Our book, The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity, was published October 15 and became an immediate bestseller. This is a book that three governments—the US, the UK and Australia—all sought to suppress. The story of how it came to be is extraordinary—3,250 highly credentialed doctors and scientists under the leadership of one extraordinary woman, Amy Kelly, worked for two years on the 450,000 internal Pfizer documents released under court order by a successful lawsuit by attorney Aaron Siri. In the process these volunteers confirmed the greatest crime against humanity of all time. Read on.

This book in your hands is the result of an extraordinary set of confluences. It also presents, in a format available in bookstores for the first time, material that has already changed history.

You are about to embark as a reader on a journey through an extraordinary story—one whose elements almost defy belief.

The Pfizer Papers is the result of a group of strangers—ordinary people with extraordinary skills, located in different places around the world, with different backgrounds and interests—who all came together, for no money or professional recompense at all; out of the goodness of their hearts, and motivated by love for true medicine and true science—to undertake a rigorous, painfully detailed, and complex research project, which spanned the years 2022 to the present, and which continues to this day.

The material they read through and analyzed involved 450,000 pages of documents, all written in extremely dense, technical language.

This far-flung, relentlessly pursued research project—under the leadership of DailyClout’s COO, the remarkably gifted project director Amy Kelly—brought one of the largest and most corrupt institutions in the world, Pfizer, to its knees. This project, pursued by 3,250 strangers who worked virtually and became friends and colleagues, drove a global pharmaceutical behemoth to lose billions of dollars in revenue. It balked the plans of the most powerful politicians on earth. It bypassed the censorship of the most powerful tech companies on earth.

This is the ultimate David and Goliath story.

The story began when lawyer Aaron Siri successfully sued the Food and Drug Administration, to compel them to release “The Pfizer Documents.” These are Pfizer’s internal documents—as noted above, 450,000 pages in number—that detail the clinical trials Pfizer conducted in relation to its COVID mRNA injection. These trials were undertaken to secure the ultimate prize for a pharmaceutical company, the “EUA,” or Emergency Use Authorization from the FDA. The FDA awarded EUA for ages 16+ to Pfizer in December 2020. The “pandemic,” of course (a crisis in public health that a book of mine, The Bodies of Others, confirmed, involved hyped and manipulated “infections” data and skewed mortality documentation) became the pretext for the “urgency” that led the FDA to bestow EUA on Pfizer’s (and Moderna’s) novel drug. The EUA is the hall pass, essentially, allowing Pfizer to race right to market with a not-fully-tested product.

The Pfizer Papers also contains documentation of what happened in “post-marketing,” meaning in the three months, December 2020 to February 2021, as the vaccine was rolled out upon the public. All leading spokespeople, and bought-off media, called the injection “safe and effective,” reading from what was a centralized script.

Many people who took this injection, as it was launched in 2020–2021–2022 and to the present, did not realize that normal testing for safety of a new vaccine—testing that typically takes ten to twelve years—had simply been bypassed via the mechanisms of a “state of emergency” and the FDA’s “Emergency Use Authorization.” They did not understand that the real “testing” was in fact Pfizer and the FDA observing whatever was happening to them and their loved ones, after these citizens rolled up their sleeves and submitted to the shot. As we can never forget, many millions of these people who submitted to the injection were “mandated” to take it, facing the threat of job loss, suspension of their education, or loss of their military positions if they refused; in some US states and overseas countries, people also faced the suspension of their rights to take transportation, cross borders, go to school or college, receive certain medical procedures, or enter buildings such as churches and synagogues, restaurants and gyms—if they refused.

The FDA asked the judge in the Aaron Siri lawsuit to withhold the release of the Pfizer documents for seventy-five years. Why would a government agency wish to conceal certain material until the present generation, those affected by what is in these documents, is dead and gone? There can be no good answer to that question.

Fortunately for history, and fortunately for millions of people whose lives were saved by this decision, the judge refused the FDA’s request, and compelled the release of the documents; a tranche of 55,000 pages per month.

When I heard about this, though, I was concerned as a journalist. I knew that no reporter had the bandwidth to go through material of this volume. I also understood that virtually no reporter had the training or skill sets required to understand the multidimensional, technically highly specialized language of the reports. In order to understand the reports, one would need a background in immunology; statistics; biostatistics; pathology; oncology; sports medicine; obstetrics; neurology; cardiology; pharmacology; cellular biology; chemistry; and many other specialties. In addition to doctors and scientists, in order to understand what was really happening in the Pfizer documents, you would also need people deeply knowledgeable about government and pharmaceutical industry regulatory processes; you would need people who understood the FDA approval process; you would need medical fraud specialists; and eventually, in order to understand what crimes were committed in the Papers, you would need lawyers.

I was worried that without people with all of those skill sets reading through the documents, their volume and complexity would lead them to vanish down “the memory hole.”

Enter Steve Bannon, the former Naval Officer, former Goldman Sachs investment banker, former advisor to President Trump, and current host of the most popular political podcast in America and one of the most listened-to worldwide, WarRoom.

He and I come from opposite ends of the political spectrum. I had been a lifelong Democrat, an advisor to President Bill Clinton’s reelection campaign, and to Al Gore’s presidential campaign. He, of course, is a staunch Republican-turned-MAGA. I had been deplatformed in June 2021, before the Pfizer documents came out, for the crime of warning that women were reporting menstrual dysregulation upon having received the mRNA injections. As a career-long writer on women’s sexual and reproductive health issues, I knew that this was a serious danger signal and that this side effect would affect fertility. (Any eighth grader should be able to foresee that as well.) Upon my having posted this warning, I was banned from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other platforms. I was attacked globally, all at once, as an “anti-vaxxer” and “conspiracy theorist”; and my life as a well-known, bestselling feminist author, within the legacy media, ended. No one in that world would talk to me anymore, publish my work, or return my calls. I was un-personed.

(It turned out, upon two successful lawsuits in 2023 by Missouri and Louisiana attorneys general, that it was actually the White House, the CDC, and senior leaders of other government agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, that unlawfully pressured Twitter and Facebook to remove that cautionary tweet of mine, to shut me down, and to “BOLO” or Be On the Lookout for similar posts. This suppression is now the subject of a pending Supreme Court decision on whether or not it violated the First Amendment.)

In this dark time in my life, to my surprise, I received a text from Steve Bannon’s producer, who invited me onto WarRoom. I brought forward my concerns about women’s reproductive health in the wake of mRNA injection, and to my surprise he was respectful, thoughtful about the implications, and took the issue very seriously. I returned again and again, to bring that and other concerns that were emerging in relation to the mRNA injections to his audience. I was relieved to have a platform on which I could share these urgent warnings. At the same time, I was sad that the Left, which was supposed to champion feminism, seemed not to care at all about serious risks to women and unborn babies. I recognized the irony that a person whom I had been taught to believe was the Devil Incarnate, actually cared more about women and babies than did all of my right-on former colleagues, including the feminist health establishment, who had always spoken so loudly about women’s wellbeing and women’s rights.

Given my appearances on WarRoom leading up to 2022, it was natural that the subject of the Pfizer documents came up on that show when the documents were released. I shared my concern that they would be lost to history due to their volume and technical language. Bannon said something like, “Well, you will crowdsource a project to read through them.”

I was taken aback, as I had zero skills related to, or knowledge about how possibly to do such a thing. I answered something like, “Of course.”

So, my news and opinion platform DailyClout was deluged with offers from around the world, from WarRoom listeners with the skill sets needed, to decipher the Pfizer documents. I was terrified. It was chaos. I had excellent people on my team. But none of us knew how to manage or even organize the deluge of emails; we did not know how to evaluate the thousands of CVs; and even once we had “onboarded” these thousands of people, in different time zones, to “the project,” our inboxes became even more terrifying, as it was literally impossible to organize 3,250 experts into an organization chart that could systematically work through these documents. Emails were getting tangled or went unanswered. People asked questions we could not answer. We had no idea what structure could allow such a huge number of disparate experts to work through the vast trove of material.

A few weeks in, as I was in despair, Bannon had me on again. He asked about the progress of the project, and I replied, more upbeat than I felt, that many people had joined us, and they were starting to read. “Of course, you will begin delivering reports,” he prompted. “Of course,” I answered, horrified at being in so far over my head.

I have never had a corporate job, so it had not even occurred to me that a series of reports was the format that the analyses of the documents should take.

Then something happened that I can only describe as providential. We put out a call to the volunteers for a project manager, and Amy Kelly reached out. Ms. Kelly is a Six Sigma-certified project manager, with extensive experience in telecommunications and tech project management. She is also a simply inexplicably effective leader. The day that she put her hand to the chaos in the inboxes, the waters were stilled. Peace and productivity prevailed. Ms. Kelly somehow effortlessly organized the volunteers into six working groups, with a supra-committee at the head of each, and the proper work began.

I can only explain the scope and smoothness and effectiveness of the work that followed, as occurring in a state of grace.

In the two years since Ms. Kelly and the volunteers have been working together, they have gone through 2,369 documents and data files totaling hundreds of thousands of pages and have issued almost one hundred reports. I taught the volunteers to write these in a language that everyone could understand—which I thought was very important to maximize their impact. And Amy Kelly meticulously revised almost all, and edited all, of them.

The first forty-six reports appeared in a self-published format that we put out. It was very important to us that they appear in a published form that was physical, and not just digital, as we wanted something that people could hand to their doctors, their loved ones, their congressional representatives.

These forty-six reports broke huge stories. We learned that Pfizer knew within three months after rollout in December 2020, that the vaccines did not work to stop COVID. Pfizer’s language was “vaccine failure” and “failure of efficacy.” One of the most common “adverse events” in the Pfizer documents is “COVID.”

Pfizer knew that the vaccine materials—lipid nanoparticles, an industrial fat, coated in polyethylene glycol, a petroleum byproduct; mRNA; and spike protein—did not remain in the deltoid muscle, as claimed by all spokespeople. Rather, it dispersed throughout the body in forty-eight hours “like a shotgun blast,” as one of the authors, Dr. Robert Chandler, put it; it crossed every membrane in the human body—including the blood-brain barrier—and accumulated in the liver, adrenals, spleen, brain, and, if one is a woman, in the ovaries. Dr. Chandler saw no mechanism whereby those materials leave the body, so every injection appears to pack more such materials into organs.

Pfizer hired 2,400 fulltime staffers to help process “the large increase of adverse event reports” being submitted to the company’s Worldwide Safety database.

Pfizer knew by April 2021 that the injections damaged the hearts of young people.

Pfizer knew by February 28, 2021—just ninety days after the public rollout of their COVID vaccine—that its injection was linked to a myriad of adverse events. Far from being “chills,” “fever,” “fatigue,” as the CDC and other authorities claimed were the most worrying side effects, the actual side effects were catastrophically serious.

These side effects included: death (which Pfizer does list as a “serious adverse event”). Indeed, over 1,233 deaths in first three months of the drug being publicly available.

Severe COVID-19; liver injury; neurological adverse events; facial paralysis; kidney injury; autoimmune diseases; chilblains (a localized form of vasculitis that affects the fingers and toes); multiple organ dysfunction syndrome (when more than one organ system is failing at once); the activation of dormant herpes zoster infections; skin and mucus membrane lesions; respiratory issues; damaged lung structure; respiratory failure; acute respiratory distress syndrome (a lung injury in which fluid leaks from the blood vessels into the lung tissue, causing stiffness which makes it harder to breathe and causes a reduction of oxygen and carbon dioxide exchange); and SARS (or SARS-CoV-1, which had not been seen in the world since 2004, but appears in the Pfizer documents as a side effect of the injections).

Thousands of people with arthritis-type joint pain, one of the most common side effect, were recorded. Other thousands with muscle pain, the second most common. Then, industrial-scale blood diseases: blood clots, lung clots, leg clots; thrombotic thrombocytopenia, a clotting disease of the blood vessels; vasculitis (the destruction of blood vessels via inflammation); astronomical rates of neurological disorders—dementias, tremors, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, epilepsies. Horrific skin conditions. A florid plethora of cardiac issues; myocarditis, pericarditis, tachycardia, arrhythmia, and so on. Half of the serious adverse events related to the liver, including death, took place within seventy-two hours of the shot. Half of the strokes took place within forty-eight hours of injection.

But what really emerged from the first forty-six reports, was the fact that though COVID is ostensibly a respiratory disease, the papers did not focus on lungs or mucus membranes, but rather they center, creepily and consistently, on disrupting human reproduction.

By the time Pfizer’s vaccine rolled out to the public, the pharmaceutical giant knew that they would be killing babies and significantly harming women and men’s reproduction. The material in the documents makes it clear that damaging human’s ability to reproduce and causing spontaneous abortions of babies is “not a bug, it is a feature.”

Pfizer told vaccinated men to use two reliable forms of contraception or else to abstain from sex with childbearing-age women. In its protocol, the company defined “exposure” to the vaccine as including skin-to-skin contact, inhalation, and sexual contact. Pfizer mated vaccinated female rats and “untreated” male rats, and then examined those males, females, and their offspring for vaccine-related “toxicity.” Based on just forty-four rats (and no humans), Pfizer declared no negative outcomes for “. . . mating performance, fertility, or any ovarian or uterine parameters . . . nor on embryo-fetal or postnatal survival, growth, or development,” the implication being that its COVID vaccine was safe in pregnancy and did not harm babies. Pfizer knew that lipid nanoparticles have been known for years, to degrade sexual systems, and Amy Kelly in fact found nanoparticles, of which lipid nanoparticles are a subtype, pass through the blood-testis barrier and damage males’ Sertoli cells, Leydig cells, and germ cells. Those are the factories of masculinity, affecting the hormones that turn boys at adolescence into men, with deep voices, broad shoulders, and the ability to father children. So, we have no idea if baby boys born to vaccinated moms, will turn into adults who are recognizably male and fertile. Pfizer enumerated the menstrual damages it knew it was causing to thousands of women, and the damage ranges from women bleeding every day, to having two periods a month, to no periods at all; to women hemorrhaging and passing tissue; to menopausal and post-menopausal women beginning to bleed again. Pfizer’s scientists calmly observed and noted it all but did not tell women.

Babies suffered and died. In one section of the documents, over 80 percent of the pregnancies followed resulted in miscarriage or spontaneous abortion. In another section of the documents, two newborn babies died, and Pfizer described the cause of death as “maternal exposure” to the vaccine.

Image is from Children’s Health Defense

Pfizer knew that vaccine materials entered vaccinated moms’ breast milk and poisoned babies. Four women’s breast milk turned “blue-green.” Pfizer produced a chart of sick babies, made ill from breastfeeding from vaccinated moms, with symptoms ranging from fever to edema (swollen flesh) to hives to vomiting. One poor baby had convulsions and was taken to the ER, where it died of multi-organ system failure.

I will now take you to the thirty-six reports you will find in this book. Some of the headlines from the reports that follow are:

On Feb 28, 2021, Pfizer produced “Pregnancy and Lactation Cumulative Review” showing that after mothers’ vaccination with its vaccine:

• Adverse events occurred in over 54 percent of cases of “maternal exposure” to vaccine and included 53 reports of spontaneous abortion (51)/ abortion (1)/ abortion missed (1) following vaccination.
• Premature labor and delivery cases occurred, as well as two newborn deaths.
• Some newborns suffered severe respiratory distress or “illness” after exposure via breast milk.
• “Substantial” birth rate drops happened across thirteen countries: countries in Europe, as well as Britain, Australia, and Taiwan, within nine months of public vaccine rollout.
• Approximately 70 percent of Pfizer vaccine-related adverse events occur in women.
• Spike protein and inflammation were still present in heart tissue one year after receipt of the mRNA COVID vaccine.
• In Pfizer’s clinical trial, there were more deaths among the vaccinated than the placebo participants. However, Pfizer submitted inaccurate data, showing more deaths in the placebo group, to the FDA when seeking emergency use authorization.
• Infants and children under twelve received Pfizer’s vaccine seven months before a pediatric vaccine approval resulting in:

* Stroke.

* Facial paralysis.

* Kidney injury or failure.

• There was an over 3.7-fold increase in the number of deaths due to cardiovascular events in vaccinated clinical trial subjects compared to placebo subjects.
• The vaccine Pfizer rolled out to the public was different than the formulation used on the majority of clinical trial participants, and the public was not informed of this.
• Histopathologic analyses (the staining of tissues to show disease states) show clear evidence of vaccine-induced, autoimmune-like pathology in multiple organs; spike protein-caused erosion of the blood vessels, heart, and lymphatic vessels; amyloids in multiple tissues; unusual, aggressive cancers; and atypical “clot” formations.
• Following vaccination, younger patients began presenting with cancers; tumors were bigger and grew more aggressively and faster than cancers had prior to mass inoculation of populations; co-temporal onset (the onset more than one cancer at the same time) of cancers became more common—a situation that was typically very unusual before the mRNA vaccines’ rollout. Benign tumors’ growth accelerated.
• By March 12, 2021, Pfizer researchers vaccinated almost the entire placebo (non-vaccinated) cohort from the trial, though Pfizer had previously committed to following both the vaccinated and placebo cohorts for two years. Immediately after receiving the Emergency Use Authorization, Pfizer lobbied the FDA to allow them to vaccinate the unvaccinated cohort for “humanitarian” reasons. Vaccinating the placebo group ended the ability to pursue safety studies over time.
• Autoimmunity cases reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) increased 24-fold from 2020 to 2021, and annual autoimmunity-related fatalities increased 37x in the same time period.
• In Pfizer’s October 2021 emergency use authorization data and documents submission for children ages five to eleven, Pfizer investigators speculated in writing that subclinical damages would manifest in patients in the long term, implying that continued doses with subclinical damages would eventually manifest as clinical damages.
• In trial studies, Moderna mRNA COVID-19 vaccine damaged mammals’ reproduction—resulting in 22 percent fewer pregnancies; skeletal malformations; and nursing problems.
• There were hundreds of possible vaccine-associated enhanced disease (VAED) cases in the first three months of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine rollout. Public health spokespeople minimized their severity by calling them “breakthrough COVID cases.”
• Pfizer concealed eight vaccinated deaths that occurred during the clinical trial in order to make its results look favorable for receiving its ages 16+ EUA.

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The most powerful forces in the world—including the White House, the staffers of the United States president himself; Dr. Rochelle Walensky of the CDC; the head of the FDA, Dr. Robert M Califf; Dr. Anthony Fauci; Twitter and Facebook; legacy media, including the New York Times, the BBC, the Guardian and NPR; OfCom, the British media regulatory agency; professional organizations such as the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecology, and the European Medicines Agency, the European equivalent of the FDA, and the Therapeutics Goods Administration, Australia’s equivalent of the FDA—all sought to suppress the information that Amy Kelly, the research volunteers, and I brought to the world starting in 2022, and that you are about to absorb in the following pages.

Nonetheless, in spite of the most powerful censorship and retribution campaign launched in human history—made more powerful than past such campaigns by the amplifying effects of social media and AI—these volunteers’ findings were not suppressed at last, and survived on alternative media, and on our site DailyClout.io; to be shared from mouth to mouth, saving millions of lives.

Fast forward to more recent events. What has the role of this information been in stopping this greatest crime ever committed against humanity?

The worst has happened. Disabilities are up by a million a month in the United States, according to former BlackRock hedge fund manager Edward Dowd.

Excess deaths are way up in the US and Western Europe. Birth rates have plummeted, according to the mathematician Igor Chudov (and WarRoom/DailyClout Volunteer Researcher Dr. Robert Chandler) by 13–20 percent since 2021, based on government databases. Athletes are dropping dead. Turbo-cancers are on the rise. Conventional doctors may be “baffled” by all of this, but sadly, we, thanks to Amy Kelly and the volunteers, understand exactly what is happening.

Our relentless effort to get this information to the world, in an unimpeachable form, has finally paid off with results. The uptake for boosters is now 4 percent. Very few people “boosted” their children. Most colleges in the United States withdrew their vaccine “mandates.” Pfizer’s net revenue dropped in Q1 of 2024 to pre-2016 levels. OfCom, which had targeted Mark Steyn for “platforming” on his show my description of the reproductive and other harms in the Pfizer documents, is being sued by Steyn. The BBC had to report that vaccine injuries are real, as did the New York Times. AstraZeneca, a somewhat differently configured COVID vaccine in Europe, was withdrawn from the market in May 2024, following lawsuits involving thrombotic thrombocytopenia (a side effect about which our research volunteer Dr. Carol Taccetta had informed the FDA by letter in 2022), and the European Medicines Agency notably withdrew its EUA for AstraZeneca. Three days after we published our report showing that the FDA and CDC had received the eight-page “Pregnancy and Lactation Cumulative Review” confirming that Dr. Walensky knew about the lethality of the vaccine when she held her press conference telling pregnant women to get the injection, Dr. Walensky resigned.

It is difficult indeed to face this material in the roles that Amy Kelly and I play. No doubt for the volunteers, unearthing this criminal evidence is painful indeed. It may be hard to read some of what follows. As I have said elsewhere, seeing this material is like being among the Allied soldiers who first opened the gates of Auschwitz.

But the truth must be told.

Among other important reasons to tell these truths, people were injured and killed with a novel technology not deployed before in medicine; and these pages hold important clues as to the mechanisms of these injuries, and thus, they provide many signposts for physicians and scientists in the future, for treating the many injuries that these new mRNA technologies, injected into people’s bodies, have brought about.

We must share the truth, as the truth saves and sustains; and eventually, the truth will heal.

*

We thank Steve Bannon, and his wonderful team at WarRoom, for being the instigator of this entire project and for consistently bringing us onto his show so that we can tell the world what the volunteers find.

We thank Skyhorse Publishing, publisher Tony Lyons, and our editor Hector Carosso, for taking the critical step of publishing this material in a book that will be available everywhere. Books matter, and this publication will make a difference in bringing about accountability and an accurate history of this catastrophic set of events.

We thank the volunteers, 3,250 strangers around the world who banded together in the love of truth and of their fellow human beings. We thank our two hundred lawyers, who helped us to FOIA emails from the CDC and helped us to understand the crimes that we were seeing in the following pages.

Many of our volunteers themselves have suffered ostracism, job loss, marginalization, and other penalties, as a consequence of their commitment to real science, real medicine, and to bringing forth the truth to save their fellow human beings, and generations yet unborn.

*

The battle is ongoing. No one who committed this massive crime against humanity is in jail, or even facing civil or criminal charges. There are at least three lawsuits against Pfizer—two of ours, and one of Brook Jackson’s—but, to date, none of the lawsuits have completely prevailed. The litigation drags on.

Nonetheless—nonetheless. The word is out.

Amy Kelly and I get hundreds of emails from grateful families, telling us about their healthy babies or grandchildren and thanking us for saving those babies, or sons and daughters and daughters-in-law, and we know this project has saved many lives; perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives and maybe saved millions from disabling injuries. Steve Bannon, who started it all, saved hundreds of thousands of lives and saved his listeners and ours from sustaining millions of injuries. God know how many babies will be born in the future, safe and well, because of our collective, arduous, much-targeted work.

The story of this project is not over.

Your own actions, upon your having read these reports, are part of the ongoing ripples of this work.

Whom will you tell?

How will you process the information?

What will you do to avenge the crimes of the past?

What will you do to save the future?

*

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

Featured image is from the author

The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity

by The WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Analysts (Author),

Naomi Wolf (Editor),

Amy Kelly (Editor),

Stephen K Bannon (Foreword)

ASIN: ‎ B0CNQGVDKB

Publisher: ‎ War Room Books (October 15, 2024)

Publication date: ‎ October 15, 2024

Click here to purchase the book.

The US presidential election is only a dozen days away and the Biden/Harris complicity in the mass murder of Gazans by Jewish Israelis should be the key issue for decent Americans. However the expert UK estimate of 335,500 Gaza dead (mostly children) is ignored by mainstream media, Trump and Harris. Only Dr Jill Stein (Greens), Dr Cornel West (independent) and Chase Oliver (Libertarian) would stop the Kid-Killing Kamala (KKK) Harris-complicit Gaza Genocide.

A widely-reported mainstream estimate is of about 40,000 Gazans killed since 7 October 2023 (1,139 Israelis killed) in the Jewish Israeli-imposed Gaza Genocide or 50,000 including 10,000 dead under rubble. Thus Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor (6 October 2024):

“Since the start of the genocide in Gaza, more than 50,000 Palestinians have been killed by the Israeli army, including around 42,000 recorded by the Gaza Ministry of Health, the majority being women and children”.

However these estimates do not consider indirect deaths from Jewish Israeli-imposed deprivation through war criminal siege involving deprivation of life-sustaining water, food, shelter, sanitation, medicine and medical care in gross violation of Articles 55 and 56 of the Fourth Geneva Convention that unequivocally state that an Occupier must provide its conquered Subjects with life-sustaining food and medical services “to the fullest extent of the means available to  it”.

I have been researching avoidable mortality from deprivation for 3 decades (see my huge book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”). Thus, for example, I estimated 9.5 million deaths from violence and deprivation in the Iraq and Afghan wars as compared to the 4.7 million estimate by the “Cost of War” project of a huge team at prestigious Brown University.

Rasha Khatib, Martin McKee  and  Salim Yusuf in the leading medical journal The Lancet (10 July 2024):

“Collecting data is becoming increasingly difficult for the Gaza Health Ministry due to the destruction of much of the infrastructure… Applying a conservative estimate of four indirect deaths per one direct death to the 37,396 deaths reported, it is not implausible to estimate that up to 186,000 or even more deaths could be attributable to the current conflict in Gaza”.

Professor Devi Sridhar (chair, global public health, University of Edinburgh) taking deaths from deprivation (indirect deaths) into account (5 September 2024):

“For several decades, methods have been developed to build up datasets in situations with poor or damaged health and monitoring systems…Using the method, the total deaths since the conflict began would be estimated at about 335,500 in total”.

Because Global South under-5 year old infant deaths are 70% of avoidable deaths from deprivation this 335,500 deaths in 11 months can be translated (based on reported child, adult female and adult male proportions of the 50,000 violent deaths) to deaths from violence and imposed deprivation in the first year of the Gaza Massacre totalling about 366,000, including 267,000 children, 31,000 women and 71,000 men.

This horrific and utterly unforgivable killing in the US- and US Alliance-complicit  Gaza Massacre and Gaza Genocide should be the key issue in all Western elections but is not. Indeed the horrific estimated numbers (e.g.  335,500 dead) are overwhelmingly not reported by racist, mendacious and genocide-ignoring US and Western mainstream journalist, editor, politician, academic and commentariat  presstitutes. I have ranked the five US presidential candidates for decency as follows:

#1.  Dr Jill Stein (the Greens candidate)  tops the list of candidates because she ticks all boxes – an end to the killing, genocide, occupation and human rights denial . (In addition she wants strong action on climate  change, and war and  no doubt is opposed to nuclear weapons.)

#2.  Dr Cornell West (Independent) comes equal first with Dr Stein on Palestinian human rights and ending  war and occupation, but Dr Stein as a Green is in addition more strongly active on climate change.

#3.  Chase Oliver (Libertarian candidate) comes third because he opposes war and thus would want the violence in Gaza and Lebanon to end. However he supports the Mainstream American position by support (albeit non-military) for  Apartheid Israel and hence is seriously morally compromised over Palestinian human rights. Indeed he “would allow private parties, including defense contractors, to voluntarily contribute funds and sell weapons to our friends without fear of violating any Federal laws”. Those supporting Apartheid Israel are supporting the vile crime of Apartheid and are thus severely morally compromised in a one-person- one-vote democracy like America.

#4.  Donald Trump (Republican) is awful in fervently supporting Apartheid Israel and hence the vile crime of Apartheid. He enthusiastically supports the Apartheid Israeli war on Gaza but thinks that the devastation and killing is a bad look. A serious flaw is his appalling and continuing record of blatant lying (over 30,000 lies during the  4 years of his administration) – this seriously questions his judgement, his amenability to expert scientific opinion, and hence his suitability for high office. On the other hand his lying could be regarded as political gamesmanship , noting that his opponent Kamala Harris also lies but in a less obvious and hence more plausible and more dangerous fashion. 2 big pluses of Trump over Kamala Harris are (1)  he is against  wars, talks to his international enemies and will stop the Ukraine War to end the horrific killing, and (2) he is not actually involved in the Gaza Massacre.

#5.  Kamala Harris (Democrat) must be ranked last if you believe in the sanctity of life of born children. Child-killing geriatric Genocide Joe and Kid-Killing Kamala (KKK) Harris are still supplying the funding, the bombs and the weapons that in the first year alone have killed 366,000 Gazans including 267,000 children, 31,000 women and 71,000 men. The Bible states “An eye for eye, tooth for tooth” but the bombs-supplying Biden/Harris Administration has killed 366,000 Gazans in the first year alone in Jewish Israeli reprisals for the deaths of 1, 139 Israelis on 7 October 2023 (97.5 % adults and hence mostly  present or former Occupier IDF soldiers, and many killed in the IDF response under the IDF “Hannibal Directive”). Indeed  Jesus stated:

“And whosoever shall offend ONE of these little ones that believe in me, it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he were cast into the sea”.

For details and documentation see this.

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War   

Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds” (2003). He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2021), “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008, 2022), “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020), “Free Palestine. End Apartheid Israel, Human Rights Denial, Gaza Massacre, Child Killing, Occupation and Palestinian Genocide” (2024), and contributed to Soren Korsgaard (editor) “The Most Dangerous Book Ever Published – Dangerous Deception Exposed!” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/.

Featured image: Then-senator Kamala Harris, left, hosted by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his Jerusalem office, November 2017. (Amos Ben Gershom/GPO)

Jill Stein  Presidential Candidate for the Green Party Takes a Stance against the so-called Lesser Evil.

She condemns the Democratic Party which has aligned itself with Israel and the genocide directed against the people of Palestine.

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O sistema de eleição presidencial

1) Os dois principais partidos, Republicano e Democrata, escolhem seu candidato presidencial por meio de eleições primárias realizadas nos 50 estados. Elas são realizadas de maneiras diferentes de estado para estado. Em alguns, os candidatos são escolhidos por meio de cédulas secretas, em outros, por meio de reuniões abertas, os caucuses. Em alguns estados, somente os membros registrados do partido que organiza o caucus podem participar do caucus; em outros, os não membros do partido ou os membros do partido rival também podem participar e votar.

2) Dependendo do resultado do caucus, cada candidato recebe um número variável de delegados, que representam seu estado na convenção nacional do partido que escolhe seu candidato presidencial. A convenção conta com a presença não apenas dos delegados dos estados, mas também dos superdelegados: personalidades importantes do partido que podem votar em quem quiserem, às vezes invertendo a situação.

3) Depois que os dois partidos escolhem seus candidatos presidenciais, é realizada uma eleição geral. Os eleitores não elegem diretamente o presidente, mas um Grande Eleitor que representa o candidato escolhido.

4) A eleggere il Presidente degli Stati Uniti sono 538 Grandi Elettori. Per diventare Presidente bisogna ottenere il voto di almeno 270 di loro Ogni Grande Elettore rappresenta il partito cui appartiene, ma la Costituzione degli Stati Uniti non gli impone di votare il candidato alla presidenza scelto dal suo partito.

5) Ogni Stato ha una quota di Grandi Elettori, calcolata in modo da favorire gli Stati più piccoli.: il Wyoming, poco popolato, ha un Grande Elettore ogni 194’000 abitanti.; la California, più popolata, ne ha uno ogni 723’000 abitanti.

Resultado:

Esse sistema permite manobras políticas de todos os tipos: por exemplo, fazer com que os membros do próprio partido compareçam e votem nos membros da bancada do partido oposto para não eleger um determinado candidato considerado politicamente perigoso. A alocação de um Grande Eleitor com base em um número de habitantes que varia de estado para estado às vezes leva à Presidência dos Estados Unidos candidatos que receberam menos votos na eleição geral.

O mecanismo de votação

1) Não há nenhuma lei federal que exija a identificação das pessoas que vão às urnas. O governador da Califórnia, que pertence ao Partido Democrata, promulgou uma lei que proíbe a exigência de identificação das pessoas que comparecem às seções eleitorais para votar.

2) Nas eleições de 2020, o voto por correspondência aumentou acentuadamente para mais de 66 milhões (contra 28 milhões em 2016).

3) Uma lei de 2002 exige a presença de uma máquina de votação eletrônica em todas as seções eleitorais. Não existe um padrão para construir uma máquina eletrônica utilizável com segurança.

4) Cerca de um quarto dos eleitores votará com máquinas que emitem cédulas de papel. O restante votará com máquinas eletrônicas que armazenam votos e podem ou não produzir um registro em papel do voto.

Resultado:

Esse mecanismo permite fraudes de todos os tipos. As cédulas que chegam pelo correio são abertas e registradas por pessoal contratado por empresas privadas, nas quais pode haver pessoas encarregadas de falsificar os resultados.

As urnas eletrônicas podem ser adulteradas, carregando-as com programas que falsificam os resultados.

O professor Alex Halderman, que leciona ciência da computação na Universidade de Michigan, demonstrou isso ao simular uma votação em que as máquinas eletrônicas anularam o resultado.

Manlio Dinucci

Breve resumo da análise da imprensa internacional do Grandangolo na sexta-feira, 1 de Novembro de 2024, no canal de TV italiano Byoblu:

https://www.byoblu.com/2024/11/01/elezioni-usa-i-meccanismi-della-frode/

Tradução : Mondialisation.ca 

VIDEO (italiano) :

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Manlio Dinucci é geógrafo e jornalista, e ex-diretor executivo italiano da International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, que recebeu o Prêmio Nobel da Paz em 1985. Porta-voz do Comitato no Guerra no Nato (Itália) e pesquisador associado do Centre de recherche sur la Mondialisation (Canadá). Vencedor do Prêmio Internacional de Jornalismo 2019 para Análise Geoestratégica do Club de Periodistas de México.

Il sistema delle elezioni presidenziali

1) I due maggiori partiti, Repubblicano e Democratico, scelgono il candidato alle presidenziali attraverso le elezioni primarie che si tengono nei 50 Stati. Esse si svolgono in modalità diverse da Stato a Stato.  In alcuni i candidati vengono scelti attraverso votazioni segrete, in altri attraverso riunioni aperte, i caucuses.  In alcuni Stati al caucus possono partecipare solo gli iscritti al partito che lo organizza, in altri possono partecipare e votare anche non iscritti al partito o iscritti al partito rivale. 

2) In base al risultato del caucus a ciascun candidato viene assegnato un numero variabile di delegati, i quali rappresentano il loro Stato alla Convention nazionale del Partito che sceglie il suo candidato alle presidenziali.  Alla Convention partecipano non solo i delegati degli Stati, anche i super-delegati: personalità importanti del Partito che possono votare per chiunque vogliano, ribaltando a volte la situazione.

3) Una volta che i due partiti hanno scelto i rispettivi candidati alla Presidenza, si procede alle elezioni generali.  Gli elettori non eleggono direttamente il Presidente ma un Grande Elettore che rappresenta il candidato prescelto. 

4) A eleggere il Presidente degli Stati Uniti sono 538 Grandi Elettori. Per diventare Presidente bisogna ottenere il voto di almeno 270 di loro Ogni Grande Elettore rappresenta il partito cui appartiene, ma la Costituzione degli Stati Uniti non gli impone di votare il candidato alla presidenza scelto dal suo partito.

5) Ogni Stato ha una quota di Grandi Elettori, calcolata in modo da favorire gli Stati più piccoli.: il Wyoming, poco popolato, ha un Grande Elettore ogni 194’000 abitanti.; la California, più popolata, ne ha uno ogni 723’000 abitanti.

RISULTATO:

Tale sistema permette manovre politiche di tutti i tipi: ad esempio quella di far partecipare e votare membri del proprio partito al caucus del partito avversario per non far eleggere un determinato candidato ritenuto politicamente pericoloso.  L’attribuzione di un Grande Elettore in base a un numero di abitanti che varia da Stato a Stato porta talvolta alla Presidenza degli Stati Uniti candidati che alle lezioni generali hanno ricevuto meno voti. 

Il meccanismo della votazione 

1) Manca una legge federale che imponga l’identificazione di chi si reca alle urne. Il Governatore della California, appartenente al Partito Democratico, ha promulgato una legge che vieta di richiedere l’identificazione di chi si presenta ai seggi per votare.

2) Alle elezioni del 2020, il voto per corrispondenza è fortemente aumentato superando  i 66 milioni (rispetto ai 28 milioni del 2016).

3) Una Legge del 2002 richiede la presenza di una macchina per il voto elettronico in tutti i seggi elettorali. Non esiste operò nessuno standard per costruire una macchina elettronica utilizzabile in sicurezza.

4) Circa un quarto degli elettori voterà con macchine che rilasciano schede cartacee. Il resto voterà con macchine elettroniche che memorizzano i voti e possono produrre o no una registrazione cartacea dell’avvenuta votazione.

RISULTATO:

Tale meccanismo permette frodi di tutti i tipi. Le schede che arrivano per posta vengono aperte e registrate da personale assunto attraverso società private, nel quale possono esserci persone incaricate di falsare i risultati. Le macchine elettroniche per la votazione possono essere manomesse, caricandovi programmi che falsano i risultati.  Il professore Alex Halderman, che insegna scienze informatiche all’Università del Michigan, lo ha dimostrato simulando una votazione di cui le macchine elettroniche capovolgono il risultato. 

Manlio Dinucci

VIDEO :

Despite the overall accolades the recent BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, received both from the mainstream and non-mainstream media, not all that glitters is gold.

A second look reveals—unfortunately—that the BRICS nations follow the same globalist agenda as does the Western world.

And if the BRICS are representative of the Global South, then maybe much of the Global South has also been taken hostage by that globalist agenda.

What concrete proof do we have of these claims?

Here are some BRICS declarations made at the Kazan summit that supply all the proof we need, despite having received little-to-no coverage from the news media:

• BRICS supports “global governance” and “the central role of the United Nations in the international system,”
• BRICS supports the leading role of the IMF in global finance,
• BRICS supports the UN’s 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,
• BRICS supports public-private partnerships to help nations achieve their Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
• BRICS supports the reduction and removal of greenhouse gases to combat climate change,
• BRICS supports the creation of carbon markets,
• BRICS supports the World Health Organization (WHO) and its “central coordinating role” in strengthening “the international pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system,”
• BRICS supports the development of “safe & effective vaccines,”
• BRICS supports “digital transformation” using 5G and other “emerging technologies,” and
• BRICS supports the goal of “Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security” instead of the goal of “Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet.”

The BRICS countries are spouting the same nonsense—or much worse than nonsense—as one might find at the G20 and the G7 summits. In some cases, it looks like their declarations were taken verbatim from the last G20 conference, held in New Delhi 9–10 September 2023.

Let’s be on the alert: the next G20 summit is scheduled for 18–19 November 2024 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, hosted by the ultra-globalist Lula government. And the next planned G7 conference is to take place in June 2025 in Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada.

No doubt, all the BRICS nations firmly support the Pandemic Agreement being formulated by the WHO as well as the UN Pact for the Future. The intent of that agreement and that pact is to move the world straight into a One World Government, with the UN as the government and the WHO as the worldwide Gestapo.

In addition, any new nation joining the BRICS organization must agree to all the above-stated declarations.

It is time for “We the People” to declare our own international agreement, free from the meddling intrusions being proposed by the tyrannical organizations and nations that are attempting to destroy our inherent and inalienable rights.

Maybe this is the reason President Vladimir Putin gently suggested a new funding and financing platform for the BRICS, so that Russia and its alliance partners could escape the tentacles of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

To enhance such a move—if ever the BRICS nations can see eye-to-eye, that is—perhaps a common Secretariat and joint Economic Development, Trade, and Defense policies would be in order.

If the BRICS were to take a stand for their independence within the UN Pact for the Future, they may also consider a common virtual BRICS currency along the lines of the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights (SDR) principle—but without adhering to IMF rules.

The SDR principle is simply currency that is the weighted average of all the BRICS nations’ currencies—not including the US dollar, of course.

Although the UN Pact is not legally binding, it may be difficult for smaller countries to refuse to abide by its mandates. But declining the UN Pact mandates would be less of a problem for larger countries and/or for a bloc of countries such as the BRICS.

A new BRICS virtual currency could also be used to back the nine individual countries’ own national currencies and to trade among each other. And because their currency would not include the US dollar, the BRICS nations would be free of interference from the West.

Given the outcome of the just-completed Kazan summit and the overall rift within the BRICS nations, the suggestions offered above may be a long shot at this time.

However, they should not be ignored. For, in the not-too-distant future, we could find ourselves in “A New World”—a world not of the UN’s or the WHO’s making, but of the people’s making. That is, a world striven for and developed by humanity itself.

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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in aerospace engineering. During his two tours of duty as a captain in the Canadian Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia, Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.

With a keen eye for detail, problem-solving skills and a spiritual mind, David is a geopolitical analyst and writes regularly on a myriad of topics for Global Research, and other non-mainstream media. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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

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

Featured image: President of Russia Vladimir Putin addresses the official reception of the 16th BRICS Summit. (Grigory Sysoev / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

Lost in the hoopla of the coming US presidential election and the pandemonium of current global affairs was an unheralded summit last month that could cause more upheaval on the planet than anything our self-described world leaders have thrown at the populace yet.

On September 22, representatives of 193 sovereign nation-states gathered at the United Nations headquarters in New York City to adopt a Pact for the Future.

The document, which includes a Global Digital Compact and a Declaration on Future Generations, promises to “open the door to new opportunities and untapped possibilities,” according to UN Secretary-General António Guterres.

The landmark agreement, which Guterres called a “step-change towards more effective, inclusive, networked multilateralism,” contains 56 “actions” that countries pledged to achieve.

The net effect of the Pact for the Future and its two so-called annexes is intended to radically accelerate the push toward completion of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and its Agenda 2030.

Marketed as a blueprint to “lay the foundations for a sustainable, just, and peaceful global order—for all peoples and nations” (and who could possibly object to such a heavenly vision?)—this latest flurry of UN paperwork may have set new records in linguistic maneuvers and platitudes per page.

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Screenshot from un.org

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A few questions are in order:

• What do all the bureaucratic bromides and buzzwords in the Pact actually mean when translated into plain English?

• How will the Pact’s sound and fury impact us once its “multilateral” wheels are set in motion?

• Is this “sustainable, just, and peaceful global order” really a pot of gold awaiting us at the end of the United Nations Summit of the Future rainbow?

• Are these promises of “new opportunities and untapped possibilities” truly wonderful gifts designed to serve the public? Or are they just more Trojan horses that will carry us closer to the cliff’s edge than into a Canaan-like Promised Land flowing with milk and honey?

• And what exactly did Secretary-General Guterres mean when he said the UN Summit of the Future represented “an essential first step towards making global institutions more legitimate, effective, and fit for the world of today and tomorrow” and that UN member states had gathered to “bring multilateralism back from the brink”?

Wading through the finished product, 66 pages of hackneyed phrases passed off as profound policy, requires the stoicism of a saint and a devil’s dictionary in order to translate its conniving “globalese” into a comprehensible tongue.

Rather than answer the above questions one by one, we can turn to the accompanying four-page Concept Notes for the Interactive Dialogues, which offer a concise version of the Pact’s mind-numbing pages and pages.

The Concept Notes begin by highlighting the need to “transform global governance and turbocharge the implementation of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development.” These notes give us a clear idea of what the priorities were for the two-day “Summit of the Future” as well as the direction that UN 2.0 is attempting to steer the planet.

For instance, the opening line of Interactive Dialogue 1 speaks of “[t]he urgent need for reform of the global financial architecture” in order to “modernize the system while accelerating progress to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals.” Well, those words end our suspense as to what the UN’s top priority shall be: total control of the world’s financial transactions and systems.

The framework for what that new global economic system might look like is articulated in the World Economic Forum’s guidebook The Great Reset. A deep dive into the details of The Great Reset, made famous by the slogan “You’ll own nothing and be happy,” exposes this pretentious tract as just another long-winded rationale for economic despotism and centralized control over the lives of all the people (read: peons) on the planet.

Next on the globalists’ to-do list is the “urgent” need for a vaguely defined “enhanced multilateralism.”

According to various UN pooh-bahs, the international community is facing challenges that are “too great for any nation, small or large, to tackle alone.” Naturally, the UN proclaims that these undefined “challenges” can be resolved only through mechanisms installed by the UN and its sponsors.

