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Fascism is a governmental system in which the means of economic production and delivery of services are privately owned but government-controlled. Throughout history — before even getting to its racism and wars — fascism has led to the glorification of the state and the destruction of personal liberty. It is happening here.

During the past few months, we have learned that the major credit card companies have begun to record transactions at gun shops so as to enable the feds to learn the identity of patrons. These are lawful gun shops selling lawful products to lawful purchasers. The credit card records do not reflect precisely what was purchased — it might have been $2,000 for a gun safe or for gun safety lessons — but they do record the purchase amount and the contact information of the purchaser.

The problem here comes about when the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives come calling with their so-called National Security Letters in order to find out who is purchasing what. The George W. Bush-championed Patriot Act of 2001 — the most horrific congressional assault on personal liberty since the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 criminalized dissent — permits federal agents to bypass the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment when they want private records that are in the hands of a custodian.

These NSLs are really nonjudicial search warrants in which one federal agent has authorized another to seek your records. Since the gun shop purchase consists of the exercise of the natural right to exchange value for a lawful product and since the product purchased is an extension of the natural right to self-defense, the former protected by the Fifth Amendment and the latter by the Second Amendment, there is no lawful reason for the feds to know who has made these purchases.

Prior to the Patriot Act, if the feds came calling upon the custodian of your records, the custodian informed you of the government’s interest in your records, and you had a reasonable time period to challenge the feds in court. Today — notwithstanding the free speech protections in the First Amendment — it is unlawful for a custodian to inform you that the feds have come calling.

Thus, the records held by your computer, telecom, financial, health care, utilities and credit card service providers, your physicians and lawyers, may all be accessed without search warrants and without notice to you.

Under the Constitution, where federal gun registries are not permitted, it is none of the federal government’s business who has purchased what from a gun shop.

Moreover, since the Supreme Court has characterized the right to self-defense as fundamental, akin to the freedom of speech, there is no more authority under the Constitution for the feds to learn the identity of gun shop patrons than there is for them to learn the identity of bookstore patrons.

The additional danger here is to the democratic process. These decisions to keep records of sales and make them available to federal agents were made by government bureaucrats and corporate bosses, not by Congress. This is a creeping deterioration of the right to keep and bear arms because the feds are notoriously anti-gun, no matter who is president and no matter what the Supreme Court rules the Second Amendment protects.

Add to this the new program concocted by Visa whereby it will keep records of credit card purchases in which it will rank the purchased products’ conformity with the green climate change agenda view of carbon emissions, and make those records available to the Treasury Department, and you see a further whittling away of personal privacy.

It gets worse.

Last week, Amazon announced a bizarre new partnership with the New York City Police Department whereby if you live in New York City and install Amazon’s Ring service at the front entrance to your apartment — and thus permit Amazon to record the audio and video of all who come and go at your entrance — the NYPD will have real-time access to the same audio and video.

This is yet another example of law enforcement intruding into private property — the home — without a search warrant, without probable cause of crime and without articulable suspicion.

The Amazon/NYPD partnership — just like the credit card/BATF partnership and the Visa/Treasury partnership — was never authorized by legislation. All these symbiotic relationships, just like the now well-known Big Tech/Department of Homeland Security partnership producing censorship of speech the government hates and fears, were born by bureaucrats using government carrots and sticks and the acquiescence of gutless corporate chieftains willing to please their government masters.

The government’s appetite for surveillance is insatiable. Yet, the dual purposes of the Fourth Amendment — by requiring judicial search warrants based on probable cause of crime and specifically describing the place to be searched and person or thing to be seized — are to keep the government off the peoples’ backs and to compel law enforcement to focus on crimes that have already been committed.

May the government lawfully engage in fishing expeditions? In a word: NO.

The secondary purposes of the Fourth Amendment are to prohibit general warrants — not based on probable cause of crime and not specifying the place to be searched or the person or thing to be seized — and to require that before the government begins to gather any evidence of crime, it has articulable suspicion about the crime that has been committed and the person or place to be investigated.

Moreover, articulable suspicion alone — the threshold for commencing all criminal investigations — does not justify any search, seizure or non-public surveillance.

What we have here is the stealth use by government of private enterprise to do its unconstitutional dirty work, thus far untested in the courts but unconstitutional on its face. What secret favors is the government giving in return?

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The Israeli military on Wednesday published pictures of joint aerial exercises with the US that were held this week and simulated attacks on Iran.

The drills were held over Israel and the Mediterranean Sea. According to the Times of Israel, the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) said the exercises involved four Israeli F-35 fighter jets that joined four US F-15s and a US KC-135 tanker aircraft that refueled two Israeli F-16s.

While Israel often threatens to bomb Iranian nuclear facilities, it’s not clear if they have the capabilities to pull off the operation on its own. Israel currently relies on aging tankers for mid-air refueling, which aren’t expected to be capable of supporting the strikes on Iran.

The drills came after the head of the IDF, Aviv Kohavi, was in Washington and urged US officials to step up planning for joint attacks on Iran. Upon his return to Israel, Kohavi said that the US and Israel agreed to “significantly expand” joint military activity.

The IDF said that during this week’s drills, Israel’s Intelligence Directorate “conducted an extensive simulation that replicated a campaign against distant countries,” referencing Iran.

“These exercises are a key component of the two militaries’ increasing strategic cooperation in response to shared concerns in the Middle East, particularly those posed by Iran,” the IDF said.

Israeli officials have been hyping up the threat of Iran’s nuclear program, but the US recently acknowledged in its Nuclear Posture Review that Tehran is not making a nuclear weapon. That conclusion hasn’t stopped the threats from Israel or the US as Robert Malley, President Biden’s special envoy for Iran, warned in October the US would use a “military option” against Iran as a “last resort” to prevent it from acquiring a nuclear bomb.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image: Photo of the drills released by the IDF

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The New York Times has found another neo-Nazi militia to fawn over in Ukraine. The Bratstvo battalion “gave access to the New York Times to report on two recent riverine operations,” which culminated in a piece (11/21/22) headlined “On the River at Night, Ambushing Russians.”

Since the US-backed Maidan coup in 2014, establishment media have either minimized the far-right ideology that guides many Ukrainian nationalist detachments or ignored it  completely.

Anti-war outlets, including FAIR (1/28/22, 3/22/22), have repeatedly highlighted this dynamic—particularly regarding corporate media’s lionization of the Azov battalion, once widely recognized by Western media as a fascist militia, now sold to the public as a reformed far-right group that gallantly defends the sovereignty of a democratic Ukraine (New York Times, 10/4/22; FAIR.org,  10/6/22).

That is when Azov’s political orientation is discussed at all, which has become less and less common since Russia launched its invasion in February.

‘Christian Taliban’

The lesser-known Bratstvo battalion, within which the Times embedded its reporters, is driven by several far-right currents—none of which are mentioned in the article.

Bratstvo was founded as a political organization in 2004 by Dmytro Korchynsky, who previously led the far-right Ukrainian National Assembly–Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

Korchynsky, who now fights in Bratstvo’s paramilitary wing, is a Holocaust denier who falsely blamed Jews for the 1932–33 famine in Ukraine, and peddled the lie that “120,000 Jews fought in the Wehrmacht.” He has stated that he sees Bratstvo as a “Christian Taliban” (Intercept, 3/18/15).

In the 1980s, the Times portrayed the religious extremists of the Afghan mujahideen—who were receiving US training and arms—as a heroic bulwark against Soviet expansionism. We all know how that worked out.

In an echo of that propaganda campaign, the Times neglected to tell its readers about the neo-Nazi and theocratic politics of the Bratstvo battalion. Why should anyone care who else Bratstvo members would like to see dead, so long as they’re operating in furtherance of US policymakers’ stated aim of weakening Russia?

Modern-day crusade

The article’s author, Carlotta Gall, recounted Bratstvo’s Russian-fighting exploits in quasi-religious terms. Indeed, the only instances in which the Times even hinted at the unit’s guiding ideology came in the form of mythologizing the unit’s Christian devotion.

Of Bratstvo fighters embarking on a mission, Gall wrote, “They recited a prayer together, then loaded up the narrow rubber dinghies and set out, hunched silent figures in the dark.” Referring to battalion commander Oleksiy Serediuk’s wife, who also fights with the unit, Gall extolled, “She has gained an almost mythical renown for surviving close combat with Russian troops.”

The piece even featured a photograph showing militia members gathered in prayer. Evoking the notion of pious soldiers rather than that of a “Christian Taliban,” the caption read, “Members of the Bratstvo battalion’s special forces unit prayed together before going on a night operation.”

The Times also gave voice to some of the loftier aims of Bratstvo’s crusade, quoting Serediuk’s musing that, “We all dream about going to Chechnya, and the Kremlin, and as far as the Ural Mountains.” Nazi racial ideologues have long been enamored by the prospect of reaching the Urals, which they view as the natural barrier separating European culture from the Asiatic hordes.

While plotting Operation Barbarossa, Hitler identified the Urals as the eastern extent of the Wehrmacht’s planned advance. In 1943, referring to the Nazi scheme that aimed to rid European Russia of Asiatic “untermenschen” so the land could be settled by hundreds of millions of white Europeans, Himmler declared, “We will charge ahead and push our way forward little by little to the Urals.”

‘Mindset of the 13th century’

The only two Bratstvo members named in the piece, meanwhile, are Serediuk and Vitaliy Chorny. While Chorny—who the Times identified as the battalion’s head of intelligence gathering—is quoted, his statements are limited to descriptions of the unit’s fighting strategy. Serediuk’s recorded utterances are similarly lacking in substance.

Far more illuminating is an Al Jazeera article (4/15/15) titled “‘Christian Taliban’s’ Crusade on Ukraine’s Front Lines,” which quotes both Serediuk and Chorny extensively. Serediuk, Al Jazeera reported, “revels in the Christian Taliban label.” In reference to his decision to leave the Azov battalion, the piece went on to say:

Serediuk didn’t leave the Azov because of the neo-Nazi connections, however—extreme-right ideology doesn’t bother him. What does irk him, however, is being around fighters who are not zealous in their religious convictions.

In the same piece, Chorny invoked the violently antisemitic Crusades of the Middle Ages to describe Bratstvo’s ideological foundation:

The enemy—the forces of darkness—they have all the weapons, they have greater numbers, they have money. But our soldiers are the bringers of European traditions and the Christian mindset of the 13th century.

To circumvent the Times’ exultant narrative, one has to do a certain amount of supplementary research and analysis. But even the most basic inquiry—searching “Bratstvo battalion” on Google—reveals the far-right underpinnings of the unit with which the Times embedded its reporters.

The seventh search result is a June 2022 study from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, which reported, “Another such far-right entity is the so-called Brotherhood (Bratstvo) ‘battalion,’ which includes Belarusian, Danish, Irish and Canadian members.”

The ninth result is an article from the Washington Free Beacon (4/6/22), which quoted a far-right Canadian volunteer as saying on Telegram that he was “fighting in the neo-Nazi ‘Bratstvo’ Battalion in Kyiv.”

SS memorabilia

In a world where journalists actually practiced what they preached, someone at the paper of record surely would have noticed the Nazi insignia appearing in two photos in the piece. In this world, however, the Times either forgot how to use the zoom function—though the paper made extensive use of this capability when reporting on China’s Communist Party Congress the month before (FAIR.org, 11/11/22)—or they simply did not want to report on this ugly and inconvenient discovery.

One soldier is seen wearing an emblem known as a “Totenkopf” in a photo of Bratstvo’s prayer circle. The Totenkopf, which means “death’s head” in German, was used as an insignia by the Totenkopfverbande—an SS unit that participated in Hitler’s war of annihilation against the Soviet Union, and guarded the concentration camps where Nazi Germany condemned millions of Jewish men, women and children to death.

Individuals donning the Totenkopf also took part in the murder of millions of others in these camps, including Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents, trade unionists, persons with disabilities, homosexuals and Romani people.

In September, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy posted—and then quietly deleted—a picture on social media of himself with a number of soldiers, one of whom was wearing a Totenkopf patch similar to that seen in the Times’ photo of Bratstvo’s prayer meeting. One can easily find this particular iteration on Amazon or eBay.

Later in the Times article, another photograph of a soldier wearing a slightly different version of the insignia appeared. Here, bathed in the light of an interior room and staring out from the very center of the image, the Totenkopf is even harder to miss. Amazon’s product description for this specific variant reads, “This gorgeous replica piece takes you back to World War II.”

If the Times simply failed to identify the Totenkopf in two separate photos—both of which were taken by a Times photographer while he was embedded with Bratstvo, and were then featured prominently in the article—that would certainly amount to a journalistic failure.

The alternative scenario is that the Times did recognize the SS memorabilia worn by the soldiers they chose to embed with, and decided to publish the images anyway without commenting on the matter.

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Featured image: The New York Times (11/21/22) captioned this photo, “Members of the Bratstvo battalion’s special forces unit prayed together before going on a night operation.”

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All we need to do is take a broad glance across the radical changes that have taken place since the turn of the millennium to realize the rapid degeneration of American culture and society. To acknowledge that the US is now at its lowest point since the founding of the nation is an understatement. And yet we cringe at the need for having serious conversation with ourselves. As a civilization, and this applies to many other developed nations that the US considers to be allies, we refuse to reflect back upon what should have been done to have mitigated our path towards self destruction and what we have enabled to be done and worse directly participated in. 

Image is by Elekhh – CC BY-SA 3.0

This week, the New York Times, along with several other mainstream media publications, have finally come forward to challenge the US government’s indictment of Julian Assange on accusations of treason. However, these have been the very same media outlets who relied on Wikileaks’ materials and investigations while at the same time giving vocal support to the government’s criminal charges. Assange’s revelations were not only accurate, but from the perspective of a higher moral ground Assange’s activities were heroic. But for the powerful, who engage in reprehensible criminal actions, Assange must be punished. Some elected officials have gone so far as to advocate for his execution.  The media’s complicity in promulgating the government’s condemnation of Assange, and every other whistleblower who reveals government cover-ups and crimes, displays a collective cowardice. How many other revelations might there be if the media didn’t fear people like Assange who bring forth new information about government and corporate improprieties and corruption?

Looking back at the gradual decline of American education, how did we reach a stage where teaching Math or English can be racist? However, today the cult of cultural woke claims it is. Teachers are unwillingly forced to acquiesce to their unions’ demands to embrace critical race theory, a distortion of fundamental psychological principles that is determined to discover racist tendencies present in every aspect of human interaction.  Critical race theory’s egregious threat to any potential goal to reach a unifying civilization is its assault on the very idea of a free society. Woke ideology’s mission is to dismantle a free society where there is only a collective and no longer distinct individuals capable of exerting free will. In fact, similar to ranting New Atheists such as Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett, the advocates of wokeness deny free will exists.  Pretending to be the postmodern champions of civil rights, its followers instead erase whatever has been gained by  history’s protectors of human rights. Every imaginable absurdity of human creativity is simply thrown into the heap of irrational nonsense, hyperactive emotional afflictions, to be codified into laws. And those who resist should be banned, censored and punished.

The consequences of the dumbing down of the Western mind to a level of adolescent tantrums is being witnessed in all its perverted glory during the Covid-19 pandemic and more recently following Russia’s special military operations to de-Nazify and demilitarize the Ukrainian Russophobic regime. The inanity of America’s political elites and their European allies following the Obama/Clinton 2014 coup in Kiev has now created a hot war with Russia by proxy, a war NATO is incapable of winning. Again we observe the outright ludicrousness of our media spinning absurd propaganda lies and misinformation that defies any reality based upon facts. Virtually everything we have been told about the efficacy of face masks, lockdown policies and the mRNA vaccines, as well as Zelensky’s imaginary victories against an overwhelmingly superior Russian military, has been sheer fantasy.  The official narratives regarding both the pandemic and the new cold war against Russia indicate that a kind of woke-based mentality has penetrated our entire executive and legislative branches of governance. This grotesque twisting of the intellect needs to rewrite history in order to mask its underlying stupidity.

This trend to revise history to accommodate their inhumane military escapades for regime change was on full display during John Stewart’s recent interview with Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice. The two former hardened neocon secretaries of the State Department twisted, gnarled and fabricated documented facts to excuse their military campaigns to violently  bring about regime changes to sovereign nations, despite whatever criticism one may have against those countries.  And the American public, regardless of the lies voiced by the media, that can simply put on their thinking caps and do a little bit of extracurricular reading after turning off CNN, MSNBC and the other compromised news networks rooting for the American imperialist project.

Oddly, for reasons that are difficult to fathom in their entirety, the political, industrial and corporate machinery speak in a single voice and refuse to challenge official chronicles built upon delusional aspirations of total control. Three years into the Covid era, it has only been the cadres of courageous physicians, nurses and scientists who have broken away from the hypnosis of the NIH-Big Pharma matrix to speak truth at enormous cost to their reputations and careers. They too are being canceled and threatened with the loss of their medical licenses for observing the inconsistencies and contradictions between evidence based scientific data and the cherry picked science sanctified by the federal health agencies and Gates funded global medical institutions, such as the World Health Organization.

During the course of the pandemic, we are observing our cities being increasingly ghettoized. Covid lockdown policies have resulted in the closure of thousands of small businesses and a complete restructuring of the employer-employee relationship. During the phase of dramatic unemployment, Western cities and districts have essentially legalized random looting of stores. In effect, California’s Prop 47 forbids employees to interfere with looters or else be branded as racist. In Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland and Seattle, gangs send street thugs and homeless people to load up on merchandise under the helpless watch of security guards.  Even large national chain stores have had to close in many cities. How can any society be considered sane when authorities support thieves over the rights of store owners who are victimized? In New York, practically crime has been unofficially ruled as legal with a revolving door policy between the street and the court with an unlikely chance of being sentenced to prison. Consequently criminals continue to rob citizens, jack cars, sexually harass or even on occasion kill while knowing they will likely be released. All the while, the victims of these crimes are ignored.

The majority of Americans, both on the left and right, suffer from chronic confirmation bias and a rigid self-righteousness about the superiority of American values and ideals. This cultural blindness is especially pernicious in the halls of government and corporate boardrooms. The consequence has been that Americans exhibit a remarkable ability to evade criticisms against the degenerate trends in the US that are being witnessed by leaders in foreign nations. For example, regardless of your opinions about China’s ruling Communist party and its human rights record, the Chinese government is widely recognized for having achieved a miracle by lifting nearly 800 million of its citizens out of poverty during the past four decades, according to the World Bank. Therefore, when the Chinese government observes the growing poverty in cities across America and rising crime it is viewed as an abomination of human decency. For a nation that prides itself in winning the economic race against China, it is disgrace we seem unable to lift 38 million citizens out of poverty. Average Americans carry exorbitant debt with no relief or security in sight.

The failure of American education is another shameful plague ravishing youthful minds. Woke liberalism encourages children to act and make decisions without parental knowledge or consent. In place of the nuclear family, the state is becoming the new surrogate. In order to protect students’ fragile emotions, colleges need to become stress-free sanctuaries of comfort and entertainment with easy access to anti-anxiety-depression medications and legions of behaviorists and counselors to ensure students’ mental afflictions are normal and precious. In the past, unless teachers and professors engaged in a morally egregious act, students collectively demanding their expulsion was unheard of. Today, woke students are organizing to remove any professor who even mistakenly offends their precious race theory sentiments.

All of the points noted above have now been institutionalized into a  faux liberal Democrat Party and being imported into corporate human resource departments. A weird political wokeness is now becoming the Democrats’ fundamental zeitgeist.  As long as the public identifies with this aberrant corporate Democrat ideology, they are protected. On the flip side, Republicans nurture their own delusions, which would lead to a social landscape similar to Russia. We are stuck with a pathetic choice between two destructive political calamities. In the meantime, everywhere we look America is descending to a third-world status with a much larger bank account. US healthcare is the most expensive in the world– $4 trillion annually–but the nation ranks at the bottom of the 39 other developed countries. How is it that medical errors and prescription drugs is the third leading cause of death and now quickly overtaking cancer following the roll out of the experimental Covid vaccines?

Sadly, there seems to be no effort by America’s leadership to remedy the causes behind our social and cultural collapse. There is no reverse gear in American politics. Nor is there any remorse for the poor decisions that are ushering our domestic downfall. And the public repeatedly fails to organize independently of their political allegiances to hold anyone accountable.  Where are the demonstrations against our military ventures destroying numerous innocent lives overseas or protests against domestic policies contributing to homelessness, poverty, injustice, etc.  Like the Romans, our political architecture gives the public bread and circus, a 24/7 hundred course meal of rapacious hedonic imagery and lies broadcast through a highly propagandized media. Daily we witness the images and sound bites of a nation engrossed in a debauchery that Dante couldn’t have imagined and yet we either applaud or remain silent.

Can anyone think of a single groundbreaking accomplishment by either political party that has made the US or the world a more equal and safer place to live during the past three decades?  We have failed to do so.

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

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***

In recent months, two Pfizer officials have bragged about moving vaccine science forward at a speed that disallows proper scientific protocols from being followed, and the release of reformulated mRNA COVID boosters without testing is now the norm.

In November 2022, recently retired head of vaccine R&D at Pfizer, Kathrin Jansen, said “we flew the aeroplane while we were still building it. We couldn’t wait for data, we had to do so much at risk.” Pfizer compressed its vaccine development timeline from 10 years to a mere nine months by simultaneously developing and testing the product in human trials.

Pfizer and other COVID jab makers hid side effects by eliminating the control groups long before the studies were over

Vaccine makers are readying to release other mRNA shots, many of which are being fast-tracked and predicted to receive authorization in months rather than years. Moderna is working on a three-in-one shot for COVID, flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), and they seem to expect releasing it before clinical trials are finished

Pfizer quoted and relied on data from Israel when it sought approval from the FDA, and as it turns out, the Israeli government hid information about side effects. It didn’t even implement its surveillance system until a year after the shots rolled out, and when the data were analyzed, researchers concluded there were causative links between certain side effects and the jabs

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In the video above, Del Bigtree with The Highwire reviews how the precautionary principle and long-standing safety guidelines in medicine have been eliminated with the COVID shots, and how data showing harms are being ignored, suppressed and manipulated to hide the truth.

In recent months, no less than two Pfizer officials have bragged about moving vaccine science forward at a speed that virtually guarantees that proper scientific protocols will be abandoned.

In early October 2022, during a COVID hearing in the European Parliament, Dutch member Rob Roos questioned Pfizer’s president of international developed markets, Janine Small, about whether Pfizer had in fact tested and confirmed that their mRNA jab would prevent transmission prior to its rollout.¹

Small admitted that Pfizer never tested whether their jab would prevent transmission because they had to “move at the speed of science to understand what is happening in the market … and we had to do everything at risk.”

“We flew the aeroplane while we were still building it. We got creative — we couldn’t wait for data, we had to do so much ‘at risk.” ~ Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer vaccine R&D

Then, in November 2022, recently retired head of vaccine R&D at Pfizer, Kathrin Jansen, told an interviewer that “we flew the aeroplane while we were still building it.”²

As noted in that interview, Pfizer compressed its vaccine development timeline from 10 years to a mere nine months. Well, you cannot do that unless you cut certain corners and develop and test the product more or less simultaneously. In this case, human trials began even though the preliminary testing was extremely minimal. That’s what she’s talking about when she says they built the plane in midair.

They Did Everything at Your Risk

“We got creative — we couldn’t wait for data, we had to do so much ‘at risk,’” Jansen said. There are those words again — doing everything “at risk.” In other words, the risks were not part of the equation, and let’s be clear, the risk they’re referring to is the risk a person takes when they take the shot.

Pfizer’s primary focus was to create a shot that minimized the symptoms of infection, but aside from that, there was no time to assess side effects or long-term drawbacks of the technology, such as antibody-dependent enhancement, myocarditis, or spontaneous abortions.

This is probably why Pfizer and the other COVID jab makers all decided to eliminate the control groups long before the studies were even over. This way, side effects could be hidden, and we see the effects of that decision now.

Myocarditis, blood clots, lethal heart attacks, strokes, cancer and sudden death are all skyrocketing, but since there’s no official control group to compare with, those trends are written off as either normal or coincidental. You’ve probably seen that heart attacks are now blamed on everything from hot weather and cold showers to soil microbes in your garden, climate change and loud noises.

So, a more accurate statement would be that Pfizer did everything “at your risk.” They risk nothing. They get paid whether the shots work or not, and they have zero liability for injuries and deaths, financial or otherwise. The person who takes on all the risk is the one who takes the shot. They could lose their health, their career, everything they own and their very life.

Jansen admits “the mRNA platform wasn’t ready for prime time” when they decided to use it, and that there were stability and formulation issues, all of which were literally decided on the fly, often based on little or no data.

To her credit, Jansen stresses that this is “not a model for the future,” because “it’s not sustainable” to be working at warp speed all the time. Unfortunately, those who are continuing this work apparently disagree, because warp speed rollout with minimal or no testing is, in fact, the new norm already.

Warp Speed Is the New Norm

We know warp speed is the new norm because of a decision made by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this past summer. During its June 28, 2022, Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) meeting, they approved a bivalent COVID shot for fall 2022.³

With that vote, they sneaked in a whole new policy, a new framework, under which reformulated COVID shots will be treated as biologically similar to existing shots and therefore be allowed to skip clinical trials.

During that meeting, they were originally scheduled to vote on the Future Framework policy question of whether reformulated shots should be treated as new molecular entities subject to formal review. They never addressed that policy question and instead skipped right to the vote on a bivalent COVID shot for the fall.

By approving it, knowing there would be no time for testing and data gathering, they replaced the old evidence-based system through a sleight of hand. The bivalent shots received emergency use authorization (EUA) at the end of August 2022, based on the antibody levels in eight mice.

Moderna, which received EUA for its bivalent booster at the same time as Pfizer, also used mice to ascertain antibody responses, but has not disclosed the number of mice used.

So, clearly, we are still moving at warp speed, without regard for risk. And already, vaccine makers are readying to release other mRNA shots, many of which are being fast-tracked and predicted to receive authorization in months rather than years.

Other mRNA Approvals Expected With Little or No Data

For example, Moderna is working on a three-in-one shot for COVID, flu and RSV (respiratory syncytial virus), and they seem to fully expect releasing it before clinical trials are finished. As reported by CBC News:⁴

“Moderna is actively promoting a combined COVID-19, flu and RSV vaccine … But while a safe and effective vaccine would be welcome as Canada faces a surge in pediatric RSV cases, stubbornly high COVID hospitalizations and deaths and steeply rising flu cases, the pharmaceutical company hasn’t released data to support the vaccine’s safety or efficacy …

Moderna’s decision to promote its vaccine before completing Phase 3 clinical trials — in which the vaccine would be tested on a larger group as part of a randomized, double-blind study — is controversial. It’s also raised concerns from vaccine researchers and infectious diseases experts about the motivations behind prematurely marketing the shot.

‘There’s still more questions than answers, obviously, with releases like this that come from companies without accompanying data,’ said Matthew Miller, a vaccine researcher and associate professor of infectious diseases and immunology at McMaster University.

‘I think we need to be really cautious. We have no data on safety, no data on effectiveness or efficacy or age groups. How would you handle updating various components of that vaccine? Lots and lots of questions’ …

Developing a vaccine for RSV, let alone combining one with COVID and flu, is no small feat — and the complications around dosing, timing and age considerations could pose major challenges for the vaccine maker down the road.

‘Having a single formulation increases the complexity of updating that formulation annually,’ said Miller … ‘So now, instead of dealing with four flu strains, you’re adding in RSV and COVID and having a combined shot might actually be more complex in some ways than having separate formulations that are co-administered at the same time.’”

In addition to fast-tracking mRNA injections for a variety of respiratory viruses, vaccine makers are also loading their pipelines with mRNA shots for diseases such as cancer, multiple sclerosis (MS), birth defects and rarer diseases.

Curiously, while mRNA shots are being hailed as the new and improved answer for every ill, Moderna president Stephen Hoge and chief technical officer Juan Andres cashed out hundreds of millions of their stock options earlier this year,⁵ which seems odd if everything is going well and no future trouble is expected.

Government and Corporate Interests Have Become One

Aiding and abetting the circumvention of the precautionary principle are contract research firms that run medical research trials for drug companies and federal agencies alike, thereby giving the drug companies the inside track on drug approvals.^6,7

As noted by investigative journalist Paul Thacker, the COVID pandemic has erased the boundaries between corporate interests and those of our government, and with that, there are few left to trust.

“Talk about foxes guarding the henhouse,” Thacker writes.⁸ “Or, maybe, one fox raising and caring for the hens, another alerting the farmer when it’s time for dinner — and a third setting the farmhouse table for a feast.

That is the highly murky and incredibly profitable world of contract research organizations (CROs), private companies that specialize in recruiting patients and running medical research trials.

In the last handful of years, the [FDA] contracted a CRO to work with the National Institutes of Health to determine how companies run some drug trials; Pfizer hired a CRO to run their COVID-19 vaccine trial; a CRO calmed fears about the safety of AstraZeneca’s COVID-19 vaccine after the FDA and NIH raised safety data concerns.

And just a few weeks back the federal government awarded a CRO a contract to run an anthrax vaccine trial to prepare for a biological attack. And here’s the funny thing. All this overlapping and interconnected corporate and government work involves the exact same CRO: ICON.”

Thacker contacted the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), asking them to explain “how ICON can run clinical trials for federal agencies while also helping private companies gain federal approval,” and “what HHS does to ensure ICON’s federal work benefits taxpayers and not their private clients.”

After initially getting the runaround he was eventually told to ask ICON to explain their “internal firewalls.” The HHS spokesperson did promise to send Thacker “language HHS puts in contracts to ensure research organizations like ICON protect against conflicts of interest,” but he never did. Make of that what you will.

FDA Authorized Pfizer Jab Based on Questionable Data

"The Ministry of Health in Israel is actively hiding critical information abt side effects from the Israeli public…Why is that important?…[In] all the approval stages of the FDA…Pfizer is quoting & relying on data from Israel." —MIT professor Retsef Levi

👇PREMIERE 7:30pm ET! pic.twitter.com/KJSRbnNAeW

— Jan Jekielek (@JanJekielek) November 15, 2022

Making an already dangerous situation worse, vaccine companies and governments are working overtime to hide and suppress data showing the COVID jabs are a medical disaster, and have hidden unfavorable data from the very beginning. The basic data gathering has also been shockingly lax across the world, considering the stakes.

As noted by MIT professor Retsef Levi in The Epoch Times interview above,^9,10 Pfizer quoted and relied on data from Israel when it sought approval from the FDA, and as it turns out, the Israeli government hid information about side effects.

Even more surprising, Levi claims the Israeli government lied when it said it had a robust system for monitoring and tracking side effects from the start. That surveillance system wasn’t launched until a year after the rollout of the shots, Levi says. A research team was eventually hired to analyze the data, and their findings were disconcerting.

Unlike what was told to the public, many of the side effects were both common and long-lasting. The Ministry of Health was advised to think in terms of “medical-legal” when communicating this to the public, as the Ministry might be held liable for telling the public side effects were rare and of short duration.

In other words, they were informed they’d grossly misinformed the public and could be held accountable for injuries. The Ministry’s solution? Fire the research team and alter the report’s data and conclusions.

In the interview, Levi explains how some of the data manipulation was done. For example, they massively lowered the number of post-jab menstrual irregularities by counting both women and men. You don’t need to be a scientist to realize that by counting men, who cannot menstruate, you end up with a wild misrepresentation of the incidence of menstrual irregularities.

Most egregious of all, the Ministry hid the fact that the research team found clear evidence of causality, as patients, when rechallenged with another dose, would experience a resurgence of symptoms and/or a worsening of symptoms. Adding insult to injury, even though the Ministry knows exactly who these patients are, they have not reached out to help them medically or compensate them for injuries that have been clearly linked to the shots.

Excess Death Rates Continue to Climb

Mortality statistics also reveal we’ve been sold a sack of lies. In the video above, nurse instructor John Campbell, Ph.D., reviews some of the latest excess death statistics from the U.K., which show that, in October 2022, the average weekly excess death rate was 1,564.

In 2020, the average weekly excess death rate was a mere 315, and in 2021 it was 1,322. For the week ending October 21, 2022, the excess mortality was 1,822, which is 15.7% above the five-year average.

So, there are now far more non-COVID deaths than there were COVID deaths during the height of the pandemic, before there were any COVID jabs. In particular, data from the King’s Fund show excess deaths from cardiovascular disease and diabetes are mounting.¹¹

Yet, while the number of people dying were a media obsession during 2020 and 2021, now that the death toll is far greater than what we saw at any point during the pandemic, mainstream media remain quiet, and seem completely uninterested in finding out why people are dying at historically unprecedented rates.

Autumn Booster Campaigns Leave Death in Its Wake

The Daily Sceptic also reported striking parallels between the autumn booster campaign, specifically, and excess deaths in the U.K.:¹²

“Potential new support for the role of the vaccines [in excess non-COVID deaths] can be seen in the chart below. I have plotted the autumn vaccine doses in the over-75s (the age group which makes up the large majority of deaths) and excess non-COVID death occurrences (in red), revealing a striking correlation … COVID death occurrences (in blue), on the other hand, rise and peak several weeks later.

… [The] Scottish Unity Edinburgh Group sent me this chart showing a similar correlation in Scotland between deaths and the autumn booster rollout.”

New Zealand Booster Campaign Linked to Excess Deaths

Similarly, an earlier study^13,14,15 published June 28, 2022, found that, in New Zealand, the age groups that were most likely to have received a COVID booster in the winter of 2021 had 7% to 10% more excess deaths than age groups that were ineligible for boosters. The graph below illustrates how the rise in excess mortality coincided with booster uptake. According to the study’s author, economics professor John Gibson:¹⁶

“The results suggest 16 … excess deaths per 100,000 booster doses, amounting to over 400 excess deaths in New Zealand given the booster doses administered to date. If this rate of excess deaths is extrapolated to other countries, it amounts to over 300,000 excess deaths worldwide …

The ratio of vaccine risk to benefits likely has swung more towards risk than during the original randomized trials, due to dose-dependent adverse events and to fixation of immune responses on a variant no longer circulating.”

I, for one, am not surprised by these kinds of statistics, and I don’t think vaccine makers are either. When you take off in an unfinished plane, crashing is to be expected because, in the real world, you cannot build planes in midair. Likewise, in the real world, you have to do extensive, long-term testing, starting in animals, to be sure a drug is safe. The concept of fast-tracking has been proven a dangerous failure. How long will it take before government and industry admit it?

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Notes

¹ Twitter Rob Roos October 11, 2022

² Nature November 11, 2022

³ The Defender June 29, 2022

⁴ CBC November 12, 2022

⁵ CNBC March 10, 2022

^6, 8 Disinformation Chronicle November 1, 2022

⁷ Twitter Paul Thacker November 4, 2022

⁹ Twitter Jan Jekielek November 15, 2022

¹⁰ The Epoch Times Retsef Levi Interview

¹¹ Telegraph October 29, 2022

¹² The Daily Sceptic November 10, 2022

¹³ EconPapers Rollout of COVID-19 Booster Vaccines Is Associated With Rising Excess Mortality in New Zealand

¹⁴ Clark County Today July 18, 2022

^15, 16 The Expose July 7, 2022

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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During the pandemic, several doctors in the Canadian province of British Columbia (BC) hit the headlines for opposing Covid measures. State-sanctioned medical authorities responded by warning physicians that if they “put the public at risk with misinformation,” they may face investigations and regulatory action. Now, just 18 months later, these threats from medical authorities have evolved into a sweeping piece of legislation that includes two-year jail sentences for doctors who are deemed to be spreading certain types of “false or misleading information.”

The new legislation, Bill 36 — Health Professions and Occupations Act (HPOA), was approved by the legislature last Thursday and immediately received Royal Assent. A Cabinet order will determine when it comes into force.

According to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, a non-partisan, non-profit organization that defends the freedoms of Canadians, the bill will permit BC’s Health Minister to appoint College Boards who have the power to enforce many of the bill’s provisions. The bill also gives the Health Minister powers to enforce some provisions.

These combined powers can be used to jail, fine, and suspend doctors who are deemed to have spread certain types of “false or misleading information to patients or the public” and force doctors to get vaccinated as a condition of being eligible to practice. These powers are outlined in sections 259, 514, 518, 506, 511, and 200.

You can see the full text of Bill 36 here.

Powers to suspend and impose limits on health practitioners

Section 259 (“Summary protection orders”) states that health practitioners can be suspended or have limits imposed on their practice authority if they provide “false or misleading information to patients or the public” and it’s deemed that “a person who acts on the information is significant risk of harm” or providing the information is deemed to be a “health hazard” under the Public Health Act.

The Public Health Act classifies any activity that “is likely to interfere, with the suppression of infectious agents or hazardous agents” as a health hazard. This definition is broad and could easily be applied to criticism of vaccines, masks, lockdowns, thermal surveillance, lateral flow tests, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, antibody tests, and any other measures that authorities claim are necessary to stop the spread of Covid or another infectious disease.

Bill 36 also doesn’t define “false or misleading information” which raises the possibility that doctors could be suspended for sharing something that challenges the current narrative and later turns out to be true.

During the pandemic, multiple statements that were branded false later turned out to be true, such as those related to vaccines. Initially, high-ranking public health officials praised the purported 90% Covid-19 vaccine efficacy rate and said the vaccine will protect against the delta variant. Big Tech platforms made questioning the effectiveness of the vaccine a bannable offense. Yet this year, high-ranking health officials have reversed their stance and admitted that they “knew” Covid-19 vaccines wouldn’t prevent infection.

Powers to jail and fine health practitioners

Section 514 (“Offences”) and Section 518 (“Penalties”) permit fines of up $200,000 per individual or $500,000 per company and prison terms of up to two years for those that “knowingly” disclose information that contravenes a provision of Bill 36.

This seemingly suggests that someone who “knowingly” violate’s Bill 36’s rules on false or misleading information can be jailed or fined.

Just like the term “false or misleading information,” the term “knowingly” isn’t defined in Bill 36 and there’s no methodology or test in the bill that describes how courts will determine whether someone knowingly violated the rules.

Powers to perform warrantless search and seizures

Section 506 (“Search and seizure order”) permits judges to authorize a person to search and seize items from a health practitioners’ premises on the pre-crime-esque premise that the target will “likely contravene” a provision of Bill 36.

And section 511 (“Warrantless search”) allows those petitioning the judge for a search and seizure order to perform warrantless searches if they deem there to be “grounds for a search and seizure order” and “the delay necessary to obtain the order would result in the loss or destruction of evidence.” Those performing warrantless searches are also allowed to prevent the lawful owner of the premises from entering and seize items if they deem there to be “reasonable grounds” for it.

This seemingly means that if a health practitioner is deemed to be “likely” to break the bill’s false or misleading information rules or “likely” to push back against the bill’s mandatory vaccine provisions, even when they haven’t actually done any of these things, they could have their premises searched and items seized without a warrant if the person performing the search decides that there are grounds and that evidence could be destroyed.

