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The first three were the direct result of US intelligence agencies’ anti-Russian information warfare campaign and attendant political weaponization of the false perceptions that were instilled in the minds of the European elite. The last two then built upon the preceding progress to geostrategically re-engineer the continent via a clever divide-and-rule system that’s upheld by the Damocles’ sword of catalyzing cascading crises across Africa that would inevitably spill into Europe as punishment if the US’ vassals ever dare to seriously rebel.

The successful reassertion of the US’ previously declining unipolar hegemony over Europe was one of the most important developments of the past year. The objectivity of this assessment is evidenced by Director General of the prestigious Russian International Affairs Council Andrey Kortunov extensively elaborating on that trend in his report about “A New Western Cohesion and World Order” that he published in late September. It’s worth reading for those who aren’t yet familiar with his thoughts.

The present piece won’t rehash that esteemed expert’s insight, but build upon it in the geostrategic direction. The overarching trend that Kortunov devoted considerable time to investigating has some additional facets that he either glossed over or completely missed in his report. This analysis will therefore aim to correct those shortcomings, while humbly acknowledging that it too is far from comprehensive and admittedly overlooks some details as well.

What follows are the five ways that the US successfully reasserted its hegemony over Europe in 2022. These factors contributed to the past year being transformational for Russian grand strategy since they forced the Kremlin to decisively oppose the US-led West’s Golden Billion after realizing that any potential rapprochement with this de facto New Cold War bloc was now impossible even if it undertook some pragmatic compromises to that end. Here’s how the US made this outcome inevitable:

1. Influence Networks & Values Were Exploited To Decouple The EU From Russia

American intelligence agencies leveraged their deeply embedded influence networks across the continent to coerce the EU into unilaterally conceding on its objective national (and especially economic) interests vis-à-vis Russia. In pursuit of this, they also exploited nebulous notions of so-called “Western values” in order to falsely present Russia’s special operation not as a military campaign in defense of its national security red lines, but as supposedly being an existential threat to the West.

2. Liberal Totalitarianism Was Weaponized As A “Self-Defensive” Reaction To Russia

The totalitarian tilt inherent in the liberal-globalist ideology that proliferated across the EU since the end of the Old Cold War was weaponized by the US to make that bloc’s decoupling from Russia irreversible. American perception managers provoked its most fascist manifestations such as rampant Russophobia into finally coming to the surface on the false pretext of being required to “defend Western values” from so-called “Russian subversion”, which resulted in irreconcilable differences between those two.

3. The World War II Mindset Was Manipulated To Entrench The EU’s Newfound Vassalhood

Upon being led by the preceding two developments into considering Russia to be a World War II-like existential threat, the EU was easily manipulated into surrendering its sovereignty to the US on the false basis that failing to do so would result in the “New Hitler” steamrolling them after Ukraine. Granting America control of their military policies saw it demanding that Europeans indefinitely make sacrifices for the “war effort”, which in practice led to them subordinating their economies to the US’ too.

4. The US-Provoked “Friendly Competition” Between Europeans Keeps Them Divided

Europe’s preexisting centralization trend was unprecedentedly accelerated in the face of the falsely presented “Russian threat”, but the US cleverly provoked “friendly competition” between its vassals as part of their “shared war effort” to ensure that they remain divided and never unite against it. This saw it encouraging a rivalry between Germany and Poland over leadership of Central & Eastern Europe (CEE), which is expected to be indefinitely maintained for divide-and-rule purposes by its UK “junior partner”.

5. Africa’s Artificially Manufactured Food & Fuel Crises Are Wielded As A Damocles’ Sword

The West’s anti-Russian sanctions artificially manufactured Africa’s food and fuel crises that otherwise would never have materialized but have subsequently been wielded by this de facto New Cold War bloc’s US leader as a Damocles’ sword over its EU vassals. In the worst-case scenario that they ever seriously rebel, America will exacerbate these systemic crises for the purpose of provoking unparalleled political unrest in Africa that’ll inevitably result in a crippling wave of uncontrollable migration to the EU.

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The five developments mentioned above add credence to Kortunov’s conclusion that the US has indeed successfully reasserted its previously declining unipolar hegemony over Europe across the past year, which represents one of the most globally significant trends of 2022. The first three were the direct result of its intelligence agencies’ anti-Russian information warfare campaign and attendant political weaponization of the false perceptions that were instilled in the minds of the European elite.

The last two built upon the preceding progress to geostrategically re-engineer the continent via a clever divide-and-rule system that’s upheld by the Damocles’ sword of catalyzing cascading crises across Africa that would inevitably spill into Europe as punishment if the US’ vassals ever dare to seriously rebel. The latter likely won’t be necessary though since the former “division of labor” driven by the US’ manipulation of Europeans’ World War II mindset has proven sufficient for keeping them under control.

Looking forward, the US is expected to exploit its restored hegemony over the EU in order to give itself an edge over China in their ongoing talks on a New Détente. It’ll threaten to have the bloc impose Russian-like maximum sanctions against the People’s Republic on an equally manipulated values-driven basis if China doesn’t concede on its security interests in the Asia-Pacific. This scenario shouldn’t be taken lightly since the US already got the EU to sacrifice its economic interests vis-à-vis Russia.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Andrew Korybko’s Newsletter.

Andrew Korybko is an American Moscow-based political analyst specializing in the relationship between the US strategy in Afro-Eurasia, China’s One Belt One Road global vision of New Silk Road connectivity, and Hybrid Warfare. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Henry Kissinger Warns Against New World War

December 28th, 2022 by Marc Vandepitte

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***

War fever has strongly affected thinking about the conflict in Ukraine. US Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger warns that this could lead to another dangerous global conflict. In a recently published notable article, he calls for rapid negotiations and urges politicians to develop a strong vision and political courage.

When it comes to foreign policy, Henry Kissinger is one of the most important voices in the US. For many years he was national security adviser. He also served as Secretary of State under the Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. In the early 1970s, he masterminded the rapprochement between the US and China in order to isolate and weaken the then Soviet Union.

The 99-year-old Kissinger is not a wimp. He was directly involved in the 1973 coup in Chile and also in the extremely brutal Vietnam War.

Call for rapid peace negotiations

On December 17, he wrote a remarkable article for the British magazine Spectator. In it, he calls for a quick end to the fighting and for peace negotiations. Otherwise, he fears there will be a new world war.

He notes that Ukraine has had a number of successes in its defence against Russia. “Ukraine has acquired one of the largest and most effective land armies in Europe [through this war], equipped by the US and its allies.” The country has also become de facto integrated into NATO and therefore “neutrality is no longer meaningful”.

That is why, according to Kissinger, it is time for the West to turn those successes into political realities.

“The time is approaching to build on the strategic changes which have already been accomplished and to integrate them into a new structure towards achieving peace through negotiation.”

Such a peace process should, on the one hand, cash in on successes and “confirm the freedom of Ukraine”. On the other hand, we must “define a new international security structure for Central and Eastern Europe” in which Russia “should find a place”.

Kissinger calls for a cease-fire along the borders where the war began on Feb. 24. “Russia would disgorge its conquests thence, but not the territory it occupied nearly a decade ago, including Crimea. That territory could be the subject of a negotiation after a ceasefire.”

If no agreement can be reached on the pre-war dividing line, then

“recourse to the principle of self-determination could be explored. Internationally supervised referendums concerning self-determination could be applied to particularly divisive territories which have changed hands repeatedly over the centuries.”

Frivolous belligerence

Kissinger calls the idea which prevails in some warmongering circles of defeating Russia militarily and then splitting it up unwise, frivolous and dangerous.

“The preferred outcome for some is a Russia rendered impotent by the war. I disagree. For all its propensity to violence, Russia has made decisive contributions to the global equilibrium and to the balance of power for over half a millennium. Its historical role should not be degraded.”

A “dissolution of Russia” or a total weakening could turn the largest country in the world “into a contested vacuum”. Given the large number of nuclear weapons, the result would be an extremely dangerous powder keg, where other countries “might seek to expand their claims by force”.

Moreover, such a defeat is far from obvious. Russia’s military setbacks “have not eliminated its global nuclear reach, enabling it to threaten escalation in Ukraine”. Or as they say in Dutch: ‘a cornered cat can make strange jumps.

Motives

There are two motives that make Kissinger advocate peace negotiations. On a strategic level, he thinks the US and the West are overplaying their hand in this conflict. Not only is weakening Russia not an option, by escalating this conflict, the West risks driving Russia into the hands of China, creating a powerful enemy.

In The Wall Street Journal of August 12, he says:

“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to”.

He argues that the US can better control two such enemies by triangulating between them, as happened under President Nixon. He offers no simple prescription: “You can’t just now say we’re going to split them off and turn them against each other. All you can do is not to accelerate the tensions and to create options.”

On a tactical level, Kissinger wants quick negotiations to preserve the territorial gains made on the battlefield as much as possible. According to The Economist, Ukraine is running out of ammunition for its anti-aircraft systems and needs better missile defence systems. It will probably be months before the promised and much more effective Patriot missiles from the US are operational.

Meanwhile, Russia is preparing for a new offensive. Possibly as early as January, Russian troops could launch a major attack. In doing so, they would try to drive back the Ukrainian army and could even make a second attempt to take the capital Kiev. That may be why Kissinger advocates getting to the negotiating table as soon as possible.

Judging by the current war rhetoric of Ukrainian President Zelensky, peace negotiations stand little chance at the moment. But in every war, there is a great gulf between propaganda and reality. Behind the scenes, the US government, Ukrainian officials and other Western allies have been having quiet conversations about what a diplomatic solution could ultimately look like.[i]

Kissinger is unaffected by the war fever surrounding this conflict. He appeals to common sense and calls on politicians to develop a strong vision and muster political courage:

“The quest for peace and order has two components that are sometimes treated as contradictory: the pursuit of elements of security and the requirement for acts of reconciliation. If we cannot achieve both, we will not be able to reach either. The road of diplomacy may appear complicated and frustrating. But progress to it requires both the vision and the courage to undertake the journey.”

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Marc Vandepitte is a Belgian economist and philosopher. He writes on North-South relations, Latin America, Cuba, and China. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Note

[i] Financial Times, 22 december 2022, p. 2.

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Nuclear Bomb Connection in United States Fusion Breakthrough

December 28th, 2022 by Prabir Purkayastha

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***

The Lawrence Livermore Laboratory’s advance in achieving fusion energy using lasers has been splashed as a huge success worldwide. So what is the success all about? The joint press release of the United States Department of Energy and the National Nuclear Security Administration says this experiment “will pave the way for advancements in national defence and the future of clean power”. In other words, there is a weapons component to the fusion experiment. The Department of Defence is the Department of War.

Talking to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Prof Richard Rosner of the University of Chicago, a former director of the Argonne National Laboratory, explained that the experiment’s primary purpose was to test the health of the nuclear weapons stockpile without conducting an actual explosion. The controlled fusion experiment was a real-life test of a laser system. It showed it is possible to ignite hydrogen (in this experiment, a mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium) using lasers to produce a little more energy—therefore, a net gain—than the lasers supplied. However, if we take into account the energy required to produce the 192 laser beams, then, alas, the experiment is still very far away from a net gain. The possibility of viable fusion energy production using lasers is at least a few decades away. It is as good as saying we do not know when—or if at all—the production of fusion energy will be viable.

But why was this experiment required, as the press release says, for advancements in national defence?

The Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty was originally thought to be an intermediate step towards total disarmament. Initially, the maintenance of complex equipment—the thermonuclear nuclear warhead—was done by replacing faulty parts from other disassembled bombs. It may still be possible to continue on this path if all disassembled bomb parts are kept in the inventory or if a few parts are manufactured, even at a high cost. But the question remained: what about the health of the fissile material itself? How long would it stay stable and usable?

The task of the “stockpile stewardship” program of the United States government-owned National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) was to ensure the “health” of the bombs without conducting physical tests. The just-conducted test at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratories ensures that nuclear materials are still functional: take a few samples from the stockpiled bombs, ignite them using the complex 192-laser system it has built, and see whether the outputs are as expected. If yes, the stockpile is still of “healthy” hydrogen bombs. No physical tests are necessary, and the “crown jewels”—this is what Colin Powell called them—of the United States armoury are still as potent as ever! It also ensures that people handling such complex tests really know what they are doing.

The NNSA funds the team that worked on the laser project at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory. This one and the Los Alamos Laboratory are the two biggest weapons research laboratories in the United States. In other words, the funding for the Lawrence Livermore experiment came from the stewardship program of the NNSA, which looks after the health of the nuclear bomb stockpile that the United States maintains.

How much does the ageing stockpile of nuclear weapons cost the United States? Daniel Gross tells us that upkeep—storage, protection, and maintenance—requires about $20 billion annually, nearly three times the National Science Foundation’s budget.

Apart from its primary purpose of checking out the health of the hydrogen bomb stockpile, does the Lawrence Livermore laser experiment have a significant spin-off in terms of fusion energy? Indeed, there have been several military-to-civilian transfers in the past. So why does this not herald a possibility of plentiful fusion energy and, therefore, a move away from fossil fuels and global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions? The simple issue of time is crucial here. If we do not cut emissions drastically in the next 10 to 20 years, the window to reduce greenhouse emissions, so that the temperature rise can be limited to 2 degrees Celsius, will close. We no longer have the luxury of time. Therefore, anything that happens at least two decades in the future will no longer be relevant in limiting global warming.

So let us forget fusion energy with respect to global warming. But can fusion be a source of grid energy? If not stop or slow down global warming, can it be a long-term, plentiful energy source?

Leaving out the easy answer—we already use fusion energy since solar energy arises from the fusion in the sun—yes, it is a possible source. But then we must address two other questions. One is a science-technology question: what processes do we use to produce more energy output than we must spend as input? And two, what will achieving this cost us? Always, it is the technologists who ask the second question, ‘OK, it works, but at what cost?’ Is it cheaper or at least comparable to other technologies?

The science component is the easy one to answer. As Prof Richard Rosner says in an interview with the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, we solved this problem long back. The hydrogen bomb uses a fission device—a miniature atom bomb—as the trigger, which causes fusion in the hydrogen envelope that surrounds the trigger, initiating nuclear fusion. To quote Rosner, “So we have known how to fuse hydrogen and release energy for a long time—in 1952, we exploded the first thermonuclear device, whose detonation was largely the result of hydrogen fusion. So we’ve known how to do that for a very, very long time.” Lawrence Livermore Laboratory has achieved the same but under controlled conditions.

But is it even the first instance of controlled fusion? No, other facilities have achieved it, too, using the electromagnetic compression of hydrogen in what are called Tokamaks. In a few cases, the fusion lasted much longer. New in the Lawrence Livermore experiment is more energy output than input from the lasers—hence the “net gain”. But the energy needed to produce the 192 laser bombs that compressed a tiny capsule containing a mixture of deuterium and tritium would be about a hundred times more than what the lasers supplied to the capsule.

Leave out the question of energy involved in firing the lasers. Consider what scaling up we require to make laser-firing hydrogen a viable energy source. The answer is quite depressing. To cite Rosner again, we will need to fire such laser beams ten times per second and a million pellets/capsules per day before we can say the process is viable. And this is before accounting for the cost of the process and whether it can become economically viable.

Are there better alternatives to creating fusion energy than laser beams? In the Tokamaks, a fuel consisting of a mixture of hydrogen isotopes is compressed with electromagnetic forces that lead to fusion. This has been tried out in various institutions. At the moment, the Chinese experiment, called EAST, appears to be in the lead, followed by JET, the European Tokamak. The ITER Tokamak, an international project in which India is a partner, is scheduled to come on stream by 2025. But it plans to produce sustained fusion energy output ten times the input, using deuterium and tritium, only by 2035. Still, it will not produce electricity, as that is a well-known technology with no new research component.

Why do we find it so challenging to produce fusion energy when the stars, including our sun, do it so easily? The answer is that the enormous gravitational force of the sun compresses hydrogen far more easily than we can. The problem here on earth is compressing hydrogen isotopes without such a gravitational force. That is why we need lasers or electromagnetic forces to do what gravitational force easily does for stars. Second, we need alternates to fossil energy here and now. As I have written previously, the challenges are storing the energy generated from renewable sources like the sun on the grid and switching to mass public transport to make the energy transition we urgently need. It is not solving the far more difficult problem of creating mini-suns here on earth.

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In September, the U.S. created a foundation that was supposed to unfreeze Afghanistan’s foreign assets. Yet, interviews with trustees reveal that, in three months, no funds have been disbursed—or concrete plans made—to help the Afghan people.

The Taliban seized power in Afghanistan in August 2021 and, in response, Europe, the United Arab Emirates and the United States froze the Afghan central bank’s roughly $9 billion in foreign assets — $7 billion of which was under control of the United States.

Without access to these funds — alongside a lattice of sanctions, a decline in humanitarian aid and harsh political turmoil under Taliban rule — Afghanistan has been led into an economic collapse with a dramatic uptick in poverty; 6 million Afghans are facing the immediate risk of starvation. According to calculations from the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), a left-leaning think tank, U.S. sanctions on Afghanistan (including the freezing of these central bank assets) could kill more people than 20 years of U.S. war and occupation.

In September, the Biden administration placed half of the U.S.-controlled assets into a private foundation, trusteed by just four people, ​to be used for the benefit of the people of Afghanistan while keeping them out of the hands of the Taliban and other malign actors,” according to a joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State.

But interviews with two of those four trustees reveal that no funds have yet been disbursed to help the Afghan people and there are no policies in place to do so immediately. One trustee underscored that it is unlikely the foundation will be a vehicle to quickly return the assets to Afghanistan’s central bank while the Taliban is maintaining oppressive rule.

This lack of progress raises concerns that the Biden administration is on course to worsen the rapidly spiraling humanitarian crisis. ​Who pays the price,” asks Basir Bita, an Afghan activist who works with the Afghan refugee community in Canada and who has family in Afghanistan, ​for the U.S. freezing the funds? The public. The people who live in Afghanistan.”

Creation of a foundation

The United States froze the Afghan central bank’s assets amid public outcry over the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Biden administration depicted the move as a refusal to legitimize Taliban rule.

Yet, according to Andrés Arauz, a senior research fellow at the CEPR,

The reality is that central banks don’t just hold government money — they also and mostly hold commercial banks’ money. They are not only banks of governments; they are also banks of banks. It was important for the working of Afghanistan’s financial system, and therefore its economy, that their banks have access to money that was seized by the United States.”

The freezing of the assets plunged Afghanistan into a liquidity crisis, in which people are unable to access their cash and perform essential transactions. Alongside the liquidity crisis is hyper-inflation, which has worsened the acute and widespread problem of hunger. Between June 2021 and July 2022, the price of wheat flour in Afghanistan skyrocketed 68% and cooking oil jumped 55%, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross. Seventy percent of homes are ​unable to meet basic food and non-food needs,” the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warned in June. Reports have emerged of Afghans selling their daughters, and their kidneys, in an effort to survive hunger and rising debt.

Citing the deepening catastrophe, some activists and lawmakers have been calling for the Biden administration to take a less collectively punitive approach and return the assets to Afghanistan’s central bank. In January, the New York Times editorial board published an op-ed warning against a policy of letting the Afghan central bank fall apart, titled, ​Let Innocent Afghans Have Their Money.”

In the midst of all of this, in February, the Biden administration issued an executive order to set aside $3.5 billion of the U.S.-held central bank assets for victims of the attacks of September 11, 2001 (though lawyers and lobbyists stand to profit handsomely). This move was widely criticized by United Nations experts and some 9/11 families for its disastrous humanitarian consequences for Afghans.

On September 14, the U.S. departments of Treasury and State announced the other half of the U.S.-controlled reserves of the Afghan central bank — another $3.5 billion — would be placed under the control of a Swiss foundation called the Afghan Fund. The Afghan Fund would ​maintain its account” with the Bank for International Settlements, which is a global financial institution, based in Switzerland, that provides banking services for central banks.

According to a statement from the Bank for International Settlements, its role ​is limited to providing banking services” and it plays no part in the decision-making of the Afghan Fund.

In the short term, the Afghan Fund’s board of trustees ​will have the ability to authorize targeted disbursements to promote monetary and macroeconomic stability and benefit the Afghan people,” according to the joint statement from Treasury and State. The foundation could, for example, use the assets to pay for ​critical imports like electricity,” or to pay for ​Afghanistan’s arrears at international financial institutions to preserve their eligibility for financial support.” The Afghan Fund’s long-term goal is to return the funds to the Afghan central bank, but only if key assessments and ​counter-terrorism” controls are implemented, the statement indicates.

Some activists and members of the U.S. Congress cautiously supported the creation of the Afghan Fund, hoping it marked a step toward the United States unfreezing the assets.

The fund has the potential to create a vital pathway to a functioning financial system, returning desperately needed assets to Afghanistan that could alleviate major price spikes of food and other essentials,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wrote in a September 15 statement.

The press coverage surrounding the Afghan Fund intimated a major unlocking of the assets could be just around the corner. ​Setting up the new fund will enable the funds to flow quickly,” Kylie Atwood wrote for CNN.

But now, three months later, no money has been distributed and two of the Afghan Fund’s trustees say there is no immediate plan to return assets to the Afghan central bank.

Four trustees

The Afghan Fund has four trustees who make its decisions. Of the two born in Afghanistan, the first is Anwar-ul-Haq Ahady, former head of the Afghan central bank and Afghanistan’s former minister of finance. The second is Shah Mehrabi, a professor at Montgomery College in Maryland, who also serves on the Afghan central bank’s Supreme Council.

Mehrabi and Ahady each confirmed to Workday Magazine and In These Times that, in the three months since it was created, the Afghan Fund has not disbursed any funds — neither directly to the Afghan central bank, nor to meet any immediate needs for economic stabilization — and has no immediate plans to make significant disbursements to the central bank.

At the first meeting of the Afghan Fund trustees in Geneva on November 21, ​potential disbursement issues were addressed but no policy and procedures or options were elaborated or finalized,” Mehrabi explains. There is another meeting scheduled for January, he says, but ​release of these funds to the central bank most likely will not occur in January.” Ahady confirmed the Afghan Fund has not yet reached agreement on a policy to disburse funds.

According to Mehrabi and Ahady, among the trustees at the November 21 meeting was Andrew Baukol, the U.S. Treasury’s acting undersecretary for international affairs, who replaced Scott Miller, U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, as a trustee. (The U.S. Embassy in Switzerland confirmed that Miller had been replaced, and ​the U.S. representative is now based at Treasury.”) The swap-in of Baukol, who has also worked in the CIA and the U.S. office of the International Monetary Fund, suggests a larger role for the Treasury Department.

The fourth trustee is Alexandra Baumann, a Swiss foreign ministry official.

For any decision to go through, it must have the unanimous backing of the foundation’s four trustees, Ahady explains. Given the Treasury Department’s representation, ​If the U.S. government disagrees, no decision will be made,” he says.

Mehrabi’s position on the board was a win for advocates of unfreezing the Afghan central bank funds, as he is an outspoken proponent of unlocking the assets and restoring them to the central bank. Mehrabi explains over WhatsApp that he would like to see a ​limited, monitored release” of funds to the Afghan central bank, ranging from $80 million to $100 million per month, ​depending on the demand and stabilization of currency and stable prices.” (He has previously called for $150 million a month.)

Mehrabi’s proposal is relatively moderate compared with others who have issued less qualified calls to fully unfreeze the Afghan central bank assets and revive the institution. But for those who are anxious to welcome any amount of disbursement to Afghanistan’s central bank, Mehrabi stands out for supporting the direct flow of funds.

When asked whether other trustees agree the funds should be returned to the Afghan central bank, Mehrabi replies, ​The issue of disbursement has not been fully discussed yet and finalized.”

A Treasury Department readout from the November 21 meeting says the trustees of the Afghan Fund agreed on operational matters, like ​hiring an external auditor” and ​developing compliance controls and foundational corporate governance documents.” But the readout contains no mention of what will happen with the actual assets.

When asked about the prospect of unlocking the assets for the Afghan central bank, Mehrabi explains: ​The U.S. government’s position has been not to release funds to the central bank unless capacity building and AML/CFT issues [anti-money laundering and counter-financing control measures] are resolved. How long will this take? There is an immediate need to tackle higher prices that people are suffering from, and lack of funds has prevented businesses from paying for imports. If funds are not released soon, the suffering of Afghans will continue.”

Ahady says over the phone that, due to the position of the United States, the Afghan Fund will be unlikely to return any significant portion of the assets to the Afghan central bank while the Taliban ​is declining U.S. requests for more inclusive government and women’s rights.”

Some funds may be disbursed for key items that circumvent the central bank in the public interest, Ahady says, such as printing new bank notes or passports. But the primary purpose of the Afghan Fund ​is really to keep this money so that, one day, when the situation becomes normal, this is the capital of the Afghan central bank. So at least the central bank will have capital to work with. So the main idea is not so much disbursement, unless it’s strictly needed, but to manage the fund that’s under sanction.”

Ahady declined to comment on whether he supports this orientation to the frozen assets.

Such an approach would differ from the standards laid out in the joint statement from the departments of Treasury and State, which highlights three conditions for unfreezing the assets: that the central bank ​demonstrates its independence from political influence and interference”; ​demonstrates it has instituted adequate anti-money laundering and countering-the-financing-of-terrorism (AML/CFT) controls”; and ​completes a third-party needs assessment and onboards a reputable third-party monitor.”

According to Cavan Kharrazian, a progressive foreign policy advocate for Demand Progress, any delay will most greatly harm those who are already vulnerable and oppressed under Taliban rule. ​For the foreseeable future, the Taliban will be in charge of the government of Afghanistan,” Kharrazian says. ​While they have a deplorable human rights record, especially towards women, there is also a severe economic and humanitarian crisis in the country that needs immediate attention. This crisis affects the most vulnerable segments of society the worst.”

Kharrazian adds: ​The U.S. just spent 20 years and trillions of dollars attempting to eradicate and replace the Taliban and its oppressive rule. It didn’t work. But the U.S. does have the ability to facilitate the unfreezing of funds that can benefit millions of people facing humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan.”

Afghan activist Bita implores that ​the funds need to be released right now, because people are struggling. So many people lost their lives, so many people sold their kids on the streets, so many forced their daughters to marry a man because of the economic situation. So it has to be right now.”

Arauz, from the CEPR, says it would be a profound mistake on the part of the United States to withhold assets from the Afghan central bank in order to punish the Taliban. ​The central bank funds are not government funds,” he emphasizes. ​They are commingled with commercial banks’ funds, which ultimately belong to depositors, which are human beings and businesses. It would not be returning the funds to the Taliban — it would be returning funds to the commercial system and depositors of the Afghan economy.”

The clock is ticking and activists warn that each day without the unfreezing of the funds brings more hardship for Afghans. ​When the fund was created, every major humanitarian institution, the United Nations, etc., were already pretty clear that the whole country faced a giant humanitarian crisis that needed to be addressed as soon as possible,” Kharrazian says. ​There was already a sense of urgency.

They’ve waited three months to deliberate over sending small portions over what should have been fully unfrozen funds. If it was urgent in September, it’s especially urgent now, with winter arriving.”

Ahady’s position is that unlocking the Afghan central bank assets would not be a magic wand. He says that ​the objective of sanctions is to make things difficult, and have these sanctions contributed to the slowdown of economic activities in Afghanistan? Yes.” But, he contends, a number of factors are to blame, including dependency on foreign assistance, the imposition of sanctions, and poor economic management. ​I think that, even if the U.S. government were to release this fund, this is not going to solve Afghanistan’s economic problems,” he says. ​It might help a little bit. Just a little bit.”

Afghan Fund trustee Baumann did not respond to a request for an interview, but she has emphasized caution in previous statements to the press. ​The [Afghan central bank], in its current form, is not a fit place for this money,” she said in an October article from SWI swiss​in​fo​.ch, a media service of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation. ​We do not have any guarantee that if the money goes back right now that it will be effectively used for the benefit of the Afghan people.”

The U.S. Treasury Department also did not return a request for comment.

With no clear timetable for disbursing funds, Erik Sperling, executive director of advocacy organization Just Foreign Policy, expresses frustration. ​Given U.S. Treasury’s continued veto and dominance over the Swiss Fund,” he says, ​U.S. officials like Janet Yellen, Adewale O. Adeyemo and, ultimately, President Biden are responsible for destroying [the Afghan] economy and knowingly plunging tens of millions of Afghans into crisis.”

According to Bita, ​The way the U.S. government has taken hostage of the funds — that is one way of dehumanizing the people of Afghanistan.”

With this money,” Bita adds, ​you could save the lives of so many people.”

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Sarah Lazare is the editor of Workday Magazine and a contributing editor for In These Times. She tweets at @sarahlazare.

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In my humble opinion the surfacing of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in Washington last week was possibly the most disgusting example of the corruption of our country and its values since Israeli President Benjamin Netanyahu arranged for a similar invitation to address a rapturous Congress back in 2015. Zelensky’s “surprise” visit had in fact been arranged over the course of several months and was a carefully choreographed performance intended to pay political dividends for both the White House, for the Democratic Party in Congress and for Zelensky and his political supporters at home.

He met privately with President Joe Biden in the White House, where he presumably received most of what he was seeking as well as a pledge of total support until “Ukraine wins.” He subsequently was invited to address a Joint Session of Congress, a privilege that was most definitely not arranged at short notice, with House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi predictably calling on all Congressmen to attend. The session began with a three minute standing ovation from the assembled Representatives and Senators.

So the creepy little con-man was enabled to have his say in a video link that reached a global audience. That it consisted of a gaggle of lies to justify the rapid passage of hundreds of billions of dollars from the struggling American taxpayer to a nation renowned only for its reputation as the most corrupt in Europe was not noted by the audience. As it has been from the start Joe Biden’s war, it is inevitable that the Democrats in Congress should leap around and fill the chamber with cheers every time Zelensky opened his mouth to emit yet another inanity.

But to their shame, many Republicans joined in on the celebration of the odd diminutive man Zelensky, whose beatification was passionately embraced by the national media to make sure no one missed out on the importance of the event. The New York Times report on the visit began by describing Zelensky’s status as “a national hero and global superstar, having forged a leadership style blending personal daring with deft messaging to rally his people at home and his allies abroad.” In part, that message included describing his struggle as engaging in a battle pitting “good against evil.”

Image: President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

Nevertheless, those Republicans whose heads were not wedged up their keesters did boycott the event, to the tune of only 86 out of 213 being present. It seems that some Republicans are against the war generally speaking while others actually believe that the billions going to Ukraine should be audited to determine whether it is being stolen or not. Congressmen Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert attended but played with their cell phones and did not rise and applaud the stirring rhetoric coming from Zelensky, who was basically seeking many new weapons and lots more money justified not as “charity” but as an “investment” so he and Ukraine could work to bring rule of law, global security, democracy and freedom to the world. In the aftermath, one particularly delusional commentator has enthused how

“There can be no more compelling or effective leader of the democratic free world today than Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Fate has called upon him to rise to a level of courage and clarity few figures in history have demonstrated.”

In his speech, Zelensky clearly forgot to mention how he has eliminated freedom of speech and association in his own country as part of his war agenda, while also banning opposition parties and media and even harassing the Russian Orthodox Church. But the tweetosphere inevitably ignored those issues and erupted instead over the alleged bad behavior by some Republicans in not supporting such a great leader. One Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC), who is the anointed NBC television network’s Presidential Historian, tweeted, “For any members of Congress who refused to clap for Zelenskyy, we need to know from them exactly why.” Independent journalist Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) responded sarcastically to Beschloss, “Haul them before a Committee and force them to pledge allegiance to Ukraine and Zelensky or else face long-term imprisonment in a supermax. Refusing to clap for a foreign leader on command is a form of treason.”

And politicians too were inevitably prone to bombastic misrepresentation. Congressman Don Beyer of Virginia tweeted how

“This disrespect is embarrassing. It embarrasses you, your constituents, the body we serve in, and our country. Huge numbers of President Zelensky’s people have been killed in a bloody war they did not seek. We must be able to debate foreign policy without mocking human suffering.”

Another lunkhead Democrat Representative Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts declared war, asserting that

“We’re in a global struggle between democracy and autocracy. And Ukraine is fighting on the frontlines of that struggle. Our support for Ukraine is sending a message to Moscow, it’s sending a message to Beijing. And it’s sending a message to other authoritarian regimes.”

Auchincloss was apparently unaware that it is the United States government that has itself become more autocratic/despotic in that it is generally accepted that the president now has extralegally assumed the authority to allow war crimes to be committed in places like Syria, Afghanistan and Libya while also torturing people to death in secret prisons. The president and his Attorney General Merrick Garland are also rooting out “domestic terrorists” who generally speaking are white people who oppose Democratic Party policies.

Clearly, neither Beyer nor Auchincloss understands that a principled “debate” on foreign policy is not taking place at all in America, largely due to the ability of their party and colleagues to manage and control the process whereby it is possible to start an illegal/unconstitutional war that just might go nuclear without any real pushback from critics or the public.

When it comes to controlling the narrative on Ukraine, the normally inept Biden Administration has unleashed the most effective propaganda machine that has ever existed, even if one is taking into consideration George W. Bush’s many lies relating to Afghanistan/Iraq. It is interesting to note that nor did Beyer find Zelensky’s macho sporting of a “wartime uniform” featuring combat style sweatshirt and fatigue cargo pants, which Tucker Carlson described as befitting the “manager of a strip club,” as disrespectful of the august body that he was addressing.

Nor was Beyer apparently affronted when Pelosi and Vice President Kamala Harris unfurled and waved a huge Ukrainian flag at the speaker’s rostrum. And speaking of Zelensky’s performance itself, one has to wonder who wrote Zelensky’s speech? He has neither the experience nor the smarts necessary to appeal to the most basic instincts of the American people, so one might rather expect that the piece was written and the presentation coached by the usual neocon handlers that have presumably surrounded him since his ascent to power.

The chinless and gutless wonder Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell made up for the lack of ardor exhibited by some of his colleagues by saying on the day before Zelensky’s arrival that arming Kiev to “defeat” Russia tops the agenda of “most Republicans.” He elaborated that

“Making sure the Defense Department can deal with the major threats coming from Russia and China, providing assistance for the Ukrainians to defeat the Russians, that’s the number one priority of the United States right now, according to most Republicans.”

Mitch calls defeating the Russians the number one priority for the United States, not the open southern border nor the economy suffering from inflation, shortages and recession. And then there is Senator he/she Lindsey Graham, who clearly endorsed that hardline in spades, calling for the “assassination of Russian President Vladimir Putin,” an act that would surely initiate World War 3.

I rather suspect that the passion unleashed for the Jewish Zelensky is at least in part engineered by the usual suspects among the politically powerful Jewish groups, lobbyists and media personalities, where criticism of Ukraine, which has a large Jewish population, is considered a capital offense. Jewish media in the US hailed the impending news of the Zelensky visit, enthusing in seasonal fashion over how “Ukraine’s survival” under Zelensky had been a “modern day Hanukkah miracle.”

Hatred of Russia (and of course Iran) is also a sine qua non among such groups and media outlets and they will twist every argument to urge US military intervention in both those countries. That is precisely what Zelensky himself does when he calls for NATO intervention even when he is the one who bombs neighboring Poland.

In the current situation, you will not find the totally “reliable” New York Times debunking the ridiculous claim that throwing hundreds of billions of dollars at Zelensky and his band of thieves is in any way related to US national security requirements. No one was threatening the United States and the war that erupted in February was clearly negotiable on two major issues: implementation of the Minsk accords of 2014-5 over autonomy for Donbas and demands for neutrality for Ukraine, i.e. no joining NATO. It was the United States that encouraged Ukraine’s abrupt tilt towards and west and refused to negotiate in any seriousness with Russia over issues that were vital to that country’s actual security.

So did the Zelensky bit of kabuki theater largely engineered by the White House and Nancy Pelosi succeed in getting everything the Ukrainians wanted? Probably not, as offensive missile systems that could be used to strike deep into Russia are still on hold, but the money and other weapons are now in the pipeline. And there surely will be more to come, certain to include US military “advisers” on the ground.

No matter how it turns out, the Ukraine is a tragedy writ large and the fools sitting complacently on Capitol Hill are largely to blame for not recognizing that US interests do not necessarily coincide with the aspirations of Volodymyr Zelensky and his fellow accomplices. Maybe in two years’ time when the whole house of cards has collapsed and Americans, feeling a great deal of economic and political pain, begin to wonder what took place, it will be time to throw all the bums out and replace them with folks who really care about what happens to this country.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected]. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Antiwar Activist Faces Repression in Germany

December 28th, 2022 by Phil Wilayto

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June 22, 2022 was the 81st anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, and a prominent German antiwar activist took the occasion to publicly question why the German government is now supporting neo-Nazi organizations in Ukraine.

As a result, that activist is now facing the possibility of up to three years in prison.

Heinrich Bücker runs Berlin’s popular Coop Antiwar Cafe, which since 2005 has been a gathering space for activists working on a wide range of issues. Since 2019 the cafe has co-organized the weekly event “Frente Unido América Latina” in front of the U.S. Embassy. He’s a member of the “Kommunistische Platform” in the party DIE LINKE; a member of the League of Anti-Fascists; and represents the U.S.-based World Beyond War in Berlin. The cafe also represents the “Aufstehen” Initiative in Berlin Mitte, backing the left politician Sahra Wagenknecht and organizing left events against sanctions and for peace.

On June 22, Bücker gave a speech at an event hosted by Berlin’s Friedenskoordination (Peace Coordination) at the Soviet War Memorial in Berlin’s Treptower Park, in which, according to a statement on the antiwar cafe’s website, he said that

“… it seems incomprehensible to me that German politics should again support the same chauvinistic and especially Russophobic ideologies on the basis of which the German Reich found willing helpers in 1941. The SS and Wehrmacht used Ukrainian national-fascist organizations as repressive and murderous squads against their own countrymen, including millions of Jewish men, women and children.”

The collaboration of ultra-nationalist Ukrainian organizations with the Nazi occupation is a matter of historical record. And, before the present war, Western mainstream media would routinely report on the existence of present-day fascist organizations in Ukraine, such as the Azov Battalion, Right Sector, National Militia, C-14 and many others. (See this)

But that coverage has now ended.

On Oct. 19, Bücker received a letter from the Berlin State Criminal Police Office notifying him that he was under investigation for possible violation of Paragraph 140 of the German Criminal Code, which has to do with disturbing the public peace. A violation of the statute can be punished by a fine or a prison sentence of up to three years. The investigation was apparently prompted by a complaint by a Berlin attorney upset about Bücker’s speech.

“In Germany, we are currently experiencing a narrowing of the space for debate and massive restrictions on freedom of expression, caused by one-sided reporting in the mainstream-media,” Bücker writes. “There are now a number of individuals who are in the focus of the German criminal investigation authorities. Similar tendencies are also reported from other EU [European Union] countries.”

The Coop Antiwar Cafe itself also has come under attack. In addition to threatening emails, the cafe’s front windows were recently smashed.

Along with his June 22 speech, Bücker also initiated a statement on the war in Ukraine that questioned the official line that it’s simply an act of unprovoked Russian aggression. Instead, the statement, posted on the cafe’s website, points to the steady eastward expansion of NATO up to the very borders of Russia, and U.S. and European support for the 2014 coup that drove out the elected president of Ukraine and brought in a right-wing government anxious to join NATO and hostile to both Russia and the country’s ethnic Russian minority.

Another reason for the police interest in Bücker could be the prominent role he has played in promoting an anti-imperialist statement on the war in Ukraine initiated by the U.S-based Odessa Solidarity Campaign, a project of the Virginia Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality. That statement, similar to the one initiated by the Coop Antiwar Cafe, has been endorsed by more than 230 organizations and individuals in 22 countries, with nearly two-thirds of the endorsers from Germany.

Meanwhile, in the United States, the African People’s Socialist Party is calling for support in the face of expected indictments of four of its leaders and prominent supporters who have been actively speaking out against U.S. support for Ukraine. The APSP is a Pan-African organization that for the past 50 years has been opposing U.S. wars at home and abroad.

In response to the police pressure, Bücker’s allies and supporters in Germany have been preparing a united defense effort. Stay tuned for new developments and calls for solidarity.

For more information on repression directed against antiwar activists and efforts to support them, see:

Coop Antiwar Cafe: http://coopcafeberlin.de

African People’s Socialist Party: https://apspuhuru.org

Odessa Solidarity Campaign: https://odessasolidaritycampaign.org

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Phil Wilayto is a longtime antiwar and social justice activist based in Richmond, Virginia. He is editor of The Virginia Defender quarterly newspaper; co-founder of the Virginia Prison Justice Network; and coordinator of the antifascist Odessa Solidarity Campaign. Wilayto is the author of several books, including “The Feeding Trough,” an investigation into the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation; “We Won’t Go Back!” an eyewitness account of the 1989 Pittston coal strike;” and “In Defense of Iran: Notes from a U.S. peace delegation’s journey through the Islamic Republic.” He can be reached at: [email protected].

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For over two decades, American families have faced an unscrupulous foe that threatens the public health and welfare. It is a rogue, unmanageable institution within our federal government, now seemingly beholden solely to private corporate interests. Citizens have been horribly mistaken in believing that the nation’s leading health agency, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), honors its mandate to protect the public from “dangerous health threats,” both domestic and foreign. We are expected to assume the CDC relies upon the most advanced and cutting-edge medical science and data to make its policy decisions. However, the agency’s history of corruption and fraud contradict its own pledge, as outlined on its website. Instead of protecting the “health security of our nation,” the CDC uses bromides and meaningless pageantry to hide its true nature.

Throughout the Covid-19 pandemic, now entering its fourth year, the fear-mongering spewed from the CDC has become virulent. It is a classic Orwellian script. Back in 2018, writing for the Foreign Policy Journal, Jeremy Hammond accused the agency of promoting disinformation about influenza statistics in order to induce fear in the public as a marketing campaign to increase vaccination rates. Moreover, the SARS-2 virus outbreak from the Wuhan laboratory has been seized upon as an opportunity to brainwash the public and reshape it into obedient livestock in order to increase the agency’s power over public health policies and vaccination compliance. Worse, this disinformation campaign has ignored everything we know so far about the efficacy and safety of the Covid-19 vaccines, especially the experimental mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer.

Unfortunately, the government has assured us that there is no public space to debate the pros and cons of these vaccines. The CDC has consistently shut down debate when its decisions are challenged.  Physicians, medical researchers, immunologists and former vaccine advocates who challenge the loose claims for vaccine safety and efficacy are frustrated and eager to publicly debate the best vaccine advocates the CDC and vaccine industry have to offer, but none will take up the challenge because the science is so clearly not on their side.

The agency consistently fails to conduct and apply any gold standard and robust review for its own medical research and ignores the best independent peer-reviewed science. In short, the agency is a mouthpiece for the pharmaceutical-industrial complex and operates for its own financial advantage, rather than for the benefit of society. Its revolving doors are kept spinning with a constant influx of pharmaceutical industry and vaccine insiders. In fact the lines separating corporate influence and public health are grossly blurred and distorted. It is no surprise that documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests paint the CDC as rotten in its core and one of the greatest health threats to the nation. The agency, in Robert Kennedy Jr’s words, is a “cesspool of corruption.”

Despite the CDC’s claims on its website that it “does not accept commercial support” and ”no financial interests or other relationships with the manufacturers of commercial products,” the British Medical Journal called out the agency for accepting funding from the pharmaceutical industry and other for-profit corporations. In 2019, this resulted in a citizens’ petition addressed to then CDC director Dr. Robert Redfield for promulgating false disclaimers and to demand greater transparency in its financial relationships. The petition charges the agency’s blatant “deception” with “misleading health professionals, consumers and others both in the United States and around the world.” Four years later the CDC’s duplicity has not only heightened but it has been increasingly wrapped in secrecy and untruths.

What you will never hear in the mainstream media is that there is another medical institution that is supposed to have been granted the responsibility to assure the CDC receives quality and reliable scientific research to use as the basis for its healthcare decisions.  The National Academy of Medicine (NAM), formerly known as the Institute of Medicine (IOM) until 2015, does not possess the CDC’s legislative clout; however, elected officials are led to believe that it represents a far superior body of scientists and researchers in their medical fields.

Founded in 1970, the Institute of Medicine falls under the charter of the National Academy of Sciences started by President Abraham Lincoln and Congress in 1863. The Academy’s purpose is to bring together the nation’s best scientific minds to advise the government on scientific matters. The IOM was founded later to provide expert advice and reliable medical research to the White House and Congressional legislators to guide their decisions, keeping them informed about the social, economic and political impacts of healthcare.

According to its principles, and unlike the CDC, NAM members deliberating on vaccine research and policies are supposed to be independent and not represent private interests. This also meant the provision of “unbiased” opinions to the CDC and NIH. Even Julie Gerberding, a former CDC director and now head of Merck’s vaccine division, recognized NAM as “an authoritative resource on medical issues, including vaccination, and a global leader in vaccine-policy development.”

However, during the past decade NAM has increasingly become simply another private, non-profit voice to support CDC policies. On one occasion the Academy rejected the proposal for a study that would compare the quality of health between children receiving the CDC’s full vaccination schedule and a second group receiving fewer vaccines.

