the issue out of context or, rather, not presenting the full picture. The fact is, your medical data are not nearly as private as you think. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) is rife with exemptions when it comes to your privacy.
Federal agencies such as Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have every right to access identifiable information, as they are exempt from the privacy clauses, and they’re particularly justified to access your private vaccination data if there’s an outbreak of infectious disease, be it real or fictitious. As noted in the HHS’s and CDC’s HIPAA guidance:4
“Balancing the protection of individual health information with the need to protect public health, the Privacy Rule expressly permits disclosures without individual authorization to public health authorities authorized by law to collect or receive the information for the purpose of preventing or controlling disease, injury, or disability, including but not limited to public health surveillance, investigation, and intervention …
[T]he Privacy Rule expressly permits PHI [protected health information] to be shared for specified public health purposes. For example, covered entities may disclose PHI, without individual authorization, to a public health authority legally authorized to collect or receive the information for the purpose of preventing or controlling disease, injury, or disability …
Further, the Privacy Rule permits covered entities to make disclosures that are required by other laws, including laws that require disclosures for public health purposes.”
Loopholes Also Allow Re-Identification of Personal Data
Government agencies and a number of third parties or “covered entities” can also use a number of loopholes to re-identify previously de-identified patient data. As explained in a CDC Public Health Law document detailing the lawful sharing of private medical data:5
“While HIPAA limits the use and disclosure of health information, it also permits certain secondary use exceptions for public health purposes. HIPAA provides certain circumstances under which patient data can be disclosed to health departments without patient authorization.
Under HIPAA, providers may disclose identifiable patient data (protected health information or PHI) if required by law, allowing states to pass legal exceptions to HIPAA restrictions.
Providers may also disclose PHI to health departments without patient authorization for public health activities, such as communicable disease reporting, or to a public health authority to prevent or control disease, injury, or disability under the public health exemption. A covered entity may access, use, and disclose PHI for clinical research without an individual’s authorization if:
1) it obtains documentation of waiver of individual’s authorization by an institutional review board or privacy board
2) the PHI is necessary for this research
3) the research is using PHI of decedents
Providers may disclose EHI without patient authorization when the data have been ‘de-identified’ … but still permits re-identification by providers or regional health information organizations through randomized patient source codes should a public health alert or case report become necessary.
Finally, providers may disclose a ‘limited data set,’ including dates and zip codes, without authorization and still re-identify patients if they maintain patient codes derived from certain identifiers.”
So, can your vaccination status be accessed by federal health agencies? Yes. Can that information be identifiable? Absolutely yes. Does that mean that you, as an individual, could be surveilled and/or get caught in a forced vaccination dragnet or end up experiencing negative repercussions in other areas of your life due to your vaccination status? Probably.
U.S. “privacy” laws certainly make allowances for such scenarios, and considering the behavior of government over the past three years, it would be naïve to believe they would never use your vaccination data against you.
Reuters Muddies the Water
Reuters also muddies the water in other ways. For example, the fact check stresses that medical providers have used the general code Z28.3 (which represents “underimmunized”) since 2015, and that “these codes are not used with purposes beyond monitoring and reporting diseases and mortality statistics or for insurance billing.”
While it’s true that the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) code Z28.3 has been around for years, the new subcodes that track COVID jab status were added in mid-September 2021 during a ICD-10 Coordination and Maintenance Committee meeting, and during that meeting, they specified that “there is interest in being able to track people who are not immunized or only partially immunized.”
Below is a screenshot of page 194 of the agenda6 distributed during that meeting. There’s no ambiguity here. The new ICD-10 codes were added for the specific purpose of “tracking people” who are unjabbed or only partially jabbed against COVID-19.
They didn’t say they wanted to track “general population data.” They specifically said “people” are to be tracked. They also clearly state that this tracking is “of value for public health” — and again, the key words “public health” open the door to federal health agencies accessing identifiable data.
Moreover, additional subcodes specify the “why” a person chose not to get the COVID shot or stopped getting boosters. Those codes are listed in the screenshot below, under Z28.3 Underimmunization Status.7
The use of “delinquent immunization status” under code Z28.39 also tells us something about where this is all headed. “Delinquent” means being “neglectful of a duty” or being “guilty of an offense.” Is refusing boosters a criminal offense? Perhaps not today, but some day, it might be, and these codes lay the foundation for that kind of medical persecution.
All Missed Vaccinations Will Be Tracked
Another tipoff that these codes will become part and parcel of the biosecurity control grid, even if they’re not used in this way now, is the fact that code Z28.39 — “Other underimmunization status”8— is to be used “when a patient is not current on other, non-COVID vaccines.”9
In other words, they have already begun tracking ALL of your vaccinations, not just the COVID shot, and they can use the Z28.3 sub-codes to identify why you refused a given vaccine.
They’ve also added a billable ICD-10 code for “immunization safety counseling,” which explains the codes detailing “why” you refused a vaccine. So, if you didn’t get a vaccine due to “personal decision” (code Z28.2), or due to “personal beliefs or group pressure” (code Z28.1), then your doctor can bill your insurance for regurgitating vaccine propaganda and trying to change your mind.
Codes Could Be Put to Good Use
Giving credit where credit is due, Reuters Fact Check did point out a potentially beneficial purpose for the new ICD-10 codes:10
“[Eric Burnett, who specializes in hospital and internal medicine at Columbia University] said the ICD-10 codes could also help track data on vaccine efficacy, including comparisons between vaccination statuses of hospital or ICU patients with COVID, or patient mortality data based on vaccination status.”
That would be great, but the risk of these data being misused by the government is, I believe, greater than the possibility of them being used to protect the public from dangerous mRNA shots, seeing how overwhelming amounts of data showing harms are already being willfully ignored.
CDC Refuses to Answer Questions About the New Codes
Another red flag is the fact that the CDC has refused to answer questions about how it intends to use the new ICD-10 codes. In mid-February 2023, nine House Republicans sent a letter to the CDC demanding answers to these five questions:11
Why did the CDC and National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) decide to start gathering data on why Americans chose not to take the COVID-19 vaccine?
How do the CDC and NCHS intend to use these new COVID-19 vaccination ICD codes?
What steps are the CDC and NCHS taking to ensure that Americans’ private health information contained in the ICD system is protected?
Will the CDC and NCHS confirm that they have not, will not, and cannot create a database of Americans based on their COVID-19 vaccination status?
Can the CDC and NCHS confirm that private companies do not have access to lists of Americans’ COVID-19 vaccination status through the ICD system, or any other database overseen by the CDC and NCHS
As reported by The Daily Signal February 28, 2023, the CDC for some reason does not want to answer these questions:12
“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told The Daily Signal that it ‘will not be tracking’ the reasons Americans give for refusing to take a COVID-19 vaccine … Meanwhile, congressional Republicans told The Daily Signal that the CDC failed to respond to their questions by a deadline last week.
‘Two weeks ago, we sent a letter to the CDC demanding answers about its new COVID-19 vaccine database,’ Rep. Josh Brecheen, R-Okla., told The Daily Signal in a statement …
‘The CDC is stonewalling us and refusing to respond. Why won’t the CDC explain why it’s gathering data about Americans’ personal choices? House Republicans are not afraid to use the budgetary process to keep the CDC accountable to the American people,’ Brecheen warned.
House Republicans raised the alarm about the CDC’s involvement with the World Health Organization’s recently codified International Classification of Disease, or ICD, codes related to COVID-19 vaccination status, which went into effect last April. The codes enable the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to collect data on the reasons Americans refuse to take one of the vaccines …
‘The ICD codes were implemented in April 2022, however the CDC/NCHS does not have any data on the codes and will not be tracking this information,’ Nick Spinelli, a CDC spokesman, said in an emailed statement. ‘The codes are developed and managed by the World Health Organization to enable healthcare providers to track within their practices …'”
End Goal Is Global Database for the Vaccine Passport System
The mention of the WHO brings me to my next point, which is that all of this information will likely, eventually, be transferred into a global vaccination database. Hence the reason why the WHO develops and manages the ICD-10 codes. It’s to allow for the “harmonization” of health care across the world.