Powers to force health practitioners to get vaccinated

Section 200 (“Eligibility to practise”) allows the Health Minister to introduce regulations that make being “vaccinated against specified transmissible illnesses” a condition of eligibility to practice. This means that doctors could be forced to get the Covid vaccine and any other vaccines specified by the Health Minister in order to continue practicing.

“An end run around democratic checks and balances”

Bill 36 has been blasted by legal groups and political parties.

“The legislation represents an end run around democratic checks and balances,” the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms wrote in a statement on Bill 36.

BC lawyer Charlene Le Beau added:

“The enactment of Bill 36 would evidence a further erosion of the rights and freedoms our Charter is supposed to protect, particularly individual liberty. As Aristotle posited, ‘The basis of a democratic state is liberty.’”

David Leis, the vice president of engagement and development at the public policy think tank the Frontier Centre for Public Policy, called the bill “a full-frontal assault on the professional integrity and freedom of the health-care professions” and said the bill is “entirely inappropriate.”

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Senator Rand Paul asserted Thursday that Anthony Fauci is directly responsible for funding dangerous research that likely killed millions of people, and that he “won’t get away.”

“Likely there is no public health figure who has made a greater error in judgement than Dr Fauci,” Paul declared in a Fox News appearance, adding “the error of judgement was to fund gain of function research in a totalitarian country.”

Fauci funded “research that allowed them to create super viruses, that in all likelihood leaked into the public and caused seven million people to die,” Paul declared.

“This is right up there with decisions, some of them malevolent or military to kill millions of people,” The Senator further urged.

Watch:

The Senator made the comments after Fauci appeared in a fawning Washington Post interview, where he was labeled a “hero,” complained about being a victim, and couldn’t think of anything he did wrong.

Fauci: "I didn’t do a study on it, but from what I’m seeing … the people who are spreading misinformation & disinformation, seem to be relentless … It’s almost as if we’re outgunned by the people who are spreading disinformation." pic.twitter.com/Pb1Pei7C7x

— Tom Elliott (@tomselliott) December 1, 2022

Paul further noted that “It goes to judgement, talk about errors, you think he might apologise to the world… to support that kind of research then look the other way and say nothing to see here, and to cover it up.”

“For the last two years he’s been covering his tracks, but we’ve caught him red handed and he won’t get away,” Paul asserted, adding “historically [Fauci] will be remembered for one of the worst judgments in the history of modern medicine.”

Paul also commented on efforts he is leading to overturn the Biden Administration’s COVID vaccine mandate for military personnel.

“They deserve to have their religious freedom, as well as their medical choices and freedom to decide what goes into their body,” Paul noted.

He continued,

“We know this, and this is a scientific fact, the vaccine does not prevent you from getting an infection, it doesn’t prevent you from transmitting an infection, and for young people there isn’t significant evidence to show that it reduces the severity or hospitalisation.”

“The military has become so ‘woke’ and they’re demanding you get a vaccine that you don’t need, so something’s got to change,” the Senator further urged.

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In July 2022, the Canadian government announced its intention to reduce “emissions from the application of fertilizers by 30 percent from 2020 levels by 2030.” In the previous month, the government of the Netherlands publicly stated that it would implement measures designed to lower “nitrogen pollution some areas by up to 70 percent by 2030,” in order to meet the stipulations of the European “Green Deal,” which aims to “make the EU’s climate, energy, transport and taxation policies fit for reducing net greenhouse gas emissions by at least 55 percent by 2030, compared to 1990 levels.”

In response, Dutch “farm and agriculture organizations said the targets were not realistic and called for a protest,” which led farmers and their supporters to rise up across the country. The artificially designed Green Deal is one of the goals of Agenda 2030, which was adopted by 193 member states of the United Nations (UN) in 2015.

In addition to the UN, Agenda 2030 is also supported by a number of other international organizations and institutions, including the European Union, the World Economic Forum (WEF), and the Bretton Woods Institutions, which consist of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Trade Organization (WTO). It is also endorsed by some of the most powerful agrichemical multinational corporations in the world, such as BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Syngenta, which, together, control more than 75 percent of the global market for farm inputs. In recent years, “the acquisition of Syngenta by ChemChina, and the merger of Bayer and Monsanto” have “reshaped the global seed industry.” Additionally, “DuPont de Nemours was formed by the merger of Dow Chemical and DuPont in 2017.” However, “within 18 months of the merger the company was split into three publicly traded companies with focuses on the following: agriculture with Corteva, materials science with Dow and specialty products with DuPont.”

In recent years, all of these corporations have issued statements suggesting that the agriculture sector will undergo major changes over the upcoming three decades, and that they are committed to doing their parts to accelerate the transition to so called green policies. Accordingly, they advocate for governments to redirect public finance away from conventional farming and toward regenerative agriculture and alternative protein sources, including insect farming and lab-grown meats.

Moreover, BASF, Syngenta and Bayer are members of “the European Carbon+ Farming Coalition,” which includes a number of “organizations and stakeholders along the food value chain,” such as “COPA-COGECA, Crop In, European Conservation Agriculture Federation (ECAF), European Institute of Innovation & Technology (EIT) Food, HERO, Planet Labs,” “Swiss Re, University of Glasgow, Yara, Zurich and the World Economic Forum.” Originally, this “coalition emerged as a partnership between the World Economic Forum’s 100 Million Farmers platform and its CEO Action Group for the European Green Deal.”

Its objective is to “decarbonise the European food system” by accelerating the transformation of farming and agricultural practices. More specifically, the European Carbon+ Farming Coalition seeks to attain “zero gross expansion in the area of land under cultivation for food production by 2025, reduction in total territories used for livestock of about one-third by 2030, and a consequent freeing up of nearly 500 million hectares of land for natural ecosystem restoration by the same date.” According to the WEF, in addition to benefitting the environment, such changes will also be economically advantageous, as “changing the way we produce and consume food could create USD 4.5 trillion a year in new business opportunities.”

In order to accelerate the transformation of farming over the coming decades, BASF calls for requiring “farmers to decrease their environmental impact” by reducing “CO2 emissions per ton of crop by 30 percent,” and applying “digital technologies to more than 400 million hectares of farmland.” BASF also supports the wide use of a number of new products, including “nitrogen management products,” herbicides, “new crop varieties,” “biological inoculants and innovative digital solutions,” so as to make farmers “more carbon efficient and resilient to volatile weather conditions.” It is estimated that such changes would “contribute significantly to the BASF Group target of €22 billion in sales by 2025.”

Meanwhile, Syngenta, the world’s second-largest agrochemical enterprise (after Bayer), which is owned by a Chinese state-owned company called ChemChina, focuses on “carbon neutral agriculture” under the pretense of “combatting climate change.” More precisely, it supports “providing technologies, services, and training to farmers,” as well as the further development of new gene-edited seeds that would lower the emission of CO2. According to Syngenta, “gene-edited crops” will be widely used and cultivated across the globe “by 2050.”

This company also promotes “a transformation toward regenerative agriculture,” which is claimed to “lead to more food grown on less land; reduced agricultural greenhouse gas emissions; increased biodiversity; and enhanced soil health,” though there is scant scientific evidence or long-term data to back up these assertions. Nonetheless, Syngenta argues that the world needs “governments and media … to encourage widespread adoption” of regenerative practices by as many farmers as possible.

Bayer also advocates for regenerative agriculture to help “farmers significantly reduce the amount of greenhouse gas their operations emit, while also removing carbon from the atmosphere.” It further claims that it is necessary “to shift to a regenerative approach and make crops more resilient to climate impacts.” Additionally, much like Syngenta, Bayer supports the development of “new gene editing technologies” in order to reduce “the environmental footprint of global agriculture.” Looking ahead, Bayer foresees that, “in agriculture, biotechnology will be a critical enabler” that will be used to “feed the 10 billion people that will be on the planet by 2050 while at the same time fighting the impact of climate change.”

Similar to Bayer, BASF, and Syngenta, DuPont also seeks to contribute to decreasing “dependence on fossil fuels, and protecting life and the environment.” Its response primarily focuses on facilitating the production and consumption of alternative protein sources that can reproduce “the texture and appearance of meat fibers, and can be used to extend or replace meat or fish.” DuPont pointed out that “in 2016, Americans consumed about 26 kg of beef per capita, at least half of which was eaten in the form of a hamburger. Replacing just half of America’s burger meat with SUPRO® MAX protein,” which has a carbon footprint that is up to eighty times lower than dairy and meat proteins, is equivalent removing “more than 15 million mid-sized cars from the road.”

Some of the world’s most powerful multinational agrichemical corporations have benefitted immensely from international trade agreements that put their interests ahead of those of small- and medium-size farms, as well as the masses, when it comes to transforming the food and agriculture sectors. In particular, the World Trade Organization’s agreement on trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights (TRIPS), which was adopted in 1994, played a major role in destroying the livelihoods of many farmers, while proving lucrative to agrichemical giants like BASF, Bayer, Dow Chemical, DuPont, and Syngenta. This is mainly because TRIPS has allowed for the patenting of seeds and plants.

As a result, native herbs and plants in a number of different countries, many of which had previously been farmed for generations, became the sole properties of powerful agrichemical multinational corporations. After plants and herbs have been patented, local farmers are forbidden from engaging in the traditional and longstanding practices of saving and replanting their own seeds. Instead, they are required to pay the patent holding corporations for the same seeds that they had previously produced, saved, replanted, and exchanged at no cost.

Powerful agrichemical multinational corporations have also furthered their own interests and agendas by exerting unprecedented influence over research and development in the food industry, while ignoring any findings demonstrating that their business practices were harmful to the natural environment. In particular, some of these major agrichemical corporations have focused their efforts and resources on studying “genetically modified organisms (GMOs), the creation of stronger pesticides and synthetic fertilizers, and defending the performance of these products.”

They have also supported the expansion of GMO crops with the knowledge that their cultivation involves “the application of larger quantities” of “synthetic fertilizers and pesticides,” which has led to large amounts of toxic chemicals contaminating soil and water sources. Basically, these agrichemical corporations have been largely responsible for creating many of same environmental problems that they now claim need to be urgently solved through Agenda 2030.

There is a real possibility that the radical and large-scale transformations of the entire food industry and human eating habits being pushed by the social engineers of Agenda 2030 are leading the masses toward a dramatic decrease in living standards. Lessons from the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century revealed that it is very difficult to fix big mistakes attributed to the large-scale central planning of social engineers, because doing so often requires “major social transformation” or the “remodelling the whole of society,” which can result in widespread unforeseen consequences or events, major destructive outcomes, and “inconvenience to many people,” in the words of Karl R. Popper.

The intense and coordinated international effort to facilitate an artificially designed transformation of the global food industry, based on Agenda 2030, is a testimony to the fact that we are witnessing the pendulum of civilization swinging back in many advanced societies, where striving to achieve a comfortable life could rapidly be replaced by a struggle for bare necessities in a lower level of existence, which is not supposed to occur in advanced societies.

The masses need to be made to realize that the social engineers of Agenda 2030 are “false prophets,” who are misguiding them to the point where they will be “haunted by the specter of death from starvation.” This may well lead to the emergence of “irreconcilable dissensions within society,” whereby food riots, conflicts, and violence could inevitably “result in a complete disintegration of all societal bonds,” as Ludwig von Mises put it.

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This article was originally published on Mises Wire.

Birsen Filip holds a PhD in philosophy and master’s degrees in economics and philosophy. She has published numerous articles and chapters on a range of topics, including political philosophy, geo-politics, and the history of economic thought, with a focus on the Austrian School of Economics and the German Historical School of Economics.

She is the author of the upcoming book The Early History of Economics in the United States: The Influence of the German Historical School of Economics on Teaching and Theory (Routledge, 2022). She is also the author of The Rise of Neo-liberalism and the Decline of Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020).

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

“Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.”

Bertrand Russell (May 18, 1872–February 2, 1970) endures as one of humanity’s most lucid and luminous minds — an oracle of timeless wisdom on everything from what “the good life” really means to why “fruitful monotony” is essential for happiness to love, sex, and our moral superstitions.

In 1950, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for “his varied and significant writings in which he champions humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought.” On December 11 of that year, 78-year-old Russell took the podium in Stockholm to receive the grand accolade.

Later included in Nobel Writers on Writing (public library) — which also gave us Pearl S. Buck, the youngest woman to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, on art, writing, and the nature of creativity — his acceptance speech is one of the finest packets of human thought ever delivered from a stage.

Russell begins by considering the central motive driving human behavior:

All human activity is prompted by desire. There is a wholly fallacious theory advanced by some earnest moralists to the effect that it is possible to resist desire in the interests of duty and moral principle. I say this is fallacious, not because no man ever acts from a sense of duty, but because duty has no hold on him unless he desires to be dutiful. If you wish to know what men will do, you must know not only, or principally, their material circumstances, but rather the whole system of their desires with their relative strengths.

[…]

Man differs from other animals in one very important respect, and that is that he has some desires which are, so to speak, infinite, which can never be fully gratified, and which would keep him restless even in Paradise. The boa constrictor, when he has had an adequate meal, goes to sleep, and does not wake until he needs another meal. Human beings, for the most part, are not like this.

Illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen from ‘Homer for Young Readers,’ 1965. 

Russell points to four such infinite desires — acquisitiveness, rivalry, vanity, and love of power — and examines them in order:

Acquisitiveness — the wish to possess as much as possible of goods, or the title to goods — is a motive which, I suppose, has its origin in a combination of fear with the desire for necessaries. I once befriended two little girls from Estonia, who had narrowly escaped death from starvation in a famine. They lived in my family, and of course had plenty to eat. But they spent all their leisure visiting neighbouring farms and stealing potatoes, which they hoarded. Rockefeller, who in his infancy had experienced great poverty, spent his adult life in a similar manner.

[…]

However much you may acquire, you will always wish to acquire more; satiety is a dream which will always elude you.

In 1938, Henry Miller also articulated this fundamental driver in his brilliant meditation on how money became a human fixation. Decades later, modern psychologists would term this notion “the hedonic treadmill.” But for Russell, this elemental driver is eclipsed by an even stronger one — our propensity for rivalry:

The world would be a happier place than it is if acquisitiveness were always stronger than rivalry. But in fact, a great many men will cheerfully face impoverishment if they can thereby secure complete ruin for their rivals. Hence the present level of taxation.

Rivalry, he argues, is in turn upstaged by human narcissism. In a sentiment doubly poignant in the context of today’s social media, he observes:

Vanity is a motive of immense potency. Anyone who has much to do with children knows how they are constantly performing some antic, and saying “Look at me.” “Look at me” is one of the most fundamental desires of the human heart. It can take innumerable forms, from buffoonery to the pursuit of posthumous fame.

[…]

It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the influence of vanity throughout the range of human life, from the child of three to the potentate at whose frown the world trembles.

Illustration by Maurice Sendak for ‘Nutcracker’ by E.T.A. Hoffmann.

But the most potent of the four impulses, Russell argues, is the love of power:

Love of power is closely akin to vanity, but it is not by any means the same thing. What vanity needs for its satisfaction is glory, and it is easy to have glory without power… Many people prefer glory to power, but on the whole these people have less effect upon the course of events than those who prefer power to glory…

Power, like vanity, is insatiable. Nothing short of omnipotence could satisfy it completely. And as it is especially the vice of energetic men, the causal efficacy of love of power is out of all proportion to its frequency. It is, indeed, by far the strongest motive in the lives of important men.

[…]

Love of power is greatly increased by the experience of power, and this applies to petty power as well as to that of potentates.

Anyone who has ever agonized in the hands of a petty bureaucrat — something Hannah Arendt unforgettably censured as a special kind of violence — can attest to the veracity of this sentiment. Russell adds:

In any autocratic regime, the holders of power become increasingly tyrannical with experience of the delights that power can afford. Since power over human beings is shown in making them do what they would rather not do, the man who is actuated by love of power is more apt to inflict pain than to permit pleasure.

Illustration by Alice and Martin Provensen from ‘Homer for Young Readers,’ 1965.

But Russell, a thinker of exceptional sensitivity to nuance and to the dualities of which life is woven, cautions against dismissing the love of power as a wholesale negative driver — from the impulse to dominate the unknown, he points out, spring such desirables as the pursuit of knowledge and all scientific progress. He considers its fruitful manifestations:

It would be a complete mistake to decry love of power altogether as a motive. Whether you will be led by this motive to actions which are useful, or to actions which are pernicious, depends upon the social system, and upon your capacities. If your capacities are theoretical or technical, you will contribute to knowledge or technique, and, as a rule, your activity will be useful. If you are a politician you may be actuated by love of power, but as a rule this motive will join itself on to the desire to see some state of affairs realized which, for some reason, you prefer to the status quo.

Russell then turns to a set of secondary motives. Echoing his enduring ideas on the interplay of boredom and excitement in human life, he begins with the notion of love of excitement:

Human beings show their superiority to the brutes by their capacity for boredom, though I have sometimes thought, in examining the apes at the zoo, that they, perhaps, have the rudiments of this tiresome emotion. However that may be, experience shows that escape from boredom is one of the really powerful desires of almost all human beings.

He argues that this intoxicating love of excitement is only amplified by the sedentary nature of modern life, which has fractured the natural bond between body and mind. A century after Thoreau made his exquisite case against the sedentary lifestyle, Russell writes:

Our mental make-up is suited to a life of very severe physical labor. I used, when I was younger, to take my holidays walking. I would cover twenty-five miles a day, and when the evening came I had no need of anything to keep me from boredom, since the delight of sitting amply sufficed. But modern life cannot be conducted on these physically strenuous principles. A great deal of work is sedentary, and most manual work exercises only a few specialized muscles. When crowds assemble in Trafalgar Square to cheer to the echo an announcement that the government has decided to have them killed, they would not do so if they had all walked twenty-five miles that day. This cure for bellicosity is, however, impracticable, and if the human race is to survive — a thing which is, perhaps, undesirable — other means must be found for securing an innocent outlet for the unused physical energy that produces love of excitement… I have never heard of a war that proceeded from dance halls.

[…]

Civilized life has grown altogether too tame, and, if it is to be stable, it must provide harmless outlets for the impulses which our remote ancestors satisfied in hunting… I think every big town should contain artificial waterfalls that people could descend in very fragile canoes, and they should contain bathing pools full of mechanical sharks. Any person found advocating a preventive war should be condemned to two hours a day with these ingenious monsters.

More seriously, pains should be taken to provide constructive outlets for the love of excitement. Nothing in the world is more exciting than a moment of sudden discovery or invention, and many more people are capable of experiencing such moments than is sometimes thought.

Complement Nobel Writers on Writing with more excellent Nobel Prize acceptance speeches — William Faulkner on the artist as a booster of the human heart, Ernest Hemingway on writing and solitude, Alice Munro on the secret to telling a great story, and Saul Bellow on how literature ennobles the human spirit — then revisit Russell on immortality and why science is the key to democracy.

*

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A principle of infectious diseases is “antimicrobial stewardship” which involves choosing the right antibiotic for the right patient and never over-prescribing or blanket covering patients who don’t need treatment. 

Another principle is “narrowing the spectrum” of a drug once the organism is identified by culture or other methods.  These fundamental approaches to the use of antibiotics work to limit the problem of bacterial resistance and the development of “superbugs.”  Every year hospitals each produce their antibiogram or report of their common infections encountered and what antibiotics either are effective (organism is sensitive) or ineffective (organism is resistant).  In the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic these principles have been applied to the use of monoclonal antibodies and the process explains why various EUA products (e.g., bamlanivimab) were pulled from the market when they were understood to be no longer effective at neutralizing SARS-CoV-2.   This entire thought process has been thrown out the window for COVID-19 vaccines.  For 18 months the ancestral strain Wuhan Institute of Virology Spike protein was the featured antigen for Pfizer, Moderna, Janssen, AstraZeneca, and Novavax vaccines.  Within a few months, there was mounting evidence that SARS-CoV-2 easily mutated to escape the reach of antibodies generated by the vaccines which would apply to serious invasive illness (IgG and IgM).   Because the COVID-19 vaccines have never been demonstrated to neutralize SARS-CoV-2 in the nasopharynx, the only theoretical benefit would be for systemic disease.   It has now become apparent that nature has the upper hand over the vaccine manufacturers as SARS-CoV-2 has far greater alacrity.  Because replication can allow changes in genetic code that rapidly allow continued survival, SARS-CoV-2 enjoys a library of ~28k mutations of which ~4.5K are in the receptor binding domain of the Spike protein or the tip of the spear.

Wang R, Chen J, Hozumi Y, Yin C, Wei GW. Emerging Vaccine-Breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 Variants. ACS Infect Dis. 2022 Mar 11;8(3):546-556. doi: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.1c00557. Epub 2022 Feb 8. PMID: 35133792; PMCID: PMC8848511.

Wang and colleagues using detailed modeling techniques of the mutations prevalent in the more intensely vaccinated countries has shown indeed mass vaccination is backfiring and fueling more viral resistance to the limited antibody library that could be generated by the vaccines.[i]  Wang’s analysis suggests that future vaccine development against SARS-CoV-2 is hopeless.  The virus is simply too nimble and can manipulate the “binding free energy” between the RBD and its human target the ACE2 receptor.  This means the more vaccinations are delivered the greater the number of mutant stains and the longer the virus will propagate and extend the pandemic.  Thus, a key step in ending the pandemic will be termination of mass vaccination.  The virus doesn’t stop until mankind stops.

*

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Note

[i] Wang R, Chen J, Hozumi Y, Yin C, Wei GW. Emerging Vaccine-Breakthrough SARS-CoV-2 Variants. ACS Infect Dis. 2022 Mar 11;8(3):546-556. doi: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.1c00557. Epub 2022 Feb 8. PMID: 35133792; PMCID: PMC8848511.

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A private medical clinic has opened in Lucca, Italy that is devoted to caring for patients who have been injured by the experimental COVID-19 vaccines.

The clinic was opened by a group of doctors and health workers who were recently reinstated to their positions after newly-elected Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government removed discriminatory legislation that barred vaccine-free Italians from working in healthcare.

An Italian medical rights group celebrated the clinic as “helpful” and “welcoming,” but a left-wing political party from Tuscany has attempted to pressure the mayor of Lucca to publicly disavow the clinic seeking to help heal those suffering from COVID vaccine injuries.

The local Partito Democratico (Democratic Party) released a statement saying “we believe the mayor needs to take a position, and distance himself from what is happening on this front in our city.”

The statement was made even after the party admitted that the group who started the clinic did so with the intention of helping the vaccine-injured, and that the group also wanted doctors to have freedom of conscience protections when practicing medicine.

Italy has flipped the script on COVID restrictions since the election of Meloni, who has admitted that Italy had the “most restrictive anti-COVID measures in the entire Western world,” but was still “among the countries with the highest numbers of deaths and infections.”

She vowed that her government “will not replicate that pattern in any way,” promising to never  “limit fundamental freedoms.”

Under previous Prime Minister Mario Draghi, the then left-wing government had enacted severe measures against Italians who chose not to take the COVID jab, restricting them from many aspects of public life under the guise of the “Super Green Pass.”

Under the restrictions, all Italians were required to be jabbed or provide proof that they had previously recovered from COVID in order to work, and all those over 50 years old had to be vaccinated or they would be fined by the government on a monthly basis.

In response, Italians protested in massive numbers, and it is believed that support swelled for the populist Meloni as a result of her opposition to such measures.

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The Swiss Confederation usually imports electricity from France and Germany to keep the lights on over the winter, but this year neither country has any power to spare. Many French nuclear power plants are down after years of postponed maintenance, while in Germany we suffer from a superfluity of idle wind turbines and a (self-imposed) shortage of natural gas.

The Federal Council of Switzerland has therefore published draft legislation, which outlines four tiers of escalating measures to conserve electricity and avert potential blackouts. The first prescribes a lot of temperature restrictions for things like refrigerators and washing machines. The second includes more unusual rules, such as the demand that heating in clubs and discotheques “be set to the lowest level or switched off completely,” and that “streaming services … limit resolution of their content to standard definition.” The third foresees cutting business hours, banning the use of Blue Ray players and gaming computers, and also limiting the use of electric cars, which should be driven only when absolutely necessary. A fourth and final tier mandates closure of ski facilities, casinos, cinemas, theatre and the opera.

A lot of these rules look unenforceable, but they said the same thing about contact restrictions during the pandemic. It turns out that the state really can prevent you from socialising with people in your own home if it wants to, especially when there’s no shortage of prying neighbours eager to snitch.

Feasibility isn’t the point, though. It’s the optics here that are most astounding. Electric vehicles, which politicians have heavily subsidised as one of their primary policy responses to climate change, are just now crashing against that other great arm of the green agenda, namely renewable energy. You can’t drive everyone into ever greater dependence upon the electrical grid, while also orchestrating an energy transition to wind (which hardly blows in Germany, except in the north) and solar (which generates no meaningful power in the depths of the Central European winter). Gas from Russia was the magic ingredient that kept the whole renewables charade going, and we’re out of that now. There’s no way to cover up the failure; not even the green-friendly German media has any excuse or messaging angle here.

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After a terrorist attack in Istanbul killed six and wounded 81, Turkey retaliated, launching a fierce air campaign against targets it claimed to be Kurdish militias in northern Iraq and Syria supporting the PKK. Whether Erdogan will stop there remains unclear as he threatens Turkey’s fourth ground incursion into Northern Syria since 2016 – a threat he has made without follow through since May 2022. The U.S. force presence in Northeastern Syria has historically forced Turkey’s hand to tread lightly along the border. However, just last week, a Turkish airstrike landed within 300 meters of American positions, north of Hasakah. Luckily, no American troops were present at the time.

American forces in Syria are currently balancing on a tripwire, caught in a NATO ally’s crossfire. No matter how problematic of an ally Turkey may be, no country should risk conflict with an ally without a strong interest in doing so. Thus, the most recent near-miss begs the question: what is the U.S. interest in remaining in Syria for an eighth year? Just as in Afghanistan, the U.S. mission in Syria has distorted and morphed over the years from clear and limited to endless and unachievable. To remain is inexcusable.

U.S. forces have been stationed in Northeast Syria since 2015, training, arming, and supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a coalition of militias that includes the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG). The U.S. first intervened with the stated objective of eliminating ISIS’s territorial caliphate. Partnering with the SDF was always a means to this end, and it was achieved in 2019. While remnants may lurk in disparate pockets of Syria’s deserts, ISIS holds no territory and lacks the resources or capability to hold or retake territory.

Still, U.S. forces remain in Syria, dismissing their original goal and adopting the new objective of a so-called “enduring defeat” of ISIS. Of course, the reality is that those arguing for an “enduring defeat” are arguing for a perpetual U.S. occupation of Northeast Syria under a more palatable pseudonym. The war on terror, by nature, is not a war that could or would plausibly be won by military force alone. For every ISIS leader, there is another standing behind him.

Further, when defining an “enduring defeat,” advocates for staying in Syria also commit the sin of falsely conflating U.S. interests with those of its partner forces, mirroring America’s mistakes in its two-decade-long war in Afghanistan. After the United States defeated the Taliban government, it should have withdrawn from Afghanistan in 2002. Yet, American leaders continued to distort the original objective, staying for 19 years and leaving U.S. troops to fight and die for nation-building and democratization.

Policymakers fuel this misconception by continuing to mischaracterize the Kurds as U.S. allies. Wartime allies, such as the local partner forces used throughout the U.S. war on terror, are inherently temporary ones: U.S. obligations to them end after the mutual objective is achieved. As with most partnerships, the U.S.-Kurdish joint mission was never borne of benevolence, on either side. Instead, it was based on the existential threat that ISIS posed to SDF territory and the U.S. interest in eliminating ISIS’s capability to launch attacks against the U.S. homeland.

While one can support Kurdish independence movements, empathize with their desire for an autonomous state, or sympathize with the persecution they face at the hands of both the Syrian regime and the Turkish government, one can also admit that they are not U.S. ‘allies’ and their aims are not ours. Whether the United States withdraws tomorrow, in a year, or in a decade, the Kurds’ external threats will not disappear when the United States is no longer around to protect them forever. It may be difficult to stomach, but the United States would be wise to consider what comes after a withdrawal and seek other arbiters for the Kurds’ security.

While unsavory, the Syrian regime, which possesses a strong, self-proclaimed interest in maintaining Syria’s original borders, would likely provide the Kurds with the necessary protection and deny Turkey from any further incursions. In 2019, after President Trump green-lit Erdogan’s ground incursion, the Kurds were able to strike a deal with Damascus and halt further Turkish advances. Kurdish autonomy or democratic aspirations may not be achieved through such negotiations; however, the Kurds could likely argue for a status quo ante – regaining what they had before the civil war – as well as maintaining their self-defense capabilities in exchange for the regime’s protection.

One can easily sympathize with the Kurds and condemn Erdogan’s brutal campaign against them. Yet, the consequences of the United States remaining in Syria should not be overlooked or minimized. For an American to die three years after the objective was achieved, caught in the crossfire of a conflict it no longer possesses an interest in, would be indefensible. American servicemen and women should not be put at needless risk due to a policy driven more by inertia than interests.

In 2002, President George W. Bush described the history of conflict in Afghanistan as one of “initial success followed by long years of floundering and ultimate failure.” Unfortunately, despite thousands of Americans losing their lives in these endless wars in the Middle East, America appears to continue to have learned nothing.

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Natalie Armbruster is a research associate at Defense Priorities.

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***

Many scientists lobbying for the deregulation of agricultural biotechnology ‘new genomic techniques’ (NGTs) in the European Union have either direct or indirect interests in commercialising and marketing new genetically modified organisms (GMOs). They have patents or patent applications or other connections to the seed industry.  

That is the conclusion of a September 2022 investigatory report commissioned by the Greens/EFA in the European Parliament – Behind the smokescreen: Vested interests of EU scientists lobbying for GMO deregulation. These scientists will benefit financially or in terms of career development, either personally or through their organisations.

FOAM Organics Europe, an umbrella organisation for organic food and farming, notes that a group of 91 international scientists and policy experts have released a public statement opposing the use of the term ‘precision breeding’ to describe gene editing, on the grounds that it is “technically and scientifically inaccurate and therefore misleads parliament, regulators and the public” because gene editing is neither precise nor is it breeding.

FOAM quotes Claire Robinson, from industry watchdog GMWatch, who says:

“It is not only misleading but also dangerous, as deregulating these new techniques will have serious socio-economic consequences as well as potentially serious impacts on health and the environment.”

The European Court of Justice recognised this in 2018, ruling that organisms obtained with new genetic modification techniques must be regulated under the EU’s existing GMO laws. But there has been intense lobbying from the agriculture biotech industry to weaken the legislation: the industry had by late 2021 spent at least €36 million lobbying the EU.

The push for GMOs and their newer NGT versions is relentless – despite the risks and despite most of the public not wanting them. That is according to research by Pew Research Center conducted between October 2019 and March 2020. For instance, in Russia, 70% of the public regard GM foods as generally unsafe to eat. The figure is 62% in Italy, 58% in India and 57% in South Korea.

In reviewing research findings into public perceptions of GMOs, GMWatch concludes that many consumers do not want GM (including gene-edited) foods and a large majority want to see gene-edited foods assessed for safety and labelled.

The case for GM is weak, despite incessant industry PR about GM being necessary to feed the world.  GMWatch notes that GM crops do not increase intrinsic yield and, in some cases, they decrease it (noted in the book GMO Myths and Truths). Moreover, world hunger is not caused by a lack of agricultural productivity but by poverty and an inherently unjust globalised food system.

Yet, around the world, the industry’s drive to get GM crops into fields persists. In India, the country’s apex regulatory body recently sanctioned GM mustard for cultivation. This would be India’s first GM food crop.

This, despite a public interest litigation (PIL) before the Supreme Court to prevent cultivation and the widespread rejection of GM mustard by farmers’ organisations. Something not lost on Ashwani Mahajan, national co- convenor of Swadeshi Jagran Manch, a body that promotes self-reliance and associated with the country’s ruling BJP.

He states on Twitter:

“WHAT AN IRONY! Government is yet to find a respected farmer leader of repute to support GM Mustard and they say that they are bringing GM Mustard in farmers’ interests.”

Ashwani refers to a letter written by farmers leaders to PM Modi urging him to immediately put a stop to GM mustard.

The concerns set out in the letter by farmers’ leaders have been elucidated in the numerous affidavits as part of the GM mustard PIL before the Supreme Court (the online article Prominent Lawyer Prashant Bhushan Urges Indian Government to Stop Commercialisation of GM Mustard provides an overview of some of the key evidence).

The letter objects to the decision of the Genetic Engineering Appraisal Committee to approve the environmental release of GM HT Mustard, hybrid DHM-11 and its parental lines. These parental lines will be distributed to private and public sector researchers to develop other hybrids.

The farmers leaders say to PM Modi:

“The farmers are already in distress! This HT (herbicide-tolerant) mustard will further coerce them towards the usage of a deadly herbicide (glufosinate) which will only benefit large agro-chemical corporations like Bayer, the producer of this herbicide. Your Ministry’s regulators have made various ‘claims’ in favour of the release of DHM-11, all of which lack logic or science.”

The letter states that independent scientists have exposed claims about yield increases through GM HT mustard to be hollow and unfounded. Data has been rigged and manipulated and protocols have been severely compromised:

“It is unscientific that the Government of India and its regulators are parroting the false claims of the crop developers… yields are going to decline if this GM mustard is approved – that is because this GM mustard is a low-yielder compared to other non-GM varieties and hybrids in the market.”

It is often stated that this GM mustard is an Indian creation. But the letter makes it clear it is a Bayer construct, a patented technology of Bayer Crop Science, and this has been concealed from the people of India.

Independent experts who have looked into the biosafety data submitted by the crop developer at Delhi University have clearly pointed out that GM mustard has not been tested rigorously and adequately and has never been tested as a herbicide tolerant crop.

The farmers’ leaders say:

“What is also important to note is that glufosinate is a dangerous herbicide, like glyphosate. It is irresponsible for the regulatory body to recommend environmental release, and then ask for testing to be done post-environmental release, knowing fully well that GM technology is a living technology, irreversible and uncontrollable.”

Supporters of GM mustard say it will help reduce the edible oil import bill of India. But India is nearly self-sufficient when it comes to mustard demand and supply. The letter also discusses adverse trade implications of allowing GMOs to contaminate India’s food supply.

PM Modi is also made aware that GM crops like DHM-11 will contaminate neighbouring crops by outcrossing. He is asked: How will the purity of seeds and crops be maintained and protect organic certification? And given that GM Mustard is herbicide tolerant, there is the strong possibility that farmers will end up on a financially costly health- and environment-damaging chemical treadmill.

The letter states that GM technology is unproven and heavily dependent on agro-chemicals. It says GM crops will be an unnecessary addition of pressure into a system that is already squeezing the farmer dry, adding to the riskiness in farming.

Moreover:

“GM crops clearly are a relinquishment of our sovereignty to corporate interests that will threaten our food supply and our ability to control our own food chain.”

India is a centre for diversity for mustard and several high-level official committees have time and time again recommended against transgenic technologies in crops for which the country is the centre of origin or centre of diversity.

The letter concludes with the warning:

“If the Government of India does not put the interests of ordinary citizens like us in policy-making around such hazardous technologies, we will be forced to step up our struggles to protect our interests.”

Such action is necessary because farmers and the public are rejecting GMOs but compromised scientists and policy makers are promoting a risky technology with unproven need to help boost industry profit by facilitating market capture and the displacement of indigenous systems of production.

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

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

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

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

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A draft of the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) includes billions in military aid for Taiwan, but Congress isn’t sure if the funds will be approved, Defense News reported on Thursday.

The funding includes $10 billion in the State Department’s Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program over five years, giving Taiwan $2 billion each year until 2027. It also includes $1 billion in annual presidential drawdown authority, which would allow the US to send Taiwan arms directly from US military stockpiles, the most common method the US is using to arm Taiwan.

While the funding for Taiwan is included in NDAA, members of Congress aren’t sure if it will get past the appropriations committees. Lawmakers say that in order to get the funds for Taiwan, cuts need to be made elsewhere and Democratic appropriators aren’t sure if they want to do that.

Democrats are particularly concerned about cutting the State Department’s budget to fit in the FMF for Taiwan, and it’s not clear if they would be willing to increase the department’s top line.

The State Department’s 2022 budget was $55 billion, including $6 billion for FMF, which Taiwan does not yet receive. The plan to give the island $2 billion in FMF would make it the second-highest recipient of the program behind Israel, which receives $3.3 billion in FMF each year.

But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are keen to begin unprecedented military aid for Taiwan, which will be a highly provocative move toward China, and will likely find a way. The Washington Post first reported the plan to give Taiwan $3 billion in annual military aid and cited congressional aides who said if the funds aren’t appropriated, the White House could ask Congress to approve the aid as emergency funding as it has been doing for Ukraine.

The $10 billion in FMF is an effort to incorporate into the NDAA a piece of legislation known as the Taiwan Policy Act. The bill was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee back in September and included $6.5 billion in FMF, which was raised to $10 billion.

The effort to arm Taiwan comes as China has been warning the US against increasing support for the island. Before voting on the Taiwan Policy Act, Sen. Mitt Romney (R-UT) recognized how China would view the legislation. “We’re doing something that’s highly provocative and bellicose,” he said before voting in favor of the bill.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

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Heading into its tenth month, the war in Ukraine, and the resulting political, social and economic upheavals brought about by Russia’s illegal invasion, have given rise to a narrative in Washington notable both for its ferocity and unanimity. 

A coterie of neoconservative and liberal interventionist ‘thought-leaders’ with a direct line to the Biden National Security Council have ruled as out-of-bounds views which take into account the role the United States and NATO, or even Ukraine itself, may have played in bringing about the current crisis. Such views have been deemed largely irrelevant to what is seen as a global battle, in which Ukraine is currently the most important front, between an alliance of global authoritarians on the one hand (Russia, China, Iran) and the forces of freedom and democracy (Ukraine, the U.S., NATO) on the other.

The trouble with much of what passes for informed analysis on the current state of affairs in Ukraine is that it is clouded by what the Biden administration and its eager servants in the media wish to be true, rather than by what is actually true. That, as a recent Quincy Institute panel on the Global South demonstrated, enormous swathes of the world outside of Europe and the Anglophone North Atlantic do not share the NATO-centric view of Russian aggression seems rarely, if ever, taken into account by Washington’s foreign policy “Blob.” Yet, as the journalist and grand strategist Walter Lippmann once observed, “Where all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

Venturing into this contentious territory are three authors who, as Lippmann once did, dissent from the new Cold War orthodoxy. Each of the three books under review helps to illuminate different aspects of the current war and the concomitant crisis in relations between Russia and the West.

A too often overlooked (or ignored) cause of the cycle of endless tragedy which characterizes Ukraine’s post-Cold War trajectory is Ukrainian nationalism. It didn’t have to be this way. At the end of the first Cold War, President George H.W. Bush traveled to Kiev in 1991 and warned that the U.S. would:

…not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism. They will not aid those who promote a suicidal nationalism based upon ethnic hatred.”

