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It would seem ironic that the annual Munich Security Conference is traditionally set in Munich, Germany, the site of Adolf Hitler’s return in 1920 after his discharge from WW I service in the German army. Home to the Munich Putsch of 1923, it became the location from which the Workers Socialist Nazi party grew into a mass movement and political force throughout Germany; thus threatening the world.
This is no small coincidence or perhaps no coincidence at all. Formed in 1963 which is long ago enough to be currently inconsequential, the MSC aspires to provide a platform for the ruling class on international diplomacy regarding security and foreign policy challenges. Its Munich Security Report 2023 “explores intensifying authoritarian revisionism and the growing contest between different visions for the international order. It also stimulates the debate on how the coalition defending the vision of a liberal, rules-based order can be enlarged and strengthened.”
The key phrase here is ‘intensifying authoritarian revisionism” rather than eliminating ‘authoritarian revisionism’ while defending its ‘vision’ of a US invented “rules-based order.” It is that ‘vision’ upon which the extraneous United Nations functions and upon which the Biden Administration base their foreign policy rather than an internationally recognized rule of law system supported by a foundation of legal principles. Not exactly the stage of ‘peace saboteurs’
Not exactly a stage for ‘peace saboteurs,’ the MSC gathered on February 17th with its usual like minded New World Order neo-con globalists who believe in their own flawless superiority and impeccable infallibility – for which no prevailing evidence exists.
As representatives of a government living in the past, the recent meeting provided an opportunity for the most Members of Congress to ever attend an MSC meeting in its sixty year history. Hobnobbing with the upper crust of European political elites who are equally living in the past, MSC attendance indicates a tentative belief that the US can be a winner in a nuclear exchange while the Russians, perhaps more aware of their own devastating nuclear capability, understand there will be no champions. As those Members of Congress continue to blindly accept the US hoop-la, their attendance confirms their pro Ukraine war bona fides while pledging billions of precious US taxpayer dollars (during a debt ceiling crisis) and a generous flow of weapons to continue the conflict.
What most of those Members failed to consider was the general anxiety amongst those European elites as well as a private recognition that the Ukraine war is not going as anticipated despite the effort to destroy Russia that dates back to December, 2013 when Sen. John McCain stood on the stage in Kiev and promised US support.
As a majority of members of relevant Committees with jurisdiction over war, the military, intel or American financial resources, their attendance confirms an unfamiliarity with the US role in the 2014 coup following McCain’s appearance from which the conflict developed. In other words, while Congressional dilletantes collect generous benefits gratis of the American taxpayer without reciprocation, they could take their work more seriously and become better informed Congressional scholars before making fools of themself.
While the MSC Agenda included an extensive array of thorny geopolitical topics devoted to expanding its hegemonic presence, American participants included Senators Lindsay Graham (SC), Christopher Coons (Del.), Robert Menendez (NJ), Mitch McConnell (Ky.), NJ Gov. Phil Murphy, Reps. Veronica Escobar (Texas), Nancy Pelosi (Calif.), Mike McCaul (Texas), Homeland Dept. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, SOS Antony Blinken and VP Kamala Harris.
Despite a predominant blackout on media, MSC attendance included the most Congressional Members ever with twenty eight Senators predominantly representing the Senate’s Foreign Relations, Armed Services and Intelligence Committees (eighteen Democrats, one Independent and ten Republicans): Senators Blumenthal (Conn), Britt (Ala.), Budd (NC), Cantwell (Wash), Coons (Del.) Cornyn (Texas) Cortes-Masto (Az), Durbin (Ill), Ernst (Iowa), Graham (SC), Heinrich (NM), Kelly (Az.), King (Me.), Klobuchar (Minn.), McConnell (Ky.), Menendez (NJ.), Peters (Mich.), Reed (RI), Ricketts (Neb.), Risch (Idaho), Schumer (NY), Shaheen (NH), Tillis (NC), Tuberville (Ala.) Van Hallen (Md.), Warner (Va.), Whitehouse (RI), and Wyden (Ore.). Only Senator Ricketts is looking at a 2024 re election. Accompanying Sen. McConnell were trainee Republican Senators Budd and Britt who were introduced as Republican Party support for NATO and Europe.
On the House side, twenty one Members were in attendance (eleven Democrats and ten Republicans) also predominantly representing the Armed Services, Foreign Affairs and Intelligence Committees: Reps. Boyle (Pa), Connolly (Mass), Ciccilline (RI), Crow (Co), Ellzey (Texas), Escobar (Texas), Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Himes (Conn.), Issa (Calif), Jackson (Texas), Mace (SC), McCaul (Texas), McCormick (Ga.), Meeks (NY), Miller (Texas), Pelosi (Calif), Self (Texas) , Sherill (NJ), Smith (Adam) (Wash.), Swalwell (Calif) and Turner (Ohio).
Without the nuisance of a required Congressional war powers vote, Texas won the prize for the most attendees; six Representatives and one Senator while all US Senators from the states of North Carolina, Rhode Island and Arizona Senators were in attendance. Upon his return from Germany, Sen. Tuberville expressed a prevalent although unspoken sense of not knowing how to “get out of Ukraine.” The truth is no more difficult than cutting off the money and stopping the flow of weapons….even a US Senator does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure that out…all it takes is a willingness to accept reality that Ukraine will not ‘win’ the war.
On the trip into Germany, Rep. McCaul, Chair of the House Foreign Affairs, known as a rabid militarist, could not resist a stop in Kyiv to shake the hand and meet with the drugster Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky who has been closing churches and drafting fifteen year olds. McCaul expressed an interest to see Ukraine ‘first hand’ and be ‘on the ground’ in the war zone as he was joined by Reps. Issa, Miller, Self, Ellzey and Sen. Risch in a press conference. The Congressional delegation called for more ‘lethal aid’ including F16s and more ATACMS (long range missiles). Upon their return from MSC, McCaul and Rep. Mike Turner, Chair of House Intel Committee reiterated their support for increased military aid to Ukraine. In pursuit of the full experience, Rep. McCaul might consider camping out at the Ukraine border to greet the Russian Sixth Army (or comparable) as they come across the border.
Even the potential of a nuclear exchange did not inhibit Senators Graham, Blumenthal and Whitehouse from support sending US long range missiles and F16 aircraft to Ukraine. As the truly deplorable VP Harris added her voice that the “US has formally determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity” without any details of that formal determination or providing any evidence.
Just prior to a visit with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it may be understandable if the presence of China’s top foreign policy diplomat Wang Yi was a bit unsettling for much of MSC crowd. While refusing to oppose Russia’s ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, China’s bilateral energy and trade exchanges reached almost $200 Billion, bailing out on the dollar in place of the yuan; but it was the prospect of military assistance to Russia that gave the already anxious MSC insiders pause for deeper reflection.
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Renee Parsons served on the ACLU’s Florida State Board of Directors and as president of the ACLU Treasure Coast Chapter. She has been an elected public official in Colorado, staff in the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, an environmental lobbyist for Friends of the Earth and a staff member of the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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Introduction: 1 year of violence on top of 30 years of conflict: Too much wrong thinking
The world’s focus is on the war. On February 24, it is one year since Russia launched its so-called special military operation. Much more important is to focus on the underlying conflicts – because there exists no war or other violence without root causes.
The focus on war, by definition, won’t lead to a solution or wider, sustainable peace – like feeling the pain in a patient without diagnosing where it comes from can never lead to healing.
Unless you ask: What is the problem, the conflict, that stands between the conflicting parties – NATO and Russia – it will end with escalation until one of the sides feel that the nuclear button is the only way out.
International politics is still so immature that the simple distinction between the violence and the conflict seem too intellectually demanding for the decision-makers, the media and most researchers.
However, understanding it would help save humanity’s future.
The conflict is about 30 years old, and the war is one year.
Whatever the reader may think about Putin, Russia, the invasion, Ukraine etc., the infantile blaming, demonisation and the projection of all guilt on one side in such a complex, multi-party and history-based conflict should stop. It’s emotionalist and stands in the way of rational and prudent policy-making.
Moreover, it is dangerous in its consequences. Therefore, it’s time for the West – US/NATO and the EU – to do some soul-searching and stop living in denial about its complicity in the conflict and this terrible war.
The overarching fallacy is to think and believe that because Russia did something wrong, everything NATO/EU did and do is right.
Contrary to good academic practice and my other writings, this article merely states points and conclusions, while my arguments can be found in the 200-300 pages of analyses I have written since 2014. Much of it can be found here and here.
I focus here on NATO/EU policies and why they are wrong and won’t succeed; that does not mean that I find Russia’s policies right and successful. But before you accuse others, take a look at yourself. The day after the invasion, I distanced myself from it and also made six – correct, as it turned out – predictions.
The basic psycho-political elements of the West’s policy vis-a-vis Russia
The building blocks of the West’s – NATO/EU – policies vis-a-vis Russia can be characterised by the following psycho-political concepts:
Immaturity and banalisation – in blaming everything on Russia in general and Putin in particular (it can be said that Putin also blames everything on the West, but that won’t help the EU and NATO – just make ‘us’ as stupid as ‘we’ think he is).
Psycho-political projections – what Russia does, NATO/EU countries have done themselves and in some respects much worse; and Putin is hysteric when he feels threatened by us, whereas we are justified – always were – that Russia is a huge threat and that Ukraine is only the first of a series of future aggressions. In other words, comparative studies and media mention of NATO countries’ aggression and violations of international law are prohibited.
Just one example: President Joe Biden, the leader of today’s only global empire with over 600 bases in more than 130 countries and the most war-fighting and mass-killing country since 1945, stated on February 24, 2022, that “This was … always about naked aggression, about Putin’s desire for empire by any means necessary.”
Untruthful innocence – NATO, by constitution, never did and doesn’t do anything wrong; it is innocent. NATO’s S-G Stoltenberg has repeatedly stated that ‘NATO is not a party to the conflict’ (but also, inconsequently, that Putin must not win because, then, ‘we’ shall have lost). The homepages of NATO and the EU state untruthfully that the extremely well-documented promises made to Gorbachev about not expanding NATO ‘one inch’ were never given.
The same untruthful innocence produces the lie that it all began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea or the full-scale invasion of Ukraine and that it was ‘unprovoked.’ The word reveals with abundant clarity that NATO knows it behaved in a provocative way. The only relevant history is the history of the conflict – which began at the end of the First Cold War in 1989-90. The rest is make-believe, opportunistic ignorance and pure propaganda.
Groupthink – which implies that a group of elite decision-makers constantly and over time confirm each other in being fundamentally right and cannot be on the wrong track; they meet (latest in Munich) and confirm each other; their ministries, presumed analytical institutions and think tanks as well as the mainstream media hardly ever raise questions or criticise; every interpretation and information not identical with this groupthink is repelled, the world is interpreted selectively to fit the group’s worldview – and eventually, it is totally convinced that it cannot be wrong and that it’s decisions are smart and productive and will lead to the goal.
In this case, the US/NATO stated goal is to weaken Russia militarily and damage its economy to such an extent that it can never do such a thing again – a punishment for what it has done. Groupthink is dangerous because it defies reality checks, leads to hubris, to fatally wrong decisions, and invariably ends up as lemmings running to doom.
Hubris – or arrogance: In reality, ‘we’ are omnipotent. As former NATO S-G, Anders Fogh-Rasmussen has stated: Putin knows that “NATO spends ten times more on the military than he does and that we can beat the crap out of him.” Yet, paradoxically, no Western leader seems to be even thinking of aligning the idea that NATO shall win this war with NATO’s consistent propaganda to its citizens that Russia was a formidable threat which NATO had to defend itself against.
That was done by NATO having actually 12 times higher military expenditures before the war the war anyhow happened, and its ‘deterrence’ failed. And NATO has moved into the largest-ever re-armament to ‘defend’ with goals like 2-4% of the GNP spent/wasted on ‘warfare planning, ‘security’ and ‘defence.’ (As if that was a serious way to determine thow to meet perceived threats).
Militarism – every’ solution’ mentioned is about military actions. We shall win on the battlefield. Nobody in NATO/EU circles knows how to pronounce words such as peace, conflict-resolution, mediation, peacemaking, peace-keeping, reconciliation, dialogue, talks…
Of course, it is implicitly understood that President Putin is at such a low intellectual and moral level that the only thing he understands is that we – the bigger boys in the schoolyard – beat that crap out of him.
Sadly, the only thing that today keeps the Western world together is militarism, winning over Russia together. No other or more positive cause has had the same solidifying function. Militarism has become a religion, NATO its church – and only infidels question that faith and God’s existence. And they know that God is always on’ our’ side.
With warfare, people come together and, in enigmatic ways, their lives may acquire a new meaning that replaces a sense of meaninglessness, and fills an existential void.
Omnipotence – the EU/NATO world has no sense of limitations. It can fight economic crises, recover after the Corona years, handle refugees, solve climate change, alleviate poverty – you name it – and it can re-arm for billions upon billions of dollars. It – the US in particular – can wage a Cold War on everything China – an industry of non-documented accusations – and it can print any amount of greenbacks and repay debts, fix all the infrastructure and other problems of the US society, compete and win in the fields of advanced technology.
The EU – which hasn’t gotten its acts together and built a modern transport infrastructure based on an all-Europe high-speed train network – believes it can always do that later.
All these countries can install sanctions ad libitum – the disease I call ‘sanctionitis’ – believing that they will not be hurt themselves by them. And we shall, of course, re-build Ukraine after we have contributed to destroying it, now it has fought so nobly for ‘our’ values.
We are second to none, and we can do everything simultaneously. No need to prioritise. Significantly, all decisions are made knee-jerk: Sanctions, cancelling of Russia in all other fields, Finland’s and Sweden’s NATO member decisions without analyses of the short, mid-and long-term consequences.
All major decision-makers will be retired or dead, leaving it our children and grandchildren to pay the price by living in a Cold War-impoverished, de-developed and unhappy Europe and US – the more so, the longer the war lasts.
Lacking world awareness – 80-85% of humanity lives in countries whose governments do not side with the NATO/EU world. If the NATO/EU world thought about global attitudes before they made their decisions in response to Russia’s invasion, they made a Himalayan miscalculation – or thought they could later bully everybody into lining up behind them.
This is interesting also because NATO does not only have 30 members, it has 42 partners – some on all continents – and it tries very clearly to move towards becoming a global rather than transatlantic organisation.
This dimension is brilliantly summarised by the High Rep of the EU Foreign and Security Policy (and Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party member), Josef Borell’s racist statement from late 2022: “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden. Everything works. It is the best combination of political freedom, economic prosperity and social cohesion that the humankind has been able to build – the three things together. The rest of the world,” he went on, “is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.” (Stated when opening the European Diplomatic (!) Academy in Bruges).
This leads to:
Intellectual poverty – EU/NATO policies now operate on simplifying Twitter-like statements, assertions, non-documented accusations, self-legitimising marketing language, slogans, empty promises and symbolic blue-yellow emblems, ties, dresses – instead of on analyses, arguments and complex understanding.
Following these things every day is utterly boring, predictable and – filled with repetition. Mr Stoltenberg could easily enter Guiness World Records in Banality Repetition. The awareness or focus of politics, media and research is on weapons, war reporting, media war, more weapons fast into Ukraine – and ‘we shall win’ and ‘Russia must not win.’
The obvious questions never asked are: And then what? At what cost to whom? And what will Europe and the world look like afterwards – if it exists? These groupthinkers don’t seem to bother. The idea of asking: If war, what are the underlying conflicts? What are the real, tangible problems – a conflict is an unsolved problem – that stand between NATO and Russia and seriously contributed to the latter blowing up – is prohibited.
The intellectual poverty also comes through in believing, as it seems, that the word ‘Putin’ explains everything. So, this enormously complex conflict accumulating and deepening since the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dissolved, is reduced to Mr Putin – The (D)Evil – his personality, childhood, or his being physically or mentally ill, a man you shall not listen to who runs a country whose people we punish collectively (against international law, but who cares?).
Furthermore, it comes through in cancelling all critical voices and calling people who ar capable of seeing two sides in a conflict ‘Putinists’ or ‘Putin Versteher’ – the poor trick of framing, of attacking the messenger instead of saying something intellectually qualified.
So, nine psycho-political building blocks in synergy.
Reality checks are very unlikely – at least until the crisis is on the verge of complete breakdown. These building blocks alone guarantee, in my view, that this is not going to go well, and that the NATO/EU leaders are likely to make ever larger miscalculations and live on delusions. Wars tend to narrow down people’s minds. There is no space or time for reflection, for stopping to think.
What does it mean to win?
The usual, again intellectually deficient, argument is that’ we’ must and will, therefore, win, ‘they’ shall lose. And, implicitly, we win because they lose, we win over them. That could turn out to be wrong because ‘they’ might win and ‘we’ might lose.
But it is actually a fourfold table; apart from these two outcomes, both could somehow win, and both could lose.
But even this is a fallacy – because there are not two but many parties: Russia (government and people), Ukraine (government and people), NATO with 30 member states (governments and people) and the US as the leader (government and people). And there is the rest of the world and how the conflict and war impact the global system as time passes.
But let’s stick to the winning idea. What does it mean? Winning militarily, of course – but also winning politically, morally, economically and culturally? Who will be stronger in which respects when the war ends?
The most likely scenario I see on this first anniversary of the war, is a long struggle rather than a quick end to it. The longer it lasts, the more difficult it will be to solve the underlying conflicts – because of the immense accumulated hatred, traumas, devastations, death and wounded, the destroyed economies, etc.
Although the human and material destruction in Ukraine is, so far, rather limited in comparison with, say, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen etc. – it is already as huge as it is heartbreaking. Therefore, the slogan “This war must stop now!” – is the most powerful and truthful – but it is unlikely that the parties will listen anytime soon. They are all in a blind chicken game.
Apart from arms-producing companies and major energy corporations, I see none among the many conflict parties mentioned above who will be better off after this war than before 2014 (the US-instigated and financed regime change in Kyiv and the Russian annexation afterwards of Crimea) or before February 24, 2022.
Instead, everyone – you and me, too – will pay various types of prices. This applies to the immediate after, but also to decades ahead. Healing this conflict and the wounds of this war, building trust as well as a new security system, will take several decades.
In summary, this war cannot be won in any reasonable sense of the word. The ad nauseam repeated NATO/EU slogan “We shall win, stand with Ukraine as long as it takes,” is ill-considered, intellectually poor and delusional.
And it is dangerously irresponsible also because it means killing even more Ukrainian citizens who – in any thinkable scenario – will be the main losers.
Regrettably, this does not prevent those who say it from believing their own words. It’s just that they have never thought through what they mean – because of the 9 psycho-political points above.
All basic NATO/EU assumptions are either plain wrong, unrealistic or unsustainable.
Putin wanted to split NATO, but we stand united.
The first is plain wrong. If NATO is not a party to the conflict, why is Russia’s invasion of a non-NATO country an attempt to split the alliance? Ten former Warsaw Pact countries have become members of NATO despite the well-documented promises all important Western leaders gave Gorbachev over 30 years ago that, if they got united Germany into NATO, the alliance would not expand “one inch” to the East? Why did Russia not split that expanded NATO earlier – and why did it intervene in the case of Ukraine?
It is true, however, true that the only thing the West stands united around is hatred, demonisation and re-armament – winning the war on Ukraine’s territory. Western cohesion has much to thank Putin for – for as long as it lasts.
Putin is out to conquer one country after the other.
Well, so far, it’s not gone that well in Ukraine, and why did he not do that over the last 20 years during which he has been president? Does Russia – with 8% of NATO’s military expenditures and falling – really have the capacity to invade one country after the other, occupy and administer a series of NATO members? Some people say, look at the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. Well again, that was not what it really was – but the repeated propaganda works.
Russia/Putin threatens Finland and Sweden and may even make an isolated attack on the Swedish island of Gotland – therefore, Sweden must join NATO.
Well, what about a shred of evidence of such an intention? Any assessment of the ‘correlation of forces’? Goodhearted people seem to believe that Sweden would have to fight it alone but – no – the US would come to its rescue even if Sweden wasn’t a member of NATO. That was already agreed upon and planned.
Sweden will instead now be drawn early into warfare and have to accept US and perhaps other bases/weapons prepositioning on its territory and thereby ensure that Russian missiles will target Sweden. It has said goodbye to 200 years of beneficial non-alignment, an independent foreign policy, options of being a mediator and an advocate of common security and the UN goal of general and complete disarmament.
The Swedish PM Kristersson has – without any mandate – promised full loyalty even with NATO’s nuclear doctrine. The Swedes will now live much more dangerously – with sharp, confrontational borderlines instead of neutral buffers. And with much less diversity and freely stated opinions in a more militarist security debate.
Russia will fall apart economically.
Yes, of course, there are economic problems and they may likely increase year by year – but Russia is far from falling apart – for at least four reasons. Furthermore, the Russians know how to suffer – 27 million dead in WW2 – whereas Westerners don’t know much about suffering for their principles and stated ideals.
Ukraine is an existential issue for Russia and many Russians, but absolutely not for the US/NATO – except for the fact that NATO’s only raison d’etre is expansion for the sake of expansion and to keep the conflict with Russia as a-symmetrical as possible and weaken Russia.
Moreover, Russia has the world’s by far largest territory and deposits of natural resources – it is certainly able to slowly but surely turn its back on the EU and NATO countries and cooperate, instead, much more closely with China, India, Iran, the Middle East and the rest of the world, also in the China-driven Belt And Road Initiative, BRI.
Out there, they may not love Russia, but they unite with it because they are sick and tired of the West in general and the US Empire’s operations in particular. And because the Global South has been hard hit by both global economic crisis, the fallout from the Corona and now the West’s response to the invasion.
No ceasefire, no talks, no mediation, no UN or OSCE, no China, no peacekeepers, no demilitarisation, no brainstorming on possible solutions – in short, no-brainer and therefore no peace
We can win this war by letting the Ukrainians fight it for us.
We’ve all heard it repeatedly: Ukraine’s cause is our cause. Ukraine is fighting for our liberal values, for us, for Europe. Ukraine struggles impressively for freedom, democracy, human rights – and therefore, we have a duty to support it with weapons and humanitarian aid.
This idealised, or glossy, Western media image of ‘our’ Ukraine has a political purpose and should be discussed. Understandably, a country fighting for its survival may have to compromise on some of those fine values; the relevant question is what Ukraine might look like – given parts of its history and the de-moralising effects of multi-year warfighting.
Additionally, do the Ukrainians have the military, political, economic and psychological strength to carry the West’s burden on its shoulders, fight for years against NATO’s allegedly formidable nuclear enemy? For a time, yes, but hardly for much longer.
We should not be surprised if more and more Ukrainians begin to wonder: How much of our country and our future must be destroyed to – perhaps – become a NATO member? Is our president doing what is best for Ukraine or is he actually more loyal to the US/NATO than to his citizens? What about internal conflicts, power struggles, coup d’etat attempts and war fatique if this war drags on and, for years, doesn’t lead to anything that can be called victory?
And will Europe take more millions of Ukrainian refugees who have to run away or see no future there?
What we see is the tyranny of the small steps – incremental NATO de facto involvement “for as long as it takes.” It means both fighter aircraft, long-range missiles, and substantial depletion of NATO’s military arsenals. It won’t be for Ukraine’s sake – the country could well be pulverised – but because ‘we’ need to win this war.
The ethics is abominable.
Is Ukraine really important enough for the US and NATO to risk major war, perhaps nuclear war? Do NATO countries have real ideals, and do they want to show that deeds are more important than words? Does NATO really want to win and pay victory’s price?
Today’s leaders would say ‘Yes.’ Then the moral dilemma can be formulated in this way: Why not put in 300 000 – 400 000 NATO troops and conduct the war you have developed plans for since decades back – make it your war, not a proxy war in which the Ukrainian people shall pay the price for the – predictable – consequences of NATO’s expansion (Remember that before the invasion, there was only a minority of all Ukrainians who were in favour of NATO membership and 2/3 of the people who wanted the question decided by a referendum – they never got. NATO and President Poroshenko made the decision).
So, how much are the Ukrainians willing to sacrifice for ‘our’ goals? And for how long?
Peace will emerge from the victory on the battlefields of Ukraine.
It won’t. It never has. Militarism and being drunk on weapons exclude every thought of peacemaking – the words mentioned above under militarism. When you allocate all your resources to the arsenals of war, you deplete the arsenals of peace.
The NATO/EU countries have, in contrast to Putin in 2014, never proposed that the UN come in as a mediator, disarmer and dialogue facilitator. The Minsk process was nothing but a way to buy time for Ukraine to be armed as much as possible before the great battle for ‘our values’ and the killing of 14 000 Russian-leaning Ukrainian citizens. Ukraine is not a country without internal conflicts – that may blow up when the present war ends.
The incredible conflict and peace illiterate assumption seems to be that the NATO/EU countries can be both a fighting party and, later, a mediator. Or that there will be no need for any mediation and reconciliation with Russia: A new Iron Curtain, just tighter, in the making.
The people of Europe will put up with all this because we tell them it is an existential fight.
I do not think they will. There are already doubts and demonstrations against the US/NATO/EU media narrative. It will dawn among the EU’s 420 million citizens that the skyrocketing prices are not “Putin’s prices” but of their own politicians’ making.
It may dawn upon them that Nord Stream’s destruction was an act of economic terrorism against friends and allies, a deep humiliation of Germany and Chancellor Scholz personall – a hitherto unseen US arrogance that will not be forgotten even with the media avoiding it as much as they can – a 9/26 as a European 9/11?
According to this survey published by Euronews, people’s attention is shifting from Ukraine’s battlefield to the wider-felt impacts, including supply-chain disruption, energy price spikes and rising inflation. Time will exert its influence on what can be done by whom and for how long.
We can make Ukraine a NATO member and ignore Russia’s concerns, protests and anger.
Well, not exactly prudent but, rather, a result of the above 9 psycho-political mechanisms. That’s is why NATO’s expansion cannot be discussed and the narrative has it that Putin acted out of the blue.
Generally, people who feel ignored will, as time passes and their frustration builds, force others to listen to them.
“In 2008, William Burns, who is now Biden’s director of the CIA but was then ambassador to Russia, warned that “Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).” He warned Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that “I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.” Short even of expansion into Ukraine, Burns called NATO expansion into Eastern Europe “premature at best, and needlessly provocative at worst.” If it came to Ukraine, Burns warned, “There could be no doubt that Putin would fight back hard.”
This is one of numerous facts that you are prevented systematically by our politicians and media to know and discuss.
The list of intellectuals – Realpolitik as well as peace experts – who have warned that Ukraine was a No Go place for full NATO membership is long and most mentioned in my book. NATO, the hubris alliance, did not believe it had to listen or take serious what they – and every Russian president – have stated the last 30 years and CIA’s Burns expressed so well in the same year as NATO decided that Ukraine should become a NATO member (without ever asking the Ukrainian people).
The West will come out stronger and keep its role as a world leader.
It won’t, it will be weakened. If it wants to outcompete China, the Belt and Road Initiative as well as other big powers, it would be wiser to sleep out the militarist hangover and get up early in the morning. If anything, this extremely resource-consuming war for a non-important, non-NATO country will weaken the West more than it will weaken Russia, which will join the emerging new multi-polar world order.
We are where we are now for a series of reasons. We did not have to be here. This could all have been avoided.
The – superior – NATO/EU world is in denial, and its policies have no chance of succeeding because they are intellectually and morally deficient.
This is true irrespective of what you feel about Putin and Russia. If you or the West think he is stupid or evil, don’t believe that anything you do is wise and good. It hasn’t been. And don’t ever reciprocate in kind – tit-for-tat – because that makes you a mirror image of Putin. (Read your Gandhi).
Each and every person who says that ‘we’ shall win this war and ‘they’ shall lose should get out of the sandbox and recognise that s/he becomes co-responsible for the limitless suffering of the innocent Ukrainian citizens, perhaps in the millions.
This war must stop and stop now. We must begin to think and get out of the emotionalist, self-glorifying autopilot straitjacket.
Or we shall all lose.
Knowledge-based and intelligent civil conflict resolution is the only road to peace, cooperation and coexistence in the future.
Peace is still possible.
And peacemaking is the only chance for the US and Europe to play a positive role in tomorrow’s new and very different world.
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Russia experts and national security specialists will be pouring over the text of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s address on Tuesday for some time to come, trying to divine hidden meaning.
The fact is, however, Putin’s speech was something rarely heard in Western political circles —unvarnished statements of fact, set forth in a straightforward, surprisingly easy-to-understand manner.
In a world where Western politicians regularly dissemble to shape perception, even if the underlying “facts” are not true (one need only refer to President Joe Biden’s infamous phone call with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, in July 2021, for an example), Putin’s speech was a breath of fresh air — no hidden agendas, no false pretense — no lies.
And on the issue of arms control, the truth hurts.
“I have to say today,” Putin announced near the end of his address, “that Russia is suspending its participation in New START. I repeat, not withdrawing from the treaty, no, but merely suspending its participation.”
The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), signed in 2010 as the outcome of negotiations between U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, ostensibly caps the number of strategic nuclear warheads that each country can deploy at 1,550; limits the number of deployed land-and submarine-based missiles and bombers used to deliver these warheads to 700; and caps at 800 the deployed and non-deployed ICBM launchers, SLBM launchers and heavy bombers equipped for nuclear armaments.
In February 2021, Biden and Putin agreed to extend the treaty for an additional five years. New START will expire in 2026.
Background to the Decision
The backstory to New START is important, especially in the context of Putin’s declaration regarding Russia’s suspension. The core of that backstory is missile defense.
In December 2001, then-President George W. Bush announced that the United States was withdrawing from the landmark 1972 anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty, which banned (with limited exception) the development and deployment of missile defense systems designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).
The ABM treaty set in stone the Cold War concept of mutually assured destruction, or MAD, the idea that no side possessing nuclear weapons would use them against another nuclear power for the simple reason that to do so would bring about their own demise through guaranteed nuclear retaliation.
The insanity of MAD helped pave the way for all arms control agreements that followed, from the Strategic Arms Reductions Talks (SALT), to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty and on to the various iterations of Strategic Arms Reduction treaties (START).
Putin condemned the U.S. decision to withdraw from the ABM treaty as “a mistake.” At the time, U.S. and Russian strategic nuclear arsenals were subject to the limitations imposed by the 1991 START treaty. Efforts to further reduce U.S. and Russian nuclear weapons were undertaken as part of the START II treaty.
But post-Cold War politics, combined with the U.S. decision to abandon the ABM treaty, left the treaty signed but unratified, effectively killing it.
Similar issues helped conspire to kill the START III treaty in the negotiation stage. The narrowly focused Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty, or SORT, which was signed in 2002, committed both the U.S. and Russia to additional reductions beyond those mandated by START I, but contained no verification or compliance mechanisms.
The START I treaty expired in 2009, and SORT in 2012. New START was intended to replace both agreements.
The Medvedev Presidency
One of the sticking points has been the issue of missile defense. Under President Putin, Russia refused to enter any new substantive arms control treaty (SORT was more informal agreement than treaty in structure and substance) that did not meaningfully address missile defense.
But in May 2008, Dmitry Medvedev took over as Russian president. The Russian constitution prohibited a president from serving more than two consecutive terms in office, and so, with Putin’s support, Medvedev ran for Russia’s highest office, and won. Putin was subsequently appointed prime minister.
Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential election campaign took advantage of Vladimir Putin’s endorsement and high popularity. (Leonid Dzhepko, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
While the Bush administration sought to negotiate a follow-on treaty to the soon-to-be expired START I, Medvedev proved to be every bit as reluctant to entering any agreement with the U.S. that did not include limitations on missile defense, something President Bush would not accept.
In the end, the problem of negotiating a new treaty would be left to the administration of Barack Obama, who assumed office in January 2009.
In their first meeting, in London in late March 2009, the two leaders issued a statement in which they agreed “to pursue new and verifiable reductions in our strategic offensive arsenals in a step-by-step process, beginning by replacing the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with a new, legally-binding treaty.”
As for missile defense, Obama and Medvedev agreed to treat it as a separate issue. “While acknowledging that differences remain over the purposes of deployment of missile defense assets in Europe,” the statement read, “we discussed new possibilities for mutual international cooperation in the field of missile defense, taking into account joint assessments of missile challenges and threats, aimed at enhancing the security of our countries, and that of our allies and partners.”
Let there be no doubt — the New START treaty that was negotiated between Russia and the United States, while singularly focused on reducing strategic offensive nuclear arsenals, contained a clear understanding that this treaty would be followed by a good-faith effort by the U.S. to address Russia’s longstanding concerns over missile defense.
This was reflected in the exchange of non-binding unilateral statements attached to the New START treaty. The “Statement of the Russian Federation Concerning Missile Defense” set out the position that New START “may be effective and viable only in conditions where there is no qualitative or quantitative build-up in [U.S. missile defense system capabilities].”
Moreover, the statement said any build-up in U.S. missile defense capabilities which gave “rise to a threat to [Russia’s strategic nuclear force potential]” would be considered one of the “extraordinary events” mentioned in Article XIV of the treaty and could prompt Russia to exercise its right of withdrawal.
For its part, the United States issued its own statement declaring that U.S. missile defenses “are not intended to affect the strategic balance with Russia” while declaring that it intended “to continue improving and deploying its missile defense systems in order to defend itself against limited attack.”
The agreements reached between Obama and Medvedev, however, was not necessarily acceptable to Putin. According to Rose Gottemoeller, the U.S. negotiator for New START, Putin, as prime minister, nearly scuttled the talks when, in December 2009, he once again raised the issue of missile defense.
“They [the Russians] were going to have a critical National Security Council meeting,” Gottemoeller later recounted in an October 2021 talk with the Carnegie Council, “and the story I have heard told is that Putin, for the first time showing some interest in these negotiations, walks into the National Security Council meeting and simply draws lines through all the issues on this decision sheet and said, ‘No, no, no, no, no.’”
Gottemoeller went on to describe how Putin then travelled to Vladivostok and delivered a speech where he denounced the treaty as “totally inadequate,” criticizing both the U.S. and Russian negotiating teams as being “only focused on limiting strategic offensive forces,” noting that “they are not limiting missile defense. This treaty is a waste of time,” Gottemoeller quoted Putin. “We should get out of the negotiations.”
According to Gottemoeller, Medvedev stood up to Putin, telling his prime minister, “No, we are going to continue these negotiations and get them done.”
Broken Promise
Anatoly Antonov was the Russian negotiator for New START. He dutifully complied with his instructions from the Kremlin to craft a treaty focused on the reduction of strategic offensive weapons, working under the assumption that the U.S. would be as good as its word when it came to engaging in meaningful negotiations on missile defense.
And yet, less than a year after New START entered into force, Antonov found that the U.S. had no intention on following through on its promises.
In an interview with Kommersant newspaper, Antonov said that talks with NATO on a planned Western European missile-defense system had reached “a dead end,” adding that NATO proposals were “vague” and that the promised participation of Russia in the proposed system “is not even up for discussion.”
Antonov indicated that the lack of good faith shown by the U.S. regarding missile defense could lead to Russia withdrawing from the New START treaty altogether.
While the U.S. did offer to let Russia observe specific aspects of a specific test of a U.S. missile interceptor, the offer never amounted to anything, with the U.S. downplaying the abilities of the SM-3 missile when it came to intercepting Russian missiles, noting that the missile lacked the range to be effective against Russian missiles.
The late Ellen Tauscher, who at the time was the U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, had offered Antonov written assurances that the Mk. 41 Aegis Ashore system, which would employ the SM-3 missile interceptor, was not directed against Russia.
U.S. Under Secretary Ellen Tauscher, right, in 2009. (U.S. Mission Geneva, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)
However, Tauscher said,
“We cannot provide legally binding commitments, nor can we agree to limitations on missile defense, which must necessarily keep pace with the evolution of the threat.”
Tauscher’s words were prophetic. In 2015, the U.S. began testing the SM-3 Block IIA interceptor against ICBM targets. The SM-3 did, in fact, have the range to shoot down Russian intermediate- and intercontinental-range missiles.
And now those missiles were to be stationed on bases constructed in Poland and Romania, two former Warsaw Pact nations that were closer to the border with Russia than NATO forces had ever been.
The Americans had negotiated in bad faith. Putin, it turned out, had been right to question a strategic arms control treaty that did not consider Russia’s concerns over missile defense.
And yet this did not weaken Putin’s commitment to fulfilling New START. According to Gottemoeller,
“Putin, since this treaty has been signed, has taken a very positive stance about it. Since the treaty has entered into force, he has called it repeatedly publicly the ‘gold standard’ of nuclear treaties and has supported it…I know that he has been committed to the treaty and really committed to the efforts underway now in this strategic stability dialogue to get some new negotiations going.”
But Putin’s assiduous adherence to New START did not mean that the Russian leader had stopped worrying about the threat posed by U.S. missile defense. On March 1, 2018, Putin delivered a major address to the Russian Federal Assembly — the same forum he spoke to on Tuesday. His tone was defiant:
“I want to tell all those who have fueled the arms race over the last 15 years, sought to win unilateral advantages over Russia, and introduced unlawful sanctions aimed at containing our country’s development — everything that you wanted to impede with your policies has already happened. You have failed to contain Russia.”
Putin then unveiled several new Russian strategic weapons, including the Sarmat heavy ICBM and the Avangard hypersonic vehicle, which he said were developed in direct response to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM treaty.
Putin said Russia had warned the U.S. that it would take such measures back in 2004. “No one listened to us then,” Putin declared. “So listen to us now.”
One of the people listening was Rose Gottemoeller. “[P]eople are worried about … the new so-called exotic weapons systems that President Putin rolled out in March of 2018,” the former arms control negotiator, by then retired, said in 2021. “[T]wo of them are already under the limits New START, the so-called Sarmat heavy [ICBM] and also the Avangard, which is their first strategic-range hypersonic glide vehicle that they are getting ready to deploy. They have already said that they will bring it under the New START Treaty.”
Gottemoeller noted that any future arms control agreement would be seeking constraints on these systems.
Treaty Extension in 2021
The New START Treaty was extended for a five-year term in February 2021, even though the Russians believed that the “conversion or elimination” procedures used by the U.S. to determine whether B-52H bombers and Ohio-class submarines converted from nuclear- to non-nuclear use, or eliminated altogether, were insufficient.
The Russians hoped that these issues could be worked out using the treaty-mandated Bilateral Consultative Commission (BCC) process, which meets twice a year to resolve issues such as these.
March 28, 2011: U.S.-Russian delegations at the Bilateral Consultative Commission on the New START Treaty. (U.S. State Department, Wikimedia Commons)
One of the problems facing both the U.S. and Russian inspectors and negotiators, however, was the Covid-19 pandemic. In early 2020, both sides agreed to suspend on-site inspections and BCC meetings due to the pandemic. By mid-2021, U.S. and Russian negotiators began discussing the creation of joint Covid protocols that could get both inspections and BCC consultations up and running.
But then came Ukraine.
On March 9, 2022, the U.S., U.K. and European Union all passed sanctions which banned Russian aircraft from overflying their respective territories and placed visa restrictions on Russians transiting EU or the U.K. en route to the United States. According to the Russians, these restrictions effectively prohibit the dispatch of weapons-inspection teams to the U.S. using New START short-notice inspection protocols, which have strict treaty-mandated timelines attached to their implementation.
In June 2022, the U.S. unilaterally declared that the moratorium on inspections imposed because of the Covid-19 pandemic was no longer in effect. On Aug. 8, 2022, the U.S. attempted to dispatch a short-notice inspection team to Russia to carry out treaty-mandated inspection tasks.
Russia denied entry to the team, and accused the U.S. of trying to gain a unilateral advantage by conducting on-site inspections while Russia could not. Citing the restrictions imposed by sanctions, the Russia Foreign Ministry said “there are no similar obstacles to the arrival of American inspectors in Russia.”
To resolve the impasse over inspections as well as other outstanding treaty-implementation issues, Russian and U.S. diplomats began consultations on convening a meeting of the BCC, and eventually were able to settle on a Nov. 29, 2022, date in Cairo, Egypt. Four days before the BCC was supposed to begin, however, Russia announced that the meeting was off.
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, in statements made to Kommersant, said that the war in Ukraine was at the heart of the decision. “There is, of course, the effect of what is happening in Ukraine and around it,” Ryabkov said. “I will not deny it. Arms control and dialogue in this area cannot be immune to what is around it.”
Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov, center, at an International Atomic Energy Agency meeting, August 2020. (Dean Calma/IAEA, Flickr)
Arms Control Could Be Dead
The State Department issued an official report to Congress on Russian compliance with New Start in early 2023 which accused Russia of violating the New START treaty by refusing U.S. inspectors access to sites inside Russia.
Russia, a State Department spokesperson stated, was “not complying with its obligation under the New START Treaty to facilitate inspection activities on its territory,” noting that “Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control.”
The insensitivity of the U.S. side to the impact of its actions targeting Russia — sometimes literally — as part of the overall U.S. response to Putin’s initiation of the Special Military Operation in February 2022 is, however, telling.
In his address on Tuesday, Putin highlighted the role played by the U.S. and NATO in facilitating the Ukrainian use of Soviet-era drones to carry out an attack on a base near Engels, Russia, that housed Russia’s strategic aviation assets, including nuclear-capable bombers. He also pointed out that he had just signed orders for the Sarmat and Avangard systems to become operational and, as such, inspectable under the terms of New START.
“The United States and NATO are directly saying that their goal is to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia,” Putin said. “Are they going to inspect our defense facilities, including the newest ones, as if nothing had happened? Do they really think we’re easily going to let them in there just like that?”
Rose Gottemoeller observed that the U.S. is “not going to change our policy on Ukraine because he’s [Putin] in a hissy fit over the New START treaty. That’s just not going to happen.”
But Putin’s stance is far more principled than a simple “hissy fit.” Born of the original sin perpetrated by the U.S. in withdrawing from the ABM treaty, Putin’s angst is directly tied to the deceit displayed by U.S. officials — including Gottemoeller — when it came to assurances given Dmitry Medvedev about missile defense during the New START negotiations.
This deceit led to Russia deploying new categories of strategic nuclear weapons — the Sarmat and Avangard — to defeat U.S. missile defense systems, including those that had been forward deployed into Europe.
And now, with the war in Ukraine being linked to a U.S. strategy of achieving the strategic defeat of Russia, the U.S. is seeking to use New START to gain access to these very systems, all the while denying Russia its reciprocal rights of inspection under the treaty. As Putin aptly noted, such an arrangement “really sounds absurd.”
The inability and/or unwillingness of either party to compromise on New START means that the treaty will remain in limbo for the indefinite future which, given that the treaty expires in February 2026, means there is a distinct possibility arms control between the U.S. and Russia is dead.
K-114 Tula nuclear submarine at a pier of the Russian Northern Fleet’s naval base during drills for nuclear submarine crews in the Murmansk Region of Russia. (RIA Novosti archive/ Mikhail Fomichev / CC-BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons)
Risk of New Arms Race
While the U.S. and Russia had previously committed to a follow-on treaty to replace New START, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine poses a nearly insurmountable obstacle for anyone seeking to have such a treaty document ready for signature and ratification by the time New START expires.
There is a good chance the U.S. and Russia, in two years’ time, will find themselves without any verifiable mechanism to assuage the fears and uncertainty about the two parties’ respective nuclear arsenals, leading to the real possibility — if not probability — that they will both embark on an unconstrained arms race fueled by ignorance-based angst that could very well result in the kind of misunderstandings, mistakes, or miscalculations that could trigger a nuclear war and, in doing so, end all humanity.
“The truth is behind us,” Putin said, closing out his address to the Russian Federal Assembly.
So, too, may be humanity’s last chance to prevent nuclear calamity, if a way can’t somehow be found to get arms control back on the agenda.
Here, Gottemoeller’s assertion that the U.S. would not alter its Ukraine policy to save New START underscores the self-defeating reality of the Biden administration’s efforts to arm Ukraine.
The sooner the war in Ukraine is over, the sooner the U.S. and Russia can get down to the business of preserving arms control as a viable part of the relationship between the two nations.
By seeking to extend the Ukraine conflict, however, the U.S. is in effect engaging in an act of self-immolation that threatens to engulf the world in a nuclear holocaust.
During the Vietnam War, the noted correspondent Peter Arnett quoted an unnamed U.S. Army officer as saying, “We had to destroy the village to save it.” With regard to the linkage that has been created between Ukraine and arms control, the same sick logic now applies — to save one, the other must be destroyed.
To save Ukraine, arms control must be destroyed.
To save arms control, Ukraine must be destroyed.
One sacrifices a nation, the other a planet.
This is the Hobson’s Choice U.S. policy makers have created, except it is not.
Save the planet. That is the only choice.
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Scott Ritter is a former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer who served in the former Soviet Union implementing arms control treaties, in the Persian Gulf during Operation Desert Storm and in Iraq overseeing the disarmament of WMD. His most recent book is Disarmament in the Time of Perestroika, published by Clarity Press.
Featured image: Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Feb. 21 address to Federal Assembly. (Kremlin)
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Another tragic death of a 14 year old hockey player from British Columbia (click here).
“The community is mourning the sudden passing away on February 13, of 14-year-old Robin Singh Janjua who played on Delta Hockey Academy’s U15 Green team”.
The Surrey Eagles posted the following on their Facebook: “The Surrey Eagles are grieving the loss of one of the brightest stars of our local community, in the passing of Robin Janjua.
“He was a beloved son, brother and friend to many. He absolutely loved the game of hockey, he was exceptionally talented and had a strong commitment and positive attitude whenever he played. Robin embodied the essence of what it meant to be a great teammate, and his loss will continue to be felt deeply across the hockey community. On behalf of the Surrey Eagles, our players and parents, we are sending our thoughts and prayers to the Janjua family at this very difficult time.”
“The sudden death of a 14-year-old player has saddened the hockey community in Surrey, Delta and beyond.
Robin Janjua played with Semiahmoo Minor Hockey in South Surrey/White Rock before he left for Delta Hockey Academy at the start of the current season, to play on the academy’s U15 Green team.
He died on Valentine’s Day (Feb. 14), according to posts on DHA’s social media accounts Tuesday (Feb. 21).
Robin is described has a “kind-hearted young man” who was “an exceptional student, athlete and teammate.”
The cause of death has not been reported.
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All images in this article are from the author
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
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How far we have come—or, rather, fallen. Once upon a time in America, corporations were required to sign a charter before doing business in a state or community. “After the nation’s founding, corporations were granted charters by the state as they are today,” writes Stephen D. Foster Jr.
Unlike today, however, corporations were only permitted to exist 20 or 30 years and could only deal in one commodity, could not hold stock in other companies, and their property holdings were limited to what they needed to accomplish their business goals. And perhaps the most important facet of all this is that most states in the early days of the nation had laws on the books that made any political contribution by corporations a criminal offense.
The founders despised the East India Trading Company, the Massachusetts Bay Company, and above all, centralized banks.
“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them (around the banks), will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered,” Thomas Jefferson wrote in an 1802 letter to Secretary of State Albert Gallatin.
That was then, this is now. Now we have self-appointed globalist sociopaths telling us we will own nothing and be happy (only possible with the right amount of soma).
East Palestine, again. It is too symptomatic to be ignored.
Norfolk Southern—the railroad giant whose train derailed and caused a toxic chemical fire in a small Ohio town earlier this month—has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to throw out a 2017 lawsuit filed by a cancer-afflicted former rail worker—and the Biden administration is siding with the corporation, reporting from The Lever revealed last week. (Emphasis added.)
However, if you read Bizarro World Daily (the corporate media)—where facts are conspiracy theories and the state will classify you as a domestic terrorist if you prefer reality over fairy tales—Biden is portrayed as an advocate of the right of workers to organize. It was the Bad Orange Man who attacked labor rights.
Even the Vermont career politician, Bernie Sanders, is reluctant to place blame for the poisoning and future cancer epidemic in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and beyond on a corporation that has donated so much “campaign” money to the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, the Democratic Congressional Committee, the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the National Republican Congressional Committee, and various establishment PACs. The Bern shall not bite the hand that feeds.
The fact this career politician works closely with the democrat establishment completely destroys the claim he is an advocate of the people (or people who believe socialism is some kind of palliative against the predatory and psychopathic behavior of large corporations and banks).
Sanders blamed the driver of the train for the accident. “Sanders’ statement not only absolved Buttigieg and the Biden administration, but his own responsibility for the disaster,” opines Shannon Jones, writing for the World Socialist Web Site (in Neocon Bizarro World, we often depend on socialists, to tell the truth, as the “objective” corporate media only deal in omission, lies, and deception).
If the Supreme Court (handpicked political appointees in black robes) decides in favor of Norfolk Southern, the following will become difficult, if not impossible for the average person.
It should be obvious by now Biden, Congress, and the real owners of the DC dinosaur, corporations, and banks, are steadily working together to reduce you, your children, and your grandchildren, to the status of penurious hand-to-mouth wage slaves with zero ability to confront the state and its corporatist (fascist) “partners” as they mow over and shred your natural rights.
Please, don’t vote for Bernie Sanders, Biden, DeSantis, Trump (who threatens to run again, if the Democrats don’t throw him in prison), and any other mealy-mouth careerist of the uniparty political class.
The first assumption should be: they don’t give a whit about you (except for your money), they are not interested in protecting you (with the exception of fictional enemies), and they are well-paid to carry water for banks and corporations that, as Jefferson knew so long ago, will destroy lives and the environment in immoral and criminal pursuit of money and the narcissistic desire to rule and control other people.
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Die Aufklärung über die Wissenschaft der Psychologie ist eine länderübergreifende Forschungsaufgabe, die nur zu bewältigen ist, wenn freie und vernunftbegabte Mitbürger gemeinsam mit ehrlichen Wissenschaftlern forschen und sich einig sind. „Global Research“ ist hierfür zusammen mit anderen unabhängigen Medien ein geeignetes Diskussionsforum.
Da die Wissenschaft dem Leben entsprungen ist, ist sie dazu berufen, dem Leben der Menschen zu dienen. Oder wie es Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) im Theaterstück „Leben des Galilei“ ausdrückt:
„Ich halte dafür, dass das einzige Ziel der Wissenschaft darin besteht, die Mühseligkeit der menschlichen Existenz zu erleichtern.“
Das Konzept der Natur des Menschen beinhaltet aus naturwissenschaftlicher Sicht die völlige Abwesenheit genetisch vorherbestimmter aggressiver Triebe. Dadurch ergibt sich die Fähigkeit des Menschen, ohne Gewalt und Kriege in einer friedlichen Welt zu leben und sich in ihr zu organisieren.
So eine Welt entsteht jedoch nicht von selbst, sondern – wie die nachfolgenden Ausführungen über den menschlichen Geist der Verblendung und den Mythos eines Aggressionstriebs zeigen werden – einzig und allein durch menschliche Entschlüsse, durch ein Denken und Handeln, das sich am Ideal des Friedens und der Gerechtigkeit orientiert.
Solange wir in einer Welt leben, in der Gewalt und Kriege an der Tagesordnung sind, können wir uns der Verantwortung nicht entziehen. Da die Welt ist so, wie wir sie eingerichtet – oder in Bezug auf bereits bestehende Verhältnisse – geduldet haben, sind wir mitschuldig, selbst dann, wenn wir Opfer sind.
Sollten Wissenschaftler zu den aufgeworfenen Fragen nichts beizutragen haben, rührt die Not der Menschen nicht an ihr Herz. Ihre Weisheit und ihre Wissenschaft ist dann nur ein selbstgefälliges Spiel des Verstandes, das keine Verbindlichkeit kennt.
Wie in Teil I bereits dargelegt, stützt sich der Autor bei seinen psychologischen Überlegungen auf die Gedanken und Erkenntnisse seines geschätzten Lehrers, auf persönliche Gespräche mit ihm und auf Gesprächsprotokolle.
Die Natur des Menschen ist friedlich
Seit Menschen existieren und wir Erkenntnisse über sie haben, wissen wir, dass sie stets nach einer besseren Lebens-Situation streben, in erster Linie nach einem Leben in Frieden ohne Gewalt und Kriege. Jedoch in der heutigen kapitalistischen Welt herrschen Gewalt, Blut, Tod und Verderben.
Die Erziehung in unserer Kultur erzeugt bei den Kindern Angst vor dem anderen Menschen, eine Gefühlsreaktion, die sich gegen den anderen wendet. Wenn sie dann heranwachsen, sind sie nicht imstande, mit den Mitmenschen zusammenzuwirken und zusammenzuleben. Auch das eigene Leben können sie sich nicht gut einrichten.
Dabei ist die Natur des Menschen friedlich. Und deshalb ist die Menschheit fähig, ohne Waffen und Kriege zusammenzuleben. Die meisten Menschen lieben es, ihrer täglichen Arbeit nachzugehen oder den Acker zu bestellen und mit dem Nachbarn in Frieden und Freundschaft zu leben.