Incidentally, the fact that the WHO develops and manages these codes also means that the WHO has approved these new codes that track vaccination status, and we already know that the WHO is working on a global vaccine passport.
To work properly, a global vaccine passport system needs a global vaccination database, and there’s no telling what privacy measures, if any, such a database might end up with. What we do know is that white papers13 and proposed legislation14 published during the COVID era that discuss health tracking and/or vaccine passports have stressed that privacy concerns must be relaxed or dropped altogether to ensure global biosecurity.
We also saw how COVID “vaccination” status was not considered a private medical matter at all during 2021 and 2022. In many places, you had to disclose your status and show proof that you’d been jabbed. Yet mainstream media now want you to believe that your COVID jab status is protected by medical privacy laws. What a joke.
As noted by Dr. Robert Malone in a January 25, 2023, Substack article, this vaccine passport system is being put into place right under our noses, and it would be incredibly naïve to think that these new ICD-10 codes are not part of that scheme:15
“The administrative state is busy building a vaccine passport system that will be active before most Americans are aware of what is being done to them. No one is going to knock on your door asking for your vaccine status because they already know …
They don’t need approval from Congress or the courts because we have given them the information through our health care providers. The CDC is the governmental organization tasked with tracking vaccine status on individuals.
They already have the records, as well as updated booster information. They just need to tweak a definition here and there, or get President Biden to keep the COVID-19 public health emergency in place indefinitely and the vaccine passports will be a fait accompli.”
A Data Collection Dragnet
As of January 1, 2014, the U.S. government required public and private health care providers to adopt and use electronic medical records (EMR) if they wanted to quality for full Medicaid and Medicare reimbursement.
The government also financially incentivized physicians and hospitals to adopt electronic HEALTH records or EHR.16 The difference between EMR and EHR is that EHR provides a far more comprehensive patient history than EMR, as it contains a patient’s medical history from more than one medical practice.
In essence, EHR is what you get when doctors share your medical data to create one comprehensive file that covers all your interactions with the medical system. While that sounds good in theory, Big Pharma immediately seized the opportunity to misuse it by placing drug ads within the EHR system.
This in turn has driven up medical costs and resulted in poor prescribing decisions that put patients at risk.17 Patients are also directly targeted with drug marketing through patient portals.
Physicians and hospitals who adopted EHR got paid extra. Between January 1, 2011 and December 31, 2016, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) paid out EHR incentive payments to hospitals totaling $14.6 billion.18 Meanwhile, those who chose not to capture, share and report clinical data on patients were financially penalized through reduced Medicare reimbursements.19,20
Needless to say, these “sticks” and “carrots” led to the rapid adoption of both EMR and EHR, both of which government requires if it wants the power to control the population through medicine, and we now know that’s exactly what government intends to do.
Transhumanism Is Being Implemented Through Food and Medicine
At the end of September 2022, President Biden laid out a “bold goal” to “end hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030” through a federally-backed “Food Is Medicine” campaign.21
Integrating food and nutrition with health care so that food and health policies are under one umbrella will facilitate the creation of new policies, funding and control over both areas. Eventually, food purchases and health records will be linked to your vaccine passport/digital identity, which also holds your educational records, travel records, work records and bank accounts.
That this “Food Is Medicine” campaign has nothing to do with promoting real nutrition or whole food is obvious, as that same month Biden also signed the “Executive Order on Advancing Biotechnology and Biomanufacturing Innovation for a Sustainable, Safe and Secure American Bioeconomy.”22
On a larger scale, this plan is also promoted by the World Health Organization, which is trying to seize power over health care globally through International Health Regulation (IHR) amendments and the Pandemic Treaty. For more information on that, see “Pandemic Treaty Will Usher In Unelected One World Government.”
The WHO is also seeking to put food, medicine and climate under one umbrella. This would allow it to control the global population in any number of ways, as a climate issue could be positioned as a public health issue, or a food issue, and vice versa. In other words, people could be forced to eat bugs instead of beef because it “benefits the climate.” Private vehicle use could be restricted because it helps lower vehicular pollution that endangers public health, and so on.
So, to bring us full circle back to where we started, while media are now trying to lull you to sleep with “promises” that there’s nothing nefarious about tracking the unvaccinated or “undervaccinated,” think long and hard before you close your eyes to the possibility that this is all part of biosecurity-based totalitarian control grid.
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Lavrov’s trip showcased the significant role that Russia attaches to Brazil when it comes to the Latin American dimension of Moscow’s grand strategy. Both parties’ rhetoric was positive, but it remains to be seen if anything of tangible substance ultimately comes from it, which will be greatly determined by whether or not Lula attends this year’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in less than two months’ time like he was just invited to do.
Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov’s latest visit to Brazil went exactly as expected with respect to these two BRICS countries promising to comprehensively expand cooperation, but there were also five very important details that evaded the notice of most observers. The first is that the official Brazilian press release informed everyone that bilateral trade reached the historic record of $9.8 billion last year, which occurred entirely under the tenure of Lula’s predecessor Bolsonaro.
This fact contradicts the Alt-Media Community’s narrative that this former leader was a US puppet since no such proxy would ever take trade with Russia to its highest-ever level, especially in the context of the ongoing NATO-Russian proxy war in Ukraine over the past year. The basis upon which both sides pledged to further enhance their ties was therefore partially built by Bolsonaro, who in turn continued the trajectory that Temer and Rousseff kept in place from Lula’s first two terms.
Second, Lavrov’s expression of gratitude “to our Brazilian friends for a correct understanding of the genesis of this situation and their striving to contribute to a search for ways of settling it” that was reported in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s official transcript of his joint statement has a deeper meaning. It extends credence to a recently leaked report alleging that his country approves of the optics surrounding Lula’s peace rhetoric, but this crucially isn’t the same as endorsing the substance thereof.
About that, the third detail is the time that Russia’s top diplomat devoted to explaining Moscow’s stance towards the conflict and desire to see it end “as soon as possible”. This follows Lula’s condemnation of Russia in his joint statement with Biden, Brazil’s vote in support of an anti-Russian UNGA Resolution, and then Lula lying just the day prior to Lavrov’s trip about President Putin supposedly being disinterested in peace. Accordingly, his words can thus be seen as a polite response to those preceding developments.
And finally, Lavrov’s counterpart confirmed that he passed along President Putin’s invitation for Lula to attend the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF) in mid-June, which TASS reported was first extended during his chief foreign policy advisor’s trip to Moscow last month. Lula earlier pledged that he won’t visit either Russia or Ukraine due to their conflict, and the ICC demands that Brazil arrest President Putin if he ever sets food there, so it’s unclear whether Lula will take him up on this offer.
This last-mentioned detail from Lavrov’s trip to Brazil is by far the most important since it’s a clever and polite way to assess the sincerity of Lula’s stated intentions to continue building ties with Russia in spite of US pressure. He can of course just say that there are so-called “scheduling conflicts” or possibly claim to be sick right before he’s supposed to depart for St. Petersburg, but the point is that this will prove whether Lula is serious about making good on everything that Lavrov and his counterpart discussed.
All told, Lavrov’s trip showcased the significant role that Russia attaches to Brazil when it comes to the Latin American dimension of Moscow’s grand strategy. Both parties’ rhetoric was positive, but it remains to be seen if anything of tangible substance ultimately comes from it, which will be greatly determined by whether or not Lula attends this year’s SPIEF in less than two months’ time. In the meantime, the US is expected to maximally pressure him into not going, so it’s difficult to predict what he’ll do.