Putting aside the fact that the UN and its affiliates have a track record that proves they are part of the problem instead of the solution to anything, the terms “multilateralism” and “global governance”—repeated throughout the UN documents—need to be exposed for what they actually mean.

Apparently, from what we can ascertain, the UN decided that the more sinister-sounding terms “one world government” and “new world order” had worn out their welcome and were justifiably raising alarm bells in the public square. Thus, kinder, gentler surrogate words have been introduced in an attempt to pacify the people and soften the not-so-fuzzy image of global totalitarianism.

It’s called marketing.

When the curtains are pulled back, exposing the spin machine, we find that the true intent of these autocrats, who claim to “represent the peoples of the world,” is to create a global governance structure with dramatically increased powers over all human activity.

Such a centralized control system would, by design, erode a nation’s ability to control its own domestic and foreign policy, eliminating such “quaint” notions as national sovereignty.

One example of how this might play out in the real world can be found in how the UN pushes the idea that the only possible way to effectively tackle what it determines to be “complex global shocks” is through “multilateralism,” as defined by the UN.

In a March 2023 policy paper titled “Strengthening the International Response to Complex Global Shocks — An Emergency Platform,” the UN Secretary-General proposed that

“the General Assembly provide the Secretary-General and the United Nations system with a standing authority to convene and operationalize automatically an Emergency Platform in the event of a future complex global shock of sufficient scale, severity and reach.”

In practice, what this could mean is that the standing UN Secretary-General would become a “global emergency czar” who is given power to preside over any international emergency, be it real or manufactured.

The proposal would strip nations, businesses, and the public sector of the right to make their own decisions, while handing over all authority to intergovernmental bodies within the UN’s orbit. NGOs, UN agencies and private “stakeholders” would effectively rule, like dictators, over every nation and even over every jurisdiction (province, state, county, city) within each nation. National sovereignty would be null and void.

Another major item on the UN menu is the concept of a “Common Digital Future,” which is embedded within the aforementioned “Global Digital Compact.”

Curiously, the UN directly compares these digital technologies to natural resources, observing that the potential of digital technology can be only optimized through shared access and use of resources such as the air around us and earth’s bodies of water.

Setting aside the fact that we can’t drink technology or eat data, the irony of the UN suggesting that shared access will be a defining feature of any of its programs flies in the face of the UN’s history as a vehicle for increased privatization of the commons.

As part of this Common Digital Future, the UN promotes the idea of “working together to promote information integrity, tolerance and respect in the digital space.” Again, more noble-sounding words, but how does the UN propose to do this?

Here’s a clue: The UN offers to help the public sort through the flotsam and jetsam of the social media landscape by promising to “strengthen international cooperation to address the challenge of misinformation and disinformation and hate speech online and mitigate the risks of information manipulation in a manner consistent with international law.”

If you are uncertain as to what that means, consider that the UN is seeking tighter controls over what they judge to be misinformation in order to manage and restrict what information the public can freely access. The end product, if implemented, would allow certain UN agencies to have complete control over all information sources.

This has long been one of the principal desires of the globocrats, who know that a well-informed public that is able to discern between government deceptions (such as the propaganda used to sell the corona crisis) and on-the-ground realities is exceedingly difficult to control.

At the conclusion of the September summit, UN leaders stressed the importance of the need for “a reinvigorated multilateral system.” The countries in attendance reached the consensus that “the world must accelerate progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.”

If you didn’t hear about the summit and its outcome on your evening news, don’t be surprised. It was scarcely covered by any nation’s news media. Are your eyebrows raised at the thought of the world’s “leaders” making plans to reshape the earth, its economy, and its inhabitants without so much as a whisper or a whimper from mainstream journalists?

If these journalists were to scrutinize the UN’s latest plans, they would find that what is being presented as a new and necessary plan of action is really the same old story of the megalomaniacs’ desire for total control of the planet, dressed up in a shiny new package to conceal their intentions.

The bottom line is that any time you see a program being forwarded by a gaggle of unelected, unaccountable globalists, you can rest assured that the program being promised is as thoroughly tyrannical as it can be. And that’s by design.

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

This article was originally published on Health Freedom Defense Fund.

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. He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from HFDF

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

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Introduction 

In September 2009, the U.S Justice Department attorneys and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius held a news conference “dealing with a health care-related settlement”.

  Pfizer [was] ordered [2009] to pay $2.3 billion to settle charges of promoting its drugs for uses not approved by the Food and Drug Administration.”

Pfizer Inc which is currently involved in the Worldwide distribution of the mRNA vaccine, was accused in 2009 of “Fraudulent Marketing”.

American pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc…. has agreed to pay $2.3 billion, the largest health care fraud settlement in the history of the Department of Justice, to resolve criminal and civil liability arising from the illegal promotion of certain pharmaceutical products, the Justice Department announced today.

The company [Pfizer] will pay a criminal fine of $1.195 billion, the largest criminal fine ever imposed in the United States for any matter. Pharmacia & Upjohn will also forfeit $105 million, for a total criminal resolution of $1.3 billion. (US DOJ)

To consult the Department of Justice’s historic decision click screenshot below

How on earth can we trust a Big Pharma vaccine conglomerate which pleaded guilty to criminal charges by the US Department of Justice.

People were never informed. Both the media and the governments “turned a blind eye”. 

In 2009 Pfizer pleaded “Guilty to a Felony Violation of the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act.” 

And that is the Big Pharma Company which is now marketing the “unapproved” mRNA vaccine, which has resulted in an upward trend of mortality and morbidity, starting immediately following the roll-out of the Covid-19 in mid-December 2020. (That was exactly three years ago)

Video. US Department of Justice. 2.3 Billion Medical Fraud Settlement

Pfizer’s CEOs Were not Arrested.  They were Put on “Probation” by the U.S. DOJ  

A probation officer under the auspices of the U.S. DOJ has the mandate to “investigate and supervise persons charged with or convicted of federal crimes”.

In the case of Pfizer’s probation, the DOJ had called upon the company to “cease its conduct of criminal activities” 

“As part of the settlement, Pfizer also has agreed to enter into an expansive corporate integrity agreement with the Office of Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services [DHHS].

That agreement provides for procedures and reviews to be put in place to avoid and promptly detect conduct similar to that which gave rise to this matter.” (US DOJ, emphasis added)

The DOJ’s 2009 decision regarding Pfizer’s Probation with DHHS was mistaken to say the least.

In 2009, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the DHHS was headed by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who (to put it mildly) is known to be in “conflict of interest” in regards to his relationship with Big Pharma. 

Pfizer has casually violated the conditions of its 2009-2013 four year probation.

That “similar conduct” by Pfizer has been repeated in 2020-2023 in relation to a very dangerous substance (mRNA Vaccine), on a much larger scale (compared to Bextra, Celebrex in 2009).

What is unfolding is the Worldwide “fraudulent marketing” of a “killer vaccine”.

The level of criminality is beyond description.

Amply documented the mRNA “vaccine” which was intended to protect people has resulted in an upward trend in excess mortality.

The Pfizer Confidential Report released under Freedom of Information confirms based on their own data that the vaccine is a toxic substance.  To access the complete Pfizer report click here

Neither the media nor the governments of 190 countries (with some exceptions) have had the courage to inform the broader public.

From a legal standpoint, the Pfizer’s CEOs who violated the DOJ clauses pertaining to their 2009 probation should have been arrested.

Al Capone (1931) Versus Pfizer (2020-2023)

Most people in the America are aware that Al Capone was indicted in 1931 on charges of tax evasion.  

There are several Hollywood productions on Al Capone and numerous press reports focussing on organized crime in Chicago.

Public opinion is well informed. Everybody knows about Al Capone.

Nobody knows about Pfizer being put on probation by the US Department of Justice.

When is the media going to wake up and inform America??

When is Hollywood going to produce a film entitled: 

“The Greatest Crime against Humanity, The Roll-out of the Covid-19 Vaccine”? .

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Had You known that Pfizer Had a Criminal Record Would you have Accepted to Receive the  Covid-19 Jab? 

The Roll-out happened Three years ago on December 15, 2020

The evidence of criminality pertaining to the mRNA “vaccine” is overwhelming. 

Our thoughts are with the victims of this diabolical project

At this juncture in our history, the priority is to “Disable the Fear Campaign” and “Cancel the Vaccine” (including the repeal of the so-called “Pandemic Treaty”).

Hopefully this will set the stage for the development of a Worldwide movement of solidarity, which questions the legitimacy of the powerful “Big Money” financial elites which are behind this infamous project. 

At the time of writing, in the course of the last 3 years, almost 14 billion doses of the Covid-19 killer vaccine have been administered Worldwide to a population of 8 billion people. (Data of the WHO)

In the last two months, Worldwide, humanity has taken a stance. A mass movement has unfolded in solidarity with the People of Palestine, who are the object of a criminal undertaking by the Netanyahu government which has resulted in countless deaths of civilians including women and children. 

While the vaccine rollout is by no means comparable, it is ultimately (in both cases) the value of human life which is at stake.  

The evidence regarding the loss of life pertaining to the Covid-19 “vaccine” is overwhelming: See Pfizer’s “Secret Report”, See the carefully documented impacts of the “vaccine” by Dr. William Makis: health workers, school children, students, pregnant women and new born babies (and many more). 

And that is why we need a mass movement against the Covid-19 “Vaccine”.

The Vaccine should be discontinued. And the main actors behind the Covid-19 vaccine should be the object of a criminal investigation.

Video

Interview with Caroline Mailloux, Lux Media: 

The Covid Vaccine and the “Secret” Pfizer Report”

Michel Chossudovsky Puts Forth a Strategy and Legal Procedure to Confront Big Pharma with a view to Withdrawing the Covid-19 Vaccine Worldwide

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Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, December 15, 2023 

Transcript 

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Justice Department Announces Largest Health Care Fraud Settlement in Its History

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Two days ago on October 14, I posted my column about a new US Department of Defense Directive, 5240.01, that radically alters the relationship between the US military and American citizens.  In the new directive issued one month prior to the election, the US military is authorized to intervene against American citizens and to use deadly force against Americans.  

I asked why such a drastic reformulation of long established policy unless the Democrats were setting up a coup in place of a lost election.

The dramatic change in policy requires more examination than my speculative question, but does not seem to be getting any attention. 

One would think that those patriots who are convinced that the military will come forward at the last resort and save our freedoms should be alarmed by Department of Defense Directive 5240.01.

Those patriots who see Trump as America’s savior should be alarmed by his response.  In a Fox Business interview on October 13, Trump was asked if he anticipated any chaos following the announcement of the election results.  Trump said not from his supporters, a surprising statement if the Democrats steal the election.  Trump thought that Kamala’s loss could result in disturbances from the woke left-wing, but “it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, the National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.” So here we have it: Trump has bought into Directive 5240.01.

Having accepted the directive, how can Trump complain if the directive is used against him? 

It is only a few days before the presidential election and Trump seems again to be in the clutches of advisors composed of the ruling elites. 

Who are Trump’s advisors?  Do they have any sense?  Why is Trump aligned with Israel’s genocide of Palestine and attacks on Iran?  Is Trump just another warmonger serving the military/security complex and  Greater Israel?

Trump directs American hostility toward China, because of the lopsided trade deficit.  But it was Wall Street that forced the offshoring of US manufacturing.  The trade deficit results when the US corporations bring their offshored production home to America to sell.  How can it be that Trump hasn’t a single advisor able to inform him of the real problem?

We have to be grateful for Trump.  He realizes that America is in dire straits, and he alone has emerged as anyone willing to do anything about it.  But Trump is a real estate developer. He does not know issues and their history.  His first term proved him to be a poor judge of people as he appointed to his government the very people he had declared to overthrow, and they overthrew him.  Judging by his positions on DOD 5240.01, China, Israel, he has learned nothing and has no better advisors.

In my opinion it is essential that Trump be elected, because it will give America four more years.  But the result is unlikely to be renewal of our country.  Simply, the can will be kicked down the road.

It is difficult to rouse the American people to the realities that they face. Americans are the most insouciant of all peoples. They exist surrounded by oceans and friendly countries devoid of military potential.  Americans have ruled the world because World War II destroyed all rivals.  Americans might be beginning an acquaintance with hardship, having lived on credit card and student loan debt, but despite the deceptions their government inflicts on them — 9/11, Muslim Terrorists and weapons of mass destruction, Covid pandemic, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Iranian nukes, Chinese threat, Trump insurrection, Putin’s resurrection of the Soviet Empire, the return of slavery by white supremacists– a large segment of the population still trusts the government that is destroying them.

So, what can be done?

How can an insouciant population deal with a ruling elite when the population doesn’t understand what is happening?  

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

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.

First published on June 1, 2013

The following video features 2016 Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton who candidly acknowledges that America created and funded Al Qaeda as a terrorist organization in the heyday of the Soviet-Afghan war:  

““Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago

… let’s go recruit these mujahideen. 

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.” 

In 1979 the plan in Afghanistan was regime change: destroy the secular (pro-Soviet) government which came to power in 1973, and install a proxy U.S. Islamic State, led by the Taliban.

THEN AND NOW 

NOW

And today leading up to the 2024 elections, it’s “Déjà Vu: financing the “terrorists” as part of US-NATO’s  “Global War on Terrorism”

What Hillary does not mention is that at no time in the course of the last 45 years since the so-called Soviet-Afghan War, the US has not ceased to support and finance Al Qaeda as a means to destabilizing and impoverishing sovereign countries.

It was “a pretty good idea”, says Hillary, and it remains a good idea today.

TRANSCRIPT 

“Let’s remember here… the people we are fighting today we funded them twenty years ago… and we did it because we were locked in a struggle with the Soviet Union.

“They invaded Afghanistan… and we did not want to see them control Central Asia and we went to work… and it was President Reagan in partnership with Congress led by Democrats who said you know what it sounds like a pretty good idea… let’s deal with the ISI and the Pakistan military and let’s go recruit these mujahideen.

“And great, let them come from Saudi Arabia and other countries, importing their Wahabi brand of Islam so that we can go beat the Soviet Union.

“And guess what … they (Soviets) retreated … they lost billions of dollars and it led to the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“So there is a very strong argument which is… it wasn’t a bad investment in terms of Soviet Union but let’s be careful with what we sow… because we will harvest.

“So we then left Pakistan … We said okay fine you deal with the Stingers that we left all over your country… you deal with the mines that are along the border and… by the way we don’t want to have anything to do with you… in fact we’re sanctioning you… So we stopped dealing with the Pakistani military and with ISI and we now are making up for a lot of lost time.” (HILLARY CLINTON)

C’est le monde à l’envers.

President Ronald Reagan issued (and signed) the National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which de facto authorized  “stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen” as well as CIA support to religious indoctrination.

The promotion of “Radical Islam” was a deliberate CIA initiative (NSDD 166) which in the wake of 9/11 has served as justification to waging a “Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) in the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast Asia and sub–Saharan Africa. 

See:

October 7, 2001: America’s “Just War” against Afghanistan: Women’s Rights “Before” and “After” America’s Destructive Wars

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 23, 2024

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

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Click the share button above to email/forward this article to your friends and colleagues. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. First published in June 2024.

Global Research Wants to Hear From You!

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The year 2024 seems to have been a banner year for assassination attempts on the world stage. [1]

In May, there was a hit put on the Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico. The man just shy of his sixtieth birthday was off-side with NATO and most European countries in his advocacy for not selling weapons to Ukraine, allowing the country to cede some of its territory to Russia.  Fico also promised to launch investigations into COVID-19 pandemic corruption, COVID-19 vaccine injuries and deaths, and 21,000 excess deaths. [2][3]

Ebrahim Raisi, president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, died in a suspicious helicopter crash that same month. [4]

So the suspicion of some people, this author included, was that Trump, the high profile personality who is accused of being a Manchurian Candidate (Putin’s buddy) and not quite reliable in dealing with standard “COVID protocols,” likely had a deep state bullet with his name on it. [5][6]

There have been not just one but two assassination attempts on the former president in the past two months. Both attempts failed, though one came awfully close to succeeding. [7]

This brings to mind several other assassination attempts of presidents and presidential candidates going back to the 1960s. As with the Kennedy brothers, JFK and RFK, there were some details 6 decades later that have curious qualities not generally explained by the official story. For example, why was the first shooter able to climb up on a roof only 100 yards away without any Secret Service personnel questioning him or stopping Trump from giving a speech? Why did the second gunman have the ability to get in and out of Ukraine and know Trump’s whereabouts on one of Trump’s golf courses in Florida? And how did he fit the typical description (not unlike Lee Harvey Oswald) of “lone gunmen?”

Is there more to this scenario than individuals taking matters into their own hands to deal with the man President Biden refers to as being a “threat to American democracy?” If so, then it might be helpful to get hold of a person who has devoted years investigating the suspected state murders of the past. And at this time, the Global Research News Hour had the great privilege of tracking down the knowledgeable yet polite voice of Lisa Pease.

Lisa Pease has spent many lunch hours, nights and weekends at her local library pouring through the files on microfilm to research the assassination of Robert F Kennedy. On 2018, she has published the critically acclaimed book A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. She joind us for the bulk of the hour to share her perspectives on RFK, the inconsistency around the official story, and the problematic aspects of Trump’s two close calls with the Grim Reaper.

Guiding listeners through the conversation this week is the former CJUM (University of Manitoba radio) host and broadcaster David Wright.

Lisa Pease is the author of ‘A Lie Too Big to Fail: The Real History of the Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.’ Based on more than two decades of investigative research, Pease’s recently published book has already been hailed as “the magnum opus of RFK assassination research” by the acclaimed author of ‘JFK and the Unspeakable,’ James Douglass. Pease was previously published in a collection of essays titled ‘The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X.’

Global Research News Hour Episode 442

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg.

A deserção está a tornar-se um problema cada vez mais sério entre as tropas ucranianas. Até os políticos locais na Ucrânia estão a admitir a terrível situação das forças armadas do país no meio de uma crise moral e psicológica devastadora que levou muitos soldados a simplesmente abandonarem as suas fileiras.

Numa declaração recente, a deputada ucraniana Anna Skorokhod afirmou que mais de 100.000 soldados ucranianos desertaram durante o atual conflito com a Federação Russa. Ela disse aos jornalistas ucranianos que existe um problema de má gestão nas forças armadas ucranianas, com muitos oficiais a tomarem decisões inadequadas, contribuindo assim para o baixo moral no campo de batalha.

Ela comentou como os soldados ucranianos estão reagindo psicologicamente às políticas draconianas de mobilização. Muitas pessoas ficam descontentes por terem de lutar nas trincheiras quando, na verdade, as suas competências profissionais são diferentes e carecem de conhecimentos e formação militar. Além disso, a elevada letalidade do desgaste militar incentiva os soldados a desistirem de lutar, uma vez que esta parece cada vez mais uma guerra perdida.

Além disso, Anna também afirmou que os soldados questionam a autoridade da hierarquia militar ucraniana. Segundo ela, apenas 10% a 15% do exército ucraniano está efetivamente a lutar no campo de batalha, o que é obviamente visto como extremamente negativo pelos soldados que foram enviados para a frente – pois percebem que estão a lutar por comandantes covardes e políticos corruptos.

“Não vou dizer-vos o número [exato] de pessoas que desertaram e desapareceram, mas direi que são mais de 100.000 (…) As pessoas estão a levantar questões às quais não consigo dar respostas. ‘Por que eu, um trabalhador de oficina até um mês atrás, devo sentar nas trincheiras enquanto os oficiais superiores estão longe da linha de frente? Por que apenas 10% a 15% do pessoal do exército está realmente participando de combates?’”, disse ela.

Ela não é a primeira pessoa a expor tais números. Anteriormente, o advogado militar Roman Lykhachev afirmou que “definitivamente mais de 100.000 militares” já abandonaram ilegalmente os seus deveres militares. Ele ainda mencionou que muitas vezes há casos em que cerca de 20 a 30 soldados desertam ao mesmo tempo, o que mostra a gravidade do problema entre as tropas.

A este problema somam-se diversas outras questões bem conhecidas relativas à atual realidade ucraniana. O país está a ser devastado por uma crise sem fim, que tem afetado não só a sua estrutura militar e política, mas também a sua situação moral e psicológica. Existem muitos fatores que influenciam a decisão de um soldado e o levam a desertar. O medo da morte é, sem dúvida, um fator relevante, mas é ingênuo acreditar que todos os desertores tomem tal decisão simplesmente por medo.

O fator mais relevante parece ser a falta de “vontade de lutar”. Por outras palavras, os ucranianos comuns não acreditam que valha a pena dar a vida pela Ucrânia. Para os soldados ucranianos de hoje, lutar pelo regime neonazista parece uma enorme perda de tempo, uma vez que claramente não há qualquer possibilidade de vitória.

Esta falta de qualquer crença na vitória não está apenas a levar os ucranianos à deserção, mas também a encorajar muitos deles a mudar de lado – rendendo-se, juntando-se às forças armadas russas e regressando à frente para combater o regime que está a levar o seu povo a uma catástrofe humanitária. O governo neonazista está a responder a esta tendência endurecendo ainda mais as suas políticas de recrutamento, com planos atualmente em curso para mobilizar mais de 160.000 novos soldados para a frente.

Curiosamente, nem a Ucrânia nem a OTAN são capazes de compreender que esta política irresponsável apenas acelera a derrota do regime. Quanto mais duras forem as medidas militares, mais deserções e problemas internos haverá no exército. Foi exatamente isso que a deputada ucraniana quis dizer quando mencionou a existência de “más decisões” e problemas na hierarquia política e militar. É inevitável que esta crise se torne ainda mais grave no futuro, tendo uma reação popular violenta, com soldados e seus familiares resistindo às imposições ditatoriais de Vladimir Zelensky.

Tudo isto é uma consequência da decisão da OTAN de concordar em trabalhar como proxy numa guerra suicida contra a Rússia. As palavras dos líderes ocidentais sobre “lutar até ao último ucraniano” não foram um exagero. A OTAN  está de fato pronta para destruir a Ucrânia e o seu povo apenas para prolongar a situação de conflito no ambiente estratégico russo. Todos os soldados enviados para a frente são apenas bucha de canhão numa guerra em que tanto Kiev como a OTAN sabem que a vitória é absolutamente impossível.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Artigo em inglês : Desertion becoming serious problem among Ukrainian troops, InfoBrics, 31 de Outubro de 2024.

Imagem :  InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, membro da Associação de Jornalistas do BRICS, pesquisador do Centro de Estudos Geoestratégicos, especialista militar.

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

Held in Samoa in the wake of the BRICS Summit in Russia, the 27th Meeting of Heads of State of the Commonwealth of Nations was not attended by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, a demonstration that the prestige of the United Kingdom is on the decline.

India and South Africa sent junior representatives. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju led the Indian delegation, while Deputy Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Thandi Moraka headed the South African delegation.

At first glance, there are undeniable practical reasons, such as returning from the 16th BRICS Summit, held between October 22 and 24 in Russia. However, there is another aspect. Modi and Ramaphosa could have attended the Commonwealth meeting instead of the BRICS one. Having preferred to go to Russia denotes a foreign policy decision.

Created in different stages – the Balfour Declaration in 1926, the Statute of Westminster in 1931, and the London Declaration in 1949 – the Commonwealth of Nations was a way for the British Crown to provide greater independence of government for its colonies while still retaining influence.  This power relationship was and is essential for the United Kingdom.

Based on its history, the Commonwealth of Nations is diametrically opposed to BRICS, a group of countries that advocates the creation of a world order based on multipolarity and the development of so-called peripheral countries. Therefore, BRICS is naturally incompatible with the Commonwealth, which represents the idea of ​​the British empire and colonialism.

In effect, the Commonwealth is a meeting around the British Crown to honour and revere its colonial past. Thus, Modi and Ramaphosa’s choice to prioritise the BRICS Summit, to the detriment of the meeting led by King Charles III, reveals the geopolitical reorganisation underway worldwide.

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25/10/2024. Apia, Samoa. Prime Minister Keir Starmer attends the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in Samoa. Picture by Simon Dawson / No 10 Downing Street (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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The Indian and South African leaders’ absence was not the only setback for the 27th Commonwealth Heads of State Meeting, the first to be presided over by King Charles III. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau did not attend the meeting, so Canada’s High Commissioner to the UK, Ralph Goodale, was sent in his place.

However, unlike Modi and Ramaphosa, Trudeau’s absence does not signal geopolitical opposition. Canada is aligned with the Euro-Atlantic order, a member of NATO and the G7, which were created to maintain the Old World order. Instead, Trudeau’s absence is explained by domestic political problems. Parliamentarians are pushing for the prime minister’s resignation as his popularity plummets.

Still, the message about Trudeau’s priorities is clear: Maintaining his power instead of meeting with the King of England. As such, the only major Commonwealth countries present at the meeting were the United Kingdom and Australia, which sent Prime Ministers Keir Starmer and Anthony Albanese, respectively.

The UK’s presence is more than mandatory, while Australia operates in the same Western sphere of influence as Canada. Australia positions itself as a country of the Global North, a developed country, and a Western country that benefitted from British colonialism rather than be looted and pillaged like what happened in India and South Africa.

However, more than expected, the West still encourages the presence of Australian leadership. The Oceanian country is used as a spearhead in the AUKUS military alliance, which is composed of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States and created to combat any influence in the Indo-Pacific region that does not align with the Anglo alliance.

In addition to the absence of three of the five largest economies, the Commonwealth meeting also saw some discontent with the UK. Even before it began, during a visit to Australia, King Charles III was confronted by Indigenous senator Lidia Thorpe, who accused him of complicity in the genocide of the indigenous population in her country.

Furthermore, in August, former Jamaican Prime Minister P. J. Patterson (1992–2006) stated that reparations for slavery would be discussed at the summit. This was vehemently denied by the UK, which further stressed that neither the government nor the Crown would issue an apology for the country’s role in the transatlantic slave trade.

Although financial compensation is being requested, London could indeed provide the abandonment of the colonial relationship that the Commonwealth itself proposes. In years past, this meeting was the moment to revere the British monarchy, yet a small country like Jamaica now dares to challenge the Crown.

The decline of British influence in the world is evident, with countries of the Global South, such as India and South Africa, continuing to question Western policies and practices. These countries advocate some degree of transformation in the international system, mainly in the sphere of economic relations and international institutions, and are becoming far more relevant and important than the UK.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image: Leaders attending an executive session of CHOGM at Maota Fono (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image source

“I use the words you taught me. If they don’t mean anything anymore, teach me others. Or let me be silent.” – Samuel Becket, Endgame

Before he went to Rockaway Beach to bury himself in sand up to his neck, Patrick said to me: “People ask me where I’ve been, and I tell them I’ve gone within to a place that’s so damn dim I can’t see them anymore. Then listen up, they tell me, to what’s going down these days, but my ears are blocked, yet they won’t stop, their tongues just flop like socks.”

He worried me, and I told him so, but he just smiled and added, “Up in the tower the cuckoo strikes his fist to stop the chiming of the bells.”

I told him it was all very poetic but strange as hell. Why was he talking like that and why was he going to bury himself in sand?

He laughed and said, “Why not? There’s something dripping in my head. A heart, a heart in my head. You’ve heard that one before?”

Inspired by his Irish compatriot, Samuel Becket, he wanted to make a point. What it was he wasn’t sure, only that it required a symbolic statement fitting for this Halloween season at a time of historical grotesqueries.

In some place in his mind he thought of his Aunt Winnie, who was always saying it was too late for her to change her life. She had been saying that ever since Patrick came over from Ireland decades ago. Hearing her, Patrick would think – then what’s the point of going on living, but he never said this to her.

His thinking was ambivalent, to put it mildly. He too was absolutely terrorized by the thought of death. He had these recurring dreams that he needed to use the toilet and everywhere he looked he was faced with toilets overflowing with shit. Every month or so, he would say to me, “To think, one moment you’re here and the next you’re not. I can’t get over it.” Yet he never could make the connection between his dream and his aunt’s neurosis.

Patrick and I had been friends for a long time and I had never known him to act like this. He was an accomplished poet but also a very good musician. When we were in our early twenties, we had been in a band together, The Young Artists. We took the name from James Joyce’s novel, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Patrick had been born in Cork, Ireland and moved to the Woodlawn section of the north Bronx when he was 18, just out of high school. He was living with his aunt and uncle, who were our next door neighbors, and that’s how we met. He had an eye for one of my sisters, but that’s a story I’d rather not touch.

We were both big fans of Joyce and fancied ourselves young artists, wild bon vivants in the mold of J.P. Donleavy’s character in The Ginger Man, Sebastian Dangerfield. Donleavy had grown up a few blocks over in the neighborhood and we both loved his wild use of language and poetry. We also loved Guinness and the neighborhood pubs, all of them Irish, with rollicking music on the weekends and young women as crazy as we were. Our buddy Diego Sandoval, who grew up in Mexico City and whose father, a psychiatrist, knew Fidel Castro, was a member of our group. Diego loved Nietzsche and his idea of the music of forgetting. He loved to free associate, so the three of us would often improvise songs in English and Spanish with a little Gaelic thrown in. It was very Joycean, so like Leopold Bloom, and we often weren’t sure what we were singing but there were times when some spot of magic seemed to touch us and everything made sense. What started as a farce ended as a feast.

Patrick says it’s all a farce now, a spectral theatrical show, just look at the news, it all repeats itself and people never seem to wise up. He thinks everyone is like his Aunt Winnie now, anxiously waiting for death and disaster to strike but denying their repressed anxiety as they participate in a blatant political masquerade led by the phoniest crew of political actors who are leading the world toward nuclear annihilation. Death of the soul at the very least.

I sure as hell agree with him.  As I have said before but which I think bears repeating, this waiting business is a deadly and widespread game.

I remember reading somewhere that some sullen sage once said that life is what we do while we wait for death. It’s not the kind of wise-guy wisdom I would try to refute, especially with today’s widespread public insouciance as our political charlatans make a mockery of the sacredness of life.

The writer William Saroyan once said that he could enjoy thinking that an exception to death would be made in his case. Now that he’s dead for more than half as long as he lived, his enjoyment can be considered short-lived. Kaput.

But wishful thinking aside, there’s no question but that Mr. Death knocks at everyone’s door sooner or later, better never than late, to coin a phrase in reverse and revert to wishful thinking. Nevertheless, it’s hard to deny the fact that he’s coming and everybody’s waiting for his knock. Unless, that is, you are in league with those technologists out in Silicon Valley, such as Ray Kurzweil of Google, who think they are going to employ technology to knock death dead and live forever. But even Ray is waiting for what he calls the Singularity to kick in – the day when humans and computers tie the knot and the former get uploaded or downloaded into the latter, I forget which, and death disappears as humans live in the “cloud.” In the meantime, Ray swallows a few hundred pills a day to keep chugging along until he reaches the promised land.

These artificial intelligence (AI) folks in Silicon Valley and at the World Economic Forum, all besotted on their machine dreams, seem to feel they’re smarter than Plato, Jesus, Buddha, Shakespeare, and other idiots we used to think wise, but I think George Carlin meant to include the Artificial Intelligence crowd when he said:

Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.

Of course, rather than knock, Mr. Death just might blow the house down. Although it’s a little impersonal and there will be no introductions, a lot of people are waiting for that. Like the early Christians who were eagerly awaiting the imminent end of the world, most people today are unconsciously waiting for a nuclear holocaust – to be seen on the evening news, of course, or maybe announced by a tweet or an instant message as they scroll their little crystal rectangles to see what’s going down.

Everyone will, that’s what going down.

The general consensus seems to be it will solve all problems, which is a brilliant insight in a Humpty Dumpty sort of brillig way in a looking-glass/ technological world where our most amazing technology is the nuclear bomb, rather recently joined in conjugal bliss with the computer that will save us from death.

In any case, what’s there to do? Keep waiting, that’s all, seems to be the popular approach. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think people were looking forward to meeting Mr. Death. For why else are they waiting without raising their voices in protest against U.S. nuclear first strike policy and the trillion-dollar modernization of American nuclear weapons announced by Barack Obama and continued under Donald Trump and Joseph Biden.  Why do they wait in silent fear and trembling as the United States military and CIA maraud across the planet killing and maiming to profit their capitalistic masters?  How can they possibly in good conscience wait while the Israelis with full American support try to obliterate all Palestinians in their ongoing genocidal bloodbath?

That’s the big picture, so to speak, the big waiting game. Waiting in the smaller sense can also kill you, or keep you going (but don’t ask where), depending on your point of view. There are endless variations to this waiting game with the smaller joined to the larger in a powerful synergy that freezes people in their tracks.

This sense of waiting for something terrible to happen permeates the air these days. The media and government pump out incendiary reports in an endless stream of things to fear in an effort to immobilize the population. Neurotic fears have long been known to be most effective tools of social control. When these can be manufactured in great and continuous numbers, they have a cumulative effect of creating growing social anxiety, which is the case today. It is no accident that the dramatic increase in drug usage to quell anxiety, nervous stress, and depression has occurred concurrently with the mainstream media’s propagandistic outpouring of fear-mongering and the drug industries relentless advertising campaigns for their psychotropic fixes.

The news is constantly suggesting that some “apocalyptic” event is just around the corner.

Like: there will be strong thunderstorms at 4:30 PM, or at least a 58.5% chance, so wear your helmet and take shelter.

Like: a woman in South Dakota ate a cherry that had a double pit that caused her to almost choke to death, so be very careful eating cherries; “almost” might be “really” in your case.

Like: the sun is very hot this year, so never step outside unless you are sprayed with chemical sunscreen from head to toe.

Like: there is a bug or bird or some critter that has recently been detected that is carrying a disease so deadly that if it flies by you within 11 ½ inches you will die a slow tortuous death in four days, five at the most.

Like: space aliens are coming for you if the Russians don’t get you first.

All kinds of neurotic fears are endlessly broadcast to keep folks on their anxiety-ridden toes while the real dangers go unmentioned and bubble under the surface. This is the corporate media’s job, of course, one they have perfected.

Wherever you go in the United States, you can see on people’s faces the strain of waiting for some absurd fear to become a reality, while things they should be fearing are repressed.  You can almost feel them holding their breaths in nervous anticipation. It keeps people occupied as they await every presidential election that is “the most important one in your lifetime.”

Yet no one laughs.

The recently deceased wonderful essayist Lewis Lapham said it eloquently in an issue of Lapham’s Quarterly:

In my capacity as human being, I’ve met with most if not all of the descriptives handed down from antiquity, but in my profession as journalist, I’ve encountered primarily the distinctions between what Sigmund Freud in 1917 defines as real fear and neurotic fear, the former a rational and comprehensible response to the perception of clear and present danger, the latter ‘free-floating,’ anxious expectation attachable to any something or nothing that catches the eye or the ear, floats the shadow on a wall or a wind in the trees. Real fear invites action, the decision to flee or fight dependent upon ‘our feeling of power over the outer world’; expectant fear induces states of paralysis, interprets every coincidence as evil omen, prophesizes the most terrible of possibilities, ascribes ‘a dreadful meaning to all uncertainty.’

Ironically, it was Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, the great red, white, and blue American propagandist, who took his uncle’s insights and used them in the service of corporate and government control. By inducing irrational fears of a foreign enemy – i.e. the Soviet Union in the 1950s – as he urged President Eisenhower, you could distract people from the real threat, which was their own government and the CIA with whom Bernays worked overthrowing the democratically elected president of Guatemala, among other evil projects. Fake fears large and small could paralyze the average person and create loyalty to the state and capitalism. They would wait for their protectors to tell them what to do. The present Russia bashing and fear-mongering as well as Israeli propaganda is straight from Bernays’ play book.

Is it any wonder that Samuel Becket’s Waiting for Godot was such a popular play in the 1950s? Godot never came then and he’s not coming now, but waiting is still the name of the game. The character Vladimir sums up the waiting game:

Was I sleeping, while the others suffered? Am I sleeping now? Tomorrow, when I wake, or think I do, what shall I say of today? That with Estragon my friend, at this place, until the fall of night, I waited for Godot?

It is not just waiting that recurs to me as Patrick undertakes his novel act on the slippery sands of Rockaway.  The autumnal season and especially this weekend of ghosts, the dead, and masks has me thinking once again of my own experience with acting, so I will repeat myself as in a second coming, in the hope of a visionary breakthrough, chimerical as it may be.

Having grown up as the only brother among seven sisters, I was always my parents’ favorite son. With such dumb luck, I never felt the need to be someone I wasn’t and so accepted my favored fate. But from an early age I learned from my sisters what it meant to “put on your face.” Like most girls in a cosmetic culture, they would stand or sit in front of a mirror dutifully applying lipstick, cover-up, and mascara (Italian, maschera, mask) in preparation for their entrances onto the social stage where they would face so many other faces facing and eyeing them. Mirrors meeting mirrors, the looking-glass selves. It seemed to the boy that it was an exhausting act.

At the time, I had only a dim awareness of the depth of people’s playacting, although I don’t think there was much playful joy in it.

I’ve been fascinated by masks, liars, and the role of acting on the social stage ever since I was three years-old and was posed before a large mirror for a professional photographer. Look in the mirror, son. Look at yourself looking at yourself. Pose for us. The photographer’s cigarette providing the smoke.

When Patrick and I met, we realized we had a common interest in the performative nature of social life and so we fashioned our songs and performances around this theme. Diego added great spontaneity. We believed we could use words in a poetical way to reach people below their everyday consciousness.

Patrick has lost his faith in words and thinks a stunt like burying himself in sand up to his neck, like Nag and Nell in Becket’s Endgame, both contained up to their necks in ash cans, might reach people.  I don’t.  Becket had an actual stage and mesmerizing words to match.  Even then, it took years for audiences to appreciate the play’s brilliance. They at first thought he was too depressing and now probably have no idea who he is.

Today is Halloween and Patrick therefore thinks his act might resonate with the day. I told him that I think the only thing he will accomplish is to suggest to people to put their heads deeper into the sand.

As Halloween and the coming weekend transpires, enchantment only increases. I think of how all persons are, by definition, masked, the word person being derived from the Latin, persona, meaning mask. Another Latin word, larva, occurs to me, it too meaning mask, ghost, or evil spirit. The living masks light up for me as I think of ghosts, the dead, all the souls and spirits circulating through our days, like the wind blowing the dry leaves everywhere.

While etymology might seem arcane, I rather think it offers us a portal into our lives, not just personally, but politically and culturally as well. Shakespeare was right, of course, “all the world’s a stage,” though it’s debatable whether we are “merely” players. It does often seem that way, but seeming is the essence of the actor’s show and tell.

But who are we behind the masks? Who is it uttering those words coming through the masks’ mouth holes (the per-sona, Latin, to sound through).

Halloween. The children play at scaring and being scared. Death walks among them and they scream with glee. The play is on. The grim reaper walks up and down the street. Treats greet them. The costumes are ingenious; the masks, wild. The parents stand behind, watching, smiling. It’s all great fun, the candy sweet. So what’s the trick? When does the performance end?

As Halloween ends, the saints come marching in followed by the souls. All Saints. All Souls. The Days of the Dead. Spirits. Ghosts walk the streets. Dead leaves fall. The dead are everywhere, swirling through the air, drifting. We are surrounded by them. We are them. Until.

Until when? Perhaps not until we see through the charade of social life and realize the masked performers are not just the politicians and celebrities, not only the professional actors and the corporate media performers, but us.

Lying is the leading cause of living death in the United States, and the pharmaceutical companies have no prescription for this one. Not yet, anyway, as far as I care to know.

By the time you read this, Patrick’s performance will be over. I hope he planned to do it at high tide. Otherwise, Patrick’s endgame will be Patrick’s end.

Then I too will be at a loss for words.

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

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

Israel knew that, if it could stop foreign correspondents from reporting directly from Gaza, those journalists would end up covering events in ways far more to its liking.

They would hedge every report of a new Israeli atrocity – if they covered them at all – with a “Hamas claims” or “Gaza family members allege”. Everything would be presented in terms of conflicting narratives rather than witnessed facts. Audiences would feel uncertain, hesitant, detached.

Israel could shroud its slaughter in a fog of confusion and disputation. The natural revulsion evoked by a genocide would be tempered and attenuated.

For a year, the global networks’ most experienced war reporters have stayed put in their hotels in Israel, watching Gaza from afar. Their human-interest stories, always at the heart of war reporting, have focused on the far more limited suffering of Israelis than the vast catastrophe unfolding for Palestinians.

That is why western audiences have been forced to relive a single day of horror for Israel, on 7 October 2023, as intensely as they have a year of daily horrors in Gaza – in what the World Court has judged to be a “plausible” genocide by Israel.

That is why the media have immersed their audiences in the agonies of the families of some 250 Israelis – civilians taken hostage and soldiers taken captive – as much as they have the agonies of 2.3 million Palestinians bombed and starved to death week after week, month after month.

That is why audiences have been subjected to gaslighting narratives that frame Gaza’s destruction as a “humanitarian crisis” rather than the canvas on which Israel is erasing all the known rules of war.

While foreign correspondents sit obediently in their hotel rooms, Palestinian journalists have been picked off one by one – in one of the greatest massacres of journalists in history.

Israel is now repeating that process in Lebanon. On Thursday night, it struck a residence in south Lebanon where three journalists were staying. All were killed.

In an indication of how deliberate and cynical Israel’s actions are, it put its military’s crosshairs on six Al Jazeera reporters this week, smearing them as “terrorists” working for Hamas and Islamic Jihad.

They are reportedly the last surviving Palestinian journalists in northern Gaza, which Israel has sealed off while it carries out the so-called “General’s Plan”.

Israel wants no one reporting its final push to exterminate northern Gaza by starving out the 400,000 Palestinians still there and executing anyone who remains as a “terrorist”.

These six join a long list of professionals defamed by Israel in the interests of advancing its genocide – from doctors and aid workers to UN peacekeepers.

Sympathy for Israel

Perhaps the nadir of Israel’s domestication of foreign journalists was reached this week in a report by CNN. Back in February whistleblowing staff there revealed that the network’s executives have been actively obscuring Israeli atrocities to portray Israel in a more sympathetic light.

In a story whose framing should have been unthinkable – but sadly was all too predictable – CNN reported on the psychological trauma some Israeli soldiers are suffering from time spent in Gaza, in some cases leading to suicide.

Committing a genocide can be bad for your mental health, it seems. Or as CNN explained, its interviews “provide a window into the psychological burden that the war is casting on Israeli society”.

In its lengthy piece, titled “He got out of Gaza, but Gaza did not get out of him”, the atrocities the soldiers admit committing are little more than the backdrop, as CNN finds yet another angle on Israeli suffering. Israeli soldiers are the real victims – even as they perpetrate a genocide on the Palestinian people.

One bulldozer driver, Guy Zaken, told CNN he could not sleep and had become vegetarian because of the “very, very difficult things” he had seen and had to do in Gaza.

What things? Zaken had earlier told a hearing of the Israeli parliament that his unit’s job was to drive over many hundreds of Palestinians, some of them alive.

CNN reported: “Zaken says he can no longer eat meat, as it reminds him of the gruesome scenes he witnessed from his bulldozer in Gaza.”

Doubtless some Nazi concentration camp guards committed suicide in the 1940s after witnessing the horrors there – because they were responsible for them. Only in some weird parallel news universe would their “psychological burden” be the story.

After a huge online backlash, CNN amended an editor’s note at the start of the article that originally read: “This story includes details about suicide that some readers may find upsetting.”

Readers, it was assumed, would find the suicide of Israeli soldiers upsetting, but apparently not the revelation that those soldiers were routinely driving over Palestinians so that, as Zaken explained, “everything squirts out”.

Banned from Gaza

Finally, a year into Israel’s genocidal war, now rapidly spreading into Lebanon, some voices are being raised very belatedly to demand the entry of foreign journalists into Gaza.

This week – in a move presumably designed, as November’s elections loom, to ingratiate themselves with voters angry at the party’s complicity in genocide – dozens of Democratic members of the US Congress wrote to President Joe Biden asking him to pressure Israel to give journalists “unimpeded access” to the enclave.

Don’t hold your breath.

Western media have done very little themselves to protest their exclusion from Gaza over the past year – for a number of reasons.

Given the utterly indiscriminate nature of Israel’s bombardment, major outlets have not wanted their journalists getting hit by a 2,000lb bomb for being in the wrong place.