NAM’s rationale was that it would be unethical to conduct such a study. It has also become riddled with scandals and conflicts of interest. The Project on Government Oversight has accused the Academy of gross conflicts of interest and a culture of secrecy, including its funding resources.  A 2021 investigation conducted by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests the NAM has become no different than our other federal health agencies acting on behalf of the pharmaceutical industry. The report states that the Academy has been receiving millions of dollars directly from all of the major vaccine manufacturers and bankrolls taxpayers to pay for discarded drugs, or “drug waste.” Back in 2016, it was estimated that these payouts amounted to $2.8 billion annually. Today, NAM is another broken agency that Congress should either eradicate or rule to have scrupulously reformed.

The CDC’s horribly unethical activities are a matter of public record. These are not secrets or confidential information. The documents and voices of whistleblowers within the CDC are readily found on the internet to support all of our charges against the agency. They are readily available to anyone who wishes to investigate. Unfortunately, our media has again failed to do its job in accurately reporting on federal corruption, instead becoming an instrument of the Medical Deep State and a mouthpiece to deceive the public.

CDC misconduct includes widespread corporate nepotism favoring private pharmaceutical interests, illegal destruction of clinical data that showed a correlation between the MMR vaccine and a 250 percent increase in autism among African American boys, hiring a criminal(s) to conduct fraudulent research to conceal the neurological risks of mercury-containing vaccines, the silencing of internal officials and whistleblowers, serving as the go-between on behalf of the beverage industry concerning the World Health Organization’s restriction of sugary soft drinks, etc. The CDC fudged firearm safety statistics; that report led Harvard University’s Injury Control Research Center director David Hemenway to declare that no one should trust the CDC’s estimates.

During the 1970s, it was the CDC’s Dr. Colleen Boyle who covered up the hideously toxic nature of Agent Orange and dioxin that thousands of Vietnam War veterans were exposed to. Although the IOM and Congress at that time revealed Boyle’s chicanery, the agency duly rewarded her loyalty with a promotion.

Image: Thuy` Linh, 21 years old. Third generation Agent Orange victim genetic malformation, born without arms. Thuy` Linh finished high school 2 years ago. She applied to many universities to study but most of them didn’t accept her because of her missing arms. Her mother finally found a school willing to admit her. She finished her course in design a few months ago. Currently, she is looking for a suitable job. She went to Tû Dû Obstetrics Hospital when she was 3 years old and stayed until she was 18. HO CHI MINH CITY, VIET NAM, 2015. Photo credit: Mathieu Asselin

Long before the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, the CDC and the drug industry had already been closely colluding to push unsafe vaccines. In 2004, Congress accused the agency of operating as a public relations firm for private interests, rather than as a watchdog ensuring the integrity of vaccine science. That same year, the US Office of Special Counsel uncovered potential evidence that the CDC and pharmaceutical companies were destroying data linking the vaccine preservative thimerosal with neurological disorders. Senator Tom Coburn’s expose reveals the agency’s widespread budgetary mismanagement has wasted millions of tax dollars and concludes that the CDC cannot demonstrate it is controlling disease.

In October 2017, Congressman Bill Posey sent a letter to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions calling on him to resume efforts to extradite and prosecute Dr. Poul Thorsen for money laundering of over $1 million from the CDC. The catch is that Thorsen was contracted by the CDC to conduct fraudulent research in Denmark that would mask any association between the vaccine preservative thimerosal and autism.

In 2011, Thorsen was placed on the Inspector General’s most wanted list; nevertheless, the CDC has continued to erect obstacles to extradition efforts. More worrisome, Rep Posey discovered that for at least three years after the FBI issued its arrest warrant, the CDC and National Institutes of Health continued to collaborate with Thorsen and even jointly-published more junk science together.

Read the entire document here.

Another misdemeanor involved the CDC providing erroneous data to Congress about its women’s health program, WISEWOMAN, commissioned to provide preventative health services to women between 40 and 65 to reduce cardiovascular disease. Native Americans were also targeted for assistance in the program. The data was cooked and enrolled far less women than the CDC reported to Congress.

These ethical violations are systemic throughout the agency and Congress has been paralyzed in any efforts to rein in the rottenness that saturates the agency’s leadership.  Even CDC’s scientists are fully aware of the degree of corruption permeating the agency. In 2016, a group of CDC scientists submitted a letter outlining their concerns to the agency’s chief of staff. Out of fear of retribution, the group filed their complaint anonymously. They wrote:

“We are a group of scientists at the CDC that are very concerned about the current state of ethics at our agency. It appears that our mission is being influenced and shaped by outside parties and rogue interests…. What concerns us most is that it is becoming the norm and not the rare exception. Some senior management officials at CDC are clearly aware and even condone these behaviors. Others see it and turn the other way. Some staff are intimidated and pressed to do things they know are not right.”

Over the years, Congressional subcommittees have voiced warnings to CDC officials to clean up their act. A House Government Reform Committee reported that both the CDC’s and FDA’s advisory committees for vaccines were thoroughly compromised with pharmaceutical conflicts of interest. In 2009, the Office of the Inspector General conducted an investigation of conflicts of interests within the CDC. The Office discovered that 97 percent of its advisors failed to declare their links to the pharmaceutical industry.

Prior to Covid-19, one of the greatest series of on-going medical scandals, cover-ups and misinformation has been the federal health agencies’ denial of vaccine safety and the epidemic rise in autism and other neurological disorders.

Speaking at Yale University in 2019, Children’s Health Defense founder Robert Kennedy Jr presented data from his investigations into the CDC’s culture of medical negligence and efforts to cover up the compelling evidence for vaccine-induced injuries, including autism.

Over the course of twenty years, the NAM/IOM has monitored and reviewed the medical literature to determine the most- and least- likely injuries associated with specific vaccines and provided recommendations to the CDC.

In 1991, 22 illnesses were identified, 6 were confirmed as vaccine-related and 12 remained uncertain due to insufficiently reliable studies. Those cases with confirmed causation included learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, and childhood diabetes. This data was collected subsequent to President Ronald Reagan signing the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, a point when autism rates started to climb exponentially.

Three years later, the NAM/IOM identified 54 medical conditions, the medical literature supported 10 diseases as vaccine-induced and 38 were uncertain. Among the confirmed illnesses were seizures, demyelinating disease, sterility, transverse myelitis and, for the first time, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS). Again in 2011, the IOM reported a whopping 155 adverse conditions with 16 vaccine-induced injuries supported by the science, including a correlation between the DTaP vaccine and autism.

Because the IOM holds no official authority over the federal agencies, its recommendations to the CDC went unheeded. Instead, the agency has dug itself into a deeper hole of secrecy and corruption. With a budget of $11.5 billion, Kennedy notes that only a pathetic $20 million is designated for vaccine safety.

These early IOM reports are extremely valuable. They identify many of the same childhood diseases that have risen to epidemic proportions in the intervening years, and they indict vaccines as a causal factor. Yet regrettably, as noted above, the NAM/IOM is as compromised and corrupt as the CDC. The Academy, too, has become another pawn of the Medical Deep State sharing a similar goal to keep every American on the ever-revolving vaccination treadmill with lies and even threats and force if necessary.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the CDC expanded its authoritative powers and influence into public life as never before. Piggybacking on the 1944 Public Health Service Act, for the first time, the agency enacted on its authority to override state health departments in order to mandate masks and quarantines, health inspections, widespread Covid monitoring with the unsuited PCR test, and forced closures of businesses, schools and houses of worship.  In collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services, the CDC unleashed a highly refined strategic offensive against Americans by capturing the nation’s media networks to propagandize its fabricated interpretation of the severity of the SARS-2 virus and its variants.  This involved generating a culture of fear, political and social divisions, and a dystopian atmosphere to implement policies to gain further control over the population.

According to federal health documents obtained by Judicial Watch, in order to promote the Covid-19 vaccines and boosters, the CDC and HHS infiltrated all media companies and their producers, morning and afternoon talk shows, cultural event organizers, entertainment firms, management agencies for celebrities such as Tom Brady, Hollywood scriptwriters, leading Christian evangelical leaders on the Christian Broadcast Network, Catholic publications, and the major sports organizations such as the NFL and NASCAR. They also succeeded in capturing Google’s Youtube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.  All of these entities were pressured to comply with the “vaccine engagement” packages sent to them.

Since the CDC also operates as an intelligence agency alongside the Department of Defense and the national security state, its pandemic surveillance program tracked the mobile phones of tens of millions Americans. According to internal documents obtained through a Freedom of Information filing, the agency used this phone data to monitor lockdowns and vaccination compliance. This included tracking the entry into K-12 public schools and even compliance on transportation hubs, “parks and green spaces” and Native American reservations.

In their analysis report “Covid-19 Vaccine Mandates: Twenty-One Scientific Facts that Challenge the Assumptions,” the Physicians for Informed Consent drew from the CDC’s own medical data and the Covid-19 vaccine clinical trials to show the CDC has debunked its own propaganda to the public. Among the facts presented in the CDC reports are:

  • In 68 countries, there was “no significant signaling of Covd-19 cases decreasing” with higher vaccination compliance.
  • There is no strong evidence that the vaccines decrease Covid-19 deaths. In the Eurosurveillance report for July 2021, 100 percent of “severe, critical and fatal” Covid-19 cases were among vaccinated persons.
  • There is evidence that previous SARS-CoV-2 infection is more effective than COVID-19 vaccines.
  • Serious adverse event risk for the Pfizer mRNA vaccine is 1 in 556 subjects and 1 in 1,408 for Moderna’s vaccine
  • There was a 97 percent increased risk of cardiac-related deaths in men between 18-39 years within 28 days of vaccination.
  • There is no observable benefit for vaccinating children versus the risks of children with a SARS-2 infection. Nevertheless Pfizer’s clinical trial for children 5-11 years old showed 1 in 59 vaccinated kids suffered from severe systemic reactions
  • For those not living in a nursing home, Covid-19 survival rate is 99.8 percent overall and 99.999 percent for children.

The CDC’s and Anthony Fauci’s frequent debacles, scientifically-based policy reversals, revelations of data secrecy and officials’ lies have contributed to a national decline in confidence and trust. One notable reversal was the CDC no longer recognizing the PCR test as a valid means to detect active SARS-2 infections.

Reporting about this announcement in December 2021, Prof. Michel Chossudovsky at Global Research noted that the CDC admitted that the PCR tests “cannot differentiate between SARS-coV-2 and influenza viruses.”

For many years the CDC’s website clearly states that “Influenza virus testing is not required to make a clinical diagnosis of influenza in outpatients with suspected influenza, particularly during increased influenza activity when seasonal influenza A and B viruses are circulating in the local community.”

This would certainly explain the enormous discrepancy and exponential drop in the number of hospitalizations and deaths associated with the flu since the start of the pandemic compared to other flu seasons.

It is also a fine example of counterfeit medical science masquerading as a clinical fact because the Encyclopedia of Virology claims there are over 200 different human respiratory viruses in circulation. How can any physician determine the viral cause for any flu-like symptoms if it is not tested for?

In early 2022, the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania conducted one of the more thorough surveys on Americans’ perceptions of the CDC providing “trustworthy information” about the pandemic. Despite the survey’s findings revealing an overall lack of confidence, the results were notably divided between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives’ approval fell below 40 percent for Fauci and 52 percent for the CDC; Fauci boasted 85 percent approval among the corporate liberal media and 89 percent for the CDC.

The CDC has now had three years to reinvent itself under the pretext of a life-threatening global pandemic. It had the choice to overhaul its long history of incompetence as a protector of public health; instead it chose to follow the course of dictatorial control as the nation’s sole authoritative voice over medicine and heath.  Never before has medical science been so politicized. And this raises a final and fundamental question.

Would you hire someone with such an extensive rap sheet to care for your child, let alone a newborn infant?  Would you trust them to undertake the correct measures in an emergency, or use sound judgment to assure your loved one’s well-being?

For the now millions of vaccine-damaged adults and children following the advent of mRNA vaccines, the CDC remains a felon on the loose with the full protection of the government.

Congress is a mob of inebriated Keystone cops who refuse to realize the urgency in an exhaustive re-evaluation and housecleaning of the CDC, the FDA and Fauci’s NIAID.

The CDC’s gross negligence during the past couple of years and utter disregard for Americans’ well-being and health draws only one conclusion.  You are dispensable. The American public is best served as willing experimental fodder for new novel drugs and vaccines.

Today’s killing fields in Ukraine, sponsored by the US’s military industrial complex, is a microcosm of America’s killing fields orchestrated by the pharmaceutical complex for many decades.

For the drug industry’s bottom line, we do not matter. Nor do your children.

And the mainstream media and every major network, newspaper and magazine, are similarly complicit in preserving the CDC’s culture of deception.

The entire American medical establishment demands to be officially stamped with a “black box warning” in order to draw the public’s attention to the serious and life-threatening dangers from believing the false propaganda being disseminated by the CDC and other federal health agencies.

*

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Richard Gale is the Executive Producer of the Progressive Radio Network and a former Senior Research Analyst in the biotechnology and genomic industries.

Dr. Gary Null is host of the nation’s longest running public radio program on alternative and nutritional health and a multi-award-winning documentary film director, including his recent Last Call to Tomorrow

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: The Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. (Raed Mansour/Flickr)


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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CIA’s Deadly “Strategy of Tension” to Destroy Russia

By Kurt Nimmo, December 27, 2022

During the Cold War, the CIA worked closely with the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and emigre groups. Project AERODYNAMIC (formerly CARTEL, ANDROGEN, AECARTHAGE, between 1949 and 1970) concentrated on anti-Soviet operations, largely confined to propaganda. This entailed working closely with ultranationalists that have long had one goal in mind—the murder of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

Is the Pandemic Over? The Worldwide Corona Crisis. Bankruptcies, Unemployment, Famine and Food Insecurity

By Michael Welch and Prof Michel Chossudovsky, December 28, 2022

Now that U.S. President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 “pandemic” over, the shell-shocked citizenry of the planet as they cautiously emerge from their locked down territories and slowly remove the masks from their faces, the time has certainly come for people to take stock of the nearly three years since this menace has run amok on their neighborhood and their lives.

Looking Back on 2022: Ukraine and the Rest of the Story

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, December 28, 2022

The Ukraine war has also aggravated global inflationary trends — already evident before the war. Global inflation is now affecting millions of people all over the world. Economies are stagnating also because investment flows are slowing down, yet another consequence of the war. This affects the generation of jobs and the general employment pattern even in countries far from the war zone.

War on Global Agriculture: The Unsustainable ‘Sustainable’ UN Agenda 2030

By F. William Engdahl, December 28, 2022

Over the past weeks a coordinated all-out assault on our agriculture—the ability to produce food for human existence—has begun. The recent G20 governmental meeting in Bali, the UN Agenda 2030 Cop27 meeting in Egypt, the Davos World Economic Forum and Bill Gates are all complicit.

Sri Lanka’s Neoliberal Nightmare, Widespread Famine Triggered by COVID-19 Lockdown and an Unpayable External Debt

By Asad Ismi, December 28, 2022

According to the World Food Programme (WFP), Sri Lanka faces a “serious food crisis,” with 6.3 million people—close to 30% of the 22 million population—being food insecure. Food inflation has reached a record-high of 90%, making staples such as rice unaffordable for millions of people. Overall, inflation is running at 60%.

Video: Bill Gates Calls for “Aggressive” Carbon Taxes to “Accelerate” Fourth Industrial Revolution

By Steve Watson, December 28, 2022

Speaking with the World Economic Forum Wednesday, Bill Gates called for an aggressive implementation of carbon taxes in order to force middle income countries to fundamentally alter their entire industry sectors.

What Is Asymmetric Warfare?

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, December 27, 2022

Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. one military bloc, etc.) are very or even extremely different regarding their military and other capacities to fight each other. They are as well as very different in the terms of their areas of comparative strategic advantage, Therefore, the confrontation between such two different sides is coming to turn on one belligerent side’s ability/capacity to force the other side to fight on their own terms and conditions.

“Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.”

By Dr. Rudolf Hänsel, December 27, 2022

Whether World War I or World War II, whether the Vietnam War or the West’s current proxy war against Russia: time and again mothers send their sons to the “field of honour” and afterwards wear a black armband “in proud mourning”. Youth dies before it can begin to live.

Country for Bad Dreams: Vandalism on the Australian Nullarbor Plain

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, December 27, 2022

Edward John Eyre, the first European to cross the Plain in 1840-1841, wrote hauntingly of it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into bad dreams”.  In his case, personal circumstances soured the impressions: horses dying of dehydration; a case of mutiny resulting in the killing of his companion John Baxter; the theft of the party’s supplies; the slimmest chances of survival.

Pfizer’s Shots Aren’t Safe and Were Never Shown to be

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, December 27, 2022

A whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial has also come forward with evidence showing data were falsified, patients were unblinded and follow-up on reported side effects lagged way behind. Why didn’t any of these issues concern the DSMB? Was it because there really was no independent DSMB?

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Looking Back on 2022: Ukraine and the Rest of the Story

December 28th, 2022 by Dr. Chandra Muzaffar

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***

As 2022 draws to a close, the world bears the tragic burden of the war in Ukraine. The war began on the 24th of February of this year with the Russian invasion of its neighbour. It has been 10 months. There is nothing to indicate that it will end any time soon.

Thousands have perished — soldiers on both sides and civilians in Ukraine. A huge number of people have been injured and maimed. Both Russian and Ukrainian prisoners have been subjected to torture.

Accompanying this record of death and suffering is the destruction and devastation of infrastructure, both civilian and military. A nuclear facility in Ukraine is caught in this crossfire thus enhancing the danger of a nuclear conflagration. It has been exacerbated by reckless threats about the deployment of nuclear weapons by combatants themselves. Indeed, since the end of the Cold War in 1991, the world has not been this close to such a confrontation.

The Ukraine war has also been a huge boon to arms merchants. Billions of dollars of weapons have been rushed to Ukraine by the US and other NATO members. In some instances they help to advertise new varieties of combat tools that have yet to prove their effectiveness in battle.

The war has also had a severe impact upon certain dimensions of the global food supply chain brought about largely by the sanctions imposed upon Russia by the United States and some of its allies as a way of punishing the former. The actual victims of these sanctions however have sometimes been the poor in countries of the Global South.

The Ukraine war has also aggravated global inflationary trends — already evident before the war. Global inflation is now affecting millions of people all over the world. Economies are stagnating also because investment flows are slowing down, yet another consequence of the war. This affects the generation of jobs and the general employment pattern even in countries far from the war zone.

The war’s impact upon both longstanding and more recent political crises has also been telling. Kashmir is still under occupation and the occupied continue to resist and yet it is receiving even less attention from the media because of another war more closely linked to powerful global actors. Likewise, Palestine erupts every other day because of harsh Israeli aggression but the world is preoccupied with Ukraine mainly because it is the present epicentre of the struggle for global hegemony. Then there is Somalia, Eritrea and Peru, among other conflicts. Each is significant in its own way. But they have been pushed to the margins by the tragedy in Ukraine.

Image is from Andrew Korybko

I shall end this section of my analysis by highlighting three other major events in 2022, each of which should have received much more attention from the people. The first is the popular uprising in Pakistan following the ouster of Prime Minister Imran Khan in April 2022 by a segment of the military core working hand in glove with political leaders backed to the hilt by specific elites in Washington. The Pakistani people know that this is a blatant regime change operation because Imran was more inclined towards pursuing an independent foreign policy for his country with even stronger ties to Beijing and Moscow. The US ruling elite is against such a policy because it is convinced that it would not jive with US geopolitical goals in the region.

The hundreds of thousands perhaps millions of ordinary Pakistanis who have come out into the streets to protest against the US backed regime, and for Imran, since April represent the mass expression of democratic aspirations seldom seen in any society anywhere in the world. This outpouring of sentiment was further reinforced by sweeping by-election victories by Imran’s party, the Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) in July. Imran and his party are demanding that free and fair elections be held immediately to allow the people to decide on who should rule Pakistan.

While there has been some coverage of the people’s uprising in the Western and Eastern media, its underlying significance has not been given the focus it deserves for an obvious reason. The uprising represents a direct challenge to the politics of regime change which is one of the primary weapons in the arsenal of those who seek to run the world. For them—the advocates of global hegemony led by the US elite — the courage and determination of the Pakistani masses is the ultimate nightmare!

Let us now turn to yet another event this time involving Pakistan’s neighbour, Afghanistan. When the Taliban regained power in Kabul in August 2021  after 20 years of US misrule,  the defeated American elite retaliated by freezing financial  assets  belonging to the Afghan people kept in the country’s Central Bank. Worth at least 7 billion dollars, the US government placed this money in September this year under the authority of a so-called independent panel over which the Taliban or the Afghan people have no say.  In reality, it is still the US government that will decide how or when the money will be unfrozen and for what purpose it would be used. This is a terrible travesty of justice. Even UN officials in Kabul have criticised the move. They feel that part of the money should be used immediately to feed millions of Afghanis who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition. According to some sources, mass famine is a real possibility in parts of the country. It is highly immoral to manipulate money belonging to the Afghan people in this manner in order to avenge one’s defeat and to fulfil a larger hegemonic agenda in the region.

This brings us to the third event in 2022 that should be high on our radar. This is mass hunger and suffering in parts of East Africa, a region that covers Somalia, Ethiopia, Kenya and South Sudan. Oxfam estimates that one person is likely to die every 36 seconds in that region partly because of acute hunger and extreme poverty. Across East Africa, 6 million children suffer from malnutrition.

The underlying causes for the plight of the people are varied. Drought linked to climate change is undoubtedly a major factor. Local-level conflicts are also responsible. Prices for food have also escalated in the course of the year brought about by a number of reasons, one of them being the war in Ukraine. The war also explains to an extent why humanitarian funding for the region is far below the target. There is a gap of more than 3 billion dollars.

There have been other important happenings in 2022 which have been given the emphasis they deserve by the mainstream media. The climate crisis is an example. Freezing winter storms in the US this December have come as a shock to many people. The mainstream media should have also given as much attention to yet another climate change disaster —- the massive flooding in Pakistan from June to October 2022 that resulted in one-third of the country being submerged in water.

The mainstream media continues to accord appropriate attention to the Covid 19 pandemic. Though its overall impact is much less in 2022, many people in the global North and the global South remain deeply concerned about a disease whose origin remains a mystery. People ask, is it linked in some way to unfolding geopolitical challenges?

When we reflect upon all that has happened in 2022, the various happenings can be classified into two categories. One, those that are directly linked to the war in Ukraine and two those that have been overshadowed by the war and yet call for resolution in the larger interest of humanity. There are also a couple of events that fall outside the two categories. Everything considered, Ukraine remains at the vortex of humanity’s concerns in 2022.

The world realises why it is so urgent to bring the fighting to an end and to work out a diplomatic solution to the conflict. There have been attempts in that direction. In the early months of the conflict, Pope Francis of the Catholic Church tried to mediate.   He was followed by Indonesian President, Joko Widodo in his capacity as the then Chair of G20. Widodo met with the main protagonists on both sides of the divide and pleaded for the cessation of the conflict on the ground that it was having an adverse impact upon countries of the Global South.

Civil society groups have also offered ideas on ending the war. Code Pink and Common Dreams have articulated their thoughts on a peace initiative. Two of my friends (Richard Falk and Joseph Camilleri) and I also launched a call to end the war in Ukraine through a public document entitled “ To all Who Care About Humanity’s and the Planet’s Future.”

The document not only discusses the perilous situation the world is in but also analyses the underlying causes of global friction and tension. It suggests solutions to both the Ukraine war and the conflict over Taiwan and proposes concrete steps that can be taken to create a world that is not burdened by hegemonic politics, a world distinguished  by just and equitable relations between nations and communities. Towards this end it advocates the reversal of the militarisation of the international system and espouses far-reaching reforms of international institutions. The document recognises that for all these changes to take place there has to be “a massive global awakening of human wisdom and energy.”

Image: CODEPINK “No War with Russia Rally, Negotiate Ukraine, Don’t Escalate.” (2022) 

Richard, Joe and I then invited a number of individuals we were familiar with to endorse the document on the 27th of August 2022.  44 of them responded positively. They comprise some of the world’s leading civil society personalities, public intellectuals and activists. With their endorsement, the document went public. The citizens of the world were now invited to join the effort to stop wars, reduce global tensions and build a world committed to justice and compassion in which the dignity of all creation is the primary goal of all human endeavour. To date, 3,646 women and men have signed up on Change.org.

In spite of our effort and the endeavours of others, peace moves have not made a dent so far. While there are many reasons that explain the continuance of the Ukraine war, the absolutist position adopted by the antagonists appears to be a formidable obstacle. For the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, his initial aim was to dissuade Ukraine from joining NATO which would have brought NATO to his country’s doorstep and perhaps threatened its security. But as the fighting in Ukraine became more complicated with massive Western and NATO military assistance to Ukraine, he seems more determined now to emasculate his neighbour completely. Similarly, Ukraine and its backers were concerned in the earlier phase of the war with defending Ukraine’s sovereignty and nothing more but as Ukraine began to repel the Russian invasion, its backers began to feel that they would be able to confront and defeat the Russian armed forces and should therefore seize the opportunity to destroy Russia’s military might once and for all.

The extreme positions adopted by both sides are unrealistic — and dangerous. Ukraine is not going to disappear from the map. Neither is it possible to crush the Russian nation. A prolonged war will only increase the suffering of both Ukrainians and Russians, and other Europeans. Indeed, with winter setting in and the energy crisis looming large on the horizon, the toll upon lives and lifestyles could become unbearable.

This is the time for both sides to concede and compromise. They should move away from hard-line positions. They should work towards a negotiated settlement.

The world, especially civil society groups should convey this message to all the parties involved. There is no way that anyone can score a decisive victory in this conflict. This is why it is better to sue for peace NOW.

*

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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 is from South Front

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India’s Rocket Force Takes Off with China in Its Sights

December 28th, 2022 by Gabriel Honrada

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First published on December 10, 2022

a

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“Even the official definitions of the corona virus, I can quote Anthony Fauci, or I can quote the CDC, or the WHO….The definition is such that it is not a life threatening disease by any means!”

  • Professor Michel Chossudovsky (from this week’s interview)

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Click to download the audio (MP3 format)

Now that U.S. President Joe Biden declared the COVID-19 “pandemic” over, the shell-shocked citizenry of the planet as they cautiously emerge from their locked down territories and slowly remove the masks from their faces, the time has certainly come for people to take stock of the nearly three years since this menace has run amok on their neighborhood and their lives.

There are reports of massive bankruptcies, unemployment, famine and food insecurity worldwide resulting from the pandemic. UNICEF estimated 1.6 billion children were affected by the closures of schools.

Suicide rates had gone up. Deaths attributable to drug overdose has gone up dramatically starting in 2020.[1]

Meanwhile, the wealth of billionaires increased! The combined wealth of U.S. billionaires collectively by $850 billion over the seven first months of the pandemic. At the global level, the world’s 2,189 billionaires saw their combined wealth go up a whopping $1.5 trillion to $10.5 trillion! [2]

All because of a little virus called SARS-CoV-2?

A sober second look at this situation might reveal that there is more to it than that. Arguably, it was the lockdowns, insider trading and other factors that may have been just as devastating as people collapsing from a virus.

These and other data and analysis have just been released in a new book written by the renowned author and academic Michel Chossudovsky. It is entitled The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup D’Etat Against Humanity.

A clear and simple to follow condensation of three solid years of research, this 164 page volume, available in pdf form unravels its history, which includes

  • a deliberate fear campaign to terrify the global populace into compliance with the wishes of the architects,
  • the very flawed approach for diagnosing the virus,
  • the corrupt science which played a role in favour of the profits and influence of global pharmaceutical corporations,
  • the deliberate smearing of scientists and anyone else who expresses a counter-viewpoint to the dominant COVID narrative,
  • the dangers of the vaccines, the vaccine passports,
  • digital identities and ultimately even a period of depopulation that may be planned by the powers that be.

Chossudovsky also offers a message of what can be done to arrest this process before democracy becomes a relic of the past as the New World Order truly shines its sinister light on the citizenry of the 99 percent!

The book is available for free on this site as a free download.  FREE COPY Click here to download.

After the interview, I will talk in more detail about some of the other important points raised in the book.

Michel Chossudovsky is Founder and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization in, Montreal, and Editor of Global Research. He is Professor of Economics (emeritus) at the University of Ottawa, and award wining author of 13 books including The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup D’Etat Against Humanity (2022) and The Globalization of War, America’s Long War against Humanity (2015)

(Global Research News Hour Episode 372)

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The Global Research News Hour airs every Friday at 1pm CT on CKUW 95.9FM out of the University of Winnipeg. The programme is also podcast at globalresearch.ca .

Other stations airing the show:

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Cowichan Valley Community Radio CICV 98.7 FM serving the Cowichan Lake area of Vancouver Island, BC airs the program Thursdays at 9am pacific time.

Notes:

  1. Michel Chossudovsky (2022), (Pg 77-82) “The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Global Coup D’Etat Against Humanity”, Global Research Publishers, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG)
  2. https://ips-dc.org/u-s-billionaire-wealth-up-850-billion/

 

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

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***

First published on January 21, 2022

Speaking with the World Economic Forum Wednesday, Bill Gates called for an aggressive implementation of carbon taxes in order to force middle income countries to fundamentally alter their entire industry sectors.

Gates declared that

“The rich countries have to play a central role, both funding RND and having policies, in some cases carbon taxes will be used to drive the demand for these clean products.”

He continued,

“Only by doing that in an aggressive way will the economic costs be brought down enough that we can turn to all the middle income countries and say ‘OK, change your whole cement industry, change your whole steel industry.’”

“The number of companies working on these things is very exciting,” Gates proclaimed.

He further lamented that

“Some of them will fail, a lot of them will fail,” but asserted “we only need a reasonable number, a few dozen of them to make it through and that’s what we have to accelerate.”

Watch:

In his books, World Economic Forum founder and globalist Klaus Schwab makes clear that the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution’ or ‘The Great Reset’ will lead to the abolition of private property.

That message is echoed on the WEF’s official website, which states, “Welcome to the year 2030. Welcome to my city – or should I say, “our city”. I don’t own anything. I don’t own a car. I don’t own a house. I don’t own any appliances or any clothes.”

Apparently, you won’t be allowed to own any private property and your only recourse will be to live in a state of permanent dependency on a small number of rich elitists who own everything.

That used to be called feudalism, which is a form of slavery.

Indeed, while Americans are being told by technocrats that the future is one without private property, Gates himself and other billionaires have been buying up huge amounts of farmland.

Gates is now the biggest owner of farmland in America, according to a Forbes report from last year.

Meanwhile, the great unwashed will be pushed to living in tiny houses or pods, with living standards dramatically lowered in the name of saving the planet.

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An Open Letter to Bill Gates on Food, Farming, and Africa

December 28th, 2022 by Community Alliance for Global Justice

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***

First published on November 16, 2022

***

We, 50 organizations focused on food sovereignty and justice worldwide, want you to know there is no shortage of practical solutions and innovations by African farmers and organizations. We invite you to step back and learn from those on the ground.

*

Dear Bill Gates:

You were recently featured commenting on the global state of agriculture and food insecurity, in a recent New York Times op-ed by David Wallace-Wells and also in an Associated Press article.

In both articles, you make a number of claims that are inaccurate and need to be challenged. Both pieces admit that the world currently produces enough food to adequately feed all the earth’s inhabitants, yet you continue to fundamentally misdiagnose the problem as relating to low productivity; we do not need to increase production as much as to assure more equitable access to food. In addition, there are four specific distortions in these pieces which should be addressed, namely:

1) the supposed need for “credit for fertilizer, cheap fertilizer” to ensure agricultural productivity,

2) the idea that the Green Revolution of the mid-20th century needs to be replicated now to address hunger,

3) the idea that “better” seeds, often produced by large corporations, are required to cope with climate change, and

4) your suggestion that if people have solutions that “aren’t singing Kumbaya,” you’ll put money behind them.

First, synthetic fertilizers contribute 2% of overall greenhouse gas emissions and are the primary source of nitrous oxide emissions. Producing nitrogen fertilizers requires 3-5% of the world’s fossil gas. They also make farmers and importing nations dependent on volatile prices on international markets, and are a major cause of rising food prices globally. Yet you claim that even more fertilizer is needed to increase agricultural productivity and address hunger.

Toxic and damaging synthetic fertilizers are not a feasible way forward. Already, companies, organizations, and farmers in Africa and elsewhere have been developing biofertilizers made from compost, manure, and ash, and biopesticides made from botanical compounds, such as neem tree oil or garlic. These products can be manufactured locally (thereby avoiding dependency and price volatility), and can be increasingly scaled up and commercialized.

Second, the Green Revolution was far from a resounding success. While it did play some role in increasing the yields of cereal crops in Mexico, India, and elsewhere from the 1940s to the 1960s, it did very little to reduce the number of hungry people in the world or to ensure equitable and sufficient access to food.

It also came with a host of other problems, from ecological issues like long-term soil degradation to socio-economic ones like increased inequality and indebtedness (which has been a major contributor to the epidemic of farmer suicides in India). Your unquestioning support for a “new” Green Revolution demonstrates willful ignorance about history and about the root causes of hunger (which are by and large about political and economic arrangements, and what the economist Amartya Sen famously referred to as entitlements, not about a global lack of food).

Third, climate-resilient seeds are already in existence and being developed by farmers and traded through informal seed markets. Sorghum, which you tout in your interview as a so-called “orphan crop”, is among these already established climate-adapted crops. You note that most investments have been in maize and rice, rather than in locally-adapted and nutritious cereals like sorghum. Yet AGRA (the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa), which your foundation (the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) created and financed, has been among those institutions that have disproportionately focused on maize and rice. In other words, you are part of creating the very problem you name. The AGRA initiative, which your foundation continues to fund, has also pushed restrictive seed legislation that limits and restricts crop innovation to well-resourced labs and companies. These initiatives don’t increase widespread innovation, but rather contribute to the privatization and consolidation of corporate monopolies over seed development and seed markets.

Finally, your assertion that critics of your approach are simply “singing Kumbaya,” rather than developing meaningful (and fundable) solutions, is extremely disrespectful and dismissive. There are already many tangible, ongoing proposals and projects that work to boost productivity and food security–from biofertilizer and biopesticide manufacturing facilities, to agroecological farmer training programs, to experimentation with new water and soil management techniques, low-input farming systems, and pest-deterring plant species.

What you are doing here is gaslighting–presenting practical, ongoing, farmer-led solutions as somehow fanciful or ridiculous, while presenting your own preferred approaches as pragmatic.

Yet it is your preferred high-tech solutions, including genetic engineering, new breeding technologies, and now digital agriculture, that have in fact consistently failed to reduce hunger or increase food access as promised.

And in some cases, the “solutions” you expound as fixes for climate change actually contribute to the the biophysical processes driving the problem (e.g. more fossil-fuel based fertilizers, and more fossil-fuel dependent infrastructure to transport them) or exacerbate the political conditions that lead to inequality in food access (e.g. policies and seed breeding initiatives that benefit large corporations and labs, rather than farmers themselves).

In both articles, you radically simplify complex issues in ways that justify your own approach and interventions. You note in the New York Times op-ed that Africa, with the lowest costs of labor and land, should be a net exporter of agricultural products. You explain that the reason it is not is because “their productivity is much lower than in rich countries and you just don’t have the infrastructure.”

However, costs of land and labor, as well as infrastructures, are socially and politically produced. Africa is in fact highly productive–it’s just that the profits are realized elsewhere. Through colonization, neoliberalism, debt traps, and other forms of legalized pillaging, African lives, environments, and bodies have been devalued and made into commodities for the benefit and profit of others.

Infrastructures have been designed to channel these commodities outside of the continent itself. Africa is not self-sufficient in cereals because its agricultural, mining, and other resource-intensive sectors have been structured in ways that are geared toward serving colonial and then international markets, rather than African peoples themselves. Although you are certainly not responsible for all of this, you and your foundation are exacerbating some of these problems through a very privatized, profit-based, and corporate approach to agriculture.

There is no shortage of practical solutions and innovations by African farmers and organizations. We invite you to step back and learn from those on the ground. At the same time, we invite high profile news outlets to be more cautious about lending credibility to one wealthy white man’s flawed assumptions, hubris, and ignorance, at the expense of people and communities who are living and adapting to these realities as we speak.

From:

Community Alliance for Global Justice/AGRA Watch

Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

Southern African Faith Communities’ Environment Institute (SAFCEI)

GRAIN

African Centre for Biodiversity

Kenya Food Rights Alliance

Growth Partners

Grassroots International

Agroecology Fund

US Food Sovereignty Alliance

National Family Farm Coalition

Family Farm Defenders

Oakland Institute

A Growing Culture

ETC Group

Food in Neighborhoods Community Coalition

Detroit Black Community Food Security Network

Sustainable Agriculture of Louisville

Haki Nawiri Afrika

Real Food Media

Agroecology Research-Action Collective

Environmental Rights Action/ Friends of the Earth Nigeria (ERA/FoEN)

Les Amis de la Terre Togo/ Friends of the Earth Togo

Justiça Ambiental/ JA FoE Mozambique

Friends of the Earth Africa

Health of Mother Health Foundation (HOMEF)

Committee on Vital Environmental Resources (COVER)

The Young Environmental Network (TYEN)

GMO Free Nigeria

Community Development Advocacy Foundation

African Centre for Rural and Environmental Development

Connected Advocacy

Policy Alert

Zero Waste Ambassadors

Student Environmental Assembly Nigeria (SEAN)

Host Community Network, Nigeria (HoCON)

Green Alliance Nigeria (GAN)

Hope for Tomorrow Initiative (HfTI)

Media Awareness and Justice Initiative (MAJI)

We The People

Rainbow Watch and Development Centre

BFA Food and Health Foundation

Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa (CAPPA)

Women and Children Life Advancement Initiative 

Network of Women in Agriculture Nigeria (NWIN) 

Gender and Environmental Risks Reduction Initiative (GERI) 

Gender and Community Empowerment Initiative 

Eco defenders Network 

Urban Rural Environmental Defenders (URED) 

Peace Point Development Foundation (PPDF)

Community Support Centre, Nigeria

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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„Stell dir vor, es ist Krieg und keiner geht hin.“

December 28th, 2022 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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***

Das erwähnte Zitat des US-amerikanischen Dichters und Historikers Carl August Sandburg entspricht nicht der Realität: Der Mensch, ob jung oder alt, kann nicht sagen: „Nein, ich gehe nicht in den Krieg!“, er muss folgen. Bis heute kann man sich diese menschliche Reaktionsweise nicht erklären, weil sich der Mensch noch nicht erkannt hat – nicht sich selbst, nicht seine Natur, nicht seine seelische Verfassung und nicht seine Reaktionsweisen. Aufgrund tiefenpsychologischer Erkenntnisse wissen wir heute, dass die frühkindliche Erziehung so auf ihr Gefühlsleben eingewirkt hat, dass sie gehen müssen. Das ist kein freier Wille. Doch der Mensch kann sich durch fachmännische Hilfe Stück für Stück selbst erkennen, sich seiner unbewussten Gefühlsanteile bewusstwerden und sein Verhalten zum Wohle der Menschheit ändern. Wenn man sich mit diesen psychologischen Gedanken befreunden kann, werden sie Mut machen und keine neuen Ängste schüren. 

Der Krieg ist kein unabwendbares Schicksal; er ist ein gutes Geschäft, doch für die Menschheit eine Niederlage

Ob Erster oder Zweiter Weltkrieg, ob Vietnamkrieg oder der momentane Stellvertreterkrieg des Westens gegen Russland: Immer wieder schicken Mütter ihre Söhne auf das “Feld der Ehre“ und tragen anschließend „in stolzer Trauer“ eine schwarze Armbinde. Die Jugend stirbt, bevor sie beginnen kann zu leben (1).

Krieg ist für uns alle ein großes Unglück. Papst Johannes Paul II. sagte am 13. Januar 2003: „Krieg ist niemals ein unabwendbares Schicksal. Krieg bedeutet immer eine Niederlage für die Menschheit.“ Andere Völker zu bezwingen und sie zu beherrschen, das ist ein gutes Geschäft. Nie zuvor haben die Staaten der Welt so viel Geld für Rüstung ausgegeben, so viele tödliche Waffen geschmiedet wie heute. Die Gewinne der globalen Rüstungsindustrie sind astronomisch.

Im Leben der Völker hat der Militarismus stets eine verhängnisvolle Rolle gespielt. Der Kampf des Menschen gegen den Menschen hat immer wieder die Errungenschaften der Kultur in Frage gestellt. Die kriegerische Lebensweise wirkt verrohend und die Folge ist gewöhnlich ein Rückfall in die Barbarei, der sich auf allen Gebieten des gesellschaftlichen Lebens bemerkbar macht.

Leider ist die Menschheit nicht imstande, dieses uralte Übel aus der Welt zu bannen. Machtpolitische, wirtschaftliche und soziale Gründe geben dem Geist der Gewalt ständig neue Nahrung und führen zu vernichtenden Kriegen. Angesichts der ungeheuren Opfer an Menschen und Material, von denen die Kriegsgeschichte berichtet, erhob sich von Zeit zu Zeit der Mahnruf hochgesinnter Menschen, die das Ideal einer friedlichen Welt proklamierten. Die Idee eines ewigen Friedens ist sicher so alt wie die Menschheit selbst.

Heute sehen wir, dass der Krieg nur Werke der Zerstörung vollbringt; niemals dürfen wir von ihm unser Heil erwarten. Die geschichtliche Betrachtung zeigt sogar, dass der Niedergang der Kultur immer mit Kriegen verbunden war. Und obwohl diese Tatsache hinlänglich bekannt ist, ruft kein Universitätslehrer, kein Philosoph, kein Psychologe der Jugend zu: „Geht nicht!“

Männer jeden Alters können leider nicht anders. Die Erziehung hat so auf ihr Gefühlsleben eingewirkt, dass sie gehen müssen. So wie sie in der Kinderstube Vater und Mutter folgen mussten, folgen sie als Erwachsene politischen Autoritäten. Dieses Gefühl des absoluten Gehorsams aus der Kindheit tragen sie bis ins hohe Alter mit, ist ihnen aber nicht bewusst. Deshalb können und dürfen wir sie nicht verurteilen. Und die Eltern haben leider nicht gewusst, dass die Erziehung zum absoluten Gehorsam ein Fehler war. Sie haben es in der Regel gut gemeint, aber in ihrer Unwissenheit und aufgrund eigener Kindheitserlebnisse bringen sie ihre Kinder durch fragwürdige Erziehungsmethoden in Not.

Die gute Nachricht ist, dass die Menschen sich mit Hilfe eines psychotherapeutischen Fachmanns Stück für Stück selbst erkennen, sich ihrer unbewussten Gefühlsanteile bewusstwerden und ihr Verhalten ändern können.

Die Tiefenpsychologie und die Dynamik des Unbewussten als wesentlicher, hochwirksamer Teil des Lebens

Kein Mensch hat in vorpsychologischen, vom religiösen Mittelalter geprägten Zeiten über sich selbst, über seine Gefühle und über sein Leben Bescheid gewusst. Erst mit Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 bis 1872) und Karl Marx (1818 bis 1883) haben die Menschen angefangen, sich als Wesen der Natur zu sehen und sich selbst zu beobachten (2). Kurze Zeit später hat ein gewisser Arzt, Siegmund Freud (1856 bis 1939), in Wien die Entdeckung gemacht, dass der Mensch ein Unbewusstes hat. Das war vor über 100 Jahren.

Unglücklicherweise hat Freud als Kind seiner Zeit die Welt und die Menschen nicht verstanden. Er war konservativ und ein guter Patriot. So war er der Meinung, dass Österreich-Ungarn den Ersten Weltkrieg gewinnen soll. Die anderen sollen zugrunde gehen. Seine Psychoanalyse ist in gewissem Sinne versandet; sie ist eine ärztliche Sache geworden.

Doch durch die wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnisse der Tiefenpsychologie wissen wir heute, dass man dem Menschen helfen, dass er sich umorientieren und seine Gefühle verändern kann. Die Lehre des Individualpsychologen Alfred Adler (1870 bis 1937) ist zu einem Grundpfeiler der Tiefenpsychologie geworden und aus der psychologischen Forschung nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die weitere Entwicklung der Tiefenpsychologie hat Adler in vielen Punkten Recht gegeben. Für Adler ist der Charakter ein schöpferisches Produkt des Kindes, entstanden aus der Auseinandersetzung mit den frühkindlichen Lebensumständen, insbesondere den Erziehungseinflüssen, die für die Charakterbildung am maßgeblichsten sind.

Die grundlegende Erkenntnis der Tiefenpsychologie ist die Annahme eines dynamischen Unbewussten als wesentlicher und hochwirksamer Teil des psychischen Lebens des Menschen. Aus diesem Grund kann der Mensch nicht sagen „Nein, ich gehe nicht in den Krieg!“ Die frühkindliche Erziehung hat sein Gefühlsleben so geprägt, dass er der Autorität, die ihn zu den Waffen ruft, folgen muss. Da es sich um unbewusste Gefühlsanteile aus der Kindheit handelt, ist sein Verhalten nicht das Ergebnis eines freien Willens. Er kann deshalb nicht verurteilt werden.

Leider gibt es heute noch wenig Psychologen, die sich der Sache der Menschen annehmen.

