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Abstract

All-cause mortality by week in Australia shows that there was no detectable excess mortality 13 months into the declared pandemic, followed by a step-wise increase in mortality in mid-April 2021, synchronous with the rollout of the COVID-19 vaccine prioritizing elderly, disabled and aboriginal residents.

The excess mortality in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022; 14 % larger all-cause mortality than in recent pre-vaccination periods of same time duration;

62 million administered vaccine doses) was 31±1 thousand deaths, which is more than twice the deaths registered as from or with COVID‑19.

In addition, a sharp peak in all-cause mortality (mid-January to mid-February 2022; 2,600 deaths) is synchronous with the rapid rollout of the booster (9.4 million booster doses, same time period), and is not due to a climatic heatwave.

We give thirteen numbered arguments as to why we conclude that the excess mortality in Australia is causally associated with the COVID-19 vaccine.

The corresponding vaccine injection fatality ratio (vIFR) is approximately 0.05 %, which we compare to estimated vIFR values from the USA Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) and from all-cause mortality data for India, Southern states of the USA, Michigan (USA) and Ontario (Canada).

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Australia experienced a significant and sustained increase in all-cause mortality, starting with its COVID-19 vaccine rollout aimed at high-risk residents in mid-April 2021, whereas it saw no detectable excess all-cause mortality up to that point during 13 months of a pandemic that was declared by the World Health Organization (WHO) on 11 March 2020.

Starting in mid-April 2021, the all-cause mortality per week in Australia shows a sustained increase of >10 %, during which it never returns to its seasonal low value (of approximately 3,000 deaths/week) and attains highs of >4,000 deaths/week in June-July-August 2022. The step-wise increase in all-cause mortality remains large up to the final date of presently consolidated official government statistics (week-34 of 2022, week ending 28 August 2022) (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a).

Over the measured period of the step-wise increase in all-cause mortality (mid‑April 2021 through August 2022; 14 % larger all-cause mortality than in recent pre-vaccination periods of same time duration; 62 million administered vaccine doses) there are 31±1 thousand excess deaths of all causes in Australia, whereas no excess deaths are detected in the prior 13-month period since a pandemic was declared (mid-March 2020 through mid-April 2021).

The excess all‑cause mortality following the COVID-19 vaccine rollout (31,000 deaths, mid‑April 2021 through August 2022) is more than twice the total number of deaths registered as being from or with COVID-19 (14,014 deaths, 1 January 2020 through 29 August 2022; WHO, consulted 20 December 2022, https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/au).

The above points are corroborated and illustrated in the following figures.

Figure 1A: All-cause mortality in Australia, all ages, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 1B: All-cause mortality in Australia, ages 85+ years, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 1C: All-cause mortality in Australia, ages 75-84 years, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 1D: All-cause mortality in Australia, ages 65-74 years, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 2: All-cause mortality in Australia, all ages, from week-1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022), compared to the COVID-19 vaccine rollout. Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Cumulative 1st doses of the vaccine. Orange: Cumulative 2nd doses of the vaccine. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

The vaccine rollout is shown in more detail as follows.

Figure 3A: Cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered (all dose types) by time (24 February 2021 through 22 August 2022) by state in Australia (as indicated, in the sequence NSW, VIC, QLD, SA, WA, TAS, NT, ACT). (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

Figure 3B: Daily and 7-day average daily reported COVID-19 vaccine doses (all dose types) administered by time (1 March 2021 through 22 August 2022) in Australia. (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

Mortality and vaccination data specifically for the state of Victoria (VIC), Australia, is shown, for example, as follows.

Figure 4A: All-cause mortality in the state of Victoria (VIC), Australia, all ages, from week‑1 2015 (week ending 4 January 2015) through week-34 2022 (week ending 28 August 2022). Light-blue: All-cause mortality by week, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 72-week periods (week-15 2021 through week-34 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st week of its 72-week integration period. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022a.)

Figure 4B: Daily and 7-day average daily reported COVID-19 vaccine doses (all dose types) administered by time (28 February 2021 through 22 August 2022) in the state of Victoria (VIC), Australia. (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

The step-wise increase in mortality is evident in Figure 1 (A through C), and it is synchronous with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout (Figures 2, 3 and 4).

The step-wise transition to a regime of larger all-cause mortality is also seen in the different states of Australia. The example of Victoria is shown in Figure 4. The same phenomenon occurs in the all-cause mortality of all the eight states of Australia, although not clearly in NT (Northern Territory) (Appendix 1).

In addition to the above-described step-wise change in regime of all-cause mortality, there is a prominent peak in all-cause mortality, having a full duration of seven weeks, from mid-January to mid-February 2022. It is not consistent with a seasonal feature and it is synchronous with a large burst in COVID-19 vaccine dose delivery (Figures 1, 3B and 4), which was the rollout of the booster (3rd doses) in Australia. The said 7-week-duration peak in all-cause mortality is prominent in the states NSW, QLD and VIC, but is essentially not present in the other states (Appendix 1). The booster rollout is shown in the following Figures 5 and 6.

Figure 5: Daily and cumulative booster (3rd doses) rollout in Australia. The time axis is from 10 November 2021 through 22 August 2022. (Source: https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, accessed 20 December 2022.)

Direct comparisons between all-cause mortality by week for the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 peak and booster delivery by week are shown below, for Australia and for the states NSW, VIC and QLD (Figures 6A through 6D).

Figure 6A: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in Australia. All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

Figure 6B: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in NSW (Australia). All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. Both mortality and booster delivery are for NSW. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

Figure 6C: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in VIC (Australia). All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. Both mortality and booster delivery are for VIC. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

Figure 6D: Highlight of the mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak, in relation to booster (3rd doses) delivery, in QLD (Australia). All-cause mortality by week (light-blue) and booster doses delivered by week (black) from 2021 to 2022. Both mortality and booster delivery are for QLD. (Data sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a); and https://www.covid19data.com.au/vaccines, consulted on 14 December 2022.)

The integrated excess mortality in the 7-week-duration peak, relative to its baseline, is approximately 2,600 deaths, compared to approximately 9.4 million booster doses delivered over the duration of the mortality peak. This corresponds to a vaccine injection fatality ratio (vIFR) of approximately 0.03 %, which in turn is not too different from the vIFR of 0.008 % for 65+ year old USA subjects injected with the Janssen vaccine, calculated from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) data by Hickey and Rancourt (2022) (their Table 1).

An alternative hypothesis for the 7-week-duration mortality peak would be that it was caused by an Australian summer heatwave affecting Eastern Australia. This hypothesis is not tenable with the climatic and mortality data, which we demonstrate in Appendix 2.

For the following reasons (presented as numbered points), taken together, we conclude that the 16-month (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) sustained regime of large excess all-cause mortality in Australia may largely or predominantly be caused by its vaccine rollout, including the booster (3rd doses).

1 – There is a clear temporal association between the new regime of heightened all‑cause mortality and the vaccine rollout, whereas Australia did not have detectable excess mortality up to the start of the rollout, during 13 months of a pandemic that was declared by the WHO on 11 March 2020. (Figures 1, 2, 4 and 6; and Appendix 1)

2 – The excess mortality in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) for Australia (all ages) is 31,000 (±1,000) deaths (Figure 1A), which is more than twice the total number of deaths registered as being from or with COVID-19 (14,014 deaths, 1 January 2020 through week ending 29 August 2022; WHO, consulted 15 December 2022, https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/au).

Note that the percentage of total COVID-19-assigned deaths that are “with COVID-19” (rather than “from COVID-19”) varies between approximately 10 % and 30 %, in the period January 2022 through August 2022 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022b; their figure entitled “Proportion of deaths from and with COVID-19 during the Omicron wave”, and see “Proportion of deaths from and with COVID-19 during the Omicron wave by state of registration”). Here, death “from COVID-19” means that COVID-19 is assigned as “the underlying cause of death as the disease or condition that initiated the train of morbid events leading to death”, whereas other diseases and conditions reported as contributing to death are “referred to as associated causes” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022c). In fact, 95.4 % of deaths “from COVID-19” in Australian death certificates had non-COVID-19 “causal sequences of events” and/or “pre-existing chronic conditions” (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022c; their table entitled “Number of deaths due to COVID-19 that has associated conditions”).

The question is unavoidable: Why would Australians suddenly (at the start of the vaccine rollout) start dying in excess of something mostly if not entirely other than COVID-19, after 13 months of a declared pandemic during which there was no detectable excess all-cause mortality?

3 – The mean vIFR in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) for Australia, therefore, would be:

31 K deaths  /  62 M vaccine doses[1]  =  0.05 %

which is larger than the vIFR of 0.008 % for 65+ year old USA subjects injected with the Janssen vaccine, calculated from the VAERS data (Hickey and Rancourt, 2022; their Table 1), and smaller than the estimated 1 % calculated for the excess mortality event in India (Rancourt, 2022), and for excess mortality peaks for several Southern states of the USA (Rancourt et al., 2022). As such, the 0.05 % estimated mean vIFR for Australia is within an expected range for real‑world circumstances.

4 – In addition to the above-described vaccination-period regime of all-cause mortality (mid-April 2021 through August 2022), there is a prominent peak in all-cause mortality from mid-January to mid-February 2022, having a full duration of seven weeks, which is synchronous with a large burst in COVID-19 vaccine dose delivery (Figures 1, 3B, 4 and 6). The said large burst in vaccine dose delivery was the rollout of the booster (3rd doses) in Australia (Figures 5 and 6).

We stress that Figure 6, showing a high degree of synchronicity (in both position and width) between the mid‑January to mid-February 2022 all-cause mortality peak and the booster (3rd doses) delivery pattern, with the booster delivery surge generally leading the mortality surge by approximately 1 week, represents strong evidence for a causal relation; the strongest we have seen in all-cause mortality data.

5 – The said prominent peak in all-cause mortality from mid-January to mid-February 2022 has an integrated excess mortality in its 7-week duration, relative to its baseline, of approximately 2,600 deaths, compared to approximately 9.4 million booster doses delivered over the duration of the mortality peak. This corresponds to a calculated vIFR for the specific mortality peak:

2.6 K deaths  /  9.4 M vaccine doses^[2]  =  0.03 %

which is comparable in value to that obtained (0.05 %) for the mean vIFR in the vaccination period (mid-April 2021 through August 2022) for Australia.

6 – The impact of the rollout would be sudden, as observed (Figures 1, 2, 4A and 6; and Appendix 1), because Australia prioritized elderly, disabled and aboriginal residents (Australian Government – Department of Health and Aged Care, 2021).

7 – The step-wise increase in all-cause mortality, into the regime of excess all-cause mortality (mid‑April 2021 through August 2022) occurs simultaneously in mid‑April 2021 across all of Australia, in the eight states (see Appendix 1), rather than showing any distribution of starting times, which would be compatible with a spreading infectious disease seeding different regions at different times and spreading at different rates depending on regional differences of social and health conditions.

In this regard, theoretical models of spreading and emerging pandemics show high sensitivity of dynamic outcomes to seeding, societal population size, and inferred social and health conditions (Parham and Michael, 2011; Hasegawa and Nemoto, 2016; Ma et al., 2022).

8 – The VAERS data of the USA unambiguously shows excess all-cause deaths immediately following injections with each of the three types of COVID-19 vaccines used in the USA, with a prominent peak within 5 days of injection and an exponentially decaying excess mortality extending 2 months following injection (Hickey and Rancourt, 2022; see their Figs. S3 through S5). The integrated mortality by number of injections following injection (injection toxicity or vIFR) increases exponentially with age, as does the batch to batch variability of toxic effect (Hickey and Rancourt, 2022; see their Fig. S6). The latter observations of exponential increases with age mean that the injections represent fatal challenges in proportion to frailty of the subject.

9 – Detailed histopathological and immunohistochemical autopsy studies have demonstrated that the COVID-19 vaccines are causes of death, both in otherwise healthy subjects and in elderly subjects with comorbidities (Choi et al., 2021; Schneider et al., 2021; Sessa et al., 2021; Gill et al., 2022; Mörz, 2022; Schwab et al., 2022; Yoshimura et al., 2022).

10 – The Australian Government interprets both test results (cases) and the mortality as occurring in four “waves”, which it describes by time period as follows (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022b):

• “Wave 1: as occurring between March and May 2020. The predominant variant during Wave 1 was the original virus strain.
• Wave 2: as occurring between June and November 2020. Wave 2 predominantly occurred in Victoria. The variant during Wave 2 was the original virus strain.
• Delta wave: as occurring between July and December 2021.
• Omicron wave: as occurring during 2022 (until the end of September 2022). Due to the length of this wave and the higher number of deaths […].”

We have not found any study establishing a scientific basis for the Australian Government’s assignation of these waves. Furthermore, the said Government’s assignation is irreconcilable with:

1. the absence of detected excess mortality in March-May 2020 (Figure 1; and Appendix 1),
2. the absence of detected excess mortality in Australia (Figure 1A) and in Victoria (Figure 4A) in the period June-November 2020 (and see Appendix 1),

• a Delta-variant wave (July-December 2021) that would have missed both the mid-April 2021 step-wise surge in excess all-cause mortality and the 7-week-duration mid-January to mid-February 2022 peak in excess all-cause mortality, and

1. an Omicron-variant wave (2022) that would have caused two distinct and prominent features in excess all-cause mortality, namely the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 7-week-duration peak and the large surge that followed starting in May 2022 (Figure 1A).

The official interpretive situation is similar, although less sophisticated, to that employed by Dhar et al. (2021) who postulated that the April-July 2021 “second wave” event in Delhi (the capital city of India) was due to the Delta variant, which would have quickly swept Delhi to become predominant because it would have higher transmissibility and larger immune escape than concomitantly circulating variants. However, Dhar et al. estimate the needed characteristics of Delta by fitting a model to the epidemiological data and to the variant predominance estimated by genomic measurements from small non-randomized cohorts. Leaving aside the large known and unknown uncertainties throughout their exercise, basically, the inferred characteristics of Delta are obtained by fitting to the data, rather than being independently measured in a controlled clinical trial. Under such circumstances, the mortality event creates an illusion of the needed Delta for Delhi, but an actual Delta cannot be concluded to have caused the mortality event.

Likewise, the Australian Government’s assignation of COVID-19 waves for Australia is merely a naming exercise of reported test results (case statistics), coupled to sparse and unreliable genomic measurements (Australian Government – Department of Health and Aged Care, 2022). The Australian Government’s assignation is contradicted by hard data of all-cause mortality by time.

11 – A similar synchronicity between vaccine dose delivery and excess all-cause mortality is observed in connection with the so-called “vaccine equity” campaigns in the USA. An anomalous fall-2021 peak was interpreted as being caused by the vaccines, and is prominent in the 25-64 years age group in 21 states of the USA, most notably including Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida and Louisiana (Rancourt et al., 2022). The data for Mississippi is shown below (Figure 7).

Figure 7: Rancourt et al. (2022), their Fig. 11B. All-cause mortality by week (light-blue), cumulated number of people with at least one dose of vaccine (dark-blue), cumulated number of fully vaccinated people (orange) and cumulated number of people with a booster dose (yellow) by week from 2019 to 2022, for 25-64 years age group in Mississippi. Data are displayed from week-1 of 2019 to week-5 of 2022.

In the study by Rancourt et al. (2022), it was concluded that significant (detectable by all-cause mortality) vaccine-induced mortality occurred primarily among fragile groups, characterized by high degrees of poverty, disability, obesity, diabetes, and high medication rates. The vaccine injection was seen as an additional challenge, often accelerating and causing death in residents with comorbidities.

12 – Another example of probably causal synchronicity between a rapid COVID-19 vaccine rollout prioritizing elderly, frail and disabled residents and large excess all‑cause mortality is that of India (Rancourt, 2022). In that case, the early rollout of the vaccine in April-July 2021 was devastating, causing the deaths of approximately 3.7 million residents, on administering approximately 350 million doses of the vaccine (in a population of 1.39 billion). This corresponds to an effective vIFR (per-dose toxicity) of approximately 1 %. It is also approximately the same vIFR (1 %) as is consistent with the anomalous fall-2021 peak in excess all-cause mortality occurring in high‑poverty states of the USA, which was interpreted as being caused by the vaccine (Rancourt et al., 2022; and see the data for Mississippi shown in Figure 7).

Clearly, frail residents are susceptible to being fatally harmed by the injection and should be protected against state-run injection campaigns implemented without stringent individual clinical risk assessment. It appears that the population-wide COVID-19 vIFR can be as large as 1 % (India, Southern USA states), and is approximately 0.05 % in Australia.

Both India and Australia had virtually no detectable excess all-cause mortality after a pandemic was declared by the WHO, until their respective COVID-19 vaccine rollouts, which makes the synchronicity association relatively easy to assign.

13 – Two more examples of synchronicity between a rapid COVID-19 vaccine rollout prioritizing elderly and vulnerable residents and large excess all‑cause mortality occur for Michigan, USA (Rancourt et al., 2022) and Ontario, Canada.

Key figures for Michigan, USA are as follows (Figure 8). The COVID-19 vIFR in the main rollout of the vaccine in Michigan is comparable in value to that for the vaccination period for Australia (0.05 %).

Figure 8: All-cause mortality by week (light-blue), cumulative number of people with at least one dose of vaccine (dark-blue), cumulative number of fully vaccinated people (orange) and cumulative number of people with a booster dose (yellow) by week from 2019 to 2022, and by age group for Michigan, USA. Data are displayed from week-1 of 2019 to week-5 of 2022. Upper panel: (Rancourt et al., 2022; their Figure 11G) Michigan, 25-64 years age group. For the 25-64 years age group, the vaccination data is for the 18-64 years age group. Lower panel: (Rancourt et al., 2022; their Figure 11H) Michigan, 65+ years age group. The discontinuous breaks in cumulative number of vaccinated individuals are artifacts.

A key figure for Ontario, Canada is as follows (Figure 9).

Figure 9: All-cause mortality by week (light-blue), cumulative number of people with at least one dose of vaccine (dark-blue), cumulative number of fully vaccinated people (orange) and cumulative number of people with a booster dose (purple) by week from 2010 to 2022 (upper panel), and from 2019 to 2022 (lower panel), in the province of Ontario, Canada. Both mortality and vaccination are for the age group 65-84 years. (Rancourt et al., manuscript in preparation)

A clear non-seasonal peak is seen in this age group (65-84 years) in Ontario, which is synchronous with the COVID-19 vaccine rollout to this age group (Figure 9); and a particularly large and sharp mortality peak is synchronous with the booster rollout to this age group the following winter season (Figure 9). Here, again, the corresponding COVID-19 vIFRs are comparable in value to that for the vaccination period for Australia (0.05 %).

As further discussion, we make the following observations and comments.

As outlined above, less than and approximately half of the excess deaths of all causes in the vaccination period are deaths registered as COVID-19 deaths. The COVID-19-registered deaths have the following properties (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2022c):

1. Attribution of death “from COVID-19” versus “with COVID-19” is based on a qualitative evaluation susceptible to bias
2. 4 % of deaths “from COVID-19” in Australian death certificates had non-COVID-19 “causal sequences of events” and/or “pre-existing chronic conditions”

• The deaths statistics by age and sex are typical of all-cause old-age deaths statistics in Western societies

61. The three “most commonly certified acute disease outcomes of COVID-19” were: pneumonia (61.4 %), respiratory failure (15 %), and other infections (11.2 %)
62. The three most common pre-existing conditions in certified “with COVID-19” deaths were: chronic cardiac conditions (39.0 %), dementia (30.5 %), and chronic respiratory conditions (17.8 %)

Therefore, it is reasonable to infer that the vaccine injections caused death by providing an additional and significant challenge to already chronically frail or vulnerable subjects, and that COVID-19 itself may not have provided a significant contribution, as we already demonstrated for the Southern states of the USA (Rancourt et al., 2022), and as is apparent for India (Rancourt, 2022).

In this context, and given the “most commonly certified acute disease outcomes of COVID-19”, it is important to note that Australia, like virtually all Western jurisdictions, dramatically reduced its antibiotic prescriptions after a pandemic was declared by the WHO (Gillies et al., 2021; Rancourt et al., 2022). This would mean that, not only were chronically frail residents challenged with the toxic injections, but they may also not have been provided the normal treatments against respiratory bacterial infections.

Finally, we note that there is starting to be some acknowledgement in the mainstream media suggesting that vaccine harm in Australia may be much larger than generally admitted by the medical establishment. The recent public testimony and submission to Parliament of former federal MP and former Australian Medical Association (AMA) president Dr. Kerryn Phelps stands out in this regard (Chung, 2022).

In conclusion, the declared pandemic would have had to entirely spare Australia any detectable deaths for more than a year, while it raged in many other places around the world, before it showed any virulence, suddenly in mid-April 2021, when vaccines coincidentally were being rolled out to the elderly and most vulnerable. In addition, a sharp peak in all-cause mortality (mid-January to mid-February 2022) would be synchronous with the rapid deployment of the vaccine booster (3rd doses) purely by coincidence, without any explanation (plausible or not) being provided.

On the contrary, our analysis leads us to conclude that the excess mortality in the vaccination period (31±1 thousand deaths, mid-April 2021 through August 2022; 14 % larger all-cause mortality than in recent pre-vaccination periods of same time duration; 62 million administered vaccine doses), which is more than twice the deaths registered as from or with COVID‑19, and the sharp peak in all-cause mortality (mid-January to mid-February 2022; 2,600 deaths), which is synchronous with the rapid rollout of the booster (9.4 million booster doses, same time period) are causally associated with the COVID-19 vaccine. We give thirteen numbered arguments as to why we make this conclusion.

The corresponding vaccine injection fatality ratio (vIFR) is approximately 0.05 %, which is intermediate between the value from VAERS for ages 65+ years with the Janssen vaccine in the USA (0.008 %) and the value for India’s vaccine rollout and for Southern states of the USA subjected to “vaccine equity” campaigns (1 %).

Of course, this is diametrically opposite to the proposal that the COVID-19 vaccine would have saved any lives; a proposal that is not substantiated by extensive study of all-cause mortality data (Rancourt et al., 2022).

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Sources

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Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022b): Australian Bureau of Statistics /// “COVID-19 Mortality by wave” /// ABS (25 November 2022), accessed 16 December 2022, https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/covid-19-mortality-wave.

Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022c): Australian Bureau of Statistics /// “COVID-19 Mortality in Australia: Deaths registered until 31 October 2022” /// ABS (16 November 2022), accessed 16 December 2022, https://www.abs.gov.au/articles/covid-19-mortality-australia-deaths-registered-until-31-october-2022

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Choi et al. (2021): Sangjoon Choi, SangHan Lee, Jeong-Wook Seo, Min-ju Kim, Yo Han Jeon, Ji Hyun Park, Jong Kyu Lee, Nam Seok Yeo /// Myocarditis-induced Sudden Death after BNT162b2 mRNA COVID-19 Vaccination in Korea: Case Report Focusing on Histopathological Findings /// Journal of Korean Medical Science 2021; 36(40): e286.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2021.36.e286

Chung (2022): Frank Chung /// Dr Kerryn Phelps reveals ‘devastating’ Covid vaccine injury, says doctors have been ‘censored’: Dr Kerryn Phelps has broken her silence about a “devastating” Covid vaccine injury, slamming regulators for “censoring” public discussion with “threats” to doctors. /// news.com.au (20 December 2022 – 5:59PM),https://www.news.com.au/technology/science/human-body/dr-kerryn-phelps-reveals-devastating-covid-vaccine-injury-says-doctors-have-been-censored/news-story/0c1fa02818c99a5ff65f5bf852a382cf  /// Archived: https://archive.vn/svsir

Dhar et al. (2021): Dhar MS, Marwal R, Vs R, Ponnusamy K, Jolly B, Bhoyar RC, Sardana V, Naushin S, Rophina M, Mellan TA, Mishra S, Whittaker C, Fatihi S, Datta M, Singh P, Sharma U, Ujjainiya R, Bhatheja N, Divakar MK, Singh MK, Imran M, Senthivel V, Maurya R, Jha N, Mehta P, A V, Sharma P, Vr A, Chaudhary U, Soni N, Thukral L, Flaxman S, Bhatt S, Pandey R, Dash D, Faruq M, Lall H, Gogia H, Madan P, Kulkarni S, Chauhan H, Sengupta S, Kabra S; Indian SARS-CoV-2 Genomics Consortium (INSACOG)‡, Gupta RK, Singh SK, Agrawal A, Rakshit P, Nandicoori V, Tallapaka KB, Sowpati DT, Thangaraj K, Bashyam MD, Dalal A, Sivasubbu S, Scaria V, Parida A, Raghav SK, Prasad P, Sarin A, Mayor S, Ramakrishnan U, Palakodeti D, Seshasayee ASN, Bhat M, Shouche Y, Pillai A, Dikid T, Das S, Maitra A, Chinnaswamy S, Biswas NK, Desai AS, Pattabiraman C, Manjunatha MV, Mani RS, Arunachal Udupi G, Abraham P, Atul PV, Cherian SS. /// Genomic characterization and epidemiology of an emerging SARS-CoV-2 variant in Delhi, India. /// Science. 2021 Nov 19;374(6570):995-999. doi: 10.1126/science.abj9932. Epub 2021 Oct 14. PMID: 34648303; PMCID: PMC7612010. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.abj9932

Gill et al. (2022): James R. Gill, Randy Tashjian, Emily Duncanson /// Autopsy Histopathologic Cardiac Findings in 2 Adolescents Following the Second COVID-19 Vaccine Dose. /// Arch Pathol Lab Med 1 August 2022; 146 (8): 925–929. doi: https://doi.org/10.5858/arpa.2021-0435-SA

Gillies et al. (2021): Gillies, MB, Burgner, DP, Ivancic, L, et al. /// Changes in antibiotic prescribing following COVID-19 restrictions: Lessons for post-pandemic antibiotic stewardship. /// Br J Clin Pharmacol. 2022; 88( 3): 1143- 1151. https://doi.org/10.1111/bcp.15000

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Rancourt (2022): Rancourt, DG /// Probable causal association between India’s extraordinary April-July 2021 excess-mortality event and the vaccine rollout /// Correlation Research in the Public Interest, 5 December 2022 /// https://correlation-canada.org/report-probable-causal-association-between-indias-extraordinary-april-july-2021-excess-mortality-event-and-the-vaccine-rollout/

Rancourt et al. (2022): Rancourt, D.G., Baudin, M. and Mercier, J. /// COVID-Period Mass Vaccination Campaign and Public Health Disaster in the USA: From age/state-resolved all-cause mortality by time, age-resolved vaccine delivery by time, and socio-geo-economic data /// Research Gate (2 August 2022) /// https://www.researchgate.net/publication/362427136_COVID-Period_Mass_Vaccination_Campaign_and_Public_Health_Disaster_in_the_USA_From_agestate-resolved_all-cause_mortality_by_time_age-resolved_vaccine_delivery_by_time_and_socio-geo-economic_data /// Also available at: https://vixra.org/abs/2208.0023

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Schwab et al. (2022): Schwab, C., Domke, L.M., Hartmann, L. et al. /// Autopsy-based histopathological characterization of myocarditis after anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination. /// Clin Res Cardiol (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00392-022-02129-5

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Notes

[1] Cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered: All doses, including boosters, are counted individually; administered 14 April 2021 through 25 August 2022, 63.01M – 1.36M = 62M. Our World in Data, accessed 16 December 2022: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~AUS&Metric=Vaccine+doses

[2] Estimated using cumulative COVID-19 vaccine doses administered: All doses, including boosters, are counted individually; administered 8 January 2022 through 21 February 2022, 53.4M – 44.0M = 9.4M. Our World in Data, accessed 16 December 2022: https://ourworldindata.org/explorers/coronavirus-data-explorer?facet=none&Interval=Cumulative&Relative+to+Population=false&Color+by+test+positivity=false&country=~AUS&Metric=Vaccine+doses

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

Appendix 1: Step-wise increase in all-cause mortality occurs in mid-April 2021 in all the states in Australia

Here, we show the all-cause mortality data for Australia and for each state of Australia (as labelled in the panels of Figure A1-F1), and including the 72-week vaccination period integrations, described in the present article.

We also provide the following table of corresponding vaccine-period excess mortalities.

Table A1-T1: Integrated all-cause mortality (72 weeks), differences and ratios

*The baseline-period 72-week-integrated mortality was estimated from an inspection of the values on the graphs (Figure A1-F1) for periods prior to the vaccination period, in such a way as to be representative of the value that would be predicted in the absence of the vaccination campaign and its effects.

Figure A1-F1 (containing 9 panels) follows.

APPENDIX 2: Mid-January to mid-February 2022 mortality peak not caused by a heatwave

This appendix is concerned with the question of whether the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all-cause mortality in Australia (occurring in NSW, VIC and QLD; see Appendix 1) can be due to a climatic heatwave.

It is important to address this question because sharp all-cause mortality peaks are often associated with exceptional summer heatwaves in mid-latitude countries (e.g. Rancourt et al., 2022, cited in the present article).

The most important heatwave to affect Eastern Australia over more than the last three decades was in 2009. The government report [Australian Government – Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statement 17: The exceptional January-February 2009 heatwave in south-eastern Australia (issued 4 February 2009, updated 12 February 2009), http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/scs17d.pdf , accessed 18 December 2022] describes it this way:

“An exceptional heatwave affected south-eastern Australia during late January and early February 2009. The most extreme conditions occurred in northern and eastern Tasmania, most of Victoria and adjacent border areas of New South Wales, and southern South Australia, with many records set both for high day and night time temperatures as well as for the duration of extreme heat.

There were two major episodes of exceptional high temperatures, from 28-31 January and 6-8 February, with slightly lower but still very high temperatures persisting in many inland areas through the period in between.”

This exceptional 2009 heatwave did not cause any significant peak in all-cause mortality, as shown in Figure A2-F1, below. In fact, heatwaves essentially do not cause peaks in all-cause mortality in Australia, presumably because it’s always hot in the summers. Figure A2-F1 does not show any peaks, 1980-2022, which could be interpreted as summer heatwave peaks.

Also, there are no Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology, Special Climate Statements (SCSs) 2006-2022, which can be interpreted to be associated with or similarly associated to the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all‑cause mortality occurring in Eastern Australia (NSW, VIC, QLD) (see Appendix 1). See the list of SCSs here: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/statements/ . Archived on 18 December 2022 here: https://archive.vn/WDlPA

And the Australian Government, Bureau of Meteorology, “Monthly Weather Review, Australia, January 2022” report [Product code IDCKGC1AR1. Prepared on 27 April 2022. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/mwr/aus/mwr-aus-202201.pdf ] makes no mention of any climate or weather event that could be associated with the mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all-cause mortality occurring in Eastern Australia (NSW, VIC, QLD).

That the 2022 all-cause mortality peak of concern is not due to a heatwave is again corroborated by the fourteen maximum daily temperature maps for Australia shown below, for the years and dates as indicated on the maps.

[Source: http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/ . Specifically: http://www.bom.gov.au/jsp/awap/temp/rmse_archive.jsp?map=maxave&period=daily&year=2022&month=1&day=12 ]

The mid-January to mid‑February 2022 prominent peak in all-cause mortality occurring in Eastern Australia (NSW, VIC, QLD) (see Appendix 1) — seen in Figure A2-F1 and in Figures 1, 2, 4A and 6 of the present article — is not due to any climate, weather or temperature event or anomaly.

Figure A2-F1: All-cause mortality in Australia, all ages, from January 1980 through August 2022. Light-blue: All-cause mortality by month, left y-scale. Dark-blue: Integrated all-cause mortality over successive and non-overlapping 16-month periods (May 2021 through August 2022, for most recent period), right y-scale. Each point is positioned on the x-axis at the 1st month of its 16-month integration period. The labelled vertical line shows January 2009, which had a record-breaking heatwave and virtually no associated increase in mortality. February has lower mortality because it generally has only 28 days. (Data source: Australian Bureau of Statistics (2022a) for 2015-2022; United Nations (2022) for 1980-2014.)

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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.

The idea here is that the entrance of NATO into the conflict will strike fear into Russia and Putin and his generals and they will rethink the SMO and retreat with tails tucked.

Not going to happen.

In any case, this is a very bad calculation since it is clear that Russia will go to the end of the mission assigned by Vladimir Putin. Counting that our forces will retreat in the face of a few NATO regiments whose arms problems Russia is experiencing is a ridiculous calculation… and which will very quickly prove to be extremely deadly.

Is it possible the USG and NATO believe their own lies about Ukraine?

The war propaganda corporate media insists Ukraine is winning. “Russia is losing the war it started against Ukraine thanks to military support from the West. Now, NATO should provide the Ukrainian Armed Forces with the offensive firepower and air defense Ukraine needs to end it,” writes a USG propagandist working for the 1945 website, a site churning out pro-war commentary for the propaganda media.

Fatigue has set in as the USG and its “partners” in Europe have emptied their arsenals. “Despite Washington’s assurance of supporting Kyiv for ‘as long as it takes,’… the fact is the U.S. will not be able to maintain the supply of high-end ammunition to Ukraine indefinitely,” reports the International Business Times, despite death merchants cranking out new bombs and missiles.

The USG is determined to follow through on its delusional policy of victory in Ukraine and the project to destroy Russia. Rusreinfo.ru notes

the European and American governments have an agenda to follow, made urgent by the announced dollar crash on the one hand and by the current economic debacle that will only increase in Western countries. A state of war would trigger martial law and global control of the population as it has been developed in recent years under the pretext of “covid”. They may also think that a state of war would reunite the citizens behind them.

Another delusion. Indeed, the American people are opposed to Russia’s SMO and support Ukraine, while at the same time, thanks to USG propaganda and omission, are ignorant of what Ukraine’s ultranationalists have done to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine. In essence, the American people are supporting the indiscriminate bombardment of civilians in Donetsk and Luhansk. They are unwittingly facilitating atrocities reminiscent of those committed by Hitler and the Nazis (the Nazi Reichskommissariat Ukraine tested genocide in Eastern Europe under a Führer Decree).

Unlike Biden, and his neocon and humanitarian interventionist “advisers,” the American people want a peace deal and an end to the war. The Chicago Council on Global Affairs conducted a poll last month.

A just-completed November 18-20 Chicago Council survey finds that large majorities of Americans continue to support US assistance to Ukraine, both economically and with military equipment. But as the fighting drags into winter, the overall US public is now divided on whether the United States should support Ukraine as long as it takes or if it should urge Kyiv to settle for peace as soon as possible. (Emphasis added.)

Not that the political class, the uniparty, taking orders from a global elite, will be bothered with the wishes of the American people, who only matter every two years during elections of handpicked selected candidates.

“U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley held a joint news conference on Wednesday after a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group,” Reuters reported, around the same time the results of the above poll were released.

Austin and Milley both said the United States would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.”

Milley, the top U.S. general, cautioned that Russia still had significant combat power inside of Ukraine despite suffering military setbacks in its invasion.

“The probability of a Ukrainian military victory — defined as kicking the Russians out of all of Ukraine to include what they claim as Crimea — the probability of that happening anytime soon is not high, militarily,” Milley told the news conference.

“Politically, there may be a political solution where, politically, the Russians withdraw. That’s possible,” he added, saying Russia “right now is on its back.”

Milley and Austin are pushing the USG “take down Russia” narrative, never mind this will not happen and Putin has warned existential threats levied against Russia will result in a thermonuclear response.

Russia will not exit Ukraine short of accomplishing its objectives—making certain NATO is not on its border, disarming a Russophobic post-coup ultranationalist government, and making sure Ukronazis are unable to terrorize and bomb ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine (and now Russia proper in Kursk, Briansk, Shebekino, Belgorod, and Klintsy).

Earlier this month, the Pentagon urged Ukraine to strike inside Russia. Now there is talk of a direct NATO intervention in Ukraine.

Does anybody still have any doubt that this is US/NATO's proxy war against Russia? pic.twitter.com/TfNnZDo0b3

— Hassan Mafi ‏ (@thatdayin1992) December 11, 2022

The USG realizes the Ukrainians are unable to defeat Russia, thus the only option is for direct NATO involvement above and beyond the current proxy war. On December 12, Jens Stoltenberg, the Norwegian secretary general of NATO, admitted the alliance will soon enter the fray directly.

NATO Chief says a full-blown Russia-NATO war is a “real possibility” that may go “horribly wrong,” as he charges ahead.
How can a warmonger we never elected drag us into a war we never authorized, that can kill us all with no questions asked? https://t.co/bi0iZHPDmu

— Dr. Jill Stein🌻 (@DrJillStein) December 13, 2022

Adam Kinzinger, a House Republican, proposed a new Authorization of Use of Military Force (AUMF) allowing USG troops to enter Ukraine to restore “the territorial integrity of Ukraine” in the event Russia uses WMDs. According to The Libertarian Institute,

Since Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Kinzinger has repeatedly pushed to escalate a situation that his policy helped to create. On March 3, 2022, he publicly called for a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine to “prevent Russian air attacks.” If enforced, a no-fly zone in Ukraine would see U.S. forces shooting down Russian planes and even attacking targets in Russia.

Keep in mind the Republicans will take control of the House of Representatives in January.  It is reported they will attempt to audit the weapons going to Ukraine. However, this does not mean they oppose USG involvement in the war. In March, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called Putin a “ruthless thug” who, according to USA Today, “invaded a sovereign country and is responsible for the killing of innocent people.” Biden, Pelosi, and McConnell are on the same page, thus underscoring the unanimity of the uniparty in regard to killing Russians.

No mention of the millions of people killed by the USG war machine since the end of WW2. A “carefully researched article by James A. Lucas documents the more than 20 million lives lost resulting from US led wars, military coups and intelligence ops carried out in the wake of WWII, in what is euphemistically called the ‘post-war era’ (1945- ),” writes Michel Chossudovsky.

Lucas writes the USG and its satraps are responsible for mass deaths in Angola, Argentina, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Chad, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Democratic Republic of Congo, Dominican Republic, East Timor, El Salvador, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Hungry, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Israeli-Palestinian War, Korea, Laos, Nepal, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Paraguay, Philippines, Sudan, Vietnam, Yugoslavia (and Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia, not mentioned).

Most Americans are unaware the USG is the world’s most prolific mass killer since the end of WWII.

This instilled ignorance, and the basic intellectual incuriosity of the average American, will allow the USG to dive further into the bloody Ukraine war, and without large antiwar demonstrations of the sort that came to an end during the USG invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Many leaders and members of former antiwar movements and organizations were subsumed into the uniparty, on the “Democrat” side under Barack Obama, the man responsible for 30,000 deaths in Libya and the importation of jihadi cutthroats into Syria’s “civil war,” actually a covert campaign by the USG and Israel to reduce Syria to the failed state status suffered by Iraq after two brutal invasions and a medieval sanctions regime (resulting in a million Iraqis killed).

So long as the war propaganda media can divert attention away from the violent policies and behavior of the USG and its neoliberal predatory agenda, and the people remain ignorant of reality and mindlessly offer consensus for mass murder in the name of a perverse reformulation of democracy, there will be no stopping psychopaths from dragging the country into a war that very well may spell extinction for humanity and a majority of all living creatures.

*

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Today is an official day of mourning in Panama. It is a bank holiday and most businesses are closed.  

Americans like to think they did Panama a favor by invading and ridding the country of the dictator. If you go to the official web site, you will see cited a very LOW number of deaths due to Bush Senior’s 1989 invasion, which in fact killed thousands of Panamanian citizens.  

There was no mention in the US press that Noriega was a CIA asset, but declassified documents revealed that he was.  

He was trained at the notorious School of the Americas in torture methods. He was groomed for the position of president, and then after the mysterious plane crash that killed strongman Omar Torrijos, the extremely popular leader responsible for the handover of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians under Carter, the reins of government were turned over to the vicious dictator Manuel Noriega, all with Washington’s blessings.  

When Noriega started bad mouthing the US, Bush went after him, first organizing a coup, which succeeded, but the US betrayed the coup plotters, who were then punished by Noriega. The US then went after the army group that had tried to cooperate with the US to oust Noriega, illegally sending troops to areas outside the Canal Zone. The purpose of this betrayal was to take complete control of the military power in Panama, and this led to the bloody invasion that we are commemorating today.  

There was indiscriminate shooting of civilians, as described in the documentary linked below. The Panamanians I have spoken with all agree that the US invaders in 1989 were vicious killers, very different from the US service people in the Canal Zone, who had been very friendly with the locals, giving them well-paid jobs, which disappeared after the signing of the Carter-Torrijos treaty.  

In this web site you will see president Cortizo taking credit for making this a national Day of Mourning. In fact, I was here on Dec 20 during one of the years of the Martinelli presidency and I remember that president commemorating the Panamanians who died in the invasion.  

But lying is what politicians do, and their henchmen are journalists.  

This documentary is the closest you will get to a true picture of what actually happened, click the image below to watch the video.

*

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Featured image: Elements of 1st Bn, 508th Infantry parachuting into a drop zone, during training, outside of Panama City. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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The contradiction behind the messages is clear.  This was a “sophisticated” operation involving surveillance.  It was planned. Those unfortunate police officers were lured to an isolated Queensland property where they were “executed”.  The details were initially sketchy, but that did not prevent the general sentiment from simmering away: this was, in the words of a statement by the Queensland Police Union, a “senseless murder of colleagues”.  That account has been trotted out with unanimity.

It began as an inquiry about a missing person, involving four officers from Tara sent to a Wieambilla property in the Western Downs region, some 270km west of the Queensland capital, Brisbane.  According to Ian Leavers, President of the Queensland Police Union, two officers, constables Rachel McCrow and Matthew Arnold, were shot on arrival around 4.45pm in “a ruthless, calculated and targeted execution of our colleagues”. Of the two remaining officers, one was wounded, while the other escaped.  A neighbour, Alan Dare, going in to assist, was also killed.

The three individuals accused of perpetrating the shootings were brothers Nathaniel and Gareth Train, and Gareth’s wife Stacey Train.  They were subsequently killed by specialist police forces at the site.

Murder, in many instances, is filled with sense and planning.  As disturbing it may well be, an intention to kill can conform to a set of presumptions that make sense within a particular world view.  That view is often alloyed by a number of disturbing influences, the contaminant that sets the fuse.

To that end, it would be appropriate to investigate what the motivations of these figures are.  But efforts to do so have been uneven.  Media outlets have not held back in portraying the individuals as members of the mad, the deranged, the delusional.  These cloddish efforts do little to illuminate and much to obfuscate.

The quest to not understand has been aided by the conspiracy label attached to the three individuals.  Gareth Train, for one, believed that the 1996 Port Arthur massacre had been a false-flag operation; tactical police had set out to target “conspiracy talkers” and “truthers”.  He also had a YouTube channel, since deleted, replete with posts covering conspiracies on COVID, anti-vaccination and the sovereign citizen movement.  That same channel featured footage from Gareth and Stacey Train showing the prelude to the attack, including coverage of the shootings.

An ABC investigative report into the background of the trio noted, among other things, the conduct of Gareth and Tracey on their move in 2011 to the small town of Camooweal, about 13km from the Northern Territory border in far west Queensland.  “We were invited to tea at their house,” noted a resident, who noticed “their pig dogs inside the house in cages” and Gareth’s “big collection of hunting knives and he then told us he was a social worker.”

Gareth, the accounts note, had a certain lusting for blood.  “Sometimes we would see Gareth with his knives running around with dogs chasing the pigs,” another resident stated.  Given the ecstasy shown by many an Australian in massacring “feral” invasive species, not to mention the occasional native one, this crude behaviour is hardly eyebrow raising.  But this is Gareth, the cop killer, so all must be exceptional and unusual in his universe.

A closer reading of such accounts suggests that what the Trains did was less a case of being remarkable than the fact it was done so openly.  Slaughtering animals is all good, but do not do it in front of children.  Paul (not his real name) recalled how Gareth would “butcher” the pigs and hang the carcasses facing the local school.  “There would be a smell of offal and blood running onto the footy field.”

Using the analytical template for the standard nutter and the unhinged lunatic, interest focused on Gareth Train’s views expressed on fora dedicated to conspiracies and survivalism.  “I currently live on my rural property in western Queensland were [sic] I have been building an ‘ark’[,] homesteading for the last five years preparing to survive tomorrow. I am not interested in indoctrinating or convincing anyone of anything.”

The last line is worth recalling but has gotten lost in the speculative literature warning about rampaging conspiracy theorists willing to tear their way through the security and law enforcement establishment.  It’s easy to forget that the survivalist, conspiracy tribe seeking arks and sanctuaries from impending cataclysm is a large one.  It includes a good number of terrified billionaires, among them the libertarian Peter Thiel, who hopes to set up shop in New Zealand when calamity strikes.

Nicholas Evans, an academic in policing and emergency management, illustrates  the fear of his colleagues: “[t]he killings are the clearest example of what security, policing researchers, and law enforcement have warned of – conspiracy beliefs can be motivators for actual or attempted violence against specific people, places and organisations.”

In the saturation of grief, the police have been less than forthcoming about why they sent junior officers to this particular property in the first place.  Queensland Police Service commissioner Katarina Carroll conceded she did not have the “full extent of information” about the Trains.

The Queensland Police have resolutely refused to answer questions about whether officers had made a prior visit to the property, or the extent of knowledge about the shooters.

The now deleted YouTube channel features videos suggesting a history with authorities, expressed through paranoid language.  And as with much in the way of paranoia, kernels of veracity might be picked.  “You attempt to abduct us using contractors,” goes one caption.  “You attempt to intimidate and target us with your Raytheon Learjets and planes.  You sent ‘covert’ assets out here to my place in the bush.  So what is your play here?  To have me and my wife murdered during a state police ‘welfare check’?  You already tried that one.”

Gareth’s brother Nathaniel was also one who came across the police radar, having driven a 4WD packed with loaded guns and military knives through a New South Wales border gate into Queensland last December.  This was in breach of COVID-19 regulations.  Nathaniel was subsequently found disposing of some of the items in a creek near the Queensland town of Talwood, an incident reported to police.  The fact that these included three loaded firearms might have struck law enforcement as odd.

On Radio National on December 21, the Queensland Police Union again reiterated the view that there was no credence to claims that police had made a previous visit to the property.  Instead of discussing such details, Leavers has something else in mind: purchasing the property of the shooters in Wieambilla, rendering the profane sacred.

This macabre object has a broader purpose: “The last thing we want to see is the anti-vaxxers, pro-gun, conspiracy theorists to get this land and use it for their own warped and dangerous views.”  Comprehending or even seeking to understand such individuals was simply intolerable.  “They are absolutely un-Australian and I don’t want it to be used for them to promote themselves.”  Let ignorance reign so that others may live happily.

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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 Queensland Police News

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Yesterday, three more policemen were killed in the same area that saw the murder of the deputy police chief on Thursday and the wounding of two others. The unrest and murders occurred in the southern area near Maan.  The area has supported the Radical Islamic ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood and ISIS.  Large amounts of guns and ammunition were seized by the police. Experts are wondering if this might be the beginning of an uprising in Jordan. Using the cover of fuel price increases as the catalyst of a deadly uprising, recalling the 2011 staged uprising in Deraa, Syria which was engineered by the Muslim Brotherhood on the heels of a similar US-NATO attack on Libya.

Funeral of the Jordanian police officer that was killed by the Muslim Brotherhood

Dozens of people have been arrested by Jordanian security forces, accused of involvement in recent protests and violence sparked by the rise in fuel prices.

Colonel Abdul Razzaq Dalabeh, the deputy police chief of Maan province, was killed after being shot in the head on December 15 in Al-Husseiniya after he confronted protesters.  Two additional policemen were shot and wounded in the same area.  Reinforcements were called up to crack down on the protests and to find the killer of Dalabeh.

Fuel prices have almost doubled in Jordan in the last year. The diesel used by trucks and buses has caused major transport cost increases. Jordan depends on imports from neighboring countries by land.  Home heating oil costs have made people choose between eating and heating in a country that is bitterly cold in winter and may be blanketed with snow in places.

More than a week ago, cab and truck drivers began strike actions. Bus drivers and merchants joined them with shops shuttered in protest on December 14.  Protests then escalated to blocking roads with burning tires and confrontations with security forces.

Previous fuel increases and protests

In 1999, Abdullah II bin Al-Hussein took the throne as King of Jordan.  The following year Bashar al-Assad was elected President of Syria.

In 2012, Jordan increased gasoline prices by 10% which resulted in protests. That was the year after the Syrian conflict began.

Jordan has no oil or gas resources

Jordan is located in the Middle East and surrounded by some oil-rich nations like Iraq and Saudi Arabia, but Jordan has no oil or gas resources, is dependent on imports, and is affected by the increasing prices of energy caused in part by the Ukrainian conflict.

The IMF loan

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is headquartered in Washington, DC. approved a $2 billion loan in 2012, and called for Jordan to increase their fuel prices to the consumers, which resulted in protests.  Jordan’s economy was under extreme pressure as thousands of Syrian refugees poured over the border into the Zaatari camp.

Jordan participated in the attack on Syria

The King of Jordan played a pivotal role in the US-NATO attack on Syria orchestrated by President Obama.  The King can’t say no to the US because Jordan receives a great deal of its annual budget from the US government. Many of the weapons and fighters in Syria came through the Jordanian border at Deraa, which was the staging place of the “uprising”.  The US government sent the weapons they had confiscated in Libya, while overthrowing the government there, to be transported to Syria via the Jordanian border at Deraa.  The Al Omari Mosque in Deraa in March 2011 became the arsenal for the terrorists following the Muslim Brotherhood ideology. Jordan has always had Muslim Brotherhood followers in the country and has suffered violent attacks by them in the past. The Muslim Brotherhood is an internationally recognized terrorist group following Radical Islam, but the US has never banned it.

Part of the US plan for regime change in Syria was the establishment of refugee camps, such as in Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. The refugees living in camps perpetuate an image that Syria is not safe enough to live in, and this promotes the regime change goal.  In reality, Syrian refugees have returned from Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan. The Lebanese government is in the process of sending refugees back home, especially those that were in the Arsal camp which was populated by Muslim Brotherhood terrorists and their wives and children. In the upcoming Turkish Presidential elections in six months, all the parties vying for the office have pledged to forcefully return all the refugees to Syria.

Jordan is facing violence carried out by domestic terrorists. President Assad had said that if you feed a monster, it may turn to bite you.  The monster is Radical Islam. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton testified before the US Congress and admitted, “we created them”, which referred to Al Qaeda and how the CIA had created the terrorist group to fight for US interests in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union.  Al Qaeda, the US-sponsored Free Syrian Army, Jibhat al-Nusra, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, and finally ISIS all have the same ideology, which is the foundation of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Jordan participated in the US-NATO attack on Syria, and after 12 years is facing the same terrorist ideology, but this time directed at the Amman government, instead of Damascus. The monster has turned to bite the hand that fed it.

Israeli occupation

More than half of the 6.3 million population of Jordan is Palestinian.  They are the survivors and descendants of the founding of Israel in 1948 and were made refugees after their homes, farms, and businesses were taken by Israeli settlers.  The UN has registered over 2 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan.

In April, the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, and the UAE met together in solidarity with the Palestinian people. The leaders called on Israel to stop all actions that undermine the two-state solution and to return to negotiations to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under UN resolutions.

Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi received Jordan’s King Abdullah and Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed at Cairo Airport, and they stressed “the importance of sustaining efforts to restore calm in Jerusalem, and the need to respect the legal and historical status quo at Al-Aqsa Mosque.”

On December 17, President Mahmoud Abbas of the Palestinian Authority called King Abdullah II of Jordan and said, “the State of Palestine and its people are keen on the security and stability of Jordan”, and that “the security and prosperity of Jordan are part of the security and prosperity of Palestine”.

Abbas thanked the King for his unending support of the Palestinian cause, which is tied to the Jordanian custodianship over Islamic and Christian holy places in Jerusalem.

The King is the custodian of the Al Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem and is a 41st-generation direct descendant of the Islamic prophet Muhammad.  The king of Jordan, its mainly Palestinian population, and his Palestinian wife, Queen Rania, are all tied to the past, present, and future of Palestine.

On December 18, Israeli occupation forces blocked the main entrance to the town of Azzun, east of Qalqilia city in the northern West Bank. Israeli forces shut down the main entrance to the town with a metal gate, blocking the movement of Palestinian traffic through the entrance.

Human rights groups have said,

“Restricting movement is one of the main tools Israel employs to enforce its regime of occupation. Israel imposes restrictions on the movement of Palestinians within the West Bank, and travel between it and the Gaza Strip, into East Jerusalem, Israel, and abroad.”

The violence now brewing in Jordan may be tied to the King’s resistance to the occupation of Palestine.

Massive Protests in Jordan against the rise of fuel prices

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

All images in this article are from MD; featured image: King of Jordan giving his condolences to the family of the police officer that was killed

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First published on Global Research in 2014.

Former heavyweight boxing champion Mohammed Ali (born Cassius M. Clay) is probably the most famous draft resister in US history. When refusing to accept the draft in 1967, during the American war against Vietnam he told the Press:

“No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder, kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end… Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam, while so-called Negro people in Louisville[1] are treated like dogs and denied simple human rights.”

The only war in the official history of the United State that was lost, was also the first war in which Jim Crow, the apartheid regime created in the US after the Civil War and Reconstruction, was not the policy of the US military. How African-Americans came again to challenge the imperialist war machine in the 1960s cannot be understood without uncovering the decades of silence and deception that have covered the first war the US regime truly lost—although it has never officially ended.

Bruce Cumings, certainly the most authoritative if not the sole US expert on this mysterious conflict, wrote,

“Americans know the Korean War as a “forgotten war”, which is another way of saying that generally they do not know it. A war that killed upwards of four million people, 35,000 of them Americans, is remembered mainly as an odd conflict sandwiched between the good war (World War II) and the bad war (Vietnam).”

This reflects what might be called an especially American form of Manichaeism—for Americans there is only the “good” and the “bad”. The ability to judge either their own individual behaviour or that of their government is limited by this narrow dualism, a recurrent pattern in the way they perceive both domestic and foreign affairs. It is what made Jim Crow a most stringent and insidious form of social engineering: white and black, good and bad, sin and salvation, communism (without understanding it) and democracy (without having it). Bipolar disorder predates the pharmaceutical and confessional waves of the last two decades. In fact this disorder, going back to the country’s founding myth, has been a fundamental obstacle to comprehending the vicious invasion of a fiercely independent Asian country, under the pretext of preserving these supposedly clear moral categories. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, staunch Presbyterian and corporate mercenary, declared the necessity of a “Christian war” in Asia.[2]

I.F. Stone, a unique American journalist, tried to breach the insipid and seemingly impenetrable barrier in the consciousness of Americans when he first published his Hidden History of the Korean War in 1952—in the midst of brutal fighting in Korea and political purging in his own land. Stone wrote:

“Writing in an atmosphere much like that of full war, I realised that I could be persuasive only if I utilised material which could not be challenged by those who accept the official government point of view. I have relied exclusively, therefore, on United States and United Nations documents, and respected American and British newspaper sources.”[3]

Stone’s history is damning although he deliberately used only published sources and not the disclosure of classified documents. His hidden history is a case study in how the control of the narrative—to use a modern term—successfully prevented and prevents obvious criminal conduct by the government and military from being recognised for what it is.

Hence Professor Cumings asserted that Stone’s non-conformist history “is a textbook on how to read… People with a built-in indifference to history are ill accustomed to retrospective digging, to lifting up rugs, to searching for subterranean forces and tendencies. Exploring the labyrinth of history is alien to the American soul, perhaps because an optimistic people find knowledge of the past too burdensome in the present”[4]

But just maybe even more problematic are the basic lies upon which the US founding myth was based and had to be enforced upon every new wave of cheap immigrant labour imported to dilute the poison of Negro slavery and Native American annihilation from which the hypocritical optimism was born. The US war against Korea was only possible because the US regime had emerged from the “good war” with the only industrial economy intact and capable of fulfilling its founder’s “manifest destiny” to replace the empires of their European forebears. This manifest destiny replaced Britain’s “white man’s burden” with the war against communism and nationalism. This optimism, born from decimation of a continent filled with virtually defenceless indigenous, driven by uprooted and exploited labour, was only possible with a culture of forgetting, forgetting the mass murder, the slavery, the poverty and oppression to which immigrants had been subjected in Europe before they came to North America. Two world wars had taught Germans and Japanese their tenuous place in this white man’s republic, racially divisible under god.

I.F. Stone explains the way the war was fabricated by a man William Manchester called an “American Caesar”.[5] He shows that this nominally United Nations war was a process of transforming the continental warrior state into a full-fledged global war machine for whom the very scent of peace was deemed revolting, esp. for dividends. Repeatedly Stone refers to the threat of “peace”. Chapter 15 is called, “Peace alarms”. Chapter 28 is called “Anti-peace offensive”. Chapter 33, “Hiding the Lull” describes how MacArthur’s headquarters worked to conceal the actual decline in combat activity—except US bombing. Chapter 41 is called “Postponing Peace Again”. In fact Stone shows on numerous occasions that the worst fear of those US warlords in Asia and Washington was that “peace might break out”.[6] Even MacArthur’s field commanders lied beyond the distortions for which William Westmoreland would be grated years later. Stone writes:

“Eighth Army Headquarters claimed to have killed or wounded 69,500 of the enemy from January 25 to midnight February 9, an average of about 4,600—or as Headquarters put it, “almost” a “full division” a day. Comparisons with the peak battles of World Wars I and II will indicate what a feat this was… If the figures given out that day at Lieutenant General Matthew Ridgway’s Headquarters were correct, then the push through the no man’s land south of Seoul must rank with the Battle of Stalingrad, the climax of World War II…”[7]

This was somehow plausible—and even acceptable– to Americans since they were repeatedly told how their clean-cut American soldiers were confronting endless “hordes” of Asians. Even the British press could not swallow the official reporting. The Daily Mirror published a story headlined: “Fairy Tales from Korea”.[8]

Aside from the exhaustion of the belligerents during the US Civil War—from 1860 – 1865—after the horrific violence waged by the industrialised armies of the mercantile North against the feudal armies of the Southern latifundista, there has been little serious bloodshed in the history of US conquest—at least as far as whites have been concerned. Hence the optimism that prevails among the warmongering classes seems to have arisen from the exceedingly modest waste of white lives in the two hundred years of the republic’s continental and colonial expansion.