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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 frequent contributor to Global Research.
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Watching a once great nation commit suicide is not pretty. President Joe Biden does not seem to understand that his role as elected leader of the United States is to take actions that directly or indirectly benefit the folks who voted for him as well as the other Americans who did not do so. That is how a constitutional democracy is supposed to work.
Instead, Biden and the gang of introverts and neocon war criminals that the has surrounded himself with have done everything that can to inflict fatal damage on the economy through rash initiatives both overseas and at home. A spending spree to buy support from the bizarre constituencies that make up the Democrat Party base while also fighting an undeclared war in Europe have meant that nearly two trillion dollars has been added to the national debt under Biden’s rule, a debt that was already unsustainable at nearly $30 trillion, larger than the United States’ gross national product. Plans to cancel student loan debts will add hundreds of billions of dollars more to the red ink.
And those actions undertaken overseas, to include continuing to expand the war in Ukraine against Russia, will do immeasurable more damage. Consider how the Democratic Party has long had it in for Russian Federal President Vladimir Putin, dating back to when Putin took power in 2000 and started kicking out the western scallywags who were looting his country.
Subsequently, false intelligence and other innuendoes were contrived by Hillary Clinton and her team in 2016 to implicate Donald Trump as a Russian stooge who was secretly working for Putin. When that didn’t work and Trump was elected, the Russians were accused by the media and Democrats of willy-nilly interfering in US elections more generally speaking, a much-exaggerated claim in contrast to the overwhelming silence surrounding the real electoral and policy interference, which has been coming from Israel and its fifth column inside the United States, who, not coincidentally, are the chief proponents of the war against Russia.
Placing a target on Vladimir Putin’s back appears to have an unfortunate consequence which Biden has yet to wake up to, namely the fact that the United States now has what might be described as a Ponzi scheme faux economy which is very vulnerable, particularly as much of the world has become disenchanted with the US style of global leadership. Note for example the recent state visit by French President Emmanuel Macron to Beijing, where he embraced a “global strategic partnership with China” to bring about a “multipolar” world, freed of “blocs” that is not sheltering behind “Cold War mentality.” Macron also criticized the “extraterritoriality of the US dollar.”
And threats made by the Bidens against both China and Russia have accomplished little beyond drawing the two major political and military powers closer together. Beijing and Moscow entered into a trade agreement in their own currencies in 2014 and have openly taken steps to challenge US dominance of international currency exchanges, creating instead a global multipolar trading environment. Europe aside, many nations are now eager to cut the tie that binds, which is the decades long American dominance of international financial mechanisms and also the general use of dollars to pay for oil and other energy supplies. The widespread use of petrodollars enables the buffoonish Janet Yellen at the US Treasury and the Federal Reserve banks to print unlimited unbacked fiat currency, knowing that there will always be a market for it.
Which brings us back to the Ukraine war, pursued “until we win” by Biden and his somnolent Secretary of State Antony Blinken. One of the first moves when Russia intervened in Ukraine was to block and eventually confiscate Russia’s 300 billion dollars-worth of foreign reserves in banks in the US and Europe. That sent a shock wave across currency markets all around the world. Biden and Yellen had weaponized the US’s own national currency, which hitherto had been an untouchable step in international relations for nations that were not actually at war. Countries like China and India with large economies then realized that the US Treasury Department and the dominance of the dollar as an exchange currency had now become a weapon of war and a serious threat to the economies of all other nations.
As a consequence, the US Dollar is right now being rejected by many nations as the world’s reserve currency. Some nations all over the world have agreed to use the Chinese Yuan and Indian Rupee for any-and-all international currency transactions. Saudi Arabia continues to use the petrodollar but does not demand it. Recently, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to permit the Saudis to sell oil to China in Yuan. Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter, is now allowing multiple currencies to be used to purchase its oil, a major attack on the primacy of the US dollar and it also has accepted Chinese mediation to mend fences with the US and Israel’s arch enemy Iran. And the Saudis have even more recently refused a Biden Administration request that it start pumping more oil to reduce energy costs, signaling that the shift is both political and economic in nature. Japan, a major economy, has also started purchasing oil and gas directly from Russia against the US imposed energy embargo while Brazil, another major economy, has agreed to use the Yuan in its increasing trade with China. As fewer nations utilize the US dollar, America’s ability to export and ignore its burgeoning domestic debt and inflation to other countries is being diminished.
This might have a decisive impact on the US currency as the drive to break with the petrodollar continues to grow and could produce something like a “perfect storm” impacting on the US economy. It threatens to drastically lower the standards of living of nearly all Americans within the next several years as the dollar loses value and purchasing power. As the US economy is heavily interconnected with many European economies, Europe is also likely to be a victim of the coming disaster.
The good news, of course, is that the United States will no longer be able to afford its endless wars and international interventions. Lacking its economic power, it will no longer be able to declare itself “exceptional” and the enforcer of a “rules based international order.” It would mean an ending of the funding of developments like the Ukraine proxy war and the troops will have to come home from places like Syria and Somalia. And it might even mark the ending of sending billions of dollars annually to a wealthy Israel.
Ending dollar supremacy would inevitably have an immediate impact on what passes for US foreign policy, making it more difficult for Washington to initiate and sustain Treasury Department sanctions on countries like Iran and North Korea. It could also create economic turmoil for many countries until the situation resolves itself by producing greater volatility in currency markets worldwide. The Federal Reserve Bank will no doubt respond to the unfolding crisis by acting as it always does by raising interest rates to astronomical levels, thereby hurting most the Americans who can least afford the shock therapy.
And it did not have to turn out this way. It could have been avoided. If the US, which had no horse in the race, had left Ukraine alone Vladimir Putin would not have become a symbol of defiance against the “Rules Based International Order” and he would not have worked with China to establish multipolarity in the way the financial world operates. Instead, we have a situation where Europe is being de-industrialized due to soaring energy prices and Washington’s destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines while the US is potentially confronting economic disaster as the dollar’s relevance to international trade sinks. The ultimate irony is that Russia, and also the US/Israeli arch enemy Iran, are by comparison doing quite well economically as they sell their oil and gas to anyone in any currency. One has to conclude that when US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently made her secret trip to Kiev to promise the despicable Volodymyr Zelensky billions of taxpayer dollars the United States might just have been better served if she had stayed in Washington and made some minimal effort to address the mounting economic problems confronting us here at home.
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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.
Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].
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Several former military and intelligence professionals have contacted me and voiced similar doubts about the pat story being circulated regarding National Guard Airman Jack Texeira and the allegations that he removed TOP SECRET documents from a SCIF, photographed them and then posted them to a gamer chat. They all agree, something is not right. The media account does not make sense.
The biggest oddity are the two separate documents from the CIA’s Operations Center. Neither are complete and both deal only with the Ukrainian/Russian war. To reiterate a point from my previous article, that CIA Operations Center produces two daily reports — one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It is not a “Community” product, i.e., it is not distributed to the other intelligence agencies. It is an internal CIA document (of course, it is available to the Director of National Intelligence).
Texeira’s alleged possession of two separate reports is doubly odd because he did not copy the full reports. The one dated 1 March 2023 only shows 3 of 8 pages. If he was taking the documents to impress the youngsters on the gamer chat, why did he not take the whole enchilada? And why did he only publish the portions of the intel report that dealt exclusively with Ukraine and Russia?
There has been some media reports that he also posted a State Department EXDIS cable. I have not seen it and cannot confirm that it exists. If it does, that would be another huge red flag. EXDIS is bureaucratic speak for EXCLUSIVE DISSEMINATION. It has a cousin, NODIS — i.e., NO DISTRIBUTION. The U.S. military does not have access to such cables.
