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Introduction

Afghanistan, Iraq, maybe Libya. If you asked the average American where the United States has been at war in the past two decades, you would likely get this short list. But this list is wrong — off by at least 17 countries in which the United States has engaged in armed conflict through ground forces, proxy forces, or air strikes.[1]

For members of the public, the full extent of U.S. warmaking is unknown. Investigative journalists and human rights advocates have cobbled together a rough picture of where the military has used force, but they rely on sources whose information is often incomplete, belated, or speculative. There is only so much one can learn about the United States’ military footprint from trawling Purple Heart ceremonies, speaking with retired military personnel, and monitoring social media for reports of civilian harm.[2]

Congress’s understanding of U.S. war-making is often no better than the public record. The Department of Defense provides congressionally mandated disclosures and updates to only a small number of legislative offices. Sometimes, it altogether fails to comply with reporting requirements, leaving members of Congress uninformed about when, where, and against whom the military uses force. After U.S. forces took casualties in Niger in 2017, for example, lawmakers were taken aback by the very presence of U.S. forces in the country.[3] Without access to such basic information, Congress is unable to perform necessary oversight.

It is not just the public and Congress who are out of the loop. The Department of Defense’s diplomatic counterparts in the Department of State also struggle to understand and gain insight into the reach of U.S. hostilities. Where congressional oversight falters, so too does oversight within the executive branch.

This proliferation of secret war is a relatively recent phenomenon, and it is undemocratic and dangerous. The conduct of undisclosed hostilities in unreported countries contravenes our constitutional design. It invites military escalation that is unforeseeable to the public, to Congress, and even to the diplomats charged with managing U.S. foreign relations. And it risks poorly conceived, counterproductive operations with runaway costs, in terms of both dollars and civilian lives. So how did we get here?

Two sources of the government’s ability to wage war in secret are already the subject of much discussion. The first is the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), which was enacted in the wake of the September 11 attacks. Notwithstanding the limitations in its text, the 2001 AUMF has been stretched by four successive administrations to cover a broad assortment of terrorist groups, the full list of which the executive branch long withheld from Congress and still withholds from the public. The second is the covert action statute, an authority for secret, unattributed, and primarily CIA-led operations that can involve the use of force.[4] Despite a series of Cold War–era executive orders that prohibit assassinations, the covert action statute has been used throughout the war on terror to conduct drone strikes outside areas of active hostilities.

But there is a third class of statutory authorities that enable undisclosed hostilities yet have received little public attention: security cooperation authorities. Congress enacted these provisions in the years following September 11 to allow U.S. forces to work through and with foreign partners. One of them, now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 333, permits the Department of Defense to train and equip foreign forces anywhere in the world. Another, now codified at 10 U.S.C. § 127e, authorizes the Department of Defense to provide “support” to foreign forces, paramilitaries, and private individuals who are in turn “supporting” U.S. counterterrorism operations.

While training and support may sound benign, these authorities have been used beyond their intended purpose. Section 333 programs have resulted in U.S. forces pursuing their partners’ adversaries under a strained interpretation of constitutional self-defense. Section 127e programs have allowed the United States to develop and control proxy forces that fight on behalf of and sometimes alongside U.S. forces. In short, these programs have enabled or been used as a springboard for hostilities.

The public and even most of Congress is unaware of the nature and scope of these programs. The Department of Defense has given little indication of how it interprets §§ 333 and 127e, how it decides which § 333 partner forces to defend, and where it conducts § 127e programs. When U.S. forces operating under these authorities direct or engage in combat, the Department of Defense often declines to inform Congress and the public, reasoning that the incident was too minor to trigger statutory reporting requirements.

Notwithstanding the challenges Congress has faced in overseeing activities under §§ 333 and 127e, Congress recently expanded the Department of Defense’s security cooperation authorities. Section 1202 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for 2018 largely mirrors § 127e, but instead of supporting U.S. counterterrorism efforts, the partner forces it covers are intended to support U.S. “irregular warfare operations” against “rogue states,” such as Iran or North Korea, or “near-peers,” such as Russia and China. Far beyond the bounds of the war on terror, § 1202 may be used to engage in low-level conflict with powerful, even nuclear, states.

Through these security cooperation provisions, the Department of Defense, not Congress, decides when and where the United States counters terrorist groups and even state adversaries. Moreover, by determining that “episodic” confrontations and “irregular” warfare do not amount to “hostilities,” the Department of Defense has avoided notification and reporting requirements, leaving Congress and the public in the dark.[5]

This report delves into the legal frameworks for conducting and overseeing security cooperation and identifies how those frameworks have inaugurated the modern era of secret war. It draws on public reporting and materials prepared by the Departments of Defense and State, as well as interviews with administration officials, congressional staffers, and journalists. Part I provides a brief history and overview of constitutional war powers and congressional oversight of the military; part II analyzes the suite of authorities under which security cooperation takes place; and part III identifies the constitutional defects of this secret war-making and proposes reforms to increase transparency and prevent abuse.

I. History and Overview of Constitutional War Powers

In the U.S. constitutional system, authority over military affairs is divided between Congress and the president. The Constitution explicitly grants Congress the power to declare war and the power to create, fund, and regulate the military. The Constitution also vests the president with a general “executive power” and provides that the president shall be the commander in chief of the military.

Based on Congress’s responsibility for declaring war and making military appropriations, the Constitution was long understood to afford Congress substantial control over where and how the military operates.[6] Furthermore, a special limitation on the length of army appropriations — the Constitution’s Two-Year Clause — was understood to demand Congress’s regular and informed review of military affairs.[7] The president’s role, by contrast, was narrow. Per the Supreme Court, the “power and duty” of the president was to “command [] the forces” and “direct the conduct of campaigns” after Congress had already “provide[d] by law for carrying on war.”[8] Only in narrow circumstances, when defensive force was necessary to “repel sudden attacks” on U.S. soil and persons, was the Constitution understood to empower the president to act without congressional authorization.[9]

As discussed below, this balance of power was respected for most of the nation’s history. But it began to unravel during the Cold War, a trend that has accelerated since September 11.

Early History

The precedent for congressional control and oversight of military operations was established early. Just 10 years after the Constitution’s adoption, during the Quasi-War with France, Congress exercised its authority to limit the geographic scope of U.S. naval activity. Denying a request from President Adams, Congress restricted American vessels to defending the coastline rather than cruising the high seas and seeking confrontations with French vessels.[10] Congress additionally specified how American vessels would be armed, manned, and even provisioned — rations included one pound of bread each day and four ounces of cheese every other.[11]

Adams acknowledged Congress’s wartime enactments, and the Supreme Court enforced them when American vessels exceeded their scope.[12] The Supreme Court affirmed Congress’s power to wage a war “limited in place, in objects, and in time.”[13] Early presidents were careful not to overstep their authority, even when they acted unilaterally to defend the country from foreign threats. In 1801, while Congress was out of session, President Jefferson invoked his inherent constitutional authority to prevent the Barbary States from detaining and ransoming American merchants. The day after Congress returned, however, Jefferson dutifully apprised Congress of his deployment of American vessels to the Mediterranean, the circumstances that had given rise to the deployment, and the conduct of the vessels. He then sought and received Congress’s express permission to “go beyond the line of defense” in countering the Barbary States.[14]

Presidential respect for Congress’s power to authorize or foreclose American military action, and transparency about military operations, persisted well past the Founding Era. Half a century after Jefferson repelled the Barbary States, President Lincoln followed his model in countering the Confederacy. The Civil War began when Congress was out of session, with the Confederacy’s bombardment of Fort Sumter. Lincoln called for a special legislative session and, as he waited for Congress to return, readied the nation for war and imposed a naval blockade to close the Confederacy’s ports. When Congress reconvened, Lincoln publicly outlined what he had done and sought retroactive and continuing congressional approval for it.[15] To aid Congress in its deliberations, he and his administration promised to “stand ready to supply omissions, or to communicate new facts considered important for [Congress] to know.”[16]

Even when American lives and the unity of the country were at stake, Jefferson and Lincoln acknowledged the limits of presidential unilateralism and embraced accountability to Congress. They understood that transparency enabled Congress to fulfill its constitutional role of legislating on military affairs and determining whether, when, and how war could be waged.

The Cold War 

Even as the United States grew in size and military might, Jefferson’s and Lincoln’s understanding of the constitutional balance of powers prevailed throughout the 19th century and into the early decades of the 20th. The Cold War, however, ushered in a shift in presidential practice regarding Congress’s authority to declare war and conduct military oversight.[17]

In 1950, President Truman unilaterally committed American forces to the Korean War, enmeshing the United States in a three-year conflict without prior congressional approval. Departing from the established balance of powers, Truman asserted a presidential prerogative to use the military “in the broad interests of American foreign policy.”[18] President Eisenhower followed in Truman’s footsteps, using the newly created CIA to engage in unauthorized and undisclosed hostilities in Latin America and Southeast Asia.

Eisenhower’s secret war in Laos — a war that his successors would broaden in size and scope — was particularly noteworthy. The CIA’s control of a “vast proxy army” of tens of thousands of Laotians, combined with its bombing campaign in support of those proxies, was a lurch, not a step, toward undoing the balance of powers envisioned in the Constitution and implemented by Jefferson and Lincoln.[19] Congress had not approved the “large scale operations,” and legislators eventually excoriated the agency for acting “considerably beyond” its authority.[20] But Congress’s condemnation came a full decade after the start of the secret war, as journalists finally broke the news on Laos by using “scraps of [] information picked up from irregular sources.”[21]

Laos exemplified the dangers of secrecy in military affairs: by frustrating Congress’s ability to conduct oversight, the president could usurp Congress’s power to decide when, where, and how war would take place. The president could render Laos the “most heavily bombed nation in history,” and Congress and the American public would scarcely know it.[22]

Perhaps because the constitutional balance of powers relied so heavily on military transparency, secrecy was on the rise. In 1960, Congress assessed that the Eisenhower administration had spurred “a growth of secrecy in the Federal Government unparalleled in American history,” using “the excuse of military security” to conceal where U.S. forces were and what they were doing.[23] The trend accelerated under subsequent administrations. In 1969, President Nixon expanded the Vietnam War into neutral ambodian territory without informing Congress, let alone requesting authorization. Congress learned of the incursion four years later, after an Air Force major blew the whistle on how he had “deliberately falsified the reports of at least two dozen secret B-52 [bomber] missions over Cambodia.”[24]

The secret war in Cambodia pushed Congress to enact the War Powers Resolution, over Nixon’s veto. In accordance with the Constitution’s text and history, the War Powers Resolution reaffirmed the president’s obligation to seek congressional authorization before engaging U.S. forces in hostilities beyond the line of defense.[25] It also required the president to notify and consult with Congress whenever combat-equipped U.S. forces were deployed and when they engaged in hostilities.[26] Consistent with Congress’s power to limit war “in place, in objects, and in time,”[27] the War Powers Resolution set forth special procedures for Congress to terminate hostilities and compel the withdrawal of U.S. forces from the field.[28] Even without Congress’s use of these special procedures, the War Powers Resolution directed that the president “shall terminate” any unauthorized hostilities after 60 days or, in cases of “unavoidable military necessity,” 90 days.[29]

Presidents were not eager to comply with these new measures to rein in unilateralism and restore transparency. Immediately, Nixon challenged the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution.[30] Subsequent administrations echoed his arguments while adopting strained interpretations of the law that neutered its reporting provisions and limitations on unauthorized hostilities. Thus, President Reagan maintained that his administration had acted in a manner consistent with the War Powers Resolution, even as it operated unauthorized paramilitary groups against Nicaragua’s government and launched an unauthorized invasion of Grenada.[31]

But Congress did not let up. Lawmakers repeatedly brought suit under the War Powers Resolution to challenge unauthorized hostilities, whether those undertaken by Reagan or later by President Clinton in the former Yugoslavia. Congress also enacted legislation such as the Boland Amendments, which exercised Congress’s military appropriations power to prohibit the use of funds for “supporting, directly or indirectly, military or paramilitary operations in Nicaragua.”[32] During the Clinton administration, Congress enacted similar funding prohibitions to restrict the use of U.S. forces in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Haiti, Rwanda, and Somalia.[33]

September 11 and Its Aftermath

September 11 ushered in a new era of deference to the president. Congress quieted its efforts to preserve its constitutional role, and the War Powers Resolution lay dormant — even as new military authorities and technologies expanded the president’s power to deploy the military without explicit congressional authorization or even knowledge.

Within a week of the attacks, Congress passed the 2001 AUMF to allow President George W. Bush to pursue those who had “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks.”[34] Shortly thereafter, the Bush administration concluded that the terrorist organization al-Qaeda had perpetrated the attacks and that the Taliban, the political leadership of Afghanistan, were providing al-Qaeda with safe harbor. So began the war in Afghanistan.

But the 2001 AUMF was not limited to Afghanistan.Indeed, it had no geographic or temporal limitation. As Bush said on September 20, 2001, two days after signing the 2001 AUMF into law, “There are thousands of terrorists in more than 60 countries. . . . Our war on terror begins with al-Qaeda, but it does not end there.” Contrary to the stated purpose of the 2001 AUMF — preventing those responsible for September 11 from perpetrating future acts of terrorism against the United States — Bush’s purpose was to ensure that “every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated.”[35]

This vision of the war on terror has superseded the plain text of the 2001 AUMF. Successive administrations have interpreted the 2001 AUMF to cover al-Qaeda’s “associated forces,” despite those words not appearing in the statute. The executive branch has designated a broad array of terrorist groups, including those that did not yet exist on September 11, as associated forces. In doing so, presidents have unilaterally expanded the scope of the war on terror to organizations like al-Shabaab in Somalia, which was founded in 2006 and which threatens targets in East Africa, not the United States.

For much of the war on terror, Congress was unaware of the full list of associated forces or countries that the executive branch asserted were covered by the 2001 AUMF.[36] Only in 2013 did President Obama provide Congress with a list of such forces and describe the executive branch’s rationale for designating them.[37] Even then, the list did not include the countries in which the Department of Defense countered adversaries. The Trump administration, too, refused to provide information on the geographic scope of the war on terror — despite Congress’s enactment of a law specifically demanding it.[38] In March 2022, after years of delay, the Biden administration finally provided the congressional foreign affairs[39] and defense committees with a series of overdue reports on where and against whom U.S. forces have fought. These reports had lengthy classified annexes, were not provided to all congressional offices, and are not publicly available.

The AUMF, though, was not the end of the matter. On the day before he signed the 2001 AUMF into law, President Bush made a broad finding under 50 U.S.C. § 3093, the covert action statute, to grant the CIA “exceptional authorities” to kill or capture al-Qaeda targets around the world.[40] This finding granted the CIA powers “identical” to those wielded by the Department of Defense under the 2001 AUMF, including the “direct use of lethal force.”[41] By 2011, the CIA controlled a “3,000 man covert army in Afghanistan,”[42] had used new drone technologies to conduct covert airstrikes in Yemen and Pakistan, and had killed upward of 2,000 militants and civilians.[43] Twenty percent of CIA analysts were dedicated to identifying and locating targets for future drone strikes.[44] Ostensibly a civilian agency, the CIA had the authorities and tools to act as a military force.

Even though the roles of the CIA and the military have converged, the executive branch maintains that the CIA is not subject to the same statutory reporting regime as the Department of Defense. When the CIA conducts hostilities, whether by directing a proxy force or conducting an airstrike, its hostilities are not reported to all of Congress or to the public. Indeed, they are not even reported to the congressional defense or foreign affairs committees. Instead, CIA activities are reported through highly classified notifications to the congressional intelligence committees. In some cases, the president limits these notifications to just eight senior lawmakers.[45]

Building on the 2001 AUMF and the covert action statute, Congress has enacted security cooperation statutes to allow the military to “support” foreign forces whose objectives align with those of the United States. The ways in which these authorities have enabled military operations without specific congressional authorization and with limited oversight are the focus of this report and detailed in the next part.

Finally, the creation, use, and misuse of these statutory authorities came on the heels of a dramatic increase in the president’s claimed authority to conduct military operations without congressional authorization. In the years leading up to September 11, executive branch lawyers formulated a novel theory of self-defense, under which the president could initiate hostilities just shy of an all-out war to protect “important national interests.”[46] The George H. W. Bush and Clinton administrations cited this theory in support of unilateral interventions in Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. And the Obama and Trump administrations expanded the theory, using it as the basis for unilateral interventions in Libya and Syria.

These legal authorities — the 2001 AUMF, the presidential finding under the covert action statute, the security cooperation provisions, and the newly expanded conception of constitutional self-defense — coincided with the development of drone and cyber technologies, so-called light-footprint means of using force against adversaries without a clear U.S. presence.

Able to operate under these new authorities and with these new technologies, the Department of Defense, like the CIA, had the tools to conduct hostilities in ways that were nearly imperceptible to Congress and the public. So it did. The military extended the reach of the war on terror across the globe, combating adversaries Congress could not have foreseen in places ranging from the Philippines to Tunisia. At times, it became clear to Congress that the scope of these hostilities far exceeded what it had authorized or even understood.[47] But instead of invoking the War Powers Resolution or passing funding limitations,[48] Congress has allowed this unaccountable behavior to persist.[49]

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Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced to his Bolivian counterpart, Luis Arce Catacora, that his country will once again join the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), from which it withdrew in 2020 by decision of former president Jair Bolsonaro.

The decision will be ratified by Lula during the VII Summit of Heads of State to be held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on 24 January, said the deputy foreign minister, Freddy Mamani.

“This participation of the president of Brazil, Brazil’s return to Celac is very important, this announcement is fundamental for Latin America and the Caribbean and will strengthen the process of regional integration,” Mamani said during a press conference.

On 16 January 2020, the Bolsonaro government announced that it had decided to withdraw Brazil from Celac because it considered that it “gave prominence to non-democratic regimes”.

On the same grounds, earlier, in April 2019, the far-right leader made Brazil’s withdrawal from the Union of South American Nations (Unasur) official. Instead, he integrated Brazil into the Forum for the Progress of South America (Prosur), founded in March 2019 in Chile by right-wing governments and which excludes Venezuela by decision of the conservative governments of the eight member countries.

Unlike Bolsonaro, Lula, who assumed the presidency on 1 January, has a different conception of both blocs and even has a broad predisposition to give them a major regional boost.

In fact, the Bolivian deputy foreign minister said that Arce and Lula talked about “recovering Unasur, on new bases, guaranteeing a clear programmatic and effective sense of the organisation”.

Mamani affirmed that the sub-regional organisation will be “reconstructed” for greater continental integration in line with the deepening of bilateral relations between Brazil and Bolivia, as agreed by Lula and Arce.

At the meeting held by the two heads of state on 2 January, it was decided to “rebuild and deepen the broad agenda of work between Bolivia and Brazil for the benefit of our peoples, including cooperation, investment, trade and environmental issues, among others,” Mamani stressed.

They also analysed actions to strengthen border security and the fight against drug trafficking.

They also discussed various trade agreements, including the purchase and sale of natural gas, the possible export of electricity and the sale of urea and potassium chloride.

Although the leaders addressed the topics in general terms, the vice-chancellor said that each of them would be analysed by work teams from both governments.

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Featured image: The presidents of Bolivia, Luis Arce Catacora, and Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. (Image by abi.bo)

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Russia’s crude grades from the Arctic, which used to be sold in Europe before the EU embargo, are now heading East to the two biggest buyers of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine—China and India.

Russia’s grades from the Arctic – Arco, Arco/Novy Port, and Varandey – have been selling at deep discounts in China and India as the EU embargo and the G7 price cap have further pushed more Russian crude to customers in Asia that have not joined the Price Cap Coalition, according to trade data and sources cited by Reuters.

“All these Arctic crudes usually go to the EU but now they have to go elsewhere,” a Singapore-based trader told Reuters.

India imported at the end of 2022 its first cargo of Varandey crude from the Timan-Pechora oilfields operated by Lukoil, per sources and vessel-tracking data from Refinitiv.

Before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, India was a small marginal buyer of Russian crude oil. After Western buyers started shunning crude from Russia, India became a top destination for Russian oil exports alongside China.

Russia overtook Iraq to become the single-largest oil supplier to India in November, as Indian refiners raced to stock up on Russian oil ahead of the December 5 price cap and associated bans on transportation services for Russia’s crude.

In China, independent refiners have seen their refining margins jump in recent weeks as they have been able to negotiate steeper discounts for their preferred Russian crude grade, ESPO, even if they buy it above the G7 price cap.

While China hasn’t joined the Price Cap Coalition, the fact that a price cap now exists gives the world’s top crude oil importer, as well as other buyers of Russian crude such as India, more bargaining power to negotiate steep discounts for the Russian crude even outside the price cap mechanism, analysts say.

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Tsvetana is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing for news outlets such as iNVEZZ and SeeNews. 

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“The German government has decided to shift the problems that their predecessors created onto our country. To this end, they plan to confiscate Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, Russia‘s lower house of parliament.

Moscow could retaliate with similar measures if Germany decides to use frozen Russian assets to help Ukraine rebuild, a senior Russian official warned on Thursday.

“The German government has decided to shift the problems that their predecessors created onto our country. To this end, they plan to confiscate Russian assets to rebuild Ukraine,” said Vyacheslav Volodin, speaker of the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.

“We have the right to take similar actions in relation to assets of Germany and other states,” he said in a Telegram post.

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Israel’s new national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gvir, lost no time in demonstrating who is boss. On Tuesday, days after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government was sworn in, the ultra-nationalist politician marched straight in to the Al-Aqsa Mosque complex in the occupied Old City of Jerusalem – probably the most incendiary site in the Middle East.

Ben-Gvir did so despite reports that he had agreed with Netanyahu to delay such a visit for fear of the potentially explosive consequences.

But who will hold him to account for playing with fire? A prime minister who desperately needs Ben-Gvir’s support to stay in power so that Netanyahu can legislate an end to his corruption trial and keep himself out of jail? Or the Israeli police force that Ben-Gvir himself now has unprecedented control over?

The leader of the fascist Jewish Power party used the visit to indicate both to his followers and to Netanyahu that he answers to no one, and that he will not compromise on his own extreme ideology of Jewish supremacism.

The visit sent another message too: Ben-Gvir appears ready to provoke a religious war – one that would demonstrate once and for all the power of his kind of Jewish zealotry and thuggishness to subdue all Muslim opposition. Al-Aqsa could be the powder-keg to ignite such a conflagration.

Ben-Gvir’s visit has passed, at least so far, without a significant Palestinian backlash, although Hamas had reportedly warned beforehand that it would not “sit idly by”, threatening “explosive violence”.

Ben-Gvir was testing the waters. He will surely be back soon, with bigger provocations. Both during and after Israel’s recent general election campaign, he called for Jews to be able to pray at the Muslim holy site, and has said he will demand that Netanyahu institute what he terms “equal rights for Jews” there.

Diplomatic protest

The fear of what Ben-Gvir may do next, unless Netanyahu reins him in, was part of the reason his visit triggered such a storm of diplomatic protest. Jordan, which has formal custodianship of the holy site, called in Israel’s ambassador for a dressing down, while the US, Israel’s patron, roused itself to describe the visit as “unacceptable”. The UAE postponed Netanyahu’s forthcoming visit.

Ben-Gvir will be delighted at such ineffectual reprimands. The precedent he was drawing on was the visit to Al-Aqsa in September 2000 of then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon backed by 1,000 members of Israel’s security forces, over the opposition of the Jerusalem police.

That incursion triggered a Palestinian uprising, the Second Intifada, justifying years of crushing Israeli military repression. Israel used tanks to confine the then Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat, to his Ramallah headquarters, while the Israeli army emasculated the Palestinian Authority (PA), effectively reversing the promise of self-rule implicit in the Oslo Accords. Palestinian society was gradually bled of the ability and will to sustain an uprising that cost thousands of lives.

Ben-Gvir might be angling to provoke a similar confrontation to provide a pretext for finishing off what’s left of the PA. There could be a domestic political bonus too: Sharon rode the wave of Jewish nationalism he unleashed right into the prime minister’s office. The Israeli public wanted an uncompromising general and Jewish patriot to pound the Palestinian people into submission.

Already buoyed by a renewed wave of Jewish chauvinism, along with the political legitimacy Netanyahu has conferred on him by ushering his party into government, Ben-Gvir might be hoping to see that scenario play out again.

Rival nationalisms

Israeli media, Arab states and western diplomats have all framed Ben-Gvir’s visit as threatening what is known as the “status quo”: a set of principles agreed in the 19th century, and renewed after Israel’s occupation of Jerusalem in 1967, to enshrine Muslim sovereignty over the mosque complex and Muslim authorities’ power to regulate access and worship.

