I Went to Kamala Harris’s White House Rally

October 31st, 2024 by Matt Orfalea

I visited Kamala Harris’s “Closing Argument” rally at the White House to ask people why they’re voting for Kamala Harris. Occasionally, if someone brought up the Constitution or freedom, I’d follow up and ask them for their thoughts on internet censorship during the Biden/Harris administration. More often than not, they abruptly ended the interview: “Just go away!”

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Between this and one-hour livestream that I recorded earlier, in line for the rally, the number one reason Harris supporters gave me was some variation of, “She’s not Donald Trump.” A close second was abortion/women’s rights.

Many people were offended or angry about comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s Puerto Rico “garbage” joke at the previous night’s Trump rally in Madison Square Garden.

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Click here to watch the video

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HINCHCLIFFE: It is absolutely wild times. It really, really is. And, you know, there’s a lot going on. Like, I don’t know if you guys know this, but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now. Yeah, I think it’s called Puerto Rico. Okay. All right. Okay. We’re getting there now. Again, normally I don’t follow the national anthem.

One Harris supporter said Hinchfliffe’s joke was evidence that Trump “hates people the way they were born.” Another said it was proof that Trump is a “fascist”.

But Hinchcliffe did not refer to the Puerto Rican people as “garbage”—just the island, which does have an environmental problem with an overwhelming amount of garbage.

Joe Biden went on to use the word “garbage” too, but he wasn’t joking.

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Click here to watch the video

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BIDEN: “And just the other day, a speaker at his rally called Puerto Rico a ‘floating island of garbage.’ Well, let me tell you something. I don’t — I — I don’t know the Puerto Rican that — that I know — or a Puerto Rico, where I’m fr- — in my home state of Delaware, they’re good, decent, honorable people. The only garbage I see floating out there is his [supporters/supporter’s].”

It sure sounds like President Biden just called Trump supporters “garbage”’; however, the White House claims he was only referring to the comedian’s joke as “garbage.”

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Back at the rally, some people told me they were voting for Jill Stein. “It’s just because she has honor. The other parties? Different stories,” one told me. Another’s sign said they were voting for Stein’s Green Party for the first time because Harris is “committing genocide” through her support of Israel’s ongoing attacks in Gaza.

“You should skip me,” one man said, “I’m not a fan of Kamala at all.” He voted for Trump but was supporting his wife who voted for Kamala. She said she found Kamala “too liberal” but could not bring herself to vote Trump.

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“I don’t like a lot of the things that Donald Trump does and says but he was the better candidate for me,” the man said.

The woman put her arm around his shoulders and smiled.

Maybe we don’t need a Civil War after all!

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The Ever Widening War. Paul C. Roberts

October 31st, 2024 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

Zero Hedge, normally a reliable site, reports that the US Department of Defense and the NATO Secretary General claim that 10,000 to 12,000 North Korean soldiers have joined Russian forces in Kursk to help drive out the Ukrainian incursion.  

The Pentagon spokeswoman, Sabrina Singh, says that if these North Koreans do for Russia what French troops and NATO personnel are doing for Ukraine, the US will remove its ban on NATO firing missiles into Russia from Ukraine.  

As Putin has said, this would mean the US/NATO are at war with Russia, which, Putin has implied, means a nuclear response from Russia. Why Putin is OK with drones fired deep into Russia but not missiles is unclear.

What do we make of this report?  It strikes me as nonsensical and contrary to Putin’s abhorrence  of expanding the conflict.  It also strikes me as nonsensical that Russia cannot expel Ukrainians from Kursk without North Korean reinforcements. 

There are two possible real explanations.  One is that Washington’s military/security complex wants to carry the war further into Russia, confident from Putin’s past non-response that Putin will do nothing about it, and the alleged Korean troops are an excuse.  The neoconservatives believe that Putin is nothing but hot air and that they can destabilize his regime by sending in missiles to kill Russians and destroy infrastructure all over Russia.  That Putin has been unwilling to use the available force that he has to end a conflict with a third world military with zero military technology of its own after three years suggests to the neoconservatives that Putin is so averse to war that he simply will not fight anything other than a limited military operation.  

The other explanation is that Putin is demonstrating to Washington that Russia, also, can bring in foreign resources to the conflict. The French send troops.  NATO sends “mercenaries.”  Washington provides weapons and people to operate them along with intelligence and targeting information.   If this is the explanation, assuming there actually are North Korean troops there, it shows that Putin has a defective understanding of the situation.

President Putin, you are at war.  You, Russia, China, and Iran are in the way of American hegemony.  American foreign policy has not repudiated the neoconservative doctrine that hegemony is the principal goal of US foreign policy. Therefore your support for peace negotiations is nonsensical.  Negotiations make no sense. They show you to be humanitarian but unrealistic.

Russia is in the way of Washington.  There can be no peace until Washington redefines its foreign policy goal, or Russia is broken up into its constituent parts.  While Putin speaks of peace negotiations with Ukraine, Washington is attempting to open a second front against Russia with a color revolution in Georgia.

Whatever peace deal Putin makes would have no more reality than the Minsk Agreement, Washington’s pledge not to move NATO one inch to the east, or any of the broken 20th century agreements.   Washington only respects force, and Russia has not demonstrated force.  Neither has China.  Neither has Iran.  The absence of countervailing power is building toward a major war.

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Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image source

How Corporations Get Away with Murder. Emanuel Pastreich

October 31st, 2024 by Emanuel Pastreich

This position of “communications and content specialist” that was advertised broadly yesterday on the internet by Booz Allen Hamilton represents perfectly what is happening to our country as part of the secret takeover of our society—which you are not supposed to notice because you are so caught up with Trump hate or Harris contempt, or some variation of that pre-planned political distraction called the “election.”

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The tempting position at BAH is described as providing support for external communications and marketing strategies for workshops, forums, action tracking, and other programs for corporations that have hired Booz Allen Hamilton as a consultant.   

Such corporate promotion of events and activities within businesses, between businesses, and for public consumption has a long history, and is neither remarkable nor notable.

However, the small print of the job description gives the entire project away.

“Top Secret/SCI (secret compartmented information) clearance with polygraph is required.”

The question that should come to mind for anyone reading this job advertisement who still has a brain is: “why does a corporate marketing consultant position require top secret clearance?”

That question is a good one. Top Secret/SCI, the highest level of clearance, is completely unnecessary for anyone handling communications and marketing for corporations. Of course, there could be circumstances in which work for a defense contractor might require security clearance, but that most certainly should not extend to marketing and advertising work using “Microsoft Office Suite Applications, including Word, PowerPoint, and Excel” or “Adobe Creative suite tools, including Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, and Audition.”

The reason that clearance is required for corporate advertising is that secret governance after the 9/11 incident and the COVID 19 operation has extended from the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, to State, Treasury, Energy and Homeland Security, to the entire federal government, and increasingly to state government and to the defense and security contractors, often located outside the US in places like Israel, and to private intelligence/marketing/consulting firms like Booz Allen Hamilton. In short, what government and corporations do to the nation, and its citizens, is secret even from lawyers and judges.

Corporations can show you a memorandum of understanding they have with the government and they can act as if the classified codicil to the MoU does not exist—even though it describes what the corporation actually does, and what the true chain of command is. No one is entitled to know anything and in effect there is no judiciary any more.

So why do you need top secret/SCI clearance to work in marketing? Because much of the administration and finances of multinational corporations, from Coca Cola to Lockheed Martin, is labeled as classified using various bogus government-tied “security concerns” these days.

What does that mean specifically? It means that orders can be given within the corporation which are classified and for which you will go to jail for disclosing to anyone, and be fined hundreds of thousands of dollars too.

That means that as an employee, if you get an order to promote Covid 19 as a life-threatening virus, Covid vaccines as a scientific miracle drug, the 9/11 commission’s report as a scientifically sound study of the facts, or any other fraud that the rich and powerful may want to impose on citizens, you are free to do so, and you must do so, or else you will be brutally punished for not doing so without anyone ever knowing. Noone who gets in the way of corporate power will go unpunished.   

In such an ecosystem, it makes perfect sense to require a security clearance for marketing. After all, the images and storylines that are fed to the public, and to employees of government and corporations, are the front line in the war on truth, and the destruction of civil society.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

Emanuel Pastreich served as the president of the Asia Institute, a think tank with offices in Washington DC, Seoul, Tokyo and Hanoi. Pastreich also serves as director general of the Institute for Future Urban Environments. Pastreich declared his candidacy for president of the United States as an independent in February, 2020.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

There Never Was a “New Corona Virus”, There Never Was a Pandemic

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2024

My research based on a careful review of  WHO data, concepts and “methodologies” confirms that there never was a dangerous epidemic, and the identity of the new virus was never confirmed. 

Iran: The Road to Armageddon? Felicity Arbuthnot

By Felicity Arbuthnot, October 31, 2024

The increasingly hysterical claims regarding Iran, the latest threat to life as we know it, is being brought to you by the very same warmongers who wrought the duplicity that resulted in Iraq’s murderous decimation, the hawks’ nest which is the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and their friends.

The BRICS’ 16th Summit in Kazan Revisited. “Not All That Glitters Is Gold”. BRICS Nation Follow the Same Globalist Agenda”. Peter Koenig and David Skripac

By David Skripac and Peter Koenig, October 30, 2024

A second look reveals—unfortunately—that the BRICS nations follow the same globalist agenda as does the Western world. And if the BRICS are representative of the Global South, then maybe much of the Global South has also been taken hostage by that globalist agenda.

Virtuous, Smug and Venal: British Electoral Interference in the US

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 31, 2024

US politics, to that end, remain a matter of enormous importance to the UK.  Interfering in US elections is a habit that dies hardest of all.  In 1940, with the relentless march of Nazi Germany’s war machine across Europe, British intelligence officers based in New York and Washington had one primary objective: to aid the election of politicians favouring US intervention on the side of Britain. 

Disaster for Ukraine Military as NATO Assets Fail Across Battlefield. “Zelensky Now Wants Nukes”

By Drago Bosnic, October 30, 2024

The situation is so bad that over half of the forcibly conscripted Ukrainians last no longer than a few days. It could be argued that this has essentially turned into a death cult of sorts, as evidenced by the disturbing views of some service members.

Lies Cannot Hide Israel’s Failed Attack on Iran’s Air Defense System

By Joachim Hagopian, October 30, 2024

Over a hundred US-made F-35 stealth fighter jets piloted by Israeli Air Force last weekend, assisted by US refuel tankers over Iraq, were able to provide safe enough distance and cover away from Iran’s solid, still intact air defense system to launch Israel’s air-to-air ballistic missiles at targets deep inside Iran.

From Cyber Parks to Sadhus, Change and Tradition in Urban India: Colin Todhunter

By Colin Todhunter, October 30, 2024

While societal structures may evolve externally, fundamental cultural and spiritual values remain deeply entrenched. Indian urbanism allows for the coexistence of age-old practices with contemporary realities; tradition and modernity, spirituality and materialism exist together.

More than two months after its government’s controversial Finance Bill 2024 sparked widespread unrest, the flame of resistance remains bright across Kenya. The youth-led struggle—largely forged on social media platforms like X (formerly Twitter), TikTok, and WhatsApp by Generation-Z Kenyans—has ignited years of smoldering frustration into fresh demands for accountable governance, dignity, and justice.

Following the government’s cancellation of the bill, the rallying call shifted from #RejectFinanceBill2024 to #RutoMustGo—a shift from opposition to a tax increase that would disproportionately impact the poorest of Kenyans to a rejection of the neocolonial political arrangement, a public indictment of both elite colonial agents and the comprador class, and a mandate to renegotiate the broken social contract between Kenyan citizens and leadership. Kenyan youth are rejecting the poverty and humiliation perpetuated through the inequitable power relations of the global capitalist system, which have left Kenya vulnerable to aggressive foreign interests and the shadowy manipulation common within the imperial global agenda.

Entangled in the Debt Crisis

A proposal to alleviate Kenya’s extensive debt crisis by generating approximately $2.7 billion in taxes sparked nationwide criticism and the eruption of social unrest on June 18. In an effort to stave off default and remain one of Africa’s fastest growing economies, Kenyan President William Ruto promoted Finance Bill 2024 as a necessary step towards paying down the staggering $80 billion in domestic and foreign public debt, which accounts for nearly three-quarters of the country’s economic output. This is more than double the amount of public debt owed by neighboring East African nations Uganda and Tanzania, who are due to repay $26 million and $37 million, respectively.

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, Kenya currently spends 27 percent of annual revenue on interest payments alone. [1]

At this current rate, Kenya is spending 4.8 percent of GDP on public debt interest payments, surpassing the 4.4 percent dedicated to education and the mere 1.9 percent invested in health—two of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) promoted by the United Nations (UN) in their 2030 Agenda and said to be prioritized by international development agencies and multilateral financial institutions.

Calling attention to the inherent contradiction between sustainable development and the priorities of the country’s blueprint for economic growth, Kenya Vision 2030—the multilateral stakeholders who crafted the newly adopted UN Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework (UNSDCF)—maintain that the nation can best make strides towards realizing SDGs by expanding public-private partnerships and welcoming a greater amount and diversity of public and private financing and investment. [2] Agreed upon in January 2022, the adopted development roadmap requires austerity policies that increase taxes and decrease government spending in order to reduce budget deficits and repay debts, encouraging development financing and foreign investments. Of the $80 billion in public debt, nearly half (47.7 percent) is owed to external multilateral creditors and another 30 percent is owed to foreign bilateral lenders.

Crucially, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has played a major role in contributing to the economic hardships facing the majority of Kenyan citizens. While years of government corruption and financial mismanagement have plagued Kenya’s economic health—both adding to and camouflaging systemic causes of the current debt crisis—stringent IMF loans have inflamed hardships, perpetuating a cycle of debt that disproportionately affects the poorest and most vulnerable communities. In April 2021, the IMF entered into a 38-month loan agreement with Kenya that would allow the nation to access $2.34 billion in return for enacting a set of IMF conditionalities that require the government to increase taxes, reduce subsidies, and cut wasteful spending by privatizing state-owned enterprises. [3]

This agreement was extended by ten months last summer and an additional $941 million was approved in January 2024, bringing the current total IMF-endorsed debt to $3.9 billion in exchange for broader governance reforms that the organization claims will address weaknesses in public programs, strengthen anticorruption efforts, bolster antiterrorism finance frameworks, improve central banking operations, and advance policies for sustained and inclusive growth. According to IMF records, Kenya has entered into more than twenty similar IMF lending agreements since becoming a member of the institution in 1964. [4] These agreements economically entrapped Kenya; Kenya’s people would need to critically examine fiscally imposed imperialism and emancipate themselves from the architecture of neocolonial international finance to escape.

Imperialism, Financing, and Favors

There is no denying that United States—the IMF’s main shareholder and power—backs the imposition of these austerity measures in Kenya. There is also no hiding that, since his 2022 election, President Ruto has become the new darling of US and G7 foreign cooperation in Africa; Ruto’s decision to send 1,000 Kenyan police officers to Haiti to support a US-brokered “peacekeeping” mission over the opposition of the Kenyan people confirmed his commitment to the interests of the Western ruling class. Despite domestic protest and international criticism, 400 Kenyan police officers landed in Haiti on June 26.

Working with Haitian authorities and a contingent of 2,500 officers from various countries, Kenyan officers are tasked with deploying force to restore security from gang violence and establish law and order. Speaking with enthusiasm, Ruto addressed the UN Security Council on the policing mission in October 2023, where, according to Gathanga Ndung’u, “he reiterated his Pan-African populist rhetoric of ‘cooperation’ and ‘solidarity’ among black people everywhere.” [5] President Ruto’s adept ability to cater to the gallery of pan-African sentiment masks a traitorous imposture the people of Africa have witnessed many times before, making him a particularly disingenuous and dangerous Kenyan leader.

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Kenyan police in a meeting with President Ruto before departing to Haiti. Photo: Presidency of Kenya

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After endearing himself to fellow Africans as a Pan-Africanist guided by principles of bottom-up economics and politics during his rise to power, Ruto—adjusting his diplomatic posture—has set a seat for himself at the imperialist table by committing his allegiance to the needs of Western powers. [6] In return, US leadership has praised the Ruto presidency as “endearing” and “enduring,” despite the Kenyan government’s excessive use of brutal and deadly force against protesters over the past two months, forced evictions of citizens from areas impacted by climate-related disasters, and tacit grants of impunity for state-sanctioned extrajudicial killings. [7]

As Black Alliance for Peace’s analysis suggests, “the excessive support and public adoration the US government has given to Kenya’s President William Ruto represents the racist contempt this settler state has for all of Africa.” [8] In accepting the damaging conditions of financial agreements and indiscriminately performing the duties required by the Kenyan state’s geopolitical commitments to the US, Britain, and other foreign powers, President Ruto has cemented Kenya’s position as the face of Western imperialism in Africa—a position celebrated by US President Biden in his announcement of Kenya’s designation as a major non-NATO ally. [9]

Given the defense and security role that Kenya is now playing in Haiti, Somalia, and the Red Sea, the US political establishment is likely more than willing to work alongside Ruto to quell the current cost of living and antigovernment protests in order to maintain Kenya’s peaceful and stable image to its multinational investors. In the midst of anxieties about market and natural resource competition with China and Russia, the souring of US-Ethiopia relations, and the recent loss of Niger as a security partner in the Sahel region, the United States will be all the more desperate to protect its existing partnerships on the continent. Steps to cement this military and policing partnership are being taken in the form of a proposed expansion of US military presence at Camp Simba in Manda Bay, Kenya. [10]

Securing the favor of US military might against unfavorable political voices, the Kenyan government has deployed its forces to serve as the foot soldiers of imperialism, maintaining law and order in occupied lands rendered ungovernable by foreign-generated civil wars and political unrest. Kenya’s ruling class have agreed to enlist their own people to fight and die in foreign lands on behalf of Western interests, sacrificing Kenyan lives at the altar of global capitalism in return for political recognition, impunity, and financial favors. The country serves as a mercenary force for Western imperialism despite the current debt trap that has crippled Kenya’s economy and left it dependent on foreign financial assistance and loans from international lenders like the IMF and World Bank.

However, as evolving global power dynamics continue to contribute to the consolidation of multinational private sector power and the growing influence of Chinese and Russian investments, the list of creditors that hold Kenya’s foreign debt continues to expand beyond the big banks located in New York and London. China has quickly emerged as one of the most consequential lenders and investors in Africa. According to a recent Boston University study, since 2000, China has loaned African nations more than $170 billion dollars, $134 billion of which come from China’s development finance institutions. [11] A recent New York Times report suggests that China continues to maintain a loan portfolio that rivals the Bretton Woods financial institutions’. [12] According to IMF estimates, at the end of 2022, Kenya owed more than $6 billion to China for loans received since 2000.

The completion of the Lamu Project (a deep-water port connecting the Kenyan coast to Asian markets) will only bolster China’s strategic trading advantage in east Africa. Brokered through the Maritime Silk Road program, China will gain substantial access to African resources and markets in return for continued defense loans and a counter-terrorism base in Northern Kenya. According to the Group for Research and Initiative for the Liberation of Africa (GRILA-Toronto),

“if Kenya defaults on the debt they have incurred, which seems likely, the Lamu port will soon become yet another space of Chinese state sovereignty in sub-Saharan Africa.” [13]

In addition to Chinese cooperation and financial assistance, the IMF reported that Kenya owed more than $7 billion to foreign bondholders, $3.8 million to industrialized countries, more than $3 billion to the African Development Bank, and another $2 billion to international commercial banks. Questions of economic sovereignty and inequality, as well as public outrage over unrepresentative and irresponsible political leadership, culminated into the fierce resistance that has sustained fervor for more than two months in Kenya—but as protestors build their movement for change, they must not lose sight of the fluidity of broader geopolitical dynamics that are likely to impact the situation on the ground.

The international community’s narrow measure of progress as neoliberal development and market-driven economic growth—according to which Kenya appears as East Africa’s capitalist beacon—are merely well-packaged imaginaries that obscure the internal inequalities, injustices, and political betrayals that persist sixty years after independence. As freedom fighters of the Kenyan Land and Freedom Army (KLFA) were executed by British colonial forces, the emerging post-colonial elite —the national bourgeoisie who rose to power by collaborating with British authorities against the KLFA—replaced the colonial settler as the dominant class and amassed large tracts of land at the expense of the country’s majority. As Wairimu Gathimba describes, just as the private sector and international actors have materially and economically benefited from land elsewhere throughout Africa, Kenya has experienced the colonization of its acreage for commercial agriculture, natural resource extraction, and the conservation lie, developing Kenyan land into a place where imperial masters endure. [14]

The comprador class and political elite continue to align themselves and Kenyan land with multinational capital and foreign interests, promoting the comforts of the minority and leaving the people to declare “not yet Uhuru”—not yet liberation, not yet sovereignty over ancestral lands, and not yet the prioritization of the people’s needs. The nation’s short history has shown that, until promises of political and economic decolonization are fully realized, the Kenyan government will continue to be met with their people’s fury and burning desire to forge social change towards an inclusive, equitable, and just independence.

Igniting Resistance

On June 18, Kenyan citizens took the criticisms, discussions, and deliberations that had been bubbling online for more than a year from those virtual spaces to the streets. In the months leading up to the initial #RejectFinanceBill2024 demonstration, Kenyan youth had used social media platforms to share information, collectively condemn government corruption, and discuss notions of sovereignty, political agency, and their constitutional responsibility to collectively struggle for a free and just society. Utilizing social media platforms, Kenyan millennials and Gen-Z youth claimed a virtual space both outside the conventional political realm and distant from formal interface with government. Their use of these virtual spaces opened movement participation to a wider spectrum of actors, provided an alternative route to generate critical mass, and encouraged direct, collective citizen engagement with the state.

Kenyan youth have turned cyberspace into a terrain of resistance where they continue to mobilize, strategize, and inspire fellow citizens to take to the streets. While the early stages of this uprising have again shown social media’s undeniable power to mobilize people into action for political ends, questions surrounding its ability to safeguard against misinformation and polarization continues to be a concern. The likely risks of private industry monitoring and state repression make the long-term viability of social media as a space for radical organizing uncertain.

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Kenya young people demonstrate demanding the resignation of President Ruto

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Following a week of public unrest and the storming of the Kenyan Parliament building by thousands of protestors on June 25, the uprising scored its first and central demand—the total rejection of the Finance Bill. [15] At least nineteen citizens were killed by police in the chaos surrounding the people’s capture of Parliament, which ultimately resulted in President Ruto’s withdrawal of the bill the following day. While June 25 will no doubt be memorialized as a landmark victory for the Kenyan people, the success of the #RejectFinanceBill2024 campaign also deflated the widespread energy of the uprising.

Subsequent online discussions and protests in Nairobi and across the country under the rallying call of #RutoMustGo have been less impactful. While some citizens have retreated to the safety of virtual political spaces on social media platforms, others continue to organize both virtually and in their communities—convening their discontents, crafting collective actions, and consolidating their demands for social change. Decentralized antigovernment protests have persisted across the country, demonstrating the people’s renewed demands for accountable leadership, economic justice, and national sovereignty free from international interference.

In a recent interview with the Africa [Stream podcast], Deputy Chairperson and National Organizing Secretary of the Communist Party of Kenya, Booker Ngesa Omole, explained the party’s use of a boiling water analogy to illustrate the uprising’s foundation in long-term organizing efforts; just as a pot of water does not boil until constant heat brings it to a boiling point, the people’s uprising and ongoing protests are the fruit of years of struggle and organization. [16] Since the struggle for the adoption of a people-first, multiparty, democratic constitution in 2010—concluding a process that began as part of the resolution of the violent conflict that followed the 2007 elections—Kenyans have organized as part of what Njuki Githethwa refers to as, the fifth wave of social movements for consolidated constitutionalism and justice within the existing social and political order. [17]

The culmination of years of resistance that included the fight for independence and the people’s triumph over authoritarian dictatorship, the 2010 constitution limits executive power, balances authority, and guarantees rights to women, minorities, and marginalized communities, thus paving the way for a more inclusive political system and protected citizen participation. Like the battle for constitutional democracy, the current uprising did not result from a lone catalyst. Rather, the proposed tax legislation (Finance Bill 2024) is but one of a number of combustible grievances that include exploitation, oppression, and disregard for the people.

The bubbling public unrest against inequities and injustices has been on display in Kenya for more than a year. Similar to current circumstances, cost-of-living marches were seen on the streets of Nairobi last summer as opposition politician and former prime minister, Raila Odinga, rallied angered citizens in protest over newly posed tax increases. [18]

Since elected, President Ruto has repeatedly claimed he wants to put an end to the violence and terror wrought by Kenya police, yet according to human rights defenders 130 citizens were murdered in 2022 and 118 were victims of extrajudicial killings last year. [19] The consistent abuses of power and excessive use of force have influenced the ongoing social justice campaign against unlawful police killings, kidnappings, and disappearances. In April 2024, after devastating floods inundated communities along the Mathare River—impacting those in Nairobi with the greatest needs the most and forcing thousands across the country to flee and seek refuge—the government ignored pleas for help and instead seized land and bulldozed homes to prevent future catastrophe and encourage profitable riverside investments where these informal Eastlands residences once stood.

The people quickly responded to the government’s disregard and mismanagement, launching a campaign against future state brutality and taking their demands for dignity and housing rights to the streets. [20] Teacher protests also resurged in April, with union leaders across the country highlighting sectoral issues concerning pay, contracts, and worker status. [21] The dispute between the government and the Kenya Nation Union of Teachers (KNUT) persists and a nationwide teachers strike looms amid calls for President Ruto to fully implement terms of the 2021–2025 collective bargaining agreement. [22]

A month earlier, almost four thousand doctors in Kenya’s public healthcare sector went on strike for nearly two months to demand government approval of a 2017 collective bargaining agreement and comprehensive labor rights. [23] Additionally, climate activists continue to organize routine public demonstrations in response to the expanding fossil fuel industry in Kisumu. [24] As contestations have flared and grievances continue to smolder, a mass movement demanding change has gained steam.

Mapping the Trajectory of Resistance

The youth-led uprising that defeated Finance Bill 2024 has grown into widespread discontent for the deep-seated socioeconomic issues within Kenya. The uprising has exposed the fissures within the government’s façade of stability and silenced the false characterization of the country’s young generation as apolitical. Instead, the uprising marks this the political awakening and assumption of power of a generation that will no longer live in poverty and humiliation, nor be beaten into silence; it is a generation’s declaration to stand at this rupture of Kenyan political history and demand dignity and justice for the masses.

Thus far, they have stayed true to their self-prescribed description as leaderless, tribeless, and fearless. Despite violent policing and state repression, citizens continue to assemble, demonstrate, and present petitions to leadership—even dancing in the streets to celebrate their energy and unity in their struggle for justice and equality. Their courage and determination are clear, as was evidenced in a viral video of social justice coordinator Wanjira Wanjiru refusing arrest and declaring, “when we lose our fear, they lose their power.” [25] There could be no better fitting mantra for this youth-led movement at this revolutionary moment in Kenyan history.

Through political discussion and organizing in virtual spaces, Kenyan digital natives—a population made up of millennial and Gen-Z youth—are fanning the flames of radical social change, rightfully identifying their lack of control over their labor and its product (that is, tax payments), and demanding liberation from the decades of economic violence, Western extractionism, and imperialism that the political class has tethered itself to since independence. Broadening its reach and building through coalition, the mass movement demands the government prioritize the people’s interest and build a country in which they can live, work, and thrive.

From the KLFA in the 1950s to the December Twelve Movement-Mwakenya (DTM, a underground Marxist movement) in the 1980s, alternative paths have been forged before, during, and after Kenyan independence. The current struggle has shown a new collective hope for building an alternative political reality, but history suggests that concentrated organizing, political clarity, and cohesive political program will be necessary for the people to rise as one and achieve liberation for themselves.

According to Njuki Githethwa, how this uprising is to be directed towards a radical and just social order in Kenya depends on how well-placed the social forces, radical organizations, and revolutionary movements are to harness and build on current momentum. [26] There is already some movement in this direction with the formation of the National Provisional Coordination Committee of the People’s Assembly (NCCPA), a united front made up of various leftist political organizations and movements, such as Communist Party of Kenya, the Revolutionary Socialist League, Kongomano la Mapinduzi, student groups, social justice centers, and feminist collectives.

As concerned citizens continue to deliberate and educate each other in virtual spaces, leftist organizers are organically building the movement from the grassroots with members of the community. In a recent interview with the Millennials are Killing Capitalism podcast, Wanjira Wanjiru explains that a national coalition of leftist organizations have launched a series of public meetings to further educate and mobilize the masses for revolutionary change. [27] Prior to the NaneNane march on August 9, the Social Justice Centres Working Group (SJCWG)—a grassroots movement based in Nairobi and made up of several social justice community centers that advocate for inclusive democracy and human rights—began to host routine people’s assemblies. Held at social justice centers around the city, these assemblies provide a venue for Kenyans to come together, discuss issues, share ideas, and strategize for a collective way forward.

Congregating in public forums to learn and build a radical movement together is itself a form of resistance to the individualism promoted by the deepening neoliberalism in Kenyan society. However, if this resistance is to effectively pursue radical change, it must continue to move beyond its current decentralized infrastructure and spontaneous actions. The movement shares a history of colonial exploitation and oppression; this shared identity that can be fostered into a collective sense of power and possibility.

While the movement’s buoyancy is encouraging, the test of any oppositional politics is its sustainability. Maintaining the movement’s overall success against a well-organized and resourced ruling elite will require consolidated political organization, revolutionary strategic thinking, and tactical discipline. It’s too early to know in which direction the current movement in Kenya may turn, as the brutalization and arrests of protestors continue with each organized collective action. [28] The defeat of Finance Bill 2024 has renewed a spirit of people-first democracy in the country, and organizers are seizing the moment to give substantive meaning to the otherwise bankrupt rhetoric of “democratization” and “good governance” in Africa.

The national coalition faces many obstacles as they strive to broaden the movement and consolidate the struggle under a shared ideological and political program. The state-sponsored narrative characterizes this movement as unorganized, terminally spontaneous, and lacking political vision or cohesive strategy. Many Western-funded civil society actors and NGOs have echoed this narrative, encouraging progressives and revolutionaries to remain unorganized around material realities, identify with central leadership, and seek policy reforms and conventional institutional solutions to grievances.

A grounded Marxist analysis would correctly assert that any grand ideals purportedly necessary to organize a mass movement would merely reflect material reality, and thus indirectly appeal to material relations and tendencies. Whether or not this movement will embrace a socialist orientation remains uncertain—but revealing the radical social changes needed to achieve a fair and just political and economic sovereignty for Kenya and its people must prevent the state, global finance, and their geopolitical allies from obscuring the future Kenyans deserve. Doing so requires a revolutionary, anti-imperialist lens that only a Marxist perspective can bring into focus.

*

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Zachary J. Patterson is an independent researcher, activist, and ROAPE.net contributor. He writes on Kenya, NGOs, socialist politics and movements on the continent. He works in the space of art and revolutionary politics and is an organizer with the Indianapolis Liberation Center.

Notes

[1] United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, “Debt at a Glance,” UN Trade and Development, accessed August 29, 2024, https://unctad.org/publication/world-of-debt/dashboard.

[2] United Nations Kenya, United Nations Kenya Sustainable Development Cooperation Framework 2022–2026 (Nairobi: United Nations Kenya), https://unsdg.un.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/Kenya_UNSCDF_2022-2026.pdf.

[3] “Key Questions on Kenya,” International Monetary Fund, updated August 22, 2024, https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/KEN/kenya-qandas.

[4] “Kenya,” International Monetary Fund, last updated August 22, 2024, https://www.imf.org/en/Countries/KEN#ataglance.

[5] Gathanga Ndung’u, “Kenya—A loyal lieutenant of imperialism,” Review of African Political Economy, December 12, 2023, https://roape.net/2023/12/12/kenya-a-loyal-lieutenant-of-imperialism/.

[6] Larmbert Ebitu, “Pan-African Masquerade: William Ruto with the Mask Off,” Black Agenda Report, September 27, 2023, https://www.blackagendareport.com/pan-african-masquerade-william-ruto-mask.

[7] “Remarks by President Biden and President Ruto of the Republic of Kenya at Arrival Ceremony,” White House, May 23, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/05/23/remarks-by-president-biden-and-president-william-ruto-of-the-republic-of-kenya-at-arrival-ceremony/; The Network of Mathare Community Social Justice Centres, “Joint Statement by Mathare Community Social Justice Centres,” Mathare Social Justice Centre, May 2, 2024, https://www.matharesocialjustice.org/solidarity/joint-statement-by-mathare-flood-response-organizations/; Agence France-Presse, “Rights groups say 118 people killed by Kenya police last year,” Voice of America, April 24, 2024, https://www.voaafrica.com/a/rights-groups-say-118-people-killed-by-kenya-police-last-year/7582859.html;Agence France Presse, “118 People Killed by Kenyan Police in 2023: Rights Groups,” Barron’s, April 24, 2024, https://www.barrons.com/news/118-people-killed-by-kenyan-police-in-2023-rights-groups-df6bbf00.

[8] “Responsibility for the Kenya Crisis Lies at the Feet of US Neo-Colonialism,” July 9, 2024, https://blackallianceforpeace.com/bapstatements/kenyacrisisusneocolonialism.

[9] Joseph R. Biden Jr., “Memorandum for the Secretary of State,” White House , June 24, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/06/24/memorandum-on-the-designation-of-kenya-as-a-major-non-nato-ally/.

[10] Harry Verhoeven and Michael Woldemariam, “Who lost Ethiopia? The unmaking of an African anchor state and U.S. foreign policy,” Contemporary Security Policy 43, no.4 (2022): 622–50, https://doi.org/10.1080/13523260.2022.2091580; Al Jazeera and News Agencies, “US agrees to withdraw troops amid Niger amid Sahel regions pivot to Russia,” Al Jazeera, April 20, 2024, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/20/us-agrees-to-withdraw-troops-from-niger-amid-sahel-regions-pivot-to-russia; Joseph Clark, “Austin Welcomes Kenya’s President to Kenya Amid Long Strides in Defense Ties,” U.S Department of Defense, May 24, 2024, https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3787745/austin-welcomes-kenyas-president-to-pentagon-amid-long-strides-in-defense-ties/.

[11] A New State of Lending: Chinese Loans to Africa,” BU Global Development Policy Center, September 18, 2023, https://www.bu.edu/gdp/2023/09/18/a-new-state-of-lending-chinese-loans-to-africa/.

[12] Patricia Cohen and Keith Bradsher, “Behind the Deadly Unrest in Kenya, a Staggering and Painful National Debt,” New York Times, June 26, 2024, https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/26/business/kenya-tax-protests-debt.html.

[13] Kristin Plys, “Africa-China Relations: South-South cooperation or a new Imperialism,” Review of African Political Economy, January 13, 2022, https://roape.net/2022/01/13/africa-china-relations-south-south-cooperation-or-a-new-imperialism/.

[14] Wairimu Gathimba, “Kenya at 60: Field notes from the neocolony, and the civilising politics of betterment in the Ruto Hustler era,” African Arguments, December 14, 2023, https://africanarguments.org/2023/12/kenya-at-60-field-notes-from-the-neocolony-and-the-civilising-politics-of-betterment-in-the-ruto-hustler-era/; Barbara Plett Usher and Farouk Chothia, “Kenya’s president withdraws tax plan after deadly protest,” BBC News, June 27, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gg30gm0x2o.

[15] Evelyne Musambi, “Anti-tax protesters storm Kenya’s parliament, drawing police fire as president vows to quash unrest,” Associated Press, June 25, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/kenya-protests-finance-bill-33a20092285f1d663264f7b0d513e1da; Barbara Plett Usher and Farouk Chothia, “Kenya’s president withdraws tax plan after deadly protest,” BBC News, June 27, 2024, https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c3gg30gm0x2o.

[16] “Pan-African Attitude Ep 11. – Kenya’s Anti-Finance Bill Protest,” YouTube video, 1:13:45, posted by “Africa Stream,” June 28, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/live/uNDN6iC4kiw; Communist Party of Kenya (website), https://www.communistpartyofkenya.org/.

[17] Njuki Githethwa, “Vistas of the emerging social movement in Kenya,” Ukombozi Review, January 19, 2021, https://ukombozireview.com/2021/01/19/vistas-of-the-emerging-social-movement-in-kenya/.

[18] Peter Muiruri, “Death-toll rises as Kenya’s cost-of-living protests continue,” Guardian, July 23, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/jul/21/death-toll-rises-as-kenyas-cost-of-living-protests-continue.

[19] Agence France-Presse, “Rights groups say 118 people killed by Kenya police last year”; Agence France-Presse, “118 People Killed by Kenyan Police in 2023.”.=

[20] Zachary Patterson, “Institutional failure, police brutality, and the quest for climate justice in Kenya,” Review of African Political Economy, May 16, 2024, https://roape.net/2024/05/16/institutional-failure-police-brutality-and-the-quest-for-climate-justice-in-kenya/.

[21] “Kenya: The resurgence of teacher protests and infighting within civilian and security institutions,” Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, May 24, 2024, https://acleddata.com/2024/05/24/kenya-situation-update-may-2024-the-resurgence-of-teacher-protests-and-infighting-within-civilian-and-security-institutions/.

[22] Sharon Resian, “Teacher Strike Looms Amid Calls For The CBA Agreement To Be Fulfilled,” Capital News, August 12, 2024, https://www.capitalfm.co.ke/news/2024/08/teachers-strike-looms-amid-calls-for-the-cba-agreement-be-fulfilled/.

[23] Kahura Mundia, “Kenyan doctors’ strike: the government keeps failing to hold up its end of the bargain,” Conversation, April 26, 2024, https://theconversation.com/kenyan-doctors-strike-the-government-keeps-failing-to-hold-up-its-end-of-the-bargain-228294#:~:text=At%20least%204%2C000%20doctors%20are,and%20the%20recruitment%20of%20doctors.

[24] Rédaction Africanews, “Kenya: Climate activists march against fossil fuel industry,” Africanews, April 19, 2024, https://www.africanews.com/2024/04/19/kenya-climate-activists-march-against-fossil-fuel-industry/.

[25] Instagram post by Gloria Eyo (Maduka) (@thegloriaeyo), Instagram, June 19, 2024, https://www.instagram.com/thegloriaeyo/reel/C8Z_vX6xyZw/.

[26] Njuki Githethwa, “Everything must fall, everything must change,” Review of African Political Economy, July 8, 2024, https://roape.net/2024/07/08/everything-must-fall-everything-must-change/.

[27] “Wanjira Wanjiru on #RutoMustGo Protests in Kenya,” YouTube video, 50:02, posted by “Millenials are Killing Capitalism,” August 13, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/live/vX-WMx5rNRg.

[28] Citizen Reporter, “‘Nane Nane’: 174 Reporters Arrested, As Police Claim They Were Not Notified Of Demos,” Citizen Digital, August 8, 2024, https://www.citizen.digital/news/nane-nane-174-protesters-arrested-as-police-claim-they-were-not-notified-of-demos-n347413.

Featured image: Kenya 2024 protest (Licensed under CC BY 3.0)

The British cannot help themselves.  They are a meddling island people who conquered huge swathes of the earth in a fictional fit of absentmindedness and remain haughty for having done so.  They have fought more countries they can name, engaged in more wars they care to remember.  They have overthrown elected rulers and sabotaged incipient democracies.  In the twilight of empire, Britain sought, with heavy hearted reluctance, to become wise Greek advisors to their clumsy Roman replacement: the US Imperium.

US politics, to that end, remain a matter of enormous importance to the UK.  Interfering in US elections is a habit that dies hardest of all.  In 1940, with the relentless march of Nazi Germany’s war machine across Europe, British intelligence officers based in New York and Washington had one primary objective: to aid the election of politicians favouring US intervention on the side of Britain.  As Steven Usdin noted in 2017, they also had two other attached goals: “defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security.”

Much of this is also covered in Thomas E. Mahl’s 1998 study Desperate Deception: British Covert Operations in the United States, 1939-44, which was initially scoffed at for giving much credence to Britain’s role in creating the office of Coordinator of Information, an entity that became the forerunner of the Office of Strategic Services, itself the forerunner to the Central Intelligence Agency.

Mahl was, it was revealed in 1999, on to something.  In a dull yet revealing study written at the end of World War II documenting the activities of the British Security Coordination office, an outfit established by Canadian spymaster Sir William S. Stephenson with the approval of US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, activities of interference are described on a scale to make any modern Russian operative sigh with longing envy.  Those roped into the endeavour were a rather colourful lot: the classicist Gilbert Highet, future novelist of dark children’s novels extraordinaire Roald Dahl, and editor of the trade journal Western Hemisphere Weekly Bulletin, Tom Hill.

During Stephenson’s tenure, the office used subversion, sabotage, disinformation and blackmail with relish to influence political outcomes and malign the America Firsters.  (How marvellous contemporary.)  It cultivated relations with such figures as the 1940 Republican nominee for president, Wendell Willkie.  It also offered gobbets of slanted information to media outlets, often produced verbatim, by suborned pro-interventionist hacks.  In October 1941, BSC provided FDR a map purporting to detail a plan by Nazi Germany to seize South America, a document the president gratefully waved at a news conference. (The study claims its authenticity, though doubts remain.)

The Democrats are currently receiving the moral and physical aid of volunteers from the British Labour Party, who are throwing in hours and tears for a Kamala Harris victory in various battleground states.  Their presence was revealed in a now deleted social media post from Labour’s head of operations, Sofia Patel, noting that somewhere in the order of 100 current and former party staff were heading to the US prior to polling day to campaign in North Carolina, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Virginia.

On the other side of the political aisle, Nigel Farage, now Reform UK leader and member for Clacton-on-Sea, has spent much time openly campaigning for Donald Trump.  Hardly surprising that he should complain about UK Labour doing what he has been doing habitually since 2016.  Walking political disaster and former Conservative Prime Minister Liz Truss, historically the shortest occupant in that office, also put in an appearance at the 2024 Republican National Convention to offer what limited support she could.

Trump’s campaign team has taken umbrage at the efforts of Labour Party staffers, enough to file a complaint with the US Federal Election Commission (FEC).  This is not small beer: any opportunity to allege an unfavourable distortion in votes will be pounced upon.  In an October 21 letter to the FEC’s acting general counsel, Lisa J. Stevenson, Trump’s attorney sought “an immediate investigation into blatant foreign interference in the 2024 Presidential Election”. This took “the form of apparent illegal foreign national contributions made by the Labour Party of the United Kingdom and accepted by Harris for President, the principal campaign committee of Vice President Kamala Harris.”

The claim makes mention of another effort in the 2016 elections, when the Australian Labor Party furnished the Bernie 2016 campaign representing Senator Bernie Sanders with “delegates to be placed with the campaign”.  The ALP covered flights and provided participants with a daily stipend.  The FEC subsequently found this to be a provision of campaign services to the Sanders campaign, and determined that it, and the ALP, had violated the foreign national prohibitions.  Each received civil penalties of $14,500.

Patel’s announcement, the claim goes on to argue, seems to emulate the overly enthusiastic ALP model.  As head of operations, “her LinkedIn posts indicate that she is speaking as a representative of the party.”  Her posts supported “a reasonable inference that the Labour Party will finance at least travel and facilitate room and board.”