That may in part be out of concern for their welfare. But there are likely to be more cynical concerns.

Having foreign journalists in Gaza blown up or executed by snipers would drag media organisations into direct confrontation with Israel and its well-oiled lobby machine.

The response would be entirely predictable, insinuating that the journalists died because they were colluding with “the terrorists” or that they were being used as “human shields” – the excuse Israel has rolled out time and again to justify its targeting of doctors in Gaza and UN peacekeepers in Lebanon.

But there’s a bigger problem. The establishment media have not wanted to be in a position where their journalists are so close to the “action” that they are in danger of providing a clearer picture of Israel’s war crimes and its genocide.

The media’s current distance from the crime scene offers them plausible deniability as they both-sides every Israeli atrocity.

In previous conflicts, western reporters have served as witnesses, assisting in the prosecution of foreign leaders for war crimes. That happened in the wars that attended the break-up of Yugoslavia, and will doubtless happen once again if Russian President Valdimir Putin is ever delivered to The Hague.

But those journalistic testimonies were harnessed to put the West’s enemies behind bars, not its closest ally.

The media do not want their reporters to become chief witnesses for the prosecution in the future trials of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his defence minister, Yoav Gallant, at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Karim Khan, the ICC’s prosecutor, is seeking arrest warrants for them both.

After all, any such testimony from journalists would not stop at Israel’s door. They would implicate western capitals too, and put establishment media organisations on a collision course with their own governments.

The western media does not see its job as holding power to account when the West is the one committing the crimes.

Censoring Palestinians

Journalist whistleblowers have gradually been coming forward to explain how establishment news organisations – including the BBC and the supposedly liberal Guardian – are sidelining Palestinian voices and minimising the genocide.

An investigation by Novara Media recently revealed mounting unhappiness in parts of the Guardian newsroom at its double standards on Israel and Palestine.

Its editors recently censored a commentary by preeminent Palestinian author Susan Abulhawaafter she insisted on being allowed to refer to the slaughter in Gaza as “the holocaust of our times”.

During Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the Labour Party, senior Guardian columnists such as Jonathan Freedland made much of the insistence that Jews, and Jews alone, had the right to define and name their own oppression.

That right, however, does not appear to extend to Palestinians.

As staff who spoke to Novara noted, the Guardian’s Sunday sister paper, the Observer, had no problem opening its pages to British Jewish writer Howard Jacobson to smear as a “blood libel” any reporting of the provable fact that Israel has killed many, many thousands of Palestinian children in Gaza.

One veteran journalist there said: “Is the Guardian more worried about the reaction to what is said about Israel than Palestine? Absolutely.”

Another staff member admitted it would be inconceivable for the paper to be seen censoring a Jewish writer. But censoring a Palestinian one is fine, it seems.

Other journalists report being under “suffocating control” from senior editors, and say this pressure exists “only if you’re publishing something critical of Israel”.

According to staff there, the word “genocide” is all but banned in the paper except in coverage of the International Court of Justice (ICJ), whose judges ruled nine months ago that a “plausible” case had been made that Israel was committing genocide.

Things have got far worse since.

Whistleblowing Journalists

Similarly, “Sara”, a whistleblower who recently resigned from the BBC newsroom and spoke of her experiences to Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, said Palestinians and their supporters were routinely kept off air or subjected to humiliating and insensitive lines of questioning.

Some producers have reportedly grown increasingly reluctant to bring on air vulnerable Palestinians, some of whom have lost family members in Gaza, because of concerns about the effect on their mental health from the aggressive interrogations they were being subjected to from anchors.

According to Sara, BBC vetting of potential guests overwhelmingly targets Palestinians, as well as those sympathetic to their cause and human rights organisations. Background checks are rarely done on Israeli or Jewish guests.

She added that a search showing that a guest had used the word “Zionism” – Israel’s state ideology – in a social media post could be enough to get them disqualified from a programme.

Even officials from one of the biggest rights group in the world, the New York-based Human Rights Watch, became persona non grata at the BBC for their criticisms of Israel, even though the corporation had previously relied on their reports in covering Ukraine and other global conflicts.

Israeli guests, by contrast, “were given free rein to say whatever they wanted with very little pushback”, including lies about Hamas burning or beheading babies and committing mass rape.

An email cited by Al Jazeera from more than 20 BBC journalists sent last February to Tim Davie, the BBC’s director general, warned that the corporation’s coverage risked “aiding and abetting genocide through story suppression”.

Upside-down Values

These biases have been only too evident in the BBC’s coverage, first of Gaza and now, as media interest wanes in the genocide, of Lebanon.

Headlines – the mood music of journalism, and the only part of a story many of the audience read – have been uniformly dire.

For example, Netanyahu’s threats of a Gaza-style genocide against the Lebanese people earlier this month if they did not overthrow their leaders were soft-soaped by the BBC headline: “Netanyahu’s appeal to Lebanese people falls on deaf ears in Beirut.”

Reasonable readers would have wrongly inferred both that Netanyahu was trying to do the Lebanese people a favour (by preparing to murder them), and that they were being ungrateful in not taking up his offer.

It has been the same story everywhere in the establishment media. In another extraordinary, revealing moment, Kay Burley of Sky News announced this month the deaths of four Israeli soldiers from a Hezbollah drone strike on a military base inside Israel.

With a solemnity usually reserved for the passing of a member of the British royal family, she slowly named the four soldiers, with a photo of each shown on screen. She stressed twice that all four were only 19 years old.

Sky News seemed not to understand that these were not British soldiers, and that there was no reason for a British audience to be especially disturbed by their deaths. Soldiers are killed in wars all the time – it is an occupational hazard.

And further, if Israel considered them old enough to fight in Gaza and Lebanon, then they were old enough to die too without their age being treated as particularly noteworthy.

But more significantly still, Israel’s Golani Brigade to which these soldiers belonged has been centrally involved in the slaughter of Palestinians over the past year. Its troops have been responsible for many of the tens of thousands of children killed and maimed in Gaza.

Each of the four soldiers was far, far less deserving of Burley’s sympathy and concern than the thousands of children who have been slaughtered at the hands of their brigade. Those children are almost never named and their pictures are rarely shown, not least because their injuries are usually too horrifying to be seen.

It was yet more evidence of the upside-down world the establishment media has been trying to normalise for its audiences.

It is why statistics from the United States, where the coverage of Gaza and Lebanon may be even more unhinged, show faith in the media is at rock bottom. Fewer than one in three respondents – 31 percent – said they still had a “great deal or fair amount of trust in mass media”.

Crushing Dissent

Israel is the one dictating the coverage of its genocide. First by murdering the Palestinian journalists reporting it on the ground, and then by making sure house-trained foreign correspondents stay well clear of the slaughter, out of harm’s way in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.

And as ever, Israel has been able to rely on the complicity of its western patrons in crushing dissent at home.

Last week, a British investigative journalist, Asa Winstanley, an outspoken critic of Israel and its lobbyists in the UK, had his home in London raided at dawn by counter-terrorism police.

Though the police have not arrested or charged him – at least not yet – they confiscated his electronic devices. He was warned that he is being investigated for “encouragement of terrorism” in his social media posts. 

Police told MEE that his devices had been seized as part of an investigation into suspected terrorism offences of “support for a proscribed organisation” and “dissemination of terrorist documents”.  

The police can act only because of Britain’s draconian, anti-free speech Terrorism Act. 

Section 12, for example, makes the expression of an opinion that could be interpreted as sympathetic to armed Palestinian resistance to Israel’s illegal occupation – a right enshrined in international law but sweepingly dismissed as “terrorism” in the West – itself a terrorism offence. 

Those journalists who haven’t been house-trained in the establishment media, as well as solidarity activists, must now chart a treacherous path across intentionally ill-defined legal terrain when talking about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. 

Winstanley is not the first journalist to be accused of falling foul of the Terrorism Act. In recent weeks, Richard Medhurst, a freelance journalist, was arrested at Heathrow airport on his return from a trip abroad. Another journalist-activist, Sarah Wilkinson, was briefly arrested after her home was ransacked by police. Their electronic devices were seized too. 

Meanwhile, Richard Barnard, co-founder of Palestine Action, which seeks to disrupt the UK’s supply of weapons to Israel’s genocide, has been charged over speeches he has made in support of Palestinians. 

It now appears that all these actions are part of a specific police campaign targeting journalists and Palestinian solidarity activists: “Operation Incessantness”.

The message this clumsy title is presumably supposed to convey is that the British state is coming after anyone who speaks out too loudly against the British government’s continuing arming and complicity in Israel’s genocide.

Notably, the establishment media have failed to cover this latest assault on journalism and the role of a free press – supposedly the very things they are there to protect.

The raid on Winstanley’s home and the arrests are intended to intimidate others, including independent journalists, into silence for fear of the consequences of speaking up. 

This has nothing to do with terrorism. Rather, it is terrorism by the British state.

Once again the world is being turned upside down.

Echoes from History

The West is waging a campaign of psychological warfare on its populations: it is gaslighting and disorientating them, classing genocide as “self-defence” and opposition to it a form of “terrorism”.

This is an expansion of the persecution suffered by Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who spent years locked up in London’s Belmarsh high-security prison. 

His unprecedented journalism – revealing the darkest secrets of western states – was redefined as espionage. His “offence” was revealing that Britain and the US had committed systematic war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Now, on the back of that precedent, the British state is coming after journalists simply for embarrassing it. 

Last week, I attended a meeting in Bristol against the genocide in Gaza at which the main speaker was physically absent after the British state failed to issue him an entry visa. 

The missing guest – he had to join us by Zoom – was Mandla Mandela, the grandson of Nelson Mandela, who was locked up for decades as a terrorist before becoming the first leader of post-apartheid South Africa and a feted, international statesman. 

Mandla Mandela was until recently a member of the South African parliament. A Home Office spokesperson told MEE that the UK only issued visas “to those who we want to welcome to our country”. 

Media reports suggest Britain was determined to exclude Mandela because, like his grandfather, he views the Palestinian struggle against Israeli apartheid as intimately linked to the earlier struggle against South Africa’s apartheid.

The echoes from history are apparently entirely lost on officials: the UK is once again associating the Mandela family with terrorism. Before it was to protect South Africa’s apartheid regime. Now it is to protect Israel’s even worse apartheid and genocidal regime.

The world is indeed turned on its head. And the West’s supposedly “free media” is playing a critical role in trying to make our upside-down world seem normal.

That can only be achieved by failing to report the Gaza genocide as a genocide. Instead, western journalists are serving as little more than stenographers. Their job: to take dictation from Israel. 

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

Featured image: The funeral of two Palestinian journalists killed by Israeli forces in Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

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Notes

[1] https://www.fraserhealth.ca/health-topics-a-to-z/school-health/healthy-schools-communications-toolkit

[2] https://www.fraserhealth.ca/health-topics-a-to-z/immunizations/children-and-youth-immunization

[3] https://www.fraserhealth.ca/health-topics-a-to-z/coronavirus/covid-19-vaccine

[4] https://parl-gc.primo.exlibrisgroup.com/discovery/delivery/01CALP_INST:01CALP/12165649990002616?lang=en

[5] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2024.05.20.24306810v1.full.pdf

[6] https://www.floridahealth.gov/diseases-and-conditions/respiratory-illness/COVID19/_documents/news/2022/10/20221007- guidance-mrna-covid19-vaccines-doc.pdf

[7] https://vaccinechoicecanada.com/letters/the-science-to-conclude-vaccine-safety-is-inadequate

[8] https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2402379

[9] https://aaronsiri.substack.com/p/and-like-that-the-claim-vaccines

[10] https://icandecide.org/article/childhood-vaccine-trials-summary-chart

[11] https://uptoeveryone.com/products/new-parents-guide-to-understanding-vaccination

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The US Republican and Democratic parties have essentially agreed to ignore the size of the country’s public debt and budget deficit, writes The Wall Street Journal. Rather than discussing the issue of debt, the respective presidential campaigns have become opportunities to divide American society further.

According to estimates by the International Monetary Fund, the US public debt level will reach 121% of GDP by the end of 2024 and 131.7% by 2029. During Joe Biden’s presidency, US debt rose from $28 trillion in 2021 to an unprecedented level of more than $34.5 trillion today.

“Both major parties have essentially agreed to ignore Washington’s World War II levels of debt and gargantuan annual deficits in the absence of a national emergency,” writes the newspaper’s editor, James Freeman.

According to him, the winner of the next presidential elections will be forced to spend “a lot less” than promised during their campaign. Freeman noted that the US “cannot allow itself to become Argentina,” suggesting that with such a large debt, Americans will need “not just hope but prayer as well.”

The US is less than a week away from the presidential election, which will decide whether the Democratic administration, with Kamala Harris, will continue or the Republicans will return to power, once again led by Donald Trump. Although foreign policy dominated a good part of the campaign of both candidates, it is evident among analysts that the problems that decide an election are the problems closest to the population’s daily lives.

Although inflation has slowed from its peak in 2022, when it reached 9.1%, the highest increase in 40 years, it is still eroding the purchasing power of the American population. In September, the index was 2.5%, above the 2.3% expected by the market. After Biden became president, with economic recovery as one of his main goals, voters expected inflation to cool down after four years of consecutive increases. However, high inflation persisted, affecting food prices and currently leading workers to go into debt or resort to loans to ensure their livelihood.

In September, the Labor Department reported that the unemployment rate in the US fell to 4.2%, with 142,000 job openings in August. The number, however, was below market expectations, which projected the creation of 160,000 jobs. The department’s data shows that despite the slight drop, there are still 7.1 million people unemployed in the country. This explains the increase in the number of unemployment benefit requests, which in September stood at 230,000, an increase compared to 227,000 registered at the end of August.

At the same time, the US public debt surpassed the $35 trillion mark for the first time this year, according to data released by the US Treasury Department in August. The amount began to increase during the spending required to contain the effects of the pandemic but has continued throughout the current administration. In July, when addressing the issue, the chairman of the US House of Representatives Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington, classified the public debt as “another alarming milestone” and called for more fiscal responsibility regarding public spending.

As Freeman noted in his WSJ article:

“After next Tuesday Americans will need to come together to pressure the winner to consider fiscal sanity before global investors start applying their own kind of pressure.”

However, this is unlikely to occur since division in the US is only deepening.

The final days of Democratic candidate Harris’ election campaign seem to have been filled more with anger and recriminations against Trump than with celebration and joy, which shows that the atmosphere surrounding the vice president is not exactly the most optimistic a few days before the US presidential elections.

Democratic rallies are no longer events where optimism predominates, and due to the political polarisation that American society is experiencing, Harris’ rallies are marked by extremely aggressive language that seeks to shame Republicans and their ideology. Democrats are accusing their opponents of fascism and say Republican voters of supporting the second coming of Adolf Hitler.

At the same time, Trump also accused Harris of being a fascist.

With Democrats and Republicans both responsible for the US being in a precarious economic situation, it is little wonder that they both choose to ignore the issue and instead sling false accusations of fascism. This not only demonstrates political immaturity for the leaders of the two biggest parties in the US but bodes negatively that the suffering economy will be properly dealt with no matter who is elected.

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

When the special military operation (SMO) was launched to end the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict, the political West insisted that Russia was finished (precisely what it tried to ensure back in the 1990s). Its economy was supposed to be ruined, with the Kremlin even expected to default after much of its forex reserves were frozen (i.e. stolen) by Western banks.

After all this failed, the US-led belligerent power pole tried to impose the laughable price cap on Russian oil, one that even the most prominent Western nations tried to circumvent, including Japan and even the pathologically Russophobic United Kingdom. As for the United States, it continued buying Russian commodities while criticizing everyone else who did. Still, through its Neo-Nazi puppets in Kiev, NATO launched a virtual total war on Moscow in an attempt to disrupt its economy and cause as much damage as possible.

And yet, it all failed once again. The Kremlin secured economic stability despite being forced to conduct the SMO against the entire political West. Not only that, Russia overtook Germany as the world’s fifth and Europe’s largest economy, a humiliating defeat for its EU/NATO rivals who expected quite the contrary. Berlin’s economic performance was worse than in decades, while London was at its lowest in well over 300 years (since 1709, to be specific).

And yet, to “add insult to injury”, even Western data showed that the initial estimates of Moscow’s economic performance were wrong and that it was actually even better in both 2023 and 2024. Updated IMF’s forecast of 2.6% GDP growth doubled its previous assessment. According to the Financial Times, this increase of 1.5% was the largest for any economy featured in an update to the IMF’s World Economic Outlook, released on January 30 this year.

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

It should be noted that GDP PPP (purchasing power parity) is a very reliable metric and far more suitable to measure true economic might than the overblown nominal GDP figures that serve only to feed the oversized ego of the US-led political West. Less than 10 months after overtaking Germany, Russia also zoomed past Japan, leaving Western observers dumbfounded as to how a country they were told would “collapse under the weight of sanctions” and outright theft of its forex reserves managed to accomplish such a feat. What’s more, some sources estimated that the Eurasian giant was among the fastest-growing major economies in the world. In addition, even Moscow’s updated projection of overtaking Tokyo (explicitly set for March 2025 by President Putin) turned out to be “too cautious”, as this unprecedented feat was accomplished nearly a year earlier.

eHowever, the latest estimates of Russian economic performance suggest that things are only getting better for the Kremlin. Namely, in an interview with CBS News, Richard Connolly, a junior research fellow at the Royal Institute of Shared Services in London and an expert on the Russian economy, said that “the number of small and medium-sized enterprises registered in Russia has reached an unprecedented level”. In the aftermath of the exodus of major Western companies who were forced to leave or suspend their activities due to sanctions imposed by their own countries, they left a massive market gap that was filled by domestic businesses.

Thus, Russian companies replaced major Western brands, so instead of Starbucks, there’s now Stars Coffee, instead of Zara, there’s MAAG, instead of Coca-Cola, the Russians drink Dobry Cola, etc. Other segments of th economy went through a similar shift.

What’s more, these domestic brands not only replaced their foreign predecessors, but also quickly outpaced them. For instance, back in April, Dobry Cola reported that its 2022 profits were quadrupled in 2023. Connolly says that “sanctions have proven ineffective, essentially resulting in sanctions evasion becoming a sector in and of itself”. It can even be argued that the restrictions imposed by the political Westjumpstarted parts of the Russian economy that were small and largely dormant (if not even non-existent prior to the SMO).

Russia’s Stars Coffee

What’s more, the Russians are still getting virtually all the goods and services they had before, including through imports via third countries (Georgia, Kazakhstan, China, Turkey, etc). And while some prices are higher, local brands that took over the Western market share are actually more affordable while offering similar or even better quality.

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

It should be noted that even the infamous CIA admits that Russia is the fourth largest economy in the world. However, while the World Bank’s numbers put Russia’s and Japan’s economies at $5.95 and $5.87 trillion respectively, the actual discrepancy might be far bigger. Namely, the World Bank also estimates that a whopping 39% of the Russian economy is in the shadows, while the same metric for Japan stands at 10%.

In terms of GDP PPP, this would add $2.5 trillion to Russia’s $6.45 trillion PPP-adjusted economic size, which, although still far from India’s $14.6 trillion GDP, further widens the gap with Japan. Expectedly, this economic resurgence is also enabling Moscow to rebuild its Soviet-era military might, resulting in an unprecedented real defense budget of over half a trillion dollars. The political West, powerless to stop Russia’s recovery, now wants to launch a terror campaign to disrupt this.

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

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) warns that the pro-censorship ‘IHRA handbook’ released today by Canadian Heritage will have a chilling effect on pro-Palestine speech and activism and demands it to be withdrawn immediately. Civil society, human rights groups, and faculty associations broadly oppose the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance working definition of antisemitism (known as “IHRA”) because it purposefully conflates criticism of Israeli policy with antisemitism and is frequently deployed by supporters of Israel to unfairly shut down Palestinians’ perspectives. CJPME warns that this seemingly innocuous handbook will result in public institutions persecuting people who criticize systemic racism within Israel, rather than fighting discrimination.

“After over a year of Canadians protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza, Trudeau has the audacity to publish a guide on how to crack down on pro-Palestine speech,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “This anti-Palestine, pro-censorship handbook poses a direct threat to civil liberties and will target the critics of Israel’s atrocities, especially Palestinians. We urge Canadian institutions to reject the use of the handbook,” added Bueckert. More than 11,000 Canadians have e-mailed the Prime Minister asking for the handbook to be shelved.

Based on a preliminary analysis of Trudeau’s IHRA handbook, CJPME has identified several important ways that it maliciously and falsely labels pro-Palestine speech and actions as antisemitic. For example:

• The handbook claims that it is antisemitic to oppose the ideology of Zionism, which is defined only as support for Jewish self-determination in their ancestral homeland (ignoring the role of Zionism in the dispossession and oppression of Palestinians) (29). Case studies of antisemitic incidents include a social media post that says “you can’t be antiracist and Zionist” and that “Zionism is a racist & violent settler-colonial project (29), and a social media post that says “Israel has no right to exist” (30). CJPME warns that this will be used to silence Palestinian experiences of Zionism, including the Nakba.
• The handbook claims that it is antisemitic when Israel is “held to a double standard,” cast in an “especially negative light,” or when its “right to exist” is “question[ed]” (30, 47). CJPME notes that these are entirely subjective arguments that are routinely deployed by Israel’s supporters against any and all forms of criticism and protest that they deem to be excessive or unfair.
• Other examples of supposed antisemitism in the handbook include the disinvitation of a speaker from an event because she had served in the Israeli military (31); an Instagram post that said “Zionist genocide is the greatest act of aggression. It is the root cause of the violence” and did not recognize Israel’s “right to defend itself during a time of war” (31); the suggestion that Israelis are “colonizers” (31); accusing Israelis of being “child murderers” (31); the use of the term “Zionist,” which the handbook insists should be treated as a proxy for “Jew” (32); and comparing Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza to the Holocaust (34).

The handbook was produced under the leadership of Deborah Lyons, Canada’s Special Envoy on Preserving Holocaust Remembrance and Combatting Antisemitism. Earlier this year, CJPME issued a report titled “Defaming the Pro-Palestine Movement” which revealed how Lyons wasconsistently spreading false and malicious claims about pro-Palestine activists – misrepresenting protests, slogans, and pro-Palestine positions as antisemitic – and routinely advocating for the suppression of nearly all types of pro-Palestinian protest. The report concluded that Special Envoy Lyons’ behaviour showed a pattern of anti-Palestinian racism and inappropriate collaboration with Israeli officials.

“Trudeau handpicked Lyons, the former Ambassador to Israel, to produce a guide on how to suppress Palestinians who are speaking out against Israel’s racist practices. At Trudeau’s behest, Lyons has worked with Israeli officials and pro-Israel groups to design a document which is intended to shield Israel from even the mildest criticism of its policies. With this handbook, Trudeau is choosing to protect the ideology of Zionism over the Charter rights of Canadians,” said Alex Paterson, Senior Director of Parliamentary Affairs of CJPME.

CJPME reiterates the view that IHRA is designed to suppress Palestinian perspectives, including critical scholarship on core legal concepts like apartheid and genocide, and should therefore be understood as a form of state-sponsored anti-Palestinian racism. Last year, CJPME joined more than 100 civil society organizations including Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as Palestinian and Israeli human rights groups, to warn the United Nations against adopting IHRA. In Canada, groups that oppose IHRA include Independent Jewish Voices Canada, the BC Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Labour Congress, the Canadian Association of University Teachers, the Canadian Federation of Students, the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, Confédération des syndicats nationaux, and over 40 faculty associations and academic unions. Instead of adopting IHRA, CJPME urges alternative definitions of antisemitism which do not reproduce these harms, such as the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism.

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Free Palestine protest at Parliament Hill, Ottawa, July 2014. Photo: Flickr/Tony Webster

With Moscow’s steady advances since February (it has now seized the Selydovo mining hub in Donetsk), Kyiv is announcing plans to draft another 160,000 troops into its army. According to an Institute for the Study of War’s data analysis, the Russian Federation, in October alone, has advanced 478 square kilometers (185 square miles) – this being a record since March 2022.

Moreover, Ukrainian army, according to an Economist news report, is on survival force, “struggling to survive, not to win” (as the report is titled). Its commanders worry about the very direction of the war, the country being “on the defense, militarily, economically, and diplomatically.” Since Kyiv recaptured Kherson in late 2022, it has in fact made almost no progress. Already in April 2023 I wrote on how the Ukrainian establishment was rethinking the very idea of “reconquering Crimea”, for instance.

The aforementioned Economist piece describes “understrength and overstretched” Ukrainian units, despite the drastic new mobilization law, with an “alarming demographic crisis”, a “limited stock of shells”, and “a shortfall in its air-defence interceptors.” In addition to that, one should also consider the following:

1) Washington is basically, as I’ve put it, shifting the burdens of Ukraine on Europe. as it pivots to the Pacific. The American Establishment by now is free to admit that “the war in Ukraine is not existential”, for that matter. Tellingly (priority-wise), the US is deploying its troops to Israel and sending the THAAD anti-missile system to the Jewish state – it is the same system Kyiv has repeatedly asked for – to no avail.

2) According to Forbes, the Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky risks facing an “ultra-nationalist” coup.

3) Zelensky’s new “Victory Plan” counts largely on Europe and NATO support. Europe however can only do so much, with the American superpower basically controlling the Atlantic Alliance and normally having a final say.

In short, Ukraine and the Europeans are left with an unwinnable proxy war, while European structures will be tasked with welcoming and integrating a divided state (South Korean style) that can only be described as extremely corrupt and bent on authoritarian ethnocracy (see below).

Interestingly, two-third of the aforementioned Russian military gains have taken place in the Donetsk region, which is part of the larger Donbass area. Donbass has in fact been the stage for conflict since 2014– that is, shortly after the ethnonationalist Maidan revolution which turned the country into a global hub for the far-right and White supremacists, as a 2021 TIME magazine story described it.

Over the last decade, the Donbass region has often been under heavy Ukrainian artillery, while Ukrainian leaders tell ethnic Russians of the region to “go to Russia”. The Ukrainian record of atrocities and human rights infringements in that area (including state-controlled far-right and neo-Nazi violence by means of battalions such as the Azov one) is typically underreported – in today’s Western media reports at least.

To put things in context, the fact is that, whatever one thinks of the Soviet experiment (in terms of the economy, social policies and ideology), the Soviet collapse was arguably one of “the greatest geopolitical catastrophes of the century”, as Russian President Vladimir Putin has famously described it. For one thing, the post-Soviet border situation in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus remains troublesome, with its “frozen conflicts” and unrecognized states or de facto republics which have disputed or limited recognition – and all the internal ethnopolitical dramas brought about by some of the post-soviet republics efforts at “nation-building”.

Moreover, whether one likes or not the ongoing Russian policies or its campaign in Ukraine, all of the above pertaining to Ukrainian far-right politics is part of the larger context behind Donbass annexation referendums, for one thing. As  I’ve written, one can only imagine what would happen with that region and its inhabitants in a Kyiv victory scenario.

Nicolai N. Petro, a professor of political science at the University of Rhode Island, is one of the experts who has warned (writing for Foreign Policy) that Ukraine does have a “civil rights problem” concerning its pro-Russian, Russian-speaking and ethnic Russian minorities, with policies that “effectively relegate Russian speakers to permanent second-class status” and that could, even after peace is achieved, “alienate, criminalize, or deport a significant portion of the country’s population.” These “civil rights” issues pertaining to ethnopolitics, the politics of memory and identity are a major part of what the tensions and the conflict has been about in the Eastern Slav region since at least 2014.

Adding fuel to the fire, there is of course the ever pressing topic of Western attraction, plus NATO expansion and its risks, in the larger context of an American policy of “dual-containment” and of “countering” and “encircling” Russia. Amazingly, journalistic lay analyses and lay reporting on the region tend to minimize or to ignore all together these two key aspects – the geopolitical and the ethnopolitical – by (as academic says) “naturalizing”, that is, taking at face value post-Maidan Ukrainian nation-building discourses and territorial claims. They do so while at the same time demonizing Russian perspectives and concerns – not only those of the Russian state but also those of a large part of the Donbass population, for that matter.

Worse still, in a New Cold War climate, aggravated by today’s “cancel culture”, any informed analysis who addresses the aforementioned key issues risks being “denounced” as “Russian propaganda”, and there are various institutes and journalists who make a living of reporting such things. Sometimes the targets are scholars who are even very critical of Moscow but who nonetheless dare to mention the topic of Ukrainian ethno-chauvinistic policies or of NATO enlargement or literal Nazism amongst Ukrainian military and paramilitary forces.

All of this is part of the elephant in the room, and not addressing such issues (or turning a blind-eye to it as the European Union has been doing) is a recipe for disaster and for the continuation of conflict in Eastern Europe. Moreover, it short-circuits some of the key values of Western Europe itself – simply speaking, by welcoming post-Maidan Ukraine as one of its own, the European and Western bloc denies much of the human-rights discourse that has been constructed to be the very core and the raison d’être of its key institutions.

From a European perspective, Kyiv’s efforts to realize its ethnocratic nation-building project (which I addressed elsewhere) and, moreover, the Ukrainian struggle to “survive” endangers the very survival of Europe – at least in the way Western Europe has come to envision itself.

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Uriel Araujo, PhD, is an anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Whenever the government of India announces any new initiatives for promoting natural farming, the people of India committed to ecologically protective farming are very happy that at last the government is coming to the right path.

However when they learn that the government or its farm research establishment is also entering into collaborations with those multinational companies which are known to be closely associated with the promotion of most hazardous technologies (such as GM crops and highly hazardous agrochemicals that go with them), which have already paid billions of dollars in other countries for the health harm caused by them, which have  indulged in shockingly unethical practices and have even been involved in war crimes (the most shocking experiments in concentration camps) and chemical weapons in the past, then people are shocked and start thinking—if we are on the path of ecologically protective farming, then why are we inviting such multinational companies to destroy our environment?

Any country or government must be clear about its policies and priorities. It cannot have the contradictory attitude of saying that it is walking on the ecologically protective and destructive paths at the same time.

Several organizations and scientists are doing wonderful work on agro-ecology and natural farming in several countries. If the government feels that there is something very valuable to be learnt from the experiences and knowledge of some of them (even though in the context of natural farming most effective solutions are best found at the local level keeping in view local conditions), then the government can certainly invite them or even have a collaboration with them. But surely there can be absolutely no justification for having collaboration with those multinational companies that have become widely known for the spread of hazardous technologies including GM crops, who have been involved in legal cases amounting to billions in the context of these hazards, and some of whom have been involved in the course of their history even with the most horrible war crimes under the Nazi regime led by Hitler.

What are such companies doing in India?

Are we going to open up our agriculture research establishment to them?

Are we going to follow their lead?

Are we going to ask our scientists to work in collaboration with them? If yes, why? What is the logic or the rationale of this? 

Of course it is well-known that some of the worst polluter companies are trying to hide their massive ecological harm by adopting green-washing techniques and even trying to present themselves as climate saviors and environment protectors. No one should be fooled by such tactics of those who have already paid billions for cases relating to high health hazards or else are still entangled in many such cases. Why are they paying huge compensation for hazards mainly only in rich countries? Why are they not paying such compensation for the harm done by the same products in poorer countries?

The government should carefully reconsider all such harmful and dangerous collaboration agreements.      

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Scientific India Magazine

On October 24th, a U.S. presidential candidate told an interviewer,

“Our day one agenda… also includes picking up the phone and telling Bibi Netanyahu that the war is over, because it’s basically our proxy war. We control the armaments, the funding, the diplomatic cover, the intelligence, etc., so we can end this in the blink of an eye with a single phone call, which is what Ronald Reagan did when Israel had gone into Lebanon and was massacring thousands of people. So we can do that right now. That’s day one.”

Tragically, the candidate who said that was not Donald Trump or Kamala Harris, but Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Most Americans have been persuaded that Stein cannot win the election, and many believe that voting for her in swing states will help elect Trump by siphoning voters from Harris.

There are many other “third-party” candidates for president, and many of them have good policy proposals for ending the genocidal U.S.-Israeli massacre in Gaza. As the website for Claudia de la Cruz, the presidential candidate for the Party of Socialism and Liberation, explains,

“Our tax dollars should be used to meet people’s needs — not pay for the bullets, bombs and missiles used in the massacre in Gaza.”

Many of the principles and policy proposals of “third-party” and independent candidates are more in line with the views of most Americans than those of Harris or Trump. This is hardly surprising given the widely recognized corruption of the U.S. political system. While Trump cynically flip-flops to appeal to both sides on many questions, and Harris generally avoids committing to policy specifics at all, especially regarding foreign policy, most Americans understand that they are both more beholden to the billionaires and corporate interests who fund their campaigns than to the well-being of working Americans or the future of the planet.

Michael Moore has published a flier titled “This Is America,” which shows that large majorities of Americans support “liberal” positions on 18 different issues, from a ceasefire in Gaza to Medicare For All to getting money out of politics.

Moore implies that this should be reassuring to Democrats and Harris supporters, and it would be if she was running on those positions. But, for the most part, she isn’t. On the other hand, many third party and independent candidates for president are running on those positions, but the anti-democratic U.S. political system ensures that they can’t win, even when most Americans agree with them.

War and militarism are the most deadly and destructive forces in human society, with real world, everyday, physical impacts that kill or maim people and destroy their homes, communities and entire countries. So it is deeply disturbing that the political system in the United States has been corrupted into bipartisan subservience to a military-industrial complex (or MICIMATT, to use a contemporary term) that wields precisely the “unwarranted influence” that President Eisenhower warned us against 64 years ago, and uses its influence to drag us into wars that wreak death and destruction in country after country.

Apart from brief wars to recover small neocolonial outposts in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait, all now many decades ago, the U.S. military has not won a war since 1945. It systematically fails on its own terms, while its nakedly lethal and destructive power only fills graveyards and leaves countries in ruins. Far from being an effective vehicle to project American power, unleashing the brutality of the U.S. war machine has become the fastest, surest way to further undermine America’s international standing in the eyes of our neighbors.

After so many wars under so many administrations of both parties, neither Republicans nor Democrats can claim to be a “lesser evil” on questions of war and peace, let alone a “peace party.”

As with so many of America’s problems, from the expansion of corporate and oligarchic power to the generational decline in living standards, the combined impact of decades of Democratic and Republican government is more dangerous, more lasting and more intractable than the policies of any single administration. On no question is this more obvious than on questions of war and peace.

For decades, there was a small but growing progressive wing in the Democratic Party that voted against record military spending and opposed U.S. wars, occupations and coups. But when Bernie Sanders ran for president and millions of grassroots Democrats rallied around his progressive agenda, the Party leaders and their corporate, plutocratic backers fought back more aggressively to defeat Bernie and the progressives than they ever fought to win elections against the Republicans, or to oppose the war on Iraq or tax cuts for the wealthy.

This year, flush with blood money from the Israel lobby, pro-Israel Democrats defeated two of the most progressive, public-spirited Democratic members of Congress, Cori Bush and Jamaal Bowman.

On the Republican side, in response to the U.S. wars on Iraq and Afghanistan, the libertarian Republican member of Congress Ron Paul led a small group of Republicans to join progressive Democrats in an informal bipartisan peace caucus in Congress. In recent years though, the number of members of either party willing to take any kind of stand for peace has shrunk dramatically. So while there are now over 100 Congressional caucuses, from the Candy Caucus to the Pickleball Caucus, there is still not one for peace.

After the neocons who provided the ideological fuel for Bush’s catastrophic wars reconvened around Hillary Clinton in 2016, President Trump tried to “make America’s military great again” by appointing retired generals to his cabinet and characteristically staking out positions all over the map, from a call to kill the families of “terrorists” to a National Defense Strategy naming Russia and China as the “central challenge to U.S. prosperity and security,” to casting himself as a peacemaker by trying to negotiate a peace treaty with North Korea.

Trump is now running against Biden’s war in Ukraine and trying to have it both ways on Gaza, with undying support for Israel and a promise to end the war immediately. Some Palestinian-Americans are supporting Trump for not being the VP for Genocide Joe, just as other people support Harris for not being Trump.

But most Americans know little about Trump’s actual war policy as president. The unique value of a leader like Trump to the military-industrial complex is that he draws attention to himself and diverts attention away from U.S. atrocities overseas.

In 2017, Trump’s first year in office, he oversaw the climax of Obama’s war against ISIS in Iraq and Syria, which probably killed as many civilians as Israel has massacred in Gaza. In that year alone, the U.S. and its allies dropped over 60,000 bombs and missiles on Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan,Yemen, Libya, Pakistan and Somalia. That was the heaviest bombing since the first Gulf War in 1991, and double the destruction of the “Shock & Awe” bombing of Iraq in 2003.

Most chillingly, the Iraqi forces who defeated the last remnants of ISIS in Mosul’s Old City were ordered to kill all the survivors, fulfilling Trump’s threat to “take out their families.”

“We killed them all,” an Iraqi soldier told Middle East Eye. “Daesh, men, women and children. We killed everyone.”

If anyone is counting on Trump to save the people of Gaza from Netanyahu and Biden’s genocide, that should be a reality check.

In other areas, Trump’s back-pedaling on Obama’s diplomatic achievements with Iran and Cuba have led to new crises for both those countries on the eve of this election. By moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem, bribing Arab despots with ‘Abraham’ deals, and encouraging Netanyahu’s Greater Israel ambitions, Trump primed the powder-keg for the genocide in Gaza and the new crisis in the Middle East under Biden.

Image: Jill Stein

On the other side, Harris shares responsibility for genocide, arguably the most serious international crime in the book. To make matters worse, she has connived in a grotesque scheme to provide cover for the genocide by pretending to be working for a ceasefire that, as Jill Stein and many others have said, the U.S. could enforce “in the blink of an eye, with a single phone call” if it really wanted to. As for the future, Harris has only committed to making the U.S. military even more “lethal.”

The movement for a Free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza has failed to win the support of the Republican or Democratic presidential campaigns. But this is not a failure on the part of the Palestinian-Americans we have listened to and worked with, who have engaged in brilliant organizing, gradually raised public awareness and won over more Americans to their cause. They are leading the most successful anti-war organizing campaign in America since the Iraq War.

The refusal of Trump or Harris to listen to the calls of Americans whose families are being massacred in Gaza, and now in Lebanon too, is a failure on the part of the corrupt, anti-democratic political system of which Trump and Harris are figureheads, not a failure of activism or organizing.

Whomever each of us votes for in the presidential election, the campaign to end the genocide in Gaza will continue, and we must grow stronger and smarter and more inclusive until politicians cannot ignore us, no matter how much money the Israel lobby and other corrupt interests throw at them, or at their political opponents.

Whomever we vote for, the elephant in the room will still be US militarism and the violence and chaos it inflicts on the world. Whether Trump or Harris is president, the result will be more of the same, unless we do something to change it. As legendary Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu famously said, “If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.”

No American should be condemned for voting for a candidate of their choice, however successfully the Democrats and Republicans have marginalized the very concept of multi-party democracy that the U.S. claims to support in other countries. Whoever wins this election, we must find a way to put peace back on this country’s national agenda, and to make our collective voices heard in ways that cannot be drowned out by oligarchs with big bags of cash.

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Medea Benjamin is the cofounder of CODEPINK for Peace, and the author of several books, including Inside Iran: The Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Nicolas J. S. Davies is an independent journalist, a researcher for CODEPINK and the author of Blood on Our Hands: The American Invasion and Destruction of Iraq.

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, published by OR Books, with an updated edition due in February 2025. They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image is from CODEPINK

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Oct. 16, 2024 – Goodpasture cross country runner Janie Grace Moss dies three days after collapsing on run

Goodpasture cross country runner Janie Grace Moss died Wednesday morning, due to complications after she collapsed during a run. 

Goodpasture announced her death on social media and athletic director Jim Carter also confirmed it to The Tennessean.  

Moss collapsed during a run at Wright Park on Sunday, according to a GoFundMe created for her. She was life-flighted to Centennial Hospital, where she experienced cerebral edema, or brain swelling, and was put on life support, according to the fundraiser page. 

Moss, a senior, was also a member of Goodpasture’s cheer and swim teams. A prayer vigil was held for her Monday at Goodpasture’s W.F. Ruhl Arts Center. 

“It is with great sadness we share that GCS senior Janie Grace Moss passed away this morning,” Goodpasture’s athletic department posted in a statement to the ‘X’ platform, formerly Twitter. “We are so thankful for the person she was in this world. Her light shines and will continue to shine bright. Please be prayerful for her family and the GCS school community.”

The cause of Moss’ death was not immediately known. 

* 

Goodpasture Runner Is Third TSSAA Cross Country Death This Season

Moss represents the third death of cross country runner in Middle Tennessee this TSSAA cross country season.

Sycamore runner Tristen Franklin died on Aug. 27 after collapsing during a run in triple-digit temperatures. He was 15. Franklin was on a run in his neighborhood, not on school property, when he collapsed. His cause of death has not been released.

Katherine Lindsay Rust, an eighth grader at Thompson’s Station Middle School, died on Sept. 18 after running in a meet, according to her obituary. She was 13.

.

.

My Take…

Three Tennessee child athletes – Cross Country runners, have dropped dead in the past 2 months.

I suspect all three were COVID-19 Vaccinated.

In Canada, 80% of kids ages 12-19 got two mRNA vaccines and athletes were MANDATED two contaminated mRNA injections in 2021 in order to be able to continue participating in sports.

It’s one of the greatest crimes that has gone entirely unpunished.

This will continue to happen until parents do something about it.

*

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***

Among the most visible geopolitical controversies of our age is planetary climate. The idea goes that earth’s temperature is rising, that this rise is becoming catastrophic, that its cause is manmade carbon emissions, and that only reductions in those emissions will save the planet and, by extension, humanity. But is any of this true? The American Geopolitical Institute will be exploring these questions through the eyes of our lead investigator, Dr. Lewis Coleman. In his initial article, Dr. Coleman takes a hard look at the much-maligned atmospheric gas, CO2.

*

Carbon dioxide (CO2) is the most misunderstood of all atmospheric gases, but also the most interesting. It is benign, beneficial, and essential for both plant and animal life, but it is vociferously vilified as toxic waste, like urine, that must be expelled from the body by breathing, and as a “greenhouse gas” that threatens human existence with excessive heat and melted polar ice.

Given overwhelming evidence to the contrary, these fractured fairy tales are flabbergasting. They can only be explained by prevailing ignorance plus the power, politics, privilege, and persuasion that perpetually prevails and perturbs human endeavor and prevents progress.¹

CO2 is essential for life on the earth’s surface. Multicellular plants convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates for food and cellulose for structural support. In multicellular vertebrates, carbon dioxide is as essential as oxygen, because it enables the mechanism of oxygen transport and delivery that captures oxygen from the atmosphere (or water) and delivers it to cells deep within the body.²

CO2 is also the major component of hydroxyapatite, which forms bone. The human body contains some 20 liters of gaseous carbon dioxide that is mostly dissolved in bodily fluids, as compared to 1 L of nitrogen and 1 L of oxygen. The CO2 leaks from the skin and equilibrates with atmospheric CO2, which slowly fluctuates over eons within a narrow range. Respiratory drive mechanisms adapt to this equilibrium and stimulate breathing to sustain it.

If CO2 was a narcotic, we would all be drunk, and if it were toxic, we would all be dead. Instead, CO2 has powerful therapeutic properties that were revealed by medical research at the turn of the 20th century. This is because breathing or bathing in CO2 stimulates respiratory drive, reduces microvascular flow resistance, speeds the transport of oxygenated blood from the lungs to organs and tissues, and releases oxygen from blood into tissues.²

Carbon dioxide is one of the most beneficial substances on planet earth. Why then do the madmen who control society want to get rid of it?

It wasn’t always this way.

A century ago, the nurse-anesthetists who dominated anesthesia service in operating rooms after WWI embraced physician research and supplemented ether anesthesia with morphine analgesia to prevent harmful nervous activity induced by surgery.¹ They also supplemented ether with carbon dioxide to speed anesthetic induction and emergence; counteract morphine respiratory depression; optimize cardiorespiratory function, tissue oxygenation, and organ protection; and prevent heart attacks, strokes, atelectasis, pneumonia, nausea, vomiting, and unexpected postoperative respiratory arrest.