The truth, however, is that Israel has been whittling away the status quo at an ever-faster pace since Sharon’s visit. That was why the Israeli general’s incursion sparked an explosion from Palestinians two decades ago, while Ben-Gvir’s, so far at least, has not. Violations of the status quo by extremist Israeli politicians are no longer quite so out of the ordinary.

Perhaps more than any other Israeli leader of his time, Sharon appreciated the degree to which Al-Aqsa had become the symbolic, beating heart of a power play between rival Israeli and Palestinian nationalisms. Encouraging the distinction between national and religious sentiment to be blurred, as he did at Al-Aqsa, helped to unify an Israeli society deeply divided by questions of religion.

Ownership of the mosque complex – or Temple Mount, as Israeli Jews call it, referring to two ancient Jewish temples that supposedly lie beneath the plaza – was seen as the natural corollary, and confirmation, of Jewish title to the land. Or as Sharon put it at the time, the holy site was “the basis of the existence of the Jewish people, and I am not afraid of riots by the Palestinians”.

It was how the ultra-nationalist, secular Sharon redefined the conflict. He made an assertion of Jewish sovereignty over the plaza a prerequisite for any Israeli politician vying for power. After he became prime minister, and in the midst of the Second Intifada, Sharon in 2003 unilaterally enforced access for Jews and other non-Muslims to the site, over the opposition of the waqf, the Muslim religious authorities at Al-Aqsa.

Today, little of the status quo agreement survives. Israeli occupation forces exclusively determine who gets entry to Al-Aqsa. Muslim worship can be limited whenever Israel decides. Palestinians from Gaza, trapped in their enclave by fences and watchtowers, are permanently excluded from the holy site.

Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers in military fatigues, and religious Jews and settlers, have ready access – and they often use their visits to pray, in stark contravention of the status quo. Increasingly, Israeli security forces storm the mosque at will; such an incident in May 2021 contributed to weeks of violence across the occupied territories and inside Israel.

Master-serf relations

Like Sharon, Ben-Gvir views Al-Aqsa as a supreme nationalist cause. One of his legislators, Zvika Fogel, a former Israeli military commander in charge of Gaza, set out Ben-Gvir’s goal, suggesting it could be achieved without a Palestinian backlash: “We shouldn’t treat his visit as something that will lead to an escalation. Why not see it as part of realising our [Jewish] sovereignty?”

Yet, faced with a weakened Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir must be hoping to push Sharon’s policy still further – not only asserting a principle of Jewish ownership of the holy site, but also entrenching the physical reality of absolute Jewish control.

This would include prioritising Jewish worship, as now happens in Hebron at the Ibrahimi Mosque. It is a model that the settlers who follow Ben-Gvir want repeated at Al-Aqsa, and it also implies the physical partition of Al-Aqsa plaza, mirroring the reality in Hebron.

Such ambitions replicate at al-Aqsa the master-serf relationship that Israel has developed in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. Should Jewish rule over the plaza be contested, the Israeli government could then punish Muslims and ban access, with state police – now under Ben-Gvir’s control – empowered to break into the mosque or any other site on the plaza whenever they deem necessary.

But it does not end there. Like his supporters, Ben-Gvir wants to destroy the Muslim holy site and restore it as a Jewish temple. He said as much last May when he visited Al-Aqsa complex, posting a picture calling for the eradication of the mosque to “establish a synagogue on the mount”.

‘The last war’

For the time being, Ben-Gvir appears to be using his party’s legislators as his mouthpiece, so as not to jeopardise his coalition agreement with Netanyahu. After Tuesday’s visit, Fogel relished the prospect of Hamas retaliating with rocket fire out of Gaza. He said such a showdown “would be worth it because this will be the last war – and after that we can sit and raise doves and all the other beautiful birds that exist”.

Ben-Gvir does not need to set the fire directly at Al-Aqsa. With Israel’s police forces under his command, and with his political ally Bezalel Smotrich in charge of managing the occupation, he has a whole armoury of other ways, particularly in Jerusalem, to inflame the Palestinian population.

Trigger-happy police killings of civilians, settlement expansion, house demolitions, and the building of a cable car route through occupied East Jerusalem to bring Jewish tourists to the foot of Al-Aqsa all have the potential to fire up tensions. Ben-Gvir can also make the lives of Palestinian security prisoners even more miserable, as he promised to do during the elections, provoking hunger strikes.

Palestinian anger often finds its outlet at Al-Aqsa because of the holy site’s role as a religious and nationalist symbol, particularly for a people denied any other symbols of nationhood.

Ben-Gvir’s closest political allies in the Temple Mount movement are already setting their sights on Passover in April, which this year coincides with the middle of Ramadan. They have appealed to the police, as they do every year, to allow them to carry out provocative rituals, such as animal sacrifice, associated with the construction of a Jewish temple in place of Al-Aqsa Mosque. Each year, police try to stop them; but this year, Ben-Gvir will be dictating police policy.

Scholar Tomer Persico, a keen observer of Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist roots, notes that in a 2019 interview, the Jewish Power leader argued that the “big difference” between him and his mentor, extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane, was that “they give us a microphone”, while Kahane was shunned by the Israeli political establishment.

That was three years ago. Ben-Gvir has rapidly become the new mainstream in Israel. Today, with his ministerial powers and a national platform to amplify his incitement, it is only a matter of time before he sets things alight.

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Jonathan Cook is the author of three books on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and a winner of the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His website and blog can be found at www.jonathan-cook.net

Featured image: Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir visits Al-Aqsa, 3 January (Social Media)

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***

Mounting evidence shows the COVID shots are destroying people’s immune systems and are triggering turbo-charged cancers

A survey by Steve Kirsch found sudden death is the No. 1 cause of death among those under the age of 65 who got the COVID jab

Myocarditis as a cause of death is now registering across all age ranges but only for the vaccinated. Cardiac-related deaths are also significantly elevated among younger people (under 65) who got the jab compared to their unjabbed peers

Recent research shows repeated jabs trigger a switch in the types of antibodies your body produces and lower your ability to clear viruses. By switching from spike-specific neutralizing IgG antibodies to IgG4 antibodies, your body switches from tumor suppression mode into tumor progression mode

In addition to the potential for cancer cells to run amok, IgG4 dominance may also have severe autoimmune implications, as the COVID jab spike protein share similarities with human proteins

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Evidence showing the COVID shots are a public health disaster keeps mounting. In late December 2022, Steve Kirsch¹ and Jessica Rose,² Ph.D., both published Substack articles detailing some of the latest evidence showing the shots are destroying people’s immune systems and have triggered an avalanche of turbo-charged cancers.

Kirsch’s article³ features results from a recent survey he conducted. It included four questions: age, whether the deceased was jabbed or not, year of death and cause of death. While the number of responses is low, major insights can still be gleaned by looking at the trends.

First, we have the baseline data from 2020, which show cancer was the No. 1 killer of Americans younger than 65, followed by hospital treatment for COVID. Turbo-charged cancers accounted for one-ninth of the cancer reports, and there were no reports of death from myocarditis.

Among seniors over the age of 65, preexisting conditions were the top cause of death in 2020. Cancer was second, COVID infection third and cardiac events fourth. There were no turbo-charged cancer deaths, nor any myocarditis deaths. Kirsch then gets into the differences between the vaxxed and the unvaxxed in 2021 and 2022.

What the Unvaxxed Died of in 2021 and 2022

In 2021 and 2022, the primary cause of death for people 65 and younger was hospital treatment for COVID. Incidences of sudden death, pulmonary embolism and turbo-charged cancers were all low, and there were no unknown causes of death, nor any myocarditis deaths.

Click to enlarge.

The same went for people older than 65. Hospital treatment for COVID was the No. 1 killer. Heart attacks, turbo-charged cancer and sudden death were all low, and there were no deaths from myocarditis.

Click to enlarge.

What the COVID-Jabbed Died of in 2021 and 2022

Among the COVID-jabbed aged 65 and younger, sudden death was the No. 1 cause of death in 2021 and 2022. The second was cardiac-related death and cancer was third. Importantly, the incidence of turbo-charged cancer among the jabbed was significant in this group, and myocarditis killed more than COVID-19.

Click to enlarge.

Among those older than 65, cancer was the No. 1 cause of death, and the turbo-charged cancer rate is “huge compared to those without the vaccine.” Sudden death was also significantly elevated.

Click to enlarge.

Stark Difference in Cancer Deaths Between Jabbed and Unjabbed

Kirsch summarizes the three most stunning differences between the jabbed and unjabbed:⁴

How COVID Jabs Raise Risk of Infections and Cancer

Exploding cancer rates is precisely what you would expect from a drug that impairs and destroys your immune system, which is what the COVID jabs do. The scientific paper “Innate Immune Suppression by SARS-CoV-2 mRNA Vaccinations”⁵ describes how the COVID shots suppress your innate immune system by inhibiting the type-1 interferon pathway, which is the first-stage response to all viral infections.

The reason type-1 interferon is suppressed is because it responds to viral RNA, and there’s no viral RNA in the COVID shot. The RNA is modified to look like human RNA, so the interferon pathway doesn’t get triggered. As a result, the COVID jab makes you more susceptible to infections.

One mechanism by which the jab causes cancer has to do with the fact that the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein obliterates 90% of the DNA repair mechanism in lymphocytes,⁶ a type of white blood cell that helps your body fight infections and chronic diseases such as cancer. That’s bad enough, yet that’s just one mechanism of many.

How the Jab Lowers Your Viral Clearance Capacity

Recent research^7,8 also shows that repeated jabs trigger a switch in the types of antibodies your body produces and lower your ability to clear viruses. Jessica Rose reviews these findings in her Substack article:⁹

“A paper was published in Science Immunology on December 22, 2022 entitled: ‘Class switch towards non-inflammatory, spike-specific IgG4 antibodies after repeated SARS-CoV-2 mRNA vaccination’¹⁰ …

[It] explains in wonderful detail how a class of antibody that commands a non-inflammatory response (more like tolerizing) is prominent in people who have been repeatedly injected with the modified mRNA COVID-19 injectable products.

Translation: Instead of the intended pool of spike-specific neutralizing IgG antibodies being dominant in multiply-injected people, a pool of antibodies associated with spike-specific tolerance are dominant in multiply-injected people.

Besides the tolerizing capacity, they also showed that the phagocytic enabling capacities were much reduced overall. These activities lead to clearance of viral pathogens. Reduce them → reduction in viral clearance capacity …

To be clear, this wasn’t a ‘maybe the antibody profile was a little different’ … This was a ‘whoa there’s a 48,075% increase in spike-specific antibodies between the 2nd and 3rd injections …

IgG4 antibodies among all spike-specific IgG antibodies rose on average from 0.04% shortly after the second vaccination to 19.27% after the third … [I]mportantly, that is not a typical consequence of repeat antigen exposure from either natural infections and vaccination.”

Spike Overexposure Also Opens the Door for Cancer

As noted by Substack author Brian Mowrey:¹¹

“This is a totally bonkers thing for an anti-spike-protein B cell to decide to do, and reflects B cell over-exposure to spike, which reflects super-excess production of spike by the Pfizer/BioNTech mRNA code …

It is not normal to make IgG4 when repeat encounter with a virus is spaced out over a lifetime, but injection-prompted antigen exposure promotes this response, and mRNA vaccines accelerate this effect …

There is no reason to predict that this would be ‘good’ in an antiviral response … ‘Wearing out’ the immune response in this way is believed to contribute to the development of tolerance against tumors.”

So, to summarize the effects in layman’s terms, the switch from spike-specific neutralizing IgG antibodies to IgG4 antibodies switches your body from tumor suppression mode into tumor progression mode, as cancerous cells now can evade your immune system. You become “tumor tolerant” as your immune system is no longer scavenging for and eliminating cancer cells. Mowrey also points out that:¹²

“Once a B cell has switched to IgG4, it cannot switch to any other IgG subclass, as the genes for all those other base designs have been discarded. All future clones of this B cell will code for IgG4 receptor/antibody for the antigen in question.”

What Other Health Effects May Result?

For clarification, IgG4 is a subclass of the immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibody type that responds to repeated and/or long-term exposure to an antigen. The mRNA shot evaluated here was that of Pfizer, and it was compared against Janssen’s viral vector-based shot. Moderna’s shot was not included. Notably, these results were not found among people who got Janssen’s shot, only Pfizer’s Comirnaty jab.

As noted by Rose:¹³

“… the bottom line here is that the Comirnaty product … induces a shift away from a viral clearing to a tolerance-inducing antibody class, and this is not the status quo for traditional vaccines or natural infections. The main problem here is … we have no idea of the effects of this ‘effect.'”

That said, we can look at what happens in people with IgG4-related disease, and start formulating hypotheses from there. As explained by Rose, a hallmark of IgG4-related disease is fibrosis, i.e., tissue scarring, which can lead to organ dysfunction, organ failure and even death if left untreated.

Rose is now researching the possible links between this antibody switching and the stringy white deposits found in COVID-jabbed people who died. Might it be a new form of connective tissue disease?

In addition to the potential for cancer cells to run amok (as discussed in the section above), IgG4 dominance may also have severe autoimmune implications seeing how the COVID jab spike protein share similarities with human proteins.

“Molecular mimicry has been shown¹⁴ in multiple publications to be a potential problem with regard to the spike protein whereby it has been shown to share motifs with human proteins,” Rose writes.¹⁵ “What this means is that autoimmunity potential against these human proteins is clear and present.

In the context of this recent publication showing a dominant IgG4 pool, I have to wonder what the implications of this dominant pool are for molecular mimicry. Are these IgG4 antibodies capable of tolerizing in the context of our own protein?”

Resources for Those Injured by the COVID Jab

If you got one or more jabs and suffered an injury, first and foremost, never ever take another COVID booster, another mRNA gene therapy shot or regular vaccine. You need to end the assault on your system.

The same goes for anyone who has taken one or more COVID jabs and had the good fortune of not experiencing debilitating side effects. Your health may still be impacted long-term, so don’t take any more shots.

When it comes to treatment, there are still more questions than answers, and most doctors are clueless about what to do — in part because they never bothered to give early treatment for COVID and therefore don’t understand how different medicines and supplements impact the spike protein.

So far, it seems like many of the treatments that worked against severe COVID-19 infection also help ameliorate adverse effects from the jab. This makes sense, as the toxic, most damaging part of the virus is the spike protein, and that’s what your whole body is producing if you got the jab.

Two doctors who have started tackling the treatment of COVID jab injuries in earnest include Dr. Michelle Perro (DrMichellePerro.com), whom I’ve interviewed on this topic, and Dr. Pierre Kory (DrPierreKory.com).

Both agree that eliminating the spike protein your body is now continuously producing is a primary task. Perro’s preferred remedy for this is hydroxychloroquine, while Kory’s is ivermectin. Both of these drugs bind and thereby facilitate the removal of spike protein.

As a member of the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC), Kory helped develop the FLCCC’s post-vaccine treatment protocol called I-RECOVER. Since the protocol is continuously updated as more data become available, your best bet is to download the latest version straight from the FLCCC website at covid19criticalcare.com¹⁶ (hyperlink to the correct page provided above).

The World Health Council has also published lists of remedies that can help inhibit, neutralize and eliminate spike protein. Inhibitors that prevent spike protein from binding to your cells include Prunella vulgaris, pine needle tea, emodin, neem, dandelion extract and the drug ivermectin.

Spike protein neutralizers, which prevent the spike from damaging cells, include N-acetylcysteine (NAC), glutathione, fennel tea, star anise tea, pine needle tea, St. John’s wort, comfrey tea and vitamin C. A March 2022 review paper¹⁷ suggests combating the neurotoxic effects of the spike protein using the flavonoids luteolin and quercetin.

Time-restricted eating (TRE) and/or sauna therapy can also help eliminate toxic proteins by stimulating autophagy. Several additional detox remedies can be found in “World Council for Health Reveals Spike Protein Detox.”

Other Helpful Treatments and Remedies

Other treatments and remedies that may be helpful for COVID jab injuries include:

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***

We’re witnessing a fascinating thing: Congress is actually debating and voting on something.

Remarkable!

For the first time in a century—and only the second time since the Civil War—the vote for the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives has entered multiple ballots.

To replace Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats have put forward Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of New York, a walk-the-line party man.

Jeffries has supported curtailing the war on Yemen and has cautiously questioned the the American military occupation of Syria. But he’s a reliable yes-man for every Pentagon budget, and he’s committed to U.S. military intervention in Ukraine (the springboard for World War III).

This vote was intended to be a shoe-in for Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican House Minority Leader.

McCarthy—who already tried and failed to become Speaker in 2015—is bought and paid for shill of the War Party and military-industrial complex.

When Kevin McCarthy hears about a new country we’re bombing illegally, he gets dollar signs in his eyes. He has no saving grace when it comes to an America First foreign policy.

For pete’s sake, four years ago his nominating speech for Minority Leader was given by the reptile Liz Cheney herself!

So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that a small cadre of Freedom Caucus members are opposing his coronation to the speakership.

On Tuesday, on the first vote, there were an assortment of names put forward. The one with the strongest showing in opposition was Andy Biggs of Arizona.

Rep. Biggs is a patriot, and principled defender of the U.S. Constitution. He’s a signer of my organization’s Congressional War Powers Pledge, where he swore to not support a war that was not first explicitly authorized by a vote of Congress.

He has kept that pledge.

Just a few weeks ago, Rep. Biggs told Judge Andrew Napolitano,

“These AUMFs, which I believe are unconstitutional to begin with, the AUMFs are being bastardized as we speak and they’re being used in every which way. And effectively, I gotta put it this way. We are fighting a proxy war with Russia today in the Ukraine. And there is absolutely no authority for that…”

That’s the sort of America First perspective that’s never entered Kevin McCarthy’s tiny mind.

On the second and third vote, the dissenters coalesced around conservative workhorse Jim Jordan of Ohio, who’s officially supporting McCarthy for the speakership.

Now, as I write, the House has finalized its sixth round of voting and has adjourned until noon today.

Twenty determined members have settled on Byron Donalds of Florida as their choice.

Rep. Donalds has only served one-term in the U.S. House, so it’s difficult to ascertain a full-scope view of his foreign policy.

He has voted to repeal the 2002 AUMF against Iraq, but last year supported giving even more military supplies to Ukraine than Joe Biden countenanced. Over the summer, like dozens of other Republicans, he flip-flopped and now opposes further aid.

Personally, I find the legislative process refreshing. This is how the people’s house is supposed to function!

(Maybe the whole country would be better off if they just vote on the Speakership a couple thousand times for the next two years).

In the meantime, while Beltway organizations sit on their hands waiting to see who they’ll be taking out to lunch in the new session, Bring Our Troops Home has continued our labor to pass Defend the Guard.

With this bill, we will prevent our National Guard’s deployment into illegal, undeclared wars and starve imperial Washington of manpower.

State Senator Eric Brakey of Maine, one of our most intelligent and committed supporters, has introduced Defend the Guard and is waiting to receive a formal bill number.

We’ve had Defend the Guard presented before a Maine House committee back in 2021, which you can watch.

I’ll let you in to a little secret: whoever becomes the next Speaker of the U.S. House, the swamp is not going to get drained. The War Party will not be kicked off its roost so easily.

But in state governments, closer to voters and the beating heart of our once proud republic, we can make real progress. We can fix our broken foreign policy.

Bring Our Troops Home is not working around the clock just for a dog and pony show. We’re meeting with legislators, gathering veterans, and educating the public to pass actionable legislation to end our endless wars.

When we go to committee again, and hopefully a floor vote—not just in Maine but in over thirty states in 2023—I need to know that we have your support.

To find out what you can do to defend the integrity of your state’s National Guard, visit DefendTheGuard.US

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Dan McKnight is a 13-year veteran of the military, including service in the United States Marine Corps, United States Army, and the Idaho Army National Guard. He is founder and chairman of Bring Our Troops Home. Follow him on Twitter @DanMcKnight30 and @TroopsHomeUS

Featured image is from TLI

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***

My sister in Canada once had an ardent although not excessive interest in British royalty. She’s followed successive generations of The Windsors from the 1940s into the 21st Century. Now, she says, that’s over. First she refused to indulge the latest ‘Crown’ film series; now she’s determinedly ignoring the newest BritRoyal wrangles and confessions displayed on Netflix’s ‘Harry and Meghan’ run. 

I’m joining the boycott. Not because I might not sympathize with a young couple’s reported difficulties with their family. But because they have taken on a narrative that they cannot possibly control, one that simply provides a captivated public with a new chapter in an endless loop; it’s unarguably mere entertainment. So, are they exploiting the family name? Or is the media machine exploiting them?

However savvy the exiled young family may appear, however trusted the advisors who arrange their appearances, however candid, perceptive and valid their interpretations of BritRoyal life, do they really believe their story can rise beyond a quotidian media event to feed the public’s insatiable mythomania?

I admit I found some of the stories presently circulating irresistible: ‘The Crown’ drama and the countless documentaries about the doomed and adored Diana: cheated wife, cool mother, pitiable sister, shunned daughter-in-law, public martyr. All are supplemented with film forays through the Windsor family tree, each limb with its jealousies, intrigues and mysteries: the royal sisters, Margaret and Elizabeth; a new Channel 4 British production ‘Prince Andrew: The Musical’; the exiled recluse, Princess Alice of Battenberg, mother of the Duke of Edinburgh. Royal historians proffer appropriate dignity and authority while doddering cousins, eyewitnesses to the royals as adorable infants, are pulled from retirement to add a kinder touch.

Controversies from the 2021 Oprah TV interview highlighting the problems of the likable scion Harry and his American wife Meghan were preempted by June’s week-long spectacle, the funerary ritual of Elizabeth II. But the current docuseries, with its added layer of Sussex-Windsor confessions, must have been underway before the matriarch’s royal body was cold. As if Harry’s and Meghan’s tattling would not create a backlash, this week we have Harry offering a footnote for the public to chew on.

I’m inclined to concur with my sister’s decision to dismiss further portrayals of BritRoyals. Whatever insights they may offer about dysfunctional family realities and the plague of press attention they suffer, there’s no definitive truth here, certainly no winner. Whichever side we may come down on after hearing revelations by the Duke and Duchess, all this is a sort of pulp biopic.

This enchanting couple has succumbed to a powerful drug—celebrity. They may win sympathy; they may fill their de-royaled coffer (reputedly $100 M for the series); they may feel vindicated. But they’re no more than itinerant celebrity entertainers.

Wasn’t Harry’s mother Diana, whose victimization he himself invokes, a casualty of press obsession with celebrity? Not only was the ‘People’s Princess’ doomed; she fell victim to the myth that she might set the record straight. Perhaps she believed that the adoration showered on her would affirm the inviolability of her truth. Harry, like Diana, is turning to that same media monster, perhaps believing it’s the court of true justice. And like Diana, he may be entangled in a web where it’s hard to distinguish clash from collusion. He may never resurface.

Remember Diana’s cunningly-arranged 1995 BBC interview? She was lured into that after she’d been maneuvered to provide the text for Diana: Her True Story­­ — the in-her-own-words book by Andrew Morton. Now Harry, insisting his mother’s woeful history will not be repeated, is about to release his ‘raw, unflinching’ (to use the book’s promotional blurb) memoir, Spare.

Great British authors, from Shakespeare to Hilary Mantel, have created complex, engaging, irresistible portraits of the British aristocracy and monarchy for public consumption. Their plots and characters derive from royal competitions and jealousies, family rivalries, church and state intrigue, misogyny and sedition, mental illness, betrayal, racism, abuse, thwarted ambitions and false claimants. The British House of Windsor provides today’s creative minds with abundant material for our binge-watching and tabloid journalism. Doubtless, novels and plays will follow.

The unfortunate aspect of the current brouhaha created by Harry and Meghan is that as exiled-royals they have joined the media business—Meghan’s pre-royal life was in TV drama; she now hosts a podcast. Yet it appears she and her husband fail to understand that the business is so much bigger than them.

We wait for a wise counselor to bring them up to speed on the vagaries of digital data, polarization of news reporting, the business of media criticism and the genre of fact-checking.

And what about their American children and those young royal cousins across the pond?

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Barbara Nimri Aziz whose anthropological research has focused on the peoples of the Himalayas is the author of the newly published “Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”, available on Amazon. 

She is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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“Yogmaya and Durga Devi: Rebel Women of Nepal”

By Barbara Nimri Aziz

A century ago Yogmaya and Durga Devi, two women champions of justice, emerged from a remote corner of rural Nepal to offer solutions to their nation’s social and political ills. Then they were forgotten.