As regulations stand, FEC rules permit the participation of foreign nationals in campaign activities as long as they remain uncompensated volunteers.  If one accepts the narrow reading of the laws according to the US District Court for the District of Columbia in Bluman v FEC, contributions must be of a non-financial nature.  British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has stated that party staff have travelled to the US to campaign for Harris “in their own spare time”, staying with other volunteers in the process.  By no means is it clear that this did not involve a financial contribution.

Previous public efforts to sway election results in the US by British well-wishers hoping to test the waters have not ended well.  In 2004, The Guardian newspaper launched Operation Clark County, a smug and foolish effort to dissuade undecided voters in the swing state of Ohio from voting for the Republican incumbent, George W. Bush.  The response was one of unmitigated, volcanic fury.  A letter from Wading River, NY captured the mood: “I don’t give a rat’s ass if our election is going to have an effect on your worthless little life.  If you want to have a meaningful election in your crappy little island full of shitty food and yellow teeth, then maybe you should try not to sell your sovereignty out to Brussels and Berlin, dipshit.”  The letter is coarsening in its finality. “Oh yeah – and brush your goddamned teeth, you filthy animals.”  Starmer, beware.

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

Featured image: Farage speaking at a Trump rally in October 2020 (Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)

[We repost this article by the late Prof. Joseph H. Chung, first published by GR in February 2023. Prof. Chung was an indefatigable voice on the politics of Asia-Pacific, especially on the dynamics of the Korean Peninsula.]

***

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.

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USS Arizona burned for two days after being hit by a Japanese bomb in the attack on Pearl Harbor. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Thus, Japan undermined the West by beating the Western power, Russia. Moreover, during the Pacific war, Japan chased away the Western colonial powers from East Asia and gave the Asians to free themselves from their inferior complex vis-à-vis the West. This had the effect of undermining the West.

Another way of undermining the West was the brutal revelation of the West’s racism during the Pacific war. The West’s pretention of being civilized world was undermined by brutal racism against Asians.

There were many ways of exposing the West’s anti-Asia racism. For instance, Japanese were regarded as cockroach, monkey, venomous snakes or vampire bats.

The anti-Japanese racism has led to hatred against Japanese not only among the people but also civil and military leadership. Admiral William Halsey shouted “Kill Japs! Kill more and more Japanese!” Australian General Sir Thomas Blarney told Americans under his command: “Your enemy is a curious race, a cross between human being and the ape.”

The extreme racism and resulting hatred have induced the American soldiers to commit the worst kind of war crimes. The statement of an American officer is horrifying,

“Nothing can describe the hate we feel for the Nipps. The destruction, the torture, burning and deaths of countless civilians, the savage fight without purpose-to us they are dogs and rats-we have to kill them-to me and all of us killing nips is the greatest sport known-it causes no sensation of killing being but we really get a kick out of hearing the bastard screem”. (p.32).

The GIs had fun in exchanging the skulls of Japanese; some of the skulls were sent to people of highest decision makers in Washington.

Chapter 2: The War Against Defeated Japan: Punishing a Challenger to the West’s Regional Hegemony

Japan was punished for having the cardinal sin of attacking Pearl Harbour with the baptism of nuclear massacre and the humiliation of becoming American vassal state.

The established interpretation of the nuclear massacre in Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been the need for terminating the bloody war and saving millions of lives by not invading the territory of Japan.

But, Japan was ready to surrender as early as April 1945 and Japan was trying the negotiate surrender terms through Sweden, Portugal and Russia. Hence, it was not necessary to kill people with atomic bombs. Already, on July 12, Emperor Hirohito said: “It will be necessary to terminate the war without delay.” (p. 56)

Most of the American leaders were not seeing nuclear attack as necessary to make Japan surrender. General Douglas McArthur and the Naval Chief of Staff, Admiral William Leahy told President Harry Truman that the nuclear weapon was not necessary to make Nippon surrender. Admiral William Halsey qualified the atomic bomb as toy of the scientists wants to try.

The real reason for baptizing Japan with atomic bombs was to warn the Soviet on the one hand and, on the other, to experiment the impacts on human body. In other words, the Japanese were guinea pigs. It may be pointed out that Japanese medical experts and Japanese scientists were excluded from studies of nuclear impact on Japanese people.

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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.

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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

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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If you’ve been getting information about the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict only from the mainstream propaganda machine, there’s just one “reality” you’re aware of – “Ukraine is winning”. The Kiev regime is “so successful” in its fight against the Russian military that it got tired of “all this winning”. In fact, it was so tired that it decided to switch to a “losing strategy” in previous years and is reverting to the “victory plan” just now.

This vaunted “plan” boils down to NATO joining the fray and “defeating Russia”. There’s just one “tiny” problem with it – the political West cannot win a direct confrontation with Moscow, meaning it needs a different strategy. One of the recent examples of this was Zelensky’s threat that the Neo-Nazi junta will acquire nuclear weapons. In other words, its forces are “so successful” on the battlefield that they need nukes to stop the Kremlin.

The situation is so bad that over half of the forcibly conscripted Ukrainians last no longer than a few days. It could be argued that this has essentially turned into a death cult of sorts, as evidenced by the disturbing views of some service members. In the meantime, the Russian military keeps obliterating high-priority targets (usually with its unparalleled long-range strike weapons), including the grossly overhyped US-made “Patriot” SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems, as well as equipment and various military facilities across NATO-occupied Ukraine, particularly in the Odessa oblast (region).

Western-sourced armor is also suffering high attrition rates, with cases of “Abrams” and “Leopard 2” tanks destroyed in pairs, while not even additional Soviet-era tank armor helps against Russian weapons. High-value targets were also neutralized in Nikolayev and Lvov.

The situation is particularly bad in the Kursk oblast, where the Kiev regime forces are suffering insurmountable losses, surpassing 20,000 soldiers, according to military sources. Footage from the area shows heavy casualties for the Neo-Nazi junta troops, while the Russian military not only managed to destroy NATO-sourced armor, but it even captured “Abrams” and “Leopard 2” tanks.

The now legendary “Lancet” drones are also continuing their unprecedented win streak, neutralizing both personnel and air defense systems. Moscow’s forces are regularly preventing the Kiev regime’s offensive actions in the area and are even launching counterattacks, including with the help of volunteers, particularly Serbs who are quite happy to use the opportunity to destroy NATO equipment and personnel. Still, the Neo-Nazi junta is desperate to hold its most important PR frontline.

To that end, its forces are even resorting to the use of German-made chemical weapons. However, while these horrible weapons (banned by numerous international agreements) are indeed extremely deadly, they are a desperate, last-ditch effort by the Kiev regime. Meanwhile, Russian Aerospace Forces (VKS) are launching ever more attacks against the Neo-Nazi junta forces, with deadly effect. When combined with the Kremlin’s world-class long-range strike capabilities, these attacks result in massive casualties for the Kiev regime, exacerbating its already atrocious manpower problems. In addition, Russian military sources report that 46% of all enemy equipment destroyed during the Kursk oblast incursion so far was of Western origin, clearly implying that the Neo-Nazi junta forces are becoming dependent on NATO handouts more than ever.

This is a rather grim prospect for the Kiev regime, as its forces actually performed better with Soviet-era weapons and equipment. Namely, these systems are far more robust than the extremely sensitive NATO-sourced equivalents that are also quite costly and very difficult to service (much less replace). At this point, even most Western analysts admit that the Neo-Nazi junta is paying a heavy price for its PR adventure in the Kursk oblast, particularly as much of the forces needed in the far more strategically important Donbassare rerouted to hold the line in the Kursk area. As a result, the collapsing defenses in the Donbass are falling even faster, with the Russian military advancing steadily in multiple directions, taking one critical settlement after another. Even the staunchest Kiev regime supporters are dumbfounded by the lack of sensible military priorities of its leadership.

The best they can do, starting with Volodymyr Zelensky, is to blame everyone but the actual culprits – themselves. For the umpteenth time, it’s “the world’s fault” that the Neo-Nazi junta is losing. Desertion, conscription dodging and even the refusal to go back home by Ukrainian POWs are widespread, with the Kiev regime trying to resolve the chronic lack of manpower with far stricter forced conscription and the introduction of more NATO personnel and foreign mercenaries in general.

However, these are only temporary solutions that cannot ensure the Neo-Nazi junta’s survival. Terrified of the scenario of complete collapse, the United States is even trying to (ab)use the alleged presence of North Korean troops as a supposed “red line” and an excuse to intervene directly. However, it still doesn’t want NATO to be involved head-on, which is why it’s “slow-walking” Kiev regime’s membership prospects.

Still, in a futile attempt to intimidate Moscow, Washington DC and Brussels even organized nuclear exercises in mid-October. Unmoved by this, the Kremlin responded with its own nuclear drills, as well as a reiteration of security guarantees to Belarus, its closest ally. NATO further escalated by repeating the Pentagon’s talking points about the alleged presence of North Korean troops, insisting they are “helping Russian forces regain territory in Kursk [oblast]”. Once again, we “suddenly” have these “genetically altered supersoldiers” supposedly sent by Pyongyang, with “only 12,000 of them” replacing “at least 600,000 dead Russian soldiers” (the mainstream propaganda machine has the habit of simply flipping Moscow’s and Kiev’s casualties). However, lying about the results of the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict will certainly not change its outcome.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

In recent times a subject of great concern for health has been that powerful multinational companies are introducing several products which are highly hazardous for people, exposing them to several serious ailments and diseases including cancer.

As the incidence of several serious afflictions and diseases including several kinds of cancer has increased at a very fast pace in several countries, several public interest groups have been seeking scientific help to find out if several products believed to be highly hazardous products are responsible for this. As a lot of scientific evidence has become available regarding highly hazardous products, cases which seek billions of dollars worth of damages have been decided in favour of persons whose health was damaged by hazardous products while even more cases are pending.

At the same time, powerful corporations have sought all kinds of devices to escape the responsibility, going to the extent of merging themselves in other companies. While this is the situation in some of the richest countries, the situation in several parts of the global south are even worse as some of the highly hazardous products that are banned or highly regulated in richest countries are exported to the global south where these are used much more indiscriminately. In the context of hazardous agro-chemicals and weed-killers or their ingredients, a lot of controversy has centred around cancer-linked glyphosate and Roundup.

Recent disclosure by leading environmental organization Friends of the Earth have revealed that Residential Roundup products are more toxic to consumers and the environment than ever before.

“Not only has manufacturer Bayer [OTCMKTS: BAYRY] failed to remove glyphosate from all Roundup products, as promised, but new formulations of Roundup are 45 times more toxic to human health, on average, following long-term, chronic exposure”, Friends of the Earth has stated in a press release dated October 22, 2024. They also pose greater risks to the environment.” 

This press release by Friends of the Earth (FoE) says,

“Bayer announced it would remove glyphosate from consumer products starting in 2023 in response to tens of thousands of lawsuits linking the weed-killer to non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Friends of the Earth reviewed Roundup weedkillers for sale at the two largest U.S. home and garden retailers – Home Depot [NYSE: HD] and Lowe’s [NYSE: LOW] – to determine whether the company followed through as of October, 2024.”

FoE adds,

“Not only do several Roundup products still contain glyphosate, but eight new Roundup products contain chemicals of dramatically greater concern. With no requirement from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to warn consumers of the new dangers, people are unknowingly being exposed to higher risks.” 

According to the FoE statement,

“Roundup products sold to consumers now contain combinations of four new active ingredients as replacements for glyphosate: diquat dibromide, fluazifop-P-butyl, triclopyr, and imazapic. All four chemicals pose greater risk of long-term and/or reproductive health problems than glyphosate based on the EPA’s evaluation of safety studies. They have been linked to a variety of harms to human health, including birth and developmental abnormalities; reproductive dysfunction; kidney or liver damage; and irritation, inflammation, or allergic reactions affecting the skin, eyes, and respiratory system. The worst offender is diquat dibromide, found in all of the new Roundup formulations. It is 200 times more chronically toxic than glyphosate, is classified as a highly hazardous pesticide, and is banned in the European Union.” 

Further this statement says,

“In addition to the threat to human health, the new Roundup weed-killers also endanger animals and the environment. On average, they are more toxic to bees, birds, fish, aquatic organisms, and earthworms. They are also more persistent in the environment and more likely to leach into groundwater, increasing the risk of contaminating waterways and drinking water.” 

“The human toll of Roundup is enormous – tens of thousands of people have lost their lives and their health because of this toxic weed-killer. With the new formulations of Roundup, Bayer had the opportunity to make us safer, but it did the opposite,” said Kendra Klein, deputy director of science for Friends of the Earth. 

This statement adds,

“Internal corporate documents unearthed during the Roundup litigation show the profound extent of deceit and disinformation that Monsanto deployed to cover up the dangers of Roundup. Our analysis reveals that Bayer continues to mislead consumers, exposing them to far greater risks with no warning. While the new active ingredients are listed on Roundup product labels, as required by law, there is no language alerting consumers to the higher risks they pose. The average consumer – even if they notice the new ingredients – knows little about the toxicology of glyphosate compared to the new ingredients that are taking its place.” 

The FoE statement also informs us that as many as over 120 organizations have called on Home Depot and Lowe’s to take action to #RejectRoundup and make their garden product shelves safer overall.

At the same time concerns are also increasing in many countries regarding the agricultural use of chemical weed-killers as very serious health hazards could be seen in very remote villages where it will be difficult even to monitor and the linkages of highly hazardous products with serious diseases may be more difficult to establish, even though such diseases are certainly increasing in the wake of the wider spread of such products. Highly hazardous herbicides are being promoted as a package along with certain seed varieties and are an integral part of the spread of several GM crops which in themselves are also health hazards and ecologically disruptive, as pointed out by several senior scientists. So the real task and the real challenge before us is to work for the spread of natural farming ad ecologically protective farming so that health and sustainable livelihoods can be protected and at the same time biodiversity and environment can also be protected.

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Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include When the Two Streams Met (Freedom Movement of India), Man over Machine (Mahatma Gandhi’s ideas for present times) and India’s Quest for Sustainable Farming and Healthy Food. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Sustainable Pulse

In recent weeks, the United States and its vassals and satellite states have been pushing the narrative that North Korea is allegedly “sending infantry to aid the Russian military” due to its supposed “massive losses”.

Both the Kiev regime and South Korea (specifically its National Intelligence Service or NIS) insisted they have information that Pyongyang allegedly “sent around 12,000 soldiers to deploy in Ukraine”. Many outlets of the mainstream propaganda machine keep publishing all sorts of unsubstantiated reports, with claims ranging from North Korean troops that are supposedly “already deserting” and then being “forced into penal units” to elite special forces that are a danger to the Neo-Nazi junta forces. South Korean sources are even presenting rather unclear satellite imagery as “proof” of the supposed “large-scale deployment of North Korean soldiers”.

There are other reports designed to fit into the political West’s usual propaganda narrative, such as the claim that Russia supposedly asked North Korea to “help drive Ukrainian forces out of Kursk [oblast/region]”. The NYT insists that Pyongyang allegedly sent 5000 soldiers to “help Moscow”, quoting American and Kiev regime officials as their primary source. Expectedly, no other evidence was presented to corroborate such claims. However, this didn’t stop the US from (ab)using these unsubstantiated reports to “draw red lines regarding North Korean presence in Ukraine”. Namely, the House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner sent a letter to President Joe Biden, asking him to “brief the committee on Russia’s use of North Koreans in Ukraine”, insisting this should be considered a “red line for the US”. However, it seems he decided to up the ante.

“If North Korean troops were to invade Ukraine’s sovereign territory, the United States needs to seriously consider taking direct military action against the North Korean troops,” Turner posted on X, adding: “I have long challenged the Biden-Harris Administration’s unwise position on restricting Ukraine’s use of US weapons against targets within Russian territory. If North Korean troops attack Ukraine from Russian territory, Ukraine should be permitted to use American weapons to respond.”

It could be argued that Turner, a Republican, could certainly be trying to (ab)use the narrative for political purposes, although this still doesn’t explain the need to go that far. Only the most aggressive warmongers in the Washington DC oligarchy use such rhetoric, particularly one concerning long-range strikes deeper within Russia. Worse yet, the troubled Biden administration also seems to be embracing this escalating rhetoric. White House National Security spokesman John Kirby claims that US intelligence services “found evidence that at least 3,000 North Korean soldiers arrived at Russia’s Pacific port of Vladivostok earlier this month” and that these troops then “traveled onward to multiple Russian military training sites in eastern Russia, where they are currently undergoing training”. He also added that “if they deploy to fight against Ukraine, they’re fair game”.

Neither Turner nor Kirby specified what exactly the Pentagon would do (much less how), but if they were indeed suggesting direct military action, the only logical conclusion is that the warmongering oligarchy in Washington DC is more out of touch than previously thought. Namely, if those North Korean troops are indeed deployed in Kursk oblast (region), any US/NATO missile and/or jet sent to attack them will be promptly shot down by Russian fighter jets and/or SAM (surface-to-air missile) systems. It would be even worse if the US or some other NATO member tried launching long-range missiles at Russia, as this would prompt the Kremlin to respond directly by launching its own weapons (particularly hypersonic ones, which the political West lacks entirely due to growing technological inferiority). Moscow already used these to neutralize thousands of NATO personnel.

Russia also sent a very clear message when NATO started flirting with the idea of the so-called no-fly zones over Western Ukraine, launching hypersonic missiles at an area that was virtually on the Polish border. This meant that any NATO forces foolish enough to try and cross the border would get annihilated in minutes. Obviously, the Pentagon is perfectly aware of this, which raises the obvious question – why is the US suddenly making threats it cannot fulfill (at least without risking to blow up the world)? Namely, days before US officials made these laughable threats, the Pentagon refused to support the assertion that North Korean troops are fighting in Ukraine, citing the lack of any conclusive evidence. On the other hand, even if Russia does have foreign troops within its sovereign territory, the US and/or NATO are the last to have a say in this matter.

What’s much more apparent is that the political West (or should we say the Deep State that’s also in bed with other warmongering oligarchies, particularly the one in Brussels) is determined to escalate tensions in the entire world and perhaps even ensure at least one war starts, so the (most likely) upcoming Trump administration inherits one. If we assume that Donald Trump really doesn’t want to start any new wars (and there’s certainly some merit to that, as he refused to invade Venezuela during his first presidency), then the war criminals in Washington DC have just over a week to start one, anywhere in the world. Whether it’s an escalation in Ukraine, the Middle East, Asia-Pacific or perhaps even at home, it doesn’t really matter to these creatures (because calling them humans would be too much of a stretch), as long as there’s more war, death and destruction.

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image source

BRICS Declaration Reinforces Call for Multipolarity

October 30th, 2024 by Abayomi Azikiwe

A three-day gathering (October 22-24) held in the city of Kazan in the Russian Federation represented the 16th Annual Summit of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa Plus (BRICS).

At present there are nine governments that have officially joined the multilateral organization which are the five already mentioned along with the Islamic Republic of Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has been approved for membership by the body although they have not formally accepted. Nonetheless, there was high-level representation from Riyadh in attendance in Kazan led by Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan.

The Final Declaration of the BRICS Summit held under the theme: “Strengthening Multilateralism for Just Global Development and Security” covered 32 pages encompassing 134 points of agreement. Much of the focus in the document revolves around the desire for the democratization of international trade and the dissolution of punitive and coercive measures including sanctions and economic blockades. (See this)

36 governments were represented at the Summit while 13 of these nations have been invited to become “partner states.” This collection of countries poised to join BRICS as “partner states” were Turkey, Indonesia, Algeria, Belarus, Cuba, Bolivia, Malaysia, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Thailand, Vietnam, Nigeria, and Uganda.

In an unfortunate episode of disunity within South America, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela was blocked from joining BRICS as a result of a veto by the Republic of Brazil which apparently cited the criticism by the western imperialist states and their allies in regard to the recent elections that extended the tenure of President Nicolas Maduro. In response, Maduro after returning to Venezuela, proclaimed that no one will halt the Bolivarian Republic in its international efforts.

A statement issued by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry said in part that:

“The Venezuelan people feel indignation and shame at this inexplicable and immoral aggression by Itamaraty (foreign ministry), maintaining the worst of Jair Bolsonaro’s policies against the Bolivarian Revolution founded by Commander Hugo Chávez.”

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva attended the BRICS Summit remotely after it was announced that he had experienced a head injury. 

Interestingly enough, many of the heads-of-state and officials in attendance at the BRICS Summit in Kazan have recognized President Maduro as the legitimate leader of the socialist-oriented state, including host member President Vladimir Putin. Venezuela has thwarted numerous attempts to overthrow its government by successive administrations in the United States since the ascendancy of the former late President Hugo Chavez a quarter-century ago.

134 Points of Unity Confirmed

Some of the highlights embodied within the Kazan Declaration include proclamations related to the necessity of the Global South states to win their right to self-determination and national sovereignty. The objectives of achieving genuine economic growth and development for the majority of the world’s population will not occur absent the political independence from neo-colonialism led by the U.S. in the 21st century.

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The plenary session of the Outreach/BRICS Plus meeting. (By Alexei Danichev / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

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The BRICS Declaration passed in Kazan demands the diplomatic and military recognition of the territorial unity of the Syrian Arab Republic which has been the focus of imperialist destabilization efforts for more than a decade. This same declaration goes on to oppose the recent bombings of Yemen which has acted in solidarity with the oppressed people of Palestine and Lebanon in the face of genocidal aggression from Tel Aviv coordinated and bolstered by Washington and its NATO allies.

Unlike other gatherings sponsored by the western industrialized states, the BRICS Kazan Declaration is in support of the just struggles of the Palestinians and other targeted nations in West Asia which are subjected to constant military attacks by the State of Israel and its principal supporters in the U.S.

In points 29-30 it emphasizes:

“We mourn the tragic loss of civilian lives in the recent period and express sympathy with all civilian victims and their families. We call for urgent measures, in accordance with international law, to ensure the protection of lives. We reiterate our grave concern at the deterioration of the situation and humanitarian crisis in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, in particular the unprecedented escalation of violence in the Gaza Strip and in the West Bank as a result of the Israeli military offensive, which led to mass killing and injury of civilians, forced displacement and widespread destruction of civilian infrastructure.”

Several points within the Declaration urge the member states and participants to enhance their internal and cross-border financial transactions in a manner which can be beneficial for the peoples of the Global South. Hyperinflation within the developing nations is serving as a major impediment to qualitative growth.

The precipitous decline in the value of national currencies across many sections of Africa, Asia and Latin America stems from the lack of controls over the role and value of the U.S. dollar. Mechanisms for trading in national currencies could provide greater purchasing power for the developing states, which would undoubtedly ease the problems of housing shortages and food deficits.

Point 65 in the Declaration from Kazan goes on to state:

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

These goals, if implemented, would go a long way in reconfiguring the methods utilized for financial transactions on a world scale. Nonetheless, there is tremendous concern and opposition by the imperialist states to these objectives being advanced by the nations of the Global South.

Much of the animosity exemplified by Washington and Wall Street towards various geopolitical regions of the world is clearly related to the hegemonic designs of the imperialist states. The continuity of these policies is resulting in greater internal, regional and international conflict.

Other Economic Alliances in Recent History

BRICS represents a historical pattern of efforts to build alternatives to the existing world capitalist system. During the period of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), there was the founding of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). See this.

COMECON was formed in response to the project headed by U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall in June 1947 under the administration of President Harry S. Truman. Popularly known as the Marshall Plan, its actual purpose was to undermine the expansion and viability of socialism which had grown exponentially after World War II.

Founded in 1949, COMECON was designed to build unity and economic integration among the socialist states in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and other territories such as the Republic of Cuba, Angola, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Vietnam, etc.  The organization faded after the overthrow of the socialist states in Eastern Europe during the late 1980s. When the Soviet Union was weakening to the eventual point of collapse in 1990-91, COMECON was dissolved.

Since this time period there has been the formation of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) which consists of those nations and autonomous areas which remain in alliance with Moscow. Even though Russia is no longer a socialist state, the U.S., the European Union (EU), the United Kingdom and Japan are threatened by the reemergence of the county as a major regional and world center of power.

The BRICS Summit differs from COMECON because it brings together states which have both capitalist and socialist economic systems. The world’s second largest economy and leading socialist state, the People’s Republic of China, has pioneered with Russia, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) established in 2001, which is now the largest regional grouping in the world. China has also formed in conjunction with the Africa Union (AU), the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) which has been in existence since 2000.

There is the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) headquartered in Accra, Ghana as well which seeks to build deeper economic cooperation between these independent states. Affiliates within the AfCFTA include regional groupings such as the Southern African Development Community (SADC), the East African Community (EAC), Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the newly formed Alliance of Sahel States (AES), among others.

Consequently, the BRICS Plus Summit is a manifestation of the international movement towards ending the domination of the world’s peoples by international finance capital. This movement inevitably must wage a protracted struggle against the enemies of progress and development.

As the desire for genuine independence and sovereignty intensifies, the incompatibility of these objectives with the forces of exploitation and oppression will become more pronounced.

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Abayomi Azikiwe is the editor of the Pan-African News Wire. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.  

Featured image: A projection mapping show at the Kazan Kremlin. (By Ramil Sitdikov / Source: Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

Monday was the twenty-fourth consecutive day of the Israeli occupation forces’ aerial, ground, and naval bombardment of northern Gaza. The siege has included blocking supplies of food, water, medicine, and fuel, destroying homes, demolishing entire residential blocks, attacking hospitals, and assassinating individuals trying to escape.

Over 1,000 Palestinians have been killed since Israel began its siege of northern Gaza.

In Gaza, at least 41 Palestinians were killed and 113 wounded in the latest 24-hour reporting period, the health ministry reported.

In Lebanon, at least 20 people were killed in Israeli airstrikes on Monday, according to Lebanese media. Three of the dead were paramedics.

Medical Teams Needed in North Gaza Hospital After Israeli Raid, Health Ministry Says

The Ministry of Health in Gaza Monday appealed to international organizations to quickly send surgical teams to Kamal Adwan Hospital in the northern Gaza Strip, after the occupation arrested and deported all the medical staff present in the hospital, leaving only one pediatrician.

The ministry urged anyone with surgical skills to join the hospital to save whoever they can.

Israeli occupation forces besieged the hospital last week and forced displaced families who had taken shelter there, and wounded Palestinians seeking treatment out of it. Men and young boys were stripped and detained, while women and young children were forced to walk towards southern Gaza.

Medical teams were detained and taken away by the occupation leaving the wounded with no one to care for them.

Occupation forces withdrew from the hospital on Saturday after causing severe damage to the building and bombing its oxygen supply.

UNRWA Outlawed – US “Concerned”

Israeli lawmakers vote to ban UN agency for Palestinian refugees

The Israeli Knesset on 28 October passed two laws banning the UN Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) from operating inside Israel, Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and occupied East Jerusalem.

In a 92-10 vote, the Knesset approved the first law, which says that the UN agency cannot “operate any institution, provide any service, or conduct any activity, whether directly or indirectly.” Moments later, lawmakers voted 87-9 for the second law, which states that no Israeli government official or agency may contact UNRWA, effectively prohibiting Israeli officials from providing services or dealing with UN employees.

Ahead of the Knesset vote, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called the bills a “catastrophe.”

UNRWA was created over 70 years ago to provide essential services — education, healthcare, and emergency aid — to Palestinian refugees across Gaza, the West Bank, and neighboring countries following the Nakba and colonization of Palestinian land by Jewish settlers.

U.S. “Deeply Concerned” New Israeli Laws Will Worsen Gaza Crisis

The Biden administration is “deeply concerned” that two bills passed by the Israeli Knesset on Monday will exacerbate the already dire humanitarian crisis in Gaza and harm Palestinians in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, a State Department spokesman told reporters – at a time when than 1.8 million people across Gaza are experiencing high levels of acute food insecurity.

The U.S. and other Western countries pressed Israel not to move forward with the bills against the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Their passage will likely increase pressure on the Biden administration to suspend military assistance to Israel.

Israel has long opposed UNRWA, and has claimed some of the agency’s staff took part in the Oct. 7 attack. UNRWA has repeatedly denied allegations of the agency having widespread links to Hamas, and a UN-appointed independent commission in April said Israel “had yet to provide supporting evidence” of its claims.

Two weeks ago Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin sent a letter to Israeli leaders demanding Israel take steps within 30 days to improve humanitarian conditions in Gaza or risk the supply of U.S. weapons to Israel being affected. The letter also expressed their concern about the UNRWA bills, as well as a warning of policy implications should those bills pass.

The two bills will take effect in 90 days, during which time Netanyahu said Israel will “work with our international partners to ensure Israel continues to facilitate humanitarian aid to civilians in Gaza in a way that does not threaten Israel’s security.”

US president Joe Biden said on Monday, “We need a cease-fire. This war should end.”

Israel’s Netanyahu Rejects Egyptian Cease-fire Initiative in Gaza

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rejected an initiative proposed by Egypt on Sunday for a short-term cease-fire with Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi announced the proposal, according to Israeli media.

“We proposed a cease-fire in the Gaza Strip for two days to exchange four (Israeli) hostages for some (Palestinian) prisoners, and then negotiations would take place over 10 days to turn the cease-fire into a permanent truce,” al-Sisi said during a joint press conference with Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune in the capital Cairo.

Despite the support of most Israeli ministers for the Egyptian proposal, Tel Aviv decided to reject the deal due to opposition from Netanyahu, who emphasized that “negotiations will take place only under fire,” according to Israel’s Channel 12.

Jailed Palestinian Leader Marwan Barghouti Brutally Assaulted at Israeli Prison

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Featured image: Philippe Lazzarini, Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) holds press conference in Jerusalem on October 27, 2023 [Mostafa Alkharouf/Anadolu Agency]

An October 27th Times of Israel reports that Israel’s IDF airstrike against Iran late Friday-early Saturday was a complete and rousing success:

Israel’s widespread airstrikes in Iran on Saturday crippled Iran’s ability to produce long-range ballistic missiles in a blow that will be hard and time-consuming to recover from, and rendered crucial energy facilities vulnerable to future attacks by destroying air defense batteries protecting them, according to multiple reports citing Israeli, American and Iranian officials, as well as satellite images analyzed by experts.

On Saturday night October 26th the Jerusalem Post headline boasted:

‘Backbone of Iran’s missile industry’ destroyed by IAF strikes on Islamic Republic

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Screenshot from Jerusalem Post

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Afraid of losing their precious USA-made warplanes if they dared venture flying directly over Iran, Israeli pilots chose to use safely guarded Iraqi airspace, compliments of the illegal US military occupiers still entrenched on Iraqi soil years after losing the Iraq War over a decade ago, falsely justifying the US military presence in Iraq to remove the final vestiges of ISIS terrorists. Total bullshit.

People with half a brain at this stage of the US long war know that US and Israel created, financed, armed and supported ISIS terrorists just like al Qaeda terrorists before them as their proxy war Middle East ally. That’s why the US continues to violate Iraq’s sovereignty, totally disregarding its demand to remove US military from Iraq, in addition to US providing logistical support for America’s chief terrorist ally in the Middle East – Israel.  So, over a hundred US-made F-35 stealth fighter jets piloted by Israeli Air Force last weekend, assisted by US refuel tankers over Iraq, were able to provide safe enough distance and cover away from Iran’s solid, still intact air defense system to launch Israel’s air-to-air ballistic missiles at targets deep inside Iran.

Even prior to the IDF attack on Iran, Israel made sure that Axios relayed that “fair-minded” Israel warned Iran of the attack before its launch, warning not to retaliate. During the 4-hour period early Saturday morning, three waves of IDF fighter aircraft attempted to strike 20 strategic military targets in and around the capital Tehran, along with military targets in southwestern and western Iran, ostensibly to weaken the Islamic Republic’s air defense system safeguarding its nuclear sites and oilfields. Without directly attacking Iran’s nuclear and energy infrastructure, allegedly in compliance with US pressure, not that higher paygrade Israel ever pays attention to feeble US paper tiger’s wish list, Western press maintains that Israel focused on successfully crippling Iran’s air defense and missile production. Again, complete face-saving fabrication.

Israel’s public broadcaster Kan claimed that Israel’s advancing progress over the last two decades enabled its “much greater freedom of operation for Israeli warplanes in striking Iran.” Yeah, due solely to the Jewish State hiding behind the illegal cover of the US military embedded permanently inside Iraq. Israeli press are such bxllshxxters, just like joined at the Zionist Jew hip USA press. Hitting drone and missile producing targets in Iran, the US/Israel side is boasting how this decisive IDF precision attack sparing Iran civilians and killing only four Iranian soldiers has effectively neutralized Iran’s air defense capabilities, now rendered far weaker in anticipation of the direct war escalating against Tehran. Again, Israel insists that virtually all its missiles penetrated Iran’s nearly depleted air defenses. Via the Saturday October 26th New York Times:

Israel’s attacks on Iran early Saturday destroyed air-defense systems set up to protect several critical oil and petrochemical refineries, as well as systems guarding a large gas field and a major port in southern Iran, according to three Iranian officials and three senior Israeli defense officials.

All this hyperbole marveling Israel’s strategic triumph over Iran is the incessant, nonstop Zionist-controlled,  media lies to cover up actual on the ground reality that the frontlines in both the Middle East and Ukraine are growing abysmally bleak for the US and its diehard genocidal nation allies Israel and Ukraine.

What actually is far more likely to have occurred during those early morning hours last Saturday is Israel’s failed suppression of Iran’s air defense system that effectively intercepted a vast majority of incoming IDF missiles, so much so that a far more concentrated, protracted Jewish State swarm attack plan had to be aborted. Despite MSM’s hyped falsehoods surrounding Israel’s mission success in Iran, any actual damage inflicted was minimal. Despite the hundred IDF warplanes, only about 20 missiles were fired, causing negligible damage limited to a few radar installations in western Iran near the Iraqi border.

Despite all the government/media lies, the US-backed wars in Ukraine and Israel are both fast sinking into irreversible defeat, mired in unwinnable wars against Russia and Iran. Netanyahu’s vow to obliterate Hamas has totally backfired, and every time IDF airstrikes savagely pulverize more schools, refugee tent camps and hospitals, Hamas resistance fighters continue defending their homeland, inflicting more Israeli casualties.

Image: Slaughterhouse – by Mr. Fish

Regarding Hezbollah and the US/Israel desperation to ignite another illegal color revolution in Lebanon, or for that matter elsewhere in the former-Soviet state of Georgia, they fail. Bibi the Butcher will never be able to bring back those 60,000 displaced Israeli citizens to their northern Israel homes. His campaign on both fronts are doomed and like a cornered rat, his only move is to desperately widen the war knowing that vassal USA will join his Zionist vs. Islam Third World War.

Thus, the government of Israel, like the United States, lie through their teeth 100% of the time because no nations getting their ass kicked, fast going down in deliberate ruin, can honestly, publicly admit it. Face-saving deception is all they’re left dishing out. Everything coming out of the West’s Mockingbird media today, be it Israel, US or EU, particularly when it comes to wars, must be taken with a grain of salt, deemed not credible or trustworthy whatsoever. The annual Gallup poll results released last Friday found that only 31% of US respondents trust mainstream media at all, the lowest on historical record.

The Zionist owned and controlled fascist Western governments married to their Zionist owned fascist propagandist news media outlets, all five of them monopolizing the MSM airwaves, are forbidden to ever admit the truth. By deliberate, diabolical design, every conflict and war the City of London moneychangers finance and create since World War II is intentionally lost on purpose. To this point, it’s now nearly a full decade since I wrote a Global Research article entitled “Why the United States Always Loses Its Wars,” asserting in the opening paragraph:

In violation of all ethical precepts and all international laws, the sole global superpower citing its impunity through exceptionalism hypocritically insists it can maintain its moral high ground in its relentless pursuit of regime changes anywhere it so chooses on earth. We are the global village bully that’s hated by much of the world. And it’s pure self-aggrandizing bullshit to perpetrate the myth that America is hated because of our ‘freedom,’ another rhetorical brainwashing lie. We now live in a fascist totalitarian police state run by a globalized crime syndicate of the central banking cabal. As of last April [2014] per a Princeton-Northwestern study, the US has officially been designated an oligarchy.

The writing on the wall was more than clear ten years ago. Likewise, today’s two Western backed wars in Ukraine and Middle East are two more in the latest losing propositions going down in flames, joining this ever-long list of disastrous US foreign war defeats committed in our name by malific intended design, central to centuries ago, long-plotted moneychangers’ agenda to throw the West under the bus.

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This article was originally published on The Government Rag.

Joachim Hagopian is a West Point graduate, former Army officer and author of “Don’t Let the Bastards Getcha Down” exposing a faulty US military leadership system based on ticket punching up the seniority ladder, invariably weeding out the best and brightest, leaving mediocrity and order followers rising to the top as politician-bureaucrat generals designated to lose every modern US war by elite design. After the military, Joachim earned a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology and worked as a licensed therapist in the mental health field with abused youth and adolescents for more than a quarter century.

Joachim has written hundreds of articles for many news sites, including Global Researchlewrockwell.com and currently https//jameshfetzer.orgInteldrop.org and https://thegovernmentrag.com. As a published author of a 5-book volume series entitled Pedophilia & Empire: Satan, Sodomy & the Deep State, Joachim’s books and chapters are Amazon bestsellers in child advocacy and human rights categories. His A-Z sourcebook series fully document and expose the global pedophilia scourge and remain available free at https://pedoempire.org/content s/. Joachim also hosts the weekly Revolution Radio broadcast “Cabal Empire Exposed” on Friday morning at 7AM EST (ID: revradio, password: rocks!)

Featured image is from TGR

Ukraine is struggling to recruit troops to reinforce its front lines amid thousands of casualties in nearly three years of conflict. Under these conditions, the Kiev regime is hunting for recruits in places that were once off-limit, such as “upscale venues,” whilst also becoming increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries to perform special operations.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the Kiev regime has expanded its search network for military recruits to include “upscale venues” and “nightlife spots,” which is creating more social tension.

Even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky tries to secure more weapons and security guarantees from the US government, the “biggest immediate problem” in Ukraine is recruiting more soldiers, the US outlet said. To deal with this issue, the Kiev regime recently lowered the age of compulsory military service to 25 and imposed additional penalties for draft dodgers, seeking to bring more soldiers to the front lines in the face of advancing Russian forces.

However, the newspaper said that most of the men who wanted to join the Ukrainian armed forces had already done so, while others had fled the country or were in hiding to avoid being drafted. Some prominent figures, including state prosecutors, are also avoiding joining the military by claiming medical exemptions.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the military is stepping up its recruitment campaigns in public places in the capital and other major cities. Military agents check concert halls, grocery stores, and even luxury restaurants in the port city of Odessa.

Mathieu Boulègue, a researcher at the Transatlantic Defence and Security Programme at the Centre for European Political Analysis, believes “there is no easy solution” to Ukraine’s troop shortage.

“That is unfortunately a critical issue that you cannot solve by sending stuff over, short of sending Western troops,” the researcher told the American outlet.

Some Ukrainian officials, cited by the outlet, said they were building up reserves of conscripts to replace those who had lost their jobs. However, they warned that mobilising new troops would not be effective without “more Western supplies to arm new recruits properly.”

The deployment of new Ukrainian troops is not just a military problem for Kiev, the Wall Street Journal noted, but also a growing social and political issue for Zelensky.

“Among soldiers who have been serving on the front line for nearly three years, resentment is building against men avoiding military service,” while scandals continue to emerge involving officials who allegedly accept bribes to grant exemptions.

For this reason, the Kiev regime is increasingly reliant on foreign mercenaries to perform military operations since the citizenry does not provide enough soldiers. In effect, the presence of foreign mercenaries demonstrates the extreme shortage of experienced troops in Ukraine.

In the latest example, foreign mercenaries from the US, Canada and Poland, likely on a sabotage mission or raid, attempted to breach Russia’s Bryansk Oblast on October 27. The special operations mission the mercenaries were assigned required highly skilled operators capable of sabotage or reconnaissance, so given the lack of such people in the Ukrainian military, it is reasonable that they would turn to foreigners.

Emphasising this point is the fact a tattoo was discovered on the body of one of the eliminated foreigners, indicating that he was a member of the elite 75th Ranger Regiment of the US Army.

The discovery of the mercenary group makes a mockery of the West’s claim that soldiers from North Korea are fighting in Ukraine since it is Ukraine suffering from a shortage of troops and relying on foreigners. In fact, it is clear that the West planned the operation rather than Ukraine.

While South Korea and the Kiev regime spread fake news that North Korean troops are fighting in Ukraine, about 15,000 mercenaries from more than 100 countries have arrived in the country since February 2022 to join Ukrainian forces.

According to a Russian Defence Ministry report, Western secret services recruit mercenaries through the US private military companies Academi (formerly Blackwater), Cubic, Dark Horse Benefits, Dean Corporation, Forward Observations Group, Hyperion Services, and Sons of Liberty International, as well as the Polish ASBS Othago and the European Security Academy. At the same time, mercenaries are recruited by neo-Nazi and right-wing organisations from Germany, Italy, Portugal and other countries.

With Ukraine’s best troops dead, wounded or exhausted, the Kiev regime is now hunting for recruits all over the country, including in places that were once considered off-limits. This only deepens Kiev’s reliance on foreign mercenaries and, more importantly, demonstrates the hopeless position that the regime is in.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Bumble Dee/Shutterstock

Hezbollah and Lebanon After Nasrallah

October 30th, 2024 by Steven Sahiounie

Many expected Hezbollah to dissolve into disarray after its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was assassinated on September 27 by Israeli airstrikes, but Hezbollah fights on in Lebanon and has increased its attacks on Israel since Nasrallah’s death. Nasrallah’s death motivated the armed fighters to avenge the death of their charismatic leader who began his leadership in 1992.

Israel announced on October 27, that five of the IDF were killed in Lebanon fighting Hezbollah, bringing to 37 the death toll for soldiers fighting there since the start of ground operations in Southern Lebanon on September 30.

According to the BBC, eight IDF were killed fighting Hezbollah inside Lebanon on October 3, marking Israel’s first losses in Lebanon.

According to Hezbollah sources, the number of IDF killed is 90, with 750 injured. The equipment losses are 38 Merkava tanks, 4 wheel loaders, 1 hummer, 1 armored vehicle, 1 troop transport, 3 drones, 3 Hermes 450, and 1 Hermes 900.These equipment losses are the result of hand-to-hand combat and do not include Hezbollah attacks on Israeli military bases.

According to the Lebanese Health Ministry, at least 2,672 people have been killed and 12,468 injured in Lebanon. Political analysts have thought there will be no ceasefire in either Gaza or Lebanon until after the US election next week. With the Oval Office flying on auto-pilot, Netanyahu has a fully charged green light to pursue his military goals at the expense of the US taxpayer.

Image source

US Special Envoy, Amos Hochstein, has been on a shuttle diplomacy mission to secure a ceasefire in Lebanon. He is trying to sell a US-Israeli deal that will strip Hezbollah of weapons, and put the Lebanese Army in southern Lebanon, while Hezbollah withdraws its forces north of the Litani River.

Hochstein is in Tel Aviv today, and officials in Beirut are awaiting his next visit.

The current and ongoing conflict is referred to as the Third Lebanon War, following Israeli invasions in 1982 and 2006 that proved to be failures for Israel militarily. The 1982 Israeli invasion, the Hezbollah resistance group, as a response to the brutal Israeli occupation of the south of Lebanon lasted from 1982 to 2000. It was the resistance that was successful in driving out the Israeli occupation army, but a small area on the border, Shebaa Farms, remains occupied by Israel.

Hezbollah has vowed to stop all attacks on Israel if a ceasefire is agreed on in Gaza, where 40,000 Palestinians have been killed, with at least half identified as women and children. The suffering in Lebanon is connected to the suffering in Gaza.