Es ist allein die Machtgier derer, die innerhalb der Völker als Obrigkeit fungieren und die durch ihre gesellschaftliche Stellung vom Geist der Gewalt durchdrungen sind, weshalb es immer wieder zu kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen kommt, in denen die Menschen für ihrer Herren und Ausbeuter verbluten. Deshalb sollte man nicht die „Völker“ für die Kriege verantwortlich machen. Es sind die herrschenden Schichten, die sich bekriegen und gegenseitig zu unterjochen versuchen. Ihre „Untertanen“ leben, arbeiten und sterben für sie.
Die psychologische Forschung sollte an der Frage ansetzen, wie die Unterdrückung des Menschen durch den Menschen überhaupt möglich ist. Die Macht als Ursache allein reicht nicht aus, da die Macht des Volkes größer ist als diejenige seiner Herrscher. Es muss ideologische Erklärungen dafür geben, dass die Herrschenden es schaffen, die Hörigkeit ihrer Völker sicherzustellen.
Es ist die ideologische Verblendung des Menschengeistes, die dazu führt, dass die Menschen ihre Liebe zur Freiheit und zum Frieden vergessen und damit beginnen, ihre Ketten zu verherrlichen?
Kriegsgründe und der Geist der Verblendung
In früheren Zeiten wurde der Ursprung des Krieges auf den Sündenfall der ersten Menschen zurückgeführt. Doch diese mythologische Erklärung ist nicht ernst zu nehmen. Auch der Konkurrenzkampf zwischen den Religionen, von denen jede sich im Besitz der absoluten Wahrheit wähnte, gab Anlass zu kriegerischen Verwicklungen.
Ebenso falsch ist die Auffassung vom Menschen als einem Raubtier in seinem „Kampf uns Dasein“: „homo homini lupus“ (Der Mensch ist dem Menschen ein Wolf).
In der Neuzeit ist dann der Typus des Wirtschaftskrieges geschaffen worden, in dem die Herren des Handels und der Industrie die Völker zu einem Ringen um Rohstoffquellen und Absatzmärkte antreten ließen.
Ein weiteres wichtiges Moment der Verblendung ist die nationale und rassische Ideologie, deren epidemischer Charakter uns sowohl in der Vergangenheit veranschaulicht worden ist, uns aber auch in der Gegenwart vor Augen geführt wird.
Der Mythos der Nation und der Rasse schafft eine künstliche Einheit zwischen Herrschenden und Beherrschten, indem den Untertanen vorgaukelt wird, sie gehörten mitsamt ihren Herren einer geheimnisvollen und ruhmreichen Körperschaft an, an deren Glanz und Größe auch der geringste Knecht seinen Anteil hat. Diese Verklärung der Knechts-Mentalität schuf die Voraussetzungen für absolutistische Herrschaftsformen, in denen die Menschen ein willenloses Werkzeug ihrer Obrigkeit geworden sind und ihr in Krieg und Frieden vorbehaltlose Gefolgschaft leisteten.
In Wirklichkeit sind Nationalismus und Rassenlehre Geisteshaltungen des Stolzes und der Überheblichkeit, in denen immer auch Aggressivität gegenüber Nachbarvölker oder benachbarte Rassen mitschwingt. Zu allen Zeiten waren sie für die Herrschenden ein Mittel zur Verführung der breiten Volksmassen.
Ein weiterer Unsinn und Schwindel ist der bereits in früheren Artikeln dargelegte und von Arno Plackausführlich beschriebene Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb (1). Laut dieser vorpsychologischen Auffassung würden die Menschen wegen eines angeborenen Aggressionstriebs gerne in den Krieg ziehen, um andere Menschen, die sie in der Regel nicht kennen und die ihnen nichts angetan haben, umzubringen und sich selbst umbringen zu lassen. Doch kein Mensch verlässt seine Liebe, kein Mann Frau und Kinder, um in den Krieg zu ziehen.
Wieso sollten Menschen, die ruhig und in Frieden in ihrem Haus, Hof und Garten leben, auf einmal einen Aggressionstrieb haben und gegen das andere Volk in den Krieg ziehen wollen? Die wohlbekannten Theoretiker des Aggressionstriebes wie Siegmund Freud und Konrad Lorenz, deren Namen jeder Zeitungsleser und Fernsehzuschauer kennt, verstanden die Menschen nicht.
Haben wir den Mut und die Geduld, unsere diesbezügliche Meinung zu revidieren. In Tat und Wahrheit ist es die gewalttätige Erziehung, die bereits beim Kind Aggressionen auslöst. Der Mensch ist nicht imstande, seinen Mitmenschen umzubringen; das entspricht nicht seiner Natur.
Abschließend soll auf die tragische Schwäche der Menschen eingegangen werden, dass sie nicht NEIN sagen können. Haben sich die Herrschenden für einen Krieg entschieden, dann muss gefolgt werden. Die Menschen können nicht sagen: „Nein, ich gehe nicht in den Krieg!“
Männer jeden Alters können leider nicht anders reagieren. Die Erziehung hat so auf ihr Gefühlsleben eingewirkt, dass sie in den Krieg ziehen „müssen“. In ähnlicher Weise, wie sie in der Kinderstube Vater und Mutter und in der Schule den Lehrern folgen mussten, folgen sie als Erwachsene politischen und anderen Autoritäten. Dieses Gefühl des absoluten Gehorsams aus der Kindheit tragen sie bis ins hohe Alter mit. Das Verhalten des Auschwitz-Kommandanten Rudolf Höss, der eine Erziehung nach streng religiösen und militärischen Grundsätzen genoss, ist hierfür ein beredtes Beispiel (2).
Da den folgsamen Männern dieser psychologische Zusammenhang aber nicht bewusst ist, können und dürfen wir sie nicht verurteilen. Die Eltern und Erzieher haben nicht gewusst, dass eine Erziehung zum absoluten Gehorsam ein schwerwiegender Fehler mit ungeahnten Konsequenzen ist. Sie meinten und meinen es in der Regel gut, bringen ihre Kinder aber in ihrer Unwissenheit und aufgrund eigener Kindheitserlebnisse in Not.
Die Annahme eines dynamischen Unbewussten als wesentlicher und hochwirksamer Teil des psychischen Lebens des Menschen ist in der Tiefenpsychologeine eine grundlegende Erkenntnis.
Die gute Nachricht ist, dass wir jederzeit damit beginnen können, die Erziehung unseres Nachwuchses kinderfreundlicher zu gestalten und dass sich Erwachsene mit Hilfe eines psychotherapeutischen Fachmanns ihrer unbewussten Gefühlsanteile bewusst werden und damit ihr Verhalten ändern können.
Eine Welt ohne Waffen und Kriege entsteht allein durch menschliche Entschlüsse
Ein Blick auf die gegenwärtige geschichtliche Situation der Menschheit und die Tragikomödie, die ihr seit Jahren von den Regierungsmedien vorgespielt wird, gibt wenig Anlass zu Optimismus. Ganz im Gegenteil!
Die Geschichte strebt durch ihre Eigengesetzlichkeit nicht selbst zum Frieden – quasi über unsere Köpfe hinweg. Eine Welt ohne Gewalt, ohne Waffen und Kriege kann einzig und allein durch den Entschluss der Menschen realisiert werden, durch ein Denken und Handeln, das sich am Ideal des Friedens und der Gerechtigkeit orientiert. Und diese Reduzierung der Gewalt muss hier und heute erfolgen.
Die Kultur muss eben immer wieder neu errungen werden, was die Größe der vor uns liegenden Aufgabe mehr als verdeutlicht.
Dabei ist es von entscheidender Bedeutung, dass bereits das Kind von den Eltern, Lehrern und Erziehern erfährt, dass man vor dem anderen Menschen keine Angst haben muss, sondern dass der andere gerne mit ihm spielt und mit ihm zusammenlebt. Auftretende Konflikte würden sich immer in Freundschaft und ohne jegliche verbale oder körperliche Gewalt lösen lassen. Erwachsenen sollten für diese Kinder gewaltfreie Modelle sein.
Wenn wir zudem davon ausgehen, dass das menschliche Gefühlsleben nicht nur als Resultat der Eltern-Kind-Beziehung zu verstehen ist, sondern dass das soziokulturelle Milieu und die damit korrespondierenden Gefühle ebenso entscheidend sind, weil Eltern, Lehrer und Erzieher die Werte einer Kultur tagtäglich in Wort und Tat an das Kind herantragen, dann ist es auch wichtig, dass die in der Kultur vorherrschenden Werte ebenso einer friedlichen und gewaltfreien Gesellschaft entsprechen.
In diesem Zusammenhang ist positiv anzumerken, dass die Menschheit in den letzten Jahrtausenden mehr und mehr die Stimme des Menschheitsgewissens in sich vernommen hat und sich dessen bewusst ist, dass es darum geht, in Freiheit und Brüderlichkeit zusammenzuleben und durch den gemeinsamen Kampf gegen die Naturgewalten das Leben auf dieser Erde zu sichern.
Auch wenn sie bisher nicht imstande war, das uralte Übel „Krieg“ aus der Welt zu bannen, weil machtpolitische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Gründe dem Geist der Gewalt ständig neue Nahrung verschafften, die zu kriegerischen Auseinandersetzungen führten, so erhob sich doch von Zeit zu Zeit der Mahnruf hochgesinnter Menschen, die das Ideal einer friedlichen Welt proklamierten.
Die Idee eines „ewigen Friedens“ ist sicher so alt wie die Menschheit selbst.
Erziehung zu Gemeinschaftsgefühl und mitmenschlicher Verbundenheit
Die Erziehungsmethoden der Vergangenheit drosselten bereits in den Kindheitsjahren die Gemeinschaftsgefühle der Menschen und statteten sie mit jener Aggressionsbereitschaft aus, durch die eine gewalttätige Welt im Zustand der Gewalttätigkeit verharren konnte.
Durch psychologische Erziehungsmethoden könnten jedoch Menschen herangebildet werden, die gegen die Verstrickungen des Machtwahns gefeit sind. Indem die Pädagogik in Elternhaus und Schule auf unangemessenes Autoritätsgebaren und körperliche sowie verbale Gewaltanwendung verzichtet und sich mit wahrem Verständnis dem kindlichen Seelenleben anpasst, wird sie Menschen heranziehen, die keine Untertanen-Mentalität mehr besitzen und damit für die Machthaber in unserer Welt kein gefügiges „Werkzeug“ mehr sein werden.
Kinder des Bürgertums und der Arbeiterschaft können in der Regel nicht verwechselt werden. Diejenigen Kinder, die in gesellschaftlich begünstigter Position aufwachsen, haben das Gefühl der Selbstsicherheit und Überlegenheit („Mir gehört die Welt!“). Gibt es Dienstboten im Elternhaus, bekommen sie früh den Eindruck, dass sich die Menschen in „Herren“ und „Diener“ unterscheiden und dass die Diener dazu da sind, für die Herrschaft zu leben und zu arbeiten. Kein Wunder also, dass in ihrer Seele der Drang entsteht, auch einmal „Herr“ zu sein.
Auch die verzärtelnde Erziehung schafft einen Menschtypus, der mit einem Auserwähltheitsanspruch der Welt gegenübersteht und nicht geneigt ist, anderen Menschen gleiche Ansprüche zuzubilligen.
Das Arbeiterkind sieht sich frühzeitig in eine Welt hineingestellt, in der es Bevorrechtete und Benachteiligte gibt. Damit erfasst ein sozial bedingtes Minderwertigkeitsgefühl seine Seele.
Aber das Kind aus der gesellschaftlich benachteiligten Volksschicht krankt ebenso sehr an der Machtgier wie das Kind aus der gesellschaftlich begünstigten Position. Die Unterwürfigkeit, zu der ihn seine Position drängt, wirkt als ständiger Stachel, der ebenso zur Aggressionsbereitschaft führen kann. Es wäre eine Täuschung, hier eine „Schwarz-Weiß-Malerei“ zu betreiben.
Letztlich geht es darum, durch die zukünftige Erziehung einen Menschentypus hervorzubringen, der – wie Alfred Adler es sich vorstellte – Gemeinschaftsgefühl und mitmenschliche Verbundenheit ebenso selbstverständlich äußern wird wie das Atmen (3).
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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Schul-Rektor, Erziehungswissenschaftler (Dr. paed.) und Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Nach seinen Universitätsstudien wurde er wissenschaftlicher Lehrer (Professor) in der Erwachsenenbildung: unter anderem Leiter eines freien Schul-Modell-Versuchs und Fortbildner bayerischer Beratungslehrkräfte und Schulpsychologen. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. Bei einer Öffentlichen Anhörung zur Jugendkriminalität im Europa-Parlament war er Berichterstatter für Deutschland. In seinen Büchern und Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zu Gemeinsinn und Frieden. Für seine Verdienste um Serbien bekam er 2021 von den Universitäten Belgrad und Novi Sad den Republik-Preis „Kapitän Misa Anastasijevic“ verliehen.
Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.
Noten
(1) Plack, Arno (Hrsg.). (1973). Der Mythos vom Aggressionstrieb. München
(2) Broszat, Martin (Hrsg.). (1963). Kommandant in Auschwitz. Autobiographische Aufzeichnungen des Rudolf Höß. München
(3) Adler, Alfred (1978). Kindererziehung. Frankfurt am Main
The enlightenment of the science of psychology is a transnational research task that can only be accomplished if free and rational citizens research together with honest scientists and are in agreement. “Global Research”, together with other independent media, is a suitable discussion forum for this.
Since science springs from life, it is called to serve the lives of people. Or as Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956) puts it in the play “Life of Galileo”:
“I hold that the only aim of science is to ease the hardships of human existence.”
From a scientific point of view, the concept of the nature of man involves the complete absence of genetically predetermined aggressive drives. This results in man’s ability to live and organise himself in a peaceful world without violence and wars.
However, such a world does not come into being by itself, but – as the following explanations about the human spirit of delusion and the myth of an aggressive instinct will show – solely through human resolutions, through thinking and acting oriented towards the ideal of peace and justice.
As long as we live in a world where violence and wars are the order of the day, we cannot escape responsibility. Since the world is the way we have set it up – or tolerated it in relation to pre-existing conditions – we are complicit, even if we are victims.
If scientists have nothing to contribute to the questions raised, the plight of human beings does not touch their hearts. Their wisdom and their science is then only a complacent game of the mind that knows no binding force.
As already explained in Part I, the author bases his psychological reflections on the thoughts and insights of his esteemed teacher, on personal conversations with him and on transcripts of conversations.
The nature of human beings is peaceful
Ever since human beings have existed and we have had knowledge about them, we have known that they always strive for a better life situation, first and foremost for a life in peace without violence and wars. However, in today’s capitalist world, violence, blood, death and destruction prevail.
Education in our culture creates fear of the other person in children, an emotional reaction that turns against the other. When they then grow up, they are unable to interact and live together with their fellow human beings. They are also unable to arrange their own lives well.
Yet the nature of man is peaceful. And that is why humanity is capable of living together without weapons and wars. Most people love to go about their daily work or cultivate the field and live in peace and friendship with their neighbour.
It is only the greed for power of those who act as authorities within the peoples and who, through their social position, are imbued with the spirit of violence, which is why there are always warlike conflicts in which people bleed to death for their masters and exploiters. Therefore, one should not blame the “peoples” for the wars. It is the ruling classes that are at war and try to subjugate each other. Their “subjects” live, work and die for them.
Psychological research should start with the question of how the oppression of man by man is possible in the first place. Power alone as a cause is not enough, since the power of the people is greater than that of their rulers. There must be ideological explanations for the fact that the rulers manage to ensure the bondage of their peoples.
It is the ideological delusion of the human spirit that causes people to forget their love of freedom and peace and begin to glorify their chains?
Reasons for war and the spirit of delusion
In earlier times, the origin of war was traced back to the Fall of the first humans. But this mythological explanation is not to be taken seriously. The competition between the religions, each of which believed itself to be in possession of the absolute truth, also gave rise to warlike entanglements.
Equally wrong is the view of man as a predator in his “struggle for existence”: “homo homini lupus” (man is a wolf to man).
In modern times, the type of economic warfare was created, in which the masters of trade and industry engaged peoples in a struggle for sources of raw materials and markets.
Another important moment of delusion is the national and racial ideology, whose epidemic character has been illustrated to us both in the past, but is also brought before us in the present.
The myth of nation and race creates an artificial unity between the rulers and the ruled by making the subjects believe that they and their masters belong to a mysterious and glorious body in whose splendour and greatness even the lowest servant has a share. This glorification of the servant mentality created the conditions for absolutist forms of rule in which people became a will-less tool of their authorities and gave them unreserved allegiance in war and peace.
In reality, nationalism and racial doctrine are attitudes of pride and arrogance, which always include aggression towards neighbouring peoples or races. At all times they have been a means for the rulers to seduce the broad masses of the people.
Another nonsense and hoax is the myth of the aggression instinct, already presented in earlier articles and described in detail by Arno Plack (1). According to this pre-psychological view, people would gladly go to war because of an innate aggression instinct, to kill other people whom they usually do not know and who have done nothing to them, and to have themselves killed. But no man leaves his love, no man leaves his wife and children to go to war.
Why should people who live quietly and in peace in their house, yard and garden suddenly have an aggression instinct and want to go to war against the other people? The well-known theorists of the aggression instinct like Siegmund Freud and Konrad Lorenz, whose names every newspaper reader and television viewer knows, did not understand the people.
Let us have the courage and patience to revise our opinion in this regard. In fact, it is violent upbringing that triggers aggression in children. Man is not capable of killing his fellow man; that is not his nature.
Finally, the tragic weakness of human beings is that they cannot say NO. If the rulers have decided to go to war, then it must be followed. People cannot say, “No, I will not go to war!”
Men of all ages, unfortunately, cannot react in any other way. Education has so affected their emotional life that they “must” go to war. In much the same way that they had to follow father and mother in childhood and teachers in school, they follow political and other authorities as adults. They carry this feeling of absolute obedience from childhood with them into old age. The behaviour of the Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, who enjoyed an upbringing according to strict religious and military principles, is an eloquent example of this (2).
But since the obedient men are not aware of this psychological connection, we cannot and must not condemn them. The parents and educators did not know that an education to absolute obedience is a serious mistake with unforeseen consequences. They meant and usually mean well, but in their ignorance and because of their own childhood experiences they put their children in distress.
The assumption of a dynamic unconscious as an essential and highly effective part of the human psychological life is a fundamental insight in depth psychology.
The good news is that we can always start to make the upbringing of our offspring more child-friendly and that adults, with the help of a psychotherapeutic professional, can become aware of their unconscious emotional parts and thus change their behaviour.
A world without weapons and wars is created by human decisions alone
A look at the current historical situation of humanity and the tragicomedy that has been played out for it for years by the government media gives little cause for optimism. Quite the contrary!
History, by its own laws, does not strive for peace itself – over our heads, as it were. A world without violence, without weapons and wars can only be realised by the decision of human beings, by thinking and acting in accordance with the ideal of peace and justice. And this reduction of violence must take place here and now.
Culture must be won over again and again, which more than illustrates the magnitude of the task ahead of us.
In this context, it is of crucial importance that already the child learns from parents, teachers and educators that one does not have to be afraid of the other person, but that the other person likes to play with him and live together with him. Any conflicts that arise would always be solved in friendship and without any verbal or physical violence. Adults should be non-violent models for these children.
If we also assume that human emotional life is not only to be understood as the result of the parent-child relationship, but that the socio-cultural milieu and the feelings corresponding to it are just as decisive, because parents, teachers and educators transmit the values of a culture to the child every day in word and deed, then it is also important that the values prevailing in the culture also correspond to a peaceful and non-violent society.
In this context, it is positive to note that in recent millennia humanity has increasingly heard the voice of humanity’s conscience within itself and is aware that it is a matter of living together in freedom and brotherhood and securing life on this earth through the common struggle against the forces of nature.
Even if it has so far been unable to banish the age-old evil of “war” from the world, because power-political, economic and social reasons constantly provided new nourishment for the spirit of violence that led to warlike conflicts, the exhortation of high-minded people who proclaimed the ideal of a peaceful world arose from time to time.
The idea of “eternal peace” is certainly as old as humanity itself.
Education for a sense of community and human solidarity
The educational methods of the past already throttled people’s sense of community in their childhood years and equipped them with the readiness for aggression through which a violent world could remain in a state of violence.
However, through psychological education methods, people could be formed who are immune to the entanglements of the delusion of power. By renouncing inappropriate authority and the use of physical and verbal violence in the parental home and school and by adapting to the child’s soul life with true understanding, pedagogy will produce people who no longer possess a subjugated mentality and will thus no longer be a docile “tool” for those in power in our world.
Children of the bourgeoisie and the working class cannot, as a rule, be confused. Those children who grow up in socially favoured positions have a sense of self-assurance and superiority (“The world is mine!”). If there are servants in the parental home, they get the impression early on that people are differentiated into “masters” and “servants” and that the servants are there to live and work for the master. No wonder, then, that the urge arises in their souls to be “masters” for once, too.
The pampering upbringing also creates a type of person who faces the world with a claim to chosenness and is not inclined to grant other people equal claims.
The working-class child sees himself early on in a world in which there are privileged and disadvantaged people. Thus, a socially conditioned feeling of inferiority takes hold of his soul.
But the child from the socially disadvantaged class suffers just as much from the lust for power as the child from the socially advantaged position. The submissiveness to which his position urges him acts as a constant sting which can equally lead to a readiness to be aggressive. It would be a fallacy to paint a “black and white” picture here.
Ultimately, it is a matter of bringing forth through future education a type of human being who – as Alfred Adler envisioned – will express a sense of community and fellow human bond as naturally as breathing (3).
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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a school rector, educationalist (Dr. paed.) and psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). After his university studies, he became an academic teacher (professor) in adult education: among other things, he was head of an independent school model trial and in-service trainer of Bavarian guidance counsellors and school psychologists. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in private practice. He was rapporteur for Germany at a public hearing on juvenile delinquency in the European Parliament. In his books and articles, he calls for a conscious ethical-moral education and an education for public spirit and peace. For his services to Serbia, he was awarded the Republic Prize “Captain Misa Anastasijevic” by the Universities of Belgrade and Novi Sad in 2021.
He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
(1) Plack, Arno (ed.). (1973). The myth of the aggression instinct. Munich
(2) Broszat, Martin (ed.). (1963). Commandant at Auschwitz. Autobiographical notes of Rudolf Höß. Munich
(3) Adler, Alfred (1978). Child rearing. Frankfurt am Main
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If one tries to use rational thought processes to produce a reasoned explanation for that which is neither rational nor reasoned, one will end-up building a false picture of the world around one.
This is what has happened to those who have tried to ‘make sense’ of a global agenda whose first principle is to create chaos and confusion. Trying to piece together strands that ‘by intent’ have no connection is quite obviously a road to nowhere.
The shadowy architects of The Great Reset/New World Order/One World Government pulled-off a clever trick in designing a totalitarian programme for top-down change whose individual parts each contradict one another.
So, when put together by the ‘rational’ public mind, it makes people feel that they must be suffering a diminished personal level of intelligence, because they can’t make the agenda make any logical sense.
So what do most people do? They form a comforting yet implausible theory, that satisfies a need to believe events are following some sort of logical pattern which only those ‘in charge’ can properly understand.
This achieves the cabal’s desired affect of defeating any resistance to the programme being enforced. If those on the receiving end can’t, or won’t, believe that the perpetrators see and experience life from a completely different perspective from their own, they can’t grasp why an anti-human agenda could possibly be the reality of the day.
But it is the nature of psychotic/demonic beings to sow the seeds of confusion and then stand back and watch, gaining satisfaction from observing the results play themselves out. So sure are they of the enduring psychological weaknesses displayed by a majority of human beings that they publicly announce each new turning of the screw, via the compliant and controlled world of the mass media.
If enough big names, global institutions and media operations say black is white and two plus two makes five, most will prefer to go along with this perversion than face their own inability to recognise that things have indeed been deliberately 100% distorted.
This distortion is now fully operational in every area of life controlled by the chain of command which – starting from the 0.5% ‘elite’ cabal – runs on to corporate fiefdoms, banking dictatorships, supra national conglomerates (i.e The European Union), trans planetary institutions like the World Economic Forum, World Health Organisation and United Nations, the military industrial complex, and finally national and local governments and the general public.
Built into a very actual programme of centralised global control and the relentless thieving of basic individual and collective freedoms, are a whole series of fake sign posts which seem to indicate that all the worlds’ problems result from extreme outside events associated with human error or mental blindness.
Global warming, pandemics, economic turmoil, war, mass movements of refugees are all part of a world ‘on the brink of disaster’, we are continuously informed by the very architects of the disruptions themselves.
Each of these ‘disasters’ has been designed, planned and executed with ice cool malicious intent by the dark cabal, confident of its ability to successfully play on the fears of all who fail to confront the rules of the Matrix. The financial cabal announces in advance – each further phase of the planned break-down of justice, freedom and law and order.
So if anyone should later exclaim “They forced us, without any warning, to comply with their evil agenda”, a ready prepared answer states “We told you and you ignored it.” It is a feature of the slippery nature of these dark tricksters that they cover their tracks in all situations.
The sheer audacity of some pronouncements is breathtaking.
Bill Gates coolly argues the need to depopulate the planet.
Klaus Schwab informs us that “we will be happy” having had all our properties stolen from us.
Yuval Noah Harari advises that chipped and digitalised people will be a big advancement of the human race, “Better than God” could achieve.
Tedros Ghebreyesus , head of the World Health Organisation, states that only he and his board member cronies can decide when to declare health emergencies affecting all independent nation states of the world.
Almost all leaders of nation states are happy to persuade their constituents to go along with these dictatorial pronouncements. For example, they are told to take the weaponised mRNA genetically engineered Covid jab “If you want to be recognised as responsible citizens, retain your freedom of movement and not get put on the red list of subverters of the status quo.”
It is not as though any of these pronouncements are done in secrecy. They are done in plain sight in the public domain. But still the great majority of the public can’t or wont respond with the normal/ natural organic reaction of anyone put under this kind of direct threat “Hey! Who do you think you are? Don’t threaten me with your pompous megalomania – you should be locked-up immediately!”
There is something going on which causes normal human biological reactions to be stymied and rendered seemingly sterile.
In my opinion, it is a well developed form of hypnosis.
Inducing one’s audience to experience a variety of versions of fear, is stage one. Coming across as a highly placed authority figure is stage two. Having recourse to dark powers to ‘bewitch’, is stage three.
When all three of these are packaged within a sophisticated mind control/social engineering programme, the deliverer holds a number of ace cards. Not least the fact that if and when exposed ‘it sounds too unbelievable to be true’ to all but the keenly aware.
So, we who are aware have the crucial task of reverse engineering the sequence of events that bewitch the general public, thereby exposing the preconceived and calculated use of chaos and confusion which render the cult’s poisoned agenda such a brutal deception.
Can this be done?
Yes it can. But it involves deepening our understanding of the ways of the psychopathic and psychotic mind. We need to grasp how ‘spellbinding techniques’ play a much more central role in mass human mind control programmes than are currently recognised.
This exploration calls for courage and the realisation of our deeper spiritual powers. Such a task cannot be achieved without raising the energetic levels of our latent higher potentialities; a concentrated focus on that which has the power to dispel darkness so as to break the hold of the demonic elements over the human mind.
Humanity is confronted by this test – here and now. If faced directly and bravely, the instigators of the present darkness will be defeated. Defeated by the manifestation of a rising level of truth which the tricksters cannot endure, as their ‘success’ is based on maintaining the blanket existence of a very low vibrational energy, which they consistently try to convey as the only energetic state available to mankind. Nothing less than the three dimensional prison of the Matrix.
Once this huge deception is uncovered on a sufficient scale, the dark mask will fall and the first phases of our true liberation will unfold in front of us like the rising sun; heralding an unprecedented universal expansion of the higher powers of mankind and all planetary and inter planetary energies.
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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher. He is Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE https://hardwickalliance.org/. Julian’s latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is strongly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info
We are not on the first but on the ninth anniversary of the war in Ukraine, which was unleashed in February 2014 with the coup d’état under US-NATO direction. Speaking from Warsaw, President Biden promised to “stand by President Zelensky no matter what.” He is echoed by President Meloni who, reversing the position assumed in 2014, assured Zelensky that “Italy will be with you until the end”. These are disturbing statements, given the real possibility that the conflict could lead to a nuclear war, which would be the end not only of Europe but of the world. Ukraine is capable of producing nuclear weapons and, certainly, in Kyiv, there are those who pursue such a plan.
The New York Times confirms it: “Ukraine gave up a gigantic nuclear arsenal 30years ago. Today there are regrets”. With the breakup of the USSR in 1991, Ukraine found itself in possession of the third largest nuclear arsenal in the world: some 5,000 strategic and tactical weapons. They were removed in the 1990s under agreements between the United States, Russia and Ukraine. However, the technological capability acquired by Ukraine in the military nuclear field during the US-Soviet confrontation has not been removed.
Ukraine – warns President Putin – intends to create its own nuclear weapons, and this is not a mere boast. The acquisition of nuclear weapons will be much easier for Ukraine than for other states conducting such research, especially if Kyiv receives foreign technological support. We cannot rule this out. If Ukraine acquires weapons of mass destruction, the situation in the world and in Europe will change dramatically”
In which hands would the Ukrainian nuclear weapons be confirmed by the fact that Zelenskyy has just conferred on the 10th Ukrainian Assault Brigade “the Edelweiss title of honour “: the same name and symbol of one of the most ferocious Nazi Divisions, the 1st Edelweiss Division, which in 1943 massacred over 5,000 Italian soldiers who had surrendered in Greek Kefalonia.
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Clip #1 – Right Now with Medical Researcher Stuart Wilkie (click here)
Clip #2 – Radical by Maajid Nawaz with Dr. Mike Yeadon (click here)
VIDEO
COVID-19 deaths in Long-Term Care homes in 2020
The official narrative is that the elderly in Long Term Care homes were at high risk for COVID-19 infection and death.
In 2020, most COVID-19 deaths occurred in Long Term Care homes.
New evidence strongly suggests that these were not unavoidable COVID-19 deaths, but that something much more sinister and dark happened in these homes. There were at least two types of intentional harm that the elderly faced:
Vulnerable elderly were given a high dose “euthanasia drug cocktail” of Midazolam and Morphine which lead to their death, which was then labeled a “COVID-19 death”
Elderly who developed pneumonia were intentionally denied antibiotics, leading to their death, which was then labeled a “COVID-19 death”.
Midazolam
Midazolam is a benzodiazepine medication used for anesthesia, procedural sedation and to treat severe agitation.
“Midazolam injection may cause serious or life-threatening breathing problems such as shallow, slowed, or temporarily stopped breathing that may lead to permanent brain injury or death.”(click here)
In the US, high doses of Midazolam were used in executions of death row inmates by lethal injection (click here).
UK Long Term Care Home Deaths
On Feb.7, 2023, whistleblower “jikkyleaks” posted on Twitter one of the more shocking graphics I have seen in the past 2 years (click here):
The excess deaths in the United Kingdom (during COVID-19 pandemic waves in early 2020 and early 2021) correlate almost perfectly with spikes in Midazolam 10mg/2ml use.
As jikkyleaks explains:
“This is the data for midazolam prescribing from the UKs official prescriber database”
“the spike in midazolam prescription (on this *GP* database) was driven almost entirely by injectable 10mg/2ml doses. This was not the anxiolytic oral form. It’s a euthanasia injection.”
The key here is that this spike in Midazolam use was outside the Hospital setting (in Long Term Care homes).
And yes, the excess deaths in April 2020 were in the elderly:
How many died?
Dr.John Campbell describes the dangers and potential lethality of the high dose Midazolam and Morphine drug cocktail, in his detailed video (click here).
British MP Andrew Bridgen recently wrote: “I have been supplied with lots of evidence from people who believe their relatives died due to the medical interventions brought in as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic” (click here).
Former Pfizer scientist Dr.Mike Yeadon PhD believes over 100,000 people were killed by government protocols of Midazolam and Morphine (click here).
Other drugs
Other “end of life” protocol drugs were used extensively during this time as reported by the British Medical Journal (click here).
This includes antipsychotic drugs Levomepromazine and Haloperidol.
Conveniently, on April 3, 2020, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) published a “COVID-19 rapid guideline: managing symptoms in the community”, which included the “opioid and benzodiazepine combination” (click here):
It seems that starting in April 2020, 10,000s of elderly were designated as “at the end of life” and euthanized with an opioid (Morphine) and benzodiazepine (Midazolam) combination.
Withdrawal of Antibiotics
Another disturbing component of the abuse of the elderly that would have lead to their deaths, is evidence that the elderly were denied life-saving antibiotics when they did develop complications of viral respiratory illness, namely pneumonia.
In the UK, antibiotic prescriptions dropped 50% during 2020 (source):
“For those that still haven’t heard about this – #3tablets relates to the fact that COVID deaths occurred because vulnerable people were not given macrolide antibiotics for post-viral pneumonia because of a prior propaganda campaign.”
“3 tablets. That’s what they withheld from the elderly that were diagnosed with “COVID pneumonia” because they were told not to treat. It was bacterial pneumonia. They died.”
Canada’s Long Term Care (LTC) home COVID-19 Deaths
In January 2021, the Lancet published: “COVID-19 highlights Canada’s care home crisis” (click here):
“COVID-19 deaths in long-term care have been called a national disgrace, and experts are calling for the army to intervene.
When Canada’s national health data agency reported in June, 2020, that Canada had the worst record among wealthy nations for COVID-19-related deaths in long-term care facilities for older people, many observers referred to it as a “national disgrace”. At that time, as the first wave of COVID-19 in Canada began to subside, its 2039 homes for older people accounted for about 80% of all COVID-19-related deaths.
6 months later, as the second wave of COVID-19 sweeps the country, little has changed, and Canada’s long-term facilities remain dangerously prone to the disease.”
A stunning admission from Canadian Institute for Health Information (click here):
“Compared with other Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries, Canada had a relatively low overall COVID-19 mortality rate but the highest proportion of LTC deaths. Residents of LTC homes in Canada represented 81% of all reported COVID-19 deaths compared with an average of 38% in other countries.”
Canada’s COVID-19 mortality rate in LTC homes was higher than UK’s, where 10,000s of vulnerable elderly were being given high dose Midazolam & Morphine euthanasia drug cocktails to drive up the COVID-19 death toll from April 2020 onwards.
I have not been able to find Canada’s Midazolam prescription data, however, according to the Canadian Medical Association, Midazolam is used in 91% of MAID – Medical Assistance in Dying cases (click here).
Concluding Remarks
The evidence of United Kingdom’s “Midazolam murders” in Long Term Care homes is damning. Overall, it paints a very dark picture: in the UK, it appears the elderly in Long Term Care homes were euthanized by the 10,000s in order to drive up the COVID-19 death toll in 2020.
Canada’s LTC homes did even worse than UK’s and that raises very disturbing questions. What happened in Canada’s LTC homes when family members were not allowed to visit their loved ones? What kind of euthanasia protocols were used in Canada, that resulted in even higher death tolls than in the UK?
We need whistleblowers to tell us.
One thing is clear. With over 80% of all COVID-19 deaths in 2020 taking place in Long Term Care homes, without these deaths there would have been no “pandemic” in Canada, no fear or panic, and perhaps no COVID-19 vaccine rollout.
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“You see, the United States doesn’t want Iraq disarmed. The United States wants Saddam Hussein gone!” – Scott Ritter (Feb. 4, 2003) [1]
“These are right-wing neo-Nazi extremists, many of whom have swastikas and other Nazi symbols tattooed on their bodies. This is where they tormented the Russian-speaking population for the past eight years. They are now in the process of being killed or captured by the Russians. This is what “de-Nazification” looks like.” – Scott Ritter (March 23, 2022) [2]
February 24th marks the first anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. [3]
It also marks the twentieth anniversary of a month of record turnouts against the expected war in Iraq by the United States, the United Kingdom, and their so-called “coalition of the willing.” [4]
And it also marks the last day of Fundrive 2023, put on by station CKUW which hosts the Global Research News Hour! [5]
Mobilizing against war is one of the major themes of the decade old radio program, and the Global Research website that spawned it. Our main approach is finding the path toward the latest military offensive as being motivated by purposes other than “self-defence” or freeing a foreign people from oppression. [6]
In the case of Iraq twenty years ago, while politicians and the major media were concluding the reason was essentially the nefarious weapons of mass destructionSaddam Hussein was secretly building and stockpiling, Global Research and community radio stations like CKUW in Winnipeg relayed factual statements from individuals like Scott Ritter to the effect that these arguments had no merit. If it wasn’t for these alternative outlets and the thorough and informed information they presented, the general population would have been surprised about the absence of WMDs once the Iraqi president was captured and ousted from power.
What are the same entities saying about the Ukraine War twenty years later? Vladimir Putin out of frustration at Ukraine turning attention away from their long-standing relationship with Russia toward the European Union, decided to take control of the country directly with an invasion and kill any and every soldier that stood in his way. Global Research and the Global Research News Hour corrected this “analysis” by mentioning the war as actually a “proxy-war” between the U.S./NATO and Russia. That Russia was not emboldened to re-build the former Soviet Union as some of the major media had been postulating as a possibility. Russia was defending itself against the expansion of NATO right to Russia’s next-door neighbour, very much against a promise made to Soviet leader Gorbachev three decades ago.
On this special edition of the Global Research News Hour, we will not only point to the similarities and differences between these major military offensives past and present, but we will also highlight the personal recollections of host and producer Michael Welch, and his commitment then and now to put an end to war through the magic of radio informed antiwar activism. This marks a special fund-raising episode for the show and the radio station broadcasting it.
This program features a clip from a show in the past year. There will be a live interview with Ken Stone of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War who is supporting this weekend’s special actions in Canada to bring the War in Ukraine to an end, as well as a panel discussion connecting the dots between the Ukraine War and other U.S./NATO imperialist agendas all over West Asia. It will also broadcast an interview with one of four Indigenous chiefs in Ontario signing a Mutual Cooperation Agreement to defend their territory from mining exploration without their consent.
To review a list of donor Donate NOW to CKUW Fundrive at fundrive.ckuw.ca
As an alternative, direct your funds to the Global Research donation site, highlighting funding for the Global Research News Hour.
Chief Donny Morris represents Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug First Nation, one of four signing the Mutual Cooperation Agreement on January 31, 2023.
Ken Stone is a long time antiwar, anti-racism, environmental and labour activist, resident in Hamilton. He is Treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.
WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.
Campus and community radio CFMH 107.3fm in Saint John, N.B. airs the Global Research News Hour Fridays at 7pm.
CJMP 90.1 FM, Powell River Community Radio, airs the Global Research News Hour every Saturday at 8am.
Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.
JOHN LEICESTER, HANNA ARHIROVA and SAMYA KULLAB (Feb. 24, 2023), ‘As Ukraine Marks Year of War, Leader Vows to Secure Victory’, AP News; https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-anniversary-day-e0adf7f14f165b708cd948509e4e8f20?utm_source=homepage&utm_medium=TopNews&utm_campaign=position_01
More than 70 years ago NATO was born. In April 1949, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) established what was designated as the doctrine of “Collective Security” under Art. 5 of the Washington Treaty.
NATO has a sordid history of aggression and war crimes. The US not only continues to “occupy” World War II “axis countries” (Italy, Germany), it has used the NATO emblem to install US military bases throughout Western Europe, as well as in Eastern Europe in the wake of the Cold War, extending into the Balkans in the wake of NATO’s war on Yugoslavia.
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***
[This morning on January 24, 2023, the science and security board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved their famous Doomsday Clock to read 90 seconds to midnight, 10 seconds closer than it’s ever been before. This essay examines some of the forces making this clock tick.]
Situational Awareness at Our Future’s Edge
“Madness is the exception in individuals, but the rule in groups.”– Friedrich Nietzsche
“You have to understand, the nuclear industry and the people that run it – and I say this advisedly – they have a religious belief in nuclear power. So facts don’t interfere. You know, religion is belief. They believe in nuclear power….” – S. David Freeman – 2011 – Former Director of the Tennessee Valley Authority
“A striking characteristic of leading figures throughout America’s Atomic Brotherhood is an almost religious devotion to atomic energy and all for which it stands. These men share a deep faith in the essential goodness and above all the historical inevitability of atomic energy.” – Mark Hertzgaard, Nuclear Inc., 1983
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together…. We must also be alert to the…danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.” – Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell address. 1961
“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” – James Madison
The Age of Cognitive Dissonance
Worldwide data indicate that the commercial nuclear power industry has been in decline since at least the turn of the century. Construction schedule and budget overruns, combined with cheaper and faster deployment of wind and solar energy sources make the nuclear energy future look increasingly dim.
According to the World Nuclear Association, there are 425 active reactors worldwide, providing approximately 10% of the world’s electricity supply, about the same as three decades ago.
Once upon a time, amid breathless predictions of a “nuclear renaissance,” 34 new reactor projects were announced. Of those, only two in Georgia are expected to eventually come on-line, years behind schedule and at costs more than double the initial estimate.
“Nuclear plant operators should start decommissioning activities of shutdown reactors as early as possible as the deferral of decontamination and dismantling (D&D) exposes operators to delay-related costs, investment risks and loss of crucial expertise as workers leave the industry, Geoffrey Rothwell, Principal Economist at the OECD’s Nuclear Energy Agency, told Nuclear Energy Insider.”
The highest number of nuclear reactor closures happened in 2021, and, according to Reuters, a ‘Green Surge’ of renewable power sources is going on, far out-competing nuclear developent on spead and costs.
In a 2019 Forbes article American physicist Amory Lovins wrote,
“Most U.S. nuclear power plants cost more to run than they earn. Globally, the WorldNuclear Industry Status Report 2019 documents the nuclear enterprise’s slow-motion commercial collapse—dying of an incurable attack of market forces. Yet in America, strong views are held across the political spectrum on whether nuclear power is essential, or merely helpful, in protecting the Earth’s climate—and both those views are wrong.
In fact, building new reactors, or operating most existing ones, makes climate change worse compared with spending the same money on more-climate-effective ways to deliver the same energy services. Those who state as fact that rejecting (more precisely, declining to bail out) nuclear energy would make carbon reduction much harder are in good company, but are mistaken.”
“Today’s hot question,“ Lovins presciently noted, “is not about new US reactors, which investors shun, but about the 96 existing reactors, already averaging about a decade beyond their nominal original design life. Most now cost more to run—including major repairs that trend upward with age—than their output can earn.
“They also cost more just to run than providing the same services by building and operating new renewables, or by using electricity more efficiently.”
Nevertheless, a recent, breathless Newsweek opinion piece optimistically effused, “The Nuclear Energy Renaissance Has Arrived!”
Quill Robinson, the article’s ‘conservationist’ author cited reports that California’s legislators – faced with the ‘threat of looming blackouts in the face of climate change’ – voted to extend the operation of Diablo Canyon’s reactors. He also reported that twice nuclear-devastated Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida recently announced that – because of the ‘threat of looming blackouts in the face of climate change’ – nuclear energy is “essential to proceed with a green transformation.”
The euphoric Newsweek opiner went on to confidently assert – in denial of all accumulating evidence to the contrary – that “high-profile accidents are the exception to the rule; nuclear is incredibly safe and getting safer.”
The uniformity of ‘talking points’ he cited – a currently standard script – is a clue that there is a concerted psychological operation, or psyop, going on here. Why tout a moribund industry suffering from what energy expert Amory Lovins long ago diagnosed as “an incurable attack of market forces?”
What powerful institution with global reach has the most highly developed and sophisticated state-of-the-art psyop strategies and information warfare technologies at its disposal?
Known as the Fifth Gradient of War, or 5GW, “Moral and cultural warfare is fought through manipulating perceptions and altering the context by which the world is perceived…. The ability to shape the perception—and therefore the opinions—of a target audience is far more important than the ability to deliver kinetic energy, and will determine the ultimate victor in tomorrow’s wars.”
Why would these well-honed, state-of-the-art, ‘cognitive warfare’ tools be unleashed on the U.S. population in support of a faltering civilian nuclear energy industry?
WTF is going on here?
Welcome to the Nuclear Armed Madhouse
The United States is the most militarized – and nuclearized – nation, society and culture in the history of the world.
Just pause, take a few deep breaths, and let that fact – plus the sobering, omni-directional implications of it – sink in for a moment.
According to ExecutiveGov, the country’s projected Department of Defense budget – not counting the so-called ‘Dark Budget’ (see below) – reached $778 billion in 2022, up 14% from 2017. This compares to the second ranking military budget of China, which has a military budget of $229 billion.
“If carried out, the plans for nuclear forces delineated in the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) and the Department of Energy’s (DOE’s) fiscal year 2021 budget requests, submitted in February 2020, would cost a total of $634 billion over the 2021–2030 period, for an average of just over $60 billion a year, CBO estimates.
“Almost two-thirds of those costs would be incurred by DoD; its largest costs would be for ballistic missile submarines and intercontinental ballistic missiles. DOE’s costs would be primarily for nuclear weapons laboratories and supporting activities.”
You don’t have to be a Ph.D.-certified, think tank situational analyst to get the picture.
For a country that, as of Oct. 8, 2022, had a total national debt of $31.1 trillion, U.S. expenditures on means of mass destruction are clearly illogical, immoral, unethical and suicidal.
Here’s a brief, enlightening snapshot.
According to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Nuclear Notebook: United States nuclear weapons, 2023 by Hans M. Kristensen and Matt Korda, as of this year the US Department of Defense maintains an estimated ‘stockpile’ of approximately 3,708 nuclear warheads for delivery by land- and submarine-launched ballistic missiles and aircraft. The authors state that US nuclear weapons are stored at an estimated 24 geographical locations in 11 US states and five European countries, and that the US has deployed 659 strategic launchers with 1,420 warheads in various locations.
The American arsenal of nuclear weapons and delivery systems are in a perpetual process of renewal and modernization which is set to continue to 2039 and beyond, with a budget of $1.2 trillion over the next three decades. A so-called ‘Family of Strike Plans’ is maintained and constantly revised, with their main current targets being China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.
The US Navy runs a fleet of 14 Ohio-class nuclear powered submarines which constantly prowl the world’s oceans, each capable of carrying up to 20 Trident sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). Each SLBM can carry up to eight individually targetable nuclear warheads. A new generation of even larger US Columbia-class nuclear submarines is under development with a project budget of $112 billion.
Meanwhile – not to be outdone – the US Air Force operates a network of 400 silo-based Minuteman III ICBMs with a total force of 800 always available – with a constant upgrade program going on – as well as a fleet of over 40 nuclear capable strategic bombers carrying nuclear bombs and air-launched cruise missiles in constant motion from bases around the world. The bomber fleet’s command and control system interfaces with the constellation of MILSTAR satellites operated by the US Space Force.
This globe-spanning mobile ‘Doomsday Machine’ – as Pentagon Papers whistleblower Dan Ellesberg calls it – interfaces with NATO partner militaries in a system which is also constantly in a process of ’modernization’ and ‘harmonization’ of ‘interoperable’ nuclear and conventional weapons systems of mass destruction, dominated by the United States and its complex of ‘defense’ industries, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman.
As we will see in what follows, this system is seamlessly integrated and co-dependent with America’s civilian commercial nuclear power industry and its infrastructure, trained labor pool, and radioactive waste (mis-) management industry.
Hegemonic Military Nuclearism
Like fish, oblivious of their surrounding liquid environment, we Americans are enveloped in a ubiquitous militarist/nuclearist complex that is all-pervasive, yet virtually invisible to the average citizen, outside the collective domain of public awareness, and therefore immune to informed democratic oversight and control.
The core of its dominion is its development, monopoly control and deployment of advanced biological, directed energy and thermonuclear weapons. Worth noting is that it also exercised chief administrative control of the ‘warp speed’ roll-out of the Covid-19 genetic therapy inoculations – purportedly, of course, all in the interest of efficiency, public health and national defense.
The July 30 Operation Warp Speed organizational chart obtained by STAT details about 90 of the officials involved in the initiative. Roughly 60 work for the Department of Defense.
Virtually all elements of social and economic activity as well as of the environment – from education to philanthropy to health care to weather modification – can be weaponized under the rubric of ‘defense,’ and therefore, increasingly have been.
The World as Battlespace
The 1974 book, ThePermanentWarEconomy by Seymour Melman had as its sub-title: American Capitalism in Decline. In it Melman demonstrated how the so-called ‘defense industry’ had became the core of what amounted to a state capitalism dominating the entire economic system by means of government control over both capital and technological research and development.
He explained, “The fact that the war economy of World War II was useful for ending the Great Depression became the basis for a theory that there was no other way to get a full-employment economy.”
Melman went on to show that, “By 1971 the government-based managers of the U.S. military system had superseded the private firms of the American economy in control over capital.” He argued that the squandering of funds and resources on weapons development – which in fact decreased national security – was leading to a hollowing out of the country’s once vibrant and productive economy.
Embedded inextricably within that Military Matrix – and equally penetrative in its power and influence – is the Nuclear-Energy-Weapons-Radioactive-Waste Complex. The components of this nuclear triad are as intricately entangled as the strands of the proverbial Gordian Knot.
In the 1979 book The new tyranny: How nuclear power enslaves us, Austrian writer Robert Jungk identified that triad as quintessentially totalitarian because its is based from its inception on secrecy, deceit and technocratic control. He warned that by following the path of nuclear energy nations would be forced to surrender their liberties one step at a time and become regimented societies.
Jungk’s warning, like Melman’s and Eisenhower’s was prescient, but went unheeded.
In fact, Eisenhower himself had unwittingly laid the foundation for what he came to fear the most in his 1959 Fireside Chat announcing the Atoms for Peace program. This cover-story/psyop at the beginning of the Atomic Age succeeded in putting a happy face on “Our Friend the Atom” and “Reddy Kilowatt.” It also – as Alfred Meyer explains in his recent Progressive article It’s All About the Bomb – “placed nuclear materials and reactors in more than forty countries, including Iran. This generated ongoing business for many American nuclear enterprise companies while supporting and expanding the U.S. military’s nuclear infrastructure and capacity in the United States.”
Atoms for Peace became the origin myth for the First Church of Nukes Forever; a cult, a culture, and an industry based – as we will discuss below – on a Big Lie.
Like the proverbial blind men and the elephant, Ike, Melman and Jungk each had a grasp on one appendage of a larger beast the total extent of which remained beyond their ken.
An Updated Situational Awareness
As investigative reporter Whitney Webb has shown in her two volume revelatory opus One Nation Under Blackmail, by Ike’s era, starting early in the 20th century, there had developed a seamless integration of the military-industrial-intelligence complex with the international network of organized crime and the transnational banking cartel that enabled it.
It was, and is, a command and control matrix far superseding the reach of democratic institutions of government. Those who buck this system pay a price.
James Douglass’s 2008 book, JFK and the Unspeakable – Why he died and why it matters, finally unpacked the complicated story of how John Kennedy’s immersion in and opposition to that dominating matrix led inexorably to his 1963 assassination in Dallas. It was a coup from which the country has yet to recover – or, indeed even recognize.
Throughout the last century, the ‘military-industrial complex’ that Eisenhower famously glimpsed, named and warned about in his 1961 presidential farewell broadcast has metastasized throughout all the organs and neural pathways of the American body politic and penetrated all its institutions… and beyond.
It might now more accurately be termed the “Military-Industrial-Intelligence-Big Tech-Economic-Academic-Media-Communications-Medical-Pharmaceutical-Organized-Crime-Surveillance-Population-Control Complex.”
The subsets of this meta-matrix, the permanent war economy and the plutonium-based nuclear energy, weapons and waste economy symbiotically merged. Together they have become the medium in which we now swim.
Dark Budgets Mask Dark Doings
In their recent study of pandemic criminality in government, co-authors David A. Hughes, Valerie Kyrie and Daniel Broudy point out that,
“Lawlessness has been germinating in the United States ever since the birth of the national security state in 1947, with its founding myth of “national security” enabling the intelligence agencies to operate outside of any meaningful democratic oversight. …The history of US foreign policy since the birth of the CIA has been a tale of near continuous violations of international law and war crimes (Hughes 2022a), operating under cover of propaganda and psychological warfare in the name of “national security” and a range of exceptionalist myths (Blum 2006; Chomsky 2007; Hughes 2015).
“Eye watering amounts of money have been funneled from US federal budgets into black budgets that the public is not allowed to know about. For example, an estimated US$21 trillion cannot be accounted for in the financial records of the Department of Defense and the Department of Housing and Urban Development between 1998 and 2016 (Skidmore & Fitts, 2019). The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB), which sets the generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for the US federal government, introduced Standard 56 on 4 October 2018, allowing national security concerns to override the need for public financial transparency. FASAB-56, according to Fitts and Betts (2021), “permits the federal government by administrative action—without formal legislative, regulatory, judicial, or executive approval—to keep secret books as determined by a secret group of people pursuant to a secret process.” In other words, it provides for the clandestine pillaging of public wealth. The US government, in Fitts and Betts’ (2021) opinion, is “operating sufficiently outside the Constitution and financial management and other laws to be called a ‘criminal enterprise.’”