Years after their demise, in 1980 veteran anthropologist Barbara Nimri Aziz first uncovered their suppressed histories in her comprehensive and accessible biographies. Revelations from her decade of research led to the resurrection of these women and their entry into contemporary Nepali consciousness.

This book captures the daring political campaigns of these rebel women; at the same time it asks us to acknowledge their impact on contemporary feminist thinking. Like many revolutionaries who were vilified in their lifetimes, we learn about the true nature of these leaders’ intelligence, sacrifices, and vision during an era of social and economic oppression in this part of Asia.

After Nepal moved from absolute monarchy to a fledgling democracy and history re-evaluated these pioneers, Dr. Aziz explores their legacies in this book.

Psychologically provocative and astonishingly moving, “Yogmaya and Durga Devi” is a seminal contribution to women’s history.

Click here to order.

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***

Eleven months after the Russians acted to provide a military protection force for Russians living in western Ukraine, or alternatively, 11 and a half months after Kiev and Zelensky stepped up attacks on their “own people” in the Donbass, presumably for their own good, what have we learned?

People of the world have gained new perspectives on things like gross US and NATO hypocrisy, the ability of politicians and diplomats to lie to your face, and in writing, and the ability of any number of countries exist and persist despite their ostensibly and possibly corruptly elected leadership being infirm, decrepit, insane, criminal and/or widely known for playing pianos with their dicks.

Life goes on – money gets made – people vote with their feet – and politicians hold their index fingers in the air to determine what next.

The WEF elite meets in Davos this month.  Many of the topics revolve around how to rebuild Ukraine, and all the “right” investors will reserve their tickets on that 2023 gravy train.  If 2022 was a profitable US/NATO/EU/UK military and logistics laundry and boondoggle in Ukraine, 2023 is looking to be an even bigger operation.  Quadrillions will be spent – as time runs out on the dollar and dollar-pegged currencies.

After destruction of the electrical and industrial infrastructure, the collapse of the military capability and the departure of nearly a third of the population– 8 million to Europe, 3 million choosing Russian-protected independence in the Donbass – Ukraine is both a carcass for European and American vultures, as well as a nearly clean slate for a delightful WEF experiment.

Economic collapse in a small country with natural resource and agricultural wealth, accompanied by a domestic political-cultural crisis, and a weakened national military makes for good times, if you are a Davos believer, a US foreign policy designer, or just a good old-fashioned Rodney Dangerfield of a neighbor who has done so much for Ukraine already, and still can’t get any respect.

Medvedev’s predictions are entertaining, but he is not lying about Poland and western Ukraine.  Just last week, Germany rudely denied Poland’s demand for $1.3 trillion in WWII reparations.  Poland may be forced to take their reparations directly out of Germany’s current bestie.  It would actually be a good deal for a Germany impoverished by green socialism and bloodied by self-flagellation.  Trade western Ukraine for the past “debt” and Poland’s trouble, and now we have the makings of an excellent resolution of the small European war of 2022.

Poland is NATO – so the wheezing hawks get a little bit of NATO-ized “Ukraine.” The Donbass and Crimea are Russian, associating with the Russian Federation as they see fit.  But how can we ensure the graft, the grift, the laundering and the wet dreams of the WEF?  Perhaps a small enclave in the middle of Ukraine can be set aside as that “big Israel” of Europe that Zelensky has offered – a place for global thievery and intrigue, a playground for all types.  Perhaps this New Ukraine could exist on transfer taxes on oil and gas, become a convenient capitol laundry for dying Western currencies, a host for US and EU government cryptocurrency?  A green casino, or a Maz Kanata’s Castle?  Towards this end, Zelensky has already thoughtfully destroyed the press, the police and the church. What a happy accident!

Zelensky, and his western enablers and sponsors, have done all they can to pave the way for a larger Poland and a New Ukraine – all for the price of 3 or 4 million Russians who, in flying new flags, will only slightly enhance Russia’s geography and economy.

We are seeing a new shift in the elite conversation.  Two months ago it was punishing and wearing down Russia to defend precious Ukrainian democracy; today, is it “rebuilding” and refunding a post-war Ukraine, with a sudden need to pay back Poland for seven decades of bad faith.  Yet, the western media is still reporting that Ukraine is winning.  Maybe that’s part of the plan.

The wind over Ukraine stinks of dead animals and smoke, and the organized rape is just beginning.  On the bright side, global war may be postponed.  That the West’s latest victim is of the Christian European northern hemisphere – and not part of a Crusade narrative against an alien and godless “other” – should set off alarm bells everywhere.

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Karen Kwiatkowski, Ph.D. [send her mail], a retired USAF lieutenant colonel, farmer and aspiring anarcho-capitalist. She ran for Congress in Virginia’s 6th district in 2012.

Featured image is from Alexey Fedorenko/Shutterstock

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The Zaporizhzhia region in south eastern Ukraine houses the largest nuclear power station in Europe – the Zaporizhzhia NPP – one of the ten largest such plants in the world. It is currently in an intensely fought war zone. Dr Philip Webber, SGR, explains some of the risks of radiation releases that this poses, both nationally and internationally.

About the Zaporizhzhia site

The Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant [1] is part of a huge industrial complex some 8km square. It houses six large (1 gigawatt or GW) VVER-1000 Russian designed and built nuclear power reactors, [2] three thermal (coal- and gas-powered) power stations, and the purpose-built city of Enerhodar, which was built in 1970 to house 11,000 power plant workers and a total population of around 53,000. [3]  Before the war, the nuclear plant supplied about 20% of Ukraine’s electricity – widely used for heating in large apartment blocks. The reactors’ containment structures [4] house the nuclear core and used or ‘spent’ nuclear fuel in cooling pools. After five years, this spent fuel is transferred to dry storage casks nearby, which are air-cooled. In addition, huge external cooling ponds – which are continuously sprayed with water – store many older used nuclear fuel rods. The three thermal plants were shut down in May 2022 having run out of fuel due to the Russian invasion.

The Zaporizhzhia power site is much larger than the biggest UK nuclear sites such as Sellafield or Hinkley Point – either of these would fit within just the area of the cooling ponds at Zaporizhzhia. The entire complex is situated on a flat promontory on the south-east bank of the Dnipro River which is 5km wide at that point. [5]  The site is 50km south west of the city of Zaporizhzhia, also on the south bank of the Dnipro. Kherson is about 150km to the south west – but on the other bank of the river.

Under occupation

The reactor site has been occupied by Russian military forces since March 2022 – with Ukrainian forces in control of the opposite river bank. The original Ukrainian Energoatom plant operators are being forced to keep working there under conditions of extreme stress. These stresses include excessively long shifts, extreme concerns about family safety, and even the arrest of the plant chief. Various parts of the site have been hit by artillery shells and warheads from rocket-launched missiles over several months. Photographs show cratering and rocket tubes embedded in the ground. Both sides accuse the other of deliberately targeting and hitting the plant site. As a result of major safety concerns, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has placed monitoring teams at the site and nearby, but sourcing reliable information remains extremely difficult. [6]

The local electricity grid is very extensive and extremely vulnerable. Before the war, several high voltage (HV) power lines extended east from the nuclear and thermal plants to what is now Russian-occupied Ukraine via extensive electricity sub-stations, whilst one large HV line connected directly across the Dnipro to the opposite bank – under the control of Ukraine – via Marhanets just 15km away. Artillery shells can easily be fired over 40km whilst rocket launchers can reach even further, so the entire area is within range of both Russian and Ukrainian forces. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the IAEA continue to report that connections to the electricity grid keep being destroyed by artillery shelling which are then intermittently repaired. Repairs are very difficult owing to a severe shortage of supplies such as power transformers, insulators, cabling and HV circuit breakers. So far, neither the containment buildings for the reactors, nor the spent fuel assemblies in canisters, nor the large cooling ponds appear to have been seriously breached, but there is no guarantee this will continue to be the case.

The plants remain in a highly contested conflict area. The IAEA and UN have called for the plants to be placed in a demilitarised safety zone. No such zone has yet been set up. It is perhaps worth saying that any such demilitarised zone would have to include the city of Enerhodar because of its intimate connection and proximity to the nuclear power plants and power lines that traverse the entire area. Creating such an exclusion zone at the centre of a high intensity war zone is extremely difficult and has been rarely achieved in other conflicts.

Emergency shutdown

It is extremely difficult to secure a reliable picture of what is actually going on at the Zaporizhzhia power generation site. The most reliable and consistent reporting in December 2022 appears to be that all of the Zaporizhzhia reactors were ‘scrammed’ – put into emergency shutdown – as the entire Ukrainian power grid was hit by multiple Russian strikes on 23rd November 2022. All of Ukraine’s other three reactor sites – Rivne, South Ukraine and Kmelnytskyi – were also scrammed. These three latter plants are still under Ukrainian control being outside of the Russian occupied areas east of the Dnipro River. In a scram, the control rods are fully inserted into the reactor, emergency back-up diesel generators are activated for core cooling, and thus the reactor cores gradually reduce to low levels of nuclear fission. According the Petro Kotin, President of Energoatom, [7] after the emergency shutdowns, two of the six Zaporizhzhia reactors were restarted to generate sufficient power to enable the emergency diesel generators to be taken off-line and to provide some power to the city of Enerhodar. However, restarting a cold shutdown reactor is very far from routine in the middle of a war zone without reliable external power supplies. Emergency shutdowns and restarts place large strains on the steam generation circuit pipework and valves making equipment failures more likely.

What if the cooling fails?

Any nuclear reactor, for safe operation, needs to be connected to an electricity supply to provide a reliable source of emergency core cooling power. Without such active cooling from pumped water, the reactor core will eventually overheat to dangerous levels. Outside the reactor cores, radioactive decay in spent fuel continues, releasing heat inside the reactor containment structure, the dry storage casks, and the external ponds. Any failures of, or threats to, electricity supplies create serious emergency situations. Because of this danger, each reactor has emergency diesel-fired electricity generators with around 10 days of fuel. [8]  Ultimately, without active cooling powered by the grid, and once back-up diesel generators run out of fuel, core temperatures would rise uncontrollably. This would lead first to hydrogen gas release, then explosions, and ultimately, runaway core meltdowns breaching the core containment.

This is what happened at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan in 2011 [9] – when the cores in three reactors could not be cooled, large volumes of hydrogen gas were released into the containment structures, which then exploded, releasing highly radioactive materials into the environment – mainly as gases and vapours. After a few days, the reactor cores reached the melting points of the nuclear fuels and these highly radioactive molten materials burned down through the lower regions of the reactor vessels. This situation also has similarities with the 1986 Chernobyl disaster – the site of which is now part of Ukraine (and was occupied briefly by Russian troops early during the invasion).

In a reactor core of 1GW size, as those at Zaporizhzhia, if the cooling system breaks down, hydrogen explosions would occur after 8 to 12 hours. After about two days, the reactor core would become hot enough to burn through the base of the reactor vessel. [10]

Cooling for the reactor cores and spent fuel storage relies on several factors: a reliable supply of water; a reliable supply of power for the cooling pumps; working pumps; and staff to conduct any repairs and maintain the cooling systems. Without a reliable connection to the electricity grid, the only source of power for the pumps are, as mentioned, the back-up generators. With all of these factors now under threat, the risk of a reactor containment breach due to cooling failure is high. [11]

Other risks result from the ongoing conflict. Whilst an artillery shell or conventional cruise missile strike is unlikely to breach the reactor core containment directly, the threat is much greater to the integrity of over 3,000 spent fuel assemblies stored locally in concrete containers. Artillery, or a cruise missile could easily breach any of these containers releasing highly radioactive materials. This in turn could make part of the site – for example, cooling circuitry or fuel supplies – too dangerous to manage, which would lead to an even more serious core failure.

The possible effects of a nuclear disaster

There are a wide range of possible disaster scenarios.

Firstly, considering a meltdown of one or more reactor cores, the most comparable reactor accident so far has been the Fukushima plant radiation releases following the Great East Japan Earthquake and its subsequent tsunami in 2011. This led to an initial obligatory exclusion zone of 20km radius around the plant with 30km radius stay-at-home and no-fly zones and finally a larger zone extending 40km to the north west. Within a year, some people were permitted to return home within the 20km zone, whilst others with higher radiation levels were restricted for five years after the disaster, and a 30-year clean up period was envisaged. The Fukushima experience however does not give one high confidence that future nuclear disasters may be better managed. Following the meltdowns, the Japanese authorities did not coordinate information about radiation properly. For example, residents were evacuated from one area to another which in fact had higher levels of radiation contamination. [12]  There were multiple failures including a lack of evacuation planning and deliberate restriction of information.

Establishing the levels of radiation requires monitoring over-flights – in the Fukushima case, these were undertaken by the US military. Such flights would be highly dangerous and perhaps impossible in a war zone, so it would be extremely difficult for anyone to gather accurate information about the radiation levels on the ground. This would make any emergency planning very difficult from the outset.

A further difficulty arising from the conflict is that emergency responses such as evacuation of population, distribution of iodine tablets or provision of emergency medical treatment would be very difficult to coordinate, especially as no one authority would be able to take charge of the situation. Reactor crises require rapid, coordinated and well-organised recovery measures including evacuation, emergency measures to reduce radiation, suppress fires etc. These would be unlikely to be possible further increasing the impacts of any radiation release.

The most likely risk scenario is a breach of spent fuel held in canisters or cooling ponds outside of the reactor core containment structure. This spent fuel is still highly radioactive and vulnerable to missiles, shells and rocket strikes which could spread radiation directly or start fires spreading radiation. An impact by an aircraft is also a significant risk due to the highly inflammable aircraft fuel onboard.

What if a nuclear weapon were used?

At Zaporizhzhia, the large amounts of spent fuel storage make this risk even worse. Fallout would create a lethal radiation risk across the entire plant site and city of Enerhodar. Risks downwind would be highly dependent on the wind direction, speed and any rainfall, but could threaten lethal dose rates in Marhanets and Nikopol (population 100,000) only 15km away. Lethal radiation doses could be experienced at least 60km downwind. [14]  This could potentially include the city of Zaporizhzhia itself, which had a pre-war population of 750,000. This would present a completely unmanageable evacuation requirement in peacetime let alone in the middle of an intense war. Depending on the dose rates, some areas may need to be avoided for years to decades. This was a major problem after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 with a 30km radius exclusion zone still in place over 30 years later.

In the case of a larger nuclear weapon (e.g. 1,000kT), even larger potentially lethal radiation zones would be created up to 550km in extent and 100km wide. [15]  Again, the primary source of radiation risk would be the reactor products, although in this case, combined with major blast and fire damage across a 5km radius.

Impacts in a war zone

Both the risk of a nuclear disaster and the consequences of it are multiplied in a war zone. In Ukraine, the population are already suffering intense pressure, strain and casualties due to direct impacts such as widespread Russian bombardment with artillery and missiles. Continued attacks on the energy infrastructure are leading to widespread power outages, water shortages, cold homes and huge damage to vital infrastructure such as hospitals and access to medical care. These acts already amount to widespread breaches of international humanitarian law, and are contributing to an as yet uncertain death toll amongst the civilian population.

Any nuclear accident leading to a significant release of radiation would further escalate consequences by adding yet another layer of uncertainty and danger combined with extreme difficulty in responding to an emergency. Coordination of effort cannot be achieved in the middle of an intense conflict; within Ukraine, comprehensive radiation monitoring would be extremely difficult or impossible and either side would doubt any information that was produced. Any of the more severe accident scenarios could result in radiation impacts outside of the borders of Ukraine including the EU, Russia and Belarus. In the case of Chernobyl these led to restrictions on some food stuffs over very wide areas.

The only conclusion that can be drawn is that the existence of nuclear plants in any war zone creates a whole new range of risks and dangers as the maintenance of safe operation relies on expert management, reliable supplies of vital materials such as diesel, and a connection to a working grid. Nuclear power and conflict (or environmental disaster such as recent flooding in Pakistan or drought in France) are mutually incompatible. For this reason, some commentators have likened nuclear reactors to giant landmines that can be ‘detonated’ in war in a disaster impossible to contain or effectively manage. The other three Ukraine reactor sites are also at high risk due to damage to the electricity grid and have already been subject to emergency shutdown due to such damage. The attacks on the electricity supplies also create problems and risks for neighbouring Moldova which also faces a cold winter as it obtains its electrical power from the Ukrainian grid via Russian-controlled Transnistria. [16]

Any conflict highlights how our modern society now relies on a wide range of infrastructure: energy; clean water; medical and social care; and other public services such as housing and transport. Wars disrupt all of these as they become deliberate military targets in the attempt to disrupt the resources that support frontline troops and to break the resolve of the civilian population. This has been the case for centuries and continues regrettably with much more destructive weaponry today. [17]  Other recent examples of the targeting of civilians and vital infrastructure include conflicts in former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen and several ongoing conflicts across the horn of Africa. That today, in Europe, yet another conflict is seeing deliberate attacks on civilian targets including highly vulnerable nuclear power plants, water supplies and the electricity grid is yet another example of how vital it is to find peaceful solutions to conflict and how ultimately military action creates long-lasting destruction that will take decades of post-conflict rebuilding and many generations to heal.

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Dr Philip Webber is Chair of Scientists for Global Responsibility. He has written widely on the risks of nuclear weapons and nuclear power – including co-authoring the book London After the Bomb. He spent part of his career working as an emergency planner in local government.

Notes

[1] Wikipedia (2022a). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Plant

[2] The VVR reactors are not only Russian designed and built but also supplied with enriched uranium from Russia. Despite much publicised sanctions, 20% of the nuclear fuel used by the EU is still supplied by Russia. No2NuclearPower (2022). 2 December. https://www.no2nuclearpower.org.uk/news/nuclear-fuel-3-12-22/

[3] Wikipedia (2022b). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enerhodar

[4] A reactor containment structure is a massive concrete and steel structure designed to contain intense radiation and superheated steam circuit pipework and valves protecting the highly radioactive reactor core.

[5] The river is dammed in several places, so strictly speaking the body of water to the north of Zaporizhzhia is part of the extensive Kakhovka reservoir 240km long and up to 23km wide.

[6] IAEA (2022). Director General Statement on Situation in Ukraine, 20 November. https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/pressreleases/update-128-iaea-director-general-statement-on-situation-in-ukraine

[7] The Observer (2022). 27 November. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/nov/26/fears-for-all-ukraines-nuclear-plants-after-emergency-shutdowns

[8] Electricity Info (2022). 9 October. https://electricityinfo.org/news/ukraine-zaporizhzhia/

[9] Wikipedia (2022c). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fukushima_nuclear_disaster

[10] Wikipedia (2022d). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_meltdown (also see note 13)

[11] Popovych Z, Bondar D, Ramana M (2022). 7 October. https://thebulletin.org/2022/10/zaporizhzhia-on-the-brink-how-deteriorating-conditions-at-the-nuclear-power-plant-could-lead-to-disaster/; Ouest France (2022). 1 September. https://www.ouest-france.fr/monde/guerre-en-ukraine/guerre-en-ukraine-quels-sont-les-risques-d-accident-nucleaire-autour-de-la-centrale-de-zaporijjia-b1108af8-29e8-11ed-bd3f-f86da3bd80f7

[12] Reference 133: The Economist, 10 March 2012 from: Wikipedia (2022c) – as note 9.

[13] Fetter S, Tsipis K (1981). Catastrophic Releases of Radioactivity. Scientific American, vol.244, no.4, pp.41–47; Rotblat J (1981). Nuclear radiation in warfare. SIPRI/ Taylor & Francis; Fetter S (1982). The Vulnerability of Nuclear Reactors to Attack by Nuclear Weapons. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Program in Science and Technology for International Security, Report No.7.

[14] This estimate is based on fallout spread for a 1kT weapon from nuclear tests entraining reactor products. Data from: Fetter (1982); Rotblat (1981) – as note 13.

[15] The danger zone (1 gray cumulative dose causing radiation sickness and some longer-term deaths) for a 1GW reactor and 1MT weapon is 550km x 100km. Rotblat (1981) – as note 13.

[16] In a legacy from the Soviet Union, the Ukraine, Russian and Moldovan electrical power grids remain part of a common infrastructure. Quite apart from efforts by the EU to secure energy independence from Russia and self-sufficiency this is another example of how interdependence of energy supplies can be used as a weapon of war.

[17] Some weapons have been specifically designed to damage electricity generation for example by air-dropped conducting fibres.

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“The Real Story of January 6,” a documentary by The Epoch Times, reveals the truth that has been hidden from the American people. While a narrative has been set that what took place that day was an insurrection, key events and witnesses have been ignored until now. The documentary takes an unvarnished look at police use of force and the deaths that resulted in some measure from it. The film asks tough questions about who was responsible for the chaos that day. With compelling interviews and exclusive video footage, the documentary tells the real story of January 6. The film is narrated by Joshua Philipp, host of “Crossroads” on EpochTV and a senior investigative reporter at The Epoch Times.

Jasper Fakkert, editor-in-chief of The Epoch Times, said: “There has been a narrative perpetuated about January 6 that omits many of the facts about what happened that day.

“With in-depth interviews and exclusive video footage, we take an objective look at the issues, the people, and the impacts of the events.”

The film takes a close look at the shooting of 35-year-old Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt and the deaths of three other supporters of former President Donald J. Trump. It analyzes the police response to the massive crowds and use of force around the U.S. Capitol.

It examines the human impacts of Jan. 6, including the suicide of one defendant and the long pretrial imprisonment of dozens of others. It also investigates claims that some attacks on the Capitol and police were carried out by unindicted suspicious actors.

What Really Happened on January 6? | The Real Story of January 6

While the dust from Jan. 6, 2021, has long cleared, it has been replaced by a smoke screen. A carefully crafted narrative has been set that claims the events of that day amounted to a “violent insurrection.” This claim, however, does not match the facts. “The Real Story of January 6” takes an objective look at what happened through the eyes of those who were there. The Epoch Times provides the first comprehensive look into what really happened that day. The Truth can’t be hidden.

We are Being Censored. Help Spread This Documentary.

While this documentary is groundbreaking in providing a complete overview of what happened on January 6, The Epoch Times has been censored and suppressed by Big Tech. In order to spread the documentary, The Epoch Times relies on its own Epoch TV as well as other non-cancelable platforms to spread the truth. Stand up for free speech and oppose censorship by sharing the documentary with as many people as you can.

Click here to watch the documentary.

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***

“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice.”—Montesquieu, Enlightenment philosopher

For those wondering what to expect from the government in 2023, it looks like we’re going to be in for more of the same in terms of the government’s brand of madness, mayhem, corruption and brutality.

Digital prisons. Unceasingly, the government and its corporate partners are pushing for a national digital ID system. Local police agencies have already been given access to facial recognition software and databases containing 20 billion images, the precursor to a digital ID. Eventually, a digital ID will be required to gain access to all aspects of life: government, work, travel, healthcare, financial services, shopping, etc. Before long, biometrics (iris scans, face print, voice, DNA, etc.), will become the de facto digital ID.

Precrime. Under the pretext of helping overwhelmed government agencies work more efficiently, AI predictive and surveillance technologies are being used to classify, segregate and flag the populace with little concern for privacy rights or due process. All of this sorting, sifting and calculating is being done swiftly, secretly and incessantly with the help of AI technology and a surveillance state that monitors your every move. AI predictive tools are being deployed in almost every area of life.

Mandatory quarantines. Building on precedents established during the COVID-19 pandemic, government agents may be empowered to indefinitely detain anyone they suspect of posing a medical risk to others without providing an explanation, subject them to medical tests without their consent, and carry out such detentions and quarantines without any kind of due process or judicial review.

Mental health assessments by non-medical personnel. As a result of a nationwide push to train a broad spectrum of so-called gatekeepers in mental health first-aid training, more Americans are going to run the risk of being reported by non-medical personnel and detained for having mental health issues.

Tracking chips for citizens. Momentum is building for corporations and the government alike to be able to track the populace, whether through the use of RFID chips embedded in a national ID card, microscopic chips embedded in one’s skin, or tags in retail products.

Military involvement domestically. The future, according to a Pentagon training video, will be militaristic, dystopian and far from friendly to freedom. Indeed, all signs point to the battlefield of the future being the American home front. Anticipating this, the government plans to have the military work in conjunction with local police to quell civil unrest domestically.

Government censorship of anything it classifies as disinformation. In the government’s ongoing assault on those who criticize the government—whether that criticism manifests itself in word, deed or thought—government and corporate censors claiming to protect us from dangerous, disinformation campaigns are, in fact, laying the groundwork now to preempt any “dangerous” ideas that might challenge the power elite’s stranglehold over our lives.