But Bush, who lost his bid for reelection the following year, ended up being ignored. And in the intervening three decades, Ukraine’s domestic politics have been trapped in a seemingly endless and tragic cycle of revolution and recrimination.

In The Tragedy of Ukraine, What Classical Greek Tragedy Can Teach Us About Conflict Resolution (De Gruyter, 2023), scholar Nicolai N. Petro posits that the cycle owes itself to the “lack of meaningful dialogue between Galicia and Donbass, the cultural heartlands of Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking Ukraine” which “runs through Ukrainian history like a red skein.”

As Petro sees it,

“Such a dialog will be possible only if Russophone Ukrainians are embraced as true Ukrainians and not treated as potential traitors within their own country. Ukraine’s ability to break the cycle of tragedy will ultimately depend on this.”

The solution offered by Petro, to apply to the Ukraine crisis the lessons handed down to us by the ancient Greek tragedians, is timely, original, and most of all, wise. As Petro puts it, “In the centuries since the fall of Athens, Greek tragedy has continued to be a source of inspiration for…all the humanities, but its most important function – that of sparking dialogue among citizens on civic values and behavior – has been all but forgotten.” Petro believes that efforts, such as the Minsk protocols and the National Platform for Reconciliation and Unity, failed to bring about peace to Ukraine because they “did not include any mechanisms for fostering social healing among Ukrainians themselves. That is why a greater awareness of classical Greek tragedy,  which saw social healing as one of its core therapeutic functions, can be so valuable for Ukraine.”

And so, if Petro provides us with a lens from antiquity with which to view the Ukraine crisis, Hall Gardner’s Toward an Alternative Transatlantic Strategy (Foundation Perspective and Innovation, 2022), provides us with a valuable critique from present-day Europe. Gardner, a professor of international relations at the American University of Paris,  believes that the Biden administration’s policy of trying to simultaneously “cooperate” and “constrain” peer rivals, notably Russia and China (a policy that Gardner calls “constrainment”), is misguided. As he points out, “the effort to find common interests with rival states is taking place in a context in which those ‘intersecting interests’ are essentially American-defined priorities and not necessarily major priority for Russia, China or for other rivals and allies.”

The way Gardner sees it, the best way forward for the West is through an equitable partnership between Europe and the United States which must replace Washington’s rule by diktat. Whether the war in Ukraine will hasten or delay such a development is anyone’s guess. But Gardner’s offering is timely given the rift that has opened up between the Biden Administration and its European allies in recent weeks. “The fact is,” an anonymous senior European official told Politico  last week, “if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons.”

Yet given the chaos and, yes, tragedy now engulfing Ukraine, policymakers across the West might do well to reflect on how we got to this point in the first place. In How The West Brought War To Ukraine (Siland Press, 2022), Dr. Benjamin Abelow, a nuclear arms activist and graduate of Yale Medical School, gives a concise, thorough chronology of U.S. policy toward Russia over the past 30 years.

According to Abelow, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, if seen through the prism of our own demands for a hemispheric sphere of influence via the Monroe Doctrine, is not necessarily the expression of “unbridled expansionism” on the part of  “a malevolent Russian leader.” It is instead  “a violent and destructive reaction to misguided Western policies.” Abelow succeeds in prompting the reader to question the regnant Western narrative of the conflict and, in so doing, helps point the way towards what a negotiated settlement might look like.

In the end, Western policymakers would do well to take seriously the advice offered by the aforementioned authors. Whether or not they will do so remains, alas, an open question.

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Libya’s National Oil Corporation (NOC) agreed last month for BP to begin drilling for and producing natural gas in a major project off the north African country’s coast.

The UK corporation, whose board of directors includes former MI6 chief Sir John Sawers, controls exploration areas in Libya nearly three times the size of Wales.

For a long time, British officials have sought to profit from oil in Libya, which contains 48 billion barrels of reserves – the largest oil resources in Africa, accounting for 3% of the world total.

BP is one of the few international oil and gas companies with exploration and production permits in Libya. Muammar Gaddafi nationalized its assets in Libya shortly after seizing power in a 1969 coup that called into question the entire British position in the country and region.

Following years of tensions between the two countries, Prime Minister Tony Blair met Gaddafi in 2004 and struck the so-called “Deal in the Desert,” which included a $900 million exploration and production agreement between BP and Libya’s NOC.

BP re-entered the country in 2007, but its operations were halted by the 2011 NATO-backed aggression on the country, resulting in ousting Gaddafi and later killing him.

BP operations resumed after the signing of a memorandum of understanding in 2018 between the NOC and Eni, the Italian oil major, to resume exploration, with Eni as the oil field operator. BP CEO Bob Dudley hailed the agreement as an important step “toward returning to our work in Libya.”

The $8 billion BP-ENI project includes two exploration areas, one onshore in the Ghadames basin and one offshore in the Sirte basin, totaling approximately 54,000 km2. The Sirte basin concession alone encompasses an area larger than Belgium.

The UK’s other oil major, Shell, is also “preparing to return as a major player” in Libya, according to its statement in a confidential document. After putting its Libyan operations on hold in 2012, the corporation is now planning to explore new oil and gas fields in several blocks.

Oil bribery

In September of last year, a third British company, Petrofac, which provides engineering services to oil operations, was awarded a $100 million contract to help develop the Erawin oil field in Libya’s deep southwest.

Petrofac was at the time under investigation for bribery by the UK’s Serious Fraud Office (SFO). One of its executives, global head of sales David Lufkin, had already pleaded guilty in 2019 to 11 counts of bribery.

The SFO convicted and fined Petrofac on seven counts of bribery between 2011 and 2017 in the month following the award of the Libya contract.

The company pleaded guilty to using agents to bribe officials to the tune of £32 million in order to win oil contracts in Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

“A key feature of the case,” the SFO noted, “was the complex and deliberately opaque methods used by these senior executives to pay agents across borders, disguising payments through sub-contractors, creating fake contracts for fictitious services and, in some cases, passing bribes through more than one agent and one country, to disguise their actions.”

It works with BP in several countries around the world, including Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Oman, and in the North Sea.

Backed by UK government

All three British firms re-entering Libya have close ties to the British government. During some of the years when Petrofac paid bribes, the company was led by Ayman Asfari, who donated nearly £800,000 to the Conservative Party between 2009 and 2017.

David Cameron appointed Asfari, who is now a non-executive director of Petrofac, as one of his business ambassadors in 2014.

In May 2019, when Petrofac was under investigation by the SFO, UKEF provided £700m in project insurance for the design and operation of an oil refinery at Duqm in Oman, a project in which Petrofac was named as the sole UK exporter.

Petrofac was one of five companies that sponsored the official reopening of the British Embassy in Tripoli in June of this year.

Ambassador Caroline Hurndall told the audience,

“I am especially proud that British businesses are collaborating with Libyan companies and having a meaningful impact upon Libya’s economic development. Many of those businesses are represented here tonight.”

BP and Shell are close to Whitehall, with a long history of personnel revolving between the corporation and former senior civil servants.

Control of oil

Despite all that has befallen the north African nation, Libya was the UK’s third largest source of oil last year, after Norway and the US, supplying 7.8% of all British oil imports. Oil provides over 90% of Libya’s revenue, which makes it the country’s lifeline.

However, the country’s NATO-backed aggression has provoked a battle for control over the oil industry which has been described as being in “disarray”, with “little clarity on who really is in control of the nation’s most valuable resource.”

UK ministers have long sought access to Libya’s oil in the international rivalry over access to the key resource. Documents obtained by the oil-focused NGO Platform in 2009 revealed that Labour ministers and senior civil servants met with Shell at least 11 times and possibly as many as 26 times in less than four years to discuss the company’s oil interests in Libya.

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We, the undersigned, proclaim our opposition to the G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration, as a gross violation of national sovereignty, individual liberty, health freedom, personal privacy, and the right to travel.

The G20 Declaration intends:

• Global digital vaccine passports and digital IDs connected to global digital health networks to travel
• Central Bank Digital Currencies to track and control purchases and behavior
• Escalating internet surveillance and censorship using the pretense of “disinformation”
• Expanding global governance through the Trojan Horse of a Bio-Security apparatus
• “Reforms” in food production and distribution which will harm small farmers and dictate what foods we may eat

We call on all elected officials to take a stand with ‘we the people’ and publicly denounce this latest attempt by global elites to advance their dystopian vision of a techno-feudal state with us as digitally branded subjects.

Background

On Nov. 15-16, 2022, a select group of unthinkably wealthy business leaders and high-ranking political officials met in Bali for the annual G20 conference with designs on mapping out their global ambitions to construct an international system of technocratic compliance and control.

The objectives of this global scheme are detailed in the 59-page 2022 G20 Bali Update and condensed in the G20 Bali Leaders’ Declaration.

The meeting culminated with the leaders of the world’s 20 largest economies signing a pledge that seeks to achieve seismic transformations of all global commerce, travel, health freedom, privacy, and communication.

Beyond the rhetorical artifice of “inclusivity”, “diversity”, “sustainability” and an array of obligatory buzzwords and catchphrases, the document reads like a blueprint for a billionaire’s utopia and a digital plantation for the rest of humanity.

Items featured on the wish list of the G20 globalists include:

1) The establishment of a global digital vaccine passport and a digital ID connected to global digital “health” networks without which, travel would not be allowed:

We support the WHO mRNA Vaccine Technology Transfer hub as well as all as the spokes in all regions of the world with the objective of sharing technology and technical know-how on voluntary and mutually agreed terms.

We acknowledge the importance of shared technical standards and verification methods, under the framework of the IHR (2005), to facilitate seamless international travel, interoperability, and recognizing digital solutions and non-digital solutions, including proof of vaccinations. We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates.

 2) Introduction of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDC) which are programmable:

We encourage central banks, other public authorities and the payments industry to continue to work collaboratively on these important initiatives to enhance cross-border payments. We welcome the report by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) Committee on Payments and Market Infrastructures (CPMI) on interlinking payment systems and the role of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that was presented in a joint workshop by the Indonesian G20 Presidency in coordination with the BIS CPMI and the BIS Innovation Hub…We also welcome the joint report by the BIS CPMI… We welcome continued exploration of how CBDCs could potentially be designed to facilitate cross-border payments, while preserving the stability and integrity of the international monetary and financial system.

CBDC would allow central banks to dictate the development of digital currencies. The programmability of CBDCs could allow central banks to directly gain control over purchases and behaviors of transacting parties.

3) Escalating internet surveillance and censorship using the pretense of “disinformation”:

We acknowledge that affordable and high-quality digital connectivity is essential for digital inclusion and digital transformation, while a resilient, safe and secure online environment is necessary to enhance confidence and trust in the digital economy […] We acknowledge the importance to counter disinformation campaigns, cyber threats, online abuse, and ensuring security in connectivity infrastructure.

4) Expanding global governance through the Trojan Horse of a Bio-Security apparatus:

We reaffirm our commitment to strengthen global health governance, with the leading and coordination role of WHO and support from other international organizations. We support the work of the Intergovernmental Negotiating Body (INB) that will draft and negotiate a legally binding instrument that should contain both legally binding and non-legally binding elements to strengthen pandemic PPR and the working group on the International Health Regulations that will consider amendments to the International Health Regulations (IHR) (2005) mindful that the decision will be made by World Health Assembly.

This is yet another attempt to exploit “health emergencies” to expand the power of supranational organizations such as the World Health Organization.

5) “Reforms” in food production and distribution which will be to the detriment of small farmers and local food production in addition to dictating which foods we may eat, while benefiting agricultural monopolies and the biotech industry.

We will also implement the One Health approach, intensify research on food science and technology…

We are committed to supporting the adoption of innovative practices and technologies, including digital innovation in agriculture and food systems to enhance productivity and sustainability…We will promote responsible investments in agricultural research and science and evidence-based approaches.

The One Health approach has been described as a blueprint for taking over food chains and natural areas in the name of public health.

“Adoption of innovative practices and technologies” is intended for the advancement of Biotech Agribusiness and its products such as lab grown meat. “Responsible investments in agricultural research and science” translates to control of food systems and the creation of food dependency through GMO food systems.

In conclusion, the intent of this plan is CONTROL — to create a series of monopolies, cartels and oligopolies that govern food, energy, healthcare, travel, commerce and all aspects of our lives.

This most recent meeting and “commitment” from the G20 representatives is yet another attack on the dignity and freedoms of people of the world.

The problems of the world require local solutions tailored to individual communities, not top-down diktats from unelected, unaccountable technocrats who aim to transform our societies under the pretense of health, environment, equity, and inclusivity.

Together, we proclaim our opposition to this latest attempt to subjugate humanity. We demand our public servants denounce the G20 Bali Leaders Declaration and stand with the people they represent.

“If ever there was a time for humanity to wake up now is the time” – Vandana Shiva

On November 28, 2022, this proclamation was authored and signed by,

Leslie Manookian, Founder and President
Health Freedom Defense Fund

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Gérard Araud was not mincing his words.  As France’s former ambassador to Washington, he had seen enough.  At a November 14 panel hosted by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft titled “Is America Ready for a Multipolar Word?”, Araud decried the “economic warfare” being waged by the United States against China, expressing the view that Europe was concerned by the evident “containment policy” being pursued.

Araud is very much the diplomat establishment figure, having also served as French representative to the United Nations from 2009 to 2014.  But despite his pedigree, he was most keen to fire off a few salvos against such concepts as the “rules-based order” so treasured by the Anglosphere and the “West” more broadly defined.  “To be frank, I’ve always been extremely sceptical about this idea of a ‘rules-based order’.”  Both he and the French in general loved the United Nations, “but the Americans not too much”.

With unerring frankness, he also noted that the UN and broader international hierarchy was dominated by the US-European bloc.  The undersecretaries to the organisation reflected that fact, as did the stewardship of the World Bank and the IMF.  “So that’s the first element: this order is our order.”

The second element was historical: the balance of power as it was in the war-ruined world of 1945.  “Really people forget that, if China and Russia are obliged to oppose [with] their veto, it is because frankly the Security Council is most of the time, 95% of the time, has a Western-oriented majority.”

French President Emmanuel Macron has adopted elements of Araud’s thinking, notably regarding the problems and limits of US domination, while still reasserting the value of France’s own global imprint.  Such actions and sombre strategizing are taking place in the shadow of the West’s decline.  In a recent closed-door meeting with his top diplomats, Macron remarked that

“the international order is being upended in a whole new way.  It is a transformation of the international order.  I must admit that Western hegemony may be coming to an end”.

This theme of decline in Macron’s is an ongoing Spenglerian motif.  It surfaced at the end of the G-7 summit in 2019, where he reflected on the decline of Western dominance while pondering the finance-obsessed nature of the global market economy.  This was pretty rich coming from a banker, though he was certainly right on the issue of greater multipolarity.

To his diplomats, Macron paddled in the waters of history, reflecting on French power in the 18^th century, the Industrial Revolution led by Britain in the 19^th century, and the brute dominance of the United States from the 20^th century.  With typically Gallic, broad stroke synthesis, he suggested that “France is culture, England is industry, and America is war.”

Then came the finger pointing, sharply directed at the biggest of culprits and the underminers of the West.  “Within Western countries, many wrong choices the United States has made in the face of crises have deeply shaken our hegemony.”  It was not something that began with the Trump administration; previous US presidents “made other wrong choices long before Trump, Clinton’s China policy, Bush’s war policy, Obama’s world financial crisis, and quantitative easing policy.”

To this swipe at Washington could be added the role of emerging powers, which were underestimated by the West “not just two years ago, but as early as ten or twenty years ago.”  He admitted that “China and Russia have achieved great success over the years under different leadership styles.”

Despite such rueful admissions about decline, Macron is still keen to pursue a form of geopolitical balancing, notably in the Indo-Pacific.  This is code for the pursuing French interests in a region that is increasingly looking like exploding into a folly-driven conflict between the Chinese and US camps.  But Paris is hardly going to miss out pushing the credentials of its defence industry, which took a bruising with the scuppering of the Attack Class submarine deal with the Australian government in September last year.

In February, Macron convinced Jakarta to ink a deal worth $8.1 billion for 42 Rafale fighter jets produced by Dassault Aviation.  Two diesel-electric Scorpène-class attack submarines produced by the Naval Group have also been added to the mix, along with ammunition, making the arrangements with Jakarta some of the most lucrative for France in Southeast Asia.

On his current visit to Washington, Macron is facing those old problems of US power.  While Australia was designated assassin in killing off the submarine contract, the ammunition came from Washington as part of the AUKUS security pact, a spear pointing at China in the Indo-Pacific.  President Joe Biden has merely described the handling of the whole matter as “clumsy”.

Then come such issues as the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which gives advantageous climate subsidies to US companies over their European counterparts, and how the Ukraine War is to be addressed.  Biden has no inclination to speak to Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin, content to let the war rage as long as it bleeds Russia; Macron has been more than willing to keep the lines open, acknowledging that diplomacy, however frail, must at least be drip-fed.

In his own reflections on what could be done regarding the US-Western parochialism of the rules-based order, Araud made the obvious point.  Any genuine international system purporting to be undergirded by rules had to integrate “all the major stakeholders into managing of the world, you know really bringing in the Chinese, the Indians, and really other countries, and trying to build with them, on an equal basis, the world of tomorrow.”  What a daring idea, and one that is bound to avoid a global conflict.  For that reason, it won’t be embraced.

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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]

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United States President Joe Biden while running for office in 2020 pledged to become the most pro-union head-of-state in the history of the government.

However, many within the labor movement are incensed that Biden would demand that the House of Representatives and the Senate force the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen (BRS), SMART-TD, and Brotherhood of Maintenance Way Employees Division which represent more than half of all railroad workers to accept a labor agreement previously rejected by large numbers within the membership. (See this)

The president had intervened several weeks ago utilizing a decades-old federal law, the 1926 Railway Labor Act, which allows the administration and Congress to impose contracts that would prevent a strike within the transport industry. Any labor action which might disrupt interstate commerce such as ground and air transport could be halted through government intervention. (See this)

Biden cited the current state of the U.S. economy as a rationale for his approach to the deadlock in negotiations between the labor unions and the Association of American Railroads which controls the private operations of the industry. The deal Biden attempted to force on the Railroad owners and unions failed to be ratified by key elements of the workers.

Even after the midterm elections of November 8 where the president and Democratic members of Congress praised the electorate for voting in large numbers hence preventing far worse outcomes within the House and Senate, the rights of workers were so rapidly denied. In the weeks leading up to the midterm elections, Biden warned against the threat of far-right extremism and fascism in the U.S. He declared that democracy itself was on the Midterm ballot since the entire electoral process was vehemently attacked on January 6 of 2021 at the Capitol Building.

Yet, when the still sitting Democratic House and Senate were provided an opportunity to rebuke the Biden anti-labor policies, they decided to approve a contract which denies paid sick leave for railroad workers. The House bill initially voted on did place the 7 days paid sick leave clause into the text. Nonetheless, in the Senate, this key demand of the workers was denied.

Such an approach to the interests of organized labor and the working class in general illustrates the actual class character of the Democratic Party leadership which heavily relies upon unions and African Americans to win local, statewide and national elections. Absent the passage of legislation to ensure and enhance the voting rights of African Americans and other nationally oppressed peoples in the U.S., millions still went to the polls to cast their ballots largely for the Democratically-dominated Congress.

The December 6 runoff election in Georgia for the Senate has been marked by nationwide efforts on the part of Democratic-oriented political action committees to pour money into the state in support of the incumbent Raphael Warnock. The results of the Georgia Senate runoff election will determine whether the chamber will be evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans or a one-member majority for the Democrats if Warnock prevails. Even with a split Senate, Vice President Kamala Harris, as the President of the Senate, could break any tie vote.

A statement from Tony Caldwell, President of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees Division (BMWED) in the Railroad industry said in a letter to the Senate on the present situation:

“Railroad workers are at their breaking point. An extension of the stats quo will also deny railroad workers a much needed and well-deserved increase to their pay during a period where they have felt the woes of inflation. It has been three years since Railroad Workers have received a raise. They should not have to wait two more months.” (See this)

Based upon these developments, the ongoing efforts to organize within the low-wage service sectors of the labor market will continue to face formidable challenges. The potential for a Teamsters’ strike against UPS in 2023 could evoke similar anti-union actions by the administration.

Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency Files Complaint against Jackson, Mississippi

In another move within the same week, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced several legal actions involving the water crisis in the majority African American municipality of Jackson, the capital of the State of Mississippi. On behalf of the EPA, the Justice Department leveled a complaint against the administration of the beleaguered city saying it had failed to enforce the Clean Water Act.

Immediately a federal judge accepted the Justice Department complaint along with the appointment of a third-party administrator to manage the water system in Jackson. In addition to the EPA complaint filed by Garland, negotiations will be underway for a period of six months related to the implementation of a federal consent decree on the Jackson water system.

Jackson’s problems became national news in the summer of 2022 when residents were unable to use the water supplied by the city’s treatment plant. Although the state government dominated by Republican Governor Tate Reeves has blamed the water crisis on the Jackson administration of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, others have cited the decades-long neglect and disinvestment by the state and federal governments in Jackson as well as scores of other majority African American populated cities.

Image: Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba and Governor Tate Reese

A report published on November 30 by the Associated Press notes that:

“The department filed a proposal to appoint a third-party manager for the Jackson water system. That is meant to be an interim step while the federal government, the city of Jackson and the Mississippi State Department of Health try to negotiate a court-enforced consent decree, the department said in a news release.”

Garland in a press release emphasized that he was compelled in:

“[T]aking action in federal court to address long-standing failures in the city of Jackson’s public drinking water system. The Department of Justice takes seriously its responsibility to keep the American people safe and to protect their civil rights. Together with our partners at EPA, we will continue to seek justice for the residents of Jackson, Mississippi. And we will continue to prioritize cases in the communities most burdened by environmental harm.”

Vangela M. Wade, CEO of the Mississippi Center for Justice indicated her hope that the Justice Department intervention would improve the status of the Jackson water system. Nonetheless, she pointed out as well that:

“[T]he deplorable and unsafe condition of Jackson’s water system didn’t happen overnight but stems from decades of neglect and the intentional disinvestment of resources for the majority-Black municipality.”

Governor Reese, who has consistently attacked the Jackson administration of Mayor Lumumba, praised the action taken by the Justice Department. He noted the fact that the control of the water system was finally being taken out of the control of the city government.

Reese said in a press release:

“It is excellent news for anyone who cares about the people of Jackson that the Mayor will no longer be overseeing the city’s water system. It is now out of the city’s control, and will be overseen by a federal court.”

Denial of Democracy and Self-Determination

The situation in Jackson is not an isolated one in the U.S. Numerous majority Black cities throughout the country have been subjected to similar violations of home rule and the right to self-determination.

Cities in Michigan such as Detroit, Flint, Inkster, Highland Park, etc., have been forced into emergency management effectively denying their right to vote for officials who embody the authority inherent in the municipal charters and state constitutions. Even the emergence from emergency management and bankruptcy, the state governments backed up by Washington and Wall Street continue to inflict regressive tax measures which transfer billions of dollars to the rich while driving working class and impoverished people out of the municipalities.

Mississippi historically has been one of the most repressive states since the period of antebellum slavery. As a center for cotton production and the interstate slave trade, after the Civil War until well into the 20th century, the African American population proportionately had been one of the largest in the U.S.

Many African Americans were lynched by law-enforcement personnel and white mobs in the state during the late 19th and 20th centuries. Mississippi was a focal point of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, prompting economic and violent retaliation against African Americans and their allies seeking change to the status quo.

It was in the state of Mississippi that one of the earliest independent political organizations was established, the Freedom Democratic Party. The MFDP registered people to vote and carried out a challenge to the seating of the all-white Democratic Party delegates present at the 1964 Democratic National Convention held in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Later in June 1966, the slogan Black Power was advanced by Willie Ricks and Stokely Carmichael, leaders in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Later in 1968, the state and its capital of Jackson was designated as the center of the Republic of New Africa (RNA), which has sought to found an independent Black nation in five southern states.

Since the era of Reconstruction, where two African Americans, Hiram Revels and Blanche K. Bruce were elected by the state legislature to serve in the Senate representing Mississippi, no one else from the community has worked in the same capacity. These factors highlight the contradictions within the national politics of the Democratic and Republican parties. The fairness supposedly guaranteed under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution has never been fully implemented by the federal courts and the administrative apparatus of the state.

Whether in the realm of labor rights for living wages and safe working conditions to the guarantees that the oppressed peoples have democratic due process and self-determination, the U.S. political and economic system has failed. Under socialism the working class could be ensured of adequate wages, quality conditions within the workplace and the necessary social needs of the proletariat, farmers and youth.

With the abolition of institutional racism and national oppression, African Americans and other people of color communities would enjoy the same rights and privileges as those within the white population. African Americans are in desperate need of self-determination and equal protection under the law necessitating the complete transformation of capitalist society.

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

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First published on September 30, 2022

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You may want to take note of this recent quote by Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban:

 ”The armed conflict in Ukraine will continue until 2030, as a result, Ukraine will lose half of its territory, and the EU will cease to exist by that moment.  This conflict could have been local, but due to the intervention of the West,  it became global, as a result of which the EU economy was destroyed.”

Mr. Orban also seems to have the support – at least the tacit support – of the The Visegrad Group, consisting of four countries, the V4.

It is an informal regional format of cooperation between the four Central European countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary, which are not only linked by neighborhood and similar geopolitical situations but above all by common history, traditions, culture, and values. The V4 was founded in February 1991 in Visegrád, Hungary, by the four member countries.

The above statement is a response by PM Victor Orban to the European Commission’s (unelected) President Ursula van de Leyen’s threat to Hungary of cutting them off the 7.5 billion Euros which they are due under the European Union’s so-called Cohesion Policy. It is the EU’s main investment policy, sort of a COVID compensation.

Under the EU rule, the Cohesion Fund provides support to Member States with a gross national income (GNI) per capita below 90% of the EU-27 average. The purpose of the subsidy is to strengthen the economic, social and territorial cohesion of the EU.

Within that framework, the Cohesion Policy’s purpose is to benefit all regions and cities of the Union and promotes economic growth, job creation, business competitiveness, sustainable development and environmental protection.

So, why the threat? Because Mr. Orban refuses to sanction Russia?

Because he expresses his right of a sovereign state – and as the leader of Hungary, he is supported by about 70% of the people – of all those who see national sovereignty as more important than following the dictate of a defunct European Union, a US vassal par excellence.

And – while war is never justified – Mr. Orban understands why Russia had to take actions to protect the Russian people in the Donbas area, plus to demilitarize the Nazi state of Ukraine – especially the Azov Battalion(s) which were fighting alongside Hitler’s troops against the Soviet Union during WWII.

Let alone the constant an ever-increased pressure from the Washington / Pentagon directed NATO, encroaching Russia; plus, the fact that neither of the two Minsk Agreements (September 2014 and April 2015), sponsored by France and Germany, on settling the Ukraine conflict, were ever adhered to.

See this full BBC report on Ms. Victoria Nuland, Deputy Secretary of State in 2014 “F**k Europe”, and more. This conversation preceded by days only the western-inspired – US, EU, NATO – 22 February 2014 Maidan Coup against Ukraine’s legitimately and democratically elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

Also, to be mentioned are the twenty or thirty-some grade 4 (war-type) biological, US-funded and built laboratories in the Ukraine territory. This was admitted by the very Ms. Nuland before a US Congressional Committee. These labs were a direct danger to Russia. Obviously, President Putin couldn’t just stand by, watching NATO arming and training the Ukraine military with “boots on the ground”.

All of this, of course, is known to the European Commission. Ms. Von der Leyen knows exactly the truth about Ukraine, but keeps lying to the European people, helped massively by the corrupted media. Therefore, Europeans are blinded and keep yelling almost in unison: Russia-Russia-Russia!

Given these circumstances, one wonders whether there is a wanton agenda of knowing self-destruction of the European Union by the EC leadership. In fact, they know exactly what they are doing.

Washington / NATO have chosen their best candidates to carry out their nefarious agenda.

The records of corruption of Ms. Von der Leyen and German Chancellor Scholz, who is betraying Europe and his country every day, speak for themselves.

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Now comes Italy

When Italy was preparing for their elections to be held last Sunday – 25 September 2022, and a coalition of right-wing parties, all opposed to sanctioning Russia – seemed to emerge as the winner, Ms. Von der Leyen, again lifted her finger pointing at Italy, reminding Italians that they should vote according to the European mandate, neoliberal, of course, and for the Globalist agenda.

Ms. von der Leyen hinted that the country could face punishments such as those recently leveled against Hungary and Poland if the upcoming election results in the predicted right-wing sweep.

“My approach is that whatever democratic government is willing to work with us, we’re working together,” she said in response to a question over whether she had “concerns” about Sunday’s Italian parliamentary vote, in which the conservative Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) are projected to take first place.

“If things go in a difficult direction, I’ve spoken about Hungary and Poland, we have tools,” von der Leyen explained (RT, 23 September 2022).

These tools refer to withholding the Cohesion Fund money. If anything, this statement incited an ever-stronger Italian vote to the right.

In the meantime, the election outcome is clear. A coalition led by Giorgia Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party. Ms. Meloni is expected to form the country’s most rightwing government since the end of the second world war. It will also be including the far-right League, led by Matteo Salvini, as well as Forza Italia, headed by three-times Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Mr. Salvini denounced von der Leyen’s “shameful arrogance” and called on the EC to “respect the free, democratic and sovereign vote of the Italian people!”

Ms. Giorgia Meloni will lead as the first woman in recent Italian history, Italy’s new Government.

The Italian Coalition Parties are all not very EU-friendly. They will certainly not be bullied by Ms. von der Leyen. And she knows that, as well as all her backers and those who give the orders, Washington, NATO, the Pentagon and the gigantic invisible financial complex behind the WEF’s Globalization Project, the One World Order (OWO).

What if Italy and / or Hungary would leave the EU?

Italy being one of the original members of the European alliance, tracing its origins back to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1948 Treaty of Brussels, the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome.

Let’s not forget either, the original idea for a European Union, the creation of the Treaty of Rome, came from the Rockefellers. They knew already then that a rebuilt Europe, especially with Germany leading, could become an undesired competition for the United States. But as an association of countries with one currency, they could be controlled. But they should never become one country, similar to a US-style federation. That would be too dangerous as an economic block.

With the also planned destruction of the Soviet Union by a Cold War and all the fake danger-propaganda that went along, ending successfully for the US in 1991, things looked good for the single Empire.

But then came Vladimir Putin, and nothing went the way projected by the west, mainly Washington. Because Europe under the spell and imagined “danger” of the USSR, was already under the wings of her protector and mentor, Washington, Pentagon and then the ever-expanding NATO. In fact, Europe didn’t have her own army. NATO would take care of Europe’s defense.

The only then visionary who saw and predicted Europe’s demise under NATO and without her own military, was General Charles de Gaulle, France’s President until 1969. He exited France from NATO, until French President Sarkozy re-entered France to the Atlantic Alliance in 2009.

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Back to Italy.

It could, indeed, be the end of the European Union as we know it, if Italy leaves the alliance, or even better, when Italy and Hungary leave the alliance. Were Hungary to exit the EU, she would most likely be followed by her allies of the Visegrad Group (V4 = Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary).

See this 4 min video “Shameful Arrogance”.

And there is more – underwater Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipeline explosions.

On 27 September 2022, several deep-sea explosions destroyed both German-Russian gas pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2. This supposes that no pressuring, or second-thought by Germany’s leadership or Parliament, or business community, could reverse Germany’s decision on sanctioning Russia and on refusing to buy Russian Gas.

There is no way that the EU, headquartered in Brussels, alongside with NATO, was unaware of the destruction plan. Hence, this is an EU act of suicide, willingly destroying Germany’s economy, and with it a large proportion of the European / EU economy – and the European people’s living standard.

So, that this long-planned Washington dictated and EU agreed act of self-demolition cannot be reversed, the two pipelines had to be destroyed. Four explosions in total, as registered by Denmark and Sweden. Untreated gas is bulging up from the sea, near Denmark. Environmental and health consequences cannot yet be assessed.

But the escaping gas’ worth, after two days, had already been assessed at 2 billion euros.

Indeed, reversing their commitment to Washington to destroy Europe, was a risk for the western wannabe Empire powers, the US / NATO. If Germany was to abandon her destructive decision for ethical or conscientious reasons, to safe her population from a predicted “extremely cold winter”, and from an imploding economy – as we currently witness – the western globalization, alias OWO-plan would fail.

These pipeline explosions are an open declaration of war at Europe. At the people of Europe. And this – very likely – in full knowledge of Brussels, i.e., the EU Commission, or at least the head of the EC.

Already on 22 February 2022, responding to a journalist’s question what Washington would do if Germany would decide despite their current sanctioning of Russia, to buy Russian gas to salvage their economy and possibly the lives of many Germans, Biden said that they had means to sabotage the pipelines of the Baltic Sea. See 35-second video.

On 2 September 2022, Russian intelligence agencies have already reported US / NATO military maneuvers with underwater drones, loaded with explosive devices. See this and this.

On 26 September 2022, US / NATO special underwater torpedoes blow up Nord Stream 1 and 2.

No matter all the evidence that Brussels was fully aware of this “Act of War” against Europe, launched by the US / NATO, EU’s massive and as usual deceptive hypocritical posturing takes on shameful proportions. EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Wednesday that the bloc was “deeply concerned” about the damage to the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines connecting Russia to Germany via the Baltic Sea.

“Europe vows ‘robust and united’ response to suspected sabotage of two Russian gas pipelines.”

The sabotage act may have left permanent irreparable damage, if not repaired quickly as the infiltrating sea water may quickly corrode the pipelines, a German unnamed official said, according to an RT Report.

Who is going to repair the damage in time, so that corrosion may not leave permanent damage?

Germany will most likely not have the US/NATO permission to do so, and Russia – well, NATO will do whatever it takes to prevent that from happening.

At this stage, Russia may be most interested in stopping the gas from flowing, to halt the economic losses and potential environmental damage.

*

In summary, all is pointing in the direction of destroying Europe from all angles and sides: Dismantling the European Union. The presumed One World Order Government does not want to deal with a bloc of countries, encompassing 500 million people and an estimated GDP of US$ 17 trillion equivalent (2022), de facto the world’s third largest economy, after the US and China (2022 est. US and China US$ 20 trillion and US$ 19.9 trillion, respectively).

So, the destruction of the European economy and annihilation of the EU – the alliance of European countries that were never allowed by Washington to become a Federation, as is the United States of America – is a plan, the EC is fully aware of and has agreed to.

This may also explain Britain’s exit from the EU.

The aggressive provocations on Italy, a founding father of the EU, plus Hungary and by association the V4, are the empire’s strategy to collapse the EU, executed by the very European Commission.

Being aware of the plan, may shake up sufficient high-ranking politicians, and especially business people and CEOs to stop it; to stop at least the economic destruction of Europe. The EU in its current form is a disgrace. Dismantling it, returning to sovereign nation states would be an advantage for humanity. It would allow a fresh, non-globalist start – one giant step away from a globalized OWO.

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

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

Featured image: Ursula von der Leyen (Source: Britannica.com)

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It’s safe to say the world has gotten used to mind-blowing statements coming from the detached Kiev regime, as this has become their common theme. Apart from boastful claims of supposed “victories” of the Neo-Nazi junta forces against the Russian military, talks of how much financial assistance is necessary is the usual topic in Kiev. The regime frontman Volodymyr Zelensky is never tired of demanding yet another few billion dollars (euros and pounds are good enough, too) per month to support the political West’s favorite puppet regime. However, his most recent statements make every other demand look entirely “reasonable”. Namely, the Kiev regime frontman now wants over $1 trillion for the supposed “reconstruction” of the country.

During a video address on November 29, Zelensky stated that it would cost more than $1 trillion to “rebuild” Ukraine. If the number sounds astounding, that’s quite expected, given that it’s over five times the country’s 2021 GDP. However, even this sounds laughable when the second requirement is listed – this “reconstruction” plan would come into effect only after the military superpower with over 6,000 thermonuclear warheads next door is somehow “defeated”. Many have ignored Zelensky’s mind-boggling statements regarding this matter, but he keeps insisting that this is precisely what the Kiev regime needs.

“The reconstruction of our country will become the most momentous economic, technological, and humanitarian project of our time. Even now, we engage dozens of our partner countries to rebuild Ukraine,” Zelensky said during his late-night video address on Tuesday, according to a report translated by Newsweek. “The total volume of work amounts to over a trillion dollars,” he added.

Zelensky mentioned the figure while talking about his hopes that the country would host the World’s Fair in 2030. Another interesting aspect of the plan was that foreign governments and corporations could become “permanent sponsors of specific regions, cities or economic sectors”. Apart from being unrealistic, Zelensky’s ideas are also boiling down to the direct colonization of Ukraine. By giving control of different regions of the country to “permanent sponsors”, the Neo-Nazi junta frontman is effectively fracturing what’s left of the country and giving it to foreign corporate interests in a free-for-all exploitation scheme.

According to Western-backed, Latvia-based news outlet “Meduza”, Zelensky is hoping to develop a system that will allow “partner countries” to become “patrons” of Ukrainian regions, cities or businesses. “We’re already seeing interest [in the program] from France, Great Britain, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Turkey, Poland, Portugal, Czechia, Slovenia, Latvia, Estonia, Switzerland, Slovakia, Austria, Greece, Canada, the U.S., Japan, and Australia. And that’s not an exhaustive list,” he said.

Interestingly, the mind-blowing $1 trillion figure was mentioned by Zelensky at least once before, but it somehow went under the radar of most mainstream media. The first time he mentioned it publicly was on September 6, when he was invited to virtually “ring” the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange. Zelensky used this unique opportunity to float the idea and initially appealed for “at least” $400 billion in foreign funds. “The general project of Ukrainian reconstruction will be the largest economic project in Europe of our time. The largest for several generations. Its volume is already estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars,” he stated at the time and then added: “And with the necessary modernization of the Ukrainian infrastructure, taking into account security needs, it is more than a trillion dollars and in a fairly short term – less than ten years.”

As previously mentioned, the country’s GDP was just over $200 billion in 2021, according to official data from the World Bank. This effectively means that the Kiev regime is demanding others invest half a decade’s worth of Ukrainian “peacetime” GDP. Although this may seem like a dumbfounding request, what’s even more staggering is the fact that at least one US-based think tank already backed the proposal. The renowned Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) openly supported the idea, claiming that “it would provide strategic benefits to the United States.”

In a November 22 report titled “United States Aid to Ukraine: An Investment Whose Benefits Greatly Exceed its Cost”, CSIS authors argued the following: “In practice, Ukraine cannot continue to fight and to recover without continuing aid from the US and other powers. Moreover, if the war drags on as it well may do, the total costs of both the war and recovery states could easily rise well over $500 billion. A truly long war could put the total cost of the war and recovery to a trillion dollars or more.” The report further states: “So far, there has been only limited domestic political resistance in the United States to continuing civil and military aid to Ukraine.”