From the outset of violence beginning on October 7, 2023, the US and the international community have been urging a ceasefire in Gaza to release the hostages, and to end the genocide in Gaza. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opposed a ceasefire because he had not yet realized a military goal. He intends to complete the ethnic cleansing of Gaza by removing all Palestinians remaining from Gaza, and to eliminate all Hamas leaders, fighters, and weapons. Israeli families of the hostages have demanded their government make a deal to release the hostages, but Netanyahu will not bend. He is willing to have his citizens pay the price in blood for his plan to annex Gaza. To Netanyahu, and his co-conspirators, Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, the end justifies the means. Netanyahu and his supporters, like the US government, will argue the death and destruction in Gaza and Lebanon is justified to bring security to the Israeli people. But, security experts will say there can be no security in Israel without the security of the Palestinian people.

Without a home and human rights, the Palestinian people, and their supporters, will continue to fight for freedom and self-determination regardless of how high the walls are. Experts in Lebanon point out that Israel and the US have miscalculated the effect of the pagers and walkie-talkie explosions on September 17 and 18. The enemies of Hezbollah were sure this would be the Lebanese resistance group’s downfall.

The collective ‘West’ has not understood the ideology of resistance to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The ideology of resistance doesn’t belong to a certain group, religion, or country. It is across the Middle East, spanning Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Gaza, and the Occupied West Bank.

Iran and Turkey are also pro-Palestinian and support the resistance, though they are not part of the Arab world. Lebanon is about 43% Christian and 57% Muslim. The support for the resistance is found across religious groups. The detractors of Hezbollah feel Lebanon should not link itself to the cause of resistance, and should decouple its political agenda from supporting the people in Gaza and the Occupied West Bank. Those who oppose Hezbollah may support the cause of resistance but oppose the costs brought to bear by the Lebanese people.

The members of the UN who have voted against Israel and the US represent the majority of countries, and peoples of the globe. Israel and the US are an isolated partnership on the global diplomatic stage. Hezbollah is a Lebanese Shia Islamist political party and resistance group. Its military wing is the Jihad Council, and its political wing is the Loyalty to the Resistance Bloc party in the Lebanese Parliament.

Before October 7, 2023, its armed strength was assessed to be equivalent to that of a medium-sized army. There is only one solution to dismantling Hezbollah, Hamas, or any other Pro-Palestinian resistance group.

The UN resolution, which is decades old and gathering dust, is the two-state solution with Israel respecting the 1967 borders with Palestine, and handing back the Golan Heights to Syria, and the Shebaa Farms to Lebanon. The call for resistance will be over globally if the two-state solution is realized.

When the occupation of Palestine is ended, and Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side with equal rights, then both communities will be secure, peaceful, and prosperous. Until that day, the Israeli people will never be secure, because their neighbors are not secure.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

Steven Sahiounie is a two-time award-winning journalist. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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There exists a significant amount of literature and debate regarding modernity, urbanisation and social change in India. Critical inquiries persist, not least on the impact of change on the daily lives of individuals and the ways in which they navigate their identities amid the tensions between modernity and tradition in an increasingly dynamic urban environment.

At the heart of this urban landscape are the working poor, who play a crucial role in India’s economy. Engaged in diverse occupations, such as construction, goods transport, waste recycling, domestic service and street vending, their contributions are vital for the functioning of the economy.    

Informal workers constitute more than 90 per cent of the labour force (80 per cent in urban settings). However, the informal sector is characterised by challenging working conditions that include strenuous manual labour, low remuneration, extended hours and a lack of workplace benefits.

This stark reality of the informal sector stands in direct contrast to the expansive cyber parks and modern shopping malls that epitomise India’s uneven ‘development’ — a concept that suggests modernisation often occurs in isolated sectors, leaving substantial portions of the population relatively untouched. This is particularly evident in the retail landscape, where traditional and modern forms of commerce coexist, often in uneasy tension.

On one hand, there is a concerning proliferation of organised retail and (monopolistic) online commerce platforms, representing one aspect of Indian consumerism. On the other hand, local street markets and vendors — integral components of the informal sector — remain a longstanding and vital feature of Indian urban life.

Despite the encroachment of modern retail, these traditional markets continue to thrive, facilitating a direct connection between rural producers and urban consumers, particularly concerning fresh produce. This farm-to-table model not only sustains millions of livelihoods within the informal sector, but it is also deeply embedded in Indian culinary culture, highlighting the ongoing relevance of these markets within urban neighbourhoods. The persistence of such traditional forms of commerce alongside modern retail outlets highlights the interplay between tradition and modernity in India’s urban economic landscape.

Culturally, India presents a distinctive scenario. Unlike many Western contexts where religion is often compartmentalised, spiritual practices and symbols are intricately interwoven into public life. The integration of sacred and secular elements persists despite the influences of modernity, urbanisation and global consumerism.

While societal structures may evolve externally, fundamental cultural and spiritual values remain deeply entrenched. Indian urbanism allows for the coexistence of age-old practices with contemporary realities; tradition and modernity, spirituality and materialism exist together.

For instance, religious symbols serve as markers of cultural identity. The portrayal of Hindu deities on everyday items reinforces cultural connections even within modern contexts. Such representations often feature vibrant artistic styles that blend functionality with cultural significance.

Moreover, religious paraphernalia — such as leaves, limes or conch shells — are commonly used to adorn small businesses. Each leaf possesses distinct symbolic meanings; conch shells are associated with Vishnu and are frequently displayed outside stores. Limes, often paired with green chilies to ward off negative energies, symbolise prosperity and abundance, making them prevalent, hanging in front of shops. This practice illustrates how spiritual beliefs permeate daily life and underscores the enduring influence of tradition on contemporary commerce in India. 

Deeply rooted beliefs associated with concepts like dharma persist despite social transformations. Many dharmic traditions emphasise the significance of seva (selfless service), with charitable giving — known as dana in Sanskrit — considered an essential aspect of one’s dharma or religious duty. This practice is perceived not merely as a moral obligation but as a spiritual endeavour that fosters personal growth and good karma. This may, in part, help us to understand why ‘duty’ or ‘service’ is often invoked when people talk about their jobs.

Historical photographs depicting Britain in the 1950s and 1960s evoke memories of cohesive communities and industrial landscapes that were rapidly swept away under the guise of ‘progress’. These images connect us to a past where individual identities were closely linked to their local and immediate social, economic and cultural environments.

The consequences of this ‘progress’ have been critically examined by writer Paul Kingsnorth in his book Real England: The Battle Against the Bland. He laments the loss of authentic pubs, rural hedgerows, affordable housing, individuality and character in towns due to corporate greed and an insatiable quest for profit — a phenomenon described by one insightful reviewer as a “Starbucked, Wetherspooned avalanche”.

In India, custom, tradition and personal identity are intricately interwoven. The persistence of ancient beliefs amid modern pressures underscores the enduring power of cultural identity. However, even within this context, forces such as modernity or globalisation — more accurately framed as neocolonialism — are gradually reshaping urban landscapes and influencing the lives, fashions and preferences of its inhabitants.

In 2003, British journalist David Charters (1948-2020) remarked:

“Sadly, the world is being shrunk to a ‘global village’ by the forces of celebrity, mass media, instant communications, swift travel and the constant desire for standardisation. So, we should record the qualities that made us different while there is still time”.

Take a journey through Chennai’s streets to prompt reflection on the issues highlighted above by visiting the author’s open-access, image-based ebook here.

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Renowned author Colin Todhunter specialises in development, food and agriculture. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image: Elante Mall is the largest mall of Chandigarh (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

“The crime of all crimes.” That is how the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda declared genocide in the final judgment of Prosecutor v. Akayesu, the case against the mayor of Taba, Rwanda for crimes against humanity. Today, that crime repeats itself as UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese painfully details in her latest report.

Albanese joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report to break down her report and present the indisputable evidence that Israel is actively committing a genocide of the Palestinian people.

“The acts of killing, the mass killing, the infliction of psychological and physical torture, the devastation, the creation of conditions of life that would not allow the people in Gaza to live, from the destruction of hospitals, the mass force displacement and the mass homelessness while people were being bombed daily, and the starvation—how can we read these acts in isolation?” Albanese asks.

The UN Special Rapporteur clearly outlines the steps and conditions required to meet the classification of genocide, and in the case of Gaza, it’s undeniable. Albanese tells Hedges,

“What is relevant in order to establish that there is genocide is not just the intent behind these crimes, enunciated in Article II of the Genocide Convention; it’s the overall intent, specific intent, to destroy the people—the group as a whole, or in part, as such. And what is the group here? It’s the Palestinians.”

Throughout the rest of her report, Albanese details the harrowing death and destruction Palestinians endure on a daily basis in countless forms, alongside the horror suffered by non-Palestinians in Gaza. Albanese documents record-breaking numbers: The highest number of journalists killed, the highest number of UN officials killed, the highest number of hospitals targeted, the destruction of all universities, the fastest rate of population starvation. It’s clear, according to Albanese, the scale of devastation the Israelis are inflicting is one of scorched-earth catastrophe.

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The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity. Dr. Naomi Wolf

By Dr. Naomi Wolf, October 29, 2024

Our book, The Pfizer Papers: Pfizer’s Crimes Against Humanity, was published October 15 and became an immediate bestseller. This is a book that three governments—the US, the UK and Australia—all sought to suppress. 

Bill Gates Calls for ‘Vaccine Misinformation’ to be Censored in Real-Time by AI

By Frank Bergman and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 30, 2024

Billionaire Bill Gates is calling for all questions and concerns about vaccines to be censored in real time by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an effort to allegedly tackle so-called “misinformation.”

Total Censorship Becoming the Norm in the Political West. “Protection of Free Speech” to Suppress It

By Drago Bosnic, October 29, 2024

Censorship is now so vital to the ruling oligarchy in Washington DC that it’s become the “new normal” in universities, government offices and virtually all other public institutions. In addition, censorship has become particularly strong during recent election campaigns, when the mainstream propaganda machine is tasked to ensure that only “approved” narratives are in the spotlight.

The Politics of Fear: Laying the Groundwork for Fascism, American-Style

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, October 29, 2024

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left… The list goes on and on.

When Evil Is Allowed In, Evil Stays. Paul C. Roberts

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 29, 2024

It is a paradox that Washington, Putin, and Iran are equally indifferent to Israel’s slaughter from the air of civilians in Gaza and civilians in Lebanon. Any one of the three countries could stop the murder of civilians, but not one of them will do anything.

Globalists Plot Worldwide Genocide Via WHO Pandemic Treaty

By Richard C. Cook, October 29, 2024

With all the trouble in today’s world, including the completely pointless American-instigated war in Ukraine, Israel’s loathsome genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza, and militant U.S. threats to China over Taiwan, perhaps we should be asking whether the escalation in tensions threatening massive global conflict is really a carefully-crafted Globalist “false-flag” concealing something even more sinister.

Why Did Trump, Rogan Refuse to Touch COVID Vaxx in Three-Hour Interview?

By Ben Bartee, October 29, 2024

Not only did the vaxx elephant in the room remain ignored, but they didn’t touch the recent DoD directive explicitly allowing the U.S. military to kill American citizens under so-called emergency conditions, nor the transhumanist, exterminationist ideology of the psychopathic multinational elites.

India-China Cooperation and the End of QUAD’s Imperialist Agenda

October 30th, 2024 by Bhabani Shankar Nayak

United States President Joe Biden has sought to participate in the presidential campaign of his vice president, Kamala Harris. However, the Democrat’s team has kept him on the sidelines, believing his presence will harm her chances of overcoming Republican candidate Donald Trump.

According to Axios, Biden wants to get involved in the final days of Harris’ campaign to be elected president. According to three people familiar with the matter, her team responded to Biden’s request, “We’ll get back to you.”

Harris’ rise to the Democratic nomination resulted from the crisis within the party caused by Biden’s advanced age and cognitive decline, which raised doubts both internally and externally about his ability to retain the White House. Doubts turned into certainties on June 27, when the Democrat faced the Republican candidate in a debate in which he displayed irresolute behaviour.

Axios reported that the vice president’s team believes Biden is a political liability at a crucial moment in the campaign but has been reluctant to back down from him.

“It’s the latest example of Democrats, and even some of Biden’s staff, tiptoeing around the 81-year-old president’s ego and feelings,” the outlet wrote, adding: “Harris’ team and allies respect Biden’s service but are wary of further tying Harris to the unpopular president on the campaign trail.”

According to CNN, the current US president has an average approval rating of 38% and a disapproval rating of 57%, while FiveThirtyEight found that Biden’s approval rating is 39%.

“He’s a reminder of the last four years, not the new way forward,” said another person familiar with the situation and referencing Harris’ campaign slogan.

Although Harris’ campaign team is trying hard to present her as a different candidate from what Biden represents, a little more than half of Americans believe that the Democrat will continue with the current government’s policies.

According to a poll by the Wall Street Journal, 54% of American voters say Harris will mostly continue Biden’s approach, while 41% believe she will have her own ideas and new leadership in the White House. The perception that the Democrats will continue with the same direction of government is more prevalent among undecided Americans.

Asked which of the two candidates could implement necessary change, the poll showed 49% of voters favour Trump versus 40% for Harris. Asked who has a vision for the future, 45% of respondents voted for the Republican candidate and 43% for the Democratic presidential hopeful.

The American newspaper pointed out that Harris and Trump are competing for a small portion of undecided voters a few days before the November 5 elections. According to a poll last August, the Republican led with 47% of electoral preferences over the Democrat, who had 45% of voting intention.

David Wasserman, an analyst at the Cook Political Report, told the newspaper that Harris has to generate enthusiasm among the 37% to 40% of voters who believe Biden’s presidency was successful while seeking support from Americans who want a big change.

The Wall Street Journal also claimed that Harris’ campaign members acknowledged that the candidate needed to do more to show her separation from Biden’s image. The Democrat’s efforts have been hesitant, which has been exploited by Trump and his electoral team during the race.

The Ukraine conflict will likely leave a host of issues for the next US president, including the cost of US aid, potential peace negotiations, and the extent of NATO’s involvement. Yet Harris is proposing more of the same as Biden has done with this conflict – unwavering support for the Kiev regime and no change in its stance on negotiations with Moscow.

If Harris wins the election, she will find it much more difficult to provide the level of financial support to Kiev that has been possible under the Biden administration, which has resulted in more than $100 billion in support being provided, something that would make her job more difficult. Although she will continue to support whatever Zelensky says he wants to do, she may be unable to provide him with the money and weapons he seeks.

Trump has repeatedly emphasised that the war should end and that it is much better to achieve a peace deal with Russia to start the long-term peace process. This is significantly different from what Harris offers. Trump says he would not want to provide endless financial resources to prop up the Kiev regime, which is gradually losing the war.

In effect, Biden is hidden away from Harris to increase her chances of winning the US presidential election. However, Americans are not naïve and see that she is effectively a continuation of what the current president offers, as seen in their policies towards Ukraine.

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This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Adam Schultz / Flickr

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Bill Gates Accused of  “Medical Malpractice”

and “Crimes against Humanity”

by

Michel Chossudovsky 

September 17, 2024

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Kenya: A 500,000 Petition Called for an Investigation 

“An online petition is calling on the White House to investigate Bill Gates and Melinda Gates for “crimes against humanity” and “medical malpractice”.

The petition received more than 500,000 signatures as of 11th May 2020.

 

By Muslim Mirror Web Desk

The petition accuses the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation of “medical malpractice” for citing an accusation of “intentionally sterilizing Kenyan children through the use of a hidden HCG antigen in tetanus vaccines.” The petition also quoted Bill Gates’ when talking about his interest in “reducing population growth” by means of vaccinations.

In Y 2014, the Catholic Bishops Conference of Kenya conducted a study on the 5-injection, 2 yr vaccination project performed on female Kenyans aged 14-49, in a South African laboratory and concluded that “all 6 samples tested positive for the HCG antigen.”

“This proved right our worst fears; that this WHO campaign is not about eradicating neonatal tetanus, but a well-coordinated forceful population control mass sterilization exercise using a proven fertility regulating vaccine,”

Dr. Ngare, spokesman for the Kenya Catholic Doctors Association, said.

“This evidence was presented to the Ministry of Health before the third round of immunization, but was ignored.”

The vaccine, which was administered to 2.3-M girls and women by the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF for free, was said to be funded by Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization (GAVI), an organization started and funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. “(Muslim Mirror, emphasis added)

Bill Gates: the Covid-19 Scam and the mRNA Vaccine

Amply documented Bill Gates has instructed the WHO Director General Tedros to engage in several waves of Misinformation since the outset of the Covid Crisis.

The Lies and Fabrications pertaining to the alleged Covid Pandemic, the Lockdown, the mRNA Vaccine are beyond description.

The fraud emanates from Bill Gates.

And now Bill Gates wants to censor people from revealing the criminality behind the pandemic and the “Covid-19 Vaccine”.

The official “corona narrative” is predicated on a “Big Lie” endorsed by corrupt politicians. Bill Gates wants to censor the truth. See article by Frank Bergman below. 

“They are Killing our Loved Ones”

“‘You Were Right, Vaccines Are Killing Millions of Our Loved Ones”, Kazuhiro Haraguchi, Japan’s former Minister of Internal Affairs’s

Law Suit against Bill Gates in the Netherlands

“A Netherlands judge last week ruled that Bill Gates must face seven people injured by COVID-19 vaccines in court in the Netherlands.

According to Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the seven “corona skeptics” sued Gates last year, along with former Dutch prime minister and newly appointed NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, and “several members” of the Dutch government’s COVID-19 “Outbreak Management Team.”

Other defendants include Albert Bourla, Ph.D., CEO of Pfizer, and the Dutch state.

“Because Bill Gates’ foundation was involved in combating the corona pandemic, he has also been summoned,” De Telegraaf reported. (M. Nevradakis)

The court ruled Gates must pay attorneys’ fees and additional legal costs totaling 1,406 euros (approximately $1,520). A hearing is scheduled for Nov. 27. 2024 A Modest sum of money for Bill Gates. 

“Even if … your name is Bill Gates, you still have to go to court”

Father of Vaccine-injured Plaintiff Made ‘Emotional Plea’ to the Court

“At the Sept. 18 hearing, plaintiffs also delivered statements. According to Zebra Inspiratie, “One of the victims, who is very ill, was also given the opportunity to make a plea. She was no longer able to speak and was represented by her father. It was an emotional plea.”

Krikke said the plaintiff’s father told the court that his daughter, who was previously healthy, fell ill after getting the COVID-19 vaccine and could no longer speak, telling the judge that he “would really like to speak to Bill Gates directly” to ask him what happened to his daughter.

“After that, the judge was really quiet,” Krikke said.

The Oct. 18 ruling also addressed the plaintiffs’ claims about Gates’ role in the WEF’s “Great Reset” project.”

See: also

 

Judge Rules Bill Gates Must Face Vaccine-Injured in Netherlands Court

By Michael Nevradakis, October 25, 2024

Who is Responsible for “Misinformation”

“Hell is Empty and the Devils are All Here”. William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”, 1623

My response to Shakespeare: “Send the Devils Back to Where They Belong”

“When the Lie Becomes the Truth, There Is No Moving Backwards”

 

 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, September 17, 2024, October 30, 2024

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Bill Gates Calls for ‘Vaccine Misinformation’

to be Censored in Real-Time by AI

Frank Bergman

September 12, 2024

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Billionaire Bill Gates is calling for all questions and concerns about vaccines to be censored in real time by artificial intelligence (AI) as part of an effort to allegedly tackle so-called “misinformation.”

According to the Microsoft co-founder, one of the key missions of his Gates Foundation is stopping the spread of “vaccine misinformation” online.

Gates argues that critics of official narratives regarding vaccines must be silenced in order to convince skeptical or unwilling members of the public that experimental injections are “safe and effective.”

In order to stamp out “vaccine misinformation,” Gates is calling for opinions that counter the official narratives to be shut down with the help of AI.

Gates laid out his vision during an interview with CNBC.

According to Gates, the public’s free speech rights are a major obstacle to his plan.

He lamented that America’s Constitution and its speech protections are standing in the way of AI setting new “boundaries” for the flow of information online.

Gates claims to support free speech but insists that the First Amendment should have “rules” in case a person expresses a view that is “causing people not to take vaccines.”

“We should have free speech, but if you’re inciting violence, if you’re causing people not to take vaccines, where are those boundaries that even the US should have rules?” Gates said.

“And then if you have rules, what is it?”

Gates was less forthcoming about who he believes should have the authority to decide what those rules are, however.

Nevertheless, he insists censorship is necessary and must be ushered in without delay.

Gates argues that allowing people to express views without immediate censorship is causing “harm.”

In order to tackle this alleged issue, Gates is calling for every comment made online to be “fact-checked” and censored in real-time with the help of AI-powered machines.

“Is there some AI that encodes those rules because you have billions of activity and if you catch it a day later, the harm is done,” he said.

It comes as Gates has launched a crusade against free speech in recent weeks.

As Slay News recently reported, Gates demanded just last week that digital IDs be made mandatory in order to supposedly tackle so-called “misinformation.”

In a new interview, the Microsoft co-founder also blasted the First Amendment for protecting the free speech rights of the American people.

Gates argues that the First Amendment is standing in the way of censoring “misinformation” online.

He called for digital IDs as a way to skirt the First Amendment and curb “misinformation during an interview with CNET, where he also discussed artificial intelligence (AI) and “climate change.”

Gates claims he is grappling with what he believes to be the threats of “misinformation” and the technological phenomena of deepfakes.

While warning of this alleged threat, Gates argues that digital IDs will help curb this “misinformation” by forcing people to verify their identities online.

Gates told CNET that there must be limitations on free speech or order to crack down on “misinformation.”

He laments that Americans’ First Amendment protections are making it “tough” to censor online content.

“The U.S. is a tough one because we have the notion of the First Amendment and what are the exceptions like yelling ‘fire’ in a theater,” Gates explained.

“I do think over time, with things like deepfakes, most of the time you’re online you’re going to want to be in an environment where the people are truly identified, that is they’re connected to a real-world identity that you trust, instead of just people saying whatever they want,” Gates added.

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Whenever top-ranking Western officials give a speech of almost any kind, it’s virtually mandatory to mention the political West’s so-called “values”, including numerous “freedoms” supposedly “enjoyed” by most people in their part of the world. And yet, despite constant blabbering about “freedom and democracy”, there’s (un)surprisingly little actual freedom in the belligerent power pole. Worse yet, if new laws in the United States and European Union are anything to go by, there’s going to be less of it than ever before. In fact, the Deep State is now (ab)using the alleged “protection of free speech” to suppress it, or as they say, in order to “save free speech, we must censor free speech”. In other words, we have reached a point where paradoxes and absurdity are the norm.

And indeed, censorship is now so vital to the ruling oligarchy in Washington DC that it’s become the “new normal” in universities, government offices and virtually all other public institutions. In addition, censorship has become particularly strong during recent election campaigns, when the mainstream propaganda machine is tasked to ensure that only “approved” narratives are in the spotlight. Back in 2020, the near-universal crackdown on actual free media resulted in numerous shutdowns of numerous outlets, mostly through cyberattacks. For instance, the Belgrade-based Fort Russ News, where I was a senior editor, went offline just weeks before the 2020 presidential election after numerous “mysterious” cyberattacks.

While it managed to return a few times, FRN was permanently shut down after years of persecution at the hands of corrupt federal institutions, including by Pentagon-linked think tanks such as the infamous RAND Corporation that directly targeted all FRN personnel (PDF) as supposed “Russian agents” (myself included). It is only thanks to the Internet Archive that most of FRN’s content is still available. However, this sort of censorship is certainly not a thing of the past. On the contrary, it’s returning in full force, as other reputable media are also being targeted. Namely, Consortium News, an independent investigative news source, went offline following a major cyberattack. The Consortium News website is still unavailable.

“Our web host has confirmed seven recent data breaches and now it appears that our site has been totally replaced. We have been hacked,” the news outlet announced on X.

They are working to restore the website, but the fact that the security breach happened only a week before the election is very telling. Having such a major independent media outlet, famous for its highly critical view of America’s endless wars, go offline is very “convenient” to the Deep State and the warmongering oligarchy in Washington DC. WikiLeaks, another independent source fiercely targeted by the US government, also confirmed that the Consortium News website has been completely removed and its contents are no longer accessible. Once again, this is hardly surprising given that top-ranking American officials are openly talking about the “dangers of disinformation”, the latest Neo-McCarthyist buzzword.

Uncomfortable truths, otherwise known as “evil Russian disinformation”, need to be suppressed at all costs. However, while the corrupt US federal institutions (particularly its numerous intelligence services) are leading the charge in the crackdown on independent media, there’s still a lot of pushback, as millions of Americans (nearly 40%, to be specific) simply don’t trust the mainstream propaganda machine. On the other hand, the EU seems to be even worse. For years, the troubled bloc has been trying to censor press freedom not just in Europe, but also around the world, including the US. This is going so far that Ursula von der Leyen, EU Commission president, advocates “pre-bunking in the public forum to vaccinate people against disinformation”.

However, nobody comes close to the United Kingdom in “preserving freedom and democracy”. Thousands of British citizens are arrested every year for social media posts. However, this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sheer scale of censorship in the UK. Namely, you can get arrested for “thought crimes”, as several cases showed. Precisely this happened to a man who quietly prayed on the street across from an abortion clinic in the town of Bournemouth. Expectedly, the mainstream propaganda machine tried “fact-checking” the story, but similar cases show that you can indeed get arrested for having “wrong thoughts”. Namely, back in November 2022, a woman was arrested for an identical “thought crime”, also in front of an abortion clinic.

In the meantime, “evil” Russia allows actual free speech to journalists from countries that banned virtually all Russian media. Western outlets are allowed to freely interview whomever they want, including President Vladimir Putin. In stark contrast, not even Russian mics are tolerated by the political West’s most prominent “beacon of freedom and democracy” that’s now getting dozens of billions for its “commitment”. The case of Tucker Carlson serves as a perfect example of how any form of independent thought is treated in the US and NATO, while the fates of the likes of Julian Assange are definite proof of just how “free” the political West is. On the other hand, the promotion of the so-called Western “values” is as strong as ever.

Namely, any attempt to deal with repulsive crimes such as pedophilia is met with a fiery crackdown of the mainstream propaganda machine. Movies such as the “Sound of Freedom” are continuously targeted by the censors. Any remotely sane person would be dumbfounded to find out that topics such as child trafficking and pedophilia are being suppressed. But that’s exactly the case, even though raising awareness about it should be a matter of basic common sense. However, given the state of so-called Western “values”, it’s hardly surprising this is not the case anymore. Namely, while the political West is after Putin for evacuating kids from a warzone, it’s also involved in the massive child trafficking “business” in Ukraine and elsewhere.

What we can clearly conclude from all this is that the warmongers, war criminals and plutocrats in Washington DC and Brussels are determined to prevent the spread of any sort of “Russian disinformation” (i.e. the truth), as this is extremely “inconvenient” for them. If hundreds of millions of Americans and Europeans knew what was actually going on, they’d certainly be against the policies their unelected bureaucratic oligarchies are imposing, both at home and abroad. Precisely this is why knowing the truth is all the more important. Unfortunately, it can indeed be dangerous to think and speak freely at this time, and we can only expect more censorship and more “thought criminals”, as any deviation from the official narrative is “dangerous for our democracy”.

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

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The entire population of North Gaza is at risk of dying according to Joyce Msuya,  Acting Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator;

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

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No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.”—Edward R. Murrow, broadcast journalist

America is in the midst of an epidemic of historic proportions.

The contagion being spread like wildfire is turning communities into battlegrounds and setting Americans one against the other.

Normally mild-mannered individuals caught up in the throes of this disease have been transformed into belligerent zealots, while others inclined to pacifism have taken to stockpiling weapons and practicing defensive drills.

This plague on our nation—one that has been spreading like wildfire—is a potent mix of fear coupled with unhealthy doses of paranoia and intolerance, tragic hallmarks of the post-9/11 America in which we live.

Everywhere you turn, those on both the left- and right-wing are fomenting distrust and division. You can’t escape it.

We’re being fed a constant diet of fear: fear of terrorists, fear of illegal immigrants, fear of people who are too religious, fear of people who are not religious enough, fear of extremists, fear of conformists, fear of the government, fear of those who fear the government, fear of those on the Right, fear of those on the Left… The list goes on and on.

The strategy is simple yet effective: the best way to control a populace is through fear and discord.

Fear makes people stupid.

Confound them, distract them with mindless news chatter and entertainment, pit them against one another by turning minor disagreements into major skirmishes, and tie them up in knots over matters lacking in national significance.

Most importantly, divide the people into factions, persuade them to see each other as the enemy and keep them screaming at each other so that they drown out all other sounds. In this way, they will never reach consensus about anything and will be too distracted to notice the police state closing in on them until the final crushing curtain falls.

This is how free people enslave themselves and allow tyrants to prevail. 

This Machiavellian scheme has so ensnared the nation that few Americans even realize they are being manipulated into adopting an “us” against “them” mindset. Instead, fueled with fear and loathing for phantom opponents, they agree to pour millions of dollars and resources into political elections, militarized police, spy technology and endless wars, hoping for a guarantee of safety that never comes.

All the while, those in power—bought and paid for by lobbyists and corporations—move their costly agendas forward, and “we the suckers” get saddled with the tax bills and subjected to pat downs, police raids and round-the-clock surveillance.

Turn on the TV or flip open the newspaper on any given day, and you will find yourself accosted by reports of government corruption, corporate malfeasance, militarized police and marauding SWAT teams.

America has already entered a new phase, one in which children are arrested in schools, military veterans are forcibly detained by government agents because of their so-called “anti-government” views, and law-abiding Americans are having their movements tracked, their financial transactions documented, and their communications monitored.

These threats are not to be underestimated.

Yet even more dangerous than these violations of our basic rights is the language in which they are couched: the language of fear. It is a language spoken effectively by politicians on both sides of the aisle, shouted by media pundits from their cable TV pulpits, marketed by corporations, and codified into bureaucratic laws that do little to make our lives safer or more secure.

This language of fear has given rise to a politics of fear whose only aim is to distract and divide us. In this way, we have been discouraged from thinking analytically and believing that we have any part to play in solving the problems before us. Instead, we have been conditioned to point the finger at the other Person or vote for this Politician or support this Group, because they are the ones who will fix it. Except that they can’t and won’t fix the problems plaguing our communities.

Nevertheless, fear remains the method most often used by politicians to increase the power of government.

The government’s overblown, extended wars on terrorism, drugs, violence, disease, illegal immigration, and so-called domestic extremism have been convenient ruses used to terrorize the populace into relinquishing more of their freedoms in exchange for elusive promises of security.

An atmosphere of fear permeates modern America. However, with crime at an all-time low, is such fear rational?

Statistics show that you are 17,600 times more likely to die from heart disease than from a terrorist attack. You are 11,000 times more likely to die from an airplane accident than from a terrorist plot involving an airplane. You are 1,048 times more likely to die from a car accident than a terrorist attack. You are 404 times more likely to die in a fall than from a terrorist attack. You are 12 times more likely to die from accidental suffocating in bed than from a terrorist attack. And you are 9 more times likely to choke to death in your own vomit than die in a terrorist attack.

Indeed, those living in the American police state are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist. Thus, the government’s endless jabbering about terrorism amounts to little more than propaganda—the propaganda of fear—a tactic used to terrorize, cower and control the population.

In turn, the government’s stranglehold on power and extreme paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats has resulted in a populace that is increasingly viewed as the government’s enemies.

Why else would the government feel the need to monitor our communications, track our movements, criminalize our every action, treat us like suspects, and strip us of any means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons?

So far, these tactics—terrorizing the citizenry over the government’s paranoia and overblown fears while treating them like criminals—are working to transform the way “we the people” view ourselves and our role in this nation.

Indeed, fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.

The American people have been reduced to what commentator Dan Sanchez refers to as “herd-minded hundreds of millions [who] will stampede to the State for security, bleating to please, please be shorn of their remaining liberties.”

Sanchez continues:

I am not terrified of the terrorists; i.e., I am not, myself, terrorized. Rather, I am terrified of the terrorized; terrified of the bovine masses who are so easily manipulated by terrorists, governments, and the terror-amplifying media into allowing our country to slip toward totalitarianism and total war…

I do not irrationally and disproportionately fear Muslim bomb-wielding jihadists or white, gun-toting nutcases. But I rationally and proportionately fear those who do, and the regimes such terror empowers. History demonstrates that governments are capable of mass murder and enslavement far beyond what rogue militants can muster. Industrial-scale terrorists are the ones who wear ties, chevrons, and badges. But such terrorists are a powerless few without the supine acquiescence of the terrorized many. There is nothing to fear but the fearful themselves…

Stop swallowing the overblown scaremongering of the government and its corporate media cronies. Stop letting them use hysteria over small menaces to drive you into the arms of tyranny, which is the greatest menace of all.

As history makes clear, fear and government paranoia lead to fascist, totalitarian regimes.

It’s a simple enough formula. National crises, reported terrorist attacks, and sporadic shootings leave us in a constant state of fear. Fear prevents us from thinking. The emotional panic that accompanies fear actually shuts down the prefrontal cortex or the rational thinking part of our brains. In other words, when we are consumed by fear, we stop thinking.

A populace that stops thinking for themselves is a populace that is easily led, easily manipulated and easily controlled.

The following, derived by from John T. Flynn’s 1944 treatise on fascism As We Go Marching are a few of the necessary ingredients for a fascist state:

  • The government is managed by a powerful leader (even if he or she assumes office by way of the electoral process). This is the fascistic leadership principle (or father figure).
  • The government assumes it is not restrained in its power. This is authoritarianism, which eventually evolves into totalitarianism.
  • The government ostensibly operates under a capitalist system while being undergirded by an immense bureaucracy.
  • The government through its politicians emits powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.
  • The government has an obsession with national security while constantly invoking terrifying internal and external enemies.
  • The government establishes a domestic and invasive surveillance system and develops a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the citizenry.
  • The government and its various agencies (federal, state, and local) develop an obsession with crime and punishment. This is overcriminalization.
  • The government becomes increasingly centralized while aligning closely with corporate powers to control all aspects of the country’s social, economic, military, and governmental structures.
  • The government uses militarism as a center point of its economic and taxing structure.
  • The government is increasingly imperialistic in order to maintain the military-industrial corporate forces.

The parallels to modern America are impossible to ignore.

“Every industry is regulated. Every profession is classified and organized. Every good or service is taxed. Endless debt accumulation is preserved. Immense doesn’t begin to describe the bureaucracy. Military preparedness never stops, and war with some evil foreign foe, remains a daily prospect,” writes economist Jeffrey Tucker. “It’s incorrect to call fascism either right wing or left wing. It is both and neither… fascism does not seek to overthrow institutions like commercial establishments, family, religious centers, and civic traditions. It seeks to control them… it preserves most of what people hold dear but promises to improve economic, social, and cultural life through unifying their operations under government control.”

For the final hammer of fascism to fall, it will require the most crucial ingredient: the majority of the people will have to agree that it’s not only expedient but necessary. In times of “crisis,” expediency is upheld as the central principle—that is, in order to keep us safe and secure, the government must militarize the police, strip us of basic constitutional rights and criminalize virtually every form of behavior.

We are at a critical crossroads in American history.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, fear has been a critical tool in past fascistic regimes, and it has become the driving force behind the American police state.

All of which begs the question what we will give up in order to perpetuate the illusions of safety and security.

As we once again find ourselves faced with the prospect of voting for the lesser of two evils, “we the people” have a decision to make: do we simply participate in the collapse of the American republic as it degenerates toward a totalitarian regime, or do we take a stand and reject the pathetic excuse for government that is being fobbed off on us?

There is no easy answer, but one thing is true: the lesser of two evils is still evil.

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

This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His most recent books are the best-selling Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the award-winning A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, and a debut dystopian fiction novel, The Erik Blair Diaries. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

Nisha Whitehead is the Executive Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Earlier this month Brazil’s Supreme Court lifted its ban on X (formerly Twitter) after Elon Musk finally complied with the court orders. It was the end of a months-long standoff between Justice Alexandre de Moraes and Musk (X was suspended on August 31). The matter has often been addressed as an issue of “free speech”, but with the recent BRICS Summit Declaration on digital sovereignty, one can clearly see that the discussion here should not be just about “censorship”. The BRICS Summit in Kazan, held from October 22 to 24 (2024), for the first time held a meeting with its expanded format, now including new member states such as Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Ethiopia.

As I wrote before, it is true, as many critics and analysts have highlighted, that Moraes has weaponized the war against the so-called Brazilian far-right and the alleged defense of democracy as a way to expand the power of the court and arguably his own powers. Already in 2023 a New York Times piece pointed out that Moraes “jailed people without trial for posting threats on social media; helped sentence a sitting congressman to nearly nine years in prison for threatening the court; ordered raids on businessmen with little evidence of wrongdoing; suspended an elected governor from his job; and unilaterally blocked dozens of accounts and thousands of posts on social media, with virtually no transparency or room for appeal.”

However, if Moraes controversial measures may be used to cast doubts on, say, Brazil’s “sécurité juridique”, Musk’s failure to comply with court orders local laws could indeed also cast doubts on the billionaire and his companies, not to mention on the political role they may play. It goes beyond Musk, of course. In countries such as the US there is an ongoing conversation about how social media such as Facebook and Instagram – not to mention their algorithms – influence people’s politics and elections. Controversy aside, Brazil has shown that it is possible to force Big Tech into compliance. Moreover, the topic has prompted a larger conversation in Brazil on having a national social media platform – or, for that matter, a national engine search. To this day Brazil in fact has to rely on US products such as Google. It doesn’t have to be this way. Now that economic nationalism is back, it is only natural that one questions this state of affairs.

This is a strategic matter, and it extends even way beyond social media – ultimately it is about digital sovereignty, a concept which surpasses the traditional geoeconomic and geopolitical realms. Digital services today encompass sectors such as transportation, energy, public administration, digital IDs, healthcare, payment systems and much more.

In Europe there is an ongoing debate about developing what some call a #EuroStack, a digital public infrastructure relying on European technology and investments. As Cristina Caffarra puts it (she is the co-founder and Vice Chair of the Competition Research Policy Network, Centre for Economic Policy Research – CEPR): 

“Europe has done digital regulation and is in the process of implementing it. But this is ultimately only reliant on beating Big Tech into a compliance game which is hard and will take a long time.”

On September 24, a multi-party group of Members of the European Parliament took part in the “Towards European Digital Independence” conference in Brussels. According to Francesca Bria (a fellow at Stiftung Mercator), it is about investing in “public goods and infrastructures that protect citizens’ rights, ensure European autonomy and security, support the growth of European businesses, and serve the public interest.” Bria highlights the fact that Big Tech companies “dominate the entire technology stack—from chips and cloud infrastructure to operating systems… —solidifying their market position through network effects and economies of scale… This stifles innovation, limits opportunities for European businesses, and undermines Europe’s economic security and industrial competitiveness.”

Nowadays, so much is talked about de-dollarization and about the topic of a currency for BRICS. On Tuesday, former Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff (currently the President of the BRICS bank), met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Kazan and discussed BRICS expansion and the use of local currencies, replacing the dollar. There has been however yet another new development that has thus far been quite underreported: the BRICS group has for the first time, in its Kazan Declaration, committed itself to “the design of a fair and equitable global framework for data governance, including cross-border data flows, to… ensure the interoperability of data regulatory frameworks at all levels.”

Reliance on external AI capabilities and external cloud services makes strategic assets and all kinds of sensitive data vulnerable to foreign frameworks, such as the US CLOUD Act (this is true even for Europe as well). As mentioned Europeans, albeit a bit slowly, are now more and more concerning themselves with the issue

One may recall that, in 2013, then Brazilian President Dilma Roussef proposed to route internet traffic away from Washington, as part of a strategy to counter American National Security Agency (NSA) espionage: the daring plan involved developing an undersea fiber-optic cable system that would funnel all internet traffic between the South American continent and Europe, thereby bypassing entirely the US, but it did not follow through. It has been brought to light that, at that same time, both Roussef and then German Chancellor Angela Merkel were the targets of NSA espionage.

It is about time emerging powers such as Brazil boldly address the issue of social networks and the larger matter of digital sovereignty, AI, digital currencies and cybersecurity. And this is a conversation that now has finally started to take place within the scope of the BRICS group as well – together with energy and industry (which are of course all connected topics), this could very well be one of the most pressing issues for the 21st century.

Next year, Brazil will be hosting the BRICS Summit – it will also be hosting the 2025 Climate Summit (COP30). Being at the center stage in G20, Brazil now has the opportunity to use the coming months to champion digital sovereignty for the Global South in the emerging polycentric global order. It should use the opportunity to call for the development of not just legal frameworks but also of a digital industry and a digital infrastructure which fosters sovereignty. BRICS needs a #BricsStack too – and Brazil could point the way to that.

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Ghana’s Living Nightmarish Experience with Chinese Soft Power

October 29th, 2024 by Shmuel Ja'Mba Abm

From official sources, an estimated population ranging from 10,000 to 30,000 Chinese nationals live in Ghana today. Unofficial sources put it higher. Although on the high side, an unbelievable report says about 700,000 Chinese live in Ghana.

It took the trial of En Huang aka Aisha Huang, arrested in Kumasi on September 2, 2022, to officially confirm that Chinese nationals could enter and exit Ghana illegally too. Kumasi is Ghana’s second largest city after Accra, the capital of Ghana. Kumasi is in the Ashanti Region. En Huang, a Chinese national described by the media in Ghana as kingpin of illegal mining in Ghana, was convicted on December 4, 2023 for mining offences. Also called Galamsey Queen, En Huang was sentenced to four and a half years with hard labour in prison. In addition, she was to pay a fine of GH 48,000 with consequences of custodial sentences in default. Galamsey is the local name for illegal mining.

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En Huang was earlier arrested for illegal mining offences committed from 2015 to 2017 in Ghana. However, on December 19, 2018, the Attorney General of Ghana entered a nolle prosequi and terminated the trial. Her permit to remain in Ghana indefinitely, was revoked by the Comptroller General of Ghana Immigration Service, leading to her immediate repatriation to China aboard Ethiopian Airlines.

Contrary to the order of the Comptroller General, En Huang re-entered Ghana. On September 2, 2022, she was arrested again, but in Kumasi. The Attorney General directed her prosecution of past and present committed offences.

Officially, migration of Chinese to Africa started in the 1960s, although the record on the Gold Coast, now Ghana, puts its first visitors in the 1940s. Originally, these migrants came from Hong Kong, a British colony just as was the Gold Coast, the former name of Ghana. Mainland Chinese started coming to Ghana in the 1980s. The Gold Coast became independent on March 6, 1957, taking the new name Ghana.

To appreciate the figures, let’s look at the size of others from the region to compare. For instance, 272 Japanese have been recorded in Ghana, whilst a total of 614 Koreans are known to reside in Ghana. As of 2021, 11,313 from the rest of Asia were recorded as residents in Ghana.

The earliest ethnic Chinese migrants to the Gold Coast, in what is now called Ghana, who came from Hong Kong, began arriving in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when both territories [Ghana and Hong Kong] were still part of the British Empire. These migrants stayed in the Gold Coast for periods ranging from a few years to several decades. They never came to consider the Gold Coast as their home.