Stone repeatedly demonstrates that Douglas MacArthur always lived up to the reputation he enjoyed among his fellow general officers—as a man who knew how to stage a show. MacArthur’s wilful deceit and manipulation of the US media assigned to his headquarters in Tokyo was every bit as contrived as the embedded reporting and isolated journalist pools of the Grenada invasion (1983) and the endless Gulf Wars starting in 1991. It should be no surprise however that a third generation colonial slaughterer should follow his return to the Philippines (where his father had also been military governor) to pursue the conquest of the rest of Asia, absorbing on the way the colonies and dependencies of Europe’s bankrupt empires.

However Stone rightly distinguishes between MacArthur’s limitless egotism and the genteel ambitions of the Northeastern establishment personified in Dean Acheson, whom the British antecedents thought “was their picture of what a foreign secretary should be: cultivated, personable and superbly tailored.”[9] Where Stone becomes problematic is precisely in this aspect of his analysis. If MacArthur and the rest of the military establishment in Washington were bent on presenting the war in terms of the controlling narrative: good v. bad, communist v. democracy, Christianity v. atheism, and ultimately whites v. non-whites, who were the real targets of the propaganda—the psychological operations at the core of the war against Korea. What made the war against Korea, essentially a civil war to reunify a peninsula that had been colonised by Japan with US brokerage and then partitioned against both Allied promises and the will of the Korean inhabitants, necessary?[10]

It could not have been the general population, including the Black Americans still targets of Jim Crow and white terrorism at home. It could not have been the socialists who emerged in the US as a potent force in the labour movement, abetted by the grudging US alliance with the Soviet Union in World War II. Nor could it have been the average working class man or woman whose claims to a peace dividend were to be foiled by America’s corporate elite. Stone was not privy to NSC 68—promulgated just before 1950 and only declassified in the 1970s. Nonetheless Stone was well aware of the corporate forces prepared to fight against social expenditure but perfectly willing to adopt military Keynesianism if it meant windfall weapons profits.[11]

Stone’s Hidden History leaves us with the facts of war: the total destruction of Korea, esp. north of the 38^th parallel. He documents endlessly, from reports in the New York Times and other newspapers of record, that despite the lack of an enemy in the field that had no interest in demolishing its homeland, the Supreme Commander exercised carte blanche (pun intended) to saturate the entire peninsula with high explosives and napalm. The logical conclusion of Stone’s story is that the US regime destroyed non-white Korea—like so many Vietnamese villages thereafter—to save it. But for whom? Stone only hints at the answer.

Today the territory of the Palestinian nation has been virtually obliterated by a US client state. However the debate in the US persists in the same way it did between 1950 and 1953. Perhaps what Stone missed—or was simply unable to say in public—is that same issue which conceals the war against Palestine: Namely the entrenched power of an elite US ruling class.

This imperial consensus however is not uniform in its particular objectives or interests. It only coalesces when there is active warfare. It has only recently been acceptable in albeit limited public venues to discuss the “Israel lobby”. In 1950, it was impossible for anyone to discuss the “China lobby”. Stone tells us that powerful factions in the US elite could not agree whether the dictates of empire meant that US power should be focussed on Europe and the threat posed by the Soviet Union to the expansion of US corporations into European markets or—as the faction to which John Foster Dulles and his brother Allen in CIA belonged felt—directed toward the endless wealth to be plundered in Asia. The evacuation of Britain, France and the Netherlands from their plantation and mining possessions—not least of which the CIA-favoured opium trade, controlled from Shanghai until 1949—promised huge opportunities.

MacArthur’s role ought to be seen in this light. The decision to attempt “rollback” in Asia, rather than “containment” was made possible by the US atomic arsenal. This fearsomely obscene weapon had already been deployed against “non-white hordes” in Japan and appeared no doubt the weapon of choice for US re-conquest of China. Sheer numbers would have made an invasion and occupation of China impossible. The victory of Mao Tse-Tung and the Chinese Communist Party resulted in the expulsion of the last of China’s great warlord drug dealers from the mainland. Not only Chiang Kai-Shek but also his banking and pirate backers in the US, Japan and Britain would have profited immensely from a restoration of the status quo ante.[12] To pursue this goal MacArthur cut the Korean War out of whole cloth and deliberately created conditions which would replicate the rationale used to defend the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

The mystery with which Stone left his readers in 1952 was why did the US regime ultimately stop its campaign to conquer China? Was it the repeated refusal of the Chinese and Russians to intervene far enough to provide objective justification for MacArthur’s fake war against communism? Was it the realisation in Washington that having destroyed all of Korea they could not have fought a two front, perhaps even nuclear war? Perhaps it was precisely the outbreak of a precursor to what has been erroneously called “Vietnam syndrome”, the puncturing of pride within the ruling elite and the choice in Washington and New York to make more money at home and in Europe?

According to Gerald Horne, the Korean War was a major catalyst for Truman’s half-hearted attempts to abolish the US apartheid system of Jim Crow.[13] While the war in Korea served well to establish the post-war military-industrial complex, against which Eisenhower belatedly warned, it did not produce the desired domestic harmony. The Korean War was waged at home against every dissident group that had survived the New Deal and the US victory over the Axis. However, by attacking a fiercely nationalist, non-white country while attempting to preserve all the vestiges of centuries of white privilege at home, the elite was forced for a brief moment to choose. Could it crush nationalism (anti-colonialism) abroad and equality at home? Could it win an absolute ideological victory in Europe while terrorising Blacks in America? Could it arm and train segregated military units and construct the national police force which today keeps the largest prison population in the world under lock and key?

Stone does not ask any of those questions. But then these issues were not yet part of the official and respected narrative.

In 1954, the US regime was compelled to use federal authority to suppress the most atrocious practices of its racist system. It could be confronted with this domestic crime all the way through to the finish of its only “bad war”. Mohammed Ali was only born in 1942, less than ten years before the war against Korea started. However he was only the most famous of those Blacks who refused to join in the annihilation of non-whites throughout the world to support liberties never respected at home. Refusing to go to Vietnam—where both the death squads and saturation bombing deployed by the US Armed Forces in Korea were enhanced and modernised–Ali put it quite bluntly. “My enemy is the white people not the Vietcong.” Sometimes the US ruling elite is forced to recognise the potential hazard of such honesty in the face of their own egregious deceit.

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Notes

[1] Louisville, Kentucky, where Mohammed Ali was born.

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In order to be able accurately to define “victory” in the war in Ukraine, the pre-requisite is to define whom the two sides are that wage this war.

For example: when America fought in WW II, it was waging war in foreign battlefields and with its own troops and weapons, and even if America were to win in any of those battlefields, it still could have been defeated in WW II simply by Hitler’s winning WW II.

Any given battlefield was only a part of the war itself; and that war, WW II, was not defined by any one of its many battlefields. There is a difference between a battlefield in which a war is being waged, versus the war that is being waged.

However: when America fought and still fights in Syria, it wages war on that battlefield against Syria, for regime-change in that nation; and ONLY by replacing Syria’s Government with one that the U.S. Government supports would America (and its allies in that war) “win” that war, in that battlefield (Syria), which is that war’s ONLY battlefield.

In that instance, then, winning that battlefield is the same as winning the war there, by America and its allies, against that nation.

America (unlike in WW II) does not wage this war against Syria by using its own troops and weapons but instead by hiring proxy armies — mainly separatist Kurds and Al Qaeda-led jihadists — in order to achieve there a regime-change that the U.S. Government approves of.

Unless and until that is done, America will have lost the war that it is fighting in Syria. (Perhaps this is a reason why U.S. troops are not fully withdrawn from there though Syria’s Government has repeatedly ordered them to leave: America doesn’t want to lose in Syria, as it did lose in Afghanistan and in Vietnam.) However: the war in Syria is not between Syria’s Government and America’s proxy-armies there; it is instead a war between America and Syria, which is being waged by America in that battlefield, using foreign troops, to defeat Syria.

Similarly, the war in Ukraine is not a war between Ukraine versus Russia, but, in Ukraine’s case, Ukraine is only a proxy battlefield and proxy army on America’s side.

The war in Ukraine is a war that America initiated against Ukraine in February 2014 by America’s coup there that overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected and neutralist Government and replaced it by a rabidly anti-Russian and pro-American one on Russia’s border in order ultimately to become able to place just 317 miles away from the Kremlin U.S. missiles which would be only a five-minute flight-time away from nuking Russia’s central command — far too little time in order for Russia’s central command to be able to verify that launch and then to launch its own retaliatory missiles.

For America to win that war, by Ukrainians, in the battlefield of Ukraine (i.e., by that proxy army, in that proxy battlefield against Russia) would be to checkmate Russia and so to transform Russia into another U.S. vassal-nation, regardless of what Russians might want — and this is what the U.S. regime demands: “regime-change in Russia.” That is America’s (and its ‘allies’ or vassal-nations’) goal there.

For Russia to win that war in the battlefields of Ukraine would be for Russia to defeat the U.S.-imposed government there and to establish in Ukraine not the neutralist Government that had been there before America’s take-over of Ukraine in 2014 but instead a Russian-imposed Government that will order all U.S.-and-allied troops and advisors — including from all of America’s vassal-nations and especially from NATO — out of the country, and close the door, seal Ukraine’s borders against all U.S. vassal-nations.

That would mean telling all Ukrainians who want to leave for “The West” to go and never come back into Ukraine. At that time, Russia would invite the U.S. and its vassal-nations (or ‘allies’) to provide to any such Ukrainian any assistance, financial or otherwise, that the person might need in order to relocate into the U.S. empire. However, even if the U.S.-and-allied side refuse to provide any such assistance, the person must relocate and never come back — even if the person would then be stateless. Anyone who wishes to remain in Ukraine would be required to sign an oath of loyalty to the new, pro-Russian, Ukrainian Government. That would automatically entail the right to vote in the new Ukraine’s future elections.

The only alternative to there being a clear win of this war by either side would be for America to agree to Russia’s demand that America recognize the legitimacy of the then-existing line of separation between the two sides, and for Russia to relocate its own capital away from Moscow, to Novosibirsk (1,900 miles away from Ukraine) or some other city that would be far enough away from NATO so that America would not within the forseeable future any longer be able, at all realistically, to aspire to checkmate against, and grab control over, Russia. That would entail concessions by both sides, no win for either side. (Moving the capital to Novosibirsk would also place the capital near the center of Russia and within its Asian part — better suited for the future, nearer to China, Beijing being 1,865 miles away.) America would continue to be the world’s biggest threat to peace; the only way to stop that would be for Russia to win in Ukraine against America.

America is attempting to carry out the plan that Cecil Rhodes came up with in 1877, and that Harry Truman committed America to on 25 July 1945, and that GHW Bush, starting on 24 February 1990, committed America and its allies to continue at least until Russia becomes conquered. Barack Obama merely started the present phase of this “Rhodesist plan”, a phase that could produce a nuclear WW III and end everything, if Russia fails to achieve a clear win against the U.S. empire.

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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 is from commons.com.ua/

“…and the ones who call the shots won’t be among the dead and lame; And on each end of the rifle we’re the same” — John McCutcheon

108 years ago this Christmas Eve something happened in the early months of the “War to End All Wars” that put a tiny little blip of hope in the historical timeline of the organized mass slaughter that is war.

The event was regarded by the professional military officer class to be so profound and so important (and so disturbing) that strategies were immediately put in place that would ensure that such an event could never happen again.

“Christian” Europe was in the fifth month of the war of 1914 – 1918, the so-called Great War that finally ground to a mutually suicidal halt after four years of exhausting trench warfare, with all of the original participants financially, spiritually and morally bankrupted.

British, Scottish, French, Belgian, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, German, Austrian, Hungarian, Serbian and Russian clergymen from church pulpits in those Christian nations were doing their part in fomenting a decidedly un-Christ-like patriotic fervor that would result in a holocaust that destroyed four empires, killed upwards of 20 million soldiers and civilians, physically wounded hundreds of millions more and caused the psychological and spiritual decimation of an entire generation of young men whose spiritual care was supposed to be the responsibility of those clergymen.

Christianity, it should be remembered, began as a highly ethical pacifist religion based on the teachings and actions of the nonviolent Jesus of Nazareth (and his pacifist apostles and followers). Christianity survived and thrived despite persecutions until it became the largest religion in the Roman Empire by the time Constantine the Great became emperor and usurped the religion into becoming OK with homicidal violence. Since then, the nations that profess Christianity as their state religion have never allowed the mainline churches to truly exercise the radical peacemaking of the original form of Christianity as Jesus had taught.

So, contrary to the ethical teachings of Jesus, most modern Christian churches have not been active resisters to its particular nation’s imperial aspirations, its nation’s aggressive wars, its nation’s war-makers or its nation’s war profiteers. Instead, the church has, by and large, become a bloody instrument of the satanic in support of whatever sociopathic warmongers and sociopathic corporations are in power.

So, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise to see that the religious leaders on both sides of World War I were convinced that God was on their particular side and therefore not on the side of those professed followers of Jesus that were fingered as enemies on the other side. The incongruity (believing that the same god was blessing the lethal weapons and protecting the doomed sons on both sides of No-Man’s Land) failed to register with the vast majority of combatants and their spiritual counselors.

So, early in the war, pulpits and pews all over Europe reverberated with flag-waving fervor, sending clear messages to the millions of doomed warrior-sons that it was their Christian duty to march off to kill the equally doomed Christian soldiers on the other side of the line. And for the civilians back home, it was their Christian duty to “support the troops” who were destined to return home dead or wounded, psychologically and spiritually broken, disillusioned – and faithless.

A mere five months into this frustrating war (featuring trench warfare, artillery barrages, withering machine gun fire, and, soon to come, unstoppable armored tanks, aerial bombardment and poison gas), the first Christmas of the war on the Western Front offered a respite to the exhausted, freezing and demoralized troops.

Christmas was the holiest of Christian holidays and every soldier in the frozen trenches was slowly coming to the abrupt realization that war was NOT glorious (as they had been led to believe). The new experiences of death, dying, hunger, frostbite, sleep deprivation, shell shock, traumatic brain injuries and homesickness, the traditional hopefulness of the spirit of Christmas had a special meaning for the troops.

Christmas reminded the soldiers of the good food, warm homes and beloved families that they had left behind and which – they now suspected – they might never see again. The soldiers in the trenches desperately sought some respite from the misery of the rat and lice-infested, corpse-infested and increasingly frozen trenches.

They did not yet realize that even if they survived physically, they might not survive psychically or spiritually.

Trench Warfare in 1914

In the excitement leading up to the war, most frontline soldiers had been convinced that God was on their side, that their nation was pre-destined to be victorious and that they would be “home before Christmas” where they would be celebrated as conquering heroes.

Instead, each frontline soldier was at the end of his emotional rope because of the unrelenting artillery barrages against which they were defenseless. If they weren’t killed or physically maimed by the artillery shells and bombs, they would eventually be emotionally destroyed by “shell-shock” (now known as combat-induced posttraumatic stress disorder – PTSD).

The soldier-victims of battlefield cruelty often suffered depression, suicidality, hyper-alertness and horrifying nightmares and flashbacks (which was usually misdiagnosed as a “hallucination of unknown cause”, a reality that would condemn millions of future soldiers to be mistakenly diagnosed with schizophrenia and thus mistakenly treated with addictive, brain-altering psych drugs).

Many World War I soldiers suffered any number of traumatic mental and/or neurological abnormalities, including traumatic brain injury, which only became a diagnosable affliction several wars later.

Among the other common war-induced “killers of the soul” were the starvation, the malnutrition, the dehydration, the infections (such as typhus and dysentery), the louse infestations, the trench foot, the frostbite and the gangrenous toes and fingers. If any of the tormented survivors got back home in one piece, they would not really appreciate being treated as military heroes in memorial day parades staged in their honor. They knew – if they were being totally honest with themselves – that they not heroes, but rather they were victims of a sick, delusional, militarized culture that glorified war and killing and then abandoned the wounded survivors, whom they wouldn’t or couldn’t understand.

Poison gas attacks from both sides, albeit begun by the scientifically-superior Germans, began early in 2015, and Allied tank warfare – which was a humiliating disaster for the British innovators of that new technology – wouldn’t be operational until the Battle of the Somme in 1916.

One of the most stressful and lethal realities for the frontline soldiers was the suicidal, misbegotten, “over the top” infantry assaults against the opposition’s machine gun nests. Such assaults were complicated by the presence of shell holes and the rows of coiled barbed wire that often made them sitting ducks. Artillery barrages from both sides commonly resulted in tens of thousands of casualties in a single day.

The “over the top” infantry assaults sacrificed hundreds of thousands of obedient soldiers in the futile efforts to gain ground. Those assaults were stupidly and repeatedly ordered by senior officers such as Sir John French and his replacement as British Commander-in-Chief, Sir Douglas Haig. Most of the old-timer generals of a century ago had trouble admitting that their outdated horse and sabre cavalry charges across the muck of No-Man’s Land were both hopeless and suicidal.

The general staff planners of their disastrous attempts to end the war quickly (or at least end the stalemate) were safely out of the range of enemy artillery barrages. The national war-planners were safely back in Parliament or in their castles, and their aristocratic generals were comfortably back at their warm and dry headquarters far away from the battles, eating well, being dressed by their orderlies, and drinking their tea and claret – none of them at any risk of suffering the lethality of war.

Psychologically distressing screams of pain often came from the wounded soldiers who were helplessly hanging on the barbed wire or trapped and perhaps bleeding to death in the bomb craters between the trenches. Often the dying of the wounded would linger for days, and the effect on the troops in the trenches, who had to listen to the desperate, unanswerable cries for help was always psychologically devastating. By the time Christmas came and winter hit, troop morale on both sides of No Man’s Land had hit rock bottom.

Christmas in the Trenches

So on December 24, 1914, the exhausted troops settled down to their meager Christmas with, for the lucky ones, gifts from home, special food, special liquor, special chocolate bars and the hope for peace, if even for one night.

On the German side, a magnanimous (and deluded) Kaiser Wilhelm ordered that 100,000 Christmas trees with millions of ornamental candles be sent to the front, expecting that such an act would boost German troop morale. Using the precious supply lines for such militarily unnecessary items was ridiculed by the most hardened officers, and nobody suspected that the Kaiser’s Christmas tree idea would backfire – instead becoming a catalyst for an unplanned-for and unauthorized cease-fire, orchestrated by non-officers and unheard of in the history of warfare. It was to become censored out of mainstream history books for most of the next century.

The Christmas Truce of 1914 was a spontaneous, unauthorized event that happened at a number of locations all along the 600 miles of triple trenches that stretched across Belgium and France, and it was an event that would never again be duplicated.

”Joyeux Noel”

Ten years ago, “Joyeux Noel” (French for “Merry Christmas”) received a well-deserved Academy Award nomination for best foreign film of 2005. It tells the moving tale that was adapted from the many surviving stories that had been told in letters from soldiers who had participated in the truce. It was almost a miracle that the truth of that remarkable event survived the powerful censorship.

Courageous German soldier Singing in No Man’s Land – Christmas Eve 1914

As told in the movie, in the darkened battlefield, some German soldier started singing the beloved Christmas hymn “Stille Nacht”. Soon the British, French and Scots on the other side of No Man’s Land joined in with their versions of “Silent Night”. Other Christmas songs were sung, often as duets in two tongues. Before long, the spirit of peace and “goodwill towards men” prevailed over the demonic spirit of war, and the troops on both sides began to sense their common humanity. The natural human aversion to killing other humans broke through to consciousness and overcame the fear, patriotic fervor and pro-war brain-washing to which they had all been subjected.

Soldiers on both sides courageously dropped their weapons, came “over the top” in peace to meet their former foes face-to-face. To get to the neutral zone, they had to climb over barbed wire, walk around shell holes and over frozen corpses (which were later to be given respectful burials during an extension of the truce, with soldiers from both sides helping one another with the gruesome task of burying their comrades).

Graves in No Man’s Land – Christmas Day 1914

Treasonous French, German and Scottish Lieutenants – Christmas Day, 1914

The spirit of retaliation had been replaced by a spirit of reconciliation and the desire for real peace on earth. New friends shared chocolate bars, cigarettes, wine, schnapps, soccer games and pictures from home. Addresses were exchanged, photos were taken and every soldier who genuinely experienced the emotional drama was forever changed, having an aversion to kill men who were not demons but rather exactly the same as they were.

And the generals and the politicians back home were appalled.

Fostering Peace on Earth in Times of War is an Act of Treason

Fraternization with the enemy (as well as refusing to obey orders in time of war) is universally regarded by military commanders as an act of treason and a serious crime deserving of severe punishment. In most wars throughout history, such “crimes” were often dealt with by severe beatings and often firing squad. In the case of the Christmas Truce of 1914, most commanding officers feared mutiny if severe punishments were carried out so, instead, not wanting to draw public attention to an incident that was potentially contagious and could stop the war, they  censored letters home and tried to ignore the episode.

War correspondents were forbidden to report the incident to their papers. Some commanding officers threatened courts martial if fraternization persisted. They understood that getting to know and befriend a supposed enemy was bad for the killing spirit of war.

There were punishments that were carried out against some of the most conscientious soldiers who refused to fire their rifles. The French Catholic and British Protestant Allied troops naturally began questioning the moral legitimacy of the war and so they were re-assigned to different – and less desirable – regiments.

German troops were either Lutheran or Catholic, and the consciences of many of them had been revived by the truce. Refusing to obey their orders to kill, many of them were sent to the Eastern Front where there were much harsher conditions. Separated from their comrades who had also experienced the spirit of Christmas, they had no choice but to fight and die in the equally suicidal battles against their Russian Orthodox Christian co-religionists. Very few Allied or German soldiers who experienced the Christmas Truce of 1914 survived the war.

If humanity is truly concerned with the barbaric nature of militarism, and if our modern-era false flag-generated wars of empire are to be effectively derailed, the story of the Christmas Truce of 1914 needs to be retold over and over again.

The satanic nature of war became obvious to the ones who experienced the Christmas Truce in 1914, but war profiteers have been trying –with great success – to cover it up ever since. Flag-waving patriotism and telling fake or exaggerated stories of universal military heroism have worked well to glorify what is blatantly inglorious.

The satanic nature of war has existed ever since greed took over natural humane values and somebody found out that he could dominate somebody else (or steal his possessions) with the threat of bodily harm. The satanic nature of homicidal violence, whether state-sponsored or simply a solitary act, was recognized as evil by the nonviolent Jesus and his earliest followers 2000 years ago.

Both ancient and modern wars have been unjustifiably glorified in history textbooks and, if civilization is to survive, they need to be exposed as satanic.  Violence begets violence and wars are contagious. Wars are universally futile, seem to be contagious, never truly end and their extremely high costs makes them a very poor return on investment.

Modern American wars are now being fought by vulnerable, thoroughly indoctrinated, post-adolescent, Call of Duty first person shooter gamers who liked the adrenalin high of killing virtual “bad guys”. Sadly, unbeknownst to them, they are at high risk of having their emotional and spiritual lives negatively and permanently altered by the physical, mental and spiritual damage that always comes from participating in actual homicidal violence.

Combat war can easily doom its participants to a life overwhelmed by the wounds of war (PTSD, sociopathic personality disorder, suicidality, homicidality, loss of religious faith, traumatic brain injury, malnutrition from the highly processed military food, autoimmunie disorders because of the military’s over-vaccination programs with neurotoxic vaccines, and addictive drug use [either legal or illegal]). What is most important to realize is that all those lethal effects are totally preventable.

Society has an Ethical Duty to Warn

It seems to me that it would be helpful if moral leadership in America, especially its Christian leaders, would discharge their duty to warn their children and adolescents about all of the serious consequences that being in the killing professions can have on their souls and psyches.

Without such countervailing truths being told by a nation’s moral leadership, war planners have an easy time keeping potential  soldiers from recognizing the humanity of those that are fingered as enemies, whether they are Syrians, Iranians, Iraqis, Afghanis, Russians, Vietnamese, Chinese or North Koreans. I have been repeatedly told by military veterans that military chaplains, who are supposed to be nurturers of the souls of the soldiers that are in their “care”, never bring up, in their counseling sessions, the Golden Rule, Jesus’ clear “love your enemies” commands, his many ethical teachings in the Sermon on the Mount or the biblical commandments that say “thou shalt not kill” or “thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s oil”.

Military chaplains (as is true with military psychiatrists as well) are just well-paid cogs in the apparatus of making war maximally efficient for their military, economic, political and corporate overlords. In fairness, I suppose, military chaplains have probably never been schooled – beginning with their Sunday School upbringings – in the profoundly important gospel truths about humility, mercy, non-violence, non-domination, non-retaliation, unconditional love and the rejection of enmity. Is it too late to start asking them to do what Jesus would have them do?

Theological Blind Spots of War

One theological blind spot about war was nicely illustrated near the end of “Joyeux Noel” in a powerful scene depicting a confrontation between the Christ-like, altruistic, antiwar Scottish chaplain and his pro-war Calvinist bishop. As the humble chaplain was mercifully administering the “last rites” to a dying soldier, he was approached by the bishop, who had come to chastise the chaplain for fraternizing with the enemy during the Christmas Truce. The bishop summarily relieved the simple pastor of his chaplaincy duties because of his “treasonous and shameful” Christ-like behavior on the battlefield.

The authoritarian bishop refused to listen to the chaplain’s story about his having performed “the most important mass of my life” (with enemy troops participating in the celebration) or the fact that he wished to stay with the soldiers that needed him because they were losing their faith in God. The bishop angrily denied the chaplain’s request to remain with his men.

Christmas Eve Mass, France, Dec 24, 1914

The bishop then delivered a rousing pro-war, jingoistic sermon (which was taken word-for-word from a homily that had actually been delivered by an Anglican bishop later in the war). The sermon was addressed to the fresh troops that had to be brought in to replace the veteran soldiers who had suddenly become averse to killing, and were refusing to fire on the “enemy”.

The image of the dramatic but subtle response of the chaplain to his sacking should be a clarion call to the Christian church leadership – both clergy and lay – of every militarized, so-called “Christian” nation. This chaplain, after listening to the bishops sermon, simply hung up his cross and walked out of the door of the field hospital.

“Joyeux Noel” is an important film that deserves to be annual holiday viewing. It has ethical lessons far more powerful than the traditional fare of “It’s A Wonderful Life” or “A Christmas Carol”.

One of the lessons of the story is summarized in the concluding verse of John McCutcheon’s famous song about the event: “Christmas in the Trenches”:

“My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell.

Dr Kohls is a retired physician from Duluth, MN, USA. In the decade prior to his retirement, he practiced what could best be described as “holistic (non-drug) and preventive mental health care”. Since his retirement, he has written a weekly column for the Duluth Reader, an alternative newsweekly magazine. His columns mostly deal with the dangers of American imperialism, friendly fascism, corporatism, militarism, racism, and the dangers of Big Pharma, psychiatric drugging, the over-vaccinating of children and other movements that threaten American democracy, civility, health and longevity and the future of the planet. Many of his columns are archived at http://duluthreader.com/articles/categories/200_Duty_to_Warn, http://www.globalresearch.ca/authors?query=Gary+Kohls+articles&by=&p=&page_id= or at https://www.transcend.org/tms/search/?q=gary+kohls+articles

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First published on December 16, 2022

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Perhaps some vegans would agree with the World Economic Forum’s attempt to sell the idea that only a dictatorship can ensure that methane emitting cows, real food supporters and mixed farmers will not disrupt the path of global salvation set out by the proponents of a ‘Green New Deal’.

Whatever opinions may be held, the interpretation of what constitutes a ‘Green’ diet is not being decided by common sense oriented consumers of pro-ecological foods.

Amongst the fake foods being pushed forward as ‘world saving’, synthetic beef is already in production in Israel, Holland, Indonesia and the USA.

The motivation to create such a product centres around the story that cows give off methane thereby contributing to global warming.

This piece of so called ‘science’ has given a boost to the vegan argument that mankind should adopt a purely vegetable, grain, fruit and nut diet – and that farm animals should be phased-out of agricultural practices altogether.

The more thoughtful ones rightly point-out that some 70% of all agricultural grains are used to feed livestock instead of to feed human beings direct, thus producing a huge imbalance in global food availability and efforts to eradicate poverty and starvation.

This argument, widely adopted by the vegan lobby – should be recognised as valid – provided it is seen in the context of a long, gradual evolutionary transformation of farming systems and human dietary trends. But not as reason to force veganism on a generally omnivorous global human family, overnight.

Veganism has already advanced quite rapidly in the ‘health conscious’ segment of modern Western society; but it is riven with confusions and extremism.

Most of the younger generation know absolutely nothing about food and farming, plant processing or modern food production methods.

They can’t make an informed distinction between ‘grass-fed’ (no grains), low stocking density, free ranging well cared for livestock – and cereal fed, highly intensive, high stocking rate ‘coral’ based animal concentration camps.

Starting from here, the vegan goes only by what he/she is informed is a ‘healthy meat free diet’, via the heavily slanted projections of corporate advertising.

But is it healthy?

Unfortunately not. Unless organically grown (a tiny minority), the vegetables, fruits, nuts and grains  that form the typical vegan diet are all the product of intense agrichemical farming methods that use synthetic nitrogen, carcinogenic pesticides, herbicides, fungicides and monocultural (non rotational) soil depleting field management methods.

Such foods are also grown by ‘hydroponic’ methods. Here vegetables are grown in large vertical greenhouses using no soil at all, just water drip fed with chemicals. The mechanics of this system are largely robotic.

The majority of vegans have no idea about any of this. They judge all by the words of the propaganda machine which pumps out glossy photos of perfect looking veggies being eaten by perfect looking people in perfect looking homes and perfect looking restaurants.

The sales pitch for vegan is as brutal as any other corporate backed global market promotion.  It is hugely misleading, deeply divisive and increasingly political. It conveys the sense of ‘purity’ on one hand and ‘degenerate’ attitudes on the other; when of course the reality is neither.

There is a clear moral statement behind vegan and vegetarian, but it only becomes a broader force for the good when it involves eating such foods grown caringly, organically and locally.

The rest is simply about supporting the centralisation, globalisation and ‘devitaminisation’ of the food chain. The hypermarket/supermarket New World Order.

This takes us straight back to the deeply deceptive WEF Green New Deal agenda for a fascistic, corporate ‘Zero CO2’ food and farming future ‘To save the world from global warming’.

If we want to be on the right side of the laws of nature – then we must feed ourselves via human scale, ecological and time honoured methods of environmentally friendly farming.

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Julian Rose is an early pioneer of UK organic farming, writer, international activist, entrepreneur and holistic teacher.  He is President of The International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside and Co-founder of the Hardwick Alliance for Real Ecology HARE. His 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. 

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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***

Mike Whitney: You think that Putin should have acted more forcefully from the beginning in order to end the war quickly. Is that an accurate assessment of your view on the war? And—if it is—then what do you think is the downside of allowing the conflict to drag on with no end in sight?

Paul Craig Roberts: Yes, you have correctly stated my position. But as my position can seem “unAmerican” to the indoctrinated and brainwashed many, those who watch CNN, listen to NPR, and read the New York Times, I am going to provide some of my background before going on with my answer.

I was involved in the 20th century Cold War in many ways: As a Wall Street Journal editor; as an appointee to an endowed chair in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, part of Georgetown University at the time of my appointment, where my colleagues were Henry Kissinger, National Security Advisor and Secretary of State, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor, and James Schlesinger, a Secretary of Defense and CIA director who was one of my professors in graduate school at the University of Virginia; as a member of the Cold War Committee on the Present Danger; and as a member of a secret presidential committee with power to investigate the CIA’s opposition to President Reagan’s plan to end the Cold War.

With a history such as mine, I was surprised when I took an objective position on Russian President Putin’s disavowal of US hegemony, and found myself labeled a “Russian dupe/agent” on a website, “PropOrNot,” which may have been financed by the US Department of State, the National Endowment for Democracy, or the CIA itself, still harboring old resentments against me for helping President Reagan end the Cold War, which had the potential of reducing the CIA’s budget and power. I still wonder what the CIA might do to me, despite the agency inviting me to address the agency, which I did, and explain why they went wrong in their reasoning.

I will also say that in my articles I am defending truth, not Putin, although Putin is, in my considered opinion, the most honest player, and perhaps the most naive, in the current game that could end in nuclear Armageddon. My purpose is to prevent nuclear Armageddon, not to take sides. I remember well President Reagan’s hatred of “those godawful nuclear weapons” and his directive that the purpose was not to win the Cold War but to end it.

Now to Mike’s question, which is to the point. Perhaps to understand Putin we need to remember life, or how it was presented by the West to the Soviet Union and the American broadcasts into the Soviet Union of the freedom of life in the West where streets were paved with gold and food markets had every conceivable delicacy.

Possibly this created in the minds of many Soviets, not all, that life in the Western world was heavenly compared to the hell in which Russians existed. I still remember being on a bus in Uzbekistan in 1961 when a meat delivery truck appeared on the street. All traffic followed the truck to the delivery store where a several block long line already waited. When you compare this life with a visit to an American supermarket, Western superiority stands out. Russian hankerings toward the West have little doubt constrained Putin, but Putin himself has been affected by the differences in life between the US in those times and the Soviet Union.

Putin is a good leader, a human person, perhaps too human for the evil he faces. One way to look at my position that Putin does too little instead of too much is to remember the World War II era when British Prime Minister Chamberlin was accused of encouraging Hitler by accepting provocation after provocation. My own view of this history is that it is false, but it remains widely believed. Putin accepts provocations despite having declared red lines that he does not enforce. Consequently, his red lines are not believed. Here is one report:

RT reported on December 10 that “The US has quietly given Ukraine the go-ahead to launch long-range strikes against targets inside Russian territory, the Times reported on Friday, citing sources. The Pentagon has apparently changed its stance on the matter as it has become less concerned that such attacks could escalate the conflict.”

In other words, by his inaction Putin has convinced Washington and its European puppet states that he doesn’t mean what he says and will endlessly accept ever worsening provocations, which have gone from sanctions to Western financial help to Ukraine, weapons supply, training and targeting information, provision of missiles capable of attacking internal Russia, attack on the Crimea bridge, destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines, torture of Russian POWs, attacks on Russian parts of Ukraine reincorporated into the Russian Federation, and attacks on internal Russia.

At some point there will be a provocation that is too much. That’s when the SHTF.

Putin’s goal has been to avoid war. Thus, his limited military objective in Ukraine to throw the Ukrainian forces out of Donbass meant a limited operation that left Ukrainian war infrastructure intact, able to receive and deploy advanced weapons from the West, and to force Russian withdrawals to lines more defensible with the very limited forces Putin committed to the conflict. The Ukrainian offensives convinced the West that Russia could be defeated, thus making the war a primary way of undermining Russia as an obstacle to Washington’s hegemony. The British press proclaimed that the Ukrainian Army would be in Crimea by Christmas.

What Putin needed was a quick victory that made it completely clear that Russia had enforceable red lines that Ukraine had violated. A show of Russian military force would have stopped all provocations. The decadent West would have learned that it must leave the bear alone. Instead the Kremlin, misreading the West, wasted eight years on the Minsk Agreement that former German Chancellor Merket said was a deception to keep Russia from acting when Russia could have easily succeeded. Putin now agrees with me that it was his mistake not to have intervened in Donbass before the US created a Ukrainian army.

My last word to Mike’s question is that Putin has misread the West. He still thinks the West has in its “leadership” reasonable people, who no doubt act the role for Putin’s benefit, with whom he can have negotiations. Putin should go read the Wolfowitz Doctrine. If Putin doesn’t soon wake up, Armageddon is upon us, unless Russia surrenders.

MW: I agree with much of what you say here, particularly this: “Putin’s inaction has convinced Washington… that he doesn’t mean what he says and will endlessly accept ever worsening provocations.”

You’re right, this is a problem. But I’m not sure what Putin can do about it. Take, for example, the drone attacks on airfields on Russian territory. Should Putin have responded tit-for-tat by bombing supplylines in Poland? That seems like a fair response but it also risks NATO retaliation and a broader war which is definitely not in Russia’s interests.

Now, perhaps, Putin would not have faced these flashpoints had he deployed 500,000 combat troops to begin and leveled a number of cities on his way to Kiev, but keep in mind, Russian public opinion about the war was mixed at the beginning, and only grew more supportive as it became apparent that Washington was determined to defeat Russia, topple its government, and weaken it to the point where it could not project power beyond its borders. The vast majority of the Russian people now understand what the US is up-to which explains why Putin’s public approval ratings are presently at 79.4% while support for the war is nearly universal. In my opinion, Putin needs this level of support to sustain the war effort; so, postponing the mobilization of additional troops has actually worked to his benefit.

More importantly, Putin must be perceived to be the rational player in this conflict. This is absolutely essential. He must be seen as a cautious and reasonable actor who operates with restraint and within the confines of international law. This is the only way he will be able to win the continued support of China, India etc. We must not forget that the effort to build a multipolar world order requires coalition building which is undermined by impulsive, violent behavior. In short, I think Putin’s “go-slow” approach (your words) is actually the correct course of action. I think if he had run roughshod across Ukraine like Sherman on his way to the sea, he would have lost critical allies that will help him establish the institutions and economic infrastructure he needs to create a new order.

So, my question to you is this: What does a Russian victory look like? Is it just a matter of pushing the Ukrainian army out of the Donbas or should Russian forces clear the entire region east of the Dnieper River? And what about the west of Ukraine? What if the western region is reduced to rubble but the US and NATO continue to use it as a launching pad for their war against Russia?

I can imagine many scenarios in which the fighting continues for years to come, but hardly any that end in either a diplomatic settlement or an armistice. Your thoughts?

Paul Craig Roberts: I think, Mike, that you have identified the reasoning that explains Putin’s approach to the conflict in Ukraine. But I think Putin is losing confidence in his approach. Caution about approaching war is imperative. But when war begins it must be won quickly, especially if the enemy has prospects of gaining allies and their support. Putin’s caution delayed Russia’s rescue of Donbass for eight years, during which Washington created and equipped an Ukrainian army that turned what would have been an easy rescue in 2014 like Crimea into the current war approaching a year in duration. Putin’s caution in waging the war has given Washington and the Western media plenty of time to create and control the narrative, which is unfavorable to Putin, and to widen the war with US and NATO direct participation, now admitted by Foreign Minister Lavrov. The war has widened into direct attacks on Russia herself.

These attacks on Russia might bring the pro-Western Russian liberals into alignment with Putin, but the ability of a corrupt third world US puppet state to attack Russia is anathema to Russian patriots. The Russians who will do the fighting see in the ability of Ukraine to attack Mother Russia the failure of the Putin government.

As for China and India, the two countries with the largest populations, they have witnessed Washington’s indiscriminate use of force without domestic or international consequence to Washington. They don’t want to ally with a week-kneed Russia.

I will also say that as Washington and NATO were not constrained by public opinion in their two decades of wars in the Middle East and North Africa, based entirely on lies and secret agendas, what reason does Putin have to fear a lack of Russian public support for rescuing Donbass, formerly a part of Russia, from neo-Nazi persecution? If Putin must fear this, it shows his mistake in tolerating US-financed NGOs at work in Russia brainwashing Russians.

No, Putin should not engage in tit-for-tat. There is no need for him to send missiles into Poland, Germany, the UK, or the US. All Putin needs to do is to close down Ukrainian infrastructure so that Ukraine, despite Western help, cannot carry on the war. Putin is starting to do this, but not on a total basis.

The fact of the matter is that Putin never needed to send any troops to the rescue of Donbass. All he needed to do was to send the American puppet, Zelensky, a one hour ultimatum and if surrender was not forthcoming shut down with conventional precision missiles, and air attacks if necessary, the entirety of the power, water, and transportation infrastructure of Ukraine, and send special forces into Kiev to make a public hanging of Zelensky and the US puppet government.

The effect on the degenerate Woke West, which teaches in its own universities and public schools hatred of itself, would have been electric. The cost of messing with Russia would have been clear to all the morons who talk about Ukraine being in Crimea by Christmas. NATO would have dissolved. Washington would have removed all sanctions and shut up the stupid, war-crazy neoconservatives. The world would be at peace.

The question you have asked is, after all of Putin’s mistakes, what does a Russian victory look like? First of all, we don’t know if there is going to be a Russian victory. The cautious way that Putin reasons and acts, as you explained, is likely to deny Russia a victory. Instead, there could be a negotiated demilitarized zone and the conflict will be set on simmer, like the unresolved conflict in Korea.

On the other hand, if Putin is waiting the full deployment of Russia’s hypersonic nuclear missiles that no defense system can intercept and, following Washington, moves to first use of nuclear weapons, Putin will have the power to put the West on notice and be able to use the power of Russian military force to instantly end the conflict.

MW: You make some very good points, but I still think that Putin’s slower approach has helped to build public support at home and abroad. But, of course, I could be wrong. I do disagree strongly with your assertion that China and India “don’t want to ally with weak-kneed Russia”. In my opinion, both leaders see Putin as a bright and reliable statesman who is perhaps the greatest defender of sovereign rights in the last century. Both India and China are all-too-familiar with Washington’s coercive diplomacy and I’m sure they appreciate the efforts of a leader who has become the world’s biggest proponent of self-determination and independence. I’m sure the last thing they want, is to become cowering houseboys like the leaders in Europe who are, apparently, unable to decide anything without a ‘nod’ from Washington. (Note: Earlier today Putin said that EU leaders were allowing themselves to be treated like a doormat. Putin: “Today, the EU’s main partner, the US, is pursuing policies leading directly to the de-industrialization of Europe. They even try to complain about that to their American overlord. Sometimes even with resentment they ask ‘Why are you doing this to us?’ I want to ask: ‘What did you expect?’ What else happens to those who allow feet to be wiped on them?”)

Paul Craig Roberts: Mike, I agree that Russia for the reasons you provide is the choice partner of China and India. What I meant is that China and India want to see a powerful Russia that shields them from Washington’s interference. China and India are not reassured by what at times seems to be Putin’s irresolution and hesitancy. The rules that Putin plays by are no longer respected in the West.

Putin is correct that all European, and the Canadian, Australian, Japanese, and New Zealand governments, are doormats for Washington. What escapes Putin is that Washington’s puppets are comfortable in this role. Therefore, how much chance does he have in scolding them for their subservience and promising them independence? A reader recently reminded me about the Asch experiment in the 1950s, which found that people tended to conform to the prevalent narratives, and of the use to which Edward Bernays analysis of propaganda is put. And there is the information given me in the 1970s by a high government official that European governments do what we want because we “give the leaders bags of money. We own them. They report to us.”

In other words, our puppets live in a comfort zone. Putin will have a hard time breaking into this with merely exemplary behavior.

MW: For my final question, I’d like to tap into your broader knowledge of the US economy and how economic weakness might be a factor in Washington’s decision to provoke Russia. Over the last 10 months, we’ve heard numerous pundits say that NATO’s expansion to Ukraine creates an “existential crisis” for Russia. I just wonder if the same could be said about the United States? It seems like everyone from Jamie Diamond to Nouriel Roubini has been predicting a bigger financial cataclysm than the full-system meltdown of 2008. In your opinion, is this the reason why the media and virtually the entire political establishment are pushing so hard for a confrontation with Russia? Do they see war as the only way the US can preserve its exalted position in the global order?

Paul Craig Roberts: The idea that governments turn to war to focus attention away from a failing economy is popular, but my answer to your question is that the operating motive is US hegemony. The Wolfowitz Doctrine states it clearly. The doctrine says the principal goal of US foreign policy is to prevent the rise of any country that could serve as a constraint on US unilateralism. At the 2007 Munich security conference Putin made it clear that Russia will not subordinate its interest to the interest of the US.

There are some crazed neoconservatives in Washington who believe nuclear war can be won and who have shaped US nuclear weapons policy into a pre-emptive attack mode focused on reducing the ability of the recipient of a first strike to retaliate. The US is not seeking a war with Russia, but might blunder into one. The operative neoconservative policy is to cause problems for Russia that can cause internal problems, distract the Kremlin from Washington’s power moves, isolate Russia with propaganda, and even possibly pull off a color revolution inside Russia or in a former Russian province, such as Belarus, as was done in Georgia and Ukraine. People have forgot the US-instigated invasion of South Ossetia by the Georgian army that Putin sent in Russian forces to stop, and they have forgot the recent disturbances in Kazakhstan that were calmed by the arrival of Russian troops. The plan is to keep picking away at the Kremlin. Even if Washington doesn’t meet in every case with the success enjoyed in the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, the incidents succeed as distractions that use up Kremlin time and energy, result in dissenting opinions within the government, and that require military contingency planning. As Washington controls the narratives, the incidents also serve to blacken Russia as an aggressor and portray Putin as “the new Hitler.” The propaganda successes are considerable–the exclusion of Russian athletes from competitions, refusals of orchestras to play music of Russian composers, exclusion of Russian literature, and a general refusal to cooperate with Russia in any way. This has a humiliating effect on Russians and might be corrosive of public support for the government. It has to be highly frustrating for Russian athletes, ice skaters, entertainers, and their fans.

Nevertheless, the conflict in Ukraine can turn into a general war intended or not. This is my concern and is the reason I think the Kremlin’s limited go-slow operation is a mistake. It offers too many opportunities for Washington’s provocations to go too far.

There is an economic element. Washington is determined to prevent its European empire from being drawn into closer relations with Russia from energy dependence and business relationships. Indeed, some explain the economic sanctions as de-industrializing Europe in behalf of Washington’s economic and financial hegemony. See this.

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

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). 

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***

In a recent CHD.TV episode of “Good Morning CHD,” three Canadian doctors — Drs. Charles Hoffe and Stephen Malthouse and Chris Shaw, Ph.D. — discussed Canada’s disturbing normalization since 2016 of “medical assistance in dying” (“MAID”) and their government’s possibly imminent endorsement of the practice for “mature minors” who request death without parental knowledge or consent.

“Physician-assisted suicide,” “assisted suicide,” “assisted dying” and euthanasia — each with slightly different legal connotations — all refer to medical interventions to expedite death, with the main distinction being “who performs the final, fatal act.”

Last year, 3.3% of deaths in Canada occurred under MAID, representing “a growth rate of 32.4% over 2020,” and “steady year over year growth” in all provinces, including in the 18- to 45-year age group.

Among the first 100 patients to avail themselves of MAID in the province of Ontario, more than 5% were younger adults ages 35-54.

In the Netherlands and Belgium, other countries that allow euthanasia, those under age 60 account for 12.5% and 15% of those euthanized, respectively.

What the Canadian doctors were discussing on “Good Morning CHD” was a consequential 2021 modification to Canada’s original MAID law, eliminating the criterion that previously had made it a requirement for a candidate’s death to be “reasonably foreseeable” — and making decisions about eligibility far more subjective.

Even for those with “reasonably foreseeable” deaths, the bill eliminated a formerly mandated 10-day “reflection period” and downgraded the requirement for independent witnesses from two to one.

The three doctors and other critics of the more expansive policy warn that it will “nurture the country’s growing culture of death” and open the door to even more widespread implementation of a practice that is already ethically contentious, particularly since the Canadian government has pledged to consider eligibility for minors as young as 12 if deemed “capable of making decisions with respect to their health.”

Extending MAID eligibility to youth — which could be on the horizon as soon as 2023 — would mean that “before children in Canada can drive vehicles, they may be allowed to consent to physicians taking their lives.”

As Hoffe wryly commented to his two colleagues, “It is amazing the lengths that the government seems to be going to — to reduce the population.”

A growing trend, including in the youngest

Legalization of euthanasia and/or physician-assisted suicide is a growing trend worldwide, exhibiting a “momentum” that “appears unstoppable.”

Not only are more and more nations endorsing a practice that was “prohibited and morally condemned” throughout much of human history, but every country or jurisdiction that allows it is experiencing the same year-over-year growth as Canada.

And when it comes to hastening death for young people, in particular, Canada is not entirely an outlier.

Belgium, in 2014, became the first country to legalize lethal injection for children of all ages, having laid the groundwork 12 years earlier with legal euthanasia — explicitly defined as “medical treatment” — for adults and emancipated minors.

In 2016 and 2017, according to the Daily Mail, Belgium’s “radical laws” enabled the putting to death of three children and 19 young adults under age 30. Belgium reported another child euthanasia death in 2019, a year in which the country euthanized a “record number” of people overall.

Also in the vanguard of kiddie euthanasia is the Netherlands, where a 2002 law not only established the practice for adults — with the range of eligible conditions expanded in 2007 — but allowed euthanasia for children ages 12 and up. Parental consent is not required for those 16 or 17 years old.

In the first decade, there were five assisted deaths in Dutch adolescents, including one 12-year-old.

Under a “devil’s bargain between medical professionals and prosecutors,” Dutch doctors also can kill certain babies in their first year without fear of prosecution, as long as they follow a designated protocol.

In late 2022, a member of the Quebec College of Physicians proposed something similar to the Canadian parliament, suggesting that babies with “severe deformations or very grave and severe syndromes” be candidates for assisted suicide.

Objecting, a horrified bioethicist and physician noted that this would leave too “much room for parental, physician, personal, social and economic bias.”

Given the unwarranted fear-mongering about pediatric COVID-19 — used to justify misleading and ultimately genocidal vaccine mandates for kids — it is noteworthy that during the pandemic years, the Netherlands joined Canada in pointedly escalating its kid-focused euthanasia legislation.

In late 2020, the Dutch Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, began taking steps to extend “active termination of life” to children ages 1-12, first stacking the deck with a favorable commissioned report from the Dutch Society of Pediatrics.

Dutch Health Minister Ernst Kuipers renewed the case for under-12 euthanasia in a June 2022 briefing to members of parliament.

Meanwhile, in May 2022, Colombia became the first Latin American country to endorse medically assisted suicide, having made euthanasia legal in 1997. The laws apply to children as young as 6.

Switzerland, where assisted suicide (but not euthanasia) has been legal for seven decades, has played an influential role in normalizing the practice for all ages, even attracting lucrative “suicide tourism” in slick designer-furnished clinics due to its willingness to provide death to foreigners.

As long as “patients commit the act themselves and helpers have no vested interest in their death,” there is no specified age limit, prompting The Guardian to observe in 2014, “technically even a healthy young person could use such services.”

According to studies of that time period, 1 in 5 assisted suicides in Switzerland involved adults under age 65, including individuals as young as 18.

A year ago, Switzerland legalized a fancy new way for people to kill themselves that is likely to appeal to young people — a space-age “coffin-like capsule with windows” designed so that the decedent-to-be can push a button, flood the interior with nitrogen and die within 10 minutes.

Why die? Let me count the ways

In 2017, Kees van der Staaij, the leader of the Netherlands’ Christian SGP party, communicated his concerns — in the Wall Street Journal, no less — about his country’s “euthanasia culture,” and other prominent figures agreed the situation might be “getting out of hand.”

That year, Dutch politicians discussed the option of legalizing euthanasia for “perfectly healthy” people, allowing “any person age 75 or over who decides their life is ‘complete’ to receive euthanasia.”

In 2015, Belgian doctors agreed to euthanize a healthy 24-year-old woman who convinced herself of a lifelong “death wish” despite growing up “with a quiet, stable family.”

Canada’s 2021 relaxation of its criteria for hastening death suggests that concerns about an out-of-hand process are legitimate — 219 individuals “whose natural deaths were not reasonably foreseeable” immediately opted that year for assisted death, with nearly half of that group (46%) citing “neurological” problems as a reason to die.

Between 2011 and 2014 in the Netherlands, doctors euthanized 110 individuals solely for mental disorders, including a man in his 30s “whose only diagnosis was autism.”

In a study published in 2020, European researchers cautioned that granting euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide (EAS) “based on a perception of the patient’s illness as being untreatable with no prospect of improvement, could … in many cases fail to meet the due care criteria listed in EAS laws.”

They added, “This practice neglects the individual’s potential for having a life worth living.”

In Canada, the Netherlands and elsewhere, some suggest that the ranks of assisted suicide candidates increasingly are likely to include not just youth and the mentally ill but also other marginalized groups, such as the homeless, the poor, the disabled, those with chronic pain — and “even dissenters who the government feels are not fit for society.”

Critics posit that instead of preserving human dignity, medically assisted death “seems to be a way to kill the vulnerable,” with the availability of assisted suicide “inducing hopelessness … and removing pressure for an improvement in psychiatric and social services.”

In fact, cost-benefit analyses have been creeping into the assisted death calculus for some time, with research and reports issued in advance of Canada’s 2021 amendments describing how doctor-assisted death could “save millions.”

Observers also note “the pressure on aging, low-birthrate societies to cut their health care costs” and describe doctors “allegedly suggesting [assisted suicide] to … sick people seeking a quietus for reasons linked to financial stress.”

Even euthanasia’s most ardent supporters are concerned that the “financial gutting of the healthcare sector” will encourage desperate people to resort to assisted death.

Overt … and covert

In the U.S., physician-assisted suicide is legal for adults in 10 states plus the nation’s capital, with half having legalized it just in the last five years: Oregon (law passed in 1994 and implemented in 1997), Washington (2009), Montana (2009), Vermont (2013), California (2015), Colorado (2016), the District of Columbia (2017), Hawaii (2018), Maine (2019), New Jersey (2019) and New Mexico(2021).

Reflecting the pandemic-spurred trend toward remote healthcare, Vermont’s governor signed a law this year to permit telemedicine as a route for “aid in dying.” The bill makes it possible for patients to waive the “two in-person consults and … 48-hour waiting period” ordinarily required to get a prescription, and also grants healthcare providers and pharmacists full legal immunity.

The enthusiasm that these jurisdictions display for the “freedom” to die — employing loft rhetoric about “dignity” and “humane” policies — contrasts sharply with their abysmal and malevolent performance during the pandemic, when all (with the exception of Montana) stood out in their willingness to destroy people’s livelihoods and use authoritarian measures to suppress constitutionally guaranteed freedoms.

The contrast was also evident in Spain, which chose — coincidentally or not — to legalize adult euthanasia in 2021. The same prime minister who vigorously enforced pandemic lockdowns and restrictions unironically declared that the euthanasia decision made his country “more humane, fairer and freer.”

As the pandemic disturbingly revealed, however, it is not just overt euthanasia that is on the rise — governments also appear increasingly willing to put their citizens to death without admitting to it.

In the U.K., which nominally promises a jail sentence of up to 14 years for those who help others to die, credible on-the-ground reports described the use of covert euthanasia as a “medical protocol,” with damning evidence including the health secretary’s unprecedented acquisition of a two-year supply of the execution drug midazolam in March 2020.

Citizens refer to the death of more than 136,000 elderly residents of U.K. care homes since April 2020 as the “Midazolam Murders,” but they also point out that “the UK Government and its institutions have been acting as if euthanasia is perfectly legal” for far longer, since at least 2008.

The ventilator- and remdesivir-only COVID-19 protocols inflexibly adhered to by U.S. hospitals immune from liability and salivating over hefty financial incentives — were another form of covert murder, as was the withholding around the world of safe and inexpensive treatments such as hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin.

And of course, the aggressive imposition of mandates for known-to-be-dangerous COVID-19 shots took government-instigated death and disability to even more shocking levels.

Describing how medically assisted suicide has become a cherished “progressive” and “liberal” value, one writer asks, “What if a society remains liberal but ceases to be civilized?”

As the cultural conditioning favoring euthanasia ramps up, citizens everywhere urgently need to query their governments’ uncivilized motives for both silently and openly celebrating death, rather than life.

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***

To the onlooker, Israel is visibly changing. The shift is most conspicuous from the outside: the world sees a western liberal democracy moving with alarming speed towards ultra-nationalism, fundamentalism, racism, fascism and the breakdown of democratic structures as a result of the recent election. 

While correct, this view is also distorted. It assumes that until now, Israel was indeed a western democracy, and that it is now visibly becoming something else. The truth, however, is less about Israel fundamentally changing, and more about it shedding its masks and disguises.

What is changing is the appearance. The cracks appearing in Israel’s image bear little relation to the underlying essence. From this standpoint – and this standpoint only – the new government can be viewed as a harbinger of a positive message: the truth about Israel will come to light, albeit at a heavy cost in terms of the oppression of Palestinians and the rupture of fragile democratic structures that hitherto served Israel’s Jews.

The new government will be the most right-wing and religiously conservative in Israel’s history. The truth, at least in terms of the ideology of most of its ministers, is that it will also be the most extremist government anywhere in the West today. The extreme right in Israel is much more extremist than the right in Europe, and perhaps even than in the US.