This clearly implies that the authors think the US government should always insist on more financial “assistance” to the Kiev regime and push back against anyone trying to focus on mounting domestic issues. Given just how corrupt the Neo-Nazi junta is, it’s hardly surprising there’s a lack of enthusiasm for this idea among many in the US. The recent FTX-Kiev regime-DNC scandal, along with the fact that Washington DC cannot account for over $20 billion in previous “aid” provided to the Neo-Nazi junta, all serve as a testament to the skepticism many Americans feel in this regard. Considering the current state of the US (and global) economy, who could possibly blame them.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from Zero Hedge

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***

Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and three other organizations are seeking open public access to critical sworn depositions and documents already produced on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit alleging the federal government colluded with several Big Tech firms to censor COVID-19-related content on social media.

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Dr. Joseph Mercola, and Ty and Charlene Bollinger on Nov. 17 moved to intervene in the Missouri v. Biden First Amendment case on behalf of the public interest, themselves and their respective organizations: CHD, Mercola.com, The Truth About Vaccines and The Truth About Cancer.

The intervention will allow them — and the public at large — to gain access to specific discovery and depositions — including Dr. Anthony Fauci’s Nov. 23 testimony — for use in pending litigation against social media platforms.

Commenting on the motion to intervene, Kennedy said:

“It’s neither beneficial to democracy nor public health that the audio-visual recordings of key depositions describing the secret communications between key government actors and social media executives remain hidden from the American people.

“Social media platforms continue to muzzle dissenters for exercising their First Amendment rights to criticize government policies while the proof of this illegal collaboration with government officials remains sealed.”

Kennedy, Mercola and Charlene and Ty Bollinger are among the 12 individuals singled out by the Center for Countering Digital Hate as belonging to the “Disinformation Dozen” due to content they shared on social media and websites regarding vaccines.

The motion to intervene explains that these free speech advocates and their organizations have been censored and de-platformed by major social media platforms that are working with — and taking orders from — the federal government.

According to the motion:

“These Defendants have colluded with private actors (1) to curb the Applicants’ criticism of government response to the Covid-19 pandemic, and (2) to silence the Applicants’ disfavored facts and opinions concerning a variety of subjects, including Covid-19’s possible lab-leak origin, the comparative benefits of early treatment and natural immunity, and the risks or inefficacy of Covid-19 vaccines authorized for emergency use.”

The materials sought by the groups are expected to capture top-level communications between the federal branch and social media tech executives to censor and suppress a wide swath of online COVID-19 news, criticism of the government’s vaccine mandates and lockdowns and discussion of the lab-leak theory of COVID-19’s origins.

“If the Biden Administration instructed Big Tech to censor Bobby Kennedy, Children’s Health Defense, Mercola and the Bollingers, we need to see what they’ve said, and it must stop,” said CHD President and General Counsel Mary Holland. “The First Amendment prohibits the government from censoring its critics — full stop. This is what our democracy requires as the bedrock of all other freedoms.”

Missouri and Louisiana on May 5 sued the Biden administration in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, alleging the government colluded with Big Tech firms Twitter, Meta(Facebook’s parent company), Youtube, Instagram and LinkedIn to censor certain viewpoints under the guise of preventing the circulation of “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

District Judge Terry Doughty fast-tracked the case toward a hearing to stop it in its tracks and enjoin the government-directed social media giants’ version of a “Ministry of Truth.”

“We were censored, shadowbanned, de-platformed for sharing stats, facts and scientific data about COVID-19, taken from the government’s own websites — the same facts the current director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Fauci and others are now saying are true after two-plus years of denying these facts,” said Charlene Bollinger, founder and CEO of The Truth About Cancer & Vaccines.

Bollinger added:

“We were right all along. We should never have been censored. The world needs to hear our voices in order to make informed decisions about their health. What has happened to RFK Jr., Dr. Mercola, to us, and many others should never have happened.

“Our government has colluded to hide the truth about COVID, and we need the truth to ensure this never happens again. Lives are on the line. Informed consent and real science will save countless lives. It is our mission to reach everyone with the truth to support life.”

Judge Doughty allowed the state attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana to take depositions of key Biden administration officials, including Fauci, ex-White House press secretary Jen Psaki, White House Director of Digital Strategy Rob Flaherty, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly and FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan.

According to G. Shelly Maturin II, counsel for intervenors, the censorship case is “possibly the most important first amendment case of our lifetime, the outcome of which will determine whether we continue in the Orwellian/Huxley dystopian world” or whether we “take back our God-given rights enshrined in our Constitution.”

The plaintiffs and defendants must reply to the motion to intervene by Dec. 1, and Kennedy, Mercola and the Bollingers must respond by Dec. 8. Judge Doughty is expected to rule quickly thereafter.

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Featured image is from CHD

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***

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Wednesday said that he has personally asked the US government to drop its case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen.

Albanese, who previously rejected public pressure to push for Assange’s release, said that he raised the issue with US officials in recent meetings.

“The government will continue to act in a diplomatic way, but can I assure the member … that I have raised this personally with representatives of the United States government,” Albanese said.

“My position is clear and has been made clear to the US administration – that it is time that this matter be brought to a close,” the Australian leader added.

Assange has been held in London’s Belmarsh Prison since April 2019 as the US is trying to extradite him for exposing government secrets and war crimes. The US Department of Justice has indicted Assange using the Espionage Act for receiving and publishing leaks from whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a standard journalistic practice.

If extradited to the US, Assange could face a sentence of up to 175 years in a maximum security prison for his journalism. Albanese’s comments came after The New York Times and four major European news outlets finally spoke out for Assange in a letter to the US government.

In the letter, the five news organizations said that “publishing is not a crime” and that it was time for the US “to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.” The letter acknowledged that Assange’s work “in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists.”

The DOJ declined to comment when asked by Antiwar.com if dropping the charges against Assange was being considered.

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Featured image: Anthony Albanese (Source: Republic World)

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Lie #1: The war started on 24 February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine.

Before Ukraine’s President Volodmyr Zelensky quit negotiations with Russia to settle the war in Ukraine, he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria on 20 March 2022, “I made a point that the war in Ukraine has been lasting for eight years. It’s not just some special military operation.” Zakaria had asked him “You have said recently that Ukraine perhaps will not be a member of NATO. You have admitted that. Could that — there are people who ask, could that concession, had you made it clearly and loudly earlier, could that have prevented this war?” Zelensky’s reply said that for Ukraine to make such a “concession” — unless some NATO countries would step up to provide “guarantees” to Ukraine’s winning this eight-year war — would be unacceptable to Ukrainians, because this war had started “eight years” earlier, and they wouldn’t accept now — after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 — a “concession” of an indispensable part of what their military has been fighting for ever since long before that, going all the way back to 2014 — virtual if not official membership in NATO, so that American missiles can then become posted on Ukraine’s border only 317 miles away from Russia’s command center in The Kremlin. That has always been Ukraine’s goal throughout this eight-year war. And for Ukraine to “concede” it to Russia now would be for Ukraine to lose what they have been waging war for eight years in order to attain. He also told Zakaria that Ukrainians would never accept any concession to Russia on what was, before 2014, Ukrainian land: Crimea and Donbass: “Any compromises related to our territorial integrity and our sovereignty … We cannot concede to it.”

The NATO issue is part of that:

“NATO could be a source of guarantees for Ukraine, but we are not accepted as a member of NATO, so Ukraine has to seek for other security guarantees from individual countries, that could be NATO members. That is what we are proposing, a number of leaders of world countries could be the source of guarantees for Ukraine. They could be part of this circle of powerful countries. That is what we can talk about, security guarantees for Ukraine.”

His war in Ukraine is a war for “sovereignty” within the Ukraine that existed before 2014, and including Ukraine’s right to allow U.S.-or-allied missiles to be posted there within only a five-minute flight-time away from nuclear-annihilating The Kremlin.

He even said that “We are running out of time. You have to admit Ukraine into NATO right now.

We do not have much time. You have to accept Ukraine as a member of E.U. [as a stepping-stone to being allowed into NATO]”. In other words: Only as a temporary measure would he accept some NATO countries offering to provide “guarantees” to Ukraine’s winning this eight-year war — and he is holding the same goal now, that Ukraine’s Government has been pursuing ever since 2014: for U.S. missiles to be able to be placed in Ukraine and thus only a five-minute missile flight-time from The Kremlin. (During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, JFK refused to allow Soviet missiles to be placed 1,131 miles away from Washington DC.)

Here is a video of the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine which had produced this war. And here is what had led up to that historic regime-change event. And here is how that historic regime-change event ultimately produced Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.

So: the Big Lie about Ukraine’s war is that it started on 24 February 2022, instead of during 20-26 February 2014. Even Ukraine’s President acknowledges that it is false. For some reason, the leaders of Ukraine’s ‘allies’ (especially the U.S.) do not acknowledge it.

Lie #2: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 was “illegal”.

Here is why Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 could her considered as legal under international law:

No one maintains that U.S. President John F. Kennedy lacked international legal authorization to invade the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union were to place its nuclear-warheaded missiles in Cuba only 1,131 miles away from Washington DC. Everyone recognized that if the Soviet Union and Cuba were to do that, it would constitute an act of aggression against the United States, because those missiles would be so close to America’s command-center in DC as to enable a blitz nuclear attack by the Soviet Union so fast as to possibly prohibit America’s strategic command to recognize the attack in time to launch its own, retaliatory, missiles.

This is the principle, that any major world power possesses the national self-defense right to prohibit any bordering nation from allowing weaponry and forces of a major world power that is hostile to this major world power to be placed in that bordering nation.

Whereas Cuba is 1,131 miles away from DC, Ukraine is only 317 miles away from The Kremlin. Five minutes away from The Kremlin would be so close as to mean game-over for Russia, checkmate by the U.S.

JFK demanded from both Cuba and the Soviet Union, that there will NEVER be Soviet missiles placed in Cuba, and the Soviet Union then promised that they would comply with that national-security demand by the U.S.; thus, WW III was averted.

This time around, the aggressors were America and Ukraine; and Russia (facing an even bigger threat than America did in 1962) imposed the same demand as JFK did, but its enemies were/are determined and clear aggressor nations — they refused to comply.

Why does ANYONE allege that allowing the United States to place its missiles only 317 miles (a 5-minute missile-flight away) from The Kremlin would not constitute aggression by the U.S. and Ukraine against Russia? Allowing Ukraine into NATO would grant the Governments of U.S. and Ukraine a right to place U.S. missiles 317 miles from The Kremlin — something that no rational Government of Russia would ever allow to happen. As Russia’s Government has said, this issue of permanently excluding Ukraine from NATO is “a matter of life and death” for Russia. And THAT is the reason it is.

The Cuban-Missile-Crisis precedent acknowledged that Russia now has a national-defense right to demand that Ukraine NEVER be allowed into NATO. This is what U.S., its NATO anti-Russian military alliance, and the existing Ukrainian Government, refuse to acknowledge.

On 17 December 2021, Russia demanded, from both the U.S. and its anti-Russian military alliance NATO, promises in writing, that Ukraine WILL NOT BE ALLOWED INTO NATO. On 7 January 2022, America and its NATO aggression-alliance both said no.

That left Russia either to capitulate to America and its NATO, or else to invade Ukraine in order to prevent that aggressor — America — from doing essentially what JFK had gotten the Soviet Union to do: to agree to the defending major world power’s extremely reasonable (actually necessary) demand and so promise NEVER to allow Ukraine into NATO.

America (and its NATO) thus forced Russia to invade Ukraine, in order to prevent nuclear “Checkmate!” by the U.S. regime. The aggressor was America — NOT Russia.

All of the U.S.-and-allied propaganda organs (including academic ones) that use the lying phrase “Russia’s illegal invasion of ukraine” must therefore be recognized as being the liars that they actually are. (Otherwise: they must declare JFK to have been violating international law by threatening Khrushchev with an American invasion if Soviet missiles would be placed in Cuba.)

What the Cuban-Missile-Crisis example displays is a more detailed statement of the Westphalian Principle or “Westphalian State System” as Oxford Reference defines that:

OVERVIEW

Westphalian state system

QUICK REFERENCE

Term used in international relations, supposedly arising from the Treaties of Westphalia in 1648 which ended the Thirty Years War. It is generally held to mean a system of states or international society comprising sovereign state entities possessing the monopoly of force within their mutually recognized territories. Relations between states are conducted by means of formal diplomatic ties between heads of state and governments, and international law consists of treaties made (and broken) by those sovereign entities. The term implies a separation of the domestic and international spheres, such that states may not legitimately intervene in the domestic affairs of another, whether in the pursuit of self‐interest or by appeal to a higher notion of sovereignty, be it religion, ideology, or other supranational ideal. In this sense the term differentiates the ‘modern’ state system from earlier models, such as the Holy Roman Empire or the Ottoman Empire.

Richard Coggins

RTC

From:  Westphalian state system  in  The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics

That cites two “Empires” — Holy Roman, and Ottoman — but actually ALL empires violate Westphalianism. That includes today’s American empire.

During WW II, the advocates of Westphalianism were FDR and Stalin, and the opponents of Westphalianism were Churchill, Hirohito, Mussolini, and Hitler. Truman and his personal hero Eisenhower became FDR’s successors, and both of them were opponents of Westphalianism. This was the reason why the Cold War started: both of the first two American Presidents after FDR were imperialists. They created today’s military-industrial-complex-controlled America, the international American dictatorship that now exists and which has replaced FDR’s democracy.

An interesting sidelight to this is that whereas Sunni Islam, and the passion that some of them have for establishing an international “Caliphate,” accept imperialism or even advocate it (as Caliphate-proponents do), Shiite Islam opposes imperialism, and this has been one of the major reasons why Shiite Iran is rejected by all imperialistic Governments. Here is how Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei phrased this in his 21 October 2006 “Leader’s Speech in Meeting with Soldiers and Commanders of the Sacred Defense Era”:

There are two major differences between a defensive and an offensive war in terms of meaning and content. One difference is that an offensive war is based on transgression and aggression, but this is not the case with a defensive war. The second difference is that a defensive war is a place where zeal, courage and deep loyalty to ideals emerge. These ideals may be related to one’s country or … one’s religion. …. This does not exist in an offensive war. For example, when America attacks Iraq, an American soldier cannot claim that he is doing it for the love of his country. What does Iraq have to do with his country? This war is at the service of other goals, but if an Iraqi person resists this military invasion and presence inside his country, this means showing resistance and defending one’s country, national identity and those values that one believes in. …

Since the day the regime of Saddam attacked Tehran and struck the airport until the day Imam (r.a.) accepted the resolution – was a glorious era. And it continued to be a glorious era until Saddam attacked again and our revolutionary and mujahid people took over the entire desert. Basiji youth from throughout the country participated in the war and they put in an astonishing performance. This time – the second time that Iraq had attacked – they managed to make it retreat.

Between 1953 and 1979, Iran had been part of (i.e., a vassal of) the then-growing American empire, and Khamenei in that speech made a principled repudiation of THAT America — the post-FDR, imperialistic, America. But that America is now bipartisan in both of America’s political Parties, and is at war against the anti-imperialist nations of today, mainly Russia, China, and Iran — but also against any nation that is friendly toward any of those three. The anti-imperialist nations are pro-Westphalian; the imperialist nations are (and always have been) anti-Westphalian.

Ever since Obama’s coup in Ukraine in 2014, Ukraine has been and is a U.S.-vassal nation. Its demand to have the right for U.S. missiles to be positioned only about 300 miles away from the Kremlin is actually a U.S.-NATO demand that is placed upon this vassal-nation’s leaders as a precondition to be able to receive weapons from U.S.-NATO against Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion. Zelensky is a U.S.-NATO stooge. This entire problem is a problem of U.S. imperialism. Ukraine is America’s proxy. Russia is defending itself against U.S. aggression.

Today’s international law doesn’t mention the Westphalian Principle, because FDR had died and the U.N. (which he invented and named) became created in Truman’s image, not in FDR’s; and so it accepts imperialism (which FDR passionately despised and loathed). That’s part of the gutting which has resulted, of FDR’s envisioned U.N.

Lie #3: Russia’s 24 February 2024 invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked.

Click on this to see instances of that rabidly false allegation; and here and here are two typical examples of it. But the provocation is America’s demand that its vassal-nation Ukraine must have a ‘right’ to place U.S. missiles only 5 minutes from Moscow. It is outrageous, and a violation of Westphalianism (which is based upon a clear distinction between aggressor and defender).

Lie #4: Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine was aggressive not defensive.

Consequently, the phrases “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine”and “Russian aggression against Ukraine”, which are two typical phrases in media reports and official statements against Russia in this war — typical examples being this and this — all are baldfaced lies. Why are they used against Russia now, when in 1962 no one was alleging that JFK acted other than defensively in the Cuban Missile Crisis? (Furthermore: he wasn’t responsible for his neoconservative predecessor Eisenhower’s having positioned U.S. missiles in Turkey in 1959, which had precipitatedwhat Khrushchev did in Cuba. In the settlement that avoided WW III, Soviet missiles were removed from Cuba and American missiles were removed from Turkey. The U.S. regime was actually the aggressor in the combined 1959-1962 Turkey-Cuba Missile-Crisis.)

Any alleged report that employs any such phrase as “Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine” and “Russian aggression against Ukraine”, is propaganda — lying ‘news’ or ‘history’ — that bases itself upon the false unstated assumption that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 started the war in Ukraine, instead of responded to a war in Ukraine that U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration (including Joe Biden) — the American Government — had actually started there, in 2014, against Ukraine’s adjoining nation of Russia. America is planning ultimately to invade Russia from the only nation that is only 300 miles away from Moscow (Russia’s central command — far closer than Cuba was to Washington DC during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis).

Here, as proven in the links, are the historical facts, documenting the U.S. Government’s increasing aggression against Russia — using Ukraine as its primary springboard in its plan to conquer Russia:

The Obama Administration perpetrated in February 2014 a bloody Ukrainian coup (hidden behind popular anti-corruption Ukrainian demonstrations that the CIA and State Department had trained and organized local racist-fascist anti-Russian Ukrainians to lead) overthrowing the democratically elected President of Ukraine and replacing him by a racist-fascist (ideologically nazi) regime that immediately replaced Ukraine’s generals with ones to ethnically cleanse pro-Russian Ukrainians and kill some and terrorize the others to flee into Russia so as to get rid of the people in the Ukrainian regions that had voted 70% or more for that democratically elected President — and this ethnic cleansing would enable the nazi U.S.-installed regime in Ukraine to be ‘democratically elected’, and so to continue the U.S.-Government’s control over that country, on Russia’s border.

For the full details, see this.

So: all four of those phrases (“Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine”, “unprovoked war in Ukraine”, and “Russian aggression against Ukraine”, and (the one shown at the very top here) “The war started on 24 February 2022,” are lies, which reverse the aggressor (purportedly Russia, but actually America) and the defender (purportedly Ukraine — which is America’s proxy in its war against Russia) — the defender here being actually Russia).

The war in Ukraine started with Obama’s coup, not with Putin’s ultimate response to it (which occurred soon after America’s rejection on 7 January 2022, of Russia’s demand, NOT to allow Ukraine into NATO). Even Zelensky knows this (as was proven here at the start). And both he and his predecessor, Poroshenko, are aware that the February 2014 overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected President and installation of the post-coup regime means that their own Presidencies were and are likewise illegal.

America’s plan here is to place its missiles on Ukraine’s border with Russia, only a five-minute-missile-flight away from blitz-nuking The Kremlin and thereby behead Russia’s central command — too fast for Russia to be able to launch its retaliatory missiles.

What is the power of lies?

In a U.N. General Assembly vote on November 14th, the U.N. General Assembly (which has no power) voted by 94 votes for, 73 abstentions, and only 14 votes against, a Resolution to demand that Russia pay restitution to Ukraine, for the war in Ukraine — that America started against Russia by its 2014 coup. America — a proven dictatorship and police-state — leads the world’s ‘democracies’ this way.

Often, lies have more of an impact than truths do. And, this time, that impact can even turn out to be WW III. That’s why calling-out these lies, by the U.S. regime, against Russia, is essential — in order to prevent WW III.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is a professional lie-debunker. His 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.

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***

 

A recent blast hit the center of Istanbul resulting in several casualties. The Turkish authorities were very quick to announce the identity of the suicide person: A Kurdish woman in close relation with the Kurdistan Workers Party. Nevertheless, this terror act in Istanbul, followed by a new Turkish military intervention (aggression) in North Syria, once again opened the “Kurdish Question” which is in direct connection with the question of Kurdistan’s independence and terrorism as the political instrument in the realization of the national projects and ultimate goals.

The role of Russia in solving the “Kurdish Question” in the Middle East can be of crucial importance and a double-fold nature:

1. To openly support minority rights of the Kurds for self-determination including and a right for the national-state independence according to, for instance, the US’s policy-pattern upon Kosovo case; and

2. To provide by all means hidden support to the Kurdish freedom-struggle terrorism in Turkey as a matter of revenge for both Turkey’s direct support of the Chechen separatist rebels in the 1990s on Russia’s territory and for the Turkish bastard-style crashing the Russian military plane in 2015.

Kurdish majority (Source: Dr. Vladislav Sotirovic)

The Kurds are mostly discriminated against and oppressed in Turkey in comparison with all present-day states of their residence. The Kurds have not recognized in Turkey as a separate ethnolinguistic minority with their own language and culture regardless of the fact that they compose one-fifth of total Turkey’s inhabitants and being together with the Greeks and the Armenians the oldest population in Turkey living in Anatolia almost 3.000 years before the first (Seljuk) Turks came there at the end of the 11^th century.

There are three fundamental specific reasons for the current Kurdish separatist movement in Turkey out of the common Kurdish wish and right to have their own national state as one of the oldest ethnolinguistic people in both the region of the Middle East and the world:

1. Visible economic underdevelopment of the Kurdish eastern part of Turkey compared with the rest of the country as a result of asymmetric economic and development policy by Ankara.
2. Stubborn reluctance of any kind of the Turkish government to recognize the Kurdish separate existence as the ethnic group of its own specific language and culture as a result of the Ottoman/Turkish assimilation policy of all Muslim inhabitants of the country.
3. The Turkish rejection to recognize a minority status of the Kurds by granting a national-cultural or political autonomous status for Turkey’s Kurdistan that is a consequence of the continuation of Ankara’s unlawful administration of part of ethnographic Kurdistan as such autonomy was internationally recognized by the Peace Treaty of Sèvres in 1920.

Ankara’s discrimination and oppressive anti-Kurdish policy led finally to the establishment of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 1978 for the sake to fight for unrecognized Kurdish minority rights using guerrilla warfare as means to achieve its proclaimed national-political goals.

Ankara from its point of political view declared the PKK as both an illegal and terrorist organization fighting for the destruction of the legal and institutional system of the country which is true from a very technical viewpoint as it was also true that the Kosovo Liberation Army (the KLA) was doing the same with Serbia’s legal and security system in the 1990s but in this case politically and morally supported by Ankara. Undoubtedly, the PKK committed numerous terrorist actions across Turkey in which, according to official governmental sources, around 6.000 people were killed only during the first decade of the PKK activity. The limited fruits of such PKK tactics finally came as Ankara was forced to recognize at least formally the Kurdish cultural distinctiveness if not ethnic and linguistic ones. However, here the crucial question is: How it is possible to have a separate culture without а separate language and even ethnicity? It is a widespread approach that basically separates ethnolinguistic features to create and separate cultural identity as ethnolinguistic and cultural identities are usually understood as synonyms but this formula does not work in Turkey in the case of the Kurds and several other (unrecognized) ethnolinguistic minorities.

Anyway, the PKK’s requirement for either territorial-political autonomy or independence of Kurdistan is unacceptable for Ankara. Subsequently, from the mid-1980s Turkey is directly faced with its own “Kosovo syndrome”.

The Turkish authorities reciprocally answered to the PKK’s brutal warfare through the also brutal treatment of the Kurdish civilians in the war zones in East Turkey.

Hundreds of PKK activists are imprisoned and tortured each year by the Turkish state security forces which succeeded in 1999 (a year of NATO’s military intervention against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia declaratively for the sake to prevent state terrorism over Kosovo Albanian civilians) in arresting the PKK’s leader Abdullah Öcalan (known as Apo) who became under the mockery trial sentenced to death with the state brutality against the Kurds continued.

Nevertheless, only due to the direct pressure by the EU’s Commission in 2002 the pressure against the Kurds became to a certain extent eased as Turkey as a candidate state for the EU’s membership was obliged to adopt new liberal laws by which the Kurds were granted with the rights to maintain their own culture followed by the protection against arbitrary imprisonments and politically colored court investigations. In one word, in order to become the EU’s member state, one of the requirements is to grant every citizen the right to cultural expression, including Turkey’s main minority people, the Kurds, whose aspirations had long been suppressed in pursuit of nation-building goals by successive Turkish governments.

The Kurdish desire to establish Kurdistan as an independent state is opposed by all governments of the current states in which the Kurds live. In the region, especially Turkey is a country that undoubtedly suffered from different aspects of terrorism-related activities and different types of political violence. A long-standing separatist conflict in Turkey caused thousands of lives and imposed state terrorism or “terrorism from above” by Ankara against its own citizens in East Anatolia including martial law in the 1980s. A similar situation was in Iraq during the time of Saddam Hussein. That was and in Turkey still, is a clash between two levels of terrorism: state terrorism vs. sub-state terrorism. Both sides were and are making war crimes, executions, torture, and destruction of material property but the reactions by the West, especially by the US administration, are of a double standard nature as accusing only the Kurdish side of terrorism (the PKK) but not and the Turkish government. However, for the matter of comparison, during the Kosovo Crisis in 1998−1999 both the West and the US saw the terror acts carried out only by Serbia’s government but not by the KLA – a typical terrorist organization as a replica of the PKK, the IRA, the ETA or the Hezbollah. Nevertheless, the most “strange” thing is that Ankara never saw the KLA as a terrorist group or organization and opened in such a way the doors for the moral legalization of the PKK as the freedom fighters’ political-revolutionary party. Ankara made an even more serious precedent by recognizing the independence of Kosovo in 2008 – the state that is governed by ex-MLA’s commanders (as the US’s clients). Subsequently, there is no one reason not to recognize the independent Kurdistan governed by the PKK’s commanders with Abdullah Öcalan as the President (as Hashim Tachi – a commander of the KLA in the 1990s, became a President of the Republic of Kosovo in 2016).

A similar state terrorism policy emerged in Saddam’s Iraq as he time to time enacted oppression of the aboriginal Kurds like it was the case with the “al-Anfal Operation” that was carried out in 1982 (during the Iraqi-Iranian War of 1980−1988) when approximately 8.000 Kurds were arrested and executed. The most brutal military action against the Iraqi Kurds was done in 1988 when the army of Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons and destroyed more than 2.000 Kurdish villages but at that time without any US sanctions as Saddam was at that time an ally of Washington in the US’s struggle against the (Shia) Islamic Republic of Iran regardless the fact that the estimations of the killed ethnic Kurds in this organized genocide range up to 200.000.

Turkey’s policy upon the “Kosovo Question” is already returned as the boomerang to the Turkish home and is going most probably to be solved according to the Kosovo pattern. The role of Russia in solving the “Kurdish Question” in the Middle East is expected to be fundamental concerning primarily Turkey’s Kurdistan at least as a pure matter of a “boomerang revenge policy” for NATO’s/Turkey’s Kosovo strategy.

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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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***

“Crush! Kill! Destroy!”—The Robot, Lost in Space

The purpose of a good government is to protect the lives and liberties of its people.

Unfortunately, we have gone so far in the opposite direction from the ideals of a good government that it’s hard to see how this trainwreck can be redeemed.

It gets worse by the day.

For instance, despite an outcry by civil liberties groups and concerned citizens alike, in an 8-3 vote on Nov. 29, 2022, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a proposal to allow police to arm robots with deadly weapons for use in emergency situations.

This is how the slippery slope begins.

According to the San Francisco Police Department’s draft policy, “Robots will only be used as a deadly force option when risk of loss of life to members of the public or officers is imminent and outweighs any other force option available to SFPD.”

Yet as investigative journalist Sam Biddle points out, this is “what nearly every security agency says when it asks the public to trust it with an alarming new power: We’ll only use it in emergencies—but we get to decide what’s an emergency.”

A last-minute amendment to the SFPD policy limits the decision-making authority for deploying robots as a deadly force option to high-ranking officers, and only after using alternative force or de-escalation tactics, or concluding they would not be able to subdue the suspect through those alternative means.

In other words, police now have the power to kill with immunity using remote-controlled robots.

These robots, often acquired by local police departments through federal grants and military surplus programs, signal a tipping point in the final shift from a Mayberry style of community policing to a technologically-driven version of law enforcement dominated by artificial intelligence, surveillance, and militarization.

It’s only a matter of time before these killer robots intended for use as a last resort become as common as SWAT teams.

Frequently justified as vital tools necessary to combat terrorism and deal with rare but extremely dangerous criminal situations, such as those involving hostages, SWAT teams—which first appeared on the scene in California in the 1960s—have now become intrinsic parts of local law enforcement operations, thanks in large part to substantial federal assistance and the Pentagon’s military surplus recycling program, which allows the transfer of military equipment, weapons and training to local police for free or at sharp discounts.

Consider this: In 1980, there were roughly 3,000 SWAT team-style raids in the U.S. By 2014, that number had grown to more than 80,000 SWAT team raids per year.

Given the widespread use of these SWAT teams and the eagerness with which police agencies have embraced them, it’s likely those raids number upwards of 120,000 by now.

There are few communities without a SWAT team today.

No longer reserved exclusively for deadly situations, SWAT teams are now increasingly deployed for relatively routine police matters, with some SWAT teams being sent out as much as five times a day. In the state of Maryland alone, 92 percent of 8200 SWAT missions were used to execute search or arrest warrants.

For example, police in both Baltimore and Dallas have used SWAT teams to bust up poker games. A Connecticut SWAT team swarmed a bar suspected of serving alcohol to underage individuals. In Arizona, a SWAT team was used to break up an alleged cockfighting ring. An Atlanta SWAT team raided a music studio, allegedly out of a concern that it might have been involved in illegal music piracy.

A Minnesota SWAT team raided the wrong house in the middle of the night, handcuffed the three young children, held the mother on the floor at gunpoint, shot the family dog, and then “forced the handcuffed children to sit next to the carcass of their dead pet and bloody pet for more than an hour” while they searched the home.

A California SWAT team drove an armored Lenco Bearcat into Roger Serrato’s yard, surrounded his home with paramilitary troops wearing face masks, threw a fire-starting flashbang grenade into the house, then when Serrato appeared at a window, unarmed and wearing only his shorts, held him at bay with rifles. Serrato died of asphyxiation from being trapped in the flame-filled house. Incredibly, the father of four had done nothing wrong. The SWAT team had misidentified him as someone involved in a shooting.

These incidents are just the tip of the iceberg.

Nationwide, SWAT teams have been employed to address an astonishingly trivial array of nonviolent criminal activity or mere community nuisances: angry dogs, domestic disputes, improper paperwork filed by an orchid farmer, and misdemeanor marijuana possession, to give a brief sampling.

If these raids are becoming increasingly common and widespread, you can chalk it up to the “make-work” philosophy, by which police justify the acquisition of sophisticated military equipment and weapons and then rationalize their frequent use.

Mind you, SWAT teams originated as specialized units that were supposed to be dedicated to defusing extremely sensitive, dangerous situations (that language is almost identical to the language being used to rationalize adding armed robots to local police agencies). They were never meant to be used for routine police work such as serving a warrant.

As the role of paramilitary forces has expanded, however, to include involvement in nondescript police work targeting nonviolent suspects, the mere presence of SWAT units has actually injected a level of danger and violence into police-citizen interactions that was not present as long as these interactions were handled by traditional civilian officers.

Indeed, a study by Princeton University concludes that militarizing police and SWAT teams “provide no detectable benefits in terms of officer safety or violent crime reduction.” The study, the first systematic analysis on the use and consequences of militarized force, reveals that “police militarization neither reduces rates of violent crime nor changes the number of officers assaulted or killed.”

In other words, warrior cops aren’t making us or themselves any safer.

Americans are now eight times more likely to die in a police confrontation than they are to be killed by a terrorist.

The problem, as one reporter rightly concluded, is “not that life has gotten that much more dangerous, it’s that authorities have chosen to respond to even innocent situations as if they were in a warzone.”

Now add killer robots into that scenario.

How long before these armed, militarized robots, authorized to use lethal force against American citizens, become as commonplace as SWAT teams and just as deadly?

Likewise, how long before mistakes are made, technology gets hacked or goes haywire, robots are deployed based on false or erroneous information, and innocent individuals get killed in the line of fire?

And who will shoulder the blame and the liability for rogue killer robots? Given the government’s track record when it comes to sidestepping accountability for official misconduct through the use of qualified immunity, it’s completely feasible that they’d get a free pass here, too.

In the absence of any federal regulations or guidelines to protect Americans against what could eventually become autonomous robotic SWAT teams equipped with artificial intelligence, surveillance and lethal weapons, “we the people” are left defenseless.

We’re gaining ground fast on the kind of autonomous, robotic assassins that Terminator envisioned would be deployed by 2029.

If these killer robots follow the same trajectory as militarized weapons, which, having been deployed to local police agencies as part of the Pentagon’s 1033 recycling program, are turning America into a battlefield, it’s just a matter of time before they become the first line of defense in interactions between police and members of the public.

Some within the robotics industry have warned against weaponizing general-purpose robots, which could be used “to invade civil rights or to threaten, harm, or intimidate others.”

Yet it may already be too late for that.

As Sam Biddle writes for The Intercept, “As with any high-tech toy, the temptation to use advanced technology may surpass whatever institutional guardrails the police have in place.”

There are thousands of police robots across the country, and those numbers are growing exponentially. It won’t take much in the way of weaponry and programming to convert these robots to killer robots, and it’s coming.

The first time police used a robot as a lethal weapon was in 2016, when it was deployed with an explosive device to kill a sniper who had shot and killed five police officers.

This scenario has been repeatedly trotted out by police forces eager to add killer robots to their arsenal of deadly weapons. Yet as Paul Scharre, author of Army Of None: Autonomous Weapons And The Future Of War, recognizes, presenting a scenario in which the only two options are to use a robot for deadly force or put law enforcement officers at risk sets up a false choice that rules out any consideration of non-lethal options.

As Biddle concludes:

“Once a technology is feasible and permitted, it tends to linger. Just as drones, mine-proof trucks, and Stingray devices drifted from Middle Eastern battlefields to American towns, critics of … police’s claims that lethal robots would only be used in one-in-a-million public emergencies isn’t borne out by history. The recent past is littered with instances of technologies originally intended for warfare mustered instead against, say, constitutionally protected speech, as happened frequently during the George Floyd protests.”

This gradual dismantling of cultural, legal and political resistance to what was once considered unthinkable is what Liz O’Sullivan, a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, refers to as “a well-executed playbook to normalize militarization.”

It’s the boiling frog analogy all over again, and yet there’s more at play than just militarization or suppressing dissent.

There’s a philosophical underpinning to this debate over killer robots that we can’t afford to overlook, and that is the government’s expansion of its power to kill the citizenry.

Although the government was established to protect the inalienable rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness of the American people, the Deep State has been working hard to strip us of any claims to life and liberty, while trying to persuade us that happiness can be found in vapid pursuits, entertainment spectacles and political circuses.

Having claimed the power to kill through the use of militarized police who shoot first and ask questions later, SWAT team raids, no-knock raids, capital punishment, targeted drone attacks, grisly secret experiments on prisoners and unsuspecting communities, weapons of mass destruction, endless wars, etc., the government has come to view “we the people” as collateral damage in its pursuit of absolute power.

As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, we are at a dangerous crossroads.

Not only are our lives in danger. Our very humanity is at stake.

*

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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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***

“It seems probable that Russia will impose a solution. If, as expected, it becomes clear that the West can’t or won’t negotiate, it will behoove Russia to implement a maximalist solution. Or alternatively, Russia “bargains” by showing that it can create a dead zone in Western Ukraine as big as it likes. If Ukraine and its US minders don’t come to their senses, that dead zone will be awfully big.” —Yves Smith, Naked Capitalism

How does this end?

How does Russia create a “neutral” Ukraine that isn’t armed-to-the-teeth by Moscow’s enemies?

How do they prevent Kiev from conducting joint-military drills with NATO or placing missile sites on Russia’s border?

How do they stop the Ukrainian Army from shelling ethnic Russians in the east or training far-right paramilitaries to kill as many Russians as possible? How does Putin change Ukraine into a good neighbor that doesn’t pose a security threat and that doesn’t fuel anti-Russian hatred and bigotry?

And, finally, how does one resolve the conflict peacefully if one side refuses to negotiate with the other? Check out this clip from an article at Mint News:

“Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Tuesday signed a decree formally announcing the “impossible” prospect of peace negotiations between Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin…

“He (Putin) does not know what dignity and honesty are. Therefore, we are ready for dialogue with Russia, but with another president of Russia,” Zelensky said on Friday. (Mint News)

The fact that Zelensky will not negotiate with Putin does not mean there will be no settlement. It just means that Zelensky will have no voice in the outcome.

As the more powerful country, it has always been within Russia’s ability to impose a settlement that achieves its basic national security objectives, and that is precisely what Putin will do.

The settlement will not be ideal nor will it completely end the hostilities, but it will provide a layer of protection from Russia’s enemies which is the best that can be hoped for given the circumstances.

Regrettably, the settlement will also terminate Ukraine’s existence as a viable, contiguous state. And– after Russia has finished its special military operation– Ukraine will face a dismal future as a deindustrialized wastelands that is entirely dependent on its allies in the west for its survival.

Map from John Helmer

Here is an excerpt from an article by Moscow-based journalist John Helmer who thinks the Russian army will clear a vast area of central Ukraine in its upcoming winter offensive, and that much of that land will become part of a 100 kilometer-wide Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) that will protect Russia from Ukrainian missile and artillery attacks. As Helmer notes, the model for this military-imposed settlement is “the armistice of Panmunjom of July 27, 1953, which ended the Korean War…. On the ground inside the UDZ (Ukraine Demilitarized Zone) there may be no electricity, no people, nothing except for the means to monitor and enforce the terms of the armistice.” Here’s more from Helmer:

Military source:…. Once the destruction of these targets has been completed, the remnants of the infrastructure will be mined, and the area planted with sensing devices. The armies will then begin a rapid, staged withdrawal behind Russian lines where the process of fortification and entrenchment has already begun.”