The success of these heroic nurses inspired physicians to use Carbogen, a therapeutic mixture of oxygen and carbon dioxide in pressurized tanks, to treat strokes, heart attacks, drowning, alcohol inebriation, drug overdose, asthma, pneumonia, smoke inhalation, cardiopulmonary arrest, and bacterial infections, and to assist newborn babies with breathing problems. Soon Carbogen became standard equipment on fire trucks in major cities, and it saved countless lives. All this came close to revolutionizing medicine in the 1930s.³

Carbogen has largely been forgotten, though with today’s modern machines, monitors, and medications it could be more useful than ever. For example, it could cure or facilitate the treatment of interstitial cystitis, ulcerative colitis, regional enteritis, rheumatoid diseases, cancer, heart disease, and life-threatening critical illnesses such as eclampsia and multi-organ failure syndrome. CO2 remains FDA-approved, but its therapeutic properties and even the mechanism of oxygen transport and delivery have been banished from medical literature and awareness, so it is almost never used anymore.

What happened was that, disastrously, organized medicine became envious of the success of the nurse-anesthetists and conspired to control this profitable medical specialty.⁴ In 1897 Dr. Charles Bardeen, the son of a New York publishing magnate, became the first graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School. He was immediately appointed as a professor of anatomy at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, and then elevated to the position of Dean in 1907.

In 1927 he selected Dr. Ralph Waters to be the first chairman of a university department of anesthesia in the world. He later said, “Ralph Waters was the first person the university hired to put people to sleep, but instead he awakened a worldwide interest in anesthesia.”⁵ This anointed Dr. Waters with priceless prestige, and he knew how to use it. He was a shrewd salesman, who had acquired prominence in medical circles by dunking his anesthetized and intubated pet dog named “Airway” into a tank of water to demonstrate the effectiveness of Arthur Gudel’s endotracheal tubes, which are inserted into the trachea to prevent airway obstruction and support breathing.^6,7

Dr. Waters immediately joined forces with Dr. Chauncey Leake, the chairman of the Department of Pharmacology at Wisconsin, whose specialty was war gas research, to devise specious animal experiments that deliberately confused CO2 asphyxiation with anesthesia. Dr. Waters also confabulated clinical reports of anonymous anesthetists that dramatically described fictitious disasters caused by overenthusiastic CO2 supplementation, which he characterized as “CO2 toxicity” instead of asphyxiation.^1,8,9 This confusion has been subsequently sustained by rigged research and specious publications.^10-13

As chairman, Dr. Waters introduced his practical new anesthetic technique that used intravenous barbiturate induction and paralysis to enable elective endotracheal intubation. This secured the airway against aspiration and obstruction, facilitated breathing, and enabled surgery in the prone position and in the oral cavity. These procedures were impossible with the mask management technique used by the nurses. Furthermore, the paralysis promoted surgical convenience by preventing untoward muscle tension and unexpected movements due to uncontrolled surgical stimulation.

Waters thus had devised a powerful political strategy to wreck the reputation of the nurses, replace them with his MD anesthesiology trainees, and promote the sales of his patented “Waters Canister” that absorbed carbon dioxide from gas mixtures. This created a powerful hoax that frightened physicians into avoiding both CO2 and narcotics that has been abetted ever since by professional medicine, medical corporations, and “climate change” hucksters.⁴

He also indoctrinated his residents with the notion that carbon dioxide is “toxic waste, like urine,” that must be “rid from the body” to prevent mythical “CO2 toxicity” by using mechanical hyperventilation during anesthesia.^9,14 This was cleverly consistent with entrenched orthodox CO2 beliefs, but it is scientific insanity, because hyperventilation is inherently dangerous, confers no benefits, and is incompatible with therapeutic narcotics. It also dangerously depletes CO2 body reserves, which exaggerates narcotic respiratory depression and invites heart attacks, strokes, and unexpected postoperative respiratory arrest.

These effects, however, didn’t become problematic until several years later when defective “closed circuit” anesthesia machines, which were designed to conserve expensive anesthetic gases, were replaced with “open circuit” anesthesia machines that were designed to eliminate any possibility of CO2 accumulation within the machines.¹⁵ By that time, the therapeutic and life-sustaining characteristics of carbon dioxide were forgotten, so the consequent postoperative respiratory depression problems were blamed on narcotics.

Why? Because CO2 is cheap, safe, effective, and easy to use, not all that far removed from a “home remedy.” And because the combination of carbon dioxide and narcotics prevented lingering manifestations of the “surgical stress syndrome” including cancer, heart disease, and chronic illnesses, all of which promote professional and corporate profits at the price of public health.

Dr. Waters next took care to place his graduates in prominent positions in hospitals and university medical schools. Having successfully displaced the nurses, founded the anesthesiology profession on false science, and created a deadly hoax that has confused anesthesia practice ever since, he mysteriously retired at the age of 65 and refused further contact with the monstrous profession he had created.^4,16-18 Meanwhile, Dr. Chauncey Leake enjoyed prestigious appointments at UC San Francisco, the University of Texas, the Ohio State University, and as chairman of the Board of Science Journal.¹⁹

Seldom have so few caused so much harm to so many.¹ Their acts of wholesale mischief have reversed medical progress; derailed medical research; and killed and maimed countless patients ever since. Their endeavors are replete with the cloven hoofprints of organized medicine, powerful medical corporations, and the Wellcome Trust.

Back to CO2

CO2 is a “trace gas” in the earth’s atmosphere that couldn’t possibly cause “global warming,” which is a cyclical phenomenon that occurs at intervals of hundreds of years. The most recent prior episode occurred during the early 1400s, when a fleet of massive Chinese junks sailed through the melted North Pole passage and mapped the world, soon followed by Western explorers.²⁰ But the ice froze again before Admiral Byrd and his contemporaries searched for the mysterious polar passage. Now it has melted again, and commercial shipping prefers it to the Panama Canal.

What, then, is the source of CO2? The fact is that it is continuously produced by the vast mass of microbial life that thrives in the hellishly hot environment deep beneath the earth’s surface, where the nuclear core provides abundant chemicals that serve as food. This explains the high CO2 concentrations found in caves and why volcanic eruptions belch forth vast quantities of carbon dioxide. Its high molecular weight causes atmospheric CO2 to hover near the earth’s surface, where photosynthetic bacteria and multicellular plants avidly consume it and constrain its concentration to only 0.03% of the atmospheric gas mix, so that plant and animal life on the earth’s surface thrive at the brink of CO2 starvation.

Multicellular life cannot survive at higher altitudes such as the “dead zone” near the top of Mt. Everest where CO2 is virtually absent, which explains why the top of Mt. Everest is littered with lemming-like Darwin Award winners and why their guides suffer hypoxic brain damage.

CO2 is also an ideal refrigerant with a revealing history. It was patented in Britain as a refrigerant in 1850, and in 1870 an American businessman installed CO2 refrigeration in a cargo ship to transport beef from Texas to New York City. It is devoid of toxicity, but its low cost undermines its commercial viability.²¹ CO2 was soon supplanted by ammonia, but consumers feared ammonia toxicity, and preferred ice deliveries to ammonia refrigerators.

For example, tour guides at California’s Hearst Castle were sickened by ammonia leaking from its damaged antique refrigerators after the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake. The German division of the international General Electric cartel retained Albert Einstein and Moshe Szilard to invent safe refrigeration technologies during the interval between WWI and WWII. They patented several commercially impractical ideas,²² but their efforts were rendered moot by Thomas Midgely, Jr., the infamous inventor of leaded gasoline, who dramatically inhaled Freon, a fluorinated hydrocarbon developed by DuPont, to demonstrate its safety before a crowded engineering convention.²³ The DuPont Corporation then promoted Freon, whereupon Freon refrigerators were enthusiastically embraced after WWII.

However, Freon was never safe. When exposed to open flame it degenerates to phosgene gas, which killed more soldiers than any other “war gas” during WWI. This was particularly problematic because refrigeration repairmen routinely used propane torches to detect Freon leaks.²⁴ This explains the fakery of the “Ozone Hole” hysteria, which enabled DuPont to replace dangerous Freon with hydrocarbon alternatives that likewise cannot compare to the safety of carbon dioxide.

Freon also explains the pulmonary illness suffered by firemen and policemen during the 9/11 demolition of the World Trade Center towers, which exposed massive quantities of Freon to thermite flame.²⁴ Thankfully, the European Union has introduced regulations to restrict toxic chemicals, so Mercedes Benz and other European corporations are now developing safe CO2 air conditioning systems for cars and homes.

So, the next time a “climate change” fanatic starts ranting at you about the horrors of CO2 you can tell them to hold on until they hear “the rest of the story.” Meanwhile, must we await the arrival of our great-great grandchildren before the therapeutic blessings of carbon dioxide, surgical narcotics, and stress theory can be realized? Why not us? Why not now?

*

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Dr. Lewis S. Coleman is Chair of the Science and Education Board of the American Institute of Stress. He is a board-certified anesthesiologist who completed his BS degree in biology at the Ohio State University, obtained his MD degree from New York Medical College, and completed his surgical internship and anesthesiology residency at UCLA, followed by 40 years in private practice. Coleman’s basic sciences instruction at NYMC miraculously coincided with the two-year sojourn of Dr. Johannes Rhodin, who was retained by the school to reform its curriculum. Dr. Rhodin was a famous researcher and expert on the stress theory of Dr. Hans Selye. His lectures devastated the dogma of classical physiology and convinced Coleman that stress theory represented the future of medicine. Many years later, these lectures enabled Coleman to identify Selye’s long-sought stress mechanism. It promises to revolutionize medicine and provide a new era of health, longevity, and freedom from the eternal scourge of disease and premature death. Coleman sets forth his ideas in his important new book, “50 Years Lost in Medical Advance: The Discovery of Hans Selye’s Stress Mechanism.”

Notes

1 Coleman, L. S. Four Forgotten Giants of Anesthesia History. Journal of Anesthesia and Surgery 3, 1-17 (2015). <http://www.ommegaonline.org/article-details/Four-Forgotten-Giants-of-Anesthesia-History/468>.

2 Coleman, L. S. Oxygen Transport and Delivery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efi9v86isSw&t=117s (2022). <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efi9v86isSw&t=117s>.

3 Henderson, Y. Resuscitation with Carbon Dioxide. Science 83, 399-402 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.83.2157.399

4 Coleman, L. S. The Great Medical Hoax of the 20th Century.  (2022). <https://www.amazon.com/Great-Medical-Hoax-20th-Century/dp/B09X4BCTWG/ref=sr_1_1?crid=8A8KBG2F26D7&keywords=the+great+medical+hoax+of+the+20th+Century&qid=1659205157&sprefix=the+great+medical+hoax+of+the+20th+century%2Caps%2C153&sr=8-1>.

5 Morris, L. E., Schroeder, M. E., Warner, M. E. & Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (Park Ridge Ill.). Ralph Milton Waters, M.D., mentor to a profession : proceedings, the Ralph M. Waters International Symposium on Professionalism in Anesthesia, Madison, Wisconsin, 2002.  (Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology, 2004).

6 Waters, R. M. Ltr Waters to Guedel Re: intention tremors, ET tube durability. https://calisphere.org/item/784c2d71-bb93-4c73-af85-2ce6faf9f8d6/ (1929, March 19).

7 Waters, R. M. Waters reports one-lung anesthesia with new ET tubes. https://calisphere.org/item/f8195ad6-f577-4a0e-8f9f-aa9dbfaf1ae1/ (1931, June 10).

8 Leake, C. D. W., R.M. The Anesthetic Properties of Carbon Dioxid. J. Pharmacol. Exp. Ther. 33 (1928).

9 Waters, R. M. Toxic Effects of Carbon Dioxide. J.A.M.A 100:519, 1933, 219-224 (1933).

10 Eisele, J. H., Eger, E. I., 2nd & Muallem, M. Narcotic properties of carbon dioxide in the dog. Anesthesiology 28, 856-865 (1967).

11 Cullen, D. J. & Eger, E. I., 2nd. Cardiovascular effects of carbon dioxide in man. Anesthesiology 41, 345-349 (1974).

12 Cullen, D. J., Eger, E. I., 2nd & Gregory, G. A. The cardiovascular effects of carbon dioxide in man, conscious and during cyclopropane anesthesia. Anesthesiology 31, 407-413 (1969).

13 Eckenhoff, J. E. Carbon Dioxide and Man. Anesthesiology 21, 585-586 (1960).

14 Waters, R. M. Carbon Dioxide. Can Med Assoc J 38, 240-243 (1938).

15 Jackson, D. E. Anesthesia Equipment From 1914 to 1954 and Experiments Leading To Its Development. Anesthesiology 16, 953-969 (1955).

16 Overdyk, F. J. postoperative Opioids Need System-Wide Overhaul. Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation Newsletter (2010). <http://www.apsf.org/newsletters/html/2010/winter/11_opioids.htm>.

17 Coleman, L. S. Intraoperative Hyperventilation May Contribute to Postop Opioid Hypersensitivity. apsf Newsletter Winter 2009-2020 (2010). <https://www.apsf.org/article/intraoperative-hyperventilation-may-contribute-to-postop-opioid-hypersensitivity/>.

18 Coleman, L. S. A call for standards on perioperative CO(2) regulation. Can J Anaesth (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12630-011-9469-7

19 Shimkin, M. B. Chauncey D. Leake, president-elect. Science 129, 468-469 (1959). https://doi.org/10.1126/science.129.3347.468

20 Menzies, G. 1421 : the year China discovered the world.  (Bantam, 2002).

21 Nguyen, O. a. Carbon Dioxide as a Refrigerant, <https://www.rsi.edu/blog/hvacr/carbon-dioxide-refrigerant/> (2016).

22 Dannen, G. The Einstein-Szilard Refrigerators, <https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-einstein-szilard-refrigerators/> (1997).

23 Knight, L. The Fatal Attraction of Lead. BBC News Magazine (2014). <https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-29568505>.

24 Shawn. Burning freon can produce phosgene gas, <https://honda-tech.com/forums/honda-civic-del-sol-1992-2000-1/burning-freon-can-produce-phosphene-gas-229557/> (2002).

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First published on October 11, 2023

*** 

In my last article I wrote about the history and aim of the Club of Rome. I mentioned that they now are one of the leading advocates for declaring a “Planetary Emergency”. This will most likely be the trigger for the setup of a scientific dictatorship.

The idea of declaring an emergency was first proposed to Club of Rome by British consultant and psychotherapist David Wasdell in 2005.

Wasdell, with training from Tavistock Institute, had written a paper called Global Warning that was circulated during the G8 summit in Gleneagles in 2005, with the mission of getting the climate issue higher up on the political agenda.

We have a narrow remaining window to engage global strategic planning and mobilisation, followed by a maximum of fifty years to achieve the transition, to scale down resource usage, to terminate inequitable capital accumulation, and to stabilise and begin the long term reduction of global population.

Wasdell was then invited by the Club of Rome president Prince El Hassan bin Talal to make a speech at their annual conference in Norfolk, Virginia.

In order to achieve the desired impact, Wasdell advised them to:

• Recognise that there now exist a state of global emergency
• Declare excess CO2 to be an eco-toxin [!] with potentially catastrophic impact on the global biosphere
• Develop and operationalize an emergency strategy to move our global society towards a zero or negative carbon economy within the shortest possible timescale
• Develop and operationalize the most effective institutional instruments to manage the transition.

Wasdell, who became an adviser to Al Gore, was also working closely with the Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK) and its director and Club of Rome-member Hans Joachim Schellnhuber to develop the concept of Tipping Points in the climate system.[1]

This concept was incorporated into the Planetary Boundaries framework, which was developed under the leadership of Johan Rockström at the Stockholm Resilience Centre and introduced in the article “A safe operating space for humanity” in 2009. This was done in cooperation with Schellnhuber and PIK.[2]

Planetary Boundaries is a framework to “describe limits to the impacts of human activities on the Earth system”. If left unchecked, it is said to trigger cascading tipping points leading to “large-scale abrupt or irreversible environmental changes”. To prevent this potential scenario, a top-down population control is considered necessary.

Rockström, a Swedish agronomist, had in 2004 been headhunted by the first IPCC chairman Bert Bolin to serve as director of Stockholm Environment Institute and became the first director of Stockholm Resilience Centre in 2007.

The latter institute, located at Stockholm University, had been set up by the Swedish foundation for strategic environmental research (MISTRA) with the task of developing strategies for sustainable governance and stewardship of ecological and social systems. Rockström later succeeded Hans Joachim Schellnhuber as joint director of PIK in 2018.

The Planetary Boundaries framework was presented by Rockström at Club of Rome’s Global Assembly in Amsterdam in October 2009, with attendance from their royal patron Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands and honorary member Mikhail Gorbachev. Sponsors were Philips, Royal Dutch Shell and KLM.[3]

The framework was included in the Club of Rome-report Bankrupting Nature, authored by Johan Rockström and former Club of Rome-president Anders Wijkman, and became a part of Club of Rome’s and PIK’s The Planetary Emergency Plan in 2019. One year later their Planetary Emergency Partnership was launched with over 300 partners all over the world.

These plans have now come into fruition. A few weeks ago, a statement was made by The Climate Governance Commission at the UN General Assembly High-Level Week & Climate Week.[4]

The commission, which includes the current president of the Club of Rome, Sandrine Dixson-Declève, and Johan Rockström, paints a bleak picture of the future – unless we take decisive action.

The world faces a deepening planetary emergency – and is on a reckless path toward catastrophic climate change – having already over-stepped six of nine scientifically-identified planetary boundaries. A continued failure to address the underlying causes of this emergency – such as fossil fuel-based economies, resource waste/overconsumption and the destruction of nature – will have further devastating effects for all of humanity, triggering potentially irreversible tipping points, with dangerous consequences for planetary stability, both social and ecological. A system-wide approach to solving the climate crisis is required now, ensuring reliable climate and planetary boundary governance for the Earth as a whole.

Due to these alleged crises, the commission recommends “bold and concrete steps to catalyze a shift in global governance” in their forthcoming report Governing Our Planetary Emergency, which will be released in conjunction with the climate summit in Dubai (COP28) in November 2023.

The Climate Governance Commission was founded by the Swedish Global Challenges Foundation at the UN75 Global Governance Forum, September 16 & 17 2020, and is led by former Irish President Mary Robinson from The Elders and Club of Madrid with Johan Rockström and the former President of the UN General Assembly María Fernanda Espinosa as co-chairs. Supporters include Club of Madrid, Stimson Center and The Rockefeller Foundation.

The former president of Club of Rome that intervened trying to prevent my dissertation from being approved is a “contributing expert”.

They CGC state that the “global governance system is ill-equipped to deal with our planetary emergency, which now encompasses the “polycrisis” including, for example, international conflict, financial instability, global inequality, and pandemic risk and recovery.” The new term “polycrisis” was frequently used in discussions at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January 2023.[5]

To handle this “polycrisis”, CGC calls for “competent” crisis leadership.

Empowered with new authorities, current and new international governance institutions must exert competent crisis leadership, developing and deploying emergency plans and a new generation of effective policies while pursuing a more equitable allocation of resources. Further, scientific boundaries are not negotiable, but must drive and fundamentally inform our collective action and management systems.

To set these “new authorities and capabilities” in motion the commission proposes that the UN General Assembly declares a planetary emergency at the Summit of the Future in September 22-23 next year.

The UN General Assembly should declare a global planetary emergency at the 2024 Summit of the Future, reinforced in similar statements by UN Agencies, regional bodies, and national and local governments.

The commission then suggests to elaborate on the UN Secretary-General’s proposed Emergency Platform “to design and convene an inter-agency, intergovernmental Planetary Emergency Platform to bring together fragmented international institutional structures, and to develop a Planetary Emergency Plan for urgent, coordinated action, with linked national emergency plans.”

I describe the Emergency Platform here.

This Platform, consisting of intergovernmental, State and non-State actors, would “plan for and cooperate on urgent action at all levels of governance, including a global decarbonizing package”.

The commission point out that over-stepping the planetary boundaries has to come with consequences.

Global security norms should be broadened to reflect the grave implications of over-stepping climate/planetary boundaries, including UN Security Council practices to better reflect the climate policy challenges and priorities of the Global South and of all peoples.

They are because of this calling for “courageous “top down” leadership within all levels of government, combined with generalized “bottom up” citizen pressure and engagement, to catalyze fundamental transformations.”

Some of the other suggestions in the statement includes:

• A Global Environment Agency
• An International Court for the Environment
• Institutional Reform of the Global Financial System

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Global Commons Alliance

In the background, another closely related initiative has been developed to execute the prescribed transformation. In 2019 the Global Commons Alliance was launched in Singapore by Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors with the mission “to mobilize citizens, companies, cities and countries to accelerate systems change, and become better guardians of the global commons”.[6]

Their strategic priorities are to change minds, actions and systems in order to safeguard the global commons and “regaining planetary stability”. They are ready to act swiftly when an emergency is declared.

By 2025, the true magnitude of the multifaceted transformations we need to safeguard the global commons will be well understood. Key actors will know what they need to do, where things are most urgent, and be taking action that sparks and sustains transformational change in order to protect the global commons.

Their philosophy is all based on Rockström’s Planetary Boundaries Framework.

The 70+ partners include Club of Rome, PIK, WEF, and WRI, with support from an “Investor Collaborative” consisting of among others Swiss MAVA Foundation, Dutch foundation Porticus and United Nations Global Environment Facility.

Rockström is a member of the steering committee of the Global Commons Alliance and leads the “Alliance Component” The Earth Commission with the mission to define “safe and just boundaries for people and the planet”.

This is a graph from my book The Digital World Brain (under translation to English), illustrating their formula for “systems transformation”.

It is a recipe for a Scientific Dictatorship. To quote the “tenth commandment” on the now demolished Georgia Guidestones:

Be not a cancer on the Earth – Leave room for nature – Leave room for nature.

It also reminds me of a document from the Secretariat of World Order that George Hunt uncovered during a “UNA Environment and Development Conference to provide broad public debate and support for United Nations Earth Summit” in Des Moines, September 22 1991.[7]

The security council of the UN, led by the Anglo-Saxon Major Nation Powers, will decree that henceforth, the Security Council will inform all nations that its suffrance on population has ended, that all nations have quotas for REDUCTION on a yearly basis, which will be enforced by the Security Council’ by selective or total embargo of credit, items of trade including food and medicine, or by military force, when required.

This has now been rebranded as carbon footprint reduction.

I will delve more into the Global Commons Alliance in a coming article. I also mention their influence in my presentation “Shaping the Future Agenda – The Digital World Brain” from Stavanger.

*

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Notes

[1] www.apollo-gaia.org/A-GProjectDevelopment.pdf

[2] Rockström, J., Steffen, W., Noone, K. et al. A safe operating space for humanity. Nature 461, 472–475 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/461472a

[3] www.slideshare.net/Eurotopia/assembly-programme

[4] globalgovernanceforum.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/Governing-our-Planetary-Emergency-CGC-Statement-UNGA-v2.pdf

[5] www.weforum.org/agenda/2023/01/polycrisis-global-risks-report-cost-of-living/

[6] globalcommonsalliance.org/about/

[7] archive.org/details/GeorgeHuntUncedEarthSummit1992cobdenClubsPapersaldousHuxleythe_125/2-1-unUncedEarthSummit1992ByGeorgeHunt..mp4

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

A Ucrânia está aparentemente a tentar interferir na política interna dos seus “parceiros” europeus. Recentemente, o embaixador ucraniano na Alemanha tentou pressionar os partidos políticos alemães a não cooperarem com partidos ou figuras públicas que se opõem ao programa de ajuda militar a Kiev. Isto mostra o quão desesperado o regime neonazista está em evitar qualquer diminuição do seu apoio internacional, pois isso significaria o fim da sua capacidade militar.

O embaixador ucraniano na Alemanha, Aleksey Makeev, lançou recentemente uma campanha de chantagem contra os partidos políticos locais que defendem uma solução pacífica para o conflito ucraniano. Makeev declarou publicamente que todos os principais políticos alemães deveriam evitar qualquer envolvimento em projetos destinados a reduzir ou acabar com a participação da Alemanha na guerra contra a Federação Russa.

A declaração veio pouco depois da criação da chamada “Aliança Sahra Wagenknecht” (BSW), uma coligação de partidos políticos e movimentos sociais que se opõem à participação alemã na guerra. O grupo é liderado pela conhecida líder de esquerda alemã Sahra Wagenknecht. Segundo Sahra, é necessário haver “mais esforços diplomáticos” e não é certo que Berlim se envolva em iniciativas militares.

“Precisamos de mais esforços diplomáticos (…) Existe um bom plano de paz do Brasil e da China. Espero que a Alemanha e a UE apoiem tais iniciativas (…) Não se trata de ser amigo ou inimigo da Rússia, mas sobre a paz na Europa e [acabar] com a guerra na Ucrânia. Sem paz, todo o resto não é nada (…) (a Alemanha tornou-se) uma voz respeitada internacionalmente que media conflitos e defende soluções diplomáticas”, disse ela na altura.

Aparentemente, apesar do estatuto hegemônico do lobby anti-russo na Alemanha, a proposta chamou a atenção de muitos políticos e ativistas locais, razão pela qual a Ucrânia decidiu “reagir”. O embaixador ucraniano anunciou que os “partidos democráticos” locais deveriam evitar participar em tais iniciativas, considerando “intolerável” qualquer possibilidade de Berlim cooperar com um projeto de solução diplomática.

“Se os políticos dos partidos democráticos precisarem de apoio para lidar com os ultimatos intoleráveis ​​dos actores não democráticos, particularmente em questões de política externa, estou pronto a partilhar a minha própria experiência de negociação com a Rússia”, disse ele.

As palavras do embaixador foram apenas a continuação de uma série de declarações recentes contra qualquer forma de aliança com ativistas pró-paz na Alemanha. Anteriormente, ele já havia dito que nenhum partido deveria “ceder” ao BSW. Ele chamou todos os ativistas anti-guerra alemães de “populistas”, sugerindo que quaisquer iniciativas de paz são mera retórica populista sem sentido.

“Quem adotar os slogans do BSW só se perderá. Os partidos democráticos não devem permitir que os populistas, tanto a nível regional como a nível federal, os dissuadam da solidariedade com a Ucrânia”, disse ele.

É importante sublinhar que a Embaixada da Ucrânia não se limita a criticar a iniciativa. Tal atitude seria natural para Kiev, uma vez que o regime está no meio de um conflito armado com Moscou. Mas o que está acontecendo é na verdade mais profundo. O embaixador ucraniano exige simplesmente que os partidos alemães não participem num movimento que surgiu na própria Alemanha. Por outras palavras, ele está a tentar dizer aos políticos alemães o que fazer no seu próprio país.

Não é surpreendente que a Ucrânia esteja a usar o seu aparelho diplomático para fazer lobby pela guerra. Embora esta prática seja errada e repreensível – uma vez que o próprio objetivo da diplomacia é evitar a guerra – não há nada realmente surpreendente neste caso, considerando que o regime de Kiev está simplesmente a implementar as mesmas práticas que já se tornaram comuns entre os seus aliados e patrões ocidentais.

A ação ucraniana é motivada pelo desespero e pelo medo. O lobby sionista sente-se “ameaçado” pela iniciativa BSW. A coligação apresentou resultados eleitorais interessantes nas principais regiões alemãs, como Brandemburgo, Saxônia e Turíngia, onde obteve cerca de 15% dos votos – concluindo as eleições regionais em terceiro lugar. Têm havido um crescimento do sentimento anti-guerra em algumas cidades da antiga Alemanha Oriental, onde as pessoas geralmente têm opiniões muito críticas sobre a política externa de Berlim.

No entanto, ao contrário dos seus chefes ocidentais, a Ucrânia não tem poder suficiente para influenciar profundamente a política interna de outros países. O lobby que a embaixada ucraniana está a promover irá provavelmente fracassar, à medida que aumenta a insatisfação popular com a posição pró-guerra do governo alemão. No final, todos os esforços de chantagem ucranianos revelar-se-ão inúteis, pois é inevitável que haja um crescimento de iniciativas anti-guerra na Alemanha – tanto entre os políticos como entre as pessoas comuns.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Artigo em inglês : Kiev regime trying to interfere in Germany’s domestic politics, 30 de Outubro de 2024.

Imagem :  InfoBrics

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Lucas Leiroz, membro da Associação de Jornalistas do BRICS, pesquisador do Centro de Estudos Geoestratégicos, especialista militar.

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

Aparentemente, as autoridades britânicas começam a reconhecer que estar envolvido num conflito é inviável para o país num futuro próximo. Recentemente, o chefe da defesa do Reino Unido admitiu que as tropas do país não estão preparadas para uma guerra real. Isto significa que, apesar de toda a pressão que o país exerce para prolongar o conflito ucraniano, o Reino Unido não está preparado para lidar com as consequências finais de uma escalada com Moscou.

Segundo John Healey, Secretário da Defesa do Reino Unido, o exército britânico, nas atuais condições, não é capaz de travar uma guerra em grande escala. Ele acredita que as tropas do país não estão em posição de dissuadir um inimigo significativo num cenário de guerra real, uma vez que as capacidades militares britânicas foram “esgotadas” nos últimos tempos.

Healey afirmou que o Partido Conservador do Reino Unido geriu mal os seus recursos financeiros e militares, afetando gravemente as estruturas de defesa do país. Healey disse que a situação real dos militares britânicos era muito pior do que as autoridades trabalhistas esperavam quando chegaram ao poder. Segundo ele, foram envidados esforços para mudar esta situação, mas também deixou claro que Londres carece atualmente de uma capacidade dissuasiva significativa.

Healey afirmou ainda que Londres ainda é uma potência militar totalmente operacional, capaz de participar em operações conjuntas com parceiros da OTAN. No entanto, disse que as tropas do país não estão preparadas para um cenário real de guerra, o que as impede de se considerarem em situação de defesa adequada. Na prática, o Reino Unido já não parece estar entre as principais potências no cenário militar global.

“Esperávamos que as coisas estivessem num mau estado – mas o estado das finanças, o estado das forças, era muito pior do que pensávamos (…) O Reino Unido, tal como muitas outras nações, tornou-se essencialmente muito qualificado e pronto para conduzir operações militares. O que não estamos preparados para fazer é lutar. A menos que estejamos prontos para lutar, não estamos em condições de dissuadir ninguém (…) Isto está no cerne do pensamento da OTAN. Temos não apenas de ser capazes de defender as nossas nações da OTAN, mas, mais importante ainda, temos de ser mais eficazes na dissuasão que proporcionamos contra qualquer agressão futura (…) Este governo fará sempre o que for necessário para defender o país . As Forças Armadas do Reino Unido estão entre as melhores do mundo e oferecem uma defesa do Reino Unido 24 horas por dia, 7 dias por semana, operando ao lado dos nossos aliados e parceiros para se preparar para qualquer evento (…) A Revisão Estratégica da Defesa [que foi lançada em Julho] irá analisar as ameaças que enfrentamos e as capacidades que necessitamos para que as nossas Forças Armadas estejam mais preparadas para o combate, mais integradas e mais inovadas”, afirmou.

Obviamente, o secretário britânico usou o seu discurso para fazer uma forte propaganda política, criticando a administração rival e tentando fazer avançar as suas próprias ideias e agenda. No entanto, deve admitir-se que ele tem razão em criticar as capacidades militares do seu país. Depois de tantos anos sem qualquer participação em grandes conflitos – apenas enviando tropas em ações conjuntas da OTAN – os militares do Reino Unido tornaram-se despreparados para enfrentar desafios de grande escala.

O principal problema no caso britânico é que, apesar do enfraquecimento dos militares, a política externa do país tornou-se mais hostil. Ao mesmo tempo que o Reino Unido perdeu a sua capacidade dissuasora, expandiu as suas ações irresponsáveis ​​na arena internacional, aumentando significativamente a possibilidade de entrar num conflito em algum momento no futuro. O exemplo mais marcante disso é o profundo envolvimento de Londres no conflito ucraniano. O Reino Unido tem estado por trás das principais ações de escalada do Ocidente, sendo o primeiro país a fornecer armas de longo alcance a Kiev – além de ser um dos principais lobistas da OTAN para a autorização do uso destas armas em “ataques profundos”. contra cidades no território indiscutível da Federação Russa.

Healey propõe obviamente mudanças no cenário militar – o que faz parte da sua propaganda política – mas em vez de deixar o país “pronto para a guerra”, a abordagem mais racional seria criar as condições necessárias para garantir que o Reino Unido não entrará em guerra no futuro. A única forma de o fazer seria através de uma política de paz e neutralidade, abandonando a participação nos planos de guerra da OTAN.

Infelizmente, porém, o Reino Unido é co-participante em todas as ações estratégicas tomadas pelos EUA – que é o país que de fato lidera a OTAN. É possível dizer que o Reino Unido é o país mais alinhado com os EUA no seio da OTAN. Ao contrário dos países da UE, que são vistos por Washington como meros representantes e colônias – muitas vezes considerados “descartáveis” – o Reino Unido está totalmente integrado no processo de tomada de decisão americano, o que explica as razões de tantas decisões irresponsáveis ​​nos últimos tempos.

Healey está errado se pensa que será capaz de resolver os problemas militares do país. Mesmo que haja algumas melhorias, o país nunca conseguirá alcançar poder de dissuasão suficiente para intimidar Moscou – que é o principal alvo das agressões britânicas. Por esta razão, o melhor que Londres pode fazer é procurar a diplomacia e o diálogo em vez da guerra.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

Artigo em português : UK defense chief says his country’s troops ‘not ready’ for real conflict situation, InfoBrics, 28 de outubro de 2024.

Imagem :  InfoBrics

*

Lucas Leiroz, membro da Associação de Jornalistas do BRICS, pesquisador do Centro de Estudos Geoestratégicos, especialista militar.

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

The family of a University of Alabama baseball player who passed away after being pressured into getting the COVID-19 vaccine is raising awareness and helping young athletes succeed.

Davis James Heller was only 22 years old and had a promising baseball career ahead of him when he suddenly passed away from a cardiac episode on Oct. 5, 2022.

His family described Heller as “fiercely passionate about everything he did,” especially baseball.

His father, DJ Heller, told 1819 News his son did not want to get the COVID-19 vaccine. Heller presented a fake vaccination card the first year. But when it was time for a second vaccination, DJ Heller said his son felt guilty despite having a pre-existing condition.

“Davis was very much of a conscientious, good kid. He didn’t do anything wrong and didn’t like to get in trouble,” DJ Heller said.

The university said there were never any official vaccine mandates in any UA sport.

“No student-athletes at The University of Alabama were ever required to be vaccinated against COVID,” the university said in response to an 1819 News inquiry. “To state otherwise is false.”

However, Heller told his parents that coaches told the team it was selfish not to get vaccinated. Without the shot, players were not allowed to go out to eat on road trips or eat in the dining hall, Heller told his parents. They also had to be tested for COVID twice a week and quarantined for five days after every contact trace, according to Heller.

He told his parents the coaches strongly advised them to get the shot if they planned to play ball. Even though he had a medical exemption from a doctor, Heller did not want to let anyone down.

“So, when he got there in the second year and was told he would not be able to go into a locker room or a training room, he knew he would basically be isolated,” DJ Heller said. “Now looking back on it, he reluctantly decided to get it. He was completely distraught about it and towards the end of that year, he didn’t get a whole lot of opportunities.”

Davis Heller’s teammate Jim Jarvis spoke to 1819 News about his friend and his own experience feeling pressured to get the vaccine.

The pair became fast friends when they played in the same San Diego league. Jarvis said Heller was an amazing player, and even though they were on opposing teams, he was respectful.

“His first ‘at bat,’ he’s just like crushing line drives everywhere and obviously, he’s an impressive figure just because he’s so tall,” Jarvis remembered. “Usually people in baseball, there is a stereotype where if they’re playing really well they have pretty big egos.”

“But my first conversation with Davis, he was actually super friendly and open,” he said. “You could tell he was really a nice person and it wasn’t an act or anything.”

Jarvis said he also felt pressure to get the vaccine. He believes Heller took the chance and got vaccinated because he loved his team.

“There were like different guidelines if you didn’t get the vaccine and those guidelines came off as very, very strict,” said Jarvis. “It was to a point where you got the feeling that if you didn’t get the vaccine, you, like, basically were going to be kind of excluded from the rest of the team.”

“You were basically told that without getting the vaccine, you were hurting the team,” he continued. “And again, knowing Davis would do anything to help the team, that messaging is probably what struck him. He didn’t want to do anything that would come across as selfish or anything that would hurt his friends.”

Davis Heller continued to play ball and eventually transferred to North Greenville University.

His father said his son was very good at overcoming challenges.

“He was born with a cleft lip and had multiple surgeries,” DJ Heller remembered. “He was always having to overcome something.”

The 6-foot, 8-inch pitcher initially signed with Oklahoma after his junior year in high school. He suffered from “yips,” a sudden and unexplained condition that impacts a player’s abilities, but his father said he still didn’t give up.

“He was supposed to get drafted really high and all of a sudden, one day, he just couldn’t throw the baseball,” DJ Heller said. “And he didn’t quit.”

While still in high school, Davis Heller was treated for pericarditis. Years before going to college, he was given a clean bill of health. His dad said tests showed there were no longer any issues with his heart.

However, when he passed away nine months after receiving the vaccine, an autopsy showed his heart was double in size and was severely damaged.

“I remember talking the night before he was studying for a test,” Heller remembered of his child’s final hours. “He got up the next morning and had just showered and was sitting on the couch and he was gone. Just his heart gave out.”

“It was damaged to the point that they thought it was like a 70-year-old man’s heart who smoked his whole life,” he said. “But he never did any of that stuff. He was healthy.”

“You know, it’s pretty obvious to me what it was,” he continued.

DJ Heller believes the COVID-19 vaccine contributed to his son’s death, and he wants to spread awareness.

“I’m not looking for any money or a lawsuit and none of that’s going to bring my son back,” he told 1819 News. “So, this is just probably more so exposure and information as to what happened and the tragedy and the travesty of the decision-making that went on.”

Heller played under Coach Brad Bohannon, who left amid a gambling controversy. Rob Vaughn was named head coach in 2023.

The Heller family wants Heller to be remembered for being an excellent team member and friend.

“I think everybody that ever came in contact with Davis would say he was their best friend,” DJ Heller said. “He was faith-based. He was always there for anybody in need. He worked really hard. He loved his family.”

“He was a perfect son,” he added. “He did everything right, and it’s too bad because the world needs good people, and he’s not here. That’s hard.”

“He’s like the most selfless person I’ve ever met. He just puts everyone else in front of him,” Jarvis added. “He’s constantly checking in and he just genuinely cared about everyone that he knew and had a relationship with.”

The Davis Heller Memorial Foundation was established to continue Davis Heller’s legacy. The organization offers financial opportunities to players who value being a team player.

DJ Heller went public on the America Out Loud Pulse podcast with Dr. Mary Talley Bowden. Bowden is the founder of Americans for Health Freedom.

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1. We, the Leaders of BRICS countries, met in Kazan, Russian Federation, from 22 to 24 October 2024 for the XVI BRICS Summit held under the theme: “Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security”.

2. We reiterate the importance of further enhancing BRICS solidarity and cooperation based on our mutual interests and key priorities and further strengthening our strategic partnership.

3. We reaffirm our commitment to the BRICS spirit of mutual respect and understanding, sovereign equality, solidarity, democracy, openness, inclusiveness, collaboration and consensus. As we build upon 16 years of BRICS Summits, we further commit ourselves to strengthening cooperation in the expanded BRICS under the three pillars of political and security, economic and financial, cultural and people-to-people cooperation and to enhancing our strategic partnership for the benefit of our people through the promotion of peace, a more representative, fairer international order, a reinvigorated and reformed multilateral system, sustainable development and inclusive growth.

4. We commend the Russian BRICS Chairship for hosting an “outreach”/”BRICS Plus” Dialogue with participation of EMDCs from Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and Middle East under the motto: “BRICS and Global South: Building a Better World Together” in Kazan on 24 October 2024.

5. We welcome the considerable interest by countries of the Global South in BRICS and we endorse the Modalities of BRICS Partner Country Category. We strongly believe that extending the BRICS partnership with EMDCs will further contribute to strengthening the spirit of solidarity and true international cooperation for the benefit of all. We commit to further promoting BRICS institutional development.

Strengthening Multilateralism for a More Just and Democratic World Order

6. We note the emergence of new centres of power, policy decision-making and economic growth, which can pave the way for a more equitable, just, democratic and balanced multipolar world order. Multipolarity can expand opportunities for EMDCs to unlock their constructive potential and enjoy universally beneficial, inclusive and equitable economic globalization and cooperation. Bearing in mind the need to adapt the current architecture of international relations to better reflect the contemporary realities, we reaffirm our commitment to multilateralism and upholding the international law, including the Purposes and Principles enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations (UN) as its indispensable cornerstone, and the central role of the UN in the international system, in which sovereign states cooperate to maintain international peace and security, advance sustainable development, ensure the promotion and protection of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all as well as cooperation based on solidarity, mutual respect, justice and equality. We further emphasize the urgent need to achieve equitable and inclusive geographical representation in the staff composition of the Secretariat of the United Nations and other international organizations in a timely manner.

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From left: Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin; second right, foreground: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa; right, foreground: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan posing for a joint photo of the BRICS leaders during the 16th BRICS summit in Kazan. (Sergey Bobylev / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

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7. We reiterate our commitment to improving global governance by promoting a more agile, effective, efficient, responsive, representative, legitimate, democratic and accountable international and multilateral system. We call for assuring greater and
more meaningful participation of EMDCs and least developed countries, especially in Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean, in global decision-making processes and structures and making them better attuned to contemporary realities. We also call for increasing the role and share of women, especially from EMDCs, at different levels of responsibilities in the international organizations. As a positive step in this direction, we acknowledge the G20 Call to Action on Global Governance Reform launched by Brazil during its G20 presidency. We also acknowledge dialogues and partnerships which strengthen cooperation with the African continent like Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, India-Africa Forum Summit, Russia-Africa Summit and Ministerial Conference.

8. Recognizing the 2023 Johannesburg II Declaration we reaffirm our support for a comprehensive reform of the United Nations, including its Security Council, with a view to making it more democratic, representative, effective and efficient, and to increase the representation of developing countries in the Council’s memberships so that it can adequately respond to prevailing global challenges and support the legitimate aspirations of emerging and developing countries from Africa, Asia and Latin America, including BRICS countries, to play a greater role in international affairs, in particular in the United Nations, including its Security Council. We recognise the legitimate aspirations of African countries, reflected in the Ezulwini Consensus and Sirte Declaration.

9. We reaffirm our support for the rules-based, open, transparent, fair, predictable, inclusive, equitable, non-discriminatory, consensus-based multilateral trading system with the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at its core, with special and differential treatment (S&DT) for developing countries, including Least Developed Countries and reject the unilateral trade restrictive measures that are inconsistent with WTO rules. We welcome the outcomes of the 13th Ministerial Conference in Abu Dhabi (UAE) and reiterate our commitment to work towards the implementation of the decisions and declarations of WTO Ministerial Conferences. We note however there is still a need for further efforts in many outstanding issues. We emphasize the importance of reforming the WTO and strengthening the developmental dimension in its work. We commit to engage constructively within the WTO to attain the goal to deliver a fully and well-functioning two-tier binding WTO dispute settlement system by 2024 accessible to all, and the selection of new Appellate Body Members without further delay. We agree to enhance our dialogue on
multilateral trading system and WTO-related issues and welcome the establishment of the BRICS Informal Consultative Framework on WTO issues. We reiterate the decision under the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership 2025 to take actions to support the necessary WTO reform to enhance the WTO’s resilience, authority and efficacy, and promote development and inclusivity.

10. We are deeply concerned about the disruptive effect of unlawful unilateral coercive measures, including illegal sanctions, on the world economy, international trade, and the achievement of the sustainable development goals. Such measures undermine the UN Charter, the multilateral trading system, the sustainable development and environmental agreements. They also negatively impact economic growth, energy, health and food security exacerbating poverty and environmental challenges.