There was a time when State EXDIS was available to U.S. military commands on a restricted basis. That was pre-Chelsea Manning. After Manning’s leaks in 2010, that access was cut off. I know this first hand because I was part of a team scripting military exercises for all U.S. regional commands (i.e., EUCOM, NORTHCOM, AFRICOM, PACOM, CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM) during the course of a year. I was the State Department Subject Matter Expert. That means I had the job of creating cable traffic from the Secretary of State or U.S. Embassies that the U.S. military might see during a terrorist crisis. Prior to the Manning/Wikileaks leak, I had full access to State Department messages, including EXDIS. After Manning, that access was terminated. Not just for me but for all the uniformed personnel I worked with. All held TS SCI clearances. There has been no change in that policy, which means there is no way that Jack Texeira would have had any access to copy and take a State Department EXDIS message.
Another curiosity with the story, apart from Jack’s youth and the claim that he held TS SCI clearances and had access to CIA internal reports, is the schedule of his Massachusetts Air National Guard unit. That outfit had not been called up and assigned a 24 x 7 mission. Instead, the Air National Guard unit meets one weekend a month. In other words, Jack had to work his magic over a two or three day period surrounded by peers and those in command of the unit. You do not just show up and pursue your own interests. There are drills and assigned work, which is supervised by Non-Commissioned Officers (i.e., Sergeants) and Officers.
The documents I have seen posted on Twitter and Telegram, were dated 28 February, 1 March and 2 March, i.e., Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. According to the MI-6 funded Bellingcat, those documents were published on 4 March, a Saturday. Let’s assume that Texeira’s National Guard unit assembled for drill on March 4. We’re asked to believe that Jack Texeira showed up for monthly Air National Guard duty on Saturday, quickly scoured the high side computer for sensitive documents, printed them off, smuggled them out of the SCIF, returned home sometime after 5 pm (normal end of duty day), photographed the documents and quickly uploaded them to the Discord server. If that is what happened, it smacks of urgency. Most young airmen, after a long day at work, want to go out and party rather than stay at home photographing documents.
I remain skeptical of the narrative and hope by raising these questions that some genuine journalists will explore the oddities and try to get to the ground truth.
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The areas where the US occupation forces are deployed in cooperation with QSD militia affiliated with it witnessed excavations for antiquities, looting and smuggling them abroad, and to other unknown bodies of these forces and the separatist militia.
Local sources in Qamishli western countryside confirm to SANA reporter that the US occupation forces, which have been positioned on the side of Tell Mozan, south of Amuda, since 2014, have expanded the areas they consider prohibited military zones, in cooperation with QSD militia, and have subjected the area to strict security measures, to facilitate the removal of the artefacts that they stole from the hill and smuggle them out of the country to unknown destinations.
The US occupation forces, in cooperation with QSD militia, are seizing archaeological sites that are among the most important ones in the world, such as Tell Baidar, al-Hamma region, the Life Stone, Tell Mozan, and a number of hills in Qamishli eastern countryside,” the sources added.
Civil sources noted in al-Qahtaniya town in Qamishli eastern countryside that “the US occupation forces transported archaeological treasures from the hill of Muhammad al-Dhiab village and the archaeological site of Tell Leilan, two hills around which the US occupation is positioned, to a military zone and looted all their contents of artefacts, including seals, statues and gold, and transported them to its illegal bases in Hasaka countryside to smuggle them later abroad.”
The same sources affirm that the gunmen of the so-called “al-Sanadid” affiliated with QSD militia stole one of the archaeological treasures, which is a rare statue from Qasrok village in al-Yarubiyah countryside, and transferred it to an unknown destination.
US occupation forces and QSD militia continue to excavate antiquities in the areas they control in the governorates of Raqqa and Hasakah, including the towns of al-Qahtaniyah, and Amuda in Qamishli countryside.
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Why is the Pentagon budget so high?
On March 13th, the Biden administration unveiled its $842 billion military budget request for 2024, the largest ask (in today’s dollars) since the peaks of the Afghan and Iraq wars. And mind you, that’s before the hawks in Congress get their hands on it. Last year, they added $35 billion to the administration’s request and, this year, their add-on is likely to prove at least that big. Given that American forces aren’t even officially at war right now (if you don’t count those engaged in counter-terror operations in Africa and elsewhere), what explains so much military spending?
The answer offered by senior Pentagon officials and echoed in mainstream Washington media coverage is that this country faces a growing risk of war with Russia or China (or both of them at once) and that the lesson of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine is the need to stockpile vast numbers of bombs, missiles, and other munitions. “Pentagon, Juggling Russia, China, Seeks Billions for Long-Range Weapons” was a typical headline in the Washington Post about that 2024 budget request. Military leaders are overwhelmingly focused on a potential future conflict with either or both of those powers and are convinced that a lot more money should be spent now to prepare for such an outcome, which means buying extra tanks, ships, and planes, along with all the bombs, shells, and missiles they carry.
Even a quick look at the briefing materials for that future budget confirms such an assessment. Many of the billions of dollars being tacked onto it are intended to procure exactly the items you would expect to use in a war with those powers in the late 2020s or 2030s. Aside from personnel costs and operating expenses, the largest share of the proposed budget — $170 billion or 20% — is allocated for purchasing just such hardware.
But while preparations for such wars in the near future drive a significant part of that increase, a surprising share of it — $145 billion, or 17% — is aimed at possible conflicts in the 2040s and 2050s. Believing that our “strategic competition” with China is likely to persist for decades to come and that a conflict with that country could erupt at any moment along that future trajectory, the Pentagon is requesting its largest allocation ever for what’s called “research, development, test, and evaluation” (RDT&E), or the process of converting the latest scientific discoveries into weapons of war.
To put this in perspective, that $145 billion is more than any other country except what China spends on defense in toto and constitutes approximately half of China’s full military budget. So what’s that staggering sum of money, itself only a modest part of this country’s military budget, intended for?
Some of it, especially the “T&E” part, is designed for futuristic upgrades of existing weapons systems. For example, the B-52 bomber — at 70, the oldest model still flying — is being retrofitted to carry experimental AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapons (ARRWs), or advanced hypersonic missiles. But much of that sum, especially the “R&D” part, is aimed at developing weapons that may not see battlefield use until decades in the future, if ever. Spending on such systems is still onlyin the millions or low billions, but it will certainly balloon into the tens or hundreds of billions of dollars in the years to come, ensuring that future Pentagon budgets soar into the trillions.
Weaponizing Emerging Technologies
Driving the Pentagon’s increased focus on future weapons development is the assumption that China and Russia will remain major adversaries for decades to come and that future wars with those, or other major powers, could largely be decided by the mastery of artificial intelligence (AI) along with other emerging technologies. Those would include robotics, hypersonics (projectiles that fly at more than five times the speed of sound), and quantum computing. As the Pentagon’s 2024 budget request put it:
“An increasing array of fast-evolving technologies and innovative applications of existing technology complicates the [Defense] Department’s ability to maintain an edge in combat credibility and deterrence. Newer capabilities such as counterspace weapons, hypersonic weapons, new and emerging payload and delivery systems… all create a heightened potential… for shifts in perceived deterrence of U.S. military power.”
To ensure that this country can overpower Chinese and/or Russian forces in any conceivable encounter, top officials insist, Washington must focus on investing in a major way in the advanced technologies likely to dominate future battlefields. Accordingly, $17.8 billion of that $145 billion RDT&E budget will be directly dedicated to military-related science and technology development. Those funds, the Pentagon explains, will be used to accelerate the weaponization of artificial intelligence and speed the growth of other emerging technologies, especially robotics, autonomous (or “unmanned”) weapons systems, and hypersonic missiles.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is of particular interest to the Department of Defense, given its wide range of potential military uses, including target identification and assessment, enhanced weapons navigation and targeting systems, and computer-assisted battlefield decision-making. Although there’s no total figure for AI research and development offered in the unclassified version of the 2024 budget, certain individual programs are highlighted. One of these is the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control system (JADC2), an AI-enabled matrix of sensors, computers, and communications devices intended to collect and process data on enemy movements and convey that information at lightning speed to combat forces in every “domain” (air, sea, ground, and space). At $1.3 billion, JADC2 may not be “the biggest number in the budget,” said Under Secretary of Defense Michael J. McCord, but it constitutes “a very central organizing concept of how we’re trying to link information together.”