“Civilians and disarmed Ukrainian troops – except for the Ukro-Nazi units — will be allotted one or two corridors through which they will be permitted to leave the zone. They’d better not dawdle.”…

The sources agree there will be a new military demarcation line before the thaw next spring; they differ on how it is being drawn now, and how it will look next April. “For now the line will be on the Dnieper with the zone extending from the west bank into the rump Ukraine – my guess is at a depth of not less than 100km. This will put Russian territory out of the range of most Ukrainian artillery. A 100km-deep zone will also give the Russian forces time to detect and intercept anything in flight…

“In the northern sector – that’s from Kramatorsk and Slovyansk to Kharkov… these are garrisons and staging areas of hate on or near to Russia’s borders; they will not be spared ….(and) have qualified them for de-electrification, de-population, and de-nazification.”

“The point to emphasize, especially in the Russian operations in the north… will not seize and hold territory. … The idea won’t be to occupy the territory, let alone administer it, for any length of time. The goal will be to destroy enemies who raise their heads and the infrastructure they rely on; lay mines and sensors; and then withdraw.”

“Once the assigned transportation and logistics nodes have been taken, the job of destroying them by engineer units will begin. Bridges, roads, railroads, marshalling yards, rolling stock, airfields, fuel storage and dispensaries, electrical substations, transmission and communications towers, central offices, warehouses, laydown areas, agricultural equipment – anything that could possibly be used to support the Ukrainian-NATO effort east of the zone’s western border will be destroyed. That will be also be the ground forces’ job – more comprehensive and thorough than missile and drone strikes can achieve.”

“Civilians and disarmed fighters, without their motorized equipment, will be permitted to walk out of the zone to specially prepared buses (as Surovikin supervised in Syria) with whatever they can carry on their backs…. Anyone who chooses to stay inside the zone will be informed explicitly via radio, flyers, and loudspeaker that they are considered enemy combatants and will be targeted accordingly. After a prescribed amount of time, the ‘golden bridges’ for the exiting population will be destroyed. For those remaining they will have had no power, sanitation, or communications …”(“Ukraine Armistice– How the UDZ of 2023 will separate the Armies like the Korean DMZ of 1953”, John Helmer, Dances With Bears

Map from John Helmer

Helmer sums it up perfectly. Putin is going to create a vast, uninhabitable no-man’s-land in the center of Ukraine that will separate east from west and end Ukraine’s existence as a viable, contiguous state. This is what a military-imposed settlement looks like. It’s not ideal and it doesn’t necessarily stop all the fighting, but it does address Russia’s basic security requirements which Washington chose to ignore.

Rest assured, that Washington will not like this settlement and will never agree to the new borders. But the United States will not have the final say-so in this matter and that is extremely important, because Washington’s role as the “guarantor of global security” is now a thing of the past. Russia is going to decide Ukraine’s borders and that’s just the way it’s going to be. So, yes, we can expect to hear the gnashing of teeth at NATO Headquarters and the UN and at the White House, but to little effect. The matter is settled unless, of course, the US and NATO want to commit ground forces to the conflict which, we think, will precipitate a split in NATO that will inevitably lead to its collapse. Either way, Ukraine’s fate is going to be decided in Moscow not Washington, and that reality is going to have a significant impact of the distribution of global power. There’s a new sheriff in town and he is definitely not an American.

Bottom line: We think Helmer’s analysis is the most probable scenario going forward.

Putin has showed admirable restraint to this point, but after 9 months of pointless drudgery and carnage, it’s time to wrap this thing up. Moscow has always had a sledgehammer in its toolkit and now it’s going to use it. We would have preferred that it didn’t end this way, but there’s no sense in crying over spilt milk. Washington wanted to stretch this war out for as long as possible to bleed Russia dry so it couldn’t project power beyond its borders or obstruct US plans to “pivot to Asia”. But Putin foiled that plan. He didn’t step into Washington’s trap and he’s not going to pump blood and money down a black hole. He’s going to settle this matter once-and-for-all and be done with it. This is from an interview with Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

“This entire conflict could have been avoided had we simply recognized Moscow’s legitimate interests in what happens in Ukraine…. What happens in Ukraine is important to Russians…. So, we could have intervened early on and said, ‘Let’s have a ceasefire and talk’, in fact, we could have listened to the Russians for the last 10 or 20 years about their concerns about what was happening inside Ukraine. And, I think now we see with the Zelensky regime– a very dangerous government that is incurably hostile to Russia (and) that responds exclusively to instructions from Washington– that has decided that it wants to fatally weaken Russia in any way possible… The solution to this is –not to join this futile and pointlessly destructive war with Moscow– (but) to get some sense into peoples’ minds in the government in Kiev.”Colonel Douglas MacGregor, “Ukraine is about to be Annihilated”, You Tube; 2:10 minute-mark

IMO, the decision has already been made. Ukraine is going to be split in two whether Washington likes it or not. That’s just the way it is.

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

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

Featured image is from TUR

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***

 

Everybody predicts we are going to face an ice-cold winter in the Global North, especially in Europe and particularly in Ukraine. In the meantime, Russia is amassing along the northern Ukrainian border some half a million-plus troops and about 1,500 tanks and massive-massive artillery.

Ukraine is already devastated by knocked out electricity, causing blackouts in about 60% of the country, no heating, due to lack of gas and petrol supplies from Russia and / or (auto-)destroyed internal delivery systems, with expected low sub-freezing temperatures of -15 degrees C and more, literally converting millions of people into refugees – towards western Europe.

The situation is already desperate. No Heat. No food. No energy. No light. Darkness and cold. Outright misery.

It’s said, President Putin is just waiting for the ground to freeze solid, so Russian tanks and troops will not get stuck in the mud. Once that happens – he will command the Endgame.

This is Putin’s last option. So, thinks former senior advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, Col. Doug Macgregor – see this interview with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate.

Former United States Marine Corps intelligence officer and United Nations weapons inspector, Scott Ritter, foresees a similar situation. The Russians have not changed objectives since the beginning of the war – denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine, plus protecting the predominantly Russian Donbas Region and other Russian-rooted populations.

No matter what the western mainstream media lies, President Putin has always instructed his generals to avoid targeting civilians, to minimize civilian casualties, and to the extent possible, protect civilian infrastructure. Knowing how the west would react and what western corrupted media would say, President Zelenskyy initiated a program of auto-destruction of everything, including killing his Ukrainian compatriots, accusing Russia. Western media complied. Anything goes, if it helps blaming and destroying Putin and Russia.

The stated Russian goal of denazification and demilitarization is reasonable and would be achievable without constant NATO interference and arming of Ukraine, without non-stop blasting of Russia-Russia-Russia; and without blowing Zelenskyy’s ego out of any human proportion.

Mr. Putin’s proposals for negotiations have been ignored or adamantly refused by Zelenskyy, the western bellboy, as the west is hellbent to destroy Russia and Putin in whatever ways possible. See this, Scott Ritter: “Ukraine cannot win this war. It’s a fantasy”.

Since this is a western war of propaganda (John Pilger), propagating the obnoxiously stupid notion that Ukraine will win this war, there is no pressure from even reasonable westerners (sic) to bring the conflict to the negotiation-table.

Hence, by the war-minded western journalists – main and off-mainstream – without much difference, Putin is showing with Russian troops and war material buildup along Ukraine’s northern frontier, his readiness for a final strike to end this war.

Other journalists and war-luminaries move their thoughts and predictions in the same direction.

The going narrative is, the west / NATO leaves Putin no choice, other than this devastating endgame situation.

Under normal circumstances this might be a logical conclusion. But we are not living in a world of normal circumstances. We are living in a dystopian world, with dystopian people, who in their dystopian-think far prefer war to peace. Not only for the multi-billion-dollar war profits, but also – and maybe foremost – for the macho-type muscle flexing vis-à-vis Russia and all those no-good bandido-nations, who are still supporting Putin and Russia.

Are these pundits truly thinking of the full picture? One may wonder about the potential consequences of a WWIII-scenario of such an attack, nuclear or non-nuclear; but, maybe more importantly, what is Ukraine for Russia?

During the past at least 300-plus years, Ukraine has been an integral part of Russia, of the Russian Empire, of the Soviet Union. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, independent Ukraine was still a close ally to the new Russia – until the “f*ck Europe” (Victoria Nuland) February 2014 US-EU-NATO inspired Maidan Coup. That was an unnatural game changer.

Please allow me to ask – President Putin, arguably one of the few – if not the only clear-thinking world leaders left, would he eradicate a historic and cultural part of Greater Russia? Which in the end would only benefit the western profit-drunken war-machine? – And of course, the WEF’s promoted and orchestrated by invisible financial giants Great Reset with its parallel ultra-deceptive UN Agenda 2030? – Would he?

Don’t think so.

Mr. Putin is a man of ethics and of traditional values, including family values. Almost every Ukrainian citizen has somewhere family or other close-relation links with people in Russia.

Mr. Putin, a man who has not forgotten Ukraine’s role in the successes of the Soviet Union, of Russia, in manufacturing, technology development; Ukraine, a source of a multitude of minerals and other raw materials, and not least – the breadbasket, not only for Russia but for the world – Mr. Putin, a man of that caliber would not annihilate an essential part of the Body of Russia – and this for reasons way beyond the present western fangs around Ukraine.

President Putin doesn’t want a WWIII, though many say, we are already in a “new” form of a WWIII. Perhaps. But not nuclear; and not (yet) all-destructive.

Think about it.

There are other ways.

Why not just capture Zelenskyy and his corrupt inner-circle elite Nazi-gang, replace them with a “real” democratically elected leadership, with a western-funded revival and reconstruction program and get going without delay – sort of a Maidan-Coup in reverse. Within short, Russian efficiency would rebuild Ukrainian infrastructure, reinstate the flow of energy, electricity, heat, food, a relative comfort for a devastated society. – Imagine, how happy Ukrainians would be if Russia would take over?!?

“Western-funded”, means, rebuilding Ukraine physically and morally with revenues from sales of Russian gas and other hydrocarbons to desperate Europe – which Europe bitterly needs – unless she risks within a couple of years a large-scale deindustrialization, slide into abject poverty, if not back into the Stone Ages.

Europe has already realized this, as their gas storage tanks are full to the brim throughout the EU, clandestinely filled with Russian gas over the past few months, while the official narrative was “sanctioning Russia – no Russian energy ever” – see this.

Given Mr. Putin’s solid background in intelligence and his savvy as a strategist, “taking out” President Zelenskyy and his criminal inner-clan and putting them before a Russian war-crimes tribunal, might not be that difficult. This could probably be done without destroying a single building.

In fact, you might not be surprised, a vast, a very vast majority of Ukrainians would be grateful to Mr. Putin and might even ask the Kremlin for integration into Russia. That might not happen. At least not immediately. But Ukraine could indeed become again an ally and close partner of Russia – the status she had before the 2014 US-NATO planned and Ukrainian neo-Nazi “Right Sector”, executed Maidan Coup.

Would the West just look on and do nothing?

Probably not.

But would they risk a nuclear war over Ukraine? – We don’t know. Of course, there are high risks of false flags, pointing to Russia having done terrible things to the Ukrainian people and to the west, propagated as we know it by western lie-propaganda media – that would require terrible retributions. All that is possible, and Russia might be prepared for it.

That may be the reason for the fully armed and war-ready military build-up along the northern Ukrainian frontiers.

In the end, western powers, or those who think they represent these powers, have largely achieved their goal, namely the war as a deviation maneuver of public attention from a larger agenda: The fast-advancing Great Reset, alias, UN Agenda 2030 – and the 4^th Industrial Revolution, the digitization of everything. The tyrannic assault on humanity for total control. According to their plan, there are about eight years left to achieve their criminal objectives.

As we fall for the multi-deviations of War, New Covid Variants, new plandemic threats, Inflation, Climate Change, Energy Crisis, Food Shortages, – and-so-on – THEY are advancing with giant steps towards their Reset objectives, including Yuval Noah Harari’s dream, of a world without “useless eaters” and robotized, chip-implanted transhumanized survivors. Harari, a depopulation advocate, is Klaus Schwab’s buddy and close associate.

*

We, The People, are on Our Own

We must never forget, that we are on our own. In all these atrocities, plandemics, deadly vaxx-coercions, famine, false energy crises, manufactured inflation and fabricated “climate change”, alias geoengineering, controlling the weather, weaponizing the weather worldwide (see this), and perhaps worst of all, imposing fully digitized central bank currencies (DCBC) to enslave us and rob us of our last shred of liberty – plus, the daily drill of lies, after lies, after lies from our governments, health authorities, weather institutes – yes, let’s never forget, We, the People, are on our own.

We cannot rely on or trust any authorities, as we know them. All those illusions, of democracy and “in our government we trust” are lies, always were. We have to prepare to be on our own, to start on our own a new society, a new way of life.

Do not think, that the “old way” – the old society – could be reformed and rebooted. Reform doesn’t exist. Never think Reform. Think NEW. New in the sense of local, family, like-minded people, community-based, gradually building up a peaceful equitable society, outside of the current corrupt dystopian mainstream. Forget the mainstream. Let it rot by itself.

If we manage to physically and intellectually and spiritually detach from the old corrupted ways, and build up New Ways by the People for the People – local production for local consumption, with local means of exchange, becoming gradually self-sufficient, joining with other communities, building networks of new-thinking and new-acting people – we are halfway there.

Our conviction and unfaltering perseverance plus unpredictable dynamics will take over, take us further towards a new conscience. With positive-thinking mindsets we will be moving into a New Sunrise.

*

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

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

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“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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***

As the war in Ukraine has dragged on for nine months and a cold winter is setting in, people all over the world are calling for a Christmas truce, harkening back to the inspirational Christmas Truce of 1914. In the midst of World War I, warring soldiers put down their guns and celebrated the holiday together in the no-man’s land between their trenches.This spontaneous reconciliation and fraternization has been, over the years, a symbol of hope and courage.

Here are eight reasons why this holiday season too offers the potential for peace and a chance to move the conflict in Ukraine from the battlefield to the negotiating table.

1. The first, and most urgent reason, is the incredible, daily death and suffering in Ukraine, and the chance to save millions more Ukrainians from being forced to leave their homes, their belongings and the conscripted menfolk they may never see again.

With Russia’s bombing of key infrastructure, millions of people in Ukraine currently have no heat, electricity or water as temperatures drop below freezing. The CEO of Ukraine’s largest electric corporation has urged millions more Ukrainians to leave the country, ostensibly for just a few months, to reduce demand on the war-damaged power network.

The war has wiped out at least 35% of the country’s economy, according to Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal. The only way to halt the meltdown of the economy and the suffering of the Ukrainian people is to end the war.

2. Neither side can achieve a decisive military victory, and with its recent military gains, Ukraine is in a good negotiating position.

It has become clear that U.S. and NATO military leaders do not believe, and possibly have never believed, that their publicly stated goal of helping Ukraine to recover Crimea and all of Donbas by force is militarily achievable.

In fact, Ukraine’s military chief of staff warned President Zelenskyy in April 2021 that such a goal would not be achievable without “unacceptable” levels of civilian and military casualties, leading him to call off plans for an escalation of the civil war at that time.

Biden’s top military advisor, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, told the Economic Club of New York on November 9, “There has to be a mutual recognition that military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word, not achievable through military means…”

French and German military reviews of Ukraine’s position are reportedly more pessimistic than U.S. ones, assessing that the current appearance of military parity between the two sides will be short-lived. This adds weight to Milley’s assessment, and suggests that this could well be the best chance Ukraine will get to negotiate from a position of relative strength.

3. U.S. government officials, especially in the Republican Party, are starting to balk at the prospect of continuing this enormous level of military and economic support. Having taken control of the House, Republicans are promising more scrutiny of Ukraine aid. Congressman Kevin McCarthy, who will become Speaker of the House, warned that Republicans would not write a “blank check” for Ukraine. This reflects the growing opposition at the base of the Republican Party, with a Wall Street Journal November poll showing that 48% of Republicans say the U.S. is doing too much to help Ukraine, up from 6% in March.

4. The war is causing upheavals in Europe. Sanctions on Russian energy have sent inflation in Europe skyrocketing and caused a devastating squeeze on energy supplies that is crippling the manufacturing sector. Europeans are increasingly feeling what German media call Kriegsmudigkeit.

This translates as “war-weariness,” but that is not an entirely accurate characterization of the growing popular sentiment in Europe. “War-wisdom” may describe it better.

People have had many months to consider the arguments for a long, escalating war with no clear endgame—a war that is sinking their economies into a recession—and more of them than ever now tell pollsters they would support renewed efforts to find a diplomatic solution. That includes 55% in Germany, 49% in Italy, 70% in Romania and 92% in Hungary.

5. Most of the world is calling for negotiations. We heard this at the 2022 UN General Assembly, where one after another, 66 world leaders, representing a majority of the world’s population, eloquently spoke out for peace talks. Philip Pierre, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia, was one of them, pleading with Russia, Ukraine and the Western powers “to immediately end the conflict in Ukraine, by undertaking immediate negotiations to permanently settle all disputes in accordance with the principles of the United Nations.”

As the Amir of Qatar told the Assembly, “We are fully aware of the complexities of the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and the international and global dimension to this crisis. However, we still call for an immediate ceasefire and a peaceful settlement, because this is ultimately what will happen regardless of how long this conflict will go on for. Perpetuating the crisis will not change this result. It will only increase the number of casualties, and it will increase the disastrous repercussions on Europe, Russia and the global economy.”

6. The war in Ukraine, like all wars, is catastrophic for the environment. Attacks and explosions are reducing all kinds of infrastructure–railways, electrical grids, apartment buildings, oil depots–to charred rubble, filling the air with pollutants and blanketing cities with toxic waste that contaminates rivers and groundwater.

The sabotage of Russia’s underwater Nord Stream pipelines supplying Russian gas to Germany led to what may have been the largest release of methane gas emissions ever recorded, amounting to the annual emissions of a million cars. The shelling of Ukraine’s nuclear power plants, including Zaporizhzhia, the largest in Europe, has raised legitimate fears of deadly radiation spreading throughout Ukraine and beyond.

Meanwhile, US and Western sanctions on Russian energy have triggered a bonanza for the fossil fuel industry, giving them a new justification to increase their dirty energy exploration and production and keep the world firmly on course for climate catastrophe.

7. The war has a devastating economic impact on countries across the world. The leaders of the world’s largest economies, the Group of 20, said in a declaration at the end of their November summit in Bali that the Ukraine war “is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy — constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity and elevating financial stability risks.”

Our long-standing failure to invest the relatively small proportion of our resources required to eradicate poverty and hunger on our otherwise rich and abundant planet already condemns millions of our brothers and sisters to squalor, misery and early deaths.

Now this is compounded by the climate crisis, as entire communities are washed away by flood waters, burned out by wildfires or starved by multi-year droughts and famines. International cooperation has never been more urgently needed to confront problems that no country can solve on its own. Yet wealthy nations still prefer to put their money into weapons and war instead of adequately addressing the climate crisis, poverty or hunger.

8. The last reason, which dramatically reinforces all the other reasons, is the danger of nuclear war. Even if our leaders had rational reasons to favor an open-ended, ever-escalating war over a negotiated peace in Ukraine – and there are certainly powerful interests in the weapons and fossil fuel industries that would profit from that – the existential danger of what this could lead to absolutely must tip the balance in favor of peace.

We recently saw how close we are to a much wider war when a single stray Ukrainian anti-aircraft missile landed in Poland and killed two people. President Zelenskyy refused to believe it was not a Russian missile. If Poland had taken the same position, it could have invoked NATO’s mutual defense agreement and triggered a full-scale war between NATO and Russia.

If another predictable incident like that leads NATO to attack Russia, it can only be a matter of time before Russia sees the use of nuclear weapons as its only option in the face of overwhelming military force.

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For these reasons and more, we join the faith-based leaders around the world who are calling for a Christmas Truce, declaring that the holiday season presents “a much-needed opportunity to recognize our compassion for one another. Together, we are convinced that the cycle of destruction, suffering and death can be overcome.”

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

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

Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies are the authors of War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict, available from OR Books in November 2022. They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Featured image: British and German soldiers playing soccer in No-Man’s Land during the Christmas Truce in 1914. Photo Credit: Universal History Archive

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***

 

 

 

 

How big can a mind be?

If we’re lucky, we have threescore and ten years — in a very big wide world, full of history — to experience as much as we can take in.

Threescore-ten is not nearly enough, but some extraordinary people manage to encompass and give order to a lot of it.

And some even more extraordinary people manage to rise above their own lives to interpret creation and the fabric of the universe as having consistent meaning across cultures and throughout the ages.

David Ray Griffin was Professor of Philosophy of Religion and Theology, at the Claremont School of Theology and Claremont Graduate University, from 1973-2004.  With his senior, Dr. John Cobb Jr., he co-founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973.

Griffin has stated that “the task of a theologian is to look at the world from what we would imagine the divine perspective, one that would care about the good of the whole and would love all the parts.”

Not only was David an outstanding theologian and one of the two best-known living scholars of Alfred North Whitehead’s process theology (the other being John Cobb):  His books also spanned the related fields of postmodernism, theodicy (defence of God against evil), primordial truth, panentheism, scientific naturalism, parapsychology, Buddhist thought, and the mind-body interaction.

About the time that he retired in 2004, he was approached by some people who admired his candor, and pointed to evidence that the 9/11 event was highly suspicious.

At first David thought that 9/11 was simply blowback from the way America had treated the Middle East — but upon researching it more deeply he realized that there was indeed a very serious likelihood that the US had contrived 9/11 as a false flag operation to manufacture consent to occupy Afghanistan and Iraq for their oil.

This injustice fired his energy to research in depth, then write a dozen scholarly books on 9/11 — books that were not acknowledged in the media but which engaged in a cat-and-mouse game with the purveyors of the official 9/11 narrative, who continually adapted their story to cover up the weaknesses that David tracked and revealed as their tattered narrative evolved.

The first and most famous of these books was The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11, published by his much-appreciated Interlink press in March 2004.

That best-seller was followed in 2005 by a devastating takedown of the Bush Administration’s whitewash Commission titled The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions, which exposed 115 problems in “the 571-page lie”.

Following these early 9/11 works, David was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in both 2008 and 2009, and was named among “The 50 People Who Matter Today” by the New Statesman, on September 24, 2009.

In November, 2008, David’s seventh book about 9/11, The New Pearl Harbour Revisited, was one of only 51 books awarded as “pick of the week” that year by Publishers Weekly.

What followed was extraordinary.

As the foremost book reviewing tool in the English language, Publishers Weekly’s spotlight should have led to reviews in the New York Times, the Times Literary Supplement, Library Journal, and many other top reviewing sources — but the word was out in the narrative-controlled media to give it a pass.

In 2011, David and I founded an organization called the 9/11 Consensus Panel, comprised of more than 20 professionals expert in various aspects of the 9/11 attacks. In 2018, the 51 consensus points that were developed during this unique evidence-based reviewing project were published under the title 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation (2018).

During that seven-year project, David addressed the existential crisis of climate change, penning his encyclopaedic 2015 reference, Unprecedented: Can Civilization Survive the CO2 Crisis? (I took that book to the COP21 Paris climate summit in 2015, and presented it there, following up with a YouTube documentary on that enormous gathering of humanity – the largest meeting since World War II.)

David then turned his attention to US imperialism – writing Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World in 2016, and producing the incredible work of scholarship, The American Trajectory:  Divine or Demonic, in 2018.

David was at last able, in 2019, to turn to his long-planned The Christian Gospel for Americans: A Systematic Theology.  It is a magnum opus of enormous breadth and depth.

In it, for example, he confronts the science vs religion issue, showing that some scientists – former atheists – have been overwhelmed by the extent of exceedingly precise ratios between the chemical elements of earth that are required for life, to now saying that the universe was “fine-tuned for life,” thus reflecting a “fine-tuner” (or divine creator).

In 2022, as he approached the end of his life, and following a long struggle with prostate cancer, David wrote the beautiful and crowning reflections of his maturing theology, James and Whitehead on Life after Death.

In the spirit of James and Whitehead, he explains that the universe is not separate from, but is within God, and is itself the very nature of God. This evolving world view requires a new understanding of the divine reality – panentheism, meaning “all in God”.

The causal principles of the universe exist naturally, being inherent in the nature of things, because they exist in the very nature of God.

This chapter on the infinitely fine-tuned nature of the universe to support life is a transporting gift.

But he was not done yet!

Forthcoming in March, 2023, from the publisher Clarity Press, is David’s America on the Brink: How the US Trajectory Led Fatefully to the Russia-Ukraine War – which was completed during the last days of his life.

In total David Ray Griffin has written 50 books and more than 200 essays. (He was once asked if he had ever had an unpublished thought!)

In all of his books – and most notably those on American imperialism – he read and cited recent scholarly investigations from top university presses, effectively overriding the propaganda that has passed down through many years.

Paul Craig Roberts wrote: “David has served truth to the hilt. He is a hero of our time.”

There is no question that his body of work will go down in history as providing some of the most elegant thinking our century has witnessed.

And at some point, his chronicling of historically suppressed truths must emerge into full daylight, to allow reality-based civilization to advance.

Let us keep his work alive, so that earth’s future peoples will inherit the great spectrum of wisdom he has left them:  from a hopeful common-sense theology, to the exposés of imperialist propaganda and false flag operations, to the full extent of the climate crisis, to our evolving perception of the nature of the divine, to the evidence that our spirits will survive after death.

David Griffin stands with the greats – yet was quiet, humorous, down to earth, and unassuming.

Consult David Griffin’s archive on Global Research.

David Griffin has passed away. His Legacy Will Live

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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. 

Elizabeth Woodworth is a regular contributor to Global Research

Celebrity COVID Vaxx Injuries

By Ben Bartee, December 01, 2022

There is no shortage of examples of the celebrity COVID vaxx injury phenomenon, particularly among those who virtue-signaled their vaccinations. Actor Bob Odenkirk, an otherwise seemingly healthy 58-year-old Hollywood star, promoted the shot in March 2021 in a choreographed publicity stunt, probably at the behest of the show’s producers, while shooting the last season of Better Call Saul.

Video: Trudeau Did Not Have Authority to Invoke the Emergencies Act. Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Closing Argument

By Canadian Constitution Foundation, December 01, 2022

The video below is the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s closing argument made in the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) on November 25, 2022.

Pentagon Cannot Account for $20 Billion Worth of Weapons in Ukraine While Another $19 Billion for Taiwan Is Missing

By Drago Bosnic, December 01, 2022

As if ongoing corruption scandals, including the FTX-Kiev regime-DNC connection, weren’t enough, the troubled Biden administration is now faced with another one. According to the latest reports, the US government is unable to account for the approximately $20 billion worth of weapons it sent to the Kiev regime.

We Will be Sacrificed for Global Standardization of Systems

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, December 01, 2022

Agenda 21 (Agenda for the 21st Century) is the inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information, education and all human beings in the world.

High Fuel Prices Likely to Kill More Europeans Than Fighting in Ukraine. The Economist

By Marc Vandepitte, November 30, 2022

That the economic sanctions resulting from the invasion of Ukraine affect Europe more than Russia is an annoying fact. But now a recent study by The Economist suggests that because of high fuel prices, the additional death toll in Europe in the coming winter could exceed the number of soldiers killed in combat in Ukraine so far. Food for thought.

The West Seeks War, Not Peace

By Mark Taliano, November 30, 2022

“The collective West” does not want peace for Ukraine.  Instead it wants war in an unsuccessful bid to “bleed Russia”. The West was not seeking Peace when it orchestrated the bloody, unconstitutional Maidan coup, ousting elected President Yanukovych, who was forced to flee the country.

Thanksgiving in a Victim World. Resuming Our National Holidays After a Mass Violation

By Dr. Naomi Wolf, November 30, 2022

I recently traveled to Florida, to do research for a new book. I stayed in a hotel for almost a week, in a modest, touristy town, a few miles from the beach. Every day, from the moment I opened my eyes til the moment I settled into my cool hotel sheets, my heart exulted with an indescribable happiness.

British Medical Journal: “COVID-19 Vaccines and Drugs Were Developed at “Warp Speed””

By Maryanne Demasi, November 30, 2022

On 25 September 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received a complaint by Brook Jackson who had been working for Ventavia Research Group, a Texas based company hired to run clinical trials for Pfizer’s covid-19 mRNA vaccine.

Dutch Government to Close Down 3000 Farms

By Free West Media, November 30, 2022

Many farms are to be closed down in the Netherlands because of EU requirements and Brussels’ “Green Deal”. In the Netherlands there have been several protests by farmers in the summer, as reported by FWM.

Israelis Are Not Welcome in Qatar During the 2022 World Cup

By Steven Sahiounie, November 30, 2022

sraeli citizens and journalists are allowed in Qatar in a FIFA agreement during the 2022 World Cup now underway in Doha. Being allowed to enter a country to watch football, or to cover an event as a journalist or media crew, is far different than being welcome.

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***

There is no shortage of examples of the celebrity COVID vaxx injury phenomenon, particularly among those who virtue-signaled their vaccinations.

Actor Bob Odenkirk, an otherwise seemingly healthy 58-year-old Hollywood star, promoted the shot in March 2021 in a choreographed publicity stunt, probably at the behest of the show’s producers, while shooting the last season of Better Call Saul.

Shortly thereafter, in July, he suffered a heart attack on set.

Pop icon Katy Perry recently experienced a haunting eye malfunction live on stage that looked a lot like Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS) or similar neurological conditions known to result from the jabs.

Canadian actress Jennifer Gibson got her face totally wrecked by the vaxx

Canadian actress Jennifer Gibson. pic.twitter.com/4FsC5ndfAp

— D. Scott @eclipsethis2003 (@eclipsethis2003) September 29, 2022

Fully vaxxed author Julie Powell

I would argue that COVID does kill some of the right people. The anti-vaxxers/maskers are dying in legions.

But yes. It’s a real shame about Kavanaugh.

— Julie Powell (@licjulie) October 1, 2021

A year later, she died of cardiac arrest.

Even when presented with proof-positive irrefutable evidence that the vaxx messed them up, they still encourage their fans to get shot up.

 

Oh we have another coincidence pic.twitter.com/YxLB3VWCaz

— Luke Rudkowski (@Lukewearechange) November 20, 2022

 

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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. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Daily Bell

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***

The video below is the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s closing argument made in the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) on November 25, 2022.

The argument was made by Sujit Choudhry, council of the CCF, under the premise that Trudeau did not have the authority to invoke the Emergencies Act.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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

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***

As if ongoing corruption scandals, including the FTX-Kiev regime-DNC connection, weren’t enough, the troubled Biden administration is now faced with another one. According to the latest reports, the US government is unable to account for the approximately $20 billion worth of weapons it sent to the Kiev regime. The US Congress has become a place of heated debates as Republicans warn there will be “impending audits” after they take full control of the House of Representatives in January. Major news media, such as Fox News, claim that the US government under Biden inspected only 10% of approximately 22,000 weapons it sent to the Kiev regime from late February to November.

The GOP wants audits to determine what is going on with the massive amounts of weapons the US is sending and how much of it is ending up “where it’s supposed to be.” Republican representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has vowed to “hold our government accountable” for spending US taxpayers’ dollars for the sake of the corrupt Kiev regime. Other members of the US Congress have been asking for audits for months, while Senator Rand Paul asked on Twitter:

“Didn’t someone try to legislatively mandate a special inspector general to scrutinize Ukrainian spending?  Oh, that’s right, it was my amendment and most Democrats AND Republicans opposed any semblance of oversight.”

Back in May, the Biden administration promised it would pledge more than $54 billion in the military, financial and humanitarian “aid” to the Kiev regime. Various estimates of the full amount of funds the political West sent (and is still sending) put the actual number much higher (more than $65 billion back in May). Since Russia launched its counteroffensive on February 24, the US provided the bulk of those funds, way more than all of its vassals and satellite states combined, according to data cited by Summit News. On multiple occasions, the US government and the Pentagon indirectly admitted they weren’t able to track Ukraine-bound funds and resources after they reached the Polish-Ukrainian border.

On the other hand, representatives of some of the US vassals and satellite states in Europe have expressed frustration with the GOP’s requests for accountability of where the funds earmarked for the Kiev regime are ending up. These European officials “hope that such measures would not lead to cutting off funding to Ukraine and ultimately to victory for Russia.” Others, such as the United Kingdom Parliament member Tobias Ellwood, have been more direct and accused the Republicans that “they are playing into Putin’s hands” by asking for audits and imposition of stricter control, oversight and accountability regarding the funds for the Kiev regime.

Yet, weapons deliveries to the Kiev regime are hardly the only issue the US is faced with at present. Weapons the Biden administration promised to deliver to China’s breakaway island province of Taiwan have been considerably delayed and slowed as a result of the US commitment to arming the Neo-Nazi junta. It is estimated that Washington DC approved approximately $20 billion in arms sales to the government in Taipei since 2017. In late August, a Defense News report claimed there was a $14 billion backlog in weapons sales to Taiwan. However, the latest data indicates that the number has now drastically increased to nearly $19 billion in delayed deliveries, according to a new estimate by The Wall Street Journal.

“US government and congressional officials fear the conflict in Ukraine is exacerbating a nearly $19 billion backlog of weapons bound for Taiwan, further delaying efforts to arm the island as tensions with China escalate,” the WSJ report begins. “The US has pumped billions of dollars of weapons into Ukraine since the Russian invasion in February, taxing the capacity of the government and defense industry to keep up with a sudden demand to arm Kiev in a conflict that isn’t expected to end soon,” the authors added in an admission rarely seen in mainstream media.

The information indicates that the US might not be able to respond effectively to a potential escalation of tensions in Taiwan.

“The flow of weapons to Ukraine is now running up against the longer-term demands of a US strategy to arm Taiwan to help it defend itself against a possible invasion by China, according to congressional and government officials familiar with the matter,” WSJ report states.

Somewhat ironically, many Washington DC and Taipei officials have consistently used the Ukraine crisis as a reference point to reinforce the narrative that the US “must urgently equip the island with everything it needs.” However, very few of them have admitted that the US Military Industrial Complex doesn’t have the production capacity necessary to concurrently arm the Kiev regime and the government in Taipei. This is especially true given the aforementioned issues with tracking weapons and other funds earmarked for the Neo-Nazi junta in Kiev.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

 

China reactivated its investments and trade with Latin America, something which could be key in the trade dispute with the US as the Asian Giant anticipates trade volumes to massively increase in the coming years. It is not lost that Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel was the first foreign leader to visit China following the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in October; Beijing is negotiating a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) with El Salvador and Uruguay; and, Argentina has expressed its interest in becoming a BRICS member. This is all with the aim of diminishing US influence in Latin America.

The Latin American region is having increased geopolitical importance for China. Beijing is particularly focussing on lines of investment and trade, especially on agreements already made but were diminished by the pandemic and China’s own economic problems. None-the-less, Latin America is the second largest destination for foreign investment from China, with more than 2,700 Chinese-funded companies operating in the region.

What makes China’s drive into Latin America all the more audacious is that it is traditionally considered the “Backyard of the United States.” By China making inroads in a US-dominated region, it signals a change in the international order – one towards multilateralism.

Despite this demonstration of multipolarity in action, Latin America still has not moved on from its logic of only being an exporter of raw materials which imports industrialised goods from China. China has focused on acquiring raw materials and investing in infrastructure to get products out of the region at the lowest possible cost.

There is also a hope in China to lessen its trade relations with the US by engaging more deeply with Latin America.

In November 2022, China removed the last phytosanitary barriers with Brazil so that it can import Brazilian corn. The removal of the barriers will result in greater flows of Brazilian corn and lessen China’s dependency on corn from the US, the Asian Giant’s top supplier.

In another example, China lessened its reliance on American soybeans after buying 3.6 to 4.2 million tons of Argentinian soybeans since the new soybean dollar agreement was announced, a special exchange rate provided by the Argentine Central Bank for soybean exporters.

None-the-less, China’s geopolitical value on Latin America is almost exclusively in raw materials, as is now seen in the market for lithium, a metal fundamental in the development of many technologies. Of the nine mining projects in Argentina that are financed by China, six are lithium. In 2021, 98.2% of total mining exports of lithium carbonate was to the East Asian country.

Contrary to the strengthening of trade relations, trade with China and the rest of Asia is unlikely to have a positive effect for domestic consumers in Latin American countries, especially those suffering from rising inflation. Although agricultural and energy production records are being broken every year across Latin America, the alleviation of poverty and hunger has not advanced. Without a proposal that allows directing the benefits and income of the energy and agriculture sectors towards a productive transformation that generates employment, it is difficult to foresee changes in the local economies to benefit the majority and not just local elites and China.

However, it is not only China that is increasingly playing a central role in the economic development of Latin America and consolidating itself as a strategic destination for its exports. Trade relations between Asia and Latin America will continue growing due to, among other factors, the prospects for economic and demographic growth of the other giant in the region: India. India for now does not compete with China in Latin America but has found some niches, such as agricultural manufacturing, but this will likely change as the South Asian country continues to develop.

South Korea, for their part, has been negotiating an FTA with Mercosur – a trade bloc that includes Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay – since 2018. In recent years it has had permanent contacts with the governments of those countries to try to speed up the process. Japan also seeks to be influential in Latin America and maintain strong ties, especially with Chile and Brazil. However, just like South Korea, they continue to have heavy tariffs on agricultural imports, something that diminishes the full potential of relations.

None-the-less, with China’s influence growing in Latin America, and with India, Japan and South Korea wanting to expand trade relations and influence, the region is no longer the “US’ backyard”, as it was perceived to be since the 1823 Monroe Doctrine.

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Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.

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Die Welt ist in einem Zustand, der wenig Hoffnung aufkommen lässt. Während für weltweite Kriege und Waffen, die die Menschen jenseits der Grenzen erschlagen, unerschöpfliche finanzielle Mittel bereitgestellt werden, sind mehrere Millionen Kinder und Jugendliche in einem der wohlhabendsten Länder der Welt armutsgefährdet. Deshalb müssen die Menschen aufgeklärt werden; man muss ihnen die Wahrheit sagen.

Doch Aufklärung allein wird die Gesellschaft nicht umgestalten. Auch soll der Zustand der Welt nicht nur beschrieben, sondern vor allem verändert werden. Doch wie und mit wem soll das geschehen? Die Forschungsergebnisse der Tiefenpsychologie verweisen auf die Erziehung des jungen Menschen. Sie sei wichtiger als Aufklärung. Aber der Standpunkt der humanistischen Psychologie ist relativ neu, noch nicht gründlich erarbeitet, schwer vermittelbar und vor allem nicht im Interesse der Herrschenden, des Staates und der Kirche.

Ungeachtet dessen ist es für eine friedliche und humane Zukunft von großer Bedeutung, den Menschen durch Erziehung und Aufklärung das psychologische Wissen über sich selbst und die Mitmenschen zu vermitteln, damit sie sowohl ihre persönlichen Probleme lösen als auch damit beginnen können, die Welt in friedliche Bahnen zu lenken.

Der Jugend als Vorposten einer neuen Gesellschaft, des Fortschritts und einer humaneren Welt soll dabei unsere besondere Aufmerksamkeit zuteilwerden.