These migrants consisted largely of men who came to the Gold Coast alone and worked as employees in Chinese-owned factories, while their families remained back at home in Hong Kong. They were concentrated in the western part of the Gold Coast. But after the Gold Coast became independent, the Kwame Nkrumah government began implementing plans to promote development in the eastern part of the country.

As a result, these Chinese migrants began moving towards Accra and Tema. Aside these mentioned individual migrants, an official contingent also came from the People’s Republic of China [PRC] for a brief period in the 1960s. At the time, the PRC provided a variety of military assistance to Ghana in the 1960s, including a loan meant for an arms factory in 1962, which in any way was never constructed. It included a dispatch of military advisors in 1964. After the February 24, 1966 putsch, which overthrew Nkrumah’s government, the National Liberation Council military government expelled the 430 PRC nationals, including three intelligence officers and thirteen guerrilla warfare specialists.

However, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, some of the migrants from Hong Kong returned accompanied by their families to Ghana. Migrants from Shanghai also joined, around the time. Following further political instability in the 1970s and 1980s, including two coups d’ètat by Flt Lt Jerry Rawlings, many Chinese migrants returned home.

Backed by the sudden leap of economic reforms and opening up the country, migrants from mainland China began arriving just at the time Hong Kong migrants, in the reverse, were flowing out of Ghana. Thus, migration from mainland China intensified in the 1990s – some came as employees. Most came as traders, who started and ran import-export businesses or restaurants.

Origins of migration also diversified. Whereas earlier migrants came mostly from Hong Kong or Shanghai, latter Chinese migrants came from Guangdong, Henan as well as the Republic of China in Taiwan. The early wave on migrants from Hong Kong worked as employees in a variety of industries in both the Gold Coast and in Ghana, including a failed tobacco-growing venture, a factory in Takoradi producing cooking implements, and an imitation wax print clothing company.

The true owners of these businesses hardly visited Ghana themselves. In the 1990s and 2000s, large Chinese companies trooped in to actively participate in Ghana’s construction industry as large contractors. Individual Chinese traders engaged in the retail of textiles, electrical appliances, and in daily consumables.

As stipulated and required in the Ghana Investment Promotion Act of 1994, a foreigner needed an investment of not less than US $300,000 in retail business, provided 10 locals would be engaged as employees.

More recently, late arrival Chinese nationals introduced engagement in small-scale mining, particularly in gold. Some are also engaged in providing funds for mining operation purposes, in the lease of heavy duty equipment and machinery to miners, and in the strategic setting up of shops that deal in the supply and distribution of mining-related chemical substances, equipment and machinery, and spares.

Chinese nationals in Ghana live together in close units but within local communities. They haven’t built larger single Chinese communities in the strict sense of it as in Chinatown yet. But names like China Mall, Chinese Restaurant, etc. have emerged.

Most migrants visited with the aim of exploring better opportunities to make money, as against an intention to acquire citizenship and settle down in Ghana as a national. To obtain Ghanaian citizenship, an applicant could do so by marriage to a citizen of Ghana; or show proficiency in a spoken indigenous language or understand it.

Some early Chinese nationals, who have proven record to have lived in Ghana for most of their lives, have acquired Ghanaian citizenship, often granted without difficulties.

In recent times, a section of local environmentalists and traders have risen in protests against chiefs and the government for the influx of Chinese nationals engaged in illegal mining and petty trading as retailers selling imported goods. The chiefs and the government are accused for the relaxation of investment laws.

In late 2007, local traders organised protests in Accra which accused Chinese nationals of unfair competition and trading in specified areas of engagement preserved for natives, which Chinese nationals were disqualified. In reaction, these Chinese migrants reported of arbitrary treatment by the police.

For example, one day in February 2009, officers of the Ghana Immigration Service arrested over 100 Chinese nationals, the highest in a single day. They were arrested for their engagement in illegal gold mining. Forty-one of these Chinese nationals signed an open letter of protest to the Ghana Immigration Service, requesting for a review of their cases.

The sudden crackdown was explained as necessitated by the government’s desire to protect local businesses arising from worsening economic disparities, despite the fact that this is not allowed under Ghanaian law.

Chinese investments, of course, play a critical role in spurring and stimulating diversity of portfolios in the economy of Ghana, resulting in increases in trade volumes as it shapes an emerging pattern of migration of Ghanaian traders to the Guangzhou and Yiwu regions of China, addressing older forms of challenges which impaired relationship.

Virtually, every home in Ghana today is inundated with imported Chinese consumables – from basic needs such as toothbrushes and toothpaste to toilet rolls and toiletries. In the area of building and construction, supplies of imported inexpensive building materials have improved conditions in meeting previous high cost challenges in housing deficit.

Significantly, in the areas of rural development for example, imported Chinese motorcycles and tricycles have contributed immensely in reducing the deficit in haulage and transport services delivery, and reducing the cost and time of doing business drastically, although this came with heavy losses in human lives with high figures in rates of maimed cases such as amputees.

Also, thanks to Chinese low cost mobile phones and accessories and computers, Ghanaians have seamlessly joined the ICT revolution by default. Even mobile telephony service providers and tech companies import Chinese equipment and complementary accessories to keep the industry alive.

In all, weak institutions and regulatory bodies and regimes have contributed in several ways to allow excesses of Chinese business operations in Ghana to overwhelm law enforcement and made mockery of the government through a compromised criminal justice system.

As it stands today in Ghana, illegal mining and its attendant threats of environmental disaster has created a tense political climate with civil society organisations and organised labour confrontations with the government, leading to a bitter standoff.

Reported cases of unregulated use of chemical substances and heavy metals such as cyanide, lead and mercury in illegal mining activities, are found in water bodies, the food chain and wildlife. Manifestations of the effects of these on humans, such as deformities in childbirth and in the reproductive system, have been recorded by scientists in laboratories.

Mining in Ghana has been known for several millennia before the most recent clash of cultures with Europeans. At no time has it been this devastating as it did with the recent influx of Chinese into the country, especially with the sophistication of imported Chinese equipment and machinery, which have quickened the pace of environmental degradation and destruction.

Whereas the onus lies on the Government of Ghana to assert its authority as a sovereign in the exercise of law enforcement in respect of strict adherence to a regulatory regime that comes with the issuance of mining licences, it behoves on the integrity and good relationships with the Chinese government through its embassy and diplomatic staff in Ghana to make collaborative interventions to curb the looming menace already taking a heavy toll on the host country as adequately enumerated above.

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

Shmuel Ja’Mba Abm has extensive scholarly publications that establish him as a leading academic expert in regional geopolitical dynamics and diplomatic relations in Africa. Author of e-monographs on geopolitics, ethnic conflicts, and political philosophy.

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With Volkswagen management planning a radical cost-cutting program, Central Works Council Chairwoman Daniela Cavallo, of the IG Metall trade union, announced yesterday that at least three German plants are to be closed and tens of thousands of jobs cut.

On Monday morning, the works council invited workers to information meetings at all German plants. Some 25,000 employees gathered at the main plant in Wolfsburg alone. A works council leaflet, which was distributed en masse on Monday, begins with the words: “It is a declaration of war of historic proportions on its own workforce and entire home regions at the heart of the Group.” It continued: 

In connection with job losses for tens of thousands of us, the Board of Management intends to enforce the following: close at least three VW factories in Germany, shrink virtually all plants still existing in Germany, also separate from previous core areas and, on top of that, enforce massive pay losses for the remaining employees.

All this is “not sabre rattling” as a tactic in the current round of collective bargaining, the VW works council explained, as the board really wants all this and considers that the cost-cutting plan has “no alternative and no room for concessions.” The Central Works Council was informed in advance, but the Board of Directors refused to come clean to its own employees. “That is why your works councils are now forced to inform you about this.”

The financial daily Handelsblatt quoted from an internal strategy paper, which is referred to as a “poison list” in management circles. According to the paper, further massive social attacks are planned. They include, among other things, major wage cuts, the outsourcing of individual administrative areas and pay freezes for the years 2025 and 2026. 

Chief Human Resources Officer Gunnar Kilian said in a media release that the Board of Management had decided not to disclose any further details about the planned measures in the cost-cutting programme: “We adhere to the principle agreed in codetermination to first conduct the discussion about the future of Volkswagen AG internally with our negotiating partners.”

On Wednesday, negotiations between management and IG Metall on a new company collective bargaining agreement will enter the second round. During the first round in September VW rejected IG Metall’s demands for a 7 percent wage increase and instead pushed for savings. According to Cavallo, VW is now demanding a 10 percent wage cut and pay freezes in the next two years. 

Many VW workers are shocked. The largest European carmaker already announced a “cost-cutting policy” in the summer and terminated the employment guarantee that had been in place for decades. But Monday’s announcements exceeded all fears. The VW Group has long been known in Germany for relatively high wages and social benefits with jobs considered crisis-proof, from apprenticeship to retirement.

The works council chief’s apparent indignation on Monday was, however, all for show. In truth, the works council is involved in all management discussions and is directly involved in the preparation of the plans to shut plants. The works council and IG Metall are responsible within management for designing the social attacks in such a way that resistance to them can be suppressed. The confidentiality up to now was also agreed upon and the announcement now made by the works council two days before the next round of negotiations was deliberately calculated. 

Cavallo and her IG Metall colleagues speak of an attack “on us” and try to present themselves as representatives of workers’ interests. The reality is the opposite. The fact that the works council speaks of “historic” attacks, but has so far not initiated any combat measures against them, shows this. In no other German company is the cooperation between the owners, management and trade unions as close and sophisticated as at Volkswagen.

Head of Human Resources Gunnar Kilian, who is responsible for the plan to shutter plants and for layoffs, was General Secretary of the works council before moving to the Board of Directors. He was considered the “closest confidant” of Cavallo’s predecessor Bernd Osterloh and his “mastermind.” 

The VW Group has in the past been described as the epitome of social partnership and as a “German codetermination model.” IG Metall and the works council, together with an army of full-time officials, ensure that the decisions of the Executive Board and Supervisory Board are implemented smoothly. 

The head of IG Metall traditionally serves as Deputy Chairman of the Supervisory Board of the Group, assisted by the works council, which, due to statutory codetermination, together with IGM, occupies half of the Supervisory Board. The other half is accounted for by Porsche Holding, which is controlled by the Porsche and Piech families and owns 53 percent of the ordinary shares, the Emirate of Qatar (17 percent) and the Social Democratic Party-governed state of Lower Saxony (20 percent). 

The VW Group is thus practically dominated by a triumvirate of trade unions, works councils and the SPD. Ex-IGM head Jörg Hofmann, General Works Council Chairman Daniela Cavallo and Lower Saxony Minister President Stephan Weil (SPD) sit on the eight-member Supervisory Board, where all important decisions are discussed. 

In order to repel the planned attacks and to defend all plants and jobs, it is necessary to break the conspiracy of the trade union apparatus, works council and SPD and to initiate a genuine struggle. This requires the establishment of independent rank-and-file committees in which all VW workers who seriously want to fight join forces. The first initiative has already been taken last month with the founding of the VW Rank-and-File Committee.

Rank-and-file committees already exist in several car plants and have joined forces to form a network. It is part of the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC), which coordinates the growing struggles of the working class worldwide. The development of rank-and-file committees at VW must be geared towards making the fight against the savage cost-cutting at VW part of a systematic, international counter-offensive by workers throughout the automotive and parts industries.

The cost-cutting at VW is part of a global offensive by the car companies, which—supported by national governments and trade union bureaucracies—are fighting a bitter battle for market share and higher returns, and are using the switch to electric mobility to lay off hundreds of thousands.

Ford is shutting down its plant in Saarlouis and is now attacking the workers in Cologne and Valencia. With Stellantis, “hardly a stone remains on top of another,” as the daily FAZ writes. The CEO Carlos Tavares, who is notorious as a “cost killer,” is destroying thousands of jobs in the US and Italy. The Opel plant in Eisenach is not spared either, and of the 15,000 jobs that once existed at the Opel main plant in Rüsselsheim, only 8,300 remain.

A veritable massacre is taking place in the supplier industry. ZF Friedrichshafen is destroying 14,000 jobs and Continental 7,000. Almost daily, smaller companies with several hundred employees close. The software group SAP is also cutting 10,000 jobs, ThyssenKrupp is cutting its steel division, the chemical group Bayer is destroying 5,000 jobs and BASF is closing two sites in Cologne and Frankfurt-Höchst.

The crisis of the capitalist system is intensifying and massive social attacks are being enforced in order to increase profits not only in Germany and Europe, but worldwide. In the US, striking Boeing workers are facing very similar attacks and have already twice rejected a miserable collective bargaining agreement backed by the union bureaucracy.

The unrestrained pursuit of profit by billionaires and speculators not only exacerbates exploitation, but also leads to war. The hunt for raw materials, markets and cheap labour develops into an economic war with trade restrictions, punitive tariffs and subsidies, and finally into a military conflict.

For example, the US is now imposing import tariffs of 100 percent on electric cars from China. At the same time, they are surrounding the economically rising country militarily and systematically preparing for war. The EU has imposed similar import duties—albeit at a lower level.

Germany has used EU enlargement to increase its economic dominance in Eastern Europe. It supports the NATO proxy war against Russia in Ukraine in order to force regime change in Moscow and bring the huge country with its raw materials and energy sources under the direct control of the German economy. The economic and energy crisis exacerbated by this is now being passed on to the workers using increasingly brutal methods. 

The fight to defend jobs, wages and social standards is therefore inextricably linked to the fight against war and military rearmament as well as the defence of democratic rights. It must be conducted on the basis of a socialist perspective. Without breaking the power of the billionaires, banks and large corporations, not a single social problem can be solved. The banks and major corporations must be expropriated and placed under the democratic control of the workers.

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Cattle Dog Gusto: How Bluey Conquered the United States

October 29th, 2024 by Dr. Binoy Kampmark

For decades, the cultural phenomenon known as Americanisation has taken place with diffusing ease.  Momentum was gained with the retreat of communism from Europe’s eastern states with the end of the Cold War and the eventual termination of the Soviet Union in 1991.  Global brands of Americana from fizzy drinks to Dallas became pervasive cultural presences.  Not even children’s programming was exempt.

Converts and devotees would mimic accents, adopt terms of reference, and emulate patterns of behaviour.  In terms of children’s programming, Sesame Street, the work of the non-profit organisation Sesame Workshop, has been the global standard bearer.  Jenny Perlman Robinson and Daniela Petrova, writing for Brookings in 2015, delved into its significance as an informal educating tool, reaching millions of children across 150 countries.  “What had started as an educational television program more than 40 years ago is now a multimedia platform that uses everything from radio, video, and books to the latest in interactive media and technology.”

In 2018, Australia made its own contribution in the field.  The Australian Broadcasting Corporation released an animated series that has since become a giddying global phenomenon.  The US has not been spared, suggesting that Americanisation, at least in some areas, can also be given hearty doses of its own medicine.  The series in question, Bluey, features an Australian dog of the Blue Heeler variety: one Bluey, a six-year-old cattle dog who lives in the Queensland city of Brisbane with sister Bingo, and parents Bandit and Chilli.

By the end of March 2020, the series had won an International Emmy in the children’s preschool category, something no doubt helped by the enforced isolation brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.  In 2023, Bluey became the second most popular streaming show in the US, logging 731 million hours.  In 2024, the series became the most viewed show in the United States.

Such success was due, in no small part, to a distribution deal struck between the BBC and Disney in 2019. 

“The warmth and authenticity of Bluey’s family dynamic is what first captured our interest in the show,” explained Jane Gould, senior vice president of Disney Channels Worldwide.  “Bluey reminds us all of our own families, and it plays out in the small but emotionally epic dramas of day-to-day life in surprising, heartfelt and very funny ways that will engage children and parents alike.”

The fascinating aspect about Bluey is its central premise: neither the viewing parents nor their engaged children are treated like passive imbeciles.  Both groups can partake in the themes of the series without feeling infantilised. 

“It trusts,” wrote David Sim in The Atlantic in August last year, “that its young audience will be able to understand stories that are about the foibles and insecurities of parents too.” 

The web traffic site, Similarweb.com, yields an interesting statistic: the largest demographic of visitors to the official Bluey website (Bluey.tv) are those between 25-34, coming in at 28.86%.

Fantasy and imagination mingle with testing, even potentially contentious issues. There are questions about premature birth (“Early Baby”); the appearance of friends who proceed to vanish (“Camping”); even questions about the fine line between full blooded banter and unacceptable teasing.  In a Father’s Day episode, Bluey’s dad, Bandit, openly wonders about the merits of getting a vasectomy.

Given such a format, it was bound to interest academics keen to tell us the obvious after generating the usual quantitative quarry of data.  In a survey of 700 adults – part of a research project called Australian Children’s Television Cultures – we are told that Bluey was most keenly enjoyed by parents wishing to view a series with their children.  Those behind the research project were keen to note the words of one of the respondents in describing the series.  Bluey was “representative of an idealised Australian ethos – relaxed, curious, and hard-working.”

The influence of Bluey has also been noted in another respect.  In 2022, a father in Massachusetts revealed that his child had begun using the term “dunny” instead of “toilet”.  This brought much pleasure to ABC Sydney radio presenter, Richard Glover.  “Finally,” he chortled in The Washington Post, “we have our revenge.”

According to Glover, US popular culture had ensured that Australians of his generation had “enrolled in a PhD program” on the subject. “We paid the price for our enthusiasm, regularly scolded by our parents for ‘using those terrible American words.’ These included ‘sidewalk’ instead of ‘footpath’ and ‘trash’ instead of ‘rubbish’.”  Now, it was time for those in the US, notably children, to learn that breakfast could be called “brekkie”, a chicken a “chook”, and “tradie” a skilled tradesperson.

Little wonder that we can find a Master of Arts thesis dedicated to the adult fandom phenomenon around Bluey, including its appeal to those millennials who show “higher rates of anxiety, a greater distrust in the American government, and disbelief in American excellence than those of previous generations.”  Anthropomorphised cattle dogs had become saviours of a sort.

Something else is at play here. If Bluey is naturalistic, touching on the raw end of life in parenting and children’s lives, it functions in a digital world that is less adult, increasingly infantile and increasingly disabling.  Children and adults are becoming increasingly estranged from relations through technological parting and an addiction to the screen.  Funny that it should fall to a family of animated Australian cattle dogs to tie parents and children in a gentle knot of play and accommodation.

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

Featured image is licensed under Fair Use

France and Germany are expressing concerns about a proposal by the European Union’s diplomatic arm that aims to bypass Hungary’s veto as Budapest blocks more than €6 billion in aid to Ukraine. At the same time, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban has blasted the European Union’s support for the Kiev regime’s so-called Victory Plan.

The European External Action Service (EEAS) has floated the possibility of allowing member states to make voluntary contributions to the European Peace Facility (EPF), which helps finance military equipment. This would enable future funds to flow based on taxpayer consent rather than unanimous support.

However, sources told Bloomberg that some member states, including France and Germany, fear a precedent could be set that would jeopardise the EPF’s future as a foreign policy tool. In some countries, voluntary contributions may require approval from national parliaments, which would add a different layer of complication.

“Some member states, including France and Germany, have voiced concerns over setting a precedent that could imperil the future of the European Peace Facility as a foreign policy tool, according to people familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg reported. “Currently, the EPF relies on mandatory contributions based on each member state’s economic weight and requires unanimity for disbursement.”

The French and German governments declined to provide formal comment.

Earlier, the EU’s top diplomat, Josep Borrell, said that Hungary continues to block the allocation of €6 billion as compensation to EU states for the supply of arms and ammunition to Ukraine. A European source told reporters that the EU’s foreign policy service had presented member states with a proposal for the EU to contribute to the EPF on a voluntary basis, thus bypassing Hungary’s veto.

Orban is the most Kremlin-friendly leader in the European bloc and has repeatedly stalled EU aid for Ukraine and obstructed sanctions against Russia. Even though the EU approved an additional €5 billion for Ukraine earlier this year, Orban has been blocking its disbursement, creating tensions between Budapest and Brussels that have only escalated during Hungary’s rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union, as seen with EU member states and institutions boycotting Hungarian-held events.

On October 23, the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian uprising, Orban said in the Millenaris Park in Budapest that Kiev and Brussels seek to drag the entirety of Europe into a war with Russia by inviting Ukraine to NATO.

“Over the past 70 years, we have never been so close to a new world war as we are now,” he said, adding, “European leaders and Brussels bureaucrats dragged Europe” into the Ukrainian conflict, and now “they want to drag the entire European Union into the Russia-Ukraine war.”

Orban stressed that Kiev’s intentions are backed by Europe continuing to deliver weapons to Ukraine and supporting Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s so-called Victory Plan, which aims to “expand the scope of the war by inviting Ukraine to join NATO and moving the frontline to Russian territory.”

Earlier this month, Orban described Zelensky’s plan as scary. In his view, the Victory Plan will only pave the way for defeat and not victory. Budapest stated that it would neither support Kiev’s initiative nor participate in its implementation.

It is for reasons like this that the EU is instigating its provocations against Orban, including trying to topple his leadership and have him replaced with a puppet who will serve the interests of Brussels instead of Hungary.

“We know they want to force us into the war (in Ukraine), that they want to impose their migrants upon us… and hand over our children to gender activists,” Orban said in Millenaris Park before referring to the new pro-EU Tisza party of Peter Magyar. “We know that they’ve got a puppet government (in mind), the party they want to impose on us.”

In July, the first month of Hungary’s Council of the EU presidency, Orban outraged the European elite by travelling to Moscow and Beijing as part of his “peace mission.” The very fact that his efforts to find peace caused controversy demonstrates that Europe wants the war in Ukraine to be prolonged for as long as possible.

However, what was not expected is that the EU’s two most influential countries, Germany and France, would be concerned that “a precedent” could be made where democratic mechanisms are bypassed. In this way, it is seen just how divided Europe is and the ludicrousy of accusing Orban of authoritarianism when authoritarian practices are considered and employed to limit his power and influence.

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Oppose the Pro-genocide Purge on US College Campuses!

October 29th, 2024 by Jacob Crosse

In response to student and faculty outrage over the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a veritable purge is taking place on college campuses in the United States. Administrations are suspending, evicting, firing and otherwise trampling on the democratic rights of faculty and students protesting the ongoing slaughter.

This repression is taking place at some of the most prestigious universities in the country, with deep ties to the Democratic Party. This past Friday, some 25 faculty members from Harvard University were suspended from entering the Widener Library for two weeks after conducting a silent “study-in” protest in solidarity with students who were suspended for conducting a similar protest the month prior.

The banning of faculty from the library for simply displaying pieces of paper that had innocuous phrases such as “Embrace diverse perspectives,” is an unprecedented act of disciplinary action. Harvard cited “library policy” to justify barring faculty members from the institution’s main library, which will severely impact their ability to conduct their own work.

In addition to over two dozen faculty members, according to The Harvard Crimson, more than 60 students who previously conducted a silent “study-in” at Widener Library against the genocide have also been banned from the main library on campus for two weeks.

Similar anti-democratic measures are underway at many other campuses:

  • At the University of Pittsburgh, at least 17 students and community members face prosecution for their participation in Gaza Solidarity encampments. After police assaulted the encampments, arrested protesters face inflated charges, including felonies. They have also been issued “persona non grata” notices, essentially banning them from the University of Pittsburgh campus.
  • At the University of Chicago last week, university officials sent the police to evict and suspend an Arab student who participated in an anti-genocide protest earlier this month. Megan Porter, the student’s attorney, told a local news outlet that even though her client has not been convicted of a crime, he was nevertheless removed from campus. Porter added that he does not have family in the state and has nowhere else to live.
  • At Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Dr. Maura Finkelstein, who herself is Jewish, was fired for posting comments on social media in opposition to Zionism and the ongoing genocide. Interviewed earlier this month by the World Socialist Web Site, Finkelstein observed, “Our campuses are being militarized.”
  • At Cornell University, administrators suspended four students for three years for their involvement in a pro-Palestinian protest on September 18, directed at military contractors arming the genocide. Cornell University Ph.D. student Momodou Taal, a graduate instructor, was nearly deported earlier this month for participating in the September 18 demonstration.
  • At the University of California, Santa Cruz, over 100 students and faculty members were temporarily banished from campus after they were arrested for protesting the Gaza genocide last semester. The ACLU Foundation of Northern California and the Center for Protest Law and Litigation have filed a lawsuit against the university, arguing that the mass suspension is unconstitutional.
  • The University of Michigan is pursuing criminal charges against 11 students for participating in anti-war demonstrations against the war in Gaza last spring. The charges include trespassing and obstructing a police officer, a felony offense with potential sentences of up to two years in prison.

Many of these universities have close ties to the Democratic Party and American imperialism. The Harvard Corporation, the top governing board of Harvard University, includes former Obama administration officials, billionaires and heads of private investment firms.

Notable Democrats who are currently members of the Harvard Corporation include: Penny Sue Pritzker, billionaire heiress and US Secretary of Commerce in the Obama administration; Kenneth Chenault, one of several corporate executives who spoke at this year’s Democratic National Convention; and Mariano-Florentino Cuéllara, former justice on the Supreme Court of California who served in the Clinton and Obama administrations.

Earlier this year, Harvard University appointed as its vice president and general counsel Jennifer O’Connor, a former executive at Northrop Grumman, the sixth largest weapons manufacturer in the world, which supplies the Israeli Air Force with missile and laser systems for attack helicopters and fighter jets.

The repression on campuses is not limited to the United States. Earlier this month riot police violently arrested students at Western Sydney University for participating in a peaceful sit-in protest against the genocide. After the thuggish arrests, hundreds of academics and faculty signed an open letter condemning the police brutality. The signatories noted the violent actions of the police “are part of a broader pattern of police repression across Australian universities against those who protest against Israel’s atrocities.”

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) calls on students to mobilize against this escalating attack on democratic rights. Students must demand that all charges against those protesting the genocide—one of the greatest war crimes of the 21st century—be dropped. All sanctions and restrictions on students and faculty must be overturned.

Students should seek the support of workers in the factories and workplaces where colleges and universities are located to mobilize broader support, connecting the defense of basic democratic rights with opposition to war abroad and the war on the working class at home.

The escalating assault on protests on campuses takes place only one week before the US election, which is plumbing the depths of political reaction. Trump and the Republicans are seeking to build up a fascist movement and have pledged to mobilize police and the military against opponents of the genocide and all opposition to the politics of the corporate and financial oligarchy.

The central involvement of the Democratic Party in the persecution of opposition to genocide demonstrates that its claim to be protecting “democracy” is a cynical fraud. No matter who prevails in the election, if there is, indeed, a clear outcome, the drive toward dictatorship will continue in lockstep with the escalation of war and the extreme growth of social inequality.

The McCarthyite witch-hunt against Gaza solidarity demonstrators, the harassment of anti-war activists, and the punitive measures against protesting students and faculty are preparations for even more extensive attacks on the democratic rights of the population as a whole.

The anti-democratic methods deployed by the US ruling class during the McCarthyite anti-communist witch-hunts of the 1950s are being revived on a global scale by all the imperialist powers. The defense of fundamental democratic rights, including the right to protest genocide and ethnic cleansing, is inseparable from the development of an independent socialist movement in the working class and among young people against all imperialist war and its source, the capitalist system.

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In any other context, Joe Rogan — and I appreciate this about him — won’t shut up about the COVID-19 scam.

Nary a show passes by that it doesn’t come up at some point, even with guests who don’t appear very interested in the topic or have nothing to do with it apart from having been a human on planet Earth in 2020.

Yet, strangely enough — or not strangely at all, perhaps — the topic never came up at any point during his three-hour sit-down with the former president.

In fact, when Big Pharma came up, Rogan very carefully danced around the topic of the so-called “vaccines” that Trump so graciously rushed to market in record time.

Not only did the vaxx elephant in the room remain ignored, but they didn’t touch the recent DoD directive explicitly allowing the U.S. military to kill American citizens under so-called emergency conditions, nor the transhumanist, exterminationist ideology of the psychopathic multinational elites;

Nor the CIA trafficking opium out of Afghanistan (at the time of the invasion, the Taliban had virtually eradicated the opium trade in the country;

by the time the U.S. military had taken over, a few years later, the global share of the opium trade soared to 90+%; production collapsed once again after the withdrawal) — just to name a small handful of issues they could have broached which Rogan, who is well-versed in them, had a golden opportunity to pose to one of the only men on Earth who might be willing and able to offer uncommon insight, given that he occupied the top executive position for four years.

Instead, we got a lot of fluff like “tell me what it felt like to be president,” etc.

These omissions were, in my view, pre-ordained. What I wouldn’t give to have been a fly on the wall in the negotiations between Rogan and the Trump team leading up to the appearance.

So, no points to Rogan for this massively disappointing performance.

Regarding the former president and his inability or unwillingness to tackle real issues head-on, the reality is that Trump is a notorious germophobe who bought in long ago to the biomedical industry propaganda that men in white coats and Fortune 500 pharmaceutical corporations love humanity and want us all to live our best lives.

The proper takeaway from the Rogan interview, in my view, is that he’s not bringing the kind of hard-nosed, confrontational, insurgent energy we desperately need in a leader to combat the industry and the deathgrip it has on every relevant institution.

And if he’s not willing do to execute the much-needed war on these institutions, his feckless, corrupt counterparts in Congress certainly aren’t.

Via Biospace (emphasis added):

“The nonprofit transparency group Open Secrets tracks spending by pharmaceutical and health product political action committees (PACs), which have spent $12,009,986 on campaign contributions in 2023 and 2024. The 111 pharmaceutical PACs have given over $5.2 million to Democrats, while around $6.6 million has gone to Republicans thus far in 2023 and 2024.

The top lobbying client in the pharma manufacturing sector is the Pharmaceutical Research & Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), which has a lobbying budget of over $16.9 million. Pfizer is second with $6 million available, followed by Merck, Novartis and Eli Lilly with $5.2 million, $4.6 million, and $4.4 million in 2023 and 2024, respectively.”

Whither do we turn for our champion but to ourselves?

Salvation doesn’t lie with any politician, and surely not with any of the current crop in permanent Washington.

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

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Substack where this article was originally published. Also, keep tabs via Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is a screenshot from the interview video

When Evil Is Allowed In, Evil Stays. Paul C. Roberts

October 29th, 2024 by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

On two previous occasions Israel sent its vaunted army into southern Lebanon only to be driven out by the Arab militia, Hezbollah, operating without tanks, without an air force, without air defense.   It appears that it has now happened again.  Israel has been stopped cold on the ground, causing the Israeli defense minister to announce an end to the ground operations.  The Israeli Army is only good at killing women and children from the air, as in Gaza.

Israel’s war against Hezbollah has been replaced with Israeli air strikes against civilian residential areas in Beirut, which provides more evidence that the only function of the Israeli military is to murder women and children from the air.  The obvious conclusion is that the Israeli military doesn’t fight; it commits war crimes against civilians.

The reason civilian neighborhoods in Beirut, the capital of Lebanon and not Hezbollah territory, are being destroyed from the air is that Iran and Russia permit it by not providing air defense systems to Lebanon.  

Iran and Russia are “maintaining peace” by permitting Israel to slaughter Lebanese women and children and destroy schools and hospitals from the air.  

It is a paradox that Washington, Putin, and Iran are equally indifferent to Israel’s slaughter from the air of civilians in Gaza and civilians in Lebanon. Any one of the three countries could stop the murder of civilians, but not one of them will do anything.

Putin has placed his bets on BRICS, but that is an economic organization that might or might not succeed.  Its success is handicapped by the fact that the Russian and Chinese economists are indoctrinated by the American neoliberals, and, therefore, are not merely worthless to their countries but positively harmful. 

If Washington wanted the Israelis’ murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians to stop, Washington would stop providing Israel with the weapons.  Clearly, Israel is doing what Washington wants.  But why do Russia and Iran want Palestinian and Lebanese civilians to be massacred when either country can stop it?  It is beginning to look as if it is not merely Washington and Israel that Satan has in his grasp, but Russia and Iran as well.

Every time Putin gets off-focused from Russia’s only threat–Washington–he finds himself with a mess on this hands.  With Putin focused on the Olympics in China, Washington sent the Georgian army into South Ossetia. With Putin focused on the Sochi Olympics, Washington overthrew the Ukrainian government and brought war to Russia.  Now Putin is focused on BRICS and Washington is stirring up a color revolution in Georgia to regain the former Russian province as another beached against Russia. The opposition parties and the President of Georgia do not accept the election results, which are favorable to Russia. See this. 

I think that Putin by refusing to use power is losing credibility. I don’t think Putin understands the ideological character of the Democrat Party and the ideological woke liberal-left that controls it. If the Democrats manage to retain control over the government, I don’t think Putin is prepared for the consequences.  

Humankind, said T.S. Eliot, “cannot bear very much reality.”  That is as true of Russians as of Americans. Reality conflicts with hopes, aspirations, and plans, and when ignored upsets all of them.  Putin’s Ukraine conflict which has greatly widened, the brewing color revolution in Georgia supported by Washington, and Iran’s demonization and isolation are all self-inflicted  disasters caused by ignoring reality.

When powerful countries such as Russia, China, and Iran stand aside from genocide, they destroy their own reputations. The world is crying out for someone with the means to stand up for humanity, for justice, for truth, and there are no takers.

In Gaza children undergo amputations without anesthesia. The little water available is polluted. Everyone is sick. Washington keeps sending the weapons used from the air against purely civilian populations. Disease and starvation will finish the job for the Americans and the Israelis.  It is America that has enabled this genocide.

And Americans, in their insouciant existence, think they are the salt of the earth.

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

Paul Craig Roberts is a renowned author and academic, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy where this article was originally published. Dr. Roberts was previously associate editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal. He was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy during the Reagan Administration. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is by L’Orient Le Jour/Muntasser Abdallah

Film: The New American Century

October 29th, 2024 by Alternative Truth

[This film was produced in 2009.]

This film goes in detail through the untold history of The Project for the New American Century with tons of archival footage and connects it right into the present.

This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it.

This film shows how the first film theaters in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War.

This film shows the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan.

This film shows how Halliburton under their “cost plus” exclusive contract with the US Government went on a mad dash spending spree akin to something out of the movie Brewster’s Millions, yet instead of blowing $30 million they blew through BILLIONS by literally burning millions of dollars worth of hundred thousand dollar cars and trucks if they had so much as a flat tire.

“A stunning film. It should be seen as widely as possible, in cinemas, bars, clubs, at meetings and, of course, through the internet. I’m sure the film will continue to be a source of debate and political education for many years. Maybe until the war criminals have been brought to trial.” – Ken Loach

While Massimo Mazzucco’s first political documentary, GLOBAL DECEIT (2006), focused on the long list of inconsistencies in the official version of the 9/11 attacks, THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY explores the historical, philosophical and economic background that suggests a matrix for such events that is much closer to home than the so-called “Islamic terrorism”.

The film provides solid evidence for the true reasons behind the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, whose unfolding is described in chilling detail in a document called “Project for the New American Century”, published in the year 2000, that seems to have served as the actual blueprint for such dramatic events.

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

Globalists Plot Worldwide Genocide Via WHO Pandemic Treaty

October 29th, 2024 by Richard C. Cook

[This article was first published by GR in May 2024.]

Introduction

With all the trouble in today’s world, including the completely pointless American-instigated war in Ukraine, Israel’s loathsome genocidal onslaught against the Palestinians in Gaza, and militant U.S. threats to China over Taiwan, perhaps we should be asking whether the escalation in tensions threatening massive global conflict is really a carefully-crafted Globalist “false-flag” concealing something even more sinister.

Particularly dominating the news cycle are the battles now raging in the U.S. and elsewhere between activists and authorities via pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

But again, is it more contrived distraction? 

I believe it is. 

What then is the real agenda behind these headline-dominating events? What are the Globalists, who are the real string-pullers, actually trying to achieve? Will more conventional wars and street-level conflict really do the job?

Actual Human Deaths from War

To narrow our focus, the world has not seen a major war since World War II took place in 1939-1945, with over 16 million military fatalities and an estimated 70-85 million overall casualties, including civilians. Given a world population of 2.3 billion in 1940, war casualties were thus about 3.7 percent of that total. 

Granted the horrific nature of wartime deaths, 3.7 percent remains a relatively low figure, with the concentration of deaths obviously affecting some nations much more than others. In World War II the hardest hit were the Soviet Union and Germany. But the total loss was scarcely a bump in the road of long-term growth of the world’s human population, today reaching 8.1 billion and counting. 

Looking at more contemporary data, deaths attributed to all wars since 9/11, a period often referred to as one of “endless war,” are about 4.5-4.7 million. This figure, however, yields vastly smaller proportions than those of World War II. Thus the net demographic effect of war over the past two-plus decades is scarcely noticeable, though again, any casualties are horrific to those affected. 

Additionally, war casualties, including civilians, are nowadays produced by highly focused conflicts within limited areas. These conflicts often involve countries where the West covets their resources. Thus West Asia, with its vast hydrocarbon and mineral reserves, has posed a tempting target, leading to U.S./U.K. assaults against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Similar, though less visible assaults, have taken place in Africa. 

More recently, the U.S. proxy war against Russia in Ukraine has led to depopulation of that country through emigration and battlefield losses, even as U.S. corporations like BlackRock have made investments in land and minerals. The U.S.-supported genocide by Israel against Palestinians in Gaza has also been suspected of having as a motivation a takeover of offshore oil and gas reserves. 

Still, we might say that weighed in the balance against the incredible potential for casualties resulting from the enormous firepower of the world’s conventional and nuclear arsenals, total wartime deaths today remain relatively limited. And even if these arsenals were put to far greater use than they have been in recent conflicts, would the totality of the world’s population be seriously reduced by such an outbreak before the impulse to all-out war had spent itself? 

Are we certain, for instance, that the much-feared World War III, would really result in obliteration of life on earth, as many speculate, or would that too be just another speed bump? We really don’t know. Plus there are many more safeguards and restraints within the international community than existed in 1941 which could be activated, including procedures in place through the much-maligned United Nations. 

We are also seeing that the West’s military arsenals are useless except on hapless opponents, as shown by the failure of Western arms in Ukraine, where they have proven to be overly-complex, expensive, and vulnerable. Their main purposes today seem to be, increasingly, “job creation,” enrichment of the stockholders in the arms manufacturing sector, providing some kind of phantom “deterrence” against “aggression,” or just entertainment for politicians, the mainstream media, and voters.  

As horrible as war is, the Globalists are certainly looking beyond overt warfare to accomplish their ends, which many believe center on, or at least include, bioweapons in order to accomplish wholesale human population reduction. In fact, the U.S. military and the CIA have been covertly creating and utilizing bioweapons for decades, as documented on Tucker Carlson Uncensored in a recent episode entitled “Was Lyme Disease Created as a Bioweapon?”

Though not covered in this article, space weaponry is another area where war fantasists have been hoping for decades to make breakthroughs in doomsday weapons that would cause enemies to surrender without a fight or that would wipe an adversary off the map in an unanswerable first-strike. 

But let’s move on. 

The Depopulation Lobby

While it seeks to conceal itself, the existence of a powerful lobby in favor of wholesale planetary population reduction can be discerned.

For a couple of centuries, doomsayers like English minister Thomas Malthus (1766-1834)  have been shouting that sooner rather than later population growth would outstrip the capacity of earth’s resources to support such expanding human numbers. 

Of course, Malthus was wrong, largely due to the ability of the Industrial Revolution to provide sustenance for a growing population and engender large improvements in sanitation, nutrition, agricultural productivity, and medical treatments to keep more people alive for longer lifespans. Particularly impactful have been the reduction in infant mortality and improvements in family and childhood welfare. 

But for a certain class of people closely identified with the Globalists these changes have not been a cause for rejoicing, but rather a premonition of impending doom. These sentiments have merged with the “eugenics” movement which sees population growth as largely an increase in the numbers of people they do not like and do not want to be alive. 

For this particular class, the potential of war to reduce the population has not seemed to have panned out for the reasons disclosed by the considerations presented above. Other, more effective, methods have therefore been sought. Bioweapons, viewed as relatively easy to inflict by covert means and difficult to trace to their sources, have moved to the forefront. Who, then, may be behind it all?

In his article from July 30, 2023, “Billionaires Try to Shrink World’s Population: Secret Gathering Sponsored by Bill Gates, 2009 Meeting of ‘The Good Club,’” Global Research head Dr. Michel Chossudovsky asked, “Is Worldwide Depopulation Part of the Billionaires’ Great Reset?” 

Dr. Chossudovsky writes:

For more than ten years, meetings have been held by billionaires described as philanthropists to reduce the size of the world’s population culminating with the 2020-2022 COVID crisis.

Recent developments suggest that “Depopulation” is an integral part of the so-called COVID mandates, including the lockdown policies and the mRNA vaccine.

According to the Wall Street Journal: “In May 2009, the billionaire philanthropists met behind closed doors at the home of the president of the Rockefeller University in Manhattan. This secret gathering was sponsored by Bill Gates. They called themselves ‘The Good Club.’ Among the participants were the late David Rockefeller, Warren Buffett, George Soros, Michael Bloomberg, Ted Turner, Oprah Winfrey, and many more.”

In May 2009, the WSJ as well as the Sunday Times reported (John Harlow, Los Angeles) that “Some of America’s leading billionaires have met secretly to consider how their wealth could be used to slow the growth of the world’s population and speed up improvements in health and education.” The emphasis was not on population growth (i.e. Planned Parenthood) but on “Depopulation” i.e., the reduction in the absolute size of the world’s population. 

To read complete WSJ article click here.

According to the Sunday Times report :

The philanthropists who attended a summit convened on the initiative of Bill Gates, the Microsoft co-founder, discussed joining forces to overcome political and religious obstacles to change.

Dr. Chossudovsky’s article may be accessed here and is cited in my own book, Our Country, Then and Now. 

It’s no secret that eugenics and population control have long been a goal of the Globalists in general and the Rockefeller family and Bill Gates in particular. With the “Good Club,” we have Gates and David Rockefeller in the same series of meetings, along with several other famous billionaires. Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent book, The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health, cites multiple examples where the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has promoted large-scale vaccine utilization in Africa with the likely underlying motive of population reduction. In Europe, the Club of Rome and its offshoots, including the World Economic Forum, have lobbied for similar objectives. 

As far as raw numbers are concerned, “Good Club” member and founder of CNN Ted Turner famously said,

“A total population of 250-300 million people, a 95 percent decline from present levels, would be ideal.” —as quoted in the McAlvany Intelligence Advisor, June 1996.

It’s appropriate here to mention Aurelio Peccei, co-founder of Club of Rome, originator of the idea for the World Economic Forum, and his justification for the need for supra-national institutions to address global crises. This involves the implicit necessity to weaken the sovereignty of nation states in order for Globalism to succeed. It’s from this angle that the destruction of the U.S. producing economy has been undertaken through industrial outsourcing and was achieved in the decades following publication of Peccei’s seminal volume, The Chasm Ahead.   

The relationship between the Rockefellers and Peccei dates to April 11, 1964, when Peccei attended a meeting of the Bilderberger Group in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he met with David Rockefeller, by then president and chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. Rockefeller was also the overseer for the Council on Foreign Relations, the principal U.S. Globalist think-tank.  

I read about this meeting between Rockefeller and Peccei decades after the fact. It had a particular interest for me, because I was there! Not in their meeting, of course, but at the Williamsburg Lodge where the conference was being held. I was with the local high school current events club at the time, and we had been invited to listen to a couple of speeches. During my lifetime and career as a government analyst, I have been witness to many events of historical significance. Just think, I was also hanging around near what may have been the laying of plans to destroy much of the human race!