Doch das ist nicht gewollt. Das Wissen des jungen Menschen, der sich dem Studium der Psychologie zuwendet, fällt auf den alten Boden. Er ist religiös, national, patriotisch und staatsgläubig. Er steht in der Regel auf dem Standpunkt der Erhaltung dieses Systems.

Verehrte Leser, ich hoffe, wir verstehen uns und Sie können sich mit den psychologischen Gedankengängen anfreunden. Erst wenn bei den Menschen die innere Gefühlslage entstanden ist, dass man immer NEIN sagen kann und niemandem folgen muss, erst dann kommt die Tat.

Die Dynamik des Unbewussten in der Liebesbeziehung zwischen Mann und Frau

In diesem Zusammenhang erinnert sich der Autor an psychotherapeutische Gespräche während seiner Ausbildung und in der eigenen Praxis. In diesen Gesprächen ging es ebenfalls um die Dynamik des Unbewussten.

Junge Männer wandten sich hilfesuchend an den Psychotherapeuten, weil sie mit ihrer Haltung des Grolls und der Ablehnung die Liebe mit ihren Freundinnen und Frauen zugrunde richteten. Aufgrund ihrer Kindheitserlebnisse mit Eltern und Geschwistern konnten sie die Frau nicht bejahen, sich nicht auf eine Stufe mit ihr stellen. Sie wollten mehr gelten als die Frau und stets das letzte Wort haben; die Frauen dagegen sollten brav sein und gehorchen. Diese Männer meinten selbstkritisch, dass sie wohl unvernünftig seien, weil sie sich selbst schaden würden.

Doch sie waren nicht unvernünftig. Sie verhielten sich sehr wohl vernünftig, weil ihre Handlungen ihrer Gefühlssituation entsprachen. Aufgrund von Kindheitserlebnissen wie Verwöhnung, Verzärtelung und Bevorzugung als männliche Nachkommen konnten sie die Frau nicht bejahen und wollten mehr gelten als sie.

Auch hier haben Eltern in ihrer Unwissenheit den Fehler gemacht, die Söhne gegenüber den weiblichen Geschwistern zu bevorzugen und sie zu verwöhnen. Damit haben sie sie als Erwachsene in diese Situation gebracht. Doch anstatt den Eltern böse zu sein und ihnen zu zürnen, ist es sehr wichtig, sie zu verstehen und sich mit ihnen zu versöhnen.

Deshalb wurde den jungen Männern empfohlen, Kraft und Mut aufzubringen, um sich mit Hilfe eines psychotherapeutischen Fachmanns der unbewussten Gefühle aus der Kindheit bewusst zu werden, damit die Liebesbeziehungen gerettet werden kann. Da sie nichts für ihr irritiertes Verhalten konnten – es war kein freier Wille –, sollten sie sich auch nicht die Schuld geben. Sie sollten sich aber bewusstwerden, dass hier etwas vorliegt, dessen sie nicht Herr werden können.

Auch bei diesen Männern musste zuerst eine gesunde Gefühlsgrundlage entstehen, bevor sie sich mit der Frau und allen anderen Menschen auf eine Stufe stellen konnten.

Forderungen an die Erziehung

Da wir Menschen das Produkt der Erlebnisse in der Kindheit sind, haben wir als Erwachsene nur das zur Verfügung, was wir bei unseren Beziehungspersonen an Vertrauen, Mut und Kenntnissen erlebt und erfahren haben. Die Eltern und Geschwister sind unsere Welt. Hier bekommen die Kinder sozusagen ihren Fahrplan, den Kompass für das Leben. Wenn sie dann in den Kindergarten kommen, wissen sie schon Bescheid, haben sie bereits eine Einstellung und eine Meinung über sich selbst und die anderen Menschen.

Erziehungsmethoden der Vergangenheit schufen den Menschentypus, der die Tragödie der Geschichte verursachen konnte. Das autoritäre Prinzip, jahrhundertelang als fraglos-gültige Grundlage des erzieherischen Verhaltens angesehen, drosselte bereits in den Kindheitsjahren das Gemeinschaftsgefühl der Menschen und stattete sie mit jener Aggressionsbereitschaft aus, durch die eine gewalttätige Welt im Zustand der Gewalttätigkeit verharren konnte.

Durch die Erkenntnisse der wissenschaftlichen Psychologie wissen wir heute, dass der Mensch in einem derartigen Maße das Produkt seiner Erziehung ist, dass man die Hoffnung hegen darf, durch bessere, das heißt, psychologische Erziehungsmethoden Menschen heranbilden zu können, die gegen die Verstrickungen des Machtwahns gefeit sein werden. Indem die Pädagogik in Elternhaus und Schule auf ausschließliche Autorität und auf Gewaltanwendung verzichtet und sich mit wahrem Verständnis dem kindlichen Seelenleben anpasst, wird sie einen Menschentypus hervorbringen, der keine „Untertanen-Mentalität“ besitzt und darum für die Machthaber in unserer Welt kein gefügiges Werkzeug mehr sein wird.

Auch die Schule hat eine große Aufgabe und Verantwortung. In erster Linie hat sie die Überzeugung zu vermitteln, dass erfahrungsgemäßes Wissen, Verstand und Vernunft immer und überall den Vorrang haben. Sie sollte der Jugend von Anfang an Werte vermitteln, die unserem Heute entsprechen und die auch im Erwachsenenalter noch Gültigkeit haben. Darüber hinaus sollte sie den jungen Menschen eine psychologische Bildung vermittelt, das Wissen über sie selbst und ihre Belange.

Des Weiteren hat die Schule die eigene Kraft und das Selbstbewusstsein der jungen Menschen zu stärken und vom eigenen geliebten Seelenheil abzulenken auf das Heil der Allgemeinheit, auf die Notwendigkeit der Hilfsbereitschaft.

Die Demokratisierung der Erziehung, aufgefasst als Achtung vor der kindlichen Persönlichkeit und als freundschaftliche Zuwendung des Erziehers zu seinem Zögling auf der Basis konsequenter Führung ohne Zwang und Gewalt ist dazu berufen, einen der wertvollsten Beiträge zum Aufbau einer humanen Gesellschaftsordnung zu leisten.

Die unbewussten Gefühlregungen aus der Kindheit, die der Erwachsene vergessen hat und die ihn oft nicht froh werden lassen, kann er bei einem fähigen Tiefenpsychologen psychotherapeutisch abklären und sich so kennen lernen. Es ist immer möglich, aus alten negativen Gedanken und Gefühlen herauszuwachsen und schließlich zu entscheiden, ob man in den Krieg ziehen will – oder besser nicht.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Viele Jahrzehnte war er Lehrer (Rektor) und bildete pädagogische Fachkräfte fort. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis.

Noten 

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/youth-died-before-they-could-begin-live/5776057

2. http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28358&csshttps://www.globalresearch.ca/how-with-whom-can-we-reorganise-society/5800536

Das Bild stammt aus The Unz Review

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First published on August 19 2022

***

A great humanitarian uproar in recent weeks demanding the safe shipping of Ukrainian grain to ease a hunger crisis in Africa and elsewhere is deceptive on many levels.

Not the least is who owns the land on which the grain is grown and whether that grain is actually illegal GMO patented corn and other grains. A corrupt Zelenskyy regime has quietly made deals with the major GMO agribusiness companies in the West who have been stealthily taking control of some of the world’s most productive “black earth” farmland.

The 2014 CIA Coup

In February 2014 a US Government-backed coup d’etat forced the elected president of Ukraine to flee for his life to Russia. In December 2013 President Viktor Yanukovych had announced following months of debate that Ukraine would join the Russian Eurasian Economic Union on promise of a $15 billion Russian purchase of Ukraine state debt and 33% reduction in cost of imported Russian gas.

The competing offer had been a paltry “associate membership” in the EU tied to Ukraine acceptance of a draconian IMF and World Bank loan package that would force the privatization of Ukraine’s invaluable agriculture land, allow planting GMO crops, as well as imposing severe pension cuts and social austerity. In return for a $17 billion IMF loan, Ukraine would also have to raise personal income taxes by as much as 66% and to pay 50% more for natural gas. Workers would have to work ten years longer to get pensions. The aim was to open Ukraine to “foreign investment.” The usual IMF rape of the economy on behalf of globalist corporate interests.

A key provision of the US and IMF demands on the post-coup government of US-picked Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk , a leader of the CIA-backed Maiden protests against Yanukovych, was to finally open Ukraine’s rich agriculture land to foreign Agribusiness giants, above all GMO giants including Monsanto and DuPont. Three of the Yatsenyuk cabinet , including the key Finance and Economy ministers, were foreign nationals, dictated to Kiev by the US State Department’s Victoria Nuland and then-Vice President Joe Biden. The Washington-imposed IMF loan conditions required that Ukraine also reverse its ban on genetically engineered crops, and enable private corporations like Monsanto to plant its GMO seeds and spray the fields with Monsanto’s Roundup.

Since Ukraine declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, keeping control of Ukraine’s precious “black earth” land has been one of the most heated issues in national politics. Recent polls show 79% of Ukrainians want to retin control of their land from foreign takeover. Ukraine, as southern Russia, is home to valuable black earth or chernozems, a dark, humus-rich soil that is very productive and needs little artificial fertilizer.

2001 Moratorium

A 2001 Ukraine law imposed a moratorium on private sale of farmland to larger companies or foreign investors. The moratorium was to halt buy up by corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs and their leasing to foreign agribusiness of the rich farmlands. By then Monsanto and other Western agribusiness had made significant inroads into Ukraine.

When Ukraine left the Soviet Union in 1991, farmers who had worked on the Soviet collective farms were each given small plots of the land. To prevent sale of the plots to hungry foreign agribusiness, the 2001 moratorium was voted. Seven million Ukrainian farmers owned small plots totaling some 79 million acres. The remaining 25 million acres were owned by the state. Cultivation of GMO crops was strictly illegal.

Despite the moratorium, Monsato, DuPont, Cargill and other Western GMO purveyors secretly and illegally began spreading their patented GMO seeds in the black earth of Ukraine. Small landowners would lease their land to large Ukrainian oligarchs, who in turn would enter secret agreements with Monsanto and others to plant GMO corn and soybeans. By the end of 2016 according to a now-deleted US Department of Agriculture report, about 80% of Ukraine’s soybeans, and 10% of corn, were grown illegally from genetically modified seed. The Zelenskyy 2021 law has allowed this open door to GMO to be vastly expanded.

Enter the Comedian

In May 2019 Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a Ukrainian TV comedian, a protégé of notoriously corrupt Ukraine oligarch, Igor Kolomoisky, was elected President in a tragic popular revolt “against government corruption.” One of Zelenskyy’s first acts in 2019 was to try to overturn the 2001 land moratorium. Farmers and citizens staged huge protests throughout 2020 to block the changes proposed by Zelenskyy.

Finally, taking advantage of the covid lockdown restrictions and bans on public protests, in May 2021 Zelenskyy signed Bill No. 2194, deregulating land, calling it the “key” to the “farmland market.” He was right. In a sneaky move to calm farmer opposition, Zelensky claimed the new law allows only Ukrainian citizens to buy or sell the valuable farmland in the first few years. He did not mention the huge loophole allowing foreign-owned companies like Monsanto (today part of Bayer AG) or DuPont (now Corteva), or other companies which have been operating in Ukraine more than three years, to also buy the desired land.

The 2021 law also gave ownership to notoriously corrupt municipal and village governments who can change the land purpose. After January 2024 Ukraine citizens as well as corporations can buy up to 10,000 hectares of land. And an April, 2021 amendment to the land market law– “On Amendments to the Land Code of Ukraine and other Legislative Acts concerning the improvement of the management system and deregulation in the field of land relations”– opened another huge loophole for foreign agribusiness to take control of the rich Ukraine black earth. The amendment circumvents the ban on sale of land to foreigners by changing the purpose of the land, say from cropland to commercial land. Then it can be sold to anyone, including foreigners who can in turn repurpose it to farmland. Zelenskyy signed the bill and went back on his campaign pledge to hold a national referendum on any change in land ownership.

Should there be any doubt as to interest of US GMO-linked agribusiness in grabbing Ukraine prime farmland, a look at the current Board of Directors of the US-Ukraine Business Council is instructive. It includes the largest private grain and agribusiness giant in the world, Cargill. It includes Monsanto/Bayer which owns patented GMO seeds and the deadly pesticide, Roundup. It includes Corteva, the huge GMO fusion of DuPont and Dow Chemicals. It includes fellow grain cartel giants Bunge and Louis Dreyfus. It includes the major farm equipment maker John Deere.

These were the powerful agribusiness corporations reportedly behind Zelenskyy’s betrayal of his election promise.

With Bayer/Monsanto, Corteva and Cargill already controlling a reported 16.7 million hectares of prime Ukraine black earth farmland, and with a de facto bribe from the IMF and World Bank, Zelenskyy’s government caved in and sold out. The result will be very bad for the future of what was until recently the “breadbasket of Europe.” With Ukraine now being pried open by the GMO cartel companies, it leaves only Russia which banned GMO crops in 2016 as the only major world grain supplier without GMO. The EU is reportedly working on a new law that would overturn the long-established critical approval process for GMO crops and open the floodgates there to the GMO takeover.

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F. William Engdahl is strategic risk consultant and lecturer, he holds a degree in politics from Princeton University and is a best-selling author on oil and geopolitics. 

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization.

 


seedspdf.jpgSeeds of Destruction: Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation

Author Name: F. William Engdahl
ISBN Number: 978-0-9879389-2-3
Product Type: PDF File

Price: $9.50

This skilfully researched book focuses on how a small socio-political American elite seeks to establish control over the very basis of human survival: the provision of our daily bread. “Control the food and you control the people.”

This is no ordinary book about the perils of GMO. Engdahl takes the reader inside the corridors of power, into the backrooms of the science labs, behind closed doors in the corporate boardrooms.

The author cogently reveals a diabolical world of profit-driven political intrigue, government corruption and coercion, where genetic manipulation and the patenting of life forms are used to gain worldwide control over food production. If the book often reads as a crime story, that should come as no surprise. For that is what it is.

Click here to order.

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No Farmers, No Food, No Life

December 28th, 2022 by Dr. Carla Peeters

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First published on August 1, 2022

***

The world is now facing a man-made food catastrophe. It is reaching crisis levels. 

Current policies in many parts of the world place a priority on climate change for realizing a green new deal. Meanwhile, such policies will contribute to children dying from severe malnutrition due to broken food systems, with shortages of food and water, stress, anxiety, fear, and dangerous chemical exposure.

More negative pressure on farmers and the food system is asking for a catastrophe. The immune system of many people, especially children, has lost its resilience and has weakened too far with high risks for intoxication, infections, non-communicable and infectious diseases, deaths and infertility.

Dutch farmers, of whom many will face a cost of living crisis after 2030, have drawn the line. They are supported by an increasing number of farmers and citizens worldwide.

It’s not the farmers who are the most heavy polluters of the environment, but industries who make the products needed for a technocracy revolution to green energy, data mining, and Artificial Intelligence. As more of the WEF plans are rolled out by politicians, inequalities grow, and conflicts are rising all over the world.

The strong farmers’ revolt in the Netherlands is a call for an urgent transition to a people-oriented, free and healthy world with nutritious food cultivated and harvested in respect to natural processes. The cooperation of ordinary people worldwide is on the rise to prevent a mass famine catastrophe caused by the plan of scientism and technocracy to rule and control the world by unelected scientists and elites.

Enough food, access to food is the problem

Farmers around the world normally grow enough calories (2,800) per person (while 2,100 calories/day would be sufficient) to support a population of nine to ten billion people worldwide. But still over 828 million people have too little to eat each day. The problem is not always food; it is access. The UN which wrote in 2015 in the Sustainable Development Goals goal 2: No hunger and malnutrition for all in 2030 will not be reached.

Throughout history many times natural or manmade disasters led to food insecurities for longer periods of time, resulting in hunger, malnutrition (undernourishment) and mortality. The Covid-19 pandemic has worsened the situation. Since the global pandemic began, access to food estimates show that food insecurity has likely doubled, if not tripled  in some places around the world.

Moreover, during the pandemic, global hunger rose to 150 million and is now affecting 828 million people, with 46 million at the brink of starvation facing emergency levels of hunger or worse. In the hardest hit places, this means famine or famine-like conditions. At least 45 million children are suffering from wasting, which is the most visible and severe form of malnutrition, and potentially life-threatening.

With global prices of food and fertilizers already reaching worrying highs, the continuing impacts of the pandemic, the political forces to realize climate change goals and the Russia-Ukraine war raise serious concerns for food security both in the short and the long term.

The world is facing a further spike in food shortages, pushing more families worldwide at risk for severe malnutrition. Those communities which survived former crises are left more vulnerable to a new shock than before and will accumulate the effects, diving into famine (acute starvation and a sharp increase in mortality).

Furthermore, growth of economies and development of nations are currently slowing down due to a lack of workforce due to a sharp decrease in well-being and higher mortality rates.

In the wake of new nitrogen limits that require farmers to radically curb their nitrogen emissions by up to 70 percent in the next eight years, tens of thousands of Dutch farmers have risen in protest against the government.

Farmers will be forced to use less fertilizer and even to reduce the number of their livestock, in some cases up to 95%. For smaller family-owned farms it will be impossible to reach these goals. Many will be forced to shutter, including people whose families have been farming for up to eight generations.

Moreover, a significant decrease and limitations of Dutch farmers will have huge repercussions for the global food supply chain. The Netherlands is the world’s second largest agricultural exporter after the United States. Still, the Dutch government pursues their agenda on Climate Change while there is currently no law to support the implementation, while they will not change much in the planet’s major air pollution. Models used to arrive at the decision of the Dutch government are debated by acknowledged scientists.

In no communication have Dutch politicians considered the effects of their decision on breaking a most important goal in the UN agreement: ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all in 2030.

Unfortunately, Sri Lanka, a country whose political leader introduced zero Nitrogen and CO2 emissions policy, is now facing economic problems, severe hunger, and difficulties to access food upon a political decision that farmers were not allowed to use fertilizers and pesticides. Still, politicians responsible for Nitrogen emissions/climate change in other countries pursue the same green policy.

Furthermore, experts are warning that heat, flooding, drought, wildfires, and other disasters have been wreaking economic havoc, with worse to come. Food and water shortages have been in the media.

On top of that, Australian experts announce a risk for an outbreak of a viral disease in cattle. This could cause an A$80 billion hit to the Australian economy and even more real supply chain issues. Countless businesses and producers go bankrupt. The emotional toll they are facing to euthanize their healthy herds is immense and hardly bearable. It is pushing more farmers to end their life.

Hopefully, the need for the Danish government to apologize, as an investigative report on the cull of more than 15 million minks in November 2020 criticized the action that led to the misleading of mink breeders and the public and the clearly illegal instructions to authorities, will help politicians to reconsider such drastic measures on farmers.

Worldwide, farmers’ protests are rising, supported by more and more citizens who stand up against the expensive mandates for changes to “green policies” that already brought massive miseries and instability.

At a ministerial conference for food security on June 29 2022, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that worsening food shortages could lead to a global “catastrophe”.

Malnutrition responsible for more ill health than any other cause

The increased risk of food and water shortages the world is facing now will bring humanity to the edge. Hunger is a many-headed monster. For decades conquering world hunger has become a political issue in a way that it could not have been in the past. The use of authoritarian political power led to disastrous government policies, making it impossible for millions of people to earn a living. Chronic hunger and the recurrence of virulent famines must be seen as being morally outrageous and politically unacceptable, says Dreze and Sen in Hunger and Public Action, published in 1991.

“For those at the high end of the social ladder, ending hunger in the world would be a disaster. For those who need availability of cheap labor, hunger is the foundation of their wealth, it is an asset,” wrote Dr. George Kent in 2008 in the essay “The Benefits of World Hunger.”

Malnutrition is not only influenced by food and water shortage, but also to exposures of extreme stress, fear, insecurity of safety and food, social factors, chemicals, microplastics, toxins, and over-medicalization. No country in the world can afford to overlook this disaster in all its forms, which affects mostly children and women in reproductive age. Globally more than 3 billion people cannot afford healthy diets. And this is in contradiction to what many people think is just a low-income country problem.

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic began, about 8% of the population in North America and Europe lacked regular access to nutritious and sufficient food. A third of reproductive-age women are anemic, while 39% of the world’s adults are overweight or obese. Each year around 20 million babies are born underweight. In 2016 9.6% of the women were underweight. Globally in 2017, 22.2% of the children under the age of five were stunting, while undernutrition explains around 45% of deaths among children under five.

As stated by Lawrence Haddad, the co-chair of the Global Nutrition Report independent Expert Group, “We now live in a world where being malnourished is the new normal. It is a world we must all claim as totally unacceptable.” While malnutrition is the leading driver of disease with nearly 50% of deaths caused by nutrition related non-communicable diseases in 2014, only $50 million of donor funding was given.

Malnutrition in all its forms imposes unacceptably high costs – direct and indirect – on individuals, families and nations. The estimated impact on the global economy of the chronic undernourishment of 800 million people could be as high as $3,5 trillion per year, as was stated in a Global Nutrition Report in 2018. While child deaths, premature adult mortality and malnutrition-related infectious and non-communicable diseases are preventable with the right nutrition.

This will be much more at this precious moment, as the population sharply increases in excess mortality and non-communicable diseases among the working age people as recently shown by insurance companies.

Famines cause transgenerational effects

Famine is a widespread condition in which a large percentage of people in a country or region have little or no access to adequate food supplies. Europe and other developed parts of the world have mostly eliminated famine, though widespread famines that killed thousands and millions of people are known from history, like the Dutch Potato famine from 1846-1847, The Dutch Hunger winter 1944-1945 and a Chinese famine of 1959-1961.

The latter was the most severe famine both in terms of duration and number of people affected (600 million and around 30 million deaths) and led to a widespread undernutrition of the Chinese population in the period from 1959-1961. Currently, Sub-Saharan Africa and Yemen are countries with recognized famine.

Unfortunately, global destabilization, starvation and mass migration are increasing fast with more famines to be expected if we do not act today.

Epidemiological studies of Barker and later of Hales showed a relation between the availability of nutrition in various stages of pregnancy and the first years of life and diseases later in life. Their studies demonstrated that people with metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases were often small at birth. More and more research proves the role of nutrition-related mechanisms influencing gene expression. Even the period prior to pregnancy might influence a later risk for insulin resistance or other complications of the fetus.

As demonstrated in a study with 3,000 participants in Northern China, prenatal exposure to famine significantly increased hyperglycemia in adulthood in two consecutive generations. Severity of famine during prenatal development is related to the risk for Type 2 diabetes. These findings are consistent with animal models that have shown the impact of prenatal nutritional status on neuro-endocrine changes that affect metabolism and can be programmed to transmit physiologically across multiple generations through both male and female generations. Early life Health shock conditions can cause epigenetic changes in humans that persist throughout life, affect old age mortality and have multigenerational effects. Depending on which trimester the fetus is exposed to food deprivation or even stress alone a related disease later in life may vary from schizophrenia, ADHD to renal failure and hypertension among others. Other studies of famine exposure in people have produced evidence of changes in the endocrine system and to prenatal gene expression in reproductive systems.

The effects of periods of famine or undernutrition have predominantly been seen in people with low social economic income. However, 1 in 3 persons in the world suffered from some form of malnutrition in 2016. Women and children are 70% of the hungry. There is no doubt that undernutrition increased further during the past six years. Stunting and wasting increased in the most vulnerable. Two out of three children are not fed the minimum diverse diet they need to grow and develop to their full potential.

The hungry people in countries like Sri Lanka, Haiti, Armenia ,and Panama are the tip of the iceberg, opening the eyes of many citizens worldwide to a fast-growing problem as a result of the lockdowns, mandates and coercive policies in climate change, drought and the Ukraine war.

Citizens of the world have been facing for years: excess mortality, a fast decline in infertility and childbirth with a threat to human rights for women and more diseases.

Shocking reports of the UN and WHO acknowledged the health of people and environment is declining. The world is moving backwards on eliminating hunger and malnutrition. The real danger is that these numbers will climb even higher in the months ahead.

The truth is that food innovation hubs, food flats (vertical farming), artificial meats and gene and mind manipulations will not be able to tackle the depressing state humanity is facing.

Zero-Covid policy has brought humanity at risk in its existence. Covid-19 vaccines with a risk for harmhave been rolled out even for children under five years, hardly at risk for a severe disease, but undernourishment that greatly increases susceptibility to major human infectious diseases has not been taken care of.

Conflicts are growing worldwide, increasing instability. Citizens will no longer accept policies without a clear harm-cost benefit analysis.

We need to act now to decrease food and fuel prices immediately by supporting farmers and effective food systems for nutritious food to heal the most malnourished (children and females at childbearing age) in the population.

Let us hope for a return of Hippocrates’ principle: “Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.”

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Carla Peeters is founder and managing director of COBALA Good Care Feels Better. She obtained a PhD in Immunology from the Medical Faculty of Utrecht, studied Molecular Sciences at Wageningen University and Research, and followed a four-year course in Higher Nature Scientific Education with a specialization in medical laboratory diagnostics and research. She studied at various business schools including London Business School, INSEAD and Nyenrode Business School.

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What Is Asymmetric Warfare?

December 27th, 2022 by Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović

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At least from the very academic viewpoint, war is a condition of armed conflict between at least two sides (but, in fact, states). There are, historically, several types of warfare as conventional warfare, civil war, lightning war (blitzkrieg in German), total war, hegemonic war, liberation war, war on terrorism, etc. However, according to the used warfare technique, there is, for instance, little war (guerrilla war in Spanish) or according to the (counter)balance of warfare sides, there is asymmetric war as an example.

Asymmetric warfare exists in the case when two sides of combat forces (two states, two blocs, a state vs. one military bloc, etc.) are very or even extremely different regarding their military and other capacities to fight each other. They are as well as very different in the terms of their areas of comparative strategic advantage, Therefore, the confrontation between such two different sides is coming to turn on one belligerent side’s ability/capacity to force the other side to fight on their own terms and conditions.

Another feature of asymmetric warfare is that the strategies that the weaker side has consistently adopted against the stronger side (enemy) often involve targeting the enemy’s domestic political base as much as its forward military capabilities. Nevertheless, in essence, usually, such strategies involve inflicting pain over time without suffering unbearable retaliation in return.

In practice, a very illustrative example of asymmetric warfare was when on March 20th, 2003, US-led coalition forces invaded (made aggression) Iraq of Saddam Hussein with the objective of locating and disarming suspected (and not existing) Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

The coalition forces lead a very fast and overwhelmingly successful military campaign with the occupation of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. Consequently, the Iraqi military forces collapsed and finally surrendered to the occupants. US President Bush Junior declared the official end of major fighting operations in Iraq on May 2nd, 2003.

On one hand, historically speaking, the casualties during the conventional part of the war were low for major modern and contemporary military conflicts. However, on other hand, the fighting soon has been evolved into an insurgency in which the combination of guerrilla/terrorist attacks on both Western coalition forces and the civilians of Iraq became the everyday norm.

Therefore, by the spring of 2007, the coalition had suffered some 3.500 men and around 24.000 wounded. Some independent sources estimate that total Iraqi war-related deaths are up to 650.000 (the minimum is 60.000). The 2003 Iraqi War is an example of how the asymmetric war can be transformed into guerrilla warfare with unpredictable consequences for the originally victorious side. The same happened with the war in Afghanistan in 2001 which started as an asymmetric war but was finished twenty years later with the victory of Taliban guerrilla forces over the Western coalition.

Nevertheless, the 2003 Iraqi War illustrated several themes that have been prominent in the talks regarding the future development of warfare including the question of asymmetric war as well. In this particular case, one of the focal features of asymmetric warfare was the fact that the fast military victory of the US-led coalition saw the Iraqi armed forces overrun by the technological superiority of the advanced weapons and information systems of the West, particularly of the US. It simply suggested that military revolution was on the way (RMA – revolution in military affairs).

Another feature of asymmetric warfare in Iraq in 2003 was that US-employed military (operational) doctrine has been as well as of focal importance. In other words, the military success of the Western coalition forces was not only the result of pure technological supremacy, but it was as well as the result of superior operational doctrine. A very fast and comparatively bloodless victory for the US-led coalition launched the view that in the post-Cold War 1.0 strategic environment, there were few inhibitions on the use of force by the US Army as at that time still being a hyper-power in global politics and international relations. Therefore, it was not the threat from the time of Cold War 1.0 that some regional conflict or war would escalate into nuclear warfare between two superpowers. In addition, Washington was healing the trauma of Vietnam through asymmetric wars against Yugoslavia in 1999, Afghanistan in 2001, and Iraq in 1991/2003.

It can be said that in the case of the asymmetric war against Iraq in 2003, a focal point was US dominance of information warfare in both the military sense (using satellite systems for communication, weapons targeting, reconnaissance, etc.) and civilian sense (manipulation of the civilian communications and global media images of the warfare). Consequently, Washington succeeded at least in the West to produce an understanding of the war as pro-democratic and preemptive (against the use of WMD by Iraqi forces, in fact, against Israel).

Nevertheless, the point was that this conflict did not end with the surrender of the regular forces (army) of Iraq. It, actually, confirmed some arguments of those who supported the idea of “post-modern” warfare (or “new” wars) out of the regular (standard) type of wars (army vs. an army).

On other hand, the ability to operate using complex informal military networks allowed the Iraqi rebels after the regular phase of the war in 2003 to conduct effective asymmetric warfare, regardless of the overwhelming superiority of Western military technology. The insurgents, as well as, have been able to use the global media in order to present their warfare as a liberation war against Western neo-imperialism. However, the techniques used by the rebels were brutal (terrorism), ruthless, and in many cases targeted against the civilian population, in a campaign supported by outside structures (both governmental and non-governmental) and finance. It is sustained by an overtly identity-based campaign and reflects at the same time the features of the concept of the “post-modern” or “new” wars.

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Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović is a former university professor in Vilnius, Lithuania. He is a Research Fellow at the Center for Geostrategic Studies. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

I once described a friend of mine, a French skier, as ‘poetry in motion’. What did I mean by that? Can an athlete truly be a poet? After all, a poet is someone who generally takes great time and care to craft a gem, a poem, a creation to be polished and refined with pumice,  as the famous Latin poet Catullus wrote: āridā modo pūmice expolītum. A craft defined by contemplation, meditation and revision, an exertion not dependent upon the exigencies of the moment, but of a larger conception of time.

When I described my skiing friend Alain, was I christening him as a true poet? What makes poetry? What makes a poet? What does a poet make?

After all, the words ‘poem’ and ‘poetry’ are derived from a Greek root that means ‘to create, to make’.

Is a bricklayer a poet? Hmmm …

When I thought of Alain’s skiing, I thought of something that was graceful, beautiful and possessed of a certain kind of light, perhaps even of symmetry. I did not think of brute force, of hammer blows, of a monstrous subjugation of the snow-clad mountains of Taos Ski Valley, but rather of a a display of exquisite subtlety and skill and adaptation to the terrain.  Even when Homer, the G.O.A.T. in poetry,  dealt with the savage brutality of the Trojan War in his Iliad, he transformed this brutality into something transcendently poetic.

‘Poetic justice,’ on the other hand, connotes something different: closure, a neat declaration of the laws of Karma, a tidy wrapping up of things, a reestablishment of order in a world that was careening into chaos.

Argentina’s wild and improbable run to victory in the football (soccer)  World Cup of 2022 provided us with many examples of football grace, football force and football justice. The incomparable Lionel Messi finally achieved his much-desired goal after much travail in a concluding match with France that featured more moments of thrill and drama than I had remembered in a sporting event. Up 2-0 in the second half, Argentina seemed to be assured of a clear cut win, until a careless penalty was awarded to France and, 97 seconds later, a natural goal was volleyed home by a resurgent Kylian Mbappe to level the score. In extra time Messi struck and Argentina again seemed to have the game in hand before an unlikely Argentinian handball in the box gave France the opportunity to equalise.

Thus the game was reduced – and I use this term deliberately – to a penalty shootout, where luck and fortune have as much weight as skill. Nonetheless, the Argentinians emerged victorious.

Was this poetic justice for the Lionel Messi who had laboured for so many years scoring goal upon goal and registering assist upon assist for his club teams and the national team, whose vision on the soccer pitch was breathtaking? Perhaps. Whatever it was, I believe that the better team in the end did indeed merit the honour of hoisting the trophy.

For me, however, it was the magnificent play of Angel Di Maria that pushed my thoughts into the direction of poetry. Di Maria had been wreaking havoc upon the hapless French up until minute 65, when he was taken off. His speed and ability to thrust unsettled the French, and his creative manoeuvres led to the first Argentinian goal, having drawn a penalty converted by Messi. But it was his breathtaking finish to a play that began with Emi Martinez, the Argentine keeper, and progressed back and forth across the vast pitch to culminate in a strike that justified visions of poetry.

It was the goal of the tournament, a thing of beauty, a creation that emerged from nothing, from the unpredictable chaos of the game into a sublime and unforeseen event.

And isn’t this just what true poetry really is? The distillation of the complexity and messiness of the world into an essence of beauty and truth?  Well, we may argue about whether football produces truth, but we really can’t argue about the spontaneous eruptions of beauty, dependent upon the laws of chance and the skill of players prepared for the vagaries of fate.

After he scored this magnificent goal Di Maria used his hands to create the image of a heart.

It was the fitting exemplar of a majestic culmination.

Di Maria, Messi and Argentina’s manager Lionel Scaloni all hail from the city of Rosario in Argentina, a trio that joined forces, ultimately, in the service of poetic justice and display.

After all, true poetry is nothing more or less than a novel distillation of our disorderly world into that thing of beauty which the great English poet Keats rightly called a joy forever. By these standards Di Maria, Messi and the entire Argentinian team were poets, forged in the crucible of spontaneous necessity, and rendering unto us, we eager spectators, renewed hope in the capabilities of humankind and the exquisite existence of a transcendent and aesthetically delightful order.

Vamos Argentina, vamos Angel Di Maria, vamos poesía!

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Dr. Garcia is a Philadelphia-born psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who emigrated to New Zealand in 2006. He has authored articles ranging from explorations of psychoanalytic technique, the psychology of creativity in music (Mahler, Rachmaninoff, Scriabin, Delius), and politics. He is also a poet, novelist and theatrical director. He retired from psychiatric practice in 2021 after working in the public sector in New Zealand.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Pfizer’s Shots Aren’t Safe and Were Never Shown to be

December 27th, 2022 by Dr. Joseph Mercola

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***

Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a member of Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB), was previously a paid adviser to Pfizer. DSMBs are supposed to be independent, and aren’t if members have previous relationships with the company

German autopsies found “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab, and investigators suspect the inflammation observed would be fatal. They also found spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, but not another key part of SARS-CoV-2. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab

Data from the German health insurance provider BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans, show 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab

The largest German statutory health insurance dataset, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out

December 13, 2022, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs. He also established an independent Public Health Integrity Committee to analyze and assess federal health guidance before they’re implemented in Florida

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Contrary to the official narrative (and hence popular belief), the COVID shots have no demonstrated safety. In Episode 298 of The Highwire, Del Bigtree interviews attorney Aaron Siri about the various lawsuits his firm has brought to reverse COVID jab mandates.

Siri describes a recent deposition of Dr. Kathryn Edwards, a world-leading vaccinologist who sat on Pfizer’s data safety monitoring board (DSMB). This five-member committee oversaw the safety of Pfizer’s jab. A DSMB is supposed to be an independent group of experts, whose responsibility it is to monitor patient safety and treatment efficacy data while a clinical trial is ongoing.

Pfizer’s Not-so-Independent Safety Monitoring Board

As noted by Siri in the deposition, since the DSMB is supposed to be independent, it’s crucially important that all the members of that board have no potential conflicts of interest and are in fact truly independent of the drug company whose product they’re evaluating.

In the case of Edwards, she was a paid adviser to Pfizer before she was hired (by Pfizer) to be on the DSMB for their COVID jab. According to Edwards, this fact is irrelevant, because that prior relationship did not influence the work she did on the board.

“I say what I believe based on my expertise,” she told Siri. “So, you don’t think financial incentive can sway people’s judgment at all?” Siri asked. “It does not sway my judgment, Sir,” she replied. “Then why have an independent DSMB?” Siri asked. “Why doesn’t Pfizer just have some of its employees on it?”

“Because we are independent; we are independent from Pfizer in this assessment,” she replied. But just how can an independent advisory committee possibly be “independent” if members have prior relationships with the company?

Another noteworthy tidbit from that deposition was Edwards’ comment that she reviewed “lots of reactions and adverse events” from the COVID jab trial. Yet the public has continuously been told there are no bad reactions. So, what was she looking at? And why, if there were “lots of reactions,” did the DSMB conclude that there are no safety concerns?

Of course, we know at least some of what she was looking at. Pfizer trial documents1 have been released showing the company amassed nine single-spaced pages’ worth of “adverse events of special interest” (see pages 30 through 382), including 1,223 events with fatal outcomes between December 1, 2020 and February 28, 2021 alone.

A whistleblower who worked on Pfizer’s Phase 3 trial has also come forward with evidence showing data were falsified, patients were unblinded and follow-up on reported side effects lagged way behind. Why didn’t any of these issues concern the DSMB? Was it because there really was no independent DSMB?

What German Autopsy Data Have Revealed

In a mid-December 2022 Substack article, the anonymous writer who goes by the moniker “A Midwestern Doctor” reviewed German autopsy data, which demonstrate:3

  • The presence of “highly unusual tissue inflammation” in people who died shortly after getting the jab. As noted by the author, “Pathologists had not observed this phenomena before the COVID-19 vaccines, and they suspected this inflammation would be fatal.”
  • The presence of COVID spike protein in the tissues of the deceased, whereas another key part of the SARS-CoV-2 virus was absent. This suggests the actual virus was not part of the problem; the only possible source of the spike protein was the jab.

The most recent and “most definitive” study on this subject, according to A Midwestern Doctor, examined 35 people who died within 20 days of getting the COVID jab. After thorough autopsy examination, 10 of the deceased were determined to have died from causes other than the jab.

Among the remaining 25, most died from causes that, in general, have frequently been linked to vaccination. Five died from myocarditis, which could potentially be linked to the shot. In three of those five cases, the COVID jab was determined to be the definitive cause of the myocarditis that led to their death.

As noted by A Midwestern Doctor, “These results are very important for convicting the vaccines if it can also be proven that a large number of unexpected deaths are occurring following vaccination.” As it turns out, that’s exactly what excess mortality data tell us.

German Insurance Provider Data Show Rise in Doctor’s Visits

A Midwestern Doctor also cites data from the German health insurance provider, BKK, which covers about 10.9 million Germans. One of the BKK board members, Andreas Shöfbeck, discovered concerning trends in their data, which he sent to the Paul-Ehrlich Institut, an agency of the German Federal Ministry of Health.

No good deed goes unpunished in the era of COVID censorship, however, so Shöfbeck was summarily dismissed from the board as thanks for his contribution to public health and safety. The BKK dataset showed 2.05% of COVID jab recipients sought medical care after their jab. A Midwestern Doctor continues:4

“This concerning safety signal prompted … the AfD [Alternative for Germany, a conservative political party] … to file the German equivalent of FOIA [Freedom of Information Act request] for the rest of the insurance data …

Recently AfD obtained AOK Sachsen-Anhalt’s data, which once analyzed, demonstrated that many of the conditions we associate with COVID-19 injuries noticeably increased when the vaccination campaign initiated … [C]onditions which rose five-fold or more were:”

conditions associated with COVID-19

“AfD also submitted a FOIA request to KBV, the association which represents all physicians who receive insurance in Germany and thus the largest insurance dataset available.”

Largest Insurance Dataset Reveal Rise in Sudden Deaths

The larger statutory health insurance dataset from KBV, which encompasses 72 million Germans, show massive increases in sudden and unexpected deaths after the COVID jabs rolled out.

The following graph is from a press conference presentation by data analyst Tom Lausen (see video below; it’s in German, but you can enable English subtitles).5 No mainstream media attended the press conference.

experimental covid vaccines

As noted by A Midwestern Doctor:6

“… one way that individuals have analyzed the unusual changes in health following the vaccination campaigns has been to assess how far they fall outside of the expected range of variation …

I did a quick calculation for the above graph and found that 2021’s increase from 2016-2020 was 37.7σ [sigma], while 2022’s was 41.0σ. This is quite a big deal (the rarity of an event happening by chance increases exponentially as the σ increases).

For context, a 7σ event has a 1/390,632,286,180 chance of spontaneously occurring (it is thought to occur once in a billion years) … (I was not able to find a reference on the probabilities for the even higher σ events observed here).

Given these numbers, it is very difficult to argue that these events were not caused by something. In this regard, we are also quite fortunate that while the vaccines were rushed to the market over a period of time far too short to establish safety, that process still took a year.

Because of this lag, it is possible to refute the commonly cited argument that these changes were due to COVID-19 or the lockdowns, as these only occurred in 2020 …”

Dramatic Rise in Heart-Related Fatalities

Lausen also presented a graph for German fatalities per quarter involving cardiac problems.7,These six death certificate codes all correspond to “sudden deaths” with cardiac cause. As you can see, heart-related mortality more than doubled in the first quarter of 2021 from the year before, and nearly tripled from the five-year average.

german fatalities

Some have argued that since few shots were given in early 2021, heart-related deaths would not have increased until the second quarter if there was a correlation between the two. However, other data show there was a rapid rise in COVID jab doses administered during the first quarter of 2021 (see graph below), so it’s not outside the realm of possibility that there is a correlation.

Also, as with all-cause mortality, the fact that heart-related deaths did NOT spike during 2020 suggests COVID-19 had nothing to do with the rise that occurred in the first quarter of 2021.

daily COVID-19 vaccine doses administered

Data Analyst Calls for Immediate End to COVID Jabs

In the conclusion of his presentation, Lausen calls for the immediate suspension of the COVID jabs until correlation between the shots and death can be conclusively ruled out. He also calls for:9

  • Autopsies on all who died suddenly to determine what the massive increase is due to
  • Mandatory recording of the COVID jab status of all deceased individuals, and the brand used, and regular publication of these data
  • Immediate evaluation of the KBV data by German health authorities
  • Informing all doctors and the population at large about the increase in diseases being reported post-jab
  • Regular publication of KB e V data linked with COVID jab data held by the Paul Ehrlich Institute and the Robert Koch Institute (Germany’s public health institute)

The Shots Also Have Negative Effectiveness

In addition to not being safe, by any standard, the COVID shots are also negatively effective, meaning after 90 days, both Moderna’s and Pfizer’s shots make you more susceptible to COVID.

As shown in the graphic below, Danish data reveal Omicron cases among the jabbed rose dramatically after three months for both injections, giving Pfizer a negative effectiveness of 76.5% at 90 days’ post-jab and Moderna a 39.3% negative effectiveness.

pfizer moderna negative effectiveness

As noted in a series of Twitter posts by Chris Martenson Ph.D.:10

“If you’ve been vaccinated, and feel like you’ve been getting sick more often than your unvaccinated friends, your impression is correct … The only rational, scientific, ethical, and moral response is to #StoptheShotsNow for everyone under 50 who is healthy. Anything less is profiteering, politics, or personal failure. Or assault and/or homicide if you’re a doctor.”

Florida Governor Calls for Grand Jury Investigation

I’ve reviewed data on side effects and excess mortality in the U.S. in several previous articles, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis recently did what many of us have been calling for in light of those data.

December 13, 2022, he petitioned the Florida Supreme Court for a statewide grand jury investigation of crimes and wrongdoing committed against Floridians related to the COVID-19 jabs.11 According to the governor’s press release:12

“The pharmaceutical industry and the FDA have refused to release patient-level data for independent researchers.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna have received FDA approval for pediatric and adult patients and continue to be marketed as safe and effective, even though the vaccines do not prevent transmission and adverse events have been minimized and disregarded by the Biden Administration and Big Pharma.

In response, Governor DeSantis has filed a petition to impanel a statewide grand jury to investigate crimes and wrongs in Florida related to the COVID-19 vaccines and further recommend enforcement methods.”

Florida Establishes Independent Public Health Committee

DeSantis is also implementing autopsy surveillance of post-jab sudden deaths, and has established a Public Health Integrity Committee, an independent group of expert researchers “charged with assessing federal decisions, recommendations, and guidance related to public health and health care … to ensure that Florida’s public health policies are tailored for Florida’s communities and priorities.”

The Committee, which will be overseen by Florida surgeon general Dr. Joseph Ladapo, consists of the following members:

As noted in the governor’s press release:13

“The Biden Administration and pharmaceutical corporations continue to push widespread distribution of mRNA vaccines on the public, including children as young as 6 months old, through relentless propaganda while ignoring real-life adverse events.

At today’s roundtable the Governor and health experts discussed data covering serious adverse events. These risks include coagulation disorders, acute cardiac injuries, Bell’s palsy, encephalitis, appendicitis, and shingles.

‘Health care professionals should always communicate the risks of a medical intervention to their patients in a manner that is clinically appropriate and meets standards of ethical practice. President Biden and Big Pharma have completely prevented that from happening – it is wrong,’ said Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo.

‘With these new actions, we will shed light on the forces that have obscured truthful communication about the COVID-19 vaccines.'”