Zur Bedeutung der Aufklärung

Da die Politik in den Köpfen und Herzen der Menschen vorbereitet wird, handeln die Menschen morgen so, wie sie heute denken. Deshalb kann die Bedeutung der Aufklärung nicht hoch genug eingeschätzt werden. Der Sinn aufklärerischer Bemühungen ist die Reinigung des menschlichen Bewusstseins von individuellen und kollektiven Vorurteilen.

Die Zerstörung von Vorurteilen bedeutet mehr als ein bloßes intellektuelles Unterfangen; der „aufgeklärte Verstand“ ist fähig, gesunde Lebensziele ins Auge zu fassen. Die Zukunft unserer Kultur wird wesentlich davon abhängen, ob es genug „Aufklärer“ geben wird, die imstande sein werden, den breiten Volksmassen jene Vorurteile zu nehmen, die der ideologische Hintergrund der Menschheitskatastrophen sind. Intellektuelle haben dabei eine große Verantwortung, denn ihre Pflicht wäre es, für die anderen Menschen zu denken und mit der Freiheit des Denkens die Freiheit überhaupt zu proklamieren.

In einer Zeit, in der die Bedrohung durch die Atombombe die Selbstvernichtung der Menschheit als möglich erscheinen lässt, bedürfen wir mehr denn je der „freien Geister“, die uns lehren, was Wahrheit und was Lüge ist.

Der französische Aufklärer Baron Paul-Henri Thiry d’Holbach schrieb dazu bereits vor 250 Jahren in der Einleitung seines Buches „Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier“:

„Es ist vergebene Mühe, die Menschen von ihren Lastern heilen zu wollen, wenn man nicht mit der Heilung ihrer Vorurtheile beginnt. Man muss ihnen die Wahrheit sagen, damit sie ihre theuersten Interessen kennen lernen, und die wahren Motive, welche sie der Tugend und ihrem wahren Glück zuführen.

Die Volkslehrer haben lange genug ihre Augen zu dem Himmel erhoben; möchten sie endlich sie der Erde zuwenden! (…). Sagen wir den Menschen, dass sie gerecht sein wollen, wohltätig, mässig und gesellig, nicht weil es ihre Götter verlangen, sondern weil man seinen Nebenmenschen zu gefallen suchen muss; (…).

Die Wahrheit ist einfach, der Irrtum ist compliziert, unsicher in seinem Gange und von Abwegen umgeben. Die Stimme der Natur ist verständlich; die der Lüge ist zweideutig, räthselhaft, mysteriös. Der Weg der Wahrheit ist gerade, jener des Betrugs ist krumm und finster. Diese Wahrheit ist allen Menschen nothwendig, und wird von allen Gerechten gefühlt. Die Lehren der Vernunft sind für alle Jene, die redlichen Gemütes sind. Die Menschen sind unglücklich, weil sie unwissend sind; sie sind unwissend, weil sich alles gegen ihre Aufklärung verschwört, und bloss darum schlecht, weil ihre Denkkräfte nicht hinreichend entwickelt.“ (1)

Eine Wahrheit der Gegenwart ist zum Beispiel, dass die Ungleichheit unter den Menschen in Deutschland – einem der weltweit wohlhabendsten Staaten – stärker wächst als während der Pandemie, dass mehr als zehn Millionen Menschen, darunter mehrere Millionen Kinder und Jugendliche armutsgefährdet sind und dass immer mehr Menschen unter die Armutsgrenze fallen, was laut Warnung des Wirtschaftsexperten und DIW-Chefs Marcel Fratzscher „fatale Folgen für die Gesellschaft“ (das heißt, für die Grundfesten des demokratischen Miteinanders) haben würde (2).

Doch Aufklärung allein reicht nicht aus, die gegenwärtige Gesellschaft umzugestalten. Auch soll der Zustand der heutigen Welt nicht nur beschrieben, sondern vor allem verändert werden.

Wichtiger noch als Aufklärung ist denn auch das Problem der Erziehung. Die Forschungsergebnisse der Psychologie – speziell der Tiefenpsychologie – haben die Erziehung in ihrer ungeheuren Tragweite deutlich gemacht.

Die Psychologie in der Tradition des Humanismus

Das humanistische Denken, das die Menschheitsgeschichte seit ihren Anfängen durchzieht, gewann seit dem Ausgang des Mittelalters und dem Anbruch der Frühen Neuzeit im europäischen Geistesleben immer mehr an Bedeutung. Gemeint ist jenes Denken, das sich allmählich befreit von mystischen Spekulationen, von Obskurantismus sowie von Autoritätsgläubigkeit und das sich zur Aufgabe macht, vorurteilslos, realistisch und tolerant die Dinge der Welt zu erforschen. Unter „Obskurantismus“ wird das Bestreben verstanden, die Menschen bewusst in Unwissenheit zu halten, ihr selbständiges Denken zu verhindern und sie an Übernatürliches glauben zu lassen.

Das Aufkommen des wissenschaftlichen Denkens der Frühen Neuzeit hatte auch eine realistische Betrachtung des Menschen zur Folge: die menschliche Individualität, die Lern- und Entwicklungsfähigkeit sowie die Güte des Menschen und die Bedeutung der Erziehung wurden zu zentralen Themen der Philosophie.

Der historisch bedeutungsvolle Kampf gegen jegliche Bevormundung, für die Freiheit des Geistes und die Toleranz unter den Menschen begann. Die Aufklärung brachte zudem den Gedanken der Freiheit, Gleichheit und Mitmenschlichkeit als Grundvoraussetzung eines würdigen menschlichen Lebens ein.

Doch noch heute leben wir in einer Welt, in der sich der Mensch nicht erkannt hat. Alles hat er erkannt und erforscht; aber sich selbst, seine Natur, seine seelische Verfassung, seine Reaktionsweisen hat er nicht erkannt.

Vor dem Zeitalter er Psychologie herrschte im Gegensatz zur auf Kausalität beruhenden Wissenschaft die magische Weltanschauung des Mittelalters und der Religion, die die Menschen fest im Griff hatte. Man war der Meinung, dass die Seele des Menschen hier auf dieser Welt nur eine Prüfung durchmacht und dass der Mensch in den Himmel gehört; dort sei das ewige Leben.

Tatsache ist, dass wir in gewissem Sinne noch immer im Mittelalter leben. Wir haben das mittelalterliche Denken und Fühlen nicht hinter uns gelassen. Die Mehrheit der Menschen lebt noch in diesem Zustand.

Zwar haben die Erfolge in den Naturwissenschaften das Problem etwas erhellt, aber die Menschen denken noch wie im Mittelalter, beten zu Göttern, zum Teufel und zu Engeln. Ohne Psychologie wird die Menschheit nicht weiterkommen: Dass wir Kriege führen, das ist zurückzuführen auf den Mangel an psychologischer Erkenntnis. Auch die Tatsache, dass die Menschen unglücklich sind, dass sie Schwierigkeiten haben im Leben, dass unsere Gesellschaftsordnung nicht richtig funktioniert, ist zurückzuführen auf die Unkenntnis der Psychologie.

Von allen Institutionen werden die Menschen programmiert – angefangen von der Erziehung zuhause bis hinauf zur Rekrutenschule und das „Feld der Ehre“. Das ist Programm, das ist bewusst. Und in dieser Stimmung werden die Menschen ein Leben lang gehalten.

Die Psychologie ist eine Wissenschaft über den Menschen, über die menschliche Natur: wie er wird, wie er heranwächst und wie er sich in seinem Leben zurechtfindet.

Aufgrund seiner Erfahrungen, die ihm vor allem die Eltern und Lehrer vermitteln, ist er dann das Produkt seiner Erlebnisse, seiner Eindrücke in der Kindheit. Bereits in den ersten fünf bis sechs Lebensjahren – wenn das Kind in den Kindergarten kommt – hat es schon seinen Kompass. Es weiß dann schon, wie es sich verhalten soll und hat eine Meinung über das andere Kind, über Vater, Mutter, Geschwister. Es hat schon seinen Weg, seine Charaktereigenschaften, seine Stellung in der Welt.

Tiefenpsychologische Menschenkenntnis und die Lehren des Individualpsychologen Alfred Adler als ein Grundpfeiler der Tiefenpsychologie

Die Forschungsergebnisse der Tiefenpsychologie, die den unbewussten seelischen Vorgängen einen hohen Stellenwert für die Erklärung menschlichen Verhaltens und Erlebens beimessen (Freund, Jung, Adler), können dazu verhelfen, dass psychisch irritierte Menschen in die Lage kommen, ihre Probleme in der Ehe, mit den Kindern und im gesellschaftlichen und staatlichen Leben zu lösen. Die Jugend kann das psychologische Rüstzeug bekommen, die Welt einmal in eine andere Bahn zu lenken.

Grundlegende Annahmen der Tiefenpsychologie sind vor allem die Annahme eines dynamischen Unbewussten als wesentlicher und hochwirksamer Teil unseres psychischen Lebens sowie der psychische Mechanismus der Verdrängung, der Übertragung und der Gegenübertragung und die Bedeutung der frühen Kindheit für die spätere Persönlichkeit.

Die Lehre Alfred Adlers ist zu einem Grundpfeiler der Tiefenpsychologie geworden und aus der psychologischen Forschung nicht mehr wegzudenken. Die Entwicklung der Tiefenpsychologie hat Adler in vielen Punkten Recht gegeben. Zu nennen ist zum Beispiel die Erkenntnis, dass der Mensch nicht einfach durch Triebe bestimmt wird, dass der Charakter des Menschen sich nicht aufgrund eines Vererbungsprozesses entwickelt und dass die Gemeinschaft im Leben des Menschen von zentraler Bedeutung ist.

Für Adler ist der Charakter ein schöpferisches Produkt des Kindes, entstanden aus der Auseinandersetzung mit den frühkindlichen Lebensumständen, insbesondere den Erziehungseinflüssen, die für die Charakterbildung am maßgeblichsten sind.

Auch die Medizin ist nach anfänglichem Widerstand der Kirche nur weitergekommen, indem sie die Funktion des Körpers erkannt hat. Ebenso will die Tiefenpsychologie das geistige und seelische Leben des Menschen erforschen. Dann können wir auch die Frage beantworten, wer Krieg führt, wer ihn jeweils heraufbeschwört. Sind das Menschen wie wir oder sind das andere Menschen? 

Die Tiefenpsychologie – ein Kind der Naturwissenschaft

Einige reife Menschen, die einen gedeckten Tisch und die Gelegenheit gehabt haben, sich zu bilden und zu forschen, haben erahnt, dass das gesellschaftliche System, wie es ist, nicht richtig ist. Drei von ihnen seien kurz erwähnt: Feuerbach, Marx und Kropotkin.

Der Erkenntnisstandpunkt des deutschen Philosophen, Anthropologen und Religionskritikers Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872) ist für die modernen Humanwissenschaften wie Psychologie und Ethnologie grundlegend geworden. Er forderte, dass der Mensch endlich damit aufhören müsse, ein Spielball der menschenfeindlichen Mächte zu sein, die sich der Religion zur Unterdrückung bedienen:

„Wir sehen den Menschen gebeugt unter der Last von Geschöpfen, welche nur Erzeugnisse ihres eigenen unfreien und furchtsamen Gemütes, unwissenden und ungebildeten Verstandes sind. Setzen wir an die Stelle der Gottesliebe die Menschenliebe, an die Stelle des Gottesglaubens den Glauben des Menschen an sich, an seine Kraft, werden wir aus Gläubigen zu Denkern, aus Betern zu Arbeitern, aus Kandidaten des Jenseits zu Studenten des Diesseits, und wir werden endlich ganze Menschen werden können.“ (3)

Der deutsche Philosoph, Ökonom, Gesellschaftstheoretiker, Historiker, Protagonist der Arbeiterbewegung sowie Kritiker des Kapitalismus und der Religion Karl Marx (1818-1883)

hat sich auf Feuerbach abgestützt. Marx und andere – zum Beispiel die Anarchisten – haben angefangen, den Menschen richtig zu sehen. Wenn der Kampf gegen diese Gedanken nicht geführt worden wäre, wäre die Menschheit viel weiter, könnten sich die Menschen heute das Leben in jeder Beziehung besser einrichten.

Marx hat die übernatürliche Tendenz abgelehnt und den Menschen als Wesen der Natur gesehen, dessen Haltung geändert werden kann. Er meinte, dass die Verhältnisse den Menschen ändern. Wenn der Mensch die Sicherheit seines Lebens hat, denkt er anders; er hat andere Gedanken, andere Gefühle, eine andere Beziehung zum Mitmenschen. Marx vertrat die Auffassung, dass das Bewusstsein des Menschen durch die Verhältnisse geprägt wird. Seine Größe bestand darin, dass er den Menschen zurückgeholt hat auf die Erde. Er glaubte, dass der Mensch sich ändern kann. Und die Tiefenpsychologie bestätigt das. Wenn man den Menschen die Freiheit gibt, dann werden sie gesund.

Solange im Diesseits nicht jeder menschenwürdig und ohne Furcht leben könne, meinte Marx, werde es den Glauben an ein besseres Jenseits, an eine ausgleichende Gerechtigkeit geben:

„Die Religion ist das Streben nach illusorischem Glück des Volkes, das einem Zustand der Gesellschaft entspringt, welcher der Illusion bedarf.“ (4)

Der russische Anarchist, Sozialist, Historiker, Geograph, Wissenschaftler sowie Philosoph und Schriftsteller Fürst Pjotr Alexejewitsch Kropotkin (1842-1921) kämpfte für eine gewalt- und herrschaftsfreie Gesellschaft und gilt als einer der einflussreichsten Theoretiker des kommunistischen Anarchismus. Sein wissenschaftliches Werk lautete: „Gegenseitige Hilfe in der Tier- und Menschenwelt“.

Kropotkin vollbrachte eine große Leistung, indem er die Natur beobachtete sowie die Naturwesen und seine Beobachtungen auf den Menschen bezog. Die heutige Meinung über den Menschen, die durch die wissenschaftliche Tiefenpsychologie bestätigt wird, hat Peter Kropotkin vorausgeahnt. Mit ihm fing die Neuzeit an. In der Neuzeit hat man damit begonnen, den Menschen richtig zu erkennen. Hierzu ein bewegendes, zutiefst psychologisches Zitat Kropotkins:

„Der Mensch dem die Fähigkeit sich mit seiner Umgebung zu identifizieren anerzogen ist, ein Mensch der sich der Macht seines Herzens, seines Willens bewusst ist, stellt seine Fähigkeiten frei in den Dienst der Anderen, ohne in dieser oder in einer anderen Welt dafür eine Belohnung zu erwarten. Vor allem besitzt er die Fähigkeit die Gefühle anderer zu begreifen, sie mitzuerleben. Dies genügt. Er teilt mit den anderen Freud und Leid. Er hilft ihnen, die schweren Zeiten ihres Lebens zu ertragen. Er fühlt seine Kräfte und verbraucht großmütig seine Fähigkeiten, andere zu lieben, andere zu begeistern, in ihnen den Glauben an eine bessere Zukunft zu wecken und sie zum Kampf für diese Zukunft hinzureißen. Welches Schicksal ihn auch erreicht, er nimmt es nicht als Leid, sondern als Erfüllung seines Lebens, das er nicht gegen ein pflichtloses Vegetieren eintauschen möchte, er zieht eventuell Gefahren einem kampf- und inhaltslosen Leben vor.“ (5)

Zusammen mit der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung und indem er den Faktor der gegenseitigen Hilfe für die Evolution forderte, hat Kropotkin entscheidende Einsichten der Tiefenpsychologie vorausgeahnt.

Die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung war ein enormer Einbruch in die Gefühlswelt des Menschen: der Glaube an Götter und übernatürliche Wesen hörte auf. Davor war der Mensch noch im Mittelalter in seinem Denken. Erst durch die materialistische Geschichtsauffassung hat der Mensch angefangen, sich mit sich selbst zu befassen, sich selbst zu erkennen, zu deuten und sich zu erklären, warum er sich so verhält.

Vor der materialistischen Geschichtsauffassung hat die Meinung vorgeherrscht, dass die Seele des Menschen hier auf dieser Welt bloß eine Prüfung durchmacht und das ewige Leben erst im Himmel beginnt.

Zur Bedeutung der Erziehung

Wie im Abschnitt „Zur Bedeutung der Aufklärung“ bereits angedeutet, ist das Problem der Erziehung wichtiger noch als die Aufklärung, Die Ergebnisse der tiefenpsychologischen Forschung haben die Erziehung in ihrer ungeheuren Tragweite deutlich gemacht.

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

Heute weiß man, dass der Mensch in einem derartigen Maße das Produkt seiner Erziehung ist, dass man die Hoffnung hegen darf, durch bessere, das heißt, psychologische Erziehungsmethoden Menschen heranbilden zu können, die gegen die Verstrickungen des Machtwahns gefeit sein werden.

Indem die Pädagogik in Elternhaus und Schule auf ausschließliche Autorität und auf Gewaltanwendung verzichtet und sich mit wahrem Verständnis dem kindlichen Seelenleben anpasst, wird sie einen Menschentypus hervorbringen, der keine „Untertanen-Mentalität“ besitzt und darum für die Machthaber in unserer Welt kein gefügiges Werkzeug mehr sein wird.

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

Eine aufgeklärte, vernunftbegabte und mitmenschlich eingestellte Jugend kann die Welt einmal in eine andere Bahn lenken

Bereits vor der Pandemie-Welle und lange vor dem weltweiten Kriegs-Geschrei berichteten Jugendliche aus einem wohlhabenden europäischen Land:

„Die Dichter frohlocken: ‚Schön ist die Jugend‘. Doch wie sieht es tatsächlich aus?  Bei genauerer Betrachtung zeichnet sich eine andere Realität ab. Die seelische Not ist groß; in allen Lebensbereichen sind wir entweder sehr gefordert oder überfordert. Was wir über die Welt und den Menschen erfahren, ist geprägt von Unwissenheit und Unaufgeklärtheit. Unsere Eltern sind trotz größter Bemühungen nicht in der Lage, uns eine realistische Einführung ins Leben zu geben. In unseren Kinderstuben herrscht das Prinzip von Religion und Mystik, von Verwöhnung und Strenge. Die Anerkennung ist immer an Bedingungen geknüpft; nur die Leistung zählt.

Ganz irritiert kommen wir in die Schule, wo die vorgefassten Meinungen bestärkt und zementiert werden: dumm und gescheit, arm und reich. Was zählt, ist die gute Note und nicht die gegenseitige Hilfe. Die Lehrkräfte haben nicht das Einfühlungsvermögen, unsere seelische Not zu empfinden und zu beheben.

So stehen wir da: ohne Aufklärung über den Menschen und die Welt, orientierungslos sowie unfähig, uns das eigene Leben und eine schöne Liebe einzurichten. Nachdem wir diese Erziehung durchlaufen haben, sind wir Karikaturen dessen, was wir sein könnten. Auf diesem Boden der mystischen Erziehung, konfrontiert mit Schulversagen und Liebesproblemen, ist jeder junge Mensch vorbereitet für die Drogen. Junge Menschen, die die Zukunft sein sollten, gehen zu Tausenden unter unsäglichen Qualen am Rauschgift zugrunde.“

Seit Anfang Jahr 2020 dürfte sich die allgemeine Situation weiter verschärft haben.

Warum der Jugend nicht die Erkenntnisse der Psychologie, eine psychologische Bildung vermitteln? Damit könnte man ihr ein Werkzeug in die Hand geben, womit sie ihre Lebens- und Liebesprobleme lösen und sich mit den Eltern versöhnen kann und womit sie Persönlichkeiten werden können.

Warum der Jugend nicht sagen, dass sie nicht in den Krieg ziehen soll? Mütter, Väter, Philosophen und Psychologen, Professoren und Persönlichkeiten aus allen Fakultäten.

Wenn das möglich ist und wenn es gelingt, dass sich die Jugendlichen einig sind – einig im Zusammenleben und Zusammenwirken –, dann werden sie ein Loch in diese Welt schlagen können. Sie sind doch die Vorposten einer neuen Gesellschaft, des Fortschritts. Vor allem die Jugendlichen können eine Umwälzung, eine Umgestaltung der Gesellschaft bewirken; eine schönere und humanere Welt schaffen.

Ich glaube an die Jugend, an ihre Lernfähigkeit, ihre Kreativität, ihre Einfühlsamkeit, ihr Verantwortungsgefühl, ihre Einsichtsfähigkeit und Bereitschaft zur Veränderung. Meistens fehlt jungen Menschen nur etwas Besonnenheit und Ausdauer, damit sie in kleinen Schritten ihre Kompetenzen entwickeln können.

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Dr. Rudolf Lothar Hänsel ist Lehrer (Rektor), Doktor der Pädagogik (Dr. paed.) und Diplom-Psychologe (Dipl.-Psych.). Viele Jahrzehnte unterrichtete er und bildete Fachkräfte fort. Als Pensionär arbeitete er als Psychotherapeut in eigener Praxis. In seinen Büchern und pädagogisch-psychologischen Fachartikeln fordert er eine bewusste ethisch-moralische Werteerziehung sowie eine Erziehung zum Gemeinsinn und zum Frieden. Er schreibt regelmäßig für Global Research.

Noten

(1) D’Holbach, P.-H. T. (1976). Der gesunde Menschenverstand des Pfarrers Meslier. Kritische Gedanken über die Religion und ihre Auswirkung auf die kulturelle Entwicklung. Zürich, S. 4ff.

(2) https://de.rt.com/inland/155345-experten-warnen-soziale-schere-klafft/

(3) De.wikipedia.org. Stichwort „Ludwig Feuerbach“

(4) De.wikipedia.org. Stichwort „Die deutsche Ideologie“

(5) Aus: Grasenack, Moritz (Hrsg.). Die libertäre Psychotherapie von Friedrich Liebling. Lich / Hessen, S. 45

Copyright für das Bild: Christopher Futcher

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Agenda 21 (Agenda for the 21st Century) is the inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information, education and all human beings in the world

This roadmap for global totalitarianism was agreed to by 179 nations, including the U.S., at the 1992 Sustainable Development conference in Brazil

We’ve seen various facets of Agenda 21 being implemented throughout the last three years, under the cover of biosecurity and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The Green New Deal (Green Agenda), “Build Back Better,” the Fourth Industrial Revolution (the transhumanist movement) and The Great Reset all further and facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21

Agenda 21 is based on the ideology of “communitarianism,” which argues that “an individual’s rights should be balanced against rights of the community.” Community, however, in the mind of the globalists, is made up of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), corporations and government, which are to dictate what happens around the world. The people are not really part of the equation

“Sustainable development” is NOT about recycling or making sure there’s enough food and resources for everyone. It’s about moving populations from rural and suburban areas into concentrated city centers where they and their use of resources can be monitored and controlled

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Click here to watch the video.

 

The video above features the late Rosa Koire, former executive director of the Post Sustainability Institute and Democrats Against UN Agenda 21,¹ and author of “Behind the Green Mask: UN Agenda 21.” She spent the decade before her untimely death researching and educating people about public policies intended to strip us of our individual rights.

Before taking up that fight, she was a district branch chief at the California Department of Transportation for nearly three decades. Koire passed away from a pulmonary embolism and metastatic lung cancer at the end of May 2021.

In the video above, Koire exposes the real agenda of the United Nations Agenda 21, which was laid out during a Sustainable Development conference in June 1992.

Documentation^2,3 from this conference can be downloaded in multiple languages from the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals page⁴ and the UN’s digital library.⁵ Koire’s many interviews and lectures on this topic can be found on DemocratsAgainstUNAgenda21.com.⁶

Agenda 21 Is Globalization on Steroids

Koire was adamant that Agenda 21 (aka Agenda for the 21st Century) was the most crucial topic of our time, as it is:

“The inventory and control plan for all land, water, minerals, plants, animals, construction, means of production, food, energy, information — and all human beings in the world.”

This roadmap for global control and domination — global totalitarianism — was agreed to by 179 nations at the 1992 Sustainable Development conference in Brazil. Were Koire alive today, at the end of 2022, there’s no doubt she would have warned us all that Agenda 21 was now in the final implementation stages.

We’ve seen various facets of Agenda 21 being implemented throughout the last three years, under the cover of biosecurity and the global COVID-19 pandemic. The Green New Deal (Green Agenda), “Build Back Better,” the Fourth Industrial Revolution⁷ (the transhumanist movement) and The Great Reset, officially introduced by World Economic Forum founder Klaus Schwab and then-Prince Charles in June 2020⁸ — these all exist to further and facilitate the implementation of Agenda 21.

What Is ‘Sustainable Development’ Really?

As noted by Koire, most people are under the illusion that “sustainable development” is about things like recycling and making sure there’s enough food and resources for an ever-expanding population. But no, that’s NOT what it’s actually about. “It’s about moving populations into concentrated city centers and clearing them out of rural areas,” Koire says.

It’s also a plan for robbing the lower and middle classes of their wealth and turning the global population into slaves under a digital dictatorship where all resources are controlled from the top. It’s globalization on steroids, and the greater the globalization, the fewer individual rights can exist.

October 24, 2022, former Prime Minister of England, Margaret Thatcher, tweeted the following warning:⁹ “When the state does everything for you, it will soon take everything from you — you will then have no basis for personal freedom, political freedom, or economic freedom.”

‘Community’ Is Not What You Think It Is

As explained by Koire, Agenda 21 is based on the ideology of “communitarianism,” which argues that “an individual’s rights should be balanced against rights of the community.”

We may agree with this, at least in part, because we think of “community” as something that we’re part of and have a responsibility to. However, “community” in the mind of the globalists is a construct made up of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), corporations and government, which are to dictate what happens around the world.

“We, as individuals, have literally no influence, unless we are in agreement with it,” Koire says. “If you dissent against ‘the community’ [i.e., NGOs, corporations and government], against communitarian law or communitarian social tactics, you are rejected and basically made an outcast.”

So, to be clear, Agenda 21 and The Great Reset are based on an ideology that says individual rights must be balanced against the rights of NGOs, private corporations and governments. The word “balanced” is misleading, however, because “the community” is the decision-maker. Your only option is to submit to their rule or be expunged from society.

Attempt at Preventing Local Agenda 21 Implementation Failed

In 2013, Koire’s organization, the Post Sustainability Institute, sued to stop the Agenda 21 takeover of San Francisco, California. As reported by Off the Grid News at the time:¹⁰

“In the United States, more than 500 major- and moderate-sized cities are members of an international sustainability organization that reportedly supports the implementation of Agenda 21. A group known as the Post Sustainability Institute recently filed a lawsuit to stop a project, Plan Bay Area, which is a San Francisco-area long-range transportation and land-use/housing strategy that has a finish target of 2040.

According to the Plan Bay Area website, the goal is to ‘accommodate future population growth and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars and light trucks.’ That is done by building neighborhoods that are ‘within walking distance of frequent transit service’ and that offer ‘a wide variety of housing options’ and feature grocery stores, community centers, and restaurants.”

In the video, Koire explains what the Bay Area Plan is really trying to achieve. According to that plan, any future development in the San Francisco Bay area will be restricted to just 4% of the available land. All 101 cities and counties will be joined together, and all land use decisions will be made by an unelected board.

The ramifications this will have on land use, property values, businesses and the forced movement of people is “unfathomable,” Koire says. She likens it to a “concentration camp of the future,” where water and energy usage is monitored and restricted, and where access to nature and the land outside the city is denied. Sadly, after three years, they lost the case and the Bay Area Agenda 21 plan is still on track.¹¹

The Importance of Taking Back Control Locally

Stopping the local adoption and implementation of Agenda 21 is a crucial tactic because, as she explains, “regionalization is the stepping stone to globalization, and globalization is the standardization of global systems.”

And again, the global systems we’re talking about include the use of land, water, minerals, plants, animals and humans. It includes all types of construction, means of production, food, energy, information systems and education. ALL systems of the world are to be “harmonized” and brought under the control of a central entity.

Unless systems are synchronized to work together, they cannot be centrally controlled. This is also what The Great Reset is all about — the harmonization and synchronization of systems, globally, to allow for central control of the whole world. The Great Reset is Agenda 21 under a different name.

As noted by Koire, “The goal of Agenda 21 is one world government and total control from a central unit,” and the plan is being rolled out under the false premise that we have to implement all these changes in order to stop climate change.

Agenda 21 Goals Summarized

In summary, the goals of Agenda 21 and The Great Reset are to:

The Three Pillars of Agenda 21

As explained by Koire, the three pillars of Agenda 21 are the three “E’s”:

1. Economy
2. Ecology
3. Equity (social equity)

As with the term “community,” most imagine they understand what the word “equity” means. They think it means there will be fair distribution of food, water, energy and so on. They think it’s about lessening the disparities between the rich and the poor. But again, they’re wrong.

Social equity involves “impoverishing huge portions of the population and bringing down developed nations,” Koire explains, adding, “Social equity is code for this movement [of people and goods] and reduction of the population.”

The three pillars, viewed as interconnected circles, are presented as the three areas that need to be balanced. But the “balance” spoken of is a communitarian balance. It’s not balance for the well-being of the people. The balanced center point is the area of centralized control, so that corporations and governments can exploit and control the people at will.

How to Fight Back

While we are moving toward a centralized totalitarian one world government, we are not there yet. We still have the ability to push back, by:

• Refusing to cooperate with the rollout and implementation of Agenda 21 items, tyrannical overreaches and surveillance/control tools such as digital identity and programmable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
• Widely exposing and discussing the totalitarian plan
• Working together to defund these plans, especially local Agenda 21 plans
• Helping your children understand that they’re being indoctrinated, from kindergarten through graduate school, to embrace and support their own demise
• Standing up for personal rights and freedoms

Leadership Are Following a Script

Have you wondered why no one — with very few exceptions — in government, either locally or on the state or federal level, has apologized for any of their pandemic “mistakes”? Time and again, their assertions and promises have been proven wrong, yet no apologies have been forthcoming.^12,13

Most are simply continuing as if none of their false statements and poor judgments ever happened. The reason they won’t admit that anything that happened during the pandemic was a mistake is because they knew it was all a lie from the start.

They were given a script and they followed that script. End of story. The script never made sense because it was a made-up narrative. Nothing was based on actual fact or real-world events. The script was created to give the illusion that the measures were necessary. In reality, the pandemic measures were a cover to push us into Agenda 21 and The Great Reset.

As the global systems are now falling apart due to those measures, the same villains are rolling out another narrative, another script, that says they’ll fix it. They’ll “build back better” and make everything equitable and green in the process. COVID was always about ushering in global totalitarianism.

The fly in the ointment was the fact that COVID was never as fatal as they tried to make it out to be and, over time, reality overtook the false narrative. Massive pushback against vaccine passports also hampered the takeover process, and now, Pfizer officials have driven the final nail into the coffin by admitting the COVID shots were never tested to see if they actually stopped infection and transmission, which was the sole basis for the passports.

Without the biosecurity justification, they’re back to pushing for digital identity, which was the next step in the digital enslavement process, but now large swaths of the population have caught on and know what they’re up to.

For example, well before the new Prime Minister of England, Rishi Sunak, took office, The National Pulse was reporting on his direct connections to a World Economic Forum partner company that pushes digital IDs and social credit scores.¹⁴ These kinks were perhaps divine intervention to prevent the whole world from falling into the trap.

The Administrative State Is a Major Part of the Problem

While many have hitched their hopes to a political change of guard, what most forget, or fail to understand, is that elected officials have nowhere near the power we expect them to have. As explained by The Epoch Times, the real power actually lies with the unelected administrators. That’s where the real cleanout needs to occur:¹⁵

“It’s rather obvious now that we’re dealing with a beast that includes media, technology, nonprofits, and multinational and international government agencies and all the groups they represent.

That said, let’s deal here with the most obvious problem: the administrative state … [E]lected politicians are outnumbered and outwitted on all sides, only pretending to be in charge when, in fact, the actual affairs of state are managed by experienced professionals with permanent positions …

[J]ust as the stakes are high, so, too, the problem of implementing a solution — representative democracy as a means to reobtain liberty itself — is also exceedingly difficult … Indeed, the entire system seems rigged against change.

It starts with the permanent staff on Capitol Hill. It’s a tribe. They move from office to office. They all know each other and also the permanent staff of the bureaucracies who serve Congress, and they, in turn, have close relations with the permanent staff of the executive bureaucracies, who, in turn, have close relationships with the media and the corporate executives lobbying the member of Congress.

The naive people, no matter how well intended, are quickly surrounded. This is essentially what happened to Donald Trump. He figured that as president, he would be like a CEO, not just of all of government, but the whole country. Within months, he was shown otherwise …

This is precisely why there needs to be a focus as never before on the problem of the administrative state. It has to be penetrated and taken apart piece by piece.

That will involve not only constant investigations, but also courageous bills that seek not cuts but full-on defunding of whole agencies, one after another. That’s what it will require to make genuine change …

In the end, what’s more powerful than political changes and even election upheavals, which too often fail through subversion, are dramatic shifts in public opinion.

Every institution ultimately bends to that, which is why research, education, great journalism, and competent media outlets, plus friendship networks and community organizing, might actually be more foundational than elections. All of this has begun and it’s growing. Therein lies the real hope.”

Realize Where Your True Power Lies

Regardless of which party holds the power, please realize that your power as an individual lies in your own personal day-to-day decisions. Politicians say what is necessary to get elected, based on the polling of talking points. A politician’s public talking points constantly “evolve” and are rarely consistent with their actions that benefit their corporate sponsors.

Also realize that creating divisiveness among people is part of a carefully orchestrated plan that works in the oligarchy’s favor, so we really need to get smarter about how we engage in the political process and avoid falling for their carefully constructed and sophisticated strategies that limit us from achieving the changes we want and desperately need.

As long as we’re at each other’s throats, it distracts us from analyzing and addressing the underlying system that is creating the problems in the first place. So, let people have their opinion. Ultimately, controlling interests are writing the laws and paying the politicians to pass them. But knowledge is power, so use your knowledge to take control where it actually matters the most — locally.

The power of the individual is alive and well even in this deeply flawed system. It becomes yours by stepping OUTSIDE of the system with every decision and purchase you make. With every action you take, you also set the example for others to follow, thereby making you a change-agent within your own small circle of family, friends and acquaintances.

In the end, our collective actions will create the changes that are so desperately needed, and thinking locally will eventually have a global effect.

Remember, the industries that are currently buying our politicians and writing their own laws cannot maintain power without your ongoing financial support. While we may not have a significant choice in how our tax contributions are distributed to these industries through subsidies and contracts, we do have a very powerful influence by making responsible purchases each and every day.

Withdraw that support and you automatically redistribute financial power to a benevolent business aligned with your core principles. A perfect example of this is when you buy locally-grown foods from an organic farmer.

You’re empowering that farmer to continue growing foods for the community that support environmental regeneration and human health, and you’re disempowering the big junk food manufacturers that wield undue influence over agricultural policy. This is where your true power lies.

Food Independence Is the Key to Other Forms of Independence

It’s time to dissent, to step out of the globalist and federalist systems, starting with your food. If you cannot grow your own, then get to know the farmer that can. Keep your money in your community; the closer the better. Kissinger said it best:¹⁶

“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.”

If you don’t like the state of the nation (or the world), stop eating processed and ultraprocessed junk foods. Some may initially think this decision would have nothing to do with anything that is wrong in the world, but if you really give it some thought, you’ll realize that the more independence you gain with your food, the more independence you will create in other areas as well.

Because food is such a potent form of control, breaking that control mechanism will have a ripple effect that extends outward into many other industries and fields of activity, including the political arena.

As we move into 2023 and beyond, local food security will be more important than ever, as worldwide food shortages and famine are at our doorstep. So, prepare. If you don’t, many of your options will be eliminated, as you’ll be forced to accept the globalists standardization of the food system or starve.

*

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Notes

^1, 6 Democrats Against UN Agenda 21

² UN Conference on Environment & Development, Rio de Janerio, Brazil, June 3-14, 1992, Agenda 21 (PDF)

³ Report UN Conference on Environment and Development Volume 1, Resolutions Adopted June 1992 (PDF)

⁴ UN Sustainable Development Goals

⁵ UN Digital Library Report UN Conference on Environment and Development, Volume 2, Proceedings of the Conference

⁷ We Forum January 14, 2016

⁸ We Forum June 4, 2020

⁹ Twitter Margaret Thatcher October 24, 2022

¹⁰ Off the Grid News

¹¹ Democrats Against UN Agenda 21 Appeal Update

¹² Twitter Polimath October 23, 2022

¹³ Brownstone Institute October 23, 2022

¹⁴ The National Pulse July 16, 2022

¹⁵ Epoch Times October 23, 2022 (Archived)

¹⁶ Investmentwatchblog.com June 20, 2012

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“The collective West” does not want peace for Ukraine.  Instead it wants war in an unsuccessful bid to “bleed Russia”.

The West was not seeking Peace when it orchestrated the bloody, unconstitutional Maidan coup, ousting elected President Yanukovych, who was forced to flee the country. (1)

Neither were the West and its agencies seeking Peace as they empowered nazism since the end of the Second World War where about 27 million Soviets perished in their fight against nazism. (2)

Nor was the West seeking Peace when France and Germany failed to enforce the Minsk Agreements, instead using them as a delay tactic to militarize and arm Ukraine and its nazis. Angela Merkel (3) and former Ukraine President Pyotr Poroshenk (4) both recently admitted that they used Minsk Accords to “buy time” and to militarize Ukraine to NATO standards.

It is telling too that writer and activist Yves Engler’s queries to Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland about Canada’s refusal to support negotiations with Russia were met with silence and a forceful ejection from the Rebuild Ukraine venue.

 

 

Instead it seems clear that the West seeks to prolong this war “to the last Ukrainian”, to the detriment of Ukraine, but also to the detriment of Europe itself, as it languishes beneath the yoke of US imperialism, at the cost of its own economies and its own independence.

Russia did not choose this war, but it did choose independence and sovereignty from willful Western aggression and unipolar trajectories.

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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. “Washington’s Ukraine Coup”, marktaliano.net, (Washington’s Ukraine Coup/ By Prof. Chossudovsky )   Accessed 29 November, 2022.
2. Douglas Valentine, “Video: ‘The CIA has been developing Fascists in Ukraine for 70 years.’ ” Global Research, 28 November, 2022 (Video: “The CIA has been developing Fascists in Ukraine for 70 years.” Douglas Valentine – Global ResearchGlobal Research – Centre for Research on Globalization) Accessed 29 November, 2022.
3. News 18, “Ukraine War: Merkel Says Minsk Talks Helped Kyiv Buy Time, Prepare Better.” 25 November, 2022 ( Ukraine War: Merkel Says Minsk Talks Helped Kyiv Buy Time, Prepare Better (news18.com) ) Accessed 29 November, 2022.
4. RT-EN,  “Minsk Agreement II served to buy time.” 17 June, 2022. (Minsk Agreement II served to buy time — RT EN Former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has admitted that the 2015 ceasefire in Donbass, which he negotiated as Ukraine’s president with Russia, France and Germany, was merely a red herring to give Kyiv time to rebuild its military. (detv.us)) Accessed 29 November, 2022.