AI is also essential for the development of — and yes, nothing seems to lack an acronym in Pentagon documents — autonomous weapons systems, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs), and unmanned surface vessels (USVs). Such devices — far more bluntly called “killer robots” by their critics — typically combine a mobile platform of some sort (plane, tank, or ship), an onboard “kill mechanism” (gun or missile), and an ability to identify and attack targets with minimal human oversight. Believing that the future battlefield will become ever more lethal, Pentagon officials aim to replace as many of its crewed platforms as possible — think ships, planes, and artillery — with advanced UAVs, UGVs, and USVs.
The 2024 budget request doesn’t include a total dollar figure for research on future unmanned weapons systems but count on one thing: it will come to many billions of dollars. The budget does indicate that $2.2 billion is being sought for the early procurement of MQ-4 and MQ-25 unmanned aerial vehicles, and such figures are guaranteed to swell as experimental robotic systems move into large-scale production. Another $200 million was requested to design a large USV, essentially a crewless frigate or destroyer. Once prototype vessels of this type have been built and tested, the Navy plans to order dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, instantly creating a $100 billion-plus market for a naval force lacking the usual human crew.
Another area receiving extensive Pentagon attention is hypersonics, because such projectiles will fly so fast and maneuver with such skill (while skimming atop the atmosphere’s outer layer) that they should be essentially impossible to track and intercept. Both China and Russia already possess rudimentary weapons of this type, with Russia reportedly firing some of its hypersonic Kinzhal missiles into Ukraine in recent months.
As the Pentagon put it in its budget request:
“Hypersonic systems expand our ability to hold distant targets at risk, dramatically shorten the timeline to strike a target, and their maneuverability increases survivability and unpredictability. The Department will accelerate fielding of transformational capability enabled by air, land, and sea-based hypersonic strike weapon systems to overcome the challenges to our future battlefield domain dominance.”
Another 14% of the RDT&E request, or about $2.5 billion, is earmarked for research in even more experimental fields like quantum computing and advanced microelectronics. “The Department’s science and technology investments are underpinned by early-stage basic research,” the Pentagon explains. “Payoff for this research may not be evident for years, but it is critical to ensuring our enduring technological advantage in the decades ahead.” As in the case of AI, autonomous weapons, and hypersonics, these relatively small amounts (by Pentagon standards) will balloon in the years ahead as initial discoveries are applied to functioning weapons systems and procured in ever larger quantities.
Harnessing American Tech Talent for Long-Term War Planning
There’s one consequence of such an investment in RDT&E that’s almost too obvious to mention. If you think the Pentagon budget is sky high now, just wait! Future spending, as today’s laboratory concepts are converted into actual combat systems, is likely to stagger the imagination. And that’s just one of the significant consequences of such a path to permanent military superiority. To ensure that the United States continues to dominate research in the emerging technologies most applicable to future weaponry, the Pentagon will seek to harness an ever-increasing share of this country’s scientific and technological resources for military-oriented work.
This, in turn, will mean capturing an ever-larger part of the government’s net R&D budget at the expense of other national priorities. In 2022, for example, federal funding for non-military R&D (including the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) represented only about 33% of R&D spending. If the 2024 military budget goes through at the level requested (or higher), that figure for non-military spending will drop to 31%, a trend only likely to strengthen in the future as more and more resources are devoted to war preparation, leaving an ever-diminishing share of taxpayer funding for research on vital concerns like cancer prevention and treatment, pandemic response, and climate change adaptation.
No less worrisome, ever more scientists and engineers will undoubtedly be encouraged— not to say, prodded — to devote their careers to military research rather than work in more peaceable fields. While many scientists struggle for grants to support their work, the Department of Defense (DoD) offers bundles of money to those who choose to study military-related topics. Typically enough, the 2024 request includes $347 million for what the military is now calling the University Research Initiative, most of which will be used to finance the formation of “teams of researchers across disciplines and across geographic boundaries to focus on DoD-specific hard science problems.” Another $200 million is being allocated to the Joint University Microelectronics Program by the Defense Advanced Projects Research Agency, the Pentagon’s R&D outfit, while $100 million is being provided to the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics by the Pentagon’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office. With so much money flowing into such programs and the share devoted to other fields of study shrinking, it’s hardly surprising that scientists and graduate students at major universities are being drawn into the Pentagon’s research networks.
In fact, it’s also seeking to expand its talent pool by providing additional funding to historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In January, for example, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin announced that Howard University in Washington, D.C., had been chosen as the first such school to serve as a university-affiliated research center by the Department of Defense, in which capacity it will soon be involved in work on autonomous weapons systems. This will, of course, provide badly needed money to scientists and engineers at that school and other HBCUs that may have been starved of such funding in the past. But it also begs the question: Why shouldn’t Howard receive similar amounts to study problems of greater relevance to the Black community like sickle-cell anemia and endemic poverty?
Endless Arms Races vs. Genuine Security
In devoting all those billions of dollars to research on next-generation weaponry, the Pentagon’s rationale is straightforward: spend now to ensure U.S. military superiority in the 2040s, 2050s, and beyond. But however persuasive this conceit may seem — even with all those mammoth sums of money pouring in — things rarely work out so neatly. Any major investment of this sort by one country is bound to trigger countermoves from its rivals, ensuring that any early technological advantage will soon be overcome in some fashion, even as the planet is turned into ever more of an armed camp.
The Pentagon’s development of precision-guided munitions, for example, provided American forces with an enormous military advantage during the Persian Gulf Wars of 1991 and 2003, but also prompted China, Iran, Russia, and other countries to begin developing similar weaponry, quickly diminishing that advantage. Likewise, China and Russia were the first to deploy combat-ready hypersonic weapons, but in response, the U.S. will be fielding a far greater array of them in a few years’ time.
Chinese and Russian advances in deploying hypersonics also led the U.S. to invest in developing — yes, you guessed it! — anti-hypersonic hypersonics, launching yet one more arms race on planet Earth, while boosting the Pentagon budget by additional billions. Given all this, I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that the 2024 Pentagon budget request includes $209 million for the development of a hypersonic interceptor, only the first installment in costly development and procurement programs in the years to come in Washington, Beijing, and Moscow.
If you want to bet on anything, then here’s a surefire way to go: the Pentagon’s drive to achieve dominance in the development and deployment of advanced weaponry will lead not to supremacy but to another endless cycle of high-tech arms races that, in turn, will consume an ever-increasing share of this country’s wealth and scientific talent, while providing negligible improvements in national security. Rather than spending so much on future weaponry, we should all be thinking about enhanced arms control measures, global climate cooperation, and greater investment in non-military R&D.
If only…
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“Global Power Struggles Signal An End to An Era of Diplomacy.” So ran a page one headline to New York Times April 11 print edition for an article marking Joe Biden’s ceremonial visit to Ireland to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Accords.
The commemoration served as an “unspoken reminder that such diplomatic breakthroughs remain a thing of the past,” bemoaned reporter Peter Baker.
Certainly, he is correct if one confines one’s view to the record of the US and its vassal states on the Ukraine crisis. Sec. of State Blinken has made it abundantly clear that the US wants nothing to do with negotiations to end the US proxy war in Ukraine.
Likewise, the US and its allies cynically used negotiations over the Minsk Accords for eight years as a cover for war preparations. Then the US and UK torpedoed the very promising negotiations between Russia and Ukraine to end the war in April of 2022.