*

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Notes

1 PHMPT.org 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports

2 PHMPT.org 5.3.6 Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports, Pages 30-38

3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 A Midwestern Doctor December 13, 2022

8 Meryl Nass Substack December 19, 2022

10 Twitter Chris Martenson December 15, 2022

11, 12, 13 FLgov.org December 13, 2022

Featured image is from NaturalNews.com


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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***

“This is quite shocking,” declared South Australia’s Attorney-General and Aboriginal Affairs Minister, Kyam Maher.  “These caves are some of the earliest evidence of Aboriginal occupation of that part of the country.”  That evidence was subtracted this month by acts of vandalism inflicted on artwork in Koonalda Cave on the Nullarbor Plain, claimed to be the world’s largest limestone karst landscape and covering over 200,000 square kilometres.

Edward John Eyre, the first European to cross the Plain in 1840-1841, wrote hauntingly of it as “a hideous anomaly, a blot on the face of Nature, the sort of place one gets into bad dreams”.  In his case, personal circumstances soured the impressions: horses dying of dehydration; a case of mutiny resulting in the killing of his companion John Baxter; the theft of the party’s supplies; the slimmest chances of survival.

The work in question, carvings on chalk limestone, is said to be some 30,000 years old, considered sacred by the Mirning people.  By the time news reached CNN of the incident, eight years had been shaved off the estimate, one more in line with the 1956 dating by archaeologist Alexander Gallus.  In information available on the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, the “finger markings and unique archaeological deposits found in Koonalda Cave provide a rare glimpse of Aboriginal life on the Nullarbor Plain during the Pleistocene.”

The rock art in question is now plastered by crude graffiti, featuring such messages as “don’t look now, but this is a death cave”.  The verdict of archaeologist Keryn Walshe, whose encyclopaedic knowledge of the Koonalda Cave is unsurpassed, was gravely unequivocal.  “The art is not recoverable.”  To remove the graffiti from the soft surface would effectively do away with the art itself.  “It’s a massive, tragic loss to have it defaced to this degree.”

Something of a consensus has been reached on how this took place.  A steel case, installed in the 1980s, was breached by digging intruders.  Astonishingly, the Mirning elders seemed to have been the last ones to know about it.  Bunna Lawrie, for instance, only heard about the matter this month.  (Access is usually restricted to a few male elders; the site is closed to tourists.)  “We are the traditional custodians of Koonalda,” he declared in a statement, “and ask for this to be respected and for our Mirning elders to be consulted.”

Put it down to inadequate resources, and a lack of will, which has also seen previous acts of vandalism take place.   “The failure to build an effective gate, or to make use of modern security services, such as wildlife monitoring cameras that operate 24/7, has in many ways allowed this vandalism to occur,” suggested Clare Buswell of the Australian Speleological Federation Conservation Commission in a submission to the Aboriginal lands parliamentary standing committee made earlier this year.

The statement by Lawrie reiterates the point.  “Since 2018 we have been asking for support to secure the entrance as a priority and to offer appropriate Mirning signage.  This support did not happen.”  Other misfortunes had befallen the site since, including the collapse of the cave entrance, and access works that did not involve consultation and were “not approved.”

The destruction of such sites should shock, but each revelation seemingly inures the authorities to them.  The pattern is clear: apologies follow; horror is expressed; and even offers of compensation made to cope with irreversible harm.  But the business of trashing a legacy continues, digestible as the stuff of accident or indifference.

In many instances, laws sympathetic to development and mining also do much to doom such works to extinction.  The rock shelters of the Jukaan Gorge site in Western Australia were remorselessly levelled by Rio Tinto in May 2020, an outcome that was ethically atrocious yet legally sanctioned by the legislation of the day.

Of note was the mining giant’s conduct towards local elders.  The company’s legal team stomped on any protest, haughtily informing members of the Puutu Kunti Kurrama and Pinikura (PKKP) that any emergency application to halt to the company’s works made to the federal government could only take place with the company’s blessing, and with 30 days-notice.  Carol Meredith, the chief executive of the PKKP Aboriginal Corporation, recalled the sharp response from Rio’s lawyers, who stated that “we were not able to engage seeking out an emergency declaration that perhaps would have stopped proceedings, because of our claim-wide participation agreement.”

Within the wheels of the company, blissful ignorance reigned.  Rio Tinto’s head of corporate relations, Simone Niven, was not only based in London but had little idea about the significance of the Juukan Gorge caves.  Relations could hardly be counted as her strong suit.

Conforming to previous instances of such vandalism, penalties are being called for regarding the perpetrators of the graffiti.  Under the legal regime, damaging such sites can carry a fine of $A10,000 or six months in prison. But the harm has been done; again, history has been left poorer, and the dreams worse than ever.

*

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Dr. Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge.  He currently lectures at RMIT University. He is a regular contributor to Global Research and Asia-Pacific Research. Email: [email protected]

Featured image is from Alamay via People

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***

As many people must now realise, the word ‘Green’ has been hijacked. 

It used to mean ‘natural’, ‘diverse’, ‘eco-friendly’ and ‘human scale’.

That was while bona fide ecologists still held sway over the way the word was used.

‘Green’ meant taking a responsible position concerning the management of planetary resources; having empathy for nature, fertility, ecological food and community involvement.

But then in 1992, ‘The Earth Summit’ (Rio Summit) happened, along with ‘Agenda 21’. And something called ‘Sustainable Development’ became the catch-all promotional spin to sell the prescribed medicine. The deception.

That was the beginning of the end of the ‘Real Greens’ and the arrival of the corporate, banker-backed ‘Fake Green’ agenda we live with today.

The central component of the scam was, of course, ‘Global Warming.’

Let’s remind ourselves. At first it was called ‘The Greenhouse Effect’, then ‘Global Warming’ and then ‘Climate Change’.

Image is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Polar ice cap doomsday theorists, like ex US Vice President Al Gore, came and went. But the ice didn’t.

In Britain the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) sought to spearhead the ‘Stop Global Warming’ crusade.

IPCC gave lucrative contracts to around 2,000 scientists with instructions to produce a computer modelled climate graph which would show almost unstoppable ‘warming from CO2’….unless..

‘Unless’ strict measures were taken to – over a number of years – stop countries burning any more than their appointed allowance of fossil fuels. With ‘carbon fines’ imposed on those who did not conform.

Welcome – operation “He who controls the climate agenda controls the world.”

‘Green’ became a word conveying the opposite of its original meaning.  From being a pro human, pro ecological symbol  – it became a symbol of Corporate Green Fascism.

This was verified by Klaus Schwab, head of The World Economic Forum, in his 2020 Davos  announcement of ‘The Great Reset’; an industrialist/banker led agenda with origins in The Club of Rome and Bilderberger groups of the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s.

Two leading components of the Great Reset are ‘Green New Deal’ and ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’.

The omega point of the great Davos fanfare was/is ‘Zero CO2 by 2040’.

But please note, CO2 is depicted in ubiquitous media photographs, as smoking factory chimneys. But that has little or nothing to do with CO2. It is nitrous oxides, carbon monoxide, water vapour and diverse particulates that form the chief components rising up out of those chimneys. There is nil science on display here. Except the science of the lie.  The CO2 lie.

Zero CO2 quite literally means ‘no air to breathe’, as plant life depends upon carbon dioxide to provide the oxygen we breathe.

Mr Schwab is also pleased to tell us that ‘in order to save the world’ mankind is to lose its human identity and become a digitally programmed cyborg by 2030. An extension of a super computer programme. A ‘Transhuman’.

His chief advisor, Israeli professor Yuval Noah Harari, says “We will do better than God.”

In the meantime, transgenic/genetically modified food is announced as the future of the human diet.

To include synthetic foods produced from animal cells in laboratory petri-dishes and vegetables grown in vertical hydroponic greenhouses that use no soil. Just water and chemicals.  This by 2030.

“Man must not be allowed to do any further harm to the environment” say the fake Greens. Instead, thousands of years of traditional ways of working the land must be phased-out in a single decade.

So, under ‘Green New Deal’ farmers will become redundant, their work taken over by robots. And farm animals, accused of being ‘methane polluters’ will go with them.

Redundant farmers and disenfranchised country dwellers are to be herded into digital 5/6G powered ‘Smart Cities’ to survive on a diet of insects and synthetic meat, synthetic dairy and synthetic vegetable products.

Image is from WEF

COVID-19: The Great Reset | World Economic Forum

I report this as fact, since Klaus Schwab wrote it in his book ‘The Great Reset’,  as well as appearing in somewhat edited form, on the World Economic Forum website.

So ‘Green New Deal’ is simply the contrived reaction to the contrived ‘Global Warming-end-of-the- world’ scare story. A story with not a trace of empirical science to back it up.

CO2 ‘the gas of life’ at just 0.04% of atmospheric content, was chosen to be the scape goat for a totalitarian planetary take-over, a fear based brain washing exercise.

An exercise to cow humanity into believing the end of the world is coming unless…

Unless we embrace a totalitarian New World Order in which all private property is to be transferred into the hands of ‘the dictatorship’, ensuring that “You will have nothing, and you will be happy.” (Klaus Schwab)

Let us remind ourselves once again of the Great Green Deal ‘Save the World’ message:  “For a Zero Carbon future, the world must end its dependency on fossil fuels. All energy must be renewable”.

But had anyone done their homework before this ’saviour pronouncement’ was made?

Seems not; as the intense mining of minerals and the construction of tens of thousands of steel, concrete and aluminium wind generators, combine to consume more energy than they give back.

All this manufacturing, including photovoltaic,  relies heavily on fossil fuels. The very ‘CO2 causing’ agent supposedly to be kept under the ground.  A Green Agenda, Herr Schwab?

At the top of the cult’s pyramid, they know this. The plan has always been to keep the ‘elite’ well housed, well heated and well fed on organic foods.

Fossil fuels will not be phased out, but will be steadily priced out of the market for ordinary people.

Sadly, this is what the fake political and non governmental ‘Green movement’ has also adopted as its ‘ecological message’.

They have been bought-out. They followed the money and not their hearts or their heads.

They ended-up supporting ‘Sustainable Development’. The Rio Summit lie that has, up until now, fooled the world. And they recently adopted as their leader, none other than the newly enthroned monarch of the United Kingdom, King Charles 111.

But is this political, corporate and royal lie already falling apart?

The impositions of trade restrictions on Russia was supposed to give the West the political ‘moral high ground’. A chance to show how well the ‘green energy saviour plan’ would work in meeting the needs of citizens of the European Union, when gas, oil and coal supplies are cut-off or drastically curtailed.

But instead it appears to have caused a frenzied rush to reopen coal mines and buy as much gas and oil as possible from other parts of the world.

So where is the fossil-fuel-free ‘Green New Deal’ now?

In many ways Covid has been the sweetener for Green Deal enforcement at the ground level. It was supposed to get us used to living in fear and permanent acceptance of the autocratic behaviour of megalomaniacs preaching global destruction.

But quite a few of us didn’t buy it. Quite a few of us held firm to the bio diverse, ecological, Real Green agenda for a living breathing planet earth. Bravo!

But ‘we who didn’t buy it’ must do more than individually shout from the roof tops. We must now come together. We must present an impregnable thin red line against the attempted advances of the criminals running this planet.

We must hold the line for truth, wisdom, honour, and a future in which ‘Green’ regains its status as the true ecological sign post to a healed planet and a healed humanity.

*

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE https://hardwickalliance.org/ . Julian’s latest book ‘Overcoming the Robotic Mind – Why Humanity Must Come Through’ is strongly recommended reading for this time: see www.julianrose.info

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

If events since March 2020 have shown us anything, it is that fear is a powerful weapon for securing hegemony. Any government can manipulate fear about certain things while conveniently ignoring real dangers that a population faces.

Author and researcher Robert J Burrowes says:

“… if we were seriously concerned about our world, the gravest and longest-standing health crisis on the planet is the one that starves to death 100,000 people each day. No panic about that, of course.”

No panic because the controlling interests of the global food system have long profited from a ‘stuffed and starved’ strategy that ensures people unnecessarily go hungry when corporate profit rather than need dictates policies.

US social commentator Walter Lippmann once said that ‘responsible men’ make decisions and must be protected from the ‘bewildered herd’ – the public. He added that the public should be subdued, obedient and distracted from what is really happening. Screaming patriotic slogans and fearing for their lives, they should be admiring with awe leaders who save them from destruction.

During COVID, Prime Minister of New Zealand Jacinda Ardern urged citizens to trust the government and its agencies for all information and stated:

“Otherwise, dismiss anything else. We will continue to be your single source of truth.”

In the US, Fauci presented himself as ‘the science’. In New Zealand, Ardern was ‘the truth’. It was similar in countries across the world – different figures but the same approach.

Image is from Children’s Health Defense

Like other political leaders, Ardern clamped down on civil liberties with the full force of state violence on hand to ensure compliance with ‘the truth’. Those who questioned the COVID narrative – including world-renowned scientists – were smeared, shut down and censored.

It was an internationally orchestrated campaign involving governments, the big tech companies, media and the WHO, among others.

The EU Times reported on 17 December 2022 that the US Centers for Disease Control worked with social media to censor facts and information about COVID that ran afoul of official narratives.

The organisation America First Legal noted in a press release that the fourth set of documents it released – obtained from litigation against the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) – revealed:

“… further concrete evidence of collusion between the CDC and social media companies to censor free speech and silence the public square under the government’s label of ‘misinformation’.”

Twitter ran a ‘Partner Support Portal’ for government employees and other ‘stakeholders’ to submit posts that it would remove or flag as ‘misinformation’ on its platform.

The US government was actively working to ‘socially inoculate’ the public against anything that threatened its narrative. Big tech corporations monitored and manipulated users for the purposes of censoring unapproved information and pushing government propaganda. Facebook sent written materials to the CDC in which it talked of censoring more than sixteen million ‘pieces of content’ containing opinions or information the government wanted suppressed.

AFL noted that the CDC was “collaborating with UNICEF, the WHO and IFCN member and leading civil society organisation Mafindo” to mitigate ‘disinformation’. Mafindo is a Facebook third-party fact-checking partner based in Indonesia and funded by Google.

AFL states:

“What is clear is that the United States government, big tech platforms, and international organizations were fully entangled in an intricate campaign to violate the First Amendment, to silence the American people, and to censor dissenting views.”

The CDC’s mask guidance policies for school children were also shown to be driven by politics rather than science.

Across all the major Western nations, there was a clamp down on dissent and a massive censorship campaign to justify a policy framework of social and economic lockdowns, masking, distancing and state intrusion into almost every aspect of private life.

The findings of AFL indicate how centres of power can and do act in unison when they need to. The fact that it involved a worldwide campaign shows something huge was at stake.

The official narrative was about protecting populations from a deadly virus. And any dissent that did seep into the edges of mainstream discourse (like Tucker Carlson on Fox News or a few presenters on Talk Radio in the UK, for instance) tended to focus on politicians going too far on lockdowns and restrictions and being caught up in their egotistical lust for power and control.

Such a superficial explanation avoided a deep, critical analysis of the situation. Indeed, any focus on big finance’s – Wall Street and the City of London – role in this was conspicuous by its absence.

In March 2022, BlackRock’s Rob Kapito warned that a ‘very entitled’ generation of people would soon have to face shortages for the first time in their lives as some goods grow scarce because of rising inflation. BlackRock is the world’s most powerful investment fund.  

Kapito talked about the situation in Ukraine and COVID being responsible for the current economic crisis, conveniently ignoring the inflationary impact of the trillions pumped into imploding financial markets in 2019 and 2020 (dwarfing the crisis of 2008).

The war in Ukraine as well as COVID are being used to explain the roots of the current economic crisis. But COVID policies were a symptom not a cause of the crisis – they were used to manage what by late 2019 was regarded as an impending economic meltdown. Draconian COVID policies had little to do with a public health emergency.

That much is made clear in the article A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Systemic Collapse and Pandemic Simulation by Professor Fabio Vighi.

On 15 August 2019, BlackRock issued a white paper instructing the US Federal Reserve to inject liquidity directly into the financial system to prevent “a dramatic downturn”. The message was unequivocal: “An unprecedented response is needed when monetary policy is exhausted and fiscal policy alone is not enough. That response will likely involve ‘going direct’.” It also stated the need to find ways to get central bank money directly in the hands of public and private sector spenders while avoiding hyperinflation.

Six days earlier, the Bank of International Settlements (BIS) had in a working paper called for “unconventional monetary policy measures” to “insulate the real economy from further deterioration in financial conditions”.

Vighi’s shows why the hegemonic class reacted so severely to a public health issue that impacted a minority of the population. This response only makes sense when viewed within the context of economics.

Come late 2019 and especially 2020, pumping trillions into the financial system followed by lockdowns (to prevent hyperinflation) were used as the “unconventional monetary policies” that the BIS had called for on 9 August 2019.

Did you really think the authorities cared so much about something that mainly affected the over-80s and those with severe comorbidities that they would lock down the entire global economy?

Did they really care so much about ordinary people, especially unproductive labour – the working class old and working class infirm – when through the years of imposed austerity, we saw the working classes being treated with utter contempt?

And did those who imposed restrictions and lockdowns really believe there was a ‘deadly’ virus on the loose?

Think of booze parties at Downing Street, Neil Ferguson’s breaking of lockdown rules to carry on an extra-marital affair, Matt Hancock breaking his own COVID rules with his lover, maskless world leaders gathering in London while their servants wore masks, various US political leaders ignoring their own rules and the public theatre of Fauci et al masking up for TV cameras then maskless as soon as they were off camera.

While such people tyrannised populations with fear and lockdowns, it is clear they themselves were unworried about ‘the virus’.

After embarking on a massive anti-Russia media propaganda campaign earlier this year to garner public support for Ukraine, the centres of power in the West are now sending billions of dollars of the public’s money into the coffers of the likes of weapons manufacturers Raytheon and Boeing.

Such corporations are more than happy to profit from sacrificing the lives of ordinary Ukrainians in the geopolitical quest to weaken and balkanise Russia so that US interests can gain a dominant, strategic foothold on the Eurasian landmass.

And while billions of dollars are being spent to achieve this, a wholly unnecessary ‘cost of living’ crisis (resulting from reckless economic neoliberalism which has finally imploded) is being imposed on working people in the Western countries – regarded as mere collateral damage when it comes to economic policies, war and corporate profit. The result is misery and poverty and the demonisation of some of the (now striking) workers who were lauded as ‘heroes’ during COVID.

But – of course – the powers that have so much demonstrable contempt for the lives of ordinary people at home and abroad will close down the entire global economy to protect their health!

Those who believe this are testament to the power of propaganda.

COVID-related policies were wholly disproportionate to any risk posed to public health, especially when considering the way ‘COVID death’ definitions and data were often massaged and how PCR tests were misused to scare populations into submission.

And the big winner has been Big Pharma, an industry with a track record of dirty tricks, false advertising and death and injury resulting from its products. If, say, Pfizer were an individual, given its corporate crimes, it would be serving a lengthy prison sentence with the proverbial key being thrown away.

But corporations with lengthy corporate rap sheets across many sectors are promoted to the public as being trustworthy and dependable. When governments partner (conspire) with such enterprises, they are conspiring with criminal recidivist companies. And when people purchase stock in them, the same applies.

Given the reference to the global food system at the beginning of this article, of particular interest are the crimes of Dupont and Bayer (see the Powerbase website), and Monsanto and Cargill (see the Corporate Research Project (CRP) website).

And, of course, Pfizer and its disturbing corporate rap sheet also appears on the CRP site.

These immensely wealthy corporations spend millions each year funding various groups and lobbying governments and international bodies. Little wonder that they wield tremendous influence and, in one way or another, become ‘trusted partners’ of governments, the WHO, the WTO and the like.

Image is from The Expose

In Pfizer’s case, trusted so much as being granted ‘emergency use authorisation’ to have its ‘vaccines’ brought to market and then forced on the public via the coercive policies of governments.

Returning to Lippmann, since early 2020 so many people have feared for their lives and have admired with awe leaders who supposedly saved them from destruction. Even now as reports on vaccine injuries, vaccine inefficacy and increased mortality rates since the jab rollouts are largely taboo within the mainstream media, the public are being kept on message as the WHO and Big Pharma work towards a global treaty that will strip all their rights come the next economic meltdown or ‘pandemic’.

This article was written over the Yuletide period, an increasingly secular celebration stripped of religious connotation. These days, ‘in Big Pharma we trust’ might be more apt along with blind faith in a Zuckerberg-esque fantasy metaverse where Facebook is fact, government is truth and Big Pharma is God.

Because (heaven help us) that we should be left to think for ourselves!

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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) in Montreal.

Featured image is from Union of Concerned Scientists


Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

We are currently seeing an acceleration of the corporate consolidation of the entire global agri-food chain. The high-tech/big data conglomerates, including Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google, have joined traditional agribusiness giants, such as Corteva, Bayer, Cargill and Syngenta, in a quest to impose their model of food and agriculture on the world.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also involved (documented in ‘Gates to a Global Empire‘ by Navdanya International), whether through buying up huge tracts of farmland, promoting a much-heralded (but failed) ‘green revolution’ for Africa, pushing biosynthetic food and genetic engineering technologies or more generally facilitating the aims of the mega agri-food corporations.

Click here to read.

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“Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.”

December 27th, 2022 by Dr. Rudolf Hänsel

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***

The above-mentioned quote by the US-American poet and historian Carl August Sandburg does not correspond to reality: man, whether young or old, cannot say “No, I’m not going to war!”, he has to follow.

To this day, this human way of reacting cannot be explained because man has not yet recognised himself – not himself, not his nature, not his mental make-up and not his ways of reacting. Based on depth-psychological knowledge, we know today that early childhood education has had such an effect on their emotional life that they have to leave.

This is not free will. But people can recognise themselves bit by bit with expert help, become aware of their unconscious emotional parts and change their behaviour for the good of humanity. If one can make friends with these psychological thoughts, they will give courage and not stir up new fears.

War is not an inevitable fate; it is  “good business”, a defeat for humanity

Whether World War I or World War II, whether the Vietnam War or the West’s current proxy war against Russia: time and again mothers send their sons to the “field of honour” and afterwards wear a black armband “in proud mourning”. Youth dies before it can begin to live (1).

War is a great misfortune for all of us. Pope John Paul II said on 13 January 2003: “War is never an inevitable fate. War always means defeat for humanity.” To conquer other peoples and dominate them is good business. Never before have the states of the world spent so much money on armaments, forged so many deadly weapons as today. The profits of the global arms industry are astronomical.

Militarism has always played a fatal role in the lives of peoples. The struggle of man against man has always challenged the achievements of culture. The warlike way of life has a brutalising effect and the consequence is usually a relapse into barbarism, which is noticeable in all areas of social life.

Unfortunately, humanity is unable to banish this age-old evil from the world. Power-political, economic and social reasons constantly feed the spirit of violence and lead to destructive wars. In view of the immense human and material sacrifices reported in the history of war, the exhortation of high-minded people who proclaimed the ideal of a peaceful world arose from time to time. The idea of eternal peace is surely as old as humanity itself.

Today we see that war only accomplishes works of destruction; we must never expect our salvation from it. Historical observation even shows that the decline of culture has always been associated with wars. And although this fact is sufficiently well known, no university teacher, no philosopher, no psychologist calls out to the youth: “Don’t go!”

Men of all ages, unfortunately, cannot help it. Education has so affected their emotional life that they have to go. Just as they had to follow father and mother in childhood, they follow political authorities as adults. They carry this feeling of absolute obedience from childhood with them into old age, but they are not aware of it. That is why we cannot and must not condemn them. And the parents, unfortunately, did not know that the upbringing of absolute obedience was a mistake. They usually meant well, but in their ignorance and because of their own childhood experiences, they put their children in distress through questionable educational methods.

The good news is that with the help of a psychotherapeutic professional, people can recognise themselves bit by bit, become aware of their unconscious emotional parts and change their behaviour.

Depth psychology and the dynamics of the unconscious as an essential, highly effective part of life.

In pre-psychological times shaped by the religious Middle Ages, no human being knew anything about himself, about his feelings and about his life. It was only with Ludwig Feuerbach (1804 to 1872) and Karl Marx (1818 to 1883) that people began to see themselves as beings of nature and to observe themselves (2). A short time later, a certain doctor, Siegmund Freud (1856 to 1939), made the discovery in Vienna that humans have an unconscious. That was over 100 years ago.

Unfortunately, as a child of his time, Freud did not understand the world and people. He was conservative and a good patriot. So he thought that Austria-Hungary should win the First World War. The others should perish. In a sense, his psychoanalysis sank; it became a medical thing.

But through the scientific findings of depth psychology, we now know that people can be helped, that they can reorient themselves and change their feelings. The teachings of the individual psychologist Alfred Adler (1870 to 1937) have become a cornerstone of depth psychology and it is impossible to imagine psychological research without them. The further development of depth psychology has proved Adler right on many points. For Adler, character is a creative product of the child, arising from the confrontation with early childhood circumstances, especially the educational influences that are most decisive for the formation of character.

The fundamental insight of depth psychology is the assumption of a dynamic unconscious as an essential and highly effective part of the psychic life of man. For this reason, man cannot say “No, I’m not going to war!” Early childhood education has shaped his emotional life in such a way that he must follow the authority that calls him to arms. Since these are unconscious emotional parts from childhood, his behaviour is not the result of free will. Therefore, he cannot be condemned.

Unfortunately, there are still few psychologists today who take up people’s cause.

But this is not intentional. The knowledge of the young person who turns to the study of psychology falls on the old ground. He is religious, national, patriotic and believer in the state. He usually stands on the standpoint of preserving this system.

Dear readers, I hope we understand each other and that you can come to terms with the psychological train of thought. Only when the inner feeling has arisen in people that one can always say NO and does not have to follow anyone, only then comes the action.

The dynamics of the unconscious in the love relationship between man and woman.

In this context, the author recalls psychotherapeutic conversations during his training and in his own practice. These conversations were also about the dynamics of the unconscious.

Young men turned to the psychotherapist seeking help because they were ruining love with their girlfriends and wives with their attitude of resentment and rejection. Because of their childhood experiences with parents and siblings, they could not affirm the woman, could not put themselves on a par with her. They wanted to be more valid than women and always have the last word; women, on the other hand, were supposed to be good and obey. These men thought self-critically that they were probably being unreasonable because they were harming themselves.

But they were not unreasonable. They were behaving very reasonably because their actions corresponded to their emotional situation. Due to childhood experiences such as being spoiled, coddled and preferred as male offspring, they could not affirm women and wanted to be more valid than them.

Again, parents in their ignorance made the mistake of favouring sons over female siblings and spoiling them. In doing so, they put them in this situation as adults. But instead of being angry and resentful towards the parents, it is very important to understand and reconcile with them.

Therefore, the young men were advised to muster strength and courage to become aware of the unconscious feelings from childhood with the help of a psychotherapeutic professional so that the love relationship can be saved. Since they could not help their irritated behaviour – it was not free will – they should not blame themselves either. They should, however, become aware that there is something here that they cannot master.

A healthy emotional basis had to develop in these men too before they could put themselves on an equal footing with the woman and all other people.

Demands on education

Since we human beings are the product of our experiences in childhood, as adults we only have at our disposal what we have experienced and learned from those in our relationships in terms of trust, courage and knowledge. Parents and siblings are our world. This is where children get their roadmap, so to speak, their compass for life. By the time they get to kindergarten, they already know, they already have an attitude and an opinion about themselves and other people.

Educational methods of the past created the type of person that could cause the tragedy of history. The authoritarian principle, for centuries regarded as the unquestionably valid basis of educational behaviour, already throttled people’s sense of community in their childhood years and equipped them with that readiness for aggression through which a violent world could remain in a state of violence.

Through the findings of scientific psychology we know today that man is to such an extent the product of his upbringing that we may cherish the hope that through better, that is, psychological methods of education we will be able to train people who will be immune to the entanglements of the mania for power. By renouncing exclusive authority and the use of force in the home and school and adapting to the child’s soul with true understanding, pedagogy will produce a type of person who does not have a “subject mentality” and who will therefore no longer be a docile tool for those in power in our world.

The school also has a great task and responsibility. First and foremost, it has to convey the conviction that experiential knowledge, understanding and reason always and everywhere take precedence. From the very beginning, it should teach young people values that correspond to our present day and that are still valid in adulthood. In addition, it should provide young people with a psychological education, the knowledge of themselves and their concerns.

Furthermore, the school has to strengthen the young people’s own strength and self-confidence and divert attention from their own beloved salvation to the salvation of the general public, to the necessity of helpfulness.

The democratisation of education, understood as respect for the child’s personality and as friendly devotion of the educator to his pupil on the basis of consistent guidance without coercion and violence, is called upon to make one of the most valuable contributions to the building of a humane social order.

The unconscious emotional impulses from childhood, which the adult has forgotten and which often do not allow him to become happy, can be clarified psychotherapeutically by a capable depth psychologist and thus get to know himself. It is always possible to grow out of old negative thoughts and feelings and finally decide whether one wants to go to war – or better not.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel is a doctor of education (Dr. paed.) and a graduate psychologist (Dipl.-Psych.). For many decades he was a teacher (headmaster) and trained educational specialists. As a retiree, he worked as a psychotherapist in his own practice. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

1. https://www.globalresearch.ca/youth-died-before-they-could-begin-live/5776057

2. http://www.nrhz.de/flyer/beitrag.php?id=28358&css; https://www.globalresearch.ca/how-with-whom-can-we-reorganise-society/5800536

Featured image is from The Unz Review

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The Plan. WHO’s Ten Years of Infectious Diseases (2020 to 2030), Leading to World Tyranny

By Peter Koenig, December 26, 2022

Excess mortality is reported from Norway – and all over the western world or Global North. Excesses never heard before. In the ranges of between 15% and 25%. In some countries even higher. Worrisome. No clear causes can be detected.

When Will the Peace of Christmas Come Home?

By Hanna Hanania, December 27, 2022

As mayor of the Palestinian city of Bethlehem, I have the privilege of lighting the Christmas tree in Manger Square and attending Midnight Mass at one of the world’s oldest churches, built in the fourth century by the Byzantine Empress Helena. But my most important duty is to help give people faith and encouragement.

UN Experts: US Sanctions Violate Iranians’ Human Rights

By Ben Norton, December 27, 2022

Top United Nations experts wrote a letter to the United States government, emphasizing that its illegal unilateral sanctions on Iran violate the human rights of the Iranian people, calling for them to “be eased or lifted completely.”

‘CIA Is Behind Spate of Explosions in Russia’: US Army Special Ops Veteran Claims Intelligence Agency and NATO Ally Are Conducting Sabotage Missions

By Will Stewart and Elizabeth Haigh, December 27, 2022

The CIA is combining with the spy service of a NATO ally in Europe to conduct covert sabotage operations inside Russia, according to new claims. The clandestine campaign is behind many unexplained explosions and fires that have hit strategic or prominent facilities in recent months, says US expert Jack Murphy, an eight-year Army Special Operations veteran.

Netherlands Prime Minister Apologizes for Atlantic Slave Trade. Dispels the Payment of Reparations

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 27, 2022

Africans on the continent along with those living in other parts of the globe have joined the movement for reparations as compensation from Europe and North America for the centuries-long Atlantic slave trade.

Christmas: Passing on the Lyrical Gift of Language

By Edward Curtin, December 27, 2022

Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card.  This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, which, we like to believe, will bring joy.  It’s make-believe, of course, an adult lie conjured up out of guilt and fear that our lives, the stories we live, the stories we dream, and those that dream us, are insufficiently meaningful to bring our children and ourselves the joy we say we seek.

Video: The Weaponization of the WHO

By James Corbett and Dr. Meryl Nass, December 26, 2022

Solve the intentionally confusing puzzle about what the WHO’s 2023 plans are regarding the “zero draft” for a new and potentially legally binding pandemic treaty, International Health Regulation amendments, recent Intergovernmental Negotiating Body Meetings and more.

Why Putin’s Winter Offensive Will Prompt US Entry Into the War

By Mike Whitney, December 26, 2022

Volodymyr Zelensky did not fly across the Atlantic so he could deliver a speech to the US Congress. That was not the purpose of his trip. The real objective was to produce a galvanizing event that would create the illusion of broad-based public support for the war.

The Boom of the War. Christmas Gift Exchange Between Zelensky and Biden

By Manlio Dinucci, December 26, 2022

Christmas gift exchange between Zelensky and Biden in White House meeting. The Ukrainian president brought to Biden the newly signed law abolishing the Kiev Administrative District Court, already in the crosshairs of the U.S. State Department, which had sanctioned the Tribunal’s president for “human rights violations.”

COP27: Understanding Climate Change and the UN’s Hidden Agenda Behind “Catastrophic Global Warming”

By David Skripac, December 26, 2022

COP27, like all of the UN’s previous annual climate summits (COP1 through COP26), addressed none of the actual existential issues facing humanity. Instead, its delegates, gathered in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, bombarded the rest of us with endless chatter about how human-induced climate change will spell the end of humanity if trillions of dollars aren’t thrown at this alleged catastrophe.  

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On Monday, the Russian Federation Engels airbase in the Saratov region, nearly 400 miles from Ukraine, was attacked for a second time since the beginning of Russia’s SMO.

“Russia’s Defense Ministry said the incident took place in the early hours of Monday, and three servicemen were killed by debris at the Engels airbase, which houses Tu-95 and Tu-160 nuclear-capable strategic bombers that have been involved in launching strikes on Ukraine in the 10-month-old war,” reports the Associated Press.

There have been a number of attacks inside Russia—in Kursk, the city of Bryansk, the village of Staraya Nelidovka in the Belgorod region, and the military airfields at Dyagilevo in the Ryazan region, in addition to Engels.

The attacks on gas infrastructure occurred prior to Russia announcing it would resume deliveries to Azerbaijan via the Yamal-Europe pipeline.

The corporate war propaganda media has attributed the attacks to Ukraine. However,  according to the Daily Express, Jack Murphy, described as a former “US Army Special Operations operative,” said last week

that NATO and US intelligence agencies have been running agents inside Russia, directing them to target critical infrastructure in a bid to create “chaos.” Shopping centres, gas pipelines and fuel depots have all suffered damage across Russia in recent months with Mr Murphy pointing to a CIA-directed campaign of covert “sabotage.”

On his website, Murphy writes the “campaign involves long standing sleeper cells that the allied spy service has activated to hinder Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by waging a secret war behind Russian lines.”

While no American personnel are involved on the ground in Russia in the execution of these missions, agency paramilitary officers are commanding and controlling the operations, according to two former intelligence officials and a former military official. The paramilitary officers are assigned to the CIA’s Special Activities Center but detailed to the agency’s European Mission Center, said the two former intelligence officials. Using an allied intelligence service to give the CIA an added layer of plausible deniability was an essential factor in U.S. President Joe Biden’s decision to approve the strikes, according to a former U.S. special operations official.

There is plenty of evidence the CIA has long been involved in precisely these kinds of sabotage operations. Prior to the establishment of the national security state and the CIA, the agency’s predecessor, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), produced a sabotage manual in 1944.

“Sabotage varies from highly technical coup de main acts that require detailed planning and the use of specially trained operatives, to innumerable simple acts which the ordinary individual citizen-saboteur can perform,” states the manual in its introduction.

Since that time, the CIA has honed its sabotage techniques. In “At the Abyss: An Insider’s History of the Cold War,” Thomas C. Reed, a former U.S. Air Force secretary who was serving in the National Security Council at the time, writes the CIA, under its notorious boss, William Casey, was responsible for a natural gas pipeline explosion that crippled the flagging Soviet economy in 1982.

“In order to disrupt the Soviet gas supply, its hard currency earnings from the West, and the internal Russian economy, the pipeline software that was to run the pumps, turbines, and valves was programmed to go haywire, after a decent interval, to reset pump speeds and valve settings to produce pressures far beyond those acceptable to pipeline joints and welds,” Reed writes.

The National Security Archive has a large number of documents detailing CIA sabotage operations. From the introduction:

The covert operations of the Central Intelligence Agency are one element of the forward edge of power in U.S. foreign policy. But the CIA is not a lone ranger, shooting up saloons on its own account. A senior interagency group within the United States government acts as the high command of the secret war.

As Murphy notes, any “covert action undertaken by U.S. agencies must be authorized by a presidential finding,” thus we can accurately assume President Biden signed off on sabotage operations inside Russia. Moreover, President Obama, well before Russia’s SMO, signed “a finding for covert action against Russia before he left office,” and the finding “included language about sabotage operations, according to a former CIA official.”

In other words, the USG had planned subversion operations inside Russia well before the SMO, basically a continuation of decades of sabotage and covert operations targeting the Soviet Union and, after its fall, the Russian Federation.

Following the USG-orchestrated coup in Kyiv, an “allied spy service” began running sleeper cells in Russia, an “extensive network” that included “front companies that were established as platforms to support such behind-the-lines operations,” many that go back at least 20 years, thus revealing the sabotage operations predate the Russian SMO by at least two decades.

The CIA had formed “stay behind armies,” ostensibly to resist an unlikely Soviet invasion of Europe, and these were involved in terrorist acts designed to frighten populations away from voting for socialist, communist, and other leftist political parties.

The covert branch of the CIA, the Office of Policy Coordination, under the direction of Frank Wisner, set up Europe’s stay-behind armies. Dubbed Operation Gladio, the CIA established paramilitaries in France (“Plan Bleu”), Italy, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Norway, Germany (led by former SS officer Hans Otto), Portugal, Greece, Spain, and Turkey, all apparently trained by NATO in “unorthodox warfare” to be levied against Russia.

During the Cold War, the CIA worked closely with the neo-Nazis in Ukraine and emigre groups. Project AERODYNAMIC (formerly CARTEL, ANDROGEN, AECARTHAGE, between 1949 and 1970) concentrated on anti-Soviet operations, largely confined to propaganda. This entailed working closely with ultranationalists that have long had one goal in mind—the murder of ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

As early as 1949, the CIA used Ukraine—and Belarus, Poland, and the Baltics—as a base of operations to undermine the Soviet Union. The goal of Operation Red Sox was to provide “unprecedented insight into Moscow’s designs in Eastern Europe—and, if possible, to help crack apart the Soviet empire itself,” according to Politico. In addition, the CIA was “stoking nascent nationalist movements in Ukraine” and across the Balkans.

Elsewhere in Europe, the CIA recruited rightwing extremists to engage in various terrorist attacks, as revealed during the trial of Italian fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra, a member of Ordine Nuovo (“New Order”), a far-right cultural and extra-parliamentary political and paramilitary organization. It shared a motto with the Nazi Waffen SS.

The Movimento Politico Ordine Nuovo staged terror attacks blamed on leftists. The attacks include the 1969 bombing of the Piazza Fontana in Milan, killing 16 people, and in 1970, the bombing of the Rome-Messina train, killing 6 and wounding 100. These terror attacks were called a “strategy of tension.”

The recent CIA-NATO sabotage operation, Murphy explains, is but one of many such efforts to undermine and take down Putin and the Russian Federation.

The NATO ally’s campaign overseen by the CIA is only one of several covert operations efforts being undertaken by Western nations in Russia, according to two former U.S. special operations officials. Alarmed by Russia’s February invasion, other European intelligence services have activated long-dormant resistance networks [Operation Gladio] in their own countries, who in turn have been running operatives into Russia to create chaos without CIA help, according to a former U.S. military official. In addition, as has been widely reported, Ukrainian intelligence and special operations forces are running their own operations behind Russian lines.

In short, there is a multi-nation concerted effort to attack Russia from within, an effort Russia undoubtedly considers a threat to its national security. Vladimir Putin has said on several occasions Russia will respond to existential threats with tactical nuclear weapons.

Putin and his generals will further escalate in Ukraine as the CIA and its saboteurs target civilian and military targets deep inside Russia. “President Putin is actually attempting to retain some semblance of stability in the increasingly destabilized world that’s been thrown into chaos by America’s apocalyptic plot to restore its declining unipolar hegemony,” writes Andrew Korybko for the Oriental Review.

Russia’s special military operation in Ukraine was commenced as a last resort to uphold the integrity of its national security red lines in that country in particular and in the region more broadly that were being crossed by the US-led West in pursuit of its grand strategic plot to restore its declining unipolar hegemony.

That plot, imperative for the USG and its so-called partners, will pull out all the stops in an effort to destroy Russia and China, two major competitors working to establish a multipolar world free of the coercive and often deadly politics of the neoliberal order and its enforcers, the USG national security state, the CIA, the Pentagon, and domestically with the FBI, DHS, and additional “partners,” including Silicon Valley’s social media behemoths excommunicating heretics and megaphoning the state’s forever war narrative.

The war against ethnic Russians in Ukraine—masterminded by the USG following its orchestrated coup against a democratically elected and Russian-friendly government in 2014—will continue until, like Afghanistan, stalemate and defeat present reality as stubbornly unavoidable and the decision is made to retreat (while calling it something else), leaving behind billions of dollars worth of military equipment, and forsaking the lives of abandoned collaborators.

For the indeterminate future, the CIA will attempt to raise an underground army of neo-Nazis and likeminded to fight a low-intensity guerrilla war in Russian “annexed” (by popular vote) Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, and soon Mariupol, Zaporizhia, Kryvyi Rih, and Odesa (the latter four also overwhelmingly voted to be “annexed” by Russia).

This will be the next phase of the war as it dawns on the panhandler Zelenskyy and his USG debt-straddled patron that defeating Russia on its own border is impossible short of lobbing a few thermonukes in the direction of Moscow.

Putin did not decide to use nuclear weapons when the war propaganda media declared triumphantly (and falsely) that he was painted into a corner. As for the USG, if and when it is painted into a corner as the world turns multipolar in rejection of poverty-inducing neoliberalism, there is no guarantee it will not lash out with nukes and begin the process of ending life on the planet.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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An increase in battery fires linked to electric bicycles has caught the attention of municipal and federal officials, who point to public education rather than bans as the best way to keep people safe.

As of late December, there were 206 e-bike fires in New York City in 2022, more than double the number of fires that occurred the year prior, according to a New York Fire Department spokesperson. Those e-bike fires are blamed for 142 injuries in 2022, almost 80% more than in 2021, and six deaths. In 2020, there were just 44 e-bike fires, which were associated with 23 injuries and no deaths, the department said.

The news organization The City reported that New York ZIP codes that are considered low-income areas experienced the highest proportion of e-bike fires, and most of the fires occurred at multiunit residential properties, 31 of which were public housing apartments. The FDNY spokesperson confirmed the accuracy of the reporting.

National Fire Protection Association spokesman Brian O’Connor said other U.S. cities do not appear to track this issue. There have been news reports of e-bike fires in London and Secunderabad, India, where eight people were killed in a September fire at an electric scooter warehouse.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission has ordered three e-bike recalls in 2022 due to battery issues, up from one in 2021. The largest recall, of 21,000 e-bikes, was ordered against the manufacturer Ancheer, which sold its bikes through Sears, Walmart and Amazon.

On Tuesday, the CPSC sent a letter to 2,000 manufacturers and importers of micromobility devices, including e-bikes, e-scooters and self-balancing scooters (also called hoverboards), advising them that failing to follow UL safety standards could expose them to enforcement action.

A September 2022 CSPC staff report found that between 2017 and 2021, there were 207 deaths related to micromobility vehicles, 134 of them due to fires. Of the deaths attributed to micromobility product fires, 118 were related to hoverboards, 12 were related to e-scooters — including one dockless rental unit – and four to e-bikes.

The New York City Housing Authority, which regulates public housing, proposed a ban on indoor e-bike storage in public housing in June 2022 but backed off that proposal in October after public outcry. Still, there are reports that private buildings are instituting bans of their own on e-bikes, e-scooters and other micromobility vehicles.

Li-ion batteries are “pretty unique fire hazards,” said NFPA’s O’Connor. “They produce their own heat [and] oxygen, and they produce their own fuel, which is the gas that’s a byproduct of the chemical reaction that happens when they start to fail.” The lithium burns hot and fast and can set fire to adjoining cells in the battery in a cascade called “thermal runaway.” While a watch may have one Li-ion cell, he pointed out, an e-bike may have 200.

The primary problem, fire industry experts and micromobility advocates say, lies with the low quality of cheap batteries and the desire of low-income owners to extend their utility beyond the bounds of safety.

“What you’ve seen in New York [is that] you’re primarily dealing with aftermarket batteries and aftermarket issues with vehicles that might have been crafted on their own via conversion kits,” said James Gross, co-founder of Micromobility Industries, a California-based advocacy group that tracks the industry. “You can do [an aftermarket conversion] very easily with a bike. Is that the right thing to do? Probably not. But is that the most affordable way to do it? Probably yes.”

“I think the bikes are just more prone to having people tinker with them a little bit,” said O’Connor. Secondhand batteries and chargers are readily available. Also, physical damage from collisions or water are not always apparent. “Keeping [a Li-ion battery] in a room that gets too hot, gets too cold, both can trigger [a fire]. Charging it too quickly, discharging it too quickly, having the wrong components, mismatching components.”

Because Gross sees the problem as economic — low-income purchasers who use inexpensive e-bikes to help make their living — he has an economic solution. “I think the very easy solution is subsidizing riders who could maybe use some help with the cost of the vehicle. We continue to pass incredible legislation to incentivize electric car purchases. Why do we continue to prop up a lot of the automakers? I think that’s where the conversation should go.”

O’Connor says teaching the public to understand when a battery is failing and what to do before it bursts into flame would save property and lives.