11. We reaffirm our commitment to maintaining a strong and effective Global Financial Safety Net with a quota-based and adequately resourced IMF at its center. We call for the reform of the Bretton Woods institutions, which includes increased representation of EMDCs in leadership positions to reflect the contribution of EMDCs to the global economy. We support a merit-based, inclusive and equitable selection process for the top positions at the Bretton Woods institutions, increased geographical representation and the role and share of women. We note the quota increase at the 16th General Review of Quotas (GRQ) and urge members to secure domestic approvals to make quota increase effective. We welcome the decision to create a 25th chair at the IMF Executive Board to enhance the voice and representation of Sub-Saharan Africa. We acknowledge the urgency and importance of realignment in quota shares to better reflect members’ relative positions in the world economy, while protecting the quota shares of the EMDCs, in particular, the poorest members. We welcome the IMF Executive Board’s ongoing work to develop by June 2025 possible approaches as a guide for further quota realignment, including through a new quota formula, under the 17th GRQ. The discussions should result in quota realignment that is fair and transparent, enhances the representation of underrepresented IMF members, and transfers quota share from advanced economies to EMDCs. We look forward to the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) 2025 Shareholding Review.

12. We recognise the crucial role of BRICS in the process of improving the international monetary and financial system (IMFS), with a view to making it more responsive to the needs of all countries. In this regard, we take note of the BRICS Chairship Research on the Improvement of the IMFS, which outlines core principles of security, independence, inclusion and sustainability crucial for economic and social prosperity. We encourage our Finance Ministers and Central /National Bank Governors to continue this work.

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A proposal to visualize the 17 SDGs in a thematic pyramid (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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13. We stress the universal and inclusive nature of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals, and that implementation should take into account different national circumstances, capacities and levels of development, whilst respecting national policies and priorities and in conformity with national legislation. We will exert all efforts to achieve sustainable development in its three dimensions and commit to put it at the center of the international cooperation agenda in order to better address imbalances and inadequacies of development. We condemn the attempts to subject development to discriminatory politically motivated practices, including but not limited to unilateral coercive measures that are incompatible with the principles of the UN Charter, explicit or implied political conditionality of development assistance, activities, aiming at compromising the multiplicity of international development assistance providers.

14. We underscore the key role of the G20 as the premier global forum for multilateral economic and financial cooperation that provides a platform for dialogue of both developed and emerging economies on an equal and mutually beneficial footing for jointly seeking shared solutions to global challenges. We recognise the importance of the continued and productive functioning of the G20, based on consensus with a focus on result-oriented outcomes. We support the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty and the work of the Task Force for a Global Mobilization against Climate Change, as well as the landmark Rio de Janeiro Declaration on International Tax Cooperation. We look forward to the successful hosting of the G20 leaders’ summit in Rio de Janeiro in November 2024 under the Brazilian presidency and reaffirm our willingness to coordinate our positions to enhance inclusiveness and amplify the voice of the Global South and further integrate their priorities in the G20 agenda through the consecutive G20 presidencies of BRICS member states – India, Brazil and South Africa – during 2023-2025 and beyond. In this regard, we also welcome and support the inclusion of the African Union as a member of the G20 at the G20 New Delhi Summit in 2023.

15. We reiterate that the objectives, principles and provisions of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), its Kyoto Protocol and its Paris Agreement, including its principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities (CBDR-RC) in the light of different national circumstances, must be honoured. We condemn unilateral measures introduced under the pretext of climate and environmental concerns and reiterate our commitment to enhancing coordination on these issues. We will strengthen cooperation on a whole range of solutions and technologies that contribute to the reduction and removal of Greenhouse Gases (GHGs). We also note the role of carbon sinks in absorbing GHGs and mitigating climate change, whilst also highlighting the importance of adaptation and stressing the need for the adequate provision of the means of implementation, namely financial resources, technology transfer and capacity building.

16. We recall that the UNFCCC, including the annual Conference of the Parties (COP) sessions, is the primary and legitimate international forum to discuss the issue of climate change in all its dimensions. We are deeply concerned with attempts to link security with the climate change agenda. We commend Egypt for hosting COP27 in Sharm El-Sheikh in 2022, where the Fund for Responding to Loss and Damage was established, and the UAE for hosting COP28 in Dubai in 2023, where the Fund was operationalized. We welcome the UAE Consensus achieved at COP28, including the decision entitled “Outcome of the first global stocktake”, and the UAE Framework for Global Climate Resilience. We express commitment to a successful COP29 in Azerbaijan, with an expectation of strong outcomes on climate finance to developing countries, as a critical enabler for delivering on the current and future nationally determined actions and ambitions in mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage. We support Brazil’s leadership in hosting COP30 in 2025 and welcome India’s candidacy to host COP 33 in 2028.

17. We reaffirm the importance of biodiversity conservation, including the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. We urge developed countries to ensure the provision of adequate, effective and easily accessible financial resources to developing countries to promote the conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity. We highlight the importance of improving capacity building, development and transfer of technology from developed countries to developing countries for the conservation, sustainable use and fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from the use of biodiversity.

18. We recognise that land degradation, desertification, and drought are posing serious threats to the well-being and livelihoods of people and the environment, and, whilst acknowledging the ongoing efforts in promoting sustainable land management practices, we call for the urgent provision of increased financial resources, strong partnerships, and integrated policies to address the challenges of land degradation, desertification, and drought. In this regard, we look forward to the forthcoming sixteenth session of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD COP16) that will take place in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2 to 13 December 2024.

19. In light of global efforts towards tackling global water scarcity challenge, we welcome the UAE and Senegal for co-hosting the 2026 UN Water Conference in the UAE.

20. While appreciating the efforts of our countries to preserve rare species and noting the high vulnerability of big cats, we take note of the Republic of India’s initiative to create an International Big Cats Alliance and encourage BRICS countries to work together to make further contributions to the conservation of big cats. We also take note that the UAE established the Mohamed bin Zayed Species Conservation Fund. In that regard we encourage BRICS countries to improve collective collaboration in areas of conservation and preservation of the most vulnerable species.

21. We reaffirm the need for all countries to cooperate in promoting and protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms under the principles of equality and mutual respect. We agree to continue to treat all human rights including the right to development in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis. We agree to strengthen cooperation on issues of common interests both within BRICS and in multilateral fora including the United Nations General Assembly and Human Rights Council, taking into account the necessity to promote, protect and fulfil human rights in a non-selective, non-politicised and constructive manner and without double standards. We call for the respect of democracy and human rights. In this regard, we underline that they should be implemented on the level of global governance as well as at national level. We reaffirm our commitment to ensuring the promotion and protection of democracy, human rights and fundamental freedoms for all with the aim to build a brighter shared future for the international community based on mutually beneficial cooperation.

22. We reiterate that the unilateral coercive measures, inter-alia in the form of unilateral economic sanctions and secondary sanctions that are contrary to international law, have far-reaching implications for the human rights, including the right to development, of the general population of targeted states, disproportionally affecting the poor and people in vulnerable situations. Therefore, we call for their elimination.

23. We recall the 2001 Durban Declaration and Programme of Action (DDPA) and the Outcome Document of the 2009 Durban Review Conference and acknowledge the need to intensify the fight against racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance as well as discrimination based on religion, faith or belief, and all their contemporary forms around the world including the alarming trends of rising hate speech, and acknowledge the annual UNGA resolution on “Combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism, and other practices that contribute to fueling contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance”.

Enhancing Cooperation for Global and Regional Stability and Security

24. We strongly support enhanced BRICS dialogue on policy and security issues. We welcome the Joint Statement of the BRICS Ministers of Foreign Affairs and International Relations Meeting in Nizhny Novgorod on 10 June 2024 and note the 14th Meeting of BRICS National Security Advisors and High Representatives on National Security held on 10-11 September 2024 in Saint-Petersburg.

25. We remain concerned about at the rise of violence and continuing armed conflicts in different parts of the world including those that have significant impact at both regional and international levels. We reiterate our commitment to the peaceful resolution of disputes through diplomacy, mediation, inclusive dialogue and consultations in a coordinated and cooperative manner and support all efforts conducive to the peaceful settlement of crises. We stress the need to engage in conflict prevention efforts, including through addressing their root causes. We acknowledge the legitimate and reasonable security concerns of all countries. We call for the protection of cultural heritage, particularly in regions affected by conflict, to prevent the destruction and illicit trafficking of cultural property, which is vital for preserving the history and identity of affected communities.

26. We stress that tolerance and peaceful coexistence are among the most important values and principles for relations between nations and societies. In this regard, we welcome the adoption of Security Council resolution 2686 and other UN resolutions in this regard which enjoy consensual support of UN member states.

27. We reiterate the need for the full respect of the international humanitarian law in conflict situations and the provision of humanitarian aid in accordance with the basic principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality and independence established in UNGA resolution 46/182. We call on the international community to seek collective answers to global and regional challenges and security threats, including terrorism. We stress the need to abide by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. We reiterate that differences and disputes between countries should be resolved peacefully through dialogue and consultation. We also underline the need to respect the legitimate and reasonable security concerns of all countries. We underscore the need for full, equal and meaningful participation of women in peace processes including in conflict prevention and resolution, peacekeeping, peacebuilding, post-conflict reconstruction and development, and sustaining peace.

28. We are deeply concerned over continued conflicts and instability in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, noting the Joint Statement by BRICS Deputy Foreign Ministers and Special Envoys at their meeting of 25 April 2024.

29. We mourn the tragic loss of civilian lives in the recent period and express sympathy with all civilian victims and their families. We call for urgent measures, in accordance with international law, to ensure the protection of lives.

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Palestinians line up to fetch some water in a refugee camp in Gaza. (Photo: Mahmoud Ajjour, The Palestine Chronicle)

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30. We reiterate our grave concern at the deterioration of the situation and humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the unprecedented escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and in West Bank as a result of the Israeli military offensive, which led to mass killing and injury of civilians, forced displacement and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure. We stress the urgent need for an immediate, comprehensive and permanent ceasefire in the Gaza Strip, the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages and detainees from both sides who are being illegally held captive and the unhindered sustainable and at scale supply of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, and cessation of all aggressive actions. We denounce the Israeli attacks against humanitarian operations, facilities, personnel and distribution points. For this purpose, we call for the full implementation of resolutions 2712 (2023), 2720 (2023), 2728 (2024) and 2735 (2024) of the United Nations Security Council and in this regard welcome the continuous efforts by the Arab Republic of Egypt, the State of Qatar, other regional and international efforts in order to reach immediate ceasefire, accelerate the delivery of humanitarian aid and Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. We call for adherence to international law. We are also alarmed that the further escalation of the
conflict in the Gaza Strip fuel tension, extremism and severe negative consequences both regionally and globally. We call on all relevant parties to act with utmost restraint and to avoid escalatory actions and provocative declarations. We acknowledge the provisional measures of the International Court of Justice in the legal proceedings instituted by South Africa against Israel. We reaffirm our support for the State of Palestine’s full membership in the United Nations in the context of the unwavering commitment to the vision of the two-state solution based on international law including relevant UNSC and UNGA resolutions and the Arab Peace Initiative that includes the establishment of a sovereign, independent and viable State of Palestine in line with internationally recognised borders of June 1967 with East Jerusalem as its capital living side by side in peace and security with Israel.

31. We express alarm over the situation in Southern Lebanon. We condemn the loss of civilian lives and the immense damage to civilian infrastructure resulting from attacks by Israel in residential areas in Lebanon and call for immediate cessation of military acts. We stress the need to preserve the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the State of Lebanon and to create conditions for political and diplomatic solution in order to safeguard peace and stability in the Middle East while underlining the importance of strict observance of UNSC resolutions 1701 (2006) and 2749 (2024). We strongly condemn attacks on UN personnel, threats to their safety and call upon Israel to immediately cease such activity.

32. We express our concern over the increasing incidents of terrorist attacks linked with ICT capabilities. In this regard, we condemn the premeditated terrorist act of detonating handheld communication devices in Beirut on 17 September 2024, resulted in the loss of life and injury of dozens of civilians. We reiterate that these attacks constitute a grave violation of International Law.

33. We stress the importance of ensuring the exercise of navigational rights and freedoms of vessels of all states in the Red Sea and Bab Al-Mandab Strait, in accordance with international law. We encourage enhanced diplomatic efforts by all parties to that end, including by addressing the causes of the conflict, and continued support for dialogue and Yemen’s peace process under UN auspices.

34. We stress that Syria’s sovereignty and territorial integrity must be strictly observed. We condemn illegal foreign military presence that lead to increasing risks of a large-scale conflict in the region. We emphasize that illegal unilateral sanctions seriously exacerbate the suffering of the Syrian people.

35. We condemn the attack against the diplomatic premises of the Islamic Republic of Iran in the Syrian capital Damascus by Israel on 1 April 2024 that constitutes a violation of the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

36. We recall national positions concerning the situation in and around Ukraine as expressed in the appropriate fora, including the UNSC and the UNGA. We emphasize that all states should act consistently with the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter in their entirety and interrelation. We note with appreciation relevant proposals of mediation and good offices, aimed at a peaceful resolution of the conflict through dialogue and diplomacy.

37. We stress the importance of full implementation of the JCPOA endorsed by the UNSCR 2231 (2015) and underscore the importance of a constructive approach based on the good faith by all relevant actors to resume full implementation of the JCPOA
commitments by all sides.

38. We reiterate that the principle “African solutions to African problems” should continue to serve as the basis for conflict resolution on the African continent. In this regard, we recognise the critical role of the African Union in the prevention, management and resolution of conflicts in Africa. We reaffirm our support for African peace efforts on the continent including those undertaken by the African Union and African sub-regional organizations in line with the principles of African ownership, complementarity and subsidiarity.

39. We commend the efforts and achievements by African countries in their pursuit of the peace and development, and to combat the growing scourge of terrorism in Africa, particularly in the Horn of Africa and the Sahel, and call for the channeling of more global counter-terrorism resources to developing countries to help African countries, particularly those affected, enhance their counter-terrorism capacity building. We commend efforts undertaken by African countries, the African Union, African sub-regional organizations and the United Nations in promoting peace process in South Sudan, stabilizing the situation in the Central African Republic as well as success of the Government of Mozambique supported by the Southern African Development Community (SADC) in counteraction to the terrorist threat in the North of the country.

40. We express grave concern over the escalating violence and humanitarian crisis in Sudan and reiterate our call for an immediate, permanent and unconditional ceasefire and peaceful resolution of the conflict with engagement in peace talks as the
only way to end this conflict, sustained, urgent and unimpeded access of the Sudanese population to humanitarian assistance, and the scaling up of humanitarian assistance to Sudan and neighboring states. We condemn the attack on the residence of the Head of Mission of the United Arab Emirates Embassy to Sudan on 29 September 2024, causing extensive damage to the  remises located in a residential area in Khartoum. We stress the fundamental principle of the inviolability of diplomatic and consular premises, and the obligations on receiving States including under the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and the 1963 Vienna Convention on Consular Relations.

41. We deplore the brutal gang attack in Pont Sondé, in Haiti, which resulted in the deaths and the forced displacement of civilians, and express deep concern over the ongoing deterioration of the security, humanitarian and economic situation in Haiti. We commend the establishment of Haiti´s Transitional Presidential Council and the creation of an electoral council, as essential steps to solve the current crisis. We stress that the current crisis requires a Haitian-led solution that encompasses national and inclusive dialogue and consensus building among local political forces, institutions and the society and call on the international community to support the interim government’s endeavors to dismantle the gangs, enhance the security situation and put in place the foundations for long-lasting social and economic development in the country and hold general elections by the end of 2025. We support the role of the United Nations in providing humanitarian assistance and highlight the need for international cooperation to address Haiti’s multifaceted crises effectively.

42. We emphasize the need for an urgent peaceful settlement in Afghanistan in order to strengthen regional security and stability. We advocate for Afghanistan as an independent, united and peaceful state free from terrorism, war and drugs. We urge for more visible and verifiable measures in Afghanistan to ensure that the territory of Afghanistan is not used by terrorists. We stress the need to provide urgent and uninterrupted humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people and to safeguard the fundamental rights of all Afghans including women, girls and different ethnic groups. We call on Afghanistan authorities to reverse the effective ban on girl’s secondary and higher education. We emphasize the primary and effective role of regional platforms and neighboring countries of Afghanistan and welcome the efforts of such regional platforms and initiatives to facilitate the Afghan settlement.

43. We call for the strengthening of non-proliferation and disarmament to safeguard and maintain global stability and international peace and security. We note the paramount importance of the efforts aiming at accelerating the implementation of the resolutions on the Establishment of a Zone Free of Nuclear Weapons and other Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East, including the Conference convened pursuant to UN General Assembly Decision 73/546. We call on all invited parties to participate in this conference in good faith and engage with this effort constructively.

44. We also call for the full implementation of the UNSC Resolution 1540 which offers states an important impetus for adopting effective and robust measures at the national level to prevent weapons of mass destruction, their means of delivery and related materials from getting into the hands of non-state actors, including terrorists, as well as frameworks for cooperation at the international level for this aim.

45. We reassert our support for ensuring the long-term sustainability of outer space activities and prevention of an arms race in outer space (PAROS) and of its weaponization, including through negotiations to adopt a relevant legal multilateral instrument to ensure global security. We recognise the submission of the updated Draft Treaty on the Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force against Outer Space Objects (PPWT) to the Conference on Disarmament in 2014 as an important step towards this goal. We welcome the consensual adoption of the Report of the UN Group of Governmental Experts on further practical measures for the prevention of an arms race in outer space on 16 August 2024, which provided substantive elements of a legally-binding instrument on PAROS. We stress that practical and non-binding commitments, such as
Transparency and Confidence-Building Measures (TCBMs), and universally agreed norms, rules, and principles may also contribute to PAROS.

46. Recalling the respective obligations of our States in the field of export controls stemming from relevant internationally recognised legal instruments, we underscore our determination to enhance dialogue and cooperation in this sphere with due account of the necessary balance between nonproliferation and peaceful uses of technology while ensuring legitimate rights of states to participate in the fullest possible exchange of scientific and technological information, equipment and materials for peaceful purposes.

47. We reiterate our unequivocal condemnation of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations whenever, wherever and by whomsoever committed while reaffirming that it should not be associated with any religion, nationality, civilization or ethnic group. We emphasize that terrorism is a common threat, which requires a comprehensive and balanced approach at global and regional levels with due regard to national priorities of States. We commit to enhance further international and regional cooperation to prevent and counter terrorist threats on the basis of full respect for the sovereignty and security of States and in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations and international law. We acknowledge that States have the primary responsibility in preventing and combating terrorism with the United Nations continuing to play central and coordinating role in this area. We recognise that any acts of terrorism are criminal and unjustifiable, regardless of their motivations, and stress the need to ensure strong collective response to the persistent and emerging terrorist threats without double standards. We reject any attempts at politicization of counter-terrorism issues and the use of terrorist groups to achieve political ends. We commit to take decisive measures to prevent and disrupt the spread of terrorist ideology and radicalization, the misuse of modern technologies for terrorist purposes, cross-border movement of terrorists, terrorist financing and other forms of terrorism support, incitement to commit terrorist acts, as well as recruitment of foreign terrorist fighters. We call for an expeditious finalization and adoption of the Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism within the UN framework. We call for concerted actions against all UN designated terrorists and terrorist entities.

48. We look forward to further strengthening practical counter-terrorism cooperation. We welcome the activities of the BRICS Counter-Terrorism Working Group (CTWG) and its five Subgroups based upon the BRICS Counter-Terrorism Strategy and the BRICS Counter-Terrorism Action Plan, including adoption of the CTWG Position Paper.

49. We reiterate our commitment to preventing and combating illicit financial flows, money laundering, terrorism financing, drug trafficking, corruption and the misuse of new technologies, including cryptocurrencies, for illegal and terrorist purposes. We reaffirm our commitment to the principles of technical and non-politicized nature of international anti-criminal cooperation including for the purpose of preventing and establishing financial traces of these crimes. We note the need to further strengthen such cooperation based on the relevant international legal instruments to which BRICS countries are parties, including relevant UN conventions and resolutions, regional conventions and treaties.

50. We call for an enhanced dialogue within BRICS on the issues of money-laundering and countering the financing of terrorism with the participation of relevant stakeholders. We emphasize the importance of creating conditions for the safe development of the younger generation, reducing the risk of their involvement in illegal activities and welcome the development of relevant international projects with the participation of young people.

51. We express concern over the situation with illicit drug production, trafficking and abuse worldwide, recognise that it seriously threatens public security and international and regional stability, health, safety and well-being of humankind and as well as undermines the sustainable development of States. We confirm our commitment to the existing international mechanism of drug control based on three UN drug control conventions. We acknowledge the importance of enhancing counter narcotics cooperation and strengthening contacts among BRICS law enforcement authorities and in this regard welcome the Joint Statement adopted at the Meeting of the BRICS Anti-Drug Working Group in Moscow on 22 May 2024.

52. We consider countering transnational organized crime as one of the key areas for international law enforcement cooperation. We also note that this cooperation shall not be politicized as it can cause harm to the overall fight against crime. We express particular concern with crimes which affect the environment that need to be addressed.

53. We are resolute to promote BRICS cooperation in the prevention of and fight against corruption and strengthen our coordination on major issues of the international anti-corruption agenda, including United Nations Convention Against Corruption. We are determined to honor our commitment and call for the international community to strengthen cooperation on denial of safe haven to corruption. We welcome the document “Formulation of the BRICS Common Vision and Joint Action on Enhanced Anti-Corruption Cooperation and Recovery and Return of Assets and Proceeds of Corruption” and attach importance to putting it into practice in accordance with our domestic frameworks. We appreciate the issuance of the Analytical Note on Asset Recovery in BRICS Countries by the Anti-Corruption Working Group (ACWG) and its efforts to step up collaboration among our practitioners in asset recovery. We also commend the ACWG for updating the document on BRICS Cooperation in Anti-Corruption Education, Knowledge-Sharing and Capacity-Building that benchmarks our collective achievements, including a number of expert initiatives held this year, and traces a way forward in this priority area.

54. We recognise the huge potential of ICTs bridging the digital divides for socioeconomic growth and development. We also acknowledge challenges and threats stemming from and within the digital realm. We call for a comprehensive, balanced, objective approach to the development and security of ICT products and systems as well as for the development and implementation of globally interoperable common rules and standards for supply chain security. We are concerned over the increase in frequency and sophistication of malicious use of ICTs. In this regard, we stress the importance of international cooperation in preventing and countering the use of ICTs for criminal purposes and therefore look forward to the adoption at the 79th UNGA session the draft UN Convention against Cybercrime; Strengthening international cooperation for combating certain crimes committed by means of information and communications technology systems and for collection, preservation and the sharing of evidence in electronic form of serious crimes. We also believe that technical assistance, capacity-building are foundational for developing resources, skills, policies and institutions necessary to increasing security of States while enhancing ICT resilience and to accelerate the digital transformation of States, taking into particular consideration the interests and needs of developing States. We underscore the leading role of the United Nations in promoting dialogue to forge common understandings in the security of and in the use of ICTs, including discussions on developing a universal legal framework in this realm and further development and implementation of universally agreed norms, rules and principles for responsible behavior of States in the use of ICTs. We commend the ongoing work of the UN OEWG on Security of and in the Use of ICTs 2021-2025 as a sole global and inclusive mechanism on this matter and support the establishment by consensus of a single-track, state-led permanent mechanism under the auspices of the United Nations, reporting to the First Committee of the UNGA, recognising the importance of the principle of consensus regarding both the establishment of the future mechanism itself as well as the decision-making processes of the mechanism. We are committed to promoting respect for States sovereignty and sovereign equality in the ICT environment, and oppose unilateral actions that could undermine international cooperation in this domain, including global supply chains sustainability.

55. We recognise the progress made in promoting BRICS cooperation in accordance with the Roadmap of Practical Cooperation on Ensuring Security in the Use of ICTs, and its progress report, including the establishment and further operationalization of the
BRICS Points of Contact Directory for pragmatic cooperation among national entities responsible for responding to ICT incidents as a confidence-building measure. We underscore the importance of establishing frameworks of cooperation among BRICS member states on ensuring security in the use of ICTs. We also acknowledge the need to advance practical intra-BRICS cooperation through the activities of the BRICS Working Group on security in the use of ICTs.

56. We express serious concern over exponential spread and proliferation of disinformation, misinformation, including propagating false narratives and fake news, as well as hate speech especially on digital platforms fueling radicalization and conflicts. While reaffirming commitment to sovereignty of States we emphasize the importance of information integrity and ensuring free flow of and public access to accurate fact-based information, including the freedom of opinion and expression as well as digital and media literacy in order to allow for meaningful connectivity, in accordance with applicable national and international law.

Fostering Economic and Financial Cooperation for Just Global Development

57. Recalling the 2023 Johannesburg II Declaration we reiterate our strong belief that multilateral cooperation is essential to limit the risks stemming from geopolitical and geo-economic fragmentation and commit to intensify efforts in areas of mutual interest, including but not limited to, trade, poverty and hunger reduction, sustainable development, including access to energy, water and food, fuel, fertilizers as well as mitigating and adapting to the impact of climate change, education, and health, including pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.

58. We emphasize the importance of the full implementation of Addis-Ababa Action Agenda adopted at the Third International Conference on Financing for Development in 2015 and the effective participation of developing countries in the Fourth International Conference on Financing for Development, which will be held in Spain from 30 June to 3 July 2025. We call on the developed countries to honor their commitment to financing for development and encourage their cooperation with developing countries in different development areas including taxation, debt, trade, official development assistance, technology transfer and reforming of international financial architecture.

59. We underscore the need to reform the current international financial architecture to meet the global financial challenges including global economic governance to make the international financial architecture more inclusive and just.

60. We note that high debt levels in some countries reduce the fiscal space needed to address ongoing development challenges aggravated by spillover effects from external shocks, particularly from fluctuations in financial and monetary policies in some advanced economies as well as the inherent problems with the international financial architecture. High interest rates and tighter financing conditions worsen debt vulnerabilities in many countries. We believe it is necessary to address the international debt properly and in a holistic manner to support economic recovery and sustainable development, taking into account each nation’s laws and internal procedures, accompanied by sustainable external debt and fiscal prudence. We recognise the need to address in an effective, comprehensive and systematic manner the debt vulnerabilities of both low and middle income countries. One of the instruments, amongst others, to collectively address debt vulnerabilities is through predictable, orderly, timely and coordinated implementation of the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatment with the participation of official bilateral creditors, private creditors and Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) in line with the principle of joint action and fair burden-sharing.

61. We recognise that the use of blended finance is an effective way to mobilize private capital to finance infrastructure projects. We note the important role of multilateral development banks and development finance institutions, in particular national development banks, in institutionally scaling up the use of blended finance and other instruments, and thereby contributing to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals in accordance with country-specific needs and priorities. To this end, we commend the work of the BRICS Public-Private Partnership and Infrastructure Task Force and endorse its Technical Report on Infrastructure Projects Blended Finance.

Image: New Development Bank’s logo in the HQ of the bank in Shanghai (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

62. We recognise the key role of the New Development Bank (NDB) in promoting infrastructure and sustainable development of its member countries. We support further development of the NDB and improvement in corporate governance and operational effectiveness towards the fulfillment of the NDB’s General Strategy for 2022-2026. We support the NDB in continuously expanding local currency financing and strengthening innovation in investment and financing tools. We encourage the Bank to follow member-led and demand-driven principles, the employment of innovative financing mechanisms to mobilize financing from diversified sources, and in this regard, we acknowledge the initiative to create new investment platform to leverage the existing institutional infrastructure of the NDB to boost the investment flow into the countries of BRICS and the Global South mechanisms. We support the enhancement of capacity building and knowledge exchange, including by building synergies with knowledge sources from developing countries, the assistance of member countries in achieving the SDGs and the further improvement of efficiency and effectiveness to fulfill its mandate, aiming to be a premier multilateral development institution for EMDCs. We agree to jointly develop the New Development Bank into a new type of MDB in the 21st century. We urge the Bank to execute its purpose and functions in accordance with the Articles of Agreement of the New Development Bank in a fair and non-discriminatory manner. We support the further expansion of NDB membership and expedited consideration of applications of
BRICS countries in line with the NDB General Strategy and related policies.  

63. We welcome the BRICS Interbank Cooperation Mechanism (ICM) focus on facilitating and expanding innovative financial practices and approaches for projects and programmes, including finding acceptable mechanisms of financing in local currencies. We welcome a continued dialogue between the ICM and the NDB.

64. We recognise the important role of BRICS countries working together to deal with risks and challenges to the world economy in achieving global recovery and sustainable development. We reaffirm our commitment to enhance macro-economic policy coordination, deepen economic cooperation and work to realize strong, sustainable, balanced and inclusive economic recovery. We emphasize the importance of continued implementation of the Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership 2025 in all relevant ministerial tracks and working groups.

65. We reiterate our commitment to enhancing financial cooperation within BRICS. We recognise the widespread benefits of faster, low cost, more efficient, transparent, safe and inclusive cross-border payment instruments built upon the principle of minimizing trade barriers and non-discriminatory access. We welcome the use of local currencies in financial transactions between BRICS countries and their trading partners. We encourage strengthening of correspondent banking networks within BRICS and enabling settlements in local currencies in line with BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative (BCBPI), which is voluntary and non-binding, and look forward to further discussions in this area, including in the BRICS Payment Task Force.

66. We acknowledge the importance of exploring the feasibility of connecting BRICS countries’ financial markets infrastructure. We agree to discuss and study the feasibility of establishment of an independent cross-border settlement and depositary infrastructure, BRICS Clear, an initiative to complement the existing financial market infrastructure, as well as BRICS independent reinsurance capacity, including BRICS (Re)Insurance Company, with participation on a voluntary basis.

67. We task our Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors, as appropriate, to continue consideration of the issue of local currencies, payment instruments and platforms and report back to us by the next Presidency.

68. We recognise the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement (CRA) being an important mechanism to forestall short-term balance of payments pressures and further strengthen financial stability. We express our strong support for the CRA mechanism improvement via envisaging alternative eligible currencies and welcome finalization of the amendments to the CRA documents. We acknowledge the successful completion of the 7th CRA Test Run and the fifth edition of the BRICS Economic Bulletin under the title “BRICS Economies in a Higher-rate Environment”.

69. We acknowledge the outcomes of the first cross-border BRICS Rapid Information Security Channel (BRISC) drills that would further strengthen the BRICS countries’ financial sector cyber resilience.

70. We highlight that secure, resilient, stable, effective and open supply chains are crucial for sustainable development. Acknowledging the role of the BRICS Members as the world largest producers of natural resources, we underscore the importance of strengthening cooperation of the BRICS Members across the entire value chain and agree to take joint actions with the aim to oppose unilateral protectionist measures that are inconsistent with the existing WTO provisions.

71. Concerned with the fast-paced digitalization process of all aspects of human life in the 21st century, we underscore the key role of data for development and the need to intensify the engagement within BRICS to address this issue. We highlight that fair, inclusive and equitable governance of data is critical to enable developing countries to harness the benefits of the digital economy and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence. We call for the design of a fair and equitable global framework for data governance, including cross-border data flows, to address the principles of collection, storage, use and transfer of data; ensure the interoperability of data policy frameworks at all levels; and distribute the monetary and non-monetary benefits of data with developing countries.

72. We emphasize that e-commerce has become an important driver of global economic growth, fostering international trade in goods and services, ensuring foreign investment flows and facilitating innovation. We are resolved to further increase trust in e-commerce and ensure full-fledged protection of the rights of e-commerce parties, by intensifying cooperation in the realms of utilizing digital technologies for consumer rights protection, exploring online dispute resolution tools and creating enabling environment for businesses to enter global markets, exchanging views on the issue of small value product trade through the cross-border e-commerce.

73. We agree that resilience of supply chains and unimpeded trade in agriculture along with domestic production are crucial for ensuring food security and livelihoods, especially for low-income or resource-poor farmers, as well as for net food importing developing countries. We recognise efforts to support smallholder farmers as an important part of national agriculture system. We welcome the Conference on Food Security and Sustainable Agricultural Development held on 27-28 of June 2024 in Moscow, and look forward to the upcoming Global Food Security Summit that would be held in Abu Dhabi on 26-28 November 2024. We reaffirm the need to develop a fair agricultural trading system and implement resilient and sustainable agriculture. We commit to minimize disruptions and promote rules-based trade in agriculture and fertilizers with the view to ensure a continuous flow of food and essential inputs for agricultural production which should be exempted from undue restrictive economic measures, inconsistent with WTO rules, including those affecting producers and exporters of agricultural products as well as business services with regard to international shipments. In this regard, we welcome the initiative of the Russian side to establish a grain (commodities) trading platform within BRICS (the BRICS Grain Exchange) and to subsequently develop it including expanding it to other agricultural sectors.

74. We recognise the effectiveness of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) of the BRICS countries as a well-established mechanism for trade and industrial cooperation and the facilitation of manufacturing, including those but not limited to high-tech sectors of the economy, IT and IT enabled services, tourism, port and transport infrastructure, development and commercialization of technologies as well as for the production of new types of value-added products. We also acknowledge that Special Economic Zones provide immense opportunities for encouraging additional investment in priority areas of economic development. We welcome the establishment of a forum for cooperation on SEZs of the BRICS countries. We agree to carry out practice-oriented activities including exchanges of best practices on implementation of standards and methodologies for managing SEZs.

75. We acknowledge that the MSMEs sector is a well-proved lever of economic growth, enabling an increase in overall labour productivity, household incomes and quality of goods and services. We intend to exchange best practices of supporting MSMEs, including through digital services and platforms aimed at simplifying business operations. We recognise the importance of maintaining existing value chains created with participation of MSMEs, as well as building up new cooperative ties for MSMEs, especially high-tech and innovation driven ones, within BRICS.

76. We acknowledge that the Partnership for the New Industrial Revolution (PartNIR) serves as a guiding platform for BRICS cooperation within the framework of the New Industrial Revolution to identify interests, challenges, and opportunities in the rapidly evolving industrial landscape and capacity building in the field of industry as well as ensures the continuity of BRICS industrial cooperation in a structured framework for sustained collaboration. We appreciate the efforts of the BRICS PartNIR Innovation Center (BPIC) in organizing events including BRICS Forum on PartNIR 2024, BRICS Industrial Innovation Contest 2024, BRICS Exhibition on New Industrial Revolution 2024, and the BPIC Training Programmes, and encourage all BRICS countries to actively participate in the above events. We appreciate the efforts of the BRICS Startup Forum in realizing start-ups projects that play crucial role in driving innovation and economic growth in the era of New Industrial Revolution. We look forward to deepening engagements with BRICS countries to participate in future events and activities of the BRICS Startup Forum. We note the agreement to launch the BRICS Center for Industrial Competences in cooperation with United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) to jointly support the development of Industry 4.0 skills development among the BRICS countries and to promote partnerships and increased productivity in the New Industrial Revolution. We endorse the decision by the PartNIR Advisory Group to create seven working groups, including on Chemical Industry; Mining and Metals; Digital Transformation of Industry; SMEs; Intelligent Manufacturing and Robotics; Photovoltaic Industry; Medical Devices and Pharma.

77. Recognising the importance of creating an enabling, inclusive, and secure digital economy and that digital connectivity is an essential prerequisite for digital transformation as well as social and economic growth, we emphasize the need to strengthen cooperation among BRICS countries. We also recognise that emerging technologies such as 5G, satellite systems, terrestrial and non-terrestrial networks, have the potential to catalyze the development of the digital economy. We acknowledge that resilient, safe, inclusive and interoperable digital public infrastructure has the potential to deliver services at scale and increase social and economic opportunities for all. We encourage BRICS members to explore the possibility for joint activities in the field of digital infrastructure to ensure the integrity, stability of the functioning and security of national segments of the Internet while respecting national legislative frameworks regarding any aspects of Internet use, including security ones. We note the need to enhance further intra-BRICS dialogue to unlock the enormous potential of ICTs and encourage policy exchanges and dialogues on Artificial Intelligence (AI), with a view to establishing an effective global governance framework, based on broad consensus, to boost national economies as well as to mitigate the risks of malicious use, misinformation, privacy leakage, prejudice and discrimination arising from such technologies, and to uphold a human-centred, development-oriented, inclusive, and sustainable approach, with the aim to improving people’s lives and bridging digital divides, especially between developed and developing countries.

78. Recognising that the rapid technological change, including the rapid advancement of Artificial Intelligence has the potential to bring new opportunities for socioeconomic development around the globe, we encourage more international discussions, we support the United Nations to play an important role in global AI governance and welcome the UN General Assembly resolution A/RES/78/311 entitled Enhancing International Cooperation on Capacity-Building of Artificial Intelligence, which was adopted by consensus. We look forward to BRICS cooperation to help developing countries strengthen AI capacity building. We encourage consultations on AI topic including through the established BRICS Institute of Future Networks (BIFN) Study Group on AI.

79. We reiterate our support to the work of the BIFN and encourage all BRICS members to nominate national branches. Recalling the decision of creation of four study groups under the BIFN council and noting the discussion on their draft Terms of References. We encourage BRICS members to actively participate in this regard, as appropriate. We encourage the study groups to start working and recognise the continuing efforts of the Focus Group on BRICS Platform on Digital Public Good created under the BRICS Working Group on ICTs.

80. While emphasising the fundamental role of access to energy in achieving SDGs and noting the outlined risks to energy security we highlight the need for enhanced cooperation among the BRICS countries as major producers and consumers of energy products and services towards fair, inclusive, sustainable, equitable and just energy transitions. We believe that energy security, access and energy transitions are important and need to be balanced taking into consideration full and effective implementation of the UNFCCC and its Paris Agreement. We reaffirm our determination to foster free, open, fair, non-discriminatory, transparent, inclusive, and predictable international energy trade and investment environment and agree to deepen technological cooperation. We stress the necessity for resilient global supply chains and stable, predictable energy demand in order to provide universal access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy sources as well as to ensure national, global and regional energy security. In this regard, we also strongly condemn all terrorist attacks against critical cross-border energy infrastructure and call for an open and unbiased approach to investigating such incidents.

81. We reiterate the need to take into account national circumstances, including climate and natural conditions, the structure of national economy and energy mix as well as the specific circumstances of those developing countries whose economies heavily depend on income or consumption of fossil fuels and related energy-intensive products to achieve just energy transitions. We believe that the efficient use of all energy sources is critical for just energy transitions towards more flexible, resilient and sustainable energy systems and in this regard we uphold the principle of technological neutrality, i.e. using all available fuels, energy sources and technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions which includes, but is not limited to fossil fuels with abatement and removal technologies, biofuels, natural gas and LPG, hydrogen and its derivatives, including ammonia, nuclear and renewable power, etc.

82. We call for allocating adequate, predictable and accessible finance from developed to developing countries for the just energy transitions, in line with the principles of CBDR-RC. Stressing that new industrial development models associated with energy transitions would require enormous investments in existing and new infrastructure.

83. We reject unilateral, punitive and discriminatory protectionist measures, that are not in line with international law, under the pretext of environmental concerns, such as unilateral and discriminatory carbon border adjustment mechanisms (CBAMs), due diligence requirements, taxes and other measures and reconfirm our full support for the call in COP28 related to avoidance of unilateral trade measures based on climate or environment. We also oppose unilateral protectionist measures, which deliberately disrupt the global supply and production chains and distort competition.

84. We welcome the ongoing cooperation under the framework of the BRICS Energy Research Cooperation Platform, including publishing BRICS Just Energy Transition Report, and note with appreciation the 6th BRICS Youth Energy Summit held 27-28 September 2024 in Moscow.

85. We recognise the important role of carbon markets as one of the drivers of climate action, and encourage enhancing cooperation and sharing experiences in this field. We oppose unilateral measures introduced under the pretext of climate and environmental concerns and reiterate our commitment to enhancing coordination on these issues. We welcome the adoption of the MoU on the BRICS Carbon Markets Partnership as a platform dedicated to sharing knowledge, experiences and case studies of developing carbon markets and discussing the potential intra-BRICS cooperation on carbon markets to exchange views on potential cooperation under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement among the BRICS countries.

86. We welcome the establishment of the Contact Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development by BRICS Environment Ministers on 28 June 2024 in Nizhny Novgorod and the adoption of the Framework on Climate Change and Sustainable Development at the High-level Dialogue on Climate Change (30 August 2024, Moscow). We look forward to establishing the BRICS Climate Research Platform (BCRP) to enhance the scientific and expert exchange of views, knowledge and best practices of the grouping.

87. We underscore the critical need for active climate adaptation projects, moving beyond research and forecasting to the implementation of practical solutions, advancing renewable energy, sustainable financing, low-emission technologies, and sustainable development investments, while highlighting the importance of collective action and international cooperation to address the adverse impacts of climate change and ensure inclusive, equitable climate initiatives.

88. Having significant deposits of a wide range of mineral resources, including critical, we commend the outcomes of the First Meeting of the Heads of Geological Services of the BRICS countries and acknowledge joint effort to launch the BRICS Geological Platform as the first step of practical collaboration in the field of geology and rational development of mineral resources.

89. Recognising that environmental problems are posing increasing threat, causing huge damage to the economy and affecting the quality of life of our citizens, we welcome the efforts to further develop the BRICS Clean Rivers Initiative within the framework of the BRICS Environmentally Sound Technology (BEST) Platform. We encourage more active involvement of young people in environmental activities believing it is critical to increase environmental culture and knowledge among the population, primarily young people.

90. Being fully aware of the critical importance of the oceans for sustainable development and climate stability, we recognise that appropriate planning and management, as well as adequate funding, capacity building and transfer and development of marine technology are essential to ensure the protection of the marine environment and the conservation and sustainable use of marine resources and biodiversity.

91. We support the Kimberley Process as the sole global intergovernmental certification scheme, regulating trade in rough diamonds emphasising our commitment to preventing conflict diamonds from entering the markets and acknowledge the launch of the Informal BRICS Cooperation Platform with the participation of African diamond-mining nations to ensure free trade in rough diamonds and the sustainable development of the global diamond industry. We welcome the UAE’s efforts as chair of the Kimberly Process for 2024. We support efforts to increase the turnover of precious metals within BRICS based on common
quality standards.

92. Acknowledging that developed transport infrastructure, safe, secure and cost-effective international transport routes, innovative technologies and regulations would facilitate trade flows and cross-border movement of people, we recognise the importance of integrating various modes of transport for an efficient and sustainable transport system in the BRICS countries. We welcome the outcomes of the First BRICS Transport Ministers’ Meeting in Saint-Petersburg on 6 June 2024 and look forward to further promoting transport dialogue to meet the demand of all stakeholders and to enhance the BRICS countries transport potential while also respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all member states while carrying out transport cooperation. We also look forward to further exploring opportunities to establish a logistics platform to coordinate and improve transport conditions for multimodal logistics between the BRICS countries.

93. We reiterate our support to the central coordinating role of the World Health Organization in the implementation of multilateral international efforts to protect public health from infectious diseases and epidemics and commit to reform and strengthen the international pandemic prevention, preparedness and response system. We recognise the fundamental role of primary health care as a key foundation for Universal Health Care and health system’s resilience, as well as on prevention and response to health emergencies. We welcome fostering closer ties among BRICS health institutions responsible for sanitary and epidemiological health and well-being, prevention, preparedness and response to epidemic prone communicable diseases and
health impact following disasters and encourage further exploring opportunities for knowledge sharing, exchange of expertise and undertaking joint projects in the health sector.

94. We acknowledge that BRICS cooperation on countering Tuberculosis (TB) and Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR) as well as strengthening capacities in preventing communicable diseases and other health issues such as non-communicable diseases, research and development, experience sharing, including on traditional medicine systems, digital health, nuclear medicine and radiopharmaceutical science, with a particular emphasis on strengthening the radiopharmaceutical supply chain and enhancing isotopes production, alongside fostering the development of advance digital solutions, greatly contributes to relevant  international efforts.

95. We support the initiatives of the BRICS R&D Vaccine Center, further development of the BRICS Integrated Early Warning System for preventing mass infectious diseases risks and the operations of the BRICS TB Research Network. We welcome the outcomes of the 79th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) High-Level Meeting on AMR, committing to a clear set of targets and actions, including reducing the estimated 4.95 million human deaths associated with bacterial antimicrobial resistance (AMR) annually by 10% by 2030. We express concern about the growing threat of AMR to all sectors of the economy, in particular healthcare, and note the timeliness of holding the first BRICS Conference on AMR in May 2024.