It will now rule Israel and control the most senior positions. A government in which Benjamin Netanyahu is the standard-bearer for the secular and liberal is a very extremist government indeed.

Threats lie in wait from all sides: destruction of the justice system, harm to minorities, a shameless ramping-up of Jewish supremacy, the heavy hand of religion in everyday life, and an occupation ever more cruel to its Palestinian subjects. It is difficult at such an early stage to know which of these will actually come to pass.

Israel has already had right-wing governments and extremist parties whose ascension to power had a moderating effect on their plans, for all kinds of reasons. “Things look different from here than they did from there” is the usually-accepted explanation. But it is certainly within the realm of possibility that Netanyahu’s new partners are made of sterner stuff and will carry out the looming threat of regime change in several areas of crucial significance for Israel.

Hitting the panic button

Faced with a potential actualisation of this extreme scenario, the Israeli left and centre have hit the panic button, notably by embarking on a campaign of attempted intimidation. Not a day passes without another prophecy of doom – and some, if not all, of these predictions will surely be borne out.

Nevertheless, one cannot help but ask: is the threatened change really such a radical one? Was Israel truly such a lone outpost of democratic norms, equality under the law, protection of human rights and sanctity of judicial systems that this new government could enter stage right and destroy it all?

Was that Israel of the “good old days” – the one before the new government – a country so far removed from fascism, ultra-nationalism and apartheid that the new government can come to power and change everything, so that Israel turns into that kind of country now?

Obviously not. Without downplaying the dangers posed by the new government and its chosen path, one cannot help but notice that the alarmist campaigns in response to its declarations seem to have a covert subtext about how good it was here when the Zionist left and centre were in power; how all of that will come to an end now, and how bad it will all be. That picture, however, is far from accurate.

Consider the 166 Palestinians, including at least 39 children, who died by acts of the Israeli military and settlers in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since the beginning of this year. An additional 49 Palestinians, including 17 children, who were killed in Gaza during Israel’s three-day onslaught in August on the besieged strip.

Were they killed under the terrifying new government featuring Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich, or under the so-called “government of change” featuring the liberal promises of Yair Lapid and Benny Gantz, whose tenure is now ending?

The difference between regimes will most likely be, first and foremost, one of rhetoric: the centre-left tries to gloss over the facts, whereas the extreme right will hide nothing. In some ways, this may prove advantageous.

The new government, by word and deed, may force Israel’s allies, along with the almost non-existent leftist camp in Israel, to look honestly at Israel and acknowledge the reality. With a government like the one that’s coming, no longer will there be an option to ignore, avert the gaze and obfuscate, attempting to make do with weak condemnations and clinging to a fictitious “peace process” or a two-state solution that has long been unrealistic.

The new government will force the West to look at Israel and admit, at least to itself: this is an apartheid state. Continuing the masquerade ball with Israel will become untenable. The new government may even compel Israel’s allies to move one step forward and, for the first time in Israel’s history, take practical actions against it.

Reason for hope

Not all of this may happen. Israel may not radicalise to the extent that some would have us fear; or, despite its radicalisation, the West – especially the US – may go on insisting that rhinestones are diamonds, claiming that Israel is the West’s frontline outpost in the Middle East and insisting that criticism of the state is forbidden because of the Holocaust.

But there is also another possibility. When Israel legislates appalling ultra-nationalist laws; when house demolitions and expulsions in the occupied West Bank soar; when Israel’s Supreme Court is stripped of all power; when the army kills unimaginable numbers of Palestinians and the annexation of the occupied territories becomes a fact no longer deniable – perhaps then, the West will have no other option than to turn its back on its beloved Israel, world champion of impunity, for whom almost everything is permissible.

Perhaps then, the West’s position will have to change. Maybe the West will finally understand that there is no legal or moral difference between the occupation in Ukraine and the occupation in Palestine, and that the measures it took immediately against the Russian occupation can finally be considered against the Israeli occupation, after 55 years that only postponed the ultimate outcome?

It is true that the new government, and especially some of its ministers, may take irreversible steps that could further amplify inequality, oppression, deprivation, discrimination and Jewish supremacy in all areas of life. Also true is that the first to pay the price for all this will be Palestinians in the occupied territories and Palestinian citizens of Israel. Their lives could certainly change, but let us bear in mind that their situation has already been intolerable for decades.

A handful of human rights activists in Israel may also pay a price, along with freedom of expression, which is already facing significant attempts at curtailment.

In addition, the expected damage to governmental checks and balances could endanger the entire state structure, from a planned “override clause” undermining the power of the Supreme Court in a country without a constitution, to proposed legislation designed to allow convicted criminals to serve in government. Many opinion pieces have already been written to warn against these dangers, which should not be taken lightly.

Meanwhile, the time has come for Israel to undergo a fundamental shakeup, including in the attitude of its friends in the West. For more than five decades, Israel has claimed that the occupation of 1967 was temporary, and the world bought into that bluff.

The new government will put an end to that. The occupation will be permanent, not temporary, and there will clearly be no intention to ever grant national rights to half the people living between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

This demands an international response; it is not an internal Israeli matter. Anyone who thinks that Israel will ever change course willingly, of its own accord, does not know Israel very well. Israel has no reason and no incentive to do so. The world has thus far accepted Israel with its apartheid and its oppression, while Israel ignores the international community, its institutions and its decisions.

No other country can thumb its nose at international law as Israel does and not pay a price. But apparently, there is a point at which a critical mass of insolence, arrogance and over-confidence could leave the world no choice but to take action. The hope is that this new government will bring Israel closer to precisely that point – apart from which, few hopes are evident in the vicinity.

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Gideon Levy is a Haaretz columnist and a member of the newspaper’s editorial board. Levy joined Haaretz in 1982, and spent four years as the newspaper’s deputy editor. He was the recipient of the Euro-Med Journalist Prize for 2008; the Leipzig Freedom Prize in 2001; the Israeli Journalists’ Union Prize in 1997; and The Association of Human Rights in Israel Award for 1996. His new book, The Punishment of Gaza, has just been published by Verso.

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***

The US ambassador in Peru, Lisa Kenna, worked for the CIA for 9 years, as well as the Pentagon. One day before the coup against elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo, Kenna met with Peru’s defense minister, who then ordered the military to turn against Castillo.

The US ambassador in Peru, a veteran CIA agent named Lisa Kenna, met with the country’s defense minister just one day before democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo was overthrown in a coup d’etat and imprisoned without trial.

Peru’s defense minister, a retired brigadier general, ordered the military to turn against Castillo.

The coup set off mass protests all across Peru. The unelected regime has unleashed brutal violence, and police have killed numerous demonstrators.

Meanwhile, the US government has staunchly supported Peru’s unelected coup regime, which declared a nation-wide “state of emergency” and deployed the military to the streets in an attempt to crush the protests.

Esto no es la Guerra de las Galaxias es Chorrillos, Lima pic.twitter.com/KFluRVJFAu

— HezSocial (@ZLaicos) December 15, 2022

Most governments in Latin America have criticized or even refused to recognize Peru’s unelected coup regime, including Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Honduras, Venezuela, Cuba, and various Caribbean nations.

The CIA has organized many coups against democratically elected left-wing leaders in Latin America, from Guatemala’s President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954 to Chile’s President Salvador Allende in 1973.

When the Donald Trump administration nominated Lisa Kenna to be ambassador to Peru in 2020, the State Department released a “certificate of competency” that revealed that, “Before joining the Foreign Service, she served for nine years as a Central Intelligence Agency officer.”

This important fact is curiously absent from most of Kenna’s bios, including her page on the US embassy’s official website.

Under Trump, Kenna also served as executive secretary of the State Department and was “senior aide” to Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who previously headed the CIA.

In regard to his work for the notorious spy agency, Pompeo admitted in 2019, “I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses.”

At a Congressional nomination hearing in 2020, Kenna admitted that, as executive secretary, she saw “nearly all” of the memos that were sent to Pompeo, adding, “I am aware of the vast majority of” calls made to and by him.

Kenna also previously worked for the Defense Department and served State Department roles in Iraq, Jordan, Egypt, Swaziland, and Pakistan.

When President Joe Biden entered in January 2021, he kept Kenna as ambassador in Peru.

The current US Ambassador in Peru. pic.twitter.com/iUAbnR6Hzp

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) December 13, 2022

On December 6, 2022, Kenna met with Gustavo Bobbio Rosas, a retired brigadier general from the Peruvian military who had officially been appointed as defense minister the day before. (A local media outlet reported that the meeting was on December 5, but that appears to have been an error.)

Peru’s Ministry of Defense published a photo of their friendly chat.

At the time of this meeting, it was known in Peru that the notoriously corrupt, oligarch-controlled congress was preparing for a new vote to overthrow democratically elected left-wing President Pedro Castillo.

Ahora 📸 | Ministro de Defensa, Gustavo Bobbio, se reúne con la embajadora de @USEMBASSYPERU, Lisa Kenna, para abordar temas de interés bilateral. 🇵🇪🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/9p7JuKNx75

— Mindef Perú (@MindefPeru) December 6, 2022

Article 113 of Peru’s constitution allows the unicameral congress to remove presidents simply by voting to declare that they have a “moral incapacity,” in a process known as “vacancy.”

Peru’s congress is well known for its extreme corruption. In the infamous “Mamanivideos” scandal, congress members from the far-right Fuerza Popular party were filmed bribing other congress members to vote against impeaching previous right-wing President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski.

Fuerza Popular is run by the family members of Alberto Fujimori, the far-right dictator who ruled Peru with an iron fist from 1990 until 2000. With the support of the US government, Fujimori committed genocide, sterilizing approximately 300,000 Indigenous people, while killing, torturing, and disappearing large numbers of leftist dissidents.

The Mamanivideos scandal showed that it is quite easy for Peru’s rich oligarchs to buy votes in congress to overthrow democratically elected presidents.

And as soon as Castillo entered office on July 28, 2021, the congress tried to do exactly this.

Just one day after the US ambassador met with Peru’s defense minister, on December 7, 2022, the right-wing-dominated congress launched a parliamentary coup against Castillo, using article 113.

This was the third coup attempt in just over a year by Peru’s congress, which in September 2022 had a mere 7% approval rating.

Hoping to stop the coup, Castillo responded by trying to dissolve the congress. This is allowed in cases of obstructionism by article 134 of Peru’s constitution.

Defense Minister Bobbio immediately denounced the president’s actions. He published a video resigning from his position (that he had only held for three days).

Pronunciamiento| Presento mi renuncia de manera irrevocable a mi cargo de Ministro de Defensa. pic.twitter.com/efFC0cwZ34

— Gustavo Bobbio Rosas (@GustavoBobbio_) December 7, 2022

In the video, Bobbio told Peru’s armed forces not to support President Castillo and to oppose his attempt to dissolve the coup-plotting congress.

Bobbio claimed Castillo was launching a “coup attempt,” but in reality Bobbio was instructing the Peruvian military to support a coup against the democratically elected president, on behalf of a notoriously corrupt oligarch-controlled congress that had almost no support from the population.

While Bobbio ordered the military to rebel against the president, the US government promptly attacked Castillo.

Former CIA agent and current Ambassador Kenna tweeted, “The United States categorically rejects any extra-constitutional act by President Castillo to prevent the congress from fulfilling its mandate.”

Los Estados Unidos insta enfáticamente al presidente Castillo a revertir su intento de cerrar el Congreso y permitir que las instituciones democráticas de Perú funcionen según la Constitución. Alentamos al público peruano a mantener la calma durante este tiempo incierto.

— Lisa Kenna (@USAmbPeru) December 7, 2022

Kenna failed to mention article 134 of Peru’s constitution, which states:

The President of the Republic is authorized the dissolve the Congress if it has censured or denied its confidence to two Councils of Ministers [the official name of Peru’s cabinet]. The dissolution decree contains the call for elections for a new Congress.

When Castillo moved to dissolve the congress, he cited article 134 and he made it clear that it was only going to be a “temporary” closure. The president said new congressional elections would be held as soon as possible.

Kenna ignored all of this context. Instead, the ambassador declared, “The United States emphatically urges President Castillo to reverse his attempt to close the congress and allow the democratic institutions of Peru to function according to the constitution.”

By this, the CIA veteran meant that Castillo should simply allow the anti-democratic, oligarch-controlled congress to launch a coup against him.

The US embassy in Peru subsequently published an official statement echoing exactly what Kenna had said.

This was Washington’s green light for Peru’s corrupt, right-wing-dominated congress to overthrow President Castillo, and for the state security services to arrest him, without trial.

pic.twitter.com/cyDlKaxiC8

— Embajada EEUU Perú (@USEMBASSYPERU) December 7, 2022

Mere hours after Castillo was imprisoned, the oligarch-controlled congress appointed his vice president, Dina Boluarte, as leader of the country.

Boluarte promised on the floor of the congress that she would create “a political truce to install a government of national unity” – that is, a pact with the right wing.

Boluarte had been expelled in January 2022 from the leftist Perú Libre party that Castillo had campaigned with. She proudly declared that she “had never embraced the ideology” of the socialist political party.

The day after the coup, on December 8, the State Department gave its rubber stamp to Boluarte’s unelected regime.

“The United States welcomes President Boluarte and hopes to work with her administration to achieve a more democratic, prosperous, and secure region,” stated Brian A. Nichols, the US assistant secretary for western hemisphere affairs.

“We support her call for a government of national unity and we applaud Peruvians while they unite in their support of democracy,” the top State Department official added.

EE. UU. da la bienvenida a la presidenta Boluarte y espera trabajar con su administración para lograr una región más democrática, próspera y segura. Apoyamos su llamado a un gobierno de unidad nacional y aplaudimos a los peruanos mientras se unen en apoyo de su democracia. -BAN

— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 8, 2022

In the mean time, the Peruvian people were filling the streets, condemning the coup against their elected president.

Peru’s police responded with violence, harshly cracking down, killing several protesters.

On December 14, the coup regime imposed a national “state of emergency” for 30 days, and said it might also declare a curfew.

At the same time, the coup regime also said it plans to sentence Castillo to 18 months in “preventative prison,” without a proper trial that resembles anything remotely like due process.

Just one day before the coup regime made these authoritarian announcements, former CIA agent and current US Ambassador met with Peru’s unelected leader, Dina Boluarte, and reiterated Washington’s wholehearted support.

La presidenta @DinaErcilia Boluarte recibió a la embajadora de @USEMBASSYPERU, Lisa Kenna, quien reiteró el pleno respaldo de su país a la institucionalidad democrática en el Perú y a las acciones del gobierno constitucional para estabilizar la situación social.
🇵🇪🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/30EqAa75lx

— Presidencia del Perú 🇵🇪 (@presidenciaperu) December 13, 2022

Kenna praised the right-wing “unity government” that Boluarte pledged to form, adding, “We hope to strengthen our bilateral relationship.”

Me reuní con la presidenta Boluarte para reiterarle el compromiso de los EE.UU. con la defensa de la democracia y el respeto a las instituciones. Junto con la @presidenciaperu y el gobierno de unidad que se comprometió a formar, esperamos fortalecer nuestra relación bilateral.

— Lisa Kenna (@USAmbPeru) December 13, 2022

Brian Nichols, the top State Department official on Latin America, added with a touch of deep irony, “We support the Peruvian people and their constitutional democracy.” He urged protesters to “reject violence.”

On the same day, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Colombia released a joint diplomatic statement with a completely contrary message, supporting elected President Castillo, saying he was the victim of “anti-democratic harassment.”

Apoyamos al pueblo peruano y a su democracia constitucional. Alentamos a los Peruanos a juntarse pacificamente en apoyo a las reformas que Perú necesita y a rechazar la violencia. Trabajaremos con @presidenciaperu para avanzar estas metas. -BAN https://t.co/AnrrDnxUzi

— Brian A. Nichols (@WHAAsstSecty) December 13, 2022

In a press briefing on December 13, the State department was asked about the protests in Peru.

State Department spokesman Ned Price – who, like Lisa Kenna, was also a CIA agent – emphasized Washington’s steadfast support for Peru’s coup regime.

“We do commend Peruvian institutions and civil authorities for safeguarding democratic stability,” he said, as Peru’s repressive police killed protesters.

Just witnessed a protestor shot in head by police outside our hotel in #lima. Not sure he survived. Police response becoming more violent tonight #DinaBoluarte #sosperu #PedroCastillo #ProtestasContraElCongreso #protestasenlima #Peru #ahora pic.twitter.com/8HJe3cTxvC

— M M (@MMinperu) December 13, 2022

Instead of condemning the rampant police brutality, the US State Department blamed the protesters themselves. Price stated,

“we are troubled by scattered reports of violent demonstrations and by reports of attacks on the press and private property, including businesses.”

“When it comes to Peruvian President Dina Boluarte, we of course do recognize her as such. We will continue to work with Peru’s democratic institutions, and we look forward to working closely with President Boluarte and all branches of the government in Peru,” the former CIA agent stressed.

State Department on Peru 🇵🇪 (Tuesday's daily presser):

– Commends Peru's institutions and authorities "for safeguarding democratic stability"

– "troubled by (..) violent demonstrations" and "reports of attacks on the press and private property"

– recognizes Dina Boluarte pic.twitter.com/AVj3F1cOds

— Camila (@camilapress) December 15, 2022

In addition to serving as a CIA agent for nine years and current US ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna worked as a:

• political adviser to the secretary of defense
• director of the Iraq office on the National Security Council at the White House
• deputy director of the Iraq political office at the Department of State
• chief of the political section at the US embassy in Jordan
• political/military officer at the US embassy in Egypt
• staff member at the US embassy in Swaziland
• staff member at the US consulate general in Peshawar, Pakistan

At a Congressional nomination hearing on July 23, 2020, Kenna boasted of her US-supremacist worldview, stating,

“The longer I have been in public service, the more I am convinced that America is the world’s most exceptional nation.”

She also vowed,

“I will maintain the United States’ vital relationship with Peru which has long been one of our closest partners in the region. Recently, Mission Peru has performed heroically to sustain our strong partnership and serve our fellow Americans in these challenging times.”

At the time of the hearing, Peru had a right-wing government, led by President Martín Vizcarra.

Kenna praised Peru’s conservative government, “as founder of the Lima Group,” for backing the United States in its right-wing coup attempt against Venezuela’s democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro, claiming, “The U.S. and Peru are also growing our shared support for a peaceful return to democracy in Venezuela.”

She also pledged in the hearing that, as US ambassador to Peru: “I commit to meet with democratically oriented opposition figures”; “We also commit to meet with independent, local press in Peru”; and “I am committed to meeting with human rights, civil society, and other non governmental organizations in the United States and in Peru.”

*

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Featured image: Ex CIA agent and US ambassador to Peru, Lisa Kenna, meets with its defense minister two days before a coup against its elected left-wing President Castillo (Source: Multipolarista)

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***

The UN Officer of the High Commissioner on Human Rights has issued a press release detailing the views of its experts on the Israeli treatment of the Palestinians during the past year, which they say has seen the worst death rate among the Occupied population since the organization began systematically tracking fatalities in 2005.

The experts rebuked Israel for the excessive use of force deployed by Israeli forces against Palestinians and the unbridled violence of Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the West Bank, which have left 150 Palestinians dead this year in the Occupied West Bank, including 33 children. In addition, militant, armed Israeli squatters have killed two or possibly three Palestinians this year.

Palestinian violence was responsible for the deaths of four security personnel, one guard for a squatter settlement, and five squatters on stolen Palestinian land.

The experts issued a joint statement, saying

“We remind Israel that pending the dismantlement of its unlawful occupation, Palestinians in the occupied Palestinian territory must be treated as protected persons, not enemies or terrorists.”

Quite the opposite — they pointed out that Israeli officials have the responsibility under international law to attend to the security and welfare of the Occupied population.

Fanatical Israeli squatters who have built on land owned by Palestinian families and walk around armed are a particular concern for the UN human rights experts. They say that:

“Armed and masked Israeli settlers are attacking Palestinians in their homes, attacking children on their way to school, destroying property and burning olive groves, and terrorising entire communities with complete impunity.”

Worse, there are credible reports of Israeli troops actually helping the squatters commit mayhem on Palestinians. The experts observed, “Disturbing evidence of Israeli forces frequently facilitating, supporting and participating in settler attacks, makes it difficult to discern between Israeli settler and State violence.” They added, “The impunity of one is reinforced by the impunity of the other.”

Each year has seen more Israeli squatter attacks than the year before since 2016. Ironically, it was in 2016 that the UN Security Council had passed a resolution demanding an end to such Israeli squatting.

There is something horribly wrong with Israeli military rules of engagement, which are producing this high death toll among the Palestinians. The experts point out that Occupation troops can only deploy firearms against persons from the Occupied population when the latter pose an imminent threat to life. That is, you can’t just shoot down unarmed people, and you can’t shoot someone in the head who has been taken down and immobilized, regardless of what he had been doing up to that point. The experts warn that these cavalier approaches to taking human life “may amount to extrajudicial execution – a violation of the right to life – and wilful killing prohibited under the Fourth Geneva Convention and Rome Statute.”

Ultimately, the experts say, it is the Israeli determination to colonize the Palestinian West Bank that is driving this drumbeat of violence against the indigenous population:

“Illegal settlement poses a corrosive threat to Israeli society as a whole, and unless Israeli forces abandon this dominant settler mindset and rightfully treat Palestinians in the occupied territory as protected persons, Israel’s deplorable record in the occupied West Bank will likely deteriorate further in 2023. No peaceful settlement can be pursued under Israel’s repressive occupation: a reality that should be a wake-up call for all decision-makers.”

Their expectation that the lives of Palestinians are about to get harder, though they did not say so, is justified by the formation of the most far right wing, extremist government in the country’s history, with cabinet members who are themselves illegal squatters on stolen Palestinian land and who champion more such theft.

The experts issuing this statement are Francesca Albanese, Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, Morris Tiball-Binz, Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions,and Clément Voule, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and Association.

Ms. Albanese has a law degree from the University of Pisa and a Master of Law in Human Rights from London University’s SOAS. She is finishing a Ph.D. in International Refugee Law at Amsterdam University’s Law School. An Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for the Study of International Migration at Georgetown University, Albanese is the author of Palestinian Refugees in International Law (Oxford U.P., 2020). Her highly knowledgeable critique of Israeli Occupation policies toward the Palestinians has led to a smear campaign against her, predictably and pitifully attempting to depict her concern for the rights of Palestinians as a form of bigotry toward Jews.

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Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Featured image: Shireen Abu Akleh was an icon in Palestine and throughout much of the Arabic speaking world for her reporting from the occupied territories (Illustration/MEE)

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***

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Friday marks a new stage in the bilateral relationship between the two time-tested friends, both contextually and from a long-term perspective.

The media may find it alluring to link Modi’s call to Ukraine developments despite the Indian and Russian readouts (here and here) making it clear that Russian-Indian bilateral relations dominated the conversation. 

Nonetheless, it is very significant that Modi was not deterred by the fact that although this is not era for wars, the Ukraine conflict in all probability will only escalate, and there is a greater likelihood than ever before that Russia may be compelled to seek a total military victory, as the US is leaving it with no option by doggedly blocking all avenues for a realistic settlement and is furtively climbing the escalation ladder. 

Without doubt, the Biden Administration’s reported decision to deploy Patriot missile in Ukraine is a major escalation. Moscow has warned of “consequences.” Again, Moscow has confirmed that the US planned, masterminded and equipped Ukraine with the military capability to attack deep inside Russian territory — hundreds of kilometres, in fact — including against base at Engels where Russia’s nuclear-capable strategic bombers are stationed. The two superpowers never before targeted each other’s nuclear assets. 

So, there is no question that Modi’s initiative at this point in time to discuss “the high level of bilateral cooperation that has been developing on the basis of the Russian-Indian privileged strategic partnership,” including in key areas of energy, trade and investments, defence & security cooperation, conveys a huge message in itself.

It quietly underscores a medium and long term perspective on the Russian-Indian relationship that goes far beyond the vicissitudes of the Ukraine conflict. Put differently, India will not allow its long-standing ties with Russia to be held hostage to Western sanctions. 

For India, the reorientation of Russian economic diplomacy toward the Asian region presents huge business opportunities. Who would have thought nine months ago that Russia was going to be the largest supplier of oil to India, leapfrogging Iraq, Saudi Arabia and the US? According to Reuters, India purchased about 40% of all export volumes of Russian Urals grade oil transported by sea in November, when European countries accounted for 25%, Turkey 15% and China 5%.

The figures speak for themselves: in November, while Russia supplied 909,000.4 barrels of crude oil to India per day, the corresponding figures were for Iraq (861,000.4), Saudi Arabia (570,000.9), and the US (405,000.5) Suffice it to say that when Modi upfront listed energy as his talking point with Putin, it reconfirms that India is giving a wide berth to the G7’s hare-brained scheme to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports. 

But all good things have a flip side to it. As the volume of India-Russia trade shoots up — with Russia emerging as India’s seventh largest trading partner, rising from 25th place — the imbalance in the bilateral trade is also widening, as Moscow prioritises India (and China) as preferred trading partners. 

EAM Jaishankar’s recent Moscow visit focused on a list of 500 items that Russia would be keen to source from India. Importantly, this is also about a supply chain for Russian industry / economy. Jaishankar reportedly gave an interim reply of India’s readiness to start supplying spare parts necessary for airplanes, cars and trains.

Some Russian experts have talked about India as a potentially significant “trans-shipment” state for Russia’s “parallel imports” — that is, Russia can buy not only Indian goods from India but also products from third countries.

Meanwhile, turning away from the European market, Russia also seeks business opportunities for its export basket that includes mineral products, precious metals and products made from them, aluminium and other non-ferrous metals, electric machines, vehicles, pharmaceutical, chemical, rubber products, etc. 

Clearly, there are systemic issues to be addressed such as transportation logistics; payment mechanism, collateral sanctions. However, for the near term, all eyes are on the Russian oil exports to India in the time of the G7 price cap. 

The Russian government daily Rossyiskaya Gazeta reported on Tuesday, “It is expected that Russia, in response to the price ceiling, will adopt an official ban on selling oil under contracts where the “ceiling” will be mentioned or the marginal price for our oil will be indicated.” That is, Moscow will insist on an embargo on supplies basically restricted to the G7 and Australia. 

China and India are  not affected, as they haven’t joined the price cap. The following excerpts from the Moscow daily outlines the state of play:

“There are no real mechanisms that could enforce these [G7] restrictions… already, about a third of Russian oil exports leave Russian ports without indicating the final destination. That is, a so-called “grey trade zone” is growing before our eyes, which allows traders to purchase Russian raw materials without the risk of falling under secondary sanctions… discount [ie., fair prices] allows the Asia-Pacific countries, primarily China and India, to increase purchases of Russian raw materials.” 

The fascinating part is that not only is the so-called “grey zone” expanding steadily but alongside, other suppliers have begun to adjust to the prices of Russian oil in the Asia-Pacific region — that is, to the real equilibrium prices or discounted prices. Curiously, even Western countries are in a position to receive relatively inexpensive Russian oil through third parties.

The bottom line is that the Biden administration’s goal was not to limit the volume of Russian oil exports but focused on the revenues of the Russian budget from oil production and the world oil market. Rissyiskaya Gazeta concludes: “In fact, so far what is happening does not contradict either our aspirations or the desires of the United States.” [See my article Race for Russian oil begins, The Tribune, Nov. 28, 2022]

This new-found pragmatism in the US calculus about the limits to sanctions took a curious turn in Thursday when the US blacklisted the Russian billionaire-oligarch Vladimir Potanin but exempted two of his biggest assets from the purview of sanctions — MMC Norilsk Nickel and Tinkoff Bank — on the specious ground that his holdings are less than 50% in these two companies [but are only 35%!]   

Why so? Because, MMC’s share in the world market of high-grade nickel is 17%, palladium 38%, platinum 10%, rhodium 7%, copper and cobalt 2% each; and, sanctioning the Russian company could sharply aggravate the world market for non-ferrous metals and can hurt US manufacturers. 

Clearly, the law of diminishing returns is at work in the continued weaponisation of sanctions against Russia. Indian business and industry should pay close attention to Modi’s far-sighted initiative on Friday.

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Featured image: External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar (L) met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow, November 8, 2022 (Source: Indian Punchline)

In questa puntata realizzata con la collaborazione del giornalista Max Civili, Grandangolo (nel format Dentro la Notizia) mostra la realtà iraniana attraverso un autorevole testimone che la vive dall’interno: il prof.  Raffaele Mauriello, professore alla Facoltà di Letteratura Persiana e Lingue Straniere dell’Università di Teheran.

La puntata si apre con una sintetica scheda sugli eventi storici che hanno portato all’attuale situazione, a iniziare dal colpo di stato del 1953, orchestrato dal servizio segreto britannico ed eseguito dalla CIA statunitense per rovesciare Mohammad Mossadeq, il primo ministro iraniano democraticamente eletto nel 1951, che aveva nazionalizzato l’industria petrolifera sottraendola al controllo britannico. Ciò è all’origine dei successivi passaggi storici: il regime dello Scià legato agli Stati Uniti che controllano con la Gran Bretagna l’industria petrolifera iraniana,  la conseguente occidentalizzazione forzata dell’Iran, la rivoluzione popolare che porta al potere l’Ayatollah Khomeini e alla nazionalizzazione dell’industria petrolifera iraniana, la guerra dell’Iraq contro l’Iran fomentata e sostenuta dagli USA negli anni Ottanta. Seguono le ulteriori trasformazioni fino all’Iran odierno, sempre nel mirino dell’Occidente che lo attacca dall’esterno e dall’interno. Emblematico l’assassinio del generale iraniano Soleimani con un drone USA nel gennaio 2020, mentre arrivava all’aeroporto di Baghdad in visita ufficiale in Iraq. Nell’attuale situazione geopolitica, l’Iran è oggi ancora più importante quale snodo della Nuova Via della Seta, promossa dalla Cina, e del Corridoio Internazionale di Trasporto Nord-Sud che collega la Russia all’Asia Meridionale.  

Su questo sfondo si colloca la campagna di demonizzazione dell’Iran, condotta soprattutto da Stati Uniti e Gran Bretagna. Quale sia la reale situazione del paese lo documenta il prof. Mauriello con precisi e documentati fatti, che demoliscono il quadro propagandistico del mainstream. 

Manlio Dinucci

STASERA ALLE 20:30 

SUL CANALE TV 262 BYOBLU

GRANDANGOLO

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***

On Nov. 3, a spine-chilling assassination attempt was mounted on Pakistan’s most charismatic and popular political leader, Imran Khan, while he was addressing a political rally in Wazirabad, a small town near the capital of Pakistan’s Punjab province, Lahore.

As corroborated by eye witness accounts, there were two shooters. One of them was an amateur religious zealot armed with a pistol and meant as a diversion who was caught by the supporters of PTI, Imran Khan’s political party. The other was a professionally trained sniper who shot a burst of bullets at Imran Khan’s container with a sub-machine gun and escaped the crime scene unharmed.

It’s worth pointing out that it wasn’t an assassination attempt but a shot across the bow meant to send a loud and clear warning to the leadership of Imran Khan’s PTI. The sharp shooter aimed the gun at Imran Khan’s legs and emptied an entire magazine of the sub-machine gun, and hit the bull’s eye.

Clearly, the assassin had explicit instructions only to target lower limbs of victims and avoid hitting vital organs in upper body that could’ve caused deaths and needless public furor. Injuries suffered by the rest of PTI leadership, mainly in the legs, and bystanders was collateral damage. One bystander, named Moazzam, was killed on the spot, but circumstantial evidence points that he was likely shot dead from the bullets shot by the guards protecting the container who mistakenly assumed that he was the shooter.

Multiple bullets and fragments of lead from two to three feet high metal plate around the container pierced Imran Khan’s both legs. After taking a close look at Imran Khan’s x-rays, as shown by his personal physician, Dr. Faisal, one bullet fractured Imran Khan’s right shin bone. A tiny piece of shrapnel landed near patella on the knee-cap. Another lead fragment almost pierced femoral artery that could’ve caused profuse bleeding and even death if left untreated for long.

The amateur zealot, identified as Naveed s/o Bashir, was armed with a locally made pistol he had bought for Rs.20,000 ($100). Most pistols found in Pakistan are semi-automatic and are utterly unreliable. They seldom fire an entire magazine without misfiring a couple of bullets. That’s what happened with the shooter, too. A bullet got stuck in the chamber and a valiant PTI supporter, Ibtisam Hassan, leapt on him and snatched the pistol from his hands.

Russian-made Kalashnikovs, on the other hand, are weapons of choice for sharp shooters. And since the times of Soviet-Afghan war in the eighties, Kalashnikovs are so easily available in Pakistan that one could conveniently get an AK-47 from any arms dealer. In all likelihood, the sniper was armed with an AK-47, as the classic rattling sound of Kalashnikov burst could be clearly heard in the video of the incident, and he likely escaped the crime scene in the narrow alleys of the town on a motor-bike with an accomplice.

The confessional statement of Naveed s/o Bashir was an eyewash, as he was a decoy. The whole assassination attempt appeared astutely choreographed. The purported assassin was not only caught red-handed but was also filmed shooting bullets in the air with a pistol while the actual hitman who professionally executed the assassination attempt remains as elusive as the masterminds of the cowardly plot.

Subsequently, Imran Khan implicated incumbent Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif, Interior Minister Rana Sanaullah and DG-C of ISI Major Gen. Faisal Naseer in the plot to assassinate him. But the police refused to register the first information report due to fear of repercussions from the deep state for naming a serving military officer in the police report.

In any case, the director of intelligence couldn’t have ordered mounting an assassination attempt on a popular political leader and the country’s former prime minister all by himself without a nod of approval from Gen. Qamar Javed Bajwa, then the army chief of Pakistan’s military, who retired from service on Nov. 29, weeks following the assassination plot on Nov. 3.

In Pakistan’s context, the national security establishment originally meant civil-military bureaucracy. Though over the years, civil bureaucracy has taken a backseat and now “the establishment” is defined as military’s top brass that has dictated Pakistan’s security and defense policy since its inception.

Paradoxically, security establishments do not have ideologies, they simply have interests. For instance, the General Ayub-led administration in the sixties was regarded as a liberal establishment. Then, the General Zia-led administration during the eighties was manifestly a religious conservative establishment. And lastly, the General Musharraf-led administration from 1999 to 2008 was once again deemed a liberal establishment.

The deep state does not judge on the basis of ideology, it simply looks for weakness. If a liberal political party is unassailable in a political system, it will join forces with conservatives; and if conservatives cannot be beaten in a system, it will form an alliance with liberals to perpetuate the stranglehold of “the deep state” on policymaking organs of state.

The biggest threat to nascent democracies all over the world does not come from external enemies but from their internal enemies, the national security establishments, because military generals always have a chauvinistic mindset and an undemocratic temperament. An additional aggravating factor that increases the likelihood of military coups in developing democracies is that they lack firm traditions of democracy, rule of law and constitutionalism which act as bars against martial laws.

All political parties in Pakistan at some point in time in history were groomed by the security establishment. The founder of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was groomed by General Ayub’s establishment as a counterweight to Sheikh Mujib’s Awami League, the founder of Bangladesh, during the sixties.

Nawaz Sharif was nurtured by General Zia’s administration during the eighties to offset the influence of Bhutto’s People’s Party. But he was cast aside after he capitulated to the pressure of the Clinton administration during the Kargil conflict of 1999 in disputed Kashmir region and ceded Pakistan’s military positions to arch-rival India, leading to Gen. Musharraf’s coup against Nawaz Sharif’s government in Oct. 1999.

Imran Khan’s PTI draws popular support from Pakistani masses, particularly from younger generations and women that are full of political enthusiasm. PTI won the general elections of 2018 and formed a coalition government, and Imran Khan was elected prime minister. But a rift emerged between Imran Khan’s elected government and the top brass of Pakistan’s military in Nov. 2021 over the appointment of the director general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Pakistan’s powerful military intelligence service.

Eventually, Imran Khan succumbed to pressure and appointed the spymaster nominated by the top brass. But by then, the military had decided that Imran Khan had become too powerful a political leader and was encroaching on the military’s traditional domains, defense and national security policy. Therefore, deploying the astute divide-and-conquer strategy, the deep state lent its weight behind the opposition political alliance. Imran Khan’s political allies abandoned the PTI government and the coalition government fell apart in April.

Due to the British imperial legacy and subsequent close working relationship between the security agencies of Pakistan and the US during the Soviet-Afghan war of the eighties, Pakistan’s security establishment works hand in glove with the deep state of the United States, like the Turkish security establishment which is a NATO member.

Before his ouster as prime minister in a no-trust motion in the parliament on April 10, Imran Khan claimed that Pakistan’s Ambassador to US, Asad Majeed, was warned by Assistant Secretary of State Donald Lu that Khan’s continuation in office would have repercussions for bilateral ties between the two nations.

Shireen Mazari, a Pakistani politician who served as the Federal Minister for Human Rights under the Imran Khan government, quoted Donald Lu as saying:

“If Prime Minister Imran Khan remained in office, then Pakistan will be isolated from the United States and we will take the issue head on; but if the vote of no-confidence succeeds, all will be forgiven.”

Imran Khan fell from the grace of the Biden administration, whose record-breaking popularity ratings plummeted after the precipitous fall of Kabul in August 2021, reminiscent of the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, with Chinook helicopters hovering over US embassy evacuating diplomatic staff to the airport, and Washington accused Pakistan for the debacle.

After the United States “nation-building project” failed in Afghanistan during its two-decade occupation of the embattled country from Oct. 2001 to August 2021, it accused regional powers of lending covert support to Afghan insurgents battling the occupation forces.

The occupation and Washington’s customary blame game accusing “malign regional forces” of insidiously destabilizing Afghanistan and undermining US-led “benevolent imperialism” instead of accepting responsibility for its botched invasion and occupation of Afghanistan brought Pakistan and Russia closer against a common adversary in their backyard, and the two countries even managed to forge defense ties, particularly during the three and a half years of Imran Khan’s government from July 2018 to April 2022.

Since the announcement of a peace deal with the Taliban by the Trump administration in Feb. 2020, regional powers, China and Russia in particular, hosted international conferences and invited the representatives of the US-backed Afghanistan government and the Taliban for peace negotiations.

After the departure of US forces from “the graveyard of the empires,” although Washington is trying to starve the hapless Afghan masses to death in retribution for inflicting a humiliating defeat on the global hegemon by imposing economic sanctions on the Taliban government and browbeating international community to desist from lending formal diplomatic recognition or having trade relations with Afghanistan, China and Russia have provided generous humanitarian and developmental assistance to Afghanistan.

Image: Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Imran Khan’s ouster from power for daring to stand up to the United States harks back to the toppling and subsequent assassination of Pakistan’s first elected prime minister, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, in April 1979 by the martial law regime of Gen. Zia-ul-Haq.

The United States not only turned a blind eye but tacitly approved the elimination of Bhutto from Pakistan’s political scene because, being a socialist, Bhutto not only nurtured cordial ties with communist China but was also courting Washington’s arch-rival, the former Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union played the role of a mediator at the signing of the Tashkent Agreement for the cessation of hostilities following the 1965 India-Pakistan War over the disputed Kashmir region, in which Bhutto represented Pakistan as the foreign minister of the Gen. Ayub Khan-led government.

Like Imran Khan, the United States “deep state” regarded Bhutto as a political liability and an obstacle in the way of mounting the Operation Cyclone to provoke the former Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan and the subsequent waging of a decade-long war of attrition, using Afghan jihadists as cannon fodder who were generously funded, trained and armed by the CIA and Pakistan’s security agencies in the Af-Pak border regions, in order to “bleed the Soviet forces” and destabilize and weaken the rival global power.

Regarding the objectives of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, then American envoy to Kabul, Adolph “Spike” Dubs, was assassinated on the Valentine’s Day, on 14 Feb 1979, the same day that Iranian revolutionaries stormed the American embassy in Tehran.

The former Soviet Union was wary that its forty-million Muslims were susceptible to radicalism, because Islamic radicalism was infiltrating across the border into the Central Asian States from Afghanistan. Therefore, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979 in support of the Afghan communists to forestall the likelihood of Islamist insurgencies spreading to the Central Asian States bordering Afghanistan.

According to documents declassified by the White House, CIA and State Department in January 2019, as reported by Tim Weiner for The Washington Post, the CIA was aiding Afghan jihadists before the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. President Jimmy Carter signed the CIA directive to arm the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December that year.

The revelation doesn’t come as a surprise, though, because more than two decades before the declassification of the State Department documents, in the 1998 interview to The Counter Punch Magazine, former National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter, Zbigniew Brzezinski, confessed that the president signed the directive to provide secret aid to the Afghan jihadists in July 1979, whereas the Soviet Army invaded Afghanistan six months later in December 1979.

Here is a poignant excerpt from the interview. The interviewer puts the question: “And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic jihadists, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?” Brzezinski replies: “What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet Empire? Some stirred-up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

Despite the crass insensitivity, one must give credit to Zbigniew Brzezinski that at least he had the courage to speak the unembellished truth. It’s worth noting, however, that the aforementioned interview was recorded in 1998. After the 9/11 terror attack, no Western policymaker can now dare to be as blunt and forthright as Brzezinski.

Regardless, that the CIA was arming the Afghan jihadists six months before the Soviets invaded Afghanistan has been proven by the State Department’s declassified documents; fact of the matter, however, is that the nexus between the CIA, Pakistan’s security agencies and the Gulf Arab States to train and arm the Afghan jihadists against the former Soviet Union was forged years before the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Pakistan joined the American-led, anticommunist SEATO and CENTO regional alliances in the 1950s and played the role of Washington’s client state since its inception in 1947. So much so that when a United States U-2 spy plane was shot down by the Soviet Air Defense Forces while performing photographic aerial reconnaissance deep into Soviet territory, Pakistan’s then President Ayub Khan openly acknowledged the reconnaissance aircraft flew from an American airbase in Peshawar, a city in northwest Pakistan.

Then during the 1970s, Pakistan’s then Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s government began aiding the Afghan Islamists against Sardar Daud’s government, who had toppled his first cousin King Zahir Shah in a palace coup in 1973 and had proclaimed himself the president of Afghanistan.

Sardar Daud was a Pashtun nationalist and laid claim to Pakistan’s northwestern Pashtun-majority province. Pakistan’s security agencies were alarmed by his irredentist claims and used Islamists to weaken his rule in Afghanistan. He was eventually assassinated in 1978 as a consequence of the Saur Revolution led by the Afghan communists.

It’s worth pointing out, however, that although the Bhutto government did provide political and diplomatic support on a limited scale to Islamists in their struggle for power against Pashtun nationalists in Afghanistan, being a secular and progressive politician, he would never have permitted opening the floodgates for flushing the Af-Pak region with weapons, petrodollars and radical jihadist ideology as his successor, Zia-ul-Haq, an Islamist military general, did by becoming a willing tool of religious extremism and militarism in the hands of neocolonial powers.

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Nauman Sadiq is an Islamabad-based geopolitical and national security analyst focused on geo-strategic affairs and hybrid warfare in the Middle East and Eurasia regions. His domains of expertise include neocolonialism, military-industrial complex and petro-imperialism. He is a regular contributor of diligently researched investigative reports to Global Research.

Featured image is from Countercurrents

As COP 15 prepares to adopt the objective of dedicating 30% of the planet to the creation of protected areas, there is reason to wonder whether this solution is the best in a context where the rapid evolution of the climate jeopardizes the resilience of protected areas. Consider the case of forests. In recent months, in Quebec, while the Premier had declared that a balance between the economic and environmental aspects remains essential, the public hearings on the survival of the woodland caribou highlighted a major split between the point of view of the supporters of the strict protection of nature and those advocating the rational use of resources. Is a happy medium possible?

Some are asking for strict protection of forest areas sheltering caribou, others want to continue their forest management activities. Without denying its impact, forestry is not the only cause of the decline in caribou populations. Other factors demonstrated by science come into play: habitat degradation and fragmentation by forest fires and insect epidemics, disturbance caused by resort and eco-tourism activities, hunting and poaching, wolf and bear predation, food availability, parasites, diseases and biting insects, climate change and extreme weather events. Caribou are therefore affected simultaneously by a combination of factors such that it is difficult to assess their relative effects separately. Forest management alone cannot be responsible for the decline of woodland caribou populations and is in fact only one of the many causes.

What if the forest itself was threatened? According to the Canadian Department of Forests, Canadian forests have become net emitters of CO2 over the past twenty years due to their poor management in the face of the vagaries of the climate. Due to a lack of resources, vast tracts of forest left on their own are systematically destroyed by invasive species and fires that return the phenomenal amounts of carbon sequestered by these trees to the atmosphere. Is integral protection without adequate human intervention enough to protect ecosystems?

Another dilemma arises. By removing thousands of square kilometers of forests from forest management, we are depriving ourselves of a renewable energy source and a building material that sequesters carbon for a long time. Is it possible to develop the forest without destroying its biodiversity and endangering its occupants?

The path of middle ground and balance suggested by the concept of sustainable development offers a solution to this dilemma. In Quebec, the current forest policy inspired by the Sustainable Development Act advocates forest management that recognizes and encourages the various functions of the forest, protects biodiversity and takes into account the expectations of all users in the face of the vagaries of climate change.

To do this, we need sustainable forestry that takes advantage of science and the most advanced technologies (remote sensing, modelling, local interventions) and makes it possible to identify both priority intervention areas (infection hotspots, fire risk areas) and protection areas. By targeted harvesting of forest resources in properly managed areas, it is possible both to increase the resilience of the forest and to market a source of renewable energy and a carbon-neutral building material.

Such work is costly and cannot be applied over vast territories without the adoption of a new economic model. By creating forest areas for sustainable use centered on carbon sequestration and the protection of biodiversity (the equivalent of what IUCN experts call category 6 protected areas), would it not be possible to finance forest management and biodiversity protection work by selling offset credits on the carbon market?

No, it is no longer enough to put nature in a vacuum to protect it. The impacts of climate change force us to rely on active conservation of natural environments based on scientific knowledge and to promote their various functions in a renewed economic model. This is a future-focused approach to sustainable conservation able to meet today’s challenges.

Jacques Prescott, M.Sc. biology, Associate Professor , Chair in eco-advising, Université du Québec à Chicoutimi

Gaston Déry, Forest Engineer, M.Sc., OC, C.Q., Strategic Advisor Sustainable Development

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The 2024 United States presidential race would become much more interesting if Children’s Health Defense Founder and Chairman Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who has tenaciously challenged the tyranny and propaganda pursued in the name of countering coronavirus, runs for president with legal scholar and former New Jersey Judge Andrew Napolitano as his running mate on a third-party ticket. That is the presidential ticket possibility suggested by political commentator and trends forecaster Gerald Celente in a Friday interview with host David Knight at the David Knight Show.

Twenty-five minutes into the interview, Celente broached the idea of a Kennedy-Napolitano ticket. Many Americans’ reaction to such a ticket may be similar to Knight’s initial response upon hearing its suggestion. Knight stated, “I would support something like that, even if I didn’t agree with them on all the issues, because I think they tell people what they really believe.” You can watch the interview here.

Celente further suggested that Kennedy and Napolitano could seek the Libertarian Party nomination.

Celente mentioned in the interview his having spoken along with Kennedy and Napolitano at the September 4, 2021 Ron Paul Institute (RPI) conference in Virginia near Washington, DC. Regarding what a Kennedy-Napolitano campaign would look like, Kennedy and Napolitano’s speeches at that RPI event provide a promising preview.

Watch Kennedy’s speech here:

Watch the speech by Napolitano, who is an RPI Advisory Board member, here:

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In key respects, although in dramatically different contexts, “gun control” activism falls prey to the same logical blind spot as the government’s Orwellian war on “misinformation” as well as global denuclearization efforts. 

No one, save for hardened nihilists, likes misinformation — a manufactured media term that essentially amounts to lies disseminated at scale – any more than anyone wants more gun deaths or nuclear war.

However, the notion that censorship could ever eliminate misinformation is epically misguided – ironically, a lie invented by those who hold power. In addition to running afoul of every decent Western tradition that values individual liberty, censorship campaigns invariably serve the interests of those who assume the role of censors. The inevitable result is that elites disseminate their own favored lies while suppressing competing lies as well as the objective truth.

Genuine unfiltered truth rarely, if ever, comes from a government politburo or state-sanctioned media. That’s now how reality works. Neither does stable peace result from state monopoly on force.

However, even if one were to grant, for the sake of argument, the counterfactual premise that combatting misinformation through censorship works, the US government would literally be the least deserving institution in world history to be entrusted with the task.

Back in 2003, when telling the truth would have mattered, no corporate media outlet – not the neoliberal New York Times or the neo-conservative Fox News – seriously investigated or challenged Powell’s false claims that Saddam Hussein was developing WMDs. They served the same military-industrial complex Deep State interests then as the neocons in the Bush administration.

If Colin Powell’s UN act had happened in 2022 instead of 2003, Twitter would have undoubtedly suspended anyone who questioned his account as “misinformation” at the behest of the US government, just as it does not to fight COVID “misinformation”(much of which has since been proven true).

Then just as now with “anti-vaxxers” (a catch-all term to demonize anyone who questions lockdowns), any public figure who spoke out about the Iraq WMD lies risked becoming a social pariah in the halls of power.

Guns, nukes, and misinformation already exist. They have proliferated and are possessed by numerous actors – and in greatest abundance by states. Getting rid of them is an impossibility.

The only real answer offered — through nuclear non-proliferation or gun control or censorship regimes – is to limit the average person’s capacity to possess them as a means to concentrate capability in a centralized authority.

But the reason the United States didn’t nuke the USSR – and vice versa – during the Cold War was because each had launch-ready nukes in spades pointed at each other in mountainsides, in submarines, everywhere. Firing on the enemy would have assured the other’s destruction (a concept called mutually assured destruction, or MAD).

In the context of combatting domestic totalitarianism, the Second Amendment to the Constitution serves the same function as MAD does in the context of international nuclear deterrence – namely, as a check on abuse of power.

To allow the government to confiscate the arms of the citizenry while maintaining its own arsenal would be absurd on its face – a unilateral surrender of the only real means for a free people to keep the state in check.

The Department of Homeland Security – the largest domestic law enforcement body in all the land — buys bullets by the billions. And it recently declared a jihad on flyover country in a “war on domestic terror” – a “domestic terrorist” being anyone who claims election fraud or opposes COVID lockdowns.

Why would anyone concerned with his personal liberty agree to surrender his guns to an entity that has stated ill intentions against him?

By the same token, why would a nation-state agree to unilaterally abandon a nuclear project at the behest of its adversary that already has nukes and implicitly threatens it with them?

Similarly, why would a free person allow the government – itself the biggest purveyor of “misinformation” – to police and control the public discourse?

Misinformation is obviously a potential social poison. Maybe the world would be better off without guns. It certainly would be better off without nukes. But all three are here now, and they’re here to stay. The only way to maintain the balance of force is to decentralize their distribution throughout the population.

The unavoidable effect of censorship, denuclearization, or gun control is to monopolize the means of force and information dissemination in the state, to be weaponized against a defanged, defenseless population as necessary to maintain its power.

This always ends poorly for the disarmed sitting ducks. One might ask the Cambodian peasants slaughtered by Pol Pot or the Chinese slaves killed by Mao for some perspective on the matter, but that’s not possible because they’re all dead.

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This article was originally published on Armageddon Prose.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

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Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with Die Zeit, published on December 7, that “the 2014 Minsk agreement was an attempt to give time to Ukraine. It…used this time to become stronger as can be seen today. The Ukraine of 2014-2015 is not the modern Ukraine.”

These comments echoed those of Petro Poroshenko, the former president of Ukraine, who came to power in snap elections after the 2014 coup d’état. Regarding his signing of the Minsk Accord, Poroshenko repeated in a Deutsche Welle interview last June his previous admission:

“Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war—to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”

Meaning that Ukraine had no real intention of following the accords, but wanted to buy time while Ukraine built fortifications and developed a military strong enough to wage a war of aggression against the Russian-tilted Donetsk and Luhansk regions, which had demanded autonomy from the Ukrainian government installed in the February 2014 coup.

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (2010-2014) became a target for regime change when he spurned an International Monetary Fund (IMF) loan and instead drew his country closer to Russia.

When protesters backed by the U.S. did not have enough signatures for Yanukovych’s impeachment, they overthrew his government by force and hunted down Yanukovych’s supporters. The new Ukrainian government further tried to impose draconian language laws and attacked the people of eastern Ukraine after they voted for their autonomy after the coup—an attack that began right after then-CIA director John Brennan visited Ukraine.^[1]

Signed originally on September 5, 2014, by Ukraine, Russia, rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by leaders in France and Germany, the Minsk agreement had followed a twelve-point protocol advocating for a cease-fire in the fighting between the Ukrainian military and Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and to decentralize power, giving those Republics autonomy which they had voted for in popular referenda.

October 17, 2014: Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, in talks with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, right, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel (foreground) and French President Francois Hollande (center back). [Source: consortiumnews.com]

Additional provisions included the withdrawal of illegal armed groups and mercenaries from Ukraine, the release of hostages and illegally detained persons, the establishment of security zones and independent monitoring of the conflict zones, prosecution and punishment of war criminals, and continuance of inclusive national dialogue.

Unfortunately, the Minsk protocol was never followed, and conflict in eastern Ukraine persisted, leading to the signing of the Minsk II protocol in February 2015.

This protocol reaffirmed many aspects of the first Minsk agreement, including the promotion of decentralization and autonomy for the Donetsk and Luhansk Republics, which was to be enshrined in a new Ukrainian constitution that was to recognize the diversity of religions, languages and cultures within Ukraine.^[2]

The Ukrainian right sector, however, vowed not to follow Minsk II, claiming that it was unconstitutional and the U.S. State Department accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of violating the protocol by deploying Russian Armed Forces around the contested city of Debaltseve to assist the Donetsk Army. (Putin’s spokesman denied this and said that Russia could not assist in the implementation of Minsk II because it was not involved in the conflict.)

When a law was passed in the Ukrainian parliament granting Donetsk and Luhansk partial autonomy, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that the “law was a sharp departure from the Minsk agreements because it demanded local elections under Ukrainian jurisdiction.”

The leaders of Belarus, Russia, Germany, France and Ukraine at the February 11-12, 2015, summit in Minsk, Belarus. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that Angela Merkel’s comments on December 7 were nothing short of the testimony of a person who openly admitted that everything done between 2014 and 2015 was meant to “distract the international community from real issues, play for time, pump up the Kyiv regime with weapons, and escalate the issue into a large-scale conflict.”

Merkel’s statements “horrifyingly” reveal in turn that the West uses “forgery as a method of action,” and resorts to “machinations, manipulation, and all kinds of distortions of truth, law, and rights imaginable.”

Loss of Trust

Russian President Vladimir Putin for his part told journalists at a Eurasian Union Summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, on December 10^[3] that he had thought the leader of the Federal Republic of Germany, even though Germany was on Ukraine’s side, had been sincere in negotiating the Minsk agreements, but now it was apparent that

“they were deceiving us. The only purpose was to pump arms into Ukraine and get it ready for hostilities. We are seeing this, yes. Apparently, we got our bearings too late, frankly. Perhaps we should have started all this sooner, but we still simply hoped to come to terms under these Minsk peace agreements.”

For Putin, Merkel’s admission shows that

“we did everything right by starting the special military operation. Why? Because it transpired that nobody was going to fulfill these Minsk agreements. The Ukrainian leaders also mentioned this, in the words of former President Poroshenko, who said he signed the agreements but was not going to fulfill them.”

According to Putin, now the issue of “trust is at stake. Trust as such is already close to zero, but after such statements, the issue of trust is coming to the fore. How can we negotiate anything? What can we agree upon? Is it possible to come to terms with anyone, and where are the guarantees? This is, of course, a problem. But eventually we will have to come to terms all the same. I have already said many times that we are ready for these agreements, we are open. But, naturally, all this makes us wonder with whom we are dealing.”

Fitting a Larger Pattern of Deception

Western treachery over the Minsk agreements is far from a historical anomaly.

Following the end of the Cold War, the George H. W. Bush administration promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not be expanded one inch eastward in exchange for Russia accepting the reunification of Germany and removing troops it had stationed in East Germany.

But in 1998, the Clinton administration certified NATO expansion into Romania, Poland and Hungary, triggering a new Cold War.

Decades earlier, the United States had deceived the Soviets by failing to abide by the Yalta agreements when it covertly armed neo-Nazis to try to foment counter-revolutions in pro-communist governments that were being established in Eastern Europe.

When the U.S. invaded Russia with six other countries in 1918 following the Bolshevik Revolution, President Woodrow Wilson deceived his own commanding General, William S. Graves, who was told that he was going to Russia to protect the Trans-Siberian Railway and a Czech military delegation when his real purpose was to support Czarist military officers intent on re-establishing the old order in Russia.^[4]

How the West Brought War to Ukraine

Benjamin Abelow’s new book, How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe (Great Barrington, MA: Siland Press, 2022), demonstrates that the official U.S. narrative about the war in Ukraine is not only wrong but “the opposite of truth.”