Threat assessments. The government has a growing list—shared with fusion centers and law enforcement agencies—of ideologies, behaviors, affiliations and other characteristics that could flag someone as suspicious and result in their being labeled potential enemies of the state. Before long, every household in America will be flagged as a threat and assigned a threat score. It’s just a matter of time before you find yourself wrongly accused, investigated and confronted by police based on a data-driven algorithm or risk assessment culled together by a computer program run by artificial intelligence.

War on cash. The government and its corporate partners are engaged in a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. This push for a digital currency dovetails with the government’s war on cash, which it has been subtly waging for some time now. In recent years, just the mere possession of significant amounts of cash could implicate you in suspicious activity and label you a criminal.

Expansive surveillance. AI surveillance harnesses the power of artificial intelligence and widespread surveillance technology to do what the police state lacks the manpower and resources to do efficiently or effectively: be everywhere, watch everyone and everything, monitor, identify, catalogue, cross-check, cross-reference, and collude. Everything that was once private is now up for grabs to the right buyer. With every new AI surveillance technology that is adopted and deployed without any regard for privacy, Fourth Amendment rights and due process, the rights of the citizenry are being marginalized, undermined and eviscerated.

Militarized police. Having transformed local law enforcement into extensions of the military, the Department of Homeland Security, the Justice Department and the FBI are moving into the next phase of the transformation, turning the nation’s police officers into techno-warriors, complete with iris scanners, body scanners, thermal imaging Doppler radar devices, facial recognition programs, license plate readers, cell phone extraction software, Stingray devices and so much more.

Police shootings of unarmed citizens. Owing in large part to the militarization of local law enforcement agencies, not a week goes by without more reports of hair-raising incidents by police imbued with a take-no-prisoners attitude and a battlefield approach to the communities in which they serve. Police brutality and the use of excessive force continues unabated.

False flags and terrorist attacks. Almost every tyranny being perpetrated by the U.S. government against the citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and the nation secure—has come about as a result of some threat manufactured in one way or another by our own government. This has become the shadow government’s modus operandi regardless of which party is in power: the government creates a menace—knowing full well the ramifications such a danger might pose to the public—then without ever owning up to the part it played in unleashing that particular menace on an unsuspecting populace, it demands additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threat.

Endless wars to keep America’s military’s empire employed. The military and security industrial complexes that have advocated that the U.S. remain at war, year after year, are the very entities that will continue to profit the most from America’s expanding military empire abroad and here at home.

Erosions of private property. Private property means little at a time when SWAT teams and other government agents can invade your home, break down your doors, kill your dog, wound or kill you, damage your furnishings and terrorize your family. Likewise, if government officials can fine and arrest you for growing vegetables in your front yard, praying with friends in your living room, installing solar panels on your roof, and raising chickens in your backyard, you’re no longer the owner of your property.

Overcriminalization. The government has increasingly adopted the authoritarian notion that it knows best and therefore must control, regulate and dictate almost everything about the citizenry’s public, private and professional lives. Overregulation and overcriminalization have been pushed to such outrageous limits that federal and state governments now require on penalty of a fine that individuals apply for permission before they can grow exotic orchids, host elaborate dinner parties, gather friends in one’s home for Bible studies, give coffee to the homeless, let their kids manage a lemonade stand, keep chickens as pets, or braid someone’s hair.

Strip searches and the denigration of bodily integrity. Court rulings undermining the Fourth Amendment and justifying invasive strip searches have left us powerless against police empowered to forcefully draw our blood, forcibly take our DNA, strip search us, and probe us intimately. Individuals—men and women alike—continue to be subjected to what is essentially government-sanctioned rape by police in the course of “routine” traffic stops.

Censorship. First Amendment activities are being pummeled, punched, kicked, choked, chained and generally gagged all across the country. Free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors have conspired to corrode our core freedoms. The reasons for such censorship vary widely from political correctness, safety concerns and bullying to national security and hate crimes but the end result remains the same: the complete eradication of what Benjamin Franklin referred to as the “principal pillar of a free government.”

Taxation Without Any Real Representation. As a Princeton University survey indicates, our elected officials, especially those in the nation’s capital, represent the interests of the rich and powerful rather than the average citizen. We are no longer a representative republic. With Big Business and Big Government having fused into a corporate state, the president and his state counterparts—the governors—have become little more than CEOs of the Corporate State, which day by day is assuming more government control over our lives. Never before have average Americans had so little say in the workings of their government and even less access to their so-called representatives.

Year after year, the government remains the greatest threat to our freedoms, and yet year after year, “we the people” allow ourselves to be suckered into believing that politics will fix what’s wrong with the country.

Indeed, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, this is the very definition of insanity.

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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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***

While helicopters flew overhead, members of Peru’s national army shot down civilians with live bullets in the outskirts of the city of Ayacucho on December 15. This action was in response to a national strike and mobilization to protest the coup d’état that deposed President Pedro Castillo on December 7.

Hundreds of university students, shopkeepers, street vendors, agricultural workers and activists gathered on December 15, at the center of Ayacucho to express their discontent over the removal of Castillo and continued their mobilisation toward the airport. Similar action was witnessed in several other cities across the southern Andean region of the country.

As protesters approached the airport, members of the armed forces opened fire and shot tear gas canisters directly at them. The firing by the army from the helicopters proved to be the most lethal. As the hundreds of unarmed people ran for their lives, the shooting continued.

Ten people were killed as a result of this violence inflicted by the army, and dozens more were injured, according to official numbers provided by the ombudsman’s office. At least six people are still fighting for their lives in hospitals in Peru’s capital Lima and in Ayacucho. Autopsies of 10 of those who died in Ayacucho show that six of the victims died from gunshot wounds to the chest. The youngest was just 15 years old.

Reuters reported, on December 27, how one of these fatal victims in Ayacucho — 51-year-old Edgar Prado — was shot and killed while attempting to help someone else who had been shot down during the protests.

The exceedingly violent response of the security forces to the anti-coup protests across Peru was widely condemned. A delegation of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) visited the country from December 20–22 to receive testimonies from local human rights organisations and victims about the violent repression suffered by protesters and also spoke to families of the 28 fatal victims. The delegation traveled to Ayacucho on December 22.

More than a dozen other family members, Ayacucho inhabitants, organisers, and a couple of independent journalists, including myself, waited on the sidewalk of one of the city’s narrow and colourful streets as the meeting was underway. As people came and went, much of the events and tragedies of December 15 were recounted.

The massacre

“They won’t show you this on the news here,” Carmen (name changed) told me as she showed me a video on her phone of a young boy with blood all over his shirt being dragged to safety by fellow protesters. “That’s her nephew,” she said, pointing to a woman sitting on the ground.

Pedro Huamani, a 70-year-old man who is a member of the Front in Defense of the People of Ayacucho (FREDEPA), was accompanying the victims waiting outside the IACHR meeting. “We have suffered a terrible loss,” he told me, “I was present that day in a peaceful march toward the airport.

“When they began to shoot tear gas grenades and bullets at us, I started to choke, I almost died there,” Huamani said. “I escaped and went down to the cemetery, but it was the same, we were trying to enter and they started to shoot at us from behind. Helicopters were flying overhead and from there they shot tear gas grenades at us, trying to kill us.”

Carmen brought over some of her friends and one of them, who was wearing a grey sweatsuit, told me, “We all live near the airport, and saw everything happen. You should’ve seen how they shot them down like animals. We tried to help some of the injured, but it was hard.”

The massacre in Ayacucho, as well as the violent repression across the country, has only intensified people’s demand that Dina Boluarte step down. Boluarte was sworn in on December 7 immediately following the coup against Castillo. In interviews and public addresses, she has justified the use of force by police against protesters calling their actions as acts of “terrorism” and “vandalism.”

Huamani, while shaking and holding back tears, said: “She is a murderous president and in Huamanga, we do not want her, nor do we recognise her as president because this woman ordered the police and the army to shoot at us Peruvians. And these bullets, these weapons, are really bought by us, not by the army, nor the soldiers, but by the people. And for them to kill us is really horrible.”

The anger felt by Ayacucho residents is also linked to the historical undermining of Peruvian democracy and the economic exclusion suffered by the regions outside of Lima. Huamani explained: “They took out our president [Castillo] so this is not a democracy. We are not a democracy, we are in [state of] war, but not just in Ayacucho and Huamanga, but also in Arequipa, Apurímac, Cusco. In these regions, we are suffering from poverty, we can no longer survive, we are dying of hunger … and these right wingers want to make us their slaves, but we won’t permit this because we are responding and resisting.”

Old wounds ripped open

December 15 was not the first time civilians in Ayacucho were massacred by the Peruvian armed forces. Many who were present on December 15 said that the warlike treatment received by the peaceful protesters was reminiscent of the days of the two-decades-long internal armed conflict that Peruvians suffered through more than 20 years ago.

“They still treat us as if we were all terrorists,” a family member of one of the victims of the protests pointed out.

As part of the state’s campaign against the guerrilla insurgency, it tortured, detained, disappeared, and murdered tens of thousands of innocent peasants and Indigenous people, accusing them of supporting or being part of the insurgency.

The population of Ayacucho was one of the hardest hit. According to reports by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was set up to look into the human rights violations, of the estimated 69,280 fatal victims of the internal armed conflict in Peru from 1980-2000, 26,000 were killed or disappeared by state actors or insurgent groups in Ayacucho. Thousands of people that fled their towns for the city of Ayacucho during the conflict continue to search for their loved ones and demand justice.

One of them is Paula Aguilar Yucra, who I met outside the IACHR meeting. Like more than 60% of people in Ayacucho, Indigenous Quechua is her first language. The 63-year-old is a member of the Ayacucho-based National Association of Relatives of Kidnapped, Detained and Disappeared of Peru (ANFASEP). She fled her rural community in Usmay for Ayacucho in 1984 after her mother was killed and her brother was taken by soldiers and never seen again.

Nearly 40 years later, she mourns again. Her grandson, 20-year-old José Luis Aguilar Yucra, father of a two-year-old boy, was killed on December 15 by a bullet to the head as he attempted to make his way home from work.

In a vigil held on the afternoon of December 22, Paula stood tall with the other members of ANFASEP and held a sign reading: “Fighting today does not mean dying tomorrow.”

*

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This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Zoe Alexandra is a journalist and co-editor of Peoples Dispatch.

Featured image: Outside the meeting with the human rights delegation, relatives of victims and witnesses to the massacre hold a sign that reads “Justice for our brothers killed in the massacre on December 15”. Photo: Zoe Alexandra/People’s Dispatch

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***

While there’s no doubt that both sides could benefit from a temporary lull in fighting that enables them each to resupply their forces even more during that narrow window, it’s not a game-changer either way since a day and a half doesn’t make any military difference. With this in mind, the question therefore becomes why Kiev didn’t decide to take this mutually beneficial opportunity.

President Putin declared a unilateral 36-hour truce for Orthodox Christmas from 12pm Moscow time on Friday until midnight on Saturday, yet this was rejected by Kiev on false pretexts. Zelensky claimed that his counterpart just wanted time to resupply, while his Foreign Minister also expressed similar sentiment speculating that the Russian leader was insincere. For his part, Biden added that President Putin was “trying to find some oxygen”, but all these excuses don’t make any sense.

It’s extremely unlikely that Russia really thought that Ukraine would agree to its unilateral 36-hour truce, meaning that Moscow probably didn’t expect that it would be able to resupply its forces during that narrow window without interruption if that truly was its motivation all along. Not only that, but even in the event that Kiev went along with this to deflect from its crusade against elements of its Orthodox Christian population, 36 hours isn’t long enough to make a military difference for either side.

The notion that Russia’s special operation is supposedly failing so badly that the Kremlin desperately needs a day-and-a-half-long lull in fighting to resupply its forces in order to stave off their allegedly imminent defeat contradicts the US-led Western Mainstream Media’s (MSM) “official narrative”. According to them, President Putin is obsessed with the Battle for Artyomovsk/Bakhmut for reasons related purely to his personal prestige and that of his country.

The reality is that control of this city is tactically crucial for both sides, hence why they’ve redoubled their respective efforts along that front. In any case, whether one acknowledges the aforementioned objective military reality or ascribes to the MSM’s “official narrative”, the outcome of President Putin regarding this battle as “too big to lose” (at least for the time being) is the same. That in turn extends credence to the assessment that he already ordered his forces to be regularly resupplied long ago.

Thus, it’s unimportant whether Kiev agreed to the unilateral 36-hour truce or not since the Russian Armed Forces continue being supplied no matter what, including during the most intense firefights along this front over the past weeks. While there’s no doubt that both sides could benefit from a temporary lull in fighting that enables them each to resupply their forces even more during that narrow window, it’s not a game-changer either way since a day and a half doesn’t make any military difference.

With this in mind, the question therefore becomes why Kiev didn’t decide to take this mutually beneficial opportunity. The answer is most likely political for two reasons: first, agreeing to a Russian-initiated truce could be interpreted as signaling weakness and thus prompting speculation that Ukraine might agree to tacitly recognize the loss of its four peripheral reasons; and second, keeping the military pressure on Russia during Orthodox Christmas is part and parcel of its crusade against that religion.

Altogether, it can be concluded that that this was a missed opportunity for both sides, but one that Kiev decided to do without since its political motivations overrode its military ones. That being the case, this insight can be extrapolated upon to predict that fighting will continue for the foreseeable future without any credible chance of a lasting ceasefire anytime soon. The only variable that could offset this scenario is if one side achieves a major breakthrough along the Line of Control, but that seems unlikely for now.

*

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

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

Featured image is from the author

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***

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Thursday,

“We have launched a process as Russia-Turkey-Syria,” and added, “We will bring our foreign ministers together and then, depending on developments, we will come together as leaders.”

Last week, the Foreign Ministers of Turkey, Syria and Russia met together in Moscow for the highest-level talks since 2011.  Prior to the conflict in Syria, Erdogan and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad were close enough to refer to each other as brother.  All that changed after Turkey participated in the US attack on Syria for regime change, which has left thousands dead, and millions of refugees, and utilized thousands of Radical Islamic terrorists as foot-soldiers inside Syria.

The US has imposed a stalemate in Syria, but Erdogan has decided to create a solution to Turkey’s National Security issue by working in conjunction with Assad.

Steven Sahiounie of MidEastDiscourse interviewed Hamide Rencüzoğulları, Educator and Researcher, specialized in the Middle East. Published books: AKP’s Syrian War, Bloody Spring in Libya, All at Once: the ISIS and Women in the Claw of Jihad. Her articles were published in various newspapers and magazines, and she prepared and presented the TV Program “Agenda: Middle East”. Nine lawsuits have been filed against her for her books and articles and she is still on trial by the Turkish judiciary.

Steven Sahiounie (SS):Recently, it is apparent that Turkey is trying with all means to repair their relationship with Syria; however, Turkey had participated in the US/NATO war on Syria. Now, they can see that attack has failed. In your opinion, what does Turkey want to get out of Syria?

Hamide Rencüzoğulları  (HR):  Turkey can no longer bear the burden of militants trained and equipped by NATO and Arab countries in the region.

Everyone withdrew their hands and this burden is only on Turkey’s shoulders. On the other hand, Western countries no longer pay for refugees. The economic crisis has already deepened. The postponement of Russia’s natural gas debt relieved the Turkish Government. He wanted Damascus and Ankara to get closer in return for this election gift that Putin gave Erdogan until the election. In fact, because Putin put pressure on Erdogan, he sought a formula to reconcile with Assad, but the reason is not just Putin’s will. Turkey is in a stalemate on Syrian territory. It has both economic and political reasons. Investing in infrastructure and wages of militants in the regions controlled by Turkey is now challenging. On the other hand, Erdogan presents the position of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and the PYD in Syria as a justification for national security, but neither Russia nor America gave permission for the final operation. Erdogan’s intention is for the Kurds to withdraw to a depth of 32 kilometers and, to place the jihadist militants and their families there instead. Rather than failing in the wars against the SDF, he wants to solve the SDF problem with Damascus. Of course, if Damascus is going to give Erdogan an election gift, he will accept this condition, but this is not an easy issue.

SS: President Erdogan has made sending back the Syrian refugees a national policy. Isn’t this the same policy of all Turkish opposition parties?

HR:  The problem of refugees started to put the ruling party in a difficult position. Because a large part of the society wants the Syrians to return. The authority lost the vote when it said that we will not send power. Especially after the leaders of the nationalist opposition started to turn the Syrian refugees into election material against Erdoğan.  Erdoğan also announced that he would send the Syrians back. The main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, already has the subject of deportation of Syrians to their country on their agenda, but it does not say “we will expel them”. “Honorable and voluntary return”, they are saying instead, which means reconciliation with Damascus and creating a common political solution. Erdogan was first talking about occupying an area 32 kilometers deep and relocating Syrians there. Now he has aligned with what the main Opposition Party, CHP, said. For that reason, he says he wants peace with Damascus. He wants to make peace with Damascus despite the reactions of the opponents he protects and feeds. Therefore, he needs propaganda before the election: the propaganda of “We solve the refugee crisis and the Kurdish problem together with Syria”.

SS: We hear through media reports, that Turkey and Syria are meeting and that Turkey is willing to give up the Radical Islamic terrorists. In your opinion, where will terrorists go including the Uyghurs?

HR:  He can’t go anywhere with those terrorists. More precisely, the Justice and Development Party-AKP has no power to solve it. First of all, the “Syrian National Army” established by the AKP includes over 100 thousand militants, but it is not homogeneous. There are many different groups and not all of them give unconditional allegiance to Erdogan. If he says he will lay down arms, not all of them will. Second, there is Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham (HTS) and the Turkistan Islamic Party, which the AKP does not undertake as a guarantor. He can never speak to them. But Turkey seems to have a secret agreement with HTS for several months. Groups close to Turkey started to act with HTS, and HTS took Afrin together with these pro-Turkey groups. Turkey neither spoke out, nor took any steps to prevent it. On the contrary, when HTS launched the Afrin operation, senior officials from Turkey went to Azaz to meet with opposition leaders and returned. In this meeting, I think that Turkey gave the green light to HTS and warned the opposition not to engage in conflict. Why is Turkey paving the way for HTS? There was already a secret alliance from the beginning, now the Hamza, Suleyman Shah and Sultan Murad Brigades, who are closest to Turkey, joined HTS and took over the areas under Turkish control. AKP probably has an account like this: It wants to withdraw from Syria and leave this area to HTS. Groups in the Syrian National Army that refuse to lay down their arms also join HTS in this way, so the AKP can say that it has withdrawn its hand from Syria, but on the other hand, it will continue to deepen the conflict in Syria with this growing jihadist army. I guess they have such plans. But this is too dangerous. Because the muzzle of the abandoned jihadists may return to Turkey.

SS: Media leaks have said America is offering Syria a deal if Syria will not repair the relationship with Turkey. In your opinion, why is America against a new relationship between Ankara and Damascus?

HR:  Although the USA withdrew its hand from the Syrian opposition, it actually continued to manage the conflicts through Turkey. Even though it has a position in Syria only through the Kurds, the USA has support for the Turkish invasions. The USA wants Turkey to maintain its position in the Syrian territory it has entered. However, it does not want to offend Turkey, which highlights the SDF as a security issue. In particular, the USA never wants Ankara to get closer to Damascus. We have read in some media that the USA has offered a different proposal to Turkey in order to disrupt this, which is that, the USA will pull the SDF back one kilometer, but it will revive the Suvvarül Raqqa (Raqqa Revolutionaries) group and place it on the Turkish border. This group of Raqqa Revolutionaries is a jihadist structure and the USA thinks that Turkey will not be bothered by them. As long as Russia and the Syrian army do not replace the Kurds… I guess this is the formula of the USA.

SS:We have heard media reports that the Syrian opposition in Turkey has been asked to leave Turkey immediately. In your opinion, is the break with the Syrian opposition signaling that the rapprochement with Damascus is more important?

HR:  I don’t think there will be a complete break. The persuasion process continues. There are those who accept unconditionally. Turkey may close a few of the opposition channels broadcasting in the country as a formality. Or, objecting leaders can be expelled from the country, but I think this is all a formality. Because it cannot completely confront the opponents, it is very risky…

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

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***

In a city of more than 150,000 people which is the capital of the State of Mississippi, residents of Jackson were facing an all too familiar water crisis over the holiday period of late 2022 and early 2023.

Extreme weather events impacted huge swaths of territory within the United States during late December and the first week of January resulting in the injury and deaths of many persons.

In Jackson, below freezing temperatures precipitated pipe breaks disrupting the flow of water throughout the city. Some people had very low water flow while others had no pressure at all making it impossible to function under any semblance of normalcy.

On the south side of the city the situation appears to be more acute than any other areas. People reported that for seven days there was no water service in this area of the municipality.

At the Historically Black College (HBCU) Jackson State University (JSU), the administration sent out an e-mail requesting that students not return to campus until the second week of the month due to the lack of water pressure in the buildings and dormitories. This is the second consecutive semester where students have been urged not to return to the campus due to failure of the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant along with persistent structural damage to the system.

Jackson water treatment plant

According to the JSU public notice to the community:

“As an update, the City of Jackson continues to make repairs to broken water pipes near campus. While we anticipate these repairs should be completed before classes begin on January 9th, our water pressure on campus remains low at this time. For your convenience, students who can are encouraged to arrive in the latter part of the week or weekend.”

The water crisis does not only impact higher education. The Jackson Public Schools (JPS) has again reverted back to virtual learning as of January 5-6. The JPS announced that students and parents could retrieve learning materials on January 4. Lunches for students will also be available for pick up at the schools for January 5-6. There are 33 schools operating under the control of the JPS where they are facing low or no water pressure in the buildings.

The school system noted in a statement:

“The loss of water pressure in our school communities has had an enormous impact on us all. Please know that this decision was made after careful consideration of many factors, including the possibility of more schools losing pressure while scholars and staff are present, and the challenge of maintaining a safe and clean environment.”

City Councilman Aaron Banks of Ward 6 called for a town hall meeting on January 2 in an effort to seek information on the current status of the water system. The councilman in a press statement reprinted over social media suggested that the city administration was not forthcoming in reporting on the extent of the crisis. Although statements are being periodically issued by the offices of Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba saying that progress is being made in repairing the water system, Banks apparently is not satisfied with the current situation.

Banks said in a press statement on New Year’s Day that:

“People are seeking information and as a councilman, I would like to provide daily updates to ALL those that are suffering, but, especially those that I represent. As the councilman for the area of Jackson that is usually hit the hardest during most water crises, I think the flow of communication/information should be stronger, more consistent, more frequent and presented in a more truthful and concise way.  People are seeking information and as a councilman, I would like to provide daily updates to ALL those that are suffering, but, especially those that I represent. As the councilman for the area of Jackson that is usually hit the hardest during most water crises, I think the flow of communication/information should be stronger, more consistent, more frequently and presented in a more truthful and concise way.”

As of January 3, the Clarion Ledger newspaper reported that most of the city of Jackson remained under a boil-water alert. The media outlet then announced several locations in South and West Jackson where bottled water could be picked up by residents. Elderly people and those living with disabilities were encouraged to call a number to ostensibly arrange for water to be delivered to their homes.

The Role of the State and Federal Governments in the Crisis

Although the burden of the water crisis has fallen on local authorities and residents of Jackson, the city and state of Mississippi has a long history of institutional racism and national oppression extending back to the antebellum period. Moreover, the complicity of the successive United States administrations and the Congress cannot go unrecognized.

During the recent period, the U.S. Justice Department has filed suit against the City of Jackson on behalf of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) under the guise of violations of the Clean Water Act. In addition to the lawsuit, the city is being forced to accept a consent decree imposed by the federal government which involved the appointment of a “third-party administrator”, Ted Henifin, for the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant.

At the town hall meeting hosted by Councilman Banks, Henifin was present and expressed sympathy for the people of Jackson and those under its water system. Henifin said he had come out of retirement in Virginia to take his current position. Hundreds of people attended the meeting to express their frustrations with the perennial water crisis in Jackson.

Nonetheless, the situation in Jackson warrants far more urgent measures than what has been proposed and enacted by the federal government under the administration of President Joe Biden. Although the former majority-Democratic Congress along with the Senate approved a $600 million dollar appropriation through the Omnibus Bill to address the water crisis in Jackson, it remains to be seen whether this pledge will be sufficient to effectively fix the problems. Mayor Lumumba says that at least $2 billion is needed to repair the system. (See this)

The fact that Jackson is an 83% majority African American city further emphasizes the historical plight of these oppressed people in the U.S. Mississippi continues to be one of the most impoverished states in the U.S. Consequently, it is by no means coincidental that the contradictions prevalent in modern-day 21st century urban society are glaringly obvious in this southern state.