In his report for Solari.org, The Going Direct Reset, analyst John Titus notes that it became clear by 5 years after the 2007/8 financial crisis that, “it was a matter of record that crimes on Wall Street weren’t even being investigated, much less prosecuted.” What Titus sees as the“criminal immunity enjoyed by banks,” leads him to question if the U.S. can any longer be considered a constitutional republic under the rule of law.
Sociologist William Robinson, in his recent book Global Civil War – Capitalism Post-Pandemic, postulates that the world’s people now live under a dictatorship of transnational ‘gangster capitalists.’
This article will explore the hypotheses that gangster capitalists have actually amalgamated with gangster spooks and militarists, and gangster nuclearists in an attempted grab for global governance.
We begin with the observation that the business of America is war, and that the U.S. has all the earmarks of a company town.
Mapping the Metastasis
The scope of this syndrome is made visible by the sheer physical extent of U.S. military and nuclear facilities and the huge economic impacts of the generous budgets they command.
The Department of Defense (DOD) reports that, taken as a whole, the combined branches of the U.S. military maintain 4,775 bases worldwide, with 4,150 in the U.S. alone – 5 of them the largest military installations in the world. The DOD’s global reach is extended into other countries also through the NATO alliance, which it dominates.
Military bases in the continental U.S. – https://motivasi.my.id/
Many bases are the size of small cities, and like cities, serve as hubs for the businesses, industries and civic organizations and institutions in their surrounding regions, giving them huge impact and influence on the resident populations. In addition military training and bombing ranges occupy vast areas of domestic territory.
World military spending totaled more than $1.6 trillion in 2015. The U.S. accounted for 37 percent of that total. – Graphic: nationalpriorities.org
According to political scientist Joan Roelofs, this reach and funding level accounts for there being so little anti-war protest in the United States. It is the silence of the well-fed lambs…or is it sheeple? Professor Roelofs’s book The Trillion Dollar Silencer charts the extent to which military funding and propaganda infest and influence virtually every state and public sector.
Roelofs’s revelatory little book itemizes all the many vectors along which this pervasive influence is exercised.
A key channel through which the military penetrates into virtually every aspect of civilian life is the system of DoD contracts with private corporations, and, through them, their subsidiaries, sub-contractors, employee organizations, ‘philanthropies’ and foundations, into local, regional, state, national and international institutions and organizations. Roelofs lists the top 10 DOD contractors in 2020 as:
Lockheed Martin
Raytheon Technologies
General Dynamics
Boeing
Northrup Grumman
Huntington Ingalis
Humana (a private health insurance company)
BAE Systems
L3Harris Technologies
General Electric
Roelofs reports, “The DoD itself and related government departments engage in philanthropy. Certain schools and the following national organizations are eligible to receive donations of DoD surplus property:
American National Red Cross
Armed Services YMCA of the USA
Big Brothers/Big Sisters of America
Boys and Girls Clubs of America
Boy Scouts of America
Camp Fire, Inc.
Center for Excellence in Education
Girl Scouts of the USA
Little League Baseball, Inc.
Marine Cadets of America
National Association for Equal Opportunity in Higher Education
National Civilian Community Corps
National Sky Patrol System, Inc.
Navel Sea Cadet Corps
United Service Organizations, Inc.
U.S. Olympic Committee
Young Marines of the Marine Corps, and
League/Marine Corps League….”
Roelofs writes that both the Girl Scouts and the Boy Scouts engage in ‘partnerships’ with Lockheed Martin and other corporations.
International Largess as ‘Unconventional Warfare’
She notes, “Despite its connotations, humanitarian aid is part of ‘unconventional warfare’ according to the U.S. Special Operation Command, reminiscent of the ‘winning the hearts and mind doctrine.’” She observes that, “The Joint Chiefs of Staff publishes a guide to foreign humanitarian assistance and organizations with which to coordinate military operations….”
According to Roelofs, other channels of military influence include the revolving doors between military leadership positions and non-profit organizations such as civil liberties, human rights and minority advocacy organization like the American Indian Science and Engineering Society, Asians Against Domestic Abuse, the Vietnamese American Community, the NAACP and the Urban League.
Then there are the think tanks, universities, foundations and professional associations peopled by former military personnel and funded by grants from both military agencies and defense contractors.
The extent and reach of the military networks and connections Roelofs documents are revelatory and mind-boggling in their complexity.
Interpenetrating this matrix and further complicating the picture is the system of the nuclear energy, weapons and radioactive waste management industries and their related research facilities.
Nuclearized Nation
Three maps paint the picture – we live both geographically, economically and culturally in a nuclear surround:
Source: Nuclear Regulatory Commission
Licensed under Creative Commons
Source: strangesounds.net
Throughout the ‘Atomic Age,’ basically spanning my 82-year (so far) lifetime, many books have been published making clear nuclear technology’s history and impact. Yet, for most of the population (except for the dwindling number of white hairs like me) and especially for the current cohort of millennials – that easily available body of existentially vital information remains outside their situational awareness.
A few deserve special mention in the current context.
The 1981 The Nuclear Barons – The Inside Story of How They Created Our Nuclear Nightmare, b y Peter Pringle and James Spigelman, led the way. A publishers’ blurb sums it up well:
The nuclear barons: an international elite of scientists, technocrats, and businessmen who have, for more than four decades, controlled the world’s destiny. Their decisions–usually kept secret, often shortsighted, sometimes veiled by lies and obfuscations–have led inexorably to the present nuclear mess. Radiation hazards, prohibitively costly energy, waste-disposal problems, plant safety, weapons proliferation: the nuclear nightmares we live with are the direct result of choices that were never thought through to their logical conclusions, never opened to public debate.
Seasoned reporter Mark Hertzgaard has been labeled by at least one critic as a ‘nuclear crank’ for authoring his 1983 book, Nuclear Inc: The Men and Money Behind Nuclear Energy, but it stands as an impeccably-sourced investigative classic.
Hertzgaard spent three years in the halls of the industry itself. He gained access to private corporate libraries and once-secret documents. He interviewed many Washington insiders and corporate executives who had never before spoken on the record. The result is a look at what he termed ‘America’s Atomic Brotherhood’ from the inside.
Undeterred by commercial unviability and dependence on government subsidies, repeated accidents and recurring evidence of chronic mismanagement, or the clear inevitability of nuclear weapons proliferation stemming from possession of nuclear energy technology, this Brothehood persists to this day in its quest for control of both global market share and dominance of local and national politics.
Hertzgaard laid bare the playbook of strategies employed by utility executives to dominate local institutions like banks, news papers and civic organizations and influence educational curricula at every level.
He concluded that, “The twenty-four giant transnational corporations that dominate the nuclear power industry constitute what may be the single largest and most powerful business enterprise in history. They sold a staggering $400 billion worth of products in 1981, and all but five of them rank among the one hundred fifty biggest companies in America. Their enormous influence over the U.S. economy is amplified still further by close association with eight of the nation’s nine biggest banks, and many of its top investment and law firms. Along with their allies in the electric utility industry, they have invested countless billions in the nuclear business. Understandably, they are committed to recovering profit on their investment. But it is a cynical and condescending analysis that ascribes the industry’s calls for a nuclear revival to simple corporate greed. In fact, most nuclear executives deeply believe that theirs is a moral and just cause. They regard nuclear power as the very embodiment of progress and feel privileged to help bring it into being. In their minds, what is at stake in the struggle over nuclear power is not just their own corporations’ profitability, but the future of American capitalism, technological society, and indeed Western civilization.”
Democracy or Doom
Elaine Scarry is the Walter M. Cabot Professor of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University. Her 2014 book, Thermonuclear Monarchy: Choosing Between Democracy and Doom picks up on Robert Jungk’s point, mentioned above, that nuclear technology is quintessentially totalitarian. The appropriately named professor Scarry makes clear the absolutely dictatorial power that control of nuclear weaponry confers on the gormless politicians, true believer executives and ethically clueless technicians with their hands on the controls – a power far exceeding that of any autocratic potentate in the past.
She quotes Richard Nixon’s boast, “I can go into my office and pick up the telephone and in twenty-five minutes seventy million people will be dead,” noting that Nixon was accurately describing not only his own power but also the power of every American president in the nuclear age.
Professor Scarry records that Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon each contemplated using nuclear weapons—Eisenhower twice, Kennedy three times, Johnson once, Nixon four times. It remains classified whether or not subsequent presidents, from Ford to Obama, considered using them.
Her point is that no individual, group or institution should possess the unilateral power to obliterate all life on earth. Yet that is our current, actual existential situation.
President ‘Slow Joe’ Biden has the access codes.
The Varieties of Nuclear Culture – Societal and Institutional
The ubiquitous penetration of militarism and nuclearism into local, state, regional, national and transnational institutional systems, briefly mapped above, was starkly portrayed in microcosm in Paul Loeb’s 1982 study of life in Washington state’s aptly named Hanford Nuclear Reservation, where the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs were developed.
Half the size of Rhode Island, on the banks of the now radioactively polluted Columbia River, Hanford is the largest atomic energy complex in the world. In his recent book Atomic Days Counterpunch editor Joshua Frank describes it as “a sprawling wasteland of radioactive and chemical sewage, a landmass three times larger than Lake Tahoe. It’s also the costliest environmental remediation project the world has ever seen and, argueably, the most contaminated place on the entire planet.”
Frank goes on,
“Not only is the site laced with huge amounts of radioactive gunk, but all that waste is also a ticking timebomb that could erupt at any given moment, creating a nuclear Chernobyl-like explosion, resulting in a singular trajedy unlike anything the United States has ever experienced. It’s a real and frightning possibility….”
Out of sight and out of mind for most Americans, the Hanford complex is emblematic of the virtually eternally toxic legacy of the Atomic Age.
With its ongoing stream of government contracts, Hanford is also a key hub of economic activity in the region. It is served by a cluster of what are effectively ‘company cities’ in the region, the bulk of whose residents are multi-generational employees of The Reservation, or of the plethora of local businesses, civic organizations and instructions supporting it.
Local culture and ubiquitous mushroom cloud iconography, with the town tavern the Atomic Ale Brewpub serving Plutonium Porter, and its local high school sports teams called “The Bombers,” makes Hanford also an emblematic microcosm of the degree to which nuclear culture can be internalized and normalized by an enveloped population.
Loeb’s book, Nuclear Culture – Living and Working in the World’s Largest Atomic Complex, records his extensive interviews with workers, scientists, managers and housewives making up the region’s essentially captive population.
Tellingly, the names have been changed to protect the interviewees.
National Ignition Facility, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), Livermore, CA. – present5.com
The University of California-run Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, California is a key node in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.
Together with Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, its scientists and technicians are credited with having designed every nuclear weapon in the United States arsenal, as well as making significant contributions to the development of supercomputers, AI, and other leading edge technologies.
The Lab’s website once humbly billed it as “The Smartest Place on Earth.” In 2019 it was honored with a Glassdoor Employees’ Choice Award, recognizing the Lab as one of the Best Places to Work, as rated by its own happy employees.
As the home of the National Ignition Facility (NIF), Livermore Lab is a locus of the USA’s Nuclear Weapons Stockpile Stewardship Program, whose mission is to maintain the ‘readiness’ of America’s nuclear weapons arsenal, albeit without atmospheric or underground testing. The NIF approach is to do small-scale, ‘bench-top’ simulation tests using high-powered lasers.
Fusion Confusion
Recently mainstream and social media alike have been breathlessly reporting on a reported ‘breakthrough’ in the development of nuclear fusion technology at Livermore, touting it as a potential commercial nuclear energy innovation that will be our last minute rescue from climate change.
Less enthusiastic commentators observe [Here, Here & Here] that the touted ‘milestone’ development has more relevance to detonating a new generation of thermonuclear bombs than to saving the world from climate change. Despite the fact that there is no likelihood that fusion energy production to be scaled up in time to be deployed in the face of looming climate change, the media euphoria persists.
Like its counterpart in biological weapons research, NIF’s nuclear fusion research is characterized by the term ‘dual use,’ meaning its discoveries can be applied both defensively and offensively. It also means that ‘breakthroughs’ in one area of application is also a ‘breakthrough’ in the other. Hence the convenient ‘energy breakthrough’ cover-story, a psyop designed to make research on thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction look like a quest to save the world.
The High Church of Nukes Forever
Livermore Lab has long been widely regarded as a primary citadel of America’s Atomic Priesthood, adding to its quasi-religious mystique. In 1996, professed former anti-nuclear activist-turned anthropologist Hugh Gusterson published a book titled Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War. His ethnographic immersion in the Lab’s culture had given him a transformative ‘Come-to-Jesus’ conversion experience. His findings might be most succinctly expressed by the phrase, “self-described ‘nukies’ are really nice people, too.” See this.
Gustafson analyzed the ethics and politics of laboratory personnel, reverently describing their in-house customs and regimented behaviors and protocols as “rituals of initiation and transcendence.” His personal descriptions portrayed Livermore scientists coming to identify in an almost erotic or religious way with the power of the mass destruction devices they design and create – and which, he reported in a respectful tone, they do not fear.
Can you say the word “denial”?
According to Gustafson, many Lab employees are devout Christians motivated by high ideals who are personally disturbed by some fellow church members’ condemnation and opposition to their work. Apparently they daily ask themselves, ‘What kind of thermonuclear weapons of mass destruction would Jesus build?’
With the ‘value-free,’ cultural relativist attitude of the well-indoctrinated anthropologist, Gustafson found there to be many commonalities of idealistic motivation shared by the Lab’s ardent nukies and the protestors persistently demonstrating outside the facilities well-guarded gates.
In his research anthropologist Hugh Gusterson asked a senior Livermore Lab official about the purpose of the NIF’s laser program, the official responded, ‘It depends who I’m talking to… One moment it’s an energy program, the next it’s a weapons program. It just depends on the audience’.
That’s the ominous meaning of the term ‘dual use.’
Persistent Resistance at Livermore to a ‘New Nuclear Arms Race’
Livermore’s importance as a key hub in the U.S. thermonuclear weapons production complex has made it ground zero for yearly protests and teach-in rallies for decades, organized by Tri-Valley Cares, the Western States Legal Foundation, and others.
EON has documented many such events at Livermore on our YouTube Channel. A 2019 address by Danial Ellsberg, ‘Designing Armageddon,’ remains relevant today.
Triplets Joined at the Hip – The Commercial/Military/Radwaste Connection
As reported in previous articles (here & here), ever since the heady days of Atoms for Peace and the dream of ‘energy too cheap to meter,’ nuclear proponents have been at pains to pooh-pooh any necessary connection between commercial nuclear power and nuclear weapons production. However, nuclear power advocates like former U.S. Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz have now reversed course and are currently arguing that a commercial nuclear power infrastructure and trained labor force are vital to the maintenance of America’s nuclear navy and its proudly published military doctrine of Full Spectrum Dominance (FSD).
Moniz is the President and CEO of the Energy Futures Initiative. The EFI issued a 2017 report titled, The U.S. Nuclear Energy Enterprise: A Key National Security Enabler, making clear the joined-at-the-hip symbiosis of the nuclear power and weapons industries.
Moniz and the EFI are currently celebrating the nuclear-industry-friendly Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), signed into law last month by President Biden.
All this is in the context of the looming threat of nuclear war resulting from the escalating NATO-Russia confrontation in Ukraine.
As the Nuclear Information and Resource Service (NIRS) reports, “The IRA has an estimated $100 billion or more in provisions that fund and incentivize nuclear power. These provisions steal resources from real climate and environmental justice solutions and perpetuate the polluting, corrupt status quo. The entire nuclear fuel chain still relies on fossil fuels, contaminates communities across the country and around the world, and generates forever-deadly waste.” The NIRS analysis of the IRA is here.
A Self-Driving Nukes Race Has Begun
“Autonomous nuclear weapons introduce new risks of error and opportunities for bad actors to manipulate systems. Current AI is not only brittle; it’s easy to fool. A single pixel change is enough to convince an AI a stealth bomber is a dog.” – Zachary Kallenborn – Bulletin of Atomic Scientists
Chatbots, Warbucks and Warbots
ChatGPT is being hyped as a cutting-edge new ‘helper bot’ by the Elon Musk-backed tech firm OpenAI. Sott.net reports that “Microsoft on Monday announced a new multiyear, multibillion-dollar investment with ChatGPT-maker OpenAI.”
According to the New York Post, “This superhuman tech can do a variety of complicated tasks on the fly, from composing complex dissertations on Thomas Locketo drafting interior design schemes and even allowing people to converse with their younger selves.”
Wow! Do you suppose this wondrous technology could maybe get weaponized with malicious intent?
You bet it can…And it is.
In 2021 Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, Daniel Huttenlocher co-authored a book titled The Age of AI And Our Human Future. As you might expect, these guys are arch AI boosters. Critics pointed out that,
“Its title alone—The Age of AI: And Our Human Future—declares an epoch and aspires to speak on behalf of everyone. It presents AI as an entity, as superhuman, and as inevitable—while erasing a history of scholarship and critique of AI technologies that demonstrates their limits and inherent risks, the irreducible labor required to sustain them, and the financial incentives of tech companies that produce and profit from them.”
The reviewers objected that adoption of AI by the military is presented by the three authors as an inevitability, instead of as an active policy choice that involves ethical complexities and moral trade-offs.
Now, just months later, the war in Ukraine has brought those complexities and trade-offs to the front and center.
The Expose’ reports that, “On 30 June 2022, NATO announced it is creating a $1 billion innovation fund that will invest in early-stage start-ups and venture capital funds developing “priority” technologies such as artificial intelligence, big-data processing, and automation.”
The story by Rhoda Wilson also notes that “The US Department of Defense requested $874 million for artificial intelligence for 2022.” Of course European countries, China – and no doubt Russia – are rushing to keep up. Nuclear-armed countries in a warbot race puts the nuclear arms race on steroids. Multiple contending NukeBot forces – that can mistake a dog for a stealth bomber – making nano-second decisions based on a pixel. Armageddon Man has sprouted another head.
This new autonomous nukes race is a potential windfall for Big Tech giants like Peter Thiel’s Palantir, but also for aspiring newcomers to Silicon Valley.
She points out that, “Ultimately, the new era of military AI raises a slew of difficult ethical questions that we don’t have answers to yet.”
She interviews Kenneth Payne, who leads defense studies research at King’s College London and is the author of the book I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict. He says that a key concept in designing AI weapons systems is that humans must always retain control. But Payne believes that will be impossible as the technology evolves.
“The whole point of an autonomous [system] is to allow it to make a decision faster and more accurately than a human could do and at a scale that a human can’t do,” he says. “You’re effectively hamstringing yourself if you say ‘No, we’re going to lawyer each and every decision.’”
If It’s AI, It’s Hackable – Self-Driving Nukes?
Award-winning reporter Eric Schlosser’s 2014 book Command and Control and the eponymous Oscar-shortlisted documentary based on it, directed by Robert Kenner, showed how the history of the U.S. nuclear arsenal is studded with examples of how both serious human error and courageous interventions by individual human intelligence have repeatedly risked and saved the world from thermonuclear destruction. That was then and this is now, when displacing humans with AI algorithms is under serious (and insane) consideration.
Mikko Hypponen is a Finnish global cyber security expert whose thirty-year career has coincided with the growth of the criminalization of the internet. In his recent book, If It’s Smart, It’s Vulnerable, he gives a flyover of the developmental stages of cybercrime from viruses, to worms, to malware, to ransomware, to Stuxnet and beyond.
“Question: How many of the Fortune 500 are hacked right now?
“Answer: 500”
That’s the way Hypponen sets up his basic contention from a lifetime of cyber security sleuthing: “If a company network is large enough, it will always have vulnerabilities, and there will always be something odd going on…” making it possible for the system’s security measures to be “…breached by attackers.”
With that as background, the prospect of giving AI warbots the codes to the world’s nuclear weapons arsenals is clearly just one more suicidal societal concession to Armageddon Man.
Up, Up and Away – Nukes in Space
Another key aspect of the U.S. military’s Full Spectrum Dominance doctrine is the growing belief in some circles that “space nuclear is going to be the future.”
That statement comes from Alex Gilbert, Director of Space & Planetary Regulation at the Washington, D.C.- based Zeno Power. Karl Grossman reports that, in an August 4th webinar of the American Nuclear Society, Gilbert announced, “we are at a unique moment. I call it a space opportunity.” He went on, ““we could actually see exponential growth. Right now the space economy is around $400 billion globally. By the middle of the century it could be $4 trillion.”
His view was echoed by Kate Kelly, director for Space and Emerging programs at the Lynchburg, Virginia-based company BWXT Advanced Technologies. Kelly said that the use of nuclear power in space has arrived at an “inflection point.” She explained, ““Over the last several years there’s been this re-emerging interest and investment by the government in fission systems for in-space power and propulsion.”
He wrote, “The entire US military empire is tied together using space technology. With military satellites in space the US can see virtually everything on the Earth, can intercept all communications on the planet, and can target virtually any place at any time. Russia and China understand that the US military goal is to achieve “full spectrum dominance” on behalf of corporate capital.
“Using new space technologies to coordinate and direct modern warfare also enables the military industrial complex to reap massive profits as it constructs the architecture for what the aerospace industry claims will be the “largest industrial project” in Earth history.”
A recent Space.com story says that NASA will join DARPA’s Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, pictured in the artist’s conception image above. NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy said,
“NASA has a long history of collaborating with DARPA on projects that enable our respective missions, such as in-space servicing. Expanding our partnership to nuclear propulsion will help drive forward NASA’s goal to send humans to Mars…. DRACO will be a critical part of evaluating the technologies that will take us deeper into the solar system…. Our intent is to lead and develop a blueprint for human exploration and sustained presence throughout the solar system. That is a very important goal. And we think that these advanced technologies will be a critical part of it.”
So, it becomes clear that the over-arching context for the current nuclear revivalism craze is that commercial and military nuclearism are mutually co-dependent and, in fact, joined at the hip with radioactive waste production.
Nukes Forever Dreams that Will Not Die – the Hydra Heads of Armageddon Man
In addition to the persistently recurring, consistently unfulfilled fever dream – mentioned above – of sustainable and commercially scalable nuclear fusion, three other hopes spring forever in the hearts and minds of dedicated revivalists:
Useless Breeders
According to a 2019 Stanford University report on The Rise and Fall of Plutonium Breeder Reactors, the notion of a so-called “breeder reactor”- a plutonium‑fueled nuclear reactor that could produce more fuel than it consumed – is at least as old as the Manhattan Project.
Frank von Hippel, one of the report’s eight distinguished co-authors, explains that it “looks at the experience and status of breeder reactor programs inFrance, India, Japan, the Soviet Union/Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States.” He notes that. “The problems described in the country case studies in the following chapters make it hard to dispute Admiral Hyman Rickover’s summation in 1956, based on his experience with a sodium-cooled reactor developed to power an early U.S. nuclear submarine, that such reactors are “expensive to build, complex to operate, susceptible to prolonged shutdown as a result of even minor malfunctions, and difficult and time-consuming to repair.”
The 2019 Stanford Report concludes:
“The breeder reactor dream is not dead but it has receded far into the future. In the 1970s, breeder advocates were predicting that the world would have thousands of breeder reactors operating by now. Today, they are predicting commercialization by approximately 2050. In the meantime, the world has to deal with the legacy of the dream; approximately 250 tons of separated weapon-usable plutonium and ongoing — although, in some cases struggling — reprocessing programs in France, India, Japan, Russia and the United Kingdom….
“Although there are safety issues generic to liquid metal fast reactors, it does not appear that they were the predominant reasons for the demise of the breeder program in the United States. More important were proliferation concerns and a growing conviction that breeder reactors would not be needed or economically competitive with light-water reactors for decades, if ever. Under GNEP [Global Nuclear Energy Partnership], the DOE expressed renewed interest in fast reactors, initially as burner reactors to fission the actinides in the spent fuel of the light-water reactors. So far, the new designs are mostly paper studies, and the prospect of a strong effort to develop the burner reactors is at best uncertain. The Obama Administration has terminated the GNEP Programmatic Environmental Impact Statement and efforts by DOE to move to near-term commercialization of fast reactors and the closed fuel cycle for transmutation of waste. As this report went to press, it was debating whether to even continue R&D on fast-neutron reactors. The economic and nonproliferation arguments against such reactors remain strong.”
Reprocessing
Another enduring Dumb Idea with contra-indications supplied by years of bitter experience is that of ‘reprocessing,’ an option the Union of Concerned Scientists dismisses as “Dangerous, Dirty and Expensive.”
They explain,
“Reprocessing is a series of chemical operations that separates plutonium and uranium from other nuclear waste contained in the used (or “spent”) fuel from nuclear power reactors. The separated plutonium can be used to fuel reactors, but also to make nuclear weapons. In the late 1970’s, the United States decided on nuclear non-proliferation grounds not to reprocess spent fuel from U.S. power reactors, but instead to directly dispose of it in a deep underground geologic repository where it would remain isolated from the environment for at least tens of thousands of years.
“While some supporters of a U.S. reprocessing program believe it would help solve the nuclear waste problem, reprocessing would not reduce the need for storage and disposal of radioactive waste. Worse, reprocessing would make it easier for terrorists to acquire nuclear weapons materials, and for nations to develop nuclear weapons programs.”
Proponents say that reprocessing used reactor fuel is vital to the growth of nuclear power because it would reduce waste that needs to be stored deep underground.
Sen. John McCain, a prominent supporter of nuclear reprocessing, pointed to France, where he said that reprocessing has been going on “for many, many years without any accidents or difficulties or problems.”
Yet behind the rhetoric are stark facts:
• A reprocessing facility would become a dump for the largest, most lethal source of high-heat radioactivity in the United States and possibly the world.
• Reprocessing does not significantly reduce the amount of radioactive waste that has to be buried.
• The cost of nuclear recycling rivals the recent bailout of Wall Street investment banks.
The first major problem with reprocessing is that it doesn’t come close to solving the challenge of nuclear waste. In fact, as a reprocessing facility chops and dissolves used fuel rods, it releases thousands of times more radioactivity into the environment than nuclear reactors and generates several dangerous waste streams. Denmark, Norway, and Ireland have sought the closure of reprocessing plants in France and Great Britain because of radioactive waste washing up on their shores. Just a few grams of waste would deliver lethal radiation doses in a matter of seconds in a crowded area.
The global small modular reactor market was valued at USD 9.54 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 3.6% during the forecast period. The low cost of Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) on account of the modularization and factory construction, along with the growing interest in small and mid-sized reactors due to their ability to meet the need for power generation, is positively influencing the market.
According to Forbes, ‘smart’ investors from Bill Gates to Kris Singh to the governments of Canada and Alberta are in a mass murmuration swooping toward SMRs.
A May, 2022 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by Lindsay Krall, Rodney Ewing and former NRC Chair Allison Macfarlane, titled Nuclear Waste from Small Modular Reactors agrees:
“Small modular reactors (SMRs), proposed as the future of nuclear energy, have purported cost and safety advantages over existing gigawatt-scale light water reactors (LWRs). However, few studies have assessed the implications of SMRs for the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. The low-, intermediate-, and high-level waste stream characterization presented here reveals that SMRs will produce more voluminous and chemically/physically reactive waste than LWRs, which will impact options for the management and disposal of this waste. Although the analysis focuses on only three of dozens of proposed SMR designs, the intrinsically higher neutron leakage associated with SMRs suggests that most designs are inferior to LWRs with respect to the generation, management, and final disposal of key radionuclides in nuclear waste.”
Flockinng investors beware.
The Iron Law of Regulatory Capture
Commercial nuclear power’s role as ‘enabler’ of the nuclear weapons complex and America’s Nuclear Navy no doubt contributes to the friendly, even lax attitude toward its regulatory agencies over the years.
The take-over of state and federal regulatory agencies by the very industries they are mandated to manage is a well-documented phenomenon with its own extensive literature rife with explanatory models and theories about incentives, revolving-door officials and the seemingly endemic tendency to un-reformable corruption.
In 2006 Werner Troesken published a paper in a National Bureau of Economic Research publication ‘Corruption and Reform: Lessons from America’s Economic History’ entitled Regime Change and Corruption. A History of Public Utility Regulation. In it Troesken looked at the history of public utilities commissions and wondered why, despite both public and private attempts at reform, utility regulation seems always to lapse into corruption. Here’s how he describes his inquiry and its findings in what might be called Troesken’s Iron Law of PUC Corruption:
“First, corruption is endemic to public utility industries; corruption exists, in some form, across all regulatory and ownership regimes. Second, regime change in utility industries does not eliminate corruption; it only alters the type of corruption observed. Third, for any type of governance regime (e.g., state regulation or municipal ownership) corruption grows increasingly severe over time and, at some point, becomes politically untenable….” pg. 260
“Based on the historical evidence presented above it appears that corruption, and the necessity to eliminate corruption when it gets too costly, accounts for the efficacy of regime change. In this context, the direction of regime change—from public to private, or private to public—is of second-order importance. What matters is some radical reshuffling of the institutional matrix to disrupt the underlying corrupt relationships. Unfortunately, this disruption is only temporary, and gradually new forms of corruption emerge and must again be broken down by institutional change.” Pg. 278
The main attention of this field of scholarship is focused on so-called ‘natural monopolies’ like the giant investor owned utility corporations known by the ironically appropriate acronym IOUs.
The symbiotic relationship between the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and the nuclear IOUs it putatively ‘regulates’ is embodies in the way the agency is funded. A federal law passed in 1990 requires about 90 percent of the NRC’s budget to come from fees charged to those regulated by the agency. The NRC has a defined system of ‘fees’ that it charges IOUs for its ‘services,’ like on-site inspectors, or reviewing applications for license extensions or exemptions. The IOUs don’t pay those fees out of their profits, they pass them on to their ratepayers as an operating expense. So, in effect, the ‘regulatory agency,’ is dependent for its funding, not on Federal tax-payers for whose interests it is supposedly protecting, but to the private corporations whose actions it is supposedly rigorously regulating.
It is this symbiotic, co-dependent, shell-game system that makes the NRC’s relationships to the IOUs so murky and vulnerable to apparent compromise and corruption.
Personal examples come from years of reporting are the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) and the NRC.
In a nutshell, the pattern is – if a putative ‘regulatee’ finds it too expensive or inconvenient to comply with an existing regulation or law, then the regulator will change it or grant an exemption.
One person with a life-long career of witnessing this process is the late engineer, attorney, and author, S. David Freeman. In his long, contentious, and accomplished career Freeman headed a number of energy organizations, including the Tennessee Valley Authority, New York Power Authority, Sacramento Municipal Utility District and the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power (LADWP). He holds the record for shutting down more power reactors than any other utility administrator.
One of his last accomplishments before his death in 2020 was to help negotiate a model agreement for the orderly shutdown of PG&E’s Diablo Canyon two reactor plant, an agreement now in the process of being abrogated by nuclear revivalists and a compliant NRC.
In a 2012 interview for our forthcoming documentary The San Onofre Syndrome, Mr. Freeman had this to say about the NRC: “I don’t think that it’s possible for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to ever change its habits of being mainly a puppy dog rather than a watchdog. Because of the influence of the industry – as a matter of fact – you don’t get confirmed nowadays to be on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission unless you “believe” in nuclear power.”
Plus the nuclear industry provides 70% of the NRC’s budget.
The Elements of Cultism
As we have seen, the striking similarities of the quasi-religious nuclear culture mystique to various forms of true believer cultism have been obvious from the beginnings of what Hertzgaard dubbed the American Nuclear Brotherhood. Karl Grossman interviewed a number of nuclear safety advocates on the topic in a 2012 article titled The Nuclear Cult.
Some commonly cited sociological characteristics of cults include:
1. Authoritarian, doctrinaire leadership
2. Unquestioning compliance and obedience on the part of in-group members
3. Shared belief in a rigid orthodoxy or ideology
4. Claims of superior, expert knowledge – conviction of sharing knowledge of the ‘Real Scientific Facts’
5. Redoubling assertions of certainty in the face of undeniably contradictory events
6. Opposition to informed dissent and Independent thinking on the part of group members
7. Orchestrated peer and institutional pressures for enforcement of conformity
8. Expulsion, defamation and persecution of dissidents.
All of these behaviors can be observed in the nuclear revivalist community.
Revivalism’s Two Camps – Legacy & Neo-Nuclearists
The senior generation of post-Cold War nuclear proponents motivated by an ideology focused on national security and global competitiveness has now been joined by a younger generation, who are innocent of the energy-weapons connection. They’re motivated instead by the belief that – despite massive evidence to the contrary – nuclear energy is necessary to save the world from climate change. The same commitment to cultish orthodoxy still seems to obtain with this cohort, many of whom have grown up being constantly exposed to text books and curricular programs designed and supplied by the nuclear industry to portray nuclear energy as ‘clean, green, non-polluting and carbon-free,’ an egregiously false narrative that will be discussed below.
A 2021 New Yorker article titled The Activists Who Embrace Nuclear Power By Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow profiled three members of this new breed of revivalists. Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute is described as “a controversial figure, known for his pugilistic defense of nuclear power and his acerbic criticism of mainstream environmentalists,” i.e., those advocating for renewables.
After seeing Shellenberger featured in the pro-nuclear film ‘Pandora’s Promise,” and hearing him speak, two young women, Heather Hoff and Kristin Zaitz joined the fight to ‘Save Diablo Canyon’ and co-founded a small non-profit called Mothers for Nuclear, “which argues that nuclear power is an indispensable tool in the quest for a decarbonized society.”
The group’s cheery website features images of happy moms and their little kids and proclaims its aim of having “a dialogue with others who want to protect nature for future generations.”
Nuclear revivalism is no longer a cult exclusively for gray hairs.
Swept Under the Cognitive Carpet – The Unsolvable Becomes the UnSpeakable Becomes the Invisble
Left out of the new nukes and revivalist happytalk – except for standard Pollyanna reassurances – are the basically unsolvable problems of 1) Proliferation, 2) Pollution, 3) Permanent Waste Sequestration, and 4) Poisoning the DNA Pool of all the planet’s life forms. Call them the Four Poisonous P’s of the Plutonium (Pu) Economy.
1. Proliferation
The symbiotic co-dependence between nuclear energy and weapons production – long denied since Atoms for Peace days, but now, as discussed above, being employed as a rationale for nuclear revivalism – has never really been a secret. Ipso facto a nation with nuclear energy production capability is a potential nuclear weapons state. Add to this the fact, illustrated by recent events at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia complex, that every nuclear reactor and radioactive waste storage site are nuclear bombs-in-place waiting to be targeted by any adversary with access to conventional explosives or projectiles.
But add to this the currently notion being bandied about of ‘Usable or Low Yield Nuclear Weapons’. It was a concept introduced under the Trump Admistration in 2019, and remains in the Biden Administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) and Beyond Nuclear report that,
In October, the Biden administration published its 2022 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), much later than expected. The delay was reportedly due to differences over significant aspects of US nuclear policy.
Biden’s stated position during his election campaign indicated that former President Trump’s new nuclear weapons would be abandoned, that reliance on nuclear weapons within US military strategy would be reduced, and that arms control would be revived.
He also indicated he would move towards a ‘no-first-use’ and ‘sole purpose’ policy for nuclear weapons; ‘sole purpose’ means that ‘deterring’ and responding to a nuclear attack would be the sole purpose of the US nuclear arsenal rather than the current nuclear posture which envisages its potential use against a range of threats, including an overwhelming cyber-attack.
The document falls far short of the hoped for changes. Trump’s submarine-launched cruise missile system is being cancelled, and the B83-1 gravity bomb is being retired, but Trump’s ‘usable’ nuke, the W76-2, is being retained, in spite of it being described as ‘unnecessary, wasteful and indefensible’ in the Democratic Party manifesto.
No-first-use and sole purpose have not been adopted, and full-scope ‘Triad’ replacement and other nuclear modernisation programmes are taking place.
Despite its Non-Proliferation Treaty obligations, the US seems once again to be leading the way to the normalization of … nuclear weapons proliferation.
2. Pollution
Out-of-sight and out-of-mind are the routine radioactive and toxic chemical emissions into surrounding air and aquatic environments involved in the normal day-to-day operation of all nuclear power plants. Giving the lie to claims of ‘clean, green, non-polluting and carbon-free’ is the fact that the entire nuclear cycle from mining and milling to supply chain transport to waste management are heavily carbon intensive.
With the exception of Arizona’s Palo Verde Generating Station – which uses treated sewer water from surrounding communities for cooling – nuclear power plants are uniformly located on rivers, lakes and oceans. Thousands of gallons of water from these sources are circulated daily through these plants for cooling and released back into the marine environments at much higher temperatures than when they went in. The harmful impact of these releases on aquatic life is extensively documented. Add to this the hundreds of radioactive contaminants – including radioactive Carbon-14 – being routinely spewed in gaseous forms into the atmosphere.
And then there’s the fog of tritium that surrounds each operating nuclear power plant. Dr. Ian Fairlie, a specialist on radiation in the environment, explains, “Nuclear facilities emit very large amounts of tritium, 3H, the radioactive isotope of hydrogen. Much evidence from cell/animal studies and radiation biology theory indicates that tritium is more hazardous than gamma rays and most X-rays.… Tritium’s exceptionally high molecular exchange rate with hydrogen atoms on adjacent molecules makes it extremely mobile in the environment. This plus the fact that the most common form of tritium is water, i.e., radioactive water, means that, when tritium is emitted from nuclear facilities, it rapidly contaminates all biota in adjacent areas. Tritium binds with organic matter to form organically bound tritium (OBT) with long residence times in tissues and organs making it more radiotoxic than tritiated water (HTO). Epidemiology studies indicate increases in cancers and congenital malformations near nuclear facilities. It is recommended that nuclear operators and scientists should be properly informed about tritium’s hazards; that tritium’s safety factors should be strengthened; and that a hazard scheme for common radionuclides be established.”
Indian Point and Pilgrim as a Case-in-Point – Decom and Radwaste Management as a ‘New Asset Class’ and Profit Sector…for Radwaste Vulture Capitalists
As aging reactors are shutdown at the end of their design lives and operating license agreements, they become the focus of what might be called “The Radioactive Demolition Derby.” All the components of the worn-out plant – both above ground and sub-surface infrastructures, most of them radioactive – must be carefully disassembled into manageable chunks of rubble in order to be carted away to ‘Somewhere Else.’
This effectively doubles the contaminated area, since it is impossible to ever completely remove all radioactive particles at the original site, despite industry assurances. Plus transporting the contaminated substances inevitably involves leakage and small particle disbursal along the way. By ‘diluting’ the percentage of intensely radioactive materials with less contaminated rubble, much the radioactive garbage is allowed to be dumped into regular municipal garbage dumps. This can create radioactive leachate into nearby streams and groundwater.
Radwaste Vulture Capitalists
Such a large-scale, long-term enterprise needs an industry of ambitious, risk-taking entrepreneurs. Create the need, and they will come. And indeed they have. Call them Radwaste Vulture Capitalists.
The leading emblematic poster child for this new breed is Kris Singh, CEO of his family-owned globe-spanning conglomerate operating under the broad corporate umbrella of Holtec International, a privately held company exempt from public financial disclosure.
The Holtec conglomerate consists of over 20 divisions, subsidiaries and trusts under Mr. Singh’s personal control, spanning across at least 8 countries from the U.S. to Europe, South America, Africa, Asia and Ukraine.
Two of Holtec’s many projects around the U.S. and the world is the decommissioning of the recently shuttered Indian Point and.Pilgrim nuclear plants – one on the Hudson, one on Cape Cod Bay.
The Indian Point Safe Energy Coalition (IPSEC) has assembled revealing company profiles for Holtec and its Canadian counterpart SLC-Lavalin. Holtec’s rap sheet includes convictions for bribery, tax fraud in at least two states, and a record of dubious manufacturing quality control, faulty reporting to the NRC, and multiple instances of labor abuse.
Singh’s vision seems not only to command a horizontal dominance of decommissioning and radwaste storage, from the manufacture of containers to the installation and operation of Independent Spent Fuel Storage Installations (ISFSIs) at shutdown plants, to the construction and operation of Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) facilities. It also aims to capture the market for manufacture of a proposed new generation of so-called Small Modular Reactors (SMRs).
The two key circumstances underlying Holtec’s decommissioning. business model are these:
Access to Huge Decommissioning Trust Funds
Each utility’s nuclear generating station has a Decommissioning Trust Fund (DTF) built up from required rate-payer contributions over the years of the plant’s operation.
These range from many millions of dollars to many billions for each nuclear power site.
The original intention behind the DTF was that, once the plant is shut down, the accumulated funds would be used to cover the costs demolishing the plant, disposing of the rubble (most of it radioactive), theoretically returning the site to ‘greenfield status’ safe for recreation, residential development and other uses. Any DTF monies left over at the end of this process would go back to the rate-payers.
Access to Federal Reimbursement for ‘Spent’ Nuclear Fuel Storage Fees
The other key background context element is that, according to the Nuclear Waste Policy Act of 1982, electric utility companies that operate US nuclear reactors have contracts with the Department of Energy (DoE) for used reactor fuel management removal. DOE was to begin moving used reactor fuel from nuclear energy facilities beginning in 1998 to deep geological storage.
The one such site that was ever developed, Yucca Mountain in Nevada, was chosen for political reasons and terminated for scientific reasons after billions had been spent.
Since no geological repository exists, utilities must maintain the ‘stranded’ waste on-site, and have begun successfully suing the Federal government to recover the expenses involved. This is another taxpayer funded pot of money.
Enter the Holtec business model:
Secure the contract to to supply the components of the ISFSI – design, construction and management;
Secure the contract to decommission the plant;
Buy the plant;
Seek and receive various regulation exemptions from the NRC;
Pocket the left-over DTF monies, instead of returning them to the rate-payers;
If there are no DTF monies left over, have tax-payers pick up the tab;
Sue the DoD for storing the stranded SNF;
Establish and operate a Consolidated Interim Storage (CIS) facility;
Secure the contract to transport the stranded SNF to the Holtec CIS, using Holtec transport casks.
Possible intention to reprocess the ‘spent’ nuclear fuel
Just see how the money rolls in.
But, getting back to the Pollution issue, in the case of Indian Point and Pilgrim, there’s another problem: what do you do with the hundreds of gallons of toxic, hugely radioactive and tritiated water now contained in the plants’ fuel handling pools.
Holtec’s answer is – disregarding Ian Fairlie’s dire warning cited above – ‘dump it in the Hudson and Cape Cod Bay,’ never mind the impact to the drinking water supplies of seven near-by Hudson River communities, or to the sea life in Cape Cod’s marine sanctuary.
3. Seeking Sequestration – Deep Geological Depositories, Deep Boreholes & Deep Doo-Doo
The termination of Yucca Mountain – as noted, for scientific, not political reasons – has not dampened the enthusiasm of revivalists pushing to revive Yucca Mountain or some new counterpart. But it does point to wider and deeper problems with the very concept of long-term radiological containment by means of deep burial of any kind.
In addition to deep burial caverns containing many hundreds or thousands of waste containers simultaneously, the idea of sequestering waste containers in what are termed deep boreholes has recently gained popularity in some revivalist circles. These would be dispersed both on land and under sea in rock or ocean bottom mud.
Involved with all these concepts are many of what former U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld once famously termed ‘Unknown Unknowns’. Here is a short list of a few of what Rumsfeld might have called the ‘Known Unknowns’:
Short and long term seismic events and their outcomes are unknown
The rate and effects of heat build-up from multiple containers of thermally hot waste over time are unknown
The rate and effects of the build-up over time of hydrogen and other explosive gasses are unknown
The rate and extent of container corrosion and degradation over time are unknown
Long-lived robotic sensors for a wide range of potentially emitted elements do not exist and the possibility or rate of their development is unknown
Any means of preventing future generation from accidentally or intentionally accessing the deadly subterranean materials are unknown
Systems analyst Donna Gilmore, who operates SanOnofreSafety.org, cites multiple government reports to support her conclusion that, “any geological repository is not feasible in the short or long term.” She notes that, “The Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board December 2017 report to Congress” states spent nuclear fuel waste needs to be monitored and maintained in dry storage in a manner to prevent hydrogen gas explosions for both short-term and long-term storage. This is not currently being done and cannot be done with the thin-wall welded canisters. It can only be done with thick-wall bolted lid casks, like those used in most of the world and at some US facilities. See here.
“This overview of the status of research and scientific evidence regarding the long-term underground disposal of highly radioactive wastes, shows there is no known safe permanent solution. [emphasis added] This review identifies a number of phenomena that could compromise the containment barriers, potentially leading to significant releases of radioactivity:
▪ Copper or steel canisters and overpacks containing spent nuclear fuel or high-level radioactive wastes could corrode more quickly than expected.
▪ The effects of intense heat generated by radioactive decay, and of chemical and physical disturbance due to corrosion, gas generation and biomineralisation, could impair the ability of backfill material to trap some radionuclides.
▪ Build-up of gas pressure in the repository, as a result of the corrosion of metals and/or the degradation of organic material, could damage the barriers and force fast routes for radionuclide escape through crystalline rock fractures or clay rock pores.
▪ Poorly understood chemical effects, such as the formation of colloids, could speed up the transport of some of the more radiotoxic elements such as plutonium.
▪ Unidentified fractures and faults, or poor understanding of how water and gas will flow through fractures and faults, could lead to the release of radionuclides in groundwater much faster than expected.
▪ Excavation of the repository will damage adjacent zones of rock and could there by create fast routes for radionuclide escape.
▪ Future generations, seeking underground resources or storage facilities, might accidentally dig a shaft into the rock around the repository or a well into contaminated groundwater above it.
▪ Future glaciations could cause faulting of the rock, rupture of containers and penetration of surface waters or permafrost to the repository depth, leading to failure of the barriers and faster dissolution of the waste.
▪ Earthquakes could damage containers, backfill and the rock.”
It looks like the Yellow Brick Road to deep disposal / abandonment is littered with deep sinkholes – not to mention the transportation issues involved in thousands of shipments of deadly radioactive materials traveling over ill-maintained roads, rails and bridges. Barges subject to storms, running aground and capsizing are also proposed for moving these lethal loads.
Ergo: Store it where it is at reactor sites in the safest, most robust, state-of-the-art containment systems now available.
4. DNA and Environmental Damage
Massive contamination from uranium mining and nuclear energy and weapons production has already irreversibly affected the planetary environment, and the gene pools of humans and all other species. Before the Comprehensive Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space and Under Water, in Moscow August 5, 1963, nuclear nations had already contaminated the terrestrial and near-space environment with 528 atmospheric atomic test explosions, at least one in the Van Allen Radiation Belt surrounding the earth. 1,528 subsequent underground nuclear blasts have also vented radioactive material into the atmosphere and left radioactive contamination in the soil. According to the Arms Control Association, a total of 2,056 test of all sorts have been conducted. Most directly impacted have been indigenous populations around the world, but the entire global population continues to be affected.
Graphic: Arms Control Association
No Permanent ‘Disposal’ Solution Exists
Permanent disposal of waste that remains lethal to all living things for longer than civilization has yet existed, is a challenge still unmet despite over half a century of failed attempts and empty promises. Given unpredictable earth movement, the mobility of water and the inevitable heat build-up from densely concentrated containers of highly radioactive, the thousands of tons of thermally and radioactively hot ‘spent fuel’ from just a few decades of reactor operation cannot be safely or permanently ‘disposed’ of with current technology.
The dream of deep permanent geological burial and abandonment has so far proven unworkable, and is likely to continue proving so. In the U.S., although the Department of Energy has promised to take title and possession of this waste, no central Federal storage site yet exists, nor is any on the horizon.
Thousands of tons of deadly radioactive waste from nuclear power plants are ‘stranded’ and unsafely stored in thin, corrosion cracking-prone steel canisters at least 85 U.S. reactor sites around the country. 92 operating U.S. reactors generate 2,000 tons more waste each year.
The Best Available Approach
The best available approach seems to be components of what the Swiss and Germans are doing. They use highly expensive construction designed to last over a hundred years: reinforced buildings with controlled-environments in which waste is stored in thick walled, robust monitorable, moveable and repairable casks.
Also required at each site is a so-called dry or hot cell, a hermetically sealed facility in which damaged casks can be repaired or the waste repackaged remotely and robotically. These ‘hot cells’ are necessay because nuclear power ‘spent’ fuel assemblies are lethal to humans and exposure to oxygen must be prevented to avoid combustion and explosion.
‘Dry’ or ‘Hot’ Cell facilities make possible the remote handling of highly radioactive materials in a sealed environment, making repackaging of waste possible. – Archive photo.
The hope for transgenerational, on-going maintenance of these types of facilities – requiring the necessary commitment, know-how and resources – is termed by advocates Rolling Stewardship. This method passes on to future generations the existentially necessary burden of dealing with the lethal legacy of just a few decades of nuclear energy production.
“Nuclear waste remains harmful for unimaginably long periods of time. Until the waste can be eliminated, it must be managed on a multigenerational basis. This implies continual monitoring and periodic retrieval and repackaging (e.g. 50 – 100 years). Rolling Stewardship implies persistence of memory : the accurate transmission of information and the transfer of responsibility from one generation to the next. For example, there could be a ceremonial “changing of the guard” every 20 years, accompanied by a thorough refamiliarization with & recharacterization of the waste.
“Rolling Stewardship will ensure that leakages can be rapidly detected and corrected. It will also provide a constant incentive to improve containment and find a solution to the waste problem. But it requires meticulous planning and commitment to succeed.
“The concepts of abandonment and disposal are intimately related. According to the IAEA “disposal” means that there is no intention to retrieve the waste in the future – although such retrieval may, with difficulty, be possible; the waste is abandoned.”
Such an ethic of long-term responsibility is absent from the mutually convolved ideologies of the two enmeshed cults and cultures we have been discussing.
Two Cults are More Powerful Than One
The same cultish behaviors itemized above in reference to nuclear revival true believers can also be observed in the behavior of members of the First Church of Permanent War for Perpetual Profit.
These two symbiotic, co-dependent, mutually intertwined cults and cultures – War Heads and Reactor Heads – are making the most of their historical moments of dominance.
Call this two-headed monster the Military-Nuclear Matrix – call them together, Armageddon Man.
The hope of this essay is that once made visible, this pernicious entity cannot go back to being unseen, and therefor unopposed, by what Eisenhower once hopefully called “an alert and knowledgeable citizenry.”
This monstrous governance model is, in fact, being challenged by at least two contesting paradigms: the transhumanist, technocratic, Great Reset corporate-centric model being promulgated by the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the decentralized, We the People-centric, deep democracy, high diversity, planetarian paradigm beginning to rise from the grass roots.
But that’s a subject for future posts.
A Parting Message from a Man Who Knew Whereof He Spoke
In the interview referenced above, the late David Freeman referred to his experiences as head of the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and, later in his long career, of the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMUD). It seems appropriate to close with his wise words.
“My first exposure to nuclear power as an executive was back then [at the TVA], and I found that in order to make even the NRC’s safety standards, they just cost too much, and we were better off with conservation, and we had a huge energy efficiency program that was cheaper and quicker and far cleaner than nuclear power.
“Then I [later] moved on to manage the Sacramento Municipal Utility District (SMID), and the people voted to shut down the nuclear reactor there. I had the job of burying the plant. It supplied fifty percent of SMUD’s power supply, and we were able to replace it without rate increases, and Sacramento was now one of the better utilities in the country -reasonable rates, and life was a whole lot better after nuclear power.
“But the thing that really changed my mind was when I visited Chernobyl five years after the accident in 1991, and I saw a monument with the name of villagers on it that were dead.
“I went out there and talked to a few people that were still hanging around, and when I talked to them about the possibility of solar power, they actually cried with joy that there was an alternative. And I met the mothers of the poor kids that were marching around on May Day, five days after the accident and were exposed because the Soviets didn’t tell them about it, and I realized that this was a monster.
“And so today I feel that we got the final wake-up call at Fukushima and that we need to phase out and shut down the 104 [now 92] reactors in America.
“I will put it very bluntly: We need to kill them before they kill us.”
The Denuclearization Three-Step – A Vision
1. Phase out and shutdown all nuclear reactors, including those powering all of the the world’s Nuclear Navies.
2. Outlaw production and possession of thermonuclear weapons and propulsion technologies on earth, under sea, and in space.
3. Require by enforceable international treaty agreement the containment of existing radioactive waste with the best available state-of-the-art-methods, and prohibit the production of any more.
“Where there is no vision, the people perish….” – Proverbs 29:18-27
“The longest journey begins with a single step” – Laozi, DaoDeJing, Chapter 64
An action you can take to stop Armageddon Man:
The Doomsday Clock has ticked 10 seconds closer to midnight. Send an email NOW…
Thank you for your January 23, 2023 MEMORANDUM. I am submitting a limited appearance statement in order to make the Atomic Safety and Licensing Board aware of my concerns at issue in the subject proceeding.