96. Recalling significant potential of BRICS countries in the field of nuclear medicine, we welcome the decision to establish a BRICS Working Group on Nuclear Medicine. We note the successful holding of the First BRICS Nuclear Medicine Forum on 20-21 June 2024 in St. Petersburg and the publication of the BRICS Review of Best Practices in Nuclear Medicine.

97. We welcome the release of the first edition of the BRICS Health Journal and take note of the creation of the BRICS Medical Association. We support the launch of the BRICS Public Health Institutes Network – a platform designed for exchange of experiences and best practices in strengthening and protecting public health.

98. We look forward to enhanced BRICS cooperation including through established mechanisms in remote sensing satellite applications for the economic and social development of the BRICS countries, including in support of combatting climate change, disaster risk reduction and early warning systems. We encourage enhancing inter-agency dialogue to further explore cooperation possibilities in the peaceful exploration and use of outer space and, in this regard, welcome the statement of BRICS Heads of Space Agencies.

99. Recognising that the BRICS countries have a huge tourist potential, we welcome the results of the first BRICS Tourism Forum, held in Moscow on 20-21 June 2024. We commit to further strengthening people-to-people connectivity, enhancing multi-stakeholder cooperation as well as developing joint projects in the tourist sphere. We appreciate the adoption of the Roadmap for BRICS Tourism Cooperation aimed at facilitating tourist exchanges, skills development, promoting sustainable tourism and digitalizing tourist services. 

100. We reaffirm our commitment to further advance and develop cooperation in the field of competition law and policy among BRICS countries with a view to contribute to sustainable development of markets, effective combatting anticompetitive cross-border practices, promoting healthy market environment. We acknowledge the role of the BRICS International Competition Law and Policy Center activities in knowledge creation and knowledge sharing amongst BRICS competition authorities and the importance to ensure the most favorable conditions for the competition law development of BRICS economies and work towards the elimination of monopoly barriers in socially important markets. We welcome holding of the IX BRICS International Competition Conference in 2025 in South Africa.

101. We welcome the continued evolution of cooperation among BRICS countries, including, but not limited to, further discussion on the Mutual Administrative Assistance Agreement, signature of BRICS Authorized Economic Operator Joint Action Plan among the BRICS Customs Administrations towards Mutual Recognition of Their Respective Authorized Economic Operator Programmes. Such cooperation enables the inclusion of new countries and their induction in the established process, capacity building, law enforcement cooperation, and the strengthening of cooperation among BRICS customs training centers to implement joint customs training activities and establishment of BRICS Centers of Excellence and its related online platforms.

102. Recognising the importance of further enhancing and institutionalizing BRICS tax cooperation, we welcome the adoption of the BRICS Heads of Tax Authorities Governance Framework as an important step towards systematic and consistent tax cooperation among BRICS countries.

103. We welcome the UN General Assembly resolution 78/230 on Promotion of inclusive and effective international tax cooperation at the United Nations. We express our appreciation for the commitment and dedication in developing the Terms of Reference for a United Nations Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation (UNFCITC) by the UN Ad Hoc Committee. We recognise the critical importance of developing the UNFCITC with its early Protocols to strengthen international tax cooperation and make it fully inclusive and more effective. We expect that the implementation of the UNFCITC will promote an inclusive, fair, transparent, efficient, equitable, and effective international tax system for sustainable development, with a view to enhancing the legitimacy, certainty, resilience, and fairness of international tax rules, while addressing challenges to strengthen domestic resource mobilization. We support initiatives to enhance tax cooperation and build a more progressive, stable, and effective international tax system, promoting tax transparency and facilitating discussions on effective taxation of high net-worth individuals.

104. We recognise the role of standardization tools in trade facilitation and agree to strengthen mutually beneficial cooperation in the sphere of standardization.

105. Recognising the importance of data, statistics and information for effective decision-making, we express our support to enhance the statistical cooperation within BRICS, including the annual release of the BRICS Joint Statistical Publication and the BRICS Joint Statistical Publication Snapshot, as well as exchange in best practices in the areas of official statistics in the member countries of BRICS.

106. We welcome the cooperation of the BRICS Intellectual Property (IP) Offices and exchange of best practices and experience in the IP field, in particular on advanced technological issues, aimed at supporting rightholders, including MSMEs and talent, in IP protection, commercialization and utilization.

107. We reiterate the need to further strengthen BRICS cooperation in the field of disaster management. We stress the importance of improving national disaster risk reduction systems and capacities so as to reduce disaster-related damage and protect infrastructure, human lives and livelihoods. In this regard, we encourage enhancing comprehensive disaster risk reduction capacity of BRICS countries to effectively resist natural disasters including floods, draughts, earthquakes, forest fires, etc. We support the enhanced dialogue on the development of systems for monitoring of natural hazards, forecasting natural disasters and their possible consequences, including the use of satellite Earth observation, promoting the development of information and early warning systems for natural disasters.

108. We reaffirm our commitment to enhancing BRICS cooperation in labour market development and promoting high-quality and full employment through sustainable economic and social development, inclusive and human-centered labour markets environment. We commit to continue efforts to develop comprehensive strategies for lifelong learning, vocational guidance continuous professional education and vocational skills training to ensure workers are equipped with the skills needed for the future of work and a resilient and equitable labour market. We emphasize the importance of regulating platform employment to ensure decent work, fair compensation, and social protection for all. We commit to improving safety and healthy working environment and modernizing social support systems and to take all relevant measures to reduce occupational injuries and diseases to meet the diverse needs of our populations.

109. We highlight the important role that public sector auditing plays in ensuring efficiency, accountability, effectiveness and transparency of public administration in BRICS countries and maintaining their financial and economic stability. We welcome increased interaction and sharing of best practices between supreme audit institutions of the BRICS countries. We also pay special attention to the need for improvement of the activities of external public sector audit institutions operating at the regional and local levels within BRICS countries, in accordance with Supreme Audit Institutions’ mandates and procedures, as appropriate.

110. We recognise the need of deepening cooperation in the field of justice within the BRICS framework and acknowledge the first Meeting of the BRICS Ministers of Justice. We recognise the importance of attracting investment and developing the economies of the BRICS countries and developing robust framework to address Investors’ grievances with further consultation and deliberations among BRICS countries. We take note of the Russian initiative to establish the BRICS International Investment Arbitration Centre.

111. We acknowledge the enormous potential of the BRICS countries in the sphere of Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) and the proposed Protocol to the Memorandum of Understanding on Cooperation in STI. We commend the work of the BRICS STI Steering Committee being one of the crucial mechanisms to manage and ensure the successful holding of BRICS STI activities. We welcome the establishment of the BRICS Working Group focusing on social sciences and humanities research and adaptation of the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the BRICS STI Framework Program to appropriately navigate the further management of Joint Calls for Proposals to support research work, including early launch of the BRICS STI Flagship Projects. Recognising the important role of scientometric systems and databases in modern scientific world and considering the research potential of BRICS countries, we encourage initiatives, aimed at exploring scientometric systems and databases in the BRICS countries.

112. We further underscore the importance of science, technology and innovation as a critical catalyst for economic development and improved quality of life of the people in the BRICS nations. We also note the progress made in advancing research, development and innovation programmes in critical cross cutting sectors, including biomedical fields, renewable energy, space and astronomical sciences, ocean and polar sciences, through joint research and innovation projects and promotion of joint institutional exchanges. We commend the STI sector for establishing the STI Framework Programme for possible funding of joint collaborative research and innovation is priority scientific areas. We encourage BRICS member countries to explore the possibility of allocating funding for research and development especially for supporting innovation initiatives for Startups and MSMEs, while aligning with their national priorities and strategies. We encourage the establishment of incubation and startup centers to promote innovation and technology within the BRICS STI Framework Programme.

113. We note with appreciation measures taken by BRICS countries to establish frameworks for building capacities in STI policy development; platforms for technology foresight studies; and supporting the capacities of young scientists and innovators. We encourage all BRICS member countries to explore ways to enhance investment in research infrastructures to advance scientific capabilities and competitiveness.

114. We welcome the enlargement of the BRICS Network University as well as expansion of its research areas including mathematics, natural sciences, social and humanitarian sciences, sustainable agriculture and food security, health sciences. We
agree to explore opportunities of cooperation between the BRICS member states to promote the development of the framework for mutual recognition of qualifications. We support continued dialogue on quality evaluation systems for BRICS universities, in line with their national education systems.

115. We reaffirm our commitment to enhancing BRICS Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) cooperation and appreciate the pivotal role of the BRICS TVET Cooperation Alliance as a multilateral platform for dialogue, experience sharing and project collaboration. We look forward to further discussions on qualitative and quantitative assessment of technical and vocational education and training systems through joint research projects. We support the establishment of the BRICS Digital Education Cooperation Mechanism as an outcome of the consultative process agreed by the BRICS Ministers of Education in the 2023 Skukuza Declaration and 2024 Kazan Declaration.

116. We appreciate the initiative to establish on 18 August BRICS Geographer’s Day as an annual professional holiday aimed at fostering joint research in geographical and geospatial sciences within BRICS to enhance capacities in addressing sustainable development challenges.

117. We welcome the hosting of the Global Education Meeting on 1 November 2024 in Fortaleza, Brazil, dedicated to SDG 4 and spearheaded by UNESCO, which for the first time will be held in a country of the Global South.

118. Recognising that development of high technology products based on domestic technological capacity is a factor predetermining competitiveness of national economies contributing to sustainable and inclusive economic growth, we encourage technological cooperation among BRICS countries. We acknowledge the Chairship’s initiative on the BRICS New Technological Platform under the umbrella of the BRICS Business Council, aimed at promoting technology and innovation cooperation between BRICS countries. We note the results of the BRICS Solutions Award 2024 that distinguished the best technological practices in priority areas of innovative development in the BRICS countries.

Strengthening People-to-people Exchanges for Social and Economic Development

119. We reaffirm the importance of BRICS people-to-people exchanges in enhancing mutual understanding, friendship and cooperation. We appreciate events, held under Russia’s Chairship in 2024 including in the fields of media, culture, education, sports, arts, youth, civil society, public diplomacy, and academic exchanges and acknowledge that people-to-people exchanges play an essential role in enriching our societies and developing our economies. In this regard, we call for more efforts to respect diversity of cultures, highly value inheritance, innovation and creativity, jointly advocate robust international people-to-people exchanges and cooperation and recognise the adoption of the UNGA Resolution A/RES/78/286 entitled “International Day for Dialogue among Civilizations”.

120. We stress our commitment to enhancing international cooperation in education, science, culture, communication and information in view of the complexity of contemporary challenges and transformations and in this regard note the relevance of the principles set forth in the UNESCO Constitution and its mandate to foster cooperation and peace through international collaboration that should be based on equality, dialogue, mandated programmatic activities and the spirit of consensus. We recall the UNESCO Framework for Culture and Arts Education that was unanimously adopted in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates in February 2024.

121. We underscore the vital role of culture in sustainable development as it largely benefits economic growth, social cohesion, and overall well-being. In this context, we reaffirm the importance of strengthening BRICS cooperation in the fields of culture and preservation cultural heritage. We welcome the BRICS Culture Festival that highlights the diversity and richness of the BRICS cultures and serves as a catalyst for fostering greater mutual understanding among our nations. We also welcome the BRICS Film Festival and music concerts. We encourage participation in BRICS Alliances, including the Alliance of Museums, the Alliance of Museums and Art Galleries, the Alliance of Libraries and the Alliance of Theatres for Children and Young People. We welcome the establishment the BRICS Alliance of Folk Dance and encourage the establishment of a BRICS Film Schools Alliance.

122. We regard these alliances as ideal in supporting cultural exchange, knowledge-sharing, and the preservation of our shared heritage. Through these initiatives, we aim to deepen cultural ties, enhance mutual appreciation, and contribute to a more interconnected world. We underscore the importance for the BRICS cooperation in the fields of preserving cultural heritage and culture. Recalling the UNESCO World Conference on Cultural Policies and Sustainable Development and the G20 New Delhi Leaders’ Declaration 2023, we recognise the power of culture as а catalyst for sustainable development including creativity, innovation and inclusive economic growth, social cohesion and environmental protection.

123. We emphasize that all BRICS countries have rich traditional sport culture and agree to support each other in the promotion of traditional and indigenous sports among BRICS countries and around the world. We strongly oppose any form of discrimination on grounds of age, sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin, religion, economic or other status of athletes. We recognise the importance of joint BRICS sports events, meetings, conferences, seminars in the field of sports science and sports medicine.

124. We attach great importance to the role of BRICS in developing sports ties among BRICS countries, including mass, youth, school and student sports, high-priority sports, parasport, national and traditional sports. In this regard we highly appreciate Russia’s Chairship for hosting the BRICS Games in Kazan in June, which brought together participants in 27 sports disciplines. 125. We reiterate the need to further develop youth exchanges, including in such areas as education, training, skills development, science, technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, healthy lifestyle and sports, as well as community service and volunteering. We positively assess the results of the BRICS Youth Summit, held in Ulyanovsk in July 2024, and recognise its value as a platform for open discussion and constructive interaction between the young people of BRICS countries. We intend to promote further the BRICS Youth Council which serves as a mechanism for the development and consolidation of the youth agenda within the alliance. We agree to explore the possibility to organize educational missions to the BRICS countries to raise awareness of young people about the values and principles of BRICS.

126. We commit to further promoting inter-parliamentary interaction between BRICS member states through regular exchange of views, experiences, and best practices in line with the Memorandum on the BRICS Parliamentary Forum signed on 28 September 2023 in Johannesburg and its Protocol signed on 12 July 2024. In this regard, we welcome successful holding of the X BRICS Parliamentary Forum in St.Petersburg on 11-12 July 2024.

127. We acknowledge that dialogue among political parties of BRICS countries plays a constructive role in building consensus and enhancing cooperation. We note the successful hosting of BRICS Political Parties Dialogue in Vladivostok in June 2024 and welcome other BRICS countries to continue the tradition of holding this event in the future.

128. We commend the progress made by BRICS countries in promoting affordable housing and urban development and resilience and appreciate the contribution of mechanisms including the BRICS Urbanization Forum, BRICS Friendship Cities and Local Governments Cooperation Forum and BRICS Municipal Forum to facilitating the building of more friendship city relations among BRICS countries and promoting the implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

129. We commend the successful holding of the BRICS Business Forum. We welcome the BRICS Business Council’s self-reflection with a focus on milestones achieved and areas of improvement. We support BRICS Business Council activities in different domains, including agriculture, finance and investment, infrastructure, transport and logistics, digital economy, energy manufacturing and sustainable development.

130. We acknowledge the critical role of women in political, social and economic development. We underline the importance of women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including their active participation in decision-making processes, including in senior positions, which are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace. We recognise that inclusive entrepreneurship and access to finance for women would facilitate their participation in business ventures, innovation, and the digital economy. In this regard, we welcome the outcomes of the Ministerial Meeting on Women’s Affairs and BRICS Women’s Forum held in September in Saint Petersburg under the theme “Women; Governance and Leadership” and recognise the valuable contribution of these annual meetings to the development and consolidation of women empowerment across all three pillars of BRICS cooperation.

131. We appreciate the efforts of the BRICS Women`s Business Alliance to promote women’s entrepreneurship, including the launch of the Common BRICS Women’s Business Alliance Digital Platform, the holding of the first BRICS Women’s Entrepreneurship Forum in Moscow on 3-4 June 2024 and the first BRICS Women’s Startups Contest. We support further strengthening cooperation between the BRICS Women’s Business Alliance and women entrepreneurs from the Global South, including the establishment of Regional Offices, as appropriate.

132. We encourage strengthening ties between experts communities and civil society of BRICS countries. In this regard, we welcome the successful holding of the BRICS Academic Forum and BRICS Civil Forum, activities of the BRICS Think Tank Council enhancing cooperation in research and capacity building among the academic communities of BRICS countries and the launching of the BRICS Think Tank Network for Finance that will support the discussions of the BRICS Financial Track. We endorse the establishment of the Civil BRICS Council.

133. We commend Russia’s BRICS Chairship in 2024 and express our gratitude to the government and people of the Russian Federation for holding the XVI BRICS Summit in the city of Kazan.

134. We extend full support to Brazil for its BRICS Chairship in 2025 and the holding of the XVII BRICS Summit in Brazil.

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Featured image: The plenary session of the Outreach/BRICS Plus meeting. (By Alexei Danichev / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

I visited Kamala Harris’s “Closing Argument” rally at the White House to ask people why they’re voting for Kamala Harris. Occasionally, if someone brought up the Constitution or freedom, I’d follow up and ask them for their thoughts on internet censorship during the Biden/Harris administration. More often than not, they abruptly ended the interview: “Just go away!”

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Between this and one-hour livestream that I recorded earlier, in line for the rally, the number one reason Harris supporters gave me was some variation of, “She’s not Donald Trump.” A close second was abortion/women’s rights.

Many people were offended or angry about comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico “garbage” joke at the previous night’s Trump rally in Madison Square Garden.

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Click here to watch the video

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HINCHCLIFFE: It is absolutely wild times. It really, really is. And, you know, there’s a lot going on. Like, I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah, I think it’s called Puerto Rico. Okay. All right. Okay. We’re getting there now. Again, normally I don’t follow the national anthem.

One Harris supporter said Hinchfliffe’s joke was evidence that Trump “hates people the way they were born.” Another said it was proof that Trump is a “fascist”.

But Hinchcliffe did not refer to the Puerto Rican people as “garbage”—just the island, which does have an environmental problem with an overwhelming amount of garbage.

Joe Biden went on to use the word “garbage” too, but he wasn’t joking.

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Click here to watch the video

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BIDEN: “And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his [supporters/supporter’s].”

It sure sounds like President Biden just called Trump supporters “garbage”’; however, the White House claims he was only referring to the comedian’s joke as “garbage.”

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Back at the rally, some people told me they were voting for Jill Stein. “It’s just because she has honor. The other parties? Different stories,” one told me. Another’s sign said they were voting for Stein’s Green Party for the first time because Harris is “committing genocide” through her support of Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza.

“You should skip me,” one man said, “I’m not a fan of Kamala at all.” He voted for Trump but was supporting his wife who voted for Kamala. She said she found Kamala “too liberal” but could not bring herself to vote Trump.

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“I don’t like a lot of the things that Donald Trump does and says but he was the better candidate for me,” the man said.

The woman put her arm around his shoulders and smiled.

Maybe we don’t need a Civil War after all!

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Zero Hedge, normally a reliable site, reports that the US Department of Defense and the NATO Secretary General claim that 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean soldiers have joined Russian forces in Kursk to help drive out the Ukrainian incursion.  

The Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, says that if these North Koreans do for Russia what French troops and NATO personnel are doing for Ukraine, the US will remove its ban on NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine.  

As Putin has said, this would mean the US/NATO are at war with Russia, which, Putin has implied, means a nuclear response from Russia. Why Putin is OK with drones fired deep into Russia but not missiles is unclear.

What do we make of this report?  It strikes me as nonsensical and contrary to Putin’s abhorrence  of expanding the conflict.  It also strikes me as nonsensical that Russia cannot expel Ukrainians from Kursk without North Korean reinforcements. 

There are two possible real explanations.  One is that Washington’s military/security complex wants to carry the war further into Russia, confident from Putin’s past non-response that Putin will do nothing about it, and the alleged Korean troops are an excuse.  The neoconservatives believe that Putin is nothing but hot air and that they can destabilize his regime by sending in missiles to kill Russians and destroy infrastructure all over Russia.  That Putin has been unwilling to use the available force that he has to end a conflict with a third world military with zero military technology of its own after three years suggests to the neoconservatives that Putin is so averse to war that he simply will not fight anything other than a limited military operation.  

The other explanation is that Putin is demonstrating to Washington that Russia, also, can bring in foreign resources to the conflict. The French send troops.  NATO sends “mercenaries.”  Washington provides weapons and people to operate them along with intelligence and targeting information.   If this is the explanation, assuming there actually are North Korean troops there, it shows that Putin has a defective understanding of the situation.

President Putin, you are at war.  You, Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of American hegemony.  American foreign policy has not repudiated the neoconservative doctrine that hegemony is the principal goal of US foreign policy. Therefore your support for peace negotiations is nonsensical.  Negotiations make no sense. They show you to be humanitarian but unrealistic.

Russia is in the way of Washington.  There can be no peace until Washington redefines its foreign policy goal, or Russia is broken up into its constituent parts.  While Putin speaks of peace negotiations with Ukraine, Washington is attempting to open a second front against Russia with a color revolution in Georgia.

Whatever peace deal Putin makes would have no more reality than the Minsk Agreement, Washington’s pledge not to move NATO one inch to the east, or any of the broken 20th century agreements.   Washington only respects force, and Russia has not demonstrated force.  Neither has China.  Neither has Iran.  The absence of countervailing power is building toward a major war.

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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.

Featured image source

This position of “communications and content specialist” that was advertised broadly yesterday on the internet by Booz Allen Hamilton represents perfectly what is happening to our country as part of the secret takeover of our society—which you are not supposed to notice because you are so caught up with Trump hate or Harris contempt, or some variation of that pre-planned political distraction called the “election.”

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The tempting position at BAH is described as providing support for external communications and marketing strategies for workshops, forums, action tracking, and other programs for corporations that have hired Booz Allen Hamilton as a consultant.   

Such corporate promotion of events and activities within businesses, between businesses, and for public consumption has a long history, and is neither remarkable nor notable.

However, the small print of the job description gives the entire project away.

“Top Secret/SCI (secret compartmented information) clearance with polygraph is required.”

The question that should come to mind for anyone reading this job advertisement who still has a brain is: “why does a corporate marketing consultant position require top secret clearance?”

That question is a good one. Top Secret/SCI, the highest level of clearance, is completely unnecessary for anyone handling communications and marketing for corporations. Of course, there could be circumstances in which work for a defense contractor might require security clearance, but that most certainly should not extend to marketing and advertising work using “Microsoft Office Suite Applications, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel” or “Adobe Creative suite tools, including Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Audition.”

The reason that clearance is required for corporate advertising is that secret governance after the 9/11 incident and the COVID 19 operation has extended from the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, to State, Treasury, Energy and Homeland Security, to the entire federal government, and increasingly to state government and to the defense and security contractors, often located outside the US in places like Israel, and to private intelligence/marketing/consulting firms like Booz Allen Hamilton. In short, what government and corporations do to the nation, and its citizens, is secret even from lawyers and judges.

Corporations can show you a memorandum of understanding they have with the government and they can act as if the classified codicil to the MoU does not exist—even though it describes what the corporation actually does, and what the true chain of command is. No one is entitled to know anything and in effect there is no judiciary any more.

So why do you need top secret/SCI clearance to work in marketing? Because much of the administration and finances of multinational corporations, from Coca Cola to Lockheed Martin, is labeled as classified using various bogus government-tied “security concerns” these days.

What does that mean specifically? It means that orders can be given within the corporation which are classified and for which you will go to jail for disclosing to anyone, and be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars too.

That means that as an employee, if you get an order to promote Covid 19 as a life-threatening virus, Covid vaccines as a scientific miracle drug, the 9/11 commission’s report as a scientifically sound study of the facts, or any other fraud that the rich and powerful may want to impose on citizens, you are free to do so, and you must do so, or else you will be brutally punished for not doing so without anyone ever knowing. Noone who gets in the way of corporate power will go unpunished.   

In such an ecosystem, it makes perfect sense to require a security clearance for marketing. After all, the images and storylines that are fed to the public, and to employees of government and corporations, are the front line in the war on truth, and the destruction of civil society.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

There Never Was a “New Corona Virus”, There Never Was a Pandemic

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2024

My research based on a careful review of  WHO data, concepts and “methodologies” confirms that there never was a dangerous epidemic, and the identity of the new virus was never confirmed. 

Iran: The Road to Armageddon? Felicity Arbuthnot

By Felicity Arbuthnot, October 31, 2024

The increasingly hysterical claims regarding Iran, the latest threat to life as we know it, is being brought to you by the very same warmongers who wrought the duplicity that resulted in Iraq’s murderous decimation, the hawks’ nest which is the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and their friends.

The BRICS’ 16th Summit in Kazan Revisited. “Not All That Glitters Is Gold”. BRICS Nation Follow the Same Globalist Agenda”. Peter Koenig and David Skripac

By David Skripac and Peter Koenig, October 30, 2024

A second look reveals—unfortunately—that the BRICS nations follow the same globalist agenda as does the Western world. And if the BRICS are representative of the Global South, then maybe much of the Global South has also been taken hostage by that globalist agenda.

Virtuous, Smug and Venal: British Electoral Interference in the US

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 31, 2024

US politics, to that end, remain a matter of enormous importance to the UK.  Interfering in US elections is a habit that dies hardest of all.  In 1940, with the relentless march of Nazi Germany’s war machine across Europe, British intelligence officers based in New York and Washington had one primary objective: to aid the election of politicians favouring US intervention on the side of Britain. 

Disaster for Ukraine Military as NATO Assets Fail Across Battlefield. “Zelensky Now Wants Nukes”

By Drago Bosnic, October 30, 2024

The situation is so bad that over half of the forcibly conscripted Ukrainians last no longer than a few days. It could be argued that this has essentially turned into a death cult of sorts, as evidenced by the disturbing views of some service members.

Lies Cannot Hide Israel’s Failed Attack on Iran’s Air Defense System

By Joachim Hagopian, October 30, 2024

Over a hundred US-made F-35 stealth fighter jets piloted by Israeli Air Force last weekend, assisted by US refuel tankers over Iraq, were able to provide safe enough distance and cover away from Iran’s solid, still intact air defense system to launch Israel’s air-to-air ballistic missiles at targets deep inside Iran.

From Cyber Parks to Sadhus, Change and Tradition in Urban India: Colin Todhunter

By Colin Todhunter, October 30, 2024

While societal structures may evolve externally, fundamental cultural and spiritual values remain deeply entrenched. Indian urbanism allows for the coexistence of age-old practices with contemporary realities; tradition and modernity, spirituality and materialism exist together.

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Zachary J. Patterson is an independent researcher, activist, and ROAPE.net contributor. He writes on Kenya, NGOs, socialist politics and movements on the continent. He works in the space of art and revolutionary politics and is an organizer with the Indianapolis Liberation Center.

Notes

The British cannot help themselves.  They are a meddling island people who conquered huge swathes of the earth in a fictional fit of absentmindedness and remain haughty for having done so.  They have fought more countries they can name, engaged in more wars they care to remember.  They have overthrown elected rulers and sabotaged incipient democracies.  In the twilight of empire, Britain sought, with heavy hearted reluctance, to become wise Greek advisors to their clumsy Roman replacement: the US Imperium.

US politics, to that end, remain a matter of enormous importance to the UK.  Interfering in US elections is a habit that dies hardest of all.  In 1940, with the relentless march of Nazi Germany’s war machine across Europe, British intelligence officers based in New York and Washington had one primary objective: to aid the election of politicians favouring US intervention on the side of Britain.  As Steven Usdin noted in 2017, they also had two other attached goals: “defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security.”

Much of this is also covered in Thomas E. Mahl’s 1998 study Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, which was initially scoffed at for giving much credence to Britain’s role in creating the office of Coordinator of Information, an entity that became the forerunner of the Office of Strategic Services, itself the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mahl was, it was revealed in 1999, on to something.  In a dull yet revealing study written at the end of World War II documenting the activities of the British Security Coordination office, an outfit established by Canadian spymaster Sir William S. Stephenson with the approval of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, activities of interference are described on a scale to make any modern Russian operative sigh with longing envy.  Those roped into the endeavour were a rather colourful lot: the classicist Gilbert Highet, future novelist of dark children’s novels extraordinaire Roald Dahl, and editor of the trade journal Western Hemisphere Weekly Bulletin, Tom Hill.

During Stephenson’s tenure, the office used subversion, sabotage, disinformation and blackmail with relish to influence political outcomes and malign the America Firsters.  (How marvellous contemporary.)  It cultivated relations with such figures as the 1940 Republican nominee for president, Wendell Willkie.  It also offered gobbets of slanted information to media outlets, often produced verbatim, by suborned pro-interventionist hacks.  In October 1941, BSC provided FDR a map purporting to detail a plan by Nazi Germany to seize South America, a document the president gratefully waved at a news conference. (The study claims its authenticity, though doubts remain.)

The Democrats are currently receiving the moral and physical aid of volunteers from the British Labour Party, who are throwing in hours and tears for a Kamala Harris victory in various battleground states.  Their presence was revealed in a now deleted social media post from Labour’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, noting that somewhere in the order of 100 current and former party staff were heading to the US prior to polling day to campaign in North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On the other side of the political aisle, Nigel Farage, now Reform UK leader and member for Clacton-on-Sea, has spent much time openly campaigning for Donald Trump.  Hardly surprising that he should complain about UK Labour doing what he has been doing habitually since 2016.  Walking political disaster and former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, historically the shortest occupant in that office, also put in an appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention to offer what limited support she could.

Trump’s campaign team has taken umbrage at the efforts of Labour Party staffers, enough to file a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC).  This is not small beer: any opportunity to allege an unfavourable distortion in votes will be pounced upon.  In an October 21 letter to the FEC’s acting general counsel, Lisa J. Stevenson, Trump’s attorney sought “an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election”. This took “the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President, the principal campaign committee of Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The claim makes mention of another effort in the 2016 elections, when the Australian Labor Party furnished the Bernie 2016 campaign representing Senator Bernie Sanders with “delegates to be placed with the campaign”.  The ALP covered flights and provided participants with a daily stipend.  The FEC subsequently found this to be a provision of campaign services to the Sanders campaign, and determined that it, and the ALP, had violated the foreign national prohibitions.  Each received civil penalties of $14,500.

Patel’s announcement, the claim goes on to argue, seems to emulate the overly enthusiastic ALP model.  As head of operations, “her LinkedIn posts indicate that she is speaking as a representative of the party.”  Her posts supported “a reasonable inference that the Labour Party will finance at least travel and facilitate room and board.”

As regulations stand, FEC rules permit the participation of foreign nationals in campaign activities as long as they remain uncompensated volunteers.  If one accepts the narrow reading of the laws according to the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Bluman v FEC, contributions must be of a non-financial nature.  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated that party staff have travelled to the US to campaign for Harris “in their own spare time”, staying with other volunteers in the process.  By no means is it clear that this did not involve a financial contribution.

Previous public efforts to sway election results in the US by British well-wishers hoping to test the waters have not ended well.  In 2004, The Guardian newspaper launched Operation Clark County, a smug and foolish effort to dissuade undecided voters in the swing state of Ohio from voting for the Republican incumbent, George W. Bush.  The response was one of unmitigated, volcanic fury.  A letter from Wading River, NY captured the mood: “I don’t give a rat’s ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life.  If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit.”  The letter is coarsening in its finality. “Oh yeah – and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.”  Starmer, beware.

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

Featured image: Farage speaking at a Trump rally in October 2020 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

[We repost this article by the late Prof. Joseph H. Chung, first published by GR in February 2023. Prof. Chung was an indefatigable voice on the politics of Asia-Pacific, especially on the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula.]

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This book is a golden mine leading us to the discovery of hidden not-so-angelic behaviours of the West’s colonialism and neo-colonialism in the Asia-Pacific (AP).

It reveals how the West stole the wealth of the AP; it reveals how the West destroyed the AP values; it shows how the West prevented the development of the AP; it explains how the West violated human rights of the AP people.

And, the book says why the West has behaved so badly in the AP. It is due to the West’s racism of treating the AP people as “Gooks”, that is inferior and stupid people having no right to respect and human treatment.

The book by A.B. Abrams has some unusual characteristics. To begin with, the author should have spent enormous time and resources to check every single event and story which have been hidden for political purpose or the fear of punishment of the responsible people or organization. In a book of 500 pages, there are more than 2,500 references.

These references are provided by Western sources. They are not provided by anti-West sources.

Another characteristic of the book is the use of simple and clear English language avoiding pedantic academic expressions. This facilitates the readers to easily understand the message of what is written.

The book has two parts and 12 chapters. The first part has eight chapters, while the remaining four chapters are in the second part.

The first part is titled: Challenging the Colonial Order: Asian Rejection of Western Hegemony from 1940s

The second part has the title: Post Colonial Empire: Sustaining Western Hegemony in Perpetuity

The first part is the micro-approach designed to show the frictional relations between individual country and the West, while the second part is a macro-approach putting focus on the relation between the West and the AP as a whole.

Chapter 1: Destroying Japanese Empire: How Asia’s First Industrial Power Undermined Western Control.

This chapter presents an extraordinary story of how Japan has undermined the West.

The modernization and the industrialization of the Meiji Restoration era allowed Japan to beat China in 1894-1895 and Russia 1904-1905 and it became the first Asian industrial power. This was an event which has given pride to Asians and alarm to the West.

Some of the Japanese leaders thought that it was Japan’s destiny to save Asia from the domination of the West. For instance, Naniwa Kawashima said,

“We will liberate various Asian peoples from their enslaved state, placing them all into a united bloc, we will free them from the unjust aggressive chokehold…We will curb the unjust, inhuman, thoroughly evil actions, which have been undertaken by the Europeans”.(p.13)

And the idea of Asian Co-prosperity Sphere emerged. It was Kiyashi Miki, Kyoto University professor who proposed the idea and was realized during the Pacific War.

However, the rise of Japan was a threat to the West’s racial supremacy. Even Adolf Hitler was alarmed by Japan’s rise as economic, military power and rival colonial power in Asia. This was something the West could not digest. And, the West decided to stop Japan’s rise.

In the 1930s, the Washington’s Naval Treaty and the British Naval Treaty resulted in the deep cut in Japan’s naval force capability. The oil embargo and embargo on the U.S. exports of strategic goods did hurt the Japanese economy and its war capacity.

These measures were designed to provoke War. At the last minute negotiation in Washington between Nomura Kichisaburo, Japanese Ambassador and U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Japan was asked to abandon China, which was impossible for Japan to accept. This led Japan to attack Pearl Harbour.

Japan lost the war. However, at the beginning of the war, Japan was victorious for which Asians were proud, because an Asian country could beat the Western power. And, this allowed the Asians to have confidence to better cope with Western powers.

USS Arizona burned for two days after being hit by a Japanese bomb in the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Thus, Japan undermined the West by beating the Western power, Russia. Moreover, during the Pacific war, Japan chased away the Western colonial powers from East Asia and gave the Asians to free themselves from their inferior complex vis-à-vis the West. This had the effect of undermining the West.

Another way of undermining the West was the brutal revelation of the West’s racism during the Pacific war. The West’s pretention of being civilized world was undermined by brutal racism against Asians.

There were many ways of exposing the West’s anti-Asia racism. For instance, Japanese were regarded as cockroach, monkey, venomous snakes or vampire bats.

The anti-Japanese racism has led to hatred against Japanese not only among the people but also civil and military leadership. Admiral William Halsey shouted “Kill Japs! Kill more and more Japanese!” Australian General Sir Thomas Blarney told Americans under his command: “Your enemy is a curious race, a cross between human being and the ape.”

The extreme racism and resulting hatred have induced the American soldiers to commit the worst kind of war crimes. The statement of an American officer is horrifying,

“Nothing can describe the hate we feel for the Nipps. The destruction, the torture, burning and deaths of countless civilians, the savage fight without purpose-to us they are dogs and rats-we have to kill them-to me and all of us killing nips is the greatest sport known-it causes no sensation of killing being but we really get a kick out of hearing the bastard screem”. (p.32).

The GIs had fun in exchanging the skulls of Japanese; some of the skulls were sent to people of highest decision makers in Washington.

Chapter 2: The War Against Defeated Japan: Punishing a Challenger to the West’s Regional Hegemony

Japan was punished for having the cardinal sin of attacking Pearl Harbour with the baptism of nuclear massacre and the humiliation of becoming American vassal state.

The established interpretation of the nuclear massacre in Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been the need for terminating the bloody war and saving millions of lives by not invading the territory of Japan.

But, Japan was ready to surrender as early as April 1945 and Japan was trying the negotiate surrender terms through Sweden, Portugal and Russia. Hence, it was not necessary to kill people with atomic bombs. Already, on July 12, Emperor Hirohito said: “It will be necessary to terminate the war without delay.” (p. 56)

Most of the American leaders were not seeing nuclear attack as necessary to make Japan surrender. General Douglas McArthur and the Naval Chief of Staff, Admiral William Leahy told President Harry Truman that the nuclear weapon was not necessary to make Nippon surrender. Admiral William Halsey qualified the atomic bomb as toy of the scientists wants to try.

The real reason for baptizing Japan with atomic bombs was to warn the Soviet on the one hand and, on the other, to experiment the impacts on human body. In other words, the Japanese were guinea pigs. It may be pointed out that Japanese medical experts and Japanese scientists were excluded from studies of nuclear impact on Japanese people.

For decades this “Hiroshima strike” photo was misidentified as the mushroom cloud of the bomb that formed at c. 08:16. However, due to its much greater height, the scene was identified by a researcher in March 2016 as the firestorm-cloud that engulfed the city, a fire that reached its peak intensity some three hours after the bomb. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Now, as for the punishment of the Japanese during the 7-year American military government, the book of Dr. Abrams (the book) shows the horror stories of the creation of American version of comfort women, open collective raping, killing and torturing civilians.

The Japanese were punished even after the departure of the American military government. The punishment of post-U.S. military government included the destruction of the Japanese values, making Japan a perpetual vassal state and the transformation of the Japanese territory into huge military base.

The emperor was made to fall from heaven to the earth. The peace constitution made Japan perpetual vassal country of Washington. The internal politics was to perpetuate the pro-U.S. politics run by the conservative party LDP. In 1983, Prime Minister Yusuhiro Nakasone, said that Japan was a American unsinkable aircraft carrier to defend American interests.

Chapter 3: Undermining China: America’s Twenty-year to destroy the People’s Republic.

In this chapter, we learn much about the desperate efforts to destroy China. Washington adopted the following fronts of war against China: the China civil war, Korean War and the deployment of CIA army to destabilize the Chinese regime.

As soon as WWII ended, there was the deep-rooted hostility between Kwon-Min-Tang (KMT of GMG) representing the pro-West Republic of China (RC) and the communist party representing the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

As soon as WWII was over, the shooting civil was declared and PRC was defeated and it escaped to Taiwan with national treasures including the total stock of gold. KMT of Chiang Kai-sek was defeated largely due to the corrupted leadership and poor discipline of its army. But this did not bother Washington.

“For the United States, a dependent client government, even the worst leadership, was far preferable to genuinely popular government that was independent of Western influence.” (p.85)

The U.S. provided full military support to KMT with the deployment of American military forces in large numbers to China to fight along with KMT forces to destroy infrastructure such as railways, factories, utilities and communication facilities. Moreover, Washington provided USD 2 billion in addition to ships, aircraft and military assets.

The U.S. withdrew its armed forces in China in 1949, but the CIA army of 10,000 personnel formed with former KMT forces which was trained in Myanmar was sent to mainland China to destabilize the PRC regime.

During the Korea War, the U.S. Air force attacked Chinese towns and key facilities near the Korea-China border. The objective of these attacks was the indirect way of supporting KMT in its war against PRC.

Another war front was the fight between PRC and the CIA- supported army of Tibet separatist army. The role of Dalai Lama was to destabilize Tibet under Chinese rule and, for this, he was given USD 180,000 a year. This shows the sustained intention of Washington to destabilize China.

The book shows that what the U.S. gained in this was the survival of Taiwan as an important military base of American military.

Chapter 4: The Rise and Fall of Independent Indonesia: A Twenty-year War to Restore Western Control

This chapter offers an extraordinary story of CIA in making Indonesia a corrupted pro-U.S. country and, what is also interesting is Japan’s role in Indonesia nationalists’ fight for liberation of Indonesia from Western control.

The Japanese army invaded Indonesia in 1942 and Dutch was chased away. Japan became the colonizer of Indonesia. But, Japan’s colonialism in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries was lenient and cooperative. In particular, General Hitoshi Imamura was very cooperative with Indonesians.

In fact, on 7 of September 1945, just before Japan surrendered, Japan made Indonesia an independent country. Indonesia was freed from the West’s colonial control. Moreover, Japan left various arms to Indonesian nationalist for their fight against West’s colonial efforts.

On August 17, 1945, the nationalist leader Sukarno declared independence of Indonesia and he became president. But the West began colonial offensive. Indonesia was placed under the British jurisdiction of British Admiral Earl Mountbatten and deployed British armed forces to restore its colonial status. These were gradually replaced by Dutch until 1949 and the Dutch left.

But Indonesia was facing a new kind of war, that is, the war between pro-Indonesia force and pro-Wrest forces. The pro-Indonesia force was led by Sukarno and the communist party PKI.

Sukarno has undertaken major reforms for the stability and the prosperity for Indonesia citizens. He nationalised the oil industry and he initiated the non-alignment movement. In fact, he hosted in 1950 the Bandung Conference on non-alignment movement with Yugoslavia, India, Egypt, Ghana and Indonesia. Russia was sympathetic to this movement.

All these displeased Washington, which had supported the Dutch forces during the war against Sukarno forces. This time, CIA started war against independent Indonesia. CIA deployed huge sum of resources to topple the nationalist government of Sukarno. In November 1957, President Eisenhower ordered CIA to overthrow the Indonesian government by arming and unifying the anti-government force.

Eventually, the government Sukarno was toppled by huge anti-communist forces led by General Mohammad Suharto who succeeded, on February 22, 1967, Sukarno as president of Sukarno, who was assassinated.

The fight for the replacement of nationalist, government saw an estimated 500,000-3 million suspected pro-Sukarno and pro PKI figures and their families killed. During the massacre for which the U.S. Embassy supplied kill kits, there were torturing of civilians, mass killings and hellish collective raping and other barbaric human right violations.

Chapter 5: America in the Philippines: Establishing a Colony and Neo-colony in the Pacific

This chapter presents how the U.S. conquered the Philippines and made it a solid front line force to dominate East Asia. The American perception of the Philippines was well expressed by U.S. Senator Albert J. Beverage.

“The Philippines are our forever. They are not capable of self government. How they could be? They are not self-governing race…We should not abandon our opportunity in the Orient.” (p.174)

Indeed, Washington did not abandon the opportunity. The U.S. invaded the Philippines in 1899 and met strong resistance resulting in the killing of 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 Philippine people in a country which had a population of 6 to 7 million. The U.S. used the scorched earth tactics causing suffering beyond imagination. In 1901, the First Republic of the Philippines was no more.

The U.S. was defeated by Japan in 1942 and during the whole period of Japanese occupation, the HUK (people army against the Japanese army) fought the Japanese until 1945.

However, the HUK’s independence and communist leaning made them a target for the U.S. which came back to re-colonise the Philippines.

In 1946, at the general election, the HUK obtained an important number of seats at the National Assembly in the name of the Democratic Alliance of Socialist Group. But, later, the group was not allowed to participate at elections.

Image: President Manuel Roxas (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The president was pro-U.S. Manuel Roxas who signed the U.S.-Philippines Trade Act under lopsided conditions in favour of Washington. Roxas launched all-out war against the HUK.

The final outcome of the American offensive was the total submission of the Philippines devoted to the promotion of American interest which included the deployment of U.S. forces for 99 years, 23 American military bases, transfer of the right of military decisions to the U.S. and other conditions.

Chapter 6: War in Korea: A New Frontier for American Power

This chapter shows how Washington was able to make a country of five-thousand-year-civilization as an absolutely obedient vassal country of the U.S.

The story of American conquest of Korea began in 1945 through military government (1945-1948). The transformation of Korea into U.S. vassal country began in 1945 by abolishing the government of the Republic of Korea under the leadership of Lyuh Woon-hyung (Yo Un-hyung) with a truly democratic constitution guaranteeing gender equality, the peasant’s land ownership, individual freedom and other stipulations in favour of the ordinary Koreans.

The U.S. military came in September, 1945 and, in December, the original Republic of Korea was dissolved and the military government started to rule South Korea.

The military government in Korea (USAMGIK) was ruled by the military who knew nothing about Korea. As a result, 90% of key government was filled by former collaborators with the Japanese colonial government who were supposed to be punished for their anti-Korea activities. But, they were not punished due to USAMGIK which hired them.