A lecturer in medicine at Yale University with a degree in European history who lobbied Congress on nuclear weapons policy, Abelow writes that “the underlying cause of the war lies not in an unbridled expansionism of Mr. Putin, or in paranoid delusions of military planners in the Kremlin, but in a 30-year history of Western provocations, directed at Russia, that began during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and continued to the start of the war.”^[5]

The key U.S./Western provocations detailed by Abelow are:

1. The expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a hostile anti-Russian military alliance, over a thousand miles eastward, pressing it toward Russia’s borders in disregard of assurances previously given to Moscow.
2. Withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the placing of anti-ballistic launch systems that could accommodate and fire offensive nuclear weapons such as nuclear-tipped Tomahawk cruise missiles at Russia, from newly joined NATO countries.
3. The Obama administration’s laying the groundwork for and possibly directly instigating an armed, far-right coup in Ukraine, which replaced a democratically elected pro-Russian government with an unelected pro-Western one that had four high-ranking members who could be labeled neo-fascist.
4. The conducting of countless NATO military exercises near Russia’s border, including ones with live-fire rocket exercises whose goal was to simulate attacks on air-defense systems inside Russia.
5. The assertion that Ukraine would become a NATO member.
6. Withdrawal by the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, increasing Russia’s vulnerability to a U.S. first strike.
7. The U.S.’s arming and training of the Ukrainian military through bilateral agreements and holding of regular joint military training exercises inside Ukraine.
8. Leading the Ukrainian leadership to adopt an uncompromising stance toward Russia, further exacerbating the threat to Russia.^[6]

Source: gordonhahn.com

Abelow makes clear that, if the situation were reversed and Russia or China carried out equivalent steps near U.S. territory, the U.S. would surely respond with a preemptive military attack on the aggressors that would be justified as a ‘matter of self-defense.’

So why should Russia be maligned when it is acting as any country would under similar circumstances? And why is it so hard for Americans to stand against their government’s reckless, deceitful and criminal policies that have greatly heightened the risk of nuclear war?

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Jeremy Kuzmarov is Managing Editor of CovertAction Magazine. He is the author of four books on U.S. foreign policy, including Obama’s Unending Wars (Clarity Press, 2019) and The Russians Are Coming, Again, with John Marciano (Monthly Review Press, 2018). He can be reached at: [email protected].

Notes

1. Kees van der Pijl, Flight MH17: Ukraine and the new Cold War: Prism of Disaster(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 103. 

2. Russian expert Nicolai Petro noted at the time that there was one major omission to Minsk II—an end to anti-terrorist operations against the East, which would not have passed the Kyiv parliament. Van der Pijl, Flight MH17, 146. 
3. At this summit, Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko presented proposals to strengthen the Eurasian Economic Union consisting of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia, including by promoting development of modern industries and subsidizing interest rates on loans for industrial projects. Lukashenko stated: “We need to improve, at all costs, the blood circulatory system of our union…. It is already clear to everyone that the era of dollar dominance is coming to an end. The future belongs to trade blocs, which will be made in national currencies. Belarus and Russia are no longer using the U.S. dollar in their main settlements. It is important that other partners actively join this process.” 
4. Years after Graves came back to the U.S., he wrote a scathing memoir, America’s Siberian Adventure, 1918-1920 (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith Publishers Inc., 1931) and was accused in turn of being a communist sympathizer. 
5. Benjamin Abelow, How the West Brought War to Ukraine: Understanding How U.S. and NATO Policies Led to Crisis, War, and the Risk of Nuclear Catastrophe (Great Barrington, MA: Siland Press, 2022), 7. 
6. Abelow should add that the ultimate goal of U.S. policy is to trap Russia into a quagmire and bankrupt the country by ratcheting up sanctions, resulting in the growth of civil unrest and overthrow of Vladimir Putin, who is hated because he restored Russia’s economic sovereignty following the misrule of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s and tightened Russian economic integration with Germany, threatening to undermine Anglo-American dominance in Central and Eastern Europe. See Jeremy Kuzmarov, “Repeating ’70s Strategy of Grand Chess-Master Brzezinski: Biden Appears to Have Induced Russian Invasion of Ukraine to Bankrupt Russia’s Economy and Advance Regime Change,” CovertAction Magazine, March 1, 2022, https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/03/01/repeating-70s-strategy-of-grand-chess-master-zbigniew-brzezinski-biden-administration-appears-to-have-induced-russian-invasion-of-ukraine-to-bankrupt-russias-economy-and-advance-regime-cha/; Van der Pijl, Flight MH17, Ukraine and the New Cold War, 3.

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Speculation about the circumstances and motivations behind the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy, rife at the time the tragedy occurred, has never stopped. While Kennedy’s murderer was declared soon after the assassination to have worked alone, one insider claimed to Fox News host Tucker Carlson that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was directly involved with JFK’s assassination.

Carlson noted that questions about the Kennedy assassination have been circulating since it happened, simply because there were a lot of details that didn’t add up or seemed too coincidental. The CIA refused to release its documentation on the killing.

Today we spoke to someone who had access to the still-hidden JFK files, and is deeply familiar with their contents. We asked this person directly: did the CIA have a hand in the murder of John F. Kennedy?

Here’s the reply: "The answer is yes. I believe they were involved." pic.twitter.com/3EURZcsaR2

— Tucker Carlson (@TuckerCarlson) December 16, 2022

President Lyndon B. Johnson released a report the year after JFK’s untimely death declaring that both Kennedy’s killer, Lee Harvey Oswald, and Oswald’s killer, Jack Ruby, were acting alone. About 50 years later, the CIA admitted it had withheld evidence—but the reason why is still publicly unknown. Carlson said that the term “conspiracy theory” was first brought into the everyday American lexicon by the media following JFK’s assassination due to the many rumors and suspicions flying about. The phrase then—as now, of course—was used to label anything and everything contrary to a government pronouncement, both plausible questions and far-out kookiness, as pure nonsense.

Carlson cited one potentially suspicious circumstance, noting that psychiatrist Louis Jolyon West declared in April 1964 that Jack Ruby was insane after visiting him in jail. West wrote that Ruby was in need of psychiatric hospitalization, even though no one encountering Ruby before had diagnosed him as insane. West was a contract psychiatrist and mind-control expert working for the CIA at the time. He was involved in the CIA’s MK-Ultra program, which gave powerful psychiatric drugs to some Americans without telling them about it. U.S. media has never investigated why a CIA psychiatrist who specialized in uninformed mind control was diagnosing Ruby. The reasons behind West’s selection remain lost to history.

In 1976, the U.S. House of Representatives reopened an investigation into the Kennedy assassination with a special bipartisan committee and concluded that JFK was “almost certainly murdered as the result of a conspiracy.” What was not decided: whose conspiracy? Carlson boldly called the CIA an “obvious suspect.” He explained his reasoning: “Why else would the agency withhold critical evidence from the investigators?” There was a 1992 congressional law mandating that all JFK assassination-related documentation be released by 2017, which ultimately did not happen. Former CIA director Mike Pompeo convinced then-President Donald Trump not to release all the documents, even though all the people involved are dead. The reason is unknown, and Pompeo declined to appear on Carlson’s show.

Today, the Biden administration released thousands of secret government documents regarding the JFK assassination. It is unclear how many remain secret.

Carlson believes he knows why the JFK files were not released in 2017, however. He said he talked with someone who has access to and familiarity with the still-secret Kennedy documentation, and asked, “Did the CIA have a hand in the murder of [President] John F. Kennedy?” According to Carlson, the insider replied, “The answer is yes. I believe they were involved. It’s a whole different country from what we thought it was. It’s all fake.” Carlson admitted that the response was “jarring,” but insisted the unnamed source is no “conspiracy theorist… this is someone with direct knowledge of the information.”

Carlson invited viewers, regardless of their feelings about the JFK assassination and his own new report, to consider the ramifications of his source’s statement. Based on what Carlson’s source stated, there are forces inside the U.S. government entirely beyond the control of the electorate (which, in fact, is true, simply because America has so many unelected bureaucrats). Carlson explained his understanding of the situation: “These forces can affect election outcomes. They can even hide their complicity in the murder of an American president. In other words, they can do pretty much anything they want. They constitute a government within a government.” Which is a pretty explosive accusation. Carlson noted that Americans no longer trust their government, but added that the government may be even less trustworthy than is publicly apparent.

The situation Carlson described is truly terrifying. Unfortunately, until all the CIA documentation on Kennedy’s assassination is released, the American public cannot judge whether the insider on Carlson’s show was telling the truth.

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Catherine Salgado is a contributor for PJ Media. She also writes for The Rogue Review, Media Research Center, and her Substack Pro Deo et Libertate. She received the Andrew Breitbart MVP award for August 2021 from The Rogue Review for her journalism.

Featured image is from OffGuardian

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***

“Anarchism is an aspect of socialism (among many others) that those of us wishing socialism, or some comparable form of resistance, to survive will have to think about again, this time without a prearranged sneer.” T J Clark, Farewell to an Idea

This December 9th marked 180 years since the birth of Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921), the great Russian anarchist, sociologist, historian, zoologist, economist, and philosopher. Now, of all times, we should be remembering, revitalizing, and creatively reconstructing his legacy.

One might assume that a 19th century Russian anarchist would have nothing to say that could possibly have real bearing on the world today, that his political philosophy, whatever relevance it might have once held, had been long surpassed. I would dare to venture another point of view: not only are we unable to justify confining Kropotkin to the history (or worse, the dustbin) of ideas – rather, this is a thinker that remains still ahead of us, a thinker whose vision has yet to be truly realized. We have not yet caught up with Kropotkin, but there are indications that conditions more favorable to receiving his thought are on the horizon, and that perhaps there is a day approaching when we may even begin to see his ideas implemented on a scale that could radically transform our communities and, most especially, our workplaces.

Kropotkin’s importance for us has only grown because the material conditions, the post-scarcity, the technological advances, have made it possible, no doubt for the first time in history, to truly realize his vision of unfettered human creativity. There is one chapter in The Conquest of Bread (1892) that I want to focus on because it may surprise those who are new to anarcho-communist political philosophy. The chapter is entitled ‘The Need for Luxury,’ and his thesis is quite a simple one: “After bread has been secured, leisure is the supreme aim.” The anarchist commune – or what is sometimes referred to today as “luxury communism” – recognizes “that while it produces all that is necessary to material life, it must also strive to satisfy all manifestations of the human mind.”

We can agree with Aaron Bastani, who argues in Fully Automated Luxury Communism (2020) that, “There is a tendency in capitalism to automate labor, to turn things previously done by humans into automated functions. In recognition of that, then the only utopian demand can be for the full automation of everything and common ownership of that which is automated.” Bastani is talking about using the levels of post-scarcity and automation that we’ve attained to finally usher in a society free of drudgery, toil, and where the full range of tastes can be satisfied.

Given the multiple crises we are facing, the general name for which is global capitalism, how should we answer the question famously posed by Lenin, “What is to be done?”

There are at least three basic principles which can be derived from the work of Kropotkin, and that can and should strategically guide us as we move forward.

The first is ending the tyranny of private property which has produced greater economic inequality today than we have ever seen in the history of the world. The concentration of capital has produced a condition in which a handful of individuals possess wealth exceeding that of the combined wealth of the billions of people who share this planet. So, as the great French philosopher Alain Badiou has also reiterated, our first principle must be that of collectivism in opposition to the dictatorship of capital: “It is not a necessity for social organization to reside in private property and monstrous inequalities.”

The second principle involve democratizing our workplaces, through worker self-management, or more precisely through what the economist Richard Wolff calls ‘worker self-directed enterprises – in a word, economic democracy. Experiments with non-traditional, non-hierarchical firms, have largely met with success. Perhaps the greatest example is Spain’s Mondrian Corporation, but there are many others. So that we are well past the stage of asking ourselves whether such non-capitalist forms of organization can succeed and be competitive. It has been amply proven that they indeed can.

The non-capitalist reorganization of our workplaces would undoubtedly improve the condition of workers, which is under assault around the world.

In countries around the world, union leaders are routinely threatened with violence or murdered. Indeed, the International Trade Union Confederation reports that 2019 saw “the use of extreme violence against the defenders of workplace rights, large-scale arrests and detentions.”  The number of countries which do not allow workers to establish or join a trade union increased from 92 in 2018 to 107 in 2019. In 2018, 53 trade union members were murdered — and in 52 counties workers were subjected to physical violence. In 72 percent of countries workers have only restricted access to justice, or none at all.  As Noam Chomsky observed, “Policies are designed to undermine working class organization and the reason is not only the unions fight for workers’ rights, but they also have a democratizing effect. These are institutions in which people without power can get together, support one another, learn about the world, try out their ideas, initiate programs, and that is dangerous.”

And third, it is time we recognize, as Badiou put it two weeks after the election of Trump, “that there is no necessity for a state in the form of a separated and armed power.” The principle of free association as opposed to the state is one that anarchism has long advocated. But we need to be clear here: anarchism is usually taken to mean, if anything, opposition to all government or to government as such. In fact, this is a mistakenly one-sided view of anarchism, and it certainly does not represent a nuanced understanding of Kropotkin, who made a clear and sharp distinction between government and the state.

Anarcho-communism is opposed to the state inasmuch as it represents centralized power in the hands of a few, hierarchical relationships and class domination. But Kropotkin was not necessarily opposed to a condition of society in which certain elements of decentralized community government remain. Martin Buber underscored this point: Kropotkin’s “‘anarchy’ like Proudhon’s, is in reality ‘anocracy’; not absence of government, but absence of domination.” The distinctive feature of anarchist programs is not that governments are excluded from the process and without any meaningful contribution to make. The essential characteristics are voluntarism, antiauthoritarianism, the decentralization of political authority, worker self-management (economic democracy), and in general a tendency to address social problems from the bottom up, rather than by imposing solutions from the top down.

Kropotkin was one of Russia’s finest minds, and one that was among the most dedicated to the ideals of which we are in danger of completely losing sight. There is no better time than now to salvage the very best of Russian thought, to reaffirm its universality, its inherently critical posture towards authoritarianism, and the self-destructive pursuit of power through violence.

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Sam Ben-Meir is an assistant adjunct professor of philosophy at City University of New York, College of Technology. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Peter Kropotkin circa 1900 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Billions of Euros Paid by Us. They Feed War and Corruption in Ukraine

By Manlio Dinucci, December 19, 2022

EU foreign ministers have allocated another 2 billion euros for military support to Ukraine. The “European Peace Fund”, which has been used to arm and train Kyiv’s army since 2021, is set to increase on an annual basis from the initial 400 million to over one billion euros. This adds more funds to the 30 billion euros that the EU spent from January to October to arm Ukraine.

Over 900 Faith Leaders in the US Demand Christmas Truce in Ukraine

By Peoples Dispatch, December 20, 2022

Ahead of the end-of-year holidays, nearly 1,000 faith leaders in the United States of major traditions are calling for a truce in Ukraine. With 14 million people displaced and over 6,700 confirmed deaths (although the true death toll is estimated to be greater), the war in Ukraine has resulted in enormous violence.

COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects: “I Can’t Hear You”

By Dr. Peter McCullough, December 20, 2022

Loss of hearing in the elderly is common affecting both the patient and the people around them trying to communicate. I have noticed many of my vaccinated elderly patients developing progressive hearing loss. Nieminen et al have conducted an extensive hearing assessment of patients in Finland after COVID-19 vaccination and compared them to the unvaccinated.

Yes, Jesus Would Have Been Branded a Domestic Extremist Today

By John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead, December 20, 2022

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire?

“Inside the COVID-19 Global Coup d’état”. COVID-19 Was a Global Coup by Private Finance, IT, and Intelligence Complexes

By Emanuel Pastreich and Hrvoje Morić, December 20, 2022

A lot of people talk about the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset, techno-fascism, global technocracy. I like the term “algorithm ghetto,” because it’s putting us in a ghetto. They want to create this global government, or global totalitarian system, wherein all nations are run like this. And if you don’t think the way the system wants you to think it’ll just shut you off, you can’t go to work. Your permission to travel will be shut off locally, or internationally.

Russia: From Boris Yeltsin to Vladimir Putin

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, December 19, 2022

After the Cold War 1.0 (1949−1989) emerged many new problems in the international arena of global politics as the circumstances concerning international relations drastically have been changed. One of the many problematic issues that have been facing both the USA and Europe (in fact, NATO and the EU) after 1989 was to find a new way of their relations with a new post-communist Russia – a country in a historical political and economic transition.

The Bivalent Booster Disaster

By Rav Arora, December 19, 2022

Over the past four months, the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have vigorously pushed the new bivalent vaccine on all eligible Americans. In his final White House briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated, “Please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family, and your community.”

Media Reporting, Justice and “Induced Political Dementia”

By Stephen Sefton, December 19, 2022

People who have had to care for elderly loved ones who suffer from the terrible disease of dementia commonly find during this experience that our loved ones can hold grammatically correct but completely meaningless conversations. These may be with imaginary people, about non-existent situations, or recalling events that never happened. The conversation sounds normal, but is in fact completely absurd.

On Western Support for Nazism

By Mark Taliano, December 19, 2022

It would be obvious and widely accepted that we in the West are responsible for the rebirth and growth of Nazism, if the truth was a staple in our cultural diets. Beneath veils of distractions and obfuscations, for example, the Canadian government has a long history of quietly supporting nazism.

500,000 Internally Displaced Palestinian Citizens of Israel Prevented from Returning to Their Villages

By Khaled Mouammar, December 19, 2022

Palestinian woman tells the story of her connection to the village of Ma’alul (which I visited on July 28, 2022) which was one of 520 villages destroyed by Israel in 1948, and how she and the half million internally displaced Palestinian citizens of Israel are determined to exercise their return to their villages and land despite racist Israeli laws that deny them their right to do so.

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***

Winter’s arrival in the northern hemisphere brings increased concern about the war in Ukraine – now in its 10th month. Concern about the suffering of civilians under siege and the fate of millions of refugees, concern about the energy crisis and militarization in Europe, concern about war-related food shortages in Africa, and concern about the possibility of a civilization-ending nuclear war. In the face of these compounding disasters, the world’s people are confronted by the apparent readiness of Russia, Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO to dig in for a long war in which there will be no winners.

Veterans For Peace shares these concerns. As far back as 2015, we called for the withdrawal of all NATO forces from Ukraine’s borders with Russia. Like many observers, we saw this unnecessary and totally avoidable war coming. On February 24, 2022, the day that Russia invaded Ukraine, we issued an urgent call for Diplomacy Not War. Veterans For Peace is part of the Peace In Ukraine Coalition, which is calling for a ceasefire and diplomacy to end the war before it is too late.

Now, with the holiday season almost upon us, we join in the calls by religious leaders and others for a temporary truce in Ukraine, hearkening back to the storied “Christmas Truce” in 1914 during World War I, when German and British soldiers came out of their trenches to celebrate together.

As veterans who have experienced the carnage of war, we feel great empathy for the young soldiers on both sides of this bloody war who are being killed and injured in the tens of thousands. We know all too well that the survivors will be traumatized and scarred for life. We say Enough is Enough – War is Not the Answer.

We want urgent, good-faith diplomacy to end the war in Ukraine, not more U.S. weapons, advisors and endless war. And certainly not a nuclear war. We want to see those billions of dollars going for climate, jobs, healthcare and housing, not for weapons manufacturers and war profiteers.

As soldiers who have resisted wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, we support war resisters on all sides, including conscientious objectors, draft resisters, deserters and all who refuse to participate in killing. We especially encourage U.S. military personnel to refuse to participate in training, arming, advising or otherwise engaging in this and other wars of empire. We furthermore call on the U.S. government to end all its wars and withdraw our troops from multiple countries around the world.

It is time to reverse course now. Drop the weapons. Embrace diplomacy and peace. For the sake of Ukraine. For the sake of Russia, Europe and the United States. For the sake of the all the peoples of the world. A holiday truce could be the first step toward peace.

Enough Is Enough – War Is Not the Answer!

Ceasefire Now – Negotiate, Don’t Escalate!

Support Soldiers Who Refuse to Kill!

Signed,

Enya Anderson, VFP National Board

Ellen Barfield, Past Vice President, VFP National Board; Co-founder, Baltimore VFP

Medea Benjamin, VFP Advisory Board, CODEPINK Women for Peace

Leah Bolger, Past President, VFP National Board

Marjorie Cohn, VFP Advisory Board; Past President, National  Lawyer’s Guild

Gerry Condon, Past President, VFP National Board

Paul Cox, VFP National Board

Michael Dempsey, VFP National Board; President, Monterey, CA, VFP

Jim Driscoll, VFP Climate Crisis and Militarism Project

Mike Ferner, Past President, VFP National Board

Mark Foreman, Past Treasurer, VFP National Board

Gerald Hassett, Vice President, New York City VFP

Matthew Hoh, VFP Advisory Board

Helen Jaccard, Manager, VFP Golden Rule Project

Eric Johansson, Past President, San Francisco VFP

Tarak Kauff, Past Member, VFP National Board

Bob Keilbach, Secretary, New York City VFP

Kathy Kelly, VFP Advisory Board; Board President, World Beyond War

Jeremiah Knowles, Vice President, VFP National Board

Barry Ladendorf, Past President, VFP National Board

Gene Marx, Past Secretary, VFP National Board

Ray McGovern, VFP Advisory Board; co-founder, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

Maj. (ret’d) Ken Mayers, USMCR; VFP National Board

Nick Mottern, VFP National Board; Co-coordinator, BanKillerDrones

William D. (Pete) Peterson, Vice President, VFP Tucson

Barry Riesch, Past President, VFP National Board

Doug Rawlings, Co-founder, VFP; Past Vice President, VFP National Board

Denny Riley, USAF, Our war in Vietnam

Susan Schnall, President, VFP National Board

Chuck Searcy, President, Vietnam VFP

Joshua Shurley, Secretary, VFP National Board

Alice Slater, VFP Nuclear Abolition Working Group

Rick Staggenborg, President, Mid-Valley Oregon VFP

David Swanson, VFP Advisory Board, World Beyond War

Mike Tork, Treasurer, VFP National Board

Michael Wong, Vice President, San Francisco VFP

Col. (Ret) Ann Wright, VFP Advisory Board; Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

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Featured image: Mural by Australian artist Peter “CTO” Seaton depicting Russian and Ukrainian soldier embracing.

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***

Ahead of the end-of-year holidays, nearly 1,000 faith leaders in the United States of major traditions are calling for a truce in Ukraine. With 14 million people displaced and over 6,700 confirmed deaths (although the true death toll is estimated to be greater), the war in Ukraine has resulted in enormous violence. Faith leaders are invoking the legacy of the 1914 Christmas Truce during WWI in calling for peace and negotiations in Ukraine. Led from the ground up by soldiers on both the British and German sides, during the 1914 truce troops defied their officers and ceased hostilities during Christmas all along the Western Front.

Almost 1,000 faith leaders have signed onto a statement that reads in part, “In the spirit of the truce that occurred in 1914 during the First World War, we urge our government to take a leadership role in bringing the war in Ukraine to an end through supporting calls for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement, before the conflict results in a nuclear war that could devastate the world’s ecosystems and annihilate all of God’s creation.”

The statement was put together by US peace organizations CODEPINK, National Council of Elders, and Fellowship of Reconciliation–USA (FOR).

The recent escalations in Ukraine, especially on the part of the US, have raised worldwide concerns about the potential of a nuclear confrontation. Biden’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released on October 27, abandons Biden’s 2020 campaign promise of supporting a “no first use” of nuclear weapons policy. It calls for a rebuilding of the US nuclear arsenal, citing threats from Russia and China, despite the fact that US intelligence has admitted that there is no sign that Russia is preparing to use nuclear weapons. The US has also sped up storage of upgraded nuclear warheads in Europe as the war rages on in the continent. As the Union of Concerned Scientists wrote in a blog post, “the Biden NPR doubles down on nuclear deterrence and the status quo approach to security that says we all must be prepared to die in less than an hour. That is not a world any of us should want to live in.”

While the US escalates, peace organizations call instead for negotiations. “Negotiation is not a euphemism for capitulation, nor is it a rationalization of Putin’s aggression,” says Medea Benjamin, cofounder CODEPINK. “It is simply a recognition that the end of this war cannot be achieved by more war. Any prospect for a pause in hostilities should be acted on.”

On November 19, peace organizations such as CODEPINK collaborated on an anti-war event hosted by the Peoples Forum and the ANSWER Coalition, also calling for negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. Speaking to the condemnation of progressive voices for peace in the United States, ANSWER Coalition direct Brian Becker said at the event, “Whenever people have organized and fought for and mobilized for peace, they draw the wrath of the warmakers…It doesn’t matter if their slogans are soft or mild, whether they talk about negotiations or overturning capitalism, just mobilizing the people against war is a great danger to the warmakers, because if the people finally say NO to war, the wars end. The ruling class can’t do the wars without the people.”

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Featured image: British and German soldiers fraternizing at Ploegsteert, Belgium, on Christmas Day 1914. Photo: Wikimedia

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***

The White House believes Ukraine’s military could retake the Crimean Peninsula from Russia. However, officials say the offensive may cross Moscow’s “red lines” and prompt a nuclear strike.

The Biden administration has radically changed its view of Kiev’s military since Russia invaded nearly ten months ago. The Ukrainians “continue to shock the world with how well they’re performing on the battlefield,” an unnamed official said.

The White House now assesses that the Ukrainian armed forces are capable of retaking Crimea, with NBC News reporting that statements to that effect were made to lawmakers during a Congressional hearing last month. The administration official was attempting to explain to Congress why Kiev still needs American support.

The Crimean Peninsula was a region of Ukraine before it was annexed by Russia in 2014. While a referendum of Crimean citizens backed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decision, Kiev and Washington assert the peninsula still belongs to Ukraine.

Sources reached by NBC News said the White House believes Putin will respond sharply to a successful Ukrainian offensive in Crimea. “Putin may react more strongly to Crimea,” one official said, while a former administration staffer added “That’s the red line.”

The White House does not believe Ukrainian military operations in Crimea to be imminent. “A lot would have to happen militarily first” before Ukraine could begin a real offensive to retake Crimea, an official stated.

However, the Biden administration has been surprised by some of Ukraine’s most advanced military operations. Two US officials and an American defense staffer said the White House was caught off guard and frustrated after Kiev launched a series of three drone attacks strikes deep inside Russian territory.

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com, news editor of the Libertarian Institute, and co-host of Conflicts of Interest.

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***

In a joint statement with French President Emmanuel Macron on December 1, President Joe Biden reiterated his vow of “continued support for Ukraine’s defense of its sovereignty and territorial integrity, including the provision of political, security, humanitarian, and economic assistance to Ukraine for as long as it takes.” A week later, Secretary of State Antony Blinken restated the American mantra of “nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine.”

But U.S. goals have shown signs of shifting. There have been three shifts, gradually growing, with the most significant almost imperceptibly whispered on December 7, when Secretary of State Blinken suggested for the first time that the “territorial integrity” part of Biden’s vow may be flexibly open to interpretation.

The Biden administration has long “ruled out the idea of pushing or even nudging Ukraine to the negotiating table.” But then in early November, after talks with Moscow, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan showed up in Kiev for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. At those talks, Sullivan “raised the need for a diplomatic resolution to the war” and privately pushed Zelensky to “signal an openness to negotiate with Russia and drop their public refusal to engage in peace talks unless President Vladimir Putin is removed from power.”

That was the first shift. The Biden administration went from ruling out nudging Ukraine to negotiate to pushing Ukraine to negotiate.

The second shift came only days later. Zelensky yielded to the U.S. nudge, urging the international community to “force Russia into real peace talks.” But he established preconditions for talks, including “restoration of [Ukraine’s] territorial integrity…compensation for all war damage, punishment for every war criminal and guarantees that it will not happen again,” which effectively negated the offer to negotiate.

Publicly, the U.S. continued to insist that everything was up to Ukraine: nothing about Ukraine without Ukraine. But, privately, U.S. officials began to say that “they believe that Zelensky would probably endorse negotiations and eventually accept concessions, as he suggested he would early in the war.”

And that was the second shift. Western officials began suggesting that Zelensky compromise.

The reference to Zelensky “early in the war” seems to have been a reference to Zelensky’s previous willingness to negotiate the status of the disputed eastern territories. Even before the war, in December 2021, Zelensky said he was willing to negotiate to avert conflict: “I do not rule out a referendum on Donbass in general. It might be about Donbass, it might be about Crimea.” He was still open to “compromises in Crimea” by March 8, after the war had begun. At that point Zelensky was still “ready to hold a dialogue with Russia on security guarantees, on the future of the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions [and] Crimea.” Although he said that “We cannot recognize that Crimea is the territory of Russia,” he also said, “But we can discuss with Russia the future of Crimea and Donbas.” He added that “Ukraine is ready to hold a dialogue with Russia on…the future of the occupied territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.” Three weeks later, Zelensky was still defining his goal as Russia withdrawing to positions they held before the invasion.

After pressure from the U.S. and U.K., all that changed. As Zelensky’s November preconditions for talks indicate, he began insisting on the full restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. That includes the Donbas and Crimea. In his address to the G20 on November 15, Zelensky again insisted that Russia must withdraw “all Russian troops from the territory of Ukraine” and that there must be full “restoration of Ukraine’s territorial integrity.”

In the second shift, U.S. officials begun suggesting a return to the very openness to compromise that they had consistently discouraged. TheWall Street Journal reports that “Two European diplomats briefed on the discussions said Mr. Sullivan recommended that Mr. Zelensky’s team start thinking about its realistic demands and priorities for negotiations, including a reconsideration of its stated aim for Ukraine to regain Crimea, which was annexed in 2014.” A Western European official said, “We are saying to the Ukrainians that it is up to them to decide when to do it,” but then added, “But it might be a good idea to do it sooner.”

And that U.S. recommendation that Zelensky think about “realistic demands and priorities for negotiations” set off the tremors that led to the third, and most surprising, shift.

The U.S. and its NATO allies have long insisted that the goal is to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity and to punish and weaken Russia. Blinken has appealed to the international principle that “The borders and territorial integrity of a state cannot be changed by force” and affirmed “unwavering support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders, extending to its territorial waters.”

But, on December 7, Blinken subtly modified that message. Blinken suggested for the first time, in a whisper that was barely heard, that the “territorial integrity” part of Biden’s vow may be flexibly open to interpretation.

Blinken hinted that, while leaving the choice of maintaining their wider goals up to Ukraine, the U.S. was narrowing its goals. Blinken told the Wall Street Journal that

Our focus is on continuing to do what we’ve been doing, which is to make sure that Ukraine has in its hands what it needs to defend itself, what it needs to push back against the Russian aggression, to take back territory that’s been seized from it since February 24th, to make sure as well that it has the support economically and on a humanitarian basis to withstand what’s happening in the country every single day.

The surprising line Blinken slipped in after “to take back territory that’s been seized from it” was the addition of the words “since February 24th.” That three-word addition seems to imply that, when negotiations finally start, the U.S. could settle for Russia maintaining sovereignty over Crimea and even parts of the Donbas. Anything beyond that is up to Ukraine. A senior State Department official told the Post that “how far Ukraine pushes south and east is a future decision for Kyiv.”

And the U.S. is not alone. Its Western allies repeated Blinken’s new formulation. The Post reports that “Some Western officials said Tuesday that the status of Crimea and the Donbas should be up for negotiation in eventual talks between Moscow and Kyiv.” One Western official said that “The longstanding issues of Crimea and the status of the Donbas might be something which are spoken about thereafter.”

British officials expressed “the absolute minimum needed for Russia to demonstrate it is serious about negotiating” as their willingness to “withdraw to positions that it occupied on Feb. 23, before the reinvasion.”

Germany said they will support whatever red lines Ukraine draws but added that “they believe it is unrealistic to expect that Russian troops will be fully expelled from all the occupied territories, and they think that an attack on Crimea would be potentially an escalation that could prompt the Kremlin to use weapons of mass destruction.”

Sullivan’s prior suggestion that Zelensky start thinking about realistic demands and priorities, including Crimea, and several Western allies repeating the new formulation, suggests that Blinken’s three-word addition was not a slip of the tongue. If that is so, it suggests the possibility that the U.S. and its NATO allies are shifting to a position of openness to the possibility of a ceasefire, one where Russia remains in Crimea and the area of the Donbas that it controlled prior to the war, with the final status of those territories negotiated at some later date.

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Ted Snider is a columnist on U.S. foreign policy and history at Antiwar.com. He is also a frequent contributor to Responsible Statecraft as well as other outlets.

Featured image is from Indian Punchline

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***

The invitation said the quiet part out loud.

The Ukrainian Embassy hosted a reception last week in honor of the 31st anniversary of the country’s armed services. Events like this are part of the social calendar of Washington’s smart set, with hobnobbing diplomats, think tankers, journalists, and US officials. Guests took photos with the Ukrainian ambassador. Even Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley showed up.

But there was something so overt it led some observers to laugh out loud at the gathering’s invitation.

The logos of military contractors Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Pratt & Whitney, and Lockheed Martin were emblazoned on the invitation as the event’s sponsors, below the official Ukrainian emblems and elegant blue script that said the Ukrainian ambassador and defense attaché “request the pleasure of your company.”

“It’s really bizarre to me that they would put that on an invitation,” one think tank expert told me. “The fact that they don’t feel sheepish about it, that’s interesting,” explained an academic. (Both spoke on the condition of anonymity and regularly attend embassy events in Washington.)

A copy of the invitation obtained by Vox.

That Ukraine and those US military contractors have a strong relationship isn’t surprising. America’s allies and partners around the world bought some $50 billion in US weapons last year. These four companies produce some of the most high-profile missile defense systems and anti-tank missiles that President Joe Biden has sent to Ukraine since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded in February. Neither is it surprising that Ukraine’s government, which says its country has already suffered hundreds of billions of dollars in damage, might not want to deplete its coffers.

But the explicit sponsorship indicates how intimate major military contractors have become with Ukraine, and how much they stand to gain from the war.

The invitation is a clear expression of how the war in Ukraine has been good for business. As Ukraine fights a defensive war against Russia’s brutal invasion, Ukrainians in Washington have been pushing for the US to send Ukraine more weapons. So far, President Joe Biden’s administration has committed a substantial $19.3 billion of military assistance since February.

That aid has been integral to Ukraine’s success on the battlefield; their armed forces first repelled Russia’s advances and then launched counteroffensives that have retaken much of the territory Russia initially claimed.

No one wanted to talk about the party invite, however. A senior official from the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington confirmed that the companies’ logos appeared on the invitation but declined to speak on the record. They directed me to the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense, which did not immediately respond. Lockheed declined to officially comment and deferred to Ukraine House, an embassy-linked entity that was also listed on the invitation. Raytheon also declined to comment. Emails to Northrop Grumman and Pratt & Whitney were not returned.

Even some US supporters of Ukraine say the overt sponsorship is a bad look. “Sustaining American popular support is absolutely essential for Ukraine’s continued defense,” Matt Duss, a Carnegie Endowment for International Peace fellow who previously advised Sen. Bernie Sanders, told me. “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.”

$19.3 billion of US security assistance to Ukraine, briefly explained

The Biden administration has ramped up military aid to Ukraine to an unprecedented degree. It’s had an undeniable effect on the battlefield.

It’s also been good business for US defense contractors. Among the biggest winners are Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman. Each of their stocks has climbed since Russia’s invasion, with Lockheed up about 38 percent this year.

Contractors have accelerated production to backfill the weapons the US has been sending to Ukraine. The Javelin missile, for example, has become a meme in Ukraine. It’s so in-demand that Lockheed said it will go from manufacturing 2,100 a year to 4,000. The Biden administration has been using what’s called a presidential drawdown authority to quickly source high-end weapons from American stocks and get them into Ukraine, and then use congressional funding to replenish those.

“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,” Biden told employees at Lockheed’s Troy, Alabama, factory in May. “And every worker in this facility and every American taxpayer is directly contributing to the case for freedom.”

Lockheed also produces the high-tech defensive systems that protect Ukrainian cities under Russian’s aerial bombardment. In appeals to Washington, Ukraine has sought Lockheed’s High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS). The US has sent Ukraine 20 of the missile defense systems and is working to produce another 18, which will cost about $1.1 billion, according to Defense News. Lockheed also makes another precision missile system that has been sent to Ukraine; last month, the US Army awarded Lockheed $521 million of contracts to refill its own supplies, which had been sent to Ukraine.

“We are confident in long-term growth as domestic and international demand for a wide range of our products and services remain strong,” CEO James Taiclet said on the company’s October earnings call.

Raytheon, for its part, just won a $1.2 billion contract for six surface-to-air-missile systems. The company co-produces Javelin missiles and also makes Stinger missiles, which the US awarded a $624 million contract for in May — the first in two decades, according to the Financial Times. “Over the first 10 months of the war, Ukraine has consumed as many Stinger anti-air missiles as Raytheon makes in 13 years,” the trade publication Breaking Defense noted. Pratt & Whitney, an aerospace company whose logo also appeared on the embassy invitation, is one of Raytheon’s subsidiaries.

In its most recent earnings call, Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes described a “significant global demand for advanced air defense systems, especially in Eastern Europe, as the Russians and Ukraine conflict, unfortunately, continues.”

The entire military industrial base has been facing supply chain issues resulting from the Covid pandemic and microchip shortages. But Northrop Grumman, a leading producer of ammunition, could stand to gain long-term from the ongoing war in Ukraine. “One is the growth that we’re seeing in munitions and particularly that demand which we expect to grow even more with the conflict in Ukraine,” CEO Kathy Warden said on an earnings call.

Arming Ukraine is a good narrative for these companies, especially after coming under intensive criticism for selling bombs to countries like Saudi Arabia, which have reportedly been used to kill civilians in Yemen. And an embassy event for Ukraine is an opportunity for military contractors to show that they support the so-called arsenal of democracy.

Military contractors support many research institutions and nonprofits in Washington, but that sponsorship tends to be more subtle. Their names appear in donor rolls or on the final page of a report — not on an invite below an ambassador’s name.

“I’ve never quite seen this kind of public embrace of a country and the weapons contractors as is happening with Ukraine,” Bill Hartung, a researcher at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me. “I can’t imagine another situation where the contractors would sponsor an event for a country that they’re arming in the middle of a war.”

“It’s one thing to support Ukraine to defend itself, which I think is certainly legitimate,” he added. “But I think the companies want to go beyond that. They want to cash in on this reputationally.”

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Loss of hearing in the elderly is common affecting both the patient and the people around them trying to communicate. I have noticed many of my vaccinated elderly patients developing progressive hearing loss. Nieminen et al have conducted an extensive hearing assessment of patients in Finland after COVID-19 vaccination and compared them to the unvaccinated. The data suggested each successive shot increased risk for hearing loss. However, the most important results are in the supplemental tables which demonstrate the elderly and those with risk factors for hearing loss are pushed over the edge by COVID-19 vaccination.

Nieminen TA, Kivekäs I, Artama M, Nohynek H, Kujansivu J, Hovi P. Sudden Hearing Loss Following Vaccination Against COVID-19. JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online December 15, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2022.4154

Their risk for sudden and substantial loss of hearing is more than double those who wisely deferred on the vaccines. The Spike protein produced by the vaccines is a neurotoxin damaging nerves throughout the body and likely having more of an impact in nervous tissue which is already degenerated such as the auditory nerve. It is also possible the Spike protein incites inflammation leading to fibrosis in the tissue holding the stapes or stirrup which is a bone bone in the middle ear, the annular ligament, or the oval window all involved in the conduction of sound vibrations to the inner ear. If you have an elderly person in your circle who has been vaccinated, check on their hearing and do not fall behind on progressive hearing loss which if unchecked, can lead to social withdrawal and insidious depression.

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Source

Nieminen TA, Kivekäs I, Artama M, Nohynek H, Kujansivu J, Hovi P. Sudden Hearing Loss Following Vaccination Against COVID-19. JAMA Otolaryngol Head Neck Surg. Published online December 15, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamaoto.2022.4154

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“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in the sky is gone, when the kings and princes are home, when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of Christmas begins: to find the lost, to heal the broken, to feed the hungry, to release the prisoner, to rebuild the nations, to bring peace among the people, to make music in the heart.”—Howard Thurman, theologian and civil rights activist

The Christmas story of a baby born in a manger is a familiar one.

The Roman Empire, a police state in its own right, had ordered that a census be conducted. Joseph and his pregnant wife Mary traveled to the little town of Bethlehem so that they could be counted. There being no room for the couple at any of the inns, they stayed in a stable (a barn), where Mary gave birth to a baby boy, Jesus. Warned that the government planned to kill the baby, Jesus’ family fled with him to Egypt until it was safe to return to their native land.

Yet what if Jesus had been born 2,000 years later.

What if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, Jesus had been born at this moment in time? What kind of reception would Jesus and his family be given? Would we recognize the Christ child’s humanity, let alone his divinity? Would we treat him any differently than he was treated by the Roman Empire? If his family were forced to flee violence in their native country and sought refuge and asylum within our borders, what sanctuary would we offer them?A singular number of churches across the country have asked those very questions in recent years, and their conclusions were depicted with unnerving accuracy by nativity scenes in which Jesus and his family are separated, segregated and caged in individual chain-link pens, topped by barbed wire fencing.

Those nativity scenes were a pointed attempt to remind the modern world that the narrative about the birth of Jesus is one that speaks on multiple fronts to a world that has allowed the life, teachings and crucifixion of Jesus to be drowned out by partisan politics, secularism, materialism and war, all driven by a manipulative shadow government called the Deep State.

The modern-day church has largely shied away from applying Jesus’ teachings to modern problems such as war, poverty, immigration, etc., but thankfully there have been individuals throughout history who ask themselves and the world: what would Jesus do.

What would Jesus—the baby born in Bethlehem who grew into an itinerant preacher and revolutionary activist, who not only died challenging the police state of his day (namely, the Roman Empire) but spent his adult life speaking truth to power, challenging the status quo of his day, and pushing back against the abuses of the Roman Empire—do about the injustices of our  modern age.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked himself what Jesus would have done about the horrors perpetrated by Hitler and his assassins. The answer: Bonhoeffer was executed by Hitler for attempting to undermine the tyranny at the heart of Nazi Germany.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn asked himself what Jesus would have done about the soul-destroying gulags and labor camps of the Soviet Union. The answer: Solzhenitsyn found his voice and used it to speak out about government oppression and brutality.

Martin Luther King Jr. asked himself what Jesus would have done about America’s warmongering. The answer: declaring “my conscience leaves me no other choice,” King risked widespread condemnation as well as his life when he publicly opposed the Vietnam War on moral and economic grounds.

Even now, despite the popularity of the phrase “What Would Jesus Do?” (WWJD) in Christian circles, there remains a disconnect in the modern church between the teachings of Christ and the suffering of what Jesus in Matthew 25 refers to as the “least of these.

Yet this is not a theological gray area: Jesus was unequivocal about his views on many things, not the least of which was charity, compassion, war, tyranny and love.

After all, Jesus—the revered preacher, teacher, radical and prophet—was born into a police state not unlike the growing menace of the American police state. When he grew up, he had powerful, profound things to say, things that would change how we view people, alter government policies and change the world. “Blessed are the merciful,” “Blessed are the peacemakers,” and “Love your enemies” are just a few examples of his most profound and revolutionary teachings.

When confronted by those in authority, Jesus did not shy away from speaking truth to power. Indeed, his teachings undermined the political and religious establishment of his day. It cost him his life. He was eventually crucified as a warning to others not to challenge the powers-that-be.

Can you imagine what Jesus’ life would have been like if, instead of being born into the Roman police state, he had been born and raised in the American police state.

Consider the following if you will.

Had Jesus been born in the era of the America police state, rather than traveling to Bethlehem for a census, Jesus’ parents would have been mailed a 28-page American Community Survey, a mandatory government questionnaire documenting their habits, household inhabitants, work schedule, how many toilets are in your home, etc. The penalty for not responding to this invasive survey can go as high as $5,000.

Instead of being born in a manger, Jesus might have been born at home. Rather than wise men and shepherds bringing gifts, however, the baby’s parents might have been forced to ward off visits from state social workers intent on prosecuting them for the home birth. One couple in Washington had all three of their children removed after social services objected to the two youngest being birthed in an unassisted home delivery.

Had Jesus been born in a hospital, his blood and DNA would have been taken without his parents’ knowledge or consent and entered into a government biobank. While most states require newborn screening, a growing number are holding onto that genetic material long-term for research, analysis and purposes yet to be disclosed.

Then again, had Jesus’ parents been undocumented immigrants, they and the newborn baby might have been shuffled to a profit-driven, private prison for illegals where they first would have been separated from each other, the children detained in make-shift cages, and the parents eventually turned into cheap, forced laborers for corporations such as Starbucks, Microsoft, Walmart, and Victoria’s Secret. There’s quite a lot of money to be made from imprisoning immigrants, especially when taxpayers are footing the bill.

From the time he was old enough to attend school, Jesus would have been drilled in lessons of compliance and obedience to government authorities, while learning little about his own rights. Had he been daring enough to speak out against injustice while still in school, he might have found himself tasered or beaten by a school resource officer, or at the very least suspended under a school zero tolerance policy that punishes minor infractions as harshly as more serious offenses.

Had Jesus disappeared for a few hours let alone days as a 12-year-old, his parents would have been handcuffed, arrested and jailed for parental negligence. Parents across the country have been arrested for far less “offenses” such as allowing their children to walk to the park unaccompanied and play in their front yard alone.

Rather than disappearing from the history books from his early teenaged years to adulthood, Jesus’ movements and personal data—including his biometrics—would have been documented, tracked, monitored and filed by governmental agencies and corporations such as Google and Microsoft. Incredibly, 95 percent of school districts share their student records with outside companies that are contracted to manage data, which they then use to market products to us.

From the moment Jesus made contact with an “extremist” such as John the Baptist, he would have been flagged for surveillance because of his association with a prominent activist, peaceful or otherwise. Since 9/11, the FBI has actively carried out surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations on a broad range of activist groups, from animal rights groups to poverty relief, anti-war groups and other such “extremist” organizations.

Jesus’ anti-government views would certainly have resulted in him being labeled a domestic extremist. Law enforcement agencies are being trained to recognize signs of anti-government extremism during interactions with potential extremists who share a “belief in the approaching collapse of government and the economy.

While traveling from community to community, Jesus might have been reported to government officials as “suspicious” under the Department of Homeland Security’s “See Something, Say Something” programs. Many states, including New York, are providing individuals with phone apps that allow them to take photos of suspicious activity and report them to their state Intelligence Center, where they are reviewed and forwarded to law-enforcement agencies.

Rather than being permitted to live as an itinerant preacher, Jesus might have found himself threatened with arrest for daring to live off the grid or sleeping outside. In fact, the number of cities that have resorted to criminalizing homelessness by enacting bans on camping, sleeping in vehicles, loitering and begging in public has doubled.

Viewed by the government as a dissident and a potential threat to its power, Jesus might have had government spies planted among his followers to monitor his activities, report on his movements, and entrap him into breaking the law. Such Judases today—called informants—often receive hefty paychecks from the government for their treachery.

Had Jesus used the internet to spread his radical message of peace and love, he might have found his blog posts infiltrated by government spies attempting to undermine his integrity, discredit him or plant incriminating information online about him. At the very least, he would have had his website hacked and his email monitored.

Had Jesus attempted to feed large crowds of people, he would have been threatened with arrest for violating various ordinances prohibiting the distribution of food without a permit. Florida officials arrested a 90-year-old man for feeding the homeless on a public beach.

Had Jesus spoken publicly about his 40 days in the desert and his conversations with the devil, he might have been labeled mentally ill and detained in a psych ward against his will for a mandatory involuntary psychiatric hold with no access to family or friends. One Virginia man was arrested, strip searched, handcuffed to a table, diagnosed as having “mental health issues,” and locked up for five days in a mental health facility against his will apparently because of his slurred speech and unsteady gait.

Without a doubt, had Jesus attempted to overturn tables in a Jewish temple and rage against the materialism of religious institutions, he would have been charged with a hate crime. More than 45 states and the federal government have hate crime laws on the books.

Had anyone reported Jesus to the police as being potentially dangerous, he might have found himself confronted—and killed—by police officers for whom any perceived act of non-compliance (a twitch, a question, a frown) can result in them shooting first and asking questions later.

Rather than having armed guards capture Jesus in a public place, government officials would have ordered that a SWAT team carry out a raid on Jesus and his followers, complete with flash-bang grenades and military equipment. There are upwards of 80,000 such SWAT team raids carried out every year, many on unsuspecting Americans who have no defense against such government invaders, even when such raids are done in error.

Instead of being detained by Roman guards, Jesus might have been made to “disappear” into a secret government detention center where he would have been interrogated, tortured and subjected to all manner of abuses. Chicago police have “disappeared” more than 7,000 people into a secret, off-the-books interrogation warehouse at Homan Square.

Charged with treason and labeled a domestic terrorist, Jesus might have been sentenced to a life-term in a private prison where he would have been forced to provide slave labor for corporations or put to death by way of the electric chair or a lethal mixture of drugs.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, given the nature of government then and now, it is painfully evident that whether Jesus had been born in our modern age or his own, he still would have died at the hands of a police state.

Thus, as we draw near to Christmas with its celebration of miracles and promise of salvation, we would do well to remember that what happened in that manger on that starry night in Bethlehem is only the beginning of the story. That baby born in a police state grew up to be a man who did not turn away from the evils of his age but rather spoke out against it.

We must do no less.

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This article was originally published on The Rutherford Institute.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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Read Part I:

“Inside the COVID-19 Global Coup d’état”

By Emanuel Pastreich and Hrvoje Morić, December 12, 2022

Geopolitics & Empire: Just to go to a step further, where do they want to take us? I feel like we’re still in the eye of the storm, operation COVID-19 is not yet finished, by any means. You write,

“As a result global institutions like Bretton Woods, UN, IT corporations, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle are being militarized as we speak. What they have been authorized to do to Russians today, they will do to you tomorrow. And there will be no appeal precisely because the policies were formulated and implemented in secret. Your bank account, your automobile, your every action can be shut down by these hidden forces. The oppression of citizens in Canada, New Zealand and Austria was the frontline of this war against the citizens of the earth. Now something far worse is slouching towards Kiev to be born or shadow government lurks behind the titles, US government, German government, NATO, World Bank or UN. And they will be able to seize everything you possess and put you in jail without any due process.”

Putting Us in a Ghetto

A lot of people talk about the World Economic Forum, the Great Reset, techno-fascism, global technocracy. I like the term “algorithm ghetto,” because it’s putting us in a ghetto. They want to create this global government, or global totalitarian system, wherein all nations are run like this. And if you don’t think the way the system wants you to think it’ll just shut you off, you can’t go to work. Your permission to travel will be shut off locally, or internationally.

Where I used to work, all the teachers had to get injected or they lost their job. I know people who were fired because they refused to be injected with what I call Pentagon Juice because it was the Pentagon ‘s DARPA in 2012 which created that mRNA tech.

Your further thoughts on their end game,

what they’re trying to achieve.

And in all countries, we see countries like Russia, you touch on this again, that it’s the struggles in nations like you see in Russia they’re implementing some of this stuff, China, every nation to different degrees.

So what’s their end game?

defang the population

Emanuel Pastreich: Right. Well, I think their end game first is to defang the population. I think that’s number one priority. They may not have a complete consensus among the global elite on what the end game is. This is my speculation; some elites want to reduce the World population by 95%. Others are more open to having a large slave population. And so it’s not clear whether their goal is that the population should be three billion or 500 million, or whatever. And these different goals are related to the confusion about what climate change is, and how catastrophic it is.

If you embrace the view popular among many globalists that climate change really is catastrophic and we’re not going to be able to live on this planet for a variety of reasons, then obviously you have to bring a population down to about 400 million because the planet will not support more people in the future.

If you don’t believe that scenario, if you think Earth’s ecosystem is more or less stable, then obviously you can tolerate more people. It’s not clear, what will happen, even for the elites.

But the basic assumptions are the same: we will create a false sense of democratic process and liberalism, then confuse citizens with a false multicultural, gender, good feeling rainbow flag show as a way to fool people for the period until we get them to the next stage.

And when we get to the next stage, when citizens are confined to their homes, and at any moment the so-called “government” can shut off their credit cards, or if you go outside, a drone or tracker might target you. At that point the super-rich will not have to care about what you think any more, right?

When we’ve gotten to the next stage, then at that point, all the feel good, “multi- culty” stuff can go in the garbage because then we have essentially implemented the final stage.

And at that point we will be looking at the real third world war, which will be quite brutal. I also want to note that I think that Israeli high tech companies among others may be playing a major role in this process.

Control Systems

But if we look at the know-how for QR codes and geo-fencing and all these systems of control, that Israel was the pioneer in this field and that many of the programs that are being used in the United States, in Oklahoma and Louisiana, are based on Israeli models for social control. The Israelis have expertise that they built up in the occupied territories. On the one hand, there’s the DARPA studies, the RAND studies in the background, but the Israelis were expert on how to control people and monitor them 24/7.

The cutting edge was in Israel, and now they found a global market for it in this COVID-19 operation. It has brought enormous profits for these specialized private Israeli firms all over, including places, probably everywhere. It’s been documented in the case of the United States, but my guess is in places like China, or even in Russia, that there’s substantial amount of outsourcing of these control systems, IT systems.

Probably we have a symbiotic relationship between big tech, Amazon, Cisco, Google, Facebook, the big players, and then the specialized firms, say like Black Cube, these Israeli IT intelligence firms, that do the initial work, and some of the dirty work.

Geopolitics & Empire: Just to get a little geopolitical, get your thoughts on, you mentioned World War III, there’s Ukraine and China now. Basically the big three powers, the US, NATO, Brussels, EU West, and then the pull of Russia and China in the Taiwan issue, and Ukraine. And as you said, all governments seem to have been penetrated by these IT private intelligence-

Emanuel Pastreich: For sure.

Geopolitics & Empire: These are transnational elite networks. But at the same time we see rivalry between US, China, Russia. How do you explain this apparent contradiction? What’s Putin’s vision as you see it, or Xi Jinping’s vision, and where might things go?

Emanuel Pastreich: Right. Well, one of the major problems we have in politics and in journalism is that our intellectual capacity has been so degraded. People don’t read books; they don’t understand philosophy. If you go back in 1960s or back to the 1940s, a lot of people who were engaged in journalism or in discussions on politics in universities. They knew, they read Kant and Hegel. They knew about Aristotle or for that matter, about Confucius, and they had an understanding of the epistemological and ontological problematics that lie behind politics. All that has all been cleared out.

So we’re stuck with the politics of bad guys and country-to-country confrontations. And because our minds have been so simplified, because the schemata we use are so crude, it’s hard for us to think three-dimensionally about how you can have conflicts between nation states and at the same time have cooperation between multinational corporations, et cetera.

I would say they’re basically four axes.

One is the nation state; it hasn’t disappeared, probably won’t. It has an enduring quality no matter how outdated it is. It appeals to part of the human brain by saying, I have a country and I belong to it.

The second is the multinational corporations which follow their own rules. They fight with each other, and sometimes they hate each other, but they’re not following the trajectory of the nation state. And we see this increasingly to be the case because of the IT revolution, if you will.

The third is the ethnic group, the sense of being whether it’s Caucasian or Chinese or Indian. We have these transnational ethnic groups which span the world. And increasingly we have populations of Indians in the United States or in South Africa, or wherever, who work together in their own way.

Ethnic groups do not necessarily correspond with the reach of the multinational corporation, but they are significant.

And the final axis is class.

Class, as we know, has been intentionally I think stamped as being a Marxist communist concept that is forbidden. In fact, the idea of class is an essential issue in politics in society, John Stuart Mills talked about it. It was not a Marxist concept.

I think it’s really important for us to take that association with Marxism out, to say we can talk about class and class interests without embracing a Marxist perspective, and that class should be front and center of our analysis.

It’s very hard to understand the what’s going on without getting those four different players right. And what we’re seeing is essentially an interference pattern between these different factors.

So to answer your question, I’m sorry it took so long. I think someone like Putin or Xi Jinping is not so free in his decision making process.

In some ways, I think the compromise they make is they get to be on TV and make it look like they make decisions, but, in fact, they basically have to play to the needs of these multinational corporations and billionaires, wealthy individuals in their country and around the world who are pulling their strings. And that that’s increasingly the case.

I wouldn’t say the nation state has disappeared, and there are bureaucratic entities which are focused on the particular nation like Russia or United States, but I would say increasingly transnational forces are quite significant.

And finally, this phenomenon is not totally new. The first world war followed the same trajectory basically.

We had the contradictions of these jointly- held petrochemical, steel weapons manufacturers, places where British, French, Russian, German owned stakes in weapons manufacturing in each of these countries in 1914, making profits off of wars. That was essentially how the first World War unfolded.

Of course, that war changed in nature once you had millions of people dead and you could no longer pull that game off. But the initial start of the first world war was basically another,

I don’t know if false flag’s the right word for it, but basically the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand was not a totally clean thing and it certainly didn’t need to end up in a world war.

It became a world war because of the financial interests baying for war and was these extremely wealthy families who had bought into arms manufacturing who drove the process. That’s what led to the Russian and the German Revolution in 1918, 1919.

Geopolitics & Empire: Just on the issue of Marx, I’ve been classified as a “commie,” when I am nothing of the sort. I feel just like you. It’s a very useful to employ Marxist analysis. I’ve had many leftists and Marxists on the show to have them break things down, and to use analysis of class as well.

Obviously, I’ve met people in the US, Americans who were upper class, rich, who would refuse to talk to me because I was local. Literally we’d be sitting at the table and they don’t talk to me, but then someone else comes along who’s from their class and they can’t shut up.