Then write your comments, sign off with /s/ before your name, and send ASAP.
Thank you for your solidarity & for getting in the way of the bomb ~~ ECAN & APEC (Appalachian Peace Education Center’s Peaceful Planet Committee)
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First published by Global Research on February 17, 2023
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There is reason to be alarmed by the recent China balloon. However, that reason is not the alleged China aggression but the very calculated aggression towards China by the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations. This hate and the manufactured reasons for it have been layering on for years. We’ve seen this playbook. It’s the same game plan that led us to the war on Iraq.
The U.S. is trying to contain and control China’s growth as a world power by using its military and economic powers. Just as it wanted to control the oil in the middle east.
There are 4 main reasons why the U.S. is doing this:
First, it wants to prevent China from becoming an economic superpower that could rival America;
Second, it wants the Asian market for itself at any cost;
Third, it wants to exacerbate tensions between other countries that have disputes with China over resources in order to isolate Beijing on all sides;
Fourth, it believes that such actions will increase American influence over Southeast Asia as well as its political leverage against Russia and Iran.
In other words, the U.S. wants to dominate the whole world even if that means burning it down to its core.
So how do you go to war with a country that is not an eminent threat to our nation’s safety and security? Enter the Chinese “spy” balloon. Before the words “chinese spy balloon” ever became a known phrase in every American household, Secretary of State Anthony Blinken had plans to travel to China to meet with his counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang. The meeting would have been a diplomatic approach to resolving issues between the two countries and could have been the beginning of working towards cooperation. It also would have been in line with Biden’s promise to Xi in November that we would “keep the lines of communication open.” That was until a high altitude balloon from China drifted into U.S airspace last week.
Suddenly a relatively harmless balloon from China became the latest small cache of weapons becoming earth-dooming weapons of mass destruction. Regardless of the fact that balloons have accidentally entered US airspace before or that it happened three times during the Trump administration, the Pentagon created mass hype and hysteria in this newest attempt to manufacture consent. In fact, just last year during the Biden administration, a balloon crashed near Hawaii without making a splash. This balloon turned into a spectacle because the U.S. is relentless in its aim to ramp up aggression towards China. Those drums don’t beat themselves.
This is evidenced by Blicken’s immediate response by canceling his diplomatic trip to Beijing; essentially closing the lines for diplomacy. Meanwhile during the State of the Union Address on Tuesday, President Biden made reference to the balloon by vowing to protect the US “sovereignty.” He called out Xi by name, “Name me one world leader who’d change places with Xi Jinping. Name me one!” yelling out a threat against a world leader on national television amidst the roaring drums.
Biden and Congress are using the idea of competition with China as a thinly painted veil for what they really want – war. A war they have been setting up for years.
Over the past decade, the United States has increased its military presence in the Pacific at an alarming rate.
The U.S. military has acquired access to four new bases in the Philippines, and increased its presence in Southeast Asia by half-a-million troops since 2002. However, the increased military presence doesn’t just stop and end with the Philippines. On January 1, 2020, U.S. Marine Corps opened a new base in Guam to monitor and conduct military operations in the South China Sea. This new base came to much of the dismay of the locals.
Having a base there means that the United States has more power to control China’s maritime rights under international law. In addition, there are also rumors that this new military base will be used as a “military outpost” against China by the U.S., so that they can more easily attack Chinese territory.
Then on November 29, 2022, the USS Chancellorsville sailed into the South China Sea without permission of the Chinese government. The move was seen as a provocation by many experts, who believe that it may bring about a military conflict between China and the United States. Notably its last participation in a war was when the United States illegally invaded Iraq after lying and misleading the public. Today, it is one of the most advanced warships in America’s arsenal. Sailing the USS Chancellorsville into the South China Sea was a clear threat to China and an act of provocation by the United States.
If that alone is not enough to convince you of major U.S. aggression towards China, then just listen to the words of General Mike Miniha, general in the United States Air Force, who wrote in a leaked memo “My gut tells me we will fight in 2025.” That memo that was leaked to NBC News. There is no indication whatsoever that China wants a war with the United States or any other country. Likewise, Admiral John Aquilino, recently warned the Senate Armed Services Committee that China invading Taiwan is “much closer to us than most think.” All of these are eerily similar to the bloodlust U.S. military leaders expressed prior to their war of deceit in Iraq.
It is clear that U.S. aggression towards China is calculated and deliberate. The United States has been trying to contain China since the end of World War II, but its efforts have intensified over the past few years as China has become more powerful on the global stage. Our government’s reckless rhetoric towards Beijing shows that Washington will not hesitate to use military force against China if they can manufacture enough consent to make it seem necessary–even though such an action would cause catastrophic consequences for both nations’ economies as well as international stability in the Asia Pacific region. We’ve heard this same drum beat before. We cannot allow murder of millions of people to happen again under the name of American imperialism.
We cannot go to war over greed. We must push for cooperation over competition. It is up to us to stop this escalation now, for the safety and security of all people and the planet.
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Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war.
Siamo non al primo ma al nono anniversario della guerra in Ucraina, scatenata nel febbraio 2014 con il colpo di stato sotto regia USA-NATO. Parlando da Varsavia, il presidente Biden promette di “essere a fianco del presidente Zelensky qualunque cosa accada”. Gli fa eco la presidente Meloni che, capovolgendo la posizione assunta nel 2014, assicura a Zelensky che “l’Italia sarà con voi sino alla fine”. Dichiarazioni inquietanti, data la reale possibilità che il conflitto sfoci in una guerra nucleare, che costituirebbe la fine non solo dell’Europa ma del mondo. L’Ucraina è in grado di produrre armi nucleari e sicuramente, a Kiev, c’è chi persegue tale piano.
Lo conferma il New York Times: “L’Ucraina ha rinunciato a un gigantesco arsenale nucleare 30 anni fa. Oggi ci sono rimpianti”. Con la disgregazione dell’URSS nel 1991, l’Ucraina si è trovata in possesso del terzo arsenale nucleare più grande del mondo: circa 5.000 armi strategiche e tattiche. Sono state rimosse negli anni Novanta in base ad accordi tra Stati Uniti, Russia e Ucraina. Non è stata però rimossa la capacità tecnologica acquisita dall’Ucraina nel campo nucleare militare durante il confronto USA-URSS.
“L’Ucraina – avverte il presidente Putin – intende creare proprie armi nucleari, e non si tratta di un semplice vanto. L’acquisizione di armi nucleari sarà molto più facile per l’Ucraina rispetto ad altri Stati, che stanno conducendo tali ricerche, soprattutto se Kiev riceverà un supporto tecnologico straniero. Non possiamo escludere questo. Se l’Ucraina acquisisce armi di distruzione di massa, la situazione nel mondo e in Europa cambierà drasticamente”
In quali mani sarebbero le armi nucleari ucraine, lo conferma il fatto che Zelenskyy ha appena conferito alla 10ª Brigata d’assalto ucraina “il titolo d’onore Edelweiss”: lo stesso nome e simbolo di una delle più feroci Divisioni naziste. la 1ª Divisione Edelweiss, che nel 1943 massacrò a Cefalonia oltre 5 mila soldati italiani che si erano arresi.
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Protests are unfolding against inflation, rising energy prices and the collapse of social services.
French farmers continued their protest by dumping manure on police vans in Nîmes.
Their message is simple: “LET US WORK”
Meanwhile, protests against pension reform took place all over the country.
And there are queues for food at food banks in France, Italy and Spain.
Video
It’s a Worldwide Process of Engineered Impoverishment
Debt is the driving force which is leading the entire planet into mass poverty.
Families Worldwide are unable to “make ends meet”, to pay their rent, to pay their mortgage, to pay their monthly gas and electricity bills.
In the words of Klaus Schwab: “Own nothing, be happy”.
What is required is real “regime change” (by the people) supported by a broad-based grassroots network which confronts both the governments as well as the architects of this economic and social crisis, which from the outset in early 2020 have been involved in fraud, fake science and corruption.
With foresight, Dr. Paul Craig Roberts predicted in February 2015 that the Minsk Peace Agreement would lead us no where, with both Francois Hollande and Angela Merkel under the control of Washington.
First published on February 13, 2015
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Judging by the report on RT I conclude that the Ukraine peace deal worked out in Minsk by Putin, Merkel, Hollande, and Poroshenko has little chance of success.
As Washington is not a partner to the Minsk peace deal, how can there be peace when Washington has made policy decisions to escalate the conflict and to use the conflict as a proxy war between the US and Russia?
The Minsk agreement makes no reference to the announcement by Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of US Army Europe, that Washington is sending a battalion of US troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces how to fight against Russian and rebel forces. The training is scheduled to begin in March, about two weeks from now. Gen. Hodges says that it is very important to recognize that the Donetsk and Luhansk forces “are not separatists, these are proxies for President Putin.”
How is there a peace deal when Washington has plans underway to send arms and training to the US puppet government in Kiev?
Looking at the deal itself, it is set up to fail. The only parties to the deal who had to sign it are the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk break-away republics. The other signers to the Minsk deal are an OSCE representative which is the European group that is supposed to monitor the withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides, a former Ukrainian president Viktor Kuchma, and the Russian ambassador in Kiev. Neither the German chancellor nor the French, Ukrainian, and Russian presidents who brokered the deal had to sign it.
In other words, the governments of Germany, France, Ukraine, and Russia do not appear to be empowered or required to enforce the agreement. According to RT, “the declaration was not meant to be signed by the leaders, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.”http://rt.com/news/231571-putin-minsk-ukraine-deal/
The terms of the agreement depend on actions of the Ukrainian parliament and prime minister, neither of which are under Poroshenko’s control, and Poroshenko himself is a figurehead under Washington’s control. Moreover, the Ukrainian military does not control the Nazi militias. As Washington and the right-wing elements in Ukraine want conflict with Russia, peace cannot be forthcoming.
The agreement is nothing but a list of expectations that have no chance of occurring.
One expectation is that Ukraine and the republics will negotiate terms for future local elections in the provinces that will bring them back under Ukraine’s legal control. The day after the local elections, but prior to the constitutional reform that provides the regions with autonomy, Kiev takes control of the borders with Ukraine and between the provinces. I read this as the total sell-out of the Donetsk and Lugansk republics. Apparently, that is the way the leaders of the republics see it as well, as Putin had to twist their arms in order to get their signatures to the agreement.
Another expectation is that Ukraine will adopt legislation on self-governance that would be acceptable to the republics and declare a general amnesty for the republics’ leaders and military forces.
Negotiations between Kiev and the autonomous areas are to take place that restore Kiev’s taxation of the autonomous areas and the provision of social payments and banking services to the autonomous areas.
After a comprehensive constitutional reform in Ukraine guaranteeing acceptable (and undefined) autonomy to the republics, Kiev will take control over the provinces’ borders with Russia.
By the end of 2015 Kiev will implement comprehensive constitutional reform that decentralizes the Ukrainian political system and provides privileges of autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Both Putin and Poroshenko are both reported as stating that the main thing achieved is a ceasefire starting on February 15.
The ceasefire is of no benefit to the Donetsk and Lugansk republics as they are prevailing in the conflict. Moreover, the deal requires the republics’ forces to give up territory and to pull back to the borders of last September and to eject fighters from France and other countries who have come to the aid of the break-away republics. In other words, the agreement erases all of Kiev’s losses from the conflict that Kiev initiated.
All of the risks of the agreement are imposed on the break-away republics and on Putin. The provinces are required to give up all their gains while Washington trains and arms Ukrainian forces to attack the provinces. The republics have to give up their security and trust Kiev long before Kiev votes, assuming it ever does, autonomy for the republics.
Moreover, if the one-sided terms of the Minsk agreement result in failure, Putin and the republics will be blamed.
Why would Putin make such a deal and force it on the republics? If the deal becomes a Russian sell-out of the republics, it will hurt Putin’s nationalist support within Russia and make it easier for Washington to weaken Putin and perhaps achieve regime change. It looks more like a surrender than a fair deal.
Perhaps Putin’s strategy is to give away every advantage in the expectation that the deal will fail, and the Russian government can say “we gave away the store and the deal still failed.”
Washington’s coup in Kiev and the attack on the Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east and south is part of Washington’s strategy to reassert its uni-power position. Russia’s independent foreign policy and Russia’s growing economic and political relationships with Europe became problems for Washington. Washington is using Ukraine to attack and to demonize Russia and its leader and to break-up Russia’s economic and political relations with Europe. That is what the sanctions are about. A peace deal in Ukraine on any terms other than Washington’s is unacceptable to Washington. The only acceptable deal is a deal that is a defeat for Russia.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Russian government made a strategic mistake when it did not accept the requests of the break-away provinces to be united with Russia. The people in the Donetsk and Lugansk provinces favored unification with the same massive majorities that the people in Crimea showed. If the provinces had been united with Russia, it would have been the end of the conflict. Neither Ukraine nor Washington is going to attack Russian territory.
By failing to end the conflict by unification, Putin set himself up as the punching bag for Western propaganda. The consequence is that over the many months during which the conflict has been needlessly drawn out, Putin has had his image and reputation in the West destroyed. He is the “new Hitler.” He is “scheming to restore the Soviet Empire.” “Russia ranks with ebola and the Islamist State as the three greatest threats.” “RT is a terrorist organization like Boco Haram and the Islamist State.” And so on and on. This CNN interview with Obama conducted by Washington’s presstitute Fareed Zakaria shows the image of Putin based entirely on lies that rules in the West.
Putin could be no more demonized even if the Russian military had invaded Ukraine, conquered it, and reincorporated Ukraine into Russia of which Ukraine was part for centuries prior to the Soviet collapse and Ukraine’s separation from Russia at Washington’s insistence.
The Russian government might want to carefully consider whether Moscow is helping Washington to achieve another victory in Ukraine.
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This article, originally published on Korea Times in 2019, attempts to explain the radical drive for extraction and consumption that is driving us towards world war, and ecological collapse, in more complex terms than are normally employed in political discourse.
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Capitalism has become the most popular term on the internet, serving as a catch-all concept that explains all aspects of an insane political and economic system wherein the entire Earth is consumed without a concern for the future in the pursuit of short-term profits. But does “capitalism” explain what we are witnessing, and could there be some fundamental difference between this economic and ideological system and others we have witnessed in history?
It is clear that the destruction of the environment by corporations controlled by banks of supercomputers that ruthlessly and single-mindedly calculate short-term profit has reached a stage not unlike a war. A large section of the global economy is based on this process of stripping resources from the Earth without regards to long-term impact and producing one-time use products, often unnecessary, for the consumption of the wealthier citizens of our planet. But that destruction of the environment, whether the burning of jungles, the cutting down of forests or the pollution of oceans and skies, is paralleled by real wars as well that generate similarly real profits for the few, or more importantly, for those same banks of supercomputers.
In a nutshell, the fate of our world lies in the hands of a tiny number of people and those people also are giving over all agency to the machines that offer such convenience.
We do not have to wait for supercomputers to achieve consciousness for us to lose control of our civilization. All we need is for computers to set the priorities for our society on the basis of profit, without any consideration for the needs of the ecosystem, or of humanity itself. And if social networks, videos and games remap the neural networks of our brains, encouraging dopamine-driven short-term thinking, we will no longer be capable of “global governance” and the computers will take over, ready or not. Perhaps they will have no choice but to take over, long before they have developed any consciousness.
We humans have not lost our minds completely, but we have delegated the dirty work of calculating profit, and by extension, of setting priorities, to supercomputers without even noticing it. In this land, the one-eyed are being led to the precipice by a massively parallel blind man.
For those who stop and consider what is happening to our society, the immediate conclusion that comes to mind is that a shallow consumer culture and a new narcissism and selfishness have taken over, transforming citizens into consumers. The phenomenon of blind consumption is undeniable, and the damage that it does the ecosystem and to humanity itself is the primary threat we face. Yet the question remains, what is the ultimate cause that lies behind such a consumption mania?
That is not to say that there is but one cause for the insanity we see. Simple trends can be generated by multiple factors.
The general tendency is to label the inhuman and destructive system that confronts us as “capitalism.” Over the last 150 years “capitalism” has become the catchphrase to describe the ruthlessness of a capital-driven consumer-centric society.
Yet the word “capitalism” remains ambiguous, overly vague. At times it seems to be applied to all the elements of society that you do not like without a rigorous consideration of the causal relationship between those elements. The use of the term “capitalism” often obscures as much as it illuminates because it ends systematic investigation of the discrete phenomena.
Pulling out the big term “capitalism” to describe the myriad problems that we face today, from climate change to the destabilization of markets, the replacement of workers with machines, the addiction of youth to computer games and the disruption and destruction of local economic systems by dint of the globalization of production and of distribution, all phenomena that are simply a repeat of what happened to capital and production after the industrial revolution, that we are facing but a variation of the characteristics of society and economy that socialists and communists denounced as “capitalism” in the 19th century.
Yet, although there are some similarities between what happened in the 19th century, the process today is quite different from the industrialization of that era. One must wonder whether the spread of consumption that we see is the result of a decline of virtue among citizens, and a resulting increase in greed and selfishness, or whether it is the result of a fundamental shift in human society.
That is to say, could it be that the advancement of a society founded on consumption is driven in part by technology itself? As computer power increases exponentially, we find ourselves trapped in constant race to produce devices that are faster and faster. Such a race seems natural, but is it really driven by consumer demand, or by market forces, or for that matter, by capitalism?
Why do we assume that there is a need among consumers for faster and faster smartphones and computers that compels us to make them? I am not so convinced that people demand products that are faster, or even that the desire of stockholders and investment banks for greater profits through consumption explains what we are witnessing.
It is a critical point. If technologies evolve following some hidden order rooted in their nature, and that hidden order has little or nothing to do with consumer demands or contradictions in society, it could be that we are misinterpreting the driving forces behind the serious problems that we face. It is possible that there is some other force other than the greed and selfishness of the rich that lies behind the scenes. Could it be rather that Moore’s Law, which suggests that the number of microprocessors that can be placed on a chip economically will increase exponentially every 18 months (with some variation) is in itself a force that drives the human economy and which demands that consumption be pushed far beyond the needs of people at this moment of economic disaster?
The exponential increase in computer capability that is dictated by Moore’s Law does not by itself drive the economy, or transform human society. But its influence should not be underestimated. The increasing automation of our economy is made easier by computers and supercomputers and the drive for automation transforms human relations ― resulting in a larger and larger part of the economy, or at least the calculation of the economy, taking place in a manner that is detached from daily human experience.
The increasing use of computers increases the consumption of energy globally (and consumption of materials by humans or machines). Much of the consumption of energy and materials takes place without any humans involved. The increasing use of drones and computers has even opened the door to a dystopia in which an automated economy continues on even after humans are extinct, something not unlike the closing scene of the movie “Silent Running.”
Could it also be that the machine, the computer, has become the true consumer for products, rather than the human who is increasingly a passive actor?
The expansion of computer networks could be the result of the desires of computers, rather than the desires of humans. Such a statement may sound ludicrous, but it is not at all if we think a bit more deeply about what is meant by desire. Computers do not have to think with the same nuance and complexity as humans to develop wants and desires. All that computers need to do is simply to desire to increase the amount of electricity circulating through them and around them. The word “desire” perhaps suggests an unwarranted personification. Let us then say that the “desire” is a tendency in a system. The larger system of circulating electrons in the banks of computers and supercomputers around the world has a tendency to increase the number of electrons.
That “robot desire” is the product of the Second Law of Thermodynamics that proposes that an increase in entropy is the result of all natural processes. That Second Law of Thermodynamics animates the circulation of electrons making up computers and provides a hidden desire, an id within the computer and computer network that desires more electrons in circulation and greater entropy. Such a desire for entropy exists in the individual computer (which affects those who use it) in computer systems, in banks of super computers (that control investments in the Earth’s economy), and in the global internet itself.
Ideology, markets, human greed and capital are all legitimate subjects for analysis in our attempts to understand the forces that work beneath the surface. But the use of the vague term “capitalism” obscures more than it illuminates about the complex process by which human nature and technological evolution shape our society and our economy. If analysis based on the observation of “capitalism” is so dominant as to keep us from perceiving the impact of technology, it may keep us from formulating an appropriate solution.
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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.
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During the 36th Ordinary Session of the African Union (AU) held in Addis Ababa, African leaders have indeed prioritized the most significant questions especially those including peace and security necessary for sustainable development, halting the frequency of military’s appearance unto the political scene and consolidating continental efforts for improving intra-African trade and economic development.
Under the aegis and guidance of the African Union, the continental organization which unites African countries, it is utterly important to continue making its tireless efforts and operate, keep in mind, the deeply-held wisdom – the principle of “African solutions to African problems” – especially during this current time of geopolitical changes sweeping across the world. It is well-known that a number of external countries are using Africa to achieve geopolitical goals, sowing seeds of confrontation which threatens African unity. In March 2022, Africa was sharply divided over resolutions at the United Nations.
Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE), interestingly used the phrase – “African solutions to African problems” – seven times during his speech delivered on February 18. Besides that, he further offered the suggestion that all existing conflicts and disputes on the continent, it is necessary to mobilize collective efforts to resolve them and “must be confined to this continent and quarantined from the contamination of non-African interference.”
Strengthening African unity has long been a sought-after goal that has never been fully achieved. The challenges to achieving integration are to expand trade among African countries, build more roads and other badly-needed infrastructure, and reform regional institutions. He emphasized, however, that while leaders are looking for external investment, much should be based on practical and valuable investment, and that Africa needs to improve its economy. Therefore, Africa needs to be neutral and importantly has to look towards direction of attaining economic sovereignty.
Continental food security and food sovereignty is one such issue. Without mincing words, Abiy Ahmed said “While the principle of African Solutions to African Problems is widely raised in the scope of conflict, it is imperative that we begin to extend this principle to a wide range of peace and security issues. Our continent is not only well able to feed itself, but can become a bread basket of the world. With 65% of the world’s remaining uncultivated arable land in our backyards, we need to critically assess why one third of the hungry people in the world are in our continent.”
In addition to above, Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed called upon the African Union and development partners to offering investment support in unleashing this potential that exist for possible production in Africa. “Sadly, the principle of African Solutions to African Problems is not a silver bullet to address all challenges, because not all our problems are the products of our own making,” according to Prime Minister Ahmed.
The challenge of climate change is a case in point. Global meetings on climate change are rich with the rhetoric of climate justice, the just transition, common but differentiated responsibilities of parties. These talks, however, are hardly ever backed up with action. And Africa cannot wait.
The 2023 Dakar Declaration on Food Sovereignty and Resilience rightly acknowledged the continental awakening that ‘it is time for Africa to feed itself and fully unlock its agriculture potential to feed the world’ – reminding what is necessary steps are Africans have to take towards its long-term solution.
There are still more to that. In fact Africa should adopt, at least, a leading unified voice for a better world in a lot of ways. Its collective voice directed increasingly at resolving their differences by peaceful means. The African continent is fast-tracking the establishment and implementation of a rules-based system of trade governance that promises to create the world’s largest free trade area.
Worth noting further that African countries are engaged in environmental conservation, reforestation and massive investment in the generation of clean energy from hydro sources. In short, Africa is leading the world in areas that matter for all humanity and it is time for Africa’s leadership role to be recognized and institutionalized.
Senegalese President and Former AU Chairperson Macky Sall together with African Union Commission’s executive leader Moussa Faki Mahamat, and now Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed have strongly been advocating, using again this summit opportunity, Africa’s inclusion on foreign bodies. They are lending their voices yet again for Africa to be represented on the UN Security Council with, at least, one permanent seat and double non-permanent seats. It also needs to have proportionate representation at the G7, the G20 and similar international institutions.
The African Union is headquartered in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Its vision is focused on an integrated, prosperous and peaceful Africa, driven by its own citizens and representing a dynamic force in the global arena. It has designed a continental development programme, referred to as the AU Agenda 2063, which is Africa’s development blueprint to achieve inclusive and sustainable socio-economic development over a 50-year period.
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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.
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They have become the outsourcing mandarins, consultancy companies which have served to degrade expertise in the public sector while diminishing the quality of services. Along the way, they have charged astronomical fees in giving repeatedly flawed advice. Consultants, packaged as all wise gurus, have become the great confidence tricksters.
Embracing the inner voodoo of consultancy had the effect of discouraging in-house contributions and solutions within government and the broader economy. The result was a strange plea to those outside the public sector, resulting in what can only be described accurately as the consultacracy.
In the 1970s, the new priesthood of outsourced mandarins began stirring. Within decades their power and reach had become global. Four firms came to dominate: Deloitte, Ernst & Young (EY), KPMG and PwC. Lacking much in the way of transparency regarding reporting requirements, they remain private partnerships marshalled against the public interest and emboldened by self-interest.
Latest to come out on the rise of this specific class of advisor is a work by Mariana Mazzucato and Rosie Collington. The authors make their intentions clear in the loud unmistakable title The Big Con: How the Consulting Industry Weakens our Businesses, Infantilizes our Governments and Warps our Economies. Their studies are pointed and troubling to the government-corporate fold which has expended billions in cash bringing in the outsider capable of working magic, be it in correcting the books, cutting staff, or introducing any measures to advance efficiency.
What, then, of the ultimate object of using such outfits? Supposedly, at least regarding advice to governments, it is to achieve policy goals in an efficient, timely way. Consultancies are also meant to offer good returns for their advice. The Management Consultancies Association (MCA) in the UK suggests that for every £1 spent on consulting fees, the client can expect £6 in return. That very sense of self-confidence is something to behold.
Certain areas have seen a glut of consultants, with health care being a truly rich field for exponential growth. As Politico’s Joanne Kenen, writing in 2018, explained, the health sector has generated a vast “market for consultants, advisers and a whole universe of ancillary experts who don’t practice medicine but promise to help navigate a landscape that seems to change every six weeks.”
Deloitte played an instrumental role in the botched pandemic Test and Trace Programme deemed by the UK Public Accounts Committee as “overly reliant on expensive contracts”. The fee for their services was hefty: something in the order of £40 million.
In 2021, the National Audit Office found that only 17% of people received their test results in 24 hours as opposed to the set target of 90%. This was despite Deloitte being tasked with handling logistics across testing sites and working with such private firms as Boots and Serco. Targets were not met, and local hospitals found themselves having to take over dysfunctional centres.
The defects of consultancy were also laid bare in the hiccup-filled rollout of the healthcare.gov website as part of the implementation of the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration.
The deep irony here is that health care consultants have fostered a culture of inefficiency and costliness. A study on the role played by management consultants for the National Health Service in Britain is far from glowing. Of 120 NHS English trusts examined, the bodies had expended in the order of £600m on management consultants between 2009/10 to 2012/13, rising from £313 million in 2014. This led to a “significant” rise in inefficiency and a poorer return of services. This was a god that failed.
Part of the problem is that such consultancies create work to fill the space that supposedly requires them. The brand seeks a response from the vulnerable client, irrespective of the need for supply. Importantly, the trick goes to convincing the organisation in question that they have no feasible, reliable route within its own ranks.
Organisational complexity supposedly creates instances where expertise is required, a sage-like insight into the arcana of practices that constitute the modern government department or corporation. This can then lead to suggested reorganisations that become perpetual and self-perpetuating, enabling the consultants to be kept in permanent employ. They help reorder your mess to enable them to disorder it. As the authors of a splendid contribution to the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine concluded after examining the vast literature on this dismal subject, there were “many reasons for repeated reorganizations, the most being ‘no good reason’.”
Rather than being conducted within the organisation, eyes are cast outwards and beyond to the independent outsider, one who supposedly has the worth and ability to give independent advice in a fully professional, informed capacity. This is something of a fiction, given that many such consultancies, notably in the government context, are linked to government, be it through a public sector capacity or as a political representative. Conflicts of interest prove unavoidable, and the independence of the advice becomes highly questionable.
The Big Con, despite its bleak examples, strikes an optimistic note in the form of a clarion call. The public sector, argue the authors, should not be afraid of following expertise within their own offices and departments in the form of in-house consultancies. Bring that expertise lost to the consultant firms back into the fold. The same applies to non-government bodies. But reversing this trend, and the door through which these problems open, will be a huge challenge.
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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Email: [email protected]
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Background by PressTV
The Russian president has hailed cooperation between his country and China, describing it as an important step in stabilizing the international situation.
The cooperation in the international arena between the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, as we have repeatedly underlined, plays an important role in stabilizing the international situation.
Vladimir Putin made the remarks during a meeting with visiting Chinese top foreign policy advisor, Wang Yi in Moscow. He added the two countries are reaching new milestones in cooperation and development.
China’s top diplomat, for his part, expressed Beijing’s readiness to strengthen strategic partnership and cooperation with Moscow. He stressed that such a partnership is not directed against any third party.
Wang also met with the Russian Foreign Minister earlier on Wednesday. In the meeting, Sergei Lavrov highlighted the two countries’ solidarity despite what he called the high turbulence on the world stage. He also stressed both sides’ readiness to defend each other’s interests based on international law.
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PressTV: What is your assessment of the enhanced Russia-China Cooperation?
Peter Koenig: President Putin is absolutely right – this newly enhanced Russia-China relationship and cooperation does not only strengthen joint policy interests and the strategic partnership of the two countries, but may be an important step for the stability of the international order.
We are living in an ever-more fractured world, where the western elite – the “power-holders” — make the rules, often way detached from international laws. They call it the “rules-based order”, meaning that it is complete lawlessness, rules made by the west according to their going interests, that are imposed upon the world.
The powerful make their own laws, as they see fit, and since they have all means of power and money at their disposal – to coerce countries, governments, politicians into what they want to achieve, nobody dares to intervene, let alone oppose these “rulers”.
In a counter position, Moscow and Beijing remain committed to building a multipolar world. This was once more confirmed by Wang Yi, China’s State Councilor. During his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Lavrov, he said specifically, “Despite the volatility of the state of international affairs, China and Russia are firmly and resolutely working towards a multipolar world.”
On the other hand, the west is rather keen on disruptive moves, mostly led by Washington, but often carried out by multi-billionaire oligarchs – for example, by George Soros and his “Open Society Foundation”.
Take the recent Munich Security Conference – MSC23 (Feb 17, 2023 – Feb 19, 2023). Mr. Soros, was invited comes to the “Security Conference”to attack India, because India has established an ever-stronger alliance with Russia and has refused imposing western sanctions on Russia. Soros openly criticized India, with the goal of bringing “regime change” to India — what is this?
Fortunately, India’s Foreign Minister, Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, clearly told Soros off – asking him, something to the extent, who elected you, and who invited you to bring about unrest to this community of security seeking nations?
The China-Russia alliance is a strong sign that the world has other options than the deceptive western powers – aiming at a One World Order – for a western empire, led by the US, intent to rule all and everything.
Thanks to Russia and China this will not happen.
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In addition, there are other and new strengthened alliances between China and Iran – with Iran being a prime candidate to becoming a BRICS-plus member; and through the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative which as a new priority extends particularly to Iran and to the BRICS-plus countries, bringing them closer into the eastern “fold” – under the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) economic and strategic defense guidance.
Talking about BRICS–plus – this group of countries are slated to become anever-stronger force. The current BRICS make up for about 40% of the world population and are controlling 25% of the world’s GDP. With strong support from the China-Russia alliance, via the Belt and Road… BRI for short – they are a new alliance of the New Eastern Horizon.
In other words – Russia and China are expanding alliances – so that other countries in the West, who are fed-up with the western sanction-prone regimes have other choices for their socioeconomic development – namely the eastern alliances, especially the strong Russia-China union – and, on top of it – being associated with a de-dollarized economy.
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Peter Koenig is a geopolitical analyst and a former Senior Economist at the World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO), where he worked for over 30 years around the world. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for online journals and is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed; and co-author of Cynthia McKinney’s book “When China Sneezes: From the Coronavirus Lockdown to the Global Politico-Economic Crisis” (Clarity Press – November 1, 2020).
Peter is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow of the Chongyang Institute of Renmin University, Beijing.
Featured image: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin in Moscow, 2019. Photo credit: Xinhua
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On Tuesday, February 21st President Putin gave a speech that was expected to be very significant. After it was delivered, however, most pundits said he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. Most of them focused on his announcement of the withdrawal from the START II treaty. However, he said something far more significant.
What Mr. Putin said, when read through the lens of international law, should be chilling to the West.
We would do well to remember that Mr. Putin majored in international law. His speech made a legal case against NATO.
First he listed, by my count, 30 different ways in which the Western nations have attacked Russia. These included the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders, support of terrorists in Russia, economic war, terrorist sabotage of the Nordstream Pipeline, financing of the coup and war in Ukraine, directly assisting Ukraine to attack targets in Russia including Russia’s nuclear bombers, and plotting to destroy and partition Russia into pieces.
Nestled in the middle of these was an important statement.
“This means they plan to finish us once and for all. In other words, they plan to grow a local conflict into a global confrontation. This is how we understand it and we will respond accordingly, because this represents an existential threat to our country.”
Putin’s choice of words is extremely significant in light of Russian nuclear doctrine, which states that nuclear weapons could be used by Russia “in response to the use of nuclear and other types of weapons of mass destruction against it or its allies, and also in case of aggression against Russia with the use of conventional weapons when the very existence of the state is threatened.”
Among the 30 points of evidence of the American war on Russia, Mr. Putin listed several cases of American use of conventional weapons against Russian territory through Ukraine as the thinly veiled proxy, and stated that this represents an “existential threat to [the Russian State].”
What Mr. Putin has just told us is that the Kremlin now considers nuclear use condition #2 to be true, today.
This statement was accompanied by two related actions. The day before the speech Russia tested a Sarmat II ICBM. And at the end of the speech, Mr. Putin announced that Russia shall immediately withdraw from the START II treaty, which limits the number and range of their nuclear missiles.
These three statements and events together should tell the collective West that Russia has just said “Get off my porch!”, and cocked the forty-five.
This doesn’t mean that Russia is going to strike the USA tomorrow morning. But, we are definitely now teetering on the cliff’s edge of nuclear war.
Nuclear Offense and Defense
Mr. Putin has previously said that nobody can win a nuclear war, and it is a war that should never be fought. However, behind the scenes Russia had been furiously preparing to survive just such a war, which they hope to avoid.
Russia has developed and deployed the S-500 and S-550 air defenses which are primarily designed to shoot down intercontinental ballistic missiles in space before they can release their multiple warheads upon re-entry. Each S-500 battery is capable of simultaneously tracking and destroying 10 ICBMs in the early to mid flight stages.
The S-300 and S-400 batteries armed with the new 77N6-N and 77N6-N1 anti-ballistic missiles are also capable of shooting down ICBM warheads after re-entry at shorter ranges than the S-500.
These systems create an onion of defensive rings around key Russian cities and military bases. In the event of a nuclear exchange the S-500 would target the incoming ICBMs while still in space at a range of 600 kilometers, and outside the borders of Russia; and the S-400 and S-300 batteries would target any deployed warheads that managed to get through. Obviously, preventing as many enemy missiles as possible from being launched would improve the chances of successful defense.
The S-500 was deployed in 2021 to protect Moscow and went into mass production in 2022. So it is very possible that Russia has quietly installed a comprehensive missile defense shield. However, we don’t have enough information to know whether it could be perfectly effective against hundreds of ICBMs at once. Given the maximum launch of 640 ICBMs by NATO, a total of sixty-four S-500 batteries would be required in order to intercept them all.
Due to missile reduction treaties since 1990, NATO’s nuclear triad consists of about 400 Minuteman III ICBMs, 240 submarine-launched Trident II ICBM’s, plus a few hundred B61 nuclear bombs carried by the sixty B1 and B2 heavy bombers in NATO’s air force.
If Russia’s ICBM defenses could take out 90% of 640 incoming missiles, it could survive a nuclear exchange at the cost of absorbing hits from about 50 warheads that got through. Given the smaller modern warheads in NATO’s missile forces, it would do terrible but localized damage. Moscow would probably experience massive damage, but the rest of Russian territory would be fine.
NATO’s nuclear offense forces rely on aging Trident II and Minuteman III ICBMs. The majority of these systems are over thirty years old. This means they will probably have a significant failure rate just to launch. Russia’s modern air defenses and ECM have been designed to defeat these old technologies.
In balance to the effort to perfect defenses against ICBMs, Mr. Putin announced that Russia’s nuclear forces have been 91% modernized. That means that the ICBMs that Russia would fire all have maneuverable hypersonic warheads. US air defenses are currently unable to defend against these.
The spacing of American Minuteman silos was designed for the majority to survive a first strike and launch retaliation. However, Russian maneuverable hypersonic multiple re-entry vehicles nullify this defense if the targeting data is accurate. Russia has to accurately hit 400 ground targets in the first strike to nullify a response.
Thus, if Russia strikes first, it may be able to eliminate the majority of incoming missiles by destroying them on the ground. The 240 submarine launched Trident missiles would be the primary threat to defend against. Thus a first strike could reduce the number of expected retaliation missiles by 62%.
NATO’s aging heavy bomber fleet is unlikely to be able to penetrate Russian air defenses. While these bombers were constantly kept in the air at the peak of the cold war, that is no longer the case.
A first strike would make it unlikely that the bombers and refuelers could get off the ground in time to effectively respond.
Russia currently has a window of superiority in both nuclear offense and defense that NATO is rapidly trying to close. It is not in Russia’s interest to allow NATO to close the technology gap in air defense and ICBM offense.
The world is now on the threshold of nuclear war. Russia keeps warning the West. The West keeps ignoring the warnings and doubling down. The immovable object is meeting the unstoppable force.
Three important things have changed since the Cold War which have changed the probability of a nuclear exchange.
Nuclear proliferation means that MAD can be bypassed if the identity of the first attacker is uncertain to the target. A missile that appears from an unexpected direction may not have been launched by the most obvious suspect.
MAD depends on both parties being rational actors. The West ceased to be rational when they destroyed Nordstream.
Russia may now have an effective missile defense shield, while NATO does not.
The Russian Method Projected Forward
Just as in December 2021 when Russia asked NATO for security guarantees, Russia follows the letter of the law and procedure. They gave NATO the opportunity to back down or negotiate. When they were rebuffed, Russia intervened militarily in Ukraine, about 70 days after the initial demand for negotiation with NATO.
Following the same method, in 2023, Russia has just made the legal case that the USA and NATO are at war with Russia and pose an existential threat to Russia’s existence.
It seems likely to me that in the coming weeks Russia’s ally, China, will offer a peace deal which freezes the Ukraine conflict within the current lines of contact, i.e. Ukraine conceding lost territory to Russia.
If the West rejects the offered peace, which seems fairly likely, then all of the conditions for a nuclear war will be in place. All it will take is a new provocation by NATO to trigger a first strike by Russia. Or worse, if both parties realize this is the case, both will have the incentive to strike first.
In the next 360 days we are in greater danger of a nuclear exchange between Russia and NATO than we have ever before seen. There is a 60 to 90 day window remaining for this outcome to be avoided. Let us pray that God will turn the hearts of the Western leaders away from the suicidal folly they have embraced.
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Politics are first and foremost in the international humanitarian response to the 7.8 magnitude earthquake which devastated Turkey and Syria on February 6. The western humanitarian aid groups, and their partners in the western media, have lavished all the attention and aid on one small province alone in Syria: Idlib.
Idlib shares an earthquake fault line with the epicenter in Turkey, and with the Syrian coastal city of Latakia, which has not received western humanitarian aid, even though over 800 residents are dead, 142,000 are homeless, and 102 buildings have collapsed.
Aleppo is also deprived of aid, and is closer to the epicenter than Idlib or Latakia, but does not sit on a fault line. Aleppo has 1,500 dead, and 10,000 injured.
The US administration under Obama began the war in Syria in 2011 as a regime change project, which the European Union and fellow NATO members supported as part of their continuing subservience to Washington and its’ never-ending wars in the Middle East. The ‘rebels’ were first billed by the US-EU-NATO bloc as ‘freedom fighters’, but soon morphed into Al Qaeda and ISIS. The US and EU continue to support the group in control of Idlib, regardless of their UN designation as an outlawed Radical Islamic terrorist group.
Muhammed Al-Julani is the commander-in-chief of HTS, formerly the head of Jibhat al-Nusra, the Al Qaeda branch in Syria, and previously the right hand of Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of ISIS.
The US State Department listed Al-Julani as a “Specially Designated Global Terrorist” in May 2013, and four years later announced a $10 million reward for information leading to his capture. Western journalists and western aid agencies are in constant contact with him which makes a mockery of his designation as a wanted terrorist.
Al-Julani released an audio statement on 28 September 2014, in which he stated he would fight the “United States and its allies” and urged his fighters not to accept help from the West, even though it was the US who was supplying all the weapons to the Syrian militants.
Shortly after the US-NATO war for regime change against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011, al-Julani played a key role in the ISIS move into Syria. He formed a terrorist group called Jabhat al-Nusra. This group was to act as a front for ISIS.
By December 2012, the US Department of State declared Jabhat al-Nusra to be an officially designated terrorist organization. Under al-Julani’s leadership, Nusra grew into one of the most powerful groups in Syria.
On January 28, 2017, Julani announced a name change to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) to circumvent the US terrorist designation, and thus allow for the US and all its western allies to continue its support. HTS now controls nearly all of the Idlib province, under the governance of the HTS-aligned Syrian Salvation Government.
Charles Lister reported that HTS had attacked Afrin in June 2022, but a phone call from a senior figure within Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MIT) saw HTS forces turn back and return to Idlib, demonstrating the collusion of the Turkish government, a NATO member, with the terrorist group.
In November 2022, Al-Monitor reported that HTS not only controls Idlib, but seeks to expand, and its Salvation Government maintains formal contacts with foreign governments and coordinates with the UN aid to Idlib. An HTS fighter told the media that HTS pays its members monthly salaries ranging between $100 and $300 depending on the nature of the work, while the salaries of fighters in the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army are no more than $35 per month.
The Al-Monitor report stated a camp resident in Atma said that HTS deliberately causes difficult living conditions for civilians, by restricting fuel and electricity, and imposing fees at crossings, and even on food and drinks.
Ugarit News had reported that HTS imposed a tax of $30 on each car loaded with foodstuffs entering its areas of control through the land crossings.
Al-Julani switched to wearing a western suit and tie a few years ago in the US promoting a clean-up of his image. The camouflaged uniform and his head scarf were packed away as the US and EU tried to sell him as ‘one of us’. The west was desperate to legitimize their support of a terrorist with ties to human rights abuses and chopping off heads. Today, he determines who in Idlib gets aid, the prices to be charged for entry of aid, and what extra aid will be sold. He has set up checkpoints everywhere in Idlib and has control over everything in Idlib, even the western humanitarian aid.
International aid to Idlib
In January, the UN resolution to bring humanitarian aid from Turkey was extended by six months with one crossing point agreed upon. The Turkish border crossing has been proven to be a smuggling route for terrorists, weapons, and illegal activities.
International aid agencies in Idlib are as follows: CARE International, Danish Refugee Council, Global Communities – Syria, HI – Humanity & Inclusion, The Mentor Initiative, Sham Humanitarian, People in Need, Norwegian Refugee Council, HIHFAD, Dozana, Solidarités International, World Vision, Welt Hunger Life, Christian Aid, Syrian Relief & Development, Tamdeen Youth Foundation, Asylum Access, Rahma Worldwide, ATAA, SAMS, BINAA, International Rescue Committee, SEMA, Action for Humanity, Takaful Al Sham, CAFOD, Abs Development Organization for Woman & Child, Search for Common Ground, Save the Children, Action Aid, Relief International, Oxfam, War Child, Act Alliance, Mercy Corps.
International aid has chosen to not work with the central government of Syria at Damascus. Instead of landing planes full of aid at Damascus, and Aleppo and shiploads at the port of Latakia, the west insists on only using Turkey as the gateway to Idlib.
The US, EU and NATO policy towards Syria is regime change. These freedom-loving democracies want the followers of Radical Islam, HTS, to take over Syria. The same governments which denounced the Taliban in Afghanistan are promoting a similar group in Syria.
Latakia, Jeblah, and Aleppo destruction
Turkey is an ally of NATO, the EU, and western countries, and is not subject to sanctions. Aid is pouring in from NATO, the EU, and all countries, including Ukraine. However, Latakia, Jeblah, and Aleppo are not receiving western humanitarian aid because of sanctions.
The country director of the Syrian Arab Red Crescent, Mohammed Hammoud, said that a lack of heavy equipment means that 80 percent of the work to dig out survivors is done by hand in areas outside of Idlib. He reported the hospitals in Aleppo are overwhelmed with earthquake victims. A similar situation is on the coast of Latakia. The Syrian Arab Red Crescent works in all areas of Syria and is not affiliated with any government.
US-EU sanctions against the Syrian people
The sanctions against Syria do not affect Idlib and the areas the US occupies together with the Kurdish separatist movement SDF in the northeast. Western humanitarian aid organizations are present in both Idlib and the Kurdish area, but not elsewhere.
Humanitarian aid groups have to be registered to work in Turkey, but those groups did not want to follow the same registration procedure in Syria because they are supporting the destruction of the Syrian government, and have chosen to aid the terrorists.
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The years of Covid chaos have really taken a toll on the world. We’ve suffered through the dramatic presentation of a world health crisis, and the resulting stress of oppressive societal dictates. This article discusses the history of social engineering and how it is currently impacting our personal and societal wellness.
Since the introduction of Covid, in early 2020, I think we can all agree that we’ve been collectively lambasted with breaking news about numbers, variants, risks, restrictions and so on, from morning ‘til night.
But despite how awful the situation has been described, main stream news outlets and relevant health agencies haven’t made much effort to suggest that we take common sense health actions in our daily lives. We, at Enchanted SpiceBox, have personally noted this glaring gap, because our focus for the last 35 years has been natural health and wellness.
I’m talking about advice to do simple things like:
Getting fresh air
Getting regular exercise and Vitamin D from the sun
Eating a balanced diet that includes plenty of fresh fruits and vegetables
Getting to sleep at a decent hour
Taking immune strengthening herbs, supplements and vitamins
Instead, we’ve been bombarded with instructions to stay inside, wear face masks and to socially distance from everyone – including our loved ones. Oh, and to get experimental gene therapy injections.
In the UK, citizens were grudgingly “allowed” a mere 30 minutes outside per day for “exercise.” Then they were often harassed, ticketed or arrested, if they weren’t moving fast enough.
Although influencers in the natural wellness and self-help fields have encouraged their followers to use good natural health practices, that angle has been all but missing from the main stream public narrative.
Image: Artemisia Annua Herb
Well, early on, China and Madagascar made a commendable effort to help their citizens relieve symptoms with natural remedies using local herbs, like artemisia – I wrote a whole article about how powerful artemisia is a proven anti-viral wonder herb – it’s amazing!
But with the exception of a couple of other African countries and Germany, main stream media pretty much either chastised China and Madagascar for trying, or ignored their efforts to use natural remedies (which had positive results, by the way).
Instead, humankind was repeatedly threatened and made to feel guilty, while being reinforced with new buzz phrases like:
Alone, Together
Stay at Home to Stay Safe
Our World will Never Be the Same
Social Distancing is the New Normal
Stay Home, Save lives
Flatten the Curve
And those terms don’t really help us to maintain good health on a daily basis, do they? After all this time, it tends to feel like social distancing was just a new buzz word in the realm of public relations or “social engineering.”
All of this has caused a lot of stress for populations, be it due to the restrictions, economic hardship, social divisiveness or political oppression. Not to mention the increase in other physical illnesses due to refusal of treatment during the last two years while the focus was on Covid.
Only now, are we are able to look back at what has been accomplished. And what we see in many parts of the world, is that the very principles that drove the Covid narrative have been upended due to lack of proof and effectiveness. The message has been revoked, revised, reworded, sometimes reinforced, or re-presented with new language.
And, in other parts of the world, despite the growing evidence of failed measures that were enforced to be our saving grace, governments have doubled down on their enforcement of those same protocols that didn’t prove effective. This has been done even in the light of obvious mistakes, and misguided attempts to control not only Covid, but also societal norms.
The news we get about Covid and how to treat it, does not appear to have grown organically… instead it starts to seem like a really large scale campaign of social engineering.
I’ll explain why I think that in a moment.
But I will say that, as time goes on, more and more people have begun to notice that something is very wrong with the way governments and corporations of the world have responded.
Even the most trusting soul starts to take notice when elected officials (public servants) around the world intentionally insult, scare, marginalize and harass a large percentage of their constituencies. We’re talking about those citizens who helped elect them to public office, but have not fallen in line with governmental attempts to intrude in their personal health choices.
I think public response has been slow, partly because the average person (somehow) does not think that they are being marketed or sold something for ulterior motives… especially when it comes to health.
I do think about these things, because our job at Enchanted SpiceBox is to find natural solutions to health problems, which includes mental and societal issues that impact our wellbeing. And then, once we identify issues, we do our best to present solutions to our readers.
Who Benefits? Cui Bono
It seems pretty obvious to me that the principle of cui bono should be first and foremost on our minds when we consider the societal impositions we’re enduring.
Merriam-Webster defines cui bono:
“cui bono : [noun] a principle that probable responsibility for an act or event lies with one having something to gain.”
And it is not just a theory to state that pharmaceutical companies, government officials, politicians and hospitals have made multi-billions in the last 2 years – above and beyond their wildest dreams…. and have conspired to do so. It’s been verified, even in the main stream news.
So yes, we can clearly see exactly who is gaining from this social project.
In society, just like in the human body, if you leave a symptom untreated, it will inevitably get worse and cause even more problems. Social issues don’t get better if we ignore them and act like nothing is happening. The first step toward wellness, both personal and societal, is to recognize and acknowledge that something is amiss.
What Is Social Engineering, Who Was Edward Bernays, And Why It Matters For Societal Health And Wellness
It is well known that there are “think tanks,” foundations, councils and agencies that regularly convene to discuss the future of life – our lives – on earth. Politicians, billionaires, consultants and corporate CEO’s regularly maneuver themselves to be the determining voices for the course of society.
During this time especially, instead of asking ourselves what virtual music concert we could “attend” on line or what trending Covid-19 themed accessory to buy, we should’ve been taking notice that society is being restructured through new social measures.
It’s not like they even hide their intent. The notorious World Economic Forum has been forthcoming about their plans for the rest of us. The forum’s founder, Klaus Schwab, even wrote a book about it, titled “Covid-19: The Great Reset.”
Within his vision of how society should be engineered going forward, Schwab’s stand on “stakeholder capitalism” sounds altruistic at face value. But what he doesn’t mention is that his vision includes the same group of elites controlling even more aspects of our lives. Envisioning themselves as “trustees of society” they will continue to profit from the results of that expanded control. He recently publicly stated at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs:
“What the fourth industrial revolution will lead to is a fusion of our physical, digital and biological identity” explaining how upcoming technology will allow authorities to “intrude into the hitherto private space of our minds, reading our thoughts and influencing our behavior.”
This concept does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling…
These elite decision makers don’t hide their hypocrisy either. When these elite groups meet to discuss (our) future, they often talk about how we (the Masses) need to reduce our carbon footprints. No mention that they arrived to their mountaintop retreat meetings individually, in their own private jets, (no jet-pooling for them!) wasting more resources in one event than the average person ever could or would in their day to day lives..
Like it or not, or believe it or not, social engineering is not new. For those who don’t believe in or understand the concept of social engineering, I suggest watching the 2002 BBC Documentary “The Century of the Self” about the life of Edward Louis Bernays (1891-1995).
It’s fascinating, enlightening and to be honest, more than just a bit creepy.
Bernays, the Austrian-American nephew of Sigmund Freud, was almost single-handedly responsible for re-purposing the concept of “propaganda” in America into “Pubic Relations.” Sounds much more innocent, doesn’t it?
In his first campaign, he was recruited by President Woodrow Wilson to Wilson’s Committee on Public Information created in 1917. Wilson tasked Bernays with intentionally using propaganda to influence the American population to willingly engage in World War I.
Edward Bernays promoting WWI Liberty Bonds
Based on the success of his efforts, Bernays was hired by some of the most influential business owners in the United States to turn American society into a “consumer society” beginning in the 1920’s.
“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.“
Bernays’ theory was quite simple, actually. If you can manipulate the masses to desire as you want them to, to believe that they need whatever you are promoting… whether that be a product, action, concept, health treatment, or need for war – then the direction of society will be changed and a small percentage will reap financial benefits and gain control over the masses.
This is the concept, and whether or not the “product” actually delivers its advertised benefit is inconsequential. Sounds familiar these days…
Bernays put his theory into action in other campaigns such as:
1. His first project was on behalf of the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA). Through a complex campaign, Bernays was able to convince American public that aluminum fluoride (an industrial waste product of aluminum smelting) would improve dental health if added to America’s drinking water. This was promoted by ALCOA knowingly, against all scientific studies to the contrary. With health officials enticed to put their stamp of approval on the theory, the concept was marketed to the public,.