For these reasons, the USAMGIK was not popular. In fact, there were numerous protest movements throughout the country. The military government reacted violently. The Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) in cooperation with local youth terrorist gangs mercilessly attacked those who criticized the military government. There were three notorious youth terrorist gangs, namely, the North-West Youth League, the Dae-Han Youth Corps and the North-West Young men’s Association.

The CIC had absolute power and terrorized Koreans. The CIC and the youth terrorist groups have massacred the population of Hagui village. In the village, a pregnant woman was dragged from her home stabbed her thirteen times with spears causing to abort. She was left to die with child half delivered. There were many cases of such sadistic treatment of innocent civilians.

Direct American military rule ended in 1948, and was replaced by a client government under President, Sygnman Rhee, a Korean who had been flown back at the request of the U.S. military but quickly made poor impressions on all sides for his immaturity and conspicuous immorality. He had previously been impeached by the Provisional Government of Korea for the embezzlement of public funds, and had resided in the U.S. for 20 years.

Under Rhee the U.S. continued to dominate affairs within Korea, and the CIC and the terrorist youth groups continued to torture and kill in population centers suspected of dissent resulting in the deaths of two percent of the population. The most notorious incident was the massacre of much of Cheju Island’s population in 1949 after they began to openly resist the brutalities visited upon them by Rhee’s forces.

To perpetuate the power in the absence of popular support, and the political and economic success of North Korea, Rhee needed an enemy and the enemy was North Korea.

In fact, the war against North Korea provided an opportunity to keep power, as Rhee was losing seats in the National Assembly despite very widely employed terror tactics against voters.

Thus, the interest of Seoul and Washington coincided. Both the pro-U.S ROK government and the U.S. wanted to provoke the war against North Korea. As a matter of fact, there are evidences proving that the ROK arm attacked first the city of Haeju of North Korea and the North Korean army retaliated and the battle became rapidly degenerated into the Korea War of 1950.

Chapter 7: The Desolation of Korea

This chapter tells us the tragic suffering of South Koreans caused by the American military forces. In fact, some of the scenes portrayed in the book were witnessed by me during my one-month long on-foot march to avoid the horror of killings.

The book shows the barbaric atrocity committed by American forces during the three-month occupation of South Korea by the North Korean forces from June 1950 to September 1950 and the occupation of North Korea by UN forces led by American forces from September 1950 to December 1951.

The atrocities committed by the American forces in South Korea include beastly collective rapes and extreme sexual violence, destruction of houses and schools, torturing innocent people and mass killings.

An unidentified unit of U.S. 1st Cavalry Division troops withdraws southward on July 29, 1950, the day that a division battalion pulled back from No Gun Ri after killing large numbers of trapped South Korean refugees there. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The widely known war crime was the No-Gun-Ri massacre of 400 South Korean refugees who were escaping the war zones. They were held several days and killed by aircraft bombs, land-based machine guns and bayonets.

There were several cases of bridges destroyed killing people on the bridges. The destruction of Nakdong River Bridge was a typical case of mass murdering in a situation where the North Korea forces took four more days before they arrived to the bridge. There was no need to destroy the bridge so soon. But the GIs destroyed the bridge. The American soldiers killed the poor people on the bridge and those who tried to cross the bridge by swimming.

The narrative that the North Koreans were enemies and the war was fought to protect South Koreans did not stand up to scrutiny based on the atrocities widely committed by U.S. forces against southern civilians.

What the book reveals is American racism against Koreans. For Americans, South Koreans were inferior people and not trust worthy.

According to New York Times, General Douglas McArthur considered Koreans as fanatical, barbaric and racially inferior. A number of reports and witnesses indicate that the American military was ordered to kill all South Korean refugees. There was an order “shoot all refugees coming across the river.” (p.145)  Joe Lackman, soldier from the U.S. Cavalry at No-Gun-Ri was ordered to kill them all.

The war crimes committed by U.S.-led coalition forces were so cruel and so brutal and so beastly that it is not easy to mention. However, in the report of the Women’s International Democratic Federation (WIDF), one finds this statement,

“The Americans (in Pyongyang) made the Opera (House) and the remaining of the adjoining house into an American brothel. To this brothel, they took by force women and young girls caught in the street. As she (surviving victim) feared similar fate, she did not leave the dugout for 40 days.” (p. 254)

“The chairwoman of the Wonsan (North Korea) Women’s organization aged 25 pregnant was arrested and beaten by American soldiers, exposed publically in the town square and killed when a rod was thrown into her womb with witness present.” (p. 255)

Chapter 8: Vietnamese Long War: How a Thirty-Year Assault to Impose Western Control Ravaged a Nation

This chapter tells us how Washington has paid high price to make Vietnam pro-U.S. In 1858, Vietnam became the colony of France and the wellbeing of the Vietnamese people radically deteriorated in favour of France which became rich and powerful with its lucrative exploitation of Vietnam.

Vietnamese patriots fought ever since and, after WWII, the liberation-fight became more violent and better organized. France left Vietnam being chased by the Japanese 1942. But the ambition of France to keep Vietnam as its colony never weakened. General De Gaul’s colonial aid made a famous speech in 1944,

“I aim of France in her civilizing work in the colonies exclude any idea of self government and any possibilities of development outside French Empire; the formation of independent government in the colony, however distant cannot be contemplated.”(p.301)

The Vietnamese people declared the establishment of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. France reacted by deploying 200,000 French personnel supported by 200,000 local auxiliaries.

The anti-France liberation war was well organized by Viet Minh (Vietnam League for the Independence of Vietnam) led by Ho Chin Minh, France fought back by mass killings, burning houses, collective raping of women and girls. However, France lost the war despite generous military support by the U.S. The last battle was that of Dien Bien Phu.

The rein of terror thus ended and the era of French colonialism ended officially with the Geneva Agreement of June 1954. But, the Agreement resulted in the division of Vietnam into pro-West South Vietnam and pro-Vietnam nationalist North Vietnam.

Right after the Geneva Agreement, from September of 1955, the U.S. CIA began its operations of destroying independent North Vietnam and to make it subservient to Washington.

SP5 Capezza burning a dwelling (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The Vietnam War started with the deployment of U.S. overt operation personnel force leading to the all out war against North Vietnam and the Viet Cong of South Vietnam. The shooting war began with false claim of North Vietnamese attack on American warship in the Gulf of Tonkin.

The Vietnamese war lasted for 11 years and ended with the Paris Peace Agreement of January of 1973. And, Vietnam was unified under the fag of communism-friendly North Vietnam.

The holy war of free democracy conducted by Washington paid heavy costs. The U.S. lost 58,220 GIs; North Vietnam and Viet Cong sacrificed 1,100,000 fighting soldiers. The total number of civilian deaths was 2,000,000.

There was another cost which has surely tarnished America’s pretention of being a civilized country. But, such claim was made groundless due to the very uncivilized manners of GIs revealed by the massacre of Mai Lai. The statement of a helicopter pilot is shocking,

“There were elders, mothers, children and babies…They come into the town and rape the women, kill babies and kill everyone…And it wasn’t just murdering civilians. They are butchering the people. The only thing they didn’t do is cooking them and eating them.” (p.314)

There were many other cases like this. This was the real cost to be paid by America.

However, what is astonishing is the fact that Washington succeeded in making Vietnam its faithful ally.

Chapter 9: Japan after the War: From Primary Challenge to Key Upholder of Western Hegemony

This chapter offers an intriguing story of the profound fact that in international politics that there is never eternal foe or friend. It is a story of the able manoeuvre of Washington to force its former fatal enemy country to become obedient servant country.

Even before the ink of Douglas McArthur’s pen used for the Japan’s Surrender Document dried up, Japanese soldiers and its security forces were quickly mobilized to torture nationalist Koreans who were ruled by the American military government and succeeding Korean governments’ rigged election and military dictatorship.

They were mobilized for the Korean War. They were sent to fight for pro-US KMT army during the Chinese civil war.

All these military activities are against Washington’s original Japan policy of preventing it to rearm. In particular, the participation of Japanese fighting forces to the Golf War and the Iraq War was definitely illegal, that is, it violated Article 9 of the Peace Constitution of Japan.

Two questions arise. First, was Japan forced by Americans to remilitarize by the U.S.? Second, was it the wish of Japan to  remilitarize itself?

In the book, we see that by virtue of the San Francisco Treaty of 1952, Japan had to become more than American client country; it had to become Washington’s servant country. Japan was forced to become so due to the ultimatum of John Foster Dulles, U.S. Sectary of State who forced Japan to obey Washington or remain without nationhood.

As for the second question, there are powerful groups of politicians led by the Kishi Nobuske-Shinzo Abe line of far right groups who were dreaming for the restoration of Japan’s power and glory of past years. These people are represented by the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which ruled Japan every year since 1952 with the exception of six-years of Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ).

The book tells us that the LDP is partner of CIA which funds the election of LDP. As a result of the concerted strategy of remilitarizing, Japan has become the 8th most powerful military power in the world with as many as three aircraft carriers. Yet, the LDP and the Washington want more. In 2014, Japan passed a bill allowing Japan the right of “collective defence” meaning that Japan can go to war, if allies go to war.

This means that the U.S. can count on Japanese armed forces when and if Washington decides to attack China or North Korea. This is against Article 9 of the constitution. That is why the LDP and Washington are eager to amend the constitution despite the objection by the ordinary Japanese people.

Thus, Japan is threatening the regional stability of East Asia. The intriguing question is why Washington and LDP want to kill China. The U.S. wants to maintain its hegemony. Japan wants to dominate Asia again. Would the U.S. tolerate Japan’s regional domination? No! 

Chapter 10: Economic War on Asia: Crushing Rising Economies

This chapter presents a remarkable insight of the West’s economic war against East Asia. Usually, when we talk about economic war, we mean trade war. But there is a war much is more devastating; it is the financial war.

The East Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998 was a terrible financial war conducted by the U.S. The objective of the war was to prevent the success of the East Asian model of economic development which is based on the huge productive labour force, high rate of savings, the passion for education, productive collectivism, discipline and other elements of Asian values.

Annual growth of GDP per capita in affected countries from 1995 to 2000 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

The weapons of the war was neo-liberalism, especially, financial liberalization, the neutralization of government policies through deregulation and theft of target countries’ businesses.

The liberalization and the globalization of finance have led to the huge inflow of speculative and investment funds into East Asian countries. This flow of funds was disorderly and harmful in the absence of government control due to deregulation. These funds have led to real estate bubble (Thailand, Malaysia) or sky high short-term corporate debt (South Korea).

The real estate crisis led to massive outflow foreign funds depleting foreign reserves (Thailand and Malaysia). The excessively high corporate debt rate made South Korea Chaebols had to pay short-term debt causing the depletion of foreign reserves (South Korea).

Since foreign reserves are depleted, the target countries must borrow fund from IMF, which does lend funds. But, the offensive IMF imposes repayment conditions which are such that the economy of the target country can be ruined.

The IMF’s debt repayment conditions are called “structural adjustment”. The structural adjustments policy requires drastic devaluation of the target country’s currency, tight monetary policies, stringent fiscal policies, deregulation and privatization of public enterprises.

Under tight monetary policy, the interest rate flies high, while the tight fiscal policy makes tax jump up. These policies invite inevitably the wave of corporate bankruptcies and the army of jobless. The policy of deregulation means the government becomes powerless; the master of the economy is the corporations, especially the foreign corporations.

The drastic devaluation of local currency allows foreign corporations to acquire a ridiculously cheap price the ailing local enterprises. Furthermore, the privatization of public corporations leads to the inflation of the price of public goods.

Under these conditions, the destruction of the target countries’ economies is inevitable. But, fortunately, South Korea and other East Asian countries have survived the crisis and avoided the total destruction of their economies. In short, the American financial war against East Asia did not enjoy the lasting victory.

The book is rich in providing meaningful aspects of the American financial war against East Asia. For instance, it shows the amazing story of ordinary South Koreans who gave personal wedding gold rings, golden necklace other gold product of UAS 2 million worth to pay the debt to IMF.

The book shows how American banks, insurance companies and manufacturing firms acquired almost freely parts of Hyundai, Samsung and other Chaebols. The book shows also how foreign companies bought privatized public utilities (water supply) in other target countries.

Chapter 11: Asia Divided: Unifying Initiative as a Threat to Western Primacy

This chapter discusses the lopsided bargaining power between the West and East Asia. The West is unified through EU NATO and common values system. On the other hand, East Asia is divided by religion, culture, political regime and pro-West and pro-East Asia groups of countries.

True, there is a number of multilateral organizations in East Asia. Some of them are composed of East Asian countries including ASEAN + Three (APT) which is active. Malaysia proposed the East Asia Economic Group, but it was not realized.

On the other hand, as far as Pan-Asia financial institutions are concerned There the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralism (CMIM) which plays the same role as IMF’s role. It has funds of USD 240 billion. Members are the APT.(ASEAM plus China, Japan and Korea).

Then, there is Asian Bond Market Initiative (ABMI) initiated also by APT with the mission to promote local currency denominated bonds.

The CMIM allows East Asia to be less dependent on IMF. These institutions allows East Asia to avoid the tragedy of the Asian Financial Crisis (AFC) of 1997-1998.

Then, there are two multilateral financial and investment institutions which allow East Asia to exert influences on regions outside East Asia.

First, there is the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with 106 member countries composed of 42 Asian countries, 21 European countries, 8 African countries, 8 South American countries, and 1 North American country. The function of the Bank is to develop infrastructure facilities needed for sustained economic development.

Its initial capitalization is USD 100 billion. It is the first time that an Asian financial institution can play leading role outside Asia Moreover, it allows East Asia less dependent on the World Bank.

The second is the BRI (Belt and Road Initiative). As of 2020, 147 countries are members including Sub-Saharan Africa (43), Europe (18), Central Asia (17), East Asia and Pacific (25), Latin America and Caribbean (20), the Middle East (17), North America (1) and South Asia (6).

Thus, East Asia is now better prepared to defend against the West’s financial and economic control. 

Chapter 12: Pivot to Asia and China’s Rise: Can a Western Dominated Order be perpetuated?

This chapter is the last one and it shows, in fact, the risky part of the West’s desire to maintain its domination in East Asia. The West led by the U.S. has deployed enormous resources to maintain its regional hegemony in East Asia. It has conducted wars; it deployed CIA to topple regime or government which are not West-friendly.

But, the power of the West’s domination in East Asia has weakened despite all these efforts. Hence, the stumbling block to the perpetuation of the West’s hegemony depends on the containment and even the destruction of China.

Now, despite the demonization of China through the weaponization of human right issues and trade war, the power of the West’s hegemony has been losing its strength.

The last means of destroying China and perpetuating the West’s domination is the military conquest. The book presents lengthy analysis of factors which might lead to possible Sino-American shooting war. The analysis puts focus on the various factors which could be responsible for the actual occurrence and the outcome of the war.

Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary, made the following statement which is clearly what the U.S. wants,

“The United States has an ideology of world hegemony and does not accept any prospect of any country being sovereign or acting on its own. You have to be an American vassal state. Just as the United States has turned all Europe, Canada, Australia and Japan into vassal state, that is the only term as sovereign, independent countries following their own interests…The situation will become more and more hostile. It is not going to go away, because the United States is guided by…ideology of American world hegemony which means hegemony over Russia and China”. (p.433)

Obama’s Asia Pivot is intended to transform the whole of East Asia anti-China battle ground. In addition to the deployment of 60% of U.S. navy, 30,000 GIs, Washington made Cambodia and Vietnam the American military equipment depot and Thailand along with Malaysia the American base of drones. The Philippines is expected to provide key logistic support for American hegemony war.

Moreover, the main NATO countries are expected to participate in the anti-China war. Japan is expected to speed up its militarization and play the leading mercenary role in the Sino-American war. The army of South Korea may also join the U.S. hegemonic war.

I may add that the Quad, the AUSUK and the Indo-Pacific Strategy of Japan, Canada and U.S. alliance countries are expected to play a role in this war. In short, Washington is accelerating the preparation of fatal ant-China war.

However, the book makes a critical analysis of the weakness of American military capabilities. First, the American forces are too much dispersed all over the world. The U.S. has 800 military bases in foreign countries, 174 in Germany, 113 in Japan and 83 in ROK.

Second, the U.S. excessively depends on foreign countries for parts and equipment needed for the production of military equipment. Brett Tingley, defence reporter observed:

“Currently, the U.S. almost entirely reliant on foreign made electronics…” (p. 438)

The report of the Multiple Defence Department reads:”By mid 2010s, there were only two or even one domestic firm producing key defence products, and in some cases, none as local manufacturing forced the Pentagon to look abroad”. (p.437)

Third, the defence industries are over spending due to corruption. New York Times observed.

“The Pentagon’s spending of public money is a dirty business, one that too often has nothing to do with national defence”. (p.441).

The book offers ample information proving the superior efficiency and effectiveness of the Chinese military industries. For example, in the U.S. developing fifth generation of stealth fighters cost USD 55.5 billion as against mere USD 4.4 billion to develop them in China.

By and large, the military superiority of the U.S. is not necessarily threatening China. But what is threatening to China is the blockage of the Malaccan Strait.

In fact, in September 2014, the U.S forces conducted the Valiant Shield exercise to prepare for the blockade of the Malacca Strait and other seaways such as the Sunda Strait and the Lombok Strait. The blockade of these seaways will certainly strangle the Chinese economy.

China is well aware of this threat; more than 80% of oil needed in China comes through these seaways. Therefore, China is doing everything to use alternative sources of energy. The development of electric railways, electric bus and electric cars are promoted to avoid the consequences of the naval blockade of these seaways.

To sum up, this book by Dr. A.B. Abrams opens the door to the wealth of facts allowing us to see what are behind the deep routed racism of the West and how the West will continue to conduct its holy war to subjugate and rule East Asia. This frightens us, because the West-Asia hegemonic war will kill us all.

I thank and congratulate Dr. Abrams for giving us this precious book which should be read by all, especially the Western media.

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Dr. Joseph H. Chung is professor of economics at Quebec University in Montreal (UQAM) and member of the Center of Research on Integration and Globalization (CIEM) of UQAM. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

If you’ve been getting information about the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict only from the mainstream propaganda machine, there’s just one “reality” you’re aware of – “Ukraine is winning”. The Kiev regime is “so successful” in its fight against the Russian military that it got tired of “all this winning”. In fact, it was so tired that it decided to switch to a “losing strategy” in previous years and is reverting to the “victory plan” just now.

This vaunted “plan” boils down to NATO joining the fray and “defeating Russia”. There’s just one “tiny” problem with it – the political West cannot win a direct confrontation with Moscow, meaning it needs a different strategy. One of the recent examples of this was Zelensky’s threat that the Neo-Nazi junta will acquire nuclear weapons. In other words, its forces are “so successful” on the battlefield that they need nukes to stop the Kremlin.

The situation is so bad that over half of the forcibly conscripted Ukrainians last no longer than a few days. It could be argued that this has essentially turned into a death cult of sorts, as evidenced by the disturbing views of some service members. In the meantime, the Russian military keeps obliterating high-priority targets (usually with its unparalleled long-range strike weapons), including the grossly overhyped US-made “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, as well as equipment and various military facilities across NATO-occupied Ukraine, particularly in the Odessa oblast (region).

Western-sourced armor is also suffering high attrition rates, with cases of “Abrams” and “Leopard 2” tanks destroyed in pairs, while not even additional Soviet-era tank armor helps against Russian weapons. High-value targets were also neutralized in Nikolayev and Lvov.

The situation is particularly bad in the Kursk oblast, where the Kiev regime forces are suffering insurmountable losses, surpassing 20,000 soldiers, according to military sources. Footage from the area shows heavy casualties for the Neo-Nazi junta troops, while the Russian military not only managed to destroy NATO-sourced armor, but it even captured “Abrams” and “Leopard 2” tanks.

The now legendary “Lancet” drones are also continuing their unprecedented win streak, neutralizing both personnel and air defense systems. Moscow’s forces are regularly preventing the Kiev regime’s offensive actions in the area and are even launching counterattacks, including with the help of volunteers, particularly Serbs who are quite happy to use the opportunity to destroy NATO equipment and personnel. Still, the Neo-Nazi junta is desperate to hold its most important PR frontline.

To that end, its forces are even resorting to the use of German-made chemical weapons. However, while these horrible weapons (banned by numerous international agreements) are indeed extremely deadly, they are a desperate, last-ditch effort by the Kiev regime. Meanwhile, Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) are launching ever more attacks against the Neo-Nazi junta forces, with deadly effect. When combined with the Kremlin’s world-class long-range strike capabilities, these attacks result in massive casualties for the Kiev regime, exacerbating its already atrocious manpower problems. In addition, Russian military sources report that 46% of all enemy equipment destroyed during the Kursk oblast incursion so far was of Western origin, clearly implying that the Neo-Nazi junta forces are becoming dependent on NATO handouts more than ever.

This is a rather grim prospect for the Kiev regime, as its forces actually performed better with Soviet-era weapons and equipment. Namely, these systems are far more robust than the extremely sensitive NATO-sourced equivalents that are also quite costly and very difficult to service (much less replace). At this point, even most Western analysts admit that the Neo-Nazi junta is paying a heavy price for its PR adventure in the Kursk oblast, particularly as much of the forces needed in the far more strategically important Donbassare rerouted to hold the line in the Kursk area. As a result, the collapsing defenses in the Donbass are falling even faster, with the Russian military advancing steadily in multiple directions, taking one critical settlement after another. Even the staunchest Kiev regime supporters are dumbfounded by the lack of sensible military priorities of its leadership.

The best they can do, starting with Volodymyr Zelensky, is to blame everyone but the actual culprits – themselves. For the umpteenth time, it’s “the world’s fault” that the Neo-Nazi junta is losing. Desertion, conscription dodging and even the refusal to go back home by Ukrainian POWs are widespread, with the Kiev regime trying to resolve the chronic lack of manpower with far stricter forced conscription and the introduction of more NATO personnel and foreign mercenaries in general.

However, these are only temporary solutions that cannot ensure the Neo-Nazi junta’s survival. Terrified of the scenario of complete collapse, the United States is even trying to (ab)use the alleged presence of North Korean troops as a supposed “red line” and an excuse to intervene directly. However, it still doesn’t want NATO to be involved head-on, which is why it’s “slow-walking” Kiev regime’s membership prospects.

Still, in a futile attempt to intimidate Moscow, Washington DC and Brussels even organized nuclear exercises in mid-October. Unmoved by this, the Kremlin responded with its own nuclear drills, as well as a reiteration of security guarantees to Belarus, its closest ally. NATO further escalated by repeating the Pentagon’s talking points about the alleged presence of North Korean troops, insisting they are “helping Russian forces regain territory in Kursk [oblast]”. Once again, we “suddenly” have these “genetically altered supersoldiers” supposedly sent by Pyongyang, with “only 12,000 of them” replacing “at least 600,000 dead Russian soldiers” (the mainstream propaganda machine has the habit of simply flipping Moscow’s and Kiev’s casualties). However, lying about the results of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict will certainly not change its outcome.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

In recent times a subject of great concern for health has been that powerful multinational companies are introducing several products which are highly hazardous for people, exposing them to several serious ailments and diseases including cancer.

As the incidence of several serious afflictions and diseases including several kinds of cancer has increased at a very fast pace in several countries, several public interest groups have been seeking scientific help to find out if several products believed to be highly hazardous products are responsible for this. As a lot of scientific evidence has become available regarding highly hazardous products, cases which seek billions of dollars worth of damages have been decided in favour of persons whose health was damaged by hazardous products while even more cases are pending.

At the same time, powerful corporations have sought all kinds of devices to escape the responsibility, going to the extent of merging themselves in other companies. While this is the situation in some of the richest countries, the situation in several parts of the global south are even worse as some of the highly hazardous products that are banned or highly regulated in richest countries are exported to the global south where these are used much more indiscriminately. In the context of hazardous agro-chemicals and weed-killers or their ingredients, a lot of controversy has centred around cancer-linked glyphosate and Roundup.

Recent disclosure by leading environmental organization Friends of the Earth have revealed that Residential Roundup products are more toxic to consumers and the environment than ever before.

“Not only has manufacturer Bayer [OTCMKTS: BAYRY] failed to remove glyphosate from all Roundup products, as promised, but new formulations of Roundup are 45 times more toxic to human health, on average, following long-term, chronic exposure”, Friends of the Earth has stated in a press release dated October 22, 2024. They also pose greater risks to the environment.” 

This press release by Friends of the Earth (FoE) says,

“Bayer announced it would remove glyphosate from consumer products starting in 2023 in response to tens of thousands of lawsuits linking the weed-killer to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Friends of the Earth reviewed Roundup weedkillers for sale at the two largest U.S. home and garden retailers – Home Depot [NYSE: HD] and Lowe’s [NYSE: LOW] – to determine whether the company followed through as of October, 2024.”

FoE adds,

“Not only do several Roundup products still contain glyphosate, but eight new Roundup products contain chemicals of dramatically greater concern. With no requirement from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to warn consumers of the new dangers, people are unknowingly being exposed to higher risks.” 

According to the FoE statement,

“Roundup products sold to consumers now contain combinations of four new active ingredients as replacements for glyphosate: diquat dibromide, fluazifop-P-butyl, triclopyr, and imazapic. All four chemicals pose greater risk of long-term and/or reproductive health problems than glyphosate based on the EPA’s evaluation of safety studies. They have been linked to a variety of harms to human health, including birth and developmental abnormalities; reproductive dysfunction; kidney or liver damage; and irritation, inflammation, or allergic reactions affecting the skin, eyes, and respiratory system. The worst offender is diquat dibromide, found in all of the new Roundup formulations. It is 200 times more chronically toxic than glyphosate, is classified as a highly hazardous pesticide, and is banned in the European Union.” 

Further this statement says,

“In addition to the threat to human health, the new Roundup weed-killers also endanger animals and the environment. On average, they are more toxic to bees, birds, fish, aquatic organisms, and earthworms. They are also more persistent in the environment and more likely to leach into groundwater, increasing the risk of contaminating waterways and drinking water.” 

“The human toll of Roundup is enormous – tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and their health because of this toxic weed-killer. With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite,” said Kendra Klein, deputy director of science for Friends of the Earth. 

This statement adds,

“Internal corporate documents unearthed during the Roundup litigation show the profound extent of deceit and disinformation that Monsanto deployed to cover up the dangers of Roundup. Our analysis reveals that Bayer continues to mislead consumers, exposing them to far greater risks with no warning. While the new active ingredients are listed on Roundup product labels, as required by law, there is no language alerting consumers to the higher risks they pose. The average consumer – even if they notice the new ingredients – knows little about the toxicology of glyphosate compared to the new ingredients that are taking its place.” 

The FoE statement also informs us that as many as over 120 organizations have called on Home Depot and Lowe’s to take action to #RejectRoundup and make their garden product shelves safer overall.

At the same time concerns are also increasing in many countries regarding the agricultural use of chemical weed-killers as very serious health hazards could be seen in very remote villages where it will be difficult even to monitor and the linkages of highly hazardous products with serious diseases may be more difficult to establish, even though such diseases are certainly increasing in the wake of the wider spread of such products. Highly hazardous herbicides are being promoted as a package along with certain seed varieties and are an integral part of the spread of several GM crops which in themselves are also health hazards and ecologically disruptive, as pointed out by several senior scientists. So the real task and the real challenge before us is to work for the spread of natural farming ad ecologically protective farming so that health and sustainable livelihoods can be protected and at the same time biodiversity and environment can also be protected.

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include When the Two Streams Met (Freedom Movement of India), Man over Machine (Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas for present times) and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Sustainable Pulse

In recent weeks, the United States and its vassals and satellite states have been pushing the narrative that North Korea is allegedly “sending infantry to aid the Russian military” due to its supposed “massive losses”.

Both the Kiev regime and South Korea (specifically its National Intelligence Service or NIS) insisted they have information that Pyongyang allegedly “sent around 12,000 soldiers to deploy in Ukraine”. Many outlets of the mainstream propaganda machine keep publishing all sorts of unsubstantiated reports, with claims ranging from North Korean troops that are supposedly “already deserting” and then being “forced into penal units” to elite special forces that are a danger to the Neo-Nazi junta forces. South Korean sources are even presenting rather unclear satellite imagery as “proof” of the supposed “large-scale deployment of North Korean soldiers”.

There are other reports designed to fit into the political West’s usual propaganda narrative, such as the claim that Russia supposedly asked North Korea to “help drive Ukrainian forces out of Kursk [oblast/region]”. The NYT insists that Pyongyang allegedly sent 5000 soldiers to “help Moscow”, quoting American and Kiev regime officials as their primary source. Expectedly, no other evidence was presented to corroborate such claims. However, this didn’t stop the US from (ab)using these unsubstantiated reports to “draw red lines regarding North Korean presence in Ukraine”. Namely, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking him to “brief the committee on Russia’s use of North Koreans in Ukraine”, insisting this should be considered a “red line for the US”. However, it seems he decided to up the ante.

“If North Korean troops were to invade Ukraine’s sovereign territory, the United States needs to seriously consider taking direct military action against the North Korean troops,” Turner posted on X, adding: “I have long challenged the Biden-Harris Administration’s unwise position on restricting Ukraine’s use of US weapons against targets within Russian territory. If North Korean troops attack Ukraine from Russian territory, Ukraine should be permitted to use American weapons to respond.”

Now that Secretary Austin has finally acknowledged that North Korean troops are in Russia preparing to enter the conflict with Ukraine, the Biden-Harris Administration must make clear that North Korean troops entering this conflict are a red line for the United States.

I have… https://t.co/Mi0VfuUdGb

— US Rep. Mike Turner (@RepMikeTurner) October 23, 2024

It could be argued that Turner, a Republican, could certainly be trying to (ab)use the narrative for political purposes, although this still doesn’t explain the need to go that far. Only the most aggressive warmongers in the Washington DC oligarchy use such rhetoric, particularly one concerning long-range strikes deeper within Russia. Worse yet, the troubled Biden administration also seems to be embracing this escalating rhetoric. White House National Security spokesman John Kirby claims that US intelligence services “found evidence that at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers arrived at Russia’s Pacific port of Vladivostok earlier this month” and that these troops then “traveled onward to multiple Russian military training sites in eastern Russia, where they are currently undergoing training”. He also added that “if they deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game”.

Neither Turner nor Kirby specified what exactly the Pentagon would do (much less how), but if they were indeed suggesting direct military action, the only logical conclusion is that the warmongering oligarchy in Washington DC is more out of touch than previously thought. Namely, if those North Korean troops are indeed deployed in Kursk oblast (region), any US/NATO missile and/or jet sent to attack them will be promptly shot down by Russian fighter jets and/or SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems. It would be even worse if the US or some other NATO member tried launching long-range missiles at Russia, as this would prompt the Kremlin to respond directly by launching its own weapons (particularly hypersonic ones, which the political West lacks entirely due to growing technological inferiority). Moscow already used these to neutralize thousands of NATO personnel.

Russia also sent a very clear message when NATO started flirting with the idea of the so-called no-fly zones over Western Ukraine, launching hypersonic missiles at an area that was virtually on the Polish border. This meant that any NATO forces foolish enough to try and cross the border would get annihilated in minutes. Obviously, the Pentagon is perfectly aware of this, which raises the obvious question – why is the US suddenly making threats it cannot fulfill (at least without risking to blow up the world)? Namely, days before US officials made these laughable threats, the Pentagon refused to support the assertion that North Korean troops are fighting in Ukraine, citing the lack of any conclusive evidence. On the other hand, even if Russia does have foreign troops within its sovereign territory, the US and/or NATO are the last to have a say in this matter.

What’s much more apparent is that the political West (or should we say the Deep State that’s also in bed with other warmongering oligarchies, particularly the one in Brussels) is determined to escalate tensions in the entire world and perhaps even ensure at least one war starts, so the (most likely) upcoming Trump administration inherits one. If we assume that Donald Trump really doesn’t want to start any new wars (and there’s certainly some merit to that, as he refused to invade Venezuela during his first presidency), then the war criminals in Washington DC have just over a week to start one, anywhere in the world. Whether it’s an escalation in Ukraine, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific or perhaps even at home, it doesn’t really matter to these creatures (because calling them humans would be too much of a stretch), as long as there’s more war, death and destruction.

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image source

A three-day gathering (October 22-24) held in the city of Kazan in the Russian Federation represented the 16th Annual Summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa Plus (BRICS).

At present there are nine governments that have officially joined the multilateral organization which are the five already mentioned along with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been approved for membership by the body although they have not formally accepted. Nonetheless, there was high-level representation from Riyadh in attendance in Kazan led by Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

The Final Declaration of the BRICS Summit held under the theme: “Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security” covered 32 pages encompassing 134 points of agreement. Much of the focus in the document revolves around the desire for the democratization of international trade and the dissolution of punitive and coercive measures including sanctions and economic blockades. (See this)

36 governments were represented at the Summit while 13 of these nations have been invited to become “partner states.” This collection of countries poised to join BRICS as “partner states” were Turkey, Indonesia, Algeria, Belarus, Cuba, Bolivia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria, and Uganda.

In an unfortunate episode of disunity within South America, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was blocked from joining BRICS as a result of a veto by the Republic of Brazil which apparently cited the criticism by the western imperialist states and their allies in regard to the recent elections that extended the tenure of President Nicolas Maduro. In response, Maduro after returning to Venezuela, proclaimed that no one will halt the Bolivarian Republic in its international efforts.

A statement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in part that:

“The Venezuelan people feel indignation and shame at this inexplicable and immoral aggression by Itamaraty (foreign ministry), maintaining the worst of Jair Bolsonaro’s policies against the Bolivarian Revolution founded by Commander Hugo Chávez.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended the BRICS Summit remotely after it was announced that he had experienced a head injury. 

Interestingly enough, many of the heads-of-state and officials in attendance at the BRICS Summit in Kazan have recognized President Maduro as the legitimate leader of the socialist-oriented state, including host member President Vladimir Putin. Venezuela has thwarted numerous attempts to overthrow its government by successive administrations in the United States since the ascendancy of the former late President Hugo Chavez a quarter-century ago.

134 Points of Unity Confirmed

Some of the highlights embodied within the Kazan Declaration include proclamations related to the necessity of the Global South states to win their right to self-determination and national sovereignty. The objectives of achieving genuine economic growth and development for the majority of the world’s population will not occur absent the political independence from neo-colonialism led by the U.S. in the 21st century.

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The plenary session of the Outreach/BRICS Plus meeting. (By Alexei Danichev / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

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The BRICS Declaration passed in Kazan demands the diplomatic and military recognition of the territorial unity of the Syrian Arab Republic which has been the focus of imperialist destabilization efforts for more than a decade. This same declaration goes on to oppose the recent bombings of Yemen which has acted in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine and Lebanon in the face of genocidal aggression from Tel Aviv coordinated and bolstered by Washington and its NATO allies.

Unlike other gatherings sponsored by the western industrialized states, the BRICS Kazan Declaration is in support of the just struggles of the Palestinians and other targeted nations in West Asia which are subjected to constant military attacks by the State of Israel and its principal supporters in the U.S.

In points 29-30 it emphasizes:

“We mourn the tragic loss of civilian lives in the recent period and express sympathy with all civilian victims and their families. We call for urgent measures, in accordance with international law, to ensure the protection of lives. We reiterate our grave concern at the deterioration of the situation and humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the unprecedented escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank as a result of the Israeli military offensive, which led to mass killing and injury of civilians, forced displacement and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

Several points within the Declaration urge the member states and participants to enhance their internal and cross-border financial transactions in a manner which can be beneficial for the peoples of the Global South. Hyperinflation within the developing nations is serving as a major impediment to qualitative growth.

The precipitous decline in the value of national currencies across many sections of Africa, Asia and Latin America stems from the lack of controls over the role and value of the U.S. dollar. Mechanisms for trading in national currencies could provide greater purchasing power for the developing states, which would undoubtedly ease the problems of housing shortages and food deficits.

Point 65 in the Declaration from Kazan goes on to state:

“We reiterate our commitment to enhancing financial cooperation within BRICS.  We recognize the widespread benefits of faster, low cost, more efficient, transparent, safe and inclusive cross-border payment instruments built upon the principle of minimizing trade barriers and non-discriminatory access. We welcome the use of local currencies in financial transactions between BRICS countries and their trading partners. We encourage strengthening of correspondent banking networks within BRICS and enabling settlements in local currencies in line with BRICS Cross-Border Payments Initiative (BCBPI), which is voluntary and non-binding, and look forward to further discussions in this area, including in the BRICS Payment Task Force.”

These goals, if implemented, would go a long way in reconfiguring the methods utilized for financial transactions on a world scale. Nonetheless, there is tremendous concern and opposition by the imperialist states to these objectives being advanced by the nations of the Global South.

Much of the animosity exemplified by Washington and Wall Street towards various geopolitical regions of the world is clearly related to the hegemonic designs of the imperialist states. The continuity of these policies is resulting in greater internal, regional and international conflict.

Other Economic Alliances in Recent History

BRICS represents a historical pattern of efforts to build alternatives to the existing world capitalist system. During the period of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), there was the founding of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). See this.

COMECON was formed in response to the project headed by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall in June 1947 under the administration of President Harry S. Truman. Popularly known as the Marshall Plan, its actual purpose was to undermine the expansion and viability of socialism which had grown exponentially after World War II.

Founded in 1949, COMECON was designed to build unity and economic integration among the socialist states in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other territories such as the Republic of Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Vietnam, etc.  The organization faded after the overthrow of the socialist states in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s. When the Soviet Union was weakening to the eventual point of collapse in 1990-91, COMECON was dissolved.

Since this time period there has been the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) which consists of those nations and autonomous areas which remain in alliance with Moscow. Even though Russia is no longer a socialist state, the U.S., the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom and Japan are threatened by the reemergence of the county as a major regional and world center of power.

The BRICS Summit differs from COMECON because it brings together states which have both capitalist and socialist economic systems. The world’s second largest economy and leading socialist state, the People’s Republic of China, has pioneered with Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) established in 2001, which is now the largest regional grouping in the world. China has also formed in conjunction with the Africa Union (AU), the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) which has been in existence since 2000.

There is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) headquartered in Accra, Ghana as well which seeks to build deeper economic cooperation between these independent states. Affiliates within the AfCFTA include regional groupings such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES), among others.

Consequently, the BRICS Plus Summit is a manifestation of the international movement towards ending the domination of the world’s peoples by international finance capital. This movement inevitably must wage a protracted struggle against the enemies of progress and development.

As the desire for genuine independence and sovereignty intensifies, the incompatibility of these objectives with the forces of exploitation and oppression will become more pronounced.

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

Featured image: A projection mapping show at the Kazan Kremlin. (By Ramil Sitdikov / Source: Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

Monday was the twenty-fourth consecutive day of the Israeli occupation forces’ aerial, ground, and naval bombardment of northern Gaza. The siege has included blocking supplies of food, water, medicine, and fuel, destroying homes, demolishing entire residential blocks, attacking hospitals, and assassinating individuals trying to escape.

Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its siege of northern Gaza.

In Gaza, at least 41 Palestinians were killed and 113 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the health ministry reported.

In Lebanon, at least 20 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday, according to Lebanese media. Three of the dead were paramedics.

Medical Teams Needed in North Gaza Hospital After Israeli Raid, Health Ministry Says

The Ministry of Health in Gaza Monday appealed to international organizations to quickly send surgical teams to Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, after the occupation arrested and deported all the medical staff present in the hospital, leaving only one pediatrician.

The ministry urged anyone with surgical skills to join the hospital to save whoever they can.

Israeli occupation forces besieged the hospital last week and forced displaced families who had taken shelter there, and wounded Palestinians seeking treatment out of it. Men and young boys were stripped and detained, while women and young children were forced to walk towards southern Gaza.

Medical teams were detained and taken away by the occupation leaving the wounded with no one to care for them.

Occupation forces withdrew from the hospital on Saturday after causing severe damage to the building and bombing its oxygen supply.

UNRWA Outlawed – US “Concerned”

Israeli lawmakers vote to ban UN agency for Palestinian refugees

The Israeli Knesset on 28 October passed two laws banning the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from operating inside Israel, Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and occupied East Jerusalem.

In a 92-10 vote, the Knesset approved the first law, which says that the UN agency cannot “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly.” Moments later, lawmakers voted 87-9 for the second law, which states that no Israeli government official or agency may contact UNRWA, effectively prohibiting Israeli officials from providing services or dealing with UN employees.

Ahead of the Knesset vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the bills a “catastrophe.”

UNRWA was created over 70 years ago to provide essential services — education, healthcare, and emergency aid — to Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries following the Nakba and colonization of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers.

U.S. “Deeply Concerned” New Israeli Laws Will Worsen Gaza Crisis

The Biden administration is “deeply concerned” that two bills passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday will exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and harm Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a State Department spokesman told reporters – at a time when than 1.8 million people across Gaza are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.

The U.S. and other Western countries pressed Israel not to move forward with the bills against the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Their passage will likely increase pressure on the Biden administration to suspend military assistance to Israel.

Israel has long opposed UNRWA, and has claimed some of the agency’s staff took part in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA has repeatedly denied allegations of the agency having widespread links to Hamas, and a UN-appointed independent commission in April said Israel “had yet to provide supporting evidence” of its claims.

Two weeks ago Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli leaders demanding Israel take steps within 30 days to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel being affected. The letter also expressed their concern about the UNRWA bills, as well as a warning of policy implications should those bills pass.

The two bills will take effect in 90 days, during which time Netanyahu said Israel will “work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security.”

US president Joe Biden said on Monday, “We need a cease-fire. This war should end.”

Israel’s Netanyahu Rejects Egyptian Cease-fire Initiative in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an initiative proposed by Egypt on Sunday for a short-term cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the proposal, according to Israeli media.

“We proposed a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip for two days to exchange four (Israeli) hostages for some (Palestinian) prisoners, and then negotiations would take place over 10 days to turn the cease-fire into a permanent truce,” al-Sisi said during a joint press conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in the capital Cairo.

Despite the support of most Israeli ministers for the Egyptian proposal, Tel Aviv decided to reject the deal due to opposition from Netanyahu, who emphasized that “negotiations will take place only under fire,” according to Israel’s Channel 12.

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Featured image: Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]

An October 27^th Times of Israel reports that Israel’s IDF airstrike against Iran late Friday-early Saturday was a complete and rousing success:

Israel’s widespread airstrikes in Iran on Saturday crippled Iran’s ability to produce long-range ballistic missiles in a blow that will be hard and time-consuming to recover from, and rendered crucial energy facilities vulnerable to future attacks by destroying air defense batteries protecting them, according to multiple reports citing Israeli, American and Iranian officials, as well as satellite images analyzed by experts.

On Saturday night October 26^th the Jerusalem Post headline boasted:

‘Backbone of Iran’s missile industry’ destroyed by IAF strikes on Islamic Republic

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Screenshot from Jerusalem Post

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Afraid of losing their precious USA-made warplanes if they dared venture flying directly over Iran, Israeli pilots chose to use safely guarded Iraqi airspace, compliments of the illegal US military occupiers still entrenched on Iraqi soil years after losing the Iraq War over a decade ago, falsely justifying the US military presence in Iraq to remove the final vestiges of ISIS terrorists. Total bullshit.

People with half a brain at this stage of the US long war know that US and Israel created, financed, armed and supported ISIS terrorists just like al Qaeda terrorists before them as their proxy war Middle East ally. That’s why the US continues to violate Iraq’s sovereignty, totally disregarding its demand to remove US military from Iraq, in addition to US providing logistical support for America’s chief terrorist ally in the Middle East – Israel.  So, over a hundred US-made F-35 stealth fighter jets piloted by Israeli Air Force last weekend, assisted by US refuel tankers over Iraq, were able to provide safe enough distance and cover away from Iran’s solid, still intact air defense system to launch Israel’s air-to-air ballistic missiles at targets deep inside Iran.

Even prior to the IDF attack on Iran, Israel made sure that Axios relayed that “fair-minded” Israel warned Iran of the attack before its launch, warning not to retaliate. During the 4-hour period early Saturday morning, three waves of IDF fighter aircraft attempted to strike 20 strategic military targets in and around the capital Tehran, along with military targets in southwestern and western Iran, ostensibly to weaken the Islamic Republic’s air defense system safeguarding its nuclear sites and oilfields. Without directly attacking Iran’s nuclear and energy infrastructure, allegedly in compliance with US pressure, not that higher paygrade Israel ever pays attention to feeble US paper tiger’s wish list, Western press maintains that Israel focused on successfully crippling Iran’s air defense and missile production. Again, complete face-saving fabrication.