FDNY has published a bulletin that landlords are required to distribute, advising residents of the dangers of Li-ion batteries, how to store and treat them and what to do when they catch fire. The CSPC also gives advice that aligns with FDNY’s.

”As much as we want everyone to use the best batteries they can get, [listed batteries] are more expensive. So I think educating people [that such batteries are]  worth the investment in your safety … [it’s]  something that they would be able to consider.”

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Wide Range of Neurologic Syndromes after COVID-19 Vaccination

December 27th, 2022 by Dr. Peter McCullough

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Before the COVID-19 era, for ages in medicine it has been said:  “Syphilis is often referred to as “the great masquerader,” as it may present with a wide array of clinical symptoms and may mimic a variety of other diseases making diagnosis challenging.”  There is no doubt that COVID-19 vaccine injury syndromes will far eclipse syphilis, sarcoidosis, amyloidosis, or any other systemic disorder and will assume the throne of “the great masquerader”.  

In a recent issue of Current Neurology and Neuroscience Reports, Chatterjee and Chakravarty, report on the wide range of central nervous system and peripheral nervous system syndromes that occur after COVID-19 vaccination.[i] 

Chatterjee A, Chakravarty A. Neurological Complications Following COVID-19 Vaccination. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2022 Nov 29:1–14. doi: 10.1007/s11910-022-01247-x. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36445631; PMCID: PMC9707152.

Because the vaccines contain lipid nanoparticles loaded with genetic material that code for the damaging Spike protein, each patient faces a Russian Roulette of whether or not the nervous system will be hemodynamically showered with the damaging vaccine particles.

As an example of how distorted authors and editors have become over papers on COVID-19 vaccination, in the abstract of the authors state that COVID-19 vaccination remains the ”only weapon” we have against the illness.  Complete ignorance of the entire field of early treatment of SARS-CoV-2 will be forever to their chagrin upon later reflection.

More worrisome, the authors state that prior neurologic disease is not a reason to withhold vaccination.   I can tell you as senior and experienced academic physician, that indeed the authors and the editors who accepted this paper are demonstrating poor medical judgement.  Good physicians would never have a patient with neurologic disease, for example Guillain-Barre Syndrome or multiple sclerosis, and then administer a novel genetic biological product known to cause further neurologic damage and risk worsened disability and death.

Authors and historians will revisit these words and well up remorse and sadness for patients who have suffered under this profound lapse of medical judgement.   If you have a neurologic disorder shown in the figure that is new or worsened after COVID-19 vaccination, pay a visit to your doctor, and point it out.   Tell them it wasn’t worth it.  That for you the risks of the vaccine did not outweigh the failed theoretical benefits for an easily treatable upper respiratory illness.

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[i] Chatterjee A, Chakravarty A. Neurological Complications Following COVID-19 Vaccination. Curr Neurol Neurosci Rep. 2022 Nov 29:1–14. doi: 10.1007/s11910-022-01247-x. Epub ahead of print. PMID: 36445631; PMCID: PMC9707152.

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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***

Alistair Cooke, a British-born writer who became a BBC film critic early in his career who worked mainly in the United States as a journalist, television personality, radio broadcaster had expressed his honest point of view on Hollywood’s film industry when he said that

“I believe that Hollywood is the most effective and disastrous propaganda factory there has ever been in the history of human beings.”

Since World War II, Hollywood has been one of the main instruments of propaganda for globalist agendas. It began with US President, Franklin D. Roosevelt who established the US Office of War Information (OWI) from June 1942 until September 1945 whose job was to regulate newspapers, radio broadcasts, Hollywood films and all other forms of media in order to propagandize the public in an effort to gain support for America’s involvement in the war.

The OWI launched a global propaganda campaign that oversaw revisions in collaboration with Hollywood producers, and at times, even rejected film scripts that portrayed the US as a negative force on the world stage.  The OWI’s main job was to reject any film that had anti-war material.

There was also the Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP) which was a division under the OWI that worked with Hollywood executives to decide which movies could benefit the war effort, for example, it authorized several films that had anti-Japanese propaganda, sort of like todays anti-Russia propaganda you find in many Hollywood films. However, over the last 20 years or so, Hollywood propaganda has even become even worse with the help of its Hollywood celebrities who have become mouthpieces for globalist agendas, so let’s call them for what they really are, ‘Useful Idiots.’

It’s amazing that for the last couple of decades many Hollywood celebrities have become self-described experts and spokespeople for US wars, Big Pharma, climate change and other globalist agendas.

Hollywood celebrities act and sing for a living, wear expensive name-brand clothing, and in some cases exploit their children to be part of the new woke culture.

The so-called “Hollywood activists” such as George Clooney, U2 lead singer Bono, and the rest of them are phony as they can be.

However, in all fairness, there are a handful of celebrities who do not, in any way fall into that category including Mel Gibson who is outspoken critic in Hollywood, comedian and actor George Carlin (R.I.P.), Marlon Brando, John Lennon (R.I.P.) and a handful of others.

When it comes to Israeli occupation and genocide against the Palestinians, Javier Bardem, Penelope Cruz, singer-songwriter and composer Roger Waters, Natalie Portman, and actress Vanessa Redgrave come to mind. In 1978, Vanessa Redgrave won an Oscar for best supporting actress in the film ‘Julia’ gave an acceptance speech at the 50th Academy Awards which she denounced Israel’s war against the Palestinians.  Redgrave said that “a small bunch of Zionist hoodlums whose behavior is an insult to the stature of Jews all over the world.”  The British actress had claimed in the past that far-right Jewish Defense League targeted her for producing the 1977 documentary ‘The Palestinian’. 

Most Hollywood celebrities who toe the line will do and say anything to remain relevant in the film and television industries, so they also follow the mainstream media narratives or listen to their Hollywood bosses, or maybe they are just dumbed-down individuals, just ask outspoken actor and comedian Ricky Gervais who had an iconic opening monologue in the Golden Globe awards ceremony in 2020 that will be remembered for the ages:

So, if you do win an award tonight, don’t use it as a platform to make a political speech. You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything. You know nothing about the real world. Most of you spent less time in school than Greta Thunberg.

So if you win, come up, accept your little award, thank your agent, and your God and f**k off, OK? It’s already three hours long. Right, let’s do the first award

Sean Penn and Ben Stiller:  War against Russia

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is download-11-1.jpg

Although talented, two of the most “idiotic” actors in Hollywood when it comes to the war in Ukraine is Sean Penn and Ben Stiller.  Last month, Sean Penn recently visited and lent Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky his Oscar while Zelensky awarded Penn the Order of Merit honor because he is “doing everything to help us gather international support”according to Reuters.

The article ‘Sean Penn visits Ukraine’s Zelensky, loans him an Oscar’ stated that “Hollywood actor and director Sean Penn, sanctioned by Russia for criticizing its war in Ukraine, loaned his Oscar statuette to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy during a visit to Kyiv on Tuesday.” 

The other actor is Ben Stiller who played a model in Zoolander and many other films called Zelensky his hero.  According to NBC News ‘Ben Stiller meets with Zelenskyy in Kyiv, tells Ukrainian leader ‘You’re my hero’ said that

“The comedy star praised the Ukrainian president — himself a former comedian and actor — as a hero during the meeting, telling him: “You’re amazing” and that “It’s a great honor for me,” Stiller, who was appointed a UNHCR goodwill ambassador in July 2018, said in video capturing the meeting. “It’s really wonderful, you’re my hero. You’re amazing.”  So Stiller jumps on the Zelensky bandwagon just like most of his Hollywood friends to help the Western narrative that the war in Ukraine is about “freedom and democracy.”

But I want to go back to Sean Penn and his incredible hypocrisy when it comes to US wars and regime change.  In 2011, US President Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton gave US forces and NATO the greenlight to remove Libyan President, Muammar Gaddafi from power which destroyed Libya in the process.  Here is the interview with Sean Penn on CNN on his claim that it was all Gaddafi’s fault:

Obviously, the war on Libya was run by the Democratic Party so for Penn it was justified.  Now here is Sean Penn questioning the Bush Administration on WMDs in Iraq on December 15th, 2002.  The war on Iraq was basically a Republican Party affair under the Bush neocons (click image below to watch the video):

 

Sean Penn’s hypocrisy is clearly staggering. He is a total propagandist for the US war machine.  Although Sean Penn has supported Venezuela’s revolution and other causes such as the Haiti’s earthquake in 2010 where he founded the J/P Haitian Relief Organization which operated a 55,000 person tent camp for victims of the earthquake, he is still a mouthpiece for the Democratic party and any regime change operation they deem necessary, so it is fair to say that both, Sean Penn and Ben Stiller are useful idiots.

Celebrities who Proudly Received their Covid-19 Vaccines

I am not going to get into the global lockdown and the dangers of the Covid-19 vaccine and the ridiculous enforcement of wearing facemasks or social distancing rules, so here are what several celebrities have posted on Instagram and twitter after they received their shots :

Lady Gaga:

“Double vaxed + boosted…don’t 4get to still wear a mask this sh*ts contagious 💋☠️,

America Ferrara:

“Boosted for the holidays! 🎄🎅🏽🍷 Thankful for the miracle of science and medicine allowing me to be with my loved ones safely this year 🥰

Amber Heard:

 “Did someone say ‘vaccine queen’?! 💉💉💉

Sean Penn (No Surprise here!):

“I’m a lucky man. Lucky to work alongside the ⁦@LAFD & our great frontline @CoreResponse staff, our partners at Carbon Health, USC, & Curative Lab,” he tweeted. “We test & vaccinate thousands per day. We need your support to get more people lucky. Text CORE to 707070 to donate.”

*Note: Sean Penn was interviewed by Yahoo Entertainment and said that “My deep belief personally, is that these [vaccines are] no different than having everybody being able to drive 100 miles an hour in a car” he continued “This is one of those things that should be mandatory. That we all get with the exception — the very few exceptions — for those people who, for whatever medical condition, might offset it, but I do think that vaccines need to be mandatory, and I do think that business — all businesses, the movie business, all businesses — need to take the lead and to be not so timid in dealing with their collective bargaining agreement partners.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger:

“All right, I just got my vaccine, and I would recommend it to anyone and everyone, come with me if you want to live.”

Despite all the evidence that the Covid-19 vaccines are dangerous and that wearing a facemask or social distancing does not work which brings me to the conclusion that these Hollywood celebrities are either brainwashed by the mainstream media, or they are just following the lies of Anthony Fauci who was elevated to celebrity status during the Covid-19 “pandemic”.

These people are not role models, they are just following what the medical establishment has prescribed to the public.  They are propagandizing the public to take Covid-19 killer shots which demonstrates that no one should listen to these people. Once you inject the MRNA technology into your body, its forever, its permanent and you cannot detox to get rid of it.  So in other words, don’t listen to these fools.

The Truth about Hollywood

There is no doubt that Hollywood has produced good films in the past but the Hollywood of today should focus on producing better movies and TV shows because most of their films are made only for propaganda purposes. In fact, many films today have no originality, better yet, there should be an alternative Hollywood that produces films without any form of propaganda that are worth watching.

They can produce films that tells us real stories from around the world, like stories that come out of the Palestinian struggle or what is happening in certain parts of Africa as in the Hollywood movie ‘Blood Diamond’ with Leonardo DiCaprio and Djimon Hounsou that tells the story about the Diamond industry and its effects on the African people. Instead they produce propaganda films based on the US Military fighting for democracy or numerous films based on the Jewish Holocaust. When was the last time you saw a film based on the genocide of a Native American tribe on the North American continent?

However, Hollywood is pretty good at producing movies that offend different nationalities and cultures.  As we all know who really runs Hollywood, one documentary that shows some of the most offensive films based on the Muslim world is called

‘Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People’ by Dr. Jack Shaheen.

Hollywood and their useful idiot celebrities are propagandists who support the war in Ukraine, the Covid-19 vaccines and other globalist agendas including the concept of eating bugs as recommended by the World Economic Forum.  The bottom line is that Hollywood and their useful idiot celebrities are a bunch of clowns that should not be taken seriously, so why do people around the world idolize these people in the first place is beyond me.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All images in this article are from SCN

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The Hypocrisy Behind the Vaccines

December 27th, 2022 by Martin Armstrong

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***

 

 

 

Look, the real problem is the media. We no longer have media organizations willing to actually report the truth on any of these political issues or ever do any serious investigation. Gates held a secret gathering to sell his agenda to reduce the world’s population. The Guardian reported that they are known as the “Good Club” which seems to be the same marketing ploy used for ensuring your death which they call life insurance. Fire, theft, and accident insurance are called by their proper name.

They could never sell “Death insurance” so they inverted the name by calling it life insurance and then everyone was willing to buy it. They have done the same thing with ABORTION. They flipped it from the extermination of a child arguing it has no human right until it is born, and they championed it as a Woman’s Right to decide her own body. Justice Ginsberg made it clear that it was NEVER about woman’s rights, it was all about reducing the population of minorities that Gates’ father championed Planned Parenthood and stuck his clinics in minority areas.

Here, they market themselves as the “Good Club” which can only mean one thing – this is the evil meeting that is more akin to a war room. The Guardian wrote:

The names of some of the members are familiar figures: Bill Gates, George
Soros, Warren Buffett, Oprah Winfrey, David Rockefeller and Ted Turner. But
there are others, too, like business giants Eli and Edythe Broad, who are
equally wealthy but less well known. All told, its members are worth $125bn.
The meeting – called by Gates, Buffett and Rockefeller – was held in
response to the global economic downturn and the numerous health and
environmental crises that are plaguing the globe. It was, in some ways, a
summit to save the world.

It was at this meeting that Gates sought to get others to join him and his real goal of reducing the population using the 2007-2009 financial crisis as an excuse to get together despite the fact it was caused by overleveraged mortgages. Instead, Gates cleverly steered the meeting to his real objective global health issues such he blended with overpopulation and disease.

I find it unimaginable how you can be so obsessed with overpopulation and then want to create vaccines to increase the population. Worst still, not a single mainstream media has the guts to ever be a real media organization anymore.

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Top United Nations experts wrote a letter to the United States government, emphasizing that its illegal unilateral sanctions on Iran violate the human rights of the Iranian people, calling for them to “be eased or lifted completely.”

Top United Nations experts have criticized US government sanctions for violating the human rights of Iranians.

They made it clear that the unilateral coercive measures that the United States has imposed on Iran violate international law.

A group of UN special rapporteurs stressed that these sanctions have a “negative impact” on “the enjoyment of the right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment in the Islamic Republic of Iran and on the right to health and the right to life.”

Violating Iranians’ right to life is a roundabout diplomatic way of saying that US sanctions are killing them.

The UN experts sent a formal letter to the United States condemning its sanctions and requesting that it investigate and remove them.

The special rapporteurs expressed their “serious concerns about the U.S. sanctions as a significant contributing factor in Iran’s environmental degradation, which negatively affects Iranian people’s rights to a healthy and sustainable environment, to health, to life, and to an adequate standard of living.”

They added that “U.S. sanctions impede the enjoyment of the right to education” in Iran.

Washington constantly accuses Tehran of violating its people’s rights. The US government also publicly claims to support the struggle against climate change and pollution, and on paper it recognizes that people have the right to a clean environment.

But Washington’s “sanctions against Iran contradict what seems to be a clear US position on this matter,” the UN experts said.

“It is time for sanctions that impede Iran’s ability to improve the environment and reduce the ill effects on health and life, to be eased or lifted completely so that Iranians can access their right to a clean environment, the right to health and to life, and other rights associated with favourable environmental conditions,” they insisted.

The UN special rapporteurs noted:

Since 1979, the United States of America has imposed a broad and complex network of stringent financial, economic, and trade sanctions against Iran, including a comprehensive trade ban, significant measures to isolate Iran from the international financial and commercial system, as well as secondary sanctions against non-U.S. parties that engage in dealings with Iran.

Some (but not all) of these sanctions were removed or eased in 2015, when US President Barack Obama signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear agreement with Iran that was also joined by the other permanent members of the UN Security Council (Britain, France, China, and Russia), Germany, and the European Union.

In 2018, US President Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew from the JCPOA, in violation of a UN Security Council resolution, and subsequently imposed more sanctions on Iran, in clear contravention of international law.

The UN experts noted that the Trump administration not only re-imposed “sanctions that had been lifted or eased under the JCPOA”; it also “introduced additional measures. These sanctions targeted Iran’s energy, shipbuilding, shipping and financial sectors, and included the listing of more than 700 individuals, entities, aircraft and vessels.”

US threats of secondary sanctions on foreign countries and firms that do business with Iran, as well as overcompliance, make the unilateral coercive measures even more punishing, the UN special rapporteurs wrote:

The full impact of the U.S. sanctions in Iran is magnified by considerable overcompliance on a global scale resulting from complex, time-consuming and/or costly compliance procedures; extraterritorial enforcement and fears of penalties for inadvertent breaches; and sanctions-related obstacles to financial transactions for goods and services that the sanctions do not prohibit.

The primary author of this letter, the top UN expert on sanctions, Alena Douhan, has previously released reports detailing the catastrophic impact that illegal US sanctions have had on civilians in Venezuela and Syria.

She said these “outrageous” US sanctions are “suffocating” millions of civilians and “may amount to crimes against humanity.”

The letter concerning US sanctions on Iran was signed by the following UN human rights experts:

  • Alena Douhan, special rapporteur on the negative impact of unilateral coercive measures on the enjoyment of human rights
  • Richard Bennett, special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan
  • Ian Fry, special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights in the context of climate change,
  • Tlaleng Mofokeng, special rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health
  • Livingstone Sewanyana, independent expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order
  • Obiora C. Okafor, independent expert on human rights and international solidarity
  • Fernand de Varennes, special rapporteur on minority issues

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Journalists & Not-So-Much Journalists on Zelensky

December 27th, 2022 by Ray McGovern

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***

One has to put some context around the appearance of Saint Volodymyr Zelensky Wednesday evening before the U.S. Congress. Those with a modicum of accurate background information could smell a rat behind all the hugs, kisses, and stormy applause. The real record renders the smell a stench. Alas, neither the accurate record nor the stench can find its way into the corporate media.

Here’s the thing – in the words of humorist Will Rogers: “The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so; that’s the problem.”

A Help Desk

One can expect serious writers like Joe Lauria of Consortium News to post some thoughts apres-St. Zelensky-tour-de-force, in due course. But everyone is entitled to some time off for Christmas and something needs to be said – like now.

Happily, much has already been written and spoken that exposes the dominant (propaganda) narrative for what it is – drivel. For example, readers can find much helpful sustenance in an extremely detailed piece Lauria wrote on July 2, 2022 about what actually happened in Ukraine over the past several years. See this.

Joe’s piece came in response to spurious charges by a Orwellian ‘rating’ group, led by the usual suspects, called “NewsGuard”. Consider Lauria’s piece required reading; you may find it on the final exam.

For those who prefer video, I gave a kind of tutorial on July 7, 2022, with emphasis on how Russia views the stakes in Ukraine: “Ukraine: A Taste of The Truth”.

I have also done several other videos on the general subject. (See: Youtube or raymcgovern.com.)

Not-So-Much Journalists

Reading the two articles below confirms the truth of Will Rogers’s adage – in present circumstances a dangerous one – that THE problem is “what people know that ain’t so”. You may wish to tell your friends to read/watch Lauria and me (above), as a sort of inoculation against the rubbish below:

Volodymyr Zelensky Is the Leader of the Free World
By Marc Ash, Reader Supported News, December 22, 2022

When my stomach finally settled after reading this one, I tweeted:

Zelensky’s message: Ukraine is fighting for good over evil
By Andrew E. Kramer, December 21, 2022

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Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seen earlier this year. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)

Ukraine’s War with Russia Has Nothing to Do with Freedom

December 27th, 2022 by Jacob G. Hornberger

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***

Yesterday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky appeared before a joint session of Congress to plead for more billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money to help Ukraine in its war with Russia. 

One particular sentence in Zelensky’s address caught my attention: “We Ukrainians will also go through our war of independence and freedom with dignity and success.” The sentence prompted an enormous applause from the members of Congress.

There is one big problem with Zelensky’s statement, however. The war between Ukraine and Russia has nothing to do with freedom. Instead, it has everything to do with NATO, the old Cold War dinosaur that ginned up the crisis that led to this highly deadly and destructive war.

Operating through NATO, the Pentagon was insistent on incorporating Ukraine into NATO. Zelensky too wanted Ukraine to join NATO. For at least the last 25 years, Russia has made it clear that Ukraine’s joining NATO was a “red line” for Russia. The last thing Russia wanted was Pentagon bases and nuclear missiles installed on Russia’s border, just as the last thing that the Pentagon would want is Russian bases and nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba. Russia consistently made it clear that if Ukraine crossed that “red line,” Russia would invade Ukraine to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO.

Thus, everyone knew what the stakes were if the Pentagon, NATO, and Ukraine persisted in making Ukraine a member of NATO. They knew that if they persisted, Russia would end up invading Ukraine. 

Knowingly, deliberately, and intentionally ignoring and disregarding Russia’s “red line,” the Pentagon, NATO, and Ukraine continued down the road toward making Ukraine a member of NATO, knowing full-well that that would result in a Russian invasion of Ukraine to prevent that from happening.

Thus, prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Zelensky was faced with a fateful choice. If he decided that Ukraine would not join NATO, there would be no Russian invasion of Ukraine. If he decided that Ukraine would join NATO, there would be a Russian invasion of Ukraine, one that was certain to result in massive death and destruction on both sides. 

Zelensky chose the second option. In making that choice, he was saying that the deaths and suffering of tens of thousands of his citizens and the destruction of his country were worth Ukraine’s joining NATO. That’s quite a choice. Another president might have decided the massive death and destruction that would be unleashed in such a war would not be worth joining NATO. 

In any event, the war between Russia and Ukraine is not about freedom, as Zelensky said to Congress. It’s about Zelensky’s wish to have Ukraine join NATO.

And let’s keep in mind that NATO was part of the old Cold War racket that was used to justify the conversion of the U.S. government from a limited-government republic to a national-security state, which is a type of governmental structure that wields totalitarian-like powers. When the Cold War racket suddenly came to an end, the old Cold War dinosaur NATO should have gone out of existence, just as the Warsaw Pact did.

During the entire Cold War racket, the fear that the Russians and other communists were coming to get us was used to justify ever-increasing budgets for the national-security establishment and its ever-growing army of voracious “defense” contractors who loved feeding at the public trough. The Pentagon and its “defense” contractors were clearly not ready to let go of their Cold War cash cow. 

That’s what NATO’s absorption of former members of the Warsaw Pact was all about. By installing U.S. military forces and missiles ever closer to Russia’s border, the Pentagon’s aim was to incite a Russian reaction, which would then bring back the lucrative Cold War racket. Thus, the Pentagon knew exactly what it was doing when it persisted in absorbing Ukraine into NATO. And it clearly got what it was aiming for — a renewal of its Cold War racket and ever-increasing taxpayer-funded largess.

One of the unanswered questions is how much of the $100 billion in U.S. taxpayer money that U.S. officials have given to the Ukrainian government has been used to line the pockets of Ukrainian officials. After all, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt regimes in the world. There is no reason to believe that the Ukraine-Russia war has suddenly converted Ukrainian officials into honest and honorable government officials. 

Finally, there is something else to consider that is of critical importance. The federal government’s debt now exceeds $31 trillion. U.S. officials, led by President Biden, continue spending money like there was no tomorrow. That includes almost a trillion dollars being given to the Pentagon to keep us “safe” from the threats that it itself induces. Ever-increasing federal spending, debt, taxation, and monetary destruction constitutes a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people. In pleading with Congress to give the Ukrainian government even more billions of dollars of U.S. taxpayer money, it’s too bad that President Zelensky gives short shrift to the continued destruction of our own freedom and well-being here at home.

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Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the country as well as on Fox News’ Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano’s show Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full Context. Send him email.

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***

 

 

 

The CIA is combining with the spy service of a NATO ally in Europe to conduct covert sabotage operations inside Russia, according to new claims.

The clandestine campaign is behind many unexplained explosions and fires that have hit strategic or prominent facilities in recent months, says US expert Jack Murphy, an eight-year Army Special Operations veteran.

Separately other European intelligence services have allegedly been ‘running operatives into Russia to create chaos without CIA help’, as has Ukraine.

His claims follow as a new fire struck a shopping mall in Krasnodar region, in southern Russia, the latest in dozens of such incidents. It comes as Putin issued another chilling warning to the West on Christmas day.

A gas pipeline explodes in the republic of Chuvashia, some 360 miles east of Moscow

A gas pipeline explodes in the republic of Chuvashia, some 360 miles east of Moscow

In Ukraine today, air raid sirens have been going off around the country as some decide to move their Christmas day to avoid celebrating on the same day as Russia.

Oil and gas facilities, railways, fuel depots, power plants and shopping malls have been hit across Russia by mysterious explosions, with rumours of sabotage.

‘The campaign involves long standing sleeper cells that the allied spy service has activated to hinder Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine by waging a secret war behind Russian lines,’ said Murphy in a post.

‘The campaign is responsible for many of the unexplained explosions and other mishaps that have befallen the Russian military industrial complex since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February.’

He cited anonymous US sources including three former intelligence and two military officials, and a sixth source ‘who has been briefed on the campaign’.

The CIA has denied the allegations.

‘The former officials declined to identify specific targets for the CIA-directed campaign, but railway bridges, fuel depots and power plants in Russia have all been damaged in unexplained incidents since the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February,’ wrote Murphy on his website.

No US officials were involved on the ground, he said, but the strikes had used an ‘allied intelligence service’ and were approved by US president Joe Biden, he asserted.

‘While command and control over the sabotage program resides with the CIA for legal reasons, the NATO ally has a strong say in which operations go forward since it is their people taking the risks.’

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: Thick black smoke shoots into the sky at a shopping mall housing the first Russian IKEA store. Moscow, December 9

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

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First published on November 29, 2022

***

The well-established link between the COVID-19 mRNA shots and blood clots, myocarditis, heart attacks and strokes is reason enough to stop the vaccine program, argues a London oncologist.

And further, the average age of death from COVID-19 in the United Kingdom is 82, which is higher than the age for all other causes, 81.

But there is another reason enough to halt the shots, wrote Dr. Angus Dalgleish, professor of Oncology at St. George’s University of London, in a letter to the British Medical Journal.

“As a practising oncologist I am seeing people with stable disease rapidly progress after being forced to have a booster, usually so they can travel,” he wrote to the BMJ’s editor in chief, Dr. Kamran Abbasi.

“Even within my own personal contacts I am seeing B cell-based disease after the boosters,” he wrote. “They describe being distinctly unwell a few days to weeks after the booster – one developing leukaemia, two work colleagues Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, and an old friend who has felt like he has had Long Covid since receiving his booster and who, after getting severe bone pain, has been diagnosed as having multiple metastases from a rare B cell disorder.”

Dalgleish said he has enough experience in the field “to know that these are not the coincidental anecdotes that many suggest, especially as the same pattern is being seen in Germany, Australia and the USA.”

He said his observations fit the pattern observed around the world of innate immune suppression for several weeks after mRNA vaccination.

“All these patients to date have melanoma or B cell based cancers, which are very susceptible to immune control – and that is before the reports of suppressor gene suppression by mRNA in laboratory experiments.”

Dalgleish concluded:

“This must be aired and debated immediately.”

A recent study found a sharp rise in cancer in people under 50.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital cited increases worldwide in cancer of the breast, colon, esophagus, kidney, liver and pancreas.

One of the nation’s most prolific pathologists, Dr. Ryan Cole, has reported a significant rise in cancer cases in his Boise, Idaho, lab.

He has received data from oncologists indicating the mRNA vaccines disrupt the immune system. He said in an interview that physicians report “seeing the weirdest cancers, and cancers that we have been able to keep in check and treat, taking off like wildfire – going stage 2, stage 3, stage 4, just like that.”

Meanwhile, a professor at MIT has coauthored a paper that found a 25% increase in heart attack emergency calls among young Israelis after the country’s mRNA vaccine rollout.

*

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Featured image: Navy Seaman Milan Torres prepares a dose of the COVID-19 vaccine to be administered to a patient at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland, Dec. 14, 2020. (DoD photo by Lisa Ferdinando)


The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

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First published on November 29, 2022

***

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, last year at the Atlantic Council, called people who spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation “criminals,” in his calls for censorship of misinformation online.

However, this year, Dr. Bourla is himself found responsible by the UK’s pharmaceutical regulator of making “misleading” statements about vaccination of children.

Last December, in an interview with the BBC, Dr. Bourla said that “there is no doubt in my mind that the benefits, completely, are in favor of” vaccinating children between the ages of five and 11.

He continued to say that “Covid in schools is thriving.”

“This is disturbing, significantly, the educational system and there are kids that will have severe symptoms.”

The interview was conducted before the vaccine was approved for children between the ages of five and 11 in the UK.

After the interview was published, parent campaign group UsForThem filed a complaint with the Prescription Medicines Code of Practice Authority (PMCPA). The complaint accused Dr. Bourla of making “disgracefully misleading” comments about vaccinating children and that the comments were “extremely promotional in nature,” and that he violated several clauses of the code of practice by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI).

“There is simply no evidence that healthy schoolchildren in the UK are at significant risk from the SARS COV-2 virus and to imply that they are is disgracefully misleading,” the complaint said.

PMCPA convened a code of practice panel that found that Dr. Bourla had indeed violated the code of practice in a few ways, including failure to present information to the public in a factual and balanced manner, misleading the public, and making claims that cannot be substantiated.

The Telegraph reported Pfizer appealed against the findings of the panel and strongly disagreed with UsForThem’s claims that the CEO violated the code of practice. The company argued that Dr. Bourla’s remarks were based on “up-to-date scientific evidence” and they could be proven through “publicly available independent benefit-risk assessments.”

An appeal board upheld that Dr. Bourla misled the public, made claims that were unbalanced, and made unsubstantiated claims.

However, it ruled against claims that Pfizer discredited the industry, encouraged reckless use of a treatment, and did not maintain high standards.

*

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The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity

by Michel Chossudovsky

Michel Chossudovsky reviews in detail how this insidious project “destroys people’s lives”. He provides a comprehensive analysis of everything you need to know about the “pandemic” — from the medical dimensions to the economic and social repercussions, political underpinnings, and mental and psychological impacts.

“My objective as an author is to inform people worldwide and refute the official narrative which has been used as a justification to destabilize the economic and social fabric of entire countries, followed by the imposition of the “deadly” COVID-19 “vaccine”. This crisis affects humanity in its entirety: almost 8 billion people. We stand in solidarity with our fellow human beings and our children worldwide. Truth is a powerful instrument.”

ISBN: 978-0-9879389-3-0,  Year: 2022,  PDF Ebook,  Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 Get yours for FREE! Click here to download.

We encourage you to support the eBook project by making a donation through Global Research’s DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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***

It is still estimated that over 75% of Conservative MPs, including those in government, are  registered members of the CFI lobby group that supports a foreign, non-NATO power in the Middle East that is a close ally of Russia – Putin and Netanyahu being close political associates.  According to the Israeli Statistics Bureau, 15% of the population of Israel are native Russian speakers. That’s slightly more than 1 million.   Up to one third of all Israeli Jews (2.5 million) have some roots from the former Soviet Union.

The Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI) is a British parliamentary lobby affiliated to the Conservative Party, which is dedicated to strengthening military and political ties between the British Conservative Party and the extremist Right-wing Israeli Likud party.

In 1995 Conservative politician Robert Rhodes James called it “the largest organisation in Western Europe dedicated to the cause of the people of Israel”.

By 2009, according to the Channel 4 documentary Dispatches – Inside Britain’s Israel Lobby, around 80% of Conservative MPs were members of the CFI.  In 2013, the Daily Telegraph’s chief political commentator, Peter Oborne, called CFI “by far Britain’s most powerful pro-Israel lobbying group.”

During the past 12 years of Conservative government, the amount of bilateral trade with the state of Israel has multiplied dramatically and includes substantial contracts for both classified military, defence and espionage equipment notwithstanding that Israel is not a member of NATO and should not be involved in Britain’s national security or defence requirements.  Nevertheless, the UK has signed a trade and partnership agreement with Israel, which is now  in effect.

This trade and partnership agreement includes provisions on:

trade in goods – including provisions on preferential tariffs, tariff rate quotas and rules of origin, intellectual property and government procurement.  Tariff rates for bilateral trade in goods between the UK and Israel continue to apply as set out in the agreement. However, in some cases, the non-preferential applied rates may, in fact, be lower because of changes in the UK’s Most Favoured Nation tariff schedule

For the UK Conservative government to have become so closely interconnected with an alleged corrupt Prime Minister of a non-NATO, foreign power in the Middle East that is an extremist, hard-Right, undeclared nuclear weapon state, by allowing it to have become a major defence supplier to the UK, compromises British national security to an extent that far outweighs that of China.  It is an outrage that the security of the state, the British state, has apparently been allowed to have become so compromised when the primary duty of any government is the security of the nation.

It should be noted that Israel is one of the very few countries in the world that is neither a ratified party to the Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty (NPT) nor the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) of the UN nor of the Organisation for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW).

*

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Hans Stehling (a pen name) is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Queen Mary University of London

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***

 

Over the last few decades the demand to pay reparations for African enslavement has drawn support from around the world.

Africans on the continent along with those living in other parts of the globe have joined the movement for reparations as compensation from Europe and North America for the centuries-long Atlantic slave trade.

The initial move in any reparations process would be a formal apology from the nations, governments and corporations involved. Many nations within Western Europe and later the United States and Canada profited immensely from the enslavement of African people.

In fact, scholars such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Eric Williams, Walter Rodney, Vincent B. Thompson and many others have made the argument that without the exploitation and oppression of African people, the feudal and capitalist economies of Western Europe and North America would have never gained dominance within the world economic system after the 15th century. Such an historical fact means that the current international bourgeoisie owes its global status to the labor power, waterways and natural resources of the African continent and would therefore be liable for incalculable amounts of monetary damages extending back nearly six centuries.

As a result of the institutional racism which grew out of the slave and colonial systems, Africans and their descendants still suffer today from national oppression, discrimination based on color and economic exploitation which has its origins in the antebellum period and the rise of imperialism. In the U.S., segregation was legal up until the mid-1960s when the Civil Act of 1964 was passed by both chambers of the Congress. The following year, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law even though well into the 21st century, the right to universal suffrage remains a source of struggle.

Netherlands Prime Minister Mark Rutte on December 19 delivered an address at the national archives where he expressed his deep regret that Dutch history had been marred by involvement in the Atlantic slave trade. This speech grew out of a commission which was established in 2020 amid the worldwide demonstration against racism prompted by the police execution of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

The role of the Netherlands commission was to examine the colonial history of the country which profited from the enslavement of African people in several territories in North America, South America and the Caribbean. In 2021, the commission concluded that the Netherlands needed to accept its responsibility for what was described as a “crime against humanity.”

In the 20 minutes speech, Rutte apologized for:

“[T]he actions of the Dutch state in the past: posthumously to all enslaved people worldwide who have suffered from those actions, to their daughters and sons, and to all their descendants into the here and now. For centuries the Dutch state and its representatives have enabled and stimulated slavery and have profited from it. It is true that nobody alive today bears any personal guilt for slavery…(however) the Dutch state bears responsibility for the immense suffering that has been done to those that were enslaved and their descendants.”

Yet those African descendants who were present at the speech were not impressed with the Rutte apology. During the address the prime minister ruled out the payment of reparations. Instead, he announced that his government would be establishing a fund of $US212 million to tackle some of the problems stemming from past injustices.

Africans whose ancestors were enslaved by the Dutch accused Rutte of being disingenuous in his statements. Residents of existing and former colonies of the European country say they had not been consulted prior to the speech. Others claimed that the timing of the apology was ill-timed since the 160th anniversary of the abolition of enslavement in the Dutch colonies will be commemorated during 2023.

Dutch retiree Waldo Koendjbiharie said of the speech by the Dutch leader that:

“It’s about money. Apologies are words and with those words you can’t buy anything.”

Another African descendant from the South American state of Surinam, which was colonized by the Netherlands, Roy Kaikusi Groenberg of the Honor and Recovery Foundation, emphasized:

“It takes two to tango — apologies have to be received. The way the government is handling this, it’s coming across as a neo-colonial belch.”

The Dutch Role in Slavery and Colonialism

This area of Europe would emerge as a critical player in the Atlantic slave trade and colonization in the Western Hemisphere, Africa and Asia during the early 17th century. The Dutch fought a war of independence against the Spanish crown during the late 16th and early 17th centuries.

Several rival European states were seeking to dominate the trade in human beings and commodities during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Dutch fought both Spain and Portugal to claims its own place within the burgeoning Atlantic slave trade and the colonization of the Western Hemisphere and the Asia-Pacific.

The Dutch West India Company and its counterpart known as the East India Company established numerous stations around the world. The company fought several wars with states in addition to Spain and Portugal.

Between the early 17th century to the concluding years of the 18th century, competition was fierce between France, England and the Dutch. Eventually, the Dutch would be overwhelmed by the military and commercial successes of other Western European powers such as France and Britain.

One source says of the impact of Dutch colonization that:

“Dutch West India Company, byname of West India Company, Dutch West-Indische Compagnie, Dutch trading company, was founded in 1621 mainly to carry on economic warfare against Spain and Portugal by striking at their colonies in the West Indies and South America and on the west coast of Africa. While attaining its greatest success against the Portuguese in Brazil in the 1630s and ’40s, the company depleted its resources and thereafter declined in power. It was dissolved in 1794. The company also established several colonies in the West Indies and Guyana between 1634 and 1648, including Aruba, Curaçao, and Saint Martin, but later lost many of them to the French. The Dutch colony in North America, New Netherland (renamed New York in the mid-1660s), became a province of the company in 1623. A combination of low Dutch immigration, autocratic administration, and under-investment, however, damaged the ability of New Netherland to compete with the neighboring English colonies, and it was ceded to the English in 1667. The Dutch West India Company was much less successful than the Dutch East India Company, its counterpart in Southeast Asia. The West India Company was taken over by the state in 1791 and was dissolved in the wake of the French invasion of the Dutch Republic in 1794.”

Even today in the 21st century, the Kingdom of the Netherlands is composed of the European capital and other island nations in the Caribbean. The Caribbean part of the Kingdom is made up of the islands of Aruba, Curaçao, St Maarten, Bonaire, Saba and St Eustatius.

The Netherlands joined the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949. Since this time period, successive governments and the monarchy have been loyal members of the western military alliance.

The Netherlands: A Center of “International Law” for Imperialism

Prior to the advent of World War I and II, The Netherlands attempted to maintain its foreign policy based on neutrality. Nonetheless, the country was occupied by the Nazis in 1940 forcing its leaders to take refuge in England.

In 1945 after the conclusion of WWII, The Netherlands would be a founding member of the United Nations. Later the country benefited from the Marshall Plan along with the aid airlifts in 1953 when over 1800 people died in catastrophic flooding. See this.

During the last two decades, the Netherlands has become a venue for trials over alleged human rights abuses carried out in the former Yugoslavia and the African continent. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has been exclusively pro-occupied with the investigation, extradition and prosecution of African state actors and rebel organizations.

For this reason, the ICC has become a controversial institution as several African governments have criticized the court and threatened to withdraw from the Rome Statute, which created the framework for the ICC in 1998. Efforts were underway for several years to bring the former president of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, and the current President William Ruto, to the Netherlands to stand trial over events which occurred in 2007-2008. Both cases against the two Kenyan leaders were subsequently dropped due to lack of evidence.

The former president of Ivory Coast, Laurent Gbagbo, was kidnapped by French paratroopers in April 2011 and transported to the Netherlands where he remained for nearly a decade awaiting and standing trial over efforts he carried out to prevent the current French and U.S.-backed regime from taking power in this West African state. President Gbagbo was acquitted by the ICC also as a result of a lack of evidence. These are just two examples of the injustices perpetrated by the Netherlands government in alliance with imperialism operating under the guise of international law.

Consequently, until the Netherlands pays reparations for its role in the enslavement and colonization of African and Asian peoples, its apologies under the present administration of Rutte will remain a hollow gesture. Beyond the era of African enslavement to the present, the Kingdom of the Netherlands cannot escape its culpability in the ongoing oppression and exploitation of African and other peoples.

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

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Christmas: Passing on the Lyrical Gift of Language

December 27th, 2022 by Edward Curtin

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***

 

 

“The most incomprehensible talk comes from people who have no other use for language than to make themselves understood.” – Karl Kraus, Half-Truths & One-and-a-Half Truths

Things, possessions, life on the installment plan or credit card.  This is the season to buy, to accumulate more folderols, to give things to one’s children and each other, which, we like to believe, will bring joy.  It’s make-believe, of course, an adult lie conjured up out of guilt and fear that our lives, the stories we live, the stories we dream, and those that dream us, are insufficiently meaningful to bring our children and ourselves the joy we say we seek.

Driven by a pure sense of guilt devoid of any sense of redemption in a capitalist materialist culture, we buy and buy, accumulate and accumulate, in the vain hope that such tangible “gifts” will bring a magic that we can possess.  Our exchange of gifts is a consumer culture’s parody of the true meaning of a gift: that gifts are given to be given away, to be passed around, like the peace pipe of native American Indian tribes.

As Lewis Hyde writes in his extraordinary book, The Gift: Imagination and the Erotic Life of Property, “… a gift that cannot be given away ceases to be a gift.  The spirit of a gift is its constant donation.”  What we are given, in the inner and outer world, must be shared, allowed to circulate.

But we like to own, to stop the flow.  As a result, we have become stuck, selfie people who can’t understand that to possess is to be possessed.

Stop, pose, click.  Got it!

Describing art as a way of life, or walking life’s way as an art, the German poet Rainer Maria Rilke put it thus:

Not any self-control or self-limitation for the sake of specific ends, but rather a carefree letting go of oneself; not caution, but rather a wise blindness; not working to acquire silent, slowly increasing possessions, but rather a continuous squandering of all perishable values.  This way of being has something naïve and instinctive about it, and resembles that period of the unconscious best characterized by a joyous consciousness, namely the period of childhood.

The truth is that we are sustained by stories – oral, written, existential – not by things, as a commercial civilization would have us believe.  From infancy to old age, we crave stories that will allow us to make sense of our lives, to give them shape and spiritual significance.  And the greatest gifts we can give each other are stories that draw on the mystery and sacredness of existence, stories that express, in ravishing language and a musical spirit, clarification for our lives.  Stories that help us resist the nihilistic ethos of our times, the violence and deceit that defines them.

For example, long ago a Jewish boy was born in a stable because his parents couldn’t get a room anywhere.  The parents then had to flee with the boy because the government was murdering children and was out to get him.  Later in life, this child Jesus, became a radical opponent of church and state, preached peace, love, non-violence, and living by faith, not money; he embraced the outcasts, condemned the hypocrites, and was finally executed as a radical criminal by the state.  But his spirit was undefeated; he conquered death; and his name has become synonymous with love and kindness to such a degree that we celebrate his birth as the light of the world as the darkest days of the year turn brighter.

It’s a beautiful story from beginning to end, and if heeded, would bring massive resistance to the way things are throughout the world.  No wonder it has touched the hearts of so many for so long.

Sadly, however, Wordsworth put it perfectly when he said that, “getting and spending we lay waste our powers.” And the consumer-gift-stories we indirectly tell our children by participating in the madness of holiday shopping are tales unfit for young ears.

To live to buy is to tell them lies.

Our children (and all of us) wish not things but stories that will help them face life with enthusiasm and courage.  When I was a young boy, my father would ease me to sleep with “Jiminy Cricket Stories,” imaginary improvisations on Pinocchio and his conscience.  They were in no way trendy like the most recent Pinocchio film adaptation, but fundamentally sound as in the song As Time Goes By – it’s still the same old story.

I can’t remember any of his stories today, but what stays with me is their underlying theme, their spirit: to become a real boy, a genuine person, one must determine to tell the truth.  One must be brave, truthful, and unselfish.  Yet even more, when I think of them, I feel my father’s unconditional love and the timbre of his lilting voice.

These stories about truth and bravery contained hard but vital lessons for a father to pass on to a son, but he did it in such an entertaining way that I took the lessons to heart.  Ever since, in gratitude and wonder, I have been trying to make my story adhere to that spirit of truth.  Trying; for as we all know, truth is a hard taskmaster.  We never hold it, only seek it, and can only approach it if we are possessed by language and allow its musical spirit to carry us on into the unknown.

When I became a father myself, I tried to pass on to my children a love for stories and the words we use to express our lives.  Without words, and the ability to use them meaningfully, we are lost in the world of things, a place where consuming replaces creating.  So from infancy onward, my wife and I would read to them, and eventually I began to tell them imaginary stories of my own, “Willy Daly Stories,” inspired by a boyhood pal.  They would hang onto each word, and swing into depths of reverie as I strung them together into tall tales.

“At the bottom of each word/I’m a spectator at my birth,” wrote the French poet Alain Bosquet.

Entering into this creative spirit, Susanne and Daniel would ask me. “Is that really true?”  And I could not lie and say no.  So they would laugh, I would grin, and we would go on.

Like all children, they loved these stories, the ones I told and the ones we read.  They entered into them and they, into them; their inner worlds germinated.  When they were very young, each started to read, not haltingly but fluently and with amazing comprehension.  “Out of the blue” something clicked (and neither was “taught” to read, but was read and talked to by my wife and me as though they comprehended everything, even the most abstruse words), and from that day on the words that they previously heard became theirs.  They received the gift, even when they didn’t understand the meaning, they grasped the music.