The two of them go talking, but they won’t talk to me because I’m a lower class. Obviously this is a reality.

There was one point I think where I agree with most of what you’re saying, the wasn’t one point I didn’t agree on, but I know I’m not here to debate.

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, I’m curious-

Geopolitics & Empire: It’s in your book where you talk about the climate security threat, and I think you were talking about ending the use of petroleum and coal, the war economy.

Emanuel Pastreich: Do you think I went too far?

Geopolitics & Empire: No more cars and fewer airplanes. I think the issue that we see people like the Klaus Schwab and globalists saying that as well. What’s your take on the climate security issue?

Emanuel Pastreich: I really appreciate you bringing that topic up. And it has been an issue previously for me because things that I wrote a while ago regarding the response to climate change and to the petroleum based economy are now read in an entirely different way. Sadly, that legitimate agenda has been taken over by people with a totally different intention than myself.

My intention was, at multiple levels. First, energy independence, I.e. produce your own energy and reduce your use of energy. And second was that to eliminate the role of petrochemical corporations and those banks related to them, to end their political influence.

That would allow us to make policy, whether it’s how we run our communities without being force-fed automobiles and freeways and other things which we didn’t have before and that we don’t need. They’re very destructive.

My approach was multifaceted, it’s not simply to say that climate change is going to kill us all, but also say that automobiles are dangerous, that petrochemicals are bad for you and for the environment. And that forcing us to use petroleum is basically a hidden tax for the benefit of multinational corporations.

Every time you have to use plastics, you have to use automobiles, to live because of the way corrupt politicians have designed your city, then you’re being forced to support this totalitarian system.

But to come back to the issue of climate change, what I discussed with Josh the other day. I started out by saying, I don’t know, my knowledge is limited, but I have read now quite a lot on the subject, and I’ve taught a class on climate change. And I think there is sufficient evidence to say that is a general phenomenon, that we’re seeing a major alteration of the climate. However, to say that it’s because we have too many petroleum driven cars is not the case. The climate change is a complex phenomenon. It involves the misuse of land, misuse of water, spread of deserts as a result, the destruction of the oceans by micro-plastics, a variety of factors.

And then there is the collapse of biodiversity, which many scientists say is a much more serious threat than the alteration of the climate. There are multiple factors involved, and unfortunately the discourse in academics and in the media has been simplified and reduced to a cartoonish way.

So on the one hand you have Greta Thunberg and Al Gore and other people who the corporate media feeds to us, people who give this incredibly simplistic vision of what needs to be done.

Their solutions do not address class, do not ask who owns Exxon and how do they use the corporations to make money, how their profits are related to foreign wars. None of the real politics or economics is mentioned by these climate messiahs.  The assumption in their words is that politicians are insensitive and they don’t listen to the people, and they don’t know what’s really happening. That is definitely not the case. Politicians know exactly what’s happening, but they have their masters to serve.

And so the analysis that is offered to us by most of the environmental climate change NGOs is a base blatant fraud.

But regarding the concern that we will face a catastrophic alteration of our climate, of our biosphere, that might lead eventually to human extinction, that concern I would not dismiss. I would only say that it appears that the exaggerated scenarios in which people claimed that we’ll all be dead in 10 years or 20 years, 30 years, that those scenarios appear to have been wrong.

But it doesn’t mean we won’t all be dead in 1,000 years or in 500 years. I think that’s not acceptable either.

On the other hand, we have Donald Trump and others who say that all discussion of climate change is a fraud. They say that it is fine to use fossil fuels, that we are being misled by this fake IMF, World Economic Forum agenda to believe things which are totally false.

I don’t buy that at all. I think that that argument against climate change as a threat is also funded by corporate interests, and most notably that when they criticize those drawing who are drawing attention to the threat, to the environment, to the climate, they attack those cardboard figures like Greta or Al Gore. They don’t go after books like Elizabeth Kolbert’s “The Sixth Extinction” or these rather complex, carefully written research that describes a complex dangerous phenomenon in the climate.

And so the reason why people are skeptical of climate change is that climate change has become like “scientism” or for that matter “COVID-19.” Climate change is being defined for us by a tiny group of self-interested people who are backed by global finance. And their purpose is not to end climate change, but to use climate change, again, as a trauma, a deep psychological mass trauma, that will allow us to move people to somewhere politically that they would never go naturally.

And that is to a system in which money is controlled by multinational banks through their fronts, their NGO fronts or their so-called “global governance.”

Geopolitics & Empire: We’ve covered the main points. One of my last questions for you would be what should be our response to all of these things, the plans of the crazy global elites.

My purpose is twofold, trying to resist, just as you suggested, to fight back politically, to speak the truth, and to organize. But also the second part is preparing for worst-case scenarios. If my banks account is shut down and I can’t use money anymore and I’m going to starve to death, well, then I have to start preparing.

There are a lot of people fleeing down here to Mexico where I am. There are people leaving urban areas for rural areas. They’re creating their plan Bs, getting a plot of land with water and food, creating networks, decentralizing, using technology as well.

And so, what do we need to do? What’s your advice? How do we move forward now?

Emanuel Pastreich: Right. Well, the first point I would stress is that the current system in the United States, and globally, is so corrupt, so infected, that it cannot be reformed internally.

I think we all have to recognize this fact. You’re not going to elect somebody, whether it’s in Mexico or in the United States, who’s going to be a savior. President Lopez Obrador in Mexico is one of the better politicians out there in the world, but what he could do was quite limited by the system in which he’s working.

And by the way I should mention that only two commercial publishers that were willing to publish my book “Fear No Evil” and they were in Mexico and South Korea. I’m very grateful actually to the Mexican people for supporting me back then, two and a half years ago.

So that means we have to create our own system. I‘ve written about this now at length. We need to admit that a lot of us are in serious trouble, but we need to come together and to support each other, and to create our own communities which will then be institutionalized.

So you, me, and a couple other people should say we form our own government. We have our own constitution, we’re committed to each other, and we will create our own economy wherein we produce our own food, we create our own utensils and instruments, and we are essentially independent.

Now, of course, the powers that be want to shut this down and they’ll use extreme methods. But if we get to a critical mass in our country, in our region, in our country, and globally, they will not be able to do that. That doesn’t mean they won’t be able to kill some of us, but I think they will not be able to shut down such a movement.

But I think what’s most difficult about this is process is that it means giving up hope in all these false promises that have been made to us. We thought that the UN, the United States, or European Union, or other organizations, could play some positive role if reformed.

But we have to build from the bottom up, start from you, me, and our neighbors; come together and say, we’ll help each other, we’ll grow food or build things, make our clothes, whatever it is. And that although it seems incredibly backwards and inefficient and counterproductive to go down to that level, control the basic means of production, that in fact, in the long term, that action will form the solid foundation for something which is independent.

And that by contrast, we have so many thoughtful people, progressives, whoever, who are trapped in the system, to some degree that was so true of me.

They’re dependent on the money given to them by progressive thinking, rich people, and they’re unable to address real issues. So if you had to choose, you’re better off being independent.

I’m not just an independent candidate for president, but when I was in Korea, essentially unable to work in the US, the last year I lived in Yeosu in the south of Korea, we had a tiny apartment. I lived minimally with my friend who’s on the second floor, and we cooked together, we cooperated in everything. Our costs were very low, and we were able to sustain ourselves and to be politically active.

It doesn’t require money to be politically active. In fact, most political action does not require money. But we’re fed this line that somehow, unless you have millions of dollars flowing in like Bernie Sanders did, or whatever, that you can’t be politically active. It’s a fiction.

In fact, I think the real revolution will come when people snap out of this narcissistic view of success for me, and finally realize that cooperation and mutual support are the foundation of political action and then start to create their own truly independent communities, which will be the building blocks on which we create something new.

I don’t want to say it will be a totally new system because it will be based on moral philosophy, ideas about governance that go back thousands of years.

In that respect I’m not a Marxist, right? I don’t say, throw away everything and we’re going to engage in some radical modernism. I think that if anything, we need to go back to governance as it existed before. And in the United States, the native peoples like the Iroquois people had tremendously sophisticated ideas about governance that were based on long-term sustainable development, for that matter we find such wisdom in China as well.

It’s hard to imagine now, but there were ideas about economics in which you looked at where you’re going to be in 200 years, not next month’s returns on your stock.

And that sort of revolutionary change at the conceptual level, must be goes together with the establishment of an independent community. The independent community changes the economic means of production and support. And the intellectual philosophical revolution says clearly that growth and consumption are bad, that frugality is a virtue, and that intellectual depth, spiritual depth, is far superior to consumption, going to movies, traveling, whatever. You can sit in your own room, in little space, and have profoundly deep, philosophical, spiritual experience from reading books, talking to people, creating art. It doesn’t take money.

In fact, that brings me to my final point. I think we have to end the money economy, to recognize that we humans have lived on the earth for millions of years with minimal use of money. And that even until the 1930s, most people supported themselves at the local level through mutual support, not money. You got butter from your neighbor, carrots from another neighbor, you gave your potatoes in barter, that sort of exchange. Some of it included money, but much of it did not.

You produced energy from a windmill or from a water mill or from your horse, or your cow, or your own manual labor. And you were basically economically independent. You needed some money on the weekends if you go to the market to buy some specialized products.

But I think it’s entirely possible, and preferable, to pull ourselves out of this digitalized monetary system, which is the primary tool used by the global elite to pin us down and to slowly ease us into slavery.

Geopolitics & Empire: They want to put us on their digital farm and get us off of our farm. And you echo a lot of sentiments from past guests I’ve had, who talk about basically what you’re saying, in different ways with variations like a parallel society, a parallel structure, a parallel economy and that sort of thing. Where would be the best place for people to go to find out more?  I’ll include all of the links in the descriptions, but if you want, tell us where’s the best place for people to go to find out more.

Emanuel Pastreich: Well, the best way, the best starting point, is to be able to sit down with your own family and have a serious discussion about what’s happening in the United States. It trumps everything else. Because so many families are not able to speak honestly about what’s happening, or even to address the challenges that we face. We have to overcome this taboo, the forbidden truths, and have real discussions with family members, friends and neighbors. For my part, my little contribution, I hope, is to be a catalyst to get people to say: that’s the way to go. And, obviously, I’m here to support you. If you want to contact me, I’ll do everything I can to be helpful to you.

In terms of websites, I have my own blog, circlesandsquares.asia. I do a lot of writing in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, and I have stuff in Spanish and other languages as well, which might be interesting to some. My field is Asia. I was a Chinese major. I studied Japanese for many years, and Korean as well.

And then I have a site for my presidential candidacy emanuelprez.com that has my speeches, my book in 14 languages, and then the prefaces in another 20 languages.

And then I have the US provisional government site, usprovgov.asia, where I present some of the basic concepts for what a provisional government based on the Constitution of the United States would be. And purpose of that site is to say, obviously, that I can’t do it myself, but I can set forth a vision for what is possible that will inspire other people to do it.

The underlying assumption there is that we must at the least have a strategy behind our actions. We must say to ourselves, “These people control everything now. how do you overthrow that?”

I think there are some basic principles in politics about how you do it.

The first is to say that they have no legitimacy, that the United States is based upon the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, that those documents define the United States. Other organizations which defy that basic understanding and agreement of those two documents which define our government, those organizations are not government, at all, but they’re criminal syndicates.

And so we need to identify among a larger population –the process has already started—of ordinary working people, and intellectuals, the sense that this is our position: “We are the government.” Why are we the government? Because we follow the Constitution, we follow the rule of law, and we follow the scientific method.

Those people say that they’re the government, but if we look at them, they’re set up by Google and Facebook, and Israeli private intelligence firms, etc. They’re not government in any sense. The same holds for the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. There’s not a word in the Constitution about the role of the Democratic Party or the Republican Party. So if they are making policy, then that process is profoundly unconstitutional.

They have seized control of the process of making law and enforcing law, both because of the privatization of the police and military, and also because of the process of making policy within political parties.

Our position, should be, I think, to pull back and say, “I’m not going to engage. Well, I’m going to talk, I’d love to be on the show, but I’m not interested in compromising with these people.”

I’m going to say that me, you, couple of my friends, we are the United States because we follow the Constitution.

These people are running a criminal syndicate that is posing as the United States, but they have no legitimacy.

Now, this declaration in itself does not change things. It’s not magic. It’s sort of, you might say, a speech act as defined in literary theory.  It’s like getting married, right?

The priest says, “I declare you man and wife,” right? Now, this doesn’t mean anything, right? Just words. But because of its ritual power and the way that the words are set up, it is transformative. It suddenly makes people committed to a lifetime together. And so something like that, to say, we declare that we are independent, that we follow the Constitution, that we are the government, that we are going to form a more perfect union amongst ourselves. That will be transformative.

At the beginning, maybe people won’t take it seriously. But over time they will. And that new consensus we will build from the ground up. But the underlying implication is that most of these institutions, including universities and government offices, and all sorts of organizations, used to serve their function, and they could serve their function again, but now they’re essentially criminal syndicates.

They do not have legitimacy in my eyes. And anybody who looks at the situation objectively, and gets beyond this trauma, will see quite clearly what we’re talking about.

Geopolitics & Empire: As Tommy Jay said, and so did Thomas Jefferson in the poster behind me, “Liberty begins with you.”

Emanuel Pastreich: Very true.

Geopolitics & Empire: There’s a lot to digest there, Emanuel. I’d like to thank you again for being on Geopolitics & Empire.

Emanuel Pastreich: Much appreciated. I really appreciate the opportunity to speak. I had a lot of trouble coming back to the United States. I just back in the US so I’m readjusting.

To be honest, for a while there, I thought I’d never get back to the US. I think that there is hope, and that there are people who are really trying. Starting with you, we can really change things.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

After the Cold War 1.0 (1949−1989) emerged many new problems in the international arena of global politics as the circumstances concerning international relations drastically have been changed. One of the many problematic issues that have been facing both the USA and Europe (in fact, NATO and the EU) after 1989 was to find a new way of their relations with a new post-communist Russia – a country in a historical political and economic transition. Russia after the Cold War 1.0 faced many stresses as it started to experiment with its position in the new world and new international relations which have been dictated by the American hyperpower position.

At that time, Europe was more divided than united over the fundamental constitutional provisions which would finally lead the EU toward a European super-state. Europe as well was facing several critical challenges of economic, political, and cultural nature. The leaders of Europe, but especially of the EU, not only have been confronted by older issues that they could not solve like Turkish membership of the EU, integration of European citizens of Islamic origin (some 13 million in 1991), or rising economic competition with both USA and especially China.

The Europeans were aware of where they were coming from (of their historical roots), but on other hand, they did not have a clear vision of their way to the future, losing the plot of navigation. Only in 2003, the EU started to produce a more clear vision of its future through the adoption of the European Security Strategy which became at the same time the first serious effort in thinking about its international role under the new conditions of globalization and unipolar international relations.

In the 1990s, during an especially painful decade, Russia of Boris Yeltsin moved from being what it had once been after WWII under the cover of the USSR−a military superpower that could effectively challenge the US and its allies−to a declining power with diminishing both political and economic assets. As a direct result of its speedy adoption of Western-style (wild and brutal) privatization, Yeltsin’s Russia experienced consequences close to a 1930s-style Great Economic Depression. The focal negative outcomes have been the decline of industrial production, falling in living standards, and that whole regions previously devoted to military production during the Cold War now experienced an economic depression.

From the very global perspective, the foreign policy of Russia at the time of Boris Yeltsin was catastrophic as Russia lost even the position of great power in international relations. It was quite visible during the time of the destruction of the former Yugoslavia and especially during the Kosovo War in 1998−1999. Russian MFA did little to reassure many Russians who indeed understood Yeltsin’s decision to get close to Russia’s old historic Western enemies as he was selling out Russia to the West.

However, outside Russia, the such policy made Yeltsin a hero−a “useful idiot” or “drunk clown”. Nevertheless, to the majority of Russians, he, like M. Gorbachev, was conceding everything but getting very little in return from the West. Two groups of Russian citizens were especially unsatisfied with Yeltsin’s administration and particularly with his foreign policy: nationalists and old communists, of whom there was still a significant number.

Many anti-Yeltsin Russians argued that he and his administration of Westernphile liberals, had not only given away Russia’s benefits at knock-down prices to a new class of oligarchs (tycoons), but he was as well turned Russia into a Western political, economic, and financial, and even ideological dependency. In one word, Yeltsin did not at all protect Russia’s national interest and even turned Russia into a Western colony.

However, when Yeltsin’s successor Vladimir Putin (a victor over Chechen separatists) took over the presidency, he had more or less a clear vision for Russia’s future. In order to realize his project of reviving Russia and making her independent from the Western hands, he started to stake out very different positions. Particularly, these included:

• A greater level of Russian patriotism at home.
• A clear recognition that the interests of Russia and the West would not going always smoothly.
• A persistent drive to bring the Russian economy−and Russia’s immense natural resources, especially in Siberia−back under state control from the private tycoons.

In practice, it meant that Western governments could no longer consider Russia, as it was at the Yeltsin time, as a “strategic partner”, which meant the Western economic colony, indeed. In order words, the West understood that Putin’s Russia is going not to be in a state of irreversible decline as Yeltsin’s Russia, in fact, was. Further, with practically unlimited supplies of oil and natural gas in its possession, followed by the political leadership in Kremlin that determined to defend Russia’s national interests, Russia, actually, no longer was looked like the “sick man of Europe” (this term was originally applied by West Europe to the Ottoman Empire after 1699).

It was originally a common opinion in Western societies that the West had less fear than it was during the Cold War 1.0. It was believed that reborn Putin’s Russia had nothing like the same resources as the former Soviet Union. At least up to 2022 when Russia started the special anti-Nazi military operation in historical Russia Minor (today East Ukraine). The focal Western mistake with Putin’s Russia was that Western governments thought that regardless of economic reforms by Moscow, Russia still was dependent on the West. However, in reality, several Western countries, particularly Germany, have been and still are heavily dependent on energy from Russia.

The official ideology of Moscow, at least up to 2022, did not challenge Western institutions or values. Surely, the world had changed since 1990, and Russia for the first decade after the Cold War 1.0 as a power was not what it was during the USSR. On one hand, Moscow since 1990, in fact, did not want to prevent former Soviet republics to become independent, but on other hand was unable to prevent three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) from both to sign up former (politically and ideologically) enemy institutions of the USSR and moving much more openly into the Western camp (the EU and NATO). Therefore, as the consequence, up to 2007, Russia became overwhelmingly encircled by the three Baltic republics to the north-west, an increasingly pro-Western and Russophobic Ukraine (since 2014 a Nazi Ukraine) to the south-west, and finally by Georgia in the Caucasus.

Nevertheless, first Russia’s success in opposing Western historical imperialism against its own state territory was in Chechnya in 1999 (the Second Chechen War) which certainly was enough to spoil West-Russia relations and compel many in the West to conclude that while Russia changed in many pro-Western ways it still remained a historical enemy which was fighting against Western imperialistic policy (ideologically wrapped into the protection of human rights and political democracy). The second Russian success in fighting Western imperialistic Russophobia was in 2008 during the short war against US client state Georgia followed by the Russian military intervention in Syria and in 2022 by the direct Russian preventive military intervention against NATO on the territory of historic Russia Minor. A coming future may have beckoned, but the heavy hand of the past (Russophobic Western imperialism) will continue to influence Russian relations with the West (the EU and NATO).

The key points of the article can be summarized into three facts:

• The first President of Russia, a Westernphile B. Yeltsin, sought a new partnership with the West but under the conditions of not defending the Russian national interest.
• His successor, Vladimir Putin, is pursuing much more patriotic policies at home and abroad and, at the same time, bringing Russia’s economic resources back under state control.
• Regardless of the opinion that a new Cold War (2.0) was unable after 1990/1991 because of extremely important political, social, and economic changes that have happened in Russia since the dismantling of the Soviet Union, it gradually occurred after the 2014 state putsch in Kiev.

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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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***

Over the past four months, the White House, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have vigorously pushed the new bivalent vaccine on all eligible Americans. In his final White House briefing, Dr. Anthony Fauci stated, “Please, for your own safety, for that of your family, get your updated COVID-19 shot as soon as you’re eligible to protect yourself, your family, and your community.”

Yet, only 12 percent of Americans 5 and older have received the updated booster. Meanwhile, just over 30 percent of senior citizens — the most have gotten the bivalent dose. In attempts to increase vaccine uptake, the Biden administration has announced a six-week campaign budgeting more than $475 million to expand mRNA vaccine outreach. $350 million will go into community health centers to promote booster awareness while another $125 million will be devoted “to national organizations that serve people with disabilities and older adults to support community vaccination programs and efforts.”

Instead of spending hundreds of millions of dollars trying to persuade Americans to get a fourth shot they likely don’t need, the authorities ought to take a step back and examine why no one is getting the new booster.

Low bivalent vaccine uptake may, at least in part, stem from the disastrous public launch in September when the new shots were approved on the basis of testing on eight mice. No human data existed at the time, yet the new shots were authorized under the much-abused “emergency use authorization” mechanism. This time, even the media’s most trusted public health experts were expressing concern and skepticism. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, FDA vaccine advisory member Dr. Paul Offit stated, “I’m uncomfortable that we would move forward—that we would give millions or tens of millions of doses to people—based on mouse data.”

On the concern of safety, it was the CDC and FDA’s responsibility to assure the public that the updated booster didn’t carry significant risks like the primary series. Knowing the alarming prevalence of vaccine myocarditis, convincing tens of millions of healthy men to get the new shot was already a hard sell. As the most robust research (Kaiser Permanente) on vaccine-induced myocarditis shows, roughly 1 in 1,800 young men are injured after the second dose. Long-term effects are unknown, but current studies show over half of vaccine myocarditis patients had an abnormal cardiac MRI and a third were not fully recovered at the three-month check-up.

What reassurance have CDC officials given to those concerned with the most common serious adverse event caused by mRNA vaccination? According to CDC official Dr. Sara Oliver, “We know that the myocarditis risk is unknown but anticipate a similar risk to that seen after the monovalent vaccines.”

A similar risk? About 1 in 2,000 to 1 in 5,000 for men under 40? For a disease with an infection fatality rate of less than 0.035% that only harms obese, severely ill, and immunocompromised people?

Are they serious?

The novel COVID-19 vaccines have already injured an untold number of young, healthy men and women, and the pitch from public health authorities for a secondbooster shot is “we don’t really know what the risks are.”

If safety concerns remain, perhaps the first round of human data on the bivalent vaccine would show promise. Yet all the latest studies are highly confounded, ambiguous, or otherwise flawed.

Late in September, Moderna published a disappointing study looking at the immune response to an earlier version (BA.1) of the latest shot. While they did find a rise in antibody titers, the bivalent vaccine cohort had a higher number of COVID infections than the original booster cohort. The study sample was so small that definitive conclusions were virtually impossible to make. A few weeks ago, Moderna released newer data in 500 participants showing their bivalent BA.5 booster produced five to six times higher antibody levels than the original strain booster.

Pfizer also released their antibody data for the updated bivalent vaccine, reassuring the public that the mass administration of the bivalent vaccine is a necessary next step in combating COVID-19. As stated in the press release, the “Omicron BA.4/BA.5 neutralizing antibody titers were approximately 4-fold higher for the bivalent vaccine compared to the companies’ original COVID-19 vaccine in individuals over 55 years of age.”

As promising as all this data may have seemed, these findings were far from persuasive. A mere “increase” in antibody titers doesn’t necessarily translate to any sustained protection against infection or severe disease. This is widely agreed upon among mainstream virologists and immunologists. Moreover, Pfizer has concededthere’s “no established correlate of protection” between antibody levels and immunity.

To draw more concrete conclusions, clinical data in the real-world is needed — and the CDC released the first study on bivalent vaccine effectiveness on Nov. 22. Unlike nebulous antibody statistics, this study examined vaccine effectiveness in adults 18 and older. While adults 18 to 49 who had gotten bivalent boosters were 43 percent less likely to be infected than their unvaccinated counterparts, older cohorts were far less protected. Those ages 65 and older were only 22 percent less likely to get sick with COVID-19 than unvaccinated individuals of the same age.

As tangled as these results are, they must be taken with a grain of salt. The authors of the study rightly note the findings should be “interpreted with caution because unvaccinated persons might have different behaviors or a fundamentally different risk for acquiring COVID-19 compared with vaccinated persons.”

“The findings in this study are subject to at least six limitations,” they added.

To make matters worse for the public image of the bivalent vaccine, CDC head Rochelle Walensky has shown in real time how ineffective the latest shot is. Walensky twice tested positive for COVID-19 a month after receiving her bivalent booster shot (the window which should have the “greatest protective effect” according to Dr. Vinay Prasad). She tested negative a few days after her first positive result (October 22), but her symptoms appeared to have strangely rebounded on Oct. 30. In light of the new CDC study, Walensky’s re-infection makes perfect sense: Observed bivalent vaccine effectiveness is less than 30 percent in her age cohort—far from the “90 percent effective” health agencies promised with initial doses of the vaccine.

It is a grim sort of irony to witness the bivalent booster shot utterly fail to provide any long-lasting protection in the head of the public health agency most zealously promoting it.

Putting aside the only remaining, arguable rationale for further boosting (those at higher risk), the FDA and CDC have greenlit the new Omicron booster for kids under 12. Moderna’s booster has been authorized for children 6+ and the Pfizer booster for 5 and older.

As USA Today notes: “The companies have not yet completed clinical trials of the booster in younger children. The FDA decided the change to a bivalent vaccine is not likely to have a different effect or risk profile than the earlier shots.”

For this with any knowledge of the inner-workings of the FDA, this is hardly surprising. The FDA is an incredibly corrupt agency with many conflicts of interest. To illustrate, 4,500 FDA-approved medications are recalled a year, on average. 139 for deadly side effects. Based on these figures, a dozen medications will be recalled this month because they kill people. So why are they FDA-approved?

Perhaps in part because 75% of their drug review funding comes from the biopharmaceutical industry, which allows drug companies to get swiftly expedited reviews and approvals. In fact, 68% of pharmaceutical drugs on the market are approved by the FDA through expedited reviews.

As one can infer, quick approvals means less rigorous testing of safety and efficacy.

The totality of evidence for the bivalent booster shot has failed in persuading the American public to get jabbed again. The updated vaccine should never have been approved on the basis of mouse testing. The studies published after approval (that order should have been in reverse) were hardly reassuring. The only study on vaccine effectiveness shows highly limited protection in the most vulnerable groups.

In response to Joe Biden’s tweet urging Americans to get the updated vaccine ahead of the holidays, Jordan Peterson responded,

“Why is the president of the United States shilling for the pharmaceutical industry? Because that’s exactly what this is…”

The answer is quite simple. The Biden administration has ambitiously purchased 170 million bivalent vaccine doses and over 120 million remain unused. Americans have roundly rejected it and moved on from Covid.

The administration may spend millions of tax-payer money promoting the new shot, but until vaccine standards are improved, “emergency” powers are left alone for real public health crises, and the White House COVID response team comes clean on the real dangers and uncertainties surrounding mRNA vaccines, institutional trust may never recover.

The evangelical, evidence-free promotion of highly experimental vaccines — and their new “bivalent” updated iterations — with known safety concerns has destroyed the reputation and credibility of the Biden administration’s COVID response team. I find myself agreeing with (pro-vaccine and mainstream) epidemiologist Dr. Vinay Prasad’s bold assertion:

[The White House] need to fire all their advisors and start new. That’s the only way to fix the situation.

*

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Rav Arora is a 21-year-old, independent journalist formerly writing for top publications such as The Globe and Mail and New York Post before critically covering vaccines and government mandates. 

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***

People who have had to care for elderly loved ones who suffer from the terrible disease of dementia commonly find during this experience that our loved ones can hold grammatically correct but completely meaningless conversations. These may be with imaginary people, about non-existent situations, or recalling events that never happened. The conversation sounds normal, but is in fact completely absurd.

This same experience occurs when reading or listening to Western sources reporting on international affairs. It is worth remembering that last December 15th at the 77th session of the United Nations General Assembly, the United States and its NATO allied countries voted against a resolution condemning the glorification of Nazism. It is not that the North American and European representatives abstained. No. They opposed the resolution, that is, in fact they support Nazism, a position which contradicts all the claims members of the Western political classes make to their populations about supporting democracy and human rights.

Faced with this contradiction, the very few genuinely anti-imperialist Western media outlets often analyze how Western populations can be deceived to the extreme of accepting the genocidal policies of their fascist governments and their masters in the North American and European corporate elites. For example, a common term used in those North American media outlets which criticize the imperialism of their countries is “gaslighting” derived from the famous movie “Gaslight” released in 1944. In this film the heroine is subjected to sinister, systematic manipulation by her husband, who seeks to have her declared insane in order to seize the inheritance of her aunt, whom he had previously murdered.

So now the term “gaslighting” is applied to the Western countries’  mass media psychological warfare offensive against their own populations.  By means of this psychological warfare, insane false beliefs are induced in order to convince the North American and European populations that their governments’ criminal foreign policy promotes and defends democracy and human rights. Tto achieve the imposition of this mass induced dementia, the fundamental strategy is the incessant repetition of big lies combined with the elimination of sources of information contradicting those lies.

For this reason, the Western ruling classes implement censorship policies on social networks and eliminate information sources such as Russia’s RT or Iran’s Press TV, as took place recently through decrees of the European Union and its member countries. RT and Press TV use traditional reporting criteria in the sense of seeking to report reality. However, for Western sources of disinformation, reality is precisely what they strive to eliminate in order to be able to induce collective dementia among their populations. Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation, has commented on the recent censorship measures against RT noting that: “They are further proof of the European Union’s desire to severely censor information flows to the point of banning undesirable media, contrary to the principles of freedom of expression and media for which it condemns other countries. The current decision further violates the right of EU residents to access information.”

Precisely, because the reporting criteria of the Western media are formulated to induce false beliefs. For example, they promote the belief that NATO is a defensive organization, that Iran and not Israel is a nuclear threat or that Iran is a country where women are not respected, that the United States is fighting terrorism. Or they allege that China is incapable of ensuring the public health of its population, or that Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are dictatorships that destabilize the region.

Of course, the reality is the opposite. Unquestionably, the revolutionary democracies of Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela contribute greatly to regional stability. NATO is an aggressive military organization that attacked the civilian population of Serbia with massive bombings and supports Ukraine’s genocidal assault on the Russian-speaking population in Donbass. The United States is the most important promoter of terrorism in the world. China is one of the world’s most successful countries in defending the public health of its huge population.

It is important to understand that this is not just about the dishonest, false output of the Western media or the repressive control exercised by giant communications corporations such as Facebook, Twitter and Google. The vast Western psychological warfare apparatus also incorporates the non-governmental industrial complex and seeks to control the academic industry, since intellectual production, especially in social sciences, is of special importance in being able to induce false beliefs. Of utmost relevance in this regard too is the aggressive action of the Western powers, especially the United States, trying to impose their control of the apparatus of international law.

These include, for example, the UN Human Rights Council or the International Criminal Court and the various special tribunals established in recent years to deal with specific issues, such as Rwanda, Lebanon or the former Yugoslavia, among others. These tribunals. of dubious legitimacy, very clearly carried out their investigations in support of the foreign policy objectives of the collective West against its enemies. But their tendentious conclusions go down in history as definitive. with the effect of freezing in the form of false memories the biased premises with which their original establishment was justified.

Apart from seeking control of important instances that affect the development of international jurisprudence, the United States has managed to impose its national jurisdiction over other countries. For six decades, the United States has illegally applied the genocidal Helms-Burton Act to the people of Cuba, which in effect elevates the national laws of the United States as unchallenged international standards to the detriment of the Cuban people. Another example is how Argentina, under the government of Crsitina Fernández, was the victim of intimidation and intervention by a minor judge of a district court in New York who acted aggressively in favor of US vulture funds that rejected the legitimate restructuring of Argentina’s debt agreed with all the country’s other creditors.

Last June, the United States also imposed its jurisdiction in the case of the Venezuelan plane hijacked in Argentina at which time the authorities acted with procedures in complete violation of Argentine law cased on requests from the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. These examples of unjustifiable, bad faith application of the law are based on the deployment of sinister artifices, completely disconnected from reality and truth. In these cases, the evidence presented is invariably grossly biased, clearly fabricated or as often as not simply non-existent.

Among the most notorious cases of this type have been the persecution and torture of Julian Assange for having revealed the crimes of the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan, of Vice President Jorge Glas in Ecuador, the judicial persecution of Lula da Silva and the illegal judicial kidnapping of Alex Saab. The most recent has been the infamous conviction at the beginning of this month against Cristina Fernández after more than a decade of interminable arbitrary legal attacks  against her. These abuses of national justice formalize bad faith legal processes that have the intention and often the actual effect of destroying their victims. At an international level, such processes serve to pressure, harass and condemn entire countries trying to defend their national dignity and sovereignty.

Nicaragua reflected this reality in its message this month in response to yet another false report in the United Nations Human Rights Council: “The legitimate Government of Reconciliation and National Unity of Nicaragua, will not tire of repeating with dignity, loudly and irrefutably, our total rejection of this type of mechanisms, which “update their Human Rights reports”, unilaterally and in a biased manner; acting as an “instrument of pressure and interference”, by using arguments far from out nation’s reality, with the sole purpose of keeping us underdeveloped and perverting our achievements, to have us submitted to the jurisdiction of foreign powers.”

Also relevant in this context is the message to the Iranian people last November from the Leader of the Islamic Revolution of Iran, Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei, in which he observed in relation to the failed coup attempt by the Western powers in his country, “One of their weak points is your lucidity. When you are lucid, they suffer setbacks… What the enemy wants is to gain control of  people’s minds. Controlling these is for them much more valuable than taking control of territory.”

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

It would be obvious and widely accepted that we in the West are responsible for the rebirth and growth of Nazism, if the truth was a staple in our cultural diets.

Beneath veils of distactions and obfuscations, for example, the Canadian government has a long history of quietly supporting nazism. (1)

Drawing false equivalencies between the USSR and Nazi Germany furthers the support for nazism, which, through such operations, is being whitewashed. Canada voted against a UN initiative condemning the glorification of nazism.

Russia is combating the cancer of nazism and NATO expansionism in Ukraine, whereas the West seeks to fight “to the last Ukrainian” as it uses Ukrainians, and nazism, as proxies against Russia.

Largely censored and forgotten, Washington is behind the nazi-infested coup that overturned the elected Ukrainian government in 2014. This was followed by about eight years of genocide in which nazi battalions bombed Eastern Ukrainian (Russian-speaking) civilians and civilian infrastructure. (2)

Former Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel and former Ukraine President Pyotr Poroshenko even admitted to using the Minsk Peace accords as a stalling mechanism to build up the Ukrainian military. They were never negotiating in good faith. They never wanted Peace. (3)

Western support for nazism goes back to WW2 with Western corporate support (Rockfeller’s Standard Oil) of Operation Barbarossa and the nazi rampage across the USSR.

Prof. Chossudovsky notes that,

“(w)ithout US support to Nazi Germany, the Third Reich would not have been able to wage war on the Soviet Union. Germany’s oil production was insufficient to wage a major military campaign. Throughout the war, the Third Reich relied on regular shipments of crude oil  from US Standard Oil owned by the Rockefeller family.” (4)

Furthermore, writes Chossudovsky,

“Wall Street creditors are the main actors.  They were firmly behind Nazi Germany. They financed Operation Barbarossa and the invasion of the Soviet Union.

The Rockefellers funded Hitler’s election campaign.

Wall Street also “appointed” the head  of Germany’s Central Bank (Reichsbank).” (5)

WW2 didn’t need to happen, and the current war in Ukraine didn’t need to happen either.

The complex web of Western war propaganda which obfuscates these facts enables the permanent warfare state and its war against us all.

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Mark Taliano is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and the author of Voices from Syria, Global Research Publishers, 2017. He writes on his website where this article was originally published.

Notes

(1) Aidan Jonah, “Long history of Ukrainian-Canadian groups glorifying Nazi collaborators exposed by defacing of Oakville memorial.” The Canada Files, 20 July 2020. (Long history of Ukrainian-Canadian groups glorifying Nazi collaborators exposed by defacing of Oakville memorial — The Canada Files_ Accessed 16 December, 2022.

(2)  Christelle Néant and Dr. Leon Tressell, ” ‘The First Casualty of War is the Truth’. What is Really Happening in Donbass/ A Conversation with Christelle Neant of Donbass Insider on the War in Ukraine.” Global Research, 21 June, 2022 (“The First Casualty of War is the Truth”. What is Really Happening in Donbass – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 16 December, 2022.

(3) Mark Taliano, “The West Seeks War, Not Peace.” Global Research, 30 November, 2022. (The West Seeks War, Not Peace – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 16 December, 2022.

(4) Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, ” Sleeping With The Third Reich: America’s Unspoken “Alliance” with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union/Nazi Germany largely depended on oil shipments from US Standard Oil.” Global Research, 04 December, 2022, (Sleeping With The Third Reich: America’s Unspoken “Alliance” with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 16 December, 2022.

(5) Yuri Rubtsov, “History: Hitler was Financed by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England/US Investments in Nazi Germany. Rockefeller Financed Adolf Hitler’s Election Campaign.” Global Research, 03 December, 2022. (History: Hitler was Financed by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 16 December, 2022.

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***

This U.S. Government support for Ukraine to retake Crimea is part of a plan by U.S. President Barack Obama, in which he sidelined his Secretary of State John Kerry and backed Kerry’s subordinate Victoria Nuland when she promised the then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko that he would continue to enjoy U.S. backing if he expanded his civil war against the breakaway (formerly Ukrainian) region of Donbass so as to invade also Crimea, which had broken away from Ukraine earlier — less than a month after the U.S. coup in Kiev occurred in February 2014. So, the U.S. Government’s now teasing Ukraine’s Government to invade Crimea can’t be understood without knowing its history:

On 16 March 2014, Crimeans went to the polls in a plebiscite on whether Crimea should be restored to Russia, of which it was a part during 1783-1954 (Khrushchev arbitrarily switched it to Ukraine in 1954, which outraged most Crimeans), and the vote (in that 83.1%-turnout March 2014 Referendum) was 96.77% voting to “join the Russian Federation,” which then was promptly done.

The U.S. Government, in its extensive planning for the February 2014 coup that overthrew the democratically elected neutralist President of Ukraine and selected the rabidly anti-Russian Arseniy Yatsenyuk to replace him and to install a rabidly anti-Russian junta to ethnically cleanse the areas of Ukraine that had voted more than 70% for the elected Ukrainian President that Obama had just overthrown in February, so as to enable a ‘democratic’ election in Ukraine to retain the rabidly anti-Russian U.S.-installed regime to continue to remain in power ‘democratically’ without those voters still being able any longer to vote in Ukraine, had commissioned Gallup to poll Crimeans in 2013 in order to find out how receptive Crimeans would be to the coup which was then being planned and which would entail replacing Russia’s naval base in Crimea (since 1783) by a U.S. naval base there.

This 2013 Gallup poll (which was reported to U.S. Government agencies but not to the public) had found that whereas only 15% considered themselves to be “Ukrainian,” 40% considered themselves to be “Russian”; and 24% said instead that they preferred as their self-identity “Crimean,” which meant favoring an independent nation of Crimea, a breakaway from Ukraine that wouldn’t necessarily be part of Russia.

Asked to choose between Crimea being part of the U.S.-allied EU or part of the Russia-allied EurAsian Customs Union, 53% chose the latter, 17% chose the EU. Whereas 68% said that their feelings for Russia were “Warm,” and 5% said “Cold”; 6% said that their feelings for USA were “Warm,” and 24% said “Cold.” (The poll also asked many questions that were designed in order for the U.S. Government to plan a PR program targeted especially at the roughly 10% of Crimeans who self-identified as being “Tatars” in order to enable the U.S. operation to make them hate Russia and Russians — including pro-Russian Crimeans.)

The U.S. Government again Gallup-polled Crimeans in April 2014, just weeks after the 96.77% plebiscite-vote to rejoin Russia, in order to obtain any evidence that might become the basis for a U.S. accusation the plebiscite had been rigged by Russia — not genuinely democratic. This poll of 500 Crimeans was simultaneous with Gallup’s polling of also 1,400 (non-Crimean) Ukrainians in order to help the newly U.S.-installed Ukrainian regime to control the media and public opinion more effectively.

The question,

“Please tell me if you agree or disagree: No government outside of Ukraine has a right to be involved in decisions about the country’s future. [Asked of nonCrimeans only]” produced around 80% of (non-Crimean) Ukrainians in all regions of the country being in agreement with that viewpoint, so that the U.S. Government would need to keep secret as much as possible the total dependence of the new stooge-regime in Kiev upon its masters in Washington DC.

The poll also showed that at least until April 2014, the U.S. operation to control Ukrainian public opinion was an outstanding success, because in response to “For each of the countries and organizations I mention, tell me whether you think it has played a mostly positive role or a mostly negative role in the crisis in Ukraine,” 66.4% in (non-Crimean) Ukraine said that Russia had played a “Mostly negative” role, whereas only 27.7% said America did. HOWEVER THE FINDINGS IN CRIMEA WERE DRASTICALLY DIFFERENT: There, “Mostly negative” was 76.2% for U.S., and only 8.8% for Russia; and whereas “Mostly positive” was 71.3% for Russia, it was only 2.8% for U.S.

Apparently, the vast majority of Crimeans were outraged at America’s (and its ‘allies’ or vassal-nations’) REJECTION of their 16 March 2014 plebiscite-results to (re)join Russia. And, finally, the question “Please tell me if you agree or disagree: The results of the referendum on Crimea’s status likely reflect the views of most people there/here.” produced: “Agree/Disagree” by 82.8%/6.7% in Crimea, and by 29.5%/48.2% in “Exclusive of Crimea.” Therefore, clearly already by the time of April 2014, Crimea and Ukraine were antipodally different demographic worlds.

Gallup also asked only outside Crimea, “Please tell me if you agree or disagree: Ukraine should return to the course of NATO integration.” and reported no nationwide percentage but only regional percentages, throughout non-Crimean Ukraine, in “South” “East” “Center” “North” and “West”; and ONLY in the West (west of Rivne in the northwest and Khmelnytsky in the southwest, or roughly the area within 200 miles of the Polish border) did more than 50% (53%) “Agree”: by contrast, only 10.3% in South did; only 13.1% in East did; only 32.1% in Center did; and only 37.7% in North (which includes Kyiv, the capital) did.

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded the most the regions that most OPPOSED joining in NATO. Only(and just barely), the West region favored to join NATO, and Russia’s invasion has invaded that region (the anti-Russian region) less than any of the others. This fact suggests that the Russian Government has no intention to include the West region as part of Russia in any final settlement of this war between the U.S. and Russia that is being waged in Ukraine’s battlefields, between Russian military forces and America’s Ukrainian and other military-forces — this proxy-war that Washington intends to start WW III.

That is the demographic background. Now for the historical background:

On 7 June 2015, I headlined “Obama Sidelines Kerry on Ukraine Policy” and reported that, whereas Secretary of State John Kerry had warned the then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko NOT to promise Ukrainians that Ukraine would retake both Crimea and Donbass by force if necessary, Kerry’s subordinate Victoria Nuland privately told Poroshenko to ignoreKerry’s warning — and Obama then nullified Kerry and backed Nuland on that. “Kerry now faces the decision as to whether to quit — which would force the EU’s hand regarding whether to continue with U.S. policy there [violating Obama’s will on that matter] — or else for Kerry to stay in office and be disrespected in all capitals for his staying on after having been so blatantly contradicted by his subordinate on a key issue of U.S. foreign policy.”

He stayed in office; and, then, later, Obama did it yet again — overrode Kerry for his subordinate Nuland — but this time on Syria. Kerry had worked long and hard to get Obama to accept a Syria peace-deal that would enable the people of Syria, and not the USA, to decide Bashar al-Assad’s political future — for Obama to give up trying to overthrow Assad. On 16 December 2015, I headlined “U.S. Ends Its Opposition to Democracy in Syria” and reported that despite Victoria Nuland’s insistence upon overthrowing Assad, Kerry had managed to get Obama’s nominal acceptance of democracy in Syria. (You can see in the pictures there that Nuland scowls at that signing-ceremony.) 

Then, Kerry managed an agreement with Russia on 17 May 2016 regarding Syria-policy, in which Obama nominally gave up on America’s protecting Al-Qaeda in Syria (Russia refused to allow AlQaeda in Syria to be protected from Russia’s bombing, but Obama’s Syria-operation used mainly AQ Syria as its proxy to lead the other jihadist groups to overthrow Assad); and, so, the deal was that Russia could continue to bomb AQ Syria’s forces, and that America would stop bombing Syria’s army forces, and Russia would coordinate with America on eliminating ISIS in Syria.

And, then, Kerry signed a Syrian ceasefire agreement on 9 September 2016, and barely a week later, on 17 September 2016, Obama violated that ceasefire agreement by (through his SecDef) bombing Syria’s army that were protecting Syria’s main oil field at Deir Ezzor. That’s when Putin learned not to trust ANYTHING from the U.S. regime.

Whereas Hillary Clinton had been at least as neocon as was Obama himself, Kerry had done everything he could to prevent a nuclear war, but Obama (like Biden) was on that path — the path to nuclear war. Kerry didn’t really fit in. The Deep State was solid against him.

Now, in the continuation of the Obama Administration’s ceaseless determination for the U.S. to conquer Russia and to defeat any ally of Russia such as Syria, Obama’s V.P. and now President, Joe Biden, brings the world to the precipice of WW III against both Russia and (like Trump) China while refusing to back down from Trump’s wars against also both Venezuela and Iran.

And Victoria Nuland is now #2 under Biden’s Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who is just as rabid a neocon as is she and as is Biden himself. And, just as Nuland had beaten Kerry by getting his achievements nullified by President Obama, she is apparently again receiving support from the top, to have the U.S. Government guiding Ukraine’s Government to invade Crimea.

On 14 December 2022, Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty bannered “In Satellite Images Of Russian-Occupied Crimea, Experts Point To Potential Targets For Ukraine” and reported that private U.S. military contractors are supplying Ukraine’s Government with detailed satellite images of Russia’s military defenses in Crimea for Ukraine’s missiles to target and take out.

This would, in the view of Russians, be a Ukrainian invasion of Russia using U.S. intelligence and more, in order to do it, and, therefore direct war between America and Russia.

It would be a dream for Victoria Nuland and the rest of the U.S. Deep State, including all of the billionaires who financed Joe Biden’s political career. Of course, the ‘opposition’ Party, the Republicans, are also almost 100% solid for the neocon agenda (U.S. global imperialism), right up to and including global nuclear conflict. Apparently, all of America’s (and allied) billionaires are for it — none has come out, really, against it.

And, within the empire, the general public hardly even cares about it: the exit-polls show that international relations (“foreign policy”) was at the very bottom of American voters’ concerns. The whole world could be destroyed like that — as-if it didn’t even matter.

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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.

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

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***

A huge flow of money is subtracted from our vital needs and is poured by the European Union into Ukraine, where it fuels war and corruption.

EU foreign ministers have allocated another 2 billion euros for military support to Ukraine. The “European Peace Fund”, which has been used to arm and train Kyiv’s army since 2021, is set to increase on an annual basis from the initial 400 million to over one billion euros. This adds more funds to the 30 billion euros that the EU spent from January to October to arm Ukraine.

In addition to these expenses, the European Union has decided to give the Ukrainian government 19 billion euros in a loan form, knowing full well that they will never be repaid. In a summit that President Macron convened in Paris to provide Kyiv with further financial aid, the President of the European Commission Ursula Von der Leyen announced that “the international community has decided for next year to inject at least 1.5 billion euros financial aid per month into Ukraine”.

In a country already characterized by widespread corruption at all levels, it is practically impossible in the current chaotic situation to control the actual destination of this enormous flow of money and weapons. A large part certainly ends up in the hands of power groups, which makes it disappear in the clandestine circuits of tax havens. What guarantees the European Union can give on anti-corruption controls is demonstrated by Qatar gate. The vice president of the European Parliament Eva Kaili, a Greek socialist exponent belonging to the Socialists and Democrats Group (the Italian Democratic Party is a member of it), was arrested together with others (including 4 Italians) for corruption, money laundering and participation in a criminal organization on a mandate of the Belgian Justice.

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This article was originally published on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

Palestinian woman tells the story of her connection to the village of Ma’alul (which I visited on July 28, 2022) which was one of 520 villages destroyed by Israel in 1948, and how she and the half million internally displaced Palestinian citizens of Israel are determined to exercise their return to their villages and land despite racist Israeli laws that deny them their right to do so.

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People Died from mRNA-Vaccine-Damaged Hearts, New Peer-Reviewed German Study Provides Direct Evidence

By Dr. Jennifer Margulis and Dr. Joe Wang, December 16, 2022

Medical pathologists from Heidelberg University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany have published direct evidence showing how people found dead after mRNA vaccination died. As this team of six scientists explore in their study, these mRNA-vaccinated patients suffered from heart damage because their hearts were attacked by their own immune cells.

A Poem for Christmas: Christmas Revels (1838)

By Caoimhghin Ó Croidheáin, December 19, 2022

The Irish artist Daniel Maclise (1806–1870) was a well known artist of the nineteenth century and he painted many scenes featuring British and Irish history. His painting Merry Christmas in the Baron’s Hall (1838) was eventually purchased by the National Gallery of Ireland in 1872. This festive work contains many figures of various ranks and degrees and depicts aspects of the declining traditional Christmas festivities of his time.

Erdogan Jails His Main Rival in the 2023 Election

By Steven Sahiounie, December 18, 2022

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a tough re-election vote in six months.  His rival, the Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, is very popular and far ahead in the polls. Erdogan went back in time to find an obscure statement made by Imamoglu in 2019 which Erdogan used to order the Turkish courts to try Imamoglu on the charge of ‘insulting electoral officials’.

Aussies Go 100% Coal! Imagining Life Out from Under the Climate Cloud

By William Walter Kay, December 18, 2022

The real tragedy is what we don’t see. We see billions squandered on wind and solar. Tragic enough, but we don’t see the magnificent electrical infrastructures coal might create if similarly furnished with funds.

Xi of Arabia and the Petroyuan Drive

By Pepe Escobar, December 18, 2022

It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era.

‘Disability Culture’ and the Allure of Victimhood

By Ben Bartee, December 16, 2022

The “Oppression Olympics” – the victimization hierarchy in which more extreme victimhood equals higher social status – is an odd outgrowth of the wider helicopter-mom, “everybody-gets-a-trophy,” “Nerf-the-world” culture that saturated everything circa the 90s. It proliferated from there under the guises of “tolerance” and “equity.”

White House Summit with African Leaders Result in More Promises

By Abayomi Azikiwe, December 16, 2022

During the December 13-15 White House-Africa summit, the Biden administration sought to persuade leaders and officials from 49 states that the United States wants an equal partnership with the continent. This was the first of such meetings since 2014 when the administration of former President Barack Obama was in office.

The Pentagon Budget Normalizes War

By Robert C. Koehler, December 16, 2022

Two dogs walking. One of them says to the other: “I bark and I bark, but I never feel like I affect real change.”This is the caption of a New Yorker cartoon by Christopher Weyant from several years ago. It keeps popping up in my head — I mean, every day. Like everyone else, I want what I do to matter, to “effect real change.” What I do is write. Specifically, I swim in the infinity of possibility. Humanity can kill itself or it can learn to survive. Most people (I believe) prefer the latter, which is all about discovering how we are connected to one another and to the rest of the universe. This is what I try to write about.

“Israeli Exceptionalism” Is a Canadian Value that Forgives Apartheid Israel All Its Crimes

By Khaled Mouammar, December 16, 2022

Canada at the United Nations just finalized its vote AGAINST a resolution which affirms the inalienable right of Indigenous Palestinian Semites to the Occupied Palestinian Territories’ natural resources, and demands Israel cease any exploitation, damage, or depletion of them. It passed 159-8.

Putin Attempting to Prevent a Repeat of the Clinton-Yeltsin Destruction of Russia

By Kurt Nimmo, December 16, 2022

In a speech delivered in 2007, well before the current crisis, Vladimir Putin “reserved his bitterest complaints… for the US drive to expand Nato into former Soviet eastern Europe and for the plans to deploy parts of the missile shield in central Europe. ‘Why do you need to move your military infrastructure to our borders?’” he asked.

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Omega-6 linoleic acid (LA) is the most common fat in the American diet. Most people get 25 times more LA than they need. At most, you need about 2 grams a day, but the average American gets about 50 grams a day, thanks to the fact that most processed foods and condiments are loaded with omega-6 seed oils

LA gets incorporated into your cell membranes where it causes inflammation. Its half-life is nearly two years, so ridding your body of stored LA completely can take up to seven years

Eliminating LA is a marathon, not a sprint. Ineffective and potentially harmful ways of eliminating LA include extended fasting and overtaxing your body with strenuous endurance exercise

To stop the accumulation of LA in your cells, eliminate seed oils from your diet. Cook with beef tallow, butter, ghee or coconut oil, and avoid all processed foods, restaurant foods, condiments, and animals raised on grains, such as chicken and pork

Vitamin E, in a dose of about 2 IU – 3 IU for every gram of PUFA (not just linoleate) consumed daily may also be able to provide some protection against the inflammatory and endocrine (estrogenic, pro-cortisol) effects of linoleate and PUFA in general

To safely encourage the elimination of LA from your body, focus on building muscle and maximizing lean muscle mass with concentric exercise, and eat a balanced diet with a ratio of 2-to-1 healthy carbs to protein

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In this interview, Georgi Dinkov, an expert on linoleic acid (LA), details some of the health hazards of this exceedingly common fat in the modern diet, and how to safely rid your body of it.

Both Georgi and I are convinced excessive LA intake is one of the most important variables that can make or break your health, especially in the long term. It’s a far greater contributor to chronic and degenerative disease and mortality than sugar, and it’s the primary culprit that makes processed foods so harmful.

The historical (last 50 to 75 years) incidence curves of cancer, cardiovascular disease (CVD), diabetes and neurological disease in the general population overlap remarkably well the ever-increasing PUFA consumption rates in developed countries, suggesting PUFA is a major factor in those diseases.^1,2

How Georgi Became a Biohacker

Despite having a degree in computer science, Georgi has made a name for himself as an expert biohacker. After graduating from college in 2002, he got a job as a programmer at the National Biomedical Research Foundation (NBRF).

There, he helped develop uniprot.org, a database of all known protein sequences — Protein Information Resource (PIR — pir.georgetown.edu) and UniProt (www.uniprot.org).

Surrounded by up to 60 of the brightest doctors and biochemists in the world, Georgi developed an interest in biochemistry, and started studying on the side so he could more effectively collaborate with his coworkers. He provides an amazing example of what one can learn without any formal training if they merely apply themselves.

I was a young, single person, didn’t have anything better to do, and I tried to utilize my time the best I could. Over a period of about three years, it started to click, so I started to understand what these people were talking about.

In 2005, I left, got myself a full-time job in the IT sector, and then kept reading. The reason I got into this bioenergetic area, which linoleic acid is a big part of, is because around 2009, I … became a low-carber.

Being an athlete in college, I basically happened to combine very low carb diet with very exhaustive exercise, and I got myself into a really big predicament. I started getting these very weird neurological symptoms, tingling of the extremities, headaches, sensitivity to light.”

Low-Carb Considerations

In the interview, we clear up some of the pervasive confusion surrounding low-carb diets, and why long-term chronic low-carb is not ideal. It’s a great short-term intervention for most people, especially those with insulin resistance.

This is because lowering carbs can help reset your metabolism and recover your metabolic flexibility. However, in the long term you can run into trouble — especially if you’re also doing a lot of endurance training. The main reasons for the issues caused by chronic low-carb diets (and/or stress, which mimics the effects of low-carb diets) are:

1. The elevated lipolysis in a low carb-state, which results in chronically elevated circulating levels of PUFA, with the resulting inflammatory and endocrine effects (e.g. PUFA is pro-cortisol, estrogenic and also synergizes with endogenous/exogenous estrogens, and promotes their effects even in low doses).
2. The downregulation of the resting metabolic rate (RMR) by lowered synthesis of T3 when eating a low-carb diet and/or fasting and/or strenuous exercise.

For more details on this, be sure to listen to the interview at normal speed. Believe me, this is an interview that nearly everyone should listen to a few times to capture the incredible clinical pearls that Georgi shared. I personally learned more during this discussion than I have from most interviews.

If you listen to the interview, you will learn that once your sugar stores are expended, you start tapping into your fat stores through a process called lipolysis. This liberated fat is then circulated around your body and supplied to the cells as fuel to compensate for the low glucose availability.

However, certain types of fat block the effects of insulin in your body, so a long-distance endurance athlete can actually end up with a blood profile similar to that of a person with Type 2 diabetes. In Georgi’s case, as an endurance athlete, his blood sugar climbed higher the less sugar he ate. This competition/antagonism between glucose and fats (mostly PUFA) as fuel for the cells was first discovered in the 1970s and named the Randle Cycle.

Why does it occur? The process in your liver that controls blood sugar is gluconeogenesis. If you stop supplying carbs to your body, the organs that need them will activate glucose creation in your body by elevating the stress hormone cortisol, which ends up being very destructive to your tissues, including skeletal muscle, liver, brain and kidneys.