Israel’s public broadcaster Kan claimed that Israel’s advancing progress over the last two decades enabled its “much greater freedom of operation for Israeli warplanes in striking Iran.” Yeah, due solely to the Jewish State hiding behind the illegal cover of the US military embedded permanently inside Iraq. Israeli press are such bxllshxxters, just like joined at the Zionist Jew hip USA press. Hitting drone and missile producing targets in Iran, the US/Israel side is boasting how this decisive IDF precision attack sparing Iran civilians and killing only four Iranian soldiers has effectively neutralized Iran’s air defense capabilities, now rendered far weaker in anticipation of the direct war escalating against Tehran. Again, Israel insists that virtually all its missiles penetrated Iran’s nearly depleted air defenses. Via the Saturday October 26^th New York Times:

Israel’s attacks on Iran early Saturday destroyed air-defense systems set up to protect several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, as well as systems guarding a large gas field and a major port in southern Iran, according to three Iranian officials and three senior Israeli defense officials.

All this hyperbole marveling Israel’s strategic triumph over Iran is the incessant, nonstop Zionist-controlled,  media lies to cover up actual on the ground reality that the frontlines in both the Middle East and Ukraine are growing abysmally bleak for the US and its diehard genocidal nation allies Israel and Ukraine.

What actually is far more likely to have occurred during those early morning hours last Saturday is Israel’s failed suppression of Iran’s air defense system that effectively intercepted a vast majority of incoming IDF missiles, so much so that a far more concentrated, protracted Jewish State swarm attack plan had to be aborted. Despite MSM’s hyped falsehoods surrounding Israel’s mission success in Iran, any actual damage inflicted was minimal. Despite the hundred IDF warplanes, only about 20 missiles were fired, causing negligible damage limited to a few radar installations in western Iran near the Iraqi border.

Despite all the government/media lies, the US-backed wars in Ukraine and Israel are both fast sinking into irreversible defeat, mired in unwinnable wars against Russia and Iran. Netanyahu’s vow to obliterate Hamas has totally backfired, and every time IDF airstrikes savagely pulverize more schools, refugee tent camps and hospitals, Hamas resistance fighters continue defending their homeland, inflicting more Israeli casualties.

Image: Slaughterhouse – by Mr. Fish

Regarding Hezbollah and the US/Israel desperation to ignite another illegal color revolution in Lebanon, or for that matter elsewhere in the former-Soviet state of Georgia, they fail. Bibi the Butcher will never be able to bring back those 60,000 displaced Israeli citizens to their northern Israel homes. His campaign on both fronts are doomed and like a cornered rat, his only move is to desperately widen the war knowing that vassal USA will join his Zionist vs. Islam Third World War.

Thus, the government of Israel, like the United States, lie through their teeth 100% of the time because no nations getting their ass kicked, fast going down in deliberate ruin, can honestly, publicly admit it. Face-saving deception is all they’re left dishing out. Everything coming out of the West’s Mockingbird media today, be it Israel, US or EU, particularly when it comes to wars, must be taken with a grain of salt, deemed not credible or trustworthy whatsoever. The annual Gallup poll results released last Friday found that only 31% of US respondents trust mainstream media at all, the lowest on historical record.

The Zionist owned and controlled fascist Western governments married to their Zionist owned fascist propagandist news media outlets, all five of them monopolizing the MSM airwaves, are forbidden to ever admit the truth. By deliberate, diabolical design, every conflict and war the City of London moneychangers finance and create since World War II is intentionally lost on purpose. To this point, it’s now nearly a full decade since I wrote a Global Research article entitled “Why the United States Always Loses Its Wars,” asserting in the opening paragraph:

In violation of all ethical precepts and all international laws, the sole global superpower citing its impunity through exceptionalism hypocritically insists it can maintain its moral high ground in its relentless pursuit of regime changes anywhere it so chooses on earth. We are the global village bully that’s hated by much of the world. And it’s pure self-aggrandizing bullshit to perpetrate the myth that America is hated because of our ‘freedom,’ another rhetorical brainwashing lie. We now live in a fascist totalitarian police state run by a globalized crime syndicate of the central banking cabal. As of last April [2014] per a Princeton-Northwestern study, the US has officially been designated an oligarchy.

The writing on the wall was more than clear ten years ago. Likewise, today’s two Western backed wars in Ukraine and Middle East are two more in the latest losing propositions going down in flames, joining this ever-long list of disastrous US foreign war defeats committed in our name by malific intended design, central to centuries ago, long-plotted moneychangers’ agenda to throw the West under the bus.

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This article was originally published on The Government Rag.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century.

Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, including Global Research, lewrockwell.com and currently https//jameshfetzer.org, Inteldrop.org and https://thegovernmentrag.com. As a published author of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, Joachim’s books and chapters are Amazon bestsellers in child advocacy and human rights categories. His A-Z sourcebook series fully document and expose the global pedophilia scourge and remain available free at https://pedoempire.org/content s/. Joachim also hosts the weekly Revolution Radio broadcast “Cabal Empire Exposed” on Friday morning at 7AM EST (ID: revradio, password: rocks!)

Featured image is from TGR

Ukraine is struggling to recruit troops to reinforce its front lines amid thousands of casualties in nearly three years of conflict. Under these conditions, the Kiev regime is hunting for recruits in places that were once off-limit, such as “upscale venues,” whilst also becoming increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries to perform special operations.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Kiev regime has expanded its search network for military recruits to include “upscale venues” and “nightlife spots,” which is creating more social tension.

Even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tries to secure more weapons and security guarantees from the US government, the “biggest immediate problem” in Ukraine is recruiting more soldiers, the US outlet said. To deal with this issue, the Kiev regime recently lowered the age of compulsory military service to 25 and imposed additional penalties for draft dodgers, seeking to bring more soldiers to the front lines in the face of advancing Russian forces.

However, the newspaper said that most of the men who wanted to join the Ukrainian armed forces had already done so, while others had fled the country or were in hiding to avoid being drafted. Some prominent figures, including state prosecutors, are also avoiding joining the military by claiming medical exemptions.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the military is stepping up its recruitment campaigns in public places in the capital and other major cities. Military agents check concert halls, grocery stores, and even luxury restaurants in the port city of Odessa.

Mathieu Boulègue, a researcher at the Transatlantic Defence and Security Programme at the Centre for European Political Analysis, believes “there is no easy solution” to Ukraine’s troop shortage.

“That is unfortunately a critical issue that you cannot solve by sending stuff over, short of sending Western troops,” the researcher told the American outlet.

Some Ukrainian officials, cited by the outlet, said they were building up reserves of conscripts to replace those who had lost their jobs. However, they warned that mobilising new troops would not be effective without “more Western supplies to arm new recruits properly.”

The deployment of new Ukrainian troops is not just a military problem for Kiev, the Wall Street Journal noted, but also a growing social and political issue for Zelensky.

“Among soldiers who have been serving on the front line for nearly three years, resentment is building against men avoiding military service,” while scandals continue to emerge involving officials who allegedly accept bribes to grant exemptions.

For this reason, the Kiev regime is increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries to perform military operations since the citizenry does not provide enough soldiers. In effect, the presence of foreign mercenaries demonstrates the extreme shortage of experienced troops in Ukraine.

In the latest example, foreign mercenaries from the US, Canada and Poland, likely on a sabotage mission or raid, attempted to breach Russia’s Bryansk Oblast on October 27. The special operations mission the mercenaries were assigned required highly skilled operators capable of sabotage or reconnaissance, so given the lack of such people in the Ukrainian military, it is reasonable that they would turn to foreigners.

Emphasising this point is the fact a tattoo was discovered on the body of one of the eliminated foreigners, indicating that he was a member of the elite 75th Ranger Regiment of the US Army.

The discovery of the mercenary group makes a mockery of the West’s claim that soldiers from North Korea are fighting in Ukraine since it is Ukraine suffering from a shortage of troops and relying on foreigners. In fact, it is clear that the West planned the operation rather than Ukraine.

While South Korea and the Kiev regime spread fake news that North Korean troops are fighting in Ukraine, about 15,000 mercenaries from more than 100 countries have arrived in the country since February 2022 to join Ukrainian forces.

According to a Russian Defence Ministry report, Western secret services recruit mercenaries through the US private military companies Academi (formerly Blackwater), Cubic, Dark Horse Benefits, Dean Corporation, Forward Observations Group, Hyperion Services, and Sons of Liberty International, as well as the Polish ASBS Othago and the European Security Academy. At the same time, mercenaries are recruited by neo-Nazi and right-wing organisations from Germany, Italy, Portugal and other countries.

With Ukraine’s best troops dead, wounded or exhausted, the Kiev regime is now hunting for recruits all over the country, including in places that were once considered off-limits. This only deepens Kiev’s reliance on foreign mercenaries and, more importantly, demonstrates the hopeless position that the regime is in.

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

Featured image is from Bumble Dee/Shutterstock

Many expected Hezbollah to dissolve into disarray after its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated on September 27 by Israeli airstrikes, but Hezbollah fights on in Lebanon and has increased its attacks on Israel since Nasrallah’s death. Nasrallah’s death motivated the armed fighters to avenge the death of their charismatic leader who began his leadership in 1992.

Israel announced on October 27, that five of the IDF were killed in Lebanon fighting Hezbollah, bringing to 37 the death toll for soldiers fighting there since the start of ground operations in Southern Lebanon on September 30.

According to the BBC, eight IDF were killed fighting Hezbollah inside Lebanon on October 3, marking Israel’s first losses in Lebanon.

According to Hezbollah sources, the number of IDF killed is 90, with 750 injured. The equipment losses are 38 Merkava tanks, 4 wheel loaders, 1 hummer, 1 armored vehicle, 1 troop transport, 3 drones, 3 Hermes 450, and 1 Hermes 900.These equipment losses are the result of hand-to-hand combat and do not include Hezbollah attacks on Israeli military bases.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, at least 2,672 people have been killed and 12,468 injured in Lebanon. Political analysts have thought there will be no ceasefire in either Gaza or Lebanon until after the US election next week. With the Oval Office flying on auto-pilot, Netanyahu has a fully charged green light to pursue his military goals at the expense of the US taxpayer.

Image source

US Special Envoy, Amos Hochstein, has been on a shuttle diplomacy mission to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon. He is trying to sell a US-Israeli deal that will strip Hezbollah of weapons, and put the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah withdraws its forces north of the Litani River.

Hochstein is in Tel Aviv today, and officials in Beirut are awaiting his next visit.

The current and ongoing conflict is referred to as the Third Lebanon War, following Israeli invasions in 1982 and 2006 that proved to be failures for Israel militarily. The 1982 Israeli invasion, the Hezbollah resistance group, as a response to the brutal Israeli occupation of the south of Lebanon lasted from 1982 to 2000. It was the resistance that was successful in driving out the Israeli occupation army, but a small area on the border, Shebaa Farms, remains occupied by Israel.

Hezbollah has vowed to stop all attacks on Israel if a ceasefire is agreed on in Gaza, where 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, with at least half identified as women and children. The suffering in Lebanon is connected to the suffering in Gaza.

From the outset of violence beginning on October 7, 2023, the US and the international community have been urging a ceasefire in Gaza to release the hostages, and to end the genocide in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed a ceasefire because he had not yet realized a military goal. He intends to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by removing all Palestinians remaining from Gaza, and to eliminate all Hamas leaders, fighters, and weapons. Israeli families of the hostages have demanded their government make a deal to release the hostages, but Netanyahu will not bend. He is willing to have his citizens pay the price in blood for his plan to annex Gaza. To Netanyahu, and his co-conspirators, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the end justifies the means. Netanyahu and his supporters, like the US government, will argue the death and destruction in Gaza and Lebanon is justified to bring security to the Israeli people. But, security experts will say there can be no security in Israel without the security of the Palestinian people.

Without a home and human rights, the Palestinian people, and their supporters, will continue to fight for freedom and self-determination regardless of how high the walls are. Experts in Lebanon point out that Israel and the US have miscalculated the effect of the pagers and walkie-talkie explosions on September 17 and 18. The enemies of Hezbollah were sure this would be the Lebanese resistance group’s downfall.

The collective ‘West’ has not understood the ideology of resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The ideology of resistance doesn’t belong to a certain group, religion, or country. It is across the Middle East, spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the Occupied West Bank.

Iran and Turkey are also pro-Palestinian and support the resistance, though they are not part of the Arab world. Lebanon is about 43% Christian and 57% Muslim. The support for the resistance is found across religious groups. The detractors of Hezbollah feel Lebanon should not link itself to the cause of resistance, and should decouple its political agenda from supporting the people in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Those who oppose Hezbollah may support the cause of resistance but oppose the costs brought to bear by the Lebanese people.

The members of the UN who have voted against Israel and the US represent the majority of countries, and peoples of the globe. Israel and the US are an isolated partnership on the global diplomatic stage. Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and resistance group. Its military wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.

Before October 7, 2023, its armed strength was assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army. There is only one solution to dismantling Hezbollah, Hamas, or any other Pro-Palestinian resistance group.

The UN resolution, which is decades old and gathering dust, is the two-state solution with Israel respecting the 1967 borders with Palestine, and handing back the Golan Heights to Syria, and the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon. The call for resistance will be over globally if the two-state solution is realized.

When the occupation of Palestine is ended, and Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side with equal rights, then both communities will be secure, peaceful, and prosperous. Until that day, the Israeli people will never be secure, because their neighbors are not secure.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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There exists a significant amount of literature and debate regarding modernity, urbanisation and social change in India. Critical inquiries persist, not least on the impact of change on the daily lives of individuals and the ways in which they navigate their identities amid the tensions between modernity and tradition in an increasingly dynamic urban environment.

At the heart of this urban landscape are the working poor, who play a crucial role in India’s economy. Engaged in diverse occupations, such as construction, goods transport, waste recycling, domestic service and street vending, their contributions are vital for the functioning of the economy.    

Informal workers constitute more than 90 per cent of the labour force (80 per cent in urban settings). However, the informal sector is characterised by challenging working conditions that include strenuous manual labour, low remuneration, extended hours and a lack of workplace benefits.

This stark reality of the informal sector stands in direct contrast to the expansive cyber parks and modern shopping malls that epitomise India’s uneven ‘development’ — a concept that suggests modernisation often occurs in isolated sectors, leaving substantial portions of the population relatively untouched. This is particularly evident in the retail landscape, where traditional and modern forms of commerce coexist, often in uneasy tension.

On one hand, there is a concerning proliferation of organised retail and (monopolistic) online commerce platforms, representing one aspect of Indian consumerism. On the other hand, local street markets and vendors — integral components of the informal sector — remain a longstanding and vital feature of Indian urban life.

Despite the encroachment of modern retail, these traditional markets continue to thrive, facilitating a direct connection between rural producers and urban consumers, particularly concerning fresh produce. This farm-to-table model not only sustains millions of livelihoods within the informal sector, but it is also deeply embedded in Indian culinary culture, highlighting the ongoing relevance of these markets within urban neighbourhoods. The persistence of such traditional forms of commerce alongside modern retail outlets highlights the interplay between tradition and modernity in India’s urban economic landscape.

Culturally, India presents a distinctive scenario. Unlike many Western contexts where religion is often compartmentalised, spiritual practices and symbols are intricately interwoven into public life. The integration of sacred and secular elements persists despite the influences of modernity, urbanisation and global consumerism.

While societal structures may evolve externally, fundamental cultural and spiritual values remain deeply entrenched. Indian urbanism allows for the coexistence of age-old practices with contemporary realities; tradition and modernity, spirituality and materialism exist together.

For instance, religious symbols serve as markers of cultural identity. The portrayal of Hindu deities on everyday items reinforces cultural connections even within modern contexts. Such representations often feature vibrant artistic styles that blend functionality with cultural significance.

Moreover, religious paraphernalia — such as leaves, limes or conch shells — are commonly used to adorn small businesses. Each leaf possesses distinct symbolic meanings; conch shells are associated with Vishnu and are frequently displayed outside stores. Limes, often paired with green chilies to ward off negative energies, symbolise prosperity and abundance, making them prevalent, hanging in front of shops. This practice illustrates how spiritual beliefs permeate daily life and underscores the enduring influence of tradition on contemporary commerce in India. 

Deeply rooted beliefs associated with concepts like dharma persist despite social transformations. Many dharmic traditions emphasise the significance of seva (selfless service), with charitable giving — known as dana in Sanskrit — considered an essential aspect of one’s dharma or religious duty. This practice is perceived not merely as a moral obligation but as a spiritual endeavour that fosters personal growth and good karma. This may, in part, help us to understand why ‘duty’ or ‘service’ is often invoked when people talk about their jobs.

Historical photographs depicting Britain in the 1950s and 1960s evoke memories of cohesive communities and industrial landscapes that were rapidly swept away under the guise of ‘progress’. These images connect us to a past where individual identities were closely linked to their local and immediate social, economic and cultural environments.

The consequences of this ‘progress’ have been critically examined by writer Paul Kingsnorth in his book Real England: The Battle Against the Bland. He laments the loss of authentic pubs, rural hedgerows, affordable housing, individuality and character in towns due to corporate greed and an insatiable quest for profit — a phenomenon described by one insightful reviewer as a “Starbucked, Wetherspooned avalanche”.

In India, custom, tradition and personal identity are intricately interwoven. The persistence of ancient beliefs amid modern pressures underscores the enduring power of cultural identity. However, even within this context, forces such as modernity or globalisation — more accurately framed as neocolonialism — are gradually reshaping urban landscapes and influencing the lives, fashions and preferences of its inhabitants.

In 2003, British journalist David Charters (1948-2020) remarked:

“Sadly, the world is being shrunk to a ‘global village’ by the forces of celebrity, mass media, instant communications, swift travel and the constant desire for standardisation. So, we should record the qualities that made us different while there is still time”.

Take a journey through Chennai’s streets to prompt reflection on the issues highlighted above by visiting the author’s open-access, image-based ebook here.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image: Elante Mall is the largest mall of Chandigarh (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

“The crime of all crimes.” That is how the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared genocide in the final judgment of Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the case against the mayor of Taba, Rwanda for crimes against humanity. Today, that crime repeats itself as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese painfully details in her latest report.

Albanese joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to break down her report and present the indisputable evidence that Israel is actively committing a genocide of the Palestinian people.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass force displacement and the mass homelessness while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation—how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asks.

The UN Special Rapporteur clearly outlines the steps and conditions required to meet the classification of genocide, and in the case of Gaza, it’s undeniable. Albanese tells Hedges,

“What is relevant in order to establish that there is genocide is not just the intent behind these crimes, enunciated in Article II of the Genocide Convention; it’s the overall intent, specific intent, to destroy the people—the group as a whole, or in part, as such. And what is the group here? It’s the Palestinians.”

Throughout the rest of her report, Albanese details the harrowing death and destruction Palestinians endure on a daily basis in countless forms, alongside the horror suffered by non-Palestinians in Gaza. Albanese documents record-breaking numbers: The highest number of journalists killed, the highest number of UN officials killed, the highest number of hospitals targeted, the destruction of all universities, the fastest rate of population starvation. It’s clear, according to Albanese, the scale of devastation the Israelis are inflicting is one of scorched-earth catastrophe.

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The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity. Dr. Naomi Wolf

By Dr. Naomi Wolf, October 29, 2024

Our book, The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity, was published October 15 and became an immediate bestseller. This is a book that three governments—the US, the UK and Australia—all sought to suppress. 

Bill Gates Calls for ‘Vaccine Misinformation’ to be Censored in Real-Time by AI

By Frank Bergman and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2024

Billionaire Bill Gates is calling for all questions and concerns about vaccines to be censored in real time by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an effort to allegedly tackle so-called “misinformation.”

Total Censorship Becoming the Norm in the Political West. “Protection of Free Speech” to Suppress It

By Drago Bosnic, October 29, 2024

Censorship is now so vital to the ruling oligarchy in Washington DC that it’s become the “new normal” in universities, government offices and virtually all other public institutions. In addition, censorship has become particularly strong during recent election campaigns, when the mainstream propaganda machine is tasked to ensure that only “approved” narratives are in the spotlight.

The Politics of Fear: Laying the Groundwork for Fascism, American-Style

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, October 29, 2024

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left… The list goes on and on.

When Evil Is Allowed In, Evil Stays. Paul C. Roberts

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 29, 2024

It is a paradox that Washington, Putin, and Iran are equally indifferent to Israel’s slaughter from the air of civilians in Gaza and civilians in Lebanon. Any one of the three countries could stop the murder of civilians, but not one of them will do anything.

Globalists Plot Worldwide Genocide Via WHO Pandemic Treaty

By Richard C. Cook, October 29, 2024

With all the trouble in today’s world, including the completely pointless American-instigated war in Ukraine, Israel’s loathsome genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza, and militant U.S. threats to China over Taiwan, perhaps we should be asking whether the escalation in tensions threatening massive global conflict is really a carefully-crafted Globalist “false-flag” concealing something even more sinister.

Why Did Trump, Rogan Refuse to Touch COVID Vaxx in Three-Hour Interview?

By Ben Bartee, October 29, 2024

Not only did the vaxx elephant in the room remain ignored, but they didn’t touch the recent DoD directive explicitly allowing the U.S. military to kill American citizens under so-called emergency conditions, nor the transhumanist, exterminationist ideology of the psychopathic multinational elites.

United States President Joe Biden has sought to participate in the presidential campaign of his vice president, Kamala Harris. However, the Democrat’s team has kept him on the sidelines, believing his presence will harm her chances of overcoming Republican candidate Donald Trump.

According to Axios, Biden wants to get involved in the final days of Harris’ campaign to be elected president. According to three people familiar with the matter, her team responded to Biden’s request, “We’ll get back to you.”

Harris’ rise to the Democratic nomination resulted from the crisis within the party caused by Biden’s advanced age and cognitive decline, which raised doubts both internally and externally about his ability to retain the White House. Doubts turned into certainties on June 27, when the Democrat faced the Republican candidate in a debate in which he displayed irresolute behaviour.

Axios reported that the vice president’s team believes Biden is a political liability at a crucial moment in the campaign but has been reluctant to back down from him.

“It’s the latest example of Democrats, and even some of Biden’s staff, tiptoeing around the 81-year-old president’s ego and feelings,” the outlet wrote, adding: “Harris’ team and allies respect Biden’s service but are wary of further tying Harris to the unpopular president on the campaign trail.”

According to CNN, the current US president has an average approval rating of 38% and a disapproval rating of 57%, while FiveThirtyEight found that Biden’s approval rating is 39%.

“He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward,” said another person familiar with the situation and referencing Harris’ campaign slogan.

Although Harris’ campaign team is trying hard to present her as a different candidate from what Biden represents, a little more than half of Americans believe that the Democrat will continue with the current government’s policies.

According to a poll by the Wall Street Journal, 54% of American voters say Harris will mostly continue Biden’s approach, while 41% believe she will have her own ideas and new leadership in the White House. The perception that the Democrats will continue with the same direction of government is more prevalent among undecided Americans.

Asked which of the two candidates could implement necessary change, the poll showed 49% of voters favour Trump versus 40% for Harris. Asked who has a vision for the future, 45% of respondents voted for the Republican candidate and 43% for the Democratic presidential hopeful.

The American newspaper pointed out that Harris and Trump are competing for a small portion of undecided voters a few days before the November 5 elections. According to a poll last August, the Republican led with 47% of electoral preferences over the Democrat, who had 45% of voting intention.

David Wasserman, an analyst at the Cook Political Report, told the newspaper that Harris has to generate enthusiasm among the 37% to 40% of voters who believe Biden’s presidency was successful while seeking support from Americans who want a big change.

The Wall Street Journal also claimed that Harris’ campaign members acknowledged that the candidate needed to do more to show her separation from Biden’s image. The Democrat’s efforts have been hesitant, which has been exploited by Trump and his electoral team during the race.

The Ukraine conflict will likely leave a host of issues for the next US president, including the cost of US aid, potential peace negotiations, and the extent of NATO’s involvement. Yet Harris is proposing more of the same as Biden has done with this conflict – unwavering support for the Kiev regime and no change in its stance on negotiations with Moscow.

If Harris wins the election, she will find it much more difficult to provide the level of financial support to Kiev that has been possible under the Biden administration, which has resulted in more than $100 billion in support being provided, something that would make her job more difficult. Although she will continue to support whatever Zelensky says he wants to do, she may be unable to provide him with the money and weapons he seeks.

Trump has repeatedly emphasised that the war should end and that it is much better to achieve a peace deal with Russia to start the long-term peace process. This is significantly different from what Harris offers. Trump says he would not want to provide endless financial resources to prop up the Kiev regime, which is gradually losing the war.

In effect, Biden is hidden away from Harris to increase her chances of winning the US presidential election. However, Americans are not naïve and see that she is effectively a continuation of what the current president offers, as seen in their policies towards Ukraine.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Adam Schultz / Flickr

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Bill Gates Accused of  “Medical Malpractice”

and “Crimes against Humanity”

by

Michel Chossudovsky 

September 17, 2024

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 .

Kenya: A 500,000 Petition Called for an Investigation 

“An online petition is calling on the White House to investigate Bill Gates and Melinda Gates for “crimes against humanity” and “medical malpractice”.

The petition received more than 500,000 signatures as of 11th May 2020.

By Muslim Mirror Web Desk

The petition accuses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of “medical malpractice” for citing an accusation of “intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines.” The petition also quoted Bill Gates’ when talking about his interest in “reducing population growth” by means of vaccinations.

In Y 2014, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Kenya conducted a study on the 5-injection, 2 yr vaccination project performed on female Kenyans aged 14-49, in a South African laboratory and concluded that “all 6 samples tested positive for the HCG antigen.”

“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus, but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine,”

Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, said.

“This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization, but was ignored.”

The vaccine, which was administered to 2.3-M girls and women by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF for free, was said to be funded by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “(Muslim Mirror, emphasis added)

Bill Gates: the Covid-19 Scam and the mRNA Vaccine

Amply documented Bill Gates has instructed the WHO Director General Tedros to engage in several waves of Misinformation since the outset of the Covid Crisis.

The Lies and Fabrications pertaining to the alleged Covid Pandemic, the Lockdown, the mRNA Vaccine are beyond description.

The fraud emanates from Bill Gates.

And now Bill Gates wants to censor people from revealing the criminality behind the pandemic and the “Covid-19 Vaccine”.

The official “corona narrative” is predicated on a “Big Lie” endorsed by corrupt politicians. Bill Gates wants to censor the truth. See article by Frank Bergman below. 

“They are Killing our Loved Ones”

“‘You Were Right, Vaccines Are Killing Millions of Our Loved Ones”, Kazuhiro Haraguchi, Japan’s former Minister of Internal Affairs’s

Law Suit against Bill Gates in the Netherlands

“A Netherlands judge last week ruled that Bill Gates must face seven people injured by COVID-19 vaccines in court in the Netherlands.

According to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the seven “corona skeptics” sued Gates last year, along with former Dutch prime minister and newly appointed NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and “several members” of the Dutch government’s COVID-19 “Outbreak Management Team.”

Other defendants include Albert Bourla, Ph.D., CEO of Pfizer, and the Dutch state.

“Because Bill Gates’ foundation was involved in combating the corona pandemic, he has also been summoned,” De Telegraaf reported. (M. Nevradakis)

The court ruled Gates must pay attorneys’ fees and additional legal costs totaling 1,406 euros (approximately $1,520). A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 27. 2024 A Modest sum of money for Bill Gates. 

“Even if … your name is Bill Gates, you still have to go to court”

Father of Vaccine-injured Plaintiff Made ‘Emotional Plea’ to the Court

“At the Sept. 18 hearing, plaintiffs also delivered statements. According to Zebra Inspiratie, “One of the victims, who is very ill, was also given the opportunity to make a plea. She was no longer able to speak and was represented by her father. It was an emotional plea.”

Krikke said the plaintiff’s father told the court that his daughter, who was previously healthy, fell ill after getting the COVID-19 vaccine and could no longer speak, telling the judge that he “would really like to speak to Bill Gates directly” to ask him what happened to his daughter.

“After that, the judge was really quiet,” Krikke said.

The Oct. 18 ruling also addressed the plaintiffs’ claims about Gates’ role in the WEF’s “Great Reset” project.”

See: also

Judge Rules Bill Gates Must Face Vaccine-Injured in Netherlands Court

By Michael Nevradakis, October 25, 2024

Who is Responsible for “Misinformation”

“Hell is Empty and the Devils are All Here”. William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, 1623

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 17, 2024, October 30, 2024

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Bill Gates Calls for ‘Vaccine Misinformation’

to be Censored in Real-Time by AI

Frank Bergman

September 12, 2024

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Billionaire Bill Gates is calling for all questions and concerns about vaccines to be censored in real time by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an effort to allegedly tackle so-called “misinformation.”

According to the Microsoft co-founder, one of the key missions of his Gates Foundation is stopping the spread of “vaccine misinformation” online.

Gates argues that critics of official narratives regarding vaccines must be silenced in order to convince skeptical or unwilling members of the public that experimental injections are “safe and effective.”

In order to stamp out “vaccine misinformation,” Gates is calling for opinions that counter the official narratives to be shut down with the help of AI.

Gates laid out his vision during an interview with CNBC.

According to Gates, the public’s free speech rights are a major obstacle to his plan.

He lamented that America’s Constitution and its speech protections are standing in the way of AI setting new “boundaries” for the flow of information online.

Gates claims to support free speech but insists that the First Amendment should have “rules” in case a person expresses a view that is “causing people not to take vaccines.”

“We should have free speech, but if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people not to take vaccines, where are those boundaries that even the US should have rules?” Gates said.

“And then if you have rules, what is it?”

Gates was less forthcoming about who he believes should have the authority to decide what those rules are, however.

Nevertheless, he insists censorship is necessary and must be ushered in without delay.

Gates argues that allowing people to express views without immediate censorship is causing “harm.”

In order to tackle this alleged issue, Gates is calling for every comment made online to be “fact-checked” and censored in real-time with the help of AI-powered machines.

“Is there some AI that encodes those rules because you have billions of activity and if you catch it a day later, the harm is done,” he said.

It comes as Gates has launched a crusade against free speech in recent weeks.

As Slay News recently reported, Gates demanded just last week that digital IDs be made mandatory in order to supposedly tackle so-called “misinformation.”

In a new interview, the Microsoft co-founder also blasted the First Amendment for protecting the free speech rights of the American people.

Gates argues that the First Amendment is standing in the way of censoring “misinformation” online.

He called for digital IDs as a way to skirt the First Amendment and curb “misinformation during an interview with CNET, where he also discussed artificial intelligence (AI) and “climate change.”

Gates claims he is grappling with what he believes to be the threats of “misinformation” and the technological phenomena of deepfakes.

While warning of this alleged threat, Gates argues that digital IDs will help curb this “misinformation” by forcing people to verify their identities online.

Gates told CNET that there must be limitations on free speech or order to crack down on “misinformation.”

He laments that Americans’ First Amendment protections are making it “tough” to censor online content.

“The U.S. is a tough one because we have the notion of the First Amendment and what are the exceptions like yelling ‘fire’ in a theater,” Gates explained.

“I do think over time, with things like deepfakes, most of the time you’re online you’re going to want to be in an environment where the people are truly identified, that is they’re connected to a real-world identity that you trust, instead of just people saying whatever they want,” Gates added.

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Whenever top-ranking Western officials give a speech of almost any kind, it’s virtually mandatory to mention the political West’s so-called “values”, including numerous “freedoms” supposedly “enjoyed” by most people in their part of the world. And yet, despite constant blabbering about “freedom and democracy”, there’s (un)surprisingly little actual freedom in the belligerent power pole. Worse yet, if new laws in the United States and European Union are anything to go by, there’s going to be less of it than ever before. In fact, the Deep State is now (ab)using the alleged “protection of free speech” to suppress it, or as they say, in order to “save free speech, we must censor free speech”. In other words, we have reached a point where paradoxes and absurdity are the norm.

And indeed, censorship is now so vital to the ruling oligarchy in Washington DC that it’s become the “new normal” in universities, government offices and virtually all other public institutions. In addition, censorship has become particularly strong during recent election campaigns, when the mainstream propaganda machine is tasked to ensure that only “approved” narratives are in the spotlight. Back in 2020, the near-universal crackdown on actual free media resulted in numerous shutdowns of numerous outlets, mostly through cyberattacks. For instance, the Belgrade-based Fort Russ News, where I was a senior editor, went offline just weeks before the 2020 presidential election after numerous “mysterious” cyberattacks.

While it managed to return a few times, FRN was permanently shut down after years of persecution at the hands of corrupt federal institutions, including by Pentagon-linked think tanks such as the infamous RAND Corporation that directly targeted all FRN personnel (PDF) as supposed “Russian agents” (myself included). It is only thanks to the Internet Archive that most of FRN’s content is still available. However, this sort of censorship is certainly not a thing of the past. On the contrary, it’s returning in full force, as other reputable media are also being targeted. Namely, Consortium News, an independent investigative news source, went offline following a major cyberattack. The Consortium News website is still unavailable.

“Our web host has confirmed seven recent data breaches and now it appears that our site has been totally replaced. We have been hacked,” the news outlet announced on X.

They are working to restore the website, but the fact that the security breach happened only a week before the election is very telling. Having such a major independent media outlet, famous for its highly critical view of America’s endless wars, go offline is very “convenient” to the Deep State and the warmongering oligarchy in Washington DC. WikiLeaks, another independent source fiercely targeted by the US government, also confirmed that the Consortium News website has been completely removed and its contents are no longer accessible. Once again, this is hardly surprising given that top-ranking American officials are openly talking about the “dangers of disinformation”, the latest Neo-McCarthyist buzzword.

Uncomfortable truths, otherwise known as “evil Russian disinformation”, need to be suppressed at all costs. However, while the corrupt US federal institutions (particularly its numerous intelligence services) are leading the charge in the crackdown on independent media, there’s still a lot of pushback, as millions of Americans (nearly 40%, to be specific) simply don’t trust the mainstream propaganda machine. On the other hand, the EU seems to be even worse. For years, the troubled bloc has been trying to censor press freedom not just in Europe, but also around the world, including the US. This is going so far that Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president, advocates “pre-bunking in the public forum to vaccinate people against disinformation”.

However, nobody comes close to the United Kingdom in “preserving freedom and democracy”. Thousands of British citizens are arrested every year for social media posts. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sheer scale of censorship in the UK. Namely, you can get arrested for “thought crimes”, as several cases showed. Precisely this happened to a man who quietly prayed on the street across from an abortion clinic in the town of Bournemouth. Expectedly, the mainstream propaganda machine tried “fact-checking” the story, but similar cases show that you can indeed get arrested for having “wrong thoughts”. Namely, back in November 2022, a woman was arrested for an identical “thought crime”, also in front of an abortion clinic.

In the meantime, “evil” Russia allows actual free speech to journalists from countries that banned virtually all Russian media. Western outlets are allowed to freely interview whomever they want, including President Vladimir Putin. In stark contrast, not even Russian mics are tolerated by the political West’s most prominent “beacon of freedom and democracy” that’s now getting dozens of billions for its “commitment”. The case of Tucker Carlson serves as a perfect example of how any form of independent thought is treated in the US and NATO, while the fates of the likes of Julian Assange are definite proof of just how “free” the political West is. On the other hand, the promotion of the so-called Western “values” is as strong as ever.

Namely, any attempt to deal with repulsive crimes such as pedophilia is met with a fiery crackdown of the mainstream propaganda machine. Movies such as the “Sound of Freedom” are continuously targeted by the censors. Any remotely sane person would be dumbfounded to find out that topics such as child trafficking and pedophilia are being suppressed. But that’s exactly the case, even though raising awareness about it should be a matter of basic common sense. However, given the state of so-called Western “values”, it’s hardly surprising this is not the case anymore. Namely, while the political West is after Putin for evacuating kids from a warzone, it’s also involved in the massive child trafficking “business” in Ukraine and elsewhere.

What we can clearly conclude from all this is that the warmongers, war criminals and plutocrats in Washington DC and Brussels are determined to prevent the spread of any sort of “Russian disinformation” (i.e. the truth), as this is extremely “inconvenient” for them. If hundreds of millions of Americans and Europeans knew what was actually going on, they’d certainly be against the policies their unelected bureaucratic oligarchies are imposing, both at home and abroad. Precisely this is why knowing the truth is all the more important. Unfortunately, it can indeed be dangerous to think and speak freely at this time, and we can only expect more censorship and more “thought criminals”, as any deviation from the official narrative is “dangerous for our democracy”.

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

The entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying according to Joyce Msuya,  Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator;

.

The entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying. pic.twitter.com/hUH5Sg70hh

— Joyce Msuya (@JoyceMsuya) October 26, 2024

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War  

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“No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”—Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.

Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left… The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. 

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of their so-called “anti-government” views, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented, and their communications monitored.

These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

This language of fear has given rise to a politics of fear whose only aim is to distract and divide us. In this way, we have been discouraged from thinking analytically and believing that we have any part to play in solving the problems before us. Instead, we have been conditioned to point the finger at the other Person or vote for this Politician or support this Group, because they are the ones who will fix it. Except that they can’t and won’t fix the problems plaguing our communities.

Nevertheless, fear remains the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence, disease, illegal immigration, and so-called domestic extremism have been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. However, with crime at an all-time low, is such fear rational?

Statistics show that you are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocating in bed than from a terrorist attack. And you are 9 more times likely to choke to death in your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack.

Indeed, those living in the American police state are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist. Thus, the government’s endless jabbering about terrorism amounts to little more than propaganda—the propaganda of fear—a tactic used to terrorize, cower and control the population.

In turn, the government’s stranglehold on power and extreme paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats has resulted in a populace that is increasingly viewed as the government’s enemies.

Why else would the government feel the need to monitor our communications, track our movements, criminalize our every action, treat us like suspects, and strip us of any means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons?

So far, these tactics—terrorizing the citizenry over the government’s paranoia and overblown fears while treating them like criminals—are working to transform the way “we the people” view ourselves and our role in this nation.

Indeed, fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.

The American people have been reduced to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues:

I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.

As history makes clear, fear and government paranoia lead to fascist, totalitarian regimes.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

The following, derived by from John T. Flynn’s 1944 treatise on fascism As We Go Marching are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

• The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).
• The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.
• The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.
• The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
• The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.
• The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.
• The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.
• The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.
• The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.
• The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

“Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect,” writes economist Jeffrey Tucker. “It’s incorrect to call fascism either right wing or left wing. It is both and neither… fascism does not seek to overthrow institutions like commercial establishments, family, religious centers, and civic traditions. It seeks to control them… it preserves most of what people hold dear but promises to improve economic, social, and cultural life through unifying their operations under government control.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

We are at a critical crossroads in American history.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it has become the driving force behind the American police state.

All of which begs the question what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

As we once again find ourselves faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, “we the people” have a decision to make: do we simply participate in the collapse of the American republic as it degenerates toward a totalitarian regime, or do we take a stand and reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us?

There is no easy answer, but one thing is true: the lesser of two evils is still evil.

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Earlier this month Brazil’s Supreme Court lifted its ban on X (formerly Twitter) after Elon Musk finally complied with the court orders. It was the end of a months-long standoff between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Musk (X was suspended on August 31). The matter has often been addressed as an issue of “free speech”, but with the recent BRICS Summit Declaration on digital sovereignty, one can clearly see that the discussion here should not be just about “censorship”. The BRICS Summit in Kazan, held from October 22 to 24 (2024), for the first time held a meeting with its expanded format, now including new member states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Ethiopia.

As I wrote before, it is true, as many critics and analysts have highlighted, that Moraes has weaponized the war against the so-called Brazilian far-right and the alleged defense of democracy as a way to expand the power of the court and arguably his own powers. Already in 2023 a New York Times piece pointed out that Moraes “jailed people without trial for posting threats on social media; helped sentence a sitting congressman to nearly nine years in prison for threatening the court; ordered raids on businessmen with little evidence of wrongdoing; suspended an elected governor from his job; and unilaterally blocked dozens of accounts and thousands of posts on social media, with virtually no transparency or room for appeal.”

However, if Moraes controversial measures may be used to cast doubts on, say, Brazil’s “sécurité juridique”, Musk’s failure to comply with court orders local laws could indeed also cast doubts on the billionaire and his companies, not to mention on the political role they may play. It goes beyond Musk, of course. In countries such as the US there is an ongoing conversation about how social media such as Facebook and Instagram – not to mention their algorithms – influence people’s politics and elections. Controversy aside, Brazil has shown that it is possible to force Big Tech into compliance. Moreover, the topic has prompted a larger conversation in Brazil on having a national social media platform – or, for that matter, a national engine search. To this day Brazil in fact has to rely on US products such as Google. It doesn’t have to be this way. Now that economic nationalism is back, it is only natural that one questions this state of affairs.

This is a strategic matter, and it extends even way beyond social media – ultimately it is about digital sovereignty, a concept which surpasses the traditional geoeconomic and geopolitical realms. Digital services today encompass sectors such as transportation, energy, public administration, digital IDs, healthcare, payment systems and much more.

In Europe there is an ongoing debate about developing what some call a #EuroStack, a digital public infrastructure relying on European technology and investments. As Cristina Caffarra puts it (she is the co-founder and Vice Chair of the Competition Research Policy Network, Centre for Economic Policy Research – CEPR): 

“Europe has done digital regulation and is in the process of implementing it. But this is ultimately only reliant on beating Big Tech into a compliance game which is hard and will take a long time.”

On September 24, a multi-party group of Members of the European Parliament took part in the “Towards European Digital Independence” conference in Brussels. According to Francesca Bria (a fellow at Stiftung Mercator), it is about investing in “public goods and infrastructures that protect citizens’ rights, ensure European autonomy and security, support the growth of European businesses, and serve the public interest.” Bria highlights the fact that Big Tech companies “dominate the entire technology stack—from chips and cloud infrastructure to operating systems… —solidifying their market position through network effects and economies of scale… This stifles innovation, limits opportunities for European businesses, and undermines Europe’s economic security and industrial competitiveness.”

Nowadays, so much is talked about de-dollarization and about the topic of a currency for BRICS. On Tuesday, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (currently the President of the BRICS bank), met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan and discussed BRICS expansion and the use of local currencies, replacing the dollar. There has been however yet another new development that has thus far been quite underreported: the BRICS group has for the first time, in its Kazan Declaration, committed itself to “the design of a fair and equitable global framework for data governance, including cross-border data flows, to… ensure the interoperability of data regulatory frameworks at all levels.”

Reliance on external AI capabilities and external cloud services makes strategic assets and all kinds of sensitive data vulnerable to foreign frameworks, such as the US CLOUD Act (this is true even for Europe as well). As mentioned Europeans, albeit a bit slowly, are now more and more concerning themselves with the issue

One may recall that, in 2013, then Brazilian President Dilma Roussef proposed to route internet traffic away from Washington, as part of a strategy to counter American National Security Agency (NSA) espionage: the daring plan involved developing an undersea fiber-optic cable system that would funnel all internet traffic between the South American continent and Europe, thereby bypassing entirely the US, but it did not follow through. It has been brought to light that, at that same time, both Roussef and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel were the targets of NSA espionage.

It is about time emerging powers such as Brazil boldly address the issue of social networks and the larger matter of digital sovereignty, AI, digital currencies and cybersecurity. And this is a conversation that now has finally started to take place within the scope of the BRICS group as well – together with energy and industry (which are of course all connected topics), this could very well be one of the most pressing issues for the 21st century.

Next year, Brazil will be hosting the BRICS Summit – it will also be hosting the 2025 Climate Summit (COP30). Being at the center stage in G20, Brazil now has the opportunity to use the coming months to champion digital sovereignty for the Global South in the emerging polycentric global order. It should use the opportunity to call for the development of not just legal frameworks but also of a digital industry and a digital infrastructure which fosters sovereignty. BRICS needs a #BricsStack too – and Brazil could point the way to that.

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Birds Not Bombs: Let’s Fight for a World of Peace, Not War 

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

Uriel Araujo, PhD, anthropology researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.