Now it has passed to my grandchildren, Sophie and Henry, who are children of the word, lovers of the epiphanies stories can disclose.

“The bright book of life,” as D.H.Lawrence called the novel, opened to them.  Novel: New.  New life forever arising out of the old.  Miraculously (is there any other word for it?), they were in possession of the gift of words that they could pass on; they had the power to hear and tell their own stories, to understand their lives, not as the pursuit of things, but as the pursuit of meaning.  They felt proud and I felt blessed.

“Art tells the truth,” wrote Chekhov.  Indeed.  And the wheel of life turns with the seasons.  The gift of stories is passed on.  Christmas turns to New Year’s.  People pass on, but so do stories.  The things are forgotten.

The wordsmith Leonard Cohen sang in his song, “Famous Blue Raincoat,” that “I hope you are keeping some sort of record.”  The words stick on the page, but the beautiful melody carries them into our present and into the future and we imagine stories carrying us on as the music and the words don’t stop and we keep humming the tune and imagining as we move along to that which cannot be said and about which it is impossible to be silent, to paraphrase Victor Hugo.

My daughter: Susanne. Leonard Cohen’s Suzanne: “There are children in the morning/they are leaning out for love/and they will lean that way forever/while Suzanne holds the mirror.”

My son: Daniel.  Like brave Pinocchio being swallowed by Monstro, and Daniel in the Lion’s den, the stories of courage and derring-do, told indirectly.

Daniel Berrigan, my friend and mentor, the puckish fierce poet of beauty and peace, whose fierceness belied his tenderness.

The Biblical Susanna, the falsely accused, and Daniel her liberator.

Names contain multitudes, tales never told, stories traveling on.  Daniel and Susanna ever new.

The gifts must be given away, like playing or listening to live music.  Here and gone; one time only.  Like life.

I recently saw a book for sale at my local library – From my Father, Singing by David Bosworth – a beautiful book, a true work of art.  I read it once at the suggestion of my storyteller father, and have just reread it.  I am grateful to Bosworth for his gift and to my father for passing on the word.  It is a tale in the form of a letter from a father to a son, a father in search of the meaning of his own father’s life, that elusive gift that can only be found in a story, in the telling.

The letter writer, our author, is in flight from a life lived “according to script,” a wife in love with money, shopping, and things, his dead-end job – “the place where I pretended to earn our living” – a life of pretense and lies, a living death in which all efforts were made to deny its meaninglessness: “to have fun, to keep busy, to buy something, to face the bleak descent of Sunday evening by preparing already for the following weekend.”

In order to explain himself to his son, a young infant, he explores his own childhood, the life he lived caught between his parents’ conflicting worlds.  In the end, by fashioning this letter, by putting word behind word behind word, he comes to understand and appreciate his father and consequently himself; he composes a letter to his son (who cannot yet read but whom we know will) “intended as a gift, a living legacy in words.”

Yes, art tells the truth.

Pass on the word, the true gift.

Here is Bill Joel’s gift to his daughter.

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

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

Featured image is a screenshot from this video


He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book, click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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Whereas in America (which makes and sells half of all of the world’s war-weapons), the manufacturers of war-weaponry are privately owned and succeed only by enriching their investors, Russia’s manufacturers of war-weapons are majority-owned by the Government and succeed only by winning Russia’s wars — serving the Government, which controls these companies, instead of serving private investors, who control the Government itself by lobbying and political donations.

In America, the arms-manufacturers control the Government in order to control their markets, which are their own Government and secondarily its ‘allied’ or vassal-Governments (which also buy their products). Russia never privatized its war-industries; so, they serve the Government — the public, not investors (who, in turn, control the Government in order to be able to control those corporations).

Ever since America’s failed war against Vietnam, the U.S. Government has been accustomed to military failure. That war began in 1954 when President Eisenhower “sent 700 military advisers to South Vietnam” without seeking congressional approval, and in violation of the U.S. Constitutional requirement for there to be no U.S. standing army and thus explicitly that only after a congressional declaration of war can a President send any U.S. forces to any foreign country.

Ike relied upon his immediate predecessor President Truman’s precedent of having done the same thing (violated the Constitution) by sending a force for “police action” (lying that it wasn’t military) to start his war to conquer Korea by enforcing Truman’s General Order #1, on 17 August 1945, to stop North Korea’s forces from advancing into South Korea.

Ike then hid from JFK this and other traps that were awaiting him in Vietnam, and in Cuba. According to JFK’s description of his 19 January 1960 meeting with Ike prior to assuming office, JFK said, regarding Vietnam, “Eisenhower never mentioned it, never uttered the word Vietnam.” Ike never mentioned the 700 troops in Vietnam, but JFK found that he had inherited that.

So, “In May 1961, Kennedy sent 500 more American advisers to Vietnam” — he just continued Ike’s unConstitutional policy there; it was the path of least resistance. Soon, however, he learned that it was a dreadful mistake, and that Ike had silently left minefields for him and had aimed to get his successors blamed for Ike’s disastrous decisions (which Kennedy learned too late). “By early November 1963, the number of US military advisers had reached 16,000”, but Kennedy already knew that he was trapped and would be attacked especially by Republicans if he changed course. He was just learning the ropes, and starting to think about how to change course, when he got assassinated (and his V.P. Johnson continued those errors).

That war ended in a U.S. defeat when President Ford withdrew the last U.S. troops from Vietnam by helicopters on 30 April 1975. (He, of course, failed to win election. His successor, Carter, then failed to win re-election, due to Ike’s having stolen Iran in 1953 and Carter’s suffering the resultant Iranian anti-American fervor in 1979, which doomed his campaign and brought in President Reagan.)

Afterward, the only successful U.S. wars were two very limited ones, both waged by President GHW Bush: one to seize and capture Panama’s leader and drug-trafficker Manuel Noriega on 3 January 1990; the other to expel Iraq’s forces from Kuwait during 24-28 February 1991.

America’s other wars were failures, or, at best, partial failures:

  • Grenada in October 1983,
  • Beirut in 1983-4,
  • Libya in 1986 and again in 2011,
  • Somalia 1992-95,
  • Haiti 1994-5,
  • Yugoslavia 1995-2000,
  • Afghanistan 2001-2021,
  • Philippines 2002-2017,
  • Iraq 2003-22,
  • Libya 2011-2022,
  • Syria 2012-2022, and
  • Ukraine (coup) 2014-2022.

(They all were successes for America’s arms-makers, however.)

None of America’s invasions after WW II was justified, nor was any of them in accord with America’s Constitution.

All of them were done in order to use, test-out, and to wear-out and replace, U.S. weapons, so as to increase sales-volumes and enrich political donors, who got the congresspeople elected that they wanted elected, to vote for these invasions and for the military appropriations. The system succeeded at what it was designed to do: produce profits for those American international corporations, whose owners control the U.S. Government.

And then there are the U.S. regime’s many other undeclared wars, which are partnerships with U.S.-allied regimes in which America supplies only the weaponry and training but no direct fighters, such as in America’s partnership with the Sauds to grab control over Yemen — causing mass starvation in Yemen. (It burns up lots of U.S. weapons, thus likewise pumping U.S. weapons-sales and profits.)

Russia has been spending $70 billion annually on its entire military; America has been spending (not just in its ‘Defense’ Department but in allDepartments) around $1.5 trillion per year, for its military.

In crucial military technologies, Russia is the world’s leader.

For example, on December 23rd, South Front headlined “KINZHAL HYPERSONIC MISSILE PROVED TO BE UNSTOPPABLE IN UKRAINE: RUSSIAN MILITARY CHIEF”, and it’s no mere brag by Russia; it is true. (Such missiles would be unstoppably in any nation.)

Furthermore, on November 14th, I headlined “U.S. GAO Finds Failure Is the Norm in U.S. Military Aircrafts”. That’s what happens when the military manufacturers serve their investors instead ofthe public.

On June 17th, U.S. military expert Alex Vershinin headlined at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, “The Return of Industrial Warfare”, about how inferior America is militarily as compared to Russia, and he argued — without mentioning or even showing any awareness of it — that America’s replacing industrialization (the manufacturing economy) with financialization (the financial-services economy) had done this (hollowed-out America’s military).

I would argue more specifically that the resultant intense corruptness in America’s military has done this.

The U.S. ‘Defense’ Department is the ONLY federal Department that can’t be audited.

Its opportunities for graft are unlimited (or else are limited only by the value of the dollar, which would mean that the dollar’s international value is bound to crash and collapse some day, as having been the ultimate Ponzi scheme). In fact, trillions of dollars in spending by the Pentagon simply cannot be traced. Nobody knows, or can find out, where it went.

Another reason why Russia gets far higher bang for each military buck spent is that whereas America’s military is designed to expand the American empire throughout the world, Russia’s is designed to protect the nation’s sovereign independence and to ward-off America’s constant (ever since 1945) aim to turn Russia into yet another U.S. ‘ally’ (vassal-nation).

Whereas America’s billionaires drive America’s military for increasing their empire, the Russian population drive Russia’s military for the nation’s protection and very survival.

There is no evidence — none — that Russia, spending $70 billion annually on its military, is militarily inferior to America, which spends $1.5 trillion per year on its military.

In a country that spends 20 times more for its military but gets military inferiority instead of military superiority, deceiving the public is essential (in order to function as being a ‘democracy’, which the U.S. Government needs in order to be able to call any country it aims to take over — or regime-change — a “dictatorship”). And that is the way it is done, and has been done, for decades, now. So, the military has been, at least since 2001, the highest-respected institution of all, by the American people. The trick has been very successful.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Ukraine has began fielding US M777 howitzers to repel Russia

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Video: The Weaponization of the WHO

December 26th, 2022 by James Corbett

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***

Solve the intentionally confusing puzzle about what the WHO’s 2023 plans are regarding the “zero draft” for a new and potentially legally binding pandemic treaty, International Health Regulation amendments, recent Intergovernmental Negotiating Body Meetings and more.

Learn all about the corrupt public health organization “with teeth” with guest James Corbett and Meryl Nass, M.D on ‘Good Morning CHD.’

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In his address to the US Congress on December 21, the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that he seeks  “absolute victory” over Russia, employing the word “victory” 11 times. Writing for the Washington Post, renowned journalist David Ignatius describes Zelensky’s visit to Washington as it was: a “war summit”. Ignatius concludes that this summit ended however with a gap between the Ukrainian and his US counterpart Joe Biden. The latter during their joint press conference indirectly answered the insistent requests for more potent weapons being sent to Ukraine by saying that providing Kiev with long-distance missiles “would have a prospect of breaking up NATO” and “and breaking up the European Union and the rest of the world.” Not only that, he added that his NATO allies are “not looking to go to war with Russia. They’re not looking for a third world war.” Acknowledging that perhaps he had already “said too much”, Biden then reassured his Ukrainian ally standing next to him, by telling him “as I said, Mr. President, you don’t have to worry — we are staying with Ukraine as long as Ukraine is there.”

Although the Zelensky cult has been fading for a while, he was enthusiastically applauded by American lawmakers several times and the Western media has emphasized it. However, besides the aforementioned gap, there were blatant incongruenties in his speech also.

Zelensky boasted of a first Ukrainian “victory”, which consists of supposedly having “defeated Russia in the battle for minds of the world”, and he added that “Americans gained this victory” by “uniting the global community” – when in fact Biden has been struggling to maintain his international coalition to support Kiev. Although the Ukrainian leader claimed “Europe is now stronger and more independent than ever”, the truth of course is that the continent is facing a severe energy crisis which has only served Washington’s interests. Moreover, Biden’s aggressive $369 billion subsidy package, which hurts Europe, has been described by French President Emmanuel Macron as an issue that could “divide the West”. So much for “union”.

Still talking about the information war, Zelensky himself admitted it is still necessary “to ensure that countries of the Global South also gain such victory.” By saying that, he basically conceded that the vast majority of the world does not support Kiev – and truly African nations and other emerging states have been increasingly building on multi-alignment, and non-alignment, while developing beneficial relations with China and Russia.

When the Ukrainian President mentioned having visited Bakhmut, he said that “the Ukrainian Donbass stands”. It is quite ironic that when Zelensky, talking about Donbass, said that “every inch of that land” is “soaked in blood”, he failed to mention the fact that this very region had been regularly shelled by Kiev for 8 years before the current Russian-Ukrainian conflict started in February 2022.  Ukrainian human rights violations in Donbass have in fact been heavily white-washed by the West and so has been the ugly reality of the Azov battalion’s neo-Nazi leanings.

But one thing Zelensky did say during his speech: he said that although the Ukrainians have artillery, and thanked the US for that, it is not “enough” (which elicited some uncomfortable laughter from some of the US lawmakers – audible at around 11min in the C-SPAN clip) and that “more cannons and shells are needed.” It is significant, though, that there was enthusiastic applause when the Ukrainian President clarified that his country “never asked the American soldiers to fight on our land instead of us” and that “Ukrainian soldiers can perfectly operate American tanks and planes themselves”. Ironically, in doing so, he echoed the August sarcastic remarks of Sergey Kiriyenko, first deputy chief of the Russian presidential staff, about NATO being eager to fight against Moscow “to the last Ukrainian” soldier.

Although many American voices have been calling for direct and even nuclear war against Russia, Biden, during the aforementioned joint press conference, has explicitly signaled that this is not his desire. He prefers, it would seem, to keep using Ukraine and Europe as proxies.

On January 30, before the current crisis began, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg had already reiterated that (US-led) NATO would not send troops in case Russia attacked its neighbor, but reassured the Atlantic Alliance would in any case provide “support” to Kiev. His words seem to have passed the test of time so far. Commenting on this, I wrote, on February 1st, that such a “support” could end in a humanitarian disaster with undesired consequences to Europe and the West itself. I also remarked that, in a perverted way, former US president Donald Trump’s remarks about the crisis being a “European problem” made a lot of sense. The Europeans as well as the Ukrainians themselves, of course, have been paying the hard price for the misguided policy of “encircling” Russia. I’ve also written on how the US profits from prolonging the conflict in Ukraine – to Europe’s detriment.

The problem with this kind of indirect tension game is that proxy actors themselves are sometimes unpredictable (they can get tired of being used by such an “ally”) and, moreover, tensions may escalate too much and spiral out of control, as we’ve already seen. Although Biden has admitted quite candidly that he does not wish to enter into direct conflict with Moscow so as not to provoke a world war,  Washington in any case has been playing a dangerous game, which increases the risk of such a war.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image: President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz) 

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***

“The war in Ukraine is not a Call of Duty fantasy. It is an enlargement of the human tragedy that NATO’s eastward expansion created. The victims do not live in North America. They live in a region that most Americans can’t find on a map. Washington urged the Ukrainians to fight. Now Washington must urge them to stop.” Colonel Douglas MacGregor, The American Conservative

Volodymyr Zelensky did not fly across the Atlantic so he could deliver a speech to the US Congress. That was not the purpose of his trip. The real objective was to produce a galvanizing event that would create the illusion of broad-based public support for the war.

That is why the speech was broadcast on all the mainstream media channels and that is why Congress repeatedly greeted Zelensky with raucous applause. Once again, the cadres of voracious elites who control the political levers of power in America, are determined to drag the country to war, which is why they portray a cross-dressing “thug in a gym suit” as a Churchillian figure of unshakable principles. It’s all public relations. It’s all an attempt to garner support for a conflict which will soon involve young American men and women who will be asked to die so that wealthy elites can maintain their grip on global power.

Zelensky’s trip to Capitol Hill was timed to coincide with Putin’s winter offensive, which is expected to crush the Ukrainian Armed Forces and bring the war to a swift end. The Biden administration understands the situation but does not have weaponry or manpower to impact the outcome.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Washington doesn’t have a plan for prolonging the conflict or beefing up its combat forces. It does have a plan, that is evident by the way the administration has rejected negotiations at every turn. What that tells us is that Washington is still committed to defeating Russia whatever the cost. In practical terms, that means that the US must create an incident that will serve as a justification for escalation. The incident could be related to Zelensky’s unexpected trip to Washington or, perhaps, it could be linked to the detonation of a nuclear device somewhere in Ukraine. Check out this excerpt from an article at RT:

The risk of Kiev attempting to build a so-called ‘dirty bomb’ remains, a senior Russian diplomat has said….

“Ukraine has the potential necessary to make a ‘dirty bomb,’ it doesn’t take much effort. Especially since Ukraine has been a nation advanced in nuclear technology since the Soviet times, [and] has many technologies and expertise,” Mikhail Ulyanov told journalists on Wednesday, as quoted by RIA Novosti…

General Igor Kirillov, the commander of the Russian military branch responsible for protecting troops from weapons of mass destruction, claimed in October that Kiev was “at the final stage” of producing a dirty bomb.” (“Radioactive threat from Kiev persists – Moscow“, RT)

The means by which a false flag is carried out, is completely irrelevant. What matters is that — according to political analyst John Mearsheimer– “The United States is in this to win”, that is, the US foreign policy establishment is not prepared to let the Russian army prevail in Ukraine and impose its own settlement. They’re going to find a way to intensify the conflict and bring foreign troops into the theater. That’s the objective, and that’s what they’ll do once they’ve figured out an excuse for escalation. Bottom line: The US is not going to throw in the towel and call it quits. This is a long-term project that could drag on for years if not decades.

Political analyst Kurt Nimmo thinks that NATO might join the fighting. Here’s a short blurb from Nimmo’s latest at Global Research:

If Olga Lebedeva and Pravda.ru can be believed, NATO is on the verge of entering the war in Ukraine.

“Such announcements were heard from officials of the Polish Ministry of Defence, the General Staff of the NATO alliance, officers of the French army and (of course) the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence,” according to Lebedeva.

“The main reason would be the very next Russian general offensive that NATO is planning and which according to it would decimate the Ukrainian army not only in the Donbass but also on the Kiev side (many Russian units are in combat situation in Belarus at the borders with Ukraine),” explains Rusreinfo.ru, a Russian website.

But NATO has always been very clear: Ukraine CANNOT LOSE. For Washington, the only solution would therefore be for NATO forces to enter Ukraine, hoping that this will end the Russian offensive. The calculation is that Vladimir Putin will not want to directly face NATO with the possible (nuclear) consequences, and will therefore then retreat.” (“NATO Decides to Attack Russia in Ukraine– Ukraine is unable to defeat Russia. The next step is for direct NATO involvement“, Kurt Nimmo, Global Research)

Nimmo could be right but, maybe not. It appears to me that NATO is hopelessly divided on the issue. A number of NATO countries will not join in a war against Russia regardless of the circumstances or the amount of pressure from the White House. The more likely scenario was presented by Colonel Douglas MacGregor who laid it out in an article at The American Conservative on Tuesday. Here’s what he said: .

The Biden administration’s unconditional support for the Zelensky regime in Kiev is reaching a strategic inflection point not unlike the one LBJ reached in 1965… Like South Vietnam in the 1960s, Ukraine is losing its war with Russia… The real danger now is that Biden will soon appear on television to repeat LBJ’s performance in 1965, substituting the word “Ukraine” for “South Vietnam”:

“Tonight, my fellow Americans I want to speak to you about freedom, democracy, and the struggle of the Ukrainian people for victory. No other question so preoccupies our people. No other dream so absorbs the millions who live in Ukraine and Eastern Europe… However, I am not talking about a NATO attack on Russia. Rather, I propose to send a U.S. led coalition of the willing, consisting of American, Polish, and Romanian armed forces into Ukraine, to establish the ground equivalent of a “no-fly zone.” The mission I propose is a peaceful one, to create a safe zone in the Western most portion of Ukraine for Ukrainian Forces and refugees struggling to survive Russia’s devastating attacks…”

NATO’s governments are divided in their thinking about the war in Ukraine. Except for Poland and, possibly, Romania, none of NATO’s members are in a rush to mobilize their forces for a long, grueling war of attrition with Russia in Ukraine. No one in London, Paris, or, Berlin wants to run the risk of a nuclear war with Moscow. Americans do not support going to war with Russia, and those few who do are ideologues, shallow political opportunists, or greedy defense contractors.” (“Washington is Prolonging Ukraine’s Suffering“, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, The American Conservative)

This, I think, is the much more plausible scenario. The Biden Administration will enlist a handful of countries that agree to troop deployments to west Ukraine ostensibly for humanitarian reasons. At the same time, they will allow disparate Ukrainian forces to continue the random shelling of Russia-controlled areas as well as locations on Russian soil. There will undoubtedly be an effort to control the skies over west Ukraine (no-fly zone) and to conduct attacks on Russian formations in the east. Most important, vital supplylines from Poland will remain open to accommodate the flow of men, munitions and lethal weaponry to the front. MacGregor appears to anticipate these developments given his comments at the beginning of the article. Here’s what he said:

During a speech given on November 29, Polish Vice-Minister of National Defense (MON) Marcin Ociepa said: “The probability of a war in which we will be involved is very high. Too high for us to treat this scenario only hypothetically.”The Polish MON is allegedly planning to call up 200,000 reservists in 2023 for a few weeks’ training, but observers in Warsaw suspect this action could easily lead to a national mobilization.

Meanwhile, inside the Biden administration, there is growing concern that the Ukrainian war effort will collapse under the weight of a Russian offensive. And as the ground in Southern Ukraine finally freezes, the administration’s fears are justified. In an interview published in the Economist, head of Ukraine’s armed forces General Valery Zaluzhny admitted that Russian mobilization and tactics are working. He even hinted that Ukrainian forces might be unable to withstand the coming Russian onslaught.”(“Washington is Prolonging Ukraine’s Suffering“, Colonel Douglas MacGregor, The American Conservative)

The plan to lure Russia into a war in Ukraine goes back at least a decade. And what we know now from comments by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is that Washington never sought a peaceful resolution to the conflict but worked tirelessly to install a Russia-hating regime in Kiev that would help it to prosecute its war on Russia. The gathering of nearly 600,000 Russian combat troops in or around Ukraine threatens to derail Washington’s strategy and end the war on Russia’s terms. Washington can’t allow that to happen. It cannot allow the world to see that it was beaten by Russia. Thus, Washington must pursue the only option left to them, the deployment of US troops to Ukraine.

Perhaps, cooler heads will prevail and the administration will pull back from the brink, but we think that is highly unlikely. We think the decision has already been made: We think the United States is going to war with Russia.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

All images in this article are from TUR


Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

Christmas gift exchange between Zelensky and Biden in White House meeting. The Ukrainian president brought to Biden the newly signed law abolishing the Kiev Administrative District Court, already in the crosshairs of the U.S. State Department, which had sanctioned the Tribunal’s president for “human rights violations.” The real reason the Tribunal was abolished is that it had opened proceedings against the Ukrainian neo-Nazis and their crimes. For his part, Biden gave Zelensky the first Patriot missile battery and a pledge to provide him with another $45 billion in 2023, adding to the $100 billion already given in the form of weapons and military assistance. Zelensky said in his address to Congress that what the U.S. provided to Ukraine for the war is “an investment in global security and democracy.”

The U.S. Congress has approved military spending of $858 billion for 2023 (13 times that of Russia). The Pentagon’s budget alone shows a 10 percent increase over last year’s, or $70 billion more, or $36 billion more than the President’s own request. U.S. military spending, relative to the Pentagon budget alone, is equivalent to that of the next 10 countries with the highest military spending on a global scale.   Added to the Pentagon budget are other military expenditures of about $400 billion, bringing actual U.S. military spending to more than $1.2 trillion. This colossal increase, headlines the New York Times, creates “a new boom for arms manufacturers.” All this confirms Washington’s willingness to continue to fuel the war against Russia, which is causing an unprecedented crisis in Europe.

On December 15, in an institutional ceremony held in Moscow, the Daria Dughina Medal was established by the Eurasian Movement in honor of the journalist who was murdered last August. This year, it was awarded to Russian-Ukrainian musician Akim Apachev and Hungarian film director Maya Nogradi, editor of Grandangolo, for her film For the Children of Donbass, broadcast on Byoblu on Dec. 1, 2021, viewable here.

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This article was originally published on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: President Joe Biden meets with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Wednesday, December 21, 2022, in the Oval Office of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

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Tucker Carlson and the JFK Allegations

December 26th, 2022 by Edward Curtin

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On December 15, the night that the Biden administration released some of the remaining JFK files while withholding others with another half-assed excuse, Tucker Carlson, the most-watched cable news television host, delivered a monologue about the JFK assassination.  It garnered a great deal of attention.

Although I don’t watch Carlson’s television show, I received messages from many friends and colleagues, people I highly respect, about his monologue’s great significance, so I watched that episode. And then I watched it many more times.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., a man whom I hold in the highest esteem, tweeted that it was “the most courageous newscast in 60 years.  The CIA’s murder of my uncle was a successful coup d’état from which our democracy has never recovered.”

While I completely agree with his second sentence, I was underwhelmed by Carlson’s words, to put it mildly.  I thought it was clearly “a limited hangout,” as described by the former CIA agent Victor Marchetti:

Spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting, sometimes even volunteering, some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.

Or listens carefully.

Carlson surely said some things that were true, and, as my friends and many others have insisted, he was the first mainstream corporate journalist to say that “the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

But “involved” is a word worthy of a lawyer, a public relations expert, or the CIA itself because it can mean something significant or nothing.  Or a little of both.  It is a weasel word.

And the source for Carlson’s claim was an anonymous source, someone who he said “had access” to the JFK files that were never released.  We know, of course, that when The New York Times and its ilk cite “anonymous sources,” claiming that they have told them this or that, this raises eyebrows. Or should.  Anyone who closely follows that paper’s claims knows that it is a CIA conduit, but now, those who know this are embracing Tucker Carlson as if he were the prophet of truth, as if a Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox TV host who is paid many millions of dollars, has become the Julian Assange of corporate journalism.

In a 2010 radio interview, Mr. Carlson said, “ I am 100 % his bitch.  Whatever Mr. Murdoch says, I do.”

The obvious question is: Why would Fox News allow Carlson to say now what many hear as shocking news about the JFK assassination?

So let me run down exactly what Carlson did say.

For five minutes of the 7:28 minute monologue, he said things that are obviously true: that Jack Ruby killed Oswald and that the claim that both acted alone is weird and beyond any odds; that the Warren Commission was shoddy; that the CIA weaponized the term “conspiracy theory” in 1967 according to Lance De Haven-Smith’s book Conspiracy Theory in America; that the CIA’s brainwashing specialist psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West visited Jack Ruby in jail and declared him insane, contrary to all other assessments of Ruby’s mental state; and that the 1976 House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) concluded that there was probably a conspiracy in the president’s assassination.

All of this is true but not news to those knowledgeable about the assassination.  Nevertheless, it was perhaps news to Carlson’s audience and therefore good to hear on a corporate news site.

But then, the next few minutes – the key part of his report, the part that drew all the attention – got tricky.

Carlson said that just that day – December 15, 2022 – when all the JFK documents were due to be released but many were withheld, “we spoke to someone who had access to these still hidden CIA documents.”  Who would have such access, and how, is left unaddressed, but it is implied that it is a CIA source, but maybe not.  It is strange to say the least.

Carlson then said he asked this person, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?”  And the answer was “I believe they were involved.”  Carlson goes on to say, “And the answer we received was unequivocal.  Yes, the CIA was involved in the assassination of the president.”

Note the words “hand,” “believe,” “involved,” and then “unequivocal.”

“Hand” can mean many things and is very vague.  For example, in front of his wife, a man tells his friend, “I had a hand in preparing Christmas dinner.”  To which his wife, laughing, replies, “Yes, he did, he put the napkins on the table.”

To “believe” something is very different from knowing it, as Dr. Martin Schotz, one of the most perceptive JFK assassination researchers, has written in his book, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy

On Belief Versus Knowledge

It is so important to understand that one of the primary means of immobilizing the American people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which anything can be believed but nothing can be known, nothing of significance that is.

And the American people are more than willing to be held in this state because to know the truth — as opposed to only believe the truth — is to face an awful terror and to be no longer able to evade responsibility. It is precisely in moving from belief to knowledge that the citizen moves from irresponsibility to responsibility, from helplessness and hopelessness to action, with the ultimate aim of being empowered and confident in one’s rational powers.

“Involved,” like the word “hand,” can mean many things; it is vague, slippery, not definitive, and is used by tabloid gossip columnists to suggest scandals that may or not be true.

“Unequivocal” does not accurately describe the source’s statement, which was: “I believe.”  That is, unless you take someone’s belief as evidence of the truth, or you wish to make it sound so.

Note that nowhere in Carlson’s report does he or his alleged source say clearly and definitively that the CIA/National Security State murdered President Kennedy, for which there has long been overwhelming evidence.  Such beating-around-the-bush is quite common and tantalizes the audience to think the next explosive revelation will be dispositive.  Yet no release of documents is needed to confirm that the CIA killed Kennedy, as if the national security state would allow itself to be pinned for the murder.

Waiting for the documents is like waiting for Godot; and to promote some hidden smoking gun, some great revelation is to engage in a pseudo-debate without end.  It is to do the killers’ bidding for them.  And it is quite common. There are many well-known “dissident” writers who continue to claim that there is not enough evidence to conclude that the CIA/national security state killed the president.  And this is so for those who question the official story.  Furthermore, there are many more pundits who maintain that Oswald did the deed alone, as the Warren Report concluded and the mainstream corporate media trumpet.  This group is led by Noam Chomsky, whose acolytes bow to their master’s ignorant conclusions.

Maybe we’ll know the truth in 2263.

While it is true that some people change dramatically, Tucker Carlson, the Fox Television celebrity, would be a very unlikely candidate.  He defended Eliot Abrams and praised Oliver North; supported the Contras against the Sandinistas in Nicaragua; went to Nicaragua to support those Contras; smeared the great journalist Gary Webb while defending the CIA; supported the U.S. invasion of Iraq; and much more.  Alan MacLeod chronicled all this in February of this year for those who have known nothing of Carlson’s past, including his father’s work as a U.S. intelligence operative as director of the U.S. Information Agency (USIA), the body that oversees government-funded media, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio and TV Martí and Voice of America – all U.S. propaganda outlets.

Now we are being asked to accept that Carlson is out to show how the CIA is “involved” in the murder of JFK.  Why would so many fall for such rhetoric?

No doubt any crumb of national news coverage about the CIA and the assassination by a major corporate player elicits an enthusiastic response from those who have tried for many years to tell the truth about JFK’s murder.  One’s first response is excitement.  But such reactions need to tempered by sober analyses of exactly what has been said, which is what I am doing here.  I, too, wish it were a breakthrough but think it is more of the same.  Much ado about nothing.  A way to continue to foster uncertainty, not knowledge, about the crime.

I see it as a game of false binaries in the same way the Democrats and Republicans are portrayed as mortal enemies.  Yes, there are some differences, but all-in-all they are one party, the War Party, who agree on the essential tenets of U.S. imperial policy.  They both represent the interests of the upper classes and are financed by them.  They both work within the same frame of reference. They both support what Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, rightly calls the Military-Industrial-Congressional-Intelligence-Media-Academia-Think-Tank complex (MICIMATT).

If one asks a dedicated believer in the truthfulness of The New York TimesCorporation or NPR, for example, what they think of Tucker Carlson, they will generally dismiss him with disdain as a right-wing charlatan.  This, of course, works in reverse if you ask Carlson’s followers what they think of the Times or NPR.  Yet for those who think outside the frame – and they are all non-mainstream – a different picture emerges.  But sometimes they are taken in by those whose equivocations are extremely lawyerly but appeal to what they wish to hear.  This is exactly what a “limited hangout” is.  Snagged by some actual truths, they bite on the bait of nuances that don’t mean what they think they do.

Left vs. right, Fox TV  vs. The New York Times, NPR, etc.: Just as Carlson’s father Dick Carlson ran the CIA-created U.S. overseas radio propaganda under Reagan and George H. W. Bush, so too the present head of National Public Radio, John Lansing, did the same under Barack Obama.  See my piece, Will NPR Now Change its Name to National Propaganda Radio.  Birds of a feather disguised as hawks and sparrows in a game meant to confuse and create scrambled brains.

Lastly, let me mention an odd “coincidence.”  On December 6 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., nine days before the partial JFK files release and Tucker Carlson’s monologue, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, an organization devoted to JFK research, gave a presentation showcasing what was advertised as explosive new information about the Kennedy assassination.  The key presenter was Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and prominent JFK assassination researcher who has sued the CIA for documents involving Lee Harvey Oswald and CIA operative George Joannides.

On November 22 Morley had published an article titled “Yes, There is a JFK Smoking Gun.”  It was subtitled: It will be found in 44 CIA documents that are still “Denied in Full.”  The documents he was referring to allegedly concern contacts between Oswald and Joannides in the summer and fall of 1963 in New Orleans and in Mexico City.

“They [the CIA] were running a psychological warfare operation, authorized in June 1963, that followed Oswald from New Orleans to Mexico City later that year,” wrote Morley.

Well, the “smoking gun” documents were not released on Dec 15, although on November 20 and then again at The National Press Club on December 6, Morley spoke of them as proving his point about the CIA’s involvement with Oswald, which has been obvious for a long time.  Although he said he hadn’t seen these key documents but was awaiting their release, he added that even if they were not released that will still prove him correct.  In other words, with this bit of legerdemain, he was saying: What I don’t know, and may not soon not know, supports what I’m claiming even though I don’t know it.  And even if the files were released, he writes, “As for the conspiracy question, the massive withholding of documents makes it premature to draw any conclusions. The undisclosed Oswald operation was not necessarily part of a conspiracy. It might indicate CIA incompetence, not complicity. Again, only the CIA knows for sure.”  So the smoking gun is not a smoking gun and the waters of uncertainty roll on and on into the receding future.

CIA incompetence, not complicity.  Of course.  It ain’t necessarily so.  Or it is, or might be, or isn’t.

Morley is one of  many who still cannot say that the CIA killed the president.  Tucker Carlson can speak of its “involvement” just like Morley. We need more information, more files, etc.  But even if we get them, we still won’t know.  Maybe by 2063.

My question for Tucker Carlson: Who was your anonymous source?  And did your source see the documents that were never disclosed?  What specific documents are you referring to?  And do they prove that the CIA killed Kennedy or just suggest “involvement”?

Finally, as I said before, even as there has long been a mountain of evidence for the CIA’s murder of JFK (and RFK as well, although that is never mentioned), many prominent people continue to play as if there is not.  Listen to this video interview between Chris Hedges and former CIA officer John Kiriakou.  It is all about the nefarious deeds of the CIA.  Right toward the end of the interview (see minutes 32:30-33:19), Hedges says,

“So I have to ask [since he has to answer] this question since I know Oliver Stone is convinced the CIA killed JFK … I’ve never seen any evidence that backs it up …”  and they both share a mocking laugh at Stone as if he were the village idiot when he knows more about the JFK assassination than the two of them put together, and Kiriakou says he too has not seen such evidence.  It’s a disgusting but typical display of arrogance and a “limited hangout.”

Criticize the CIA only to make sure you whitewash them for one of their greatest achievements: the murder of President John F. Kennedy.  This is straight from Chomsky’s playbook.

Beware double-talkers and the games they play.  They come in different flavors.

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

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

Featured image is from Behind the Curtain


He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book, click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

Digital Tyranny: The EU Digital Covid Vaccine Certificate Framework

December 26th, 2022 by Prof Michel Chossudovsky

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An earlier version of this posting mistakenly referred to a European Council Amendment of Resolution 2361 which “no longer objects to compulsory vaccination”. That information is incorrect. See: Resolution 2361 (2021) entitled “Covid-19 vaccines: ethical, legal and practical considerations

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First published on April 11, 2022.

The EU Vaccine Passport Restrictions are Dramatic. Fundamental Rights are being violated.

The substance of the EU procedures concerning the vaccine passport are contained in the EU EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM. (summary below, scroll down for Selected Excerpts and Complete Text).

Summary

Regulation (EU) 2021/953 on the EU Digital COVID Certificate introduced EU-wide rules for issuing and accepting proof of a person’s COVID-19 vaccination, test result or recovery.

The EU Digital COVID Certificate helps people travel freely within the EU during the COVID-19 pandemic. How the certificate is used for other purposes (access to events, etc.) is up to each EU country to decide.

The Regulation currently applies until 30 June 2022. This initiative proposes to extend it by 12 months.    (emphasis added)

Commission adoption

.

The Pandemic Treaty = Digital Tyranny

The MEMORANDUM outlined by the EU points to the derogation of fundamental human rights entrenched in the adoption of the EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework.  

As noted in the above Summary, the intent is to extend the Regulation which expires on June 30 2022 for another twelve months until June 30th, 2023.

This extension plays a key role: 

The EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework is slated to be tied into negotiations pertaining to a worldwide “Pandemic Treaty” which were initiated in early March 2022.

On March 3, the EU Council gave:

“a green light to start negotiations on an international pandemic treaty… The Council adopted a decision to authorise the opening of negotiations for an international agreement on pandemic prevention, preparedness and response.”

What is the timeline

The procedure is slated to be presented to the 76th World Health Assembly in 2023, “with the aim to adopt the instrument [namely the pandemic treaty]  by 2024.”

The object of the Pandemic Treaty consists in creating by 2024  a global health governance entity under WHO auspices.

In turn the Pandemic Treaty would be tied into the WHO’s QR Verification Code project, which is intent upon creating a global digital data bank of 8 billion people.  Both initiatives are to be carried out concurrently by the WHO in liaison with ID2020 and the Gavi Alliance, both of which are funded by the Gates Foundation.

Peter Koenig describes the QR Code as

“an all-electronic ID – linking everything to everything of each individual (records of health, banking, personal and private, etc.).”

According to David Scripac 

 “A worldwide digital ID system is in the making. [The aim] of the WEF—and of all the central banks [is] to implement a global system in which everyone’s personal data will be incorporated into the Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) network.”

The March Towards World Government

A Worldwide QR Verification Code lays the groundwork for the instatement of “a Global Police State” controlled by the financial establishment. It’s part of what the late David Rockefeller entitled “The March towards World Government” based on an alliance of bankers and intellectuals.

What is the legitimacy as well as the science behind this diabolical project?

NONE.

Amply confirmed: THERE IS NO PANDEMICThe alleged Covid-19 Pandemic is based on “Fake Science”. Both the EU Digital COVID Certificate Framework as well as the WHO QR Verification Code are based on outright lies and fabrications. It is now well established that the PCR test which has been used to “detect SARS-CoV-2” is totally invalid.

“Both the WHO and the CDC (with the usual innuendos) have confirmed what was known from the very outset in January 2020, namely that the RT-PCR test used to justify every single policy mandate including lockdowns, social distancing, the mask, confinement of the labor force, closure of economic activity, etc. was flawed and invalid”

The EU Memorandum (below) confirms two types of tests for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 both of which have been declared invalid:

“According to Regulation (EU) 2021/953, test certificates are to be issued based on two types of tests for SARS-CoV-2 infection, namely

[1] molecular nucleic acid amplification tests (‘NAAT’), including those using reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (‘RT-PCR’), and

[2] rapid antigen tests, which rely on detection of viral proteins (antigens) using a lateral flow immunoassay that gives results in less than 30 minutes, provided they are carried out by health professionals or by skilled testing personnel. (emphasis added)”

The  legitimacy of the EU Digital Covid Certification Framework, the Pandemic Treaty and the QR Verification Code rests on the presumption that the alleged “Covid-19 Pandemic is Real” and that the “mRNA Covid-19 vaccine constitutes a SOLUTION to the alleged Covid-19 pandemic.” 

The CDC confirms that the PCR test does not effectively differentiate between “SARS-CoV-2 and influenza viruses”. As of 31 December 2021, the CDC has declared the PCR test as invalid. 

For further details and analysis click here

Sustained by media disinformation and government propaganda, the mRNA vaccine was put forth as a solution to curbing the pandemic and saving lives.

The Vaccine does not Save Lives 

Amply documented, the Vaccine has triggered from the outset in December 2020 an upward trend in mortality and morbidity.

Extending the Vaccine in the EU as outlined in the “Memorandum” is a crime against humanity. The EU Memorandum must be immediately suspended.

Video: In many countries, there was a significant shift in mortality following the introduction of the mRNA vaccine

The evidence is overwhelming. The official figures (April 2022) point to approximately:

 

TOTAL for EU/UK/USA – 69,053 Covid-19 injection related deaths and 10,997,126 injuries reported as at 3 April 2022 for the EU, US and UK combined

But only a small fraction of the victims or families of the deceased will go through the tedious process of reporting vaccine-related deaths and adverse events to the national health authorities.

The following statement contained in the EU Memorandum is nonsensical:

“Increasing vaccine uptake remains a crucial objective in the fight against the pandemic, given the protection against hospitalisation and severe disease afforded by vaccination

Amply documented, it’s the Covid-19 mRNA “Vaccine” rather than the SARS-CoV-2 virus which is “the killer”. 

In the words of Doctors for Covid Ethics:

“The signal of harm is now indisputably overwhelming, and, in line with universally accepted ethical standards for clinical trials, Doctors for Covid Ethics demands that the COVID-19 “vaccination” programme be halted immediately worldwide.

Continuation of the programme, in the full knowledge of ongoing serious harm and death to both adults and children, constitutes Crimes Against Humanity/Genocide, for which those found to be responsible or complicit will ultimately be held personally liable.”

The Procedures described in the EU Memorandum should be immediately suspended. The Justification for a “Pandemic Treaty” is Based on Lies and “Fake Science”. 

See Michel Chossudovsky’s E-Book, specifically Chapters I-III.

The Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky,

As a means to reaching out to millions of people worldwide whose lives have been affected by the corona crisis, we have decided in the course of the next few weeks to distribute the eBook for FREE.

Price: $11.50. FREE COPY Click here to download.


Excerpts of the EU MEMORANDUM, with links to the complete text below.

 

The document in pdf can be accessed HERE.

Below are first few paragraphs of the document. Emphasis by Global Research

EXPLANATORY MEMORANDUM

page2image41599360

1. CONTEXT OF THE PROPOSAL

• Reasons for and objectives of the proposal

The right of Union citizens to move and reside freely within the European Union, enshrined in Article 21 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (TFEU), is one of the Union’s most cherished achievements, and an important driver of its economy. At the same time, the ongoing coronavirus disease 2019 (‘COVID‐19’) pandemic continues to pose an extraordinary threat to public health across the Union. This has led Member States to adopt public health measures seeking to protect individuals’ health as well as the capacity of their healthcare systems, some of which have been related to travel between Member States.

To facilitate safe free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic, the European Parliament and the Council adopted, on 14 June 2021, Regulation (EU) 2021/9531 establishing the EU Digital COVID Certificate framework for the issuance, verification and acceptance of interoperable COVID-19 vaccination, test and recovery certificates2.

Regulation (EU) 2021/953 facilitates free movement by providing citizens with interoperable and mutually accepted certificates on COVID-19 vaccination, testing and recovery that they can use when travelling. Where Member States waive certain restrictions on free movement for persons in the possession of proof of vaccination, test or recovery, the EU Digital COVID Certificate allows citizens to profit from these exemptions.

Since its adoption, the EU Digital COVID Certificate has been successfully rolled out across the Union, with more than 1 billion certificates issued by the end of 2021.

The EU Digital COVID Certificate is thus a widely available and reliably accepted tool to facilitate free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to a Eurobarometer survey published in September 2021, about two-thirds (65%) of respondents agreed that the EU Digital COVID Certificate is the safest means for free travel in Europe during the COVID-19 pandemic3. Almost all Member States also use the EU Digital COVID Certificate for domestic purposes, with studies estimating that its use has resulted in increased vaccination uptake4, lower hospital admissions, fewer economic losses and, most importantly, fewer deaths5.

In addition, the EU Digital COVID Certificate system has proven to be the only functioning COVID-19 certificate system operational at international level on a large scale. As a result, the EU Digital COVID Certificate has gained increasing global significance and contributed to addressing the pandemic at the international level, by facilitating safe international travel and international recovery.

By 31 January 2022, the three non-EU European Economic Area.countries6, Switzerland7 and 29 other third countries and territories8 are connected to the EU Digital COVID Certificate system, with more expected to join in the future.

The EU Digital COVID Certificate system has been recognised as one of the key digital solutions to restore international mobility9, with the International Air Transport Association urging countries to adopt the EU Digital COVID Certificate as the global standard10.

The Commission will continue its efforts to support third countries interested in developing interoperable COVID- 19 certificate systems. This may include offering additional open source reference solutions that allow for the conversion of third-country certificates into a format that is interoperable with the EU Digital COVID Certificate, as it is also possible to connect third countries the certificates of which are made interoperable by means of conversion11.

To make best use of the EU Digital COVID Certificate framework, the Council has adopted several recommendations on a coordinated approach to facilitate safe free movement during the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the most recent update, Council Recommendation (EU) 2022/107 adopted on 25 January 202212, holders of EU Digital COVID Certificates meeting certain requirements should, in almost all circumstances, not be subject to any additional requirements when exercising their free movement rights. This ‘person-based approach’ thus necessitates the continuous availability of EU Digital COVID Certificates.

Since the adoption of Regulation (EU) 2021/953, the epidemiological situation with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic has evolved considerably. On the one hand, by 31 January 2022, more than 80% of the adult population in the Union have completed their primary vaccination cycle, and more than 50% have received a booster dose, despite significant differences between Member States13. Increasing vaccine uptake remains a crucial objective in the fight against the pandemic, given the protection against hospitalisation and severe disease afforded by vaccination, and thus plays an important role in ensuring that restrictions to the free movement of persons can be lifted.