Even some six-to-seven decades after the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s in Mississippi where scores of people were martyred, imprisoned and dislocated, the promise of the Great Society and War on Poverty programs as well as the Voting Rights Act of 1965 remains unfulfilled. Obviously, the Republican-dominated Mississippi state government is biased towards the Black-dominated city of Jackson. Such an attitude is reflected in comments from state officials solely blaming the people in Jackson for the water crisis. However, Jackson is the capital of the State of Mississippi and therefore, the government there must bear responsibility along with the federal government for the present situation.

Structural problems in the water system should have never gotten to this level. Where has the State of Mississippi and the EPA been all of these decades when the O.B. Curtis water treatment plant and the pipelines have been deteriorating?

The Clarion Ledger in an article on the City Council town hall meeting on January 2, emphasized:

“He (Henifin) characterized Jackson’s water problems as ‘extremely complicated’ and portrayed the nationally publicized water problems facing Flint, Michigan, as ‘simple’ compared to the challenges in Jackson. Among the problems noted by Henifin was a non-functioning water quality monitoring system at intake valves feeding the O. B. Curtis plant. The system is supposed to measure things like the ph level and turbidity of incoming water from the reservoir but because it doesn’t work the water cannot be tested and chemically treated until it reaches the plant, he said. An old and porous distribution system which wastes as much or more treated water than it actually delivers to customers is another huge concern. By some estimates Jackson loses upwards of 30 million gallons a day, requiring the city to treat at least twice the amount of water that other cities of similar size do, he said.”

Consequently, it could take several years to correct the existing structural issues hampering the normal functioning of the water system in Jackson. With the dysfunctionality of the Republican-dominated Congress which could not during the first week of 2023 agree on a Speaker, it remains unlikely that the House of Representatives could engage in another legislative act which could provide much-needed immediate relief to the people of Jackson.

Moreover, the crisis in Jackson is not taking place within a social vacuum. Cities, suburbs and rural areas across the U.S. are in need of similar interventions by the state and federal governments. Water systems, schools, housing, power grids and healthcare institutions are in dire need of massive government subsidization.

Such priorities conflict with the existing war policies which provide over $1 trillion per year for defense, nuclear weapons and intelligence. The majority of House and Senate members irrespective of political party are firmly aligned with international finance capital and the Pentagon. Until the people take control of the political direction of the U.S., there will continue to be the rapid deterioration of the standards of living among the workers and oppressed.

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

Featured image: Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba at press conference / All images in this article are from the author

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A bill which allows the state of California to punish doctors over ‘false information about Covid-19 vaccinations and treatments’ went into effect on January 1st.

Under the new law (AB 2098) which took effect Jan.1, the state’s Medical Board would categorize dispensing information – such as the effectiveness of Ivermectin, or the Covid-19 vaccine’s rapidly waning efficacy, as unprofessional conduct.

A few days ago, Gavin Newsom signed Bill AB2098 into California law. That means doctors can lose their medical licenses for disagreeing with whatever the state determines as a consensus opinion on a particular topic. pic.twitter.com/2XHWWX4Msa

— Josh Stylman (@jstylman) October 4, 2022

The law was challenged in court by two California doctors, who said that it would restrict their free speech in violation of the first amendment, and that it was “vague” under the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution.

However on December 28th, Biden Nominee Judge Fred Slaughter refused to halt the law, ruling that the law trumps free speech claims, and that it falls “within the longstanding tradition of regulations on the practice of medical treatments.”

Another lawsuit, brought by Physicians for Informed Consent, was filed in the US District Court for the Eastern District of California in early December. The plaintiffs, physician LeTrinh Hoang and Children’s Health Defense, are being represented by Rick Jaffe, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Mary Holland, and argues that the state of California has weaponized the vague phrase “misinformation,” and thereby has illegally targeted physicians who disagree with the government’s public stance on Covid-19.

CA's horrific☠️doctor-censorship bill #AB2098 is now law and goes into effect on Jan 1, 2023…even though it is unconstitutional to ban speech.👩‍⚖️Want to help? Retweet and support #PICphysicians at https://t.co/FAQPheFy9q. Our lawsuit📄to block this will be heard on 1/17/2023. pic.twitter.com/XDZhzFQRb4

— Physicians for Informed Consent (@picphysicians) December 31, 2022

There are many potentially disastrous consequences of AB2098. https://t.co/jfxhs2hTeM

— Corbin Sabol (@corbinsabol) January 3, 2023

Expert cardiologist and PIC member Sanjay Verma, M.D., has been tracking and cataloging CDC errors in real time. For the case, he has provided what he calls “a detailed declaration exposing the government’s scientific errors and the constitutional dangers of censoring dissent”:

“To demonstrate these points of vagueness and the general unsuitability of using ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ as a disciplinary criterion, I have prepared a detailed overview of public health response to the pandemic broken down into categories such as Masks and Vaccines (transmission, safety, efficacy of natural immunity). I have also included evidence of what [I testify] would be considered misinformation promulgated by the CDC as well as its withholding of information which led to the then ‘contemporary scientific consensus’ eventually being proven wrong.” –KRON4

AB-2098, the “physician misinformation bill” goes into effect as law in California.
Physicians can no longer communicate nuanced risk about mRNA COVID vaccines to their patients without potentially having their licenses revoked.https://t.co/VHbHlKpgar pic.twitter.com/hlMxYJth2H

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2023) January 2, 2023

Vaccine so bad the state of California will revoke medical licenses from any doctor speaking out about side effects and what they’ve witnessed first hand. This isn’t science and doesn’t follow the Hippocratic Oath. $pfe #pfizer https://t.co/KksrLzgOY2

— Never McCarthy Swan (@TheWuhanClan) January 3, 2023

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This year had the unwelcome distinction of being the first to see over 100 million people displaced worldwide. Such a staggering milestone reminds us that greater efforts are needed to address the underlying causes forcing so many innocent people to flee their homes.

Even more alarming, this milestone was reached by the middle of the year. Over 50 million people were internally displaced within their own countries, over 30 million were refugees forced to flee their countries, and some 4.3 million were stateless.

More than 70 percent of all refugees came from five countries mired in violent conflict: Syria, Venezuela, Ukraine, Afghanistan, and South Sudan. Climate-related emergencies, meanwhile — including severe floods in Pakistan and drought in Somalia — contributed heavily to the growing number of people internally displaced.

Many countries have welcomed refugees this year, despite seismic challenges and limited resources. In the first five months of the Ukraine war, the United States admitted more than 100,000 Ukrainians, while other communities around the world have welcomed millions more.

Such compassion in the face of enduring struggles is encouraging — and should extend to all crises. Refugees have also remained resilient while confronting these obstacles, which speaks to their inspiring grit and bravery that rarely makes the news.

But far too often, states adopt double standards in their treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.

This is especially true for Haitians, who have long encountered discriminatory U.S. immigration policies and abuse — exemplified by images of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback whipping desperate Haitian asylum seekers in Del Rio, Texas last year. Between October 2018 and June 2021, the U.S. denied asylum to Haitians more than any other nationality.

After decades of political and economic turmoil, living conditions in Haiti deteriorated this year due to gang violence following the 2021 assassination of then-President Jovenal Moïse. Nearly half the country faces acute hunger. A lack of safe drinking water and basic sanitation have also led to a rapid reemergence of cholera.

As a result, many Haitians have had to flee their country, which prompted the UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi to call on all countries “to stand in solidarity with Haiti” and “not to return Haitians to a country that is extremely fragile.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. accelerated the mass expulsion of more than 25,000 Haitians between September 2021 and May 2022. They were returned to Haiti where they face likely harm and humanitarian disaster.

Most of the expulsions have been carried out under Title 42, a rarely used provision of U.S. health law first invoked by President Trump and continued under President Biden to bar people from seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border under the pretext of preventing COVID-19.

By denying Haitians and others the right to seek asylum, this use of Title 42 blatantly violates both international and U.S. law. It’s discrimination masquerading as a public health policy, and it’s only created more chaos at the border.

In November, a federal judge’s ruling confirmed as much by striking down Title 42, although what happens next remains to be seen. In another step forward, Biden recently extended temporary protected status for Haitians already in the U.S.

The U.S. has long served as a safe haven for the persecuted, but it must do more to treat all asylum seekers with respect and allow them to fully access the asylum process. The disparate treatment of refugees and asylum seekers also emphasizes the larger need for a more efficient, just, and inclusive U.S. immigration system.

This year’s record-breaking global displacement crisis calls for greater protections and investment by the international community instead of more indifference and cruelty. It demands humane policies anchored in respect and dignity for all people.

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Farrah Hassen, J.D., is a writer, policy analyst, and adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science at Cal Poly Pomona.

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***

December was a good month for President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine. First he was selected by Time magazine as Person of the Year. Then he was asked to address a joint session of Congress. And then he was promised more money for Ukraine.

How much more?

U.S. Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, have both said that the United States would support Ukraine for “as long as it takes.” President Biden has said the same thing.

Because of the different metrics used, and differences between total aid committed and actual aid supplied, how much Ukraine has been given and how much more it will be given is not exactly easy to figure out.

According to a report (updated Dec. 7) by the Congressional Research Service on “U.S. Security Assistance to Ukraine”:

From 2014, when Russia first invaded Ukraine, through November 23, 2022, the United States has provided approximately $21.8 billion in security assistance “to help Ukraine preserve its territorial integrity, secure its borders, and improve interoperability with NATO.” Of this amount, the Biden Administration has committed more than $19 billion in security assistance since the start of the 2022 war.

Especially since 2021, the United States has been providing defense items to Ukraine via Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), by which the President can authorize the immediate transfer of articles and services from U.S. stocks, up to a funding cap established in law, in response to an “unforeseen emergency” (22 U.S.C. §2318(a)(1)). Since August 2021, the Biden Administration has authorized 26 drawdowns valued at $11.7 billion.

The German Kiel Institute puts U.S. military, humanitarian, and financial support to Ukraine from January 24 to November 20 at $47.9 billion.

What we do know is that in 2022, the U.S. government authorized to be given to Ukraine $13.6 billion in March as part of the fiscal year 2022 omnibus spending bill, $40 billion in May in a standalone bill, $12 billion in September as part of a continuing resolution, $800 million in December in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2023, $45 billion as part of another omnibus spending bill that would fund the government through October, and $1.85 billion in additional military assistance, including a transfer of the Patriot Air Defense System.

In his speech to Congress, Zelensky said:

Financial assistance is also critically important and I would like to thank you, thank you very much. Thank you for both financial packages you have already provided us with and the ones you may be willing to decide on. Your money is not charity. It’s an investment in the global security and democracy that we handle in the most responsible way.

An investment? That’s what members of Congress call all the unconstitutional spending they authorize.

But rather than terming aid to Ukraine an investment, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)—one of several Republican members of Congress who skipped Zelensky’s speech—called it what it is: “The American taxpayers have been conscripted into making welfare payments to this foreign government.”

Screaming conservative journalist Cliff Kincaid insists: “It is not ‘neo-conservatism’ to advocate regime change in Moscow. It is a matter of Ukraine’s and America’s survival.” He believes we can save America by saving Ukraine. He says that “America has no alternative but to supply the weapons necessary for Ukraine to survive and even turn the tide against Russia.” Kincaid even considers billions of U.S. tax dollars sent to Ukraine as a bargain: “Currently, even under the impact of the Red Russian Army, backed by drones from Iran, the Ukraine resistance is holding its own and making progress. And all this is costing the United States several billion dollars. What a bargain!”

Ukraine supporters should put their money where their mouth is.

How much money has Zelensky loving, Ukraine supporting conservatives like Kincaid given to Ukraine?

President Biden receives an annual salary of $400,000. How much of it has he given to Ukraine?

Vice president Kamala Harris receives an annual salary of $255,800. How much of it has she given to Ukraine?

Former House speaker Nancy Pelosi received an annual salary of $223,500. How much of it did she give to Ukraine?

Congressional majority and minority leaders and the president pro tempore of the Senate receive an annual salary of $193,400. How much of it did Steny Hoyer, Kevin McCarthy, Patrick Leahy, Charles Schumer, and Mitch McConnell give to Ukraine?

Members of Congress receive an annual salary of $174,000. How much of it has any of them given to Ukraine?

I think we all know the answer: zilch, zero, nothing. Ukraine supporters should put their money where their mouth is.

How much money have people who chant “Stand with Ukraine” actually given to Ukraine?

How much money have people who have dumped out Russia vodka actually given to Ukraine?

How much money have people who have boycotted Russian goods actually given to Ukraine?

How much money have people who put up pro-Ukraine yard signs actually given to Ukraine?

How much money have people who fly Ukrainian flags or wear Ukrainian lapel pins actually given to Ukraine?

How much money have people who have demonstrated against Russia actually given to Ukraine?

How much money have people who wear pro-Ukrainian t-shirts actually given to Ukraine?

Would all the money given by these people even buy Ukraine one missile? Ukraine supporters should put their money where their mouth is.

It doesn’t matter if Vladimir Putin is another Hitler, a diehard communist, the personification of evil, the antichrist, or the devil incarnate. Ukraine supporters should put their money where their mouth is.

It doesn’t matter if Russia is an evil empire, is aggressing Ukraine for no good reason, is trying to reestablish the USSR, is attempting to take over all of Ukraine, or is committing genocide against the Ukrainians. Ukraine supporters should put their money where their mouth is.

No matter what has happened or will happen in Ukraine—

It is not the business of the U.S. government to take sides in disputes between countries.

It is not the business of the U.S. government to take money from Americans and give it to foreigners or their governments.

It is not the business of the U.S. government to intervene in the affairs of other counties.

Ukraine supporters should put their money where their mouth is.

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Laurence M. Vance [send him mail] writes from central Florida. He is the author of The War on Drugs Is a War on Freedom; War, Christianity, and the State: Essays on the Follies of Christian Militarism; War, Empire, and the Military: Essays on the Follies of War and U.S. Foreign Policy; King James, His Bible, and Its Translators, and many other books. His newest books are Free Trade or Protectionism? and The Free Society.

Featured image is from Kim Petersen

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***

During the course of an FBI written response to a Freedom of Information Act request asking about the trade names and suppliers of surveillance software the FBI had purchased, and in a legal brief submitted to a federal judge, the government has yet again quietly acknowledged its antipathy to constitutional provisions that all of its employees have sworn to uphold.

Since we are dealing with software used to spy on Americans in the U.S. and abroad, the constitutional right being transgressed is the right to privacy.

This is the ancient natural right to be left alone, which the Supreme Court took 175 years to recognize as being protected by the Fourth Amendment. Since that recognition in 1965, however, notwithstanding near universal judicial acceptance of the constitutional protection of the right, the executive branch of the government has persistently negated it.

Here is the backstory.

The Fourth Amendment, which requires judicially issued search warrants for all searches and seizures, protects the contents of devices that store data. Thus, the owners of mobile devices and desktop computers have a privacy right in the data they have stored there. Even a narrow interpretation of the amendment, which guarantees privacy in “persons, houses, papers, and effects,” must acknowledge that a computer chip is an “effect” and thus its owner enjoys this protection.

It is an allegiance to the plain language, general understanding and definitive judicial interpretations of the Fourth Amendment to which all in government have sworn.

During the Trump administration, and likely behind the president’s back but with the knowledge of senior folks appointed by him, the FBI purchased Israeli-manufactured software known as zero-click. Zero-click refers to the ability of the user of the software to target and download the contents of a computer without the need for tricking an unwary target into clicking on to a link. The manufacturer of this diabolic software is known as NSO, and the trade name of the software is Pegasus.

When President Joe Biden learned of the FBI’s use of Pegasus without search warrants, he banned it from government use, and his Department of Commerce banned all American purchases from NSO. The FBI now stores this software in a warehouse in New Jersey.

Why didn’t Biden just do his job and prohibit all warrantless domestic spying?

Image: Adam Schiff (Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons)

Last week, Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the outgoing chair of the House Intelligence Committee, revealed that the Drug Enforcement Administration has purchased a similar product to Pegasus, called Graphite, from another Israeli manufacturer, called Paragon. Schiff revealed this in time for Congress to include in its $1.65 trillion omnibus legislation, enacted just before Christmas, provisions that give the director of national intelligence power to prohibit all parts of the intelligence community from purchasing or using foreign spyware.

Why didn’t Congress just do its job and prohibit all warrantless domestic spying, irrespective of the software?

The answers to these questions reflect that the intelligence community knows too much about Biden and too many members of Congress for Congress to defy it. Thus, Schiff’s proposal, which became law, was premised upon a supposed congressional fear that the Israeli-manufactured spyware, when employed by the FBI or DEA, could serve as a spying mechanism by the Israeli government on the American government.

How quaint; spies and allies spying on each other! Taxpayers paying for this. The Constitution trashed yet again.

When Rep. Schiff’s civil liberties-defending colleague, Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., asked the DEA about this, it declined to give him a clear answer. Sen. Wyden was concerned about the DEA spying on Americans outside the U.S. Outside? Yes, outside. For years the governments of presidents of both parties have argued that the Fourth Amendment only restrains law enforcement, not intelligence, and they have argued that the Constitution only restrains the government in the U.S.

This discredited argument has been rejected by the Supreme Court since the 1940s, and as recently as 2008, when the court held that wherever the government goes to do its work, the Constitution goes with it. This holding is hardly novel. Rather, it is based on 400 years of British law that prohibited kings and sheriffs from removing defendants to places outside of Britain for torture and interrogation, only to be returned for trial.

Were this rule — wherever the government goes, so goes the Constitution — not so, then nothing would prevent the FBI and DEA from doing what British officials tried to get away with.

Now, back to the DEA. Joe Biden’s DEA, and Donald Trump’s before it, takes the position that when it operates outside the U.S. — such as its drug war against Mexico and Mexican civilians — it also operates outside the Constitution. In order to prevent a judicial prohibition of its extra-constitutional lawlessness, lawyers for the DEA must labor mightily to keep its behavior and its well-discredited arguments from being aired in an American courtroom.

They do this in two ways. First, as addressed above, is to use quiet threats to coerce government officials to decline to prohibit expressly these practices. And second, if necessary, to dupe federal judges and defense lawyers by creating a fictitious version of its acquisition of evidence. The fiction usually posits a foreign intermediary handing over evidence to the feds who hand it to other feds who do not know of its criminal origins.

Criminal? Yes, criminal. Hacking a computer without consent or a search warrant is a crime, no matter where it is committed or by whom.

Rep. Schiff and Sen. Wyden are well-intended. They each have a consistent track record of defending civil liberties from attacks by the government. But the culture in Congress today prevents full-throated congressional defenses of privacy, no matter which party is in control.

We have elected a government and hired its employees to protect our liberties and our property. Today it does neither. Rather, it assaults them.

What do we do about it?

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The nuclear disarmament of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine was one of the great success stories of the end of the Cold War, and it was one of the most significant victories for the cause of nonproliferation. 

When the Soviet Union ceased to exist, these newly independent states had to manage the problem of the Soviet nuclear legacy left behind in their lands. Their disarmament was bound up with their status as independent, sovereign countries as they sought and needed to be integrated with the rest of the world.

The commitment of the non-Russian republics to disarm saved the original Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) and upheld the principles of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), and their eventual disarmament is one of the underappreciated achievements of U.S. foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.

While all three states were always willing to get rid of the nuclear weapons they had inherited from the Soviet Union, the paths that they took to disarmament were somewhat different with respect to the terms and timing of removing these weapons and their delivery systems from their territories. The Ukrainian case is the most involved of the three, and because of the war in Ukraine it is also the most salient today in current debates about disarmament and nonproliferation. It is therefore fortunate that there is a new book that can expertly guide us through this complicated and important history.

US Secretary of Defense William Perry (left), Ukraine ministry of defense Mr. Schmarov (center) and Russian Ministry of Defense ltgen Grachov (right), celebrate the completed dismantlement of silo 110 and Ukraine’s completed nuclear weapons arsenal dismantlement. Silo 110 was the first of 160 Ukrainian silos to be dismantled in the next two years as part of the Nunn-Lugar / Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. (April 6, 1996)(National Archives)

Mariana Budjeryn’s Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine is an excellent study of how the process of disarmament unfolded. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including some Ukrainian sources not tapped before, Budjeryn details in great depth the internal deliberations of the Ukrainian government and the intensive rounds of negotiations among the U.S., Russia and the three non-Russian republics.

The book should become a standard reference for anyone working on this issue and on nonproliferation more broadly, and I expect that it will.

Budjeryn shows how the Ukrainian government realized that they had no practical alternative to disarmament if they were going to be a full-fledged member of the international community, but they also believed that their country should not give up the weapons without receiving something in return. The Ukrainian government took a nuanced position on the question of disarmament, as they were committed to denuclearization but wanted, for reasons of sovereignty and leverage, to emphasize that they “owned” the weapons on their territory even if they couldn’t and wouldn’t use them.

This insistence on ownership created some tensions in relations with both the U.S. and Russia, and opened Ukraine up to untrue charges of “backsliding” on its commitments. But in the end, Ukraine was never in a position to keep the weapons and did not want to keep them.

One of the most fascinating aspects of the story is how the three non-Russian republics leveraged the U.S. desire to ratify and implement START into securing themselves places at the negotiating table. Russia would have preferred to keep all arms control discussions bilateral, but since START could not be implemented without the cooperation of the other states it became necessary to include them.

This created some interesting contradictions in Washington’s dealings with these states. On the one hand, Washington accepted that the three non-Russian republics were successors to the Soviet Union for the purposes of arms control under START, but it would not accept that they were successors to the Soviet Union’s status as a nuclear weapons state.

The U.S. bottom line was that there should be no additional nuclear weapons states emerging from the collapsed Soviet Union. The NPT was clear that there could only be five nuclear weapons states, and the U.S. was not going to compromise on this point. This meant that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had to commit to joining the NPT as non-nuclear weapons states while simultaneously assisting the U.S. in eliminating part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal that they had in their countries.

It took some time to get all three across the finish line with the ratification of both treaties, but it is a credit to their governments and to the Bush and Clinton administrations that they kept this process moving forward to a successful conclusion.

If Ukraine’s disarmament is discussed today, it is often mentioned as a supposed cautionary tale of what other states shouldn’t do. Shortly after the 2022 Russian invasion began, John Ullyot and Thomas Grant declared Ukraine’s disarmament to have been a mistake: “If you abandon your nuclear program and entrust your security to formal guarantees and conventional deterrence, you gamble with your future. If you give up your nukes, you give up your national security ace-in-the-hole.”

Bill McGurn of The Wall Street Journal asked rhetorically, “If Ukraine hadn’t given up its nukes after the collapse of the Soviet Union, would Vladimir Putin have dared invade?” This line of thinking is misguided for several reasons.

As Budjeryn shows, there really was no serious option of keeping the inherited nuclear weapons without exposing Ukraine to international opprobrium and isolation, and the cost of building up an indigenous nuclear weapons program to maintain their own arsenal was prohibitive. She sums up the Ukrainian foreign ministry’s view at the time: “The negative repercussions of the nuclear option would far outweigh the positive.”

It is a mistake for people today to indulge the fantasy that Ukraine could have kept these weapons without suffering severe negative political and economic consequences, and it gives encouragement to would-be proliferators that our collective commitment to nonproliferation is waning.

Another problem with the counterfactual is that there is no guarantee that Ukraine would have been made more secure if it had paid the high price to retain these weapons. If anything, possession of what would have been the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal probably would have made Ukraine more of a target for interference and intervention, and the resources it would have had to pour into its nuclear weapons program would have come at the expense of its other defenses.

Budjeryn quotes Boris Tarasyuk, Ukraine’s then-foreign minister, as saying, “For Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons would have been to go against the entire world order.” When critics of disarmament argue that Ukraine should have somehow kept this arsenal, they are ignoring the enormous, immediate costs that Ukraine would have faced for doing so. Ukraine would not only have been putting its good relations with the U.S. and its allies at risk by keeping these weapons, but counterintuitively it would have also risked its own survival.

Budjeryn concludes: “If Ukraine had refused to join the NPT and kept a part of its nuclear inheritance, it would not be the same country it is today but with nuclear weapons. Indeed, it is doubtful whether it would be a country at all.”“Inheriting the Bomb” is essential reading for anyone interested in issues of disarmament and nonproliferation. It is exceptionally well-researched and well-written, and it deepens the reader’s understanding of the complex problems that were created by the collapse of the Soviet Union. It also reminds us of the importance of careful, patient diplomacy in managing multiple potential crises peacefully.