In Type 2 diabetes, a state with hyperglycemia, only about 10% of the circulating glucose is of dietary origin. The rest is due to chronically elevated gluconeogenesis — which suggests that cortisol is the driver of hyperglycemia in Type 2 diabetes — and elevating cortisol chronically by doing low-carb or exhaustive exercise is likely detrimental to insulin sensitivity.

People with elevated cortisol (Cushing phenotype) have the same central obesity and loss of muscle mass (sarcopenia) as the ones seen in diabetes 2. Conversely, blocking cortisol’s effects with the drug RU486 has been demonstrated to lead to sustained fat loss WITHOUT dieting, and improved insulin sensitivity.^3,4,5

Cortisol goes up during exercise, and if there’s no glucose around, cortisol rises even higher. Shakes, problem sleeping, jitteriness and neurological abnormalities are some of the symptoms of high cortisol and low glycogen stores. In Georgi’s case, his symptoms slowly vanished once he started eating a more balanced diet, with a macronutrient ratio of about one-third carbs, one-third fat and one-third protein.

Dietary Fats and Fatty Liver Disease

In his search for answers to the symptoms he experienced on a low-carb diet, he came across Dr. Peat’s website,⁶ aka, Dr. T.A. Peterson, an American biologist who’s been studying the role of energy in the cell, and the effects of LA. Georgi started reading Peat’s work in 2009, and eventually started doing his own experiments.

As noted by Georgi, published research has long demonstrated that LA is far from a benign macronutrient. It’s actually a highly proinflammatory mediator and has endocrine effects that mimic estrogen. Contrary to popular belief, LA is also a major culprit in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), more so than fructose and other sugars.^7,8

Georgi cites research^9,10,11 showing people with alcoholic cirrhosis (liver disease) who ate their normal diet, which was high in omega-6 fats, experienced classic progression of cirrhosis resulting in liver failure. The group whose diet was altered to eliminate all forms of fat aside from coconut oil, a saturated fat, was able to reverse their cirrhosis, even in the presence of continued alcohol abuse. Additional animal experiments¹² confirmed these results. As explained by Georgi:

“The livers of people who are eating predominantly omega-6 fatty acids very quickly get fattened up. Also, there’s cell damage of the Kupffer cells due to the many oxidation byproducts (OxLAMs) of these omega-6 fatty acids … [Meanwhile], the livers of the animals that were still alcoholic but were given the saturated fatty acids had very little oxidative damage to the cells, and they weren’t fat.

What could explain this? Well, it turns out that when you’re consuming a meal with fat, it’s composed of many different fatty acids, but we can separate them into saturated fatty acids, monounsaturated and polyunsaturated [PUFAs].

It turns out that the liver and most of the organs preferentially oxidize (burn) the saturated fatty acids, and then the monounsaturated fatty acids, while the polyunsaturated acids are predominantly stored.

The polyunsaturated fatty acids, aside from being very susceptible to spontaneous auto oxidation … combustion … are precursors to inflammatory mediators such as prostaglandins and leukotrienes. Those inflammatory mediators are basically derived from … linoleic acid. So, if you eat a lot of polyunsaturated fats, and specifically linoleic acid, you’ll have more … systemic inflammation.

Now NAFLD is already known to be an inflammatory state. You cannot get an inflammatory state from saturated fat. It does not produce those same mediators. Saturated fat will either get stored or will get oxidized properly through the process of beta oxidation to carbon dioxide, ATP and water.

But the polyunsaturated fats, they’re unstable. They can get combusted and create a lot of toxic byproducts, and the liver being the site of the primary organ of detoxification of whatever you are eating through the diet — guess what? They’re going to go mostly there.

Also, because they’re precursors to a number of different mediators, enzymes in the body will take these fatty acids, specifically linoleic acid, and then through a chain of reactions convert it to prostaglandins, leukotrienes and thromboxane.”

PUFAs Are Stored, Not Digested

An important take-home here is that PUFAs such as LA are not digested. Instead they’re stored.¹³Most of the body fat in obese individuals is composed of PUFAs, not saturated fat. Saturated dietary fat is mostly burned (oxidized) and used up.

So, obese individuals are typically not eating very much saturated fat; rather, they’re exponentially overdosing on LA. Animal studies in the early 20th century demonstrated conclusively that pigs fed saturated fats (mostly coconut oil) could not get fat but became lean and muscular, while the ones fed PUFA gained mostly fat.

This led to the adoption/promotion of PUFA as animal feed since the goal there is to maximize “caloric efficiency” — i.e., get the animals as heavy as possible with a little food as possible. In other words, the pro-obesity effects of PUFA and anti-obesity effects of saturated fats are well-known in the livestock industry and are not disputed.

Considering the similarity of our metabolism/structure/tissues/organs with those of pigs, it should not be at all surprising that we keep getting fatter while consuming ever-larger amounts of PUFA.

The half-life of PUFAs such as LA, which get embedded and integrated into your cell membranes, is about 680 days. This means that to rid your body of LA will take approximately seven years, provided you don’t load more in. And you really do want to get rid of this fat, as it’s highly inflammatory and prevents your mitochondria and cellular machinery from operating properly.

Research has shown that given enough PUFAs, your cells will go into apoptosis, they basically commit suicide. “It can actually work like a radiation or chemotherapy. It is a type of chemotherapy,” Georgi says. The implications^14,15 of this insight are quite profound and I look forward to exploring that with Georgi on his next interview.

PUFAs Coming Out of Storage Can Cause Trouble

A key way to eventually lower your body burden of LA is to keep your total LA intake below 2%, maybe even close to 1%. You need to stop putting more in. Exercise and fasting will help drive the LA out, but you need to be really careful if you have a lot of LA storage.

“A recent study¹⁶ found that even lean people who are running marathons, a good portion (82%!) of them are actually in acute kidney failure by the time they reach the finish line,”Georgi says. “The question is, how is this possible? It looks like these circulating fatty acids, which are mostly PUFAs coming out of storage, circulate and cause energetic problems.

Also, because of the quick peroxidation and conversion into inflammatory mediators, they’re damaging many of the organs, predominantly the kidneys.¹⁷ Why the kidneys? Anything that is not oxidized for fuel basically gets sent to the liver through the blood stream, the Phase 2 detoxification mechanism. The liver attaches glucuronic acids to these fatty acids to make them more water soluble.

It can also sulfate them. When they’re more water soluble, you pee them out. But they have to go through the kidneys, and it looks like if a sufficiently big supply of these glucoronidated sulfated PUFAs, or let’s say linoleic acid just for the sake of the argument, is flooding the kidneys, it is causing local damage there.

So, what should we do? Well, it looks like we should be taking measures to not get into excessive lipolysis. What is excessive lipolysis? It’s any situation where you’ve run out of glycogen and now the body says, ‘I don’t have the fuel,’ because you’re not eating and you’ve run out of glycogen.

Then fat is your only other fuel, plus the amino acids that are coming from cortisol. So basically, you should not be getting to a state where you’re chronically starving. Acute, let’s say like eight to 12 hours of fasting, calorie restriction, has been shown to have benefits, but anything longer than that, then you’re starting to increase baseline lipolysis.”

My Recommendations for TRE Have Changed

Georgi pointed out the dangers of an excessive time-restricted eating (TRE) window.^{18,19,20,21,22,23,24,25}An extreme example of TRE is the one meal a day (OMAD) protocol, where you’re fasting 20 hours or more each day. Georgi believes this is too extreme for most people, as most have large stores of LA that need to be purged safely.

I have been personally practicing and advocating a six– to eight-hour time restricted eating window. What I learned from our conversation is that this, or even longer eating restrictions and fasts, are perfectly appropriate for 95% of the population as they are insulin resistant and metabolically inflexible.

The major problem comes once you lose your insulin resistance and become metabolically flexible. At that point, this strategy becomes counterproductive as you will increase your cortisol levels, which causes chronic inflammation that can lead to tissue damage. Usually, it takes about three to six months for you to recover your metabolic flexibility.

Prior to my interview with Georgi I would have a six- to eight-hour eating window and I did this for a few years. Now I am going to shift to one day a week of 12 hours, three days of 10 hours and three days of eight hours. If you are metabolically healthy, I would encourage you to avoid very short eating windows under eight hours.

This is because chronic fasting also elevates your cortisol, just like chronic endurance exercise does. Cortisol, in turn, is involved in insulin resistance and the synthesis of fat, and promotes the storage of fat. Also, as just mentioned above, high amounts of LA can kill your cells.

“So, you don’t want to be doing this to your normal tissues, and you’re doing it to your tissues every single time you over-exert yourself to the point of either glycogen running low or you’re so stressed that your adrenaline has gotten to the point where it’s increasing lipolysis and you’re starting to shed fat.”

This is a massive piece of the puzzle that I never fully appreciated. Molecular biology and pH physiology are based on a pre-1860s scenario where you didn’t have these high levels of LA, which totally distorts the strategies. If they weren’t there, you could fast to activate autophagy and get all these benefits.

You could have a much longer TRE window. But LA is a game changer. It radically modifies the concept of what you need to do to optimize your health. Essentially, if you’ve filled up your fat stores with LA — and in most people, over 20% of their fats are LA stored in their cell membranes and the optimum is 1% to 2% — then you need to integrate that knowledge into your strategy.

How to Safely Purge LA

How can you safely reduce these stores of LA without self-sabotaging? As explained by Georgi, extensive fasting will, in this instance, backfire, as will overtaxing yourself with heavy exercise. You’ll need to accept that this is a marathon, not a sprint, and that it’s going to take years to purge your LA stores. The best strategy, Georgi says, is to build muscle and maximize lean muscle mass.

“What does that mean? Concentric exercise, stimulating the muscles to grow. We already mentioned that cortisol is a very catabolic steroid for the muscles, so [you don’t want that] chronically. Acute spikes of cortisol are unavoidable. But things such as chronic fasting or eating inflammatory foods should be avoided as much as possible, which means cutting out vegetable oils.

If you’re cooking your own food, you have the tools at your disposal to eliminate almost completely the consumption of polyunsaturated fats. If you have to fry things or cook on high temperature, use butter, ghee or beef tallow. Even coconut oil [is good], but it has a lower smoke point. All of these are very good substitutes.”

Also avoid all processed foods, restaurant foods, condiments and animal foods raised on grains, such as chicken and pork. Aside from switching the types of dietary fats you eat, Georgi recommends a diet with a 2-to-1 ratio of carbs to protein, the carbs being in the form of fruits and vegetables, not processed sugary snacks.

“Protein is thermogenic. It’s going to raise your metabolic rate. It’s important to consume it with enough carbs because one of the quickest ways to damage your kidneys is consuming a very high protein diet without sufficient amount of carbs.

Even a competitive bodybuilder can only fully utilize about 120 grams of protein a day. Everything else that a person consumes is going to get oxidized as fuel and in the process gets deaminated, which means it produces ammonia, which is very toxic. It destroys the kidneys, liver and brain.

So, eat your protein, don’t cut down on the protein, but don’t overdo it. Make sure the ratio of carbs to protein is at least two to one, and completely cut out PUFAs as much as possible, especially if you’re cooking your own food.”

Hopefully you didn’t skim this and miss the pearl at the end, to take twice as many carbs as protein. What Georgi didn’t state here, though, is that is for people who are metabolically flexible and not insulin resistant.

So, the key is not to be afraid of healthy carbs: They are your friend. If you are eating enough protein to build muscle, please make sure you also have enough carbs because, if you fail to do this, you can hurt your kidneys, liver and brain.

He also shared another pearl about resistance exercises that I wasn’t aware of. Eccentric exercise, in which you are resisting gravity on the way down, builds muscles, BUT it also damages your muscles and destroys the mitochondria. It is far better to focus on the concentric phase of exercise, as it builds more and stronger mitochondria. Concentric exercise increase mitochondrial biogenesis, and steroidogenesis in muscle.²⁶

How PUFAs Cause Heart Disease

Saturated fats improve the structure of cells, specifically the lipid bilayer, while PUFAs like LA impair it. The reason your cholesterol and LDL levels may go up when switching to saturated fats is because you’re giving the cells the structural material needed, from which the cells can synthesize their own cholesterol as needed. Hence, extra cholesterol gets dumped into the bloodstream because it isn’t needed.

Cholesterol is carried around by LDL. So, when you’re eating saturated fat, your LDL rises, but it’s rising because the cholesterol already in the cell is not as needed anymore. It’s actually a good sign.

Conversely, when you’re eating PUFAs, your cells need more cholesterol to strengthen their structure, so your body dumps cholesterol into the cells to protect them from the onslaught of the PUFAs. Hence, it appears your cholesterol level is going down, but it’s actually having a strongly negative effect.

Additionally, the LA becomes oxidized and the LDL carrying it is now oxidized LDL, which is strongly associated with plaque. Plaque, associated with heart attacks also contains white blood cells, calcium, 7-ketocholesterol and PUFA peroxidation byproducts. Saturated fat does not contribute to plaque.

“The plaque is basically a reaction to an inflammation caused by these toxic PUFA byproducts, and PUFA itself is inflammatory. When it gets lodged into the blood vessel walls, it causes a localized inflammatory reaction. The first response of the body is to send white blood cells to protect the blood vessel wall from damage and rupture. That’s really the purpose of the plaque.

So, the body’s not trying to kill you. It’s simply trying to repair in the best possible manner, to isolate the issue. And the issue that it’s trying to isolate is the PUFA peroxidation byproducts²⁷ and 7-ketocholesterol.²⁸ How can you get around this? Don’t eat PUFA, or at least drastically reduce it. Go back to whatever your grandmother was eating.”

Concluding Thoughts

Like me, Georgi is convinced LA is a primary culprit in chronic diseases. And, since LA is found in most whole foods, there’s really never any need to take an omega-6 supplement. It’s virtually impossible to get too little from your diet.

I believe omega-6 supplements really ought to be removed from the market altogether, as people are getting 25 times more omega-6 than they could possibly need from their diet. At most, you need about 2 grams a day, but the average American gets about 50 grams a day, thanks to the fact that most processed foods and condiments are loaded with omega-6 seed oils.

If our diet were to be shifted away from seed oils to saturated fats, the way it was 150 years ago, we’d likely see a massive decline in chronic diseases, including cancer and heart disease.

To learn more, be sure to listen to the entire interview, as we dive into far greater detail than what I’ve summarized here. Georgi is an absolute fire hydrant when it comes to biochemical details. Also check out Georgi’s blog at www.haidut.me. You can also obtain a major sampling of Ray Peat’s work for free by going to these two sites: wiki.chadnet.org/Ray-Peat and RayPeat.com.

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Notes

¹ Ray Peat Forum April 13, 2016

² Open Heart August 22, 2018

³ Obesity September 6, 2012; 18(12): 2295-2300

⁴ Front Pharmacol April 24, 2020

⁵ BMC Endocr Disord 2015; 15: 63

⁶ Ray Peat

⁷ Ray Peat Forum January 23, 2018

⁸ Haidut.me October 20, 2021

^9, 17 Gastroenterology August 1995; 109(2): 547-554

¹⁰ J Pharmacol Exp Ther November 2001; 299(2): 638-644

¹¹ Haidut.me September 12, 2019

¹² Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research 1989; 13(1): 15-19

¹³ Haidut.me October 22, 2019

¹⁴ Ray Peat Forum March 23, 2021

¹⁵ Ray Peat Forum December 4, 2019

¹⁶ Ray Peat Forum March 28, 2017

¹⁸ Haidut.me February 16, 2021

¹⁹ Haidut.me September 27, 2022

²⁰ Haidut.me March 4, 2021

²¹ Haidut.me December 10, 2021

²² Haidut.me June 21, 2022

²³ Haidut.me November 17, 2020

²⁴ Haidut.me December 21, 2021

²⁵ Haidut.me September 30, 2020

²⁶ Muscle & Nerve 2014; 50(5): 803-811

²⁷ Int J Vitam Nutr Res 2013; 83(6): 367-376

²⁸ Int J Biochem Cell Biol March-April 1999; 31(3-4): 369-375

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In an overwhelming bipartisan vote late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed legislation authorizing $858 billion in military spending for Fiscal Year 2023, a sum that drew dissent from just a handful of lawmakers and outrage from watchdogs who said the money should be spent on fighting the climate emergency, poverty, and other pressing crises.

The $858 billion budget amounts to a roughly 10% increase from the previous year and $45 billion more than the historic sum President Joe Biden requested, and it was approved even after the Pentagon failed yet another audit, unable to account for more than 60% of its assets.

Much of the newly authorized money, as analyst Stephen Semler has shown, is likely to wind up in the pockets of military contractors. The NDAA passed by a vote of 83 to 11.

“This absurdly inflated Pentagon budget is a huge payout to military contractor corporations at the direct expense of the American people,” Robert Weissman, the president of Public Citizen, said in a statement, calling the military policy legislation “a moral and political disgrace.”

“The money wasted on the Pentagon… siphons funding away from reducing child poverty, expanding healthcare, addressing the climate crisis, and countless other priorities,” Weissman continued. “This spending level is a testament to the corporate capture and corruption of the Pentagon budgeting process. It leaves the nation less secure and more unjust. It is an utter, total disgrace.”

Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), one of just 11 senators to vote against the NDAA, lamented that the bill provides the military with “many billions more than Congress has invested in addressing many of the biggest security concerns facing the American people—such as climate change, the opioid epidemic, poverty, hunger, and disease.”

“Instead, it doubles down on the failed approach of pouring money into a bloated, inefficient, and sometimes counterproductive national security machine underwritten by an army of lobbyists and gold-plated contractors that fails to deliver on the needs of the American people,” Markey added. “I simply cannot support it.”

Markey noted that he proposed an NDAA amendment that would have sliced just 1% off the $858 billion topline and allocated the savings to global climate funding, but his proposal was not granted a floor vote—unlike Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-W.Va.) proposed giveaway to the fossil fuel industry, which was voted down Thursday evening.

Joining Markey in voting against the NDAA were Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

“At a time when we spend more than the next 11 nations combined on defense, we should invest in healthcare, jobs, housing, and education—not more weapons of destruction,” Sanders tweeted late Thursday.

Breaking: Senate passed an $858 billion military budget.

We’re sprinting towards $1 TRILLION.

Meanwhile:

1.2 billion people worldwide will be climate refugees by 2050

100 million Americans have medical debt

500,000 Americans are homeless

It doesn’t have to be this way.

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) December 16, 2022

Having passed the House last week by a vote of 350 to 80, the NDAA now heads to President Joe Biden’s desk.

As Defense News reported, the legislation “allocates more than $8 billion to procure high-priority munitions while granting the Pentagon emergency procurement powers to bolster production and refill U.S. stockpiles sent to Ukraine.”

“The final bill includes a requirement for the U.S. Navy to maintain 31 operational amphibious ships, despite opposition from the White House,” the outlet added. “The White House also opposes funding a third Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. But the final bill allocates $2.2 billion for the third Arleigh Burke ship. Additionally, the bill sets aside $25 million to continue the sea-launched cruise missile nuclear development program, also known as SLCM-N, despite the Biden administration’s attempts to cancel it.”

The peace group CodePink said in a statement Thursday that “if common sense were to prevail, President Biden would veto this budget and instruct Congress to use these resources to address the climate crisis, the world’s common enemy.”

“They would invest in infrastructure and education, free healthcare so our illnesses can’t be turned around for profit. They would provide student and medical debt relief, and everyone has a roof over their head,” the group said. “Elected officials, who trade war stocks, are telling us that an arms sale or buying another F-35 fighter jet is in our best interest. The people know what we want, and it’s not endless war.”

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

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The World Health Organization has published a video claiming that people opposed to the COVID jabs are “anti-science” and a “major killing force.” 

In a recently published video on the World Health Organization’s (WHO) Twitter page, Dr. Peter Hotez said that “anti-vaccine activism” is “anti-science aggression” and links people who refused the COVID injections to the “far right.” 

“Anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally."
– @PeterHotez, Professor and Dean @BCM_TropMed, on the devastating impact of #misinformation and disinformation. pic.twitter.com/ZluiMGJ2gX

— World Health Organization (WHO) (@WHO) December 14, 2022

The WHO has made this wholesale condemnation of “anti-vaccine activists” despite the fact that many people have been seriously injured or even died after receiving the experimental COVID jabs. A Swiss study for instance found elevated troponin levels – indicating heart injury – across all vaccinated people, with 2.8 percent showing levels associated with subclinical myocarditis.

Furthermore, a group of scientists recently conducted a risk-benefit analysis which showed that getting a COVID-19 “booster shot” is at least 18 times more dangerous than catching the virus itself for young people under the age of 30. 

However, the WHO’s showcased physician did not acknowledge these facts in his rant.

“We have to recognize that anti-vaccine activism, which I actually call anti-science aggression, has now become a major killing force globally,” Hotez said in the video, using a backdrop of photos of protestors against the COVID shots. 

The University Professor of Biology at Baylor College of Medicine claimed that “during the COVID pandemic in the United States, 200,000 Americans needlessly lost their lives because they refused a COVID vaccine, even after vaccines became widely available.” 

“And now the anti-vaccine activism is expanding across the world […].” 

“It’s a killing force,” Hotez proclaimed. “Anti-science now kills more people than things like gun violence, global terrorism, nuclear proliferation, or cyber-attacks.”

The scientist did not provide evidence for this dramatic claim.

“And now it’s become a political movement,” he continued. “In the U.S. it’s linked to far [sic] extremism on the far right, same in Germany.” 

“So this is a new face of anti-science aggression. And so we need political solutions to address this.”

The doctor did not provide evidence in the video that opposition to the dangerous, experimental COVID jabs is linked to extremists.

Hotez is a pediatrician who works in the field of vaccine research and development and, in addition to his post at Baylor College of Medicine, is the Chair of Tropical Pediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital.  

The WHO is known for its radical pro-abortion stance and promotion of “abortion access” all around the world. 

 Its current director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, was a member of the Ethiopia’s communist Tigray People’s Liberation Front and served its Minister of Health when it was in power. The party was declared a terrorist organization by the Ethiopian government in 2021. 

Hotez appears to be very close to Ghebreyesus, as he recently described him as “my brother and mentor Dr. Tedros,” in a Tweet responding to the murder of the WHO director’s uncle.

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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces a tough re-election vote in six months.  His rival, the Mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, is very popular and far ahead in the polls. 

Erdogan went back in time to find an obscure statement made by Imamoglu in 2019 which Erdogan used to order the Turkish courts to try Imamoglu on the charge of ‘insulting electoral officials’.

On December 14, Imamoglu was sentenced to 2 years, 7 months, and 15 days of prison, and was banned from politics.

Following his sentence, Imamoglu told his supporters, “Because this case is not a case against me. Because this case is not a party case. This case is a country case. This case is a justice case. This case is an equality case. Because we see this case as the case of leaving a strong and democratic Turkey to our children. Believe me, 2023 will be very beautiful.”

The US reaction to Erdogan’s move to rig the election

On December 15, Ned Price, US State Department Spokesperson said, “The United States is deeply troubled and disappointed by a Turkish court’s verdict against Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, sentencing him to two years and seven months in prison and banning him from political activity.  His conviction is inconsistent with respect for human rights, fundamental freedoms, and the rule of law.  We remain gravely concerned by the continued judicial harassment of civil society, media, and political and business leaders in Turkey, including through prolonged pretrial detention, overly broad claims of support for terrorism, and criminal insult cases.

We urge the government to cease prosecutions under criminal “insult” laws, and to respect the rights and freedoms of all Turkish citizens, including by ensuring an open environment for public debate.”

The Erdogan-Biden relationship has been weak despite Turkey being an ally, a fellow NATO member, and hosting a US airbase in Incirlik.  Turkey and the US are on opposite sides in northeast Syria, and Turkey is expected to increase their attacks on the US military’s partner there, the Kurdish SDF.

Erdogan’s policies have failed

Erdogan’s polling is so low for many reasons.  From 2011 he supported the US-NATO war on Syria for regime change. The Obama plan failed, and Turkey suffered from the effects of the support for the failed US-sponsored project.

His ruling AKP party aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood united Turkey with Qatar but broke its relationship with Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and UAE. He began an Islamist transformation from a secular democracy.

International terrorists were hosted by Erdogan as they transited through airports and set up headquarters in camps on the Syrian border.

In response to the terrorists battling the Syrian government, Syrian refugees who aligned themselves with the Muslim Brotherhood flooded Turkey in the millions as they sought protection under Erdogan and his Muslim Brotherhood-aligned party, AKP.  After 12 years of 3 million Syrian refugees living in Turkey, Turkish citizens have grown to hate and resent the refugees for racial, and economic reasons.

Turkey lost its biggest export market in 2012. Turkish exports to Syria represented 50% of all global Turkish exports, but in 2012 the Syrian government banned imports from Turkey because they participated in the US-NATO attack for regime change.

This huge loss to the Turkish economy began a downturn that saw the currency devalued and hyperinflation. Turkish citizens are suffering the loss of a prosperous lifestyle robbed of them by Erdogan’s failed foreign policy.

Erdogan and his close relatives have prospered as war profiteers; making money off of stolen oil, factories, and wheat, and transporting them to Turkey for resale.  Erdogan and his son sold stolen Syrian oil to the EU for $17 per barrel and sold stolen Syrian wheat to France for its croissants and Italy for its pasta.

Erdogan is low in the polls and is afraid of losing the election

Erdogan finished with the constitutional three-term limit in 2015, so he changed the constitution to allow himself more time to reign.

Cemil Cicek is a former parliamentary speaker from Erdogan’s ruling AKP, who also has served as deputy prime minister and justice minister, and is now a member of the Turkish Presidency’s High Advisory Board.

“If you decide on a one-sentence defamation claim after such a long time, and at such a critical threshold, neither the legality nor the accuracy of your decision will be convincing,” said Cicek of the Imamoglu sentence, and added “I don’t believe that it is credible either. This both harms the judiciary and a lofty concept such as justice. It will do a lot of damage to the country as well.”

Bulent Arinc, former parliamentary speaker and one of the founding members of the AKP also slammed the court’s decision on Imamoglu.

“The court’s verdict is a shame and a despair for the Turkish judiciary,” Arinc said.

The Mayor of Istanbul

Ekrem Imamoglu is a Turkish businessman, building contractor, and center-left politician. First elected as Mayor of Istanbul with 4.1 million votes and won with a margin of 13,000 votes against his AKP opponent in the March 2019 mayoral election as the joint Nation Alliance candidate, but served only from April 17, 2019, until May 6, 2019, when the election was annulled on orders of Erdogan. Imamoglu was then reelected in a renewed election on June 23, 2019, by an even larger margin of 800,000 votes.

Condemning the decision in 2019, Imamoglu said “Those who canceled the election are fools.”

The opposition to Erdogan

Turkey’s six opposition parties including the CHP have formed the Nation Alliance to unite their strength against the ruling bloc AKP (Justice and Development Party) and its supporter MHP (Nationalist Movement Party). The opposition candidate for president will be determined by the leaders of six opposition parties, who are: CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu, IYI Party Chairman Akşener, Future Party Chairman Davutoğlu, Democrat Party Chairman Uysal, DEVA Party Chairman Babacan, and IMM President Ekrem Imamoglu.

The opposition parties are united in their goal to defeat Erdogan

200 thousand Turkish citizens gathered in Sarachane in support of Imamoglu and protested his prison sentence. The setting of the rally was the site of the July 15, 2016 coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan’s government.

The leaders of the six opposition parties gave speeches to the crowd and stressed justice and the ultimate victory awaiting the nation.

IBB President Ekrem Imamoglu spoke to the crowd,

“I will tell you: The people who run this country are sick, very sick. These are people who are allergic to the will of the nation.”

Referring to Erdogan and his nepotism and cronyism,

“You manage some interest groups, elected associations, close family foundations, and some dark circles. They have established an order of waste in Istanbul and they want it to last forever. This was an order that enriched the wealth of a handful of people and hurt the people of Istanbul,” said Imamoglu.

“If 16 million Istanbulites are not equal in your eyes; If you do not see our 85 million citizens of the Republic of Turkey,” he said and added, “You showed your day to those who want to set a barrier to your will three and a half years ago and twice. You will show it again; I have no doubt. Never lose your hope.”

CHP Chairman Kilicdaroglu said

“In Turkey today, no one feels safe. The rule of law is not the rule of the superiors. No one speaks to the one who has an uncle. But when a teenager tweets, there is a knock on his door early in the morning and he is taken into custody. We will finish this scene. Don’t worry. You will never, ever experience these sights again.”

Kilicdaroglu added,

“This is not a 100m run. It’s a marathon, and we’ve come to the end of the marathon. After six months you will see a new Turkey. You will see a beautiful Turkey. You will see an embracing Turkey. You will see a fertile Turkey.”

IYI Party Chairman Aksener said forcefully, “Democracy is ours. The ballot box is ours.”

DEVA Party Babacan said, referring to the long reign of Erdogan,

“The 3-term rule, these three terms expired in 2015.  Absolute power corrupts absolutely. 85 million is bigger than one. Turkey is bigger than one.”

Uysal, Chairman of the Democratic Party said,

“May 6, 2019, is the date of a major break for Turkish democracy. It is the date when the main pillar of our democracy collapsed.”

The Chairman of the Future Party, Davutoğlu said

“Yesterday, the judiciary became politicized. But our issue is above politics. We are here as six general presidents. We are in different political parties. But we all say ‘Honor’ with the same loud voice. We call it ‘fundamental rights and freedoms’. We call it the ‘democratic state of law’.

I say on behalf of 85 million democracy lovers: We are not afraid, we are not afraid, we will not be afraid. We did not bow to you, we do not bow, we will not bow. We will protect everyone’s rights, law, and justice, regardless of their political views.”

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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***

The real tragedy is what we don’t see. We see billions squandered on wind and solar. Tragic enough, but we don’t see the magnificent electrical infrastructures coal might create if similarly furnished with funds.  

The world’s largest coal-fired power stations, Inner Mongolia’s 6,720 Megawatt (MW) Tuoketuo Station and South Korea’s 6,100 MW Taean Station, were built in stages as additional generators were needed. Tuoketuo now sports a motley array of 12 steam turbines ranging in size from 300 to 660 MW. Taean’s managers topped-up their 8 original 500 MW turbines with 2 Hitachi 1,050s.

Australian electricity demand peaks at 35,000ish MW; therefore, 8 Tuoketuo-sized plants (operating at two-thirds capacity) could meet national needs.

Nature’s most coal-rich tribe, the Aussies, own 165 billion tonnes of recoverable black coal and 433 billion tonnes of brown. Australia’s 94 coal mines yield a mere half-billion tonnes annually.

With centuries of supply, Aussies should consider coal inexhaustible. The Stone Age didn’t end when we ran out of rocks. Uranium will dethrone coal before Australians exhaust their seams; but right now 9,000 coal-fired power plants adorn Earth; a quantum blossoming by hundreds every year.

When life throws you lemons, …make lemonade. Pre-2002 Australians drew 80+% of their electricity from coal. In 2002, decades into the climate hooey, wind power finally captured measurable portions of Australia’s electricity market. Solar surfaced in 2005. Australia’s electricity-by-source scorecard now reads: coal 51%, gas 18%, solar 12%, wind 10%, hydro 6%, and oil 2%.

Net Zero dictates 90% reductions in global coal-burning by 2050. The climate oligarchy’s sacrificial lamb, Australia, must surrender coal-power long before then.

On command, Australia’s top toadies tumble over one another, beckoning the coal-apocalypse closer. PM Albanese recently increased renewable quotas 15%, proclaiming:

“Our new ambitious target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below 2005 levels by 2030 will put Australia on track to achieve Net Zero by 2050.” (1)

Queensland Premier Palaschuk demands 70% renewable electricity by 2032; …80% by 2035. Given (non-renewable) gas’s role in planned electricity mixes, Palaschuk’s demands spell death for coal-power.

Australians added 5 units to their coal-power fleet post-1999; none since 2009. Several closures are slated for the 2020s. Other closures are being brought forward.

Between 2002 and 2022 generating capacity grew from 36,900 MW to 53,400 MW; however much new capacity is aspirational nameplate capacity configured by solar panel and wind turbine salesmen. Australia’s coal-plants consistently deliver 66% of advertised max capacity, while wind typically delivers 30%; and solar: 10%.

Australia’s 19 coal-plants continue to supply baseload power with 59 aging steam turbines. Bayswater Station draws water from the Hunter River to operate four 660 MW generators. Saltwater-cooled Eraring Station’s four 720 MW Toshibas are fed by local mines. Brown coal monsters, Lon Yang A and B’s 6 generators electrify Melbourne; …also with locally-mined coal.

Ubiquitous deposits incentivize many Australian cities, like Melbourne, to tap adjacent brown coalfields. Strides in ultra-high-voltage long-distance transmission render this strategy obsolete.

The Belo Monte-Rio de Janeiro transmission line carries 4,000 MW a distance of 2,543 kilometres. The Siberia-Ural line carries 5,500 MW 2,344 kilometres. The UHV (1.1 million volt) Changi-Guquan carries 12,000 MW 3,250 kilometres.

Nine major Australian cities lay within 1,200 kilometres of Queensland’s humongous, high-volatility black coalfields.

Australians should visualize next-gen (15,000+ MW) coal-stations. Imagine robotized arrays of Arabelle 1,900s, fed by supercritical boilers, nestled into Queensland’s richest coalfields, and swirling the world’s cheapest electricity across Australia.

GE, Siemens, Mitsubishi, Hitachi, Toshiba et al will gladly sell Australia the machinery; the manufacturing of which Aussies should master. 30,000 industrializing South Pacific and Indian Ocean islands, thirsting for electricity, makes a ready market.

There’s also coal-to-oil; or, “carbon-to-x,” as coal is now re-constructable into a myriad of commodities, not just gasoline. South Africa has been exploiting this tech at grand scale since 1950. China is undergoing a coal-to-x boom.

Why not Australia?

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William Walter Kay is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Note

1. Albanese’s letter to the UNFCCC June, 16, 2022.

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***

Could a gel made out of human proteins create the next generation of bulletproof body armor? Scientists have created a biogel that is capable of stopping supersonic objects — such as a speeding bullet.

Scientists at the University of Kent say it could ensure the safety of military and police personnel, as well as guard airplanes and spacecraft against flying debris.

The protective material contains a protein found in human cells. Known as talin, it reforms in response to external forces.

“Each molecule has 13 ‘switches’ that can unfold when force is applied,” says project leader Professor Benjamin Goult in a statement, according to SWNS. “These refold after force is removed – enabling shock absorption.”

The team adapted the ends of three switches and then linked them together using water and a gelling agent to form a mesh. When something hits it, the energy unfolds the modified talin rather than converting into heat — as is the case with existing materials.

In experiments, a piston fired tiny particles of basalt and larger pieces of shrapnel at a sample placed in front of an aluminum plate. Even at supersonic speeds of a mile a second, twice as fast as firearm bullets, the gel stopped them in their tracks.

The breakthrough opens the door to next-generation bulletproof armor.

“Talin is cells’ natural shock absorber. It contains a series of binary switch domains which open under tension and refold again once tension drops,” Prof. Goult says, according to SWNS.

“This response to force gives talin its incredible properties, protecting our cells from the effects of large force changes.”

Traditional body armor has its flaws

Current body armor has a bulky ceramic face with a fiber-reinforced composite backing. While this may be good at stopping bullets and flying debris, it is ineffective against kinetic energy which can cause physical trauma to the body behind the armor.

Moreover, due to reduced structural integrity, traditional body armor frequently sustains permanent damage after a hit, barring continued usage. Talin-based alternatives could be a viable replacement for existing conventional technologies.

“It offers a lighter, more durable armor shielding the wearer from a wider spectrum of injuries – including those brought on by shock,” Prof. Goult tells SWNS.

Energy-dissipating materials are required to efficiently collect space debris, dust, and tiny meteoroids for scientific investigation. They can trap and store projectiles after impact and help construct expensive equipment, increasing astronauts’ durability and safety.

They may also replace gels used in the industry which are prone to melting due to temperature increases brought on by projectile impact. The team is now working with a company to develop the gel as a component of body armor.

Other proteins labeled with markers can bind to talin. Damage could be identified by adding fluorescent protein.

“There’s an analogy with autopilots in planes. A lot of private planes don’t contain autopilots,” Prof. Goult says.

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The study is published on the science website bioRxiv.

South West News Service writer Mark Waghorn contributed to this report.

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***

It would be so tempting to qualify Chinese President Xi Jinping landing in Riyadh a week ago, welcomed with royal pomp and circumstance, as Xi of Arabia proclaiming the dawn of the petroyuan era.

But it’s more complicated than that. As much as the seismic shift implied by the petroyuan move applies, Chinese diplomacy is way too sophisticated to engage in direct confrontation, especially with a wounded, ferocious Empire. So there’s way more going here than meets the (Eurasian) eye.

Xi of Arabia’s announcement was a prodigy of finesse: it was packaged as the internationalization of the yuan. From now on, Xi said, China will use the yuan for oil trade, through the Shanghai Petroleum and National Gas Exchange, and invited the Persian Gulf monarchies to get on board. Nearly 80 percent of trade in the global oil market continues to be priced in US dollars.

Ostensibly, Xi of Arabia, and his large Chinese delegation of officials and business leaders, met with the leaders of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) to promote increased trade. Beijing promised to “import crude oil in a consistent manner and in large quantities from the GCC.” And the same goes for natural gas.

China has been the largest importer of crude on the planet for five years now – half of it from the Arabian peninsula, and more than a quarter from Saudi Arabia. So it’s no wonder that the prelude for Xi of Arabia’s lavish welcome in Riyadh was a special op-ed expanding the trading scope, and praising increased strategic/commercial partnerships across the GCC, complete with “5G communications, new energy, space and digital economy.”

Foreign Minister Wang Yi doubled down on the “strategic choice” of China and wider Arabia. Over $30 billion in trade deals were duly signed – quite a few significantly connected to China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) projects.

And that brings us to the two key connections established by Xi of Arabia: the BRI and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

The Silk Roads of Arabia

BRI will get a serious boost by Beijing in 2023, with the return of the Belt and Road Forum. The first two bi-annual forums took place in 2017 and 2019. Nothing happened in 2021 because of China’s strict zero-Covid policy, now abandoned for all practical purposes.

The year 2023 is pregnant with meaning as BRI was first launched 10 years ago by Xi, first in Central Asia (Astana) and then Southeast Asia (Jakarta).

BRI not only embodies a complex, multi-track trans-Eurasian trade/connectivity drive but it is the overarching Chinese foreign policy concept at least until the mid-21^st century. So the 2023 forum is expected to bring to the forefront a series of new and redesigned projects adapted to a post-Covid and debt-distressed world, and most of all to the loaded Atlanticism vs. Eurasianism geopolitical and geoeconomic sphere.

Also significantly, Xi of Arabia in December followed Xi of Samarkand in September – his first post-Covid overseas trip, for the SCO summit in which Iran officially joined as a full member. China and Iran in 2021 clinched a 25-year strategic partnership deal worth a potential $400 billion in investments. That’s the other node of China’s two-pronged West Asia strategy.

The nine permanent SCO members now represent 40 percent of the world’s population. One of their key decisions in Samarkand was to increase bilateral trade, and overall trade, in their own currencies.

And that further connects us to what has happening in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, in full synchronicity with Riyadh: the meeting of the Supreme Eurasia Economic Council, the policy implementation arm of the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU).

Russian President Vladimir Putin, in Kyrgyzstan, could not have been more straightforward:

“The work has accelerated in the transition to national currencies in mutual settlements… The process of creating a common payment infrastructure and integrating national systems for the transmission of financial information has begun.”

The next Supreme Eurasian Economic Council will take place in Russia in May 2023, ahead of the Belt and Road Forum. Take them together and we have the lineaments of the geoeconomic road map ahead: the drive towards the petroyuan proceeding in parallel to the drive towards a “common paying infrastructure” and most of all, a new alternative currency bypassing the US dollar.

That’s exactly what the head of the EAEU’s macroeconomic policy, Sergey Glazyev, has been designing, side by side with Chinese specialists.

Total Financial War

The move towards the petroyuan will be fraught with immense peril.

In every serious geoeconomic gaming scenario, it’s a given that an enfeebled petrodollar translates as the end of the imperial free lunch in effect for over five decades.

Concisely, in 1971, then-US President Richard “Tricky Dick” Nixon pulled the US from the gold standard; three years later, after the 1973 oil shock, Washington approached the Saudi oil minister, notorious Sheikh Yamani, with the proverbial offer-you-can’t-refuse: we buy your oil in US dollars and in return you buy our Treasury bonds, lots of weapons, and recycle whatever’s left in our banks.

Cue to Washington now suddenly able to dispense helicopter money – backed by nothing – ad infinitum, and the US dollar as the ultimate hegemonic weapon, complete with an array of sanctions over 30 nations who dare to disobey the unilaterally imposed “rules-based international order.”

Impulsively rocking this imperial boat is anathema. So Beijing and the GCC will adopt the petroyuan slowly but surely, and certainly with zero fanfare. The heart of the matter, once again, is their mutual exposure to the Western financial casino.

In the Chinese case, what to do, for instance, with those whopping $1 trillion in US Treasury bonds. In the Saudi case, it’s hard to think about “strategic autonomy” – such as what’s enjoyed by Iran – when the petrodollar is a staple of the Western financial system. The menu of possible imperial reactions includes everything from a soft coup/ regime change to Shock and Awe over Riyadh – followed by regime change.

Yet what the Chinese – and the Russians – are aiming at goes way beyond a Saudi (and Emirati) predicament. Beijing and Moscow have clearly identified how everything – the oil market, global commodities markets – is tied to the role of the US dollar as reserve currency.

And that’s exactly what the EAEU discussions; the SCO discussions; from now on the BRICS+ discussions; and Beijing’s two-pronged strategy across West Asia are focused to undermine.

Beijing and Moscow, within the BRICS framework, and further on within the SCO and the EAEU, have been closely coordinating their strategy since the first sanctions on Russia post-Maidan 2014, and the de facto trade war against China unleashed in 2018.

Now, after the February 2022 Special Military Operation launched by Moscow in Ukraine and NATO has devolved into, for all practical purposes, war against Russia, we have stepped beyond Hybrid War territory and are deep into Total Financial War.

SWIFTly drifting away

The whole Global South absorbed the “lesson” of the collective (institutional) west freezing, as in stealing, the foreign reserves of a G20 member, on top of it a nuclear superpower. If that happened to Russia, it could happen to anyone. There are no “rules” anymore.

Russia since 2014 has been improving its SPFS payment system, in parallel with China’s CIPS, both bypassing the western-led SWIFT banking messaging system, and increasingly used by Central Banks across Central Asia, Iran and India. All across Eurasia, more people are ditching Visa and Mastercard and using UnionPay and/or Mir cards, not to mention Alipay and WeChat Pay, both extremely popular across Southeast Asia.

Of course the petrodollar – and the US dollar, still representing under 60 percent of global foreign exchange reserves – will not ride into oblivion overnight. Xi of Arabia is just the latest chapter in a seismic shift now driven by a select group in the Global South, and not by the former “hyperpower.”

Trading in their own currencies and a new, global alternative currency is right at the top of the priorities of that long list of nations – from South America to Northern Africa and West Asia – eager to join BRICS+ or the SCO, and in quite a few cases, both.

The stakes could not be higher. And it’s all about subjugation or exercising full sovereignty. So let’s leave the last essential words to the foremost diplomat of our troubled times, Russia’s Sergey Lavrov, at the international interparty conference Eurasian Choice as a Basis for Strengthening Sovereignty:

“The main reason for today’s growing tensions is the stubborn striving of the collective West to maintain a historically diminishing domination in the international arena by any means it can… It is impossible to impede the strengthening of the independent centers of economic growth, financial might and political influence. They are emerging on our common continent of Eurasia, in Latin America, the Middle East and Africa.”

All aboard…the Sovereign Train.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok. 

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

A patent granted to Bill Gates awarded the self-appointed world health czar the “exclusive rights” to computerize human bodies and use them as local wireless networks.

The human body is a vibrating, throbbing, pulsing gateway of tubes and tunnels, filled with electrolytes and all capable of transmitting information, the lifeblood of the internet and the 21st century.

Now it has emerged that Gates’ Microsoft was granted “exclusive rights” to this ability of the body to act as a computer network.

If this sounds too much like science fiction, then you are welcome to check this out for yourself. Microsoft was awarded US Patent 6,754,472, which is titled: Method and apparatus for transmitting power and data using the human body.

Which really should be science fiction, if you stop to think about it. Did anybody consult you about whether you are willing to hand over to Bill Gates the exclusive rights to your body?

Civil liberties groups have expressed outrage over Gates’s move to patent the human body. “Body parts, in this case skin, should not be in any way patentable,” said Jim Thomas of the ETC group, which monitors developments in technology. “There are big questions here about whether individuals will be able to refuse this technology if it is used in, for example, tracking devices.”

Klaus Schwab’s right hand man, Yuval Noah Harari, says there is no question that individuals will have no say whatsoever about refusing this technology. According to Harari, “The designer of life will no longer be god, the WEF are going to be the designers of the future of life.”

Harari also explains why Gates’ patent on the human body is so important. Gates was at the forefront of the computer science revolution, according to Harari, and he is also at the forefront of “the revolution in the biological sciences.” And guess what? According to Harari, Bill Gates’ two revolutions are about to merge.

While Harari is dropping some hints, Gates is remaining coy about what they plan to do to the human body, and more to the point, whose human bodies they plan to computerize.

The big question is whether Gates is planning to allow his human subjects a choice in the matter.

According to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Gates has a “God-like willingness to experiment with the lives of lesser humans.”

Kennedy Jr. goes on to warn that Bill Gates has used his money to systematically purchase “powers exceeding, in some respects, those wielded by presidents” and is using these powers to experiment on human beings like “guinea pigs“.

“Gates’ strategy of buying WHO [World Health Organization] and purchasing control of US health officials like Tony Fauci & Deborah Birx” means the Microsoft co-founder can now “dictate global health policies affecting 7 billion people and to control the most intimate details of our lives,” said Kennedy Jr. on his Instagram page.

“Under his direction, the WHO is conducting global social and medical experimentation applying Gates’ religious faith that he can use technology (vaccines and GMO agriculture) and his deep understanding of computers to make him the savior to all of humanity. We are his guinea pigs.”

But if you think Bill Gates’ plans for humanity are disturbing, wait until you meet the people he is collaborating with.

A controversial proposal by a New York University professor to combat ‘climate change’ through biohacking has attracted the attention of World Economic Forum and the Gates Foundation.

Strap yourself in. Things are about to get weird.

Matthew Liao, a bioethicist at NYU, first presented the proposal in a paper he wrote in 2012. Titled ‘Human Engineering and Climate Change’, the crux of the paper argues for the use of radical biomedical interventions on humans so as to create people who are literally physiologically environmentally-friendly.

These biomedical interventions involve three approaches: a eugenics program against tall people, inducing intolerance towards meat including beef, pork and chicken, and radically lowering birth rates by altering women’s cognitive abilities.

Liao states that its necessary to have a eugenics program that breeds tall people out of the population because the increase in human height over the past few centuries has had a negative environmental impact, because tall people consume more calories.

To carry out the eugenics program, Liao has two suggestions. The first one being the genetic screening of embryos before IVF implantation so that parents can have the option to choose children who are likely to be short and small. Liao’s second suggestion is even more radical, and involves injecting children with hormones to severely stunt their growth so they consume less calories when they are adults.

As for inducing meat intolerance, Liao uses the globalist elites favorite excuse; ‘climate change’, to argue that we must make people allergic to meat, by stimulating the immune system against common bovine proteins.

This is taking authoritarianism to a whole new level, far surpassing anything attempted in Mao’s China or Stalin’s Russia.

Instead of eating meat, as humans have since time began, the WEF want us to eat Bill Gates’ lab-grown meat. The elite also have a thing for cannibalism. Here is WEF-aligned transhumanist politician Ben Zion consuming lab-grown human meat in what he claims is a historic first.

The 40 year-old-Facebook politician turned biohacker claims the lab-grown human meat is from cell cultures that he took from his own skin.

Why do they want us to eat crickets, bugs and lab-grown human meat? The answer lies in how badly the elite want to humiliate and degrade us.

But Liao’s suggestions don’t stop there. Getting onto the elite’s favourite topic, depopulation, and Liao suggests that to lower birth rates even further, the WEF should pump women full of smart drugs to enhance their cognitive abilities. He arrives at this conclusion by arguing that the more educated women become, the less children they have.

“Women with low cognitive ability are more likely to have children before age eighteen,” says Liao, “Hence, another possible human engineering solution is to use cognition enhancements such as Ritalin and Modafinil to achieve lower birthrates.”

When Liao published his paper almost a decade ago, it caused controversy, and was for the most part dismissed as eco-extremism, even by ‘climate change’ activists. But fast forward to the present day, and the extreme bioengineering proposals of the paper are being seriously discussed at the World Economic Forum.

Last year in December, in preparation for this year’s Davos Summit, the World Economic Forum unveiled its bioengineering framework in a presentation called ‘3 Scenarios for How Bioengineering Could Change Our World in 10 Years.’

Edible vaccines grown in plants and CRISPR gene-editing were some of the highlights of the framework. The presentation was based off a World Economic Forum sponsored academic paper called Bioengineering Horizon Scan 2020.

For this year’s Davos Summit, Liao’s human bioengineering paper was added to the ‘Bioengineering Horizon Scan 2020’ paper for both the World Economic Forum’s bioengineering framework and Climate Change framework.

As radical as Matthew Liao’s human bioengineering suggestions might seem, their consideration and deliberation by the World Economic Forum should come as no surprise.

Bill Gates is a fan of experimenting on the human body, whether his human subjects have given their consent or otherwise, and Klaus Schwab considers bioengineering a key component of his Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Do not underestimate these people. They are mad, drunk on power, and they do not have our best interests at heart.

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First published on April 13, 2022

***

In March 2020, as the entire world grinded to a halt for the first time in recorded history in the face of the Covid-19 scare, most people had no idea of the deep significance of the events taking place. It was the first time that all nations were collectively brought to a complete standstill. The fact that all the people of the world were simultaneously forced to ‘stop’, signalled that a major change in the world was coming.

• We know that Covid-19 hoax was pre-planned; that the PCR test, methods for recording case numbers, the CDC’s Covid-19 genome are all fraudulent;  it is proven that the so-called virus was never isolated anywhere;
• doctor’s such as Dr Stefan Lanka have exposed the virus misconception; the so-called Covid-19 ‘variants’ are due to the vaccinated becoming ill and spreading variants, not the un-vaccinated, as Dr Mikovits explained, it’s a cover up of XMRVs, transmitted into humans via contaminated vaccines;
• the dangers of  MRNA-based vaccines, and of EMF technologies, such as 5G; that manmade climate change is a deception;
• Covid-19 and manmade climate change are a ‘psyops’ intended to propel the world into the Davos Group WEF technocratic ‘reset’ and the aligned UN Agenda 2030 plan;
• additional orchestrated pandemics, crises and wars are likely ‘in the pipeline’ to further these plans. Many doctors and scientists that have explained this are censored on internet platforms.

In the book “Transcending the Covid-19 Deception” I detail evidence for the above and a 100-year timeline of key events, who and what is behind the curtain of these lies, and the bigger picture of what it all means.

They are using these well marketed scares, false ideologies, fake crises, and political systems (democracy, communism, socialism, etc) to control you. Many people are thus in a media-and-government-induced dysfunctional state of confusion, and thus blindly assume their pre-determined role in society under this ‘dictatorship of words’ without even being aware of it. For example, we now have millions of so-called climate change warriors blind to the fact that climate change is not actually caused by carbon emissions.

Manmade climate change is nothing more than UN, WEF and EU promoted non-evidence-based propaganda. I am a signatory of the Climate Intelligence Group European Climate Declaration, a declaration that has been signed by 1,000 scientists in climate and related fields, that asserts “the proclaimed climate crisis exists in computer models only”.

How can I assert this? I worked as a scientist at the UK Government Dept. of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and at the United Nations Environment Division in Geneva. I resigned from both roles. It was evident that the manipulation and distortion of data had long been used to promote false ideology and deceptive agenda rather than fact. These agendas stem from the top echelons of the international finance, political, and mega-corporate system, and those private central bankers who control the system by owning the source of debt-money creation.

The UN is clever marketing tool and unelected unaccountable political mechanism for implementing and maintaining a corrupt worldwide system, under the clever guise of ‘fixing the problems of the world’.  It is so big most people have no idea what the UN really is or what it is designed for, and who are the globalist robber barons that control it from the top down. The word sustainable was hijacked decades ago, it is now deceptively used to advance the agendas of the globalists who couldn’t care less about the environment.

The UN Agenda 2030 plan and the Paris Agreement goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 7% per annum until 2030 is in effect a plan that will disable the resource mechanisms of the industrial economy for the food, energy and goods that enable human life and survival. This is being done before humanity has transitioned away from the flawed polluting trans-national industrial economy toward self-sufficient local economies. Whether you believe the ‘plug is being pulled’ intentionally or not, this inevitably amounts to a de-population outcome. The dependency of humanity on a globalised system was created for decades by an international political corporate hierarchy rampantly promoting and implementing flawed trans-national systems for agriculture, energy and goods, aligned with a usury economy in which wealth continuously flowed toward the private bankers. These globalised oil-dependent systems become useless as peak oil manifests.

Furthermore, the current green energy/renewable technologies being promoted by the UN and WEF, these technologies are not a viable solution for the world’s energy supply. The Energy Returned on Energy Invested is much too low – in essence the entire process is mathematically flawed. This is evidenced by the work of Professor David MacKay, Regius Professor of Engineering at Cambridge University and former Chief Scientific Advisor at DECC.

The funding of entire world economy is now based on a life-killing net-zero GHG strategy. Note that the world’s central bankers are behind this decision and are fully funding the worldwide climate change ‘project’. The Bank for International Settlements created the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosure, which represents the world’s mega-banks and $118 trillion of assets globally.

Democracy will not make things better, it is an illusory divide and conquer/control trick. It is just the election of the latest political figure heads, none of whom have any real power – it’s the behind-the-scenes privately-owned world banking cartel that owns the debt-money creation system that has the means to control, own, fund, or de-fund whatever government, corporation or ideology it wishes. Many politicians are the witting, and often un-witting, pawns, of the globalists. Democratic leaders are subservient not to the people but always to international finance. International banking and mega corporations control governments.

For many decades the so-called banking and corporate elites have had full control of the source of money creation and its allocation, via the debt-money system, and have therefore, by default, been able to fund, and increasingly control and manipulate the entire world spectrum of industry, media, government, education, ideological supremacy and war to their own design, agenda and benefit. Mayer Amschel Rothschild (banker) is reported to have said:

“Give me control of a nation’s money supply and I care not who makes its laws.”

The WEF reset/UN Agenda 2030 moves the elites beyond control of the money system, to control of the people system, via new rules, track and trace, bio-metrics, vaccine passports, digital IDs, facial recognition, smart cities and blockchain power dynamics. That is not smart for you, it is smart for them. It is all presented in clever marketing language because if people understood it nobody would want it. Humanity urgently needs to take back control of the money creation process, or, at least, function outside of the privately-owned worldwide banking, credit creation and corporate system.

People’s access to energy and resources is being intentionally reduced via rapid inflation, bogus climate change policies, ongoing geo-political theatre and intentionally instigated war, in which both ‘sides’ are acting as pawns for the wider agenda of the punch-and-judy show globalists.

As sovereign free peoples, we urgently need to start planning, connecting with each other and creating much more self-sufficient local communities, towns, and regions free of the globalist controlled monetary system.

If people are not dependent on the system they cannot be controlled by the system. How many people will accept a ‘well-marketed system of technocratic control’ and how many will maintain their own freedom and create their own local systems? You are part of the answer.

The mainstream media is fully owned and controlled by the corporate elites and it is time for people to replace their window on the world. This starts by turning off the TV. John Swinton, former chief-of-staff for the New York Times said: “We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes… They pull the strings… AND WE DANCE.”

The corporate super-entity

The Covid and Climate change hoaxes could not have been orchestrated without a single controlling world influence over the media, banking, and the corporate/political structure. Who owns the banks and asset management companies that own and control the world? Let’s take the example of Blackrock, one of the world’s largest asset management companies, which manages funds of over $27 trillion ($27,000 billion) and in effect owns most of the U.S. and large parts of the world. The major shareholders of Blackrock are all mega-banks and financial corporations, in this way we can see that it the private mega-banks that own most of the world.

A study was conducted in 2018 at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, on the relationships between 37 million companies and investors worldwide, and they concluded there is one ‘super-entity’ of just 147 tightly knit mega-corporations, and all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity. In essence, the worldwide privately owned financial and corporate orthodoxy is one large self-reinforcing super-entity underneath the tentacles of financial mega-corporations, who are themselves pre-dominantly owned by a small coterie of privately owned mega-banks/financial institutions. One corporate ‘super-entity’ of interlocking ownership literally owns and dominates the world economy, resources, and media.

The private banking cartel owns and controls the corporate super-entity. A small number of mega-banks are among the top ten stock holders of virtually every Fortune 500 corporation. This is why less than 0.001 % of the world’s population, i.e., a small number of banking family elites and their networks, own the majority of the world’s assets and wealth.