But to declare diplomacy dead simply because US diplomacy is a corpse indicates a blinding tunnel vision. If we look at nations outside the West, the future of diplomacy looks brighter all the time. The Middle East provides a clear example, one among too many to be considered here.
China Brokers Saudi Arabia, Iran Deal
Early in March, Iran and Saudi Arabia restored diplomatic relations after a seven year lapse, a deal brokered by China and announced at a meeting of foreign policy officials of the two countries in Beijing in early April. This followed a visit by Xi Jinping to Riyadh in December and a visit of Iran’s President Raisi to Xi in Beijing in February. By early June the countries will reopen embassies and consulates and they look to cooperate on trade, technology, and combatting terrorism.
Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official summed things up as follows: “This is a victory for dialogue, a victory for peace, and is major positive news for the world which is currently so turbulent and restive, and it sends a clear signal.”
The antagonism between Riyadh and Tehran has shaped much of the conflict in the Middle East including the horrific war in Yemen, a humanitarian catastrophe that has consumed 230,000 lives in fighting and famine. There is now movement to get a “permanent ceasefire” and end the war, perhaps the first dividend of the “clear signal,” Wang Yi mentioned.
As The Interceptremarked, “To help end the Yemen war, all China had to do was be reasonable. With Joe Biden nowhere to be found, China’s diplomacy set the stage for Saudi concessions and cease-fire talks.” As this is written, there comes news of a swap of nearly 900 prisoners over three days between the warring Yemeni factions, unimaginable just weeks ago.
Moscow Mediates Syria-Saudi Reconciliation
Diplomacy seems to be spreading like a contagion in the region. In the wake of the Syrian-Saudi agreements mediated by Beijing, Moscow has moved to broker a reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Syria which is leading to Syria’s rejoining the Arab League. The Saudis plan to invite Bashar al-Assad to an Arab League Summit on May 19. This is something that Washington has worked to prevent for over a decade by threat and sanctions.
It is clear that the Moscow-Beijing “no limits” partnership facilitated the reconciliation between Syria, a Russian ally, and Saudi Arabia, the newfound friend of Beijing. A hint of things to come perhaps.
Much of this diplomatic effort is simply to undo the damage inflicted on Syria after the Arab Spring unrest of 2011 which the US turned into a full-scale regime change op and civil war. As part of its anti-Syrian vendetta, the US has used any and all means to keep Syria down and isolated from its Arab neighbors for the last 12 years.
It has also left nearly 1000 US soldiers (the official count) fighting in Syria to this day in an undeclared war unknown to most of the American people. Those troops occupy a region that is the agricultural breadbasket and source of oil for Syria which is starved for food and energy after the great damage caused by years of war.
The claim has always been made that US troops are there to fight ISIS or its latest incarnation, but as Aaron Mate has demonstrated most persuasively, the real purpose remains regime change in Syria. (As the wise Jimmy Dore often asks, If Syria is fighting ISIS, why is the US fighting Syria?)
Diplomacy for Peace, an alien idea in Washington
All these diplomatic moves in such a short time are almost dizzying. They were opened up by China’s masterful initiative with Iran and Saudi Arabia. And they are designed to bring stability and peace to the region which the developing nations there desperately need if they are to move forward. And that development can help the economies of the world.
The US made its own unique contribution to the process by dispatching CIA Director William Burns in an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia with a complaint that the US was “blind-sided’ by the move to reconcile with the Saudis. Some see the Burns visit as a warning or perhaps even a threat. Mohammed bin Salman Al Saud will want to beef up his security detail.
To return to the New York Times account of Biden’s failure at diplomacy, one success in the eyes of the Times was mentioned: “Mr. Biden and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken have successfully unified NATO against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and won support from other countries as well.” This may be a premature announcement of success, if one examines the situation in the EU more closely. But whatever the case, this is a “diplomatic” initiative to further Biden’s cruel proxy war to bring down Russia, cynically using Ukrainians as cannon fodder. Diplomacy for war.
Quite a contrast. Diplomacy for war versus diplomacy for peace.
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John V. Walsh, until recently a Professor of Physiology and Neuroscience at a Medical School in Massachusetts, has written on issues of peace and health care for the San Francisco Chronicle, EastBayTimes/San Jose Mercury News, Asia Times, LA Progressive, Antiwar.com, Consortium News, CounterPunch, and others.
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A delegation from Saudi Arabia has arrived in Yemen’s capital Sana’a alongside Omani negotiators with the aim of reaching a resolution to the protracted war in Yemen. This marks a major turning point in a conflict that began more than eight years ago and has been characterized as a stalemate between Yemen’s Houthis and a coalition of anti-Houthi forces backed and led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
This arguably unexpected turn of events — surprising given Saudi Arabia’s years-long war against a group they characterize as “Iran-allied rebels” — is the result of talks that began in early 2022 between the Saudi Arabian government and Yemen’s government in Sana’a, led by Ansar Allah — also known as the Houthis. The Houthis have in effect been ruling much of northern Yemen for the past eight years.
This is “the closest Yemen has been to real progress towards lasting peace,” Hans Grundberg, the United Nations envoy to Yemen, remarked to the Associated Press earlier this month. Grundberg urged both parties to “start an inclusive political process under UN auspices to sustainably end the conflict.”
While the terms of any settlement have yet to be made public, this moment signals the seriousness of the talks and the likelihood of a lasting political agreement among warring parties following years of asymmetrical warfare in which hundreds of thousands of Yemenis were killed, millions more were starved, and Yemen was virtually left in ruins.
War and Famine
In the aftermath of the 2011 Arab Spring, peaceful country-wide protests began in Yemen that eventually ended with Yemen’s longtime dictator, President Ali Abdullah Saleh, transferring power to his then-Vice President Abd Rabbu Mansour Hadi in 2011.
In the following years, Hadi clinged to power after failing to address the demands of all of the country’s various factions. Meanwhile, Ansar Allah rose to power following protests against the government’s curbing of fuel subsidies, and eventually seized the capital Sana’a in late 2014, and forced Hadi into house arrest.
Despite these tumultuous events, a UN-negotiated settlement was reached between Hadi, the Houthis and other factions, but this settlement was derailed. Soon after the new Saudi king appointed his son, Mohammed bin Salman, as deputy crown prince and defense minister in early 2015, Saudi Arabia amassed a coalition of several neighboring countries and, together with Western support – primarily from the Obama administration—launched airstrikes against the Houthis and imposed a naval blockade targeting food, medicine, fuel and other essential supplies in an effort to reinstate Hadi as the main head of the government. This was ratified in UN resolution 2216, which provided cover for these attacks and the imposition of the blockade under the guise of an “arms embargo.”
Meanwhile, Hadi fled to Riyadh and continued to enjoy Saudi support for years to come, while the UAE trained and funded the Southern Transitional Council (STC), a separatist group whose stated goals are to secede from the Yemeni union.
Despite full military support from the United States and other allies, including weapon sales, intelligence, logistics, training, targeting support, and, until late 2018, mid-air refueling, the Saudi-led coalition failed to capture Yemen’s most populous region from the Houthis. The Houthis, on the other hand, joined forces with their longtime enemy, former president Saleh, and formed a government and armed resistance to the Saudi-led coalition.
Even after their fallout and subsequent killing of Saleh in December 2017 after he switched to the Saudi-coalition’s side, the Houthis continued to control much of the pre-1990 unity north Yemen, where 70% to 80% of the population resides. However, the Houthis’ attempts to capture Marib, a key oil- and gas-rich province, failed.