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Featured image: Intermediate-range ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead RSD-10 Pioneer. It was deployed by the Soviet Union from 1976 to 1988. NATO reporting name was SS-20 Saber. It was withdrawn from service under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Ukrainian Air Force Museum in Vinnitsa. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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The Economist has called DARPA the agency “that shaped the modern world,” and listed weather satellites, GPS, drones, stealth technology, voice interfaces, the personal computer and the internet on the list of innovations for which “DARPA can claim at least partial credit.” These technologies were originally invented for the military aims of the Pentagon. 

DARPA was providing funding and technical support to Moderna’s mRNA vaccine technology since at least 2013. DARPA also had long-time associates and partners at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

A look at their new budget provides a glimpse at what the U.S. Military sees as part of the future of warfare.

Using machine-learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to manipulate information or human behavior seems to be a priority for DARPA judging by the budget.

A project named AAI aims to further the “facilitation of operator-machine interface, knowledge management and dissemination, and social context-informed AI forecasting.” The project also aims to include a “focus on measuring and aggregating preconscious signals and how these can be used to determine what people believe to be true.”

Project SemaFor is being earmarked for hundreds of millions of dollars and will use AI “to identify false information, its origin, and its intent [emphasis added]. A project named ASED is developing “counter-social engineering bots.” A little description of this project is given.

Once thought to be a thing of only movies and television shows, DARPA plans to further its development of a type of “ray gun.” Project Warden is being earmarked millions of dollars to “amplify the range and lethality of high-power microwave systems and weapons.”

The World Economic Forum idea of Fourth Industrial Revolution technology, which is partly defined as the merging of the digital, technical and biological systems is also highlighted in the DARPA budget.

In a project titled “Rapid Healing for Warfighter Injuries,” DARPA plans to leverage “artificial intelligence to predict, stimulate, and control physiological processes in complex tissues.”

The project codenamed “NSIA” or non-surgical machine interface technology aims to “input multiple channels of information into biological human neural tissue.” The description explains that this is currently in “final testing/transition to implementation phase.”

The agency also plans to use smart devices like smart watches, smart phones, smart cars, and smart home appliances also known as the internet of things (IoT) to further spying and surveillance. aims to facilitate maintaining custody (constant surveillance) of “targets” in contested environments, “interfacing with IoT infrastructure to supplement satellite capability.”

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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the public face of the COVID-19 pandemic, has officially stepped down from his positions at the NIH-NIAID. He may be out but his legacy of scientific fraud and falsehood remains.

We will never forget the mass casualties and injuries he has caused through his public health policy recommendations that are founded on lies and deception.

We will continue with our efforts in exposing COVID crimes spearheaded by state-sanctioned authorities in collaboration with the WHO and WEF.

Our ask is for you to help us in this endeavor.

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***

Upon once again being reinstated last month as Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu dropped a bombshell about how he pressured Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla to turn the “Holy Land” into a “lab for Pfizer” to unleash its covid “vaccines.”

In a recent interview with philosopher Dr. Jordan Peterson, Netanyahu made numerous shocking admissions, without any shame, about how the Israeli people were used as human guinea pigs in the Pfizer experiment – all thanks to Netanyahu’s goading.

“I described that in my book, my conversations with Albert Bourla, Pfizer and I persuaded him to give tiny Israel then the necessary vaccines to get us out first from the covid,” Netanyahu revealed.

“And the reason I could do that is because we have a database, 98%, a medical database. 98% of our population has digitized medical records and [a] little card.” (Related: The Israeli government knew from the beginning that covid injections were injuring and killing people; pushed the shots anyway.)

Netanyahu used Israel’s medical records technology to force the Israeli people to get jabbed, as it allowed for quick and easy access to their “vaccinated” or “unvaccinated” status. This is how the Middle Eastern state’s vaccine “passport” scheme was made possible.

“I said, we’ll use that to tell you whether these vaccines – what do they do to people, no individual people, not with their individual identities,” Netanyahu revealed. “But statistically what does it do to people with … meningitis: what does it do to people with high blood pressure, what is it you want to know?”

“So Israel became, if you will, the lab for Pfizer, and that’s how we did it. We gave the information to the world, and not only it’s been published in medical magazines and so on. That’s a database we have.”

Be sure to watch the interview below:

Netanyahu wants Big Pharma to “run algorithms” using Israel’s medical database so a genetic database can be built

Netanyahu’s ultimate goal, he says, is to build upon Israel’s personal medical records database to create a new genetic database covering the entire population of the country.

He believes that most Israelis would willingly provide a personal saliva sample to be added to that genetic database. Those who are resistant, he added during the interview, could simply be bribed with cash.

“Maybe we’ll pay them,” Netanyahu said nonchalantly about the matter. “Now we have a genetic record on a medical record of a robust population. You have diversified populations’ we have people from 100 lands. This is a very powerful engine.”

“Now let pharma companies, let medical companies, let them run algorithms on this database. […] But you can create a biotechnological industry that is unheard of right now, unheard of, unimagined even.”

It is important to note that what Netanyahu admitted to in this interview concerning Pfizer’s access to personal data about Israelis and their health conditions was recently denied by the Ministry of Health, which claims that Pfizer was never given said access – so who is lying?

Bourla himself back in 2021 said many of the things that Netanyahu did in this recent interview, including an admission about the fact that Israel “has become the world’s lab right now because they are using only our vaccine at this state and they have vaccinated a very big part of their population, so we can study both economy and health indices.”

In the United States, the government here is said to be using a “precision monitoring” system to similarly, but perhaps not as extensively, monitor the fully vaccinated for a least two years post-injection.

*

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It is surely correct for the UK to proscribe the IRGC under a formal legal process of the  Terrorism Act 2000, as a terrorist organisation, as is now proposed by the British government. However, by the same criteria it must also be right to award such a dubious distinction to the Likud party of Binyamin Netanyahu whose IDF has killed more than 100 primarily unarmed Palestinian civilians since January 2022. That is also terrorism, for a Palestinian Arab is also a human being, just as is an Israeli Jew or an English Christian.

Israeli forces have killed more Palestinians in the occupied territories during 2022 than in any year since 2005 when the second intifada ended, according to Middle East Eye‘s (MEE), which relies on UN, Palestinian, Israeli and rights groups’ data. The report found that at least 220 Palestinians were killed, including 48 children, 167 of them in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and 53 in Gaza. Some 9,000 were injured in the West Bank, MEE stated, citing UN sources. It stated that 95 Palestinian civilians were shot by Israeli troops during raids or while taking part in anti-occupation protests, 21 Palestinian fighters were killed during clashes with Israeli troops; and in the cases of a further 20 people killed in Israeli raids, it was not clear whether or not they were civilians or combatants.

Definitions

Any armed force that kills unarmed civilians is a terrorist organisation that employs terror as a political weapon; often uses religion as a cover for its terrorist activities.

An individual in an  armed force, or otherwise, who commits an act or acts of violence or threatens violence in pursuit of political, religious, or ideological objectives, including the forced acquisition of another’s land by violence and illegal annexation.

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Featured image: A Palestinian child, Omar Alhadeede, the sole survivor of his family, looks at a photo of his brothers, killed by the recent Israeli bombing on Gaza. (Image tweeted by Aya Isleem)

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***

Kyrylo Budanov, the military intelligence boss of Ukraine, told the war propaganda disseminator, ABC News, there will be additional strikes deep inside Russia, follow-ups to the December 26 attack on the Engels Air Force Base, more than 800 miles from the border. Budanov refused to say one way or another if Ukraine is responsible for the attacks. He added Ukraine will take responsibility for the attacks after it has won the war and reclaimed its “annexed” territory.

It is entirely possible Budanov will be captured and shipped to Russia to face a war crimes tribunal at some point in the future, that is if he does not become a mangled corpse buried under the charred rubble of a destroyed Ministry of Defense at number 6, Povitroflotskyi Ave, Kyiv.

Budanov has fooled himself into believing the Ukronazis are capable of taking back Crimea and the oblasts of Donetsk, Kharkiv, Kherson, Luhansk, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia.

And when asked about attacks on Crimea, which was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014, Budanov said, “Crimea is Ukrainian territory, we can use any weapon on our territory.”

Not mentioned is the fact the majority of ethnic Russians in these areas voted to leave the corrupt and poverty-stricken Ukronazi state after it made clear, most dramatically after the Maidan coup, it plans to ethnically cleanse all Russians and, according to the Ukrainian News website, herd them into concentration camps.

Maybe the Brits can help with this, as they pioneered deadly concentration camps during the Boer War in South Africa, resulting in the death of thousands (mostly women and children).

I don’t know if Ukronazi concentration camps are a real thing. However, it is no secret the post-coup government in Kyiv has held nothing but toxic enmity for ethnic Russians, the Russian language (which half the country speaks), Russian culture, and even the Russian Orthodox Church.

Soon after the USG coup in Kyiv, the handpicked prime minister—handpicked by Victoria Nuland and USG ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt—Arseniy Yatsenyuk, called for “wiping out” the “inhumans” (ethnic Russians) and “cleaning our land from the evil,” in other words, ethnic cleansing.

But don’t take my word for it. Read “White Book: On Violations of Human Rights and the Rule of Law in Ukraine.”

The document presents evidence of repeated and serious violations of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948), the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1950), the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966), and the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995).

The Washington Post (major propaganda player, CIA’s Operation Mockingbird) insists Ukraine is a democracy, never mind, as the above document reveals, “democratic” Ukronazis have harassed, beaten, abducted, tortured, and killed journalists and activists opposed to the Ukronazi, USG-supported coup d’état removing an elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in 2014.

Ukraine has many aspects of a democracy. The president, who is head of state and commander in chief, is chosen by a popular election. The legislature has a mix of single-seat and proportional representation. The prime minister is chosen through a legislative majority and is head of government. The Supreme Court is appointed by the president upon nomination by the Supreme Council of Justice.

How is it possible the violent overthrow of an elected government, the outlawing and persecution of political opposition, reducing Russian speakers to second-class citizenship, the banning of religious freedom, and numerous war crimes against civilians and POWs, can be considered a democracy?

Ukronazi apologists in the USG propaganda media, calling themselves professional journalists, argue Ukraine has imposed martial law in response to Russia’s SMO, and that has effectively put democracy on hold until the war is over and Ukraine is victorious.

Ukronazis engaged in this behavior years before the Russians decided, some argue rather belatedly, to go into Ukraine and disarm them. For the USG national security state’s propaganda media, historical fact is malignant disinformation spewed by Putin, the New Hitler, and if you believe anything coming out of Russia, you’re a Russian dupe, a national security threat to the USG, as Tucker Carlson apparently is for daring to speak the truth about Ukraine.

As I pointed out in “CIA’s Deadly ‘Strategy of Tension’ to Destroy Russia,” the USG is not interested in promoting democracy in a corrupt hellhole run by Ukronazi terrorists and oligarchs. That’s feel-good PR, an excuse to escalate the war.

The primary objective here is to “weaken” Russia, overthrow its government, and as the demented warmonger Lindsay Graham has demanded, assassinate Vladimir Putin.

The USG and its CIA have spent decades prepping Ukraine to be the frontline in the war to eliminate Russia and its elected leader. This is normal behavior for the USG and its psychopathic functionaries.

Kyrylo Budanov realizes Ukraine is not capable on its own of accomplishing attacks inside Russia, hundreds of miles from the border. He knows these raids are the work of the USG, its CIA (in-country for decades), Pentagon special forces, British intelligence, and private mercenary contractors of the sort responsible for so much death and misery in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Following the attack on Makiivka that killed an unknown number of Russian soldiers, we can expect Putin and his generals to speed up their planned winter offensive to finally delouse a smoldering rump state of its last neo-Nazis. The Russian people are demanding as much, in addition to punishing the military brass responsible for putting troops in harm’s way.

However, the war is far from over. The USG has prepared for a guerrilla war against the Russian “occupation” of Crimea and Donbas and plans for a government in exile. In this way, Zelenskyy, if he is still alive, can become the new Juan Guaido, the USG-declared president of Venezuela, never mind Venezuelans voted for somebody else.

Guaido was eventually thrown under the bus. This will be the fate of Zelenskyy or whoever declares himself the leader of a failed and destroyed Ukronazi state.

*

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***

As probably should be expected, The New York Times, CNN, The Washington Post, Fox News, et al, ad nauseam, are dwelling on the anger of Russians following the deadly attack on a Russian base in Makiivka, an industrial city in Donetsk Oblast, now part of the Russian Federation.

For the USG and its war propaganda media, the outpouring of anger and frustration over the attack is a positive development for Ukronazis. It is hoped outrage will turn against Putin and the Russian leadership.

Setting aside the hysterical screaming constituted by the official line, this is very interesting: it looks as though Russian public opinion is at last beginning to wake up. https://t.co/CzuKRoXNRk

— Charles Joseph Esdaile (@CharlesEsdaile) January 3, 2023

As usual, the BBC and those who buy into its nonstop propaganda are misjudging the Russian people. Indeed, they are “beginning to wake up,” not in response to missteps by Putin and his generals, although there is justifiable anger, but rather that Ukraine is in large part controlled by psychopaths who consider them cockroaches and want nothing more than to kill them.

Of course, we can’t expect the BBC, the main propaganda outlet for a nation responsible for blowing up the NordStream pipeline, thus leaving Germans to freeze this winter, to report details on the attack. For warmonger propagandists, the death of hundreds of Russian soldiers, without much detail on the attacks, is enough info for blinkered Brits.

First and foremost, we were told by script-reader Biden and the USG that they would only provide Ukraine with governed Lockheed Martin HIMARS artillery, unable to reach Russia. However, according to the death merchant manufacturer, “the launcher can fire rounds reaching beyond 300km and is ‘interoperable with the latest precision munitions that range 15 to 499+ km,’” reports Newsweek.

Depending on where the HIMARS were fired, most of Donetsk is within reach of potentially illegal rounds, illegal because the platform was used to fire cluster bombs, outlawed by all sane and rational nations. Believe it or not, Biden is actually considering sending cluster bombs to genocidal Ukronazis.

The original M26 rockets had cluster warheads which distributed over 600 small bomblets over a wide area. Nicknamed ‘steel rain,’ these proved extremely effective during Operation Desert Storm in 1991, but left an unacceptable number of unexploded bomblets on the battlefield. The M26 was replaced with a unitary warhead, that is, one with a single, large explosive charge.

News reports dutifully ignored by the war propaganda media indicate the Ukronazis have in fact already used cluster munitions, more than likely provided by the USG, which lies about the degree of military assistance given to Zelenskyy and his band of whack-job ultranats. Remarkably, the use of cluster bombs in Ukraine, often responsible for killing and maiming children, was reported by The New York Times. According to a report on MRonline:

The cluster bombs that the Ukrainian forces used against a village populated with civilians on their own territory are banned by countries around the world for their capacity to haphazardly kill innocent civilians, according to the Convention on Cluster Munitions. Almost 20% of these munitions fail to detonate on impact, and remain a threat to civilians long after hostilities end, killing and maiming them indiscriminately.

The Ukronazis, notorious for disemboweling and hacking to death Polish children in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia during WWII, began using cluster bombs in Donetsk following the USG-orchestrated coup in Kyiv.

Ukrainian forces had also used cluster bombs in 2015 in battles against the breakaway republics of Lugansk and Donetsk to the country’s east. More recently, they fired such munitions on Donetsk on March 14, killing 20 people and wounding 37 others…

The head of the [Donetsk’s] Defense Ministry’s National Defense Management Center, General Mikhail Mezentsev, touched on Ukraine’s actions in Donetsk, revealing the toll of the Ukrainian Tochka-U attack, a missile containing cluster munition. He described the bombing as a “war crime.”

If in fact HIMARS artillery was used in the attack on the Russian base in Makiivka, it is more than likely USG trainers and Pentagon technicians were present. The Russians understand “that targets are selected using US military satellites,” and training of Ukronazis on the complex precision rocket system is intense.

“Ukrainian Soldiers have begun training on the first U.S.-made rocket artillery systems at an undisclosed location outside of the country, according to a senior U.S. defense official,” the Defense Blog noted in June.

“What the HIMARS will allow them to do is to get greater standoff. Right now, the howitzers we provided them have about a 30 km range; the HIMARS have more than twice that, which will allow them—even with fewer systems—greater standoff,” said Colin H. Kahl, undersecretary of defense for policy.

It is entirely possible a “shoot-and-scoot” HIMARS unit could have positioned itself close enough to level a Russian military facility in Donetsk. However, I doubt the mission was carried out by Ukrainians, as we know the Pentagon and NATO do not entirely trust them—and with good reason. USG weapons systems are showing up in Africa, sold to potential terrorists and other “bad actors” by unscrupulous Ukrainians.

“NATO does not trust Ukrainian soldiers to operate HIMARS themselves, presumably for a number of reasons,” explains Ian Summer, “An American Tourist in Russia,”

Ukrainian crews might not be competent enough to perform these high-speed “shoot and scoot” missions without being detected and destroyed by Russian counter-battery fire, Ukrainian neo-nazis might be too tempted to [attack] Russian territory, Ukrainian commanders might be too corrupt and sell HIMARS launchers and munitions, or all the above.

I admit this is speculation (a conspiracy theory rendering me, according to the FBI, a domestic terrorist, maybe even a white supremacist). However, a number of reported facts strengthen the argument that the USG is on the ground in Ukraine, employing its sophisticated GPS and satellite imagery to target Russians. In short, the USG is killing Russians—and many of them (some estimates say the Makiivka bombing killed over 600, although this has yet to be confirmed).

1. The CIA is in Ukraine, and has been for some time. This was reported by The New York Times, but only because the state has made it part of the pro-war narrative. The CIA is not in the business of passing out cookies like Victoria Nuland.

2. In early December, the Pentagon admitted its willingness to push the envelope in Ukraine. “An anonymous US defense source told The Times that ‘the fear of escalation has changed since the beginning. It’s different now.’”

3. While it would be counterproductive for the USG to admit it has troops on the ground, it is far less controversial to admit there are a lot of American mercenaries willing to do what the Pentagon can’t, or won’t do in Ukraine, at least for the moment.

4. As with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the USG is using corporate mercenaries, according to the Russians, in particular, hired guns from Greystone, a former affiliate of Blackwater (subsequently Xe, then Academi). The Russians claimed in April there were 150 American mercenaries operating in Ukraine.

5. Even before Russia’s SMO, the USG decided to send “advisers” to Ukraine. “The Biden administration is considering sending military advisers and new weapons to Ukraine in the face of a Russian military buildup near the border between the two countries,” The Hill reported on November 23, 2021, citing CNN. Consider, as a historical parallel, what occurred after President Kennedy sent military advisers to Vietnam in 1961.

6. The CIA again. On December 26, I wrote “CIA’s Deadly ‘Strategy of Tension’ to Destroy Russia,” a look at mysterious attacks deep inside Russia. I pointed out how the CIA recruited a “stay behind army” of extremists to engage in various terrorist attacks and acts of sabotage following WWII. I wrote the post after former US Army Special Operations operative Jack Murphy claimed,

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

Again, considering the past history of the national security state and its CIA enforcer, I find it difficult to believe the CIA and the Pentagon (along with British intelligence) are not responsible for attacking far-flung cities in Russia and also coordinating, if not accomplishing on its own, attacks on the Russians in Donetsk.

*

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***

The accession of Kyrgyzstan to chair of the Commonwealth of Independent States for 2023 should bode well for the central Asian republic. Having not held the position since 2016, Kyrgyzstan’s new role in the CIS, a transnational Eurasian body intended to foster economic and military development, will likely spur economic growth in what is the poorest country in the region.

Going by recent trends related to the two most recent chairs of the CIS however, Belarus in 2021 and Kazakhstan last year, it also may mean that Bishkek has now been placed in the sights of the regime change lobby.

In August 2020, following Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko’s electoral victory over opposition candidate Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, a US-orchestrated regime change operation would be launched against Minsk, owing to it being Moscow’s sole European ally, its nationalised state industries, and in what was perhaps the most pertinent factor at the time, Lukashenko’s refusal to implement the lockdown measures as part of the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset initiative.

Violent protests, backed by US NGO the National Endowment for Democracy, would sweep the former Soviet state in the aftermath of the election, continuing for several months before finally being quelled by Minsk, with Lukashenko’s government remaining intact.

This would not be a fate shared by neighbouring Ukraine, with Kiev having been subjected to the Euromaidan regime operation in 2013-14 which resulted in a Western-backed coalition coming to power. A situation, that had it occurred in Belarus in 2020, would have resulted in the precarious situation where Russia’s entire western border was composed solely of NATO-members and allies.

Likewise, in Russia’s southern neighbour Kazakhstan, protests in response to rising fuel prices in early 2022 would rapidly escalate into extreme violence in the space of several days, resulting in the deaths of 18 members of the Kazakh security services, including two who were decapitated.

The sudden, violent nature of the Kazakh protests, as well as their coordinated coverage by the corporate media, bore all the hallmarks of a Western-backed colour revolution. Indeed, this was effectively confirmed as such by a May 2020 policy document published by neoconservative think tank the RAND Corporation, which envisaged the destabilisation of Kazakhstan as having a spill-over effect into neighbouring Russia, the 7,000km long border between both nations being the 2^nd largest in the world after the US and Canada.

This is where the potential for a colour revolution attempt in Kyrgyzstan comes into play.

Though a small country, Kyrgyzstan’s geographical location, to the west of the Xinjiang region of China, means that a Maidan-style colour revolution in the country would ultimately have a spill-over effect into its larger eastern neighbour, specifically into a region known for extremist activity, such as that of ETIM, a group which previously fought with the Al-Nusra Front in Syria, and which bombed the Chinese Embassy in Bishkek in a 2016 attack.

Indeed, destabilising Kyrgyzstan as a means to trigger a Domino effect which would ultimately destabilise China, ties in perfectly with the recent activity of the regime change lobby.

Just last month, protests against Beijing’s ‘zero-Covid’ policies quickly escalated into demands for the removal of Xi Jinping from office, a situation conspicuously envisaged by Open Society founder George Soros in a January 2022 address to the Hoover Institution. Despite also receiving the support of the NED, this attempt at regime change would quickly falter due to Beijing acceding to the demands of legitimate protesters and removing lockdown restrictions, resulting in the corporate media switching to a ‘Covid is spreading again’ narrative.

However, with Kyrgyzstan’s new role as chair of the CIS, and what happened with the two previous holders of the position, 2023 may see another attempt at regime change in China, one that could possibly begin in its smaller western neighbour.

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Gavin O’Reilly is an activist from Dublin, Ireland, with a strong interest in the effects of British and US Imperialism. Secretary of the Dublin Anti-Internment Committee, a campaign group set up to raise awareness of Irish Republican political prisoners in British and 26 County jails. His work has previously appeared on American Herald Tribune, The Duran, Al-Masdar and MintPress News. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. Support him on Patreon.

Featured image: Bishkek (Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0)

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***

 

That the trial was unfair is indicated by the judge’s ruling that all evidence supplied by Dutch and Ukrainian state organizations was admissible in court; but all evidence supplied by Russian organizations were inadmissible.

On November 17, a Dutch court convicted two Russians, and a Ukrainian commander of a military unit in the Donetsk People’s Militia, in absentia for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014.^[1]

The Russians are Igor Girkin, a 51-year-old former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB), and his subordinate, Sergey Dubinsky, and Donetsk People’s Militia commander Leonid Kharchenko, who allegedly took orders from Dubinsky.^[2]

Russian Oleg Pulatov^[3]—the only defendant to employ an attorney—was acquitted at the trial for lack of evidence.

Dutch prosecutors acknowledged that the four defendants had not “press[ed] the button themselves,” but said that they had worked to get Buk missiles to the firing location.^[4]

Secretary of State Antony Blinken proclaimed after the verdict that the

“U.S. welcomes today’s decision finding three members of Russian proxy forces in eastern Ukraine guilty for their roles in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17. The decision by the District Court of The Hague is an important moment in ongoing efforts to deliver justice for the 298 individuals who lost their lives on July 17, 2014.”

Justice was not actually delivered for the victims, however. The Dutch judge, Hendrik Steenhuis, ruled admissible evidence supplied by Dutch and Ukrainian state organizations and their military officers, intelligence agents, and police but not by Russian organizations because, he said, they are state agencies and “not clear, transparent, entirely unconvincing.”

Steenhuis admitted at the beginning of the trial, however, that bodies were tampered with by Ukrainian authorities at the scene of the crash, making clear that they were not transparent.