A systemic ongoing problem with the world economic system, and peak oil, has been manifesting.  Various studies now indicate that peak oil has occurred, and the days of using oil as a cheap energy source to drive the flawed globalised system and seemingly endless growth may soon be over permanently. The decades old economic Ponzi scheme of the globalists has thus reached its mathematical end-phase, forcing another paradigm shift.

By 2019, virtually every national government of the world owed vast or mathematically unpayable amounts of debt to the worldwide private banking cartel. This system forces people to live in a debt cycle which never ends. Since debt does not really exist (the money was created from nothing), the national debt is a hoax perpetrated by the so-called ‘powers that be’. The private central-banks and governments facilitate this worldwide con game.

This system of debt-money slavery had reached its mathematical end-phase by 2019. A new system of control was needed and the elites had known this for a long time. Most people still have no idea that in March 2020 the world central bankers launched a world economic reset under cover of the pre-planned Covid world lockdown. Viruses, it seems, suddenly become invisible enemies of the world’s governments, but it was all pre-planned. The Covid-19 hoax was and is a cover/smokescreen for an attempted new worldwide system of societal control. At the exact same time as the lockdown was introduced the world central bankers implemented a world financial reset and transferred trillions of dollars to Blackrock; and the WEF/UN launched a pre-planned technocratic reset of world society aligned with their Agenda 2030 plan.

Transcending the power game of godless scientism

The Covid-19 vaccine has been relentlessly promoted as a chemical messiah purported to save everyone from death, the problem of course is it is a false and dangerous messiah of demonic scientism. The vaccine companies and government health agencies knew that the Covid-19 vaccines were unsafe and going to injure a high volume of people. This is proved by the fact that the MHRA in the UK posted a procurement contract notice on the EU EPSD procurement website in 2020 “urgently seeking an artificial intelligence software tool to process the expected high volume of Covid-19 vaccine Adverse Drug Reactions”. Statistics published by the UK Government’s MHRA listed 460 dead and 243,612reported injuries within months after the launch of the Covid-19 vaccines. To date, millions of vaccine adverse reactions and thousands of vaccine-induced deaths are recorded by Yellow card and VAERS, etc., but not reported by globalist-owned media. A puppet media who, at the launch of the pandemic, employed nothing less than trauma-based mind control to convince the world’s population that they were all likely to die from a killer virus unless they do exactly what the world government orders and take an experimental gene-modification vaccine and wear masks.

Masks, by the way, are a masonic symbol of subversion, de-personalization and slavery. People in a dysfunctional state of confusion and fear have yielded their lifelong wisdom in favour of subjugation and compromise, and the younger generation is being moulded and depersonalised into robotic compliance, instead of exploring their God-given potential, which always derives from their uniqueness.

Corporate godless forces are pushing the deceptions of Covid, manmade climate change, for their Hegelian dialectic agenda of control via UN Agenda 2030 and the WEF reset. More fake pandemics, geo-political theatre, and wars are likely in the pipeline to further these plans.

In our own life-time we have lived under a political hierarchy, which though pertaining to be made of individual and autonomous nation states, is actually a one world government controlled by the world private banking cartel via its controlling ownership of the mega-corporate world structure (as evidenced in my books); and via its institutional vassals, including the unelected unaccountable UN, WEF and WHO.

This hierarchy has also stealthily introduced a poisonous a debt-monetary system that has caused economic enslavement to billions of people through-out the world, and a perpetual war machine which has caused death and injury to hundreds of millions of people through-out the world; it is a system which has introduced mass abortion, mass animal killing, atheistic ideology, illicit sex, gambling, and intoxication; it is a system that has introduced genetically modified foods, chemtrails, thousands of toxic manmade chemical compounds, herbicides and pesticides, fluoridated water, toxic pharmaceuticals and vaccines, widespread ecological destruction, etc. The godless ulterior forces have been foisting an increasingly dark and perverse society on us. There is no more normal. There has not been a normal for a very long time.

Though individual politicians have been replaced by others, the same system of government has continued. In the midst of a so-called pandemic, we were expected to believe that this one world government was suddenly concerned for the lives and health of people threatened by the so-called virus. Does a vulture wish the cow to be alive or dead? And does a vulture political hierarchy wish for the physical, economic and spiritual health of its citizens? Luciferianism is the underlying globalist cult religion, and is the only ideological institution adopted by the UN, via the UN’s relationship with Lucis Trust. Lucis Trust was originally called Lucifer Publishing Company, and still has a private library within the UN building today.

Many politicians are themselves unwitting pawns of the godless international hierarchy. The real divide in society is not the media fostered left-versus-right punch-and-judy show’, it is totalitarianism versus human freedom. The power seekers versus the freedom lovers. There are those that just want to be left alone and there are those that just won’t leave them alone. Covid-19 was a fulcrum event, it created a mental split. There are those that fully accepted the government narrative, restrictions and wore the masks of slavery proudly; and there are those more aware people that could see for themselves what was really happening.

The situation could be perceived as a challenge for us all, we can choose to either be a slave to the system or, alternatively, to create and co-create an improved society, a world of integrity, truth, justice and wellbeing, along with the many millions of people who also realise what is happening. This may all be a spiritual test where everyone has a choice and a role to play – without the narcissistic forces there would be no battle where the righteous ones can prove themselves.

In ancient societies by fulfilling one’s dharma, duty, or mission in life with integrity and to the best of one’s ability, whilst cognisant of the Creator as the supreme authority to which we will ultimately answer, each person could live more successfully in the mode of goodness, contributing to the overall societal welfare. This contrasts with modern-day conditioning in which many people behave like government-controlled zombies or robotic cogs in the system machinery of the money-masters. Robot-like behaviour is not human, humans know how to improvise and create new things directly from the source, from the Spirit.

Remember no politician, police or person has authority over you – unlock yourself from their mental prison. The agenda of political control in the world is not going to stop by people complying with it, it only stops when people say no and cultivate a path not reliant on an immoral system.

When you use the gadgets and platforms of the current corporate system you inevitably come into contact with a mass worldwide collective hypnosis, a conditioned mentality that has been molded by corporate TV, corporate media, social media which is filtered by computer algorithms, smartphone applications, etc. The pressure to comply and conform with the accepted reality and cleverly designed propaganda of these collectives is huge. In contrast, when you embrace your dharma, duty, or mission in life, you are on the right path and are doing ‘what you are here to do’, your mentality engages into a whole new world of possibility and you can feel the difference.

The ancient Vedic texts describe that humanity is in the age of ‘Kali-yuga’, a time period of chaos and dominance of dark powers. The ‘dark powers’ are hell bent on harming humans physically; crushing our consciousness and separating us from our connection with God. However, good-hearted God-conscious humans are exceedingly resilient and the dark forces cannot defeat them. It appears that enough people have awakened so that humanity is now holding the potential for an alternative reality, a better future. If a person is still thinking that they are under the control of the governments, then they are unable to function as a truly free soul and remain bound by the edicts of the government. It’s all about consent. If we do not consent with evil, it has no control over us.

It seems like most of the world has been desperate to return to the ‘normal’ world we had in 2019 prior to the fake pandemic, but the reality is that life pre-Covid-19 was far from normal, what exactly are people trying to get back to? Vastly excessive consumerism; hours stuck in traffic; the 9 to 5 hamster wheel to pay off the mortgage (mortgage is the French word for death grip btw); kids glued to harmful microwave-producing smart phones; mindless TV programmes designed to keep you ‘programmed’ and dumbed down; the whole world in unpayable debt to private bankers; an education system that indoctrinates everyone to become cogs in the system machinery of the criminal elites; mega-corporations polluting the earth; toxins in the food and water supply; Hollywood movie drivel; internet censorship; impotent art, music and culture projects that depend on corporate gatekeepers or state funding and, therefore, lack the balls to say what needs to be said; the list goes on and on. What is normal about any of that?

The old system was based on debt-slavery of money created from nothing by private bankers, and the new system being pushed is based on technocratic control created from nothing except our consent to cleverly marketing narcissism and lies. We need a better paradigm, but obviously not the technocratic ‘new normal’ paradigm the elites have planned for us to keep us under tabs. Local systems for food, energy, water and services are an essential part of escaping the coming technocratic system that is being cleverly wrapped around us. Start creating local self-sufficient systems and networks.

We don’t need these international money-masters and their ‘paid-for’ bureaucrats. We don’t need to be slaves to their systems of medical fascism, fraudulent banking, and international political and corporate totalitarianism. It is time to leave it all behind – to hell with the new normal and to hell with the old normal. Is a slow comfortable death in the suburbs of the ‘system’ really what you are here on Earth for?

The dystopian movie The Matrix portrays humans as just batteries, the slave energy to fuel a technocratic dictatorship. How many people will wake up, like the movie character ‘Neo’ and discover their own power? We are in real physical and spiritual war for truth and freedom.

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Mark Keenan is an author and former scientist at the United Nations in Geneva, and at the UK Government, Department of Energy and Climate Change. The book “Transcending the Covid-19 Deception” is available at www.mkeenan.ie and  www.amazon.com (US) or email [email protected] for direct delivery.

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First published on August 18, 2022

***

Bill Gates owns more farmland in the U.S. than any other private farmer, having purchased a total of 242,000 acres. Is the purchase of this land all part of his plan to force you to eat lab-grown synthetic meat?

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the world, has an agricultural agenda that supports agrochemicals, patented seeds, fake meat and corporate control — interests that undermine regenerative, sustainable, small-scale farming. One of the key players in this agenda is the widespread adoption of synthetic meat.

Imitation meat company Impossible Foods was co-funded by Google, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates, and Gates has made it clear that he believes switching to synthetic beef is the solution to reducing methane emissions that come from animals raised on concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs).

The strong recommendation to replace beef with fake meat is made in Gates’ book “How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need,” which was released in February 2021. In an interview with MIT Technology Review, he goes so far as to say that people’s behaviours should be changed to learn to like fake meat and, if that doesn’t work, regulations could do the trick.

Gates, by the way, invests in fake meat companies and is buying up U.S. farmland at a frenzied pace. Ultimately, the Gates empire “will own everything.”

Gates Invests in Fake Meat Companies

According to Gates, in order to eliminate greenhouse gas emissions, fake meat will “be required.” He told MIT Technology Review:

“In terms of livestock, it’s very difficult. There are all the things where they feed them different food, like there’s this one compound that gives you a 20% reduction [in methane emissions]. But sadly, those bacteria [in their digestive system that produce methane] are a necessary part of breaking down the grass.

And so I don’t know if there’ll be some natural approach there. I’m afraid the synthetic [protein alternatives like plant-based burgers] will be required for at least the beef thing.”

He then mentions Memphis Meats, which is producing synthetic meat in a lab via mass culturing stem cells from animals, often in a solution containing bovine serum, hormones, growth factors and other food additives. PR campaigns have gone so far as to call lab-grown meat “clean meat,” but research published in Environmental Science and Technology suggested it could actually require more intensive energy use compared to conventional meat.

Gates says he thinks Memphis Meats will be too expensive to become widespread, “But Impossible and Beyond have a road map, a quality road map and a cost road map, that makes them totally competitive.” He’s referring to Impossible Foods, a leader in the fake meat industry that is producing plant-based “meat.”

Impossible Foods holds 14 patents, with at least 100 more pending. Beyond Meat is another leading producer of fake “beef,” “pork” and “chicken” products, which announced in 2020 that it would start producing some of its products in China.

What many aren’t aware of, however, is that Gates is either personally invested in, or invested in via Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Beyond Meats, Impossible Foods, Memphis Meats and other companies he actively promotes. Gates told MIT:

“As for scale today, they [Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat] don’t represent 1% of the meat in the world, but they’re on their way. And Breakthrough Energy has four different investments in this space for making the ingredients very efficiently …

Now I’ve said I can actually see a path. But you’re right that saying to people, ‘You can’t have cows anymore’ — talk about a politically unpopular approach to things.”

Gates isn’t stopping at fake meat, though. He’s also recently backed a biotechnology start-up company called Biomilq, which is developing lab-cultured breast milk.

Gates: All Rich Countries Should Eat 100% Fake Beef

Whether or not it’s “unpopular” doesn’t matter, apparently, as Gates said he thinks rich countries should all be eating fake meat. When asked whether he thinks plant-based and lab-grown meats could “be the full solution to the protein problem globally,” he says that, in middle- to above-income countries, yes, and that people can “get used” to it:

“I do think all rich countries should move to 100% synthetic beef. You can get used to the taste difference, and the claim is they’re going to make it taste even better over time. Eventually, that green premium is modest enough that you can sort of change the [behaviour of] people or use regulation to totally shift the demand.

So for meat in the middle-income-and-above countries, I do think it’s possible. But it’s one of those ones where, wow, you have to track it every year and see, and the politics [are challenging]. There are all these bills that say it’s got to be called, basically, lab garbage to be sold. They don’t want us to use the beef label.”

The irony of Bill Gates — who lives in a 66,000-square-foot mansion and travels in a private jet that uses up 486 gallons of fuel every hour — talking about how to save the environment isn’t lost on everyone.

The Nation criticized Gates’ contradictions, including the fact that, as a result of buying staggering amounts of farmland, he’s a major contributor to carbon emissions. His jet-setting lifestyle also makes him a carbon “super emitter”:

“According to a 2019 academic study looking at extreme carbon emissions from the jet-setting elite, Bill Gates’s extensive travel by private jet likely makes him one of the world’s top carbon contributors — a veritable super emitter. In the list of 10 celebrities investigated — including Jennifer Lopez, Paris Hilton, and Oprah Winfrey — Gates was the source of the most emissions.”

Gates Is the Largest Farmland Owner in the US

Bill Gates owns more farmland in the U.S. than any other private farmer, having purchased a total of 242,000 acres — much of it considered some of the richest soil in the U.S. — in the past few years. Conventional agriculture represents one of the greatest sources of pollution on the planet.

An estimated 80% of soil carbon in heavily farmed areas has already been lost, due to destructive ploughing, overgrazing and the use of soil-destructive, carbon-depleting chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The jet-travel study alone pointed to Gates as one of the most problematic carbon emitters, without considering agricultural emissions. The Nation noted:

“The study only looked at Gates’s jet travel, but might have also considered Gates’s emissions from his farmland, which includes large tracts of corn and soybeans, which typically goes to feed animals (often on factory farms) — a particularly carbon-intensive model of agriculture.”

Christine Nobiss, the founder of the Great Plains Action Society, which is led by Indigenous people, accused Gates of colonization: “Bill Gates is smart enough to understand — he’s smart, he can do the math — that no one single person needs that amount of land. He’s basically participating in the never-ending cycle of colonization.”

She’s among those who have suggested Gates give away his farmland as an act of reparations and as a way to ensure it’s used for sustainable food production, but as The Nation noted, that’s not going to happen:

“Not that Gates is going to give up his vast farmland. Nor is he going to sell any of his houses — including his 66,000-square-foot mansion outside Seattle. He’s also not going to get rid of his private jet — a Bombardier BD-700 Global Express that consumes 486 gallons of fuel each hour. But, Bill Gates writes, he is going to start buying ‘sustainable jet fuel.’”

No Private Property for Americans, Except Gates

So what does Gates intend to do with all that farmland? That remains to be seen, but it’s worth noting that when you own the land, you also own the water that’s beneath it, and with his vast amounts of land, he can grow all the genetically engineered soy necessary to create the fake meat he’s so heavily pushing.

For those who control resources like food and water, power is limitless, and control of the food supply is part of “building back better.” Founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF) Klaus Schwab first started circulating the idea of The Great Reset, of which “build back better” is an integral part.

WEF has partnered with the EAT Forum, which will set the political agenda for global food production. The EAT Forum was cofounded by the Wellcome Trust, which in turn was established with the financial help of GlaxoSmithKline.

EAT collaborates with nearly 40 city governments across Africa, Europe, Asia, North and South America and Australia, and maintains close relationships with imitation meat companies such as Impossible Foods. Gates is also a supporter of The Great Reset, which is curious since his massive accumulation of wealth and land is the opposite of what The Great Reset promotes.

In truth, wealthy technocrats will not redistribute their own wealth during the reset, but will only continue to grow their financial empires as the rest of the world consents to giving up their privacy and ownership of all property.

In fact, EAT developed a Planetary Health Diet that is designed to be applied to the global population and entails cutting meat and dairy intake by up to 90%, replacing it largely with foods made in laboratories, along with cereals and oil. As Summit News reported:

“[While] billionaire philanthropists and technocrats are acquiring land at an accelerating speed, they appear to be telling the general public that in the future private property will virtually cease to exist. 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.”

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Featured image is from The Expose

The world is at a dangerous crossroads. The threat of nuclear annihilation is real.

What distinguishes October 1962 to today’s realities is that the leaders on both sides, namely John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev were acutely aware of the dangers of nuclear annihilation.

The nuclear doctrine was entirely different during the Cold War. Both Washington and Moscow understood the realities of mutually assured destruction. Today, the issue of nuclear annihilation is tacitly dismissed.  

Communication today between the White House and the Kremlin is at an all time low. International diplomacy is is crisis. The UN General Assembly is being hijacked, 

Forward JFK’s 1961 message far and wide to friends and colleagues. Bear in mind that “MISTAKES” are often what determine the course of World History.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 18, 2022

***

President John F. Kennedy

New York City
September 25, 1961

Mr. President, honored delegates, ladies and gentlemen:

We meet in an hour of grief and challenge. Dag Hammarskjold is dead. But the United Nations lives. His tragedy is deep in our hearts, but the task for which he died is at the top of our agenda. A noble servant of peace is gone. But the quest for peace lies before us.

The problem is not the death of one man–the problem is the life of this organization. It will either grow to meet the challenges of our age, or it will be gone with the wind, without influence, without force, without respect. Were we to let it die, to enfeeble its vigor, to cripple its powers, we would condemn our future.

For in the development of this organization rests the only true alternative to war–and war appeals no longer as a rational alternative. Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer concern the great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by wind and water and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war–or war will put an end to mankind.

So let us here resolve that Dag Hammarskjold did not live, or die, in vain. Let us call a truce to terror. Let us invoke the blessings of peace. And as we build an international capacity to keep peace, let us join in dismantling the national capacity to wage war.

II

This will require new strength and new roles for the United Nations. For disarmament without checks is but a shadow–and a community without law is but a shell. Already the United Nations has become both the measure and the vehicle of man’s most generous impulses. Already it has provided–in the Middle East, in Asia, in Africa this year in the Congo–a means of holding man’s violence within bounds.

But the great question which confronted this body in 1945 is still before us: whether man’s cherished hopes for progress and peace are to be destroyed by terror and disruption, whether the “foul winds of war” can be tamed in time to free the cooling winds of reason, and whether the pledges of our Charter are to be fulfilled or defied–pledges to secure peace, progress, human rights and world law

In this Hall, there are not three forces, but two. One is composed of those who are trying to build the kind of world described in Articles I and II of the Charter. The other, seeking a far different world, would undermine this organization in the process.

Today, of all days our dedication to the Charter must be maintained. It must be strengthened first of all by the selection of an outstanding civil servant to carry forward the responsibilities of the Secretary General–a man endowed with both the wisdom and the power to make meaningful the moral force of the world community. The late Secretary General nurtured and sharpened the United Nations’ obligation to act. But he did not invent it. It was there in the Charter. It is still there in the Charter.

However difficult it may be to fill Mr. Hammarskjold’s place, it can better be filled by one man rather than three. Even the three horses of the Troika did not have three drivers, all going in different directions. They had only one–and so must the United Nations executive. To install a triumvirate, or any panel, or any rotating authority, in the United Nations administrative offices would replace order with anarchy, action with paralysis, confidence with confusion.

The Secretary General, in a very real sense, is the servant of the General Assembly. Diminish his authority and you diminish the authority of the only body where all nations, regardless of power, are equal and sovereign. Until all the powerful are just, the weak will be secure only in the strength of this Assembly.

Effective and independent executive action is not the same question as balanced representation. In view of the enormous change in membership in this body since its founding, the American delegation will join in any effort for the prompt review and revision of the composition of United Nations bodies.

But to give this organization three drivers–to permit each great power to decide its own case, would entrench the Cold War in the headquarters of peace. Whatever advantages such a plan may hold out to my own country, as one of the great powers, we reject it. For we far prefer world law, in the age of self-determination, to world war, in the age of mass extermination.

III

Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when this planet may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.

Men no longer debate whether armaments are a symptom or a cause of tension. The mere existence of modern weapons–ten million times more powerful than any that the world has ever seen, and only minutes away from any target on earth–is a source of horror, and discord and distrust. Men no longer maintain that disarmament must await the settlement of all disputes–for disarmament must be a part of any permanent settlement. And men may no longer pretend that the quest for disarmament is a sign of weakness–for in a spiraling arms race, a nation’s security may well be shrinking even as its arms increase.

For fifteen years this organization has sought the reduction and destruction of arms. Now that goal is no longer a dream–it is a practical matter of life or death. The risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison to the risks inherent in an unlimited arms race.

It is in this spirit that the recent Belgrade Conference–recognizing that this is no longer a Soviet problem or an American problem, but a human problem–endorsed a program of “general, complete and strictly an internationally controlled disarmament.” It is in this same spirit that we in the United States have labored this year, with a new urgency, and with a new, now statutory agency fully endorsed by the Congress, to find an approach to disarmament which would be so far-reaching, yet realistic, so mutually balanced and beneficial, that it could be accepted by every nation. And it is in this spirit that we have presented with the agreement of the Soviet Union–under the label both nations now accept of “general and complete disarmament”–a new statement of newly-agreed principles for negotiation.

But we are well aware that all issues of principle are not settled, and that principles alone are not enough. It is therefore our intention to challenge the Soviet Union, not to an arms race, but to a peace race- -to advance together step by step, stage by stage, until general and complete disarmament has been achieved. We invite them now to go beyond agreement in principle to reach agreement on actual plans.

The program to be presented to this assembly–for general and complete disarmament under effective international control–moves to bridge the gap between those who insist on a gradual approach and those who talk only of the final and total achievement. It would create machinery to keep the peace as it destroys the machinery of war. It would proceed through balanced and safeguarded stages designed to give no state a military advantage over another. It would place the final responsibility for verification and control where it belongs, not with the big powers alone, not with one’s adversary or one’s self, but in an international organization within the framework of the United Nations.

It would assure that indispensable condition of disarmament–true inspection–and apply it in stages proportionate to the stage of disarmament. It would cover delivery systems as well as weapons. It would ultimately halt their production as well as their testing, their transfer as well as their possession. It would achieve under the eyes of an international disarmament organization, a steady reduction in force, both nuclear and conventional, until it has abolished all armies and all weapons except those needed for internal order and a new United Nations Peace Force. And it starts that process now, today, even as the talks begin.

Source: International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

In short, general and complete disarmament must no longer be a slogan, used to resist the first steps. It is no longer to be a goal without means of achieving it, without means of verifying its progress, without means of keeping the peace. It is now a realistic plan, and a test–a test of those only willing to talk and a test of those willing to act.

Such a plan would not bring a world free from conflict and greed– but it would bring a world free from the terrors of mass destruction. It would not usher in the era of the super state–but it would usher in an era in which no state could annihilate or be annihilated by another.

In 1945, this Nation proposed the Baruch Plan to internationalize the atom before other nations even possessed the bomb or demilitarized their troops. We proposed with our allies the Disarmament plan of 1951 while still at war in Korea. And we make our proposals today, while building up our defenses over Berlin, not because we are inconsistent or insincere or intimidated, but because we know the rights of free men will prevail–because while we are compelled against our will to rearm, we look confidently beyond Berlin to the kind of disarmed world we all prefer.

I therefore propose on the basis of this Plan, that disarmament negotiations resume promptly, and continue without interruption until an entire program for general and complete disarmament has not only been agreed but has actually been achieved.

IV

The logical place to begin is a treaty assuring the end of nuclear tests of all kinds, in every environment, under workable controls. The United States and the United Kingdom have proposed such a treaty that is both reasonable, effective and ready for signature. We are still prepared to sign that treaty today.

We also proposed a mutual ban on atmospheric testing, without inspection or controls, in order to save the human race from the poison of radioactive fallout. We regret that the offer has not been accepted.

For 15 years we have sought to make the atom an instrument of peaceful growth rather than of war. But for 15 years our concessions have been matched by obstruction, our patience by intransigence. And the pleas of mankind for peace have met with disregard.

Finally, as the explosions of others beclouded the skies, my country was left with no alternative but to act in the interests of its own and the free world’s security. We cannot endanger that security by refraining from testing while others improve their arsenals. Nor can we endanger it by another long, uninspected ban on testing. For three years we accepted those risks in our open society while seeking agreement on inspection. But this year, while we were negotiating in good faith in Geneva, others were secretly preparing new experiments in destruction.

Our tests are not polluting the atmosphere. Our deterrent weapons are guarded against accidental explosion or use. Our doctors and scientists stand ready to help any nation measure and meet the hazards to health which inevitably result from the tests in the atmosphere.

But to halt the spread of these terrible weapons, to halt the contamination of the air, to halt the spiralling nuclear arms race, we remain ready to seek new avenues of agreement, our new Disarmament Program thus includes the following proposals:

–First, signing the test-ban treaty by all nations. This can be done now. Test ban negotiations need not and should not await general disarmament.

–Second, stopping the production of fissionable materials for use in weapons, and preventing their transfer to any nation now lacking in nuclear weapons.

–Third, prohibiting the transfer of control over nuclear weapons to states that do not own them.

–Fourth, keeping nuclear weapons from seeding new battlegrounds in outer space.

–Fifth, gradually destroying existing nuclear weapons and converting their materials to peaceful uses; and

–Finally, halting the unlimited testing and production of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles, and gradually destroying them as well.

V

To destroy arms, however, is not enough. We must create even as we destroy–creating worldwide law and law enforcement as we outlaw worldwide war and weapons. In the world we seek, the United Nations Emergency Forces which have been hastily assembled, uncertainly supplied, and inadequately financed, will never be enough.

Therefore, the United States recommends that all member nations earmark special peace-keeping units in their armed forces–to be on call of the United Nations, to be specially trained and quickly available, and with advanced provision for financial and logistic support.

In addition, the American delegation will suggest a series of steps to improve the United Nations’ machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes–for on-the-spot fact-finding, mediation and adjudication–for extending the rule of international law. For peace is not solely a matter of military or technical problems–it is primarily a problem of politics and people. And unless man can match his strides in weaponry and technology with equal strides in social and political development, our great strength, like that of the dinosaur, will become incapable of proper control–and like the dinosaur vanish from the earth.

VI

As we extend the rule of law on earth, so must we also extend it to man’s new domain–outer space.

All of us salute the brave cosmonauts of the Soviet Union. The new horizons of outer space must not be driven by the old bitter concepts of imperialism and sovereign claims. The cold reaches of the universe must not become the new arena of an even colder war.

To this end, we shall urge proposals extending the United Nations Charter to the limits of man’s exploration of the universe, reserving outer space for peaceful use, prohibiting weapons of mass destruction in space or on celestial bodies, and opening the mysteries and benefits of space to every nation. We shall propose further cooperative efforts between all nations in weather prediction and eventually in weather control. We shall propose, finally, a global system of communications satellites linking the whole world in telegraph and telephone and radio and television. The day need not be far away when such a system will televise the proceedings of this body to every corner of the world for the benefit of peace.

VII

But the mysteries of outer space must not divert our eyes or our energies from the harsh realities that face our fellow men. Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

That is why my nation, which has freely shared its capital and its technology to help others help themselves, now proposes officially designating this decade of the 1960s as the United Nations Decade of Development. Under the framework of that Resolution, the United Nations’ existing efforts in promoting economic growth can be expanded and coordinated. Regional surveys and training institutes can now pool the talents of many. New research, technical assistance and pilot projects can unlock the wealth of less developed lands and untapped waters. And development can become a cooperative and not a competitive enterprise– to enable all nations, however diverse in their systems and beliefs, to become in fact as well as in law free and equal nations.

VIII

My country favors a world of free and equal states. We agree with those who say that colonialism is a key issue in this Assembly. But let the full facts of that issue be discussed in full.

On the one hand is the fact that, since the close of World War II, a worldwide declaration of independence has transformed nearly 1 billion people and 9 million square miles into 42 free and independent states. Less than 2 percent of the world’s population now lives in “dependent” territories.

I do not ignore the remaining problems of traditional colonialism which still confront this body. Those problems will be solved, with patience, good will, and determination. Within the limits of our responsibility in such matters, my Country intends to be a participant and not merely an observer, in the peaceful, expeditious movement of nations from the status of colonies to the partnership of equals. That continuing tide of self-determination, which runs so strong, has our sympathy and our support.

But colonialism in its harshest forms is not only the exploitation of new nations by old, of dark skins by light, or the subjugation of the poor by the rich. My Nation was once a colony, and we know what colonialism means; the exploitation and subjugation of the weak by the powerful, of the many by the few, of the governed who have given no consent to be governed, whatever their continent, their class, their color.

And that is why there is no ignoring the fact that the tide of selfdetermination has not reached the Communist empire where a population far larger than that officially termed “dependent” lives under governments installed by foreign troops instead of free institutions– under a system which knows only one party and one belief–which suppresses free debate, and free elections, and free newspapers, and free books, and free trade unions–and which builds a wall to keep truth a stranger and its own citizens prisoners. Let us debate colonialism in full–and apply the principle of free choice and the practice of free plebiscites in every corner of the globe.

IX

Finally, as President of the United States, I consider it my duty to report to this Assembly on two threats to the peace which are not on your crowded agenda, but which causes us and most of you, the deepest concern.

The first threat on which I wish to report is widely misunderstood: the smoldering coals of war in Southeast Asia. South Viet-Nam is already under attack–sometimes by a single assassin, sometimes by a band of guerrillas, recently by full battalions. The peaceful borders of Burma, Cambodia, and India have been repeatedly violated. And the peaceful people of Laos are in danger of losing the independence they gained not so long ago.

No one can call these “wars of liberation.” For these are free countries living under their own governments. Nor are these aggressions any less real because men are knifed in their homes and not shot in the fields of battle.

The very simple question confronting the world community is whether measures can be devised to protect the small and the weak from such tactics. For if they are successful in Laos and South Viet-Nam, the gates will be opened wide.

The United States seeks for itself, no base, no territory, no special position in this area of any kind. We support a truly neutral and independent Laos, its people free from outside interference, living at peace with themselves and their neighbors, assured that their territory will not be used for attacks on others, and under a government comparable (as Mr. Khrushchev and I agreed at Vienna) to Cambodia and Burma.

But now the negotiations over Laos are reaching a crucial stage. The cease-fire is at best precarious. The rainy season is coming to an end. Laotian territory is being used to infiltrate South Viet-Nam. The world community must recognize–and all those who are involved–that this potent threat to Laotian peace and freedom is indivisible from all other threats to their own.

Secondly, I wish to report to you on the crisis over Germany and Berlin. This is not the time or the place for immoderate tones, but the world community is entitled to know the very simple issues as we see them. If there is a crisis it is because an existing peace is under threat, because an existing island of free people is under pressure, because solemn agreements are being treated with indifference. Established international rights are being threatened with unilateral usurpation. Peaceful circulation has been interrupted by barbed wire and concrete blocks.

One recalls the order of the Czar in Pushkin’s “Boris Godunov:” “Take steps at this very hour that our frontiers be fenced in by barriers. . . . That not a single soul pass o’er the border, that not a hare be able to run or a crow to fly.”

It is absurd to allege that we are threatening a war merely to prevent the Soviet Union and East Germany from signing a so-called “treaty” of peace. The Western Allies are not concerned with any paper arrangement the Soviets may wish to make with a regime of their own creation, on territory occupied by their own troops and governed by their own agents. No such action can affect either our rights or our responsibilities.

If there is a dangerous crisis in Berlin–and there is–it is because of threats against the vital interests and the deep commitments of the Western Powers, and the freedom of West Berlin. We cannot yield these interests. We cannot fail these commitments. We cannot surrender the freedom of these people for whom we are responsible. A “peace-treaty” which carried with it the provisions which destroy the peace would be a fraud. A “free city” which was not genuinely free would suffocate freedom and would be an infamy.

For a city or a people to be truly free they must have the secure right, without economic, political or police pressure, to make their own choice and to live their own lives. And as I have often said before, if anyone doubts the extent to which our presence is desired by the people of West Berlin, we are ready to have that question submitted to a free vote in all Berlin and, if possible, among all the German people.

The elementary fact about this crisis is that it is unnecessary. The elementary tools for a peaceful settlement are to be found in the charter. Under its law, agreements are to be kept, unless changed by all those who made them. Established rights are to be respected. The political disposition of peoples should rest upon their own wishes, freely expressed in plebiscites or free elections. If there are legal problems, they can be solved by legal means. If there is a threat of force, it must be rejected. If there is desire for change, it must be a subject for negotiation, and if there is negotiation, it must be rooted in mutual respect and concern for the rights of others.

The Western Powers have calmly resolved to defend, by whatever means are forced upon them, their obligations and their access to the free citizens of West Berlin and the self-determination of those citizens. This generation learned from bitter experience that either brandishing or yielding to threats can only lead to war. But firmness and reason can lead to the kind of peaceful solution in which my country profoundly believes.

We are committed to no rigid formula. We see no perfect solution. We recognize that troops and tanks can, for a time, keep a nation divided against its will, however unwise that policy may seem to us. But we believe a peaceful agreement is possible which protects the freedom of West Berlin and allied presence and access, while recognizing the historic and legitimate interests of others in insuring European security.

The possibilities of negotiation are now being explored; it is too early to report what the prospects may be. For our part, we would be glad to report at the appropriate time that a solution has been found. For there is no need for a crisis over Berlin, threatening the peace– and if those who created this crisis desire peace, there will be peace and freedom in Berlin.

X

The events and decisions of the next ten months may well decide the fate of man for the next ten thousand years. There will be no avoiding those events. There will be no appeal from these decisions. And we in this hall shall be remembered either as part of the generation that turned this planet into a flaming funeral pyre or the generation that met its vow “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war.”

In the endeavor to meet that vow, I pledge you every effort this Nation possesses. I pledge you that we will neither commit nor provoke aggression, that we shall neither flee nor invoke the threat of force, that we shall never negotiate out of fear, we shall never fear to negotiate.

Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response. And it is in the light of that history that every nation today should know, be he friend or foe, that the United States has both the will and the weapons to join free men in standing up to their responsibilities.

But I come here today to look across this world of threats to a world of peace. In that search we cannot expect any final triumph–for new problems will always arise. We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems–for conformity is the jailor of freedom, and the enemy of growth. Nor can we expect to reach our goal by contrivance, by fiat or even by the wishes of all.

But however close we sometimes seem to that dark and final abyss, let no man of peace and freedom despair. For he does not stand alone. If we all can persevere, if we can in every land and office look beyond our own shores and ambitions, then surely the age will dawn in which the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved.

Ladies and gentlemen of this Assembly, the decision is ours. Never have the nations of the world had so much to lose, or so much to gain. Together we shall save our planet, or together we shall perish in its flames. Save it we can–and save it we must–and then shall we earn the eternal thanks of mankind and, as peacemakers, the eternal blessing of God.

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First published on November 18, 2022

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New research reveals that the UK has the highest electricity bills. Brits pay more for their power than anywhere else on the planet.

A new study looked at Government data on electricity and gas prices from the past five years to analyse the impact of the worsening cost of living crisis and discover which countries have had the biggest year-on-year increase in energy prices. The data, compiled by BOXT, was shared with City A.M. today.

The UK’s energy price cap was recently raised from 28p to 34p per kWh.

Much like the rest of the world, prices have increased due to reduced supply from Russia due to the Ukraine conflict, as well as the after-effects of the coronavirus pandemic.

Ireland

The UK’s neighbours in the Republic of Ireland have the second highest electricity cost, paying 18.99p per kWh. That’s 53 per cent more expensive than the average of these 24 countries.

However, prices are slightly more affordable when it comes to gas in Ireland, which stands at 5.21p per kWh.

The countries with the highest electricity prices 

Residents of Spain are paying an average of 18.51p per kWh. Electricity prices in Spain recently hit a historical high and were recently capped at €130 (£112) per megawatt hour, down from €210 (£181).

Norway is the country with by far the biggest increase in electricity prices worldwide – 91 per cent increase in electricity cost in pence/kWh since 2016.

Top 10 countries with the biggest electricity bill price increase:

The second highest electricity rises are in Finland – Since 2016, Finnish residents have seen their electricity bills increase by almost two-fifths (37%) on average.

Tied in third place are the Czech Republic, Denmark, and the United Kingdom, with a 35% increase in electricity prices.

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First published on October 1, 2022

The war in Ukraine is basically about the US-NATO’s long-term plan to destroy Russia’s rise as a major player on the world stage.  In 2019, The Rand Corporation published ‘Overextending and Unbalancing Russia: Assessing the Impact of Cost-Imposing Options’ which recommended several measures that would essentially disrupt Russia’s inevitable rise. 

The Rand Corporation’s measures are extremely dangerous and irresponsible, in fact, one of the measures that has been already implemented since the war began between Russia and Ukraine has resulted in serious consequences that can lead the world into a nuclear war:

“Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability. But any increase in U.S. military arms and advice to Ukraine would need to be carefully calibrated to increase the costs to Russia of sustaining its existing commitment without provoking a much wider conflict in which Russia, by reason of proximity, would have significant advantages”

The other measure that would be a direct threat to Russia which would have allowed NATO to place all sorts of military weapons in Ukrainian territory and that is something Russia would not allow close to its borders,

“Reposturing bombers within easy striking range of key Russian strategic targets has a high likelihood of success and would certainly get Moscow’s attention and raise Russian anxieties.”  

Lastly, deploying tactical nuclear weapons pointing at Russia as a measure would be an open invitation to a nuclear war between the West and Russia,

“deploying additional tactical nuclear weapons to locations in Europe and Asia could heighten Russia’s anxiety enough to significantly increase investments in its air defenses.” 

To the West, it seems like a risk they are willing to take,

“In conjunction with the bomber option, it has a high likelihood of success, but deploying more such weapons might lead Moscow to react in ways contrary to U.S. and allied interests.”

The US-NATO alliance want Russian and Chinese leadership toppled so that they would become vassal states who will have to obey their Western adversaries. 

The West fears a new multipolar world order as it would enable smaller nations (who have been under Washington’s thumb) to extend their diplomatic and economic relationships with whomever they want instead of dealing with Western powers who has kept most of the global south in debt and in continuous wars for decades.  The world is ready for change.  The Russian Federation understands the dangers they are facing as they witnessed what has happened to countries who defied the US-NATO alliance such as in the case of Libya, who was targeted for their natural resources and for their idea of establishing an independent Africa by creating the African Dinar bypassing Western-based currencies and that was something Washington and Paris was not ready to except.

The North American Treaty Organization (NATO) is a danger to every nation on earth including those in Africa and the rest of the global south including the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.  NATO was created in 1949 by the US government to advance its military, economic and political power over Europe.

However, since the start of the 21st century, NATO has been involved in military operations in Eastern Europe, Central Asia and in North Africa including the Bosnian war in 1992, the war in Kosovo in 1999 and the war in Afghanistan, which lasted for more than 20 years, and in 2011, France and the United States under then Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton bombed Libya and overthrew its president, Muammar Gaddafi.

The military operations were a prelude to a “Global NATO,” which is a plan mainly for future interventions in the global south.  NATO who backs Ukraine is now inching closer to a full-blown war against Russia which will be a complete disaster for the European continent and Washington could not care less because they will use NATO and Ukrainian troops until Russia is destabilized and finally destroyed but of course, that is highly unlikely.  China is also in NATO’s crosshairs as the Chatham House, a British think tank who published a commentary based on the Madrid summit last June by a former BBCjournalist and propagandist, Bill Hayton titled ‘NATO knows Asia is vital to protecting global security’ on how NATO is in the stages of creating a new strategy to contain Asia’s rising powers, including China and possibly others such as India, who might find themselves on NATO’s hit list one day if they continue to collaborate with the ‘BRICS’ nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO):

Neither of these changes means NATO aims to expand to include Asia but it shows the 30 NATO members are concerned about security threats from Asia expanding into Europe and North America. In a world of long-range missiles, cyber operations, and vulnerable supply chains, the concerns of ‘Euro-Atlantic’ countries have become global

Where does it end for NATO?  Who is next on their agenda for regime change on behalf of Washington?  Do they want to turn Russia, China, Iran into another Libya?  You bet.  Libya was destroyed in 2011 by NATO forces under Operation Unified Protector on behalf of French and American imperialists to control Libya, a resource rich African nation.  The aftermath of the destruction of Libya led to a civil war between armed factions vying for power to creating a renewed slave trade in North Africa that involved between 700,000 to 1 million African migrants and refugees.  One of the best speeches on NATO’s interventions in Libya was by the late president of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe who criticized NATO’s actions at the 67^th UN General Assembly on September 18^th, 2012.  Here is part of his speech:

A year ago, we saw a barbaric and brutal death of the head of state of Libya, a representative of his country, a member of the African Union, that death occurred in the context in which NATO was operating supposedly in order to protect civilians.  As we in spirit join the United States in condemning that death, shall the United States also join us in condemning that barbaric death of the head of state of Libya Gaddafi, it was a loss, a great loss to Africa, a tragic loss to Africa occurring in circumstances in which NATO had sought the authority of the United Nations Security Council and the chapter 7 to operate in Libya in protection of civilians who were said to be at the mercy of the government of Libya led by colonel Gaddafi.

The mission was strictly to protect civilians, but it turned out that there was a hunt, a brutal hunt of Gaddafi and his family, and Gaddafi and his family were sought. NATO caught up with them, they suffered the brutal deaths that we know about, Gaddafi and some of his children.  And as the United States spoke, I’m sure they were aware  also that they were a NATO power, that they [the U.S.] alongside other NATO powers had the authority under Chapter VII to operate in protection–to operate in Libya in protection of civilians. But did it turn out to be that?

In a very dishonest manner, we saw the authority given under Chapter VII being used now as a weapon to rout a whole family, to commit the murders that occurred in the country. Bombs were thrown about in a callous manner, and quite a good many civilians died. Was that the “protection” that they had sought under Chapter VII of the Charter?

The US-NATO criminal cabal was led by Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama, and French president Nicolas Sarkozy who basically targeted Libya’s vast wealth including its oil, gold, and silver.  Hillary Clinton’s email proved what was on the agenda and it was not to protect the people of Libya.  Here is the main section of one of the emails that Wikileaks published from April 2^nd, 2011, with the Subject heading ‘FRANCE’S CLIENT & QADDAFI’S GOLD’ that explains the premise behind the US-NATO destruction of Libya:

Qaddafi’s government holds 143 tons of gold, and a similar amount in silver. During late March, 2011 these stocks were moved to SABHA (south west in the direction of the Libyan border with Niger and Chad); taken from the vaults of the Libyan Central Bank in Tripoli. This gold was accumulated prior to the current rebellion and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African currency based on the Libyan golden Dinar. This plan was designed to provide the Francophone African Countries with an alternative to the French. franc (CFA)

According to Clinton’s emails, Sarkozy’s regime had a plan after the destruction of Libya was complete, and that was to take a larger share of Libya’s oil production as well as to “Provide the French military with an opportunity to reassert its position in the world” and most importantly, to recolonize Africa where France once had total control because Qaddafi had “long-term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in Francophone Africa.”  

On March 19, 2011, Clinton spoke about the situation in Libya in Paris, France and said that “The international community came together to speak with one voice and to deliver a clear and consistent message: Colonel Qadhafi’s campaign of violence against his own people must stop.”  The international community according to Clinton was mainly, the US and its subservient region of Europe.

The US gave the Gaddafi government terms that they had to comply with and “that means all attacks against civilians must stop; troops must stop advancing on Benghazi and pull back from Adjabiya, Misrata, and Zawiya; water, electricity, and gas supplies must be turned on to all areas; humanitarian assistance must be allowed to reach the people of Libya.”  Clinton’s threat against Libya was clear “Yesterday, President Obama said very clearly that if Qadhafi failed to comply with these terms, there would be consequences.”

Libya was in danger of being targeted for regime change after the September 11^th attacks when Washington singled out several countries in the Middle East and Africa.  General Wesley Clark was the Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO’s forces who oversaw Operation Allied Force during the Kosovo War said on a liberal news media outlet ‘Democracy Now with Amy Goodman’ that Washington was planning to “take out 7 countries in 5 Years” including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, and Libya.

Once NATO invaded Libya, internal factions called the “Libyan Rebels” supported by the West were in fact, well-known members from terrorist organizations including Al-Qaeda to create chaos within Libyan society.  There were a handful of what they called “independent revolutionary groups” who were employed in the business of regime change for Western empires.

That regime change operation was to remove the entire Gaddafi family from power.  One of the terrorist groups that was involved in the destruction of Libya was the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a jihadist group from the 1990s that still existed in Libya had re-emerged out of the shadows and was one of the actors who led a regime change insurgency for their Western masters against Muammar Gaddafi.  The aftermath of Libya was the creation of Western-backed terrorist enclave and a number of slave traders who sell African people to the highest bidder.  Then there was the oil factor, in 2016, WikiLeaks published yet another email from Blumenthal that was sent to Hillary Clinton on September 16^th, 2011, with the subject line ‘FRANCE, UK, ET AL, JOCKEYING IN LIBYA/OIL’ that clearly states their goal for future oil contracts with the new Libyan government:

According to knowledgeable individuals, as part of this effort, the two leaders, in private conversations, also intend to press the leaders of the NTC to reward their early support for the rebellion against Muammar al Qaddafi. Sarkozy and Cameron expect this recognition to be tangible, in the form of favorable contracts for French and British energy companies looking to play a major role in the Libyan oil industry. According to this source, Sarkozy feels, quite strongly, that without French support there would have been no revolution and that the NTC government must demonstrate that it realizes this fact. For his part, Cameron appears most concerned that despite British support for the rebels during the fighting, certain members of the NTC remain focused on the fact that the British government and oil industry had good relations with the Qaddafi regime, particularly the firm British Petroleum (BP).

At the same time, this source indicates that the government of France is carrying out a concerted program of private and public diplomacy to press the new/transitional government of Libya to reserve as much as 35% of Libya’s oil related industry for French firms,particularly the major French energy company TOTAL. Sources with access to the highest levels of Libya’s ruling NTC, as well as senior advisors to Sarkozy, stated in strict confidence that while much of this pressure is being exerted at very senior diplomatic and political levels, the French external intelligence service (Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure/General Directorate for External Security –DGSE) is using sources with influence over the NTC to press the French position. At present, as NTC leaders are consolidating their positions in Tripoli, they are attempting to balance the interests of the new government and the Libyan people against the need to recognize the support provided to them by France and other major powers in their struggle with Muammar al Qaddafi

Obviously, that “Support provided to them by France and other major powers” came in the form of providing arms and training to future terrorists in north Africa.

NATO’s Footprint in Africa

The invasion of Libya by NATO’s forces led to other conflicts and new agreements throughout Africa including France’s military invasion of Mali in 2013.  Then the G5 Sahel was created in the same year with a new political platform that unified 5 African states militarily in the Sahel including Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger.  The G5 was approved by the African Union.   On May 2014, NATO conveniently established a Liaison office at the headquarters of the African Union in the capital of Ethiopia, Addis Ababa.  According to NATO’s website:

NATO and the African Union (AU) took a further step in advancing their cooperation, by signing on 8 May 2014 an agreement which formalizes the status of the NATO liaison office to the African Union Headquarters in Addis Ababa. The completion of this technical agreement will facilitate greater cooperation between the two organizations in areas of mutual interest such as: strategic air and sea lift, interoperability of multinational forces, individual training, exercise planning, and lessons learned from operations. How to share experiences in implementing United Nations initiatives such as Women, Peace and Security, and Children and Armed Conflict, will also be examined

The war on Libya allowed NATO to expand its presence and recolonize Africa under the guise of installing peace and of course, fighting terrorists in Africa so they don’t have to fight them in the Western hemisphere.

How is Libya today?  What was the consequences of removing Muammar Gaddafi?  Before he was removed, Gaddafi had made Libya one of the best places in all of Africa.  The highest living standards in Africa was evident in Libya which was considered ‘very good’ according to the 2010 UN Human Development report.  Libya was ranked 53^rd in the world before NATO’s invasion according to the United Nation’s own studies.  In fact, in comparison to Brazil, Turkey and China at the time, Libya had a better quality of life including in the areas that measure annual income, education and health.  Although Libya was not perfect, it had its share of societal problems like in every country on earth, but under Gaddafi’s leadership, living standards had increased for the Libyan people.  Libya is a complex society, so Gaddafi’s governance was a difficult task, but his ideals for a better Libya was stopped in its tracks when US and it’s NATO allies decided to move forward with regime change and turn Libya into a living hell for its people.  The destruction of Libya created a pool of new terrorists that ended up in other warzones where the US government was heavily involved in including in places like Syria that turned into another cesspool of death and destruction.

Today Libya is living through a nightmare of an endless civil war between political rivals.  In late August, 32 people were killed with more than 159 people injured.  Al Jazeera reported that “the standoff for power in Libya has pitted the Tripoli-based Government of National Unity (GNU) under Abdul Hamid Dbeibah against a rival administration under Fathi Bashagha that is backed by the eastern-based parliament.”  The report admitted that “Libya has had little peace since the 2011 NATO-backed uprising that overthrew Muammar Gaddafi and it split in 2014 between rival eastern and western factions, dragging in regional powers.”

Libya has been divided between east and west by rival factions, so for the globalists who caused this problem, it brings them the element of chaos they needed because they gained control over Libya’s natural resources, they enriched the arms industry by supplying both sides of Libya’s internal conflict.  They also created a new supply of terrorists to create more wars and overthrow governments on behalf of the West in other parts of Africa and the Middle East.  The goal was to destroy Libya and expand US-NATO operations throughout Africa.  But one of the main reasons for NATO’s invasion of Libya which I mentioned earlier was to stop the creation of the African Dinar which would have given the West a black eye during a time when most of the world is trying to stop their use of the world’s reserve currency and the US government’s economic weapon, the US dollar in favor of other currencies including the Chinese yuan and the Russian ruble.

The US-NATO Alliance is using the same formula for other countries who disobey their unipolar world order.  Russia and China understand this Western concept of divide and conquer as a threat to them and to the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, Libya was used as an example of what can happen to a country if they don’t follow the Western prescription for peace and stability.

*

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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

“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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a

***

“I close with the observation that, insofar as Americans participate in this anti-imperialist movement, their activities will be deeply patriotic, because they will be seeking to call our nation back to its moral ideals, which stand diametrically opposed to the values implicit in the global domination project.”

– David Ray Griffin [1]

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Near the end of last month, the last fading breaths of a special person with extraordinary intellect offset by almost a humble and unassuming personality finally petered out, and left much of the public diminished in a fundamental way. [2]

A friend. A mentor. A prophet. A conspiracy theorist. David Ray Griffin was considered all of these things and more.

His philosophical journey which started in academia found a sideline into investigating and communicating about the truth about the problems with the official story of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. And it was not a diversionary track. For him, it was consistent with his commitment as a theologian and one who follows the truth no matter where it leads and no matter the cost to his reputation and life.

He may not have been the first voice out of the gate spreading the word, but with his background as an academic and his skills as a teacher, he was definitely a giant in the field of 9/11 investigation. He exposed the evidence that officials within the U.S. military, political and intelligence apparatus had full knowledge of the terrorist attacks in advance and either allowed or made them happen on purpose. People came to him by the hundreds, and tuned into radio by the thousands to hear about his understanding of what really happened on that horrible day.

The Global Research News Hour, and Global Research itself remain committed to similarly getting to the bottom of the vicious event which propelled the U.S. and the world into a new venture of war-making abroad and diminished rights at home. We recognize the particular importance of Dr Griffin on the roster of champions who would not be forced into silence when the growling hounds of conformity try to coerce a more “respectable” opinion out of him.

For the entire hour, we will get the perspectives of people who have been in contact with him and value his work, to share perspectives not only about his 9/11 work, but also in his other pursuits from theological studies to his role in revealing the U.S. empire in all its horrible glory. We coax them to reveal more about him on a personal level – both his strentgths and his Persian flaws. Our guests include Carol Brouillet, Ken Jennings, Richard Gage AIA, Barrie Zwicker and Elizabeth Woodworth.

David Ray Griffin may have shuffled off his mortal coil, but his memory and legacy will live on!

Carol Brouillet is Co-Founder of the Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance, and organizer of many, many, conferences, film festivals, rallies, marches. Mother, Congressional candidate, radio-show host for many years, concerned and active on many different issues, especially global economics. Her website is http://www.communitycurrency.org/.

Ken Jenkins helped co-found The Northern California 9/11 Truth Alliance. HE has a degree in electrical engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University, and has done extensive postgraduate study in psychology. He has produced dozens of 9/11 DVDs – nine with leading 9/11 Truth author David Ray Griffin. His website is http://9-11tv.org

Richard Gage, AIA is a 30-year San Francisco Bay Area architect and member of the American Institute of Architects. He is the founder and former  CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. He now leads the charge for a new WTC investigation.His current site is RichardGage911.org

Barrie Zwicker is a former journalist and media critic. He wrote for the Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Province, Sudbury Star, Detroit News, and Lansing State Journal. He is the author of the 2006 book, Towers of deception: The Media Coverup of 9/11.

Elizabeth Woodworth, a career medical librarian and author/co-author of five books, worked with David Ray Griffin in various capacities from 2006-2022.  She did proof-reading/editing on about 12 of his books and many of his essays, co-authored two books with him directly, and has also written in-depth reviews of most of his books from the 2006-2022 period on Amazon.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 373)

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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:

CIXX 106.9 FM, broadcasting from Fanshawe College in London, Ontario. It airs Sundays at 6am.

WZBC 90.3 FM in Newton Massachusetts is Boston College Radio and broadcasts to the greater Boston area. The Global Research News Hour airs during Truth and Justice Radio which starts Sunday at 6am.

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Caper Radio CJBU 107.3FM in Sydney, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia airs the Global Research News Hour starting Wednesday afternoon from 3-4pm.

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. David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (2007), 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out’, Olive Branch Press, a division of Interlink Publishing Group, Inc.
2. https://www.globalresearch.ca/david-ray-griffin-1939-2022-man-his-work-synopsis/5800929

Author’s Note

Remember Black Monday, November 1997, which was ten followed by a deal with Wall Street on Christmas Eve, December 24, 1997. 25 years ago.

This article first published in July 2000 identifies the process whereby South Korean capitalism was literally hijacked at the height of the 1997-98 Asian Crisis. The objective was also to destabilize and its major business conglomerates as well as take  over its banking system. The IMF reforms triggered a string of bankruptcies and the downfall of industrial wages.

The IMF program applied to a advanced market economy was to undermine national sovereignty as well as shunt the process of reunification of North and South Korea.  The longer term objective is to open up North Korea to Western corporate capital as well as transform the DPRK  into a new cheap labor frontier of the global economy. That was the fate of Vietnam starting in the early 1990s upon the lifting of  US economic sanctions.

The deadly sanctions regime imposed on Pyongyang over a period of more than half a century combined with the relentless threat to wage a nuclear attack against North Korea are intended to eventually impose the “Free Market” on the DPRK Korea under the guidance of Wall Street and the IMF. 

An expanded and updated version of this text was subsequently included in the second edition of my book,  The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, Global Research, Montreal, 2003. 

Michel Chossudovsky, April 6, 2013, December 17, 2022

*     *     *

The Recolonization of Korea

Seoul Black Monday. IMF Intervention in Korea

by Michel Chossudovsky

June 10, 2000

In the late days of November 1997 an IMF team of economists led by trouble-shooter Hubert Neiss was swiftly rushed to Seoul. Its mandate: to negotiate a Mexican-style bail-out with a view to rapidly restoring economic health and stability. An important precedent had been set: the IMF’s bitter economic medicine, routinely imposed on the Third World and Eastern Europe, was to be applied for the first time in an advanced industrial economy.

Washington had carefully set the stage in liaison with the US Embassy in Seoul. Barely a week before the arrival of the IMF mission, President Kim Young Sam had sacked his Finance Minister for having allegedly hindered negotiations with the IMF. A more acceptable individual was appointed on Washington’s instructions. Very convenient: the new negotiator and Finance Minister Mr. Lim Chang-yuel happened to be a former IMF and World Bank official. Also fired at short notice was presidential economic adviser Kim In-ho, for having spurned the IMF option and said Seoul would restore international credibility through its own efforts. (1)

Finance Minister Lim was accustomed to the Washington scene. No sooner had he been appointed, he was whisked off to Washington for negotiations with his former colleague IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer.

Seoul Black Monday

The government’s dealings with the IMF had been a closely guarded State secret. On Friday 21st of November, the government officially announced that it would be seeking an IMF bailout. On the following business day, November 24th, Seoul Black Monday, the stock market crumbled to a ten year low over feared IMF austerity measures and expected corporate and bank collapses. Faithfully obeying orders from Washington, Finance Minister Lim had removed all exchange controls from the currency market with the result of enticing further speculative assaults against the won. (2)

Two days later, November 26th, the IMF mission headed by Mr. Hubert Neiss arrived at Seoul’s Kimpo airport. And barely four days later on the 30th, the parties had already agreed on a Preliminary Agreement. The draft text had been prepared at IMF headquarters in Washington prior to the arrival of the mission. The policy solutions had already been decided in consultation with Wall Street and the US Treasury: no analysis or negotiation was deemed necessary.