By the mid-1970s, promotion of population reduction was official U.S. government policy. As documented by the Human Life International website (January 3, 2024):

The United States National Security Council is the highest decision-making body regarding foreign policy in the United States. On December 10, 1974, it completed a top-secret document entitled National Security Study Memorandum or NSSM-200, also called The Kissinger Report, since Henry Kissinger was Secretary of State at the time it was written.

The subject of NSSM-200 is “Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” This document, published shortly after the first major international population conference in Bucharest, was the result of collaboration among the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), and the Departments of State, Defense and Agriculture.

NSSM-200 was made public when it was declassified and was transferred to the U.S. National Archives in 1990.

The report stated:

The U.S. economy will require large and increasing amounts of minerals from abroad, especially from less developed countries. That fact gives the U.S. enhanced interest in the political, economic, and social stability of the supplying countries. Wherever a lessening of population pressures through reduced birth rates can increase the prospects for such stability, population policy becomes relevant to resource supplies and to the economic interests of the United States.

Note that Henry Kissinger was a lifetime associate of the Rockefeller financial empire and was even considered at one point as being named overall coordinator of all Rockefeller investments. 

It can also be argued that the U.S. has been trying for decades to engineer limitations on nation-state sovereignty and population growth in less developed countries through the International Monetary Fund, with its host of “conditionalities” accompanying its predatory lending policies. These have included privatizing public utilities, cutting pay for public employees, reduction of welfare benefits, conversion of agricultural production away from self-sufficiency to export commodities, voting the “correct” way at the UN, opening their economies to Western capital investment at high interest rates, etc. 

U.S. sanctions have also played a part, one example being sanctions against Iraq during the mid-1990s that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright admitted were the cause of death of 500,000 Iraqi children. “It was worth it,” she told a TV interviewer. Sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine doubtless have the same intent as part of a similar resource grab against Russia the U.S. carried out after the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

Now, however, it can be argued that the tactics of Globalist population reduction rendered against less-developed/adversarial but often resource-rich parts of the world are being intentionally turned against Western nations’ own populations and are not simply the consequences of multiple policy decisions made without an underlying agenda. Within the U.S. we have seen the rapid and radical increase in wealth disparity between rich and poor and the weakening of the social safety net by such actions as cutting food stamps and Medicaid benefits. Only a blind man could not have known these measures would cause poverty and mortality to increase among the lower income sector.

Due to inflation, caused at least in part by corporate profiteering, the availability of housing, food, education, and transportation are increasingly out of reach, with the high cost of living promoting smaller families. Abortions-on-demand as a birth control measure have long been part of the liberal program with medically-assisted suicide becoming common with the distribution of morphine by hospices. Promotion of the LBGT agenda also results in the begetting of fewer children. 

But a major milestone in the assault by the developed world against humanity may have been reached with the COVID pandemic. Again, it was Robert F. Kennedy Jr. who has amassed the details about the manner in which the societal lockdowns, business closures, shuttering of schools, and censorship of dissent had been anticipated by two decades of below-the-radar training and planning exercises, with heavy military participation. One of these, “Event 201,” took place immediately before the start of the COVID pandemic at Johns Hopkins University, sponsored by Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum. 

In his latest book, The Wuhan Cover-Up and the Terrifying Bioweapons Arm Race, RFK Jr. discusses the massive proliferation of U.S.-sponsored bioweapons labs worldwide that are conducting research on the weaponization of viruses under the heading of “gain-of-function.”  It has only been in the last couple of years that “gain-of-function” has become a phrase of common parlance. 

It almost seems as though the elite controllers of Western society have decided that open warfare is insufficient to reach their depopulation goals, so that a different solution must be sought. What they appear to have lighted upon is the deliberate inculcation of pandemics. COVID, including the deadly mRNA “vax,” was possibly their dry-run. 

Of course, COVID was not the first medical atrocity committed by Big Pharma, the U.S. government, and the medical profession. Another is the epidemic of autism likely caused by the proliferation of vaccinations inflicted on children. According to Dr. Lewis Coleman of the American Geopolitical Institute: 

We never saw this when we were in elementary school, but now it’s an epidemic, not to mention all the myriad damage caused by Long COVID and other “vaccination” effects. One shudders to consider what society will look like 20 years from now. Children with these maladies can destroy families and divert attention from the needs of healthy children. And this doesn’t count all the miscarriages and Long COVID victims and sudden death victims of the mRNA injections, or the countless patients crippled by chronic illnesses such as Parkinson’s Disease that are caused by pollution of our food, water, and air. 

File:Bill Gates MSC 2017 Quote.png

By Hildenbrand / MSC, Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

 

The Globalists’ Worldwide Depopulation Agenda Outgrows Its Training Wheels

In the meantime, the Globalists have been taking action in the spheres of economics and technology to prepare the ground for a massive crash in the world’s population. One of these actions has been the out-of-proportion “Climate Change” scare and supposed conversion to renewable energy sources that would leave advanced industrial nations dependent on solar panels and windmills. The best example is the destruction being wrought on the German economy by the Green Party which has already succeeded in shuttering all Germany’s nuclear plants. Another point of attack has been centralization and digitization of currencies. Another has been promotion of artificial intelligence in industrial processes, though the Globalists have not disclosed who will purchase all the goods produced by unending automation if the consuming public has been “disappeared.” 

Yet another ruse has been centralization of food production with an ever-shrinking number of companies responsible for the food supply. This has included conjuring up threats to the food supply through what might be called “biological terrorism,” like the growing hysteria over “bird flu” with actions like Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer’s threats of a military-style crackdown that could result in more of the already-alarming mass culling of poultry and cattle. In fact, “bird flu” may be the mysterious “Disease X” that some are now warning about. 

A May 6, 2024, article by Julian Rose in the Activist Post entitled “Madkind-v-Mankind — A Race Against Time” gives a graphic description of the future the controllers have envisioned:

“The Great Reset” is the appropriately named most recent clock setting event initiated by Madkind.

It has placed some key dates in its agenda for the transference of organic life into a digitally controlled robotic look-alike, with the purpose of rendering Mankind obsolete.

It finds 2025/26, 2030 and 2045/50 useful markers by which to achieve particular phases of this ambition.

We know Madkind’s game plan because it is explicitly laid out in UN Agenda 2030 and the World Economic Forum’s Fourth Industrial Revolution/Green New Deal.

On the financial side, for a start, a central bank digital currency with a social credit compliance program to control individual’s access to their bank accounts, is clocked in for circa 2026.

Global economic stagnation and swathes of human starvation are timed to follow.

By 2030, Madkind’s agenda states that the process of digitalisation and artificial intelligence (AI) will have usurped much of Mankind’s emotional and rational thinking capacity; with natural powers of reproduction also sterilized into submission by ever increasing atmospheric geoengineering, water and food denaturing, electromagnetic frequencies (EMF) and weaponised vaccination programmes.

By the same date around fifty percent of food is planned to be created in factory laboratories. Synthetic, genetically modified and with no connection with soil.

Insects are high on the list for protein replacement, once milk, meat and eggs have been rendered “off the menu” due to their being identified as complicit in Madkind’s mad global warming invention.

Energy production is slated to be largely divorced from fossil fuel burning practices by this same date, replaced by what it sees as “Green’ solutions taking over the powering of what is left of productive industry.

By 2045/50 Madkind sees itself in the driving seat with its so called “Net Zero” (no carbon dioxide) policy having further reduced natural biodiversity and world populations to a fraction of current levels, replacing Mankind with the AI Transhuman cyborg version and a slave race of Humankind preserved for menial duties unsuited to robots.

This is a purely cursory, indicative list – as there is far more insanity in the pipeline than mentioned here. And Madkind has a plan B, C and D if A fails to materialise (on time).

To further remind one’s self, just check Mad Schwab’s description of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and Mad Harari’s declaration “We will do better than God.”

Censorship

We are most emphatically not supposed to communicate among ourselves about any of this. Since President Joe Biden took office in 2021, the U.S. government has engaged in a major assault on free speech. As reported by the Brownstone Institute in an article entitled “Book Burning Goes Digital”:

In March 2021, the Biden White House initiated a brazenly unconstitutional censorship campaign to prevent Americans from buying politically unfavorable books from Amazon. 

The effort, spearheaded by White House censors including Andy Slavitt and Rob Flaherty, began on March 2, 2021, when Slavitt emailed Amazon demanding to speak to an executive about the site’s “high levels of propaganda and misinformation and disinformation.” 

Their subsequent discussions remain unknown, but recently released emails from the House Judiciary Committee reveal that the censors achieved their intended result. Within a week, Amazon adopted a shadow ban policy. 

Company officials wrote in internal emails, “The impetus for this request is criticism from the Biden administration about sensitive books we’re giving prominent placement to, and should be handled urgently.” They further clarified that the policy was “due to criticism from the Biden people,” presumably meaning Slavitt and Flaherty. 

We may generalize by saying that the government’s focal point for their attack on free speech has been mainly topics related to COVID, the “pandemic,” vaccines, etc. Brownstone continues: 

At the time, “vaccine misinformation” was parlance for inconvenient truths. Five months after the Amazon censorship crusade, Twitter banned Alex Berenson at the Government’s behest for noting that the shots do not prevent infection or transmission. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) favorably cited his Twitter ban in a September 2021 letter to Amazon calling for increased censorship of books. 

A similar process occurred at Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg wrote in internal emails that the platform decided to ban claims related to the lab-leak theory in February 2021 after “tense conversations with the new Administration.” Facebook executive Nick Clegg similarly wrote that the censorship was due to “pressure from the [Biden] administration and others to do more.” Another internal Facebook email from August 2021 wrote that the company had implemented new “misinformation” policies “stemming from the continued criticism of our approach from the [Biden] administration.” 

Not only does the Biden regime’s call for de facto book bans lead to the suppression of true information regarding lockdowns, vaccine injuries, and the lab-leak theory; it was also a clear violation of the First Amendment.

View original article at Brownstone.org.

For a further detailed review of government and media suppression of information on the COVID pandemic, see the May 8, 2024, Substack of the heavily censored Dr. Robert Malone entitled, “Update on COVID mRNA Vaccine Harms.” Dr. Malone states: 

I have been waiting for this moment for years now. The U.S. federal government is finally starting to acknowledge that they have forced the citizens (including military personnel) of this country to accept toxic injectable products presented as “vaccines,” products which either contain or cause patients’ bodies to produce a known toxin: the engineered SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. We are now seeing an incremental rollout of limited hangouts, in which current and former senior federal officials are starting to acknowledge deaths and harms attributable to the various emergency use of authorized COVID-19 “vaccine” products.

Of course, this comes after years of official federal denialism, cover ups, withholding data, overt marketing of unlicensed medical products (to adults AND children), and a massive censorship/defamation/propaganda campaign which has spanned virtually all of both mainstream media as well as alternative media outlets. Virtually all peer reviewed medical journals have been coopted and compromised, particularly those owned by the WEF partner publishing houses Elsevier and Springer/Nature….Relevant to this point was the recent reveal during the Dr. Peter Daszak public testimony in the US. Congress that both the Lancet (published by Elsevier) and Nature (Springer) have refused to testify in response to specific congressional requests. 

It’s a fact that the avalanche of censorship is concerned almost exclusively with the publication of true information about the COVID “pandemic”; nothing has been attacked by the government with such vehemence on any other topic. 

It follows that promotion of the false COVID narrative may be the overriding objective of the Biden administration, even above issues of war and peace, illegal immigration, human rights, or anything else. One may even conjecture that the main purpose of the Biden presidency is to prepare the U.S. and humanity for massive worldwide depopulation. The vehicle now appears to be the World Health Organization’s Pandemic Treaty set for a vote at the WHO’s upcoming World Health Assembly meeting on May 27-June 1, 2024.  

WHO Pandemic Treaty

File:Examination of world's health - journal.pmed.0010003.g001.png

Public health in governmental and non-governmental perception. (By Giovanni Maki, Public Library of Science/Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.5)

 

The WHO, an agency of the United Nations, is largely through its own assumed authority now proposing a Pandemic Treaty that has the potential to shut down the world in lockdowns vastly more severe than occurred during COVID, solely on its own say-so that a “pandemic” may be taking place. The WHO—or whoever their “bosses” are—will be able to mandate compulsory vaccination and “vaccine passports” for every human being on the planet while suppressing all debate or dissent. 

Critics are pointing out—when they are allowed to speak—that there is absolutely no evidence that natural outbreaks of infectious diseases are anywhere close to the level implied by the totalitarian program of societal suppression the treaty would implement. This raises the suspicion that such outbreaks could only be engineered by deliberate release of microbes generated by “gain-of-function” R&D similar to what was likely done with COVID. 

The Biden administration has declared its intent to be a party to the WHO agreement, but that it will not be providing the U.S. Senate the opportunity to ratify such a treaty as specified in the U.S. Constitution. They claim that the treaty can be implemented by executive fiat. 

The treaty is an obvious assault on the sovereignty of any nation that chooses to take part and a threat to the sanctity of personhood of every individual. In the U.S., the Bill of Rights would virtually be suspended.

To implement the WHO’s mandates, the Biden administration has created its own executive-level agency, the Office of Pandemic Preparedness and Response Policy (OPPRP). Approved by Congress in 2023, the agency “leads, coordinates, and implements actions related to preparedness for, and response to, known and unknown biological threats and pathogens that could lead to a pandemic or to significant public health-related disruptions in the United States.” A bureaucratic system referred to as “One Health” is under construction as an organizing mechanism. 

Basically, One Health intends to control all facets of life: Economics, water, public policy, occupational health risks, agriculture, global trade, commerce, environmental health, ecosystems, communications, climate change and incidentally, pandemics and human health. (“Patrick Wood explains how One Health includes everything, and that it is already embedded in our domestic agencies,” Meryl’s COVID Newsletter, May 8, 2024)

“Known and unknown”; “that could lead to a pandemic…” says OPPRP’s charter. An actual pandemic is not even required. And no one says how the mandates approved by the OPPRP, possibly applying to hundreds of millions of people, will be enforced at the level of communities and individuals. But as with COVID, such activities as family gatherings, shopping, or church services would undoubtedly be criminalized, while schools revert to the ruinous-to-learning process of cyber-instruction. 

Returning to the WHO, who are its bosses that will stand as the international arbiter of every real or possible microbial crisis? The most powerful figure behind WHO funding is U.S. multi-billionaire Bill Gates, who, as indicated above, is today the most visible member of the Globalist hierarchy determined to reduce the earth’s human population. Will Gates and his WEF associates be the ultimate decision-makers?

As indicated earlier, COVID can likely be seen as a dry-run for the much more severe sanctions promised by the WHO’s Pandemic Treaty. How then did the WHO perform during COVID? We may perhaps get a glimpse by examining a lawsuit recently filed in Geneva, Switzerland, location of WHO headquarters, by a group of international lawyers through an organization called the World Council for Health Steering Committee. 

The lawsuit is directed against Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director General of the WHO. Among the lengthy and detailed allegations against Ghebreyesus are those of “falsely informing world governments of a so-called pandemic, thereby causing governments to declare non-existent medical emergencies” that “have been and are still an integral part of a chain events that is resulting in mass loss of life, immense physical harm, and untold psychological distress and trauma to the people on this planet.”

Dr. Ghebreyesus is not a medical doctor, by the way. Rather he holds a Doctorate of Philosophy (PhD) in Community Health from the University of Nottingham, UK. In fact, the UK has been heavily involved in development of the WHO treaty, with then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson a signatory to the article proposing the treaty originally.

The text of the World Council for Health Steering Committee lawsuit continues: 

Said actions appear to have led to Governments deploying insufficiently tested SARS-CoV-2 genetically modified organisms (GMOs) falsely termed “vaccines,” being also gene therapies, mandating unscientific masking protocols, implementing inhumane and anti-scientific “social distancing” measures, purchasing and deploying ineffective and fraudulent PCR tests subsequently used to create false “casedemics” in order to justify unlawful “lockdowns,” business closures and house arrest.

The plaintiffs ask for this remedy on the part of Dr. Ghebreyesus:

We demand that, with immediate effect, you cease and desist from taking further actions that would involve false and fraudulent communication to governments thereby causing or resulting in further instances of the kind of catastrophic outcomes outlined above.

The lawsuit also demands personal accountability from Dr. Ghebreyesus:

We also put you on notice that failure to cease or desist from continued or repeated involvement or implication in the above harms shall render you liable both in your personal and corporate capacity. As a man, you shall be investigated for criminal conspiracy. As a corporate officer, you shall be investigated for gross negligence, serious misconduct in public office, corporate fraud, and potentially even aiding and abetting corporate manslaughter.

For complete information on the opposition of the World Council for Health to the WHO and its plans and programs, see their website at https://worldcouncilforhealth.org/.

Then ask yourself if the WHO should be entrusted with the future of the human race or whether the WHO treaty is a prescription for mass extinction. Then ask whether humanity is so lacking in self-respect as to countenance this travesty? 

Opposition to the WHO 

There is growing opposition to the WHO Pandemic Treaty, particularly among organizations and individuals who are leading the general societal awakening to the horrors inflicted by the world’s governing authorities with respect to the COVID pandemic. At the same time, the world is only beginning to realize the harm that has already been inflicted by the mRNA “vaccines” administered to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.

Communication on these vital topics continue to be repressed by the Biden administration and other governments globally. The urgency of the need to fight against the imposition of the WHO Pandemic Treaty has scarcely penetrated the political sphere. 

At the same time, awareness is growing. Within the U.S., the state of Louisiana may soon declare that it will not be subject to UN or WHO mandates. Similar legislation has been introduced in Oklahoma. 22 state attorneys-general have said the same. 

Opposition was also recently expressed by a letter to President Biden from the 49 U.S. senators in the Republican Senate Conference. As reported by Fox News (May 2, 2024):

Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., led the entire Republican Senate conference in calling on President Biden to reject agreements that would expand the authority of the World Health Organization (WHO) in the case of a global pandemic.

“We strongly urge you not to join any pandemic related treaty, convention, or agreement being considered” at the 77th World Health Assembly, reads a letter sent to Biden by Johnson and all 48 other Republican senators. 

The Republican senators stressed that any such agreement would be considered a treaty, which they noted requires “the concurrence of two-thirds of the Senate under Article I Section 2 of the Constitution.”

Sen. Ron Johnson led all GOP senators in a letter to Biden, calling on him not to support agreements to expand WHO authority. 

The World Health Assembly (WHA) will take place from May 27 to June 1, and international agreements are expected to be considered. 

The WHA is the WHO’s decision-making body, which meets yearly, so it can lay out its goals and craft policies between the 194 member states. 

Due to the growing uproar, however, Great Britain, one of the original drivers, is now considering a vote against the treaty. According to Reuters (May 9, 2024), “We will only support the adoption of the accord and accept it on behalf of the UK, if it is firmly in the UK national interest and respects national sovereignty,” a spokesperson for Britain’s Department of Health and Social Care confirmed. Also reportedly opposing the treaty is the government of The Netherlands. 

Grassroots Opposition

Among those individuals leading the opposition within the U.S. and worldwide is Dr. Meryl Nass, a physician from Maine whose license to practice medicine was suspended when she prescribed medications for COVID treatment which, while legal, were frowned upon by medical authorities as not conforming to the often-deadly government-preferred treatment protocols. The medications in question were, of course, ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine. Dr. Nass’s Substack may be found here.

Dr. Nass has recommended a series of steps for sovereign governments to take in fighting the WHO Pandemic Treaty. See her Substack here entitled “What can lawmakers do to stop the Pandemic Agreement (Treaty) and amendments to the International Health Regulations (2005) (IHR) from going forward at the 77th World Health Assembly (WHA) meeting, taking place from May 27 to June 1, 2024?”

Conclusion

For many, the Globalist attitude is on full display in the comment famously attributed to Britain’s Prince Philip by The Guardian in 2009 where he is quoted as having said, “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation.”

We have no idea what the net effect of the COVID pandemic has been, or will be, once the downstream nefarious side-effects of the “jab” play out in deaths, illnesses, and long-term infertility. Without question, the mortality and morbidity, including health effects from depression, loss of livelihood, etc., are already in the hundreds of millions. 

For instance, as reported in Jeff Childers’ Substack, May 8, 2024: “In a recent World Economic Forum clip making the rounds this week, veterinarian and Moderna CEO Stéphan Bancel freely admitted that sixteen million Americans now have disabling Long Covid, which most of us interpret in proper English as ‘Long Vaxx:’”

 I believe it is accurate to say that the harm to mankind from the COVID travesty already exceeds any single war since World War II and possibly all wars on the planet since 9/11. And this may be just the beginning. 

Returning to the considerations that began this article, I personally believe that the Globalists have taken a significant step forward on their project for massive planetary population reduction. But it may also be that the coming effects from the WHO Pandemic Treaty will be much, much greater than anything seen thus far. 

The proposed WHO Pandemic Treaty may therefore be the greatest assault on human rights, constitutional government, and the sanctity of human life in all history. And yes, I am including in this the Holocaust. 

And in our concern about the actions of the WHO, we should not forget about the major role being played by the U.S. military establishment in funding and promoting further bioweapons development. It was the U.S. military, after all, that funded the COVID vax. 

Further, Karen Kingston wrote in her Substack for May 7, 2024: 

Crime Pays: DARPA’s $4.1 Billion Synthetic Biology Budget for 2024. These monies are being used to invest in synthetic biology technologies that no reputable private venture capital firm will fund because the human applications of these biotechnologies are criminal.

DARPA is the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, a major funder of vaccine development. See its website for its article on “Taking Guess Work out of Vaccine Development: AIM Program aims to leverage host immune mechanisms to determine if vaccine candidates will provide long-lasting immune protection.”

And the U.S. military to which DARPA belongs is 100 percent under Globalist control. This was confirmed long ago by Henry Kissinger, who famously said, “Military Men Are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.” 

But it’s not just military men. The Globalists see all of us in a similar way; essentially as just a herd of cattle. 

As I indicated at the beginning of this article, the rush of events in the news today due to the countless conflicts and crises, including the turmoil associated with the 2024 U.S. presidential election, have prevented the seriousness of the WHO’s actions from being fully exposed and appreciated, not just among the political classes of the world’s nations, but from the public in general. 

At the same time, with what there is of growing public and political awareness, there are increasing reports that the current version of the WHO Pandemic Treaty has no chance of being approved at the upcoming May 27-June 1, 2024 meeting. This doesn’t mean, of course, that they won’t try again, and again, and again…or that some new Disease X, Y, or Z using gain-of-function enhancement won’t be released to bring about the longed-for emergency. The final nail in humanity’s coffin would be next. 

The Spiritual Battle

I can only add my conviction that, above all, the current battle is a spiritual one. 

In John 16:5-11, Jesus said to his disciples:

Now I am going to the one who sent me,
and not one of you asks me, “Where are you going?”
But because I told you this, grief has filled your hearts.
But I tell you the truth, it is better for you that I go.
For if I do not go, the Advocate will not come to you.
But if I go, I will send him to you.
And when he comes he will convict the world
in regard to sin and righteousness and condemnation:
sin, because they do not believe in me;
righteousness, because I am going to the Father
and you will no longer see me;
condemnation, because the ruler of this world has been condemned.

We must all decide where we stand: With spiritual truth and the real lifegiving strivings of humanity, or with “the ruler of this world” and the Globalist death cult that serves him. 

For Jesus says further in John 16:20-23:

Amen, amen, I say to you, you will weep and mourn,
while the world rejoices;
you will grieve, but your grief will become joy.
When a woman is in labor, she is in anguish because her hour has arrived;
but when she has given birth to a child,
she no longer remembers the pain because of her joy
that a child has been born into the world.
So you also are now in anguish.
But I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice,
and no one will take your joy away from you.
On that day you will not question me about anything.
Amen, amen, I say to you,
whatever you ask the Father in my name he will give you.

*

*

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

Richard C. Cook is a co-founder and lead investigator for the American Geopolitical Institute.  Mr. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst with extensive experience across various government agencies, including the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he exposed the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Shuttle, documenting his story in his book “Challenger Revealed.” After serving at Treasury, he became a vocal critic of the private finance-controlled monetary system, detailing his concerns in “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an advisor to the American Monetary Institute and worked with Congressman Dennis Kucinich to advocate for replacing the Federal Reserve with a genuine national currency. See his new book, Our Country, Then and Now, Clarity Press, 2023.

“Every human enterprise must serve life, must seek to enrich existence on earth, lest man become enslaved where he seeks to establish his dominion!” Bô Yin Râ (Joseph Anton Schneiderfranken, 1876-1943), Translation by Posthumus Projects Amsterdam, 2014. Also see the Kober Press edition of The Book on the Living God here.

Featured image is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0

[This article was first published by GR in May 2024.]

Brand-new heart syndrome reportedly affects 90% of U.S. population, American Medical Association claims, no explanation offered 

Via American Heart Association, October 2023 (emphasis added):

Health experts are redefining cardiovascular disease (CVD) risk, prevention and management, according to a new American Heart Association presidential advisory published today in the Association’s flagship journal Circulation.

Various aspects of cardiovascular disease that overlap with kidney disease, Type 2 diabetes and obesity support the new approach. For the first time, the American Heart Association defines the overlap in these conditions as cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome. People who have or are at risk for cardiovascular disease may have CKM syndrome…

According to the American Heart Association’s 2023 Statistical Update, 1 in 3 U.S. adults have three or more risk factors that contribute to cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders and/or kidney disease. CKM affects nearly every major organ in the body, including the heart, brain, kidney and liver. However, the biggest impact is on the cardiovascular system, affecting blood vessels and heart muscle function, the rate of fatty buildup in arteries, electrical impulses in the heart and more.”

Although the diagnostic designation CKM only materialized last fall, according to recently released data from the Journal of the American Medical Association, a full 90% of Americans might be afflicted.

Via Healthline (emphasis added):

“A new study has revealed that roughly 90% of Americans may have cardiovascular-kidney-metabolic (CKM) syndrome.

The risks are greatest among older adults, men, and Black individuals, the report, which was published in JAMA Wednesday, found.

The American Heart Association (AHA) introduced a new staging system in 2023 — called CKM syndrome — to better treat and manage cardiovascular, kidney, and metabolic diseases, since they are deeply connected and often require a multidisciplinary approach.

CKM syndrome is a systemic disorder that has links between heart disease, kidney disease, diabetes, and obesity.”

Via Journal of the American Medical Association (emphasis added):

Almost 90% of US adults met criteria for CKM syndrome (stage 1 or higher) and 15% met criteria for advanced stages, neither of which improved between 2011 and 2020. The lack of progress, in part, may reflect concomitant improvement and worsening of different risk factors over time. Substantial between-subgroup differences in advanced stages were observed, with older age, men, and Black adults at increased risk.”

A 90% diagnosis rate for a newborn medical condition impacting multiple organs simultaneously would seem to beg for deep, deliberate, comprehensive reflection within the medical community — the kind of sweeping mobilization of resources seen during Operation Warp Speed — to ferret out root causes, which in other contexts, like mass migration, the likes of the Karamel-uh entity are exceptionally curious about.

…Unless, of course, true healthcare isn’t the overriding objective of the brand of institutionalized, corporatized “healthcare” championed by the governing authorities and industry.

One doesn’t require an epidemiology degree to get the sense that whatever is triggering functional meltdowns in multiple organs at once in 90% of a population is probably something coming from a source ubiquitous in the environment, like the food supply, or the water, or the tip of a syringe filled with a certain experimental gene therapy — or all three at once.

Yet — and you’ll be shocked to learn this — perusing all of the literature on CMK pushed out by mainstream outlets and medical organizations like the AMA, there is a palpable lack of interest in asking fundamental questions. 

What they are interested in, and what we can expect coming down the pipeline, is new patented drugs for CMK to the great ecstasy of Pfizer and Merck shareholders.

“An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” is anathema to the industry’s business model, so what we get is the inverse paradigm.

*

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

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

This article was originally published on the author’s Substack, Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile, is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image source

BRICS 16th Summit – First Step Towards a Common Future of Sovereign Multipolarity?

By Peter Koenig, October 28, 2024

Perhaps one of the most important conflict resolutions at the margins of the meeting happened during a face-to-face dialogue between PM Narendra Modi of India and China’s President Xi Jinping, the first in five years.

Bombshell: ‘You Were Right, Vaccines Are Killing Millions of Our Loved Ones’. Japan’s Former Minister of Internal Affairs Apologizes to the Unvaccinated

By Sean Adl-Tabatabai and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 29, 2024

In Japan, the mRNA vaccine was launched in February 2021 allegedly as a means to protect the Japanese people against a non-existent “killer virus”. More than 206 million doses had already been administered. The Japanese population was not informed regarding the dangers of the mRNA vaccine.

Seoul Attempts to Distract from Domestic Issues by Alleging North Korea Will Fight in Ukraine

By Ahmed Adel, October 28, 2024

Attempts by South Korean authorities to spread information that North Korea wants to send troops to Ukraine to help Russia may be aimed at distracting attention from Seoul’s internal problems, but the time is too dangerous to be “playing with fire” now, experts quoted by the South China Morning Post said.

Election 2024: Trump vs. Harris: From the Abyss

By Richard C. Cook, October 28, 2024

The most important economic issue that divides the candidates is that Trump favors the imposition of a high level of tariffs on imports. The purpose would be to restore manufacturing enterprise on American soil, with corresponding growth of factory jobs.

Crippling UNRWA: The Knesset’s Collective Punishment of Palestinians

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, October 28, 2024

The campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli state has been relentless and pathological.  Even before last year’s October 7 attacks by Hamas, much was made of the fact that the body seemed intent on keeping the horrors of the 1948 displacements current. 

Video: The Mysterious Death of Dr. Kary Mullis, Dr. Fauci’s Most Notable Critic

By Greg Reese, October 28, 2024

The late Dr. Kary Mullis, the inventor of the PCR test, has been blowing the whistle on Fauci and big pharma for 30 years.

The Crimes of Israel, and Their Puppet Master the U.S.

By Michael Welch, Prof Michel Chossudovsky, and Michael Lynk, October 28, 2024

This week, on the Global Research News Hour, we thoroughly analyze Israel-Palestine and attempt to arrive at a solution to the humanitarian mess that holds hope for the people who say with determination, “Free, free Palestine!”

 

[This is an AI translation into Japanese.]

***

爆弾:日本の元内務大臣が予防接種を受けていない人に謝罪:「あなたは正しかった、ワクチンは私たちの愛する人の何百万人もの人を殺している」

ミシェル・チョスドフスキーによる入門ノート

Introductory Note by Michel Chossudovsky

In Japan, the mRNA vaccine was launched in February 2021 allegedly as a means to protect the Japanese people against a non-existent “killer virus”.

More than 206 million doses had already been administered. The Japanese population was not informed regarding the dangers of the mRNA vaccine.

In December 2021, Japan’s Ministry of Health authorized booster shots of  Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, pointing to the “low rate of side effects such as myocarditis”. 

According to Japan’s Ministry of Heath’s early advisory (which was similar to that applied in numerous countries):

“The Government recommends that people get vaccinated because the benefits of vaccination are greater than the risk of side reactions.” (emphasis added)

The foregoing is misleading as pointed out in the Former Minister of Internal Affairs Kazuhiro Haraguchi’s courageous statement:

“‘You Were Right, Vaccines Are Killing Millions of Our Loved Ones”

「あなたは正しかった、ワクチンは私たちの愛する人の何百万人もの人を殺している」

“They are trying to block our freedom, our resistance, our power. But we will never lose.”

Haraguchi issued a rallying call for action.

He urged the people to stand united in challenging the government and its questionable decisions.

“Let’s overthrow this government,”

he proclaimed, emphasizing the need for change and accountability.

He called on legislators to continue fighting for the people’s lives and freedoms, “Let’s make it happen,” he concluded.


Excess Mortality (Japan) (2020-2022)

In Japan, the vaccine was launched in early 2021.

Suicides in Japan Resulting from Lockdown (2020)

Notice the surge in suicide rates immediately following the March 2020 lockdown (Source: Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labor/Graphic: Jason Kwok and Natalie Croker, CNN)
 .

“Far more Japanese people are dying of suicide, likely exacerbated by the economic and social repercussions of the pandemic, than of the COVID-19 disease itself. …  Provisional statistics from the National Police Agency show suicides surged to 2,153 in October [2020] alone, marking the fourth straight month of increase.” CBS November 2020 report (emphasis added)

Suicides Among Japan’s Schoolchildren

A 2021 report by Japan’s Ministry of Education confirms that suicide among Japanese schoolchildren had hit a record high during the 2020 school year.  The report from the Ministry of Education suggests that

“the pandemic has caused changes in the school and family environment and had an impact on children’s behavior”. (For details see chapter 6 of  Michel Chossudovsky’s book)


A  note on my book entitled: 

The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity 

first published in Japanese in April 2022.

In English it is available in E-book form. (See below).

I remain indebted to the Japanese publisher which brought out and promoted my book despite political pressures  and an atmosphere of censorship.  My thanks to both the Publisher and to the Translator.

The fraudulent narrative concerning the Covid “Vaccine” is collapsing in different parts of the World.

In California, 9th Circuit Court Rules that COVID-19 mRNA Injections Are Not “Vaccines”.  

In Germany, the Health authorities  have acknowledged the devastating nature and impacts of the Covid lockdowns, the mandatory wearing of the face mask, and the experimental mRNA “vaccines”.

Global Research has from the outset provided an extensive daily coverage of the devastating impacts of the “vaccine”. Our objective is to SAVE LIVES. 

In solidarity with the people of Japan.

In solidarity with people all over the World. 

Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, June 11, June 24, 2024

 


Kazuhiro Haraguchi, the former Japanese Minister for Internal Affairs, has become the first major politician to apologize to the unvaccinated for the tsunami of deaths occuring among the vaccinated population.

His presentation  starts 7’o”

Earlier this week, huge numbers of Japanese citizens took to the streets to protest against the crimes against humanity perpetrated by globalist organizations such by World Health Organization (WHO) and World Economic Forum (WEF) during the pandemic.

During an opening speech at the protests, Haraguchi delivered a powerful and emotional apology for the huge numbers of deaths now occurring as a result of the deadly mRNA roll-out.

Haraguchi began by addressing the grief and loss felt by families who have lost loved ones who were coerced into taking the COVID jab. With a deep sense of sincerity, he extended his condolences and took responsibility for the failings of those in power. I apologize to all of you. So many have died, and they shouldn’t have,” he said.

Thelibertybeacon.com reports: One of the key points in Haraguchi’s speech was his criticism of the ban on Ivermectin, a drug developed by Dr. Satoshi Omura, which he believed could have played a significant role in combating the pandemic. Haraguchi questioned the motives behind the ban, suggesting that economic interests were prioritized over public health. “Why? Because they are cheap. They don’t want it because it will interfere with the sales of the vaccines,” he argued. This statement drew loud applause from the crowd, many of whom felt that corporate profits had taken precedence over human lives.

Haraguchi then shared a deeply personal story about his own health struggles. After receiving vaccines, he developed a severe illness, specifically a rapidly progressing form of cancer. “This time last year, I had neither eyebrows nor hair. Two out of the three supposed vaccines I received were lethal batches,” he revealed. This candid account of his battle with cancer, which included significant physical changes like hair loss, struck a chord with the audience. He recounted an incident where his appearance became a point of distraction in the Diet, with an opponent focusing more on his wig than the issues at hand.

Adding to the conversation, Haraguchi disclosed that he was not the only member of Japan’s National Diet (legislature) to suffer adverse effects from vaccines. He mentioned that three of his colleagues had been severely affected, with some even hospitalized. “They are falling to pieces, some hospitalized. But they don’t speak up,” he explained. This revelation underscored a broader issue: the reluctance or inability of public figures to discuss their personal health challenges openly.

Haraguchi was particularly passionate about the attempts to silence those who question current policies and government actions. He recounted a recent incident where he was banned from speaking on Channel 3 after an interview with its president. 

The other day, I spoke with the President of Channel 3, and I was banned. They are trying to silence our voices,” he stated. This attempt to censor dissenting voices highlighted a critical concern about freedom of speech and expression. Haraguchi urged the audience to remain steadfast in their resolve, saying,

“They are trying to block our freedom, our resistance, our power. But we will never lose.”

In the conclusion of his speech,

Haraguchi issued a rallying call for action. He urged the people to stand united in challenging the government and its questionable decisions. “Let’s overthrow this government,” he proclaimed, emphasizing the need for change and accountability. He called on legislators to continue fighting for the people’s lives and freedoms, “Let’s make it happen,” he concluded.

The protest that is happening right now (31st May 2024), which aims to draw tens of thousands of participants, marked a significant moment in the global discourse about pandemic management and health policies. Haraguchi’s speech, filled with personal anecdotes and strong criticisms, resonated deeply with the attendees.

Read this


爆弾:日本の元内務大臣が予防接種を受けていない人に謝罪:「あなたは正しかった、ワクチンは私たちの愛する人の何百万人もの人を殺している」

ミシェル・チョスドフスキーによる入門ノート

Introductory Note by Michel Chossudovsky

私の著書『 世界的なコロナ危機、人類に対するグローバルクーデター』  は、2022年4月に日本語で初めて出版されました。英語版は電子書籍の形で入手できます。

政治的圧力と検閲にもかかわらず私の本を出版してくれた日本の出版社には今でも感謝しています。

出版社と翻訳者に感謝します。

日本では、存在しない「殺人ウイルス」から日本人を守る手段として、mRNAワクチンが2021年2月に発売されたとされている。

すでに2億600万回以上が投与された。日本 国民はmRNAワクチンの危険性について知らされていなかった。

2021年12月、 日本の厚生労働省は 「心筋炎などの副作用の発生率が低い」ことを指摘し、モデルナ社とファイザー社のワクチンの追加接種を承認した。

日本の保健省の初期勧告によると(これは多くの国で適用されているものと同様でした。

「ワクチン接種のメリットは副反応のリスクよりも大きいため、 政府は人々にワクチン接種を推奨しています。」 (強調追加)

原口一博氏の勇気ある発言が指摘しているように、上記は誤解を招くものである。

「『あなたは正しかった。ワクチンは何百万人もの私たちの愛する人を殺している』」

新型コロナウイルスの「ワクチン」に関する欺瞞的な物語は、世界のさまざまな地域で崩壊しつつある。

カリフォルニア州の 第9巡回裁判所は、COVID-19 mRNA注射は「ワクチン」ではないとの判決を下した。

ドイツ では 、保健当局が、新型コロナウイルス対策のロックダウン、マスク着用義務、実験的なmRNA「ワクチン」の壊滅的な性質と影響を認めている。

日本の人々と連帯して。

世界中の人々と連帯します。

ミシェル・チョスドフスキー、グローバル・リサーチ、2024 年 6 月 11 日

 

日本の元総務大臣である原口一博氏は、ワクチン接種者の間で津波による死亡者が発生したことについて、ワクチン未接種者に謝罪した最初の主要政治家となった。

 

今週初め、大勢の日本国民が、パンデミックの最中に世界保健機関(WHO)や世界経済フォーラム(WEF)などのグローバリスト組織が犯した人道に対する罪に抗議するため街頭に出た。

原口氏は抗議活動の冒頭演説で、致命的なmRNAの流出の結果として現在発生している膨大な数の死者について力強く、感情的に謝罪した。

原口氏はまず、新型コロナウイルスのワクチン接種を強制され愛する人を失った遺族が感じている悲しみと喪失感について語った。 氏は心から哀悼の意を表し、権力者の失策の責任を認めた。  「皆さんにお詫びします。多くの人が亡くなりましたが、亡くなるべきではなかったのです」と氏は述べた。

Thelibertybeacon.com の報道によると、原口氏の演説の要点の一つは、 大村智博士が開発した イベルメクチンの禁止に対する批判だった。同氏は、この薬がパンデミック対策に大きな役割を果たせたと考えていた。原口氏は禁止の背後にある動機に疑問を呈し、公衆衛生よりも経済的利益が優先されたと示唆した。「なぜかって? 安いからだ。ワクチンの売り上げに支障が出るから嫌がるんだ」と同氏は主張した。この発言は、企業の利益が人命よりも優先されたと感じていた聴衆から大きな拍手を浴びた。

原口氏はその後、自身の健康問題に関する非常に個人的な話をした。 ワクチン接種後、深刻な病気、具体的には急速に進行する癌を発症した。 「去年の今頃は、眉毛も髪の毛もありませんでした。私が受けた3つのワクチンのうち2つは致死的なワクチンでした」と彼は明かした。脱毛などの著しい身体的変化を含む癌との闘いについてのこの率直な話は、聴衆の共感を呼んだ。彼は、国会で彼の外見が気を散らす原因となり、対立候補が目の前の問題よりも彼のかつらに注目したという出来事を語った。

会話に加えて、原口氏は、 ワクチンによる副作用に苦しんだ日本の国会議員は自分だけではないことを明らかにした。同氏は、同僚3人が重篤な影響を受け、中には入院した人もいると述べた。 「彼らはバラバラになっていて、中には入院している人もいる。しかし、彼らは声を上げません」と彼は説明した。この暴露は、公人が個人の健康問題について公然と話し合うことに消極的である、あるいはそれができないという、より広範な問題を浮き彫りにした。

原口氏は、現在の政策や政府の行動に疑問を抱く人々を黙らせる試みに特に情熱を注いだ。同氏は、チャンネル3の社長とのインタビュー後にチャンネル3での発言を禁止された最近の出来事について語った 。  「先日、私はチャンネル 3 の社長と話をしましたが、私は禁止されました。彼らは私たちの声を黙らせようとしている」と彼は述べた。反対意見を検閲するこの試みは、言論と表現の自由に対する重大な懸念を浮き彫りにした。原口氏は聴衆に対し、「彼らは私たちの自由、私たちの抵抗、私たちの力を阻止しようとしている。しかし、私たちは決して負けません。」

原口氏は演説の最後に、行動を起こすよう呼びかけた。 政府とその疑わしい決定に異議を唱えるために国民が団結するよう促した。  「この政府を打倒しよう」と宣言し、変革と説明責任の必要性を強調した。議員らに国民の命と自由のために戦い続けるよう呼びかけ、「実現させよう」と締めくくった。

現在(2024年5月31日)行われている抗議活動は、数万人の参加を目指しており、パンデミック管理と健康政策に関する世界的な議論において重要な瞬間を刻んだ。個人的な逸話と強い批判に満ちた原口氏の演説は、参加者の心に深く響いた。

これを読む。

 

 

*

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

Having cut his teeth in the mainstream media, including stints at the BBC, Sean witnessed the corruption within the system and developed a burning desire to expose the secrets that protect the elite and allow them to continue waging war on humanity. Disturbed by the agenda of the elites and dissatisfied with the alternative media, Sean decided it was time to shake things up. Knight of Joseon (https://joseon.com)

Featured image is from TPV


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

You may also access the online version of the e-Book by clicking here.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page


My thanks to the Publisher and to the translator Tatsuo Iwana.