Ukrainian authorities also withheld communication between the MH17 pilots and Ukrainian air control, the radar tracking data at the Ukrainian air control center, and communication from the air controller in charge of MH17, and appear to have fabricated an audio tape purporting to show Russian-backed rebels in Donetsk bragging about shooting down the MH17 plane.^[5]

The U.S. for its part obstructed justice by refusing to provide satellite imagery from the crash it claimed to have after Judge Steenhuis demanded it, telling the court that it was willing to interpret the satellite images but not reveal them.^[6]

A Show Trial

Christopher Black, a veteran litigator in international war crimes trials, referred to the Dutch trial “as nothing more than a Ukrainian civil war fought by the Kyiv regime, with lawyers instead of soldiers. It’s a show trial. Nothing more than propaganda.”^[7]

According to Christelle Néant writing in the Donbass Insider, evidence presented by Russia that Judge Steenhuis refused to consider included the serial number from the Buk missile allegedly used in the shootdown, which indicated that the missile belonged to the Ukrainian Army.

Despite intensive overhead surveillance of Ukraine in 2014, U.S. and other Western intelligence services could find no evidence that Russia had ever given a Buk system to the rebels or introduced one into the area.^[8]

Image: Russian-made Buk system. [Source: consortiumnews.com]

Satellite intelligence reviewed both before and after the shoot-down only detected Ukrainian Buk missile systems in the conflict zone.

Dutch intelligence specified in a suppressed October 2015 report that the only anti-aircraft weapons in eastern Ukraine capable of bringing down MH17 at 33,000 feet belonged to the Ukrainian government.^[9]

Major General Onno Eichelsheim, Director of the Dutch Military Intelligence Service (MIVD), concluded—based on review of top-secret NATO and U.S. signals intelligence monitoring Russian military units—that flight MH17 was “flying beyond the range of all identified and operational Ukrainian and Russian locations where 9K37MI Buk M1 Systems were deployed.”^[10]

The Dutch court in 2022 suggested that the Buk was fired from a field near Pervomaysky, located on the border of the zone in eastern Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian army, which was encircling and shelling Saur-Mogila next to it.

A former commander of the Donetsk People’s Militia told Néant—in a statement corroborated by a local villager named Valentina—that the Ukrainian Army was present on the outskirts of Stepanovka around Saur-Mogila at the time of the crash and that Ukrainian soldiers would have consequently seen and heard the shot from the Buk system and destroyed it, given their close proximity.

The same commander said that, if the Donetsk People’s Militia had a Buk system, they would never have installed it in Pervomaysky within range of Ukrainian artillery—with just a few soldiers to protect the device.

Rather, he told her, they would have installed it in Snezhnoye, to protect the town—which had been bombed the day before by the Ukrainian Air Force, which killed 12 civilians.

According to Valentina, the Buk in Stepanovka was too far away to hit MH17, and its trajectory was not consistent with where the plane was shot down.^[11]

The damage to the plane also was inconsistent with a hit from a missile as heavy as a Buk.^[12]

Source: dailymail.co.uk

The Buk was thus likely not the weapon—as the Dutch court and U.S. government officials claim.

The Lie That Shot Down MH17

John Helmer, the longest serving foreign correspondent in Russia, writes in his 2020 book, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, that “CT scans, x-rays, autopsy sections, and spectroscopic testing of metals…conducted in the Netherlands and verified in Australia, make the Buk story impossible.”^[13]

Helmer points out that a Buk warhead would have caused thousands of pieces of shrapnel to have been lodged in the bodies of the crash victims. The only shrapnel evidence discovered in the bodies of the MH17 victims, however, was confined to the three cockpit crew.^[14]

An Australian investigation led by Dr. David Ransom, a Victoria forensic pathologist, ruled out that the recorded injuries of the victims or cause of death “resulted from metal penetration of a Buk warhead or other ordinance.”^[15]

The Russians from the outset claimed that the MH17 was shot down in an air-to-air strike. This is consistent with numerous eyewitnesses in Rozspyne and Grabovo, who stated that they heard multiple aircraft around the time of the crash, and that one of the aircraft flew away.^[16]

Two of the eyewitnesses said that the other aircraft had to have been Ukrainian because they saw a Ukrainian fighter fall down, nose-up, behind a forest on Ukraine-controlled territory and saw two pilots descend by parachute.^[17]

Another witness reported to a Dutch police investigator in July 2015 that he had seen two Ukrainian Air Force fighter jets in the air at the time of the shootdown and a plume moving horizontally across the sky indicating an air-to-air missile launch, not a missile fired from the ground.^[18]

Rod from what experts believe is the air-to-air missile that shot down the MH17 flight. [Source: crimesofempire.com]

Russian radar readings significantly revealed the presence of a Ukrainian jet fighter “gaining height” as it closed to within three to five kilometers of MH17, while a retired Lufthansa pilot, Peter Haisenko, analyzed photos which indicated that a side panel of the fuselage located next to the pilot was riddled with 30 mm bullets—which had to have come from a Ukrainian Su-25 plane, and not a ground-to-air missile.

Objects found in the pilots’ bodies were also believed to have been bullets—which would indicate Ukrainian responsibility since it had an Air Force when the Donetsk rebels did not.

Flight and Suicide

Russian media sources reported that the pilot responsible for shooting down the MH17, Lt. Col. Dmitro Yakatsuts of the elite 299 Squadron in the Ukrainian air force, fled afterwards to Dubai with a pretty air traffic controller named Anna Petrenko, who was allegedly in charge of the MH17 flight.

Another pilot allegedly responsible, Captain Vladyslav Voloshyn, committed suicide allegedly in March 2018.

U.S. Intelligence Concurs with Russian Assessment

U.S. intelligence analysts concurred with the Russian assessments, telling journalist Robert Parry that Flight MH17 was shot down by an air-to-air missile and that the Ukrainian government had something to do with it.

Likely it was rogue elements of the Ukrainian military tied to warlord Ihor Kholomoisky, who financed neo-Nazi militias that fought the Russian-backed rebels in Donetsk.^[19]

This corroborates the theory by local investigators that the MH17 was crippled by an air-to-air missile and finished off with cannon fire from a fighter that had been shadowing it as it plummeted to earth.

Source: readersupportednews.org

Ukrainian Obstruction

John Helmer recounts that, according to a Dutch investigator, when Ukrainian investigators came on the crash scene, one of them curiously received a call from the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs reminding him that they had an order not to study the site and send bodies to Kharkiv [in eastern Ukraine]. When the Dutch investigator refused the orders, he was fired.

Alexandr Gavrilyako, a prosecutor working at the time for the Ukrainian Internal Affairs Ministry, said:

“If they knew and believed that a crime had been committed by militias or members of the Russian Federation, then on the contrary, they would have given me and my investigators instructions to examine the scene and find evidence of the guilt of this or that person. But they gave the completely opposite instructions.”^[20]

Key Unanswered Question

A key unanswered question is why Kyiv Air Traffic Control, as part of the Ukraine Ministry of Aviation, ordered the MH17 to deviate from its scheduled route that avoided the war zone in eastern Ukraine.

Screenshot images from FlightAware.com compiled by Vagelis Karmiros who collated all the recent MH17 flight paths as tracked by FlightAware and shows that, while all ten most recent paths pass safely well south of the Donetsk region, and cross the zone above the Sea of Azov, it was only the tragic July 17 MH17 flight that passed straight overhead Donetsk. [Source: rt.com]

After the FlightAware data was initially published, the site changed its version of the trajectory of MH17. The question arises: Were they pressured to do so?

“Not Really Looking at the Causes of the Crash”

The Malaysian Prime Minister, Mahathir Mohamad, expressed his belief in a documentary film that the claim that the Russians were responsible was invented from the start.

Emphasizing that Malaysian officials were stopped from reviewing the evidence, Mahathir said on May 26, 2019:

“They [Dutch, Australian and U.S. governments] never allowed us to be involved from the very beginning. This is unfair and unusual. So we can see they are not really looking at the causes of the crash and who was responsible. But already they have decided it must be Russia. So we cannot accept this kind of attitude. We are interested in the rule of law, in justice for everyone, irrespective of who is involved.”^[21]

A Highly Interesting Coincidence?

RT News reported that, just as was the case during the World Trade Center attacks of September 2001, there were military war games exercises taking place on the days before and right after the MH17 event, which could have provided a cover for a covert operation.^[22]

According to Wayne Madsen, NATO and the Ukraine military were involved in ten days of joint military “exercises,” code-named “Sea Breeze,” that included the use of electronic warfare and electronic intelligence aircraft such as the Boeing EA-18G Growler, which have the capability to jam radar systems in all surface-to-air threats, and the Boeing E3 Sentry Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS).

Image: Boeing EA-18G Growler. [Source: jet-airlinezz.blogspot.com]

Sea Breeze, according to Madsen, included the AEGIS-class guided missile cruiser USS Vela Gulf. From the Black Sea, “the Vela Gulf was able to track Malaysia Airlines MH17 over the Black Sea as well as any missiles fired at the plane.” As well, U.S. AWACS electronic intelligence (ELINT) aircraft were also flying over the Black Sea region at the time of the MH17 fly-over of Ukraine.

Operation Trident was also taking place at the time of the MH17 shootdown involving airborne and air infantry troops from the U.S., Germany, Italy, the UK, Canada, Poland and Ukraine.

Spanish Air Traffic Controller Threatened

According to Madsen, a Spanish air traffic controller, who possessed knowledge of the Ukrainian Interior Ministry’s involvement in the shoot-down of MH17, reportedly had his life threatened by people he described as “Maidan” troops, a reference to the Maidan Square uprising that toppled the Ukrainian government in February 2014.

The Spanish controller, identified only as “Carlos,” understood that the shootdown of MH17 was carried out by supporters of former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, both allies of Ihor Kolomoisky.

MI6 Psywar Operation

One of the first articles to allegedly break the story of the MH17 crash in the London Daily Mail quoted Dr. Igor Sutyagin, Research Fellow in Russian Studies from the Royal United Services Institute, who promoted the theory that MH17 had been shot down by rebels based in the 3^rd District of Torez in eastern Ukraine after mistaking the plane for a government military transport aircraft, and that the rebels had brought it down using a ground-to-air Buk missile system.

Sutyagin was a Russian nuclear weapons academic convicted and imprisoned in Moscow in 2004 for espionage, then released to the UK in a spy swap in July 2010 with Sergei Skirpal—the target of an alleged poisoning attack that was blamed on Russia, but which appears to have been part of a false-flag operation orchestrated by Great Britain, whose aim was to further the demonization of Vladimir Putin and promote further sanctions and regime-change efforts.

John Helmer writes that “Sutyagin’s appearance in the Daily Mail twenty four hours after the crash is the first public sign of British intelligence at work on the [MH17] case. The only sources Sutyagin had for what he told the newspaper were in, or working for British intelligence.”^[23]

Bellingcat

Another sign of a British intelligence operation was the role played by Bellingcat, a research institute that purveys disinformation in support of the new Cold War.

Bellingcat’s founder, Eliot Higgins, is a college dropout who made significant mistakes in an earlier investigation of the Syria-sarin case in 2013; he was for years treated as a savant on the MH17 case in the mainstream media while basing his analysis on dubious internet photographs that he used to blame Russia for the attacks.

Team Obama Adopts the Ukrainian Story…and Lies

Just over two hours after the MH17 crash, President Barack Obama spoke to Vladimir Putin, who informed Obama of a report received from air traffic controllers suggesting that the lethal explosion which took down the aircraft originated from the air, not from the ground.

After the call, Obama called Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and then quickly adopted the Buk story, the official position of the Foreign Ministry in Kyiv, absent any independent investigation.^[24]

On July 21, 2014, Obama stated on national television that the Malaysia Airlines plane, “was shot down over territory controlled by Russian-backed separatists in Ukraine,” and that Russia both trained the separatists and “armed them with military equipment and weapons, including anti-aircraft weapons.” William Engdahl wrote that Obama’s speech “brought the entire world one giant step closer to a Cold War with Russia that easily could become a hot war.”

The same was true for statements made by Secretary of State John Kerry on July 20 on NBC’s Meet the Press.

Kerry claimed that he had “seen U.S. satellite imagery of the attack on the MH17 flight [which has never been released^[25]]—the launch of a ground-based missile, its flight, and then detonation beside the civilian aircraft in flight.” Kerry continued:

“We picked up the imagery of this launch, we know the trajectory. We know where it came from. We know the timing…And it was exactly at the time that this aircraft [MH17] disappeared from the radar. We also know from voice identification [a Ukrainian fabrication that was also ambiguous] that the separatists were bragging about shooting it down afterwards.”^[26]

When Thomas Schansman, father of a U.S.-Dutch citizen killed in the crash, wrote to Kerry in 2016 requesting information about the satellite images Kerry claimed to have viewed, Kerry, tellingly, was evasive. Schansman told Robert Parry that the message was “clear. No answer on my request to hand over satellite and/or radar data to DSB [Dutch Safety Board] or public.”^[27]

DNI Repeats Kerry’s Lies

On July 22, 2014, two days after Kerry’s appearance on “Meet the Press,” the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), James Clapper, authorized the release of a brief report repeating Kerry’s allegations. It referred to “an increasing amount of heavy weaponry crossing the border from Russia to separatist fighters in Ukraine”; claimed that Russia “continues to provide training including on air defense systems to separatist fighters at a facility in southwest Russia”; and noted that the rebels “have demonstrated proficiency with surface-to-air missile systems, downing more than a dozen aircraft in the months prior to the MH17 tragedy, including two large transport aircraft.”

Yet, despite the insinuation of Russian guilt, what the public report actually said was that the rebels had previously only used short-range shoulder-fired missiles to bring down low-flying military planes, whereas MH17 was flying at approximately 33,000 feet, far beyond the range of those weapons.^[28]

Samantha Power Adds Her Condemnation of Russia

The key government figure responsible for presenting the Buk story as the official U.S. government “assessment” was then-U.S. Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power.^[29] Power was author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book, “A Problem From Hell”: America and the Age of Genocide (2003), which lamented past American inaction in the face of genocide, and was a hawk in the Obama administration pushing for military intervention in Libya to overthrow Muammar Qaddafi on supposed humanitarian grounds.

In an emergency session of the UN Security Council on July 18, 2014, Power gave an emotional speech blaming Russia for killing women and children on board the MH17 flight. She flat-out lied when she claimed that “Russian-backed separatists prevented investigators from gaining full and timely access to the crash site,” when in reality it was Ukraine that had done so.

Journalist Alexander Nettyosov reported having spent several days with Donetsk law enforcement who, he said, “fulfilled their duties to the last, in spite of the fact that Ukraine had all but abandoned its responsibilities and tried a variety of administrative and psychological measures first to delay the investigation, and then to stop it altogether.”^[30]

War Plans

Buoyed by Power’s emotional testimony before the UN, which included the shedding of tears for the victims, President Obama and his advisers spent at least a week after the MH17 crash and as much as three weeks planning to send up to 9,000 combat troops into eastern Ukraine.^[31]

The scheme—which was leaked by an Australian Army captain—was to have involved Dutch and Australian army units, with German ground and U.S. air support, plus NATO direction.

Source: 21^stcenturywire.com

James Brown, head of research at the United States Studies Center at the University of Sydney, said that the plan—which had Australia’s National Security Committee meeting every day for more than three weeks—would have consumed the bulk of the Australian Army.^[32]

The official pretext for the invasion would have been to secure the MH17 crash site, but the real agenda was to defeat the separatist movement in the Donbas, and to move against Russian-held Crimea.^[33]

According to Dutch sources, the military plan of attack was aborted when Germany refused to participate directly, or allow its bases or airspace to be used. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte announced the Dutch were pulling their troops out of the plan on July 27, 2014.

As a consolation prize, the U.S. and EU officials, on July 29, 2014, announced the imposition of new sanctions on Russia, which were the first to commence economic and trade warfare against Russian banks and the Russian ship-building sector. This was all part of a regime-change strategy designed to undermine the nationalist Putin and replace him with a pliable leader like Boris Yeltsin who had opened the Russian economy to foreign exploitation in the 1990s.^[34]

Flight MH17 and the New Cold War

In his book Flight MH17: Ukraine and the new Cold War: Prism of Disaster (Manchester University Press, 2018), Dutch scholar Kees van der Pijl points out that on the eve of the crash, Putin had been promoting economic integration with Germany to the chagrin of the U.S. foreign policy elite and advancing a land for gas deal with German Chancellor Angela Merkel bolstered by the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline that would enable Russia to supply Germany with natural gas.

The MH17 crash had the effect of preventing this new arrangement and ending tripartite talks between Vladimir Putin, German chancellor Angela Merkel and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko over the gas deal and in which Russia had promised to compensate Ukraine for the loss of rental income for the Russian naval base at Sevastopol and drop objections to a free trade agreement with the EU in exchange for Ukraine agreeing not to pursue NATO membership.

The MH17 crash also helped secure EU support for U.S. sanctions that had been levied on Ukraine the day before, while helping to validate an escalation of U.S. military intervention in Ukraine, which was already considerable to that point.^[35]

Was Putin the Intended Target?

Robert Parry said that he was told by his intelligence source that U.S. analysts looked seriously at the possibility that the intended target of the attack on the MH17 was President Putin’s official plane returning from a state visit to South America. His aircraft and MH17 had similar red-white-and-blue markings, but Putin took a more northerly route and arrived safely in Moscow.

A side-by-side comparison of the Russian presidential jetliner and the Malaysia Airlines plane. [Source: consortiumnews.com]

Other possible scenarios were that a poorly trained and undisciplined Ukrainian squad mistook MH17 for a Russian plane that had penetrated Ukrainian airspace or that the attack was a willful provocation designed to be blamed on the Russians.

Classic Piece of Strategic Communication

Parry wrote in 2016 that the MH17 case was deployed like a classic piece of “strategic communication,”  mixing propaganda with psychological operations to put an adversary—Russia and Vladimir Putin—at a disadvantage.^[36]

The Dutch MH17 trial and verdict is obviously a continuation of the psyops at a time when the anti-Russian demonization campaign has greatly expanded and when a potential hot war with Russia appears to be on the horizon.

During the 1930s, the term “show trial” was invented to describe politicized court proceedings in Stalinist Russia in which a guilty verdict for those accused of sabotaging the Soviet state was never in doubt. Now the term is most appropriate in the West where evidence and facts do not matter in legal proceedings that are designed to mobilize public support for World War III.

*

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

Notes

1. Flight MH17 was going from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All 298 people on board were killed, including 80 children. 

2. Girkin was Minister of Defense in the Donetsk People’s Republic. 
3. Pulatov was deputy head of the intelligence service in Donetsk. 
4. John Helmer, with Max van der Werff, Liane Theuerkauf and Sam Bullard, The Lie That Shot Down MH17 (John Helmer, 2020), 399. 
5. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 107, 421; William Engdahl, “Ukraine MH17 may be CIA false flag and it ain’t flying,” RT News, August 1, 2014, https://www.rt.com/op-ed/177388-mh17-cia-false-ukraine/. The rebels could have been bragging about shooting down a Ukrainian Su-25 which was shot down some hours earlier; the tapes are unclear which aircraft they are referring to that had been shot down. Sergey Dubinsky stated in an interview that the conversation recorded in the tapes was from before the MH17 crash and that the Ukrainian Security Services (SBU) had “edited it a lot.” Malaysian and German voice recording experts confirmed that the tape had been tampered with. 
6. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 521. 
7. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 580. 
8. Parry wrote: “If Russian-supplied Buks had been spotted and the batteries of four 16-foot-long missiles hauled around by trucks that are hard to miss their presence surely would have been noted.” 
9. The rebels, the report said, lacked that capacity. 
10. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 397, 407. The U.S. hence knew that the Buk missile could not have shot down MH17—though nevertheless has claimed that it did. Eichelsheim said that “these locations [where the Buk missile was allegedly placed] are in the immediate vicinity of large population centers, and the landed missile would most likely have led to messages on social media or other public media. MIVD is not aware of such publications.” 
11. Almaz-Antey Corporation, the Russian arms manufacturer of the Buk system, conducted its own experiments to determine the likely firing location and placed it near the village of Zaroshchenskoye in an area under Ukrainian government control. 
12. Kees van der Pijl, Flight MH17: Ukraine and the new Cold War: Prism of Disaster (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 134. 
13. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 159. 
14. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 87. 
15. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 142. 
16. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 61, 395. The eyewitness testimony is preserved in the Prosector’s office of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR). 
17. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 61. 
18. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 397. Numerous other witnesses said that they saw Ukrainian military planes and that the planes shot a missile which led to the explosion of the MH17. The Ukrainian military jet, they specified, was flying below the civilian MH17 airliner. Residents also specified that it was impossible for the plane to have been shot down by a Buk missile in the way the official narrative holds. 
19. Kholomoisky also financed the political rise of Ukraine’s current president Volodymyr Zelensky. 
20. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 39. 
21. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 368. 
22. On war games exercises on 9/11, see Ray McGinnis, Unanswered Questions: What the September Eleventh Families Asked and the 9/11 Commission Ignored (Vancouver, B.C.: Northern Star Publications, 2021), 113, 114. McGinnis notes that the scenario for one of the war games on 9/11, Amalgam Virgo One, involved a suicide pilot attacking a military building, while Fertile Rice featured Osama bin Laden directing a drone filled with explosives to target Washington, D.C. Two other games, Vigilant Guardian and Global Guardian, had a photo of bin Laden on the cover of their documents and featured a script where terrorists hijacked a plane in order to attack Manhattan. 
23. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 43. 
24. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 155, 156. 
25. Onno Eichelsheim, Director of the Dutch Military Intelligence Service (MIVD), claimed that these images actually revealed that Flight MH17 flew beyond the range of any Buk missiles, hence discrediting Kerry’s statements and proving him to be a liar. During the Vietnam War, Kerry had eloquently called out high-level government officials like Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for the lies that had been used to promote the war; but now Kerry had become McNamara, selling his soul for the trappings of power. 
26. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 418. 
27. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 495. 
28. The DNI never expressed certainty that Russian-backed rebels were behind the shooting down of the aircraft, claiming at one point that it was possible the missile that struck the plane was launched by a defector from the Ukrainian military who was trained to use similar missile systems. 
29. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 160. 
30. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 51. Noting that Russia was most interested in a transparent investigation, Nettyosov added that, “unfortunately, the work of the Donetsk investigators who spent two days on the Boeing 777 crash site was not used by anybody.” He continued: “If Ukraine were interested in investigating this case in which, according to the official Kyiv version, both the local militias and Russia were implicated, nobody would have held us up. Rather, to the contrary, they’d be asking us to leave no stone unturned to find every last piece of evidence, monitoring my every move, confident in my thoroughness and professional ability.” Nettyosov noted further that there is little reason to point to the militias—as downing a Boeing would brand them as international terrorists, and was also beyond their capacity. Some of the militia members, he said, were “carrying hunting shotguns.” 
31. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 257. 
32. Idem.
33. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 385, 386. 
34. Helmer, The Lie That Shot Down MH17, 257, 261; Jeremy Kuzmarov, “‘A New Battlefield for the United States’: Russia Sanctions and the New Cold War,” Socialism and Democracy, 33, 3 (2019). 
35. Van der Pijl, Flight MH17, 99, 114, 115. Mark Leonard, founder and director of the European Council on Foreign Relations, noted in a newspaper interview “without MH17 it would have been pretty difficult to find sufficient support for the increased sanctions on the Russian economy.” 

36. Van der Pijl, Flight MH17. 

Featured image: Source: johnhelmer.net

This article was originally published on Asia Times on October 11, 2020

Chinese scholar Lanxin Xiang has written a book, The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese Politics, that is arguably the most extraordinary effort in decades trying to bridge the East-West politico-historical divide.

It’s impossible in a brief column to do justice to the relevance of the discussions this book inspires. Here we will highlight some of the key issues – hoping they will appeal to an informed readership especially across the Beltway, now convulsed by varying degrees of Sinophobia.

Xiang delves right into the fundamental contradiction: China is widely accused by the West of lack of democratic legitimacy exactly as it enjoys a four-decade, sustainable, history-making economic boom.

He identifies two key sources for the Chinese problem:

“On the one hand, there is the project of cultural restoration through which Chinese leader Xi Jinping attempts to restore ‘Confucian legitimacy’ or the traditional ‘Mandate of Heaven’; on the other hand, Xi refuses to start any political reforms, because it is his top priority to preserve the existing political system, i.e., a ruling system derived mainly from an alien source, Bolshevik Russia.”