Thus, Bernays created ready buyers for ALCOA’s industrial waste, circumventing their burden of hefty disposal fees. This industrial waste “fluoride” is now ubiquitous in city drinking water systems worldwide.
It is not natural fluoride. It is toxic industrial waste that doesn’t help dental health, but rather, adds to our daily intake of toxins. Now, that’s some hefty social engineering… we were actually “sold” the concept that we need this waste material in our drinking water!
Who benefits? Not only the aluminum smelting companies, but the medical industry that treats our resultant illnesses….
And this one:
2. One of Bernays’ most popular achievements was to gain increased market share for the American Tobacco Company, by shifting public sentiment in favor of women smoking cigarettes. His successful campaign began by organizing several women to smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes – in public for the first time – on floats in New York City’s 1929 Easter Day Parade.
When polls showed that women didn’t purchase Lucky Strikes because the green and red package was not a color-coordinating fashion accessory, he then manipulated fashion industry “influencers” of the day to promote the color green.
By funding galas and luncheons around “green-colored” themes and inducing society women to embrace green-colored fashions, not only was female smoking promoted by Bernays, but wearing green became a new fashion statement, all for the sake of the American Tobacco Company!
And this:
3. Fascinated by his uncle Freud’s psychiatric theories, Bernays wasn’t hesitant about using his arts of persuasion to topple governments or in using dishonest means to sway public opinion for a political coup.
This was most dramatically evidenced by his work on behalf of his client, United Fruit Company of Guatemala. In order to retain United Fruit’s market share majority of fruit sales, Bernays concocted an elaborate campaign to convince the world that the democratic government of Guatemala was Communist and needed to be overthrown – all for the monetary gain of United Fruit. And Bernays, of course…
Who would have believed, while it was happening, that a government was toppled and lives were lost for the sake of banana sales?
Like I said, more than just a little creepy, when you think about it….
The ghost of Edward Bernays must be frolicking with delight at the moment, in whatever place souls are consigned after a lifetime of inhumane and often brutal manipulation of the public. This manipulation was not for the public betterment, but for the sake of increased power and money for oppressive governments and corporations.
Bernays is long gone, but the art of propaganda (that is, public relations…or social engineering), evidenced by the Covid scenario and its far-reaching effects on public opinion and legislation, is far from extinguished.
But we are not the innocent populations of the early 20th century…… or are we?
I want to think that the world’s society has seen enough social engineering to recognize it, as it is happening right now. But sadly, I see the majority of the population falling into the predictable patterns that were set up long ago.
Bernays was able to tap into the psyche of a person, and therefore a population. He was able to convince whole populations that a product or concept was just the thing needed for happiness and sense of Self.
Women in the 1920’s were convinced that they would be slimmer, more attractive, and more empowered for equality if they smoked cigarettes. They were even marketed to believe that smoking certain cigarettes was good for their throats. The cigarette companies were well aware that the addictive chemicals in their products that encouraged repeat business would increase cancer, but public health was not the goal. The goal was increased market-share and profits.
As time has moved along in our current scenario, those in powerful positions (government, media and corporate) who are most forcefully promoting the “vaccines” for Covid, have been outed as having undisputed connections to the pharmaceutical companies, medical supply companies and chemical companies poised to financially benefit from this pandemic.
One might even start to think, like in the times of Bernays, that these spokespersons have been hired, like Hollywood actors, to play a role in “public relations” to engineer public thinking, yet again.
Does that bother you?
According to Bernaysian practices for swaying public opinion, it’s small wonder that so many have jumped right into the idea of a Covid Passport. Even when the product we were “sold” turns out to not be producing the result that was promised.
We’ve been marketed for the last 2 years to believe that we truly NEED an injection and a Covid passport to keep ourselves safe. Governments continue to push through these demands despite the fact that in various countries with a majority of the population jabbed, the protocol has failed to control Covid. And the number of boosters (read: profit) increases over time, to keep the passport valid – regardless of whether or not the boosters help or hurt the people (just like cigarettes in the 1920’s).
Conclusion
I am encouraged, though, that our world will never be the same. I hope that this wave of engineered panic, based on unscientific and unverified data, will wake up our world population to how we are being guided into a society that we have not been invited to help design. Or worse, a society that we have been guided to promote ourselves, due to false propaganda.
I hope that social distancing (despite the efforts of whatever think-tank devised that catchy phrase) will never become normal, and regular people stand firm in deciding their own fates.
Whose version of Covid-19 will go down in history? Will Sweden’s approach to the threat be touted? Or will Spain’s dictatorial restrictions be lauded? Will the USA’s diverse restriction guidelines be white-washed or exulted?
Regardless, none of that will matter if we allow ourselves to be “sold” by propaganda into accepting authoritarian governmental decrees aimed at making us jump questionable new hoops – just to maintain the rights that we freely exercised before.
This, while they herd us toward a dystopian techno-future that, based on Bernaysian public relations, is not somewhere we should readily want to go.
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Although many remember February 24 as the first anniversary of the war in Ukraine, Russia’s special military operation is actually the next phase of a wider conflict that began in 2014. This is a key point often overlooked because the narrative built in the West is that Russia’s intervention was an unprovoked invasion with the sole purpose of territorial expansionism. The international community, which the West incorrectly refers to itself as, has rejected this narrative. To the disappointment of Western leaders, most of the world has instead deepened their ties with Russia.
However, even this narrative has been exposed in the West as a fallacy. It is recalled that former German Chancellor Angela Merkel admitted in December 2022 that “the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine.”
“It also used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine,” she said, adding that “it was clear to everyone” that the conflict had been put on hold, “yet this was what gave Ukraine invaluable time.”
Merkel’s statement confirmed that the Minsk Accords, a series of agreements which sought to end the Donbass war, was only intended to give the Ukrainian state more time to militarily strengthen. It also proves that the Western party of the Minsk Accords never intended to use this mechanism to find peace and address the concerns of local residents.
Therefore, the Russian intervention was not necessarily a surprise, and perhaps the West were even expecting it when remembering that the US were issuing warnings only weeks before the special military operation began.
However, what was an absolute surprise for the West was the geopolitical and economic ramifications – all to the detriment of the West and to the advancement of Moscow.
It cannot be denied that sanctions had an impact on the Russian economy, but the European Union has demonstrated that it is nothing more than a political dwarf that has no autonomy from Washington. Sanctions have a limited effect on Russia given that it is a completely self-sustainable country, unlike Syria and Iran (which are also heavily sanctioned but without the capacity for self-sustainability).
Rather, the sanctions have actually accelerated the de-Dollorisation of the global economy and deepened the economic crisis in Europe.
There was evidently naivety in the West as there was a false belief that Russia would capitulate to sanctions pressure. Instead, Europe is experiencing an economic crisis that has crushed the Middle Class through a cost-of-living crisis. Meanwhile, Russia has greater prospects for recovery compared to Germany and the UK.
According to a January forecast by the International Monetary Fund, Russia’s economy will grow faster than Germany’s while Britain’s will contract. This is a far cry from the eminent collapse of the Russian economy that was predicted when hundreds of international companies, such as McDonald’s and Boeing, withdrew from Russia and Russians were blocked from using Western financial institutions.
It is recalled that in March 2022, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen boasted that “the Russian economy will be devastated.” Eleven months after Yellen’s statement, the IMF predicts that the Russian economy will start growing again in 2023, expanding by 0.3% and then 2.1% in 2024. Although 0.3% growth is paltry, it is still surprisingly higher than Germany’s 0.1%, a phenomenal situation considering that it is Berlin imposing the sanctions, not Russia on Germany.
The UK is in an even worse situation. Its economy is expected to contract by 0.6%.
India and China are helping Russia alleviate the stress of decoupling from Western financial institutions and trade exchanges. Many experts believe that the 21st century is the “Asian Century” and expect the world’s major financial centres to shift from the West to the East. In this light, Russia’s exclusion from the West has left it with no choice but to strongly project to the East, something that India, China and other countries have enthusiastically taken advantage of.
The 20th century was dominated by the bipolar system and a short-lived unipolar system. Although the 21st century is multipolar in nature, the overwhelmingly dominant economic and military powers are expected to be the US and China, with a host of other Great Powers, such as Russia and India, fully capable of defending their own interests.
What the West does not realise is that in such a global system, it is Russia that hugely influences whether the US or China will triumph. Russia has effectively been given no choice but to pivot towards China. Future generations in the West will learn that this was a strategic blunder – and all for the illiberal sake of defending a neo-Nazi regime in Kiev.
Therefore, the war in Ukraine was expected to be another advancement of liberalism and Western internationalism. However, what has transpired instead is the weakening of Western hegemony. The US expected most countries to fall in line and impose sanctions against Russia, however, this did not trend in Asia, the Islamic World, Africa, or Latin America.
Although the West is persistently and arrogantly defending the Kiev regime against the reality that Russia will triumph in the war, it continues to ruin its own reputation in the eyes of the actual international community by lambasting countries, such as India, for not following their orders. This will have long-term negative ramification for the West as its influence is weakening and mistrust is deepening.
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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***
RFK Jr says,
“There were 138 companies that were involved in manufacturing and distributing the vaxxine. They’re all military contractors. The Pentagon and the National Security Agency ran the entire pandemic response.
“Pfizer and Moderna don’t really own those vaxxines. They slap their labels on ’em but it was a Pentagon project.”
This confirms the work of Sasha Latypova and Katherine Watt, who showed how the Pentagon’s Operation Warp Speed was able to completely circumvent Federal Health Regulations by using what’s called in bureaucratic-speak, an “Other Transaction Authority”, which they used to contract with the bioweapons manufacturers to literally produce the bioweapon.
This was discovered in Pfizer’s motion to dismiss Brook Jackson’s case, when they attached another contract called an Other Transaction Authority – OTA contract – saying in effect, they had no obligation to conduct valid clinical trials because the only goods and services they were providing to the US government, according to this contract are a “large scale manufacturing demonstration for a prototype”.
In short, the fake “clinical trials” were a PSYOP to convince people to get the injections.
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Featured image: Pfc. Shaniah Edwards, Medical Detachment, prepares to administer the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to soldiers and airmen at the Joint Force Headquarters, February 12, 2021. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by Sgt. Leona C. Hendrickson – Source.)
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
One advocate said Moderna’s windfall was a “direct result of the company’s refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly.”
The Massachusetts-based pharmaceutical giant Moderna announced Thursday that it brought in over $19 billion in revenue and $8.4 billion in profits in 2022 thanks primarily to its Covid-19 vaccine, which was made possible by federal funding and government technology.
“U.S. taxpayers and people all over the world should be furious,” Maaza Seyoum, Global South convenor of the People’s Vaccine Alliance, said in response to Moderna’s earnings report. “It was built on decades of publicly funded research into mRNA vaccines. And it was developed in partnership with the U.S. National Institutes of Health. This should be the people’s vaccine, available and affordable to everyone, everywhere, not a goldmine for Big Pharma.”
“Moderna’s revenue in 2022 alone is equivalent to the combined health budgets of 68 countries,” Seyoum noted. “Already, the company expects to make more from the vaccine in 2023 than the combined health budgets of 42 countries.” As CNBC reported, “Moderna has contracts on the books for $5 billion in Covid vaccine deliveries for 2023.”
Moderna sold $18.4 billion worth of its coronavirus vaccine—the company’s only product on the market—last year while rejecting calls to share critical technology with the rest of the world, denying low-income countries the ability to quickly produce lifesaving shots for their populations.
Tim Bierley, a pharma campaigner at the U.K.-based advocacy group Global Justice Now, said Thursday that “history will not be kind to Moderna, whose scandalous profits are a direct result of the company’s refusal to share vaccine technology with the Global South, even when it was clear that global shortages would be deadly.”
“Millions of people around the world are now grieving the loss of family members, many of whom were unable to get a Covid-19 vaccine,” said Bierley. “Moderna’s pandemic profiteering is even more shocking given that the U.S. public-funded 100% of this vaccine’s development. Now the company is brazenly threatening to hike prices on its vaccine—but governments should refuse to be held to ransom. And well before the next pandemic, we must make sure that taxpayer money comes with conditions that put lives above profits.”
Moderna’s earnings announcement came weeks after the company sparked widespread backlash by proposing to hike the U.S. price of its coronavirus vaccine by 4,000% over the cost of production.
Among those who condemned the planned price hike was Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who has used his platform as chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee to call out Moderna and other pharmaceutical giants for exploiting health crises to pad their bottom lines.
Shortly after Sanders announced last week that he intends to grill Moderna’s billionaire CEO on the vaccine price during a Senate hearing next month, the company said it would ensure its shot remains available for free in the U.S.
“This is an astounding reversal, entirely due to Bernie Sanders preparing to make Moderna a poster child of corporate greed, along with the public organizing against the company,” said Robert Weissman, president of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen.
From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (desktop version)
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
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, AdmiralWilliam 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).
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Air Canada, Canada’s largest airline, has become the first airline in the country to offer customers facial recognition technology for digital identification. The pilot project is currently available at Vancouver International Airport (YVR) and at Toronto Pearson International Airport, with plans to expand digital identification options to other Canadian airports and Maple Leaf Lounges.
A promotional video explains that the user takes a photo of a passport or driver’s license, scans the NFC chip, and submits a video selfie for biometric matching.
“Air Canada’s pilot project will speed up processes at YVR, and other airports where it’s established, while respecting robust privacy measures and security standards. This project has great potential in making gate boarding easier and faster for Canadian passengers, while maintaining strong safety measures,” says Omar Alghabra, Canada’s Minister of Transport.
According to Air Canada, eligible customers flying from Vancouver to Winnipeg and those using the Air Canada Café in Toronto will be invited to use digital identification for faster, more secure processing. Alternative options are available for those who wish to manually check-in or scan their boarding passes.
Air Canada’s digital identification feature enables customers to securely store biometric data on their mobile phones. Customers must provide additional consent for the data to be used day-of-travel and will be retained for up to 36 hours, in compliance with Air Canada’s privacy and security standards, the company says.
“Customers choosing to use digital identification will benefit from a simplified and seamless process at the gate and when entering our Maple Leaf Lounges,” says Craig Landry, the executive vice president and chief operations officer at Air Canada.
Air Canada’s digital identification is a voluntary program separate from government-sponsored initiatives such as NEXUS, Global Entry or U.S. CBP Mobile Passport Control (MPC).
CBP testing facial authentication
U.S. Customs and Border Protection is holding a voluntary test for airlines and cruise ships to use the Traveler Verification Service (TVS) and its face biometrics to meet Advance Passenger Information System (APIS) requirements.
Testing begins this month and will run for up to two years. CBP is currently accepting applications from carriers to participate in the tests on a rolling basis. During the test, successful matches will result in the requirement for a manual review of travel documents to be waived.
Participating carriers get access to CBP’s TVS facial comparison service, and have to supply their own hardware. Based on previous pilots, CBP estimates the hardware will cost between $5,000 and $20,000 for each departure gate, though with iPads being tested at Washington airports and similar developments, the cost could fall.
The CBP announcement also includes penalties for misconduct by carriers using passenger biometrics, and information on the Privacy Impact Assessment for TVS.
Aviation industry prepares, if unevenly
Airports have had time to prepare for a coming surge in passengers, but it remains to be seen how well they have used it, Alton Aviation Consultancy Director Ronan Murphy tells PhocusWire.
Being ready means having adequate staffing and efficient check-in and security processes, he says. Biometrics can help, but their rollout has been slow.
Staffing has been made difficult by the departure of experienced personnel from the industry during the standstill caused by the pandemic.
SITA Americas CTO Sherry Stein says that the industry is focussed on “continuity of experience,” having already seen that passenger boarding times can be reduced by 30 percent with biometrics.
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Talk Truth has been at the forefront of breaking the Canadian mainstream media’s wall of silence on excess deaths, COVID-19 vaccine injuries and deaths, and sudden and unexpected deaths of Canadian doctors and Canadian children.
Talk Truth is hosted by Allan Hunsperger and Corri Hunsperger. They have interviewed Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, Dr. Tess Lawrie, Dr. David Martin, and Canadian doctors Dr. Roger Hodkinson and Dr. Charles Hoffe, among many others.
I have done several interviews with Talk Truth, the links to which are included below:
February 20, 2023 – Alberta government deleted COVID-19 injury data, Canadian children are now dying suddenly (click here). Video Below.
December 20, 2022 – COVID-19 mRNA vaccinated kids have damaged immune systems and are struggling with influenza, strep, RSV infections (click here).
December 19, 2022 – Canadian doctor sudden deaths update, Ontario College of Physicians and Surgeons advises Ontario doctors to put their unvaccinated patients on psychiatric medication (click here).
November 2, 2022 – Fully COVID-19 vaccinated Canadian doctors are dying suddenly and unexpectedly (click here).
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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
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A looming Supreme Court decision could end up making it easier for the railroad giant whose train derailed in Ohio this month to block lawsuits, including from victims of the disaster.
In the case against Norfolk Southern, the Biden administration is siding with the railroad in its conflict with a cancer-stricken former rail worker. A high court ruling for Norfolk Southern could create a national precedent limiting where workers and consumers can bring cases against corporations.
The lawsuit in question, filed initially in a Pennsylvania county court in 2017, deals with a state law that permits plaintiffs to file suit against any corporation registered to do business there, even if the actions that gave rise to the case occurred elsewhere.
In its fight against the lawsuit, Norfolk Southern is asking the Supreme Court to uphold the lower court ruling, overturn Pennsylvania’s law, and restrict where corporations can be sued, upending centuries of precedent.
Oral arguments in the case were held last fall, and a ruling is expected from the Supreme Court in the coming months.
If the court rules in favor of Norfolk Southern, it could overturn plaintiff-friendly laws on the books in states including Pennsylvania, New York, and Georgia that give workers and consumers more leeway to choose where they take corporations to court — an advantage national corporations already enjoy, as they often require customers and employees to agree to file litigation in specific locales whose laws make it harder to hold companies accountable.
Limiting lawsuits is exactly what the American Association of Railroads (AAR), the industry’s primary lobbying group, wants. The organization filed a brief on the side of Norfolk Southern in the case, arguing that a ruling in favor of the plaintiff would open up railroads to more litigation.
It is also apparently what the Biden administration wants — the Justice Department filed its own brief in favor of Norfolk Southern.
Should Norfolk Southern prevail, the company could use the ruling to challenge other lawsuits on the grounds that they’re filed in the wrong venue, said Scott Nelson, an attorney with the Public Citizen Litigation Group, which filed a brief backing the plaintiff in the Pennsylvania case.
Such a decision could affect lawsuits filed by residents exposed to hazardous chemicals as the result of accidents in other states — such as the East Palestine, Ohio, derailment disaster, which occurred five miles west of the Pennsylvania state line.
“[Norfolk Southern] might say, ‘You can only sue us in Ohio or Virginia [where Norfolk Southern is headquartered],’ even if you were injured at your home in Pennsylvania from an accident that took place five miles away in Ohio,” Nelson said.
“Railroads Particularly Susceptible”
In 2016, former Norfolk Southern carman Robert Mallory was diagnosed with colon cancer. In a lawsuit filed the following year, Mallory alleged that his illness resulted from exposure to asbestos and other toxic chemicals on the job — and that the railroad failed to provide safety equipment and take other steps to protect him.
Mallory filed the suit in the Philadelphia County Court of Common Pleas, even though he had never worked in the state. He did so, according to Keller, the lawyer representing him before the Supreme Court, because “his lawyers were from Pennsylvania and he thought he would get the fairest access to justice there.”
Pennsylvania has what’s known as a “consent-by-registration” statute — something states have had on the books since the early 19th century — which stipulates that when corporations register to do business in the state, they are also consenting to be governed by that state’s courts. Norfolk Southern asserts that being forced to defend the case in Pennsylvania would pose an undue burden, thereby violating its constitutional right to due process.
Even though Norfolk Southern owns thousands of miles of track in the Keystone State, the Philadelphia county court sided with the railroad and dismissed the case. Mallory appealed, and the case wound its way through state and federal courts before landing at the U.S. Supreme Court last year.
Corporate lobbying groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Trucking Association have weighed in on the case on behalf of Norfolk Southern. Many have warned that a ruling in favor of the former railroad worker could allow people to sue corporations in whatever venue they’d like — a practice known as “forum shopping.”
The AAR, the railroad lobbying group of which Norfolk Southern is a member, used this argument to claim that the railroad industry would be particularly victimized by a ruling in favor of the sickened worker. Mallory had filed his lawsuit under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act (FELA), a law protecting railroad workers injured on the job.
“The characteristics that made railroads easy targets for forum shopping in the past — significant operations in multiple states and the unique features of FELA — will remain, leaving railroads particularly susceptible to suit in jurisdictions having little connection to the parties or the underlying cause of action,” noted the AAR in an amicus brief. “If this court reverses and other states elect to follow Pennsylvania’s lead, FELA plaintiffs suing those railroads could have a wide range of jurisdictions to choose from.”
But groups weighing in on Mallory’s side pointed out that “forum shopping” is the norm for corporations. For example, many corporations choose to register in Delaware for tax purposes even if they have no physical presence in the state.
Similarly, the infamous opioid manufacturer Purdue Pharma chose to file its bankruptcy case in White Plains, New York, in order to secure a friendly judge, a move that was allowed because one of the company’s units had changed its address to that location just six months earlier.
On its website, Norfolk Southern informs users that they must submit to the jurisdiction of the city courts of Norfolk, Virginia, where the company’s headquarters are located.
“The idea that it’s somehow fundamentally unfair to pose the burden of defending a lawsuit in a particular jurisdiction on a corporation — as applied to these multi-state and multinational corporations — is a fiction,” said Nelson of Public Citizen.
The Academy of Rail Labor Attorneys, an association of plaintiffs’ attorneys who represent rail workers, also pointed out that Norfolk Southern has often filed lawsuits in Pennsylvania courts.
“These examples illustrate that Norfolk Southern freely utilizes the Pennsylvania courts to enforce its rights,” the organization said in an amicus brief. “The railroad certainly is not prejudiced in any way by defending lawsuits in the state. For purposes of jurisdiction, there is no valid reason that a corporation such as Norfolk Southern should be treated differently than an individual within the state.”
Biden Administration Sides With Norfolk Southern
The Biden administration also weighed in on the side of the corporate lobbying groups — a fact that apparently confounded Justice Elena Kagan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama. During oral arguments last fall, she specifically asked Deputy Solicitor General Curtis Gannon why the government had chosen to get involved in the case.
“Mr. Gannon, the Solicitor General has a choice whether to participate in this suit or not, and so please don’t take this as at all a criticism,” Kagan said. “It’s genuine interest and curiosity. What is it about this suit that has made you decide to participate?”
Gannon responded saying,
“We pointed out not just that… the excessive availability of general jurisdiction could cause international concerns for trade with the United States and our commercial interests, but also the petitioner had called into question the constitutionality of a federal statute, and so we thought that it was important to make sure that the court’s decision here wouldn’t implicate the constitutionality of federal statutes.”
The federal government said in its amicus brief that Pennsylvania’s law amounted to an overreach of the state’s authority.
“[The law] subverts interstate federalism by reaching beyond Pennsylvania’s borders and allowing state courts to hear cases in which Pennsylvania has no legitimate interest,” Justice Department lawyers wrote, adding: “It imposes unfair burdens on defendants. And it serves no legitimate countervailing interest of the forum state or of plaintiffs.”
Keller, the plaintiff’s lawyer, said this argument is nonsense. He told The Lever that the federal government relies on consent-by-registration statutes like Pennsylvania’s to make jurisdictional claims, and that there is no evidence that these state laws interrupt international commerce.
“The United States relies on consent-by-registration statutes [like the Pennsylvania law] to obtain personal jurisdiction over various foreign entities,” said Keller. “If it’s unconstitutionally coercive when Pennsylvania does it, why isn’t it unconstitutionally coercive when the United States does it?”
Keller added,
“To be clear, I think both sets of statutes are constitutional, but there is no good reason — and I respectfully don’t think Mr. Gannon supplied one — that it’s ‘due process of law’ when America does it but not when Pennsylvania does. There is zero evidence that consent-by-registration statutes have impeded a single dollar’s worth of commerce.”
The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Ruling Could Be Used To Block Cases After Derailment
The high court’s ruling could have implications for the still-unfolding disaster in East Palestine, Ohio, which sits just miles from the Pennsylvania border.
While residents of East Palestine have been told it’s safe to return home, questions remain about the possible long-term health effects from exposure to known carcinogens released during the disaster, including vinyl chloride. The Environmental Protection Agency has detected chemicals from the accident in storm drains, nearby creeks, and the Ohio River — raising concerns about downstream water contamination as far away as Louisville, Kentucky.
If Norfolk Southern prevails in the Mallory case, the company could use the ruling to block lawsuits related to the derailment in Pennsylvania and other nearby states, arguing that they were filed in the wrong venue.
While that argument is unlikely to hold up in court, according to Nelson, it could still pose an additional barrier to those seeking justice, opening up “a litigation sideshow before you ever even get to the merits of a lawsuit.”
Norfolk Southern’s attorneys have succeeded previously in moving injury suits against the company to new venues.
A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern told The Lever that the company could not comment on ongoing litigation.
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If Norfolk Southern prevails in the Mallory case, the company could use the ruling to block lawsuits related to the derailment in Pennsylvania and other nearby states, arguing that they were filed in the wrong venue.
While that argument is unlikely to hold up in court, according to Nelson, it could still pose an additional barrier to those seeking justice, opening up “a litigation sideshow before you ever even get to the merits of a lawsuit.”
Norfolk Southern’s attorneys have succeeded previously in moving injury suits against the company to new venues.
A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern told The Lever that the company could not comment on ongoing litigation.
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Featured image: President Joe Biden greets Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh at the 2023 State of the Union address. (Jacquelyn Martin)
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Imperialism and colonialism
One of the focal historical features of the western (West European) civilization was and is imperialistic colonization followed by the brutal social, economic, political, financial, etc. exploitation of the local peoples and their cultures.
By some academic understanding and formal definition, imperialism is a process of extending a nation-state’s power by territorial occupation or by forming political, financial, economic, etc., hegemony (rule) over other people. In more simple words, imperialism is defined as the cases when one state (nation-state) controls the inhabitants and territory of another state (neighboring or overseas). In any case, the cardinal feature of imperialism is domination or control by one country or group of people over others. The others will point out that imperialism in a very broad way refers to the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationship but usually between states and often in the form of an empire that is founded on domination and subordination.
Colonialism can be defined in a narrower sense as the creation and maintenance of rule, for an extended period of time, by a sovereign power over a subordinate and alien people. Colonization involves the physical settlement of settlers and the displacement of others (indigenous people) followed by the resettlement of places. In a more political sense, colonialism is the policy of a strong power extending its control territorially over a weaker people or nation (state). Colonialism, as a historical phenomenon, takes many different forms and is experienced by different people in different ways. Historical experiences of colonists have been many and varied, as, for instance, the British case illustrates (for example, David Livingstone who spent much of his life as a missionary and explorer in Africa). Historically and originally, the Latin (Roman) “colonia” meant a country estate but it soon acquired the meaning of such an estate deliberately settled among foreigners.
As a matter of very historical fact, imperial states (empires) have been rising and falling for different reasons. Concerning the falling, usually because of the foreign (outside) factor. The best examples are Antique Egyptians, Persians, Macedonians/Greeks (of Alexander the Great), Chinese, Romans, Mongols, or Aztecs, and Incas in the Americas who all of them succeeded to create extensive territorial empires and, therefore, dominating their local or overseas regions.
In practice, in many particular cases, such empires have been physically isolated from one another (or from the rest of the world) by some kind of geographical barrier (deserts, oceans, seas, rivers, mountains, etc.).
The start of West European imperialistic colonization
We can say that West European imperialistic colonization started in 1492 by “discovering” the Americas by Genovese Jew Christopher Columbus who, basically, proved that these physical barriers were not so uncrossable. Today, we know that the Europeans discovered the Americas even in the year 1000 (Vikings) but why Ch. Columbus did it for the second time it is another part of the story (pay attention that in the same 1492 year, Spain started ethnic cleansing of the local Jews and Muslims).
We read in the official textbooks that the 1492 Columbus voyage was just a result of long-time efforts by West Europeans to control and expand economic ties (trade) with Africa and Asia (pay attention that the Portuguese navigators started occupying West Africa’s seacoast a century ago). Nevertheless, these (Iberian – Portuguese and Spanish) navigation efforts became the focal steps in the direction of West European imperialistic colonization followed by Eurocentric economic and later political globalization of the pre-modern and modern world.
The Europeans have been in the trade relation with Central and East Asia (the Orient) for a long time before 1492. Within those centuries, the economic demand by Europe for primarily spices but for other items as well as from the Orient has been provided by the land passing Central Asia and the Middle East (the Silk Road, etc.), and after that, it was transported via the Mediterranean Sea by the Italians (Venetians and Genovesians) and Dubrovnik (Ragusa) sea-merchants.
However, prompted by the territorial expansion of the state (Empire/Sultanate) of the Ottomans (Osmanli), who occupied long-time trade lines between the Middle East and Central Asia and imposed harsh taxes for the trade products, it was, basically, the Portuguese Prince Henry (the Navigator) who created the center for the overseas navigation with the final purpose to expand Portuguese trade and therefore domination overseas (avoiding Ottoman controlled trade-lines in the Middle East). Nevertheless, the emerging navigation (the sextant) and military technologies (cannons and firearms) provided West Europeans (firstly the Portuguese and Spaniards) superior instruments of conquest and colonization (of West Africa, South-East Asia, and Latin America). In other words, for the very reason to take at least part of the control of the valuable spice trade from the Orient, the Portuguese, and the Spaniards encouraged their sailors (navigators) to use the newest navigation and combat technologies in order to find alternative (out of the Ottoman control) trading lines with Central Asia, India, and China.
Image: Colonization of India
In the process of revolutionizing world trade between (West) Europe and (South) Asia, the Portuguese explorers Bartholomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama were the first by organizing the successful (West) European overseas expeditions from 1487 to 1498 to round Cape of Good Hope at the southern horn of Africa (today in the Republic of South Africa). In such a way, they, in fact, opened a new trade line between (West) Europe and the Indian sub-continent (South Asia). However, the urgent need for fresh drinking water and food supplies simply led the Portuguese sailors to establish supply stations along firstly the western and later the eastern seacoasts of Africa followed by those in the Indian Ocean and South-East Asia. That was how West European colonial imperialism started.
Nevertheless, colonialism as a historical-political phenomenon can be defined as a policy by which a state-nation maintains or extends its control over foreign territories and people. In essence, there were/are historically two types of the policy of colonialistic imperialism:
Movement of people from the mother country to another one for the reason to create a new type of political order;
External powers’ rule over the authentic people of the land.
The Portuguese sailors succeeded to establish trade lines to the south and east. The road to India along the African seacoast was, in fact, discovered by Lisbon. However, Ch. Columbus, a Jewish navigator, and trader from Genoa, had a new idea to reach (according to the mainstream textbooks) Japan or China by sailing west around the world. However, in fact, he knew that between Europe and Asia, it was a land (discovered by the Vikings in 1000) and practically he wanted to reach it probably for the very purpose to resettle the Spanish Jews to the new Israel before the pogroms in Spain started in the same year. For that purpose, he was simply late.
In any case, a very critical approach to the first Columbus trip in 1492 can be that such an overseas voyage (to Japan or China) was practically impossible for the reasonable reason that the ships of the time could not carry enough supplies (food) to sail as far as he hoped to go (except he believed that there was a land between West Europe and Asia-Pacific as, in fact, was – the Americas). In practice, Ch. Columbus did not find an alternative trade line to the Orient (as it is officially believed to be his prime purpose of the trip), he discovered (what, in fact, he wanted) the land between or later known as the Americas – two continents being very rich in many kinds of natural resources and arable land, if not in silk Oriental spices and silk. The next navigators and explorers from Spain and Portugal very quickly used the opportunity to conquer and exploit the New World of the Americas although it did not produce luxury products but at the same time, it offered many practical possibilities for both trade and colonization (grabbing of the land).
The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas
The first official global division of the world (colonies) happened in 1494 – two years after Ch. Columbus “discovered” New World. In order words, for the reason to avoid political-military conflict between two Catholic states over their competing territorial-imperialistic expansion, under the umbrella of the Vatican (Roman Catholic Pope), Madrid and Lisbon signed the Treaty of Tordesillas (in Spain) which divided the world along an imaginary north-south line some 400 km. west of the Portuguese Azores Islands (a Lisbon possession in the Atlantic Ocean). The treaty was soon followed by the new Treaty of Zaragoza (Spain) in 1529.
According to the treaty, Spain (Castilla and Aragon) was granted territorial possessions to the west of this line, while Portugal gained possessions to the east. In short, the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillias established the authority of the Kingdom of Spain in the New World with the exception of Brazil, which Portuguese sailors discovered on their side from the line in 1500. It has to be noted that the treaty was signed four years before the Portugues navigator Vasco da Gama in 1498 discovered the best use of Atlantic winds on way to Cape of Good Hope (1497−1499) and consequently reached the Indian sub-continent by navigation by local guides. Portugal, in turn, by the treaty obtained colonial power over Africa and the Indian Ocean – a lucrative trade line.
In the beginning, it was thought that Spain by the treaty received less valuable provinces compared to Portugal. However, the huge natural wealth of the (Spanish) New World very soon became obvious and extremely profitable for the Spanish (Habsburg) Crown as the conquest of both Americas Empires of Inca and Aztecs in the first half of the 16th century meant in practice extreme riches for Madrid nevertheless that a huge number of authentic before-1492 Americans disappeared because of harsh subjugation, forced labor, plundering, and epidemic diseases (followed by the forced Christianization of the local Indians). It is a fact that the majority of Spanish conquistadors (conquerors) went about their empire-building with (Roman Catholic) religious zeal and consequently simply did not consider any conflict between their profane and sacred motives for the Spanish imperialistic and colonization policies in the New World.
Very soon after the conquest of the new overseas land, both Portugal and Spain faced the same problem to be quickly solved: the lack of labor force for both their rich (silver/gold) mines (like Potosi in present-day Bolivia) and fertile plantations. The problem was solved by buying millions of African slaves from African and Arab agents and transporting them to both Americas. This practice was later continued by new conquerors of the New World – the Brits, French, Duch, and after 1776 the Americans (of the USA).
New colonial powers
The wealth from the New World (especially gold and silver) financed a big number of Habsburg Spain’s military actions in West Europe making at the same time Spain to be the most powerful state in Europe in the 16th century (at least up to 1588). Nevertheless, the Spanish huge global empire at the end of the same century became overextended and after an unsuccessful attempt to conquer England in 1588, the power of Madrid started rapidly to decline. Now, Holland became a new rising West European imperialistic and colonial power which have been building a trade empire in the next century and succeeded to control over most of the spice-rich East Indies (today Indonesia). Nevertheless, it became obvious as trade and technology have been developing in West Europe, both Portugal nor Holland did not have the population or resources to defend and/or extend their colonial empires. As a result, from the beginning of the 18th century, France and the United Kingdom (as established on January 1st, 1801) emerged as the leading global colonial powers and at the same time focal competitors in the process of building a global empire.
Nevertheless, the United Kingdom (the UK) as an island country was in the position to build its military power around the Royal Navy and, therefore, simply neglect the existence of a large standing army. In addition, the UK was trading for many raw materials (as it was lacking its own) and a very important part of its food.
As a consequence, London was gradually increasing its policy of expanding and protecting trade. However, contrary to the case of the UK, France was, basically, continental power as such having vulnerable borders, especially in the west but having geopolitical designs to expand its state territory in Europe. For those reasons, Paris was forced to keep a huge standing army and finance it. It became clear that the French navy was never able to overcome the navy of the UK. Another difference between these two countries as global colonial powers was that France was self-sufficient in food which simply meant that France was consistently more inward-looking at least in economic matters. At the same time, however, the population pressure in the UK encouraged and even forced emigration to overseas colonies, especially to North America (today the USA and Canada). As a result, the combination of these factors created a consistent advantage for the UK over France during the process of their imperialistic competition for overseas colonies, which, in fact, became a driving force in global politics and international relations of the time.
The economy as a driving force of modern form of imperialistic colonization
At least from the mid-17th century, it was the economic condition of affairs that forms the driving force of West European imperialistic colonization. If the consuming public in West European countries raised its standard of goods consumption to keep pace with every rise of productive powers, there could be no excess of goods or capital clamorous to use imperialistic colonization and exploitation in order to find markets. West European capitalists have been investing in what is today known as Third World countries (former West European colonies) and imperialism became a direct result of such policy. According to John Hobson (1858−1940), the modern form of economic imperialism is, in fact, the endeavor of the great controllers of the industry for the purpose to broaden the channel for the flow of their surplus wealth by seeking foreign markets and foreign investments to take off the goods and capital they cannot sell or use at home.
Epilogue
West European colonial empires reached their peak just before WWI started. The UK among all of them was the largest global imperial power having colonial possessions from Canada to Australia, with France in the second place mainly having colonies in Africa. The British colonies had 388,644 million people, and these colonial subjects were subjected to something closer to absolute colonial rule.
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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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***
It was 21 years ago this month that I was flown in the belly of a US cargo plane, hooded, blindfolded, gagged and chained in an orange jumpsuit, for over 40 hours. I didn’t know where I was being taken, or why.
My journey into the unknown started when I was sold to the CIA as an “Egyptian Al-Qaida general” in 2001 after the US invaded Afghanistan. I was 18 years old, and I am from Yemen. After I was imprisoned for around three months in a black site in Afghanistan, I was taken to Kandahar military prison, an airbase that served as a transit station to the unknown. I wasn’t the only one being held there.
When a huge cargo plane landed in Kandahar three weeks later, we all knew that some of us would disappear. Without being able to see, hear or speak, we were dragged to the first plane blindfolded, and then chained to the floor. It was a journey of pain and suffering. When the plane eventually landed, we hoped it would be the end to our suffering. It wasn’t. It was only the beginning of a longer, more brutal journey.
Soldiers never seem to get tired of the beating and shouting. When the second flight ended, it was still not the end of the journey. The US marines snatched and dragged me onto a bus, and then onto a ferry. Where was I going? The first clue came from the sea, which was the first friend who welcomed me. A marine shouted in English and an Arab marine translated: “You are under the control of the US marines!” They continued to shout and physically assault us for the rest of the way.
The ferry eventually docked and a bus took us on the final leg of the journey. We were disembarked by being snatched, one after another. I was forced to sit on my knees for hours. The duct tape over my mouth blocked my screams. Every cell in my body was screaming but no one could hear my cries. They could see the pain, and I felt like maybe their twisted humanity was screaming back, too.
After going through the processing station —where we experienced humiliation and degradation over and over again — soldiers dragged my naked body over sharp gravel to a cage where an IRF (Immediate Reaction Force) team piled on top of me and started removing the chains violently; then the hood, goggles, earmuffs and the duct tape. Soldiers shouted into my ears, “DETAINEE 441! STOP RESISTING!” Resisting? I was barely breathing. Without knowing it, what they did at that moment was introduce the word “resist” into my mental landscape. That’s what I needed to do; I just had no idea how.
At night, it took a while for my sight to come back, but it was still blurry. All I could see was an ocean of orange figures caged just like me, all I could hear were rattling chains, slamming doors, soldiers shouting in their loudest voice, “SHUT THE F**K UP, DON’T LOOK AT ME, LOOK DOWN, NO TALKING!” The dogs barking in the near distance sounded less aggressive than them. The barking never stopped. As in never. It sounded as though they were protesting at the inhumane treatment in their own way.
On my first morning in Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp — for that is where I was — I took a long look around me. I found myself caged in a rose chain-link cage where even animals wouldn’t survive. There were many others there too. I could see swollen faces with bruises, black eyes, shaved heads and faces, split lips and bleeding wounds. We all looked the same. It was like a signature that the soldiers wanted to leave on us all. US President George W. Bush and his administration needed to prove that they were “winning” the “War on Terror”, so they called us the worst of the worst.
We were dragged to this unknown place from different parts of the world; some of us were sold for a bounty and some were handed over to the CIA by their own governments. It was the first time in history that such a thing was done: there we were; 800 men and children — yes, children — from 50 nationalities, speaking over 20 different languages, having different mindsets and cultures, snatched and flown to a dark hole hidden from the rest of the world. This American prison camp wasn’t even in America.
Everything was taken from us, and we became just orange figures with numbers printed on a bracelet locked on our wrists. Our captors stripped us of our freedom and imprisoned our bodies and wanted to control us and deny our humanity, but they failed to understand that what really makes us unique individuals are characteristics such as our names, values, relations, morals, beliefs, ethics, emotions, memories, language, knowledge, experiences, talents, feelings, dreams, nationalities and, of course, our innate distinctive humanity. These were part of another DNA, and a survival kit which the US government didn’t want to know about. They thought that they could control our bodies and freedom, but they would never control our hearts and souls.
Yes, we were isolated and disconnected from our families and the rest of the world, but even in America’s dark hole, life won. We created our own world. Yes, we were tortured and abused, but we also sang, danced, resisted and survived. Also, we soon found other generous guests at Guantanamo who came to visit us regularly, who challenged the US restrictions and never had CIA clearance to visit. They came to share our meals, to listen to us, and to tell us that everything will be okay. We became friends and families with the iguanas, cats, birds and banana rats.
Guantanamo started with a selection of Muslims from around the world, but it kept changing, evolving and growing. We lived through Camp X-Ray, Camp Delta, Camp 5, Camp 6, Camp Echo and others. We went through the torture programmes and abuse by interrogators, psychologists and a whole host of camp staff. We went on hunger strike to protest against the torture and injustice, only to be tortured more. We lived through all the years of Guantanamo: we lived through its Dark Age, its Golden Age, and back again to the Dark Age. With each year we grew older and our imprisonment only settled into us more deeply. Our captors got more creative in developing torture techniques to break us and to try to turn us into something we were not.
To survive through the darkness in that dark hole, we only had each other and whatever makes us human beings. We were fathers, husbands, brothers and sons from different parts of the world. Some of us were teachers, doctors, soldiers, commanders, journalists, lawyers, tribal elders, mafia men, poets and professors; and some were spies. We had no shared life before Guantanamo, nothing in common. At first, we started introducing ourselves to each other, and getting to know each other. I wish our captives had taken time to get to know who we really were as well, instead of just needing to prove that we were hardened terrorists.
The cycle of hardship and the torture we endured forged strong bonds of brotherhood and friendship that helped us to survive. We started developing a new shared life and a new “us” at Guantanamo. Our brains started constructing new memories, relations, knowledge and experiences, but everything related back to and was based on Guantanamo life. Sharing our knowledge, experience and culture with each other created a beautiful Guantanamo where we sang songs in different languages, danced dances from different cultures, and laughed and cried together. After years, we grew together and became part of each other’s lives and memories. Guantanamo became part of us and part of our life. Guantanamo kept growing, evolving and changing, feeding on our lives and humanity. With it, we grew old too.
We weren’t the only victims of Guantanamo: all Americans and America’s values and justice system were as well. There were many Americans who came to work in the detention camp, and they became victims too when they refused to abandon their humanity and treat us badly. Some took a stand against the system and were imprisoned; others were fired or demoted. We fought for them as much as we fought for each other because they were humans and victims too, regardless of their nationality or which side they were on. Injustice has no boundaries, colour or nationality. As we were living in Guantanamo, we didn’t want anyone else to experience it.
Through the Dark Age of 2002-2010, we protested and carried out hunger strikes for years. We fought back as much as we could; we learned from each other and taught each other. In Guantanamo’s Golden Age we learned English and art; we painted and we made ships, cabinets, trees, all from remnants of trash and leftover cardboard.
In Guantanamo, I grew up, from a young boy to a caged man. My world was Guantanamo and it’s where half of my life was taken, where days, months and years were the same.
Then after around 15 years, I was forced to leave Guantanamo the way that I was taken there, hooded and chained. When they came to tell me about my release, they told me, “You have no choice.” I made peace with Guantanamo in Guantanamo and made the decision that it wouldn’t change me; it’s part of me and of who I am.
The whole world agrees that Guantanamo is a stain on our humanity and one of the biggest human right violations of the 21st century. There are those who tortured and abused us at Guantanamo who are still bragging about their time there and their work. Their humanity was the first real victim of that place.
Despite all these reflections, though, Guantanamo hasn’t left us yet. Even today, there are 34 men still in Guantanamo, 20 of whom have been cleared for release. There are many calls for the closure of America’s black hole detention centre. For us, closing Guantanamo does not only mean shutting down the facility, but also there being full accountability for the US government for what happened there: acknowledgment of the cruel and inhumane treatment, a full and unreserved apology, and reparations for the victims.
Guantanamo symbolises oppression, injustice, torture and lawlessness. In this way, Guantanamo is now everywhere, and I can say — in the strangest of ironies — that even though we were prisoners of the US destructive “War on Terror”, the United States is and always has been a prisoner of its own violence. Guantanamo is yet another chapter of this violence and one whose legacy will live on long after the prison is closed. The United State of America itself is Guantanamo’s greatest captive.
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***
In his State of the Union Addresson February 7, President Joe Biden once again told Ukraine that “America…will stand with you as long as it takes.”
In case the world didn’t hear, Biden moved to a more dramatic stage and repeated the words. Speakingfrom Kiev, where he met with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Biden spoke again of America’s “unwavering and unflagging commitment to Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, and territorial integrity.” He promised that “that support will endure.”
But though Biden spoke the words loudly on an international stage, that may not be what Zelensky heard.
What is Zelensky to hear when Germany loudly promises tanks made by a manufacturer who saysthe Leopard 2 tanks can’t be delivered until 2024 at the earliest?
Zelensky has been urgently requesting fighter jets: “We have freedom, give us wings to protect it.” But what does Zelensky hear when French President Emmanuel Macronsays that the “allies must prioritize equipment that will be the most useful, and fastest, for Ukraine to achieve its end goal” and that “[t]here is no way that fighter planes can be delivered in the next few weeks?”
What does Zelensky hear when one of his strongest backers, Poland’s President Andrzej Duda, saysthat a “decision today to donate any kind of jets, any F-16…is a very serious decision and it’s not an easy one for us to take?” Duda explained that “this poses serious problems if we donate even a small part of them anywhere, because I don’t hesitate to say we have not enough of these jets” and that sending fighter jets “requires a decision by the Allies anyway, which means that we have to make a joint decision.” That joint decision is vetoed for now by Biden who says the U.S. will not send fighter jets and by Germany who says, “The question of combat aircraft does not arise at all.”
What is Zelensky to hear when NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg says that NATO’s “defence industries [are] under strain” because, “The war in Ukraine is consuming an enormous amount of munitions, and depleting Allied stockpiles. The current rate of Ukraine’s ammunition expenditure is many times higher than our current rate of production?” What does Ukraine hear when U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austinsays that the U.S. is “working with the Ukrainian soldiers” so “that they’ll require less artillery munitions?” How does that sound to Ukraine especially as EU foreign affairs chief Josep Borrellwarns that the war will be over in “a matter of weeks” if the “shortage of ammunition” is not “solved quickly?”
Most importantly, what did Zelensky hear when CIA Director William Burns met with him secretly in January and told him that “at some point assistance would be harder to come by?” The delivery of that message has now been confirmed both by U.S. officials familiar with the meeting who spoke to The Washington Post and by two Ukrainian officials who spoke to Politico.
We know what Zelensky heard because people familiar with the meeting said Zelensky walked away from the meeting with the impression that he could rely on U.S. assistance through the summer but that he was “less certain about the prospects of Congress passing another multibillion-dollar supplemental assistance package as it did last spring.”
The delivery of that message has reportedly persisted. A senior administration official as toldThe Washington Post on February 13 that “we will continue to try to impress upon them that we can’t do anything and everything forever.”
The impression has reportedly persisted, too, despite Biden’s recent visit and assurance. One of Zelensky’s advisors says that Kiev is worried because they think that “both on Capitol Hill and in the administration, there are people who are looking to calibrate security assistance to incentivize the Ukrainians to cut some sort of deal.”
The crucial word in the Ukrainian advisor’s concern is “calibrate.” Calibration is an idea that has appeared twice.
The first is in the very context Kiev fears. Kiev worries that the Biden administration may seek to calibrate security assistance to incentivize Ukraine to negotiate an end to the war. That precise idea was hinted at in a January report by the influential RAND corporation. In a section on policy options the United States has to overcome as impediments to negotiations, the report says that “a belief that Western aid will continue indefinitely” is “a primary source of Kyiv’s optimism that may be prolonging the war” and discouraging Ukraine from negotiating. The report considers the very solution Kiev fears: “…the United States could decide to condition future military aid on a Ukrainian commitment to negotiations.”
Biden says that American support will endure for as long as it takes. But Ukraine’s confidence is undercut by a different message they are hearing.
That message is being clearly communicated to them. Weapons aid to Ukraine could be calibrated in a second way. The same Washington Postarticle that said that Ukraine is being told that the U.S. “can’t do anything and everything forever,” also hinted at calibration as the solution. “The frank discussion in Kyiv last month,” the report says, “reflected an effort by the Biden administration to bring Ukraine’s goals in line with what the West can sustain.”
Biden’s words are meant to very publicly portray U.S. support for Ukraine as enduring for as long as it takes. But a very different message may be being delivered to Kiev. The message that was first delivered by CIA Director Burns, and has continued to be pressed upon them, may be, as Kiev worries, that weapons aid can’t go on forever and may have to be calibrated to what the West can sustain and toward the goal of negotiating an end to the war.
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Ted Snider is a regular columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com and The Libertarian Institute. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft and The American Conservative as well as other outlets.
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***
February 3, 2023, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio
Five of the cars that derailed were carrying vinyl chloride, a flammable gas that can lead to life-threatening respiratory issues and an increased risk of cancer
Other toxic chemicals on the derailed train cars include butyl acrylate, which can cause breathing difficulties, and ethylene glycol monobutyl, linked to chronic health effects, including liver toxicity
Residents have reported fish, hens and roosters dying, along with persistent coughs, sore throats, burning eyes and a lingering odor in the air, even as officials claim there’s no risk
Every day, about 12,000 rail cars transporting toxic chemicals travel through cities across the U.S.; another disaster is imminent, according to railroad workers, due to cutbacks in staffing, scheduling designed to maximize profits and lack of maintenance to cars, locomotives and tracks
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February 3, 2023, a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, a town near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border. In total, 38 rail cars derailed, and a massive fire that broke out damaged an additional 12 cars.1
While no immediate fatalities or injuries were reported, the hazardous materials released from the cars — and concerns over a potential explosion — prompted evacuations from the area. Now residents are wondering if it’s really safe to return to their homes, or whether their long-term health, as well as their air, water and soil, has been permanently affected.
Derailed Cars Carried Vinyl Chloride and Other Toxins
The train, operated by Norfolk Southern, included 20 cars carrying hazardous materials. Eleven of them derailed.2 The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) published a list of the contents of the 11 cars, which included vinyl chloride.3
A flammable gas carried on five of the cars, vinyl chloride is used to make hard plastic resin and is found in many consumer products, from credit cards and furniture to plastic PVC piping.4 Inhaling vinyl chloride could lead to life-threatening respiratory issues.5 When it breaks down in the air or burns, it can lead to the creation of hydrogen chloride, a respiratory irritant, and phosgene, which was used as a deadly poison gas in World War I.6
It’s also carcinogenic. According to the National Cancer Institute, “Vinyl chloride exposure is associated with an increased risk of a rare form of liver cancer (hepatic angiosarcoma), as well as primary liver cancer (hepatocellular carcinoma), brain and lung cancers, lymphoma and leukemia.”
In addition to outdoor air contamination, if vinyl chloride contaminates a water supply, it can enter household air if that water is used for showering, cooking or laundry.7 February 13, 2023, Congressman Jamaal Bowman tweeted:8
“Nearly 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride were on this train. Now, the EPA has confirmed it’s entered the Ohio River basin which is home to 25 million people. This is one of the deadliest environmental emergencies in decades and no one is talking about it.”
Other toxic chemicals on the derailed train cars include:9
Butyl acrylate — This flammable liquid is dangerous if swallowed and can irritate the respiratory system, skin and eyes. It poses a “serious” health hazard and can cause breathing difficulties.
Ethylene glycol monobutyl ether (2-butoxy ethanol) — This chemical, used in paint strippers and household cleaners, can cause “serious or irreversible” chronic health effects, including liver toxicity and damage to the eyes, skin, kidneys and blood.
Ethylhexyl acrylate — This potential carcinogen is used to make plastics and protective coatings. Inhalation can lead to convulsions, shortness of breath and a buildup of fluid in the lungs.
Isobutylene — This gas is used to make rubber for tires and inner tubes. It can cause dizziness and unconsciousness if inhaled, along with skin and eye irritation.