 

 
 
地球規模で仕組まれた〈危機〉の真相

コロナは、入念に準備された世界の初期化=グレート・リセットのための計画である――

●恐怖をあおる政策と、市民社会の破壊
●感染の根拠となったPCR検査の不確実性
●仕組まれた経済不況と億万長者による富の収奪
●パンデミック以前に開発が始まっていたmRNAワクチン
●コロナワクチン市場を寡占する巨大製薬企業の闇
●世界が抱える債務と「新自由主義的ショック療法」

反グローバリゼーションの世界的論客が明かす〈コロナ騒動〉の正体

●目次●
序文・日本語版への序文
第1章 市民社会の破壊と恐怖をあおる政策
第2章 コロナ危機の時系列による経緯
第3章 Covid-19とは何か――どうやって検査・測定されるのか?
第4章 仕組まれた経済不況
第5章 大富豪をさらに富裕化する富の収奪と再配分
第6章 心の健康を破壊する
第7章 大手製薬会社のコロナ「ワクチン」
第8章 豚インフルエンザの世界的流行は本番前の舞台稽古だった?
第9章 「社会を乱すもの」と攻撃される抗議運動
第10章 世界規模のワクチン接種作戦は集団殺戮だ
第11章 世界規模のクーデターと「世界全体の初期化」
第12章 これからの道――「コロナを利用した専制政治」に反対する世界的な運動の構築

Lula vai aguentar dois anos mais em cima da corda bamba?

October 29th, 2024 by Eduardo Vasco

O Brasil não precisava ter vetado a entrada da Venezuela como parceiro do BRICS. É sabido que essa decisão foi tomada para não ficar mal com os Estados Unidos. Mas poderia muito bem ter se abstido e justificado que seria errado ir contra a vontade de todos os outros membros. Não era difícil ter deixado passar a decisão da maioria. Lula demonstrou fraqueza e isso é o pior que um chefe de Estado pode fazer. O inimigo viu que Lula fraquejou e isso vai animá-lo a aumentar as pressões. Essa é uma síndrome da esquerda nacionalista e reformista. Só que a fraqueza que Lula demonstrou foi muita – foi uma capitulação totalmente desnecessária.

Fonte : https://brazilian.report/cartoons/2024/10/24/lula-shuns-maduro-brics/

Ao lado da Fazenda e Defesa, o Itamaraty é um dos três principais ministérios do governo brasileiro. Como tratam o Brasil como uma colônia, os EUA precisam ter o controle sobre esses três ministérios-chave. É inadmissível que algum deles seja independente do controle imperialista. A composição social do Itamaraty é perfeita para a penetração da influência imperialista: uma casta burocrática e familiar formada pela burguesia e os extratos superiores da pequena burguesia. Sempre foi assim. Como uma entidade extremamente tradicional e de elite, ela é inerentemente conservadora, mesmo reacionária, que visa manter o status quo e seus privilégios absolutamente inalterados. O imperialismo americano se aproveita disso e já há mais de cem anos, quando começou a dominar a política brasileira, cooptou e colocou em sua folha de pagamentos senão toda a estrutura desse ministério, ao menos uma parte importante dos seus integrantes.

Como em tudo, o PT não conseguiu (se é que tentou) mudar o quadro da instituição. Os embaixadores e diplomatas de primeiro escalão colocados por Lula e Dilma foram rifados logo quando Bolsonaro assumiu o governo. Trocou muitos “petistas” por olavistas ou semi-olavistas. Dividiram o controle com os burocratas tradicionais da corporação, deixando os poucos “esquerdistas” de canto. Agora que Lula voltou, ao invés de fazer a mesma limpeza que Bolsonaro fez e retirar os bolsonaristas e direitistas de cena, praticamente não mexeu no Itamaraty. O Itamaraty não está sob o controle do presidente da República – como deveria estar, sendo um dos principais ministérios e, portanto, devendo obedecer fielmente o presidente.

O esgotamento da política de conciliação

A vida política institucional de Lula já está indo para o seu desfecho e ele tem a chance de deixar um legado positivo histórico, conduzindo o Brasil para um caminho soberano em relação ao jugo imperialista. Não há sucessor na esquerda e, se Lula falhar na tarefa (que ele talvez almeje e a qual seus apoiadores acreditam que ele é capaz de realizar) de abrir as portas do Brasil para a nossa soberania, a esquerda pagará um preço enorme. Haverá uma crise histórica de lideranças absolutamente adaptadas à submissão imperial, que só não se abateu com toda a força porque Lula ainda existe.

O veto do Brasil à Venezuela no BRICS é consequência da insistência da esquerda em manter a política não apenas de conciliação, mas de colaboração com a direita tradicional, vendida como a “menos pior” – que se expressa, novamente, no apoio aos candidatos dessa direita contra os “mais piores” bolsonaristas no segundo turno das eleições municipais.

As eleições municipais consolidaram a ressurreição dessa direita (o centrão). Depois da débâcle histórica de 2018, a direita conseguiu se recuperar aos poucos, graças ao resgate proporcionado pela esquerda. As eleições de 2022, com a formação de uma frente ampla desnecessária para eleger Lula levaram este à presidência, mas ao custo de que essa direita tradicional se apoderasse do governo.

Na verdade, o centrão nunca saiu do poder. É a grande chaga que mantém o Brasil como uma semicolônia do imperialismo desde a proclamação da república. Nenhuma revolução ou contrarrevolução o tirou do poder – no máximo reduziu ou fortaleceu o seu domínio, mas nunca o erradicou. A maior parte do tempo do governo Bolsonaro já havia sido, de fato, de um governo do centrão. A direita tradicional conseguiu neutralizar a força avassaladora da extrema-direita ao longo da primeira metade do governo Bolsonaro, e foi ainda mais rápida em neutralizar o governo Lula. Há mais de um ano o presidente não passa de um refém do centrão, da direita oligárquica e dependente do imperialismo americano.

O último bastião da resistência de Lula dentro do governo – a política externa – já está sendo conquistado pela direita. O imperialismo não pode tolerar uma política brasileira na cena mundial que apoie a resistência palestina e tampouco o fortalecimento de Rússia, China e do enfrentamento ao seu domínio, representado pelo BRICS. As engrenagens pró-imperialistas do Itamaraty já foram ativadas a fim de completar o cerco do próprio aparelho do Estado brasileiro ao presidente Lula e àquilo que ele representa.

Há, ainda, um problema crucial: a extrema-direita, apesar de suas contradições internas, está com sua força e popularidade praticamente intactas já há uma década. E, como sempre, é favorecida pela sabotagem e propaganda da direita tradicional (centrão, imprensa, bancos e grandes capitalistas) contra Lula. Além do mais, a forte presença da extrema-direita influenciou a política da própria direita tradicional, agora ainda mais reacionária.

A política de não-alinhamento é inviável para o Brasil

O presidente, assim, vive uma situação muito delicada. Há quem acredite que ele está certo em buscar uma suposta equidistância tanto dos Estados Unidos quanto da China. Mas um país como o Brasil, uma semicolônia do imperialismo americano submetida atualmente a uma crescente pressão de Washington, não pode se dar ao luxo de buscar uma pretensa neutralidade, ao contrário de outros, como Índia ou Turquia, que são geograficamente distantes dos EUA e vizinhas de China e Rússia e cuja dependência política e econômica do imperialismo americano (embora ainda seja grande) não é tanta quanto a nossa.

Mesmo países fronteiriços com a Rússia não suportaram as pressões contra a aplicação de uma política não-alinhada e tiveram seus governos derrubados por golpes de Estado promovidos pelo imperialismo. Foi o caso da Ucrânia, em 2014, e é o que tende a ocorrer na Geórgia novamente. Essa também é a tendência do Brasil, se Lula continuar cedendo e não tomar um rumo verdadeiramente soberano, o que significa se aliar com China e Rússia e deixar de depender dos Estados Unidos.

O imperialismo americano tem o controle do Brasil. Tanto o centrão quanto a extrema-direita são seus aliados contra Lula. Ainda que tenham desavenças (às vezes encarniçadas), na hora H eles deixarão essas discordâncias de lado e lutarão juntos contra o inimigo comum, como a história já demonstrou em incontáveis ocasiões. E os aparelhos burocráticos do Estado, como o Judiciário – principal ferramenta do imperialismo no Brasil, junto com a grande imprensa burguesa –, marcharão ao seu lado.

Aparece com crescente saliência, novamente, a falência histórica da política de colaboração de classes. Sua estabilização já não é mais viável desde que foi rompida com o golpe de 2016 e a ascensão da extrema-direita por obra da burguesia e do imperialismo. O que temos hoje é um monstrengo: a ala pretensamente nacionalista da burguesia, a quem Lula e o PT insistem em se apegar, sente-se ainda mais pressionada pelo imperialismo do que Lula – e cede muito mais facilmente e com muito menos hesitação do que o presidente. Quaisquer coincidências de interesses com a classe operária e as demais classes populares que ainda possam existir se esvaem em uma situação de polarização política continuada e que volta a crescer, elevando particularmente as contradições das camadas populares com o imperialismo americano.

A burguesia “nacional”, os aliados civilizados, democráticos e progressistas de Lula vão pular fora do barco (mesmo que não o façam abertamente) porque sabem que não há futuro nenhum dentro dessa aliança anti-histórica, na expressão usada por Mário Pedrosa ao analisar um cenário parecido, a crise do PTB de Jango com o PSD poucos anos antes do golpe de 1964.

Lula também vai ter de abandonar essa ambivalência na política externa e escolher um lado. Se não fizer, não vai durar. E se capitular definitivamente para o imperialismo, tampouco terá algum sucesso. O problema é que não dá para adotar uma política externa e uma política interna antagônicas. Para adotar uma política externa independente e, portanto, oposta ao controle do imperialismo, ele vai ter de se voltar contra os agentes do imperialismo dentro do próprio país, começando por aqueles que infestam o governo mesmo.

Mas, se na política externa Lula sofre a pressão positiva do BRICS ampliado em contraposição à pressão negativa dos Estados Unidos, no cenário interno a pressão popular – a única que poderia contrapor a pressão da direita – quase não existe, ao menos de forma organizada. Daí também a parcela de culpa da esquerda, dos partidos (a começar pelo próprio PT), dos sindicatos e da imprensa progressista na política capituladora de Lula com relação ao BRICS e à América Latina. Na realidade, as posições de Lula, em geral, ainda são mais acertadas do que as da maioria da esquerda.

Não é Lula, somente, quem está na corda bamba. É toda a direção da esquerda brasileira. Sua política medíocre e rebaixada é a grande responsável pelos erros cometidos por Lula e pelo governo. Os movimentos populares precisam dar um giro de 180 graus em sua política e começar a combater de fato os inimigos de Lula, ou seja, os agentes do imperialismo no Brasil, pressionando o presidente e as suas próprias direções. Porque as pressões do outro lado da corda são cada vez mais fortes e Lula não vai conseguir se equilibrar por muito tempo.

Eduardo Vasco

 

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Eduardo Vasco é jornalista especializado em política internacional, correspondente de guerra e autor dos livros-reportagem “O povo esquecido: uma história de genocídio e resistência no Donbass” e “Bloqueio: a guerra silenciosa contra Cuba”.

In this wide-ranging interview, Associate Professor Elisée Byelongo Isheloke, Rector/Vice Chancellor of Université Espoir du Congo (UEC), narrates his experiences of managing an educational institution from scratch, its embryo stage in many ways and with zero-capital, little support and a myriad of challenges. Despite the existing difficulties and challenges, the UEC is steadily becoming a regional powerhouse of knowledge, research and development. The UEC administration will also appreciate any form of assistance and support from external sources. Here are the interview excerpts:

Kester Kenn Klomegah (KKK): What are the peculiarities of managing an educational institution of higher learning, Hope University of Congo which is located in a small town of Baraka, in central Africa?

Byelongo Elisee Isheloke (BEI): First of all, I would like to greet you and your viewers/readers on this day and thank you for having me on this platform. Now, to answer your question, there are a number of challenges in managing any University, let alone a young one like the “Université Espoir du Congo” (UEC) also known as the “Hope University of Congo” with very limited infrastructure and a myriad of challenges.

To name but a few, the peculiarities stem from a variety of factors such as the lack of operational funding, inappropriate infrastructure and the (endemic) insufficient registered students. Most people in the small town of Baraka still send their children to bigger cities for their education. Although I do not entirely condemn this act, I would like to urge the community members to support this tailor-made community University in its mission to address some of the challenges of the very community as so far as education is concerned. 

The UEC is the only University of Fizi which is entirely based in that territory – with only one branch in Kamituga (Fizi is a territory of an area of 41 745 km2 which is bigger than that of the neighbouring country of Burundi or Ruanda). Although there are a few other Higher Learning Institutions, the UEC had been conceived to cater for the academic needs of Fizi-Itombwe with its five faculties, namely Economics, Law, Social, Political and Administrative Sciences (SSPA in French acronym) or six if one dares to add the Faculty of Languages, Interlinguistics and Esperanto which is still on its embryo stage in many ways.

In cities like Bukavu and Lubumbashi, Universities started small and developed into greatness and maturity over the years. I understand that most of those used resources from the state to develop but there are instances in the Great Lakes region where community Universities outperformed public ones in many regards. In my view, the UEC is not following a strange path per se, what is strange though, is the attitude towards it taken by not only “the elites” who live in or have roots within but even by the people who were supposed to hold it dearly. It is time this attitude changes in favour of one which is going to mobilize resources, provide capabilities and get more involvement with research and development; one which is going to allocate funds to build, manage and strengthen this University, the “UEC”.

KKK: For now, what would you count as the marked achievements during the past few years, despite the fact that the university has a short history?

BEI: The university had its years of glory when a lot of funding were allocated to its administration by the Free Methodist Church and when the Faculty of Theology had some bursaries for registered students supported from the United States of America (USA). At that time, many professors came from abroad and the region to lecture and do a number of initiatives with the aim of giving the population of this territory a better chance to education. It will be remembered that Fizi is a war-torn territory owing to more than two decades of war, conflicts in the eastern DRC where the UEC is based, and an aftermath characterized by relative security or the lack thereof.

The population of Fizi deserves better and needs access to better education in their own territory and this should allow interactions to take place between the people of Fizi-Itombwe and other indwellers who have come to Fizi for socio-economic reasons and are now part and parcel of our destiny.

Univ Espoir du Congo (@UniEspoirCongo) / X

To answer your question more directly, the UEC has formed many cadres now deployed in many state institutions. Alumni include the sector chief, education prefects, bankers, magistrates, lawyers, teachers, religious superintendents, pastors, agriculturalists, economists, political analysts, esperantists, businessmen and businesswomen, entrepreneurs, Engineers and many other cadres who play a vital role in the socio-economic, development and political spheres, not only of the territory, but also that of the entire country, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

KKK: Do students, in other words, your clients recognized the educational curriculum (quality education) useful in the current competitive labor market in central Africa?

BEI: There is no doubt about it because a year or two ago the government published a list of viable institutions in the entire DRC. The UEC came out as one of those viable institutions recognized on a national scale. This goes without saying that the diplomas, degrees and certificates issued by UEC are equal to those issued by the University of Kinshasa, Lubumbashi or Bukavu, to name but a few. Some of our graduates have been employed as magistrates by the state. There is therefore no reason to turn away this important institution of education.

When I took office as the Rector of UEC, I led my team in conducting a number of reforms which have also visibly make UEC impactful in the society. The human capital is one of those cornerstone achievements under my leadership. I have also managed to bring a few professors to volunteer as academics, deans, professors, assistant lecturers, fund-raisers, technical advisers and prayer-warriors in favour of the UEC. We have academics who joined in different initiatives from Africa, Italy, India, Spain, France, the USA  and so forth.

We managed to introduce reforms, under my stewardship, such as enhancing the quality of education through improved training by suitably qualified professors, assistant lecturers, the provision of technology, solar panels, Wifi, and the reception of new books from France, in the past and recently, mainly from the USA. The last donation of almost four hundred books from the Emeritus Professor Denis Aliko Songolo made history, making the UEC library an institution with very important written books – a treasure to be cherished for many more years. I managed to reschedule that all major transactions be done through a local bank and organized many conferences and events to enhance the culture of reading, researching and engaging in meaningful as well as robust debates about all aspects of life. Briefly, I managed to give to the university more international exposure in America, Europe, Australia, Africa and Asia; all this with the support of my team.

Last but not least, my aim is also to promote the culture, social cohesion and collaboration among the people, within and beyond the community. To do this, we started to organize the Faculty of Language, InterLinguistics and Esperanto which apart from teaching other African languages next to imported ones, namely Mandarin, English, French, Esperanto,  it will particularly promote and defend the use of Ebembe, Kiswahili and the likes – previously disadvantaged African languages. This will not only restore our dignity as the people of that territory but will also affirm our determination to a more equal society where linguistic human rights and indigenous knowledge of culture and science will be preserved and shared.

KKK: What competitive advantages has Hope University of Congo over other similar educational institutions in the region?

BEI: To go straight to the point, I would say the UEC has now the biggest library in the entire Fizi territory. The library which is yet to be built to the desired standard already has more books than any other in Fizi-Itombwe. If we manage to make my dream of building new facilities for the library, and later on for the UEC, it will become a milestone achievement of all the time.

The community University namely UEC places at the centre of its policy the preservation of this community core values, traditions and culture, its languages Ebembe, Kiswahili as well as others and the sharing of science and technology through the use of other means of communication. It was initially meant to be a bilingual University (French and English) but evolved to accommodate other medium of communication including Esperanto, although it is in this regard that capacity need to be reinforced with infrastructure, volunteers, funding, bursaries and win-win partnerships.

Science and technology remain two weaknesses of UEC owing to the lack of investors and regardless of entrepreneurial activities we have undertaken in the past. I appeal to the world to join us in this vision. A university like the UEC is destined to be a catalyst of peace in that slowly recovering region. If we get funding for entrepreneurship incubators, we could make UEC an economic hub of that semi-rural territory of Fizi.

Beyond competition, I believe we could extend access to our library to sister Higher Learning institutions such as the Institut Supérieur Pédagogique (ISP Baraka), Institut Supérieur de Développement Rural (ISDR Baraka), Institut Supérieur de Technique Médical (ISTM Baraka) to name but a few. Where we could help we will not hesitate to do so in order to serve others with our library, sharing of knowledge, know-how through research products and beyond. Please help us build and further develop the library.

We have managed to bring professors and other academics to join us in shaping the future of this University project. The likes of Emeritus Prof Denis Aliko Songolo, Prof Majaliwa Mwanjalolo, Prof Nehemie Mwilanya, Prof Extraordinary Badar Iqbal, P.O Hon. Obedi Nyamangyoku, Prof Renato Corsetti, Prof Vicente Manzano-Arrondo, Ir. Ahmed Mamdoohi, Dr. Jean Sikatenda, Rev. Nana Yenga, Mrs. Francoise Noireau, Mr. Yamungu Yamalong Boniface, Mr. Jérémie Mahungo, Mr. Kester Kenn Klomegah and many more, team up in support to our vision to make the UEC a regional powerhouse of knowledge, research and development.

While some of them lecture physically or virtually, others either support/ed with donations, books, vehicle, Ruforum bursaries procedure, visits, lobbying, conferences, advocacy, fundraising and most importantly with technical advise to the office of the Vice-Chancellor that I hold.

KKK: What has been the most difficult challenge running this university? And what management styles do you disagree with especially as head of this institution?

BEI: The lack of funding is number one problem of this young University. We need funding to pay (decent) salaries to employed staff and visiting professors/Assistants, run the University, support research, equip with infrastructure, promote discoveries, use the 45 hectares of land that we have for agriculture and/or tree planting, nature conservation, and manage developmental projects. As a community University, we could use financial resources to intervene where necessary in the suburbs, villages where the Lake Tanganyika water rise effect impacted so negatively to the housing facilities, standard of living and life in general in Fizi territory and beyond. A proper operational budget coupled with reforms that I am conducting would take this university to another level of service to the community. If for example industrial fishing, research and development are promoted via the UEC which is (relatively) at the shore of the Lake Tanganyika, it can become a hub of economic development and job creation in the region.

I adopted an open door policy in managing the UEC and I therefore do not agree with the autocratic leadership style. I treasure excellence in doing work and want to steer my colleagues to follow my example. I don’t agree with insubordination in any way.

KKK: Some say entrepreneurship is very challenging, but what keeps you motivated as a rector? Who are some of the most notable people that have experienced during the work of Hope University of Congo?

BEI: I taught entrepreneurship and business economics to the university community and around Fizi and I am prepared to do so hoping to get people and organizations to extend some form of support. Fizi should not depend on handouts from NGOs instead I suggest an economic model similar to that of China where community development is catered for, supported, and developed through a bottom up approach at times with top down support most of the time; so that we teach the people to fish more efficiently, to cultivate the land, to work with their hands and brain, hard and smartly, to preserve the environment, recycle, reuse, reoriente our inputs/outputs, promote own literature, fight corruption and mismanagement of funds, embrace the culture of saving and maintenance, promote peace and stability, build on faith, educate on good governance and so forth.

I have been inspired by our leaders. The former Bishop Welongo Wehusha who saw the need to start off the UEC and the current Bishop Dr Lubunga Wehusha whom I believe to hold dear the idea of taking this University to another level and provide it with the necessary support as I lead it to a phase of ambitious project of greatness. 

As I said before, I also met many professors both in the country and abroad willing to do more to help. I should say the team efforts of those who sacrifice their time to work with me in Baraka or from wherever they are, I say thank you so much. I think of people who work/ed as security guards, librarian, cleaner, assistants, professors, office bearers, and appreciate their contribution which makes it possible to hope for a better future. I pray and work that we will one day have funding to rewards and recognize their efforts.

Serving and working in the DRC and at the UEC for me it is in a way giving back to the country of origin and my people. It keeps me going. Having survived the atrocities of the war in that region, I think the people deserve better. It will all start with a better education to change the course of their life. After 26 years in South Africa, I am equipped to do something to change the world around me. With benefactors’ support, I believe that I will make it happen.

KKK: How do you value education and training for staff, as well as regular educational exchanges, as a means of forging relations with external universities (international cooperation) here?

BEI: I think the UEC must be a learning organisation. We need to provide continuous training and cater for career development. We are not doing enough although during my term I am trying it. I have conducted not less than five conferences/workshops and invited other academics to do so but over the years we need more capacity, volunteers, missionaries, investors, authors, engineers, economists, business analysts, educationalists, scientists, researchers, esperantists, philosophers to join me in doing capacity building, training and more.

The major partnerships we forged so far is that with Université Catholique de Bukavu (UCB), with Civencia (Spain) although in both instances we ought to materialize the agreement with practical initiatives. I am willing to steer my team in this regard going forward. I invite people with resources and the will to support me and get involved. We need well established universities to kindly provide bursaries and training opportunities to both our staff and students, invite us for joint venture initiatives, and we are willing to have twin relations with other universities abroad. Please let us know if you are reading me and could help with this.

KKK: Where would you like to see this business of education, at least, in the next five years? In other words, what’s your future vision for Hope University of Congo?

BEI: I would like to see a modern library built and then after the rest of the infrastructure for the UEC. I will reveal later the name of it when the project starts. The UEC must grow into becoming a modern University with all the facilities; it can be a unifying force that call for peace and stability in the Great Lakes region. If developed into a full-fledged University, it will have the muscles to fully call for social cohesion, security, people to people relations, peace and cater for community development, culture preservation, environment conservation, research and development, publications, natural medicine, medicinal plants, multilingualism, food security, breeding of cows and other animals, controlled hunting, that put the spirit of Ubuntu, this African philosophy of humanity and generosity, at the centre of our core values. I thank you for the opportunity and the readers for their time, especially, those who will extend a hand of support to the University project that I have. God bless you! 

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

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

All images in this article are from the author

Attempts by South Korean authorities to spread information that North Korea wants to send troops to Ukraine to help Russia may be aimed at distracting attention from Seoul’s internal problems, but the time is too dangerous to be “playing with fire” now, experts quoted by the South China Morning Post said.

Earlier, South Korean media outlet Yonhap said Seoul is considering sending a team of experts to Ukraine to monitor North Korean military personnel that Pyongyang reportedly intends to send to participate in the special military operation in Ukraine. South Korean government officials have also reportedly said that Seoul is considering providing Ukraine with lethal weapons as part of its response.

The South China Morning Post indicates that the weapons South Korea could send to Kiev are the Cheongung-II anti-aircraft missile system, K9 self-propelled howitzers, K2 tanks and Chunmoo multiple rocket launchers. However, even the South Korean opposition warns the current government not to make decisions based on unconfirmed intelligence data.

Opposition lawmakers Kim Joon-hyung and Lee Jae-gang made a joint statement, cited by the newspaper, in which they warned that Seoul is “playing with fire” by relying on unverified information. They also believe that any retaliatory action by South Korea against its northern neighbour would be a grave mistake.

According to them, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is using this issue to “distract the public from a growing political scandal involving his wife.”

Lee Jun-han, a political scientist at Incheon National University, points out that South Korea’s conservative government has a “history of exaggerating threats from the North to boost public support.”

“But the risks are too high for the country to play such a game now,” he added.

Another expert, Yang Moo-jin, the director of the University of North Korean Studies, also opines that Seoul’s abrupt reaction to information not confirmed by the United States and NATO is linked to “the need to address domestic concerns.”

Earlier, the Russian embassy in Seoul stated that cooperation between Russia and North Korea is carried out within the framework of international law and is not directed against South Korea’s security interests. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov, commenting on the alleged deployment of North Korean troops to the combat zone in Ukraine, drew attention to the contradiction in information on this issue when “South Korea says one thing, then the Pentagon says they have no confirmation of such statements.”

The White House and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte said they had no evidence to support allegations of Pyongyang’s involvement in the Ukraine conflict. Nonetheless, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told reporters in Rome on September 23 that “There is evidence of DPRK troops in Russia,” using the abbreviation for North Korea’s formal name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

“What exactly they’re doing is left to be seen,” Austin said, adding, “We’re trying to gain better fidelity on it.” It’s a “serious issue,” he said, if North Korea’s “intention is to participate in this war on Russia’s behalf.”

On September 22, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that two units of North Korean troops, with as many as 6,000 people each, were being trained for deployment.

“This is a challenge, but we know how to respond to this challenge. It is important that partners do not hide from this challenge as well,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, the head of Ukraine’s Main Directorate of Intelligence, told The War Zone that North Korean troops could arrive in Russia’s Kursk region, where Ukrainian forces launched an invasion in August.

In effect, if the reports of the North Korean troops in Russia are true and they are utilised in Kursk, there can be no international condemnation since Moscow has every right by international law to cooperate with allies so Ukrainian invaders can be expelled from Russian sovereign territory that is internationally recognised as such.

There is little indication that North Korean troops will be deployed in Ukraine, rendering South Korea and Ukraine’s allegations as nothing more than fear-mongering in the vain attempt to bring more foreign troops to Ukraine, distract from domestic issues in South Korea, and strengthen Western sanctions imposed on North Korea.

For this reason, there is even scepticism in Ukraine about the authenticity of Seoul’s and the Kiev regime’s claims, with Andriy Kovalenko, the head of Ukraine’s Center for Countering Disinformation, stating:

“There are no North Korean soldiers, yet.”

It is, therefore, more than obvious that the fake claims by Seoul and the Kiev regime are for alternative reasons, the most prominent being that the South Korean president’s approval rating has dropped to 24.1%, the lowest level since he took office in 2022. Creating fake fear over Pyongyang is his longtime tactic to distract citizens from internal issues, and it appears that his propaganda that North Korean soldiers will fight in Ukraine is a part of this same agenda.

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image: South Korean Ambassador to Ukraine and President of Ukraine in Kyiv, Ukraine on 2021 (From the Public Domain)

COVID Vaccine Injury: Pilots Die In-Flight

October 28th, 2024 by John O'Looney

Pilots dropping like flies.

Can’t fly without a jab.

Can’t fly at all now.

They even moved the goalposts for them to be able to pass the medical as regards heart function because so many of them are now fucked but want to work.

And flying me and you around, it doesn’t matter to them if we get there safely or not.

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

Featured image 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.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

You may also access the online version of the e-Book by clicking here.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

The BRICS 16th Annual Meeting in Kazan, Russia – 22-24 October 2024, is history.

Was the summit successful?

Depending on what one looks at and what is considered a success.

At the outset, it was a success, if only because it put issues and differences openly on the table to be disputed and eventually resolved.

The meeting itself did not produce much novelties. For example, many remarkable happenings, dispute resolutions and agreements happened at the margin of the summit or before. Most notably, what did not happen was another expansion of the BRICS alliance.

Since the 2023 BRICS summit in Johannesburg, when Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) joined the five original members, Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, no new members have joined. However, two more nations that were invited in Johannesburg in 2023 to become members – Argentina and Saudi Arabia – have either declined (Argentina), or, so far, not acted on becoming a member (Saudi Arabia). In fact, Saudi’s acting ruler, crown prince Mohammad bin Salman, was among the notable absentees in Kazan.

Could it be western pressure – by Saudi’s western hydrocarbon clients and military supporters?

BRICS internal rifts or disagreements concern accession conditions for new members. Missing is also a common set of internal rules that would lend the alliance stability and credibility vis-à-vis the outside world.

The BRICS also lack a common Secretariat and common guiding principles on policies of trade, economic and military cooperation.

For a new member to be accepted, it needs the unanimous support of the existing members – currently nine. 

For example, Venezuela is an eager candidate to join the Club, but was vetoed by Brazil, for reasons that have more to do with the two countries’ bilateral relationship than with the enlargement of BRICS.

Such bilateral conflicts do not help the group’s coherence and credibility, the so far most important Global South organization.

Already in September 2024, Turkey had expressed her interest in joining the BRICS and did, indeed, apply for membership. Turkey would be the first NATO member to join the BRICS; yet, so far, her accession has been stalled. 

Although, Mark Rutte, the new NATO chief, when recently questioned, did not object at all, saying that Turkey was a sovereign country and could join the BRICS alliance on her own free will. He added that Turkey would nevertheless remain one of the most important NATO members.

Perhaps Turkey’s NATO membership was a thorn in the eyes of some Global South states. However, India, not a de jure NATO member, has close relations with NATO and the US. Yet, India is a founding member of the BRICS. Perhaps the perceptions have changed since the 2006 formation of the alliance.

Image: President of Russia Vladimir Putin, right, and President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping, left, during the official reception of the 16th BRICS Summit. (Alexey Nikolskiy / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

16th BRICS Summit official reception

Mr. Putin said that there are some 30 countries that wanted to join the BRICS, among them most notably Azerbaijan, Algeria, Vietnam, Indonesia, Pakistan, Malaysia, Nigeria, Thailand, Venezuela, Palestine, DR Congo, Gabon, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Kuwait, Senegal, and Bolivia.

On the other hand, Kazakhstan, Russia’s largest neighbor in Central Asia, was invited by Russia to join the BRICS, but in a last-minute decision opted not to join. Russia was not only surprised, but not pleased at all for this abrupt decision, and promptly banned imports of a range of agricultural products from Kazakhstan in retaliation. 

According to the Oil & Gas Journal (OGJ), Kazakhstan has proven crude oil reserves of 30 billion barrels, 2nd largest endowment in Eurasia after Russia, and the 12th largest in the world, just behind the United States. With 172 oil fields, Kazakhstan possesses 3% of global oil reserves, putting it among the world’s top dozen countries in terms of oil deposits. 

Could it be that Kazakhstan reacted to some pressure, possibly blackmail, from western oil customers?

Perhaps one of the most important conflict resolutions at the margins of the meeting happened during a face-to-face dialogue between PM Narendra Modi of India and China’s President Xi Jinping, the first in five years.

Just a few months ago, tensions between New Delhi and Beijing were intense enough for Mr. Modi to decline participation in the summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Astana, Kazakhstan. Yet, the two countries have now reached a deal over their longstanding border dispute. 

The two most populous and, in terms of GDP, economically most powerful members of the BRICS coalition have not only an opportunity to rebuild their relations, but also to create a building block to help overcome BRICS disagreements. 

If one mentions BRICS internal disagreements, it may be important to notice that external, meaning western interference in terms of threats and coercions to say the least, may have played an important role in the organization’s disarray that prevented – for now – a further expansion.

Improved relations between China and India could generate a momentum for BRICS to deliver on its ambitious agenda to develop, and ultimately implement, a vision for a new multi-polar global order. 

It would lead into the direction of what Mr. Putin said in his opening address during the BRICS summit, that the BRICS alliance was not anti-west but merely a movement for independence, or potentially a shift from an anti-western to a non-western agenda.

Strangely but also remarkably, one of the west’s most feared “threats” of the BRICS summit was the summit’s talk and potentially resolution on the alliance’s dedollarization. It appears that none of that has happened.

Many of the BRICS countries are not interested in dedollarizing their economies, such as Brazil, India, the Emirates, and others. Let alone potential candidates like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Instead, Mr. Putin put forward the idea of a new BRICS lending platform for a collective, coercion-free economic advancement and investment agenda, for infrastructure, industrial as well as social services development. Mr. Putin noted that the IMF and the World Bank, the Bretton Woods Institutions created at the end of WWII, were heavily influenced by the west, especially the United States.

He did mention the BRICS bank, but not necessarily as a lending platform, as it is also fully dollarized, hence, not free from western coercive interferences.

However, China’s creation, the Asian Infrastructure and Investment Bank (AIIB), already involved with some of the BRICS, could become a more important development investment instrument in the future. 

Image: President of Russia Vladimir Putin, right, and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during their meeting on the sidelines of the 16th BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia. (By Ekaterina Chesnokova / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

16th BRICS Summit. President of Russia Vladimir Putin meets with UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres

In an open conversation with Mr. Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General who also attended the Kazan summit, Mr. Putin mentioned that it was time for the UN to “adapt to the realities of the 21st century” to be effective. This meant foremost reconfiguring the Security Council to give the emerging Global South, for which BRICS might be representative, a more prominent role. 

Citing the UN Chief, saying

“You’ve mentioned we all should represent one big family,” 

the Russian president responded, 

“and that is how we live. Families, unfortunately, have disagreements, scandals, division of property. They even fight at times.” 

Mr. Putin is right. Implicit in this statement is often outside, speak western, meddling to foster disagreements and rifts within groups of countries, who want to go their own way, like the BRICS. 

The Kazan summit may have been a precursor for things to come. But western interference will not be able to stop the BRICS alliance and cooperation towards a new multi-polar world order.

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

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

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

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

Ainda é muito cedo para avaliar os resultados da reunião dos BRICS em Kazan. No entanto, já parece claro que este evento terá impactos significativos na geopolítica global – possivelmente alterando de alguma forma as estruturas de poder globais. Tal como a Declaração de Kazan deixou claro, a realidade multipolar não pode continuar a ser ignorada, à medida que novos centros de poder se formam gradualmente.

Em Kazan, os principais líderes dos países emergentes reuniram-se para discutir questões geopolíticas de grande importância. O evento reuniu não apenas delegações de países membros do BRICS, mas também de países candidatos e até de países que não se candidataram para ingressar no grupo, mas estão abertos a cooperar de alguma forma com os países membros. Um aspecto importante do BRICS é que é um grupo agregador, onde todos os países são bem-vindos a cooperar até certo ponto.

O respeito mútuo e a cooperação são aspectos vitais do projecto BRICS – e isto ficou ainda mais claro na Declaração de Kazan, onde os países membros concordaram em apelar ao reconhecimento de novos atores internacionais, tentando assim estabelecer uma ordem justa, equilibrada e integrada.

“Notamos a emergência de novos centros de poder, de tomada de decisões políticas e de crescimento econômico, que podem abrir caminho para uma ordem mundial multipolar mais equitativa, justa, democrática e equilibrada (…) Reafirmamos o nosso compromisso com o espírito de respeito e compreensão mútuos dos BRICS, igualdade soberana, solidariedade, democracia, abertura, inclusão, colaboração e consenso”, diz o documento.

A Declaração também expressou uma forte visão crítica, condenando firmemente a atitude de certos países de impor medidas unilaterais a Estados considerados “inimigos”, o que, como se sabe, afetou negativamente o comércio internacional. Medidas como as sanções anti-russas e as restrições impostas pelos EUA aos produtos chineses perturbam significativamente o mercado mundial, gerando consequências negativas para os países emergentes – razão pela qual os BRICS, como organização que representa as nações emergentes, expressam uma condenação conjunta de tais práticas ilegais .

“Estamos profundamente preocupados com os efeitos perturbadores de medidas coercivas unilaterais ilegais, incluindo sanções ilegais, na economia mundial, no comércio internacional e na consecução dos objectivos de desenvolvimento sustentável (…) [Os países BRICS condenam] medidas unilaterais introduzidas sob o pretexto de preocupações climáticas e ambientais” e opõe-se a “medidas protecionistas unilaterais que perturbam deliberadamente as cadeias globais de abastecimento e produção e distorcem a concorrência (…) Reconhecendo o papel dos membros do BRICS como os maiores produtores mundiais de recursos naturais, sublinhamos a importância de fortalecer cooperação entre os membros do BRICS em toda a cadeia de valor e concordam em tomar ações conjuntas para se oporem às medidas protecionistas unilaterais”, acrescenta a Declaração.

Além disso, a Declaração também contém parágrafos que explicam a necessidade de avançar no processo de desdolarização – que parece ser uma prioridade para todos os países do grupo. Tanto a iniciativa de criar um mecanismo de pagamentos intra-BRICS – com uma moeda do bloco e um sistema interbancário comum – quanto a proposta de expandir o uso de moedas locais foram bem recebidas pela Declaração. Parece claro que o maior objetivo dos BRICS é tornar possível a desdolarização, independentemente do que venha a substituí-la.

A Declaração também incluiu palavras que expressam a compreensão do bloco BRICS sobre os atuais conflitos armados que ocorrem na Ucrânia e no Oriente Médio. A posição dos BRICS é de neutralidade na questão russo-ucraniana, respeitando as razões de Moscou para lançar a operação militar especial. No que diz respeito à Palestina, os BRICS condenaram conjuntamente as ações israelitas, cujos resultados levaram à morte de milhares de civis. Além disso, houve um apelo público à diplomacia entre ambos os lados, priorizando a busca por um cessar-fogo e o respeito às resoluções internacionais sobre a disputa territorial local.

Na prática, pode-se dizer que esta Declaração foi a mais significativa e, de certa forma, ousada na história das reuniões do BRICS. O grupo expressou-se conjuntamente como um bloco unido com uma agenda política comum, que é a criação de uma ordem multipolar. As principais questões globais, como os conflitos, a transição monetária e as mudanças geopolíticas, foram discutidas de forma conjunta e pacífica, respeitando os interesses individuais de cada membro e superando quaisquer diferenças específicas em favor de uma agenda comum.

Ainda não está claro como os BRICS irão atuar nesta nova ordem multipolar. Alguns autores acreditam que a organização será uma espécie de plataforma global para as nações emergentes dentro das estruturas convencionais da ONU. Outros autores acreditam que, de certa forma, os BRICS substituirão a própria ONU, mudando completamente o processo de tomada de decisão global. Em qualquer caso, uma avaliação é clara e irrefutável: os BRICS estão a contribuir significativamente para expandir a participação dos países emergentes nas questões globais.

Lucas Leiroz de Almeida

 

Artigo em inglês : BRICS Summit in Kazan significantly advances geopolitical transition towards multipolarity, 25 de Outubro de 2024.

Imagem :  InfoBrics

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

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

From prosecution (although persecution is a more fitting term) by the Department of “Justice” (DoJ) and bans on running for presidency to several assassination attempts, Donald Trump has seen it all.

The Deep State and the corrupt federal institutions are determined to prevent him from winning.

Does this mean that Trump descended from Heaven to save us all? Certainly not.

Many have argued, myself included, that it’s highly unlikely that he’ll change America’s disastrous foreign policy. Despite promises to do so, it will be exceedingly difficult (if possible at all) for Trump to significantly alter the way the United States works. However, what’s quite obvious is that he thinks thermonuclear war is an extremely bad idea (to put it mildly). And while this should be common sense, very little of it is left in Washington DC, so Trump indeed seems like the light at the end of the tunnel in comparison to the war criminals currently running the show.

That being said, it’s not his only redeeming quality, but it’s by far the most important one. However, the lunatics in power aren’t going to give up that easily. Namely, after all else failed, they’re now desperately launching defamation attacks on Trump in hopes of turning the tables at the polls. In the two latest cases of the Trump derangement syndrome (TDS), we have yet another alleged “sexual assault”, as well as an attempt to destroy the growing support Trump enjoys among Latinos and African Americans.

The Guardian just published a story about Stacey Williams, a former model who claims that (for now) former president “touched her in an unwanted sexual way in 1993, after Epstein introduced them”. Williams didn’t say why she “suddenly” decided to publicly speak about the supposed “incident” only now after over 30 years of silence, although it’s quite clear who would benefit from such a story.

However, as the “sexual scandal” strategy was already tried several times, with little success, the mainstream propaganda machine wanted to make sure to simultaneously run several narratives aimed against Trump. This one isn’t new either, but it comes in a “new package”. Namely, the Atlantic, infamous neoliberal mouthpiece, is claiming that he supposedly tried to “walk back on a promise” to support the family of US soldier Vanessa Guillén who was killed in 2020. According to the report, Trump was allegedly “outraged when he learned that Guillén’s funeral, which included heightened security and closed streets, cost $60,000”. Quoting “anonymous sources”, the Atlantic reports that Trump said that “it doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a fucking Mexican” and then “ordered then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows to deny payment”. There’s just one “tiny” problem with these claims – none of it is true.

“I don’t appreciate how you are exploiting my sister’s death for politics – hurtful & disrespectful to the important changes she made for service members,” Guillén’s sister Mayra posted on X, condemning the Atlantic’s highly politicized reporting and adding: “President Donald Trump did nothing but show respect to my family & Vanessa. In fact, I voted for President Trump today.”

Meadows himself also denied the claims made by the infamous warmongering mouthpiece, insisting that “any suggestion that President Trump disparaged Ms. Guillén or refused to pay for her funeral expenses is absolutely false” and that “he was nothing but kind, gracious and wanted to make sure that the military and the US government did right by Vanessa Guillén and her family”. Meadows instructed his spokesperson Ben Williamson to demand the Atlantic remove the deliberate disinformation. However, the magazine only added that Meadows “didn’t hear Trump say it”. This was the second time that the Atlantic published misleading and/or outright false information on Trump. Back in September 2020, it claimed that he “refused to visit a veteran cemetery” because he allegedly “called fallen soldiers ‘suckers’ and ‘losers'”. This blatantly fake story was never retracted.

It should be noted that this is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the mainstream propaganda machine and its anti-Trump witch-hunt. Namely, it’s long been a routine to compare him to the likes of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini, even in American academia. CNN has been doing it for years, while war criminals such as the Clinton family never miss out on calling Trump a “threat to democracy”. Funnily enough, the mainstream propaganda machine now even claims that he will “use lawfare” against political opponents, “conveniently forgetting” that’s exactly what the corrupt federal institutions have been doing to him all these years.

Hillary Clinton even called for more censorship to prevent people from accessing any objective information on what’s actually going on. There are other examples of TDS-induced panic, including claims that Trump will “use Navy SEALs to round up political opponents”.

Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz made similar allegations, claiming that he would “use the US military against those who didn’t vote for him”, while CNN facilitated even more disturbing acts of defamation, such as that Trump is planning to “exterminate people through eugenics”. This deeply irrational hatred was also extended to the electorate, with cases of teachers organizing mock voting, where those who voted for Harris were rewarded with pizza parties, unlike those who voted for Trump. Meanwhile, some of the DNC supporters are attacking Trump voters even in their homes, coming to their front doors and insulting them. The McDonald’s restaurant where Trump recently made a campaign ad is being review-bombed, but that’s the lesser issue, as it’s now forced to up security due to threats. And yet, this is only the tip of the iceberg of intimidation attempts both he and his supporters are subjected to.