Arm Twisting in the wake of the Presidential Race

But the deal was not yet wrapped up. The country was on the eve of a presidential election, and the front-runner opposition centre-left candidate Kim Dae jung remained firmly opposed to the IMF bailout agreement. He warned public opinion and accused the outgoing government of organising a massive sell-out of the Korean economy:

’Foreign investors can freely buy our entire financial sector, including 26 banks, 27 securities firms, 12 insurance companies and 21 merchant banks, all of which are listed on the Korean Stock Exchange, for just 5.5 trillion won,’ that is, $3.7 billion. (3)

Political turnaround

Barely two weeks later, upon winning the presidential race, Kim Dae jung had become an unbending supporter of strong economic medicine:

I will boldly open the market. I will make it so that foreign investors will invest with confidence; in a mass rally he confirmed his unbending support for the IMF Pain is necessary for reform and we should take this risk as opportunity. (4)

Succumbing to political pressure, Kim Dae jung, a former dissident, political prisoner and starch opponent of the US backed military regimes of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan, had caved in to Wall Street and Washington prior to his formal inauguration as the country’s democratically elected president. In fact Washington had demanded in no uncertain terms that all three candidates in the presidential race commit themselves to adopting the IMF programme.

Enforcing Enabling Legislation through Financial Blackmail

Kim Dae jung had also given a green light to the Korean parliament. A special session of the Legislature was held on the following day, December 23. The four main government motions concerning the IMF Agreement were adopted virtually without debate. (5) Enforced through financial blackmail, legislation had also been approved which stripped the Ministry of Economy and Finance and of its financial regulatory and supervisory functions. South Korea’s Parliament had been transformed into a rubber stamp. Meanwhile, Moody’s Investor Service, the Wall Street credit agency, acting on behalf of US banking interests, had rewarded Korea’s compliance by downgrading ratings for Korean government and corporate bonds, including those of 20 banks, to ’junk bond’ status. (5)

Negotiating a $57 Billion Bailout: Timetable of the Heist

19 November 1997- 24 December 1997

19 November: Outgoing President Kim Young-sam fires Minister of Finance Kang Kyong-shik for hindering negotiations with the IMF. Kang is replaced by Mr. Lim Chang-yuel, a former Executive director of the IMF.

20 November: Finance Minister Lim is rushed off to Washington for talks with his former colleague, IMF Deputy Managing Director Stanley Fischer.

21 November: The Repulbic of Korea (ROK) government formally announces that it will be seeking an Agreement with the IMF. The New Finance Minister is put in charge of negotiations with the IMF.

24 November: Seoul Black Monday. The Seoul stock market crumbles to a ten year low over feared IMF austerity measures and expected corporate and bank collapses.

26 November: The IMF mission arrives in Seoul headed by Mr. Hubert Neiss.

27 November: Shrouded in secrecy, talks between the IMF mission and ROK government officials commence.

30 November: After four days of negotiations, the IMF and the Government agree on a Preliminary Agreement.

1 December: The draft agreement is submitted to the approval of the ROK Cabinet.

3 December: IMF Managing Director Michel Camdessus arrives in Seoul to wrap up the deal. US Undersecretary of the Treasury David Lipton in discussions with Camdessus states that the deal cannot be finalized unless all three presidential candidates give their support to the IMF bailout.

4 December: The final text of the Agreement is ratified by the IMF Executive Board which approves a stand by arrangement for 21 billion dollars out of a total package of 57 billion.

5 December: Presidential candidate Kim Dae-jung expresses his opposition to the IMF Agreement and warns public opinion on its devastating economic and social impacts.

18 December: Kim Dae-jung wins the Presidential election and immediately declares his unconditional support for the IMF programme

22 December: US Under-secretary of the Treasury David Lipton arrives in Seoul. Lipton demands Kim Dae Jung to agree to massive layoffs of workers.

23 December: A special session of the Legislature is called. The Legislature rubber stamps four key government motions regarding the IMF programme.

24 December: Wall Street bankers are called to an emergency meeting on Christmas Eve. At midnight, the IMF agrees to rush 10 billion dollars to Seoul to meet an avalanche of maturing short-term debts.

26 December: Boxing Day: President-elect Kim Dae jung commits himself to tough actions: Companies must freeze or slash wages. If that proves not enough, layoffs will be inevitable.

Wall Street Bankers meet on Christmas Eve

The Korean Legislature had met in emergency sessions on December 23. The final decision concerning the 57 billion dollar deal took place the following day, on Christmas Eve December 24th, after office hours in New York. Wall Street’s top financiers, from Chase Manhattan, Bank America, Citicorp and J. P. Morgan had been called in for a meeting at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Also at the Christmas Eve venue, were representatives of the big five New York merchant banks including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Morgan Stanley and Salomon Smith Barney.(6)

And at midnight on Christmas Eve, upon receiving the green light from the banks, the IMF was allowed to rush 10 billion dollars to Seoul to meet the avalanche of maturing short-term debts. (7)

The coffers of Korea’s central Bank had been ransacked. Creditors and speculators were anxiously awaiting to collect the loot. The same institutions which had earlier speculated against the Korean won were cashing in on the IMF bailout money. It was a scam.

Dismantling the Chaebols

The IMF bailout had derogated Korea’s economic sovereignty, establishing a de facto colonial administration under a democratically elected president. It had plunged the country virtually overnight into a deep recession. The social impact was devastating. The standard of living collapsed; the IMF reforms depressed real wages and triggered massive unemployment.

The devaluation of the won, together with the stock market meltdown, generated a deadly chain of bankruptcies affecting both financial and industrial enterprises. The hidden agenda was to destroy Korean capitalism. The IMF program contributed to fracturing the chaebols.

Chaebol’s are conglomerates of many companies clustered around one holding company. The parent company is usually controlled by one family. In 1988, the 40 top chaebol grouped a total of 671 separate companies. Hyundai and Daewoo are examples. They produce widely differing products, everything from cars to TV sets. Chaebols do not, and this is important, control banks. (What is a chaebol?, at http://megastories.com/seasia/skorea/chaebol/chaewhat.htm)

The latter had been invited to establish strategic alliances with foreign firms meaning their eventual takeover and control by foreign capital. Acting directly on behalf of Wall Street, the IMF had demanded the dismantling of the Daewoo Group including the sell-off of the 12 so-called troubled Daewoo affiliate companies. Daewoo Motors was up for grabs. Korea’s entire auto parts industry was in crisis leading to mass layoffs and bankruptcies of auto-parts suppliers. (8)

Meanwhile, the creditors of Korea’s largest business empire, Hyundai, had demanded that group’s break-up. With the so-called spin off, meaning the fracture of Hyundai, foreign capital had been invited in to pick up the pieces, meaning Hyundai’s profitable car and ship building units,at good prices. Korea’s high tech, electronics and manufacturing economy was up for grabs. Western corporations had gone on a shopping spree, buying up industrial assets at rock-bottom prices. The devaluation of the won, combined with the slide of the Seoul stock market, had dramatically depressed the dollar value of Korean assets.

California and Texas Tycoons to the Rescue

America had come to the rescue of Korea’s ’troubled banks’. For a meager $454 million, a controlling share (51%) of Korea First Bank (KFB) was transferred to Newbridge Capital Ltd, a US outfit specializing in leveraged buyouts.(9) In one fell swoop, a California-based investment firm, with no visible prior experience in commercial banking, had gained control of one of Korea’s oldest banking institutions with 5,000 employees and a modern network of branch offices through out the country.

Under the terms of its agreement with Newbridge, the ROK government had granted so-called put back options to KFB (Korea First Bank) which entitled the new owners to demand compensation for all losses stemming from non-performing loans made prior to the sale.

What this meant in practice was a total cash injection by the ROK government (in several installments) into the KFB of 17.3 trillion won, an amount equivalent to 35 times the price Newbridge Capital had paid the government in the first place. (10)

In a modern form of highway robbery, a totally fictitious investment of 454 million dollars by Newbridge had enabled the new owners to cash in on a 15.9 billion dollar government hand-out. Not bad! And behind this lucrative scam, the Wall Street underwriter Morgan Stanley Dean Witter was also cashing in on fat commissions from both the ROK government and the new American owners of KFB.

And how was the government going to finance this multi-billion dollar handout? Through lower wages, massive layoffs of public employees including teachers and health workers, drastic cuts in social programs as well as billions of dollars of borrowed money.

Financed by the Korean Treasury, the new Texan and Californian owners of KFB had become domestic creditors of Korea’s troubled business conglomerates. Without having risked a single dollar, they now had the power to shake up, downsize or close down entire branches of Korean industry as they see fit, including electronics, automobile production, heavy industry, semiconductors, etc. Most of the business takeover proposals and spin-offs of the chaebols required the direct consent of Western financial interests. The fate of the workers of the chaebols was also in the hands of the new American owners.

The ROK government had not only lost control over the privatization program, it had allowed the entire financial services industry to be broken into. Chase Manhattan had purchased a majority interest in Good Money Securities. Goldman Sachs’ had acquired control of Kookmin Bank while New York Life had taken over its insurance arm Kookmin Life.(11)

The wholesale privatization of major public utilities had also been demanded, including Korea Telecom and Korea Gas. Korea Electric Power Corporation (KEPCO) was to be broken down into several smaller electricity companies prior to being placed on the auction block. Pohang Iron & Steel Corp. (POSCO) was also to become fully privatized. A similar fate awaits Hanjung, the State owned Korea Heavy Industries and Construction Company, slated to enter into a strategic alliance with Westinghouse.

Instating a System of Direct Colonial Rule

The system of indirect colonial rule first instated by the US Military under President Sygman Rhee in 1945 had been disbanded. Korea’s ruling business elites had been crushed. An entirely new system of government under President Kim Dae Jung had been established, geared towards the fracture of the chaebols and the dismantling of Korean capitalism. In other words, the signing of the IMF bailout Agreement in December 1997 marks an important and significant transformation in the structure of the Korean State. It also marks a decisive step in inter-Korean relations and Washington’s design to extend the free market to the entire Korean Peninsula.

Reunification and the Free Market

An IMF negotiating mission was rushed to Seoul in early June 2000, barely a few days before the historic inter-Korean Summit in Pyongyang between President Kim Dae jung and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Chairman Kim Jong il. Careful timing. The IMF’s presence in Seoul was barely noticed by the Korean press. Firmly behind Kim Dae jung, South Koreans had their eyes riveted on the promise of the country’s reunification. Other political issues were shoved to the sideline

Meanwhile backstage, removed from the heat of public debate, the IMF team was quietly putting the finishing touches on a new IMF Agreement to be duly signed by Finance Minister Lee Hun-jai, prior to his departure for the Pyongyang Summit.

It was a carefully planned sell-out: the June 2000 Agreement was more deadly than the first one signed in December 1997. In it, the ROK government renewed the IMF’s stranglehold on the Korean economy until 2003 without the occurence of any form of public debate or discussion. The dismantling and fracturing of South Korean capitalism was carefully outlined, to occur over a three year period, from 2000 to 2003. (12)

But the IMF mission had something else up its sleeve. In liaison with the US Embassy, the IMF mission briefed Finance Minister Lee Hun-jai, who was in charge of the Pyongyang Summit’s economic cooperation agenda. Lee was a faithful crony of the IMF. Prior to assuming the position of Finance Minister, he was in charge of the infamous Financial Supervisory Commission (FSC), the powerful IMF sponsored Watch Dog, responsible for triggering the bankruptcy of the chaebols. Carefully briefed before his departure for Pyongyang, Finance Minister Lee was to uphold American business interests under the disguise of inter-Korean economic cooperation. Washington’s hidden agenda under the reunification process is the eventual recolonization of the entire Korean peninsula.

Colonizing North Korea

Under the inter-Korean economic cooperation program signed in Pyongyang, the Seoul government committed itself to investing in the North Korea. Hyundai, Korea’s largest conglomerate, was to invest and build factories in the North.

But the Korean chaebols, including Hyundai, are rapidly being taken over by American companies. In other words, inter-Korean economic cooperation may turn out to be a disguised form of foreign investment and a new window of opportunity for Wall Street. The new American owners of the chaebols in consultation with the US State Department will ultimately be calling the shots on inter-Korean economic cooperation including major investments in North Korea:

Kim Dae Jung’s strategy is to help Pyongyang with aid and development, tap its cheap labor and build goodwill and infrastructure that are also in South Korea’s interest Everyone has to keep up the pretense that nothing will happen to the North Korean regime, that you can open up and keep your power and we’ll help you make deals with the International Monetary Fund and World Bank… But ultimately, we hope it does undermine them. It’s the Trojan horse. (13)

The government of Nobel Peace Laureate President Kim Dae jung had set the stage on behalf of Washington. With US military might in the background, the promise of reunification, to which all Koreans aspire, could lead to the imposition of so-called free market reforms on Communist North Korea, a process which would result in the recolonization and impoverishment of the entire Korean peninsula under the dominion of American capital.

Notes

1.Agence France Presse , 19 November 1997.

2. Willis Witter, Economic Chief sacked in South Korean Debt Crisis; Emergency measures are introduced, Washington Times, 20 November 1997. See also International Monetary Fund, Korea: Request for IMF Standby, includes Letter of Intent and Memorandum on the Economic Programme, see para. 32, p. 44. The text can be consulted at http://www.chosun.com/feature/imfreport.html. Also quoted in Michael Hudson, Draft for Our World, Our World, Kyoto, 23 December 1997.

3. National Public Radio, 19 December 1997.

4. John Burton, Korea bonds reduced to junk status, Financial Times, London, 23 December 1997. P. 3.

5. Financial Times, 27-28 December 1997, p. 3.

6. Agence France Presse, Paris, 26 December 1997.

7. Autoparts makers step up resistance to Foreign Control of Daewoo Motor, Korea Herald, 28, June 2000.

8. See Michael Zielenziger, A rebounding but unreformed South Korea making investors, officials nervous, Knight Ridder Tribune News Service, 11 June 1999

9. More Tax Money for KFB, Korea Herald, Seoul, 17 August 2000, p. 1

10 Ibid

11. Struggle to survive will intensify amid M&As, Business Korea, Vol 17, No 2, February 2000, p. 30-36.

12. Text of Memorandum of Economic and Financial Policies and Letter of Intent, June 14, Ministry of Finance, Seoul, 2000, published in the Republic of Korea Economic Bulletin, June 2000 at http://epic.kdi.re.kr/home/ecobul/indexlist.htm. Also published by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at http://www.imf.org/external/NP/LOI/2000/kor/01/INDEX.HTM. The Memorandum grants management rights to Deutsche Bank over KFB.

13 Los Angeles Times,  June 16, 2000

Order directly from Global Research

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First published on November 21, 2021

In this essay, I will be addressing the following issues: 

• US war crimes committed against the Korean Nation (1950-53),
• Fire and Fury and the Nuclear Issue: From the Cold War to the Present
• The debate on Reunification and the Sunshine Movement
• The Candlelight Movement which led to the impeachment of president Park Guen hye
• The formulation of a North-South peace proposal involving the repeal of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command (CFC) under the OPCON (Operational Control) agreement

The text concludes with a section entitled:

Reunification and the Road Ahead: There is Only One Korean Nation.

The “real alliance” is that which unifies and reunites North and South Korea through dialogue against foreign intrusion and aggression.

The US is in a state of war against the entire Korean Nation. And what this requires is: 

the holding of bilateral talks between the ROK and the DPRK with a view to signing an agreement which nullifies the Armistice Agreement of 1953 and which sets the terms of a bilateral “Peace Treaty”.

In turn, this agreement would set the stage for the exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of US forces stationed in South Korea.  

1. US War Crimes committed against the Korean Nation (1950-53)

“Fire and Fury” was not invented by Donald Trump. It is a concept deeply embedded in US military doctrine. It has characterized US military interventions since the end of World War II.  

What distinguishes Trump from his predecessors in the White House is his political narrative at the 2017 United Nations  General Assembly. 

President Harry Truman from the very outset of the Korean War (1950-53) was a firm advocate of “Fire and Fury” against the people of both North and South Korea. General Douglas MacArthur, who had actually carried out the atrocities directed against the Korean people, appeared before the US Senate and acknowledged the crimes committed against the Korean Nation:

“I have never seen such devastation,” the general told members of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations committees. At that time, in May 1951, the Korean War was less than a year old. Casualties, he estimated, were already north of 1 million.

“I have seen, I guess, as much blood and disaster as any living man,” he added, ” (quoted by the Washington Post, August 10, 2017)

Confirmed by US military documents, both the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have been threatened with nuclear war for sixty-seven years.

In 1950, Chinese volunteer forces dispatched by the People’s Republic of China were firmly behind North Korea against US aggression.

China’s act of solidarity with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) was carried out barely a few months after the founding of the PRC on October 1, 1949.

Truman had contemplated the use of nuclear weapons against both China and North Korea, specifically as a means to repeal the Chinese Volunteer People’s Army (VPA) which had been dispatched to fight alongside North Korean forces. [Chinese Volunteer People’s Army, 中國人民志願軍;  Zhōngguó Rénmín Zhìyuàn Jūn].

It is important to stress that US military action directed against the DPRK was part of a broader Cold War military agenda against the PRC and the Soviet Union, the objective of which was ultimately to undermine and destroy socialism.

Extensive war crimes were committed against the Korean Nation in the course of the Korean war and its aftermath.

Every single family in North Korea has lost a loved one in the course of the Korean War.

In comparison, during the Second World War the United Kingdom lost 0.94% of its population, France lost 1.35%, China lost 1.89% and the US lost 0.32%. During the Korean war, North Korea lost 30% of its population.

These figures of civilian deaths in North Korea should also be compared to those compiled for Iraq by the Lancet Study (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health). The Lancet study estimated a total of 655,000 Iraqi civilian deaths, in the three years following the US-led invasion (March 2003 – June 2006).

The US never apologized for having killed up to 30 percent of North Korea’s population. Quite the opposite. The main thrust of US foreign policy has been to demonize the victims of US-led wars.

There were no war reparations. The issue of US crimes against the people of Korea was never addressed by the international community. And today, the DPRK is tagged by the Western media as a threat to the security of the United States.

For more than half a century, Washington has contributed to the political isolation and impoverishment of North Korea. Moreover, US-sponsored sanctions on Pyongyang have contributed to destabilizing the country’s economy.

North Korea has been protrayed as part of an “axis of evil”. For what?

The unspoken victim of US military aggression, the DPRK is portrayed as a failed war-mongering “Rogue State”, a “State sponsor of terrorism” and a “threat to World peace”. In the West but also in south Korea, these stylized accusations become part of a consensus, which we dare not question.

The Lie becomes the Truth. North Korea is heralded as a threat. America is not the aggressor but “the victim”.

Washington’s intent from the very outset was to destroy North Korea and demonize an entire nation. The US has also stood in the way of the reunification of North and South Korea.

People across America should put politics aside and relate to the suffering and hardships of the people of North Korea. War veteran Brian Willson provides a moving assessment of the plight of the North Korean people:

“Everyone I talked with, dozens and dozens of folks, lost one if not many more family members during the war, especially from the continuous bombing, much of it incendiary and napalm, deliberately dropped on virtually every space in the country. “Every means of communication, every installation, factory, city, and village” was ordered bombed by General MacArthur in the fall of 1950. It never stopped until the day of the armistice on July 27, 1953. The pained memories of people are still obvious, and their anger at “America” is often expressed, though they were very welcoming and gracious to me. Ten million Korean families remain permanently separated from each other due to the military patrolled and fenced dividing line spanning 150 miles across the entire Peninsula.

Let us make it very clear here for western readers. North Korea was virtually totally destroyed during the “Korean War.” U.S. General Douglas MacArthur’s architect for the criminal air campaign was Strategic Air Command head General Curtis LeMay who had proudly conducted the earlier March 10 – August 15, 1945 continuous incendiary bombings of Japan that had destroyed 63 major cities and murdered a million citizens. (The deadly Atomic bombings actually killed far fewer people.).Eight years later, after destroying North Korea’s 78 cities and thousands of her villages, and killing countless numbers of her civilians, LeMay remarked, “Over a period of three years or so we killed off – what – twenty percent of the population.”It is now believed that the population north of the imposed 38th Parallel lost nearly a third its population of 8 – 9 million people during the 37-month long “hot” war, 1950 – 1953, perhaps an unprecedented percentage of mortality suffered by one nation due to the belligerance of another.

Virtually every person wanted to know what I thought of Bush’s recent accusation of North Korea as part of an “axis of evil.” I shared with them my own outrage and fears, and they seemed relieved to know that not all “Americans” are so cruel and bellicose. As with people in so many other nations with whom the U.S. has treated with hostility, they simply cannot understand why the U.S. is so obsessed with them.” (Brian Willson, Korea and the Axis of Evil, Global Research, October 12, 2006 emphasis added)

The Nature of US Atrocities against the People of Korea

The DPRK’s Foreign Minister’s Cable to the United Nations Security Council confirmed the nature of the atrocities committed by the US against the people of North Korea, acting under the banner of the United Nations:

See original below. [original text in Korean]

“ON JANUARY 3 AT 10:30 AM, AN ARMADE OF 82 FLYING FORTRESSES LOOSED THEIR DEATH-DEALING LOAD ON THE CITY OF PYONGYANG. …

HUNDREDS OF TONS OF BOMBS AND INCENDIARY COMPOUND WERE SIMULTANEOUSLY DROPPED THROUGHOUT THE CITY, CAUSING ANNIHILATING FIRES. IN ORDER TO PREVENT THE EXTINCTION OF THESE FIRES, THE TRANS-ATLANTIC BARBARIANS BOMBED THE CITY WITH DELAYED-ACTION HIGH-EXPLOSIVE BOMBS WHICH EXPLODED AT INTERVALS THROUGHOUT FOR A WHOLE DAY, MAKING IT IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE TO COME OUT ONTO THE STREETS. THE ENTIRE CITY HAS NOW BEEN BURNING, ENVELOPED IN FLAMES, FOR TWO DAYS. BY THE SECOND DAY 7,812 CIVILIANS’ HOUSES HAD BEEN BURNT DOWN. THE AMERICANS WERE WELL AWARE THAT THERE WERE NO MILITARY OBJECTIVES LEFT IN PYONGYANG. …

THE NUMBER OF INHABITANTS OF PYONGYANG KILLED BY BOMB SPLINTERS, BURNT ALIVE AND SUFFOCATED BY SMOKE IS INCALCULABLE, SINCE NO COMPUTATION IS POSSIBLE. SOME FIFTY THOUSAND INHABITANTS REMAIN IN THE CITY, WHICH BEFORE THE WAR HAD A POPULATION OF FIVE HUNDRED THOUSAND.”

It was all for a good cause: the fight against “evil communism”. The doctrine of fighting communism acted as a powerful ideological instrument during the Cold War era.

Our message to US military servicemen and women at all levels of the military hierarchy.

Reverse the course of History. Abandon the Battlefield, Refuse to Fight!

For complete text of the cable addressed to the UN Security Council click UN Repository.

2. “Fire and Fury” and the Nuclear Issue: 

From the Cold War to the Present

In the post Cold War era, under Donald Trump’s “Fire and Fury”, nuclear war directed against Russia, China, North Korea and Iran is “On the Table”.

What distinguishes the October 1962 Missile Crisis to Today’s Realities:

1. Today’s president Donald Trump does not have the foggiest idea as to the consequences of nuclear war.

2. Communication today between the White House and the Kremlin is at an all time low. In contrast, in October 1962, the leaders on both sides, namely John F. Kennedy and Nikita S. Khrushchev were accutely aware of the dangers of nuclear annihilation. They collaborated with a view to avoiding the unthinkable.

3. The nuclear doctrine was entirely different during the Cold War. Both Washington and Moscow understood the realities of mutually assured destruction. Today, tactical nuclear weapons with an explosive capacity (yield) of one third to six times a Hiroshima bomb are categorized by the Pentagon as “harmless to civilians because the explosion is underground”.

4.  A one trillion ++ nuclear weapons program, first launched under Obama, is ongoing.

5. Today’s thermonuclear bombs are more than 100 times more powerful and destructive than a Hiroshima bomb. Both the US and Russia have several thousand nuclear weapons deployed.

Moreover, an all-out war against China is currently on the drawing board of the Pentagon as outlined by a RAND Corporation Report commissioned by the US Army.

Washington is actively involved in creating divisions between China and its neighbours including the DPRK and the ROK.

The objective is to draw South East Asia and the Far East into a protracted military conflict by creating divisions between China and ASEAN countries, most of which are the victims of Western colonialism and US military aggression: extensive crimes against humanity have been committed against Vietnam, Cambodia, Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia. In a bitter irony, these countries are now military allies of the United States.

Who Is the Aggressor?

The Soviet Union had tested its first atomic bomb on August 29, 1949 in response to Washington’s design to wage nuclear war against the USSR, first formulated in September 1945.

According to analysts, the Soviet atomic bomb was instrumental in the Truman administration’s decision to eventually stall US nuclear war preparations against North Korea and China. The project  was scrapped in June 1951. 

In March 1949, President Truman approved National Security Council Memorandum 8/2, which identified the entire Korean peninsula “as an area where the principles of democracy were being matched against those of Communism.” (see P. K. Rose, Two Strategic Intelligence Mistakes in Korea, 1950, Perceptions and Reality, CIA Library, Apr 14, 2007.)

The NSC Memorandum 8/2 paved the way for the June 1949 guerrilla attacks on the DPRK:

“Inquiry uncovers secret of series of attacks by South on North. South Korean troops attacked the North a year before the Korean war broke out, researchers have claimed in the latest disturbing revelation about the conflict which almost led to global war. More than 250 guerrillas from the South are said to have launched an attack on North Korean villages along the east coast in June 1949. The incident has been confirmed by a South Korean army official.  (John Gittings, Martin Kettle, The Guardian, 17 January 2000)

Washington’s objective was to extend its geopolitical zone of influence over the entire Korean Nation, with a view to taking over all the Korean colonial territories which had been annexed to the Japanese Empire in 1910. The Korean war was also directed against the People’s Republic of China as confirmed by president Truman’s November 1950 statements (see transcript below), which intimated in no uncertain terms that the atomic bomb was intended to be used against the People’s Republic of China.

According to military analyst Carl A. Posey in Air and Space Magazine:

Truman’s decision to contemplate the use of nuclear weapons is confirmed in Truman’s historic November 30, 1950 Press Conference.

(Excerpts below, click to access complete transcript)

THE PRESIDENT. We will take whatever steps are necessary to meet the military situation, just as we always have.

[12.] Q. Will that include the atomic bomb ?

THE PRESIDENT, That includes every weapon that we have.

Q. Mr. President, you said “every weapon that we have.” Does that mean that there is active consideration of the use of the atomic bomb?

THE PRESIDENT. There has always been active consideration of its use. I don’t want to see it used. It is a terrible weapon, and it should not be used on innocent men, women, and children who have nothing whatever to do with this military aggression. That happens when it is used.³

³Later the same day the White House issued the following press release:

“The President wants to make it certain that there is no misinterpretation of his answers m questions at his press conference today about the use of the atom bomb. Naturally, there has been consideration of this subject since the outbreak of the hostilities in Korea, just as there is consideration of the use of all military weapons whenever our forces are in combat.

“Consideration of the use of any weapon is always implicit in the very possession of that weapon.

“However, it should be emphasized, that, by law, only the President can authorize the use of the atom bomb, and no such authorization has been given. If and when such authorization should be given, the military commander in the field would have charge of the tactical delivery of the weapon.

“In brief, the replies to the questions at today’s press conference do not represent any change in this situation.”

…

Q. Mr. President, I wonder if we could retrace that reference to the atom bomb? Did we understand you clearly that the use of the atomic bomb is under active consideration?

THE PRESIDENT. Always has been. It is one of our weapons.

Q. Does that mean, Mr. President, use against military objectives, or civilian–

THE PRESIDENT. It’s a matter that the military people will have to decide.  I’m not a military authority that passes on those things. [refutes his earlier statement on not using it “against civilians”]

Q. Mr. President, perhaps it would be better if we are allowed to quote your remarks on that directly?

THE PRESIDENT. I don’t think–I don’t think that is necessary.

Q. Mr. President, you said this depends on United Nations action. Does that mean that we wouldn’t use the atomic bomb except on a United Nations authorization ?

THE PRESIDENT. No, it doesn’t mean that at all. The action against Communist China depends on the action of the United Nations. The military commander in the field will have charge of the use of the weapons, as he always has. [intimates that the use of atomic bomb is “against Communist China”]

[15.] Q. Mr. President, how dose are we to all-out mobilization.

THE PRESIDENT. Depends on how this matter we are faced with now works out.

[16.] Q. Mr. President, will the United Nations decide whether the Manchurian border is crossed, either with bombing planes or–

THE PRESIDENT. The resolution that is now pending before the United Nations will answer that question.

Q. Or with troops?  … (emphasis added

In December 1949, a detailed top secret National Security Council (NSC) report was addressed to president Truman:

“Development of sufficient military power in selected non-Communist nations of Asia to maintain internal security and to prevent further encroachment by communism….

Gradual reduction and eventual elimination of the preponderant power and influence of the USSR in Asia

… The United States should continue to provide for the extension of political support and economic, technical, military and other assistance to the democratically-elected Government of the Republic of Korea.

(NSC top secret report, December 1949)

Beneath the facade of spreading democracy, Washington’s ultimate objective was to establish a proxy state in South Korea.

America’s appointee Sygman Rhee was flown into Seoul in October 1945, in General Douglas MacArthur’s personal airplane, Rhee became president in 1948, with a mandate to curb political dissent including the arrest, torture and assassination of thousands of alleged Communist opponents.

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

The doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD) evolved in the wake of the launching of the Soviet atom bomb in August 1949. Prior to that, the US resolve was to use nukes on a first strike basis against the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

However, at the outset of the Korean war in 1950, confirmed by Truman’s statements, no clearcut distinction was made between a nuclear weapon and a conventional weapon. The Truman administration’s nuclear doctrine consisted in using nuclear weapons within the framework of a conventional war theater.

The concept of Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) which characterized the Cold War was based on the recognition that the use of nuclear weapons “by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender”.

China was first threatened by the US with nuclear war in 1950, a year after the inauguration of the People’s Republic of China.  Some 14 years later in October 1964, China tested its first 16-ton nuclear bomb.

3. The Candlelight Movement, 

The Demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula

The 1987 June Democratic Uprising was a nationwide grassroots movement in the Republic of Korea (ROK) directed against the military regime of president Chun Doo-hwan, a ROK army general who came to power in 1979  following a military  coup and the assassination of President General Park Chung-hee. 

Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1987) had announced the appointment of a new military dictator: Army General Roh Tae-woo as the next unelected president of the ROK.

This self-proclaimed decision in defiance of public sentiment was conducive to the June 1987 mass movement in support of constitutional reform with a view to instating the holding of direct presidential elections. While the June movement put an end to unelected military rule, what was achieved was a military-civilian transition whereby General Roh-Tae-woo, was instated through the conduct of presidential elections. (In 1996, Roh was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison on bribery, mutiny and sedition charges.)

While the June movement was a landmark, it did not modify the social hierarchy, the corrupt political and corporate networks, the authoritarian nature of the leading corporate giants (Chaebols), not to mention the shadow decision making processes within the military and intelligence apparatus, conducted in liaison with Washington.

Thirty years later, the irony of history is that another grassroots protest movement, The Candle Light Movement in part inspired by the 1987 June Uprising successfully sought the impeachment of president Park Guen-hye, daughter of  General Park Chung-hee who ruled the ROK from 1963 to 1979.

According to media reports, the mega protests gained impetus on November 12, 2016 with one million protesters, rising to 1.9 million on November 19, and culminating on December 3, with 2.3 million. “The 2.3 million mega-protest … was a critical turning point that halted Park’s last attempt to escape impeachment.”

The government backlashed on grassroots organizations and the labor movement. In turn, under Mrs. Park’s presidency, the neocolonial relationship exerted by the US was reinforced with particular emphasis on expanded militarization.

Rep. Lee Seok-ki of the United Progressive Party (UPP) was accused without evidence of “plotting to overthrow the ROK government” of president Park Guen hye.

That government was indeed overthrown, by the people’s Candlelight movement, by a democratic process which was ratified by the constitutional court.

Convicted on charges of bribery, corruption, abuse of power, coercion and leaking government secrets (in a total of 18 cases), Park Guen-hye faces between 10 years to life in prison.

Bear in mind, these accusations are but the tip of the iceberg, they do not include Ms. Park’s orders to arbitrarily arrest her political opponents and repeal fundamental civil rights.

In a bitter irony, it was the constitutional court under pressure from the Conservative Party, which ratified president Park’s baseless accusations against Rep. Lee Seok-ki, which led to his imprisonment.

That erroneous decision by the Constitutional Court, which was in part upheld by the Supreme Court, invoking the 1948 National Security Act must be challenged and annulled.

Park Geun-hye at the Seoul central district court in South Korea. Photograph: Xinhua/Rex/Shutterstock 

4.  The Sunshine Policy

The Sunshine policy initially established under the government of Kim Dae-jung with a view to seeking North-South cooperation had already been abolished by Park Guen-hye’s predecessor president Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013). In turn, this period was marked by a heightened atmosphere of confrontation between North and South, marked by successive war games.

The administrations of both presidents Lee and Park were largely instrumental in repealing the Sunshine Policy which had been actively pursued during the Roh Moo-hyun administration (2003-2008), with increased public sentiment in favor of reunification of North and South Korea.  

Sunshine 2.0. The Demilitarization of the Korean Peninsula

The legacy of history is fundamental: From the outset in 1945 as well as in the wake of the Korean war (1950-53), US interference and military presence in the ROK has been the main obstacle to the pursuit of democracy and national sovereignty.

Washington has consistently played a role in ROK politics, with a view to ensuring its hegemonic objectives in East Asia. The impeached president Mrs. Park served as an instrument of the US administration.

Will the popular movement against the impeached president prevail?

It was conducive to the conduct of new presidential elections leading to the election of Moon Jae-in as president of the ROK.

Supported by the Candle Light movement, Moon Jae-in’s presidency potentially constitutes a watershed, a political as well as geopolitical landmark, an avenue towards national sovereignty in defiance of US interference, a potential break with a foregone era of authoritarian rule.

President Moon Jae-in had worked closely with president Roh Moo-hyun as his chef de cabinet. He has confirmed his unbending commitment in favor of dialogue and cooperation with Pyongyang, under what is being dubbed the Sunshine 2.0 Policy, while also maintaining the ROK’s relationship with the US.

While President Moon Jae-in (left) is firmly opposed to the DPRK’s nuclear program, he nonetheless took a firm stance against the deployment of the US-supplied Terminal High-Altitude Area Defence Missile Defence System (THAAD).

In recent developments, the ROK Defense Ministry acting behind his back took the initiative (May 30, 2017) of bringing in four more launchers for the THAAD missile system. “President Moon said that it’s ‘very shocking’ after receiving a report” on the incident from his national security director.” (Morningstar, May 30, 2017)

President Moon’s commitment to cooperation with North Korea coupled with demilitarization, will require redefining the ROK-US relationship in military affairs. This is the crucial issue.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads: How will the policies of President Moon’s administration affect the broader East Asia geopolitical context marked by US threats of military action (including the use of nuclear weapons) not only against North Korea but also against China and Russia?

In the present context, the US has de facto control over ROK foreign policy as well as North-South Korea relations. Under the OPCON agreement, the Pentagon controls the command structure of the ROK armed forces.

Ultimately this is what has to be addressed with a view to establishing a lasting peace on the Korean peninsula and the broader East Asian region.

5. The Repeal of the ROK-US Combined Forces Command (CFC) 

Towards a Bilateral North-South Peace Agreement 

In 2014, the government of  President Park Geun-hye postponed the repeal of the OPCON (Operational Control) agreement “until the mid-2020s”. What this signified is that “in the event of conflict” all ROK forces would be under the command of a US General appointed by the Pentagon, rather than under that of the ROK President and Commander in Chief.

It goes without saying that national sovereignty cannot reasonably be achieved without the annulment of the OPCON agreement as well as the ROK – US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure.

As we recall, in 1978 a bi-national Republic of Korea – United States Combined Forces Command (CFC), was created under the presidency of General Park (military dictator and father of impeached president Park Guen-hye). In substance, this was a change in labels in relation to the so-called UN Command.

“Ever since the Korean War, the allies have agreed that the American four-star would be in “Operational Control” (OPCON) of both ROK and US military forces in wartime …. Before 1978, this was accomplished through the United Nations Command. Since then it has been the CFC [US Combined Forces Command (CFC) structure]. (Brookings Institute)

Moreover, the Command of the US General under the renegotiated OPCON (2014) remains fully operational inasmuch as the 1953 Armistice (which legally constitutes a temporary ceasefire) is not replaced by a peace treaty.

The 1953 Armistice Agreement

What underlies the 1953 Armistice Agreement is that one of the warring parties, namely the US has consistently threatened to wage war on the DPRK for more than 60 years.

The US has on countless occasions violated the Armistice Agreement. It has remained on a war footing. Casually ignored by the Western media and the international community, the US has actively deployed nuclear weapons targeted at North Korea for more than half a century in violation of article 13(b) of the Armistice agreement. More recently it has deployed the so-called THAAD missiles largely directed against China and Russia.

The US is still at war with North Korea. The armistice agreement signed in July 1953 –which legally constitutes a “temporary ceasefire” between the warring parties (US, North Korea and China’s Volunteer Army)– must be rescinded through the signing of a long-lasting peace agreement.

The US has not only violated the armistice agreement, it has consistently refused to enter into peace negotiations with Pyongyang, with a view to maintaining its military presence in South Korea as well as shunting a process of normalization and cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK.

If one of the signatories of the Armistice refuses to sign a Peace Agreement, what should be contemplated is the formulation  of a comprehensive Bilateral North-South Peace Agreement, which would de facto lead to rescinding the 1953 armistice.

What should be sought is that the “state of war” between the US and the DPRK (which prevails under the armistice agreement) be in a sense “side-tracked” and annulled by the signing of a comprehensive bilateral North-South peace agreement, coupled with cooperation and interchange.

This proposed far-reaching agreement between Seoul and Pyongyang would assert peace on the Korean peninsula –failing the signing of a peace agreement between the signatories of the 1953 Armistice agreement.

The legal formulation of this bilateral entente is crucial. The bilateral arrangement would in effect bypass Washington’s refusal. It would establish the basis of peace on the Korean peninsula, without foreign intervention, namely without Washington dictating its conditions. It would require the concurrent withdrawal of US troops from the ROK and the repeal of the OPCON agreement.

Bear in mind, the US was involved in the de facto abrogation of paragraph 13(d) of the Armistice agreement, which forecloses the parties from entering new weapons into Korea. In 1956, Washington brought in and installed nuclear weapons facilities into South Korea. In so doing, the U.S. not only abrogated paragraph 13(d), it abrogated the entire Armistice agreement through the deployment of US troops and weapons systems in the ROK.

Moreover, it should be noted that the militarization of the ROK under the OPCOM agreement, including the development of new military bases, is also largely intent upon using the Korean peninsula as a military launchpad threatening both China and Russia. Under OPCOM, “in the case of war”, the entire force of the ROK would be mobilized under US command against China or Russia.

The THAAD missiles are deployed in South Korea, against China, Russia and North Korea.  Washington states that THAAD is solely intended as a Missile Shield against North Korea.

Similarly, the Jeju island military base is largely intended to threaten China.

THAAD System

The Jeju island military base is also directed against China. 

Less than 500km from Shanghai

Moreover, Washington is intent upon creating political divisions in East Asia not only between the ROK and the DPRK but also between North Korea and China, with a view to ultimately isolating the DPRK.

In a bitter irony, US military facilities in the ROK (including Jeju Island) are being used to threaten China as part of a process of military encirclement. Needless to say, permanent peace on the Korean peninsula as well as in the broader East Asia region as defined under a bilateral North-South agreement would require the repeal of both the Armistice agreement as well as OPCOM, including the withdrawal of US troops from the ROK.

It is important that the bilateral peace talks between the ROK with DPRK under the helm of President Moon Jae-in be conducted without the participation or interference of outside parties. These discussions must address the withdrawal of all US occupation forces as well as the removal of economic sanctions directed against North Korea.

The exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of the 28,500 occupation forces should be a sine qua non requirement of a bilateral ROK-DPRK Peace Treaty.

6. Reunification and the Road Ahead.

There Is Only One Korean Nation

America’s neo-colonial practice applied both prior and in the post World War period has been geared towards weakening the nation state. Washington seeks through military and non-military means  the partition and fracture of independent countries (eg. Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Central America, Iraq, Syria, Sudan). This foreign policy agenda focussing on fracture and partition also applies to Korea.

There is only one Korean Nation. Washington opposes reunification because a united Korean Nation would weaken US hegemony in East Asia.

Reunification would create a competing industrial and military power and nation state (with advanced technological and scientific capabilities) which would assert its sovereignty, establish trade relations with neighbouring countries (including Russia and China) without the interference of Washington.

It is worth noting in this regard, that US foreign policy and military planners have already established their own scenario of “reunification” predicated on maintaining US occupation troops in Korea. Similarly, what is envisaged by Washington is a framework which would enable “foreign investors” to penetrate and pillage the North Korean economy.

Washington’s objective is to impose the terms of Korea’s reunification. The Neocons’ “Project for a New American Century” (PNAC) published in 2000 had intimated that in a “post unification scenario”, the number of US troops (currently at 28,500) should be increased and that US military presence should be extended to North Korea.

In a reunified Korea,  the stated military mandate of the US garrison would be to implement so-called “stability operations in North Korea”:

While Korea unification might call for the reduction in American presence on the peninsula and a transformation of U.S. force posture in Korea, the changes would really reflect a change in their mission – and changing technological realities – not the termination of their mission. Moreover, in any realistic post-unification scenario, U.S. forces are likely to have some role in stability operations in North Korea.

It is premature to speculate on the precise size and composition of a post-unification U.S. presence in Korea, but it is not too early to recognize that the presence of American forces in Korea serves a larger and longer-range strategic purpose. For the present, any reduction in capabilities of the current U.S. garrison on the peninsula would be unwise. If anything, there is a need to bolster them, especially with respect to their ability to defend against missile attacks and to limit the effects of North Korea’s massive artillery capability. In time, or with unification, the structure of these units will change and their manpower levels fluctuate, but U.S. presence in this corner of Asia should continue. 36 (PNAC, Rebuilding America`s Defenses, Strategy, Forces and Resources for a New Century, p. 18, emphasis added)

Washington’s intentions are crystal clear.

It should be understood that a US led war against North Korea would engulf the entire Korean nation.

The US sponsored state of war is directed against both North and South Korea. It is characterised by persistent military threats (including the use of nuclear weapons) against the DPRK.

It also threatens the ROK which has been under US military occupation since September 1945. Currently there are 28,500 US troops in South Korea. Yet under the US-ROK OPCON (joint defense agreement) discussed earlier, all ROK forces are  under US command.

Given the geography of the Korean peninsula, the use of nuclear weapons against North Korea would inevitably also engulf South Korea. This fact is known and understood by US military planners.

What has to be emphasized in relation to Sunshine 2.0 Policy is that the US and the ROK cannot be “Allies” inasmuch as the US threatens to wage war on North Korea.

The “real alliance” is that which unifies and reunites North and South Korea through dialogue against foreign intrusion and aggression.

The US is in a state of war against the entire Korean Nation. And what this requires is:

The holding of bilateral talks between the ROK and the DPRK with a view to signing an agreement which nullifies the Armistice and sets the term of a bilateral “Peace Treaty”. In turn this agreement would set the stage for the exclusion of US military presence and the withdrawal of the 28,500 US forces.

Moreover, pursuant to bilateral Peace negotiations, the ROK-US OPCON agreement which places ROK forces under US command should be rescinded.  All ROK troops would thereafter be brought under national ROK command.

Bilateral consultations should also be undertaken with a view to further developing economic, technological, cultural and educational cooperation between the ROK and the DPRK.

Without the US in the background pulling the strings under OPCON, the threat of war would be replaced by dialogue. The first priority, therefore would be to rescind OPCON.

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***

The “Oppression Olympics” – the victimization hierarchy in which more extreme victimhood equals higher social status – is an odd outgrowth of the wider helicopter-mom, “everybody-gets-a-trophy,” “Nerf-the-world” culture that saturated everything circa the 90s. It proliferated from there under the guises of “tolerance” and “equity.”

In the last few years, the unofficial Twitter-based Olympics commission introduced a new category of oppression: disability.

One might flippantly assume that nature or fate – a bad genetic role of the dice or an unfortunate accident – might be to blame for disability. But it’s actually “ablest” society, according to the “disability community.”

Society, according to disability culture, is designed to weed out the disabled and exclude them from participation. The challenges that disabled people face aren’t due to their disabilities per se; they’re due to society’s failure to properly accommodate them.

"She can't get inside the building because of her wheelchair."

No. She can't get inside because the building is not accessible. The building has a barrier that does not let her in. The wheelchair is not the problem; the building's lack of access is the problem.

Words matter.

— Elena Hung (@ElenaHung202) October 4, 2022

Nothing is ever their fault, or their own issue to handle. Everything is society’s fault, and society’s problem to fix.

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The oppression matrix is multifaceted – or, to borrow an expression from Social Justice©, “intersectional.” Various markers of oppression converge to determine an individual’s ultimate victimhood score and, accordingly, their place in the hierarchy.

A non-exhaustive list of the ever-expanding victimized classes include:

• Races other than white (sometimes Asians are excluded as well)
• Non-white women
• Gender identities other than cisgender men or women
• Fat people (and other differently sized demographics)
• Religions other than Christianity
• Disabled people

Disability, like the other markers of victimhood, is a virtue – a currency that members can cash in on for higher rank.

It’s an arms race to the bottom, to continually innovate new oppressed categories of disability, the end goal being to claim the ultimate set and win the game. It’s like Pokémon but the objects are autism and ADD instead of Squirtle and Pikachu.

Gotta catch ’em all.

Given the social incentives, it’s not surprising that normies with no real disabilities are fakin’ it ’til they make it – much like Rachel Dolezal pretending to be black or trans-trenders transitioning for the social media clout.

Misery loves company. If disability activists had their druthers, they’d be content to lock down society in a permanent state of Public Health© forever-emergency, with everyone else shuttered alone inside, anguished and afflicted and deathly afraid of everything – which is how they mostly live their own lives anyway.

“A lot of abled people are freaking out about quarantine, and disabled people are not as much. My day-to-day life so far in my apartment hasn’t changed that much… I’m used to not seeing my friends that often. I’m used to not going outside that often.”

The American Association of People With Disabilities (AAPD) succinctly confirms that COVID-19 was a boon for the disability industry. As the biomedical security state’s biggest cheerleaders, they never want it to end.

The pandemic is not over.

The pandemic is not over.

The pandemic is not over.

— AAPD (@AAPD) September 20, 2022

How and why does a person voluntarily commit to victimhood as their primary identity?

From the 10,000-foot view, disability culture isn’t much different than the ongoing fentanyl epidemic or the recent suicide spike. It’s a coping mechanism.

Of course, there’s the perverse social prestige angle that we’ve covered already.

But, at a deeper level, the primary driving force of all these phenomena is lack of meaning and atomization. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim termed it “anomie.” To fill the void, humans embark on a desperate search to recover a sense of identity – often finding it in the strangest of places, like a blind man feeling his way through a maze.

“God is dead,” as Nietzsche asserted – a widely misinterpreted declaration that didn’t refer to the literal death of God as a celebration of nihilistic triumph. Rather, it referenced the loss of meaning in a society that derived it, up until the post-Enlightenment period, from religion.

Their disabilities are all the activists have to cling to. Spiritual decay is the real disability.

Their disability is their identity, that from which they derive their sense of purpose and place in place of a more nourishing identity. They don’t want to get better, because to lose the former would mean the loss of the latter.

To preserve their identity, therefore, they adopt a religious conviction that they will never achieve physical/mental normality, no matter what evidence to the contrary presents itself, or what opportunities they are offered to recover.

Happily saying to a chronic illness patient who has not been formally diagnosed with anything but is feeling terrible, "Great news, all your tests came out looking normal," is smug and condescending, and you know exactly what you're doing when you do so.

— Dr. Eric Oh So Good MD 🗨 (@EdoajoEric) October 7, 2022

“Happily saying to a chronic illness patient who has not been formally diagnosed with anything but is feeling terrible, ‘Great news, all your tests came out looking normal,’ is smug and condescending, and you know exactly what you’re doing when you do so.”

They are martyrs for a war that they invented against their own bodies, and are the only ones fighting. Professional campaigners build their careers around creating spectacles of themselves highlighting their cruel oppression.

“Disability campaigner” Jennie Berry explains her harrowing experience via Huffington Post:

“I asked to go to the toilet and they just said ‘no we don’t have an aisle chair onboard’, with no suggestions of what I was to do… thankfully as I have good upper body strength I proceeded to drag myself down the aisle towards the toilet.”

This is narcissistic self-marketing masquerading as civil rights activism.

Notice that the video is credited to the “disability campaigner” herself, which means that this woman made a whole production out of her airplane bathroom experience, premeditatedly deploying a videographer to record her crawling to the airline toilet like Jesus bearing the cross. Persecution by an ableist society is her martyrdom.

Obvious logistical questions that any normal person might ask arise like: why wouldn’t the person filming have just put the phone down and helped her out? Also, what would this lady have the airlines do?

Airplanes are uncomfortably cramped for everyone. Dealing with airlines sucks for everyone. She’s not special.

If avoiding embarrassment and retaining her dignity truly were her goal, she would have failed miserably. Sacrificing her dignity out of desperation to discover meaning in a senseless, hollow world is the point.

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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

Ben Bartee is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs. Follow his stuff via Armageddon Prose and/or Substack, Patreon, Gab, and Twitter.

Featured image is from TDB

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***

During the December 13-15 White House-Africa summit, the Biden administration sought to persuade leaders and officials from 49 states that the United States wants an equal partnership with the continent.

This was the first of such meetings since 2014 when the administration of former President Barack Obama was in office.

The tenure of Obama’s successor, former President Donald Trump, was marked by open hostility towards Africa where he never visited while in office. Nonetheless, the Biden administration has made no substantial shifts in its policy towards the continent. In actual fact, President Joe Biden has sought to further utilize the 55 member-states African Union (AU) as an appendage in the renewed 21st century cold war between NATO and the Russian Federation.

During the first day of the summit, the position of African governments were that they favored a diplomatic resolution to the Russian special military operation in Ukraine. The continuing conflict over the last 10 months has resulted in the further aggravation of supply chain problems plaguing the global economy since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Obviously, the administration in Washington wants to remain in dialogue with African heads-of-state despite the rapidly developing trade, political and military relations between the AU member-states with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. However, as it relates to infrastructural and security questions, Beijing and Moscow now are far more advanced in regard to building long term relationships.

Biden promised to facilitate investment of $55 billion into African economies while pledging to visit several countries on the continent in 2023. Some of the funds are designed to purportedly support the capacity of African governments to conduct democratic elections. Biden reportedly reflected on the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The attacks were aimed at preventing the results of the November 2020 elections from being certified by the House of Representatives and the Senate.

Differences over Key Issues in U.S.-Africa Relations

The divergence of opinion between the African leaders and the White House over Ukraine policy was not the only point of disagreement at the summit. Some of the participants questioned the U.S.’s commitment to the security of the continent.

On the second day of the summit, the Department of Defense under Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III, hosted a session entitled the “Peace, Security and Governance Forum.” Much of the discussion on the part of Pentagon, State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) attending the gathering represented a repackaging of the language already present in the briefing documents of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). See this.

Although the Pentagon has established a separate command for Africa since 2008, insecurity in key geo-political regions is worsening. A series of military coups in Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea-Conakry and Chad with an attempted seizure of power also taking place in Sao Tome in early December, illustrate the failure of AFRICOM to carry out its stated mission. Criticisms among the people and those in government are growing over the role of AFRICOM along with French military forces.

Almost all of the coup makers over the last decade in West Africa are graduates of Pentagon military training programs conducted both inside the U.S. and on the continent. Joint military operations between the Pentagon and various African military structures have become routine. These annual maneuvers and war games operations represent the degree to which imperialism has penetrated military forces on the continent.

Even though there are clear connections between the military usurpation of power from civilian-led governments and the Pentagon, those who have taken power in Mali, Burkina Faso and Guinea-Conakry were not invited to the White House. The State of Eritrea was not present as well since the government in the Horn of Africa state is often on the receiving end of punitive measures by Washington. The presidents of key countries such as the Republic of South Africa and the Republic of Zimbabwe sent their foreign ministers as representatives to the summit. (See this)

Senegalese President Macky Sall, who is the current Chair of the AU, said of the differences over U.S. legislative policy and sanctions against the Republic of Zimbabwe that:

“Sall criticized pending U.S. legislation that he said unfairly ‘targeted’ Africa, an apparent reference to a measure titled ‘Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa.’ Lawmakers sponsoring the bill say the legislation is intended to prevent Moscow from using Africa to bypass U.S. sanctions imposed after the invasion of Ukraine. Sall also raised concerns about years-long U.S. sanctions against Zimbabwe for corruption and human rights violations, saying that it was time to lift the penalties so the nation could ‘fight against poverty and underdevelopment.’ Earlier this week, the U.S. Treasury Department announced it was hitting four Zimbabwean people, including the adult son of President Emmerson Mnangagwa, and two companies with new sanctions, accusing them of roles in undermining democracy and facilitating high-level graft.” (See this)

Washington Views Moscow and Beijing as Strategic Competitors

Undoubtedly, this summit at the White House was planned as a public relations campaign directed against China, Russia and other international powers which have held multilateral meetings with the AU member-states. However, in real terms, the U.S. has decreased its level of direct investment in Africa since the Obama administration.

U.S. preoccupation with military interventions has dominated its foreign policy imperatives since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the socialist countries in Eastern Europe. These destabilization campaigns, aerial bombings, proxy wars and direct occupations have objectively weakened the political legitimacy of Washington in various geo-political regions internationally.

Beijing over the last two decades through the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and other structures has become the largest trading partner with the AU member-states. The U.S. Peace Information Center says of the contemporary situation:

“China is Africa’s largest two-way trading partner, hitting $254 billion in 2021, exceeding by a factor of four U.S.-Africa trade. China is the largest provider of foreign direct investment, supporting hundreds of thousands of African jobs. This is roughly double the level of U.S. foreign direct investment. While Chinese lending to African countries has dipped of late, China remains by far the largest lender to African countries. It is to be expected that China’s commercial activity in Africa would increase with the dramatic rise of its economy to become the second largest in the world, especially given China’s need for raw materials to support its very large manufacturing base. But this growth also represents a determined Chinese government-driven effort to make significant inroads in Africa.”

As it relates to Moscow, the historic relations between the Soviet Union and African independence movements and post-colonial governments marked a sharp departure from the neo-colonial approach of the U.S. Both the Soviet Union and People’s Republic of China advanced a foreign policy which was supportive of liberation struggles, sovereignty as well as non-capitalist development.

In recent years, the Russian Federation under President Vladimir Putin has established the Russia-Africa Summit which was held in 2019 in Sochi. Another summit announced earlier in 2022 has not yet convened.

Russian trade with Africa is far less than China’s. However overall, the volume of trade between the African continent and Russia has grown substantially in recent years. Agricultural products such as grain are heavily imported into Africa. Also, agricultural inputs like fertilizers are essential in local farming efforts.

Statista.com website says:

“The annual volume of trade between Russia and countries located on the African continent reached 14.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2020, marking a decrease from the previous year. The revenue from Russian exports from and imports into the region more than doubled between 2013 and 2018. Russia’s leading trade partner on the continent was Egypt. The value of goods and services exchanged with Egypt accounted for roughly one third of the total trade volume between Russia and African countries.”

Russia-Africa trade relations are not the major concern of Washington in regard to the role of Moscow. More worrisome for the White House, the State Department and Pentagon are the volumes of arms sales from Russia to the African continent. In addition, the presence of the Wagner Group, a military services company based in Russia, which has been contracted by Mali and the Central African Republic to assist with national security, has been a cause for concern. France has claimed to have withdrawn its armed forces from Mali due to criticism from the military government led by Col. Assimi Goita along with the presence of Wagner. Secretary of Defense Austin during the White House summit referred to Wagner as “mercenaries” yet did not acknowledge the destructive character of AFRICOM in Libya, Somalia and other states where they are engaged in military surveillance and offensive operations.

One source on Russian weapons transfers to Africa notes:

“Russia’s arms sales to Africa have increased by a quarter over the last four years. In fact, Russia accounts for nearly half of major arms exports to Africa, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, with Algeria, Egypt, Sudan and Angola as the biggest customers (all of which, except Egypt, abstained in the UN vote to condemn Russia). And all across Africa, Russia has military trainers on the ground who are supporting the sales of the popular Mi-17 and Mi-35 helicopters and other equipment, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

Moreover, the support for Russia on a grassroots level among the workers and youth has been revealed in mass demonstrations in Burkina Faso and Mali. These factors are often considered by African heads-of-state in their public comments and actions at the United Nations and other international forums.

U.S. imperialism provides no other viable alternatives to Africa other than the pursuit of its non-aligned policy. Africa cannot be genuinely liberated and sovereign until the people defeat U.S. influence on the continent and around the world.

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