On the other hand, the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern ‘Delta’ in the second half of 2021 caused significant increases in the number of infections, hospitalisation and deaths, requiring Member States to adopt strict public health measures in an effort to protect their healthcare system capacity. In early 2022, the SARS-CoV-2 variant of concern ‘Omicron’ caused sharp increases in the number of COVID-19 cases, rapidly replacing Delta and reaching an unprecedented intensity of community transmission across the Union. [Nonsensical statement: The Omicron announcement  on November 26, 2021 was refuted by the WHO, Moreover the PCR test does not identify the virus nor the variants of the virus]

The complete document in pdf can be accessed HERE

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First published on December 22, 2022

 

 

 

Another United Nations climate conference has come and gone. The twenty-seventh, to be exact.  

Its forgettable full name is the Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Or COP27, for short.  

COP27, like all of the UN’s previous annual climate summits (COP1 through COP26), addressed none of the actual existential issues facing humanity. Instead, its delegates, gathered in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt, bombarded the rest of us with endless chatter about how human-induced climate change will spell the end of humanity if trillions of dollars aren’t thrown at this alleged catastrophe.  

There was the usual call to action made by the same old summit attendees, who implored nations to reduce carbon dioxide greenhouse gas emissions before it’s too late to save “Mother Earth.” To that familiar refrain they added a new note: a proclamation of “climate justice” that focused on the need for rich countries to scale up “investment for climate and development” to the lofty tune of $2 trillion a year.  

But could all that blather about climate catastrophe and climate justice be nothing more than a smoke screen covering up a nefarious scheme—a scheme designed to monopolise the world’s resources for the benefit of a select few?    

Before we answer that question, let’s first go over some true facts about climate change and cover the variables that contribute to it. (Note: Natural climate cycles shouldn’t be confused with deliberate weather modification—a separate topic we will discuss further down in this article.)  

Is Climate Change Real?  

First, the question that is probably on everyone’s mind: Is climate change real? Yes, it is. It has been a natural, normal, nonstop phenomenon ever since Earth was formed.  

Second, the corollary question: Is it occurring as a result of human activity? No, it is not.  

To date, not a single scientific study has positively attributed all or part of observed climate change to anthropogenic (man-made) causes.

Granted, there are numerous computer models spewing out doom-and-gloom predictions. But, like all computer models, their outcomes can be manipulated by the variables entered into the algorithms. That is, the programmer can input certain parameters that will enable a specific desired outcome. The sole purpose of these computer models is to present a polished veneer that appears to be credible science. In actuality, these models are hiding the truth and keeping the deception called the “climate crisis” alive.  

A case in point is the infamous “hockey stick” computer-generated temperature graph produced by the equally infamous Michael Mann, a Penn State University professor of atmospheric science. After its initial sensational release in 1998, Mann’s graph was incorporated into the UN’s highly influential Third Assessment Report on climate change in 2001. Since then, the persuasive illustration has been used by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to deceive the public into believing the theory of man-made global warming.  

Professor Mann’s graph purports to show the average global temperature over the past 1,000 years. For the first 900 years the graph portrays very little variation in global temperatures. They trend in as straight a line as the shaft on an ice hockey stick lying horizontally on its back side (see below). Then suddenly, in the twentieth century, the graph displays a precipitous rise in global temperature, looking like the hockey stick’s curved blade. 

   Michael Mann’s 1998 “hockey stick” temperature model. Source. 

Mann suggests that this sudden rise in temperature is all due to a dramatic increase in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere.  

There is, however, a major problem with the hockey stick diagram: It’s utter fiction.  

In reality, there have been numerous quantifiable stages of cooling and warming of the earth’s climate spanning the millennia. Here are a few notable examples:  

  • Fourteenth-century Europe was in a mini-ice age, as revealed by this article in Climate in Arts & History. During the Little Ice Age (1300 CE–1850 CE) global temperatures were significantly cooler—by as much as 2°C (3.6°F), particularly in North America and Europe.  
  • Going back further, between 1000 CE and 1350 CE, identified as the Medieval Warming Period, temperatures were significantly warmer than current ones—and that was long before the industrial period. More than 700 scientists from 400 institutions in forty countries have contributed peer-reviewed papers providing evidence that the Medieval Warming Period was as hot or hotter than at present and was a global phenomenon, not just a European regional climate condition, as the IPCC wrongly speculates.  
  • Going back further still, there were more warm spells, including a prolonged period during the Bronze Age, known to geologists as the Holocene Maximum (5000 BCE–8000 BCE). During this period, temperatures were significantly warmer than they are today. In fact, a fascinating study conducted by Myers et al. and published inThe Cryosphere Discussions in 2020 concludes that average temperatures, especially in East Antarctica, were a full 5°C (9°F) warmer than at present.  

Yet, despite his having flattened nine centuries of climate variation with his flawed computer program, Michael Mann’s fraudulent temperature model is still being used by the UN’s IPCC.  

Why? Why won’t the IPCC acknowledge that the climate has always changed, as the above three examples demonstrate—and changed, mind you, without any help from us humans?  

We’ll touch on possible motives for the IPCC’s misinformation at the end.  

For now, let’s stick to how the powers-that-be have gone about blaming human activity for natural climate cycles andhow they have hyped a made-up climate catastrophe reminiscent of the fairy-tale emperor’s imaginary clothes.      

Enter, in the decade of the 1960s, the theory of “anthropogenic global warming” or “man-made global warming.” The false notion was first adopted in 1968 by the Club of Rome in its efforts to promote the supposed need for population reduction. It has since been used to great effect by the UN and by other intergovernmental organizations as well as national governments around the world.  

The anthropogenic warming theorists claim that the CO2 produced by human activity at the start of the twentieth century should have caused the earth’s temperature to rise. They insist there is a direct correlation between CO2 and global temperature.As CO2 increases, global temperature, they allege, increases in lock step.    

But is that actually true? Well, if we accept the findings presented by George S. Benton in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (October 1970), a startlingly different picture emerges.  

This intrepid scientist found that, in the 60 years between 1880 and 1940, the earth’s temperature rose approximately 0.6°C (1.0°F). That warming trend took place long before cars and aircraft were invented. Moreover, in the same period, industrial development was relatively insignificant.  

Then, during the post-WW2 economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s, industries were expanding and human production of CO2 was soaring to new levels. Per the man-made warming theory, global temperature should have increased in those decades. But it didn’t. Instead, it fell significantly—some 0.3°C to 0.4°C—for three decades.  

These facts certainly do not correlate with the global warming theory.

In reality, the earth’s atmosphere didn’t start to warm in the twenty-first century until 1975. This warming trend continued until 2016, when global temperatures were at their peak; they have been declining ever since.  

The proof? All satellite datasets collected from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Institute for Space Studies (NASA GISS), the UK Meteorological Office, Remote Sensing Systems (RSS), and the University of Alabama (UAH) show global temperatures have been declining since 2016, despite increasing amounts of atmospheric CO2.  

If we look hard enough, we can find scientific articles laying out these hard facts. For instance, a report from Chris Morrison in The Daily Sceptic informs us that temperatures in the South Pole are now the coldest they have been since records began in 1957 and that Arctic sea ice is making a silent comeback.  

And yet, all of these data have, inexplicably, escaped the attention of mainstream media reporters.  

In the meantime, numerous climate change alarmists, notably former US Vice President Al Gore, desperately cling to the notion that there is a clear correlation between CO2 and temperature.  

These climate cultists often refer to evidence collected from ice core samples to substantiate their claims.  

To wit: In the 1990s, the classic Vostok ice core sample taken in East Antarctica appeared to show temperature and carbon fluctuations moving in unison. Based on that sample, man-made climate change believers tried to make the case that as CO2 increased, so, too, did temperature, with no lag time between the two variables. They convinced the scientifically illiterate masses that CO2 influences temperature.  

But by the early 2000s, new scientific data—this 2001 report by Manfred Mudelsee in the Quaternary Science Reviews (QSR), for instance—made it clear that the exact inverse is true: CO2 lags temperature. Put another way, temperature changes always precede CO2 changes.  

Thus, the entire ice core theory was turned on its head by data proving that CO2 increases as a result of temperature rising, not the other way around. After the temperature rises, it takes, on average, 800 years before CO2 starts to inch up. This lag is sometimes as much as 2,300 years, other times as little as 300 years.    

The extraordinary thing is that the CO2 lag is well accepted by climatologists yet is virtually unknown outside these circles. And it is this very same lag that climate charlatans like Al Gore fail to mention when presenting evidence obtained from ice core data.  

Therefore, from the evidence presented above, we can conclude that CO2, like other greenhouse gases, does notdrive the earth’s climate.  

And that brings us to our next climate-related topic—greenhouse gases.  

Greenhouse Gases  

Gases that trap the sun’s heat in the atmosphere are called greenhouse gases (GHG). These are naturally occurring gases that absorb and release infrared radiation within the thermal infrared spectrum. The absorption and release of radiation reduces heat loss from the earth, which in turn causes an increase in atmospheric temperature.  

This reaction is what is commonly referred to as the greenhouse effect. Without these important gases, the earth would be a very cold and uninhabitable place—up to 32°C (57°F) colder, on average.  

By far the most important greenhouse gas is water vapor. It constitutes 95 percent of the greenhouse gases by volume and has a dominant effect on our climate.  

Other natural greenhouse gases, such as methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide, (N2O) are present but make up only a tiny fraction of the greenhouse gases. Methane, for example, constitutes as little as 0.000175 percent of all atmospheric gases and 0.036 percent of all greenhouse gases. And nitrous oxide’s concentration in the atmosphere is even lower, at 0.000034 percent.    

The second most abundant greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Although CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it is a natural gas,not a pollutant. It is a key component of the biosphere’s life cycle, without which all vegetation on earth would die. Natural levels of CO2 are approximately 0.04 percent of the total atmosphere.  

Of the 0.04 percent that is CO2, 95 percent comes from a combination of volcanic activity, decomposing vegetation, bacteria, and the earth’s oceans.  

Therefore, the human contribution to the overall CO2 in the atmosphere is only 0.0016 percent. And yet it is this miniscule, insignificant percentage that we are supposed to believe is, in some miraculous way, driving humanity toward a climate catastrophe.  

What an illogical and unsupportable conclusion. Even if all human fossil fuel-burning activity were to cease tomorrow, the world’s oceans and volcanoes would continue to produce the vast majority of all CO2 found in the atmosphere.  

And even if humans could drastically reduce the level of CO2, there would be no significant effect on the climate, as we have already seen from the scientific data presented above. Thus, the belief that CO2 or any other GHG gas (i.e., N2O) is the prime driver of all climate in the world is preposterous.   

The notion that carbon dioxide is “bad” is equally preposterous. CO2 is the essential nutrient that generates all life on earth—and has only beneficial effects.  

For instance, plants are so improved by more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This should be no surprise, since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Granted, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields over the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.  

In addition, research provided by author, public speaker, and climatologist  Timothy F. Ball from the University of Winnipeg reveals “current levels of 392 parts per million (ppm) are approximately one third the optimum for most plants. Empirical evidence from CO2 levels injected into commercial greenhouses indicate optimum yields at levels between 1000 and 1200 ppm. Interestingly, this is the average level of the last 300 million years.”  

A Word on Nitrous Oxide  

Recently, nitrous oxide (N2O) has made headlines by joining carbon dioxide and methane in the climate cultists’ pantheon of dreaded anthropogenic gases. In their view, increasing concentrations of N2O, like CO2, will lead to unusual and unprecedented warming and thus result in disastrous consequences for humanity.  

Based on this egregious lie, countries around the world are in the process of destroying conventional farming by reducing or eliminating the use of nitrogen fertilizer and its byproduct, N2O.  

In Canada, for example, the Liberal regime is determined to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture. According to Climate Depot, Liberal Party leaders “want Canadian farmers to reduce their emissions from fertilizer, specifically nitrous oxide emissions, to 30 percent below 2020 levels by 2030.”  

In the Netherlands, meanwhile, the government plans to shut down 3,000 farms for the supposed purpose of preventing catastrophic warming from N2O emissions.  

That unsubstantiated claim is effectively refuted by the 2022 research paper Nitrous Oxide and Climate by physicist C. A. de Lange et al. In their detailed analysis, Professor de Lange and his team prove that restricting N2O emissions is not only completely unnecessary but dangerous as well.  

Under the guise of saving the planet, the vilification of N2O is nothing more than a ploy by the Agenda 2030 conspirators to intentionally create food scarcity. Clearly the UN’s agenda is not about “ending hunger and achieving food security,” as it claims, but about achieving food insecurity worldwide.    

We may conclude from all the scientific evidence presented above—ice core data, satellite data, and field research—that none of the climate changes over the past several millennia can be explained by CO2 or by any other greenhouse gasTherefore, the fundamental principle that climate change is occurring due to human activity is absolutely false.     

So, you may be asking, how, then, is the earth’s climate changing? If CO2 and N2O are not causing climate change, what is?    

What Does Drive the Earth’s Climate?  

For over two decades, scientists have known that solar activity is the primary driver of climate change.  

In 2011, several leading scientists in Canada set out to prove this cause-and-effect relationship. In a first-of-its-kind event, they appeared before the Canadian Senate Standing Committee on Energy to challenge the anthropogenic global warming theory. Of the four scientists who appeared at the hearing, three were specialists in the field of climatology.  

Professor of Earth Sciences Ian Clark from the University of Ottawa was the first of the three to address the committee. Here is what he had to say:  

We have not really seen any global warming for the past 10 years. . . .  This is in stark contrast with the IPCC forecast of an increase of some 0.2 degrees per decade.”  

Clark explained that twentieth-century warming is merely one of a series of warm periods over the past 10,000 years. During these intervals, he noted, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere held relatively steady and, what is more, “CO2 had nothing to do with these warming periods.

He demonstrated that in the past 500 million years there has been no indication of a correlation between temperature and CO2—despite the proven lag factor. How could this be? Water vapor, he related, is responsible for the majority of the greenhouse effect—not CO2 or any other GHG.

Most importantly, Clark said that “unlike CO2 [correlations], we have very good correlations between various measures of solar activity and temperature.” He then showed the Senate committee some graphs illustrating the effects of increased solar activity on temperature: as solar activity increased, so, too, did global temperature, and vice versa.  

University of Ottawa Distinguished Professor Jan Veizer spoke next:

Many people think the science of climate change is settled. It is not. . . . [The sun] drives the water cycle; the water cycle then generates climate, and climate decides how much jungle, how much tundra and so on we will have, and therefore drives around the carbon cycle. . . .  The sun also warms the oceans that emit CO2 into the atmosphere. Atmospheric CO2 is thus the product and not the cause of the climate.

Got that? “Atmospheric CO2 is thus the product and not the cause of the climate.”

The third scientist to speak at the hearing was Carleton University Professor of Geology Timothy Patterson. He discussed how his field research in the fjords of British Columbia has revealed consistent correlations between solar cycles and climate over the past 5,000 years:

Hundreds of other studies have shown exactly the same thing. . . . The sun, and not variations in carbon dioxide, appears to be the most important driver of climate change. . . . Solar scientists predict that by later in this decade the sun will be starting into its weakest solar cycle of the past two centuries, and this will likely lead to unusually cool conditions on earth, which may persist for decades. . . . It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world.”

So there we have it. Everything that happens in earth’s atmosphere comes down to the sun. It is the driving force behind climate change and has been since the beginning of time. CO2 is irrelevant—especially CO2 stemming from human activity.

That said, there is, however, one aspect of the earth’s atmosphere that is being manipulated by intentionally disruptive human actions. One of the terms for this manipulation is “weather modification.”

Weather Modification

Since the differences between “weather” and “climate” are often misunderstood, let us first look at what differentiates weather from climate before we delve into the topic of weather modification—also referred to as Environmental Modification Techniques (ENMOD).

Unlike climate, which describes the prevailing weather conditions in a vast area of the globe over a long period of time, weather describes the state of the atmosphere at a specific location and at a specific time. Weather refers to certain characteristics of the atmosphere—temperature, wind, precipitation, and humidity.

It is in the arena of weather that some scientists employed by various government agencies have found ways to alter—even weaponize—local weather phenomena to their advantage.

Judging by reports posted on CNN recently, one could be excused for thinking that weather modification—through either “cloud seeding” or Stratospheric Aerosol Injection(SAI) geoengineering—is a newfangled notion. In reality, the origins of this cloud-seeding technology date back to the 1940s.

In the late 1940s, for example, American mathematician John von Neumann, in liaison with the US Department of Defense, was researching weather modification through cloud seeding and its potential uses in climatic warfare.

By the 1960s, atmospheric scientist Bernard Vonnegut (and, yes, brother of famed novelist Kurt Vonnegut) had vastlyimproved the cloud-seeding techniques then in use. While at General Electric Research Laboratory, he employed a solid solution of silver iodide crystals and silver bromide in the cloud-seeding mixture. Silver iodide’s hygroscopic qualities insure that water particles quickly bond with silver iodide’s solid crystalline structure.  

Unsurprisingly, the technology discovered by Vonnegut was put to active military use by the American Empire in its war against Vietnam. From 1967 to 1972, the US Air Force ran Operation Popeye, a highly classified rainmaking program deployed in Southeast Asia. The objective of the operation was to hamper the movement of North Vietnamese troops and supplies along the Ho Chi Minh trail network by prolonging the monsoon season.  

From then on, the potential military benefits of wartime deployment of weather modification technologies were self-evident. So self-evident, in fact, that by 1977 the UN was compelled to introduce a convention prohibiting the use of environmental modification technology in warfare. Both the US and the Soviet Union ratified that convention in 1980.  

Nevertheless, in August 1996, a report commissioned by the US Air Force revealed that the US military was still considering and potentially developing “weather warfare”—specifically, ENMOD systems that would offer “the war fighter a wide-range of possible options” (like generating precipitation or fog or storms) in order to defeat or coerce an adversary.  

Since then, it appears that the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has also been actively involved in ENMOD research, as this March 2009 report in Science magazine informs us.  

However, out of all the weather modification techniques we have briefly examined, none could wreak more potentially devastating effects on the planet than the aforementioned SAI geoengineering. Using this technology, scientists are attempting to play God by interfering with the natural, interconnected climatic life cycle between the sun and the earth.  

I’m speaking now of the insane scheme outlined in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, January 2019 edition), which proposes to inject aerosols into the stratosphere for a prolonged period of time as a means of mitigating the “significant impacts from climate change.”  

What do the authors mean by “impacts”? They’re borrowing the standard propaganda line from the global warming gospel, which infers or outright states that severe weather events—tropical cyclones, hurricanes, and tornados—are all on the rise because of global warming.  

But beware believing them! A quick search on Marc Morano’s Climate Depot reveals numerous studies presented by scientists from around the world—USA, Norway, Germany, and elsewhere—providing evidence to the contrary. Their data refutes the absurd, politically motivated concept being pushed by President Biden, his fellow Democrats, and other climate alarmists—the flawed concept that the world is currently experiencing a “climate emergency” aka “climate crisis.”  

Therefore, since there really are no significant impacts from human-induced climate change, the entire SAI geoengineering concept must be based on a false premise. Obviously, operating on the basis of a false premise can be dangerous. This technology is still in its infancy, but if allowed to proceed to its full development stage, it could have devastating consequences for the environment on a global scale.  

If the UN sponsors and delegates at the COP27 summit were actually concerned for humanity’s well-being, at the very least they should have discussed the possible impacts that weather modification is having on the environment. Also, they should have dealt with the two real existential crises threatening humankind’s survival: the reduction in male sperm counts and soil degradation around the globe.  

To wit: The world population recently hit eight billion, but birth rates across the world are consistently declining. Shanna Swan, an epidemiologist at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York and a leading scholar of reproductive health, projects that sperm counts of the median male are set to hit zero by 2045.

With the introduction in the 1970s of endocrine-disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in plastics, male sperm counts have dropped 50 percent to 60 percent—an average of 1 percent to 2 percent per year—between 1973 and 2011. A recent study from Israel has found that sperm counts worldwide have plunged 62 percent in under fifty years—a decades-long trend that is still accelerating.

COP27 delegates also never discussed the damaging effects GMO crops are having on the environment. (That topic hasn’t been broached at any UN conference, come to think of it.) GMO crops are sprayed with herbicides, such as Bayer’s Roundup, which contain the active ingredient glyphosate, the most ubiquitous cancer-causing herbicide/antibiotic on the planet. Moreover, the devastating effects chemical farming is having on the air we breathe and on the erosion of arable land is also never mentioned at any UN gathering.  

I repeat: If the governments represented at the COP27 summit were actually concerned about saving humanity and wildlife and the environment from all manner of toxins and pollutants, the aforementioned crises would have been at the top of their agenda.  

But, then again, COP has never been about saving the planet or humanity.  

The Real Agenda behind the Man-Made Climate Change Narrative

Since the inception of the aforementioned Club of Rome, a neo-Malthusian think tank founded by David Rockefeller in 1968, the technocrats who seek to rule the planet have been steadily moving humanity toward a neo-feudal dystopian nightmare. For proof, see here and here and here.

In addition to working in or with the UN and its affiliated organs—the World Health Organization (WHO), the IPCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), to name a few—these social engineers have been busy harnessing the power of central banks, investment banks, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), labor unions, philanthropic foundations, and billionaires in their bid to eliminate what little remains of national sovereignty and to slowly privatize everything on earth (including “natural assets” such as water and entire ecosystems). 

And, although that conquest by the supranational oligarchy and their social engineers has been in the works for years, their timeline for achieving their goals has been greatly accelerated since 2019 with the launch of the COVID plandemic.

The kickoff of the COVID-19 threat represented the first “COVID” chapter of the cabal’s global takeover playbook. The fear that was created by the introduction of an alleged deadly virus provided the perfect pretext for governments around the world, under the direction of the WHO, to suspend the rule of law and implement draconian measures such as curfews, lockdowns, physical separation, biometric surveillance, and mask wearing—steps that normally would never be accepted by the public but that under the guise of “public safety” were implemented virtually unchecked around the world.

With the successful completion of the COVID chapter, the second “save the planet from catastrophic climate change” chapter in the cabal’s playbook is proceeding as planned. For almost thirty years, the UN and its satellite organizations—the IPCC being the one most tied to this article—have been manipulating the temperature record, utilizing flawed computer climate models, and lying with unverifiable statistics in their bid to fool the world’s population into believing there is a coming climate apocalypse.

I cannot overemphasize the fact that both the “COVID” chapter and the “save the planet from catastrophic climate change” chapter are from the same playbook. Meaning, they are not isolated agendas. The COVID narrative was the test run for what we can expect to see roll out in the very near future with regard to the climate swindle.

For example, the plandemic lockdowns, which were so instrumental in destroying the global economy while simultaneously enriching the billionaire class, are once again being gradually unleashed on an unsuspecting public, but this time in the form of “climate lockdowns.”  

Here’s one illustration of what I mean. The unelected officials at the UN and WEF are introducing the concept of the “15-minute city” as a way to “save the planet” from global warming.

Under this new control grid scheme, cities will be divided into 15-minute districts. Residents will be confined to their respective district to conduct daily business through a series of electronic gates located at key roads leading in and out of the city. After a resident registers his motor vehicle details, every movement his vehicle makes will be tracked and traced via smart cameras. The totalitarians will grant passes to people who need—or how about simply want­—to travel to adjacent zones. If, however, a driver exceeds his maximum allotment of crosses between zones, he will be fined.

Already, on November 29, 2022, the UK’s Oxfordshire County approved plans to lock residents into one of six zones—and that’s only the beginning. Similar plans are being drawn up for the cities of Paris, Brisbane, Melbourne, Portland, Barcelona, and Buenos Aires.

It’s also worth emphasizing that all of the measures implemented by the ruling oligarchy in both chapters of the playbook have absolutely nothing to do with the stated intent of either ensuring public safety or saving the planet from harm.

Not convinced? One need only look at the Finance for climate action: Scaling up investment for climate and development document released at the COP27 summit to see what is really at play. The document is filled with the usual globalist predatory institutions—Global Public-Private Partnerships (G3P) working in tandem with central banks and international asset management corporations. 

On page 44, for instance, we find the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), launched at COP26 in 2021. GFANZ, along with its slew of over 550 major financial institutions, including HSBC, BlackRock, State Street, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank, to name but a few, is apparently leading the charge to facilitate “the decarbonization of the economy.” But, as Whitney Webb explains in her detailed article, GFANZ’s “plans ultimately amount to a corporate-led coup that will make the global financial system even more corrupt and predatory and further reduce the sovereignty of national governments in the developing world.”

And on page 9 of the document, there’s even the clause about “expanding the use debt/climate/nature swaps”—a euphemism used by the predator class to conceal the theft of a nation’s land and natural resources.  

Slogans such as “sustainable agriculture” or “global net zero greenhouse gas emissions” (read: the de-industrialisation of the developing world) used in the document are still more thinly veiled attempts to obfuscate their true agenda.

In conclusion: The climate change “threat” has no more to do with saving the environment than the propaganda about the scamdemic has to do with keeping people “safe and healthy.” Instead, the real scheme behind the man-made climate change/saving Mother Earth narrative is simply a debt-based scam to monopolize the world’s resources for the benefit of the ruling oligarchy, while simultaneously expanding the framework that will, if allowed to come to fruition, manipulate, regulate, and control every single aspect of our lives.

Is that really the kind of world we want to live in?  

It’s time to lift the veil and expose the lie behind the UN’s catastrophic climate change narrative.

*

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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.

He is the author of a recently published e-book, “Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified,” and a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Venue of COP27 in Sharm El Sheikh. (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)


Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified. Are We Witnessing Humanity’s March Toward Extinction? Viruses Are Our Friends, Not Our Foes

Author: David Skripac

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First published on November 1, 2022

***

It began with Pong, an early home video game involving two pixelated paddles and a ball that introduced millions to the thrill of gaming. What started as an arcade game in 1972 entered homes during the 1975 Christmas season. Since then, electronic video gaming has blossomed into a graphically stimulating multibillion-dollar-a-year industry, entertaining more than 3 billion gamers globally.

But with explosive popularity has come problems. Like other electronics, gaming consoles are linked to a range of environmental threats, from the metals and plastics required to manufacture them, to the fossil fuel-derived electricity that powers them, to the challenges of recycling the devices after the rapidly deployed next generation displaces them.

Although these problems aren’t unique to consoles, the meteoric growth and sheer scale of the industry make it an obvious target for environmentally conscious improvements. With its engaged and discerning consumer base, the gaming industry could be primed for an eco-revolution.

Gaming consoles sourced in mining and drilling

Like other consumer electronics, game console components are sourced via complex global supply chains that rely upon the mining of critical elements (including metals and rare-earth elements) and the production of new plastics, with parts assembled via highly specialized manufacturing processes — linking the gaming industry to oversized carbon emissions and the devastating environmental and socioeconomic impacts of mining and petroleum extraction.

A new console’s ingredient list is stunningly long. It includes gold, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, lithium, cobalt and cadmium — the mining and purification of which are associated with huge energy and water usage, as well as environmental harm. Extracting and processing ores often releases large quantities of hazardous chemicals, such as arsenic or mercury, into surrounding communities and ecosystems. Also, much mining is done in tropical developing nations, where poorly regulated extraction and processing cause deforestation and pollution.

Mining in Borneo.

Mining in Borneo, Indonesia. A new gaming console’s ingredient list includes gold, copper, lead, nickel, zinc, lithium, cobalt and cadmium — the mining and purification of which are associated with huge energy and water usage, as well as environmental harm. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.

But it’s not all bad news: “I think that there’s a lot of environmental awareness about the need to replace those materials,” said researcher Claire Barlow at the University of Cambridge’s Department of Engineering. Although progress in that direction is being made, both in terms of engineering and environmental policy, “the downside [is] that the replacements tend not to be so efficient.”

Some raw materials, such as tungsten and gold, are predominantly mined in regions convulsed by civil unrest and inequality, and have been linked to human rights abuses. These so-called conflict minerals have attracted international attention, and the largest console manufacturers have taken steps to track, report and reduce the inclusion of conflict-linked metals in their electronics.

However, other elements such as cobalt are not classified as conflict minerals, so are subject to less stringent monitoring and reporting standards, yet are also commonly mined in dangerous and toxic environments, sometimes by children.

Once extracted, many raw materials go through lengthy, complex refining and manufacturing processes, finally culminating in the production of microchips in highly specialized ultra-clean rooms — all requiring massive amounts of energy.

“Whenever you’re talking about CPUs and GPUs, you’re talking about nanometer-scale engineering and that’s always going to be incredibly [energy] intense,” explained Ben Abraham, founder and CEO of Sydney-based AfterClimate Solutions, a games sustainability consultancy.

In 2019, Barlow and colleague John Durrell took apart a Sony PlayStation 4 to perform a life-cycle assessment of its components. They estimated that the production and distribution of a single console emitted 89 kilograms (196 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. “The main weight of it is the electronics and the control units and that’s the major part of the carbon footprint as well,” Barlow said.

Sony PlayStation 4 components.

A life-cycle assessment of the Sony PlayStation 4 found that production and distribution of a single console emitted 89 kilograms (196 pounds) of carbon dioxide equivalent into the atmosphere. Image courtesy of iFixit PlayStation 4 teardown.

In 2019, Microsoft, in an effort to address consumer concern over the carbon footprint of console manufacture, announced the production of 825,000 carbon-neutral Xbox consoles. The company achieved this by making the consoles using renewable electricity and offsetting the remaining carbon emissions through the Sichuan China Biodigesters project, which distributes small-scale biogas plants to low-income rural households in China. “It’s doing something for [reducing] carbon footprints. It’s very worthy, but it’s absolutely nothing to do with [ending other environmental harm due to] the way they’re making these,” said Barlow. It’s also not clear how profitable, or scalable, this approach is.

There’s another major ingredient that goes into consoles: plastics. The plastic shells that encase gaming electronics are sourced from the world’s oil and natural gas frackwells, with virgin synthetic long chain polymers made in highly polluting petrochemical factories. In the U.S., these are disproportionally located encircling low-income ethnic communities — places like Port Arthur, Texas, and along a sweeping crescent of industrialized Gulf Coast known as “Cancer Alley.” But console manufacturers are taking initial steps to reduce the use of virgin plastics in their products. For example, since late 2021, post-consumer recycled plastics make up at least 28% of new Xbox Series S consoles.

Game consoles: Energy-hungry machines

By the time a new console reaches someone’s home, its production has already generated roughly half of the carbon emissions associated with its entire lifespan. Most of the rest goes into producing the electricity to power this energy-hungry machine.

The latest generation of consoles are capable of impressive performance: highly realistic 4K graphics, vast computer-generated imaginary worlds, immersive multisensory feedback. And to power all this, they use around 200 watts of electricity, placing them at the upper end of household appliances. Multiply that by 3 billion gamers globally.

The Green Gaming Project estimated that 5% of residential electricity use in California is consumed by gaming, including play on consoles, desktop computers and mobile phones. Of those three, “gaming consoles were the largest energy users,” said Norman Bourassa, principal scientific engineering associate at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, where the project was conducted.

“That’s an alarming number,” he said, because it puts game consoles “in the realm of the highest energy users, like refrigerators.”

Green Gaming Project experiments.

The Green Gaming Project conducted extensive energy usage tests on 10 different gaming consoles available between 2000 and 2016. They found that many consoles used more than 100 watts to play a game. Image courtesy of the Green Gaming Project.

The project calculated that U.S. gamers spend $5 billion annually on energy to power consoles and PCs. While these costs might not yet be putting too much strain on individual gamers’ wallets, “the hidden cost is all the CO2 that we’ve emitted,” Abraham noted. U.S. consoles churn through roughly 34 terawatt-hours of electricity per year, associated with an estimated 24 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

Energy efficiency has long been a priority for console manufacturers, and the latest generation is far more energy efficient than its predecessors. However, “we’ve used the [energy] efficiency gains to support more powerful consoles rather than reducing the impact of producing them or producing them less often,” said Mike Hazas, professor of information technology at Uppsala University in Sweden.

As a result, “When there’s a generation change there is an energy consumption jump, but there’s also more fidelity, more features,” said Bourassa. As each new chassis is released, manufacturers do tend to make improvements that can save electricity. For example, “in the PS4 [console] full life cycle they managed to reduce the power consumption and maintain the actual fidelity output of the devices. I recall they did a 40% or more improvement in efficiency.”

Console energy consumption graph.

While each new generation of consoles sees energy efficiency improvements, simultaneous feature enhancements result in a jump in energy consumption. Each new generation also creates a waste problem through designed obsolescence. Image courtesy of Mills et al. (2018).

Energy savings efforts often don’t save much energy

Some efficiency gains are being driven by national and international policy. In the EU, for example, game consoles and other electronic devices are now required to switch to a low-power standby mode limited to 0.5 watts when not in use. Similar legislation, first adopted in California and since implemented in five other U.S. states, requires standby mode to be initiated within 30 minutes of inactivity and limits maximum power usage.

To meet these requirements, the latest generation of consoles was designed to be extremely efficient when in standby mode. But there’s a problem: Many gamers either don’t know about, or don’t use this feature. “The game design, the gamer’s use of the device, and the energy saving settings in the device are not very well coordinated,” explained Bourassa.

For example, the Xbox Series S’s energy-efficient standby mode uses less than 1 watt, but in many regions the device ships with a less efficient but faster-loading setting called “Instant On,” selected by default. With this setting enabled, the console reboots five to 10 seconds faster, but in standby it uses 10 times more electricity.

“Just think how much money that company spent to design that feature,” mused Bourassa. “They did a lot of research to design it, but I personally think they were probably off the mark in terms of improved energy efficiency settings” that aren’t being used by gamers.

A 2021 analysis by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) estimated that Xbox Series S and Series X consoles in the U.S. will have wasted 4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity by 2025, simply because the energy-efficient standby mode isn’t being used. The report encouraged Xbox to ship consoles with energy saving as the default option globally, not just in regions where regulations require it.

A couple gaming.

To meet the requirements of national and international enery-saving policies, the latest generation of gaming consoles was designed to be extremely efficient when in standby mode. But the problem is that many gamers either don’t know about, or don’t use this feature. Image by ELLA DON via Pexels (Public domain).

Another mismatch exists within the architecture of the games themselves. “There are some structural reasons in the way the consoles and games are designed that encourage users to just leave them powered on,” Bourassa said. An example: many games have strategically placed checkpoints where users can save their progress. But when between those milestones, users have found a creative way to take a break without losing their work: They open the options menu.

But what many gamers probably don’t realize is that “when those menus are loaded that console is consuming its max power,” Bourassa explained. Console manufacturers and game designers need to “better address gamer behavior, because right now saving their progress in-game is actually serving to bloat the energy consumption from these devices.”

A related issue: game consoles are often used for more than just playing games. Many consoles support video streaming apps such as Netflix and Hulu, but perhaps unsurprisingly, they’re not very efficient at performing these off-spec tasks. A 2013 report by the NRDC found that streaming a movie on a PS3 or an Xbox 360 used 25 times more energy than watching the same movie on a laptop computer. “It’s horrible,” said Bourassa, “A basic computer was able to stream video at a very efficient rate, the consoles were not.” Consumer education could help ease these energy waste issues.

Maximizing the fun per watt

Not all consoles are created energy-equal. For example, when contrasted to the more energy-intensive machines from Microsoft and Sony, Nintendo’s consoles use a fraction of the energy. The hand-held Nintendo Switch, for example, uses just 35 watts to deliver 1080p-quality (high-definition) video games. The console “uses basically as much power as a phone, because it’s got a battery in it so they [need to] prioritize that super-efficient design,” explained Abraham.

The Nintendo Switch “shows what you can do with a lightweight platform,” agreed Hazas, although he acknowledges that the product only “caters to a specific market.” Sony and Xbox users, on the other hand, have come to expect the highest possible performance and top-end graphics technology as standard. Perhaps if users were informed of a product’s energy consumption profile by manufacturers, then gamers might make that a consideration in their purchases.

A Nintendo Switch.

The Nintendo Switch is a lightweight platform that uses less energy. But it only caters to a specific market. Image by Alvaro Reyes via Unsplash (Public domain).

A major question for the next generation of consoles is whether manufacturers continue down the path of ever-increasing graphics quality. “Companies have this perception that consumers want 4K video, they want [wide] color gamut, they want very intensive color rendering … and all this comes at an energy cost,” Bourassa explained.

But with many current consoles already offering 4k (ultra HD) graphics, manufacturers are pushing up against the limits of human perception. Although the human eye close up can perceive further graphics improvements, for those sitting more than a few feet from the screen, the improvement is imperceptible — which could bring the energy-gobbling high-resolution race to an end.

“What percentage of the gamers out there actually need that high fidelity, and is it really justified for them to continue on chasing that?” questioned Bourassa.

Abraham agreed: 4K appears “to my eyes like looking out a window. If you can’t see [any improvement beyond that], what’s the point” of higher resolution?

Virtual reality (VR) headsets are disrupting this trend by bringing high-resolution graphics to within inches of the user’s face. These peripheral devices are growing in popularity, with around a third of U.S. gamers saying they owned a VR system in 2020. According to Bourassa’s research, VR headsets use between 15% less and 38% more energy, compared to playing on a conventional screen. Those energy savings were achieved by rendering the maximum image resolution only in the center of the user’s field of vision, a technique known as foveated rendering. Advances in eye-tracking technology could enable continued improvements in VR user experience without increasing energy usage.

Two people gaming.

With many current consoles already offering 4k (ultra HD) graphics, manufacturers are pushing up against the limits of human perception. Image by Alena Darmel via Pexels (Public domain).

Game distribution conundrum: Disc, download or cloud?

A console’s energy use is only part of its environmental story. Users also need to access games, and there are three ways to do that. Traditionally, games were burned onto an optical disc, consuming more virgin plastic and emitting carbon dioxide during distribution. “Making anything physically always has quite a lot of emissions attached to it, it’s always harder than moving around electrons,” said Abraham.

But over the past decade, digital game downloads have risen in popularity. For most games, digital downloads use less energy, but for the largest games, energy use by the internet data centers providing the download can rival the energy needed to produce and transport physical discs. However, with the increasing availability of renewable energy, “there’s a clear pathway … to digital being net-zero,” Abraham said.

The third, and most recent, option for obtaining new games is cloud gaming, which essentially turns a console into a streaming service. “If you play a video game conventionally, all the graphics and everything else [is] rendered locally,” explained Hazas. “Cloud-gaming moves that rendering to a data center and then the data center would stream that video to you.” While this strategy comes with some computational efficiency gains, it also vastly increases the amount of data traffic being sent through the network, which uses large amounts of electricity.

The surprising finding of Hazas’s research is that digital game downloads and updates “can rival the network traffic generated by a cloud-gaming platform,” but it all depends on the size of the game and streaming resolution. He explained that “the network traffic for a 4K game — if you stream it — is much worse,” compared to downloading the game and rendering it on your own console.

Data center in Google center in Georgia.

Data centers, like this Google center in Georgia, use huge amounts of energy and require regular hardware updates. Although their operations and energy consumption are largely opaque to the public, estimates suggest that cloud streaming and digital game downloads can rival the energy used to physically distribute game discs. Image courtesy of Google.

“The good news is that the big companies … have been really pushing to use more renewables” to power new data centers, Hazas said.

If companies and governments are “committed to provisioning new renewables, to help phase out fossil fuel generation, [then] potentially the sky’s the limit” for energy use, he said. But Hazas warned that it won’t be easy to provide enough renewable energy to meet surging demand in all geographical locations.

Energy use statistics for big Internet data centers often aren’t publicly available, for security and propriety reasons. So it’s difficult to accurately calculate their present energy consumption. “It’s hard to … get a handle on that,” said Hazas, so “one area for improvement overall, both in terms of energy [use], carbon emissions and hardware refreshes, is more industry transparency.”

The greatest energy overuse risk, Hazas suggests, will arise if console makers continue supporting both local gaming and cloud gaming. “You’re potentially heading to a worst of both worlds” situation, with consoles designed to run high-end games often being used to stream video. “By trying to support all styles and all modes of delivery, we end up raising overall [carbon] emissions,” he said.

Coal mining for energy. Experts say the best case scenario would be if gaming companies and governments committed to provisioning new renewables to help phase out fossil fuel generation. But it’s not easy to provide enough renewable energy to meet surging demand in all geographical locations. Image via RawPixel (Public domain).

Planned obsolescence adds to e-waste

New console generations are released every five to 10 years, on average, and planned obsolescence adds to the global e-waste problem, with 50 million metric tons generated annually. “It’s the ethos that there’s going to be a new one [so] they don’t make them to last, and that is just so immoral,” said Barlow.

As with many electronic devices, game consoles are “intrinsically difficult to recycle,” she added, because sealed unit composite construction makes it extremely hard to extract and purify the component metals and minerals. However, e-waste is “a big potential source of [reclaimed] materials and we do need to be looking at this more profoundly,” she said.

Currently, much e-waste ends up in landfills, threatening future ecological and health impacts. Abraham analyzed the chemical composition of the PS4 processing unit and found it contained 54 different elements, including toxic heavy metals such as chromium and lead. Although the analysis didn’t reveal the element quantities in the device, it was “quite shocking to me that they were present,” he said. If these toxic elements find their way out of landfills, leaching into groundwater, for example, they could pose a risk to humans and wildlife.

E-waste in Rwanda.

Fifty million metric tons of e-waste are generated each year. Planned obsolescence in the game console market, where a new generation of consoles is released every five to 10 years, is adding to gaming’s environmental problems. Image by Rwanda Green Fund via Flickr (CC BY-ND 2.0).

The path to environmentally neutral gaming

Awareness of the oversized environmental impact of home electronics has grown rapidly over the past decade among business leaders and consumers. Microsoft has pledged to make its business carbon-negative by 2030, while Sony aims to be carbon-neutral throughout its supply chain by 2040. Both companies, along with Nintendo, say they’re working to improve environmental sustainability and social responsibility at either end of the supply chain. Among these efforts are a phaseout of hazardous chemicals, avoidance of conflict minerals, and use of recycled plastics in production, while developing recycling plans for outdated devices.

International campaigns are having an effect too. The U.N. Environment Programme’s Playing for the Planet, a voluntary alliance of more than 40 console manufacturers and game developers, aims to reduce CO2 emissions from gaming by 30 million metric tons by 2030.

Still, a carbon-neutral future for console gaming “hangs on factors disappointingly outside the game industry’s control,” Abraham said. “A big part of it comes down to the larger shift to renewables, and the decarbonization of energy systems.” Environmental neutrality would necessitate major changes in the materials and manufacturing methods used to produce consumer electronics — a prospect presently out of reach.

Nevertheless, the trajectory that console manufacturers choose could be heavily influenced by gamers themselves. “If it became the norm that you didn’t buy a new one, but you just replaced some components to upgrade, that would really be transformational,” said Barlow. But, making consoles more repairable and upgradable “takes a real shift in paradigms of customer expectations,” she said.

“We do need a strong consumer voice saying, ‘we don’t need 8K screens’ or ‘I’m OK with the console that I have,’” said Abraham, but this public awareness and pressure will only be effective if it occurs on a large scale. “One person changing  behavior is like a drop in the ocean, so how do we enable those kinds of choices to be easier or better?”

Nintendo and Sony did not respond to Mongabay’s interview request; Microsoft declined to comment beyond their public sustainability reporting and environmental pledges.

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Sources

Aslan, J. (2020). Climate change implications of gaming products and services. (Doctoral dissertation). doi:10.15126/THESIS.00853729

Mills, E., Bourassa, N., Rainer, L.  Mai, J., Shehabi, A., & Mills, N. (2019). Toward greener gaming: Estimating national energy use and energy efficiency potential. The Computer Games Journal, 8(3), 157-178.  doi:10.1007/s40869-019-00084-2

Mills, E., Bourassa, N., Rainer, L., Mai, J., Shehabi, A., & Mills, N. (2018). Green gaming: Energy efficiency without performance compromise. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Retrieved from: https://www.efficientgaming.info/fileadmin/user_upload/2018_Documents/EPC-15-023-Task-7-Report.pdf

Horowitz, N. (2021). Latest game consoles: Environmental winners or losers? Retrieved from Natural Resources Defense Council site: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/noah-horowitz/latest-game-consoles-environmental-winners-or-losers

Marsden, M., Hazas, M., & Broadbent, M. (2020). From one edge to the other: Exploring gaming’s rising presence on the network. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on ICT for Sustainability, 247-254. doi:10.1145/3401335.3401366

Featured image: In 2019, Microsoft, in an effort to address consumer concern over the carbon footprint of console manufacture, announced the production of 825,000 carbon-neutral Xbox consoles. Image by Sam Pak via Unsplash (Public domain).

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This Holiday Season, Save Lives, Spread the Word on the Corona Crisis!

December 25th, 2022 by The Global Research Team

“You see George, you really had a wonderful life. Don’t you see what a mistake it would be to throw it away?” Clarence, from Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life

***

This Christmas, we send to you, our dear readers and authors, some love and light as we extend the free distribution of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s PDF book, The Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity.

“The evidence amply documented is that the mRNA vaccine has resulted in an upward worldwide tide in mortality and morbidity.