As the fighting continued and the blockade on Yemen was tightened, the Yemeni population faced a crumbling economy and destruction of its healthcare systems. This led to outbreaks such as cholera and diphtheria, reduced functional healthcare facilities to 50%, and left more than 80% of Yemenis in need of food, water and medicine. With more than 17 million people facing food insecurity in 2022, the UN warned that “catastrophic” and “famine-like” conditions were projected to increase five-fold for those most vulnerable.
Previous Talks
In early 2022, after a series of Saudi-led attacks that killed at least 80 civilians and shut down Yemen’s internet for four days, and Houthi attacks that reached an oil facility in Jeddah and a storage facility in Abu Dhabi, warring parties began ceasefire talks in Oman.
Though far from being the first peace — a ceasefire agreement was reached in April 2022, and extended twice until October of that year — they brought a halt to U.S.-supported airstrikes for the first time since March 2015.
Despite the U.S. and Saudi’s insistence that this war was waged on behalf of Hadi — Yemen’s “legitimate” head of government — he was virtually powerless and remained in Riyadh since leaving Yemen in 2015. This facade came down when the Saudi and UAE governments set aside Hadi and replaced him with a council of eight men, all of whom were backed by Saudi Arabia or the UAE. While the Council was formed to unify anti-Houthi groups given that most had already waged battles against the Houthis, their conflicting interests soon led to in-fighting, especially in Shabwa where UAE-backed STC forces fought Saudi-backed Islah forces.
Peace Now?
In the year since the first ceasefire was achieved in 2022, fighting on the ground continued in key southern areas including Shabwa and al-Mahra. And when Houthi demands to pay government workers their long overdue salaries using oil and gas revenues were not met, they responded by attacking oil facilities to prevent the export of oil and gas.
Now, this key condition seems to have been met in a draft deal last month, and reports of a roadmap toward peace include issuing payments to government employees using gas and oil revenues in exchange for the Houthis allowing exports to take place.
But to achieve a lasting peace deal, Yemen’s sovereignty must be restored and the blockade must be fully lifted. While talks with Saudi Arabia are a major first step toward alleviating Yemenis’ suffering, the UAE must also give up control over strategic areas such as Bab al-Mandab strait and the island of Socotra, which they occupied and recently militarized.
The coalition’s failure to consolidate power among warring groups in southern Yemen, which they have controlled since 2015 underscores the importance of ceasing all foreign intervention and financial backing of warring factions. This includes the U.S.’s role, which has been instrumental in furthering the war over the past eight years despite legislative efforts to end this unconstitutional involvement.
While the meetings in Sana’a between Saudi and Houthi officials hold promise for peace with the Saudi-led coalition, a meaningful end to the war can only take place when all Yemenis who fought on either side of the war — the Houthis, Saleh and Hadi’s General People’s Congress, the Islah party, the STC, and others — face one another in direct talks and draft a way forward without the financial and military backing of foreign governments. When overt and covert foreign interventions cease, Yemen will finally have a chance to chart its own course.
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Shireen Al-Adeimi is an assistant professor of education at Michigan State University. Since 2015, she has played an active role in raising awareness about the Saudi-led war on her country of birth, Yemen, and works to encourage political action to end U.S. support. She is a non-resident fellow at Quincy Institute.
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The new president of the BRICS Bank has revealed that the Global South-led bloc is advancing toward de-dollarization, gradually moving away from use of the US dollar.
The New Development Bank plans to give nearly one-third (30%) of its loans in the local currencies of the financial institution’s members.
Dilma Rousseff, the left-wing former president of Brazil, took over the leadership of the Shanghai, China-based New Development Bank (NDB) this March.
The new chief of the BRICS' New Development Bank, Brazil’s leftist ex-President Dilma Rousseff, revealed they are gradually moving away from the US dollar, promising at least 30% of loans in local currencies of members.
The NDB was created in 2014, by the BRICS bloc of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, as a Global South-oriented alternative to the US-dominated World Bank, which is infamous for imposing neoliberal economic reforms on impoverished countries, which hinder their development.
In an interview with China’s major media outlet CGTN on April 14, Rousseff explained, “It is necessary to find ways to avoid foreign exchange risk and other issues, such as being dependent on a single currency, such as the US dollar”.
“The good news is that we are seeing many countries choosing to trade using their own currencies. China and Brazil, for instance, are agreeing to exchange with RMB (renminbi) and the Brazilian real”, she said.
“At the NDB, we have committed to it in our strategy. For the period from 2022 to 2026, the NDB has to lend 30% in local currencies, so 30% of our loan book will be financed in the currencies of our member countries”, Rousseff added.
“That will be extremely important to help our countries avoid exchange rate risks and shortages in finance that hinder long-term investments”, the new NDB president stressed.
H.E. Mrs. Dilma Rousseff, the NDB newly elected President, has started her first day in office in the NDB Headquarters in Shanghai, China. pic.twitter.com/JOLblXhhzQ
Members of the NDB not only include the founders of the BRICS but also Bangladesh, the UAE, and Egypt. Uruguay is likewise in the process of joining, and many other countries have expressed interest.
Argentina, Iran, and Algeria have formally applied to join the extended BRICS+ bloc, and according to the foreign minister of Russia, Sergei Lavrov, other nations that are interested “include Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Argentina, Mexico, and a number of African nations”.
Flags of the members of the BRICS bloc’s New Development Bank (NDB)
South Africa’s foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, revealed in January that BRICS plans to “develop a fairer system of monetary exchange” in order to weaken the “dominance of the dollar”.
“The systems currently in place tend to privilege very wealthy countries and tend to be really a challenge for countries, such as ourselves, which have to make payments in dollars, which costs much more in terms of our various currencies”, she said.
“So I do think a fairer system has to be developed, and it’s something we’re discussing with the BRICS ministers in the economic sector discussions”, Pandor added.
BRICS is making “a fairer system of monetary exchange” to challenge the “dominance of the dollar”, South Africa revealed.
Saudi Arabia, which applied to join BRICS, is considering selling oil in other currencies.
While in Shanghai, Lula was the first head of state to visit the NDB headquarters, where he attended the swearing in ceremony for Dilma.
Lula said the NDB’s goal is “creating a world with less poverty, less inequality, and more sustainability”.
He added that the bank should play a “leading role in achieving a better world, without poverty or hunger”.
This was the first time that a Head of State visited the Bank's Headquarters in Shanghai and addressed the NDB staff in person. President Lula had the opportunity to witness the NDB's commitment to promoting sustainable development and delivering on its mandate.#NDB#BRICSpic.twitter.com/MlC9tfySPY
Dilma also commented, “As a former president of Brazil, I know the importance of the work of multilateral banks to support developing countries, particularly NDB, in addressing their economic, social, and environmental needs”.
“Becoming the president of the NDB is undoubtedly a great opportunity to do more for the BRICS, the emerging markets, and developing countries”, she said.
In her speech, H.E. Mrs. Dilma Rousseff emphasized the Bank's commitment to supporting Brazil's sustainable development goals and highlighted the importance of the presidential visit for strengthening the cooperation between the NDB and Brazil.#NDB#BRICSpic.twitter.com/0aut3dLM1H
In her interview with CGTN, Rousseff explained her goals with the BRICS Bank:
It is very important to me that New Development Bank, the bank of the BRICS, acts as the tool to support the development priorities of the BRICS and other developing countries.
We need to invest in projects that contribute to three fundamental areas:
First, we need to support the countries with regards to climate change and sustainable development goals.
Second, we should promote social inclusion at every opportunity we have.
And I believe we should finance their most critical and strategic infrastructure projects.
That said, we want to promote quality development.
Developing countries still don’t have the necessary infrastructure. They don’t have enough ports, airports, and highways to meet their needs. And many times, the ones they have are not adequate.
They still have to build alternatives and more modern models of transportation, for instance.
I see China, a country that has developed capability for alternative transportation at the scale and quality it needs.
NDB has to support the other countries to also build their quality infrastructure as well, like high-speed trains.