African Americans who want to vote for Trump are now suddenly “fascists”, while whites are told they’ll be “held accountable” if they don’t vote for Kamala Harris. In previous months, Amazon allowed the sale of merchandise with the slogan “The Only Good Trump Is A Dead One”, while the mainstream propaganda machine tried suppressing information on several people who directly threatened to kill Trump. It should be noted that blatant death threats to him, his family and supporters never stopped even after several assassination attempts. Despite all this, prominent Democrats, including university professors, were openly saying things like “we hope the shooting will inspire others” or “Trump supporters should be lined up and shot”. In the meantime, corrupt federal institutions ignored repeated warnings about more plans to kill Trump, even after new “security incidents”, as they called the attempts on his life.

On the whole, it’s clear that the warmongering oligarchy in Washington DC is determined to either eliminate Trump (physically, politically, judicially or in any other way) or to sabotage his coming presidency by setting up a war with a global or at least a major regional power. Short of war, defamation is the Deep State’s last-ditch effort to (ab)use TDS, although it seems extremely unlikely this will work. Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming election, next week will surely be the most faithful in recent memory, as the warmongers, war criminals and plutocrats are desperately trying to claw their way back into the halls of power in the US. This is why Trump and his team will have to be wary of warhawks who tried to sabotage his first presidency by starting new perpetual wars. It seems some measures are already being taken against these warmongers, but it’s yet to be seen to what extent will Trump remain resilient to their malignant influence.

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

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore via Flickr

Election 2024: Trump vs. Harris: From the Abyss

October 28th, 2024 by Richard C. Cook

Two Elites? 

In September 1862, the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia under General Robert E. Lee, fresh from routing the Federals at Second Manassas, crossed the Potomac River into Maryland and set up camp just outside the town of Frederick. The U.S. had entered the second year of the Civil War.

A few weeks earlier, Lee had repulsed General George B. McClellan’s Army of the Potomac outside the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. While McClellan was occupied with retreating back up the Chesapeake Bay to Washington, D.C., Lee and his generals moved overland to crush the Union force under Major General John Pope at the Manassas railway hub.

Then, with a forced march departing from Leesburg, Virginia, 35,000 Confederate troops forded the Potomac as their band played, “Maryland, My Maryland.” Lee and Confederate President Jefferson Davis, communicating by courier back-and-forth from Richmond, figured that a knockout blow ending with an attack on Washington might bring recognition from Britain and France and so force the Lincoln government to bow to Southern independence.

But McClellan was able to regroup and give chase and, in a series of battles culminating on the farm fields bursting with corn along Antietam Creek outside the village of Sharpsburg, Maryland, the two armies fought to a stalemate. The Battle of Antietam took place on September 17, 1862, where the 23,000 combined casualties—killed, wounded, and missing—made it “the bloodiest day in American history.” After waiting a day to see if McClellan would renew the fight, and finding, much to President Lincoln’s subsequent ire, that he would not, Lee then retreated back into Virginia.

The war would drag on for 2-1/2 more years before Lee surrendered to General Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox Courthouse in April 1865. But the people of Frederick and Washington Counties in Maryland had been noticeably indifferent to the excitement that raged around their villages and farms those days in the fall of 1862.

They saw the battle as a contest between two elites, neither of which cared particularly for the interests of the local people or their desire to be left alone to focus on bringing in the fall harvest.

In fact, after the war, the Mumma family petitioned the federal government for compensation due to the Confederates burning down their house during the battle. The family lost the case, with the government telling them it was the rebels who did it, not us. Fortunately, friends and family helped them rebuild.

Is what we are looking at today, with many commentators saying we are as close as we’ve ever been to another Civil War, just a contest between two elites, or even a single elite masquerading as two? Or, as sometimes seems to be the case, between two mobs (commandeered by those elites) that are egged on in not being able to tolerate each other, mobs that even portray each other as agents of the devil?

Is there anything real at stake? Or is it the case, as Alabama’s Governor George Wallace said, when running for president against Democrat Hubert Humphrey and Republican Richard Nixon in 1968, “There’s not a dime’s worth of difference between ‘em”?

So let’s examine areas of both similarity and difference between the contenders.

Note that this analysis is based on substantive policy issues, not the trivialities of “identity politics” that people get so excited about. Honestly, Kamala Harris’s pedigree does not impress me as translating into national salvation nor does Donald Trump’s three hours with Joe Rogan.

Social Differences?

There is obviously a difference between the two candidates in terms of the social profile they have attracted among the electorate. If the contest for U.S. Senate in Maryland between Democrat Angela Alsobrooks and Republican Larry Hogan is any indication, some of the distinction, at least, boils down to abortion. Alsobrooks appears to want to give women complete latitude in aborting their unborn children, whereas Hogan appears to favor moderate restrictions. That appears to be the foremost social issue between the two candidates, and it also appears to be a major difference in social policy between the two parties at the national level.

The likelihood that the number of abortions will probably be the same no matter who wins argues in favor of Governor Wallace’s formulation—“not a dime’s worth of difference.”

Economic Differences?

The most important economic issue that divides the candidates is that Trump favors the imposition of a high level of tariffs on imports. The purpose would be to restore manufacturing enterprise on American soil, with corresponding growth of factory jobs.

This would in fact be an epochal change that would affirm a Republican Party stance on protectionism that goes back to the origins of the Republican Party in the mid-19th century. This was the time of the “American System” of economist Henry C. Carey which favored protective tariffs, a strong national currency, and government-sponsored infrastructure improvements. Restoration of the American System would strike a blow at neoliberal globalist policies by which the leaders of both parties have been shipping U.S. jobs abroad for at least three generations while investment in our own manufacturing and infrastructure has collapsed.

The trouble that Trump is not addressing is that higher tariffs would reduce or eliminate the negative trade balance by which the U.S. sends dollars abroad to be used as a world trading currency. Such a dynamic is a necessary element in providing the funding for the 800 military bases the U.S. has established in order to maintain its imperial hegemony worldwide.

With Trump’s tariffs, the U.S. would be moving in the direction of a retreat to “fortress America.” Kamala Harris has attacked Trump’s positions as “isolationism,” just as the Democratic Party globalists attacked “America First” Republicans prior to U.S. engagement in World War II.

Trump has been ingenuous on this issue in declaring that divestment of dollars by foreign nations, as BRICS may do, would be an act of hostility against the U.S., when such divestment would occur much more rapidly with high tariffs.

We would award points to Trump were it not for this elementary contradiction in policy. Also, Trump’s recent claims that he would eliminate the income tax is absurd, since tariff revenue could not possibly come close to being a replacement in funding the government.

Added to this is the fact that U.S. continuation of globalist economics spells endless war and national suicide without either side offering a real way out, so that again, Governor Wallace wins—“not a dime’s worth of difference.”

Foreign Policy Differences?

Trump claims that had he still been president the conflicts in Ukraine and Israel would never have broken out. While president, however, Trump oversaw the arming and training of Ukrainian forces by NATO that eventually provoked Russia into invading when Ukraine began to bomb Russian speakers in the Donbas region. Now the U.S. and NATO are suffering a calamitous defeat in their proxy war against Russia in Ukraine for which Trump helped lay the groundwork.

Image is from OneWorld

In the Middle East, Trump’s actions while president in moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem and in ordering the assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani likely emboldened Israel in its genocidal war in Gaza that instigated the widening conflict between Israel and the Axis of Resistance. Israel now may be on the verge of annihilation by the people it has been terrorizing for the past 75 years.

Behind the Axis of Resistance is the regional power of Iran, and behind Iran are Russia and China. The U.S. cannot defeat this coalition without bringing on a nuclear holocaust. Neither Trump/Vance nor their pro-Israel backers Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Tulsi Gabbard have any more of an answer than do Harris/Walz.

The only workable answer is to embrace the concept of a multipolar world which the U.S. thought it would never have to face when the Soviet Union dissolved in 1989-91. Could Trump pull this off? Not if the U.S. foreign policy establishment has anything to say about it. And it’s not just the Neocons. It’s everyone whose livelihood depends on U.S. imperial hegemony that is about to go down the drain. And it’s also the massive power of the Israel lobby.

It was this drive for global military conquest that the Rockefeller dynasty’s Council on Foreign Relations foisted on us at the start of World War II, embodied in the post-war National Security State, and that is still being enforced today by the U.S. military and Deep State Neocons. Breaking their power over the erstwhile American republic is a big job.

We’ll award Trump points for good intentions, but we’ll take them away as we remember how easily war mongers like Nicki Haley, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, etc. wormed their way into power during Trump’s previous administration.

Plus there’s no sign at all that Trump can escape the Zionist zombie influence or even wants to. We vote for Governor Wallace—again.

What Are They Ignoring? Banking and Finance

The U.S. banking and finance system has become increasingly unregulated over past decades to the point where the financialization of our economy has led to catastrophic inflation, major shortages of affordable housing, destruction of the middle class, and the increasing concentration of wealth in the hands of hedge funds like BlackRock and  the billionaires of the financial elite.

No society in history has survived the kind of explosive discrepancy of wealth under which the U.S. is suffering today. Empires have died as a result.

Behind this superstructure of wealth disparity is the omnipresent usury-based banking system overseen by the Federal Reserve. Meanwhile, the only thing that keeps the bankrupt federal government afloat is direct purchase by the Fed of Treasury bonds. This “money printing,” aka “QE,” was the Obama administration’s chosen tactic of “kicking the can down the road.”

It involves the utilization of these Treasury bond purchases and their addition to the Fed’s balance sheet to pay the government’s bills, primarily for the weapons industry and such necessary spending as social security. The Fed also adds to its balance sheet mortgage-backed securities, a practice aimed to conceal the still-high levels of home foreclosures left over from the Great Recession. The same method was used to finance the Trump/Biden COVID relief payments.

Image source

Trump Officially Nominated, Picks Ohio Senator Vance as Running Mate | InDepthNH.org

Neither Trump/Vance nor Harris/Walz has anything to say about reform of the failed financial system except for a few handouts that Harris would provide to a small number of first-time buyers. Trump’s proposals to reduce taxes are typical Republican election-year fare that if done would increase the federal deficit, bring on more QE, and be offset by the resulting inflation. The ideological justification for these shenanigans goes by the cutesy moniker of “Modern Monetary Theory.”

For more information, see my book Our Country, Then and Now which explains Dennis Kucinich’s 2011 NEED Act that would provide a sound indigenous currency for the U.S., pay down the national debt, and bring jobs and investment home.

Neither party gains points for this further tumble, leading to another vote for the wise Governor Wallace.

What Are They Ignoring? “Vaccination” Genocide

The COVID “plandemic,” marked by release of a virus weaponized through gain-of-function research followed by administration of a dysfunctional “vaccine” that is causing millions of excess injuries and deaths worldwide, took place under President Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed.” Trump supposedly knew nothing of what was being done behind the scenes by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Department of Defense, Big Pharma, and the captured government regulatory apparatus, but that is cold comfort for a world population under assault.

What is shaping up to be the worst public health catastrophe, and possibly the largest known genocide, in history, took place on Trump’s watch. These policies were then adopted in every respect by the Biden/Harris administration, which shares responsibility with Trump for the still unfolding disaster.

Despite the fact that Trump appears to be giving lip service at least to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s “Make America Healthy Again” proposals, there is no indication that Trump has even thought about pulling the plug on the use of mRNA “vaccines” or coming up with a program of treatment for the millions who have been harmed.

Suffice it to say that Biden/Harris/Walz have totally ignored public health in any of its multitudinous aspects, including the chronic illness epidemic and the explosion of vaccine-caused autism, much less addressing the COVID genocide. They are completely the creatures of the Deep State and Big Pharma, plus the seepage from the WEF’s “Great Reset” and the grab of national sovereignty by the WHO.

Thus both parties sink deeper into negative point territory on the public health front, though Trump has a chance to redeem himself to some extent through RFK, Jr.’s possible role in his administration, but only if he smashes the Big Pharma/DoD mRNA “vaccine” cult into oblivion. I’ll believe that when I see it and maybe not even then. You called it, Governor Wallace.

What Are They Ignoring? Societal Collapse

The symptoms of societal collapse within the U.S. are everywhere: the border crisis and the millions of illegal immigrants, nonstop inflation, likely vote stealing, decline in human fertility, chronic illness, iatrogenic disease, growth in violent crime, government grift, explosion of “lawfare,” overregulation of the food supply, censorship in violation of the First Amendment, illegal drugs and addiction, sexual immorality and human trafficking, etc. The list goes on, pointing without question to the existence of a FAILED STATE that is increasingly a danger to itself and the rest of the world.

An analogy that presents itself is the Austro-Hungarian Empire on the eve of World War I: a conglomeration of diverse regions without a unifying ideology or cultural identity, held together only by the person of an aging Emperor whose uncertain role in guiding public affairs resembles that of today’s fraudulently dysfunctional U.S. presidency.

In Austria-Hungary, once the force of that centralizing institution broke down under the pressure of war and corruption, the entire imperial edifice came crashing down, leaving the chaos of a multitude of different states that became the Central Europe of today.

Image: Tim Walz and Kamala Harris together in March 2024, prior to the start of the Harris 2024 campaign. Walz would go on to become the campaign’s vice presidential candidate. (From the Public Domain)

The U.S. may experience a similar type of crash, with neither Trump/Vance nor Harris/Walz having a comprehensive program that can prevent or resolve it.

Again, both sides lose points, because in fact we are now in an abyss of national decline. Trump/Vance at least bring a glimmer of recognition of what must change though without a program of how to do it. Thus the wise Governor Wallace again rules.

Conclusion

At the same time, my personal inclination is to go with Trump, because I identify with the America-first demographic and my own “hillbilly” roots.

But he is going to have a lot to prove, very quickly, and he’s off to a bad start with his overtly pro-Zionist stance.

So I’ll have a few people mad at me either way. But such is life.

There is now every indication that it will be Russia that draws the line through Europe that renders NATO obsolete by establishing a new security architecture balancing East and West. It is also Russia, backed by China, that is offering to mediate a peaceful settlement in the Middle East which recognizes the legitimate interests and aspirations of all participants, while an impotent American dinosaur fumes on the sidelines side-by-side with a smoldering Israel.

This change in the configuration of world power may have been sparked by the Biden administration’s economic, military, and moral collapse on multiple fronts, but it is also the result of a sea change whereby the empty financialization of Western enterprise has given way to the concrete harnessing of energy and productivity by the growing BRICS+ community that Russia is spearheading.

Ultimately, post-World War II U.S. hegemony is collapsing in full view of the entire world. The U.S. has tried to keep the lid on with its 800 military bases and multiple fleets on the high seas. But this has devolved into a high-stakes game of “Wac-a-Mole” whereby the U.S. runs around from crisis to crisis against opponents with interior battle lines who enjoy an ever-increasing advantage from every type of high-tech and asymmetrical warfare.

All things considered, Governor George Wallace’s summation that “there’s not a dime’s worth of difference between ‘em” might actually capture the realities of the 2024 presidential election. This is because in the crisis we are now in, given the evil war mongering and lawfare of the Deep State and the greed and profiteering of Big Pharma, BlackRock, the Zionists, the Neocons and the globalist bankers, we can rightfully ask whether either candidate could, if elected, make a single unhampered move in a positive direction.

As an aside, exactly the same collapse is taking place in Europe, due to EU regulations that force member states to be constantly bailing out their own failed banking system, resulting in stagflation, hyperinflation, the war against Russia in Ukraine which threatens to spread, and growing civil strife between pro-EU neoliberal governments and “right-wing” nationalist movements.

The pressure is building both in the U.S. and in Europe. In fact, the respective tea kettles are letting out large whistling sounds. Whatever the outcome, intelligent people may wisely choose to hunker down, hope for the best, but prepare for the worst. Take care; just don’t let them talk you into taking the “vax.”

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

Richard C. Cook is co-founder and lead investigator for the American Geopolitical Institute.  Mr. Cook is a retired U.S. federal analyst with extensive experience across various government agencies, including the U.S. Civil Service Commission, FDA, the Carter White House, NASA, and the U.S. Treasury. He is a graduate of the College of William and Mary. As a whistleblower at the time of the Challenger disaster, he exposed the flawed O-ring joints that destroyed the Space Shuttle, documenting his story in the book “Challenger Revealed.” After serving at Treasury, he became a vocal critic of the private finance-controlled monetary system, detailing his concerns in “We Hold These Truths: The Hope of Monetary Reform.” He served as an adviser to the American Monetary Institute and worked with Congressman Dennis Kucinich to advocate for replacing the Federal Reserve with a genuine national currency. See his new book, Our Country, Then and Now, Clarity Press, 2023. Also see his Three Sages Substack where this article was originally published.

Featured image source

Less than a year after OpenAI quietly signaled it wanted to do business with the Pentagon, a procurement document obtained by The Intercept shows U.S. Africa Command, or AFRICOM, believes access to OpenAI’s technology is “essential” for its mission.

The September 30 document lays out AFRICOM’s rationale for buying cloud computing services directly from Microsoft as part of its $9 billion Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability contract, rather than seeking another provider on the open market.

“The USAFRICOM operates in a dynamic and evolving environment where IT plays a critical role in achieving mission objectives,” the document reads, including “its vital mission in support of our African Mission Partners [and] USAFRICOM joint exercises.”

The document, labeled Controlled Unclassified Information, is marked as FEDCON, indicating it is not meant to be distributed beyond government or contractors. It shows AFRICOM’s request was approved by the Defense Information Systems Agency. While the price of the purchase is redacted, the approval document notes its value is less than $15 million.

Like the rest of the Department of Defense, AFRICOM — which oversees the Pentagon’s operations across Africa, including local military cooperation with U.S. allies there — has an increasing appetite for cloud computing. The Defense Department already purchases cloud computing access from Microsoft via the Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability project. This new document reflects AFRICOM’s desire to bypass contracting red tape and buy immediately Microsoft Azure cloud services, including OpenAI software, without considering other vendors. AFRICOM states that the “ability to support advanced AI/ML workloads is crucial. This includes services for search, natural language processing, [machine learning], and unified analytics for data processing.” And according to AFRICOM, Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, which includes a suite of tools provided by OpenAI, is the only cloud provider capable of meeting its needs.

Image: OpenAI headquarters, Pioneer Building, San Francisco (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

Microsoft began selling OpenAI’s GPT-4 large language model to defense customers in June 2023. Earlier this year, following the revelation that OpenAI had changed its mind on military work, the company announced a cybersecurity collaboration with DARPA in January and said its tools would be used for an unspecified veteran suicide prevention initiative. In April, Microsoft pitched the Pentagon on using DALL-E, OpenAI’s image generation tool, for command and control software. But the AFRICOM document marks the first confirmed purchase of OpenAI’s products by a U.S. combatant command whose mission is one of killing.

OpenAI’s stated corporate mission remains “to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity.”

The document states that “OpenAI tools” are among the “unique features” offered by Microsoft “essential to ensure the cloud services provided align with USAFRICOM’s mission and operational needs. … Without access to Microsoft’s integrated suite of AI tools and services, USAFRICOM would face significant challenges in analyzing and extracting actionable insights from vast amounts of data. … This could lead to delays in decision-making, compromised situational awareness, and decreased agility in responding to dynamic and evolving threats across the African continent.” Defense and intelligence agencies around the world have expressed a keen interest in using large language models to sift through troves of intelligence, or rapidly transcribe and analyze interrogation audio data.

Microsoft invested $10 billion in OpenAI last year and now exercises a great deal of influence over the company, in addition to reselling its technology. In February, The Intercept and other digital news outlets sued Microsoft and OpenAI for using their journalism without permission or credit.

An OpenAI spokesperson told The Intercept, “OpenAI does not have a partnership with US Africa Command” and referred questions to Microsoft. Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nor did a spokesperson for AFRICOM.

“It is extremely alarming that they’re explicit in OpenAI tool use for ‘unified analytics for data processing’ to align with USAFRICOM’s mission objectives,” said Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, who has previously conducted safety evaluations for OpenAI. “Especially in stating that they believe these tools enhance efficiency, accuracy, and scalability, when in fact it has been demonstrated that these tools are highly inaccurate and consistently fabricate outputs. These claims show a concerning lack of awareness by those procuring for these technologies of the high risks these tools pose in mission-critical environments.”

Since OpenAI quietly deleted the portion of its terms of service that prohibited military work in January, the company has steadily ingratiated itself with the U.S. national security establishment, which is eager to integrate impressive but frequently inaccurate tools like ChatGPT. In June, OpenAI added to its board the Trump-appointed former head of the National Security Agency, Paul Nakasone; the company’s current head of national security partnerships is Katrina Mulligan, a Pentagon alum who previously worked in “Special Operations and Irregular Warfare,” according to her LinkedIn profile.

On Thursday, following a White House directive ordering the Pentagon to accelerate adoption of tools like those made by OpenAI, the company published an article outlining its “approach to AI and national security.” According to the post,

“The values that guide our work on national security” include “democratic values,” “human rights,” and “accountability,” explaining, “We believe that all AI applications, especially those involving government and national security, should be subject to oversight, clear usage guidelines, and ethical standards.” OpenAI’s language is a clear reflection of the White House order, which forbade security and intelligence entities from using artificial intelligence in ways that “do not align with democratic values,” the Washington Post reported.

While the AFRICOM document contains little detail about how exactly it might use OpenAI tools, the command’s regular implications in African coup d’états, civilian killings, torture, and covert warfare would seem incompatible with OpenAI’s professed national security framework. Last year, AFRICOM chief Gen. Michael Langley told the House Armed Services Committee that his command shares “core values” with Col. Mamady Doumbouya, an AFRICOM trainee who overthrew the government of Guinea and declared himself its leader in 2021.

Although U.S. military activity in Africa receives relatively little attention in comparison to U.S. Central Command, which oversees American forces in the Middle East, AFRICOM’s presence is both significant and the subject of frequent controversy. Despite claims of a “light footprint” on the continent, The Intercept reported in 2020 a formerly secret AFRICOM map showing “a network of 29 U.S. military bases that stretch from one side of Africa to another.” Much of AFRICOM’s purpose since its establishment in 2007 entails training and advising African troops, low-profile missions by Special Operations forces, and operating drone bases to counter militant groups in the Sahel, Lake Chad Basin, and the Horn of Africa in efforts to bring security and stability to the continent. The results have been dismal. Throughout all of Africa, the State Department counted a total of just nine terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2003, the first years of U.S. counterterrorism assistance on the continent. According to the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Pentagon research institution, the annual number of attacks by militant Islamist groups in Africa now tops 6,700 — a 74,344 percent increase.

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enduring-1582752829

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Maps of U.S. “Enduring” and “Non-Enduring” bases in Africa. The Pentagon defines “enduring” bases as providing “strategic access and use to support United States security interests for the foreseeable future.” “Non-Enduring” outposts — also known as “contingency locations” — are defined as supporting and sustaining “operations during contingencies or other operations.” Contingency locations can be categorized as initial, temporary, or semipermanent. Images: U.S. Africa Command

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As violence has spiraled, at least 15 officers who benefited from U.S. security assistance have been involved in 12 coups in West Africa and the greater Sahel during the war on terror, including in Niger last year. (At least five leaders of that July 2023 coup received American assistance, according to a U.S. official.) U.S. allies have also been implicated in a raft of alleged human rights abuses. In 2017, The Intercept reported a Cameroonian military base used by AFRICOM to stage surveillance drone flights had been used to torture military prisoners.

Dealing with data has long been a challenge for AFRICOM. After The Intercept put together a count of U.S.-trained coup leaders on the continent, for example, the command admitted it did not know how many coups its charges have conducted, nor did the command even keep a list of how many times such takeovers have happened. “AFRICOM does not maintain a database with this information,” spokesperson Kelly Cahalan told The Intercept last year.

AFRICOM’s mismanagement of information has also been lethal. Following a 2018 drone strike in Somalia, AFRICOM announced it had killed “five terrorists and destroyed one vehicle, and that “no civilians were killed in this airstrike.” A secret U.S. military investigation, obtained by The Intercept via the Freedom of Information Act, showed that despite months of “target development,” the attack on a pickup truck killed at least three, and possibly five, civilians, including Luul Dahir Mohamed and her 4-year-old daughter, Mariam Shilow Muse.

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

Featured image: U.S. Army Africa 1st Lt. Salvatore Buzzurro, Africa Contingency Operations Training & Assistance program military mentor, gives a Sierra Leone Armed Forces Soldiers advice on movement techniques. The SL Army has been training with the ACOTA program for two years, and this is the fifth company prepping for their peacekeeping mission in another country. Photo by U.S. Army Africa.

The man has a cheek.  Having lectured Iranians and Lebanese about what (and who) is good for them in terms of rulers and rule (we already know what he thinks of the Palestinians), Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been keeping busy on further depriving access and assistance to those in Gaza and the West Bank.  This comes in draft legislation that would prevent the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) from pursuing its valuable functions in the Occupied Palestinian Territory.

The campaign against UNRWA by the Israeli state has been relentless and pathological.  Even before last year’s October 7 attacks by Hamas, much was made of the fact that the body seemed intent on keeping the horrors of the 1948 displacements current.  Victimhood, complained the amnesiac enforcers of the Israeli state, was being encouraged by treating the descendants of displaced Palestinians as refugees.  Nasty memories were being kept alive.

Since then, Israel has been further libelling and blackening the organisation as a terrorist front best abolished. (Labels are effortlessly swapped – “Hamas supporter”; “activist”; “terrorist”.)  Initially came that infamous dossier pointing the finger at 12 individuals said to be Hamas participants in the October 7 attacks.  With swiftness, the UN commenced internal investigations.  Some individuals were sacked on suspicion of being linked to the attacks. Unfortunately, some US$450 million worth of donor funding from sixteen countries was suspended.

UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was always at pains to explain that he had “never been informed” nor received evidence substantiating Israel’s accusations.  It was also all the more curious given that staff lists for the agency were provided to both Israeli and Palestinian authorities in advance.  At no point had he ever “received the slightest concern about the staff that we have been employing.”

In April, Lazzarini told the UN Security Council that “an insidious campaign to end UNRWA’s operations is under way, with serious implications for peace and security”.  Repeatedly, requests by the agency to deliver aid to northern Gaza had been refused, staff barred from coordinating meetings between humanitarian actors and Israel, and UNRWA premises and staff targeted.

Israel’s campaign to dissuade donor states from restoring funding proved a mixed one.  Even the United Kingdom, long sympathetic to Israel’s accusations, announced in July that funding would be restored.  In the view of UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy, UNRWA had taken steps to ensure that it was meeting “the highest standards of neutrality.”

In August, the findings of a review of the allegations by former French foreign minister Catherine Colonna, instigated at the request of the UN Secretary-General António Guterres, were released. It confirmed UNRWA’s role as “irreplaceable and indispensable” in the absence of a political solution between Israel and the Palestinians, a “pivotal” body that provided “life-saving humanitarian aid and essential social services, particularly in health and education, to Palestinian refugees in Gaza, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the West Bank.”

In identifying eight areas for immediate improvement on the subject of neutrality (for instance, engaging donors, neutrality of staff, installations, education and staff unions), it was noted that “Israel has yet to provide supporting evidence” that the agency’s employees had been “members of terrorist organizations.”

On October 24, UNRWA confirmed that one of its staffers killed by an Israeli strike in Gaza, Muhammad Abu Attawi, had been in the agency’s employ since July 2022 while serving as a Nukhba commander in Hamas’s Bureij Battalion.  Attawi is alleged to have participated in the killing and kidnapping of Israelis from a roadside bomb shelter near Kibbutz Re’im in October last year.  His name had featured in a July letter from Israel to the agency listing 100 names allegedly connected with terrorist groups.  But no action was taken against Attawi as the Israelis failed to supply UNRWA with evidence.  Lazzarini’s letter urging, in the words of Juliette Touma, the agency’s director of communications, “to cooperate … by providing more information so he could take action” did not receive “any response”.

Having been foiled on various fronts in its quest to terminate UNRWA’s viable existence, Israeli lawmakers are now taking the legislative route to entrench the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.  Two bills are in train in the Knesset. The first, sponsored by such figures as Yisrael Beytenu, MK Yulia Malinovsky and Likud lawmaker Dan Illouz, would bar state authorities from having contact with UNRWA.  The second, sponsored by Likud MK Boaz Bismuth, would critically prevent the agency from operating in Israeli territory through revoking a 1967 exchange of notes justifying such activities.

Even proclaimed moderates – the term is relative – such as former defence minister Benny Gantz support the measures, accusing the UN body of making “itself an inseparable component of Hamas’s mechanism – and now is the time to detach ourselves entirely from it”.  It did not improve the lot of refugees, but merely perpetuated “their victimisation.”  Evidently for Gantz, Israel had no central role in creating Palestinian victims in the first place.

By barring cooperation between any Israeli authorities and UNRWA, work in Gaza and the West Bank would become effectively impossible, largely because Jerusalem would no longer issue entrance permits to the territories or permit any coordination with the Israeli Defense Forces.

UN Secretary-General Guterres was aghast at the two bills.  “It would effectively end coordination to protect UN convoys, offices and shelters serving hundreds of thousands of people.”  Ambassadors from 123 UN member states have echoed the same views, while the Biden administration has, impotently, warned that the proposed “restrictions would devastate the humanitarian response in Gaza at this critical moment” while also denying educational and social services to Palestinians in the West Bank and Jerusalem.

In their October 23 statement, the Nordic countries also expressed concern that UNRWA’s mandate “to carry out […] direct relief and works programmes” for millions of Palestinian refugees as determined by UN General Assembly Resolution 302 (IV) would be jettisoned.  “In the midst of an ongoing catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, a halt to any of the organisation’s activities would have devastating consequences for the hundreds of thousands of civilians served by UNRWA.”

The statement goes on to make a warning.  To impair the refugee agency would create a vacuum that “may well destabilise the situation in [Gaza, and the West Bank, including east Jerusalem], in Israel and in the region as a whole, and may fundamentally jeopardize the prospects of a two-state solution.”

These are concerns that hardly matter before the rationale of murderous collective punishment, one used against a people seen more as mute serfs and submissive animals than sovereign beings entitled to rights and protections.  Israel’s efforts to malign and cripple UNRWA remains a vital part of that agenda.  In that organisation exists a repository of deep and troubling memories the forces of oppression long to erase.

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

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

Featured image: Families have been forced to moved repeatedly in Gaza. UN United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA).

US and Israel — Two Governments Linked by Lies and Bloodshed. Philip Giraldi

By Philip Giraldi, October 28, 2024

On Thursday I participated in a fascinating talk sponsored by Washington’s Committee for the Republic, which is “a citizen-based, non-partisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2003 [that] sponsors speakers monthly on challenges to the American Republic, including the military-industrial complex, too-big-to-fail banks, campaign finance, and US competitiveness.”

BRICS 2024: Building a New World. Manlio Dinucci

By Manlio Dinucci, October 28, 2024

The New Development Bank is becoming a major investor in the largest technology and infrastructure projects in the BRICS region. In this region, where the dollar and the euro used to dominate international transactions, the share of national currencies has risen to 65%. The share of the dollar and the euro has fallen below 30%.

U.S. and Western Allies Support the Genocide. Israel’s Role in U.S.-NATO War Against Iran

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, October 28, 2024

While the IDF is responsible for the conduct of the atrocities, the U.S. War Machine is a partner in crime. The conduct of the genocide has been planned for several years in consultation with the Pentagon and NATO.

The Gaza Catastrophe: Checking Israeli and Western Elites

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, October 28, 2024

Israel is determined to take over North Gaza. This explains its destruction of residential areas in the region. Schools and hospitals have also been targeted. People have been forced to flee their homes. Many who have chosen to stay behind have been killed.

Kid-Killing Kamala (KKK) Harris Complicit in Gaza Genocide

By Gideon Polya, October 28, 2024

The US presidential election is only a dozen days away and the Biden/Harris complicity in the mass murder of Gazans by Jewish Israelis should be the key issue for decent Americans.

Is BRICS Summit the Beginning of a New World Order?

By Marc Vandepitte, October 28, 2024

From 22 to 24 October, 36 countries, mainly from the Global South, attended the 16th summit of the BRICS countries. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also joined this meeting. As Chinese President Xi stated, the summit aimed “to create new opportunities for the Global South.”

Syria and Gaza: Continuity of Barbarism. Empire and Its Proxies Destroy Healthcare and Humanity as Policy

By Mark Taliano, October 28, 2024

In Syria and Gaza, the mechanics of Western-perpetrated terror are eerily similar. Empire’s proxies, al Qaeda, ISIS and affiliates in Syira, and Zionists in occupied Palestine, destroy healthcare as policy.

In Syria and Gaza, the mechanics of Western-perpetrated terror are eerily similar.

Empire’s proxies, al Qaeda, ISIS and affiliates in Syira, and Zionists in occupied Palestine, destroy healthcare as policy.

In February, 2023, journalist Sara Salloum explained that,

“the years of war on Syria have seen the complete destruction of 38 hospitals at the hands of terrorists, as well as the that of 450 vehicles and the killing of more than 700 Syrian doctors.” (1)

Dr. Rouba Mirza, in an interview with Syrian journalist and author Basma Qaddour,  explained that

“the West-backed terrorist groups had not only targeted doctors, pharmacists, nurses, but also attacked with rockets hospitals and pharmaceutical factories, especially in Aleppo governorate, and looted medicines and hoarded them  during the first years of the war on the country because they know that the war will last for a long time…. In May 2014, terrorist groups destroyed Al-Kindi Hospital in Aleppo after looting its contents worth millions of Syrian Pounds.”

The damage and destruction of health infrastructure has been further exacerbated by Western-imposed unilateral coercive measures.

Dr. Mirza explains that,

”this maintenance of damaged factories and equipment was hampered by the western unilateral sanctions as their designation of the Central Bank and all public financial institutions has completely blocked transactions for imports and exports, including  medicine, spare parts, raw materials, and has restrained foreign currency inflows …” (2)

Western-supported Zionists are deploying similar mechanisms of collective punishment and terror on civilian populations in occupied Palestine.

Satellite images captured between October 22, 2023 and March 27, 2024 by Al Jazeera’s Sanad verification agency reveal that 24 hospitals were damaged, including:

  • 6 hospitals in northern Gaza
  • 10 hospitals in Gaza City
  • 1 hospital in Deir el-Balah
  • 7 hospitals in Khan Younis (3)

On-the-ground reporter Hind Khoudary correctly notes that Palestinians “are not dying only from the shelling and airstrikes, they are dying from the lack of access to medical care, lack of food, hunger and starvation …” (4)

Empire’s permanent warfare and its declared “New Middle East” is a criminal war of terror on innocent civilians.  In Palestine, it is a holocaust, where multitudes are displaced and killed, where homes and livelihoods destroyed, where escape is impossible, and the land is uninhabitable.  All by design and with intent.

October 7 was a fabricated pretext for settler colonialism and holocaust.  Lebanon is now also under attack.

Each of Empire’s targets, all of the prey countries, suffer similar mechanisms of terror, in varying degrees.

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

Research Assistance by Basma Qaddour

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

Notes

(1) Sara Salloum, ” How are sanctions, blockade affecting humanitarian effort in Syria?” Al Mayadeem.Net, 7 February, 2023. (How are sanctions, blockade affecting humanitarian effort in Syria? | Al Mayadeen English) Accessed 25 October, 2024.

(2) Basma Qaddour, “Interview with the former Member of Parliament,  the pharmacist Dr. Rouba Mirza/ By Basma Qaddour” marktanliano.net, 24 October, 2024. (Interview with the former Member of Parliament,  the pharmacist Dr. Rouba Mirza/ By Basma Qaddour – Mark Taliano) Accessed 25 October, 2024.

See also: Journey To Aleppo Part II: The Syria Civil Defense & Aleppo Medical Association Are Real Syrians Helping Real Syrians

(3) “Satellite images reveal the destruction of hospitals in Gaza.” AJLabs and Sanad Verification Agency, 18 April, 2024. (Satellite images reveal Israeli destruction of hospitals in Gaza | Interactive News | Al Jazeera) Accessed 25 October, 2024.

(4) Mark Taliano, “Parallel Fascism and Western-Supported Zionist Genocide of Palestine and Palestinians (Revised)” marktanliano.net, 2 June, 2024. (Parallel Fascism and Western-Supported Zionist Genocide of Palestine and Palestinians (Revised) – Mark Taliano) Accessed 25 October, 2024.

Featured image is from Washington Report on ME Affairs

This might be the biggest story of corruption and cover-up in recent years. 

And I’m going to show you why everything he said in his speech is accurate. 

As you just heard the man, Bill Gates has been indicted in a vaccine-related case in the Netherlands and now faces trial.

Now just like most of you guys, I was surprised by this because I haven’t heard anything about this case.

According to this news story a Dutch court has ordered that Bill Gates will face trial in the Netherlands over his involvement in misleading the public about the safety of vaccines.

The plaintiffs filed the lawsuit last year, naming Gates, along with former Dutch Prime Minister and current NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, members of the Dutch government’s Outbreak Management Team, Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, and the Dutch state itself.

The plaintiffs argue that Gates, through his involvement with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Economic Forum (WEF), was involved in a far-reaching agenda—referred to as “The Great Reset Project”—. And it sought to exploit the global crisis in order to implement sweeping societal changes, all under the guise of combating the pandemic.

Now sadly according to these articles one of the seven individuals, whose identities have been redacted in public documents, has since died after receiving the vaccine.

And in their last hearing, one of the plaintiffs was represented by her father because she could no longer speak. The father explained that his daughter had been healthy prior to receiving the vaccine but became sick afterward and lost her ability to speak. He expressed his desire to “speak to Bill Gates directly” about his daughter’s condition.

Now of course Bill Gates isn’t going to talk to some poor man whose daughter is extremely sick. So he just hired the largest litigation firm in the Netherlands and argued that the Dutch court had no jurisdiction over him because he lives in the United States.

However, the court refuted this claim and ruled that it does have jurisdiction over Gates. The court made this ruling because it found “sufficient evidence” that the claims against Gates and the other defendants are “connected” and based on the same “complex of facts.”

Now the reason why this indictment is a huge problem for Bill Gates is because it set a precedence. It tells other people living in Europe that they can also sue him if they were hurt by the vaccine. So I won’t be shocked if he has to face legal proceedings in other parts of the world as well. And while all of this is happening, for some reason a man who has been bipartisan for 2 decades suddenly decides to throw 50 million dollars behind Kamala Harris only days after his indictment.

Now even though Reps for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation charity declined to comment. Citing anonymous sources, the Times reported that the charitable foundation “is significantly concerned about potential cuts to family planning and global health programs if Mr. Trump is elected.” Well, they should be concerned because Trump and many of his supporters like RFK Jr, have been waging a war against the billionaire’s alleged tactics for years.

So by giving so much money to Kamala, Bill Gates is basically trying to make sure that he will have a president who’ll support him even if things get rough.

And while this indictment might be the last straw, I think Bill Gates has another reason to stop Trump from winning the election. We all know about his history with Epstein and how the two of them were pretty close. Of course later on he said that he feels bad about ever hanging out with that monster.

However, feeling bad about your actions doesn’t mean he isn’t guilty. Of course, thanks to some mind-boggling legal reasons the names of Epstein’s partners haven’t been released to the public but according to Elon Musk that might change pretty soon.

If the Tesla founder is telling the truth, this is bad news for so many people including multiple billionaires who were doing all those vile and disgusting things on Epstein Island. So of course it makes sense for them to support Kamala and it looks like Bill Gates has now bought a seat in that life raft by paying 50 million dollars.

Video: 


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

Featured image is from AIER


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

You may also access the online version of the e-Book by clicking here.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

The Crimes of Israel, and their Puppet Master the U.S.

October 28th, 2024 by Michael Welch

On October 7, two (Israeli) babies are killed. It was dreadful! It was appalling! At the end of August when the Gazan Health Ministry published detailed figures, the first fourteen pages, 701 names were taken up with children under the age of one… It’s very, very likely that in the end, the total number of dead and injured in the Gaza Strip will be more than a quarter of a million people. There is just no comparison between the two!”

Richard Sanders [1]

a

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It is too difficult to look at the ongoing carnage besieging Gaza in 2024.

Here are the latest statistics, courtesy of Gaza’s Ministry of Health:

  • Killed in Gaza: at least 42,847 people, including nearly 16,765 children

  • Injured in Gaza: more than 100,544 people

  • Missing: more than 10,000

Israel’s military attacks have destroyed:

  • More than half of Gaza’s homes (damaged or destroyed)

  • 80 percent of commercial facilities

  • 87 percent of school buildings

  • Healthcare facilities so 17 of 36 hospitals are partially functional

  • 68 percent of road networks

  • 68 percent of cropland

And according to the Committee to Protect Journalists and the International Federation of Journalists, more than 125 Palestinians have been killed since October 7, 2023. [2]

The good news is that people in America and the Western world are waking up to the horrors and continue to plague the political class who continue to apologize for the slaughter as “defence against terrorism.” The bad news, however, is that there is far too much attention paid to the small bully in the Middle east, and not enough on the “Big Boss” that is the U.S.

This week, on the Global Research News Hour, we thoroughly analyze Israel-Palestine and attempt to arrive at a solution to the humanitarian mess that holds hope for the people who say with determination, “Free, free Palestine!”

In our first half hour, our guest, Canadian Professor of Law Michael Lynk, the former Special Rapporteur on human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, expands his own assessment and of the likely route that will have to be taken to secure a just peace in the land formerly known as Palestine. And in our second half hour, Professor Michel Chossudovsky talks about how the United States uses Israel, like many other countries, to do their “dirty work” for them.

Michael Lynk is emeritus Professor at the Faculty of Law, Western University, in London, Ontario. In January 2015, Professor Lynk was named to the Mayor of London’s Honours List for his work on humanitarian issues. In March 2016, the United Nations Human Rights Council appointed Professor Lynk as the 7th Special Rapporteur for the human rights situation in the Palestinian Territories occupied since 1967.

Professor Michel Chossudovsky is the founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization and its website globalresearch.ca. He is Professor (Emeritus) of Economics at the University of Ottawa and the award-winning author of 13 books including America’s War on Terrorism (2005), Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War (2011) and The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015.)

(Global Research News Hour episode 446)

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Transcript of conversation with Professor Michel Chossudovsky, October 17, 2024

Global Research: We have arrived at a major crossroads in world history. So saith Michel Chossudovsky. One of the points he raises, however, is that the U.S. is not only refusing to stand up to Israel, the genocidal war is fully supported by the U.S.

The U.S. is not following Israel. It’s the other way around. We will delve into this subject and the consequences down the pipe for Lebanon and Iran and more.

Of course, Michel Chossudovsky is an award-winning author, professor of economics emeritus at the University of Ottawa, founder and director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal. He’s also the editor of Global Research. Welcome back to the Global Research News Hour, Professor Chossudovsky.

Michel Chossudovsky: Thank you very much, Michael. It’s good to be with you. I must say that what is lacking in the understanding of the peace movement, of the solidarity movement with Palestine, is the fact that Israel is a de facto member of NATO.

And every single action that it takes goes through the command structures of the United States. The Pentagon, it goes to Central Command headquarters for the Middle East, and it also goes up to Nebraska to U.S. Strategic Command. So there may be flexibilities there, but when they go and kill the head of Hezbollah or when they bomb Lebanon, it is all orchestrated and it is on the drawing board of the Pentagon.

That is absolutely clear. Any government or any group which supports the Israeli government in waging genocide is complicit, under Articles III and IV of the Genocide Protocol, Geneva Convention. They are complicit.