Reports confirm that the COVID-19 vaccines are killing our children. In the UK, “the worst figures in terms of all-cause deaths are among double-vaccinated teenagers.”

According to Edward Curtin, CRG Research Associate,

“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.”

Get your copy for FREE! Click here to download.

Share this gift to your family and friends.

Forward the above link to the download in your email lists. You can also forward the saved pdf file.

Global Research wishes everyone a joyful Christmas!

It’s a wonderful life… live!

With you in truth, peace and solidarity,

The Global Research Team

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Christmas Visions: Children and the Importance of Redemption

December 25th, 2022 by Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin

First published on December 26, 2020

The Factory

“And such should childhood ever be,
The fairy well; to bring
To life’s worn, weary memory
The freshness of its spring.

But here the order is reversed,
And infancy, like age,
Knows of existence but its worst,
One dull and darkened page;—”

by Letitia Elizabeth Landon – The Vow of the Peacock and Other Poems  (1835)  

Introduction

The idea of a child-centred Christmas is taken for granted now but in Dickens’ time it was not so assured. A high child mortality rate, child labour, poverty and, a colder, more utilitarian attitude towards children prevailed.  Dickens’ own childhood experiences were bad as he was set to work long hours in  Warren’s Blacking Factory while his father and family languished in a debtors prison. Dickens wanted to write a pamphlet about children but decided a dramatic story would be more effective. His book, A Christmas Carol, while sales were slow initially, went on to become hugely successful and influential, and has never been out of print since.

Dickens at the blacking warehouse, as envisioned by Fred Barnard

In the 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life (directed by Frank Capra), children are associated with family scenes around the hearth but are shielded from potential financial disaster. It’s a Wonderful Life also performed poorly at first, yet has also become a Christmas staple.

The theme of redemption is important to both narratives and both stories turn on the idea of a change of heart for the better by the adults. This change affected the lives of the children in each story yet the children were not aware of the dangers they were in. Thus the concept of childhood as ‘the fairy well’ was well developed, and the ‘freshness of its spring’ being considered a jewel that only grows more beautiful with age.

In this essay I will look at some similarities between the two stories and at what has made for their enduring appeal.

A Christmas Carol

While many differing ideas seem have fortuitously come together for Dickens during the writing of A Christmas Carol the focus on children seems to have been the  most important. Literary influences are given as The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon by Washington Irving and a Douglas Jerrold essay from an 1841 issue of Punch, ‘How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas’.

In The Sketch-Book of Geoffrey Crayon Irving writes:

“It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent could bestow.”

Child labourers, Macon, Georgia, 1909

Dickens was very aware of the tragedy of child workers and legislation being introduce to improve their conditions at the time. The idea of social unity that Dickens utilises at the end of A Christmas Carol is expressed in another passage by Irving in The Sketch-Book, as we hear echoes of the medieval hall resounding to the sounds of the fun organised in the ancient midwinter tradition of the Lord of Misrule, with children once again to the fore:

“After the dinner-table was removed the hall was given up to the younger members of the family, who, prompted to all kind of noisy mirth by the Oxonian and Master Simon, made its old walls ring with their merriment as they played at romping games. I delight in witnessing the gambols of children, and particularly at this happy holiday season, and could not help stealing out of the drawing-room on hearing one of their peals of laughter. I found them at the game of blindman’s-buff. Master Simon, who was the leader of their revels, and seemed on all occasions to fulfill the office of that ancient potentate, the Lord of Misrule, was blinded in the midst of the hall. The little beings were as busy about him as the mock fairies about Falstaff, pinching him, plucking at the skirts of his coat, and tickling him with straws.”

Once again the innocent fun of the children is emphasised.  However, in Jerrold’s essay ‘How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas’, a different kind of father is described, one for whom image is more important than feeling. Mr Chokepear is described as “he himself declares, he is ‘the best of fathers’ — the most indulgent of men”, yet he receives the wishes of a happy Christmas “from lips of ice.” He is the best citizen and best Christian but for one thing:

“We have said all CHOKEPEAR’S daughters dined with him. We forgot: one was absent. Some seven years ago she married a poorer husband, and poverty was his only, but certainly his sufficient fault; and her father vowed that she should never again cross his threshold. The Christian keeps his word. He has been to church to celebrate the event which preached to all men mutual love and mutual forgiveness, and he comes home, and with rancour in his heart—keeps a merry Christmas! […] Gentle reader, we wish you a merry Christmas; but to be truly, wisely merry, it must not be the Christmas of the CHOKEPEARS. That is the Christmas of the belly: keep you the Christmas of the heart. Give—give.”

Dickens is concerned with genuine Christian ideas of Christmas in A Christmas Carol and not hypocritical ones for show only. Therefore, Scrooge is given the opportunity to redeem himself in a genuine way and this genuine transformation means he will be welcomed into the Cratchit’s house and the house of of his nephew for Christmas celebrations.

Thus Dickens was interested in the idea that the bosses should have a genuine change of heart and not a false annual display of good cheer for their friends. Dickens himself was interested in giving practical help to poor children as well.

Coal tub – “A succession of laws on child labour, the so-called Factory Acts, were passed in the UK in the 19th century. Children younger than nine were not allowed to work, those aged 9–16 could work 16 hours per day per the Cotton Mills Act. In 1856, the law permitted child labour past age 9, for 60 hours per week, night or day. In 1901, the permissible child labour age was raised to 12.”

In 1843 Charles Dickens became involved with  with the London Ragged Schools Union and donated funds for their upkeep. They were established to provide free education, food, clothing, lodging and other home missionary services for poor children.

As Claire Tomalin writes:

“From his own deep self he drew the understanding that a grown man may pity the child he had been, and learn from that pity, as Scrooge does. It was also his response to the Ragged School he had visited, and the Report of the Children’s Employment Commission he had read a little earlier, which showed that children under seven were put to work, unprotected by any legal constraints, sometimes for ten to twelve hours a day, inspiring the scene in which the Spirit of Christmas Present shows Scrooge two stunted and wolfish children, calling them Ignorance and Want.” [1]

Of course, while the children may be the focus of Dickens’ Christmas main story, they must not be aware that they are, thus retaining the sacred concept of childhood. Therefore in the narrative the children are affected only indirectly through the changed habits of the adults. This was Dickens’ strategy – to show that the cruelty of the world and the preciousness of childhood could exist side by side. Thus the adults could change their realm, positively affecting the children’s realm, without the two realms interacting with each other, as happened in Dickens’ own childhood. Dickens’ story also added to the growing belief in the importance of childhood not only for children but also for stable adults as Scrooge was shown to have had a lonely childhood himself.

Ignorance and Want from the original edition of A Christmas Carol, 1843

Many film versions have been made of A Christmas Carol from Scrooge, or, Marley’s Ghost (1901) to A Christmas Carol (2018), a contemporary retelling of the story set in Scotland.

It’s a Wonderful Life

Another popular film with Christmas visions is Frank Capra’s 1946 film, It’s a Wonderful Life. Almost one hundred years after Dickens’ novel was published, Capra’s film shows a very different kind of vision of society. Rather than the atomised society of the poor in Dickens’ London, Capra shows a community being pulled and pushed in different directions by individuals with very different objectives. George Bailey faces off Henry F. Potter who is trying to take over the town with cheap, exploitative housing schemes and by buying up everything of value in the town.

As Bailey faces bankruptcy of the Bailey Brothers’ Building and Loan through the forgetfulness of his uncle (mislaying a lot of money), Potter seizes the opportunity to destroy Bailey’s bank and take over the town completely. When Bailey arrives home distraught he has angry words with all of his children. They become very upset and burst into tears as they have no idea what has come over their normally loving father.

As a result of this disaster, Bailey wishes he had never been born and is shown a vision of what the town would have become had Bailey’s community spirit and camaraderie with his clients not existed: a mean place, decadent and aggressive with no community feeling or community spirit (like Scrooge, mean, aggressive with no community feeling or community spirit). After the negative scenario he experiences, Bailey rushes home to his wife and apologises to each of his children in turn for his earlier outburst thus keeping the adult and child domains separated, while the adults sort out adult problems.

Unlike Scrooge, in It’s a Wonderful Life the individualist money-pincher Potter is not considered important enough to go through the process of redemption (while he is portrayed as a Scrooge type figure), because  the poor are now portrayed as existing in a community which can ultimately defend itself from Potter’s attacks: by coming together and using collective action to help Bailey. They look to each other for help and not to the rich bankers.

Although both Scrooge and Bailey lend money, Scrooge gives out money to benefit himself while Bailey gives out money to benefit the community. In the earlier ideology of A Christmas Carol, the wealthy must look after or take pity on the helpless poor. However, while Scrooge must save himself, the community saves Bailey.

George Bailey (James Stewart), Mary Bailey (Donna Reed), and their youngest daughter Zuzu (Karolyn Grimes) in It’s a Wonderful Life.

In A Christmas Carol the poor are everywhere but have no real consciousness of their poverty and struggle against poverty despite the odds. In It’s a Wonderful Life the poor are depicted as belonging to a community but gradually grow more conscious of their weak position and unite to defend themselves.

They develop a growing consciousness of the power of the community to use collective action to fight back against those who would keep them poor. As a result, rather than being solely concerned with their own money and future as was shown earlier in the film, they see the importance of community for their own self-protection just in time, and turn up at Bailey’s house to lend, give, donate any money they have to save the bank and their own future. Thus in It’s a Wonderful Life, its the community that redeems itself.

Both Dickens’ book and Capra’s film carried radical messages for their time. Only two years after A Christmas Carol, German philosopher Friedrich Engels published The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1845, a book written during Engels’ 1842–44 stay in Manchester, important as the city at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Engels believed that Carlyle was the only British writer who had taken account of the poor and so was not yet familiar with A Christmas Carol. Meanwhile Marx saw Dickens as one of a few ‘splendid’ fiction writers in England, “whose graphic and eloquent pages have issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together.”

While It’s a Wonderful Life depicts the benefits of a community uniting, it was declared suspect by an unnamed FBI agent who watched the film as part of a larger FBI program aimed at detecting and neutralizing Communist influences in Hollywood. The agent believed that ‘communists’ used two common tricks to ‘inject propaganda into the film’, as Kat Eschner writes:

“These two common “devices” or tricks, as applied by the Los Angeles branch of the Bureau, were smearing ‘values or institutions judged to be particularly American’ – in this case, the capitalist banker, Mr. Potter, is portrayed as a Scroogey misanthrope – and glorifying ‘values or institutions judged to be particularly anti-American or pro-Communist’ – in this case, depression and existential crisis, an issue that the FBI report characterized as a ‘subtle attempt to magnify the problems of the so-called ‘common man’ in society.'”

The organization handed over these incredibly vague results of its investigation to HUAC (House of UnAmerican Activities) which could have led to McCarthyist Hollywood witch hunts. However, the HUAC decided not to follow up on the smears.

Conclusion

In both A Christmas Carol and It’s a Wonderful life, a common theme is the idea that people can change for the better and have a happier life by questioning their own selfish values and motives and by realising that there are greater forces at work which must be reckoned with for survival. Scrooge’s isolation from friends, family and employees led him to fear a lonely death and Marley’s fate. Bailey’s customers also realise that looking after number one might allow them to get by on the level of their own petty concerns, but when something seriously threatening to their homes and families appears on the horizon they are able to club together to prevent the worst. Ultimately it is the children who benefit as the adults unite and solve problems rather than sharing the burden with their children, and in the long term that also makes for a more stable community.

The idea of sheltering children from the cruel world, rather than throwing them head first into it, is still an important issue in the world’s poorest countries today where around one in four children are believed to be engaged in child labour.

On an individual level and on a community level these two stories have everlasting appeal because they are still relevant today. The continuing political, financial, and climate crises of the 21st century mean that the need for individual self-questioning and/or community action will never cease to be important, and maybe even be life-saving as the new century wears on.

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Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin is an Irish artist, lecturer and writer. His artwork consists of paintings based on contemporary geopolitical themes as well as Irish history and cityscapes of Dublin. His blog of critical writing based on cinema, art and politics along with research on a database of Realist and Social Realist art from around the world can be viewed country by country here. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. 

Note

[1] Claire Tomalin, Charles Dickens: A Life (Viking: London, 2011) p149

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What Is the Rules-Based Order?

December 23rd, 2022 by Kim Petersen

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***

In fits of, what might well be termed, masochism, some of us now-and-then tune in to the legacy media. When doing so, one is likely to hear western-aligned politicians rhetorize ad nauseam about the linguistically vogue rules-based order. Now and then, the word “international” is also inserted: the rules-based international order.

But what exactly is this rules-based order?

The way that the wording rules-based order is bandied about makes it sound like it has worldwide acceptance and that it has been around for a long time. Yet it comes across as a word-of-the-moment, both idealistic and disingenuous.

Didn’t people just use to say international law or refer to the International Court of Justice, Nuremberg Law, the UN Security Council, or the newer institution — the International Criminal Court? Moreover, the word rules is contentious.

Some will skirt the rules, perhaps chortling the aphorism that rules are meant to be broken. Rules can be unjust, and shouldn’t these unjust rules be broken, or better yet, disposed of? Wouldn’t a more preferable wording refer to justice? And yes, granted that justice can be upset by miscarriages. Or how about a morality-based order?

Nonetheless, it seems this wording of a rules-based order has jumped to the fore. And the word order makes it sound a lot like there is a ranking involved. Since China and Russia are advocating multipolarity, it has become clearer that the rules-based order, which is commonspeak among US and US-aligned politicians, is pointing at unipolarity, wherein the US rules a unipolar, US-dominated world.

An Australian thinktank, the Lowy Institute, has pointed to a need “to work towards a definition” for a rules-based order. It asks, “… what does America think the rules-based order is for?”

Among the reasons cited are

“… to entrench and even sanctify an American-led international system,” or “that the rules-based order is a fig leaf, a polite fiction that masks the harsh realities of power,” and that “… the rules-based order can protect US interests as its power wanes relative to China…”

China is aware of this, and this is expressed in the Asia Times headline: “US ‘rules-based order’ is a myth and China knows it.”

The Hill wrote, “The much-vaunted liberal international order – recently re-branded as the rules-based international order or RBIO – is disintegrating before our very eyes.”

As to what would replace the disintegrated order, The Hill posited, “The new order, reflecting a more multipolar and multicivilizational distribution of power, will not be built by Washington for Washington.”

The Asia Times acknowledged that it has been a “West-led rules-based order” and argued that a “collective change is needed to keep the peace.”

It is a given that the rules-based order is an American linguistic instrument designed to preserve it as a global hegemon.

To rule is America’s self-admitted intention.

It has variously declared itself to be the leader of the free world, the beacon on the hill, exceptional, the indispensable nation (in making this latter distinction, a logical corollary is drawn that there must be dispensable nations — or in the ineloquent parlance of former president Donald Trump: “shithole” nations).

Thus, the US has placed itself at the apex of the international order. It seeks ultimate control through full-spectrum dominance.

It situates its military throughout the world; it surrounds countries with bases and weapons that it is inimically disposed toward — for example, China and Russia.

It refuses to reject the first use of nuclear weapons.

It does not reject the use of landmines.

It still has a chemical-weapons inventory, and it allegedly carries out bioweapons research, as alluded to by Russia, which uncovered several clandestine biowarfare labs in Ukraine.

This news flummoxed Fox News’ Tucker Carlson. Dominance is not about following rules, it is about imposing rules. That is the nature of dominating. Ergo, the US rejects the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court and went so far as to sanction the ICC and declare ICC officials persona non grata when its interests were threatened.

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Having placed itself at the forefront, the US empire needs to keep its aligned nations in line.

Thus it was that Joe Biden, already back in 2016, was urging Canada’s prime minister Trudeau to be a leader for rules-based world order.

When Trudeau got together with his Spanish counterpart, Pedro Sánchez, they reaffirmed their defence of the rule-based international order.

It is a commonly heard truism that actions speak louder than words. But an examination of Trudeau’s words compared to his actions speaks to a contradiction when it comes to Canada and the rule of law.

So how does Trudeau apply rules based law? [1]

Clearly, in Canada it points to a set of laws having been written to coerce compliance. This is especially evident in the case of Indigenous people. [2]

It seems Canada is just a lackey for the leader of the so-called free world.

One of the freedoms the US abuses is the freedom not to sign or ratify treaties. Even the right-wing thinktank, the Council on Foreign Relations lamented, “In lists of state parties to globally significant treaties, the United States is often notably absent. Ratification hesitancy is a chronic impairment to international U.S. credibility and influence.”

The CFR added,

“In fact, the United States has one of the worst records of any country in ratifying human rights and environmental treaties.”

It is a matter of record that the US places itself above the law. As stated, the US does not recognize the ICC; as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, the US has serially abused its veto power to protect the racist, scofflaw nation of Israel; it ignored a World Court ruling that found the US guilty of de facto terrorism for mining the waters around Nicaragua.

The historical record reveals that the US, and its Anglo-European-Japanese-South Korean acolytes, are guilty of numerous violations of international law (i.e., the rules-based, international order).

When it comes to the US, the contraventions of the rules-based order are myriad. To mention a few:

  1. Currently, the US is occupying Syria and stealing the oil of the Syrian people;
  2. It attacked, occupied, and plundered Afghanistan;
  3. It has been carrying out an embargo, condemned by the international community, against Cuba and its people for six decades;
  4. The US has been in illegal occupation of Cuba’s Guantanamo Bay since 1903; even if deemed to be legal, it is clearly unethical;
  5. American empire has a history of blatant, wanton disregard for democracy and sovereignty;
  6. The US funded the Maidan coup that overthrew the elected president of Ukraine, leading to today’s special military operation devastating Ukraine, which continues to fight a US-NATO proxy war.
  7. Then, there is the undeniable fact that the US exists because of a genocide wreaked by its colonizers, which has been perpetuated ever since.
  8. Even the accommodations that the US imposed on the peoples it dispossessed are ignored, revealed by a slew of broken treaties. [3]

The history of US actions (as opposed to its words) and its complicit tributaries needs to be kept firmly in mind when the legacy media unquestioningly reports the pablum about adhering to a rules-based order.

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Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Notes

  1. See also Yves Engler, “Ten ways Liberals undermined international rules-based order,” rabble.ca, 17 September 2021.
  2. Read Bob Joseph, 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act: Helping Canadians Make Reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples a Reality, 2018.
  3. Vine Deloria, Jr., Behind the Trail of Broken Treaties: An Indian Declaration of Independence, 1985. This governmental infidelity to treaties is also true in the Canadian context.

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Latvia – Quo Vadis?

December 23rd, 2022 by Anton Klindzans

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The situation with human rights and the freedom of speech in the Baltic states worsens day by day. The persecution of the opposition began long before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, though. During the pandemic people had been arrested for “the distribution of gossip”. However, since the events of February 24 2022, the situation has worsened dramatically. In Latvia over 20 people have been arrested and over two hundred people have been fined and interrogated for expressing their views. The similar situation is noticeable in other Baltic States.

After more than 30 years of brainwashing by the ruling class it is clear now that the majority of the population, especially youth, is politically unmotivated. Around 15% of the population do not have the right to vote – they hold an “Alien Passport” because they do not have any ancestors that lived in Latvia before 1940. Media freedom is non-existent and government propaganda is everywhere. Therefore the result of the last election is again a victory of pro-US forces.

The attack on working class rights is still ongoing. Recently, the government has decreased the period and the amount of unemployment benefits. Trade unions are very weak to the extent of non-existent. Their leaders are making dirty deals with the government behind the backs of teachers, medical personnel, policemen, etc. The only real activities by trade unions are the distribution of travel and recreation vouchers and the organisation of festive events.

Failing to address social and economic problems of yet another capitalist crisis, the so-called leaders are proposing the only playing card – nationalism, which has led to extreme russophobia. Despite around 40% of the Russian-speaking population, after years of bans and restrictions in public use, there is now a plan to ban it from school programmes altogether.

The communist symbols are banned. There is a law “banning the glorification of communist past” and “denying the Soviet occupation”. Several people are being tried for this.

Latvia now spends more percentage of GDP to help the Ukrainian military than any other country in the world. At the same time, there is a deterioration of health and education systems. The ongoing privatisation and liberalisation lead to more payable services and rising prices for the basic needs. More and more people cannot afford different kinds of necessary medical treatment. Others have to wait for months or even years to be treated. The lack of medical staff, teachers, firemen, etc is becoming alarming. The population is experiencing deteriorating living conditions. The demographic situation is the worst in 100 years.

The Latvian government has started the massive demolition of monuments related to WW2. The biggest memorial to the fighters against nazism in the Baltic States was demolished, despite the fact that polls have shown a negative attitude towards the demolition. Furthermore, the monument was described by the national architect society as “of historical and cultural importance”. Some of the demolished monuments were actually erected to the people killed by Nazis and to the local partisans. They have even demolished the cemetery of soldiers – just scraped by an excavator. The Day of Victory over Nazism is now officially a Commemoration to the victims of the Genocide against Ukranian people while the government officials commemorate the war victims at the memorial to Waffen SS legionnaires.

The corrupt government sells national sovereignty in order to serve foreign interests, forcing the country to join the conflicting imperialistic camp and making its own populations hostage to a potential military conflict. In order to protect this policy from protests of workers and the public in general, they enforce control mechanisms and restrictions of freedom of speech and expression without any hesitation.

The detainment of people without proper trial and medical help, and with no lawyer provided must be stopped immediately.

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Anton Klindzans is a Latvian blogger, former policy advisor for a left group in the European Parliament where he worked for 9 years. He publishes regularly on different platforms.

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Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME): On Far-Right Israel Government

December 23rd, 2022 by Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East

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With the announcement of the formation of Israel’s 37th government, Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East (CJPME) is calling on the Canadian government to expel the Israeli ambassador to demonstrate that it is distancing itself from Israel’s new far-right regime. CJPME notes that the coalition led by Prime Minister-elect Benjamin Netanyahu, who enshrined Israel’s deeply racist Nation-State Law and whose plans to annex significant portions of the occupied West Bank remain “on the table,” is propped up by even more extreme, far-right elements. The Religious Zionism party (including Jewish Power), whose leaders have promoted vigilante violence, racial segregation, the annexation of the West Bank and the deportation of “disloyal” Israelis and Palestinians alike, is the third largest party in the Knesset and a major coalition partner. Expelling the Israeli ambassador would send a clear and unambiguous signal that the new government’s stated intentions to violate human rights and international law are completely unacceptable.

“Israel’s new far-right government poses a real and immediate threat to the safety and security of Palestinians on both sides of the Green Line,” said Michael Bueckert, Vice President of CJPME. “Prime Minister Trudeau must expel Israel’s ambassador and prove that Canada doesn’t hold ‘shared values’ with apartheid and a regime of Jewish supremacy,” added Bueckert.

CJPME notes that Israel’s new government has put the lives of Palestinians into the hands of the most extreme far-right and racist figures in Israeli politics. As Israel’s new ‘National Security Minister,’ Jewish Power’s Itamar Ben Gvir will have control over policing agencies which operate in both Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories (OPT), as well as development in the Galilee and the Naqab/Negev where Israel has been seeking to diminish the presence of Palestinian Arab and Bedouin communities. Meanwhile, Religious Zionism’s Bezalel Smotrich has been given unprecedented control over the infrastructure of occupation, putting him in control of policy regarding both Israeli settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank. Israeli human rights groups Yesh Din, Breaking the Silence, the Association for Civil Rights in Israel (ACRI) and the Israeli Center for Public Affairs have warned that the signed coalition agreements between Likud and Religious Zionism involve measures that amount to “annexing the West Bank to Israel and strengthening the apartheid regime in the West Bank.”

“We must come to terms with the reality that this far-right government is fundamentally a continuation of Israel’s ongoing racist trajectory,” added Bueckert. CJPME notes that the former ‘change’ government led by Naftali Bennett and Yair Lapid oversaw the extrajudicial execution of Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, the persecution of leading Palestinian civil society organizations, an aggressive and lethal military offensive against Gaza, the rapid expansion of illegal settlements, and an escalation of violence making 2022 among the most deadly years for Palestinians in the West Bank. CJPME argues that any political opposition to the new government in power must also be extended to the underlying structures of domination and oppression which have violated the rights of Palestinians for many decades, which are increasingly understood as apartheid.

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A Grand Unified Theory of Corruption and Treachery

December 23rd, 2022 by Josh Mitteldorf

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***

 

 

 

 

 

How did our CIA become so immensely powerful and so immensely corrupt?

This book tells a story that feels essentially relevant to me. Nevertheless, it is a story that has not been incorporated into narratives of any of the skeptical and well-informed independent journalists whom I most respect. It is 20 years old now, and the book is as exceedingly readable as it is meticulously documented.

Through wars of conquest beginning in the 19th Century, Japan systematically looted staggering quantities of gold from China, Korea, and SE Asia.

Anticipating defeat in WWII, members of the Japanese imperial family sent the Emperor’s cousin, Prince Chichibu, to bury gold and jewels at dozens of remote sites on occupied Philippine islands. At the conclusion of the war, the driver of Chichibu’s jeep was captured and tortured to disclose the locations of some of the underground sites.

In the Seagraves’ account, the amount of gold is many hundreds of thousands of tons, equivalent in value to the GDP of the entire world today. A portion of this loot funded the Black Eagle Trust, a secret account used to create the CIA and support its clandestine operations, fomenting wars and overthrowing popular governments around the world on behalf of the world’s largest corporations. The M-Fund was used to kickstart “democracy” in Japan by supporting the election of war criminals and reliable anti-communists.

Another major share passed through the personal holdings of Ferdinand Marcos, an American-supported President and then dictator in the Philippines from 1965 – 1986. Other beneficiaries included evangelist Sun Myung Moon, VP Richard Nixon, mobster Meyer Lansky, and Pope Pius XII. In the Seagraves’ story, everyone who came in contact with this treasure was corrupted, participating in murder, treachery, and unspeakable cruelty.

My candidate for the greatest evil in the world today would be the CIA. Whether or not you agree, you have to admit it’s a mystery how this organization acquired so much power so fast. Formed in 1947 from the contained WWII spy operation called the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the CIA was already overthrowing foreign governments in 1953, 1954, and 1958, and the American government in 1963. It was the subject of warnings issued by President Truman and by President Eisenhower as he departed in 1961.

By the time President Kennedy left office, it was the CIA that escorted him out, and too abruptly for him to have a chance to warn us. He had exclaimed (after he had been deceived in the Bay of Pigs fiasco) he wanted to “splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them into the wind.” Who better to place in charge of the Warren Commission investigation into his murder than Allen Dulles — who had been CIA director until JFK fired him after the Bay of Pigs?

The book is meticulously referenced with two CDs full of original documents (no longer available on the Web, to the best of my knowledge). But even more convincing is the level of narrative detail that they offer, detail that may not be relevant to the larger historical perspective, but which makes the volume fun to read, as they validate the Seagraves’ sources.

Their two best sources are Ben Valmores and Robert Curtis, both of whom they interviewed extensively. Ben had been a Filipino boy when he was kidnapped by Japanese military officers and recruited to be valet and personal servant to Prince Takeda, cousin of the Emperor. Though he was kept against his will, he was treated well and eventually came to be trusted by the royal family. As the final surrender of Gen Yamashita was foreseen, Prince Takeda entrusted Ben with a trunk full of maps with coded instructions for locating all 175 treasure vaults. Ben faithfully buried the trunks as he had been instructed, and later resisted many attempts to obtain them by trickery until after Takeda’s death in 1992.

Curtis was an American mining engineer, hired by Marcos to track down and recover Yamashita’s gold, then re-smelt it into bars that could not be chemically distinguished from the product of Filipino gold mines. Marcos originally promised Curtis a share of the haul, but betrayed him once he had served his purpose.

Another source for the book was court records from the case of Roxas vs Marcos, Hawaii 1998. Rogelio Roxas was a private Filipino citizen and amateur treasure hunter. From the court findings:

In 1961, Roxas met a man named Fuchugami in Baguio City, who claimed that his father had been in the Japanese army and had drawn a map identifying the location of the legendary “Yamashita Treasure.” …Roxas organized a group of partners and laborers to search for the treasure and obtained a permit for the purpose from Judge Pio Marcos, a relative of Ferdinand. Judge Marcos informed Roxas that, in accordance with Philippine law, a thirty-percent share of any discovered treasure would have to be paid to the government.

…After approximately seven months of searching… the group broke into a system of underground tunnels…Roxas discovered a gold-colored buddha statue, which he estimated to be about three feet in height. The statue was extremely heavy; it required ten men to transport it to the surface using a chain block hoist, ropes, and rolling logs. Although he never weighed the statue, Roxas estimated its weight to be 1,000 kilograms, or one metric ton. Roxas directed his laborers to transport the statue to his home and place it in a closet.

For context, a ton of gold at today’s price is worth about $50 million, not counting the museum value of an ancient work of art. The court document goes on to relate that Roxas’s house was raided by government agents; Roxas himself was arrested and tortured; just at this time, Marcos declared martial law and installed himself as permanent head of the Philippine government after his elected term should have expired. The testimony of Robert Curtis is cited. Curtis had been hired by Marcos originally to process the gold and make it saleable without suspicion. In the end, Marcos didn’t treat Curtis much better than he treated Roxas, and that may have motivated him to testify for Roxas as plaintiff.

Five years after his death, the Hawaiian jury awarded $43 billion to the heirs of Rogelio Roxas, the largest award in the history of jurisprudence. As the Seagrave book went to press, they were still trying to collect it in 2003.

The man who tortured Price Takeda’s driver later became a kingpin for distribution of the gold. He was Severino Santa Romana, or “Santy”, but was known as Jose Antonio Diaz and a dozen other pseudonyms as he opened personal accounts in 42 countries around the world, with private understandings about who really had control of the gold. He was known as an agent of the American CIA, but the Seagraves make the case that he was a double agent whose first loyalty was to the Vatican.

The involvement of the Pope was discreet and indirect. The Vatican held deposits of Nazi gold, which were retained after the war, and received some of Santy’s accounts. After the War, the Italian electorate was leaning too close to socialism for the taste of our CIA, and Operation Gladio was organized to steer Italian politics in a more favorable direction, using bribes, assassinations, and psy-ops. Much of the fuel for this project was siphoned through the Vatican, which made common cause in part because religion is anathema in communist regimes, and in part for reasons of realpolitik.

Meyer Lansky profited through casinos he operated in the Bahamas, used to launder Nazi loot as well as Yamashita’s gold on behalf of the CIA. The connection was made by Paul Helliwell, who served as global banker for the OSS and later continued in that role for the CIA. Helliwell and Santy’s operation was code-named The Umbrella, with 176 bank accounts, all coded and accessed independently by secret agreements.

Through the 1950s, the M-Fund was administered by Americans and secretly deployed to support the right wing of Japanese politics as a bulwark against communism in Asia. Then Vice President Nixon turned the whole $23 billion over to the (temporarily) ruling Japanese politicians in exchange for a kickback to his own 1960 presidential campaign. Nixon didn’t succeed in 1960, but the 23 billion 1960 dollars has mushroomed in value, and the M-Fund continues to support corruption and distort democracy in Japan today.

And Sun Myung Moon? After Marcos was removed from power in 1986, some American entrepreneurs were emboldened to return to the Philippines for treasure-hunting activities. One group called Nippon Star was convened and equipped by right-wing groups in America, including the John Birch Society and Moon’s Unification Church. They recovered a gold-laden freighter that the Japanese Navy had deliberately sunk in Manila Harbor when it became clear that its cargo could not be delivered to Tokyo.

The Seagraves repeat stories of individuals who recovered billion-dollar shares of Yamashita’s gold and deposited it in vaults of the world’s largest and best known banks. One after another, they returned to reclaim their deposits, only to be told that their certificates were forgeries. The Seagraves conjecture that banks held onto the gold and that bank executives converted the loot to their own accounts.

There may be a 9/11 connection. E.P Heidner reports (not mentioned by the Seagraves) that the Black Eagle Trust held $240 billion in U.S. Treasury notes, purchased with Yamashita gold and redeemable on 12 September 2001. In the days following the WTC attacks, the standard procedures for recording bond transactions were suspended, and this wealth was delivered into private hands without a paper trail.

By the time Santy died in 1974, his liver and his sanity had been destroyed by alcohol. He had never lived lavishly, despite the vast wealth under his control. His many identities and reliably subservient behavior make me think of the CIA’s MKUltra program of mind control, a speculation that is my own and not mentioned in the Seagraves’ account.

In the Bretton Woods Agreement of 1944, why was the US able to set up a system of world trade based on a gold-backed dollar (at a fixed $35 per oz)?

Why was Japan absolved of making reparation payments to foreigners who were raped and tortured and enslaved during the War, while Germany, in much worse shape financially, was expected to pay reparations?

Why was the OSS — which had been created explicitly to provide intelligence for the Second World War — expanded and extravagantly funded after the war had ended? How did large banks come to wield corrupt and surreptitious power in world affairs? All these questions may have a single answer.

The most important story (as we’ve come to expect) is the one we know least about. Some ginormous, unimaginable quantity of gold was used to kickstart the CIA. Money for bribes and dirty tricks and “wet work” and the temptation of officials, domestic and foreign, who might otherwise be inclined toward honesty. Money to overthrow duly elected leaders and support ruthless dictators in lavish style. This year, the son of Ferdinand Marcos returned to power in the Philippines.

My suspicion is that the American Empire with its worldwide promotion of international business interests above all else is built on Yamashita’s gold.

We have grown up as a nation respected for our free institutions and our ability to maintain a free and open society…The last thing we needed was for the CIA to be seized upon as something akin to a subverting influence in the affairs of other people…It is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue.
Harry S Truman, in a Washington Post Editorial published 59 years ago today

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On December 8, The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington hosted a reception in honor of the 31st anniversary of their Armed Forces. Interestingly, the invitation itself displayed the logos of major military contractors Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and Pratt & Whitney as the event’s sponsors – right below the official Ukrainian emblems and the Ambassador’s name.

These are all American defense and arms corporations and some of the world’s largest weapons and aerospace manufacturers. Half of Lockheed Martin’s annual sales, for instance, are to the US Department of Defense. These four companies have in fact produced many of the anti-tank missiles and the missile defense systems Washington has been sending to Kiev this year. US President Joe Biden’s administration has committed around $19.3 billion so far in military assistance to Ukraine. The Ukrainian conflict has therefore been very good for the event sponsors’ businesses, even amid the supply chain issues related to the pandemic and semiconductors  shortages.

Regarding the aforementioned logos, a think tank expert quoted by journalist Jonathan Guyer remarks that “It’s really bizarre to me that they would put that on an invitation.”  Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow Mat Duss in turn says that

“sustaining American popular support is absolutely essential for Ukraine’s continued defense. So Ukrainian diplomats should probably think harder about how it looks for them to be throwing parties with the defense contractors who are making bank off of this horrible war.”

Guyer writes on how Lockheed has announced that it will go from manufacturing 2,100 Javelin missiles a year to 4,000 (as they are highly on demand in Ukraine). The corporation’s stocks have climbed about 38% this year. President Biden himself, in May, told Lockheed’s workers at the company’s factory in Alabama that

“you’re making it possible for the Ukrainian people to defend themselves without us having to risk getting in a third world war by sending in American soldiers fighting Russian soldiers. And every worker in this facility (…) is directly contributing to the case for freedom.”

Corporate interests in the US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine are so blatant and obvious that some critics and activists have been calling it a McProxy War.

Their importance is very well exemplified by the ambivalent role played by a billionaire such as Elon Musk, who could very well be called an American oligarch, even though the Western press only describes Russian billionaires this way. Musk itself is the very face of the convergence of Silicon Valley and defense contractors.

I’ve written on how Washington today wages an aggressive subsidy war (for US companies) against its own European allies. By prolonging the unwinnable conflict in Ukraine and the resulting energy crisis in Europe (with the high energy costs), Washington thus renders their rival European companies uncompetitive. In this context, the US subsidies package turns out to be a nail in the coffin for Europe’s industry. I’ve also written on how, besides the more visible American geopolitical-military strategies aimed at encircling Russia,  there is also a geoeconomic dispute and an energy angle to the crisis in Ukraine. Government corruption and private interests are entangled with US geopolitics and geoeconomics: Washington has always wanted to have Europeans buying American LNG and has always worked against any Russian-European gas cooperation.

One should add to this game the interests of defense contractors. The world of such contractors, including the Silicon Valley, and its key players is heavily interwoven with the Pentagon and the intelligence agencies. It in fact makes up not the only so-called “military-industrial complex”, as US President Dwight D. Eisenhower called it in his famous 1961 Farewell Address, but also the deep state. These two concepts are related and should be taken seriously. Conspiracy theories apart, according to political scientist George Friedman, there has been a US deep state inscribed in the country’s civil service since at least 1871 – and it has grown in size and power with the rise of independent agencies such as the CIA. University of Wisconsin–Madison historian Alfred W McCoy in turn claimed, in a 2017 interview to the Intercept, that since the September 11 terrorist attacks the US intelligence community responded in such a way that it “has built a fourth branch of the U.S. government” that is “in many ways autonomous from the executive, and increasingly so.”

Rutgers University-Camden associate professor of history Katherine C. Epstein, in her 2014 book “Torpedo: Inventing the Military-Industrial Complex in the United States and Great Britain” details the history of how, at the turn of the twentieth century, with the development of the self-propelled torpedo, both the US and the UK came up with a new paradigm by investing in private sector development and research. This changed property rights and national security legislations, thereby intersecting industrialization, geoeconomics and geopolitics.

Experts like Jenna Bednar and Mariano-Florentino Cuélla, who talk about the American “fractured superpower”, and like Nina Hachigian, who coined to term “formestic” to describe the intertwining of foreign and domestic policy, have focused on the role played by subnational actors such as US cities and States in shaping Washington’s foreign policy. However, much attention must also be paid to private corporations and contractors interests as well as its close relations with the US agencies, that is, the American industrial-military complex and its deep state.

The aforementioned four weapons corporations are not just logos in a Ukrainian embassy’s invitation. They are part of a complex web of interests and they too shape Washington’s foreign policy. To sum it up, they have much to gain from US proxy wars – even at the expense of global peace.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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Albin Kurti, the prime minister of Kosovo, blames Russia for the rise in tension in the northern part of the partially recognized country. Kurti said Russia has turned its attention to the tiny country formerly ruled by a KLA terrorist, Hashim Thaçi. He resigned to face war crime charges in The Hague. Thaçi and other politicians are accused of murder, enforced disappearances, persecution, and torture of Serbs.

Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic said the region is on the brink of war.

Russia is a convenient scapegoat now that the USG and its propaganda machine have spent months demonizing Putin and telling lies about what is happening in Ukraine. It’s an easy out for Kurti and Pristina. He can shift blame to Russia while ignoring the complaints of a persecuted Serb minority.

Meanwhile, NATO’s KFOR is ready to insert itself in the latest dispute between Serbians and Albanian Kosovars.

“Kosovo’s NATO-led international peacekeeping force KFOR said it is still considering the Serbia’s (sic) request to send its own military to the north of the country as exacerbated tensions enter the 12th day,” reports Euractiv.

Considering NATO’s track record in Kosovo following the imposition of UN Security Council Resolution 1244, any KFOR police action in northern Kosovo—where local Serbs have set up roadblocks in response to the arrest of a Serbian police officer by Pristina—will be resented, possibly forcefully resisted.

After Yugoslavia was bombed into submission by USG president Bill Clinton and NATO in 1999 and the country was subsequently carved up, NATO established its KFOR operation in Kosovo to “keep the peace”—instead, the unit engaged in human trafficking of women and children. They became prostitutes and sex slaves for KFOR troops. The Guardian reported in 2004,

In a report on the rapid growth of sex-trafficking and forced prostitution rackets since Nato troops and UN administrators took over the Balkan province in 1999, Amnesty said Nato soldiers, UN police, and western aid workers operated with near impunity in exploiting the victims of the sex traffickers.

According to Amnesty International,

Since the deployment in July 1999 of an international peacekeeping force (KFOR) and the establishment of the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) civilian administration, Kosovo has become a major destination country for women and girls trafficked into forced prostitution. Women are trafficked into Kosovo predominantly from Moldova, Bulgaria and Ukraine, the majority of them via Serbia. At the same time, increasing numbers of local women and girls are being internally trafficked, and trafficked out of Kosovo.

Because the scandal was a major embarrassment for NATO and KFOR, it wasn’t widely covered by the corporate media.

The KFOR mission was initially dubbed “Operation Joint Guardian,” but with guardians like KFOR—whoremongers, slavers, torturers—Kosovo is better off without international “peacekeepers.”

It remains to be seen if Kosovo’s Security Force, established in 2009 and slated to take over from KFOR, will carry on the tradition of its corrupt and degenerate progenitor.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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An eight-car collision on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) is now being blamed on Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) assistance system. The crash took place in the Bay Area in California on I-80 and left one person hospitalized and eight others with minor injuries.

According to Reuters, a California Highway Patrol report on the incident says that a Tesla Model S traveling on I-80 at 55 mph crossed several lanes of traffic and then slowed abruptly to just 20 mph, at which point it triggered the crash as other cars still traveling at highway speed had no chance to avoid the slow-moving electric vehicle.

An eight-car collision on Thanksgiving Day (Nov. 24) is now being blamed on Tesla’s “Full Self-Driving” (FSD) assistance system. The crash took place in the Bay Area in California on I-80 and left one person hospitalized and eight others with minor injuries.

According to Reuters, a California Highway Patrol report on the incident says that a Tesla Model S traveling on I-80 at 55 mph crossed several lanes of traffic and then slowed abruptly to just 20 mph, at which point it triggered the crash as other cars still traveling at highway speed had no chance to avoid the slow-moving electric vehicle.

As Tesla expanded its beta program for FSD, the system has been implicated in more and more crashes, and in late 2021 the automaker had to issue a recall for cars running firmware linked to so-called “phantom braking” events, where bad software inappropriately triggered the cars’ automatic emergency braking systems.

That’s just one of a litany of problems associated with Tesla’s assistance systems—which have spawned at least 38 NHTSA investigations by this summer, according to Electrek. Ire directed towards FSD and Tesla’s attitude towards deploying the system on public roads even led to a senate candidacy this year.

FSD is an important revenue stream for Tesla. Earlier this year, CEO Elon Musk told investors that it “will become the most important source of profitability for Tesla,” and the company has repeatedly increased the price of the software package, which now costs $15,000.

Originally, access to the beta software was by invitation only, and using it depended upon maintaining a high score in a driver-monitoring system. But Tesla opened the beta up to any car with the right hardware on the same day as the eight-car crash.

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Jonathan is the automotive editor at Ars Technica, covering all things car-related. Jonathan lives and works in Washington, D.C. EMAIL [email protected] // TWITTER @drgitlin

Featured image is from Aurich Lawson/Tesla/Ars Technica

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In a major win for pollinators and other wildlife, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit today ordered the Environmental Protection Agency to protect endangered species from the bee-killing insecticide sulfoxaflor. The court held that the agency’s 2019 decision to allow new uses of sulfoxaflor across more than 200 million acres of pollinator-attractive crops violated the Endangered Species Act.

Today’s ruling comes in response to a legal challenge to the expanded use of the insecticide by the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Biological Diversity.

In a strongly worded decision, the court stated,

“When an agency deliberately ignores Congress’s legislative command, it undermines the will of the people and ultimately our constitutional structure of government.”

The court wrote that by routinely registering pesticides without protecting endangered species, which then prompts the public to sue to gain those protections, the EPA is “engaging in a whack-a-mole strategy for complying with the ESA.”

“For far too long, EPA has bent to the pesticide industry’s desire to get their toxic chemicals to market as quickly as possible,” said Sylvia Wu, a senior attorney at Center for Food Safety and counsel in the case. “Today the court told EPA, ‘No more: Congress tasked the agency with protecting endangered species and the environment at-large, not just the interests of the pesticide companies.’”

In today’s ruling the court gave the agency a 180-day deadline to provide the public with an opportunity to comment on the expanded use of the insecticide.

The EPA originally approved sulfoxaflor in 2013, but the 9th Circuit vacated the approval for failing to comply with the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act. FIFRA requires that all pesticide applications must show that the pesticide will not cause “unreasonable adverse effects on the environment.”

The EPA issued the 2019 approval to expand use of sulfoxaflor on a wide range of crops that attract bees, including soybeans, cotton, strawberries, squash and citrus. The agency action came despite the fact that its own scientists found the insecticide could threaten honeybee colonies and other pollinators.

The EPA also weakened the few spraying restrictions it previously had in place to protect native pollinators and other wildlife, eliminating all requirements for buffers even during aerial spraying.

The EPA admitted to the court that it had not considered any of sulfoxaflor’s effects on species protected by the Endangered Species Act. The agency belatedly issued a draft endangered species assessment earlier this summer. In the draft assessment, the EPA found sulfoxaflor is potentially putting 24 species of insects in jeopardy of extinction, including the Karner blue butterfly and American burying beetle.

“This decision is a huge win for monarch butterflies, rusty patched bumblebees and all the other struggling populations of insects and birds constantly under threat from harmful insecticides,” said Stephanie Parent, a senior attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity and co-counsel on the case. “It’s long past time for the EPA to take meaningful action to protect our most imperiled wildlife and put protections in place for endangered species before approving use of toxic pesticides on millions of acres of crops.”

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