Benzene — This carcinogen also causes genetic mutations. Exposure can lead to coma, irregular heartbeat and damage to blood cells. While the train wasn’t carrying benzene when it derailed, residues existed because two empty cars had previously carried the toxic chemical.
Chemical Profile for Vinyl Chloride Just Updated — After 17 Years
In a strange turn of events, the Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, released an updated toxicological profile for vinyl chloride in January 2023. The last time the profile was updated was in 2006 — 17 years ago.10
One change observed so far significantly increased the level of exposure causing heart damage. Strange Sounds11 revealed the 2006 version, archived via the Wayback Machine,12 states, “At high concentrations (>30,000 ppm), vinyl chloride was been [sic] shown to sensitize the heart to epinephrine, resulting in cardiac arrhythmias in dogs.”
The 2023 version has a significantly higher limit, stating, “At high concentrations (>150,000 ppm), vinyl chloride was shown to sensitize the heart to epinephrine, resulting in cardiac arrhythmias in dogs.”13
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also recently modified its vinyl chloride webpage, removing sections titled, “How can vinyl chloride affect children?” and “Has the federal government made recommendations to protect human health?”14 Reportedly, the section related to children included the following before it was removed:15
“It has not been proven that vinyl chloride causes birth defects in humans, but studies in animals suggest that vinyl chloride might affect growth and development. Animal studies also suggest that infants and young children might be more susceptible than adults to vinyl chloride-induced cancer.”
Many are now questioning the curious timing of the updates. “I’m not a conspiracy theorist, but why did the CDC update their profile for vinyl chloride 11 DAYS before the train crash in Ohio?” James Bradley tweeted.16,17
Reports of Dead Animals, Fish Near Derailment
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) stopped monitoring the community’s outdoor air for phosgene and hydrogen chloride February 13, stating, “After the fire was extinguished on February 8, the threat of vinyl chloride fire producing phosgene and hydrogen chloride no longer exists.”18 It continues to monitor for “other chemicals of concern,” however.
It’s also screening indoor air in homes nearby, and to date states it has “no detections of vinyl chloride or hydrogen chloride.” But even as officials claim it’s safe for residents to return to their homes, signs suggest otherwise.
Due to chemicals spilled from the train, an estimated 3,500 fish were killed in an area spanning 7.5 miles of streams, according to the Ohio Department of Natural Resources. Residents have also reported hens and roosters dying, along with persistent coughs, sore throats, burning eyes and a lingering odor in the air.19
Residents have also reported soot on their homes and vehicles, and are expressing concerns over how to clean it since it could be contaminated.20 After the derailment, crews conducted a controlled burn, igniting the vinyl chloride in an attempt to get rid of it. Andrew Whelton, a professor of environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University, told NBC News this may have created more problems, including chemicals the EPA isn’t testing for.
“When they combusted the materials, they created other chemicals. The question is what did they create?” he said.21Meanwhile, February 10, the EPA stated in a letter to Norfolk Southern that hazardous materials “continue to be released to the air, surface soils, and surface waters.”22
Residents File Lawsuits
Lawsuits have begun to roll in from business owners and residents against Norfolk Southern. According to reporter Julie Grant, speaking with NPR, “They say the company was negligent, and one thing they want is the company to fund court-supervised medical screenings for serious illnesses that may be caused by exposure to those chemicals.”23 In addition to air pollution, the water supply may also be tainted. Grant explained:24
“The U.S. EPA said it did find some of the chemicals in nearby creeks and streams. State regulators confirm that fish have been killed, but they said the area’s drinking water is supplied by groundwater, so it would take longer for these chemicals to move underground if that were to happen.
Norfolk Southern released a remediation plan, which lists a number of ways it plans to continue to monitor and clean up the site, including installing wells to monitor the groundwater. That’s at the site. It’s also near the Ohio River, which is a major drinking water source. And at least one company that’s supplied by the river says it’s looking at an alternative water source in case that’s needed.”
In a video posted by Democracy Now!, Emily Wright, a resident of Columbiana County in Ohio, a few miles from the derailment, called the derailment a “chemically-driven environmental nightmare.”25Initially, she says only those within one mile of the derailment were evacuated, even as the train kept burning overnight and into the next day.
“They kept saying the same thing over and over again in the media and in the press conferences. ‘There’s no toxins in the air … don’t worry,'” she said. But about 48 hours after the derailment, she received an alert on her phone that another explosion had occurred and the fire was out of control.26
At the time of the “controlled” burn, high wind gusts were forecasted. The resulting mushroom cloud was caught by winds, traveling over four to five counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. In her home just a few miles away, Wright and her family experienced nausea, diarrhea and breathing difficulties.
They considered leaving, but then a shelter-in-place order was issued. At the same time, officials continued to state this was only out of an “abundance of caution,” and there were “no toxins in the air.” “From day one, we’ve been fed what wasn’t the truth,” Wright said.27
While mainstream media have also downplayed the seriousness of the derailment, videos have spread on social media highlighting the potential disastrous effects28 that could come from the approximately million pounds of toxic vinyl chloride that “spilled on the ground, boiled off into the air and then caught fire,” leading to hydrogen chloride as a byproduct. This then turns into hydrochloric acid in the atmosphere, with further unknown effects.29
Next Train Derailment ‘Could Be Cataclysmic’
The East Palestine derailment serves as a wake-up call to potential disaster looming on U.S. railways. Speaking with The Guardian, Ron Kaminkow, an Amtrak locomotive engineer and secretary for the Railroad Workers United, said, “The Palestine wreck is the tip of the iceberg and a red flag. If something is not done, then it’s going to get worse, and the next derailment could be cataclysmic.”30
Every day, about 12,000 rail cars transporting toxic chemicals travel through cities across the U.S. Annually, 4.5 million tons of hazardous materials are shipped by trains in the U.S.31 The Guardian pointed out the potential for more deadly freight rail derailments is high:32
“The latest accident comes after 47 people were killed in the town of Lac-Megantic, Quebec, in 2013 when a runaway train exploded. In February 2020, a crude oil train derailed and exploded outside Guernsey, Saskatchewan, and an ethanol train in Kentucky derailed and burst into flames a week later.
The Pittsburgh region alone has seen eight train derailments over the last five years, according to the public health advocacy group Rail Pollution Protection Pittsburgh (RPPP), and about 1,700 annually occur nationally. The causes of the Pittsburgh accidents highlight the myriad ways in which things can go wrong.
A crack in a track ignored by rail companies caused a 2018 derailment, while another train hit a dump truck at a crossing with inadequate safety equipment. A broken axle on a train car is thought to be the source of the East Palestine accident.”
Liquified natural gas (LNG) may pose a particularly significant concern. In 2020, the U.S. Department of Transportation approved rail transport of LNG with no extra safety precautions, even though an accident could be catastrophic. In a letter to the U.S. Department of Transportation opposing the rule change, environmental group Earth Justice wrote:33,34
“The amount of energy contained in LNG is quite alarming. One gallon of LNG has 0.89975 therms of energy. One DOT‐113 tank car has a capacity of approximately 30,000 gallons, meaning that there would be approximately 27,000 therms worth of energy per tank car.
With this much LNG per tank car, it would only take 22 tank cars to hold the equivalent energy of the Hiroshima bomb.55 A unit train of 110 LNG tank cars would thus have five‐times the energy of the Hiroshima bomb.”
Is Corporate Greed to Blame?
Speaking with Democracy Now!, Ross Grooters, a locomotive engineer and cochair of Railroad Workers United, stated:35
“There are deep systemic problems with the freight railroads right now, and those need to be addressed for us to have some sort of normal response to events like this. Until we get at the root causes of the safety issues in the freight rail system in this country, it’s … going to occur again … it’s just a matter of when and where.”
Grooters blames corporate greed, including cutbacks to staffing, from companies making “obscene amounts of money,” and precision scheduled railroading, which he says is designed to maximize profits, not safety. “You’re cutting to the bone the amount of people doing the job. So you have fewer people doing a lot more work, faster.”
At the same time, cutbacks have been made on the maintenance of cars, locomotives and tracks, while trains are becoming increasingly long and heavy, raising the chances of derailment.
“Lastly, you have the railroads themselves,” Grooters says, “which are fighting any kind of regulation, whether it be train control systems that help manage the signal system or the lobbying efforts that we saw to kill electronic braking, which can make for safer operations and a quicker stop should a derailment like this occur.”36
Norfolk Southern, in fact, has paid $70 million in safety violations since 2000, along with $21 million in environmental violations.37 As it stands, an estimated 25 million Americans live on an oil train blast zone38 and could potentially be killed if one of these “bomb trains” derails in their town.
Regarding the toxic Ohio train derailment, Julia Rock, investigative reporter with The Lever, explained, “This is the result of efforts by the railroad industry to ensure that they do not have to retrofit trains carrying hazardous materials and crude oil with safety features.”39
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February 26th, 2023 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City — a widely misunderstood false flag operation that paved the way for 9/11 by portraying Muslims as terrorists and introducing Islamophobic racism to the U.S.
When I watched the three World Trade Center (WTC) buildings disintegrate on September 11, 2001, I assumed that there would be no interest in the story of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing; but when I read that Sheikh Omar Abdel-Rahman and Osama bin Laden were being blamed for it, I realized that the real story had to be told.
At the time of the bombing, the West’s 40-year Cold War against Communism had recently ended with the disintegration of the USSR; unidentified western investors were said to have been scooping up its assets as its public resources were becoming privatized. The U.S. military needed a new enemy to replace Communism in order to maintain its budget and protect it from any “peace dividend”. A classified Congressional document around 1991 (also sent to selected media) identified the new enemy as “Islamic Fundamentalists”; this expanded the target of the 1979 Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, which called for (legal) Palestinian resistance to Israel’s occupation to be criminalized internationally as “terrorism”. President George H.W. Bush’s 1991 “Madrid Peace Talks”, to end Israel’s 25-year military occupation of Palestinian territory, were continuing.
A massive bomb exploded under the Vista Hotel in the WTC at noon on Friday, February 26, 1993, killing 6, injuring 1000, and causing chaos throughout New York City for the rest of the day. The WTC complex covered 16 acres of lower Manhattan; the unforgettable twin towers rose one half mile into the sky. The damage under the hotel took out an area 2/3 the size of a football field and went down six floors to the PATH train station, underneath the level of the Hudson River.
The owner, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, thought that the bomb was so perfectly placed to cause maximum damage to the life support system that it had to be an inside job. This was confirmed by an extraordinary New York Times (NYT) graphic two days later which showed that the damage was not circular, but oblong, with the two ends hitting a corner of each tower: the bombers had to have had access to the Trade Center blueprints. The big question was, what country had the ability to pull off such a sophisticated operation when the only real U.S. enemy at that time was Iraq, which the US had invaded in 1991 and still basically controlled.
The damage was so massive that police estimated it would take six months to gather clues from the black abyss. It took a month to find the body of the Vista Hotel employee who had been working on the floor above the bomb; his body was found underneath all seven floors of rubble. That weekend, however, an ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms) agent entered the top edge of the abyss with a flashlight and came out with a load of vehicle parts that he claimed must have come from the bomb-laden van. An FBI agent immediately worked to decipher a Vehicle Identification Number and quickly identified it as coming from a Ryder van: a van that a Mohammad Salameh had rented.
Mohammad Salameh paid $400 to rent a Ryder van to help move work mates who were soon to leave the New York area. That Thursday evening, he used it to bring friends shopping at a local mall; when they came out with their groceries, the van had disappeared. Horrified, Salameh called the police to report the van missing. An officer Badiak responded but was unable to put out an immediate warrant for the van because it had an out-of-state license and there seemed to have been a mistake in Ryder’s handwritten license number that they gave to Salameh. Badiak didn’t bother to track the number down that evening, but he made out the report and drove Salameh to his home at 24 Kensington, where he lived with an Israeli woman called Josie Haddas. Or maybe Gosie Hadass: she apparently spelled her name differently whenever she wrote it.
Mohammad Salameh spent days on busses trying to get his $400 deposit back from the Ryder shop, which kept giving him a run-around. On the fourth attempt, on Wednesday, March 5th when he had been told he could pick up his refund, he was met with a small army of media and police, who arrested him as a suspect in the WTC bombing. (Ryder records reportedly indicated that Salameh’s van was returned!)
Salameh’s court-appointed lawyer had a hard time trying to explain to Salameh, a recent Jordanian immigrant who had difficulty with English, why he had been arrested. Salameh had faith in American justice; he wanted a fast trial so that he could get on with his life (stocking grocery shelves). NYT reporter Chris Hedges contacted Salameh’s parents in Jordan; he had recently called them and they expected another call soon to announce his coming marriage.
The New York Times, which produced the most extensive coverage of this story, was fast off the mark claiming that Mohammad Salameh — who they suspected had probable terrorist connections — was an “Islamic fundamentalist”. Its description of the WTC bombing as “sophisticated” turned to primitive, and the key graphic describing the pattern of damage disappeared from NYT archives, along with other information that did not fit the official government narrative.
Several other Muslim immigrants would join Salameh as defendants: gutsy Egyptian cabbie Mahmoud Abuhalima who, with his young family, had permanent resident status; Nidal Ayyad, a recently graduated (and married) Kuwaiti chemical engineer who had become an enthusiastic U.S. citizen, and Palestinian refugee claimant Ahmad Ajaj who had been incarcerated from the previous September until March on immigration charges and had never even met the other defendants. The New York Times noted that, except for the cabbie, the defendants were all of Palestinian descent, which it found significant. The four men faced a broad conspiracy charge for moving weapons across state lines. A fifth man was wanted with a reward: Ramzi Yousef had entered the U.S. five months before the explosion to join what was obviously the bombing plot and left the day it occurred. The court protected the identities of — and access to — an estimated two dozen other facilitators of the bombing, including Israelis such as Josie Haddas (whose name was on Salameh’s Ryder van contract).
Several months later, the FBI was called in by its asset Emad Salem, a former Egyptian intelligence officer and bomb expert, to raid what he claimed was bomb-making to attack New York City landmarks and transportation hubs. Some of the men weren’t sure what they were mixing stuff for and one who was charged, New Yorker Clement Hampton-El, smelled a rat and had been avoiding the group. Weeks later, the world- famous, blind Egyptian cleric (a 1990 refugee claimant) Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman was arrested. As the leader of local mosques that all of the defendants belonged to, prosecutors claimed the sheikh was the “mastermind” not only of the latest “bomb-making” but of the WTC explosion as well as the 1991 killing of terrorist rabbi Meir Kahane, (despite the fact that a New York State trial had found El Sayid Nosair not guilty!) Fifteen men in all would face a “seditious conspiracy” charge that included the WTC bombing (with an acknowledgment that that was being tried separately); the four defendants of the first WTC trial were “unindicted co-conspirators” of this second trial, which made both trials appear to be related. The conspiracy charges for both trials had such low requirements for conviction that guilty verdicts could have been regarded as virtually meaningless. Competent legal counsel (which the courts tried to bar) should have been able to get all of them off.
The New York Times coverage was racist, biased and inflammatory; it tried to ensure convictions by painting the defendants as shadowy Muslim criminals who refused to admit their involvement and who were bringing treacherous jihadi terrorism to threaten all Americans. At the end of October, 1993, the NYT published articles with verbatim parts of Emad Salem’s taped conversations with his FBI handler Nancy Floyd and her boss John Anticev in which both of them acknowledged that the FBI had overseen the Trade Center bombing plot, which a “higher up” had decided to make live instead of using planned fake explosives for the entrapment.
At the first WTC trial, the defense counsel couldn’t imagine that the defendants could be found guilty. Because the four defendants had alibis, no motive, no means of doing it, and there was no evidence that they had done it, their defense counsel didn’t see the point of calling defense witnesses. They were all convicted, apparently because jurors assumed that the lack of witnesses meant they had no defense! All those who would be tried in connection to the WTC bombing would be convicted, and most sentenced to life, including Ramzi Yousef and the real driver of the van (Salameh had also been charged as the driver), who had been an unwitting accomplice. Yousef was the only defendant of all of the WTC-related trials who was aware of the WTC bombing plan. The appeals, at least one of which got to the Supreme Court, were of no use despite the Constitutional violations that they documented.
As a result of the Islamophobia generated by the media during these related trials, important Constitutional and judicial protections were jettisoned, which paved the way for the government’s future “war on terror”:
The sheikh’s sermons were used against him, despite First Amendment guarantees of freedom of speech and belief;
The Fourth Amendment freedom from unwarranted searches was jettisoned by allowing the use of illegal search warrants;
The Sixth Amendment right to counsel was abandoned in various trials, including raids on the sheikh’s legal staff, tape recordings of private meetings with lawyers, and ultimately the use of secret evidence, which encourages the fabrication of evidence; and
The Eighth Amendment against cruel and unusual punishment is violated by the Special Administrative Measures (“SAMs”), (which were applied to the sheikh and Ramzi Yousef, among others), which isolates and hides from public scrutiny not only those convicted, but even those merely accused of a crime. Defense counsel, like the sheikh’s lawyer Lynn Stewart, are also vulnerable to being criminally charged and incarcerated for violating SAMs.
In 1993, the only obvious motives behind the WTC bombing appeared to be destroying American sympathy for the Palestinians during the ongoing Mideast peace talks, and using the Trade Center trials to undermine Constitutional rights.
After the events of September 11, 2001, other motives for the ’93 bombing became evident. To justify NATO members joining the U.S.’ “war on terror”, the U.S. used, as further supposed evidence of a sustained foreign attack by Al Qaeda:
the 1993 WTC bombing, including several names of those associated with it (Sheikh Abdul-Rahman, Ali Mohamed, Abdul Yasin, and Ramzi Yousef);
references to the African Embassy bombing (Ali Mohamed and a minor participant); along with
the USS Cole explosion and the Millenium shoe bomb plot, neither of which appeared to be connected to Al Qaeda.
Despite the fact that Bin Laden denied any responsibility for 9/11, that Al Qaeda was a recognized asset of the US government, and that the FBI was already on record as having admitted to overseeing the WTC bombing, the drama of the September 11th events was shocking enough that every NATO member agreed to joining the US’ multi-year “war on terror”.
The motive of 9/11 first appeared to be the “war on terror’s” regime change of countries to benefit the U.S. or Israel; the “seven countries in five years” told to General Wesley Clark were clearly intended targets. It also became evident that there were financial motives, such as the destruction of the Office of Naval Intelligence at the Pentagon, which was investigating billions of missing funds, along with other government-related financial fraud; its backup records at the WTC were also destroyed.
A financial motive for both the World Trade Center and Pentagon destruction became apparent with the publication of an extensively- referenced article called “Collateral Damage: U.S. Covert Operations and the Terrorist Attacks on September 11, 2001” by a former member of the Office of Naval Intelligence using the pseudonym E.P. Heidner. Heidner claims that on September 12, 2001, 10-year bonds worth $240 billion became mature and could be cleared only then because the Security and Exchange Commission, invoking emergency powers because of 9/11, suspended the requirement for identification to cash in securities for 15 days. The detailed information — with stunning implications that include the asset-stripping of the USSR — indicate that this plot had started by September, 1991.
One of the most disturbing aspects of this story, along with the loss of Americans’ Constitutional rights, and the crimes that have gone unpunished, is the impact of the politically- generated Islamophobia, which has been compared to anti-Semitic racism before WW II. The U.S. government has betrayed all of its citizens — particularly Muslims — by virtually defining “terrorism” as Muslim, and destroying the lives of many of the Muslims who came to the US to raise their families and make their own contribution to the United States. This includes the innocent defendants of this story who have endured tortuous incarceration, and their children and grandchildren for whom they are irreplaceable.
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Karin Brothers is a freelance writer. She is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Featured image: Image of the procession of rescue vehicles responding to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. One World Trade Center is on the far right of the frame. (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)
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What would be possible if we had an extra $100 billion to spend on urgent human needs?
Just weeks ago, Congress and President Biden agreed to a $858 billion Pentagon and war budget. That’s the highest the military budget has been since World War II.
About half of the Pentagon budget every year goes to corporate contractors who pay their CEOs multi-million dollar salaries and engage in stock buybacks to artificially raise their own stock prices.
Meanwhile, back at home, the country faces dire challenges that military spending can’t solve. Ordinary folks are still struggling to pay their bills. The need for a transition away from fossil fuels has only become more urgent since the Russian invasion of Ukraine a year ago, and the resulting energy shortages. The recent train derailment and mounting health problems in Ohio point to a need for more rigorous environmental and rail protections. And schools and hospitals are struggling with ongoing staffing shortages.
Today, Representative Barbara Lee and Representative Mark Pocan are re-introducing the People Over Pentagon Act. The Act would take $100 billion from the Pentagon and war budget, returning it to 2018 levels, and reinvest those dollars in critical programs here at home.
“We shouldn’t be adding billions upon billions of tax dollars to enrich Pentagon contractors at a time when real people are struggling. We’re so used to hearing that we can’t afford programs that meet real human needs for basics like housing, food, education, and child care. The truth is that we can definitely afford it, if we stop throwing money at Pentagon contractors,” said Lindsay Koshgarian, Program Director at the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.
Here are seven things we could do with $100 billion:
Power every household in the United States with solar energy
Hire one million elementary school teachers amid a worsening teacher shortage
Provide free tuition for 2 out of 3 public college students in the U.S.
Send every household in the U.S. a $700 check to help offset effects of inflation
Hire 890,000 Registered Nurses to address shortages
Cover medical care for 7 million veterans
Triple current enrollment in Head Start, from 1 million children and families to 3 million
Want to know what else we could do with $100 billion? Check out our online calculator.
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Featured image: Rep. Barbara Lee and Rep. Mark Pocan have introduced the People Over Pentagon Act. (Source: NPP)
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The British counter-terrorism programme Prevent under the “Authority for Research, Information and Communication”, has published a list of books and films that should be seen as warning signs of “extreme right-wing” sentiment, reported the British Daily Mail. The agency reports directly to the British government.
These are said to include the complete works of Shakespeare, medieval sagas such as Beowulf and Canterbury Tales as well as British authors such as Tolkien, Orwell, Huxley and Burke. The document apparently describes the classics as “key works” of “white nationalists”.
This assessment is said to be based on “reading lists” on far-right internet platforms. A screenshot of such a reading list can also be found in the report. It shows several of the works mentioned under the heading “important texts” together with a picture of the British fascist Oswald Mosley.
Historian and publicist Andrew Roberts commented that the listing of these works was “truly astonishing”. Several of the writers listed, such as Huxley, Orwell and Tolkien, had been “anti-totalitarian writers”.
Church of England goes woke
Meanwhile, the Bishop of Lichfield, The Right Reverend Michael Ipgrave, announced that a “new joint project on gendered language will begin this spring”.
This will most probably be the final nail in the coffin of the Church. Its membership and attendance continues to dwindle. In fact, many reports suggest young adult membership is as low as 2 percent in England.
Former CIA analystMike Vlahos recently commented that the state was eager to destroy religion in order to better control populations. This was a particular feature of totalitarian governance, as in the former Soviet Union where religion was banned, he explained.
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Featured image: Church of England will be rewriting the Bible. Facebook
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On 20 February Didier Reynders, the European Commissioner for Justice, announced that a new international centre will be set up in July of this year to investigate war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine over the course of the last year. Yet when Ukrainians are tortured by their own government the EU does not give a damn.
On Christmas night 1951 in Mims, Florida, sticks of planted dynamite exploded underneath the home of veteran organizers for the NAACP and the Progressive Voters League (PVL) resulting in the deaths of Harry T. Moore that same evening enroute to the hospital and his wife of 25 years,Harriet V.S. Moore, on January 3, 1952.
Because Operation Warp Speed rushed new mRNA technology forward in two month clinical trials without informative preclinical testing, we are now learning about what was injected into billions of human beings during the mass, indiscriminate COVID-19 vaccine program.
Our thoughts are with the people of Iraq, who’s country has been literally destroyed by US-NATO. It’s a hegemonic agenda which consists in transforming countries into territories. March 2023 marks 20 years since the US-UK led war on Iraq in 2003. And that war is still ongoing.
It was 23 February 2022. By then, the Ukrainian elite knew that Russia’s military attack was imminent. Wealthy tycoons and politicians, including Secretary of National Security Council Oleksiy Danilov, already made accommodations to make sure their military-age sons would be out of the country.
Canada has blood on its hands. The Canadian government had understood from US intelligence that the Obama plan to destroy Syria was based on using the Muslim Brotherhood, and the political ideology known as Radical Islam, as the foot soldiers inside Syria.
Canadian politicians, Public Health Officials and healthcare leaders committed many serious crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic, but one of the most heinous was the forced COVID-19 mRNA vaccination of healthy child athletes in 2021-2022 so they could continue to play sports. Here are some of Canada’s youngest athletes who died suddenly in the past 3 months.
The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.
Earlier this month, arms maker General Atomics made Ukraine a tempting offer. For the low price of $0.50 a pop, the defense contractor would send Kyiv two of its top-of-the-line MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are usually valued at about $30 million per plane. (Budget-conscious readers should keep in mind that shipping and handling — worth nearly $20 million — were not included.)
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On Christmas night 1951 in Mims, Florida, sticks of planted dynamite exploded underneath the home of veteran organizers for the NAACP and the Progressive Voters League (PVL) resulting in the deaths of Harry T. Moore that same evening enroute to the hospital and his wife of 25 years, Harriet V.S. Moore, on January 3, 1952.
The Moore family were representative of the persistent struggle of African Americans in the South extending from the 1930s to the early 1950s.
Although declassified FBI documents revealed decades later that the federal government and local authorities knew that the Ku Klux Klan had carried out the assassinations of these two leaders, yet nothing was done to bring the perpetrators to justice. This same pattern of official complicity in the terror inflicted against African Americans would continue throughout this important decade of the 1950s. (See this)
Just three-and-one-half years later in the state of Mississippi, a series of murders would prove pivotal in the eruption of the mass Civil Rights Movement beginning in 1955. Two African American leaders in Mississippi, Rev. George Lee of Humphreys County and Lamar Smith of Brookhaven, were assassinated on May 7 and August 13 respectively.
Lee was a leader of the NAACP in his area while Smith was affiliated with the Regional Council of Negro Leadership (RCNL) formed in 1952. Both Lee and Smith were organizing Black people to vote in the Jim Crow era Mississippi where the White Citizens Council and the Ku Klux Klan were committed to suppressing the democratic rights of African Americans. (See this)
During late August 1955, in Money, Mississippi, 14-year-old Emmett Till of Chicago was kidnapped and brutally lynched after being falsely accused of making inappropriate comments to the wife of a white landowner and merchant. Till’s murder gained international attention after his mother demanded the arrest and prosecution of her son’s killers. After a show trial, both killers were exonerated by an all-white jury.
These acts of racial terror enhanced the already burgeoning militancy among the African American people in the post-World War II period. Later in December, the Montgomery Bus Boycott began which lasted for one year leading to a landmark Supreme Court decision striking down the segregation laws governing municipal transportation in Alabama. The Montgomery Bus Boycott would catapult Ms. Rosa L. Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. into world renown pioneers in the popular movement for Civil Rights in the United States.
Struggles for Civil Rights and Black Suffrage in Southwest Tennessee (1957-1969)
During the mid-1930s, John D. Rust and his brother Mack D. Rust, two white agricultural workers, inventors and engineers, produced a blueprint for the first practical cotton harvesting machine. The Rust brothers were influenced by socialist ideas and viewed the cotton picking machine as a means to liberating southern farm labor. They would establish a company in Memphis to produce and market their machines. Nonetheless, it would take another three decades for this technology to make significant inroads in the production of cotton. (See this)
The machine would transform the cultivation of cotton throughout the South eliminating the demand for African American farm labor. These changes in the character of production came at a time when African Americans were demanding their civil and human rights. Consequently, in response to the developing struggle for full equality and self-determination, the implementation of the new technology facilitated the undermining of Black labor and the further migration to the urban areas of the South, North and Western regions of the U.S.
Fayette and Haywood County, Tennessee, which bordered the Mississippi Delta, in the 1950s were areas where due to the legacy of African enslavement and Jim Crow, remained populated by a Black majority. Fayette, along with neighboring Haywood and Tipton counties, were major producers and marketers of cotton.
Image: Fayette County Burton Dodson on trial for killing white man 18 years before 1958 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
After the passage of the 1957 Civil Rights Act, which purportedly empowered the U.S. Justice Department to enforce non-discrimination in access to the franchise, people began to organize in Haywood and later Fayette counties. The organizing efforts gained impetus when a former resident of Fayette County, Rev. Burton Dodson (then 78), was extradited from St. Louis, Missouri to Somerville, Tennessee in 1958 to stand trial for second degree murder of a white man participating in a racist mob attempting to lynch him in 1940.
In a timeline published by the University of Memphis it notes that:
“Prominent African American attorney James F. Estes represented Dodson. He was convicted of second-degree murder in April of 1959. Much of the Black community asserted that it was forensically impossible for Dodson to have committed the murder. The trial sparked interest with the Black citizens to register to vote and serve on juries. Attorney James F. Estes, with ties to the Memphis NAACP, spurred action for civil rights in both Haywood and Fayette Counties by assisting and/or recruiting local leaders to organize and register Blacks to vote. Estes works with Haywood County civil rights activist Currie Boyd to establish a ‘Civic League’ in Haywood. When McFerren (Viola and Charles) and Jameson (Harpson and Minnie) attended the trial of Burton Dodson, Estes seized the opportunity to encourage them to organize Blacks to register to vote in Fayette County. Understanding both the political and legal process as well as the power of the media, Estes, in December 1959, obtains affidavits from Blacks in Fayette and Haywood Counties where they make sworn statements that they have been denied their constitutional right to vote by local whites. In February, the Civil Rights Commission investigated Fayette Voter registration books. Later, in June and July of 1959, Black citizens lined up in Fayette County to register to vote. This is the beginning of a registration drive that will turn the county upside down. Black voters were blocked from voting in the Fayette County Democratic Primary. White party officials claim that primary elections are not covered under the Civil Rights Act of 1957 and that the party has the right to deny any citizen the ability to vote in the party’s primary.”
However, by 1960, through the legal actions of local activists, the Justice Department and the Federal Courts backed the claims made by African Americans that they did have the right to vote in these counties. Over the course of several months, African Americans began to register to vote in Fayette County. In retaliation, white landowners and businesspeople initiated an economic boycott against African Americans who registered. Whole families were evicted from the land they had farmed for generations. The white ruling interests refused to sell food, household supplies, gasoline, medical services, pharmaceuticals and other essentials to African Americans.
The mass evictions in 1960-61 created a Tent City in Fayette and Haywood counties where over one thousand families lived until 1962. The economic boycott of African American sharecroppers, tenant farmers and independent small landowners gained national attention prompting material assistance from northern-based labor unions and social justice organizations to the Tent cities, later called “Freedom Villages”, which sustained the people until the crisis was mitigated.
By the spring 1964, dozens of student volunteers travelled to Fayette County to assist in a mass voter registration drive and the organization of an election campaign which challenged the legacy of segregation in Southwest Tennessee. The bulk of the youth volunteers were from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. These students lived with African American families involved in the Civil Rights Movement and were subjected to arbitrary arrests and racist violence alongside the local people residing in the rural and small-town areas of Fayette County. Their efforts were carried out under the West Tennessee Voters Project (WTVP) which established an office in Somerville while working alongside the Fayette County Civil and Welfare League founded in 1959 by John McFerren and Viola McFerren, Harpson and Minnie Jameson, among others.
Two candidates, one African American named Rev. J.W. Dowdy and a liberal white farmer, L.T. Redfearn sought to be elected to the offices of Sheriff and Tax Assessor. Even though they did not prevail due to the illegal voter suppression and irregularities, it provided the political strength for the community to take further actions.
The following year in 1965, the mass struggle for Civil Rights expanded into neighboring Tipton and Haywood counties. To break the remaining vestiges of segregation still in practice despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, sit-ins and boycotts were carried out by the African American youth and their adult counterparts. (See this)
A series of actions labelled “Freedom Week” witnessed sit-ins and mass arrests in Covington in Tipton County beginning on July 19. A mass demonstration demanding a unitary non-segregated public school system occurred on July 24, 1965 in Covington, marching from the town square to the headquarters of the Tipton County School Board. The march mobilized 1,500-2,000 people from Tipton, Haywood and Fayette counties. During the following week, African American youth under the leadership of the Tipton and Fayette County Student Unions organized a strike against the segregated schools which was successful for several weeks until economic pressure forced many families off their tenant farms and out of their places of employment controlled by whites.
Federal lawsuits against the county school boards led to a four-year legal battle which resulted in the imposition of federal consent decrees mandating the integration of the public schools and the elimination of split sessions for African Americans, where their time in the classrooms was centered around the planting and harvesting of cotton. (See this)
Implications of the Defeat of Legalized Segregation in Rural and Urban Areas
During the spring and summer of 1965, efforts aimed at forming Freedom Labor Unions took place in the Mississippi Delta and in Southwest Tennessee. In several Mississippi counties, African American agricultural workers refused to go to the fields to harvest cotton demanding pay increases and improved conditions of employment.
In August 1965, the founding meeting of the Tennessee Freedom Labor Union (TFLU) was held in Fayette County. The organization, which was heavily influenced by the WTVP, brought together farmers and agricultural workers from Fayette, Haywood, Tipton and Hardeman Counties. (See this)
However, the rapid mechanization of cotton production coinciding with the repressive apparatus of the local landowners and capitalists, curtailed the potential for organizing tenant farmers, sharecroppers and agricultural laborers. The rapid population influx into the urban areas and the institutional racism and economic exploitation African Americans were subjected to sparked urban rebellions throughout the U.S. in more than 200 municipalities from 1963-1970.
By 1966, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), headed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), then chaired by Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture), were compelled to focus their organizing efforts in southern and northern urban centers. However, the struggle within rural counties such as Fayette and Haywood would continue utilizing the right to vote and the expanded educational opportunities won through the mass campaigns for Civil Rights.
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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: African Americans line up to register to vote in Fayette County Tennessee (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)
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***
Because Operation Warp Speed rushed new mRNA technology forward in two month clinical trials without informative preclinical testing, we are now learning about what was injected into billions of human beings during the mass, indiscriminate COVID-19 vaccine program. A report from Castruita et al, using a cohort of recovered hepatitis C patients with blood samples available, found mRNA from Pfizer and Moderna circulating in blood for 30 days which is as long as they had after injection. This is bad news from a vaccine safety perspective.
Castruita JAS, Schneider UV, Mollerup S, Leineweber TD, Weis N, Bukh J, Pedersen MS, Westh H. SARS-CoV-2 spike mRNA vaccine sequences circulate in blood up to 28 days after COVID-19 vaccination. APMIS. 2023 Mar;131(3):128-132. doi: 10.1111/apm.13294. Epub 2023 Jan 29. PMID: 36647776.
Vaccines which are usually live attenuated or killed virus, or a harmless protein, should be in the body only a few days as immunity is being generated. After that, the vaccine material is cleared by the reticuloendothelial system. Having foreign genetic code in the form of synthetic RNA loaded on lipid nanoparticles with PEG in the blood stream for a month is an eerie reality with the following implications:
1) all serious health events occurring within 30 days of the shot should be considered related to the vaccine unless proven otherwise,
2) the mRNA has a prolonged opportunity to circulate to vital organs including the heart, brain, bone marrow, adrenals, and reproductive organs where it can cause more damage,
3) the human body must not have robust mechanisms to clear Pfizer or Moderna, so by the time the second shot is given, some still have the first shot in their system explaining greater toxicity on the second shot,
4) theoretical concerns over shedding should be extended far beyond 30 days (I currently recommend no kissing, sexual, or close contact for vaccinated persons for at least 90 days),
5) development on new mRNA vaccines (influenza, respiratory syncytial virus, zika, etc.) should be halted immediately given this discovery.
I wonder if the mRNA vaccine developers are aware of the findings by Castruita or if they even care? Toxicity profiles of drug products is clearly related to their pharmacodynamics and pharmacokinetics. This fundamental component of drug development is now completely ignored as drug safety is no longer a concern of the biopharmaceutical complex.
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Featured image: mRNA vaccines cause myocarditis by leading your own immune cells to attack your heart, which can lead to sudden death by ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation. (Kateryna Kon/Shutterstock)
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (desktop version)
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***
It was 23 February 2022. By then, the Ukrainian elite knew that Russia’s military attack was imminent. Wealthy tycoons and politicians, including Secretary of National Security Council Oleksiy Danilov, already made accommodations to make sure their military-age sons would be out of the country. The only thing left was to prepare government agencies for war. There “was a huge meeting of Ukrainian tycoons with President Zelensky” and his cabinet on February 23, commented Taras Berezovets, a Ukrainian analyst and television host. “They all declared their readiness to” stand with the regime and therefore mobilize the rest of the population to fight for their cause. The Ukrainian elite was prepared to defend its interests at any cost, as did its allies from NATO and opponents in Moscow.
A year has passed since irreversible decisions were made. Hundreds of thousands of homes are destroyed, and tens of thousands of people lost their lives, but the warring parties are further than ever from ending this senseless hell. “Toward beautiful future, I am starting my way,” goes a popular Soviet song, making a painful reminder to the listener of the contrast between past expectations and present reality in the post-Soviet space. Once bonded together under the roof of the Soviet Union, representing the scientific and manufacturing core of the world’s second industrial power, with aspirations to overtake the capitalist West economically and in the space race, the people of Ukraine and Russia are now fighting each other in the most destructive conflict to hit Europe since the Second World War.
Every catastrophe has material preconditions, and the war in Ukraine is no exception. What motivates the Ukrainian elite to fight is something Russia had to learn the hard way, as its regime-change operation failed dramatically and metamorphosed into a full-scale war, with a front line over 1000 kilometers in length. While mobilizing the population and arming it with weapons and nationalistic opium, “Ukraine’s oligarchs have put aside both their differences with the government of Volodymyr Zelensky and any lingering pro-Russian sentiment to close ranks with the authorities in Kyiv,” reported Forbes on February 24.
Either turn against Russia and lean to the West for help or side with Russia and become a target of the West. This simple lesson the Ukrainian elite was taught in 2014 when the entourage of politicians and oligarchs behind President Victor Yanukovich, whose administration pushed for stronger ties with Russia than a pro-Western coalition that ousted him, was punished for taking the wrong side. In the aftermath of protests on Maidan turning into a massacre and Yanukovich escaping to Russia, the Western countries fired artillery rounds of sanctions and asset freezes against his top cabinet members and wealthy backers, including such prominent representatives of the elite as the Klyuyev brothersand a billionaire Serhiy Kurchenko, ranked the seventh richest person in Ukraine.
The bourgeoisie and politicians that came under sanctions lost their influence in Ukraine and either fled the country or, as the case was with Yanukovich’s political stronghold of Donbas, took a slice of the country with them, transforming widespread popular dissatisfaction with the politics of Kiev into an armed movement for secession from Ukraine. The oligarchs that remained and aligned themselves with the pro-Western regime endorsed the sanctions and happily filled the place of the ousted elite. One of them, the billionaire magnate Petro Poroshenko, not only sided with the new regime but became the President to lead it.
That most oligarchs either accepted or supported the anti-Yanukovich protests on Maidan and a political coup against his regime should come as no surprise. Ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the economic linkage between Ukraine and Russia was waning by the year. Most of its exports went to the West, and the economic bailouts also came from the West. Transforming since 1991 from one of Europe’s most industrialized countries into one of the poorest, Ukraine was becoming ever more dependent on the West and ever more independent from Russia and other post-Soviet states. The proportion of its exports to Russia declined from 38.5 percent in 1996 to 23.8 percent in 2013 and reached as little as 5.1 percent in 2021. What changed since 2014 is that Ukraine not only accelerated the economic decoupling with Russia but bolstered the armed forces to defend the status quo.
If this economic decoupling with Russia was the precondition for the separatist eruption in Donbas, an eastern region most dependent on exports to that market, the latter was the necessary precondition for the militarization of Ukrainian society against Russia. Resorting to mobilization for war with the separatists, and receiving support in the form of budget stimulus, Humvees, counter-radar systems and other military gear from the West, Ukraine rapidly managed to establish the second-largest land army in Europe. The conflict in Donbas provided a perfect excuse to boost military expenditure, which rose from 1.6 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013 to 3.3 percent in 2015 and 3.2 percent in 2021.
After eight years of building the armed forces and enhancing military and economic ties with the West, the Ukrainian bourgeoisie had both the material interest in the status quo and the means to defend it at any cost. Hence, the unity displayed in the face of the Russian attack on February 24, the total collapse of Moscow’s plan to change the regime without doing much fighting. And being injected with thousands of military vehicles, over two million artillery shells and billions of dollars in financial assistance from NATO countries, the country’s elite was emboldened to reject negotiations in the hope of winning Russia on the battlefield.
“Now Ukraine’s economy is directly dependent on support from the West,” admitted Ukraine’s richest man, Rinat Akhmetov, whose business was already tied to Western markets before the war and whose assets in the West include France’s lavish Villa Les Cèdres, also known as the world’s most expensive house. This ‘patriotic’ oligarch is among those opposing peace talks in favor of victory on the battlefield, declaring that Ukraine “must first and foremost restore territorial sovereignty – return the territories seized by Putin’s regime.”
According to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “If Russia stops fighting, the war ends. If Ukraine stops fighting, Ukraine ends.” If there is a grain of truth in this exposition, it is that Ukraine would not be the same for its richest man, who neither wishes to join Russian oligarchs sanctioned by the West nor lose the influence he accrued during the war. And accrued he did. The so-called de-oligarchization push since February 24 was nothing but an effort of the oligarchs most strongly aligned with Zelensky’s ruling party and the West to cleanse out the oligarchs that had ties to the opposition and Russia.
Image: Vadim Novinsky (Licensed under CC0)
One of the targets of de-oligarchization campaign was Vadim Novinsky, a billionaire tycoon and member of parliament from the Opposition Bloc. Labeled as the “most pro-Russian of Ukraine’s oligarchs” by Forbes, “he behaved like a Ukrainian patriot” right before Russia’s attack, commented Berezovets. Good behavior saved Novinsky in the first months of the war, but his year ended with sanctions from Zelensky’s government. Coincidentally, the sanctioned oligarch holds a minority (23.76 percent) stake in the mining and steel company Metinvest, whose majority owner (71.24 percent) is no other than Rinat Akhmetov. And it is no other than Ukraine’s richest oligarch who praises the policy line of the state, claiming that the war and Western support provide an opportunity “to really get rid of the oligarchy. We won’t get another chance. It is our historical responsibility to do it now. I am confident that this is exactly what will happen.”
Oligarchs such as Akhmetov have a vested interest in the survival of the regime, and they will continue to bet in favor of war for as long as NATO countries provide sufficient financial assistance and weapons for Ukraine to fight. And it doesn’t matter how many more cities will be destroyed, how many more people will perish in a country whose population was already shrinking before the war.
At the same time, emboldened by that support from the West, the ruling elite moves further and further in making the survival of its status quo dependent upon the total defeat of Russia. From institutionalizing non-stop mobilization to win the war on the battlefield to hosting the League of Free Nations representing secessionist voices from ethnic minorities within Russia – Ukraine is doing everything to demonstrate that its strategic needs inevitably presuppose the weakening and possible disintegration of its neighbor.
This reality is recognized and unapologetically expressed in the government. In the words of Zelensky’s advisor Mikhail Podolyak,
“What should certainly happen is that the Russian Federation should cease to exist in its current political form….[I]t doesn’t matter whether it will have democratic elections, or whether Russia will disintegrate into ethnic states… This would not matter to us once we militarily prove their importance.” The Secretary of National Security and Defense Council Danilov, whom we mentioned earlier, went even further. He had this to say to the television audience on February 16. “I can say with confidence that it was Ukrainians who broke up the Soviet Union…. The same will happen in Russia. The West needs to prepare for this. They think that Russia should remain within the same borders. This is a big mistake. We will certainly break it up…”
What Podolyak articulated represents the doomsday Russia’s ruling class is desperate to avert. The latter has a general sense of what’s at stake if the war is lost, as well as the motives behind the ruthless determination of the Ukrainian elite to win the war on the battlefield. Alluding to them, this is how President Putin described Ukraine’s “civilizational choice” of joining the Western bloc. “Pardon my language,” he responded at St. Petersburg economic forum on June 17, “but what kind of civilisational choice are they blabbering about? They stole money from the Ukrainian people, hid it in the [European] banks and just want to protect it. And the best way to protect it is to say that this is a civilisational choice. They began to pursue an anti-Russian policy in hopes that whatever they do, their money would be protected there.”
Putin talks this way only about Ukrainian oligarchs and would never use the same language toward the oligarchs at home, the arrogant and ruthless bourgeois exploiters of the Russian people who, for thirty years, did everything on their part to drive the country to “a dead end” and make the military clash a historical inevitability.
The economic decoupling between Ukraine and Russia was not a one-sided affair; it was something both countries pursued, either consciously or not. Being nothing but a mirror image of their Ukrainian counterparts, Russian capitalists benefited from the chaos and de-industrialization that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the evisceration of economic links that bonded the republics together and formed the material foundation for any peaceful reintegration project in the post-Soviet space.
Becoming prosperous from exports of raw materials and the flooding of the home market with finished imports, the mushrooming bourgeois elite was making Russia more and more dependent on trade with advanced countries in Western Europe and East Asia as opposed to neighbors within the post-Soviet space, which Russia nonetheless regarded as its natural sphere of influence and the only place in which, after losing the status of a great global power, it had any real potential to begin re-establishing it. Already in 1996, only about 20 percent of Russian exports went to republics of the former Soviet Union, and that declined to less than 15 percent in 2013. Despite this, Russia’s elite staunchly opposed the incorporation of post-Soviet states into the economic and military bloc of the West, the formal institutionalization of something that was already a material reality.
The West, in turn, was only happy to use its influence to exacerbate economic fragmentation within the former Soviet space, making the development of relations with countries such as Ukraine conditional on their refusal to participate in Russia’s reintegration endeavors. In just one example on Ukraine, a State Department cable from 10 October 2006 clearly stated that the country’s turn to join Russia-initiated “SES [Single Economic Space] customs union would complicate WTO accession and be inconsistent with aspirations for a free trade agreement with the EU.” Such was the precondition for expanding economic cooperation with the West for a country already dependent on raw material exports to Western markets. Ukraine’s oligarchs unsurprisingly made the civilizational choice they did.
Russia never accepted this civilizational choice, but the civilizational choice of its own elite to trade with the West and store the extracted capital from the labor power of the Russian people in foreign equity – this is what kept Moscow from applying the February 24 tactics on Ukraine for a long time, even during the crisis in 2014. Fear of Western sanctions and trade restrictions explains why Russia responded to the latter with shortsighted half-measures such as seizing Crimea and aiding Donbas separatists without formally recognizing their legitimacy, thereby giving up the rest of Ukraine to the West, providing the latter an excuse to build the second-largest land army in Europe and cementing the political dead end that could lead to nothing else but war.
The time for war came eight years later. And over these eight years, Russia worked on reducing its dependence on the West by nothing else than deepening trade and political ties to its main geopolitical rival, China.
This pivot to export more raw materials to China instead of the West proved successful. By 2021, China held a solid lead as Russia’s main trading partner, and the two countries were working on expanding their “partnership without borders.” In the months leading up to February 24, the economic shift of Russia toward China was cemented further. The New York Times made a good summary of it in an article on 26 February 2022: “Chinese purchases of oil from Russia in December surpassed its purchases from Saudi Arabia. Six days before the military campaign began, Russia announced a yearslong deal to sell 100 million tons of coal to China — a contract worth more than $20 billion. And hours before Russia began bombing Ukraine, China agreed to buy Russian wheat…” Thereby, Russia established enough room to maneuver that it felt emboldened to act.
And so, it worked. Declaring neutrality in the conflict, China significantly mollified the punitive restrictions that the West unleashed on Russia, from raising imports of Russian crude oil to providing Moscow with the components to manufacture weapons and missiles. But all the signals that China would take this position and undercut Western sanctions neither prevented them nor stopped their architects from blindly throwing one round of sanctions after another to only prove with each successive round their ineffectiveness.
Sanctions failed even though the U.S. and its allies began developing the mechanism to implement them months before Russia attacked Ukraine. As European Commission’s President Ursula von der Leyenrevealed at the 2023 Munich Conference on February 18,
“My cabinet and the commission started to work with the White House and the Treasury already in December [2021] on potential sanctions in case Russia would invade Ukraine…. It was tedious work day and night, to align our very different trade systems to develop sanctions that are targeted at advanced technologies and goods that are irreplaceable for Russia.”
While sanctions did not bring the intended result, the West remains stubbornly fixated on maximizing its position of strength with weapons. In the words of NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg, the alliance will “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes” to defeat Russia. Speaking on 17 February 2023, he affirmed that
“this war may end at the negotiating table. But we know that what happens around the negotiating table is totally dependent on the strength on the battlefield,” and this is all the Western alliance is concerned about. To put it differently, as Stoltenberg did on 30 December, while it “may sound like a paradox, but military support for Ukraine is the fastest way to peace.”
So far, nothing but old formulas and concepts floated in the vision of peace that Western powers aspire to accomplish. A “durable peace” for Europe, according to Secretary Blinken, is possible only if the allies “put Ukraine in the strongest possible position going forward,… so that we can prevent a repeat of this Russian aggression or… that Ukraine would be in a very strong position to deal with it.” Thus one scenario of peace is militarized Ukraine serving as a buffer state between Russia and Western Europe. In this, Blinken repeated the old formula which NATO powers advanced ever since the demise of the Soviet Union, and which brought it on the collision course with Russia. Ukraine had to choose between Russia and the West, which inevitably presupposed that it would regard the first as an enemy so that the second could be its friend.
An alternative scenario for peace, which is openly articulated by elites in Kiev, is the one in which Russia follows the fate of the Soviet Union. Then Russia would stop being a threat to Ukraine because it would no longer exist as a country. While no major power publicly indicated a preference for this outcome, there is no sign that the West would go far to prevent it from happening. Back in 1991, the U.S. and Western Europe already demonstrated that the structure of their world order cannot accommodate the post-Cold War system in which the Soviet Union stood a chance to survive in the form of a unified state, where it could remain an industrial superpower and not crumble into fifteen separate countries that export raw materials and wage wars against each other.
The fragmentation of Russia would create more states, more custom borders, national armies and contradictions for regional disputes and armed conflicts. No other than Henry Kissinger graphically described what such an outcome would mean. Writing on 19 December 2022, he warned that
“the dissolution of Russia or destroying its ability for strategic policy could turn its territory encompassing 11 time zones into a contested vacuum. Its competing societies might decide to settle their disputes by violence. Other countries might seek to expand their claims by force. All these dangers would be compounded by the presence of thousands of nuclear weapons…”
Whether Western powers aspire to keep Ukraine a buffer state against Russia or see the latter collapse, neither of these options would be acceptable to Moscow. As long as China provides an outlet for its exports and ways to evade import restrictions, Russia will have the means to continue resisting them on the battlefield. It will continue to stand its ground in a deadlock with the West, for which the latter has no response other than to commit more and more military and financial resources to Ukraine and bet its global reputation on the success of the client state. And so, the ruling classes of Ukraine, Russia and the West are at war, and each sees victory in the loss of the other.
Quietly watching this self-destructive contest from a distance is China, the only country with the economic and political capacity to do so. The willingness of the U.S. to commit so thoroughly to war with Russia provides a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the Chinese bourgeoisie to outplay and exhaust the main geopolitical rival. It is god’s gift to their quest for global hegemony. Speaking in the early days of the war, a former advisor to senior Chinese officials, Zheng Yongnian, proudly proclaimed, “China will have even greater ability and will to play a more important role in building a new international order.”
In preparation for the anniversary of February 24, China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang pressed forward with that, announcing to the world that Beijing will “provide Chinese wisdom for the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis…” And the deeper belligerents dig themselves against one another, the more important a role that wisdom will play.
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Maxim Nikolenko is an independent researcher. He can be contacted at [email protected].
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***
The COVID messaging came in early, hot — and most of all — in stereo:
“This virus is deadly. Masks, social distancing, and quarantining are critical to stemming the spread. Herd immunity will be our salvation. The only way to achieve that is to lock everyone in their homes and wait for safe-and-effective vaccines to save us. Fortunately, pharma is on it!”
Three long years later, it turns out that masks not only don’t work but can make us sicker. Social distancing was a myth, pretty much pulled out of thin air. Quarantining was an unmitigated social, psychological, and economic disaster. And despite sweeping admissions from both government officials and the manufacturers themselves that the vaccines don’t stop infection or transmission (i.e., they are not effective) and skyrocketing spikes in adverse reaction reports (i.e., they are not safe), the relentless messaging hasn’t changed. Would you like a free apple fritter with your safe-and-effective vaccine?