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***

I recently traveled to Florida, to do research for a new book. I stayed in a hotel for almost a week, in a modest, touristy town, a few miles from the beach.

Every day, from the moment I opened my eyes til the moment I settled into my cool hotel sheets, my heart exulted with an indescribable happiness.

You know those dreams in which a loved one who is dead appears to you, in full youth and health and vigor? You say to that person, in the dream, with tears of joy streaming down your cheeks, Oh my God — you are not dead! But then you wake up, and that person is still dead.

It was that dream.

But for a nation.

In Florida I was in a delirium of happiness mixed with nostalgia mixed with grief — because it felt like America.

That is, it felt the way I remember America to have felt, pre-2020.

The malls, the cookie-cutter townhouse developments, the chain stores and auto body shops, churches and sports bars, were the same as they were anywhere in the country.

But the people were entirely different. The culture was entirely different.

Everywhere I went I saw people who were — proud, and confident, and relaxed.

It did not matter who they were, or from where they had come. This was a universal birthright, it seemed, in that part of America.

The very young bartender/busboy, who had recently immigrated from Thailand, was proud, confident and relaxed. The multigenerational family reunion groups, families who had lived for generations in the region, were proud, confident and relaxed. The suburban moms walking to their vans in the mall, were proud, confident and relaxed. My Uber driver, a former Special Operator whose wife had opened a Philippine food truck in the downtown area, was proud, confident and relaxed. The pretty forty-something bartender with one side of her head shaved, and with a flowering vine tattooed down one arm, who showed me pictures of her two adult sons — one, as she explained, who had autism — the young men standing on either side of their mom, hugging her tight, and all of them grinning; she too was proud, confident and relaxed.

And so on. African-American, Caucasian, Latino, whatever, male, female, aged and young; this was a quality that united everyone.

There was a big, colorful sign — a piece of public art — in the little green park flanking the mall. People stood in front of it to take Instagram photos.

It read, “You Are Deeply Loved.”

Once, when I was walking back to my hotel, I passed a small group of people — three or four — with their arms around each other, heads bowed, in a huddle. Colleagues? Friends? A family?

I realized that they were unselfconsciously, publicly praying.

The pride in themselves, and the calm sense of security of people everywhere around me, simply being who they were, and gladly, openly, showing others who they were, really struck me.

I remembered this quality from the Before Era, as being generally true of Americans.

It was this once-American quality that had formerly so fascinated the rest of the world — the broken, fearful, inhibited rest of the world.

Whether it was the 1950s admiration in ravaged Europe of the proud, relaxed gunslinger John Wayne, or the French marveling in the 1960s at the unabashedly goofy Jerry Lewis, or the admiration worldwide in the 1970s with beat poet Allen Ginsberg sharing his wild free verse with rapt college audiences while seated on a meditation pillow, Americans were magnetically attractive because we were once so proud — of ourselves, our speech, our liberties — in a nation in which our individuality was protected by an intact Constitution.

We were relaxed, compared to other peoples, because our rights were inviolable.

The lure of America was not that “the streets were paved with gold” or that one could make a fortune in a generation, though that was attractive no doubt to many; the true magnetism of Americans was that we acted like free people.

It was that charismatic quality that everyone still had in Florida, and that had been lost in the “lockdown” and “mandates” states.

Because people in Florida felt relaxed, proud and confident, and because they had never been held indoors against their will, told where to stand, stripped of their holidays by the state, or forced into submitting to poisonous unchosen injections, there was a rhythm to social life there still. People from all walks of life chatted away with one another; the lady who wrapped up the sandals I bought chatted away with me, she chatted with all who came in; the chiropractor I visited chatted away with his customers, the salad shop workers chatted with the people who dropped off the bagels, the lady moving her grocery cart around me made a jolly, friendly remark. All this complexity took place in a peaceful, almost measurable rhythm.

When social scientists have done stop-motion videos of people moving around a city intersection, they prove that humans move in a perceptible rhythm; by the same token, newborns sync their breathing and nervous systems with their moms’, and vice versa, and happy couples’ respiration and even heartbeats align when they sit near one another.

Whole communities unconsciously align with one another in creating complex rhythms.

I have felt that something is now discordant, jarring, in how we in the “lockdown” states relate to each other post 2022. The contrast with Florida showed me what it is: we have had our community rhythms broken off; silenced.

Now, as we start up our lives again, our interactions are tentative, awkward, erratic. Do we chat with the checkout girl? Do we not, as she is just trying to breathe behind her mask? Did she get out of the habit of chatting, if unmasked now? Do we drop in on a friend? Or do we zoom now forever? Do we hug, shake hands, not hug, not shake hands?

Or do we never again just embrace, just kiss, just stop by?

It’s all smashed to smithereens.

But in Florida, I saw from the richness of those little social moments that these were a people who had not lost two years of church, of knitting clubs, of Rotary, of synagogue, of playdates. of ballroom dancing, of after-work happy hours, of bowling, of fishing, of brunch, of poker games, of christenings, of bar mitzvahs.

So the myriad, invisible bonds that are created with every human interaction, and woven tight by kindness and mutual enjoyment and shared mission — had never been severed . That continuity allowed for the restful, easy, elegant human rhythm I saw all around me.

How lovely it was; how heavenly.

If you want the Kingdom of Heaven — it turns out that other people simply acting decently to one another, in community, are in fact the Kingdom of Heaven.

(I think Jesus did try to tell us that.)

In contrast, we in the “lockdown states,” the mandates states, barely know how to approach one another now; we have lost two years of weaving our lives together.

The babies and toddlers of 2020-2022 in Florida still engage in peek-a-boo. I realized, when a Floridian toddler launched into the game with me, how much I missed that ancient interaction.

I happened to visit Houston after my Florida journey. And while the freedom of Texas had not been as absolute as the freedom of Florida, I saw the same relaxed pride and confidence among adults and the same expressiveness among little ones, that I had seen in Florida.

The babies and toddlers of Florida and Texas still issue crazy, heart-melting smiles at passing strangers, and wave at them or babble at them or try to tell them things, as human babies and toddlers evolved to do.

But this innate expressiveness has become all but extinct among the babies and toddlers of 2020-2022 up in the Northeast, or in California, or in other “lockdown” “mandates” states.

These Northeastern little ones of 2020-2022 stare with blank, impassive faces at adult faces that have only recently emerged from terrifying, disorienting masks.

The expression of these poor children is more insect-like than human, and without that gorgeous interactivity, these babies and children of 2020-2022 lose much of the human charm with which they would otherwise be endowed. Their stony impassiveness is a devastating feedback loop. As they are not talking to or babbling to or smiling at adults, fewer adults talk to or smile at them.

Why do I raise all of this in relation to Thanksgiving 2022?

Because we must face the fact that adults in the parts of the country that “locked down” and endured “mandates” — do not have this relaxed pride, so formerly typical of Americans, any more, and their children too are now different.

These populations, I saw so clearly as I went from Florida and Texas to the Northeast, now have something broken in them; in us.

I realized when I left Florida and Texas and landed in Boston and drove to New York, that what blankets the “lockdown” “mandates” states are shame and fear.

Yes, still.

There is a palpable blanket of shame and fear now over New York, over Massachusetts, because we all have been through a life-changing traumatic experience, and not just for a day or for a month but for two years.

We were all violated in front of one another.

We were all made helpless to save one another or ourselves.

Husbands could not protect their wives from being forcibly injected, if the wives had to keep their jobs.

Parents could not save their adult children from being forcibly injected, if the adult children wished to feed their own families.

Adult sons and daughters could not save their elderly parents from miserable isolation and from dying alone.

Wives could not save their husbands from being neglected in hospitals or even murdered with Remdesevir.

I once knew a toddler who had to have her hair brushed, and there were tangles. She protested and bellowed and resisted, as a healthy child will. “You have to, darling” I said as soothingly as I could, as I brushed the tangles out as gently as I knew how. “Honey, you have to.”

The minute she had the chance, a few days later, she sat me down on a stoop and pretended to pull tangles out of my hair. “Yer hap to,” she told me furiously. “Yer hap to.”

The desire to fight back, to avenge harm, is innate in us as healthy animals.

But for two years we in “lockdown” states were stripped of our powers to defend ourselves or our loved ones; and everyone saw our powerlessness.

As any sexual assault survivor knows, as traumatic as the violation is, equally traumatic is the fact that most sexual assault survivors were not able, whether they were overpowered or detained or threatened or they simply froze, to resist or to fight back.

Studies have shown that when a victim was not able to fight back, the attack leads to more serious and longterm PTSD than victims sustain (not to minimize their experience) who were able to fight back. This is true for PTSD among veterans as well.

For the past two years, all of us in “lockdown” states were violated and traumatized and very few of us were allowed, or allowed ourselves, to fight back.

I am a survivor of sexual assault in childhood, as you know if you read my essays. So I do not make this analogy lightly.

But there is so much of the same flavor, the same tenor, as that of the flavor and tenor of sexual assault, in the way that “lockdown” and “mandated” populations, men and women and children, were held against their will, forced inside, restrained, threatened and intimidated, publicly shamed, and compelled to submit themselves to an outside implacable power that claimed and invaded and penetrated their bodies against their will.

So yes, sexual abuse traumatizes for a lifetime, no matter how good your therapy is or how fortunate your circumstances or how safe your relationships are for the rest of your life.

By the same token, in the “lockdown” and “mandates” states, we are damaged and broken, with mass PTSD; and no matter what happens to us in the future, this will always be part of who we are and part of what happened to us.

You always have messed-up trust-related skills, as a sexual assault survivor. This safe situation turns dangerous in the blink of an eye. How can you ever be really safe again? This babysitter turns into a devil. This professor mutates into a monster. Where is true safety?

By the same token the rest of us who lived in “lockdown” and “mandates” states, will always live with a shadow of fear.

The public demonstration of the helplessness of a hostage, or of a target of sexual abuse, is standard in warfare. I will always be haunted by the survivors of mass rapes in Sierra Leone. Their assailants intentionally injured them vaginally and made the attacks a matter of public knowledge. The women were identified as having been damaged or “ruined”. The shame inflicted on the victims was intentional but the community too was targeted with shaming by the enemy, as the community was publicly revealed to the world as being too weak to protect its women and girls.

There is a reason that when an invading army wishes to break a population, it will force a father to watch the torture of a child, or force a husband to witness the rape of a wife. This helpless shame breaks people.

So the blanket of shame and fear I felt in Massachusetts, in New York State, compared to its absence in Florida and Texas, will be part of the feeling, the atmosphere, in those states for decades; for the rest of our natural lives.

And again, what does this have to do with Thanksgiving?

We in New York State, in Massachusetts, all over the country that went along with COVID tyranny in 2020-2022, are resuming shopping for, planning for and preparing Thanksgiving dinner, in a deeply shameful context. Because we lost two Thanksgivings to what has now been revealed as a massive hoax.

And we all know we all know it now. Our gullibility, the wool that was pulled over our eyes, is now a public matter.

At the checkout counter in my local supermarket, people were trying hard to chat and joke casually about the upcoming holiday, as they used to pre-2020. “I have the pies and the ice cream, and there is enough food for an army, so I figure, if there is anything else they want, they can do without or get it themselves.” “Yes, the older generation likes to take control of cooking the turkey, and I am fine with that.” “Yes, it’s so true, I always leave too much shopping for the last minute — “ and so on.

As if everything is normal now.

But — everything is not normal now.

We are having Thanksgiving in 2022.

But it turns out we could have had Thanksgiving in 2021.

And we could even probably have had Thanksgiving – those of us who might have chosen to do so — in 2020.

We were lied to right…down… the line.

So we lost two Thanksgivings.

There are children who are almost three years old now who have never had a Thanksgiving at all.

A famous poem, A Shropshire Lad, by A. E Housman, about Springtime, reads:

“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now

Is hung with bloom along the bough […]

Now, of my threescore years and ten,

Twenty will not come again,

And take from seventy springs a score,

It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom

Fifty springs are little room,

About the woodlands I will go

To see the cherry hung with snow.”

We don’t have that many Easters, that many Christmases, in a human lifetime; that many Passovers, that many Thanksgivings.

How many Thanksgivings do you have left?

Twenty? Sixty?

Two?

One?

None of us knows.

But the Dr Walenskys of the world, the Dr Faucis, the President, the Governors, who have no right over you, decided without your consent that they knew better than you what was important in your life; and they decided to take away forever two of your Thanksgivings.

You will never get those back.

So we try to pick up again, here in the Northeast, our rituals, with a sense of awkwardness and shame — shame that they were so easily stripped from us; shame that we were so duped; shame that we so publicly could not protect ourselves or our loved ones.

Men were unmanned. Women were un-womaned.

The Thanksgiving tables may even look different than they did pre-2020. Some families are broken right through. Some relationships will never heal.

All of us, outside of Florida, and Texas, and maybe South Dakota, the few non-”lockdown,” non-“mandate” states, are now victims.

We never won’t be.

For Thanksgiving I want America back. But to make all of America, not just a few blessed states, free and confident, safe and relaxed once again, will take a generation.

And it can only happen for us as a nation trying to heal – just as this is true for any of us who try to heal as individuals — if we first face the agonizing fact that our bodies were, indeed, a battlefield, as feminists used to say; that we were indeed, as a nation, stripped; and shamed before everyone; held hostage, and plundered, and violated.

Sorry to offer you such a bitter dish before a habitual feast.

But I think there is no honest way not to do so.

May your tables be blessed with abundance and grace tomorrow.

But, above all, may they be blessed as well, with the truth.

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***

Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure, on view at the Starrett-Lehigh Building in Chelsea, features more than 200 artworks and artifacts from the artist’s estate – 177 of which have never been exhibited before. This highly unusual and intimate exhibition was assembled not by a curator or art historian, but by Basquiat’s two younger sisters, Lisane Basquiat and Jeanine Heriveaux, and his stepmother, Nora Fitzpatrick.

Concurrent with King Pleasure, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts is hosting Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music, which features some 100 works by the artist underscoring the significance of music in Basquiat’s oeuvre, and his many references to classical music, opera, jazz, and bebop. Also running now at the Albertina in Vienna is Basquiat: Of Symbols and Signs, a retrospective including 80 major works. These exhibitions reflect the explosion of popular interest in this American artist, who in the span of seven years created a body of work of over a thousand paintings and a thousand drawings.

Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988), A Panel of Experts, 1982, acrylic and oil pastel on paper mounted on canvas, 152.5 x 152 x 4.5 cm. MMFA, gift of Ira Young. © Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat. Licensed by Artestar, New York. Photo Douglas M. Parker

What distinguishes King Pleasure is that it offers not only Basquiat’s art, but also childhood home videos, reminiscences, and full-scale recreations of the family living-room where they grew up, as well as Basquiat’s art studio on Great Jones Street where he spent the last five years of his life, replete with books, movies, and jazz records that he would play while painting.

Undoubtedly, the most spectacular reconstruction is that of the Palladium nightclub where Basquiat installed two monumental-sized paintings in the VIP lounge, including Nu-Nile (1985), which is over 8 ft. high and 40 ft. long, and Untitled (Palladium), which features a massive dragon’s head, the source material for which is a small wooden sculpture that can be found among the show’s assortment of artifacts. Indeed, on display are scores of varied objects that Basquiat collected – including, masks, drums, a monkey’s skull, small animal sculptures, as well as a metal dagger and wood shield, among other things the artist purchased during his 1988 trip to the Ivory Coast.

In the exhibition catalog Lisane Basquiat writes: “What is important for everyone to understand… is that he was a son, and a brother, and a grandson, and a nephew, and a cousin, and a friend. He was all of that in addition to being a groundbreaking artist.” It is perhaps not surprising that King Pleasure presents the public with a Basquiat for the whole family, so to speak. The artist’s untimely death of a heroin overdose at the age of 27 goes virtually unmentioned.

Image: Jean-Michel Basquiat: King Pleasure © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

Basquiat was a compulsive painter who would turn doors, refrigerators, wooden fencing and more into a canvas for his art. The exhibition provides examples of this with works such as Untitled (1984): painted on two groups of narrow wooden planks, the piece features on the left-hand side, the rather menacing head of an ass, above which the painter has written “ASS” – it bares its teeth as it chews on some vegetation; presumably the tall, green flora that we find on the right. The ass is, in fact, a recurring motif in Basquiat’s work – one that relates to the story of Samson and the ‘jawbone of an ass,’ with which he slew the Philistines, as described in the Book of Judges. The undated Laugh of Sleep, for example, includes a diagrammatic sketch of a jawbone and below it the words “JAWBONE OF AN ASS” – and below that, “240 B.C.”

Samson represents the prototypical hero-martyr, a recurring figure in Basquiat’s work and one that occupies a place of royalty in the artist’s lexicon – it includes great Black American musicians such as Charlie Parker, and athletes such as Joe Louis. Though not on view, in Obnoxious Liberals (1982), Samson is depicted as a black figure, head shorn, chained to the classical columns that he is soon to topple, and with them the temple of the Philistines.

Another standout work is Jailbirds (1983), a painting that portrays two grinning police officers as they use their batons to strike a small boy. This visceral depiction of senseless police brutality is echoed in another painting from that year – The Death of Michael Stewart (1983) – which was the focal point of the 2019 Guggenheim exhibition, Basquiat’s Defacement: The Untold Story, curated by Chaédria LaBouvier. Both paintings can be viewed in relation to one of the great themes of Western art – namely, the flagellation of Christ.

Jean-Michel Basquiat, Jailbirds, 1983. © The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

The crown and the halo – these two signs were central to Basquiat’s language, to the alphabet he invented, which as John Berger observed, “consists not of twenty-six signs but of hundreds of signs.” The crown and the halo are symbols of valorization – and the halo is in its way no less a sign of royalty than the crown – they are also indications of solitude, of isolation: no one is more alone than Basquiat’s hero-martyrs, than Samson and Christ, or their modern-day avatars. Perhaps more than any other of his images, Basquiat’s three-pointed crown has been appropriated and commodified, emblazoned on t-shirts, handbags, and coffee-cups. What gets obfuscated by all the commercializing is the protestation, the subversive, and furious energy of Basquiat’s hero-martyrs.

Jean-Michel Basquiat was a multi-layered and complex artist whose work will fascinate and challenge scholars and patrons for generations to come. If the relevance of his work to the times in which we find ourselves has only grown, it is despite the standardization and commercial ubiquity of his images – not to speak of the bloated, hyper-inflated art market and its vultures. Nevertheless, we can be sure that Basquiat will continue to hold up an ironic mirror to the society from which he emerged, challenging us to look at ourselves without illusions or lies.

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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: Copyright The Estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat

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Head of the Russian State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, considered that the current regime in Kyiv is leading Ukraine to disappear completely.

“Since 2014, Ukraine has lost 53.7 percent of its population, and the population of this country is considered a consumable item for Washington and Brussels, which want to continue the war until the last Ukrainian. This war which claims hundreds of lives every day, as the Kyiv regime is leading Ukraine to complete disappearance,” Volodin was quoted by Novosti News Agency as saying.

Volodin pointed out that Ukraine had lost its sovereignty and had become an American colony after the coup in 2014, considering that Ukraine had lost its industrial potential and was completely corrupt, and the interests of citizens were not taken into account. He added that during this period, more than 10.5 million people have fled Ukraine.

Which is the reason? For growing the Weapons Lobby’s business…

This is one of the main reason which could support even the possibility of the Third World War in Old Continent… As we can read in the following report on armaments deal among NATO Countries the global conflict has already begun!

Indeed, in November, 4, US Department of Defense released a joint statement with the Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands, and the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic about new supplies of tanks to Ukraine: the refurbished Soviet tanks T-72B.

Soviet-made T-72B tanks and Hawk missiles

We have to remember that the Coup orchestrated by some Atlantic Alliance’s nations in February, 2014 in Kiev started many years before after the Security Forum in Kiev and Prague (capital of Czech Republic) and was financed by George Soros, by US Department of State and by Netherland and Britain Embassies in Kiev, through the Ukrainian TV which supported Euromadian revolution with the help of an Islamic reporter, who then became deputy director of Kiev national weapons industry.

In the coming days, the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella will travel to Holland together with the new Foreign Affairs Minister Antonio Tajani for a diplomatic visit in which agreements on the defense and aerospace industries will also be discussed.

Meanwhile the Biden administration is privately encouraging Ukraine’s leaders 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, the Washington Post reported on Saturday.

But the US Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, former advisor of Raytehon Weapons Corporation, released a statement on $400 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine.

His Italian homologous Guido Crosetto, Minister of Defense in the new Meloni’s government, announced the possibility of a sixth decree law for the supply of weapons to Kiev. Crosetto was president of AIAD, the Federation, member of Confindustria, that represents the Italian Companies for Aerospace, Defence and Security, and advisor of Leonardo Italian defense industry in whose board of directors sits a former deputy Secretary of US Pentagon.

So it is very difficult to believe in a peace in the short term … Because since the CEPA plan, elaborated at a Washington think-tank together with the military leaders of NATO and the EU in 2020, the militarization of Europe has been desired and financed by the Lobby of Weapons.

US weapons sales in Europe booming amid raging Ukraine war

Sales of US weaponry and other military hardware to Europe are skyrocketing, thanks to the persisting Western-backed conflict in Ukraine, with European countries vowing to expand their arsenals by $230 billion, a research group says.

In many European countries over half of the recent military expenditures went to American arms manufacturers, with Norway devoting 83 percent to US purchases, the UK 77 percent, Italy 72 percent and the Netherlands spending 95 percent on US-made weapons in the period from 2017 to 2021, according to Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), with total European arms imports jumping 19 percent during that time frame from the previous five years.

“This is certainly the biggest increase in defense spending in Europe since the end of the Cold War,” said Ian Bond, director of foreign policy at the Centre for European Reform, as quoted in a Saturday report by Yahoo News.

According to the report, since the Ukraine conflict began in late February, countries in the European Union have pledged to beef up their arsenals by some $230 billion, with Germany alone planning to modernize its military to the tune of $100 billion this year.

The US arms industry, which produces and exports more weapons than any other country — selling over 39 percent of the estimated $210 billion annual global arms sales from 2017 to 2021 — has been the biggest beneficiary, it added.

“Many European countries have plans to increase their military spending very significantly, and to increase their purchases of arms as part of that,” said Pieter Wezeman, a senior researcher with the SIPRI Arms and Military Expenditure Program as quoted in the report. “And in some countries they’re accelerating” purchases originally slated for later this decade.

Even before the war, according to SIPRI, European arms imports from 2017 through 2021 were up 19%. “They’re growing at a rapid clip,” said Hartung. The amount of European arms deals being negotiated since February, he said, “has almost doubled from last year. And we’ve still got a few months left.”

“This is all very much driven by Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the realization in Europe that defense stocks had been run down quite considerably over the last 30 years,” said Bond. He added that one reason so many countries turn to U.S. arms manufacturers is the American defense industry is so large, countries don’t have to wait for cutting-edge arms to be developed. Another reason, countries in East and Central Europe “want to keep the U.S. on their side and show that they attach value to the Transatlantic alliance,” including to NATO. “And supporting American defense manufacturers is one way in which you can do that.”

According to William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, since President Biden took office, European countries account for some $33 billion of arms “offers,” as the initial stage of arms negotiations is called, with $21 billion in deals on the table since February. Although some sales have not yet been officially contracted, Hartung told Yahoo News that the $21 billion estimate is assuredly low as it represents only government-to-government deals, not direct commercial sales, which are more difficult to track.

By far, the most popular high-end item from the US in Europe is the American F-35 combat airplane — with Finland putting in an order for 54 of them in 2020, while Poland ordered 32. Another 71 planes were ordered by Norway, the Netherlands and the UK, and even neutral Switzerland ordered three dozen of the fighter planes in September, for over $6 billion.

$400 Million in Additional Security Assistance for Ukraine

On November 4, the Department of Defense (DoD) announced approximately $400 million in additional security assistance for Ukraine under the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI).

«This USAI package underscores the continued U.S. commitment to supporting Ukraine by meeting their most urgent needs, while also building the capacity of Ukraine’s Armed Forces to defend its sovereignty over the long term. Unlike Presidential Drawdown authority (PDA), which DoD has continued to leverage to deliver equipment to Ukraine from DoD stocks at a historic pace, USAI is an authority under which the United States procures capabilities from industry» the Pentagon reported in a statement.

This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine. Capabilities include:

• Funding to refurbish HAWK air defense missiles for inclusion in future Presidential Drawdown packages;
• 45 Refurbished T-72B Tanks with advanced optics, communications, and armor packages;
• 1,100 Phoenix Ghost Tactical Unmanned Aerial Systems;
• 40 Armored Riverine Boats;
• Funding to refurbish 250 M1117 Armored Security Vehicles;
• Tactical secure communications systems and surveillance systems; and
• Funding for training, maintenance, and sustainment.

«In total, the United States has now committed more than $18.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since the beginning of the Biden Administration. Since 2014, the United States has committed more than $21 billion in security assistance to Ukraine and more than $18.2 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24» stated US Department of Defense.

Instead it pretends not to remember the previous announcement by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on the admission of Georgia and Ukraine to the Atlantic Alliance to extend the military borders of the West contrary to any previous agreement with Russia.

«Through both PDA and USAI, DoD continues to work with Ukraine to meet both its immediate and longer-term security assistance needs. With Russia’s unrelenting and brutal air attacks on Ukrainian civilian critical infrastructure, additional air defense capabilities are critical. Funding to refurbish HAWK missiles will complement Spain’s recent commitment of HAWK launchers to help Ukraine meet this threat» the Pentagon added.

The overhauled T-72B tanks included in this package are part of a trilateral, coordinated effort with the Netherlands and Czech Republic. Alongside the United States, the Netherlands will provide 45 additional T-72B Tanks with the support of the Czech Ministry of Defense and in cooperation with Czech industry.

«In response to Russia’s continued aggression against Ukraine, and in support of the valiant efforts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ to defend their sovereign territory, the United States and the Netherlands are partnering with the Czech Republic to provide 90 overhauled T-72B main battle tanks to Ukraine. These tanks will come from the inventory of the Czech defence industry. The United States, Netherlands, and Czech Republic remain deeply committed to ensuring Ukraine has the equipment it needs to counter Russian aggression over the long haul» we can read in the Joint Statement by the United States Department of Defense, the Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands, and the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic.

The United States and Netherlands will jointly finance a Czech industrial initiative, closely coordinated and supported by the Ministry of Defence of the Czech Republic, for a total value of approximately $90 million. This project is a direct outcome of cooperation forged through six meetings of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group (UDCG), the August 11 Copenhagen Ukraine Donors Conference, and the September 28 National Armaments Directors meeting, convened under the auspices of the UDCG.

The introduction of these 90 technically-advanced, newly refurbished T-72B tanks will further enhance Ukraine’s proficient armored warfare capabilities, including the many T-72s generously donated by other Allies earlier in the war.

President Mattarella in the Netherlands also to talk about weapons

It will be a state visit full of appointments and symbolic events that of the President of the Republic, Sergio Mattarella, who will be in the Netherlands from 8 to 11 November to strengthen and relaunch the strong collaboration between the two countries. However, without neglecting some important dossiers at European level, starting with that of energy, inevitably at the center of the scene.

In the first part of the visit, marked by various formal appointments with the Royals, the talks will focus on aspects of European life, without however going into the details of the “hot” dossiers at community level. Instead, the meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte will be held in The Hague. And it is on that occasion that there will be a discussion, also extended to the delegations, more on the merits of Community policy.

Energy is certainly one of the most urgent dossiers, on which the Netherlands followed the opposite line to the Italian one, as demonstrated by the case of the gas price ceiling, whose stock exchange is located in Amsterdam.

«The large delegation that will accompany President Mattarella, which will also include Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani, at his first bilateral meeting with a European counterpart, will also try to relaunch cooperation between the two countries in the technological, defense and aerospace» reported the Italian Agenzia Nova that is sponsored by the national arms industry Leonardo.

Instead, it will be in Maastricht, in the House of government, precisely in the place where the treaty bearing the name of the Dutch city was signed on February, 7, 1992, that the Head of State will speak for an intervention on the future of Europe thirty years after this historic agreement .

The rhetoric will leave room for some new proclamation by Mattarella who, announcing the imminent war in Ukraine and the gas crisis on February 3, 2022, has taken on the role of the occult ambassador of the New World Order who carries the Ministers of Foreign as obedient puppets of a globalist Theatercracy.

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The G20, a group of 19 nations — including the U.S. — plus the European Union, recently held their annual business meeting (B20) in Bali, Indonesia, where they declared that a digital vaccine passport, standardized by the World Health Organization, will be part of international pandemic prevention and response moving forward.

The rule for standardized international vaccine passports will be introduced as a revision to the international health regulations during the next World Health Assembly in Geneva.

The G20 recommendations also include the creation of guidelines for a globally coordinated response to crises, “enhanced by a technology-enabled ‘always-on’ global health infrastructure,” and a mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccines made by G20 members.

President Biden signed the declaration despite the promises made by his White House COVID-19 Response Team leader, Jeff Zients, who in April 2021 stated, “Let me be clear that the government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a [vaccination] credential”.

The fact that the COVID shots do not prevent spread of infection has now been established many times over. This alone proves that vaccine passports are not for the purpose of containing epidemics. An international vaccine passport is the gateway to complete totalitarian control, because the entire control grid around a person gets tied together by it.

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As noted by former U.S. Rep. Dr. Ron Paul in the video above, World Economic Forum (WEF) founder Klaus Schwab and other globalist leaders substitute truth with their own opinions. They decide what’s right and wrong; they decide what’s right for everyone. They dictate what’s “true” on any given day.

Anyone who disagrees with them is an “enemy of the state” — they being “the state” or, more accurately, the Deep State, the hidden power behind the apparent power of official government. Who are the members of this cabal? There’s no official membership list, but over time many of the individual players have become discernible.

The globalist cabal includes but is not limited to government heads, bankers and members of nongovernmental organizations (NGO’s) and liberal think tanks around the world.

One way in which the cabal hides its undemocratic influence is by having its members in dozens of different organizations. When several organizations agree on an issue, it makes it appear as though there’s a majority view, a consensus. But in reality, it’s the same small group of individuals asserting their agenda.

G20 Green-Light International Vaccine Passports

The G20, a group of 19 nations — including the U.S. — plus the European Union, recently held their annual business meeting (B20) in Bali, Indonesia, where they declared that digital vaccine passports, standardized by the World Health Organization, will be part of international pandemic prevention and response moving forward.¹

Source: Council on Foreign Relations²

Part of the policy declaration³ reads:⁴

“We support continued international dialogue and collaboration on the establishment of trusted global digital health networks as part of the efforts to strengthen prevention and response to future pandemics, that should capitalize and build on the success of the existing standards and digital COVID-19 certificates.”

The rule for standardized international vaccine passports will reportedly be introduced as a revision to the international health regulations during the next World Health Assembly in Geneva.⁵

What this means is that when the next pandemic is declared, only those who have this digital health certificate will be allowed to move about freely and travel internationally. And, of course, only those who have been appropriately tested and/or vaccinated will have a valid passport.

In addition to adopting an international digital vaccine passport, the G20 recommendations also include the creation of guidelines for a globally coordinated response to crises, “enhanced by a technology-enabled ‘always-on’ global health infrastructure,” and a mutual recognition of COVID-19 vaccines made by G20 members.

Schwab Tells Us What the G20 Are All About

Aside from key government leaders, high-profile globalists such as Schwab were also in attendance at the G20 meetings. In his B20 keynote address, Schwab highlighted the cabal’s agenda and goals:⁶

“What we have to confront is a deep, systemic and structural re-structuring of our world … [The] world will look differently after we have gone through this transition process.”

Part of that worldwide restructuring of society that the WEF, the G20 and many other organizations are working in lockstep to achieve is the implementation of a global vaccine passport, which all of the G20 members have now agreed to. In the case of the U.S., President Biden signed the declaration despite the promises made by his White House COVID-19 Response Team leader, Jeff Zients, who in April 2021 stated:⁷

“Let me be clear that the government is not now, nor will we be supporting a system that requires Americans to carry a credential. There’ll be no federal vaccination database, no federal mandate requiring everyone to obtain a single vaccination credential.”

Basis for Vaccine Passports No Longer Exist

If you’re a rational person, you’re probably thinking, “But wait, the COVID jabs don’t prevent infection or spread, so there’s no basis for vaccine passports anymore.” Indeed, this fact has now been established many times over. This alone proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that COVID vaccine passports have nothing to do with public health or safety.

Their purpose is not to prevent or contain pandemics. They’re a control mechanism,⁸ and a really important one. Vaccine passports are THE gateway to complete, totalitarian control of the populations of the world. The globalist cabal desperately needs everyone to have this passport, because the entire control grid around a person gets tied together by it. This is why fighting for informed consent is so crucial.

But how is the G20 getting around the obvious fact that the COVID passports are useless for their stated purpose? They ignore it, and instead stress that everyone also needs a digital identity, and this digital COVID certificate does both.

Outside their own circle, this rationale makes no sense whatsoever, but as noted by Dutch legal philosopher Eva Vlaardingerbroek, the fact that vaccine passports are sold based on a fraudulent premise is now “so obvious that they’ve thrown logic out the window.”⁹

Their decisions make no sense, and they have no intention of making them sensible. They’re banking on being able to entrap us in their control system, at which point they’ll be able to tell you the moon is made of cheese and you’ll have no way of correcting them without losing everything.

Digital Identity Is Total Surveillance to Control You

As reported by Sociable:¹⁰

“In August, 2021, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a 99-page guide book¹¹on the implementation of digital documentation of COVID-19 certificates, aka vaccine passports, stating that ‘a health pass based solely on individual vaccination status may increase the risk of disease spread.’

This is because the COVID-19 ‘vaccines’ were never proven to prevent transmission nor infection, and it recently came to light in the European Parliament that Pfizer never even tested its product for stopping transmission. Despite this knowledge being publicly available, the B20 is still recommending proof of vaccination as a means to travel …

Vaccine passports, by their very nature, serve as a form of digital identity, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). A digital identity encompasses everything that makes you unique in the digital realm, and it is a system that can consolidate all of your most personal intimate data, including which websites you visit, your online purchases, health records, financial accounts, and who you’re friends with on social media …

[D]igital identity schemes can give governments and corporations the power to incentivize, coerce, or otherwise manipulate human behavior under a system of social credit. Digital identities can be used to determine what products, services, and information are available to us, and they can certainly be used by public and private entities to deny us that access.”

Source: World Economic Forum¹²

In March 2021, Naomi Wolf, author of “The End Of America,” warned that accepting digital ID will be the end of all freedom:^13,14

“I cannot say this forcefully enough: This is literally the end of human liberty in the West if this plan unfolds as planned … Vaccine passports sound like a fine thing if you don’t know what those platforms can do.

I’m CEO of a tech company, I understand what this platform does. It’s not about the vaccine, it’s not about the virus, it’s about data. And once this rolls out you don’t have a choice about being part of the system. What people have to understand is that any other functionality can be loaded onto that platform with no problem at all.”

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver has also issued a warning, saying:¹⁵

“Digital health or vaccine passports along with tracking and tracing apps present a serious threat to freedom. Vaccine passports and tracking apps are about collecting data and control. The vaccine passport is being promoted worldwide to limit a person’s ability to leave home, work, shop, dine, travel, attend a public event, or even worship.

COVID is being used to advance this dangerous threat to freedom. We must never accept vaccine passports or tracking apps as the new normal. The implications for freedom are significant.”

Vaccine Passports Are Gateway for Complete Financial Control

When vaccine passports first became a topic of international discussions, many of us saw the writing on the wall and warned that such an implementation would become a tool for complete financial and physical control, and would automatically eliminate basic human rights and freedoms.

At the time, we were labeled crazy conspiracy theorists, but it didn’t take long before our worst fears were confirmed. Your vaccine passport will be your digital identity (as confirmed by the WEF), and to that digital identity they plan to add a programmable central bank digital currency (CBDC) and a social credit score. These plans are not a conspiracy theory. They’re out in the open.

When you add all of those ingredients together — vaccine requirements for maintaining a valid passport, a digital identity, a social credit score and programmable CBDCs — you end up with a control grid that will eliminate your freedom to live life according to your own desires.

Even your diet can then be dictated by these megalomaniacs. They’re hell-bent on eliminating your ability to eat meat, for example. The whole world, especially the Western world, must transition to insect protein, they say. Meanwhile, you will not find meal worms and crickets on the menus at their globalist gatherings.¹⁶ No, insect protein is for the expendables.

COVID Is Used as a Path to Global Financial Surveillance

The global palace coup.

We literally SPELLED it out for everyone – step by step – with Rogan at the end of Jan 2022 (censored for 3 weeks)

WAKE UP ! pic.twitter.com/GBmMHe0WLA https://t.co/uotr9H2DrZ

— أبو عمّار (@MaajidNawaz) November 17, 2022

Once vaccine passports/digital identity and CBDCs are in place, the global cabal will be able to control your physical movements, behaviors and purchases based on how well you conform to their ideals, no matter how irrational, immoral, unethical, unfair or dangerous those may be. As reported by The Daily Sceptic:¹⁷

“It’s seemed evident for a while that the current fiat monetary system is, at best, unstable. At worst, it’s a Ponzi scheme whose time has expired. If that’s the case, I suspect the central bankers and 0.1% know this and might be prepared to usher in the new system before the old one collapses on itself — even as they loot it on the way down with the most significant wealth transfer in human history.

To anyone who pays attention to these trends, it seems evident that Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) will be that new system. Every indication is that CBDC’s arrival is imminent. [November 15, 2022], several global banks announced a partnership with the New York Federal Reserve to pilot digital dollars^18,19 …

From my vantage point, it’s impossible to overstate the risk presented by CBDC. Whether it’s a utopian vision based on good intentions or a sinister plot to crush our sovereignty, the result may be the same: control. A Central Bank Digital Currency has all the downsides of fiat money, plus the added layers of surveillance and programmability overseen by the state.

So many people on Team Reality have likely felt like dissidents over the last few years simply for challenging anything beyond the herd mentality … Imagine a monetary system with features baked-in to socially engineer how we live. For example:

As we saw with the lockdowns, China is the model emulated in the west. Like the creep towards health-related authoritarian measures, unelected globalists with financial interests lurk in the background …

If you have yet to notice, a primary theme of the last three-plus years (at least) is ‘freedom vs. control’, so it’s not hyperbole to suggest that the future must be decentralized if we want to ensure our children grow up in a free world.”

Globalists Have Overplayed Their Hand

If there’s a silver lining in all of this, it’s that the globalist cabal — the “deep state” that pulls the strings of governments around the world, the hidden power that is making decisions that are devastating for the entire world — overplayed their hand during COVID, exposing their heinous ideologies and plans for all the world to see. As noted by Maajid Nawaz in an interview this past summer (video above):

“When dogma defines your behavior you’re no longer looking at reality … so you’re going to be less pragmatic … That leaves serious blind spots. You end up not seeing reality for what it is, and that is why they ended up overplaying their hand. They’re not looking to reality, they’re looking to their dream, their ideal, which is actually a nightmare.