It’s Article III and Article IV. And I suggest that people read these articles. They’re very easy. It’s very straightforward.

You said, if you are supporting the genocide in any particular way, whether it’s through weapons or even promotion or media coverage, you are complicit. And the media is complicit.

GR: So it’s not just the United States that’s complicit.

You’ve got France, Germany, Canada, and even the Canadian media that are providing cover for this operation of genocide.

MC: Well, absolutely. But they’re mostly members of NATO.

They’re member states of NATO, most of which are member states of the European Union. These are “allies” of the United States, even though they’re also victims of U.S.-led economic warfare. But that’s  another matter.

It is important that our peace movement, first of all, understand that this is not simply an action against Palestine. It’s an action against the entire region. And all the actions against Lebanon and Iran and Syria and so on, indicate that the United States and NATO members are complicit in genocide.

GR: Professor Chossudovsky, so you basically say that the United States is essentially using Israel to carry out, I guess, geopolitical maneuvers in their favour. It’s kind of like the way the Ukraine government is kind of a proxy in the war, NATO-orchestrated war in Russia, or for that matter, the ISIS and al-Qaeda, as you’ve argued, that they are being used to orchestrate efforts, again, in U.S. interests. Are the interests around the world different, or are there, I mean, depending on the different orientation?

MC: Well, first of all, I should mention the war against Iran has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon since 1979.

And that coincides with the return of Ayatollah Khomeini. It was a CIA operation, he comes back to his homeland, to Iran, and he’s welcomed. And his function was there, it was a CIA op, was to destabilize the civilian and secular government, which had displaced the Shah, Shah Pahlavi. But I don’t want to get into the complexities, but what happened, if I give a chronology, and that’s very important, as of 1983, the United States launched something which was diabolical.

It had official relations with Iraq, saying, if you fight against Iran, we will fund your weapons.

They were giving weapons to Iraq in the same way as they’re giving weapons to Israel today, to go and fight against Iran.

Now, in turn, you had another component, in that they were also covertly, and that was a CIA op, they were also covertly supporting the Islamic Republic of Iran in weaponry against Iraq.

So, they take these two countries, and they trigger warfare, and that is where some people will remember Oliver North, and the CONTRAS, okay? Oliver North and the CONTRAS, well, what it was, was there was a money laundering process there, but it was essentially an operation which consisted in selling weapons to Iran undercover, and Iran would be paying for these weapons, and with the money, then they would support the CONTRA rebels in Nicaragua, which were there fighting against the government, namely an elected government of the Sandinista movement. It was a coalition government, and they were fighting against that government with a view to toppling it,  in other words, destroying it.

I was actually in Nicaragua in 1984 at the height of the CONTRA attacks, and then you had John Negroponte  he was behind this, and he was at the embassy in Honduras, with the role to support the CONTRAS,

The U.S., never wanted to have a leftist government in Nicaragua, so that was it.

And so that Oliver North was there coordinating a project which was consisted in funding the CONTRA, with the proceeds of the weapons sold to Iran so that they could fight Iraq.

Iraq was receiving weapons also from the United States, and they were fighting one another, and the objective was there to destroy both countries.

Now, that’s really very important because it just shows how diabolical U.S. military doctrine is, one country was an ally and the other country an enemy, and then they fund the enemy, and they fund the ally, and the objective was to destroy both countries.

The Iran-Iraq war was from about 1982 to 86, and then after that, one date which is very important, which I mentioned in my writings, is 1995.

Central Command Headquarters, in consultation with Strategic Command Headquarters in Nebraska, they put together a statement. I’ll read it you:  This is U.S. Central Command (USCENTCOM)

“the NSS directs implementation of a strategy of dual containment of the rogue states of Iraq and Iran, as long as those states pose a threat to U.S. interests, … ”

Now, they don’t pose any threat to the United States. The United States is thousands of miles away, and then they say that this is a process of dual containment, which is designed to maintain the balance of power in the region, but what is very important there is that, and I quote,

“the purpose of U.S. engagement, as espoused by the NSS, is to protect the United States’ vital interests in the region, uninterrupted, secure U.S. allied access to Gulf oil.”

This has always been a war for oil and gas, always, and it is still today.

GR: The gas there seems to be at least one major aspect to this genocidal campaign.

MC: Well, absolutely. I’ve itemized in my article the following, but pretty much under the heading, United States’ vital interests in the region, uninterrupted, secure allied access to Gulf oil.

Today would be Gulf oil and gas.

That is, in fact, America’s promised land. It’s not Israel’s promised land.

What do we have? Iran, third largest reserves of oil worldwide, after Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

After Russia, Iran is the second country in terms of natural gas reserves, together with Qatar, and it has a partnership with Qatar, so that, in fact, you look at Russia, Iran, and Qatar, all together they have something of the order of 54% of the world’s reserves of natural gas, which is approximately 10 times the gas reserves of the United States.

Well, let’s assume that there is a phoney climate CO2 narrative which prevails. I would say: what we should be doing is to close those oil and gas countries down because they are triggering global warming.

Why on earth would they be going after Iran and Russia? What we have to do is to close them down so that they don’t produce oil anymore. You can see that all the wars for oil and gas are ongoing despite the alleged threat of CO2)

GR: When you’re looking at the situation now, it seems as if the United States dominates NATO and people who are members of NATO, they’re actually serving the United States.

They’re under, essentially, the exploitation of the United States.

MC: Well, absolutely. Let me just answer the question that you put forth about Gaza.

There is another unspoken objective, and that is the Eastern Mediterranean coastline of Gaza, starting in Egypt and going right up to northern Syria, which is a corridor of maritime natural gas reserves, Wirth billions and billions of dollars. 

What they want is to take control of the maritime corridor of Palestine, Lebanon, Syria.

Now, with regard to what you said, NATO does not have any kind of decision-making procedures, even in terms of command structures.

It all goes through the very complex decision-making of U.S. military and intelligence, and of course the propaganda apparatus.

I’d like to quote  Vice President Dick Cheney, who pointed out, and that was in 2005, it was in the second term of the Bush administration, and of course, they were still at war.

It was in the wake of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and Vice President Dick Cheney said, I’m paraphrasing, “Israel will do the dirty work for us.”

Now, he wasn’t joking there. Now, I’ll quote exactly what he said.

“The Israelis might decide to act first and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess.”

Then you had the media headlines. This was, I think, the Washington Post that said, “Bush should not push Israel to do dirty work in Iran.”

Now, what this “dirty work” concept signifies, is that all or most of America’s allies are potentially involved in dirty work.

You have Germany who’s sending weapons to Ukraine,

You’ve got France sending soldiers to Romania,

And then you’ve a Western countries, member states of the EU which are sending weapons to Israel.

While it’s obvious that in Israel’s war against Palestine, most of these imported weapons are dysfunctional because then they’re not meant to fight against a resistance movement, which is essentially working with Kalashnikovs and small arms and so on.

The fourth military power in the world, is categorized as being Israel.

But in fact, it’s an extension of the US military apparatus, which is sitting in the Middle East.

Dick Cheney mentioned the “dirty work” referring to Israel, but in fact, I would say that all the NATO member states with some exceptions are doing the dirty work and on behalf of America’s hegemonic agenda.

Of course, it’s the powerful interest groups which are behind this war. It’s also the fact that it’s ultimately the financial establishment and so on, which are calling the shots. At the same time, these allies are also the target and the victims of US-sponsored warfare or economic warfare.

GR: What would you say is basically the end game with all of these shady dealings? You mentioned Oliver North, all of the tactics of using Israel and other people doing their dirty work.

What exactly is their end game? Is it basically to take over the entire earth, kind of like Hitler, only with more of a nice kind of public relations or something like that?

MC: Well, I think there is certainly a hegemonic agenda, which is a uni-polar world.

It’s not totally independent from other components, such as the COVID-19 crisis, as well as the vaccine.

The COVID-19 crisis was, let’s say, the lock-down was imposed on 190 countries from one day to the next, with instructions to close down the economy.

We know that if you confine the labour force and you freeze the workplace, which was part of the instructions to 190 countries, that’s economic warfare.

Then we have the whole debate on the vaccine, that people are taking the vaccine.

We have ample evidence to that effect that the vaccine is deadly and is resulting in an upward trend in mortality.

But the tendency here is to create some form of a dichotomy in one’s understanding of the new world order.

Theatre wars are not considered comparable to economic warfare.

But economic warfare is what is being applied now in most countries in Western Europe.

The hikes in fuel prices, they’re not allowing us, they’re not allowing the Europeans to buy oil and gas from Russia or from Iran.

So inevitably, this leads to hikes in market prices, collapse in purchasing power.

And then there’s the usual,  neoliberal agenda, which is applied now extensively in Western Europe. It’s a thirdworldization process.

And I would say that all  these allies are, in a sense, they are also targets, they’re enemies.

Because if you’re in a uni-polar world, there’s only one power. Well, it’s complex.

But let’s say now, just to give people an example, Canadians in particular,

is the United Kingdom an ally of the United States? The answer is no.

No, it’s not. And the reason is the following.

Very few people in Canada know this, that starting in 1921, the US government put together a plan to invade Canada.

 It’s all documented. And who was leading this military agenda? To invade Canada, to occupy Canada. It was also considered a territory of the British Empire.

They even had biological weapons, which were envisaged.

Several cities in Canada were envisaged for bombing, including Vancouver, Halifax, and Quebec City, and mainly port areas.

At that time, it was very important. And General MacArthur was there coordinating it.

General MacArthur  was actively involved, it was a bit like a dress rehearsal. They didn’t invade, but they threatened Canada. It’s all on record.

GR: Given the stakes, especially this critical juncture in history, what do you expect our listeners do to stop the course, especially with the election underway?

MC: I’m going to add one extra sentence to what I’ve just mentioned about war against Canada and the British Empire. In 1939, the war against the British Empire and against Canada was shelved. And then the United Kingdom and Canada were invited to participate in the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb. 

So it went from an enemy to a friend.

And that has been the strategy of the United States. You threaten your allies, and then you also incorporate your allies.

That decision by the U.S to invite the U.K and Canada to join the Manhattan project was, of course, related to the development of the atomic bomb. 

Now, your question is, of course, very important, we should conclude on that. I think, first of all, we have to understand that we’re at a very dangerous crossroads in our history.

I haven’t tackled the issue of nuclear war. It certainly is an issue. And if it happens, it will not be in Eastern Europe, it will be in the Middle East.

And it would be targeting Iran. But I think at this stage, I think this is very unlikely, first of all, because the Russians have an alliance with Iran. And I assume that they also have very high tech air defence systems.

I don’t think that this is going to take place, but it’s still there.

And if it does take place, it would be with the B61-12. It’s a tactical nuclear weapon.

And what is very dangerous is that in the nuclear manuals, they say that the B61 tactical nuclear weapon, which is a mini-nuke, which has an explosive capacity between one third and 12 times the Hiroshima bomb, is safe for civilians.

Now, they say it’s safe for civilians, and it is actually permitted to be used in the conventional war theater. So, it’s not the commander-in-chief that decides, it’s the military itself that decides.

And I think that politicians don’t really understand that any kind of nuclear war, even a fraction (1/3) of a Hiroshima bomb, would potentially lead to escalation, which in turn could lead us to the the end of humanity as we know it.

I mean, this is something which is complex, on we should spend, of course, much more time discussing and debating 

I’ve written two books on nuclear war, and I’m very familiar with the jargon, but with regard to the decision-making process, it’s very complex.

But the potential for making mistakes and also using artificial intelligence is there.

So, I think that what is, let’s say, to confirm, we should refrain from accusing the Netanyahu government of attacking Iran, because the Pentagon is calling the shots. And Netanyahu is a proxy. 

There is no doubt that the Pentagon and the CIA are responsible for the genocide (under Art III and IV) of the Genocide Convention, they and are complicit under international law. 

GR: I thank you for this exchange and dialogue. 

So, thanks a lot.

MC: Thank you very much.


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

The programme is also broadcast weekly (Monday, 1-2pm ET) by the Progressive Radio Network in the US.

The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Notes:

  1. https://x.com/21WIRE/status/1849709066999730477
  2. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/longform/2023/10/9/israel-hamas-war-in-maps-and-charts-live-tracker

Israeli forces have stormed the last operational hospital in the besieged north Gaza after bombing it and killing children inside, according to doctors and media reports.

Medical sources announced that at least 63 Palestinians were killed in the early morning Israeli attacks on the Gaza Strip.

“A large number of the martyrs are women and children,” they said.

The attack on the Kamal Adwan hospital, located in Beit Lahia northwest of Jabalia, was launched around 2 a.m. local time Friday, shortly after a WHO delegation left the hospital.

It began with airstrikes targeting the hospital and its courtyards, including the medical oxygen generator, said Dr. Munir al-Bursh, the director general of the Palestinian health ministry in Gaza.

The bombing led to the death of children inside the hospital and wounded medical staff.

Israeli troops then raided the hospital around two hours later, calling on all patients, including people in intensive care, to gather in the courtyard.

They detained the young men sheltering in the hospital and interrogated them. According to Al Jazeera, the troops abducted famed teenage Palestinian activist and journalist Aboud Battah from the hospital. 

Kamal Adwan is one of three hospitals in the northern Gaza Strip that have been under a suffocating Israeli siege for three weeks. They have received little to no aid, medicine, food and fuel since the blockade on the north began.

The other two, the Indonesian hospital and al-Awda hospital, have ceased operations in recent days due to the ongoing Israeli attacks. 

Kamal Adwan remained operational at minimal capacity, offering life-saving services to newborn infants in neonatal intensive care units and other patients in ICUs. 

Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of the Kamal Adwan hospital, decried the situation.

“Instead of receiving aid, we receive tanks… which are shelling the [hospital] building,” he said, speaking from the Intensive Care Unit where the injured and medical staff are huddled after Israel started its bombing.

“Where is the law? Which law in the world allows for a hospital to be directly targeted?”

The Israeli military launched a new onslaught on north Gaza on 5 October, described by rights groups and experts as part of a plan to ethnically cleanse the area of Palestinians. 

It began after a controversial proposal named the “Generals’ Plan” was presented to the Israeli regime, which would see areas north of the Netzarim Corridor, which cuts Gaza in two, emptied of its residents so Israel could establish a “closed military zone”. 

According to the plan, anyone who chooses to stay would be considered a Hamas operative and could be killed.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, estimates that about 400,000 people remain in Gaza’s north, including Gaza City.

Residential Houses Bombed in Khan Yunis

In southern Gaza, Israeli airstrikes targeted residential homes in the al-Manara neighborhood of Khan Yunis, leading to the deaths of at least 38 Palestinians on Friday. 

The airstrikes were coupled with a ground incursion by Israeli forces, supported by heavy air and artillery cover.

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Click here to watch the video

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Eyewitnesses described scenes of extensive destruction, with entire homes reduced to rubble in residential zones where families had taken shelter.

In the Qizan al-Najjar area of Khan Yunis, two Palestinians were killed and several others were injured when their homes were hit by artillery shells.

Three Palestinians were killed, and others wounded as Israeli artillery targeted the Maan neighborhood east of Khan Yunis.

The deaths reported by health officials were the latest in Khan Yunis, where people have in recent days lined up for bread outside the city’s only bakery in operation.

The strikes come a day after the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that Israel had accomplished its objective of “effectively dismantling” Hamas.

Homes Blown Up in Jabalia 

More than 150 Palestinian people were killed or injured in a “major massacre” in Jabalia refugee camp in northern Gaza after Israeli forces blew up 11 residential houses in al-Hawaja area on Thursday evening.  

“There is talk of more than 150 martyrs and wounded,” the Palestinian Civil Defense agency said.

It said the final death toll could rise as rescue efforts were disrupted due to the Israeli bombings and restrictions imposed by Israeli forces who laid siege to northern Gaza for three weeks.

“Citizens are sending distress calls to head to the place to help transport the wounded,” a statement by the agendy read.

According to the statement, the targeted homes belonged to the following families: Najjar, Abu al-Ouf, Salman, Hijazi, Abu al-Qumsan, Aqel Abu Rashid, Abu al-Tarabish, Zaqoul, and Shaalan.

On Thursday, at least 18 people were killed in an attack on the Nuseirat Martyrs School in the Nuseirat refugee camp in central Gaza.

Gaza’s Government Media Office noted that the school housed thousands of displaced people. The attack brings the number of displacement centers targeted by Israeli forces to 196.

Eleven children were also killed in the Israeli bombing of al-Maghazi Services Club in the neighboring Maghazi refugee camp, said the director of Gaza’s Government Media Office, Ismail Al-Thawabta.

Israel launched the war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas waged the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm against the occupying entity in response to the Israeli regime’s decades-long campaign of bloodletting and devastation against Palestinians.

The regime’s bloody onslaught on Gaza has so far killed nearly 43,000 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured about 100,600 others.

Thousands more are also missing and presumed dead under rubble.

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Featured image is from @issam1900haltam

Is BRICS Summit the Beginning of a New World Order?

October 28th, 2024 by Marc Vandepitte

Thirty-six countries, representing over half of the global population, gathered in Russia to discuss a new financial and economic infrastructure for the world. The potential impact could be immense in the long run.

From 22 to 24 October, 36 countries, mainly from the Global South, attended the 16th summit of the BRICS countries. UN Secretary-General António Guterres also joined this meeting. As Chinese President Xi stated, the summit aimed “to create new opportunities for the Global South.”

Changed Balance of Power

Since World War II, former colonized nations have made various attempts to establish a more equitable world order. In the 1970s, there was an attempt to create a New International Economic Order. However, these and other efforts failed due to internal divisions and, more importantly, because the geopolitical balance of power was very unfavourable. The North held various economic and diplomatic levers to keep nations in check, and when those were insufficient, the US relied on military force.

This situation has changed significantly. Over the last few decades, the economic power of the West has substantially declined. In 1990, the US and its allies accounted for 62.4% of global output. That share has currently fallen to 39.6 per cent, and this decline continues. Meanwhile, countries like China and India, and other emerging economies, are on the rise.  

Militarily, too, the West’s influence has waned. In the past 25 years, all US and allied military interventions have failed. They were forced to withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan, could neither subdue Syria nor Yemen, and Libya has ended in complete chaos and failure.

At the onset of the war in Ukraine, they hoped that by providing massive military support to Kyiv and imposing severe economic sanctions on Russia, they could bring Moscow to its knees. But this also failed. CIA Director William J. Burns acknowledged,

“The United States no longer possesses undisputed supremacy”.

Much has changed. In March of this year, Chinese President Xi Jinping expressed it this way during a visit with Vladimir Putin:

“Right now there are changes, the likes of which we haven’t seen for 100 years, and we should drive those changes together.” This was the context for the summit in Kazan.

Not a Small Club

BRICS was founded in 2006 with four original members: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. South Africa joined in 2010. The BRICS aims “to reshape the global political, economic, and financial architecture in a fair, just, and representative manner based on multilateralism and international law.” In other words, these five countries seek to establish a global governance system that is inclusive and egalitarian.

On 1 January 2024, four new states joined as full members: Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). At the past summit in Kazan, 13 ‘partner countries’ joined BRICS+. With at least 20 other countries expressing interest in joining, the BRICS+ group is no longer a small club. 

Currently, it represents 46 per cent of the global population and 37% of global output.[1] BRICS+ also accounts for a quarter of all goods exports and 40% of oil production. The BRICS+ GDP now surpasses that of the G7, and its industrial production is even double that of the G7.

A Multipolar World

BRICS was founded to create more cooperation between emerging economies and to counterbalance the US and its allies. The BRICS countries want to break away from the West’s dominant practices, and are striving for a multipolar world— one with a more even balance of power and greater opportunities for countries in the South.

The 2007–2011 financial crisis exposed the fragility and unreliability of the Western economic system. Vaccine nationalism during the pandemic showed the Northern countries’ unreliability in times of crisis. The same applies to the refusal of wealthy countries to take historical responsibility for climate change.

This division widened recently with the war in Ukraine. Most Southern countries have remained largely neutral, refusing to join economic sanctions against Russia. 

In addition, many countries frowned on the Russian Central Bank’s monetary reserves in the West being frozen and they were displeased when Russian banks were excluded from international payment transactions (SWIFT). If that is possible with Russia today, it may be done to any other country tomorrow. The financial trust in Western systems took a heavy hit.

The divide widened further with the West’s unconditional support of the genocide in Gaza. Western countries immediately imposed heavy sanctions on Russia following the Ukraine invasion but allowed Israel to act freely, even supplying arms or allowing their ports to ship them. For Southern countries, this application of a double standard is incomprehensible and unacceptable.

Financial Independence

One key aspect of BRICS is the pursuit of greater financial independence from Western financial systems and the dominance of the dollar.

“Every night, I ask myself why all countries must base their trade on the dollar,” said Lula in a speech for the New Development Bank, formerly the BRICS Bank.

Founded in 2015, the bank aims to promote financial independence within the BRICS countries. 

To reduce dependence on the dollar, the BRICS countries are exploring creating a reserve currency, backed for 40 per cent by gold and other natural resources and 60 per cent by a basket of member currencies. 

They are also promoting a payment and settlement platform that would link the financial markets of BRICS countries, independent of the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements (BIS).

Other projects include creating an independent insurance system, a rating agency separate from Western powers, and an independent interbank transaction system to compete with the US-controlled SWIFT. 

Although the dollar has not yet been dethroned and may remain the world’s reserve currency for some time, a ‘multipolar’ currency world might emerge in the coming years. This shift would reduce the South’s dependence on the dollar and limit the US’s ability to use economic sanctions as a weapon.

The measures taken at this meeting may appear small at first glance, but in the long term, they could mark the beginning of a new economic infrastructure where the West no longer holds sole dominance, allowing Southern countries to play a fully integrated role. 

In any case, the balance of power having changed, the chances that this may happen are  much more favourable now than they were fifty years ago. History will reveal whether this summit will prove to be historic.

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

Marc Vandepitte is a member of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity and was an observer during the presidential elections in Venezuela. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Sources

16th BRICS summit opens in Kazan, Russia

Expanding list shows BRICS’ unique appeal in ‘openness, inclusiveness, fairness and justice’

Internacional. Los BRICS, en Kazan, marcan el futuro del mundo

Elite US economist warns: dollar system is weakening as gold BRICS rise

BRICS grows, adding 13 new ‘partner countries’ at historic summit in Russia

Note

[1] World product expressed in dollar PPP (purchasing power parity). That figure takes into account price differences between countries for the same goods or services and expresses real purchasing power.

Featured image: A projection mapping show at the Kazan Kremlin. (By Ramil Sitdikov / Source: Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

At least thirty US school children whose parents were told the COVID mRNA shots were “safe and effective” died suddenly and unexpectedly in the US this week as the death toll continues surging among the vaccinated and boosted.

Many of the children died of medical emergencies including cardiac arrest and strokes as doctors warn they are now regularly witnessing “once-in-a-lifetime” disorders in children.

“This is the new normal… turbo cancers, died suddenly. My friend lost three friends in one week! Turbo cancers like this were virtually non-existent before the COVID shots,” explained MIT scientist and vaccine researcher, Steve Kirsch.

How long before we as a society can have an open and honest discussion about what is happening to the Covid-vaccinated before our eyes?

Lillian Costello

13-year-old Lillian Costello of Norton, died suddenly and unexpectedly on Tuesday at the Sturdy Memorial Hospital in Attleboro.

According to a GoFundMe fundraiser, Lilly was a seventh-grade student at the Norton Middle School and a proud member of the Student Council. She also enjoyed being a member of the Photography Club and participated in cheerleading.

Finley Kruchten

Finley Kruchten suffered a “massive pulmonary embolism” while in class at Denmark High School in early October, according to his family’s GoFundMe page.

Finley was taken to Northside Forsyth Hospital and then to Northside Gwinnett Hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Lucy Nash

Kentucky fourth grader Lucy Nash died suddenly and unexpectedly after suffering a cardiac arrest.

“On the first day of school Lucy collapsed and had a cardiac event,” a GoFundMe page for the family reads. “Her little brain went many minutes without oxygen while they were trying to save her life.”

Ovet Gomez-Regalado

Ovet Gomez-Regalado, a 15-year-old Kansas high school student, died two days after suffering a medical emergency. The football player collapsed suddenly on the field at practice.

The 15-year-old collapsed and died after performing 40 minutes of light drills, according to the school district in Hopewell, Virginia.

Leslie Noble

Meanwhile, staff at Franklin High School, Baltimore are mourning the sudden loss of 16-year-old Leslie Noble, a member of the school’s football team.

The teen died while participating in light drills during the first practice of the season on Wednesday in Reisterstown and experiencing a medical emergency.

“I saw a bunch of firetrucks, ambulances, and all I knew was they said that a child had collapsed on the field,” said Sharon Johnson, a staff member at Franklin High School.

Unfortunately, the long list of deaths continues, including unnamed victims whose families have requested their identities remain anonymous due to their age.

For example, a 14-year-old girl whose family requested anonymity suffered a medical emergency during a PE class in Houston. According to Marshall Middle School:

“Today was a very difficult day for the Marshall MS community. A student at Marshall Middle School suffered a medical emergency on campus today. EMS responded to the school quickly and the student was transported to the hospital. The student’s parents were quickly notified and responded to the school.”

However, in an email to parents, provided to us by a Marshall Middle School parent, the principal said,

“One of our eighth-grade students died. This loss is sure to raise many emotions, concerns, and questions for our entire school, especially our students.”

Many questions, indeed.

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

Baxter Dmitry is a writer at The People’s Voice. He covers politics, business and entertainment. Speaking truth to power since he learned to talk, Baxter has travelled in over 80 countries and won arguments in every single one. Live without fear.

Featured image is from TPV


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

Reviews

This is an in-depth resource of great interest if it is the wider perspective you are motivated to understand a little better, the author is very knowledgeable about geopolitics and this comes out in the way Covid is contextualized. —Dr. Mike Yeadon

In this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight. –Dr. Emanuel Garcia

In fifteen concise science-based chapters, Michel traces the false covid pandemic, explaining how a PCR test, producing up to 97% proven false positives, combined with a relentless 24/7 fear campaign, was able to create a worldwide panic-laden “plandemic”; that this plandemic would never have been possible without the infamous DNA-modifying Polymerase Chain Reaction test – which to this day is being pushed on a majority of innocent people who have no clue. His conclusions are evidenced by renown scientists. —Peter Koenig 

Professor Chossudovsky exposes the truth that “there is no causal relationship between the virus and economic variables.” In other words, it was not COVID-19 but, rather, the deliberate implementation of the illogical, scientifically baseless lockdowns that caused the shutdown of the global economy. –David Skripac

A reading of  Chossudovsky’s book provides a comprehensive lesson in how there is a global coup d’état under way called “The Great Reset” that if not resisted and defeated by freedom loving people everywhere will result in a dystopian future not yet imagined. Pass on this free gift from Professor Chossudovsky before it’s too late.  You will not find so much valuable information and analysis in one place. –Edward Curtin

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 FREE COPY! Click here (docsend) and download.

You may also access the online version of the e-Book by clicking here.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page.  

The Gaza Catastrophe: Checking Israeli and Western Elites

October 28th, 2024 by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

Israel is determined to take over North Gaza. This explains its destruction of residential areas in the region. Schools and hospitals have also been targeted. People have been forced to flee their homes. Many who have chosen to stay behind have been killed.

Although some food and other essentials are now available, they are far from adequate. This is why the threat of starvation is still real.

As with the rest of Gaza and Palestine, scores of medical workers have lost their lives. Media workers would be another category of people who have been victims of Israeli aggression. It has been noted that a lot of children have also succumbed to Israeli bombs and bullets. This is a pattern that has expressed itself in almost every Israeli assault upon Gaza in the last so many years.

While Israeli atrocities in North Gaza fit in with its larger agenda of ethnic cleansing of Palestine, the intensity of its current aggression in that area appears  to suggest that the Tel Aviv regime has other specific goals. It has been suggested that it is in a hurry to occupy the north to ensure that it will be able to control the oil and gas reserves off the Gaza coast as soon as feasible. There are analysts who have also argued that Tel Aviv wants to convert North Gaza into a buffer zone of sorts to enhance Israel’s security.

Whatever its ulterior motive, it is unconscionable that a country whose occupation of Gaza the International Court of Justice (ICJ) regards as “illegal” should be allowed to get away with its blatant ethnic cleansing of a people and their land. True, people have protested. Citizens groups have condemned what Tel Aviv is doing in Gaza and Palestine as a whole. Segments of the alternative media have been overtly critical of what has been happening in Gaza and the West Bank in the last one year since October 7, 2023. Both these media channels and some citizens groups have also taken Israel to task for its current aggression in Lebanon which has also resulted in the death of hundreds of civilians. And yet Israel continues with its barbaric behaviour. It has chosen arrogantly to ignore the voices of the rest of the human family. It is utterly contemptuous of even balanced views of individuals and groups who are part of its own support base.

Part of the reason why Israel persists with its injustice is because there are some powerful states behind it. The US elite continues to shower Israel with money and weapons. It is also ever ready to protect Israeli wrongdoings by using its veto in the United Nations Security Council. The British elite is likewise a faithful supplier of arms to Israel. The rogue state also benefits from German weapons and support.

If American and British elites are colluding with Israeli elites in the ongoing massacre of Palestinians and Lebanese it is largely because Zionist Israel, as many of us have pointed out on numerous occasions, is a product of British and American colonial interests in the early part of the 20th century. The German elite’s eagerness to provide blind support to Israel has a lot to do with the nation’s collective guilt over the Nazi holocaust of the 1930’s-1940’s. It is an elite that fails to see how its endorsement of Israel has encouraged the latter to perpetrate death and destruction upon an innocent people who had lost their hearth and home to usurpers pursuing a bigoted, racist ideology.

This is why citizens groups and the alternative media in Germany, Britain and the US have a special responsibility to spread awareness of the plight of the Palestinians and why they and other inhabitants of West Asia are totally opposed to Israel and the politics of Zionism. If such awareness grows and reaches a crescendo, it is not inconceivable that the governments in these Western societies will also change their stance and adopt a more critical attitude towards Israel on the question of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians and other victims of hegemonic Israeli and Western policies in West Asia.

Such a change will remain a dream for a long while to come because the vested interests that keep Israeli and Western elites in power are formidable. Perhaps those who are determined to see a modicum of justice in Gaza, Palestine and West Asia have to go beyond pleas addressed to Western elites and the international institutions they control such as the UN Security Council.  Perhaps those who are struggling for justice should begin to harness some of the resources that they and others linked to them possess such as oil and gas and utilize certain assets within their ambit such as strategic sea routes to compel Israeli and Western elites to see reason and do what is morally right.  

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

Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).  

Featured image source

As the United States national election draws ever nearer the fringe stories that just might influence the outcome are increasing both in magnitude and in number.

On Thursday I participated in a fascinating talk sponsored by Washington’s Committee for the Republic, which is “a citizen-based, non-partisan, nonprofit organization founded in 2003 [that] sponsors speakers monthly on challenges to the American Republic, including the military-industrial complex, too-big-to-fail banks, campaign finance, and US competitiveness.” The featured speaker for the evening was Josh Paul who “resigned from the State Department on October 18, 2023, over disagreement with the Biden administration’s unconditional surge of military equipment to Israel. The surge greenlighted Israel to equal or better the instruction of Thucydides: ‘The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.’

Image source

Josh Paul - DAWN

Josh is an insider’s insider. He toiled in the State Department for more than 11 years working as a Director in the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, which is responsible for US security assistance and arms transfers. He also served in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, US Army Staff… Josh holds master’s degrees from the Universities of Georgetown and St Andrews, Scotland. He is currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the organization Democracy Now for the Arab World (DAWN) and a recipient of the 2023 Callaway Award for Civic Courage.”

Josh has cited the wisdom of George Washington’s Farewell Address warning against excessive fondness for any one nation because

“[A] passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens.”

One might immediately perceive that George Washington very well described the possible consequences derived from the junior partnership which the United States finds itself locked into in its “wag the dog” relationship with the State of Israel. The “passionate attachment” has been amply demonstrated over the past year of warfare in Gaza in which the US has shamefully showered weapons and money on an Israel that is openly carrying out highly visible war crimes against the Palestinians in an attempt to achieve something like complete removal or extermination of the Gazans.

To my delight, Paul explained how policy making with Israel as the most favored nation works in practice. The United States federal government ignores its own laws to include two amendments of the 1961 Foreign Aid Act, known as the Symington and Glenn amendments, which ban aid to clandestine nuclear powers. Israel has a secret nuclear weapons arsenal that is cleverly ignored through a policy of “nuclear ambiguity” by the US federal government to allow the tribute money payment and other unilateral support to continue. An Energy Department directive actually demands imprisonment for any federal official or contractor who even mentions that Israel might have a nuclear weapons arsenal. To sustain the “nuclear ambiguity” policy on Israel’s weapons program, the government also uses deliberately improper classification to conceal what it is up to.

In addition, there is the Leahy law, which is also completely ignored in its establishment of a process which on paper requires a careful examination of how and when transferred US provided weapons are used, to include examination of possible “gross violations of human rights.” When that is the case, the sale or transfer of weapons is supposed to be denied. Israel, which is committing war crimes right out in the open that amount to a genocide and which has senior government officials calling for extermination of Arabs, is uniquely exempt in practice from such examination while Secretary of State Tony Blinken and his cast of spokesperson-buffoons lie persistently to both the government itself and to the public. They lie every time when they claim that it has not been demonstrated that Israel is guilty of such crimes against humanity, nor even when Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu openly mandates a near complete blockade of food and medicines, resulting in starvation and unneeded deaths.

Paul cited an example of how the system works in practice, with Jewish state demanding weapons often followed up with the Israeli Embassy in Washington calling the White House a few hours later asking “What is the hold up?” The White House then sends word down to the Pentagon and State Department to “Get moving on it!” All other countries seeking to purchase American weapons have to go through the vetting process and stand in line to wait their turn.

Image is from the Public Domain

It seems that Israel always gets what it wants. There has been a great deal of speculation about the surprise decision by President Joe Biden to deploy in Israel a $1.15 billion Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile defense system which will be manned by roughly 100 American soldiers on the ground. An advanced team of the soldiers and the battery itself were reported as having arrived in Israel shortly after the announcement of the deployment, and it turns out that a second battery was already in place in Israel.

The commitment ultimately derives from the Biden regime’s frequently repeated unconditional “ironclad” pledge to defend Israel, but it interestingly creates a potential tripwire situation leading to an escalation and a much larger war if American soldiers should die in an Iranian or Hezbollah attack. And there is little to look for on the upside as the soldiers and equipment will be inside a nation which is neither an actual ally nor a friend, as its leader Prime Minister Netanyahu has demonstrated repeatedly over the past year in rebuffing the many proposals regarding mitigating the horror on display in Gaza put forward by Biden. There is also a political price to pay in terms of the US relationship with nations in the Middle East and beyond as the Jewish state is indubitably carrying out a genocide while apparently simultaneously seeking to go to war with all its neighbors to expand its territory to become “Eretz” or “Greater” Israel and establish itself as the preeminent military power in the Middle East. But, at the same time, Netanyahu knows that he needs an active role by the United States as his partner against major powers like Iran to accomplish that goal, which is perhaps why an insistent Israeli leadership somehow was able to pressure the White House into making a commitment of THAAD in spite of the potentially disastrous possible consequences.

So, the United States has absolutely nothing to gain by sending its batteries and soldiers to serve as potential targets in Israel and much to lose. And there has been serious consideration of what the THAAD would be able to accomplish if it did wind up in the middle of a shooting war. Former CIA and State Department officer Larry Johnson describes the THAAD projectile as “a large bullet that is supposed to strike an in-bound missile and break it up. It is a kinetic weapon, i.e., it does not explode.” It is not clear why Israel, which claims to have the best air-defense system in the world, would want or need the THAAD. Beyond that, there is a logistical problem related to the system which Johnson declares to be that “As a tactical and strategic weapon, THAAD is a bust.” There are only nine THAAD launchers in the entire world. Each launcher has mounted on it eight missiles, which means if Iran fires 100 missiles 84% of them will be safe from THAAD even assuming that 100% of the THAAD projectiles from the two batteries score a direct hit. Reloading the system is also complicated and there is a supply problem. Lockheed Martin apparently built only 1,000 missiles for this system which would mean that there will not be a lot of spare parts sitting around in a warehouse in Israel waiting to be sent to the front. Another point not to be ignored is that each missile costs $12.6 million, not exactly cheap ammunition.

There are a number of other factors that might be in play leading to the deployment. Johnson observes that the White House has been negotiating with Netanyahu over possible plans to attack Iran. He believes that it might be “A tangible gesture of support for Israel by the Biden Administration, [which] may be playing a desperation card in order to persuade Israel not to attack Iran.” Some observers note, however, that such a reckless plan relying on good decisions being made by a nuclear armed Israel might go wrong in a number of ways and become a formula for initiating World War 3, which would certainly kill millions of people. At the same time, it is useful to consider what might be achieved by the introduction of the battery and soldiers into an extremely volatile situation as they alone could not deter or even significantly blunt a major Iranian attack. So what is the motive? And what other elements are playing into the decision? And how does the leak of a Top Secret codeword protected US government document exposing the Israeli secret nuclear arsenal and describing possible Israel preparations for a pending Israeli attack on Iran mean?

Even though time is running out, The Washington Post is reporting that Israel has already decided to attack military sites in Iran before the US election. There is some discussion apparently still going on over whether targeting by Israel (possibly joined by the US) will include oil fields and refineries as well as underground nuclear research sites. Having Washington as a partner in the enterprise is just what Netanyahu wants as initiating a new conflict with Iran will invite Tehran’s retaliation, possibly killing the US military personnel inside Israel, and bingo the US will be at war fighting for Israel, which is something that Biden might actually be trying to avoid at least until the US election is over. That is why he, completely out of character, also warned Israel by way of a letter on October 13th that he would give Israel 30 days to undo the blockade of food and medicine going into Gaza, which is causing mass starvation, on humanitarian grounds or he would consider an embargo on some arms being illegally provided to the Jewish state. It did not take much profound analysis of the statement to realize that 30 days will be after the US election and, no matter who wins, it will not be necessary to do anything to punish Israel. The statement is essentially phony and is all about the election. In fact, as a majority of Democratic Party voters oppose Biden/Kamala’s support of what Israel is doing to the Gazans and Lebanese, it might be intended influence the outcome of a close election.

Which leaves us with the TS document that allegedly exposes elements in the Israeli plan of attack. Who leaked it and why? U.S. officials are scrambling to determine how two leaked, highly US classified documents conveying potential Israeli plans to attack Iran got on the Telegram app. According to the New York Times, the documents were prepared “in recent days” by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes information and images collected by America’s fleet of spy satellites.

There are several theories regarding these leaked reports. Trita Parsi, the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, opines that there are five plausible theories for what is behind the leak. The first theory posits an Iranian hacking of the servers of the US intelligence services and leaking the document as part of their psychological warfare against Israel, suggesting that they have learned Tel Aviv’s top secret war plans, possibly delaying what is intended. The second theory is that a dissident within the US government seeking to prevent or delay the war may have leaked it, but an initial internal investigation has reportedly already moved on to looking for possible outside government perpetrators, though that speculation might itself be a lie.

Third, the Biden administration may have carried out the leak itself in order to delay the Israeli attack until after the election. Biden cannot say “no” to Israel, but he might well illegally expose even top secret intelligence with the aim of confusing preparations and delaying Israel’s planned attack.

Fourth, the Israelis may have obtained or even fabricated the report and leaked it themselves with the objective of confusing Iran and inducing it to look for attackers in all the wrong places. And Five, possibly a close American ally — a Five Eyes state (FVEY) or a NATO ally with access to FVEY intelligence — might have leaked it, suggesting that a friendly country’s government might be so frustrated with Biden’s unwillingness to “stop Netanyahu from starting the largest war in the Middle East since World War II that they are taking matters into their own hands to sabotage Netanyahu’s escalation plan.”

When it comes to THAADs or no THAADs or leaks of top-secret intelligence, the Democrats would like to do whatever it takes to establish a narrative that will help them stay in power. That would include creeping dangerously close to getting involved in what might develop into a major war by blindly adhering to the blandishments of one notably rogue nation to help destroy another nation that in no way threatens the United States. Then the White House and State Department will lie about it all, as will Israel, to cover up what the true intentions and motives of the various players were. That will be the sleight of hands that will be playing out in the next few days. Where is the truth? The truth might itself turn out to be a lie!

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

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: President Joe Biden participates in a restricted bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Hotel Kempinski in Tel Aviv, Israel, Wednesday, October 18, 2023. (Official White House Photo by Cameron Smith)

BRICS 2024: Building a New World. Manlio Dinucci

October 28th, 2024 by Manlio Dinucci

The 16th BRICS Summit, chaired by Russia and held in Kazan, capital of the Republic of Tatarstan, was attended by 35 countries and 6 international organisations. The acronym BRICS comes from the initials of the group’s five founding members: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.

In 2024, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates joined BRICS, which became BRICS+’BRICS PLUS’. By the time of the 16th Forum, some 30 countries – including Algeria, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Venezuela, Pakistan, Malaysia, Azerbaijan and Turkey – had applied for membership.

The 10 BRICS + countries account for more than 46% of the world’s population, in fact about half considering their high population growth rate. By comparison, the G7 (US, Canada, UK, Germany, France, Italy, Japan) represent less than 10% of the world’s population. In 1992, the combined GDP of the G7 countries accounted for more than 45% of world GDP, while the combined GDP of the five countries that would later join the BRICS (in 2009-2011) accounted for 16%. By 2023, BRICS’ share exceeds 35%, while G7’s falls to 29%. The gap will continue to widen. By the end of 2024, the BRICS are expected to grow by 4% on average, higher than the G7’s 1.7%. The BRICS account for about a quarter of global merchandise exports and some dominate key markets such as energy resources, metals and food.

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16th BRICS Summit. Joint photo opportunities for BRICS heads of delegation

President of China Xi Jinping, center left, and President of Russia Vladimir Putin during a group photo ceremony for the BRICS leaders during the 16th BRICS Summit. (By Sergey Bobylev / Source: Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)

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The New Development Bank is becoming a major investor in the largest technology and infrastructure projects in the BRICS region. In this region, where the dollar and the euro used to dominate international transactions, the share of national currencies has risen to 65%. The share of the dollar and the euro has fallen below 30%.

At the same time, the BRICS are building a vast infrastructure network: the Northern Sea Route and North-South Transport Corridor, which Russia opened after NATO and the EU blocked transit routes to the West; the Russia-Mongolia-China Road and Rail Economic Corridor; the New Silk Road from China to Europe; and many others in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

“In Kazan,” President Putin said at the press conference at the end of the summit, “we reaffirmed that BRICS is not a closed format. It is open to all those who share its values. The members of the group are ready to work on common solutions without external impositions or attempts to impose narrow approaches on anyone. BRICS must respond to the growing demand for cooperation in the world. Accordingly, we have paid special attention to the issue of possible expanding BRICS by creating a new category called “Partner States”.

The Western view is diametrically opposed. Emblematic is the alarm expressed by the Foreign Policy Research Institute, an influential US think-tank:

“If the US does not act, the BRICS are likely to grow in strength, align their foreign policies against US interests, and have the potential to disrupt the global order that has so far averted major conflicts.”

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

This article was originally published in Italian on Grandangolo, Byoblu TV.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image: The plenary session of the Outreach/BRICS Plus meeting. (By Alexei Danichev / Photohost agency brics-russia2024.ru)