Some of us — you might know us as anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, science deniers, or granny killers — found the whole setup sketchy from the get-go. But as injuries and unanswered questions mount, our ranks are growing by the day, thanks in part to folks like surf legend Kelly Slaterand Congresswoman Nancy Macespeaking out about their personal experiences with vaccine injuries and loss.
Since COVID won’t be our last pandemic (Bill Gates said so!), here are a few questions we all might want to ponder before the next wave hits:
What’s an acceptable death toll from any medication? Prior vaccine programs have been scrapped after just a handful of casualties; in the notoriously underreported VAERS system, the body count of the COVID so-called vaccines is currently north of 34,000. Yes, thousand. When would be a reasonable time to pump the brakes? We should have a number in mind. (Mine is 1.)
Shouldn’t there be some health guidance if the government’s genuine concern is our collective well-being? Obesity can complicate a host of medical conditions. So can low levels of Vitamin D. Maybe let’s listen to the sort of health experts who advise getting a smidgen of sunshine, forsaking a few processed foods, or taking a brisk stroll the next time our immune systems are under attack?
Does the guidance being issued make sense? During peak COVID hysteria, bars were deadly, but restaurants were harmless. Six feet apart was nonnegotiable, unless you were on a plane, or (seated) in one of the aforementioned restaurants, or separated from your cashier by a flimsy sheet of plexiglass. Viral particles proliferated in mom-and-pop shops but dropped dead in the doorways of Walmart and Costco. Church services, concerts, and other mass gatherings were perilous, but violent protests got the green light. If the messaging makes no sense, can we all agree it’s okay to question it?
Are our officials encouraging scientific debate and the pooling of the highest and best data? Because “this is our story and anyone who disagrees with it will be silenced, smeared, and de-platformed” doesn’t exactly instill trust.
Are individual circumstances and risk factors being considered? Should pregnant women, the immune-compromised, the chemically sensitive, and the previously vaccine-injured be poked with impunity? Is it logical to give the same dose to a 400-pound linebacker and a wee ballerina, or the same dose to a six-month-old preemie and a strapping kindergartener? If you’re not at risk of the disease but the cure could harm you, shouldn’t you be able to refuse it? Maybe it’s time to bring back, “ask your doctor if [this medication or treatment] is right for you.”
Are there possible side effects? If people were suffering strokes, going blind, losing limbs, and dropping dead after being poked with a certain therapeutic, wouldn’t that be good information to have? It’s called informed consent, and the absence of it is a criminal offense. Just saying.
Are people being threatened, coerced, or bribed with everything from pizza to pot (You missed the Joints for Jabs campaign?) to sign up for a supposedly safe, life-saving treatment? As the kids say, seems a little ‘sus.’ Might be a good time to sit this round out.
There’s a saying: Trip me once, shame on you; trip me twice, shame on me. Here’s hoping we’re all a bit wiser before Pandemic 2.0 rolls around.
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Jenna McCarthy is a speaker and the author of a few dozen books for adults and children. Her writing will appear here monthly, in a new column called “Here’s a thought…” Subscribe now to get the series in your inbox, along with the rest of FLCCC’s news and updates.
The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity
by Michel Chossudovsky
Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.
“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”
All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name (desktop version)
To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.
Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.
***
“It is the writer’s duty to tell the terrible truth, and it is a reader’s civic duty to learn this truth. To turn away, to close one’s eyes and walk past is to insult the memory of those who have perished.” ― Vasily Grossman, The Road: Stories, Journalism, and Essays
On 20 February Didier Reynders, the European Commissioner for Justice, announced that a new international centre will be set up in July of this year to investigate war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine over the course of the last year. Yet when Ukrainians are tortured by their own government the EU does not give a damn.
MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace raised concerns on my behalf with the EU Commission regarding the situation of young communists Mikhail Kononovych and Aleksander Kononovych, who have been tortured by the SBU. Josep Borrell, Vice President of the European Commission arrogantly replied to them saying, “Ukraine has demonstrated the resilience of its institutions guaranteeing democracy, the rule of law and human rights’’ and ignored the plight of these young communists.
Amidst the fanfare in the Western media regarding this issue there is a stony silence when it comes to investigating the war crimes committed against the Russian speaking population of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions now known as the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republics DPR/LPR.
Since the spring of 2014 civilian settlements in the DPR/LPR have been subjected to incessant attacks by the heavy weaponry of the Ukrainian armed forces. The most widely used weaponry has been the heavy artillery systems which have been the biggest killer of civilians over the last 9 years.
The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) has estimated that between April 2014 to 31 December 2021 that between 14,200-14,400 people have died in the civil war in eastern Ukraine. Of these at least 3,400 were civilians and the rest were combatants from both sides.
It should be emphasised that the exact number of casualties is still undetermined due to the large number of missing people, the fact that many civilians under artillery fire buried their relatives in makeshift graves and the fact that many of the militia men from the DPR/LPR did not have uniforms and so many will have been classified as civilians deaths.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the LPR, Anna Sororka, at a recent press conference “Scorched memory of Donbass: war crimes of the Ukrainian army and new data on the massacres of the civilian population’’ gave casualty figures which contrast sharply with those of the UN. Soroka stated that more than 2,000 civilians in the LPR were killed between April 2014 and February 2022 and that 3,365 were injured of whom 88 were children.
Meanwhile, the Commissioner for Human Rights in the DPR, Daria Morozova, stated at the same press conference that more than 5,000 people, including 91 children, were killed during this period. Besides this, over 8,000 civilians were wounded between April 2014-February 2022.
It should be further noted that DPR authorities note that large numbers of civilians were killed/injured by Western supplied armaments. Dimitry Kalshnikov, head of the forensic examination bureau of the DPR, has stated that:
“For the last five years, we have been finding special bullets used by NATO. We have never had such cartridges. As experts, such cartridges simply surprise us: at the entrance there is an awl, and at the exit it tears the tissue at all, we have never seen anything like this. This is assistance to Ukraine from international organizations.’’
During the last year of war the OHCHR has estimated that over 7.1 thousand civilians have been killed and a further 11.756 were reported injured. It does note that the real figures are probably much higher.
The DPR mission to the Joint Control and Coordination Center (JSCC) has estimated that Ukrainian troops have fired 15,000 times at civilian areas of the republic. On it Telegram channel on Monday 20 February it wrote that 108,866 munitions of various calibres have been fired by Ukrainian troops over the last year. These include 39 Toch-U rockets, 231 HIMARS rockets, as well as 22,366 shells of NATO calibre 150mm. According to the JSCC there have been 92 incidents in which civilians have been hit by anti personnel mines.
In its press release the DPR mission to the Joint Control and Coordination Centre estimated that over the course of the last year of fighting 4,440 residents died including 132 children.
Its estimate of the damage caused by Ukrainian shelling to be as follows: 9,889 residential houses and 2,441 civilian infrastructure facilities, including 138 medical and 488 educational institutions, 965 social security facilities, 70 critical infrastructure facilities, 780 electricity, water, heat and gas supply facilities.
Thankfully, a few brave independent journalists, who are dismissed as Kremlin apologists in the West, have reported on this issue throughout the last 8 years. Eva K Bartlett, Christelle Neant and Graham Philips have doggedly recorded the Kiev government’s war on the civilians of the Donbass. The stand out for me is US navy veteran Patrick Lancaster who has issued daily video reports on Youtube showing in graphic, heart breaking detail the impact of Ukrainian shelling on the civilians of the two republics.
Sadly, the Western media and political elites have completely ignored the daily war crimes being committed by Ukrainian forces against the civilians of the DPR and LPR. When you hear the next hysterical story in the Western media about alleged Russian war crimes then you should ask yourself the question: why are they not reporting the daily intensive shelling of civilians in Donetsk?
The grieving families of the invisible victims of the Ukraine war deserve our sympathy and support.
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Dr. Leon Tressell is a regular contributor to Global Research.
This is part two of a two-part study on the Canadian role in the US-NATO attack on Syria for regime change. Canada has blood on its hands. The Canadian government had understood from US intelligence that the Obama plan to destroy Syria was based on using the Muslim Brotherhood, and the political ideology known as Radical Islam, as the foot soldiers inside Syria. The Canadian government understood that the Muslim Brotherhood had infiltrated Canadian society and was involved with the Canadian government at the highest levels. The threat to Canada was known, but the decision was made to blindly follow Washington’s dirty war in Syria.
US President Obama is the main villain in this story, but Canada was capable of standing firm against plans to use Radical Islamic terrorists to change governments abroad.
Canada has supported humanitarian aid to Idlib, but not the rest of the country. Idlib is the last remaining terrorist-controlled province in Syria. It is an olive-growing region with no industry or resources outside of the production of olives. It was chosen as the headquarters of the Al Qaeda branch in Syria (Hayat Tahrir al-Sham) because it sits on the Turkish border. Turkey, following the US directives, supplied the terrorists with all resources needed including tanks and anti-tank missiles which have even been used to bring down a plane.
Canada does not supply any aid to Syria other than Idlib, which represents 2% of the total area of the country. Aleppo, Damascus, Latakia, Hama, Homs, and all other areas in Syria have never received even a loaf of bread from either the US or Canada. However, the UN does supply some food to certain areas outside of Idlib. Funds for the UN World Food Program are in part from US and Canadian donations. Even now, since the 7.8 magnitude quake occurred on February 6, Canada continues to only recognize the 3 million persons in the so-called “The Islamic Republic of Idlib” as Syria. The other 20 million in Syria get nothing, even though Latakia alone has 820 dead, 142,000 homeless due to the quake, and 102 collapsed buildings.
From the US-Canada foreign policy on Syria point of view: Idlib must be maintained as a separate viable ‘state’, free of Damascus. The US-Canada policy is to ignore the government in Damascus and pretend that Idlib is Syria. The Al Qaeda terrorists are thus rewarded by the west for their participation in regime change, which was the Obama policy that Canada signed up to.
Last month, David Pugliese of the Ottawa Citizen published an article detailing the Canadian special forces’ participation in a controversial 20-member US military team dubbed Talon Anvil in 2015, which has been accused of killing scores of innocent people in Iraq and Syria.
“In December 2021 the New York Times revealed that Talon Anvil was responsible for launching tens of thousands of bombs and missiles against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq but in the process had killed hundreds of civilians. The reckless actions of the Talon Anvil team, which operated from 2014 to 2019, alarmed members in the US military and even the CIA, the newspaper reported.”
“Independent investigators and human rights groups have estimated that at least 7,000 civilians were killed by coalition airstrikes in Iraq and Syria.”
Last month, Canada announced it would take back 23 of its citizens who have been held in Islamic State camps in northeast Syria, under the control of the Kurds who are partners of the US military there. The group includes six women, 13 infants, and four men.
This would be the largest repatriation for Canada after the Islamic State caliphate was destroyed in 2019.
More than 42,400 foreign citizens, most of them children, have been held in life-threatening conditions in IS prison camps across Syria, Human Rights Watch says.
Canadian intelligence was well aware of who in Canada was following Radical Islam, and who had left to fight in Syria before the founding of ISIS. They were also following events on the ground in Syria while Canadians and other foreigners were fighting the Syrian government, and who among them had made the transition to joining ISIS once the US-sponsored FSA had disbanded.
In 1998, Richard N. Haass wrote “Sanctions: too much of a bad thing.” In his expert analysis, it was proven that US sanctions do not work in big projects, such as regime change in Syria. He further proved that innocent people suffer under sanctions, and they were immoral and unethical. The sanctions against Syria must be lifted and allow citizens to rebuild their lives and allow foreign governments to donate and invest in the rebuilding of the country.
Aid should be allowed to enter Syria in all locations, from Idlib to Deraa, and all in between. All Syrian citizens should have the right to receive help. Planes with aid should be allowed to land in Damascus, Aleppo, and Latakia and shipping containers should arrive in the port of Latakia.
The international community should be putting pressure on the terrorists in Idlib to lay down their arms or arrange to leave the country. They are holding 3 million civilians as human shields. The freedom of those civilians should be a priority to western nations such as Canada.
The President of Turkey, Tayyip Recip Erdogan, has already voiced his wish to repair his relationship with Damascus. Canada and other peace-loving western nations should be supporting his negotiations with Damascus. Washington has told Erdogan not to talk with President Assad, but Canada could show some backbone and defy Washington by showing support for Erdogan’s peace initiative.
Canada should re-open their Embassy in Damascus. With diplomates and humanitarian experts available on the ground, this would be a positive and constructive action that would truly show the Syrian people that Canada cares.
Finally, Canada should identify the Muslim Brotherhood as a terrorist organization. Care should be taken by all future Canadian governments to study plans in Washington that assume Canadian support. The Canadian government, supported by its intelligence agency, is capable of determining whether the US foreign policy and never-ending wars abroad are in the best interest of Canada. Taking the high road is sometimes a lonely road, but lives and nations might be saved.
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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse. All copyrights are for journalist Steven Sahiounie and Mideast Discourse.
Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.
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The BBC and the mainstream media regularly frighten everyone with the latest climate disaster news with pictures of floods, fires and hurricanes, always followed by scary predictions that things will only get worse unless mankind mends its irresponsible ways.
My alma mater Reuters, the global news agency, used to be above all this hysteria and would relentlessly apply its traditional standards of fairness and balance, but even this mainstream outfit seems to have sold out to the hysterics and axe grinders.
The trouble is, many if not all of these disaster stories, far from being another step in a worsening scenario, are often nothing of the kind. In a recent book Unsettled. What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, And Why It Matters, Steven Koonin uses the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change data to show that if reporters took the trouble to do a minimum amount of checking, most of these incidents would appear to be natural disasters, yes, but not part of some ever worsening syndrome.
Economist Bjorn Lomborg has been pointing out for years that humans are having an impact on the climate, but technology will be a match for any problems. Current Government plans to combat climate change will squander massive amounts of taxpayers’ money and achieve very little in terms of stopping rising global temperature, Lomborg says.
Warmist politicians and lobby groups regularly trash the work of a significant group of climate experts, insulting them with unfounded accusations that they can’t be taken seriously because they have barely perceptible links with ‘Big Oil’ and are ‘climate change deniers’. Criticisms are mainly personal and not aimed at their work. Koonin and Lomborg also suffer the unethical ‘denier’ slur, so let’s destroy that canard first.
Every scientist knows the world’s climate has been gradually and occasionally irregularly warming since the last Ice Age over about 10,000 years. Nobody denies the climate is changing. The ‘denier’ charge is nonsensical. But it performs the useful function of making clear the user knows nothing about climate science. The argument is about the ‘why’ not the ‘if’. Warmists say all the warming is because of man’s activity. The rest say some, a little or none.
Education is another area where balance has been replaced by hysteria-inducing propaganda. Children shown demonstrating on the news are often borderline hysterical. No doubt their teachers didn’t bother to tell them that man-made global warming is a theory not a proven fact, and that it’s okay to talk about different opinions.
If you wonder why much of the mainstream media seem united in accepting that the world will soon die unless humans don hair shirts, freeze in winter and walk instead of driving, you need to know about websites like Covering Climate Now (CCN).
Reuters and some of the biggest names in the news like Bloomberg, Agence France Presse, CBS News, and ABC News have signed up to support CCN, which brags that it is an unbiased seeker after the truth. But this claim won’t last long if you peer behind the façade. CCN may claim to be fair and balanced, but it not only won’t tolerate criticism, it brandishes the unethical ‘denier’ weapon with its nasty holocaust denier echoes. This seeks to demonise those who disagree with it by savaging personalities and denying a hearing, rather than using debate to establish its case.
CCN advises journalists to routinely add to stories about bad weather and flooding to suggest climate change is making these events more intense. This is not an established fact, as a simple routine check would show.
I asked CCN about the nature of its dealings with Reuters and the likes of Bloomberg. Was it to thrash out a general approach to climate change reporting or to be more partisan?
CCN hasn’t replied.
I have a particular interest in Reuters’ attitude because I spent 32 years there as a reporter and editor. The global news agency’s traditional insistence on high standards in reporting makes this liaison with CCN seem questionable.
When Reuters announced its tie-up with CCN in 2019 it said this, among other things.
The (CCN) coalition, which includes more than 350 organisations [there are many more now] has no agenda beyond embracing science and fair coverage and publishing more climate change content.
That is clearly not true. It has a partisan agenda and encourages reporters to dismiss those with contrary opinions as ‘deniers’.
The statement went on to quote Reuters Editor-in-Chief Stephen J. Adler:
Reuters is committed to providing the most accurate and insightful coverage of the climate crisis, as it threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people world-wide. Our hope is that our careful, factual reporting will help nations, businesses and individuals respond to the challenge rapidly and intelligently.
The idea of a ‘climate crisis’ is not widely accepted, but partisans shout about it. It is a very vague claim and hard to define or prove. By Reuters standards shouldn’t this include a balancing view? Certainly, many people believe that there is such a crisis, but lots of people don’t. The idea climate change threatens the health, safety and economic well-being of people worldwide is an assertion, not a fact.
The involvement of Reuters in CCN seems to me to be in direct contradiction to three of its 10 Hallmarks of Reuters Journalism – Hold Accuracy Sacrosanct, Seek Fair Comment, Strive For Balance and Freedom From Bias.
I asked Reuters for its reaction to criticism of its CCN involvement in a new book Not Zero by Ross Clark, published by Forum, and it said this in a statement.
Reuters is deeply committed to covering climate change and its impact on our planet with accuracy, independence and integrity, in keeping with the Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
When I became Reuters global Science and Technology Correspondent in the mid-1990s, the global warming story was top of my agenda. Already by then the BBC was scaring us saying we would all die unless humankind mended its selfish ways. Carbon dioxide (CO2) was the culprit and had to be tamed, then eliminated. I had no reason to think this wasn’t true. I was wrong.
My Reuters credentials meant that I had easy access to the world’s finest climate scientists. To my amazement, none of these would say categorically that the link between CO2 and global warming, now known as climate change, was a proven scientific fact. Some said human production of CO2 was a probable cause, others that it might make some contribution; some said CO2 had no role at all. Everybody agreed that the climate had warmed over the last 10,000 years as the ice age retreated, but most weren’t really sure why. The sun’s radiation, which changes over time, was a favoured culprit.
My reporting reflected the wide range of views, with Reuters typical “on the one hand this, on the other, that” style. But even then, the mainstream media seem to have run out of the energy required, and often lazily went along with the BBC’s faulty, opinionated thesis. It was too much trouble to make the point that the BBC’s conclusion was challenged by many impressive scientists.
Fast forward 20 years and firm proof CO2 was warming the climate still hasn’t been established, but politics has taken over. Sure, there are plenty of computer models with their hidden assumptions ‘proving’ man is guilty as charged, and the assumption that we had the power and knowledge to change the climate became embedded.
The Left had lost all of the economic arguments by the 1990s, and its activists eagerly grabbed the chance to say free markets and small government couldn’t save us from climate change; only government intervention could do that. Letting capitalism run free was a certain way to ensure the end of the planet; smart Lefties should take charge and save us from ourselves.
The debate about climate change is far from over. I’m not a scientist so I don’t know enough to say it’s all man-made or not. But politicians and lobbyists have decided that we are all guilty. They are in the process of dismantling our way of life, ordering us to comply because it’s all for the future and our children. If we are going to give up our civilization, at the very least we ought to have an open debate. Journalists need to stand up and be counted. The trouble is that requires bravery and energy, and an urge to question conventional wisdom.
Reuters should be leading this movement. All it has to do is stand by its 10 Hallmarks. And maybe tell CCN thanks but no thanks; it needs to apply Reuters principles to its climate reporting.
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Neil Winton worked as a journalist at Reuters for 32 years, including as global Science and Technology Correspondent. He writes at Winton’s World.
Featured image is from Billy Wilson; Edited: LW / TO
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The title of this U.N. Release: “Avoid Speculation about the Responsibility…” is “irresponsible”, in contradiction with the fundamental mandate of the UN.
The UN Security Council MUST ADDRESS the Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage.
With the one-year anniversary of the war in Ukraine just days away, the senior United Nations political affairs official told the Security Council today that the Organization is not in a position to verify or confirm any recent claims regarding alleged acts of sabotage against the two Nord Stream undersea gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea, in September 2022.
Rosemary A. DiCarlo, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs in the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, urged the 15-member Council to show restraint and avoid speculation.
“We should avoid any unfounded accusations that could further escalate the already heightened tensions in the region and potentially inhibit the search for the truth,” she stressed, adding that what happened beneath the waters of the Baltic Sea remains unclear. (emphasis by Global Research)
Describing the incident’s fallout as one of many risks the invasion of Ukraine has unleashed on the planet, she declared:
“One year since the start of the war, we must redouble our efforts to end it, in line with international law and the [United Nations] Charter.”
Jeffrey D. Sachs, a professor at Columbia University, also briefed delegates, noting that the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines required a very high degree of planning, expertise and technological capacity. Only a handful of State-level actors have both the technical capacity and the access to the Baltic Sea needed to have carried out such an attack. Describing himself as a specialist in the global economy and emphasizing that he represents no Government or organization in his testimony, he said a recent article in the Washingtonbnew outlet revealed that the intelligence agencies of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries have privately concluded that there is no evidence that the Russian Federation carried out the attack.
He said a detailed account of the Nord Stream destruction by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh attributes the pipeline destruction to a decision ordered by United States President Joe Biden and carried out by United States agents in a covert operation. President Biden’s Administration has responded by characterizing Hersh’s account as “completely and utterly false”, he added. Against that complex backdrop, he urged the Council to require Denmark, Germany and Sweden to submit to it the results of their ongoing investigations of the Nord Stream incidents.
Also briefing today was Ray McGovern, a political activist, who said his remarks are in his personal capacity and reflect his 27-year-long career as an information analyst in the United States intelligence community. Referring to the article published by Seymour Hersh — who often attracts whistle-blowers because of his perfect record of protecting their identities and accurately publishing what they reveal — he said those attempting to smear Mr. Hersh themselves lack a strong record of credibility. He also shared his views on the broader geopolitical landscape, referencing events from past decades and threats facing the planet today.
As Council members took the floor, the representative of the Russian Federation said his delegation convened today’s meeting because Seymour Hersh’s investigation, released on 8 February, showed that the United States executed the Nord Stream sabotage with the help of a NATO ally — a use of force not in line with the aims of the United Nations. His delegation has proposed a draft resolution asking the Secretary-General to set up an independent, international investigation to verify the facts put forward by Mr. Hersh and other journalists. Detailing his doubts about the impartiality of the investigations now being carried out, he said the Russian Federation’s appeals to be involved in those probes have been hypocritically ignored.
The representative of the United States said today’s meeting is a blatant attempt by the Russian Federation to distract from the impact of its illegal and full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which will be deliberated on by the General Assembly later this week. This is not the first time that Moscow has used its seat on the Council to amplify conspiracy theories from the Internet, he pointed out, stressing that accusations that the United States was involved in the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream pipelines are completely false.
Many delegates condemned the September 2022 sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, which are critical civilian infrastructure, and voiced their concerns about the environmental fallout of the resulting gas leaks. Mozambique’s representative, for one, said it is imperative that a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the real cause of the Nord Stream pipeline incident. Together with the potential security implications, those events could also represent an ecological danger, he warned, noting that the release of harmful substances into the environment can have long-lasting consequences for both ecosystems and the health of local communities.
The representative of China said it is increasingly clear that the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines was a deliberate human act. Voicing support for an expedited investigation, he said the United Nations can play an active role by ensuring the security of transboundary infrastructure, among other things. He welcomed the draft resolution tabled by the Russian Federation and underscored the importance of authorizing an impartial investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines.
However, other delegates emphasized that there is no need for an additional investigation into the incident, citing probes already under way under the auspices of Denmark, Germany and Sweden. In that vein, the representative of Albania described the September 2022 attacks as unacceptable and said he looked forward to the conclusion of the investigation now under way. A parallel investigation is not necessary, as no new facts have been presented, he said, agreeing with several other speakers that today’s meeting only aims to divert attention from upcoming events scheduled to mark the first anniversary of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine.
Echoing that view, the United Kingdom’s representative said it was unclear why, after five months, the Russian Federation is suddenly pursuing the issue with such urgency. He welcomed the joint letter from Denmark, Sweden and Germany informing United Nations Member States that investigations are ongoing and voiced his delegation’s full support. He agreed that the likely real reason for the Russian Federation’s urgency today is a desperate desire to shift attention away from the massive casualties suffered recently by its military and from the devastation it has wrought on the people of Ukraine.
Also speaking today were delegates from Ecuador, Gabon, United Arab Emirates, Ghana, Switzerland, Japan, Brazil, France and Malta.
The meeting began at 3:03 p.m. and ended at 4:27 p.m.
Briefings
ROSEMARY A. DICARLO, Under-Secretary-General for Political and Peacebuilding Affairs in the Department of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs, recalled that on 30 September 2022, Navid Hanif, Assistant Secretary-General for Economic Development at the Department of Economic and Social Affairs, briefed the Council on the reported leaks in the Nord Stream gas pipelines. His briefing was based on information and data from publicly available sources. Today’s briefing is based on publicly available information available to date. As Assistant Secretary-General Hanif reported, between 26 and 29 September 2022 four leaks were detected in the Nord Stream undersea pipelines in the Baltic Sea, near the island of Bornholm. The first leak was reported on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline on the morning of 26 September, when seismologists detected a spike in activity. The second and third leaks were reported in the evening of 26 September on the Nord Stream 1 pipeline. A fourth leak was reported in the morning of 29 September on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. Gas supplies flowing from Nord Stream 1 were halted in September, while Nord Stream 2 never entered service.
Nevertheless, she said, the pipelines reportedly held several hundred million cubic meters of natural gas at the time of the incidents. Danish, German and Swedish officials announced they would launch separate investigations into the leaks. The Russian Federation also expressed interest in joining the investigations, while voicing concern that a deliberate act of sabotage and terrorism might be to blame for the explosions that caused the leaks. In October, Danish Police reported that a preliminary investigation found that “powerful explosions” caused the damage. A month later, the Swedish Security Service and Prosecution Authority reported that, according to their preliminary findings, the pipelines had been subject to “gross sabotage”. Swedish officials stated that, in the investigations carried out on site in the Baltic Sea, extensive damage to the gas pipelines resulting from detonations was found. Swedish authorities also seized “foreign items” and found explosive residue on a number of them. Presently, German and Danish investigations are also ongoing.
Citing new reports alleging acts of sabotage involving the two pipelines, she reiterated that the United Nations is not in a position to verify or confirm any of the claims relating to those incidents and is awaiting the findings of ongoing national investigations. “Given the sensitivity and speculation regarding this issue, we urge all concerned to show restraint and avoid any speculation,” she said, adding: “We should avoid any unfounded accusations that could further escalate the already heightened tensions in the region and potentially inhibit the search for the truth.” While exactly what happened beneath the waters of the Baltic Sea in September 2022 remains unclear, she emphasized that one thing is certain — whatever caused the incident, its fallout is one of many risks the invasion of Ukraine has unleashed.
JEFFREY D. SACHS, Professor at Columbia University in the United States, said he is a specialist in the global economy and represents no Government or organization in his testimony. As the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines on 26 September 2022 constitutes an act of international terrorism and represents a threat to peace, it is the Council’s responsibility to take up the question of who might have carried out the act, help bring the perpetrator to justice, pursue compensation for the damaged parties and prevent such actions from recurring in the future. Noting the vast economic losses related to the pipeline itself and the heightened threat to transboundary infrastructure, he pointed out that the global transformation to green energy will require considerable infrastructure of that sort. Countries need full confidence that their infrastructure will not be destroyed by third parties.
The destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines required a very high degree of planning, expertise and technological capacity, he continued, adding that only a handful of State-level actors have both the technical capacity and access to the Baltic Sea to have carried out this action. These include the Russian Federation, the United States, the United Kingdom, Poland, Norway, Germany, Denmark and Sweden, either individually or in some combination. Ukraine lacks the necessary technologies, as well as access to the Baltic Sea, he added.
He went on to note that a recent report by the Washington Post news outlet revealed that the intelligence agencies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries have privately concluded that there is no evidence that the Russian Federation carried out the act. Denmark, Germany and Sweden have reportedly carried out investigations of the Nord Stream terrorism incident, and while Sweden has perhaps the most to tell the world about the crime scene, that country has kept the results of its investigation secret from the rest of the world. It has refused to share its findings with the Russian Federation and turned down a joint investigation with Denmark and Germany. The Council must require those countries to immediately turn over the results of their investigations, he emphasized.
Pointing to investigative journalist Seymour Hersh’s detailed account of the Nord Stream destruction, he said his work attributes the Nord Stream destruction to a decision ordered by United States President Joseph R. Biden and carried out by United States agents in a covert operation. The Biden Administration has described Hersh’s account as “completely and utterly false” but did not offer any information contradicting Hersh’s account and/or any alternative explanation. He voiced his hope that the United States, together with all other Council members, will condemn that heinous act of international terrorism and join in an urgent Council-led investigation. The world will be safe only when the Council’s permanent members work together diplomatically to resolve global crises, including the war in Ukraine and the rising tensions in East Asia, he added.
RAY MCGOVERN, political activist, also briefed the Council, stating that his remarks are in his personal capacity and reflect his 27-year-long career as an information analyst in the United States intelligence community. Outlining the many weapons treaties on which he worked over the years — including those between the United States and what is now the Russian Federation — he said that, more recently, various United States Presidents have pulled out of important bilateral agreements. He also recalled the history of false information provided to the Security Council by those in the United States who believed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, which it did not.
Referring to an article published recently by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh — who attributes the Nord Stream pipeline destruction to a decision ordered by United States President Joseph R. Biden and carried out by United States agents — he stressed that Mr. Hersh attracts whistle-blowers because of his perfect record of protecting their identities and accurately publishing what they reveal, despite Government attacks. While some are now smearing Mr. Hersh, such critics do not themselves have a good record of credibility. Commenting on the idea that the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, he pointed out that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) more than doubled in size, despite its promises not to. When Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin noted that the country had to annex Crimea due to a February 2014 coup, and due to the prospect that medium-range ballistic missiles will be placed in already operational systems in Romania and Poland. Despite being disguised as anti-ballistic missile systems, they can easily accommodate hypersonic missiles, he stressed.
Emphasizing that all those matters have a human dimension despite their highly technical nature, he recalled that the United States suffered an extremely bleak period over the many years that suppressed its African-descended citizens. “We have to keep on moving forward, never turning back,” he said, reciting the lyrics of an old Civil Rights era song from the United States. It is up to the Council to keep moving forward and to reject efforts return global relations to an even darker moment, he concluded.
Statements
VASSILY A. NEBENZIA (Russian Federation) said this significant meeting is coming together with a very different tone than the 30 September 2022 meeting on the same subject, namely the sabotage committed against the Nord Stream gas pipelines. It was clear at that time, in principle, who could be behind that act of international terrorism. The Russian Federation initiated criminal proceedings under its criminal code. Meanwhile, the United States leadership made several statements, which boiled down to the following: If the Russian Federation continues to act in a way that is not pleasing to the United States, the Nord Stream pipeline would be destroyed. The United States totally denied its participation in the sabotage, and still does.
His delegation convened the meeting because on 8 February, journalist Seymour Hersh released information showing that the United States executed the sabotage and did so with the help of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) ally. He proved that American divers in summer 2022 planted explosives under the Nord Stream, which were activated three months later by the Norwegians. What happened represents the use of force with means that are not in line with aims of the United Nations, he said, describing the depth of information as astonishing and collected by a journalist with a flawless reputation. Along with its allies, the United States supports a rules-based order where the rules are dictated by themselves, and now they have blown up a foreign pipeline that is the property of a party with whom they are not at war.
Warning that such actions may be a precursor to other operations meant to weaken different States, he said the chances are high this could happen again, especially if the perpetrators of the Nord Stream pipeline explosion are not brought to justice and compensation is not received by the victims. The Russian Federation is not here to set up a trial in the Council, but rather has proposed a draft resolution asking the Secretary-General to set up an independent, international investigation to verify the facts put forward by Mr. Hersh and others. His delegation doubts the impartiality of the investigations now being carried out, which are not transparent, and Moscow’s requests to be involved in the investigations have been hypocritically ignored. Against that backdrop, he hoped the Council would take the steps necessary.
DOMINGOS ESTÊVÃO FERNANDES (Mozambique) said it is imperative that a thorough investigation is conducted to determine the real cause of the 2022 Nord Stream pipeline incident. He called on all involved Governments to act in good faith and in an expeditious and thorough manner, while taking into account the seriousness of allegations of sabotage. Together with the potential security implications, the Nord Stream incident could also represent an ecological danger, he said, noting that the release of harmful substances into the environment can have long-lasting consequences for both ecosystems and the health of local communities. Noting that the European Space Agency estimated that the emissions leaked from the Nord Stream pipelines are roughly equivalent to one and a half days of global methane emissions, he said it is the Council’s responsibility to take all necessary measures to minimize such harm and ensure that such incidents are prevented in the future.
MONICA SOLEDAD SANCHEZ IZQUIERDO (Ecuador) said nothing justifies attacks against essential civilian infrastructure, including energy infrastructure. She also highlighted the serious environmental consequences of attacks on energy pipelines, condemning the attacks that struck Nord Stream in September 2022 and urging all United Nations Member States to exercise the greatest caution and maximum restraint. She welcomed the joint letter sent to inform the Council about the ongoing investigations under way, which are being undertaken in line with the fundamental principle of the rule of law. Against that backdrop, the global community and the Council in particular must support the investigations and avoid any actions that might limit them or disrupt them.
EDWIGE KOUMBY MISSAMBO (Gabon) said today’s meeting is being held to again consider the strong suspicion of sabotage that accompanied the leak of gas from the Nord Stream undersea pipelines in the Baltic Sea. Pointing out that leaks of gas are more warming to the environment than carbon dioxide, she described the incident in September 2022 as a genuine environmental disaster. The Council’s 30 September meeting showed that the possibility of an accident was excluded and an investigation was needed. Joining other speakers in condemning the unjustifiable attacks on civilian infrastructure — which damaged the environment and created economic shocks — she called on all parties to demonstrate responsibility and ensure those responsible for the attacks are held accountable.
THOMAS PATRICK PHIPPS (United Kingdom) condemned the acts of sabotage targeting the Nord Stream pipeline. However, it is not clear to his delegation why, after five months, the Russian Federation is suddenly pursuing the issue with such urgency. He welcomed the joint letter from Denmark, Sweden and Germany informing United Nations Member States that investigations are ongoing and voiced full support for those technical investigations lead by competent national authorities. The only recent development regarding Nord Stream of which his delegation is aware is a new round of lurid accusations by the Russian Federation-controlled media. The basis for those accusations is an article by an American journalist, which cites only a single secret source, and which has been comprehensively debunked by others online, he added. The likely real reason for the Russian Federation’s urgency today is a desperate desire to shift attention away from the massive casualties suffered by the Russian Federation’s military and from the devastation it has wrought on the people of Ukraine, he said.
MOHAMED ISSA ABUSHAHAB (United Arab Emirates) said acts of sabotage against energy infrastructure, such as the explosions that damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea last September, are unacceptable. They pose a significant threat to international security, stability and prosperity, he said, adding that the 2022 explosions had devastating consequences for the planet, leading to the worst methane gas leak ever recorded. “As we work together to prevent and address climate change, such events only make our collective efforts more difficult,” he stressed, expressing support for a serious investigation into the September 2022 events alongside efforts to reduce tensions. “It is important that investigations are grounded in science and facts, not politics and posturing,” he added, noting that the gravity of the situation demands a serious and sober approach and requires holding those responsible accountable. All concerned parties should refrain from resorting to unilateral measures or escalatory actions, he added, emphasizing that the world can ill afford such steps against the backdrop of its present regional and international uncertainty.
HAROLD ADLAI AGYEMAN (Ghana) welcomed the recent joint update by Denmark, Germany and Sweden, noting that the ongoing investigative processes should also endeavour to keep the Russian Federation authorities and operators informed and their cooperation sought as necessary. Critical infrastructure especially of a transnational kind should be protected and kept safe from harm, he underscored, voicing concern about greenhouse gas emissions – which have non-localized consequences. He urged cooperation among all relevant actors to establish the facts and appropriate remedial action, including ensuring accountability. While investigations are ongoing, all parties concerned must exercise restraint, he said, cautioning against unilateral actions that could be detrimental to peace.
ANDREA BARBARA BAUMANN-BRESOLIN (Switzerland), recalling the September 2022 Council meeting on the present topic as well as the letter sent to the Council by Sweden and Denmark on 29 September, said all available information indicates that the damages to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines, which resulted in worrying gas leaks, were acts of sabotage. She condemned any attack on critical infrastructure, such as energy infrastructure, and its consequences for people, the economy and the environment. It is important to stick to the facts and to support any credible effort to shed light on the September incident, she said, spotlighting the joint letter submitted today by Germany, Denmark and Sweden regarding the ongoing investigations.
TAMAURA SHU (Japan) expressed deep concern about the September 2022 Nord Stream pipelines incidents, as well as their potential long-term damage and risk to the marine environment and climate. Noting that Japan is closely monitoring the progress of the investigation, he said the incident “reminds us once again” of the importance of ensuring the safety of energy infrastructure. Any targeting of such infrastructure and facilities must be avoided, he said, strongly condemning any such violence. Urging all those involved to exercise restraint and refrain from engaging in any activity that could disrupt peace and stability, he expressed his hope that the results of the ongoing efforts of investigation by Sweden and Denmark will clarify the cause, and that the Council will be able to discuss the issue on the ground based on the results of the investigation.
JOHN KELLEY (United States) said today’s meeting is a blatant attempt by the Russian Federation to distract from the impact of its illegal and full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which will be deliberated on by the General Assembly later this week. This is not the first time that Moscow has used its seat on the Council to amplify conspiracy theories from the Internet, he pointed out, stressing that accusations that the United States was involved in the act of sabotage on the Nord Stream pipelines are false. Competent authorities in Denmark, Germany and Sweden are investigating those incidents in a comprehensive, transparent and impartial manner, he added, pointing out that resources for United Nations investigations should be reserved for cases when States are unwilling or unable to investigate genuinely. The Russian Federation’s proposed draft resolution clearly implicates the United States and mischaracterizes statements by United States officials, he said, noting that it does not seek an impartial investigation but seeks to prejudice ongoing ones toward a predetermined conclusion of its choosing.
ARIAN SPASSE (Albania) said the September attacks on the Nord Stream pipeline were unacceptable and welcomed the prompt response and investigations that were initiated to determine the perpetrators. That investigation is under way and his delegation looks forward to its conclusion. Against that backdrop, there is no need for a parallel investigation to overlap with the current one. No new facts were presented at today’s meeting, just assumptions. Stressing that the Council is not a depository for conspiracy theories, he said the timing of the request for today’s meeting is no coincidence. It aims to divert the attention from the events scheduled to mark the first anniversary of the Russian Federation’s invasion of Ukraine. Emphasizing that the Russian Federation is trying to misuse the Council, he said there is no need for any resolution on this issue.
RONALDO COSTA FILHO (Brazil) pointed to a press article that reported serious allegations about September’s incidents regarding the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, which motivated today’s meeting. It is widely known that there are claims that these incidents were acts of sabotage, he said, noting that any response should be based on the results of impartial investigations. The seriousness of the allegations and the accusation of involvement of State actors must be given due consideration by the Council, he said, calling for greater transparency in the dissemination of established facts and restraint in the propagation of unproven interpretations. He further emphasized that harmful consequences of the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines for the environment need to be assessed by proper international bodies.
ISIS MARIE DORIANE JARAUD-DARNAULT (France) said the explosions targeting the Nord Stream pipeline were the result of a deliberate act. Investigations have been carried out and there is no reason to doubt them, she stressed, calling instead for them to be brought to a conclusion. However, there is every reason to doubt the intervention of the Russian Federation at this point, five months after the leaks. Moscow is doing all it can do to divert the international community’s attention, as 24 February marks the one-year anniversary of its invasion of Ukraine.
ZHANG JUN (China) said it is increasingly clear that the damage to the Nord Stream pipelines was a deliberate human act. Voicing support for expediting the investigation, he said the United Nations can play an active role by ensuring the security of transboundary infrastructure, among other things. He welcomed the draft resolution tabled by the Russian Federation and underscored the importance of authorizing an investigation into the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines. Voicing concern about recent details related to the incident, he said a simple statement of utterly false and complete fiction is not enough to answer the many concerns raised around the world. He expressed his delegation’s expectation that convincing explanations will be presented by relevant parties, while also drawing attention to a global security initiative concept paper released today by China.
DARREN CAMILLERI (Malta), Council President for February, speaking in his national capacity, said all available information indicates that the leaks caused by the damage to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines were the result of a deliberate act. Any deliberate disruption of energy infrastructure is dangerous and irresponsible, particularly in the midst of a global energy crisis, he emphasized, calling the weaponization of energy and infrastructure “unacceptable”. The damage increased strain on global energy markets, impacting not only the countries which received energy through the Nord Stream pipeline, but also developing countries. Against that backdrop, he underlined his country’s solidarity with Denmark, Sweden and Germany and voiced its strong support for the ongoing investigations aimed at establishing the full truth behind the leaks.
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Comments Off on UN Report: ‘Avoid Speculation’ About Responsibility for 2022 Nord Stream Pipeline Incident, Official Urges Security Council, Stressing United Nations Cannot Verify Claims
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Russia has repeated a call on Sweden to share its findings from an investigation into the blasts that put the Nord Stream 1 pipeline out of commission and damaged the brand-new Nord Stream 2.
The UN Security Council is set to meet on Tuesday and could potentially vote on a Russian draft resolution to investigate the explosions.
Sweden and Denmark conducted a joint investigation of the blasts and concluded they were intentional but stopped short of naming the perpetrator. Then, earlier this month, veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hershpublished a report that said the United States had carried out the attacks.
The report prompted an immediate denial from Washington and a double-down from Russia on its insistence to gain access to the conclusions of Sweden’s and Denmark’s investigation into the blasts. Moscow also called for a special session of the UN Security Council this week to discuss the sabotage.
“Almost five months have passed since the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines. All this time, however, the Swedish authorities, as if on cue, remain silent,” the Russian embassy in Sweden said on Telegram as quoted by Reuters. “What is the leadership of Sweden so afraid of?”
Earlier this month Russia urged an international investigation into the blasts, following the publication of Seymour Hirsch’s investigation.
“The published facts should become the basis for an international investigation, bringing Biden and his accomplices to justice, as well as paying compensation to countries affected by the terrorist attack,” the speaker of the Russian parliament, the Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, said on Telegram, calling U.S. President Joe Biden “a terrorist who ordered the destruction of energy infrastructure of his partners—Germany, France, and the Netherlands.”
Sweden’s refusal to share information about the sabotage of Nord Stream is “puzzling,” and withholding the results of the investigation means that “Swedish authorities are hiding something,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said last month.
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Can the president fight any war he wishes? Can Congress fund any war it chooses? Are there constitutional and legal requirements that must first be met before war is waged? Can the United States legally attack an ally?
These questions should be front and center in a debate over the U.S. involvement in Ukraine. Sadly, there has been no great debate. The media are mouthing what the CIA is telling them, and only a few websites and podcasts — my own, “Judging Freedom” on You Tube, among them — are challenging the government’s reckless, immoral, illegal and unconstitutional war.
All power in the federal government comes from the Constitution and from no other source. Congress, however, has managed to extend its reach beyond the confines of the Constitution domestically by spending money in areas that it cannot regulate and purchasing compliance from the states by bribery.
Examples of this are the numerical minimum blood alcohol content to trigger DWI arrests, and maximum speed limits. In both instances, Congress offered money to the states to pave highways provided they lower both numbers, and the cash-strapped states accepted the money along with congressional strings. These are bribes from the criminal consequences of which Congress has exempted itself.
The same takes place in foreign policy. Congress cannot legally declare war on Russia, since there is no militarily-grounded reason for doing so. Russia poses no threat to American national security or American persons or property. Moreover, the U.S. has no treaty with Ukraine that triggers an American military defense. But Congress spends money on war nevertheless.
Under the Constitution, only Congress can declare war on a nation or group. The last time it did so was to initiate American involvement in World War II. But Congress has given away limited authority to presidents and permitted them to fight undeclared wars. Examples of this are President George W. Bush’s disastrous and criminal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, and the War Powers Resolution of 1973.
Congress has not only not declared war on Russia; it has not authorized the use of American military forces against it. Yet, it has given President Joe Biden a blank check for $100 billion and authorized him to spend it on military equipment for Ukraine however he sees fit.
He has promised to continue giving Ukraine whatever it needs for “as long as it takes.” As long as it takes to do what? He cannot answer that because he has no clear military objective. Eliminating Russian troops from Ukraine and Crimea or Russian President Vladimir Putin from office are not realistically attainable military goals.
Congress has only authorized weapons and cash to be sent to Ukraine, but Biden has sent troops as well. The U.S. involvement in Vietnam began the same way: no declaration of war, no authorization for the use of military force, yet a gradual buildup of American troops as advisers and instructors, and then a congressionally supported war that saw half a million American troops deployed, 10% of whom came home in body bags.
We don’t know how many American troops are in Ukraine, as they are out of uniform and their whereabouts a secret. We do know that they are involved in hostilities, since much of the hardware that Biden has sent requires American know-how to operate and maintain. And some of the weaponry has American troops actually targeting Russian forces and pulling the triggers.
Are American soldiers killing Russian soldiers? Yes. None of it has been authorized by Congress, but Congress has paid for it in borrowed dollars.
Now back to the Constitution. The War Powers Resolution, which requires presidential notification to Congress of the use of American military force, is unconstitutional because it consists of Congress giving away one of its core functions — declaring war. The Supreme Court has characterized delegating away core functions as violative of the separation of powers.
Nevertheless, Biden has not informed Congress of his intentions to use American troops violently. Yet, he has used the Navy and the CIA to attack Germany — a war crime and a violation of the NATO treaty — and he has soldiers out of uniform in Ukraine, so as to perpetuate the deception that boots are not on the ground.
Don’t be surprised if Biden gives War Powers Act notice secretly to the Gang of Eight. What’s that? The Gang of Eight is the Congress within the Congress. It consists of the chairs and ranking members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House and Senate with which the president legally shares secrets.
Just as Congress cannot delegate away its war-making powers to the president, it cannot delegate them away to the Gang of Eight. The concept of the Gang of Eight is antithetical to democratic values. Informing them of whatever violence the president is up to is done under an oath of secrecy. What kind of democracy operates and kills in secret?
The various treaties to which the U.S. is a party limit its war-making to that which is defensive, proportional and reasonable. So, if a foreign power is about to strike — like on 9/11, while the government slept — the president can strike first in order to protect the U.S. Beyond an imminent attack, the basis for war must be real, the adversary’s anti-U.S. military behavior must be grave, the objective of war must be clear and attainable, and the means must be proportionate to the threat.
Has Russia threatened the U.S.? No. What grave acts has the Russian military committed against the U.S.? None. What is Biden’s objective? He won’t say.
Does the Congress uphold the Constitution? Does the president? The answers are obvious. We have reposed the Constitution for safekeeping into the hands of those who ignore it. The consequences are death, debt and the loss of personal liberty.
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The foreign ministers of the United States, Germany, and Ukraine have told the world “you can’t be neutral” in NATO’s proxy war with Russia, recalling President George W. Bush’s infamous declaration, “You are either with us, or against us”.
In doing so, these Western officials are implicitly criticizing the vast majority of the countries on Earth, which are in the Global South, and which have maintained strict neutrality over the war.
“Neutrality is not an option, because then you are standing on the side of the aggressor”.
Baerbock emphasized that
“this is a plea we are also giving next week to the world again: Please take a side, a side for peace, a side for Ukraine, a side for the humanitarian international law, and these times this means also delivering ammunition so Ukraine can defend itself”.
The German foreign minister’s comments were echoed by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“As Annalena [Baerbock] said, there is no neutral position… There is no balance”, Blinken said, stressing, “You really can’t be neutral”.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba praised the West for “stand[ing] for principles and rules”, while implying that the Global South is barbaric and lawless.
“We see an unprecedented unity of one part of the world that stands for principles and rules this world is based on, but we also see other parts of the world, some are neutral, which means effectively the support of Russia”, Kuleba said with disgust.
Baerbock had previously made it clear that the West is waging war on Russia, declaring at the Council of Europe in January, “We are fighting a war against Russia”.
The tone and context of the comments made by top Western officials at the Munich Security Conference on February 18 made it clear that they are angry with the Global South for refusing to join their proxy war.
The foreign ministers of the US, Germany, and Ukraine told the world, “Neutrality is not an option” in the West’s proxy war against Russia.
They were implicitly criticizing the Global South, which is neutral, and represents 6+ billion people.
Vast majority of world population, located in Global South, is neutral in Ukraine proxy war
A day before this discussion at the Munich Security Conference, French state media outlet France 24 published an article complaining that, “Over the past year, most Global South countries adopted a position of studied neutrality on the war in Ukraine”.
In a deeply arrogant voice, the French state media outlet wrote dismissively that “what binds this diverse group [in the Global South] together is the quest for a ‘multipolar’ world order stacked against the ‘unipolar hegemony’ of the West”. It added smugly that this “also happens to be Russia’s favourite talking point”.
This condescending talking point has been a consistent refrain coming from Western governments and media outlets, criticizing the Global South for not taking NATO’s side.
The global population is roughly 8 billion people, and more than 6 billion live in countries that have been neutral in the Ukraine proxy war.
These include the world’s most populous countries, such as:
While the United States and its closest allies in Europe and Asia have imposed tough economic sanctions on Moscow, 87 percent of the world’s population has declined to follow us. Economic sanctions have united our adversaries in shared resistance.
Less predictably, the outbreak of Cold War II has also led countries that were once partners or non-aligned to become increasingly multi-aligned.
This global divergence is especially clear when one looks at a map of which countries have imposed sanctions on Russia.
These nations only represent a bit over 1 billion people: the United States, Canada, Britain, European Union, Australia, South Korea, and Japan (the last two of which have been militarily occupied by the US for decades).
Russia commonly refers to this bloc as the “collective West”, and their comparatively wealth population as the “golden billion” that has benefited from the economic exploitation inherent in the imperialist world-system.
The countries in yellow have sanctioned Russia. The countries in gray have not sanctioned Russia. pic.twitter.com/0md8fPxOoB
The publication noted with anger that most African nations were “calling for peace but blaming Nato’s eastward expansion for the war, complaining of western ‘double standards’ and resisting all calls to criticise Russia”.
Today, almost all African countries are members of the Non-Aligned Movement, and are decidedly neutral.
Western attacks on the Non-Aligned Movement
This Western narrative that Global South countries are not actually neutral goes back to the First Cold War.
In 1961, leftist leaders of India, Ghana, Egypt, Indonesia, and Yugoslavia formed the Non-Aligned Movement. This bloc represented the majority of the world population and consisted of countries, largely in the Global South, that opposed colonialism and imperialism and did not want to participate in the cold war. They sought to build a truly multipolar world, not a bipolar one.
Because the Non-Aligned Movement was led by socialists (India’s Jawaharlal Nehru, Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah, Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Indonesia’s Sukarno, and Yugoslavia’s Josip Broz Tito), the United States and its cold war allies attacked the movement and claimed that being non-aligned really meant being a secret supporter of the Soviet-led communist bloc.
The CIA backed a coup against Nkrumah in Ghana in 1966. The year before, the CIA sponsored a coup against Sukarno in Indonesia (and subsequently supported the genocide carried out by US-backed right-wing dictator Suharto, who killed between 1 and 3 million leftists). The United States also repeatedly tried to overthrow Nasser, but failed.
Western imperialist powers have long adopted this George W. Bush-esque position, that any country that did not actively support them was against them.
Ukraine itself had been an observer state in the Non-Aligned Movement. In 2010, the government of democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych voted to officially declare Ukraine non-aligned.
A map of Non-Aligned Movement members (dark blue) and observer states (light blue)
Global South countries condemn Russian invasion, but blame Western aggression and maintain neutrality
The misleading comments by Blinken, Baerbock, and Kuleba claiming the Global South is not actually neutral about Ukraine are objectively false. But this doesn’t mean that all of these Global South countries support Russia’s war.
Many countries in the Global South have condemned the Russian invasion.
On March 2, 2022, a week after Russia sent its troops into Ukraine, the majority of member states of the United Nations did vote to condemn the invasion, including many countries in the Global South.
However, Eritrea, the DPRK, Syria, and Belarus voted against the resolution, and 35 member states abstained, including massive countries like China and India (which together have nearly 3 billion people), as well as Pakistan, South Africa, Iran, Iraq, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Vietnam, Algeria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Mozambique, and Lao.
Then in April, the General Assembly held another vote, this time to expel Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
There was less support for this resolution, with 93 votes in favor.
58 countries abstained, such as India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan.