One great thing that happened during COVID is they overplayed their hand. They exposed themselves … There’s now very little doubt, among those who have heard of the World Economic Forum, that it’s attempting to influence how we do government and politics …

Why do we have an unelected bureaucrat, and a foreign one at that, telling us how to live our lives …? It doesn’t make sense. But then we go further. Why do they all seem to be beholden to this unelected foreign bureaucrat? Why do they all appear to be doing this man’s bidding? … Why can’t they just say no?”

As noted by Nawaz, the government leaders who are not saying no to Schwab for some reason cannot say no, likely because they’ve been compromised. Compromising and blackmailing officials on behalf of the globalist cabal was Jeffrey Epstein’s specialty, and there’s no reason to assume their secrets died with him.

Those with cleaner records may have been threatened into compliance. I would add a third possibility, and that is that they’re in on it because they share the globalists ideals, which include not only top-down authoritarianism but also transhumanism and eugenics. A fourth possibility is self-preservation. They may simply want to secure their own position within the ruling echelon in the new world of “have it alls” and “have nothings.”

We Now Know What They’re Capable Of

Whatever the incentive, the problem they now all face is the fact that they’ve prematurely exposed themselves and their plans. They’ve also exposed how far they’re willing to go. For example, we know they’re willing to seize your bank account and close down your ability to transact over something as minor as making a donation to a cause they don’t like or posting “wrong”-think on social media — and that’s without the benefit of CBDCs!

So, they’ve already shown us what they WILL do once CBDCs are in place. The only difference is that penalties can then be automated. Is this a world you want to live in? Is this what you want for your children and grandchildren? If not, it’s your duty to be the resistance.

Adults today are the last generation that will be able to prevent this global tyranny. If we do nothing, our children will be ensconced in a digital prison they won’t be able to break free from. So, we cannot leave it to them. It’s up to us. So, when CBDCs are rolled out, we must reject them, no matter how inconvenient that might be. When vaccine passports are rolled out, we must reject them, despite the limitations that might bring.

In 2021, countless people were coerced into taking the jabs because they wanted to travel, fearing travel bans for the unvaccinated would be permanent. Well, they weren’t, because enough people pushed back.

We may have to endure limitations if we refuse the coming international vaccine passport, but if enough people around the world refuse, the system won’t work, and those limitations will prove to be temporary. The only way any of the globalists plans can become permanent is if we do as we’re told and go along with them.

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Notes

^{1, 2, 5, 10, 12} Sociable November 15, 2022

³ B20 Indonesia 2022 Policy Recommendations

⁴ Sociable November 17, 2022

^6, 7 KCP News November 22, 2022

⁸ Sociable November 2021

⁹ YouTube GB News November 17, 2022

¹¹ WHO August 27, 2021

¹³ Real Clear Politics March 29, 2021

¹⁴ RW Malone November 22, 2022 Substack

¹⁵ IC.org November 17, 2022

¹⁶ Twitter Event Horizon November 17, 2022

¹⁷ Daily Sceptic November 18, 2022

¹⁸ Watcher.guru November 15, 2022

¹⁹ Coin Telegraph November 15, 2022

Featured image is from Mercola

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FDA oversight of clinical trials is “grossly inadequate,” say experts

On 25 September 2020, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) received a complaint by Brook Jackson who had been working for Ventavia Research Group, a Texas based company hired to run clinical trials for Pfizer’s covid-19 mRNA vaccine. Jackson, a regional director, had witnessed problems at three trial sites she was overseeing and complained to an FDA inspector about a range of problems including falsified data, unblinded patients, and inadequately trained vaccinators who were slow to follow up on adverse events. “I thought that the FDA was going to swoop in and take care of everything. What I was reporting was so important,” Jackson told The BMJ. The FDA did not, however, inspect the trial sites in question.

This lack of oversight was not an isolated case, The BMJ has learnt. Regulatory documents show that only nine out of 153 Pfizer trial sites1 were subject to FDA inspection before licensing the mRNA vaccine. Similarly, only 10 out of 99 Moderna trial sites2 and five of 73 remdesivir trial sites3 were inspected.

Now, facing a backlog of site inspections, experts have criticised the FDA’s oversight of clinical trials, describing it as “grossly inadequate.” They say the problem, which predated covid-19, is not limited to a lack of inspections but also includes failing to notify the public or scientific journals when violations are identified—effectively keeping scientific misconduct from the medical establishment.

The FDA is “endangering public health” by not being candid about violations that are uncovered during clinical trial site inspections, says David Gortler, a pharmacist and pharmacologist who worked as an FDA medical reviewer between 2007 and 2011 and was then appointed as a senior adviser to the FDA commissioner in 2019-21.

“The lack of full transparency and data sharing does not allow physicians and other medical scientists to confirm the data independently and make comprehensive risk-benefit assessments,” continues Gortler, who is now a fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington DC.

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A 65-year-old woman who was receiving a promising experimental treatment to slow the cognitive decline caused by her early Alzheimer’s disease recently died from a massive brain hemorrhage that some researchers link to the drug. The clinical trial death, described in an unpublished case report Science has obtained, is the second thought to be associated with the antibody called lecanemab. The newly disclosed fatality intensifies questions about its safety and how widely lecanemab should be prescribed if ultimately approved by regulators.

The woman, who received infusions of the antibody as part of the trial, suffered a stroke and a type of swelling and bleeding previously seen with such antibodies, which bind to and remove forms of amyloid-beta, a protein widely theorized to cause Alzheimer’s. After the stroke was diagnosed in an emergency room at Northwestern University Medical Center in Chicago, she was given a common intervention, the powerful blood-clot busting medication tissue plasminogen activator (tPA). Substantial bleeding throughout her brain’s outer layer immediately followed, and the woman died a few days later, according to the case report.

Rudolph Castellani, a Northwestern neuropathologist who studies Alzheimer’s and conducted an autopsy at the request of the patient’s husband, called the case “very dramatic.” The report, co-authored by Castellani, concluded that the woman, like the other person whose death was linked to lecanemab, had amyloid deposits surrounding many of her brain’s blood vessels. This pre-existing condition, found in both Alzheimer’s patients and to a lesser degree in the general population, frequently goes undetected other than by autopsy. It likely contributed to her brain hemorrhage after biweekly infusions of lecanemab inflamed and weakened the blood vessels. The vessels apparently burst when exposed to tPA—known to cause brain bleeds even in some conventional stroke cases.

“It was a one-two punch,” Castellani says. “There’s zero doubt in my mind that this is a treatment-caused illness and death. If the patient hadn’t been on lecanemab she would be alive today.” (Castellani says his comments reflect personal views and were not reviewed or approved by Northwestern. The patient’s husband told Science he authorized Castellani to speak publicly about his wife’s case. Science agreed to withhold both names to protect the family’s privacy.)

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: There are two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s dementia, amyloid-beta protein deposits known as plaques among brain cells (yellow-orange bundles), and tangles of a protein called tau inside neurons (wiry objects inside the neuron), but several potential antibody therapies target just amyloid.KATERYNA KON/SCIENCE SOURCE

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***

Many farms are to be closed down in the Netherlands because of EU requirements and Brussels’ “Green Deal”. In the Netherlands there have been several protests by farmers in the summer, as reported by FWM.

The government will soon be making “compulsory purchases” of up to 3000 farms. These will then be closed down. The farmers will be made an offer that is “far above” the value of the farm, said Nitrogen Minister Christianne van der Wal. “There is no better offer coming,” Van der Wal told MPs on Friday.

The Netherlands is the world’s second largest exporter of agricultural produce after the United States, supplying vegetables to much of Western Europe. More than half of Dutch land is used for agriculture, in addition to the 24 000 hectares of greenhouses.

In 2019 already, a ruling by the Dutch Council of State prevented the expansion of dairy, pig and poultry farms, seen as major sources of nitrogen.

Ministers will decide if enough farms have come forward voluntarily to close by next autumn.

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Featured image: Dutch flag displayed in the window of a farm dwelling. Photo credit: Ewien van Bergeijk – Kwant

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***

Wading through the 18,000-word transcript of an hours-long meeting that President Vladimir Putin took with the “soldiers’ mothers” last Friday in Moscow, one gets the impression that the fighting in Ukraine may continue well into 2023 — and even beyond. 

In a most revealing remark, Putin acknowledged that Moscow blundered in 2014 by leaving Donbass an unfinished business — unlike Crimea — by allowing itself to be lured into the ceasefire brokered by Germany and France and the Minsk agreements. 

Moscow took some time to realise that Germany and France connived with then leadership in Kiev to scuttle the implementation of Minsk accord. Then Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko admitted in a series of interviews with western news outlets in recent months, including on Germany’s Deutsche Welle television and Radio Free Europe’s Ukrainian unit, that the 2015 ceasefire was  a distraction intended to buy time for Kiev to rebuild its military. 

In his words,

“We had achieved everything we wanted, our goal was to, first, stop the [Russian] threat, or at least to delay the war –- to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”  

The so-called Steinmeier Formula (proposed by German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier back in 2016 when he was foreign minister) on the sequencing of the Minsk agreement, had called for elections to be held in the separatist-held Donbass territories under Ukrainian legislation and the supervision of the OSCE; and, if the OSCE judged  the balloting to be free and fair, then a special self-governing status for the Donbass territories would be initiated and Ukraine’s control of its easternmost border with Russia restored.   

Putin admitted that Russia accepted the Minsk agreements ignoring the wishes of the Russian population in Donbass. To quote him,

“We sincerely went to this. But we didn’t fully feel the mood of the people, it was impossible to fully understand what was going on there. But now it has probably become obvious that this reunion [of Donbass] should have happened earlier. Maybe there wouldn’t have been so many losses among civilians, there wouldn’t have been so many dead children under shelling…” 

For the first time, perhaps, an incumbent Kremlin leader admitted making mistakes. The above poignant passage, therefore,  becomes a touchstone for Putin’s future decisions, as the Russian mobilisation approaches the final stage and by end-December, an estimated 4 lakh additional Russian troops will have been deployed in forward positions. 

The bottom line is that Putin slammed the door shut on another Minsk-like hodgepodge of modern furniture and antiques. How does this translate as political reality? 

First and foremost, much as Moscow is open for dialogue without preconditions, Russian negotiators will be bound by the recent amendments to the country’s Constitution, which incorporated Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhye regions as part of the Russian Federation. 

Second, Friday’s meeting has been, by any reckoning, an audacious initiative by Putin — risky, politically speaking. His interlocutors included mothers drawn from far-flung regions, whose sons are either actively fighting on the warfront, or have experienced the tragedy of sons having been killed in the fighting, or seriously wounded and need prolonged rehabilitation. 

They were strong-willed women, for sure, and yet, as one of them from the small town of Kirovsk in Luhansk told Putin while recalling the death of her son Konstantin Pshenichkin on the frontline,

“My heart bleeds, my soul freezes, gloomy memories cloud my mind, tears, tears, and suddenly my son asks me: “Mom, don’t be sad, I’ll see you – you just have to wait. You will go through this life for me, and in that life, we will be together again.”

Putin claimed openly — highly unusual for a Kremlin leader — that he went prepared for the meeting. But he still had surprises in store. Such meetings are impossible to be choreographed as pent-up emotions are in play in front of TV cameras. 

Thus, Marina Bakhilina from Sakha Republic, mother of three sons (one of whom is a highly decorated soldier from the elite Airborne Forces, 83rd Brigade and recipient of the Order of Courage) complained that there’s no hot food on the frontline. She told Putin:

“Do you understand what’s going on? If our people can’t provide our soldiers with hot meals, I, as a master of sports and a shooting CMC, would love to go there, to the front line to cook.” 

Putin replied gently,

“It would seem that the issues have already been mostly resolved… it means that not everything is normal…” 

What stands out in such frank exchanges is Putin’s massive political capital, derived out of the great consolidation he has mustered in getting the nation to rally behind him. The overall mood at the meeting was one of commitment to Russia’s cause and the confidence in ultimate victory. Of course, this strengthens Putin’s hands.

This is where the analogy of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis comes unstuck. Public opinion wasn’t a key factor 60 years ago. In a nutshell,  common sense prevailed in 1962 as realisation dawned that any failure to take into account the rival power’s security interests could have an apocalyptic outcome. 

The difference today is that while President Joe Biden has insulated  himself and is not accountable for his dogged pursuit of a Russian defeat on the battlefield in Ukraine and an ensuing “regime change” in Moscow, Putin insists on holding himself accountable to his people. Will any western “liberal” politician in power dare emulate Putin’s extraordinary meeting with the “soldiers’ mothers”? 

If economic hardships lead to social unrest and political turmoil in western Europe, the politicians in power will be at a disadvantage. Putin is fighting a “People’s War,” while western politicians cannot even admit that they are fighting Russia. But how long can it be hidden from the public view in Poland or France that their nationals are getting killed in Ukraine’s steppe? Can the western politicians pledge that their “volunteers” didn’t die in vain? What happens if a refugee flow out of Ukraine into western Europe begins as winter advances? 

In military terms, Russia enjoys escalation dominance — a markedly superior position over its NATO rival, across a range of rungs as the conflict progresses. The accelerating Russian operation in Bakhmut is a case in point. The deployment of regular troops in the recent days shows that Russia is on the escalation ladder to wrap up the 4-month old “grind” in Bakhmut city in Donetsk, which military analysts often describe as a lynchpin of Kiev’s defence in the eastern Donbass region. 

A New York Times report on Sunday highlighted the enormous scale of losses Ukrainian forces suffered in recent weeks. Evidently, the Wagner Group of Russian military contractors who were doing the fighting pinned down the Ukrainian forces in defensive position, estimated in the region of 30000 troops including crack units “that have been worn down by nonstop Russian assaults.” 

The Times report admits, citing a US defence official, that the Russian intention could have been to make Bakhmut city “a resource-intensive black hole for Kyiv.” This paradigm will repeat elsewhere, too, except that the Russian forces will be much stronger, far superior in numbers and vastly better equipped and will be fighting from heavily fortified positions. 

Putin made it clear at Friday’s meeting that vanquishing the neo-Nazi Banderites will remain a firm objective. Although regime change in Kiev is not a stated purpose, Putin will not settle for a repetition of the ceasefire and peace as in 2015, which left an anti-Russian, proxy regime of the US in power.  

That said, Putin underscored that “despite all the issues related to the special military operation, we do not change our plans for the development of the state, for the development of the country, for the development of the economy, its social sphere, for national projects. We have huge, big plans…” 

Taken together, all these elements define Russia’s so-called winter offensive. Putin’s hand-picked theatre commander in Ukraine General Sergei Surovikin is not in the mould of Patton or MacArthur. Basically, he holds the compass of the special military operations, while incorporating the experience accruing through the past 8 months of NATO involvement in the fighting. But never once did Putin use the expression “war” to characterise the conflict. 

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***

NATO on Tuesday doubled down on its pledge to eventually admit Ukraine during a meeting of the alliance’s foreign ministers in Bucharest, Romania, a position that played a major role in provoking Russia’s invasion.

The Romanian city was where NATO initially made the promise to Ukraine back in 2008, and at the time, US officials acknowledged that attempting to bring the country into the alliance could spark a war in the region.

“We made the decision in Bucharest in 2008 at the summit,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. “I was there … representing Norway as Prime Minister. I remember very well the decisions. We stand by those decisions. NATO’s door is open.”

In a joint statement, the NATO foreign ministers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said that they “reaffirm” the decisions that were made at the 2008 Bucharest summit.

CIA Director William Burns wrote a cable in 2008, when he was the US ambassador to Russia, that said promising NATO memberships to Ukraine as well as Georgia touches a “raw nerve” in Russia and raises serious security concerns for Moscow.

Burns wrote:

“Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests.”

Burns said in the cable, which was released by WikiLeaks, that Russia was particularly concerned about Ukraine.

“Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face,” he wrote.

The pledge to admit Ukraine into NATO didn’t lead to a civil war right away, but one was sparked after former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted in a US-backed coup in 2014. Separatists in the eastern Donbas region rejected the more Europe and US-friendly post-coup government and declared independence.

Starting after Yanukovych was ousted, NATO began a deep partnership with Ukraine by sending troops to train the country’s military, and the US began providing Kyiv with anti-tank missiles during the Trump administration. Yahoo News revealed earlier this year that the US deployed CIA paramilitaries to the frontlines of the Donbas war in 2014 to train Ukrainian forces.

During the lead-up to Russia’s February 24 invasion, Russia presented the US with a list of security demands. Chief among them was the issue of NATO expansion, which Russia wanted to be rolled back. Moscow was also seeking a guarantee that Ukraine won’t ever join NATO, but the US refused to entertain the idea even though President Biden had acknowledged that Kyiv wouldn’t be joining the alliance anytime soon.

Shortly after Russia’s invasion, Ukrainian President Voldymr Zelensky said he was told privately that Ukraine won’t be joining NATO.

“I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” Zelensky said in March. “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”

While NATO doesn’t plan on admitting Ukraine as a full member anytime soon, the alliance has big plans for the country. POLITICO reported in October that NATO is developing a 10-year plan to rebuild Ukraine’s military and arms industry with a focus on shifting the country from using Soviet equipment to primarily using NATO weapons. The report said the plan would make Ukraine a “default” member of NATO, a situation that will never be acceptable to Russia.

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Dave DeCamp is the news editor of Antiwar.com, follow him on Twitter @decampdave.

Featured image is from Stop the War

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***

Senator Rand Paul reacted Monday to news that the Biden administration is struggling to account for some $20 billion in aid that was sent to Ukraine, noting that both political parties ignored his call for an inspector general to overlook it.

A report from Fox News, linked in a tweet by Paul, notes that according to there Washington Post, the Biden administration inspected only 10% of 22,000 weapons the U.S. has provided to Ukraine between February and November.

It also outlines how Republicans could push for audits to determine where all the military aid is going and how much of it is ending up in the wrong hand.

“Didn’t someone try to legislatively mandate a special inspector general to scrutinize Ukrainian spending?” Paul urged, adding “Oh, that’s right, it was my amendment and most Democrats AND Republicans opposed any semblance of oversight.”

Didn’t someone try to legislatively mandate a special inspector general to scrutinize Ukrainian spending? Oh, that’s right, it was my amendment and most Democrats AND Republicans opposed any semblance of oversight. https://t.co/dYTSpbLi2O

— Rand Paul (@RandPaul) November 27, 2022

Just a fortnight ago, following the throughly debunked “Russian missile attack” on a Polish border town, which turned out to be a Ukrainian missile that had stayed off course, Biden asked Congress to provide another $37.7 billion in emergency aid to Ukraine.

The United States has already pledged more than 52 billion euros in military, financial and humanitarian aid to Ukraine since the war began in February 2022 and October 3, way more than any other nation or nations combined.

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***

The Joe Biden administration is now discussing whether to send advanced air defense systems to Kiev, according to a senior Pentagon official. The statement came just days after Poland suggested Germany should transfer its own Patriot interceptor missiles to Ukraine, as Moscow warned any such shipments would become “legitimate targets” for Russian forces.  

Speaking to reporters for a press briefing on Tuesday, an unnamed senior official said “all capabilities are on the table” in regards to Ukraine aid, adding that the Patriot system “is one of the air defense capabilities that is being considered along with all others.”

Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder later clarified that the White House has no immediate plans to send Patriot missiles to Ukraine, but noted that discussions are still underway. Asked whether the administration was concerned a Patriot transfer would escalate tensions with Moscow, Ryder offered no direct answer, instead explaining complications related to training and maintenance, saying such advanced weapons are not “plug and play.”

The Patriot missile defense system is produced by Raytheon, where Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin once served as a board member. The platform is considered to be NATO’s most sophisticated air defense weapon.

The comments from the two US officials came as the NATO bloc met for a major summit in Romania on Tuesday, where member states pledged additional support for Kiev’s war effort. In a speech delivered at the start of the event, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance would “stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes,” and later suggested that NATO itself was also discussing a Patriot missile deployment for Ukraine.

Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chair of Russia’s Security Council, responded to the NATO chief in a social media post, warning that Moscow would not allow the advanced American weapons to reach the battlefield.

”If, as Stoltenberg’s hinted, NATO supplies the Kiev fanatics with Patriot defense systems – as well as the alliance’s personnel – they will immediately turn into legitimate targets for our armed forces. I hope it is clear for the North Atlantic impotents,” he wrote.

Some European allies have also mulled whether to ship Patriots to Ukraine in recent days. After a stray Ukrainian air defense missile crossed into Poland and killed two farmers earlier this month, Germany offered to station one of its own Patriot systems in the country to prevent any future cross-border incidents. However, while Warsaw declined and urged Berlin to send the platform to Kiev instead, German officials said they could not do so, as the weapons are part of NATO’s collective air defenses and Ukraine is not a member of the alliance.

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute.

Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer and editor at RT.

Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.

Featured image: A US Patriot missile battery is seen firing during a drill at Fort Bliss, Texas. (Credit: US Army / Sgt. Ian Vega-Cerezo)

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***

Less than a week after testifying over his use of the Emergencies Act to quash truckers in February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suddenly supports protests against Covid-19 mandates breaking out all over China.

China has seen widespread anti-lockdown protests with authorities clamping down on dissidents throughout the country.

On Tuesday, Trudeau told reporters that he supports the Chinese freedom protests and the rights of people to “express themselves” over Covid-19 mandates.

“Everyone in China should be allowed to protest. We will continue to ensure that China knows we will stand for human rights and with people who are expressing themselves,” he said.

Justin Trudeau on the anti-lockdown protesters in China:

“Everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves.”

He didn’t allow his own citizens in Canada to do the same. He closed their bank accounts. Gargantuan hypocrisy.

pic.twitter.com/SAk0scWrhW

— James Melville (@JamesMelville) November 29, 2022

Thousands of Chinese citizens have taken to the streets of Beijing and Shanghai after a fire killed at least 10 people who were ordered into forced lockdowns for four months in Urumqi.

When the Freedom Convoy rocked Ottawa in protest of draconian Liberal government Covid-19 mandates and travel restrictions, Trudeau said the protesters held “unacceptable views” and would be dealt with accordingly.

“The small fringe minority of people who are on their way to Ottawa, who are holding unacceptable views that they are expressing, do not represent the views of Canadians,” said Trudeau.

“Those who have been there for each other, who know that following the science and stepping up to protect each other is the best way to continue to ensure our freedoms, our rights, our values as a country.”

Soon after he made the comments, Trudeau’s government invoked the Emergencies Act and froze the bank accounts of protest supporters.

Federal, provincial and local police authorities were also ordered to move into the city center and proceeded to brutalize the remaining peaceful protesters.

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Featured image is from The Counter Signal

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Pfizer CEO, Who Said Online “Misinformation” Is Criminal, Is Found Guilty of “Misleading” Vaccine Statements

By Cindy Harper, November 29, 2022

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, last year at the Atlantic Council, called people who spread COVID-19 vaccine misinformation “criminals,” in his calls for censorship of misinformation online. However, this year, Dr. Bourla is himself found responsible by the UK’s pharmaceutical regulator of making “misleading” statements about vaccination of children.

Malaysia: Postpone the Enforcement of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP)

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, November 29, 2022

Malaysia ratified the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) on 30^th September 2022. It comes into force on 30^th November 2022. One hopes that the new Malaysian government will postpone its enforcement until a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the CPTPP is done and the findings presented to Parliament for debate.

NATO Running Out of Weapons for Kiev Regime

By Drago Bosnic, November 29, 2022

On November 26, the New York Times reported that approximately two-thirds of NATO members have effectively run out of weapons by sending them to the Kiev regime. Even the more prominent alliance members with big MICs (Military Industrial Complexes) are having major issues keeping up with the Kiev regime’s demands.

Corporate Weapons Heaven Is a Hell on Earth. America is the World’s “Top Weapons Maker”

By William D. Hartung, November 29, 2022

Here’s a seldom commented-upon reality of this century and this moment: the United States remains the number-one arms-exporting nation on the planet. Between 2017 and 2021, it grabbed 39% of the total global weapons market and there’s nothing new about that.

Europe Accuses US of Profiting from War

By Barbara Moens, Jakob Hanke Vela, and Jacopo Barigazzi, November 29, 2022

The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry. The Kremlin is likely to welcome the poisoning of the atmosphere among Western allies.

The Real Environmental Disaster: Toxic ‘Forever Chemicals’ Everywhere, Even Babies’ Umbilical Cords

By Ben Bartee, November 29, 2022

The corporate state assumes for itself the role of environmental savior, ordained by God Himself to wage holy war against “climate change.” But it doesn’t apparently care too much, strangely, about the ongoing synthetic “forever” chemicals infestation of literally everything, including the food and water, which eventually make their way into even babies’ umbilical cords.

Because ‘Publishing Is Not a Crime,’ Major Newspapers Push US to Drop Assange Charges

By Jake Johnson, November 29, 2022

The five major media outlets that collaborated with WikiLeaks in 2010 to publish explosive stories based on confidential diplomatic cables from the U.S. State Department sent a letter Monday calling on the Biden administration to drop all charges against Julian Assange, who has been languishing in a high-security London prison for more than three years in connection with his publication of classified documents.

Vladimir Putin’s Vision of a Multipolar World

By Philip Giraldi, November 29, 2022

In history books as well as in politics every story is shaped by where one chooses to begin the tale. The current fighting in Ukraine, which many observers believe to already be what might be considered the opening phase of World War 3, is just such a development.

India Role as Balancing Power Increasing Even Amid Deepening Contradictions

By Uriel Araujo, November 29, 2022

On December 1, India will assume the presidency of the G20, which accounts for 80 per cent of the planet’s GDP. At its 2009 summit, the G20 declared itself the world’s primary venue for international financial and economic cooperation. The grouping has however often been largely seen as a vector for Western power and aspirations.

E-Waste 101: Everything You Need to Know

By Linnea Harris, November 29, 2022

E-waste is a growing waste stream: the fastest-growing in the world, according to Green Alliance, increasing by 21% between 2014 and 2019. Between 50 and 60 million tons are generated each year, which amounts to about 2-3% of annual global waste. While it might seem like an inconsequential percentage, the consequences of runaway e-waste production are extreme.

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Malaysia ratified the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) on 30^th September 2022. It comes into force on 30^th November 2022. One hopes that the new Malaysian government will postpone its enforcement until a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the CPTPP is done and the findings presented to Parliament for debate.

A postponement is necessary because the agreement impinges upon our national sovereignty as no other multilateral economic arrangement does. It affects the ability of the Malaysian state and society to protect the well-being of its workers and people.  If a dispute arises between a foreign enterprise operating in Malaysia and the Malaysian government over some issue pertaining to the safety of our workers, the matter would be referred to an international arbitration panel whose decision would be final. Our local courts would have no say.

It is also alleged that the implementation of the CPTPP will witness a sharp increase in the price of medicines. Imported medicines will be protected by much tighter intellectual property laws. This will undoubtedly have a negative impact on our ability to provide affordable health care to the poorer section of society.

The proposed trade agreement will also have an adverse impact upon the farming community. Farmers who for millennia have developed new varieties and strains through their own effort and initiative will now have to purchase seeds from huge agro-businesses. This not only weakens the position of the average farmer but it also tightens the grip of cartels and monopolies over the already vulnerable farming sector.

For all these reasons a large number of NGOs and other groups in Malaysia have come together to ask the government to postpone the enforcement of the CPTPP. This move initiated by the Parti Sosialis Malaysia (PSM) has so far garnered the support of 70 organisations. They represent the collective voice of thousands of concerned Malaysians.

Malaysia should not be under the illusion that if we are not part of the CPTPP we will not be able to benefit from lower tariffs for goods and services. Malaysia is already a member of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) which brings together all 10 ASEAN states and 5 other nations in the Asia Pacific region, namely, China, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. RCEP formed on 1^st January 2022 is the world’s largest free trade agreement. It covers a third of the global population and accounts for about 30% of the planet’s GDP. Malaysia has every reason to ensure that RCEP which is an ASEAN initiative succeeds.

Compared to RCEP, it is crystal clear why CPTPP is not in our best interests.

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar is the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST). He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: Signatories and parties to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) (Q4 2021)   Parties  Signatories  Formal Applicants  Potential Applicants (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

La proiezione del docufilm L’Urlo sul dramma dei migranti schiavi in Libia, che il regista Michelangelo Severgnini era stato invitato a presentare al “Festival dei Diritti Umani” a Napoli, è stata interrotta dopo una ventina di minuti dai rappresentati delle ONG tra cui Open Arms, che si sono scagliati contro il docufilm, definendolo “una porcheria”, e hanno ripetutamente offeso il regista senza dargli modo di replicare.

In questa puntata di Grandangolo Dentro la Notizia, con la partecipazione di Michelangelo Severgnini e del giornalista di Byoblu Michele Crudelini,  potete vedere ciò che è avvenuto al “Festival  dei Diritti Umani” e le testimonianze dei migranti schiavi che i rappresentanti di queste ONG “umanitarie” vogliono mettere a tacere.

Vi potete meglio documentare sulla situazione in Libia rivedendo su Byoblu le seguenti puntate di Grandangolo:

• LA LIBIA COME NESSUNO VE LA RACCONTA – ILDOCUFILM DI MICHELANGELO SEVERGNINI (10 Gennaio 2022) https://www.byoblu.com/2022/01/10/grandangolo-pangea-la-rassegna-stampa-internazionale-di-byoblu-29-puntata/
• LABORATORIO LIBIA: IL FRONTE SCONOSCIUTO (13 Giugno 2022) https://www.byoblu.com/2022/06/13/laboratorio-libia-il-fronte-sconosciuto-dentro-la-notizia-pangea-grandangolo/

·      LE SOFFOCANTI “BRACCIA APERTE” DELL’OCCIDENTE (22 Luglio 2022) https://www.byoblu.com/2022/07/22/le-soffocanti-braccia-aperte-delloccidente-grandangolo-pangea/

• L’ITALIA E I FONDI ALLA GUARDIA COSTIERA LIBICA (14 Settembre 2022) https://www.byoblu.com/2022/09/14/litalia-e-i-fondi-alla-guardia-costiera-libica-dentro-la-notizia-pangea-grandangolo/
• Potete anche rivedere le interviste di Michele Crudelini a Michelandelo Severgnini. https://www.byoblu.com/tag/michelangelo-severgnini/

 Manlio Dinucci 

 

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Months before Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO’s crawling encroachment on its western borders, the political West started sending massive amounts of weapons and munitions to the Kiev regime. Initially, the deliveries primarily included tens of thousands of man-portable missiles for various purposes, including ATGM (anti-tank guided missiles) and MANPADS (man-portable air defense systems) weapons. Even then, it already became clear that NATO’s stocks couldn’t provide enough weapons for a long-term conflict, while it would take years to ramp up deliveries by expanding production lines. This was further exacerbated when the Kiev regime started asking for more advanced weapons and systems amid mounting battlefield losses.

Many NATO member states were (and still are) forced to send weapons and munitions which were already in short supply for their own militaries. This is particularly true when it comes to former Warsaw Pact member states of the belligerent alliance, many of whom were forced to give up their Soviet-era weapons. Old NATO powers promised to send their weapons to replace these older arsenals of the alliance’s Eastern European members, although this process proved to be quite slow. On the other hand, the Kiev regime’s ever-growing demands are putting additional pressure. As NATO’s current production capacity simply cannot meet these requests, the Neo-Nazi junta’s battlefield prospects look grimmer by the day. “If this does not happen, we won’t be able to win — as simple as that,” Dmytro Kuleba, the Kiev regime chief diplomat warned during a recent meeting.

On November 26, the New York Times reported that approximately two-thirds of NATO members have effectively run out of weapons by sending them to the Kiev regime. Even the more prominent alliance members with big MICs (Military Industrial Complexes) are having major issues keeping up with the Kiev regime’s demands. According to an unnamed NATO official, 20 out of 30 member states are “pretty tapped out” in terms of additional weapon and munition supplies to the Neo-Nazi junta. While members such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and Italy still have the ability to arm the Kiev regime with basic weapons, even they are refraining from sending specific weapons systems requested by the junta.

The demands include various types of strategically impactful weapons, including surface-to-surface guided missiles such as ATACMS, a weapon with a 300 km engagement range. The US officially rejected such demands, supposedly “out of concern” the missiles could be used to attack targets deep within Russia. However, the more likely reason is that the Pentagon is fully aware of the fact that it would take years to replace its current stocks of such missiles and it’s not very keen on expending them all without certain replacement. The same is true for many other types of weapons and systems which are equally needed to maintain optimal military power.

Artillery is especially important in this regard. As soon as the Kiev regime started burning through its Soviet-made stocks, many of which were also destroyed in Russia’s long-range strikes, NATO was forced to provide both artillery pieces and shells. As the alliance’s post-(First) Cold War doctrine shifted toward a more interventionist style of warfare, artillery became less important, resulting in ever-shrinking stocks.

According to various reports, the enormous demand for artillery munitions is putting tremendous pressure on NATO members trying to meet the Kiev regime’s requests. At present, the Neo-Nazi junta forces are firing at least five thousand shells per day, but the US, by far the most heavily armed NATO member state, can only produce 15,000 shells per month. Camille Grand, a defense expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the New York Times that “[a] day in Ukraine is a month or more in Afghanistan.”

On the other hand, the soaring demand is extremely profitable for the Military Industrial Complexes of the political West.

“Taking into account the realities of the ongoing war in Ukraine and the visible attitude of many countries aimed at increased spending in the field of defense budgets, there is a real chance to enter new markets and increase export revenues in the coming years,” according to Sebastian Chwalek, CEO of Poland’s PGZ, a corporation that owns a number of weapons manufacturers.

However, the US MIC has been experiencing by far the largest windfall in this regard. Arms industry giants such as Lockheed Martin and Raytheon already made billions in the opening months of the Ukrainian crisis.

Back in May, during a visit to a Lockheed Martin plant, US President Joe Biden stated that the US would ramp up weapons production, but that “this would not come cheap.” However, most US officials and experts agree that this is not only a question of funding, as it will take years to increase production in order to meet the current demand, which is expected to grow exponentially in the foreseeable future.

“If you want to increase the production capability of 155 mm shells. It’s going to be probably four to five years before you start seeing them come out the other end,” according to Mark F. Cancian, a former White House weapons strategist and current senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

The US and NATO have already stated that they’re committed to fighting a long proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. In October, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin openly admitted this is the plan that Washington DC and its satellites have. He said that the US and NATO would “boost Ukraine’s defensive capabilities for pressing urgent needs and for the long term.” However, as the US is profiteering from the crisis, especially at the EU’s expense, the bloc is becoming increasingly frustrated, a feeling even the most senior officials in Brussels are now ready to express more freely than ever before.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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On December 1, India will assume the presidency of the G20, which accounts for 80 per cent of the planet’s GDP. At its 2009 summit, the G20 declared itself the world’s primary venue for international financial and economic cooperation. The grouping has however often been largely seen as a vector for Western power and aspirations.

Even before assuming the group’s presidency, during the G20 summit in Bali (Indonesia), earlier this month, the Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi played an important role there. Although New Delhi’s agenda for the Bali summit has been described as quite modest, Western and other leaders are, according to Jawaharlal Nehru University’s professor Happymon Jacob, increasingly “listening to India” as a power that remains close to “both the West and Russia”.

New Delhi has successfully been balancing its ties between the US-led West and Moscow since the start of the current Ukrainian conflict. Although India and the United States ties have been growing stronger, especially after their November 2020 Basic Exchange and Cooperation Agreement (BECA), on the other hand, the Asian power and Russia strongly cooperate on defense and energy. In October, the Russian Federation surpassed both Iraq and Saudi Arabia to become the largest oil provider to India.

Can India push for multipolarity as the next president of a divided G-20 amid an unprecedented tense global situation while there are serious tensions between the Washington-led West and Moscow and also between the former and Beijing? Even within the West itself, there are disagreements: France and Germany, two leading European countries, have signaled they are no longer willing to follow NATO’s line so eagerly. Meanwhile, the US’ own relationship with its traditional main ally in the Middle East is possibly coming to an end after the Saudi Arabia’s backed OPEC+ decision to cut oil production.

Political analyst Niranjan Marjani, who specializes in the Indo-Pacific, argues that holding the G20 presidency amid such circumstances is an opportunity for New Delhi to put into practice some of its propositions – India, after all, he reasons, has always proposed a multipolar order and strong mechanisms to balance and protect the interests of all stakeholders.

Marjani adds that, in 2023, New Delhi in fact will find itself in a unique position, as it will also be assuming the presidency of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), a grouping which has often been perceived as an “anti-Western” organization – especially since Iran’s admission in September 2021.

India has of course diplomatically engaged with both sides in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict (which is also a proxy Western war against Moscow). Moreover, it can boast the fact that it is trusted by the two sides. Likewise, while presiding over two supposedly “rival” organizations (SCO and the G20), New Delhi can keep, it is argued, promoting dialogue and diplomacy.

This is not an easy task though, notwithstanding India’s soft power as a kind of a diplomatic giant, which, some believe, can become a global power.  Although the two powers have been making advances in dialogue since September (when both Beijing and New Delhi moved back troops from the disputed area), within the Eurasian “bloc”, the South Asian power has its own border problems with neighboring China – not to mention its other border problems with Pakistan.

As for the West, Washington in turn has already threatened its partner with sanctions over its purchase of Russia’s S-400 missile systems (which Moscow will deliver by 2023). These were dropped in July, but the tensions could come back next year, while the growing Indian-Russian-Iranian cooperation around the North-South Transit Corridor should also be a major concern for American political elites.

The so-called Indo-Pacific Region (IPR) remains an arena of Western-Chinese rivalry, and the Quad, of which New Delhi is a member (often described as a “new NATO”) adds fuel to the fire. This region involves part of maritime Eurasia itself and thus is relevant for Russia also (and for India itself) – Central Asian states are after all increasingly relevant to the Quad. France too has its ambitions for the IPR, and Paris is already New Delhi’s second main arms supplier (Moscow being number 1). French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu’s trip to India this week is part of a larger French attempt to lure India from Russia.

The problem is that Quad today is all about “countering” Eurasian powers, from an Atlanticist perspective – and it must also be seen in the context of calls for a “global NATO”.

In August, during a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Tashkent, National Security Council of Russia’s secretary Nikolai Patrushev stated that the US and is allies are working based on “anti-Russian or anti-Chinese principles”, as is “vividly demonstrated by the arrangements under the AUKUS and Quad.” The remark came soon after Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar had stated in Bangkok that Quad can benefit the entire region, and that reservations about it stemmed from “unilateralist opposition”.

One can recall the fact that Japanese and Australian attempts to explicitly mention Russia in the Quad’s March readout were hampered by India in yet another act of “balancing”. But one can only “concile” so much. India needs to elaborate an integrated approach to Eurasia, intensifying its dialogue on security with Russia, but faces many contradictions in its foreign policy. How much all of them can be “balanced” remains to be seen in the near future.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

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