It is very important to invest in technology and innovation, invest in universities for example.
Our countries will not overcome extreme poverty if we don’t invest in education, science, and technology.
When asked what challenges the BRICS and NDB face, Rousseff replied:
The world now is under the threat of high inflation and restrictive monetary policy, particularly in developed countries.
Such monetary policy means a higher interest rate, and therefore a higher probability of reduction in growth and a higher probability of recession.
This presents an important question for the BRICS. We need a mechanism, a so-called anti-crisis mechanism, which must be counter-cyclical and support stabilization.
It is necessary to find ways to avoid foreign exchange risk and other issues, such as being dependent on a single currency, such as the US dollar.
The good news is that we are seeing many countries choosing to trade using their own currencies.
China and Brazil, for instance, are agreeing to exchange with RMB (renminbi) and the Brazilian real.
At the NDB, we have committed to it in our strategy. For the period from 2022 to 2026, the NDB has to lend 30% in local currencies, so 30% of our loan book will be financed in the currencies of our member countries.
That will be extremely important to help our countries avoid exchange rate risks and shortages in finance that hinder long-term investments.
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Future historians may say that the most significant event of 2023 had nothing to do with Donald Trump, other 2024 presidential candidates, or even the war in Ukraine. Instead, the event with the most long-term significance may be one that received little attention in the mainstream media — Saudi Arabia’s movement toward accepting currencies other than the US dollar for oil payments.
After President Nixon severed the last link between the dollar and gold, his administration negotiated a deal with the Saudi government. The US would support the Saudi regime, including by providing weapons. In exchange, the Saudis would conduct all oil transactions in dollars. The Saudis also agreed to use surplus dollars they accumulated to purchase US Treasury bonds. The resulting “petrodollar” is a major reason why the dollar has maintained its world reserve currency status.
Also this year, China and Brazil made an agreement to conduct future trade between the countries using the countries’ own currencies rather than dollars. Brazilian President Lula da Silva has called on more nations to abandon the dollar.
This de-dollarization movement is driven in part by resentment of America’s foreign policy, including, in particular, the US government’s increasing use of economic sanctions. Dethroning the dollar from its world reserve currency status makes it easier for countries to ignore these sanctions.
De-dollarization will negatively impact the US government’s ability to manage its over 30 trillion dollars debt. With a few exceptions, there is still no real support in Congress for spending cuts. Republican leadership members may say they will not support a debt ceiling increase unless it is tied to spending cuts. However, after the Biden administration accused the Republicans of wanting to cut Social Security and Medicare, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy declared a reduction in spending on Social Security and Medicare — big drivers of the federal deficit — “off the table.” Similarly, despite the growing skepticism of foreign interventionism among Republicans, the military-industrial complex maintains a viselike grip on congressional leadership and the White House. Therefore, do not expect any reduction in military spending. Instead, the Pentagon’s budget will likely increase.
The Federal Reserve will face continuing pressure to monetize ever-increasing federal debt and keep interest rates (and thus the federal government’s borrowing costs) low. The resulting inflation will lead to more support for ending the dollar’s world reserve currency status. As more countries abandon the dollar, the Fed will become less able to monetize the federal government’s debt without creating hyperinflation. This will result in a dollar crisis and an economic meltdown worse than the Great Depression.
This crisis will lead to the end of the welfare-warfare-fiat currency system. While history suggests this will lead to the rise of even more authoritarian political movements, the growing popularity of libertarian ideas suggests the collapse will also fuel the further growth of the liberty movement. This could mean that the crisis leads to a restoration of limited government and an advancement of liberty. The key to taking full advantage of the opportunity presented by the crisis is to keep spreading our ideas. Fortunately, we do not need a majority; we just need a tireless, irate minority committed to the cause to regain our liberty.
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He has been a source of inspiration to anti-war activists for more than half a century.
Our thoughts are with Ramsey Clark, whom I first met in New York in 1999 at the height of the US-NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
Ramsey was fully aware of the dangers of all out war in Ukraine. Below is Ramsey Clark’s November 2014 open letter to President Obama et al, condemning US-NATO troop deployments on Russia’s borders.
With foresight, Ramsey Clark had predicted what is now happening.
“This massive U.S. intervention in the Ukraine and ever-increasing campaign to surround and isolate Russia must end, I therefore demand:
1. That the U.S. government and all its public, secret, official and unofficial agencies immediately cease all forms of intervention in Ukraine, including ceasing all material and political aid to fascist and right-wing organizations within the country;
2. That all sanctions and threats of sanctions against the Russian Federation be dropped — sanctions are an act of war;
3. That U.S. military forces immediately be withdrawn from the Eastern European region and that NATO’s expansion and provocative actions against Russia be ended.”
“Peaceful Coexistence” between Russia and America is the Answer
Michel Chossudovsky,
Global Research, April 11, 2021, April 18, 2023
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TO:
President Obama, Senator McCain, Secretary Kerry, Secretary-General Ban, Members of Congress, and Members of the Media:
The overwhelming majority of the population of the U.S. is against being dragged into another disastrous war. Nothing is more dangerous than the aggressive U.S./NATO troop movements right on the borders of Russia.
Sending U.S. destroyers into the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea; scheduling threatening U.S./NATO war games and troop movements in East Europe; and imposing sanctions on the Russian Federation is a threat to peace on a world scale. We have seen the cost of past and continuing U.S. wars, which enrich the military corporations while impoverishing the targeted countries as well as poor and working people here in the U.S.
The years of U.S. funding of fascist forces in Ukraine and the recognition of a government in Kiev that overthrew the elected government, seized power and appointed extreme right-wing groups to head the police, army and national guard in order to pull Ukraine into NATO membership makes the U.S. complicit in the complete denial of the rights of the Ukrainian people. It is also a provocation against the entire region.
People in East and South Ukraine, outraged by this coup government, have attempted to resist the illegal junta, have declared an independent People’s Republic of Donetsk, and have called for referendums. In response, the right-wing coup government has allowed its military forces and other fascists to terrorize the Ukrainian people. In the most recent incident, some 40 people were massacred in the city of Odessa on May 2 by fascist militants, loyal to the Kiev government, who set the Trades Union Building on fire. In addition, 23 people were killed at Slavyansk and in Kramatorsk in the Donetsk region in attacks by Ukrainian military forces from May 2-3.
Despite mass desertions by Ukrainian police and military personnel, so-called “anti-terrorist” campaigns against activists in southeastern Ukraine were launched immediately after visits to Kiev by U.S. officials. Washington has spent $5 billion to effect “regime change” in Ukraine, helping to bring into power a junta dominated by fascist, racist, anti-Semitic organizations like Svoboda, Fatherland and Right Sector. Meanwhile, the U.S. has pledged up to $10 billion in loans to the illegal coup regime, and Washington has been instrumental in securing a $17 billion aid and austerity package from the International Monetary Fund.
This massive U.S. intervention in the Ukraine and ever-increasing campaign to surround and isolate Russia must end. I therefore demand:
1. That the U.S. government and all its public, secret, official and unofficial agencies immediately cease all forms of intervention in Ukraine, including ceasing all material and political aid to fascist and right-wing organizations within the country;
2. That all sanctions and threats of sanctions against the Russian Federation be dropped — sanctions are an act of war;
3. That U.S. military forces immediately be withdrawn from the Eastern European region and that NATO’s expansion and provocative actions against Russia be ended.
Tragically, neither the US nor the EU honored the February 21 compromise accord between the Maidan coalition and the Yanukovich govenment that was brokered by Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Poland. It is upon the US government to save the honor of Western democracies as promoters of peace, legality and moderation. Return to the February 21 Accords before the hell of war breaks loose!
Sincerely,
Ramsey Clark
Former US Attorney General Founder of International Action Center
New York
Article published with permission from Ramsey Clark.