24 countries voted against the measure, including China, Iran, Algeria, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, Ethiopia, Mali, Laos, Vietnam, and Zimbabwe.
URGENT🚨
The UN General Assembly votes to suspend Russia's membership in the UN Human Rights Council @UN_HRC
The Western bloc wants the world to believe there are only two options: aligning with it, or opposing it.
But most countries on Earth, representing the vast majority of the world’s population, in the Global South, truly are neutral.
NATO is simply frustrated that 87% of the planet won’t join its war efforts.
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Featured image: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock, and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba condemn neutrality at the Munich Security Conference on February 18, 2023 (Source: BR24 via GER)
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***
This is part of our weeklong series marking the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, February 24, 2022.See all of the stories here.
Earlier this month, arms maker General Atomics made Ukraine a tempting offer. For the low price of $0.50 a pop, the defense contractor would send Kyiv two of its top-of-the-line MQ-9 Reaper drones, which are usually valued at about $30 million per plane. (Budget-conscious readers should keep in mind that shipping and handling — worth nearly $20 million — were not included.)
While the PR stunt has yet to pay off, it serves as a reminder that, for arms makers, high-profile conflicts are a remarkable marketing opportunity. In just a few months, HIMARS and Javelin missiles went from obscure pieces of military equipment to widely recognized symbols of the brave Ukrainian resistance against Russian aggression.
This more subtle ad campaign has already started to pay dividends. Two weeks ago, the State Department approved a potential $10 billion deal with Poland for a new fleet of HIMARS and related equipment. Warsaw also put in a nearly $4 billion order for American Abrams tanks last year after sending Kyiv more than 200 of its Soviet-era T-72s. And other countries in eastern Europe — including Estonia, Finland, and Lithuania — have given Ukraine many of their Soviet-era arms and sought to replace them with cutting-edge Western weapons.
These sales are just one aspect of a broader boom in the global arms trade. While other factors — like increased U.S.-China tensions — have contributed to this trend, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has played a key role in driving international demand for weapons to new highs.
At this stage, it’s hard to predict who will benefit the most from this boom. So far, Western weapons makers have experienced the largest boost, but the long-term impact may be the creation of a “multipolar” arms trade, according to Eric Woods of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
“The trend is towards diversification away from one or two big suppliers like it was during the Cold War,” Woods told RS. “It’s more multipolar, much like the rest of the international system.”
One key reason for this shift is the relative stagnation of the Russian defense industry. While definitive arms sale numbers are nearly impossible to find, well-respected sources like the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) have noted a fairly dramatic decline in Moscow’s weapons sales in recent years, allowing the United States to open up a dominant lead as the world’s leading exporter.
As Richard Connolly of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) points out, this apparent drop may be due to the fact that Russia has become more secretive about its arms sales in order to avoid triggering Western sanctions. But, Connolly notes, even official Russian numbers on weapons exports have stagnated at around $15 billion annually in recent years, while other countries have seen spikes.
Contrary to many predictions, Russia has so far managed to keep up with major contracts that it agreed to before the war. Connolly attributes this resilience to the fact that Russia’s defense industry makes different products for its domestic and foreign markets. And weapons factories throughout the country have dramatically expanded their operations since the invasion, with some production lines now “operating around the clock” in order to meet demand.
Despite Moscow’s best efforts, however, countries have started to become more wary of its reliability as an exporter and more attuned to the potential costs of working with the Kremlin. India — the world’s leading importer of Russian weapons — is particularly concerned about these downsides, according to Akriti Kalyankar of the Stimson Center.
“The war has really brought home to New Delhi that Russia is actually in decline and that India’s dependence on Russia is something that it needs to change,” Kalyankar said at a recent panel discussion. France, which SIPRI ranked as the second leading weapons exporter in 2021, has tried to capitalize on these concerns in order to supplant Russia as India’s leading arms supplier. U.S. officials have also suggested that they are targeting the lucrative Indian import market.
Notably, both India and China have embarked on missions to expand their domestic weapons production. If successful, these initiatives would allow them to reduce their reliance on Moscow and perhaps even compete for defense contracts in the increasingly multipolar industry.
As Russia fights to hold its dwindling share of the market, U.S. companies have struggled to keep up with the massive spike in demand for weapons. This has helped to open up space for the growing number of mid-sized producers like Turkey, whose inexpensive Bayraktar drones have been in highdemand after Ukraine deftly employed them to beat back Russia’s initial invasion.
But perhaps the biggest success story is South Korea. Seoul’s rapidly growing defense industry has strong support from President Yoon Suk Yeol, who declared last year that his aim is to become the world’s fourth largest weapons exporter by 2027. (South Korea was the eighth leading exporter in 2021, according to SIPRI data.)
“The Ukraine war has given them a great chance to sell arms to major NATO countries,” said Hoshik Nam, a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Iowa. After Russia’s invasion, South Korea reached a nearly $6 billion deal with Poland for tanks, howitzers, and ammunition, some of which have already been delivered. Norway and Estonia have also expressed interest in importing Korean weapons.
Seoul has some unique advantages as a weapons maker, according to Nam. Given that the country is still technically at war with North Korea, its defense industry is able to rapidly scale up to meet demand at times of crisis at a “relatively cheap price,” and its weapons are largely compatible with NATO systems because of its long-standing defense relationship with the United States. And unlike their American peers, Korean contractors are more willing to transfer technologies for use by other countries.
There is, however, one big exception to Seoul’s selling spree. According to Nam, it is “highly unlikely” that South Korea will budge in its pledge to not sell arms directly to Ukraine because of the country’s sensitive relationships with Russia and North Korea, as well as its general policy against sending weapons into active war zones.
But this hasn’t stopped Seoul from finding some creative solutions. Reports surfaced in November of last year that South Korea had agreed to sell 100,000 rounds of artillery ammunition to the United States, which it insisted would be the “end user” of the weapons. But American officials told the AP that the rounds would actually be headed to Ukraine after passing through the U.S.
As the war drags on, demand for weapons will likely continue to rise in Europe as Ukraine’s supporters rebuild their stockpiles and modernize their militaries. But, as Jeff Abramson of the Arms Control Association argues, the weapons build-up will not end alongside the conflict. Instead, arms sales will likely continue to rise as weapons makers compete for clients in regions far removed from eastern Europe.
“Once you revitalize and grow that industry, you will see increased flows of weapons outside of the conflict in Ukraine,” Abramson told RS. “That is the history of a burgeoning arms market — it doesn’t stop [with] Ukraine.”
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Featured image: Hyundai Rotem shows off its K2 main battle tank in a 2022 expo in Seoul. (Shutterstock/ Flying Camera)
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Ukraine’s military intelligence agency has shared photos of a Black Hawk helicopter. The American-made aircraft was painted with a Ukrainian flag, and the intel org suggested it was used in military operations.
Two photos showing a Black Hawk were posted on the Twitter account and website of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence on Tuesday. A press release accompanying the images said the agency had recently completed military missions.
“Military intelligence aviation of Ukraine continues its work on the front line of the defense of our country. Reconnaissance pilots have just returned from another combat mission,” it said, adding that “Combat helicopters significantly increase the capabilities of the special units of the Main Directorate of Intelligence and the effectiveness of special operations.”
🔥 Military intelligence aviation of #Ukraine continues to work at the front line of our country’s defense
😎 Reconnaissance pilots have just returned from another combat mission.
Another aircraft seen in the photos was identified by the Drive as a Ukrainian Mi-24 Hind.
It is unclear how Kiev obtained the American helicopter or whether it has been used in combat operations. Officially, the White House has approved sending Soviet-era Mi-17 Helicopters – aircraft formerly owned by the Afghan government prior to its collapse in 2021 – though it has made no mention of Black Hawks to date.
In June, the assault and reconnaissance wing of the Intelligence Directorate, known as the ‘Shaman battalion,’ claimed to have carried out operations inside Russian territory, according to the Times of London. The outlet said the commandos were flown into the country via helicopter, but did not specify what type.
Despite repeated demands from Kiev, President Joe Biden has resisted sending long-range weapons over concerns they could be used for attacks on Russian soil. However, the White House has nonetheless authorized increasingly heavy arms shipments, including the ground-launched small-diameter bomb (GLSDB), which can strike targets more than 90 miles away, as well as dozens of advanced HIMARS multi-launch rocket platforms, a Patriot missile battery and a number of other systems.
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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute.
Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer and editor at RT.
Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.
Featured image: Ukrainian military intelligence operatives are seen with a US-made Black Hawk military helicopter following a combat operation, in an undisclosed location in Ukraine, February 21, 2023. (Credit: Main Directorate of Intelligence of Ukraine)
The Federal Aviation Administration said a twin-engine Beech BE20 crashed after departing Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport in Little Rock, Arkansas, around noon.
The plane, with five people aboard, was heading to John Glenn International in Columbus, Ohio.
The Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office told reporters at a news conference that there were no survivors.
CTEH, a science-based consulting firm, owns the plane and said all on board were employees.
The company said they were heading to Oakwood Village in Ohio to assist with the aftermath of a deadly fire at the I. Schumann & Co. copper alloy company.
An explosion at the metals plant on Monday killed a maintenance worker and injured more than a dozen people. Fire officials said the explosion likely happened in the building’s foundry, where molten metals are held in kettles.
First responders battle a blaze at a plant in the Cleveland suburb of Oakwood Village. Feb. 20, 2023. (Courtesy: WEWS)
“We are incredibly saddened to report the loss of our Little Rock colleagues,” said Dr. Paul Nony, senior vice president of CTEH. “We ask everyone to keep the families of those lost and the entire CTEH team in their thoughts and prayers.”
According to the Little Rock Fire Department, the plane crashed near the backside of the 3M Plant on Walters Road, just south of Interstate 440.
The FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board are investigating.
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Featured image: Authorities in central Arkansas are responding to the area surrounding the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport after a plane crashed Wednesday, Feb. 22. (Photo KATV)
February 23rd, 2023 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East
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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) demands that the Canadian government condemn Israel’s deadly military invasion of Nablus today in the occupied West Bank, which reportedly killed at least 10 Palestinians and injured more than 100. Today’s attack comes less than one month after a similar attack in Jenin which killed 10 Palestinians, including at least three civilians. CJPME argues that international condemnation and sanctions are necessary to hold Israeli officials accountable for these actions, which may amount to war crimes, and to prevent Israel from committing further aggressive acts.
“For the second time within a month, Israeli forces have carried out a massacre in a Palestinian city in broad daylight,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Canada must denounce Israel’s actions in the strongest terms, and impose consequences to stop this bloodshed,” added Bueckert. For months, CJPME and other human rights groups have warned that Israel’s government would be prone to this type of indiscriminate and extrajudicial violence directed against large numbers of Palestinian civilians. Past Canadian statements with lukewarm and nonspecific calls for an end to violence have failed to hold the Israeli government to account for its repressive and provocative actions.
As of the latest reporting, today’s military invasion killed at least 10 Palestinians, including two elderly people and a child, and injured at least 100 people with live ammunition and tear gas. Palestinian eyewitnesses have reported that Israeli forces entered a crowded market in the city centre of Nablus and fired indiscriminately, with most injuries to the chest and head. The Red Crescent reported that Israeli forces prevented medical teams from reaching the injured, and at least two journalists were injured by live ammunition. Videos circulating online show Israeli snipers shooting at pedestrians and an Israeli military vehicle driving directly into a crowd of bystanders.
On January 26, Israeli occupation forces killed 10 Palestinians during a military raid in the Jenin refugee camp which was condemned by UN rights experts as a possible war crime. Among those killed were 61-year old Majida Obaid and 2 children, Wasim Amjad Aref Abu Jaes (age 16) and Abdullah Marwan Juma’a Mousa (age 17). A statement by Canadian foreign affairs minister Mélanie Joly the following day included a general condemnation of violence against Palestinian civilians, and specifically a reference to “recent events in Jenin,” but did not directly address Israeli actions.
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Lula has now been in office less than 2 months and has already opened his cards for everyone to see: totally submissive to and controlled by the World Economic Forum (WEF), by Washington, by the WHO and by Bill Gates, one of the key funders of WHO and creator of GAVI.
Amid tens of thousands of lawsuits that are pending in state courts all across the U.S., a new report based on evidence discovered in these court cases reveals Big Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) had, for decades, concealed evidence showing that Zantac could cause cancer.
In 1987 the US Justice Department declared Kurt Waldheim a dangerous agent; forever forbidding his re-entry onto US soil. The aristocratic poseur, Waldheim, was the grandson of a Czech blacksmith surnamed Vaclavik. Kurt’s father, Walter, migrated to Austria where Christian-Social Party (CSP) activism landed him the plum-gig of school inspector.
Vinyl chloride – the chemical in several of the train cars that derailed and burned in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023 – can wreak havoc on the human liver.
Republican lawmakers from Idaho have introduced a bill that will make it a crime to administer mRNA vaccines in the state, citing safety concerns, which would apply to COVID-19 vaccines manufactured by companies like Pfizer and Moderna.
Back in 2010, the South Sudanese Government was warned by students who majored in economics that using the US dollar for local transactions would pose an economic risk to the country, and they were right.
The Russian Foreign Ministry summoned US Ambassador to Russia Lynne Tracy to make a demarche due to the growing involvement of the United States in the fighting on the side of the Kiev regime.
The main focus of the incompetent Biden Regime is on demonizing white Americans who are not “Woke Democrats” and on raising tensions with Russia which are already more dangerous than during the Cuban missile crisis.
Thousands of Syrians took to the streets on Monday, February 20, to protest against repeated Israeli aggression directed at the country. Protesters also chanted slogans against the unilateral coercive measures (sanctions) imposed against Syria by the US and its allies, the Syrian Arab News Agency (SANA) reported.
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Amid tens of thousands of lawsuits that are pending in state courts all across the U.S., a new report based on evidence discovered in these court cases reveals Big Pharma giant GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) had, for decades, concealed evidence showing that Zantac could cause cancer.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, GSK — then known as Glaxo — had been aware of cancer-causing risks with ranitidine, the drug which was marketed as Zantac, even before it was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 1983. These warnings came from independent researchers but also from Glaxo scientists.
Within five years, Zantac, used to treat or relieve heartburn, acid indigestion and gastric ulcers, became the world’s best-selling medicine and was one of the first to surpass $1 billion in annual sales, according to Reuters. GSK later sold the drug to Pfizer — and Zantac was then sold to Boehringer Ingelheim and finally Sanofi.
This decision was made based on “research showing the amount of NDMA in the products increases the longer the drug is stored and could potentially become unsafe,” Reuters reported, with Fierce Pharma adding that this problem was identified “even under normal storage conditions.”
According to the Bloomberg Businessweek report, the storage issues came in addition to the known risk that “under certain conditions in the stomach, ranitidine could form a potentially dangerous compound” that could cause cancer.
All four aforementioned pharmaceutical companies are now facing tens of thousands of lawsuits in state courts throughout the U.S. “Plaintiffs said the companies knew, or should have known, that ranitidine posed a cancer risk and that they failed to warn consumers,” reports Reuters.
According to Reuters, “While NDMA is found in low levels in food and water, it is known to cause cancer in larger amounts.” Zantac, accordingly, has been linked “to at least 10 types of cancer” in lawsuits that have been filed, including bladder, esophageal, liver, pancreatic and stomach cancers.
GSK continues to claim that there is “no consistent or reliable evidence” that Zantac caused cancer.
What is NDMA?
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “NDMA, which is short for N-Nitrosodimethylamine, is a yellow liquid that dissolves in water. It doesn’t have an odor or much of a taste.” It is most toxic to the liver, and “was first linked to cancer in 1956.”
It adds that “The carcinogen, called NDMA, was once added to rocket fuel and is now used only to induce cancer in lab rats.”
The same report notes that NDMA is “one of a group of chemicals called nitrosamines, which by the 1970s were considered the most potent carcinogens yet discovered. They caused cancer in every species of animal tested. A single dose of less than a milligram of NDMA can mutate mice cells and stimulate tumors, and 2 grams can kill a person in days.”
According to USA Today, drawing on FDA data, “Nitrosamines are found in water, cured and grilled meats, dairy products and vegetables” and studies have found that they lead to “increased cancer risk if people are exposed to large amounts over long periods of time.”
Stephen Hecht, Ph.D., a professor of cancer prevention at the University of Minnesota, told USA Today that food safety experts have made efforts to reduce nitrosamine levels in foods such as cured meats to far below the levels of the 1970s and 1980s.
Bloomberg Businessweek states that “Every public-health agency, from the Environmental Protection Agency to the FDA to the World Health Organization, says NDMA likely causes cancer in humans.”
The FDA has placed limits on six types of nitrosamines, reports USA Today, equaling “up to one case of cancer per 100,000 people exposed to the contaminant.”
However, the drugs that were recalled and ultimately pulled from the market far exceeded these limits, with estimates of a risk of one cancer case for every 3,000 to 8,000 patients, according to USA Today.
The withdrawal of Zantac and its generic versions resulted in tens of thousands of lawsuits that are still pending — and a process of discovery that has unearthed significant evidence revealing that Glaxo and regulatory bodies were long aware of the presence of NDMA in these medications.
Discovery reveals that Glaxo, regulators continuously ignored NDMA cancer risk
Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed “thousands of pages” of documents, including those arising from the discovery process in the ongoing lawsuits against GSK and other drugmakers, as well as scientific studies, to develop its story, discovering that GSK supported “flawed research” that skewed the narrative away from Zantac’s risks.
As stated in the Bloomberg Businessweek report: “Proving that a particular person’s cancerous cells were mutated by a company’s drug is complicated. Glaxo’s decisions suggest it never wanted to consider that possibility. The clues were there. The documents show that Glaxo preferred not to find them.”
The report continued:
“From ranitidine’s beginning to its end, Glaxo had been warned by its own scientists and independent researchers about the potential danger. An account of those four decades emerges in hundreds of documents, thousands of pages, many of which have never been made public.
“Bloomberg Businessweek reviewed court filings, many still under seal, as well as studies, FDA transcripts and new drug applications obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests. They show that the FDA considered the cancer risks when approving ranitidine. But Glaxo didn’t share a critical study.
“Over the years, the company also backed flawed research designed to minimize concerns and chose not to routinely transport and store the medication in ways that could have eased the problem. Glaxo sold a drug that might harm people, tried to discount evidence of that and never gave anyone the slightest warning.”
The report presents evidence indicating that Glaxo — and later GSK — were aware that NDMA could be present in Zantac, both as a result of how it was metabolized in the human stomach and also by naturally occurring even under ordinary storage conditions.
According to the report, ranitidine was first developed by Glaxo scientists in the 1970s, and a U.S. patent for it was granted in 1978. As stated by the report, the process of developing ranitidine and getting it approved was swift.
“They developed ranitidine quickly, and the US Food and Drug Administration reviewed it quickly. Glaxo gave it the brand name Zantac,” said Bloomberg Businessweek. It was soon marketed as being “better and safer” than the leading heartburn drug at the time, Tagamet.
However, the warning signs were already there. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, a U.S. government cancer researcher and biochemist, William Lijinsky, had found in 1969 that nitrosamines could form in the stomach, exacerbated by the presence of nitrites, “a common chemical found in cured and grilled meat and in beer and coffee and vegetables” found to be “common causes of heartburn and acid reflux.”
Lijinsky’s solution to this, presented in published studies and in Congressional testimony in the 1970s, was to limit sodium nitrite levels in food. Already, by the late 1970s, Lijinsky identified roadblocks that were not allowing his warnings to be fully heeded.
“It seems to me that the regulatory agencies have been less than eager to act in the matter of nitrites and nitrosamines,” he testified before Congress in 1977. “There has been ample information available, if they had sought it. There is, of course, immense opposition by the manufacturing companies to any change.”
According to Lijinsky’s wife, Rosalie Lijinsky, herself a genetic toxicologist who recently retired from the FDA, William lost federal funding for his research due to pressure from both the food and pharmaceutical industries.
Nevertheless, the warning signs continued to build up. A 1980 report titled “Glaxo, Ranitidine—Cause for Concern,” found that ranitidine could potentially form a potentially dangerous, and cancerous, compound in the stomach.
Glaxo, which was seeking FDA approval for Zantac, prepared for “defensive action” to protect itself from the report’s findings. The Bloomberg Businessweek story noted that Glaxo’s board never tested ranitidine to see if it might form a nitrosamine compound.
In a 1981 trial in Britain, 11 healthy men who were administered a daily two-dose regimen of ranitidine for four weeks developed more nitrite in their digestive system — meaning that conditions were favorable for the formation of nitrosamines.
These results were deemed inconclusive by Glaxo scientists, who said that “Ranitidine is recommended only for short-term use” — even though most Zantac users took the drug “for months, sometimes years, even decades,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
Another 1981 study, published in The Lancet by Italian scientist Silvio De Flora, Ph.D., found that when ranitidine was mixed with nitrite, it led to “toxic and mutagenic effects.” De Flora later suggested that the consumption of Zantac occur long before or after a meal. However, says Bloomberg Businessweek, “instructions for taking Zantac to prevent heartburn would recommend using it close to mealtime.”
De Flora, who told Bloomberg Businessweek that “Pharmaceutical companies do not like this kind of study,” said he was quickly approached by Glaxo executives, who then published a follow-up letter in The Lancet attempting to downplay De Flora’s findings.
A 1982 study, which infamously became known as the “Tanner study,” also found danger. Specifically, this study, conducted by scientist Richard Tanner of rival drugmaker Smith, Kline & French, found that ranitidine when combined with different concentrations of nitrite, formed a cancerous poison that was soon named NDMA.
According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “back in 1982, court documents show, Glaxo kept the study secret. The associate director of clinical research in the U.S. was never told about the Tanner report. The senior medical adviser for gastrointestinal research was unaware of it. So was the FDA.”
At the same time, reports Bloomberg Businessweek, “Glaxo also knew of another potentially serious problem with ranitidine. It wasn’t always stable. The drug was sensitive to heat and humidity, and when exposed to too much of either could degrade … That creates conditions for NDMA to form in the drug itself.”
However, later in 1982, Glaxo officials did not reveal this knowledge to a panel of FDA officials and independent researchers. “The Glaxo scientists disputed the idea that ranitidine could form a nitrosamine under any normal human conditions,” according to Bloomberg Businessweek.
By May 1983, the FDA had approved Zantac in a rapid process — and by 1989, it “was worth $2 billion. It accounted for half of Glaxo’s sales and 53% of the market for prescription ulcer remedies.”
However, problems persisted. In the early 1990s, it was found that the pills were not stable and were changing color while in storage. According to Bloomberg Businessweek, “Discoloration is often a sign that tablets are degrading. In some cases, degradation can cause dangerous impurities to form.”
However, Glaxo’s solution was to change the color of the pills. At this time, the company was seeking FDA approval for a less potent over-the-counter version of Zantac. This approval came in the spring of 1996.
Nevertheless, issues with discoloration persisted into the last decade. In 2010, Zantac was “tested for impurities that were known to cause … yellow discoloration.” Although, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, “NDMA used in labs is yellow,” no tests were conducted for this particular substance.
Similarly, when a manufacturing site in China identified problems with “discolored and degraded Zantac tablets” in 2015, GSK sought to downplay the issue, while no testing for NDMA was conducted. Instead, “inappropriate storage” was blamed.
During this period, GSK was fined by regulators in the U.S. and China, but not over Zantac specifically. In 2012, GSK pled guilty and was fined $3 billion “for marketing drugs for inappropriate uses, disregarding safety data and cheating Medicaid,” according to the Bloomberg Businessweek report.
And in 2014, “China fined GSK $500 million and deported a top executive for bribing doctors to prescribe its drugs.”
Issues with Zantac did not come to a head until September 2019, when the FDA received a document from Valisure, an independent laboratory, which, according to Bloomberg Businessweek, “had found extremely high levels of NDMA in Zantac and several generic versions of ranitidine.”
Valisure conducted these tests after NDMA had been found in batches of the blood pressure medication valsartan the previous year. Bloomberg Businessweek reports that Valisure “found NDMA in every version of ranitidine it tested and concluded the problem was inherent to the molecule itself.”
Although the FDA issued an alert, it also questioned Valisure’s testing methods and conducted its own tests. “Within a month,” says Bloomberg Businessweek, “at least two dozen countries pulled ranitidine from stores or halted its distribution.” GSK stopped distributing the drug, as did Sanofi.
Ultimately, in April 2020, ranitidine was banned by the FDA. The agency found that “NDMA levels increase in ranitidine even under normal storage conditions … And NDMA has been found to increase significantly in samples stored at higher temperatures, including temperatures the product may be exposed to during distribution and handling by consumers.”
However, says Bloomberg Businessweek, the FDA has not shared specifics in any published paper about what its tests detected. Instead, these findings were revealed “during a monthly lecture series called FDA Grand Rounds,” in October 2021: one tablet of ranitidine contained “almost four times the FDA’s limit in any drug” when initially tested.
Nevertheless, in June 2021, the FDA said there were “no consistent signals” that Zantac increases cancer risk and that such links that were found in outside research papers were not conclusive. Bloomberg Businessweek says this “is now a regular part of Glaxo’s public-relations and, presumably, legal defense.”
A statement provided by GSK to Fierce Pharma in response to the Bloomberg Businessweek article says it “presents an incomplete and biased presentation of the facts surrounding the Zantac (ranitidine) litigation.”
“Patient safety is the highest priority for GSK, and the company categorically refutes any allegation of having covered up data regarding the safety of ranitidine,” the statement adds. “The safety of ranitidine has been thoroughly evaluated over the past 40 years.”
Thousands of Zantac-related lawsuits pending despite setbacks
The Bloomberg Businessweek report states that “More than 70,000 people who took Zantac or generic versions of it are suing the company in U.S. state courts for selling a potentially contaminated and dangerous drug,” with the first of these trials set to begin later this month in the Superior Court of California, County of Alameda.
Other companies that sold Zantac, including Pfizer, Sanofi and generic manufacturers, are also facing lawsuits.
There have been some setbacks for plaintiffs, however. According to the Bloomberg Businessweek report, a December 2022 ruling, by the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, “dismissed thousands of federal lawsuits that had been consolidated in her courtroom for pretrial proceedings.”
U.S. District Judge Robin Rosenberg found there is “no widespread acceptance in the scientific community of an observable, statistically significant association between ranitidine and cancer.” Lawyers for the plaintiffs plan to appeal.
GSK is hanging its hat on this ruling, according to Bloomberg Businessweek. In a statement, Kathleen Quinn, a spokesperson for the company, said, “The court’s view is consistent with the position that GSK and other co-defendants have taken throughout this litigation.”
And in a statement following the Florida federal court ruling, GSK said it was glad that “unreliable and litigation-driven science did not enter the federal courtroom.”
Fierce Pharma reports that following this ruling, not just GSK but “Pfizer, GSK, Sanofi and Boehringer Ingelheim are now able to wash their hands of thousands of Zantac-related lawsuits,” as about 50,000 claims were taken “off the drugmakers’ plates.”
And according to Law360, on Feb. 7, the same Florida judge issued a new ruling which will not allow tens of thousands of Zantac lawsuits to be combined.
This ruling was made on the basis that the lawsuits in question had signed up for “court-created registry of claims in the multidistrict legislation” that was “abandoned” following the December 2022 decision.
In this new ruling, Judge Rosenberg also provided some insights into the appeals that were filed against the December 2022 decision, stating that “claimants in the registry are still now required to file their cases individually in federal court in order for their claims to be considered timely,” according to Law360.
However, as reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, “GSK does still have to fight the tens of thousands of cases waiting in state courts, where judges aren’t bound by the federal court’s ruling,” adding that “GSK could face years of lawsuits in California, Delaware and other states, with the possibility of billions in damages.”
Law360 reported Jan. 26 that despite the December 2022 Florida ruling, “New York’s Litigation Coordinating Panel on Thursday consolidated more than 40” Zantac lawsuits. Attorneys from Napoli Shkolnik PLLC, one of the firms representing plaintiffs in the lawsuits, described this as “a welcome alternative” to the Florida multidistrict litigation.
In the forthcoming Alameda County court case, GSK “is expected to urge” the court “to limit what expert testimony jurors can hear,” reports Reuters.
The plaintiff in that case, James Goetz, says he developed bladder cancer from taking Zantac over a period of many years. According to Bloomberg Businessweek:
“Goetz was 60 in 2017 when he was diagnosed with bladder cancer. That in and of itself wasn’t too unusual; 60 is about the age this particular cancer is often diagnosed in men. Smokers get bladder cancer, but Goetz hadn’t smoked since he was 22. His job hadn’t exposed him to any potentially harmful chemicals. It was perplexing, but he had no reason to think his getting cancer was anything other than random.
“When Zantac was recalled, he kept four bottles he’d already purchased. They’re in the freezer in the office of one of his attorneys, Brent Wisner, as are leftover pills from Russell. Tests showed that one of Goetz’s pills is contaminated with 3,000ng of NDMA, Wisner says; one of Russell’s has more than twice as much. Wisner says he’s invited GSK to test the tablets, but the company hasn’t done so.”
Goetz’s cancer has returned in aggressive form, necessitating surgery and dialysis. His bladder and prostate were removed, along with 20 feet of his intestines. He later suffered sepsis, kidney stones and kidney failure. His lawsuits against Boehringer Ingelheim, Pfizer and Sanofi were settled in December 2022, but his GSK case continues.
Depositions taken during the discovery process, brought to the public eye by Bloomberg Businessweek, have been revealing. A former senior medical adviser to Glaxo, when asked during a June 2021 deposition whether Glaxo had ever tested for the presence of NDMA in Zantac, answered, “Not to my knowledge.”
In a May 2022 deposition, Andrew Whitehead, who had been director of second-generation research and development for the company, testified that “it would have been known in the ‘80s as part of the development” of Zantac that ranitidine would degrade in high temperature conditions.
And a May 2021 deposition, Fred Eshelman, formerly Glaxo’s associate director of clinical research when Zantac was developed, agreed with a lawyer for the plaintiffs that “it is completely unheard of in the industry to go that fast” — referring to the clinical development of ranitidine.
More drugs under scrutiny for potential presence of nitrosamines
As the lawsuits against the former manufacturers of Zantac continue, increased scrutiny of medications for the potential presence of nitrosamines has followed.
USA Today reports that the FDA “has asked drugmakers to evaluate all products for any risk they might contain nitrosamines,” adding that “Companies that identify any such risk must conduct follow-up testing, report changes and take action” by Oct. 1.
“We continue to closely evaluate this type of impurity and will continue to investigate and monitor the marketplace and manufacturing efforts to help ensure the availability of safe, quality products for U.S. consumers,” stated FDA spokesman Jeremy Kahn.
According to USA Today, in recent years, several drugs have been recalled due to the presence of nitrosamines, including diabetes medication metformin, anti-smoking medication Chantix, and blood pressure, heart and kidney medications losartan, quinapril (sold as Accupril) and valsartan.
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Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., based in Athens, Greece, is a senior reporter for The Defender and part of the rotation of hosts for CHD.TV’s “Good Morning CHD.”
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In 1987 the US Justice Department declared Kurt Waldheim a dangerous agent; forever forbidding his re-entry onto US soil.
The aristocratic poseur, Waldheim, was the grandson of a Czech blacksmith surnamed Vaclavik. Kurt’s father, Walter, migrated to Austria where Christian-Social Party (CSP) activism landed him the plum-gig of school inspector. CSP-founder and Vienna Mayor, Karl Lueger, pioneered electoral anti-Semitism; blaming “Jewishfinanciers” for every problem.
Hitler “learned anti-Semitism from Lueger.” (1) After Walter’s CSP superior explained the limitations of “Vaclavik,” Walter choose the uber-German: Waldheim (“woods-home”). (2) When Kurt turned 18, Walter planted him in the 1st Dragoons of Stockerau – a regiment stocked with scions of ancient noble houses. (3)
In 1933 Chancellor Dollfuss transformed CSP into the Fatherland Front. Militias swarmed Austria. In 1934 a Corporate State, blessed by Archbishop Innitzer, suspended parliament and banned opposition parties. Among the banned were pan-German Austro-Nazis who retained support, especially on campuses where they distributed German-printed magazines. Austrian clerico-fascists opposed pan-Germanism out of hostility toward Protestantism. Nazis assassinated Dollfuss, July 1934.
In 1938 Hitler demanded Austria lift employment bans on Nazis. Fatherland Front responded with a huge rally. Nazis counter-demoed and held larger rallies days later celebrating the release of imprisoned compatriots.
Meanwhile, Waldheim attended Boltzmangasse Consular Academy and University of Vienna’s Law College. He met his bride on campus. Like her father, she forsook Catholicism in obedience to Hitler. (4)
In March 1938 Hitler annexed Austria. 250,000 packed Heldenplatz to hear him. 500,000 lined Ringstrasse to catch a glimpse. Innitzer promised support. By mid-July, 30,000 Austrians were political prisoners.
Walter was detained for CSP activities, then forced to retire. Gestapo visited Waldheim’s home; as did Storm Troopers (SA) who painted “priest-lover” on its walls. Kurt joined the Nazi Student Federation, and the Vienna SA with whom he trashed 43 of Vienna’s 44 synagogues on Kristallnacht. (5)
In 1938 the Army drafted Waldheim straight into commando training before dispatching him to Sudetenland. In November he returned to Vienna; resuming SA activism. In 1939 he joined the 45th Infantry with whom he occupied France.
In late-1941 the 45th aided an assault on Moscow. Waldheim witnessed civilian clearances. Bravery at Brest-Litovsk yielded promotions, three medals (including an Iron Cross), and praise from (later-hanged) General von Pannwitz. (6) A thigh-wound returned Waldheim to Austria in December. (7)
In March 1942 Waldheim signed-up with the 12th Army in Yugoslavia. (8) On March 19, the 12th decreed:
“The most minor case of rebellion, resistance or concealment of arms must be treated immediately by the strongest deterrent methods… It is better to liquidate 50 suspects than have one soldier killed.” (9)
During one operation, wherein Staff Officer Waldheim won citations, ratios were:
“100 Serbs to be executed for every German killed, 50 Serbs for every German wounded.” (10)
In May, Waldheim entered Kozara – a contested railway and mining area – with Battle Group West. By September, amidst rape and robbery, 4,735 suspected insurgents had been executed and 70,000 civilians shipped to camps. (11) Waldheim managed casualty stats and detainee transport. His name appears on a “list of honour” parchment commemorating distinguished service in Kozara. (12)
In November 1942 Waldheim received leave to complete his doctorate. (13) His thesis, The Concept of Reich according to Konstantin Frantz, re-purposes Catholicism’s purple prose about “the body of Christ” by replacing that phrase with “the Third Reich.” (14)
Returning to Yugoslavia, March 1943, Waldheim served as Senior Staff Officer for General Loehr’s village-erasing Operation Schwarz, which killed 16,000 in May, mostly in blind reprisals. (15)
The Army then made Waldheim liaison to General Vecchiarelli, head of Italy’s army in Greece; entrusting Waldheim with all intel on Greek operations. (16) German Generals wanted all men in turbulent eastern Greece detained. Vecchiarelli wouldn’t sign-off. On August 7, Waldheim recommended deporting male civilians to slave-camps. On August 20, he received orders approving his recommendation and expeditiously forwarded them. (17)
After Italy’s September 1943 surrender Waldheim proposed enslaving Vecchiarelli’s 158,000 troops; specifying the number of trains needed. He claimed Italians aided the resistance – based on personal “interrogations.”
Operation Case Axis conned Vecchiarelli into handing over his heavy weapons on the promise his troops could keep their rifles and go home. Germans surreptitiously snatched rifles as they herded Italians onto trains. When trains left stations, Italians were fully disarmed. After one rebellion 4,000 Italians were machine-gunned. (18)
In December 1943 Waldheim became Oberleutnant-3 (O3) for the 300,000-troop Army Group E. The Wehrmacht’s best-informed men, O3s were in charge of office staff, maps and files. O3s updated higher and adjacent formations through daily reports and special briefings. O3s initialed each report. A December 19, 1943 report bearing Waldheim’s “W” recounts:
burning a monastery, shooting 13 monks;
leveling a village, shooting 82 inhabitants (half under the age of 15);
placing 128 people from Sparta, including all school-teachers, before a firing squad. (19)
In August 11, 1944, Waldheim reported on an area of Crete where 2 days later 2 villages were razed and 20 suspects shot. On August 15 he reported “mopping-up” nearby areas where no resistance had been met. Twelve officers were convicted of war crimes related to these operations. (20)
With Germans withdrawing from Yugoslavia, October 1944, Waldheim feared partisans along the escape route. On October 13, he conducted aerial surveillance over 3 villages. On October 14, German soldiers torched these villages; executing 114 inhabitants. The later-hanged Captain in charge testified that he was following orders recommended and elaborated by Oberleutnant-3 Waldheim. The overall operation resulted in 739 suspects shot, 13 rifles recovered. (21)
Waldheim watched General Loehr surrender to Yugoslav partisans in May 1945. Loehr broke his word; bolting to the British to re-surrender. They returned him, to be executed. Waldheim surfaced in an American P.O.W. camp where:
“…the deal was struck which allowed the young Oberleutnant to begin a new life. In exchange for information (and he had plenty to offer!), he was authorized to return to Vienna and act as though nothing had happened since 1942.” (22)
In 1947 Yugoslavia presented Waldheim’s file to a London-based, British-chaired UN War Crimes Commission which typically rejected 75% of Yugoslav requests. Commissioners quickly approved prosecuting Waldheim for “putting hostages to death and murder.” They heard from 10 British and US veterans who witnessed Waldheim in P.O.W. camps. One remembered the “swineWaldheim” overseeing the tossing of British soldiers’ corpses from the back of a truck like “sacks of manure.” US officials presented 19 “interrogation” reports signed by Waldheim. (23)
Yugoslavia presented 244 Wehrmacht documents connecting Waldheim to crimes, plus testimony from 3 German officers confirming Waldheim’s job was: “to offer suggestions for reprisals, the fate of prisoners of war and imprisoned civilians.” Accusations centered on the razing of 13 villages, and massacres in several more, for which: “orders were planned in detail with the cooperation of the (intelligence) unit at the army corps headquarters, and in particular with the collaboration of Lieutenant Waldheim.” (24)
Dissolving the War Crimes Commission in 1948 suspended 36,000 prosecutions.
Austrian de-Nazification confronted 500,000 Austro-Nazis. Early de-Nazification involved dismissals, internments even death sentences. By mid-1946 committees generally white-washed suspects. Parties authorized to award de-Nazification certificates, bartered. Waldheim secured certificates from the Socialist and People’s parties. Inquiries into Kurt’s past ceased November 1945 when Foreign Affairs hired him. His War Crimes’ file read “whereaboutsunknown.” His work address was public record. (25) Amnesty took effect, 1948.
Waldheim led Austria’s inaugural UN delegation in 1955. He also served as Ambassador to Czechoslovakia and Foreign Minister before unsuccessfully running for President. In 1971, Waldheim became the first person to campaign for the UN Secretary-Generalship. Soviets and Americans vetoed each other’s candidates. Britain abstained. Waldheim’s dark-horse victory had LeMonde wondering whether:
“…Waldheim might have been involved in the enigmatic Nazi International which at the fall of the Third Reich, had ordered its members to infiltrate the machinery of the state and occupy important positions while awaiting better days.” (26)
*
Secretary-General Waldheim stamped his tenure with an “insistence on unconditional loyalty to a personality whose requirements were equated with those of the UN.” (27) As UN’s Head of Protocol Waldheim’s daughter populated the Secretariat with a camarilla “whoseoracular pronouncements connoted absolute knowledge.” (28)
Waldheim “loved the red carpet, the salvos salutes.” He loved flying his favourite toilet paper round the world by diplomatic pouch. A labor lawyer, hired by UN staff, likened Waldheim’s Secretariat to “the court of King Henry VIII.” (29)
Previous S-Gs lived humbly on their own dime. Waldheim crashed into No. 3 Sutton Place; cluttering it with Louis XV sofas, Saxe porcelain and English lace. A philanthropist covered the rent. The UN bought furnishings. Museums donated paintings. Waldheim shipped an antique clock gifted by Mexico to his Austrian address – at UN expense. He shipped gems from the Shah into his pocket. (30)
Waldheim initiated:
a spike in UN executive salaries;
“ex gratia payments, amounting on occasion to several hundred thousand dollars;” and,
“the corrupt sale of certain profitable posts.” (31)
Charter be-damned, Waldheim let nations top-up “their” UN officials’ salaries. By 1981 scores of UN officials earned more than the US President. Unsurprisingly, despite the: “operational and administrative chaos into which the organization would sink under Waldheim…(in) higher levels of the UN Secretariat he had more defenders that critics.” (32)
Some found Waldheim “a scheming, ambitious, duplicitous egomaniac ready to do anything for advantage or public acclaim.” Others found him: “dull”, “conceited” and “unimaginative.” Astute observers saw:
“an unexceptional but well-trained valet”
“an obsequious vacuous neuter”
“a creepy maitre’d.” (33)
Waldheim couldn’t stand the sight of a short German:
“Even when he was Austrian Minister of Foreign Affairs, he wanted at all costs to restrict entry into the diplomatic corps to very tall people.” (34)
If Waldheim learned an employee had tickets to an evening event; that employee worked late. As well,
“There’s not a waiter in a New York cafe who ever saw him leave a penny as a tip.” (35)
***
One scholar believes:
“Waldheim was a US intelligence asset who expected to be – and always was – protected by his friends in the American intelligence community.” (36)
Others thought he was KGB, considering:
As Foreign Minister he slammed the door on Czechs fleeing the 1968 invasion. (37)
As S-G he wouldn’t appeal to North Vietnam on behalf of refugees; the International Herald Tribune reporting:
“Waldheim said he had no intention of resigning because of criticism directed against him. ‘The criticism comes from the West exclusively’ he said ‘From no other part of the world. On the contrary, the rest of the world seems satisfied.” (38)
He condemned Israel’s 1976 Entebbe rescue op as “a serious violation of the national sovereignty of a United Nations member state.” (39)
He did nothing for Alicja Wesolowska and 20 other imprisoned UN workers. Poland sentenced Wesolowska to 7-years for work she did on UN assignment. Waldheim wouldn’t impose “Western standards” onto Poland. (40)
He banned GulagArchipelago from bookstores on UN premises. (41)
Moreover, Waldheim marginalized Anglos within the UN.
In the sixties, the UN General Assembly (UNGA) debated micro-state membership. The USA thought it impractical and undemocratic to give tiny islands equal status with qualitatively larger countries. They unsuccessfully proposed admitting micro-states as “associate members.”
In the seventies, Waldheim welcomed: Vanuatu, Cape Verde, Comoros, Djibouti, Dominica, Fiji, Grenada, Guinea-Bissau, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Sao Tome-Principe, Seychelles, Bahamas, Suriname, Saint Vincent, Antigua, Belize and a dozen more. He cast aside merit-based hiring in favour of geographical considerations; and based the number of senior positions given to a country on the support that country gave him. One Western Ambassador described life under Waldheim as:
“You try to get as many posts as possible for your own nationals. This is wrong, but everyone does it.” (42)
After the Human Rights Commission quit New York for Geneva, campaigns against Israel, Rhodesia and South Africa conjured an anti-Anglosphere, European-led, micro-state cargo-cult within the UN.
The UN’s emergence as a global ecofascist command centre overlaps Waldheim’s tenure (1972-81); albeit imperfectly. Change became him.
The 1965 World Population Conference explicitly connected overpopulation to foreign aid whilst prepping the 1967 launch of the crypto-eugenicist, UN Trust Fund for Population Activities.
In 1968:
UN’s Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) urged action to stop the: “accelerating impairment of the quality of the human environment caused by such factors as air and water pollution, erosion, and other forms of soil deterioration, secondary effects of biocides, waste and noise.” (43)
UNESCO held a conference titled: Scientific Basis for the Rational Use and Conservation of the Resources of the Biosphere.
UNGA declared: “the relationship between man and his environment was undergoing profound changes” (44) and endorsed the global environmentalist mega-conference – Stockholm, 1972.
Waldheim chaired said Stockholm Conference. The 900-word Stockholm Declaration repeats “environment” 24 times on top of references to “biosphere,” “Earth,” “planet” and “surroundings.” It calls for a global program of enviro-education and enviro-activism. Within months United Nations Environment Programme appeared. (Waldheim wanted UNEP’s HQ in Geneva and was miffed by the choice of Nairobi.)
Also, under Waldheim’s watch:
UNESCO initiated “Man and the Environment” and “Man and the Biosphere” programs.
ECOSOC held the first official UN population conference. Thoroughly conflating overpopulation with environmental destruction, participants concocted a rebranded UN Population Fund leading a recharged fertility-suppression drive.
UNESCO-UNEP’s Tbilisi Declaration pronounced a “environmentaleducation” crusade.
Waldheim’s Secretariat was “dense with irreproachable statements on global peril.” (45) His Under-Secretary quipped: “the worst way to make an argument is by reason and good information. You must appeal to emotions and to their fears of being made to appear ridiculous.” (46)
Waldheim helped initiate the “ozone-hole” campaign.
1976: UNEP focusses on the ozone layer.
1977: a newly-minted, UN-led, Coordinating Committee on the Ozone Layer prompts World Meteorological Organization (WMO) into monitoring ozone.
1981: UNEP announces plans for a global convention on ozone-hole prevention.
Waldheim played a crucial role in launching “climate change.”
1978: Waldheim opens the UNGA with:
“Nations will have to change from a pattern of energy consumption dominated by oil to a more energy saving pattern of growth, relying on more diversified sources of energy… considerable efforts will be needed to harmonize the interests of producers, processors, users, poorer consumers and environmentalists… we must find ways to ensure sustainable supplies of energy… We need to deal vigorously with the area of energy, which is a major challenge, and to launch a coordinated and imaginative effort by the world community in this field. I stand ready to lend all necessary assistance.” (47)
1979: UNEP, WMO and the (UN-integrated) International Council of Scientific Unions, hold a World Climate Conference.
1980: a follow-up conference, focussing on CO2, calls for a UN climate agency.
*
Image: Waldheim (2nd from left), SS General Artur Phleps (with briefcase), and others at Podgorica airfield in Montenegro during Case Black, 22 May 1943. This photograph caused much controversy when it was published while Waldheim was running in the 1986 Austrian presidential election. (Licensed under Fair Use)
In 1986, Waldheim ran for the Austrian presidency. Nominally independent, support came from the CSP-sequel, and “environmentally sensitive,” People’s Party. Ads depicted Waldheim and wife in heritage costume amidst Alpine idyll. Waldheim self-described as a persecuted anti-Nazi drafted in 1938, wounded in 1941; who studied for the duration of WWII. So reads his autobiography and numerous interviews. As late as February 1986 he denied being in Nazi groups or serving in Yugoslavia. (48)
On March 4, 1986, the New York Times exposed Waldheim. Asked why such allegations appeared across the world press, Waldheim replied: “the international press is dominated by the World Jewish Congress. It’s well known.” (49) Austrian media endorsed this theory, while a top daily editorialized:
“…former National Socialists…consider themselves to have been sufficiently punished and no longer see any reason why they should cover themselves in sackcloth and ashes.” (50)
On the stump Waldheim bellowed, to hysterical applause, that New Yorkers with names like “Steinberg and Rosenbaum” will never “tell the Austrian people how to vote.” (51) Kurt took 54% of the vote.
*
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William Walter Kay is a regular contributor to Global Research.
Notes
Cohen, Bernhard; Rosenzweig Luc; Waldheim; Adama Books, New York, 1987, page 31.
Ibid, 23.
Herzstein, Robert; Waldheim, The Missing Years; Arbor House/William Morrow; New York; 1988 page 57; see also Cohen 55.
Cohen 47-8
Herzstein 52-7; see also Cohen 33-47
Ibid 62-5
Ibid 65
Ibid 66
Cohen 60
Ibid 60-1
Ibid 60-1
Herzstein 75; see also Cohen 60-2
Cohen 62
Ibid 49-51
Herzstein 92 see also Cohen 66
Cohen 66 see also Herzstein 92
Herzstein 95-7 see also Cohen 66
Herzstein 100-1
Cohen 70-5
Ibid 82-4
Ibid 83-8
Ibid 90
Ibid 79-80 and 95
Ibid 85-90
Ibid 90-7
Ibid 115
Hazzard, Shirley; Countenance of Truth: The United Nations and the Waldheim Case; Viking Penguin; New York; 1990, page 46.
Ibid 65 and 123
Ibid 109
Cohen 135-7
Hazzard 51
Ibid 65 and 123
Ibid 127
Cohen 130-1
Ibid 131
Herzstein 257
Hazard 91 see also Cohen 119
Ibid 34 and 91
Ibid 91 see also Cohen 126
Ibid 111
Ibid 90
Ibid 27-8 and 130
Osmancyzk, Edmund; Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements; Routledge, New York, 2003, page 637.
Yearbook of the United Nations; fiftieth anniversary edition; Martinus Nijhoff Publishers; The Hague; 1995, page 256.
Hazzard 78
Ibid 97
Waldheim, Kurt; The Challenge of Peace; Rawson, Wade Publishers, Inc. New York, 1980, pages 138-9.
Cohen 55-6
Ibid 32
Ibid 105
Ibid 148
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***
The lightning visit of US President Joe Biden to Ukraine and the new military aid offered to the country aims to reverse the advances made by Russia in recent months. It also demonstrates that the US is desperately trying to prolong the conflict for as long as possible. However, to serve as a warning that the Kremlin is prepared to take every measure to ensure Russia’s security, Russian President Vladimir Putin suspended his country’s participation from START III (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty).
US President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kiev on February 20, a gesture of political, emotional and obviously military support for Ukraine. In meeting with his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky, the US president announced a new military aid package that will include $500 million worth of artillery ammunition, anti-tank systems and aerial surveillance radars.
More importantly though, Biden made the personal visit to Zelensky to ensure that he remains steadfast to the war effort and not capitulate. For Biden, Ukraine is nothing more than a state to be used and abused in the hope of weakening Russia.
It is for this reason that he said in Warsaw on February 21 that “Ukraine will never be a victory for Russia,” a disingenuous claim since Ukraine continues to lose territory and be demilitarized. Biden also accused his Russian counterpart of having a “craven lust for land and power [which] will fail.”
In fact, Biden’s speech in Poland was so venomous that he mentioned the Russian president by name 10 times, a significant figure considering that Putin, for his part, did not name his American counterpart once during his own lengthy address from Moscow on February 21.
In the same speech, Putin announced Moscow’s suspension from participating in START III, the only remaining major nuclear arms control treaty between Russia and the US. This suspension should be considered a first warning to the West for its provocative policies.
“I am forced to announce today that Russia suspends its participation in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. I repeat, it does not withdraw from the treaty, no, it suspends its participation,” Putin said in front of the Russian Federal Assembly.
On the same day, the Russian Foreign Ministry said that the decision to suspend Moscow’s participation in the treaty is “reversible,” adding that “Washington must show political will, make conscientious efforts for a general de-escalation and create conditions for the resumption of the full functioning of the Treaty and, accordingly, comprehensively ensuring its viability.”
The ministry urged “the American side to do just that. Until then, any of our steps towards Washington in the context of START are absolutely out of the question.”
It must be stressed that suspending the treaty is not withdrawing from it. Rather, it should be considered that Putin is warning the West that Moscow can escalate the conflict if provocations continue. However, Biden’s visit to Kiev and his speech in Warsaw demonstrates that Washington has no immediate intentions of de-escalating tensions with Moscow.
In his speech, Putin also reiterated that Russia was trying to avoid military conflict in Ukraine but that the West had been pushing one on purpose. It was obviously in Russia’s interest to avoid conflict, but Moscow was left with no choice but to conduct a special military operation because of Kiev’s unrelenting pursuit of NATO membership and persecution of minorities, including Russian-speakers. Given that the West continues to support Ukraine against Russia, there is a possibility that Putin will make the decision to withdraw from the treaty entirely.
None-the-less, Moscow’s announcement that it suspended its participation in START III received surprising expressions of hope from Washington and London that it will return to it swiftly. This demonstrates just how much importance the West places in the agreement, especially since Moscow has 5,977 nuclear warheads as of 2022, the largest stockpile of nuclear warheads in the world. Russia’s stockpile is in fact larger than the American stockpile, which is the second largest with 5,428 warheads.
At the same time, CNN reported that US officials were wary to announce that this would handicap Moscow’s ability to build its nuclear program.
“I wouldn’t want to offer an assessment as whether that has overstretched them to the point that they would be precluded in some way from taking steps to develop their nuclear arsenal but … they’ve got a lot of problems on their hands,” a US official told CNN.
None-the-less, what Biden’s visit to Kiev and Putin’s suspension from START III demonstrates is that the war in Ukraine is unlikely to end in the short term and will probably wage on for most of the year. It appears that the US remains committed to supporting Ukraine, especially as Zelensky continues to enthusiastically receive instructions, even now directly from the US president himself.
*
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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
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