Ay, there’s the rub: “The two objectives are totally incompatible”.

Xiang contends that for the majority of Chinese – the apparatus and the population at large – this “alien system” cannot be preserved forever, especially now that a cultural revival focuses on the Chinese Dream.

Needless to add, scholarship in the West is missing the plot completely – because of the insistence on interpreting China under Western political science and “Eurocentric historiography”. What Xiang attempts in his book is to “navigate carefully the conceptual and logical traps created by post-Enlightenment terminologies”.

Thus his emphasis on deconstructing “master keywords” – a wonderful concept straight out of ideography. The four master keywords are legitimacy, republic, economy and foreign policy. This volume concentrates on legitimacy (hefa, in Chinese).

When law is about morality

It’s a joy to follow how Xiang debunks Max Weber – “the original thinker of the question of political legitimacy”. Weber is blasted for his “rather perfunctory study of the Confucian system”. He insisted that Confucianism – emphasizing only equality, harmony, decency, virtue and pacifism – could not possibly develop a competitive capitalist spirit.

Xiang shows how since the beginning of the Greco-Roman tradition, politics was always about a spatial conception – as reflected in polis (a city or city-state). The Confucian concept of politics, on the other hand, is “entirely temporal, based on the dynamic idea that legitimacy is determined by a ruler’s daily moral behavior.”

Xiang shows how hefa contains in fact two concepts: “fit” and “law” – with “law” giving priority to morality.

In China, the legitimacy of a ruler is derived from a Mandate of Heaven (Tian Ming). Unjust rulers inevitably lose the mandate – and the right to rule. This, argues Xiang, is “a dynamic ‘deeds-based’ rather than ‘procedure-based’ argument.”

Essentially, the Mandate of Heaven is “an ancient Chinese belief that tian [ heaven, but not the Christian heaven, complete with an omniscient God] grants the emperor the right to rule based on their moral quality and ability to govern well and fairly.”

The beauty of it is that the mandate does not require a divine connection or noble bloodline, and has no time limit. Chinese scholars have always interpreted the mandate as a way to fight abuse of power.

The overall crucial point is that, unlike in the West, the Chinese view of history is cyclical, not linear: “Legitimacy is in fact a never-ending process of moral self-adjustment.”

Xiang then compares it with the Western understanding of legitimacy. He refers to Locke, for whom political legitimacy derives from explicit and implicit popular consent of the governed. The difference is that without institutionalized religion, as in Christianity, the Chinese created “a dynamic conception of legitimacy through the secular authority of general will of the populace, arriving at this idea without the help of any fictional political theory such as divine rights of humanity and ‘social contract’’.

Xiang cannot but remind us that Leibniz described it as “Chinese natal theology”, which happened not to clash with the basic tenets of Christianity.

Xiang also explains how the Mandate of Heaven has nothing to do with Empire: “Acquiring overseas territories for population resettlement never occurred in Chinese history, and it does little to enhance legitimacy of the ruler.”

In the end it was the Enlightenment, mostly because of Montesquieu, that started to dismiss the Mandate of Heaven as “nothing but apology for ‘Oriental Despotism’”. Xiang notes how “pre-modern Europe’s rich interactions with the non-Western world” were “deliberately ignored by post-Enlightenment historians.”

Which brings us to a bitter irony: “While modern ‘democratic legitimacy’ as a concept can only work with the act of delegitimizing other types of political system, the Mandate of Heaven never contains an element of disparaging other models of governance.”  So much for “the end of history.”

Why no Industrial Revolution?

Xiang asks a fundamental question: “Is China’s success indebted more to the West-led world economic system or to its own cultural resources?”

And then he proceeds to meticulously debunk the myth that economic growth is only possible under Western liberal democracy – a heritage, once again, of the Enlightenment, which ruled that Confucianism was not up to the task.

We already had an inkling that was not the case with the ascension of the East Asian tigers – Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea – in the 1980s and 1990s. That even moved a bunch of social scientists and historians to admit that Confucianism could be a stimulus to economic growth.

Yet they only focused on the surface, the alleged “core” Confucian values of hard work and thrift, argues Xiang: “The real ‘core’ value, the Confucian vision of state and its relations to economy, is often neglected.”

Virtually everyone in the West, apart from a few non-Eurocentric scholars, completely ignores that China was the world’s dominant economic superpower from the 12^th century to the second decade of the 19^th century.

Xiang reminds us that a market economy – including private ownership, free land transactions, and highly specialized mobile labor – was established in China as early as in 300 B.C. Moreover, “as early as in the Ming dynasty, China had acquired all the major elements that were essential for the British Industrial Revolution in the 18^th century.”

Which brings us to a persistent historical enigma: why the Industrial Revolution did not start in China?

Xiang turns the question upside down: “Why traditional China needed an industrial revolution at all?”

Once again, Xiang reminds us that the “Chinese economic model was very influential during the early period of the Enlightenment. Confucian economic thinking was introduced by the Jesuits to Europe, and some Chinese ideas such as the laisser-faire principle led to free-trade philosophy.”

Xiang shows not only how external economic relations were not important for Chinese politics and economy but also that “the traditional Chinese view of state is against the basic rationale of the industrial revolution, for its mass production method is aimed at conquering not just the domestic market but outside territories.”

Xiang also shows how the ideological foundation for Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations began to veer towards individualist liberalism while “Confucius never wavered from a position against individualism, for the role of the economy is to ‘enrich people’ as a whole, not specific individuals.”

All that leads to the fact that “in modern economics, the genuine conversation between the West and China hardly exists from the outset, since the post-Enlightenment West has been absolutely confident about its sole possession of the ‘universal truth’ and secret in economic development, which allegedly has been denied to the rest of the world.”

An extra clue can be found when we see what ‘economy” (jingji) means in China: Jingji is “an abbreviate term of two characters describing neither pure economic nor even commercial activities. It simply means ‘managing everyday life of the society and providing sufficient resources for the state”. In this conception, politics and economy can never be separated into two mechanical spheres. The body politic and the body economic are organically connected.”

And that’s why external trade, even when China was very active in the Ancient Silk Road, “was never considered capable of playing a key role for the health of the overall economy and the well-being of the people.”

Wu Wei and the invisible hand

Xiang needs to go back to the basics: the West did not invent the free market. The laisser-faire principle was first conceptualized by Francois Quesnay, the forerunner of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand”. Quesnay, curiously, was known at the time as the “European Confucius”.

In Le Despotisme de la Chine (1767), written 9 years before The Wealth of Nations, Quesnay was frankly in favor of the meritocratic concept of giving political power to scholars and praised the “enlightened” Chinese imperial system.

An extra delicious historical irony is that laisser-faire, as Xiang reminds us, was directly inspired by the Taoist concept of wu wei – which we may loosely translate as “non-action”.

Xiang notes how “Adam Smith, deeply influenced by Quesnay whom he had met in Paris for learning this laisser-faire philosophy, may have got right the meaning of wu wei with his invention of “invisible hand”, suggesting a proactive rather than passive economic system, and keeping the Christian theological dimension aside.”

Xiang reviews everyone from Locke and Montesquieu to Stuart Mill, Hegel and Wallerstein’s “world system” theory to arrive at a startling conclusion: “The conception of China as a typical ‘backward’ economic model was a 20^th century invention built upon the imagination of Western cultural and racial superiority, rather than historical reality.”

Moreover, the idea of ‘backward-looking’ was actually not established in Europe until the French revolution: “Before that, the concept of ‘revolution’ had always retained a dimension of cyclical, rather than ‘progressive’ – i.e., linear, historical perspective. The original meaning of revolution (from the Latin word revolutio, a “turn-around”) contains no element of social progress, for it refers to a fundamental change in political power or organizational structures that takes place when the population rises up in revolt against the current authorities.”

Will Confucius marry Marx?

And that brings us to post-modern China. Xiang stress how a popular consensus in China is that the Communist Party is “neither Marxist nor capitalist, and its moral standard has little to do with the Confucian value system”. Consequently, the Mandate of Heaven is “seriously damaged”.

The problem is that “marrying Marxism and Confucianism is too dangerous”.

Xiang identifies the fundamental flaw of the Chinese wealth distribution “in a system that guarantees a structural process of unfair (and illegal) wealth transfer, from the people who contribute labor to the production of wealth to the people who do not.”

He argues that, “deviation from Confucian traditional values explains the roots of the income distribution problem in China better than the Weberian theories which tried to establish a clear linkage between democracy and fair income distribution”.

So what is to be done?

Xiang is extremely critical of how the West approached China in the 19^th century, “through the path of Westphalian power politics and the show of violence and Western military superiority.”

Well, we all know how it backfired. It led to a genuine modern revolution – and Maoism. The problem, as Xiang interprets it, is that the revolution “transformed the traditional Confucian society of peace and harmony into a virulent Westphalian state.”

So only through a social revolution inspired by October 1917 the Chinese state “begun the real process of approaching the West” and what we all define as “modernization”. What would Deng say?

Xiang argues that the current Chinese hybrid system, “dominated by a cancerous alien organ of Russian Bolshevism, is not sustainable without drastic reforms to create a pluralist republican system. Yet these reforms should not be conditioned upon eliminating traditional political values.”

So is the CCP capable of successfully merging Confucianism and Marxism-Leninism? Forging a unique, Chinese, Third Way? That’s not only the major theme for Xiang’s subsequent books: that’s a question for the ages.

*

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Pepe Escobar is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

The Disastrous Events of the Year 2022 Will Plague Us for as Long as We Exist

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, January 05, 2023

The unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home revealed the Gestapo State that has replaced American Democracy.  Few comprehend the threat that the raid reveals. First there is the disrespect shown a recent President of the United States who clearly has far more public support than any president since Ronald Reagan.

Sportswashed: Ronaldo Heads to Saudi Arabia

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, January 05, 2023

Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, his sun setting and his prospects diminishing among Europe’s top clubs, was signed to play in Saudi Arabia.

The UN General Assembly Drags Israel to the World Court

By Dr. Chandra Muzaffar, January 05, 2023

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted last week to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for its on-going violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza and for adopting measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem.

From the History of GB-EU Relations. “How Great Britain Fell for a Confidence Trick”

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, January 04, 2023

Although Great Britain was twice saved from her own folly by the French President Ch. de Gaulle in the 1960s, however, in 1973 she not so much joined as bound herself to the common market, and agreed to be bound by the 1957 Treaty of Rome.

The EU-Anglosphere Climate War

By William Walter Kay, January 04, 2023

The EU alone possesses motive and capacity to conduct climate-camouflaged economic warfare on the Anglosphere. With English commonly, often officially, spoken in 60+ countries, “Anglosphere” presents problems.

Criminal Malfeasance: Pfizer Knew 275 People Suffered Serious Strokes in the First 90 Days After Vaccine Rollout

By DailyClout, January 04, 2023

Seventy-five years. That’s how long Pfizer and the FDA tried to hide the Pfizer documents from public view — long after just about everyone affected is dead. It wasn’t until renowned attorney Aaron Siri led a FOIA case against the FDA that a federal judge ordered the documents to be released in 108 days, the same amount of time it took the FDA to approve the Covid-19 injections.

Surveillance State: What the #TwitterFiles Mean for America, Ukraine and Libertarianism

By Thomas R. Eddlem, January 04, 2023

The #TwitterFiles are fast becoming the greatest glimpse behind the veil of America’s out-of-control surveillance state since 2013, when Edward Snowden heroically sacrificed his career and citizenship to reveal the blatantly unconstitutional and dangerous surveillance of the American people by the NSA.

How Joe Biden Is Slowly “Suiciding America’s Economy”

By Eric Zuesse, January 04, 2023

Starting on 7 April 2023, a rule that Joe Biden’s U.S. Commerce Department issued on 12 October 2022 will be fully in force, outlawing, by U.S. Executive (President Biden’s) fiat, any U.S.-allied country to engage in any commerce (buying or selling) with China that his Administration considers to be (or potentially to be) related to either artificial intelligence or supercomputing.

Let Them Eat Bugs

By David Robb, January 04, 2023

The global elites have shown great interest in insects as a source of food.  Not for themselves, mind you, but rather for the rest of us.  It is only incidental that using bugs as a food source would reserve fresh fruits and vegetables, beef, pork and chicken, and other current foodstuffs for those most deserving, such as themselves.  We have to ask, though, is eating bugs really such a good thing for humans?

WHO Fraud. There Never Was a Pandemic! February 20, 2020, Dr. Tedros Announced an “Expanding Worldwide Epidemic”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, January 04, 2023

The “killer virus” fear campaign coupled with Dr. Tedros’s timely “warnings” of the need to implement a worldwide pandemic indelibly served the interests of Wall Street’s institutional speculators and hedge funds.

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***

 

It just keeps getting darker and darker.  For the professionally ignorant, things are only getting better.  With one of history’s great events of sportswashing concluded – the 2022 Qatar World Cup – another state famed for its cosmetic distractions and moneyed seductions made a splash.  Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, his sun setting and his prospects diminishing among Europe’s top clubs, was signed to play in Saudi Arabia.

He had been seething and fuming at Manchester United, increasingly cast into peripheral, bench warming roles.  The inner truculent brat screamed and found a voice on the ever humbly named show Piers Morgan Uncensored.  In a conversation between brats who felt they had been mistreated over the years, the impression given by Ronaldo was always going to be a love of the game over cash.

“Is it also that you want to keep playing at the highest level?  That you want to play Champions League football, you want to keep breaking records?” asked Morgan.  In the manner of a ghost writer mulling over the bleedingly obvious, Morgan persisted.  “Again, it comes back to my gut feeling about you that, if it was just about the money, you’d be in Saudi Arabia earning this king’s ransom.  But that’s not what motivates you, you want to keep at the top…”

Whether he was already being courted by the money goons in Riyadh is hard to say, but if that was the case, Ronaldo was keen to keep up appearances.  He wanted goals, to score in the big leagues, to be in the service of the elite clubs.  “Exactly, because I still believe that I can score many, many goals and help the teams.  I believe I am still good and capable to help the national team and even Manchester United.”

The king’s ransom, however, is exactly what he came to accept, though he aggrandised his own appeal by claiming to be hot property on the international transfer market.  “I had many offers in Europe, many in Brazil, Australia, the US, even in Portugal.”  At around £172 million, it will be the largest amount forked out for a football player in history, beating that offered Lionel Mess for his final four years with FC Barcelona at £137.2 million per annum.  And Ronaldo only needs to play till June 2025.

Ronaldo will be helping Al-Nassr FC, whose administrators and backers are already moist with delight.  “History in the making,” their twitter account crowed. “This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves.”

History in the making. This is a signing that will not only inspire our club to achieve even greater success but inspire our league, our nation and future generations, boys and girls to be the best version of themselves. Welcome @Cristiano to your new home @AlNassrFC pic.twitter.com/oan7nu8NWC

— AlNassr FC (@AlNassrFC_EN) December 30, 2022

There is something sickly about such hailing: it projects a fantasy brand of equality, a delusion underwritten by cash. And there’s lots of it.  Ronaldo is there to add rich lashings of sugary cover to the Kingdom’s broader agenda, which has reached across sporting fields such as golf, boxing, tennis, and Formula One.  “We will support the rest of our clubs for qualitative deals with international stars soon,” came the solemn promise of the Saudi Minister for Sports, Abdulaziz bin Turki Al-Faisal.

As for the player himself, he shows little clue about who he is doing this for.  “It’s not the end of my career to come to South Africa,” he said at his first Saudi press conference, even with the message of “Saudi welcome to Arabia” in his backdrop.  The faux pas did little to dampen the enthusiasm of fans and officials.  “You don’t need to know the name of a country to make 200 million euros,” remarked one.   Nor, it would seem, its role in perpetrating humanitarian disasters, murdering journalists and indulging in mass executions.

Like Qatar, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is luring the big stars like stain removing agents for bloodstained clothes.  Messi may well be considered a footballing demigod among fans and his countrymen, but like Ronaldo, he is keen about the way money talks.  In May 2022, the Argentinian master became tourism ambassador for Riyadh.  “We are excited for you to explore the treasures of the Red Sea, the Jeddah Season and our ancient history,” exclaimed Minister for Tourism Ahmed Al Khateeb in twitter-land.  “This is not his first visit to the Kingdom and it will not be the last!”

The broader Saudi agenda here is clear enough.  Such signings are also intended to improve the country’s chances for hosting the 2030 World Cup.  Last year, Riyadh revealed it would be proposing a joint bid for the games that might also include Egypt and Greece.  “Definitely the three countries would invest heavily in infrastructure and would definitely be ready,” Al Khateeb insisted in an interview last November.  “And I know by then Saudi Arabia would have state of the art stadiums and fanzones built.”

Ronaldo, his challenged geography aside, is clear about one thing: he doesn’t want to retire gracefully and live off his accumulated treasure. Football now is less relevant than Mammon’s calling.  That is something the House of Saud knows all too well.

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

Featured image is from @AlNassrFC

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***

The United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) voted last week to refer Israel to the International Court of Justice (World Court) for its on-going violation of the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination in the occupied territories of the West Bank and Gaza and for adopting measures aimed at altering the demographic composition, character and status of the holy city of Jerusalem.

Before we analyse the significance of the vote, let us probe the actual voting pattern. 87 states voted to refer Israel to the World Court. This represents almost all the Muslim majority states including those that had recently established diplomatic relations with Israel. It shows that on this issue at least, the diplomatic manoeuvres of Israel and its backers have not helped the Zionist state. Other largely non-Muslim majority states in Latin America, Africa and Asia also endorsed the resolution. It is notable that both China and Russia supported the move to haul Israel before the World Court. 26 countries voted against the UNGA resolution. Among them were of course the US, Britain and a number of other Western states. A huge number — 53 — also abstained. India which at the time of the creation of Israel in 1948 was in the forefront of the struggle to defend the rights of the Palestinians was one of the abstentions. Its growing ties with Israel, especially in the military sphere have often been cited as the main reason for this change in attitude.

The Indian stance does not in any way nullify the significance of the vote for the resolution. The UNGA is asking the highest jurisdictional authority in the world to state its stand on Israel’s conduct as the Occupying Power over lands it has held in its grip for the last 55 years. Right from 1967, the UNGA has viewed Israel not only as an Occupying Power but has also demanded that Israel withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza. Needless to say, Israel has ignored this plea. It is worth observing that this time the UNGA’s request is being made when Israel is led by perhaps its most extreme right-wing government which has pledged to pursue policies that will undermine even further what little is left of the rights of the Palestinian people and demolish even more the Christian and Muslim features of Jerusalem.

By asking the World Court to examine Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories, the UNGA is telling Israel that it is under scrutiny. It is holding Israel accountable. It is forcing a rogue state to behave properly — a State that since 1948 has refused to abide by the norms and standards of conduct that all states are expected to uphold.

If the World Court concurs in essence with the UNGA resolution that Israel has violated the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and has attempted to alter the character of Jerusalem, how would the Israeli government under Benjamin Netanyahu respond? Going on the basis of his past and present conduct, it is almost certain that he will ignore the World Court’s position and even rail against the body just as he has condemned the UNGA for its recent resolution. In other words, there will be no change in Israeli behaviour in the Occupied Territories or in Jerusalem. After all, in 2004 the World Court had already ruled that Israeli settlements in the Occupied Territories were in breach of international law but Israel continued to expand the settlements which today house about 700,000 Jewish settlers.

But this should not in any way diminish the usefulness of going to the World Court or working through the UNGA. These are important routes to take for at least two reasons. One, they reveal that Israel is the real problem and that it is this problem that has to be resolved in the interest of genuine peace. Two, by harnessing support from UN member states and UN agencies, the Palestinian cause is enhanced. It strengthens the Palestinian position as it confronts not just Israel but its principal backer, the US and a number of European states, sometimes joined by Japan and South Korea.

It is perhaps at this juncture that we should examine briefly Palestine’s relationship with the UN. It has been ambivalent at best. It was the UN under the influence of the US and other Western powers that presided over the unjust partition of historical Palestine in 1948 giving the less than 30% Jewish population two-thirds of the land while the 70% Palestinian majority comprising Muslims and Christians was awarded the remaining one-third. There was no plebiscite to determine how the people — the entire population — felt about the proposed partition. By ignoring the people’s feelings, the UN in effect transgressed its own Charter.

But after Israel seized Gaza and the West Bank including East Jerusalem in 1967, UN resolutions — as we have seen — clearly recognise Palestinians living in those territories as victims of Occupation. It should also be emphasised that through various resolutions the UN continues to recognise the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination, national independence and sovereignty. Besides, since November 2012, Palestine is a non-member observer state of the UN General Assembly.

The UN also looks after Palestinian refugees. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) provides education, health relief and social services for over 5 million Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Lebanon, Syria. Gaza and West Bank, including East Jerusalem.

Palestine’s relationship with the UN is one wrapped in obligations, responsibilities, rights and aspirations. It has had its ups and downs. But it should continue to be viewed as one of the many channels through which the Palestinian people seek to secure their justice, freedom and dignity.

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Dr Chandra Muzaffar is the president of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), Malaysia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

2022  planted the seeds for tyranny and death.  My analysis today will focus on only four of the many terrible events of 2022.

One is the FBI raid on President Trump’s home.

One is the second stolen national election.

One is the war against Russia that is leading to Armageddon.

One is the deception about the effectiveness and safety of the Covid mRNA “vaccine.”

The unprecedented raid on President Trump’s home revealed the Gestapo State that has replaced American Democracy.  Few comprehend the threat that the raid reveals. First there is the disrespect shown a recent President of the United States who clearly has far more public support than any president since Ronald Reagan.  If a President of the United States can be treated in such a high-handed way, what prospect do the rest of us have?

Evidence seized, arrayed, and photographed by the FBI at Mar-a-Lago (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The raid was not only beyond the pale, it was gratuitous in its justification. The FBI had access to the documents and had gone through them previously.  The documents were not being withheld from inspection. The story planted in the presstitute media that Trump left the documents lying around in Mar-a-Largo for Russian spies on his staff to photo is absurd. Trump has Secret Service protection, and the agents would certainly notice any top secret documents lying around on the furniture.  If Russian agents had penetrated Trump’s household staff, the CIA would have warned him.  That media actually discussed this fabrication as if it were real reveals the incompetence and dishonesty of the media.

Normally, presidents and high government officials do not concern themselves with documents unless they are writing memoirs.  They don’t have time for documents.  Most of what is signed off on is from advice not from reading.  Presidential appointees and I assume presidents are entitled to copies of all documents that moved through their offices.  I would have needed a moving and storage service to deal with documents to which I was entitled during my time at the Treasury. I very much doubt Trump knows what documents are in the boxes.  I would have advised him not to take documents packed by others as anything could be planted on him.  All documents should have gone to a presidential library, which once set up was probably where the documents were headed.

The “raid” by a FBI SWAT team was an orchestrated political event.  In a political system where there is accountable government, the FBI director and the attorney general would have been fired for political use of a police agency.  The fact that they got away with it shows that the days of accountable government in the United States are past.

The purpose of the raid was to create the image of Trump in the public mind as a criminal, so that the public already saw him that way and it would be old hat when the criminal referral from the Democrats in the House and subsequent Department of Justice indictment materialized. Any jurors involved would be accustomed to Trump as criminal and have the same view as the prosecutor.  This is what happened to Derick Chauvin.

Not many understood what was happening in front of their eyes.  Democrats and Trump haters were simply thrilled that the orange man was being had.  Trump supporters simply saw biased Democrats and biased media.  This was the way the public saw the transformation of a federal police force subject to the rule of law into an unaccountable Gestapo political operation dedicated to the Democrats’ seizure of power by eliminating the opponent. This is how the police were transformed in the Third Reich.

A question before us is whether the audacious raid on an American president’s home could have happened if the Deep State had been held accountable in the past for its crimes.  But having got away with so much despite overwhelming evidence of Deep State guilt–for example, the murders of President Kennedy, Senator Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the Bay of Tonkin, 9/11, Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, and two stolen national elections–to set up a president for indictment  on false charges is not a big step.  

Trump’s reelection was stolen after four years of vilification of President Trump while in office accused as a Russian agent elected by the Kremlin’s interference in the election, a charge exploited by the presstitutes and Democrats for years during the Russiagate investigation. Russiagate was followed by two attempted impeachments, and by an orchestrated “Jan. 6 insurrection,” a fabrication still ongoing with the House’s criminal referral of Trump to the Department of Justice (sic). 

Trump’s reelection meant 4 more years of the same, and people were tired of it.  Therefore, despite overwhelming evidence that the Democrats stole the election, the public acquiesced  in the theft.

The 2022 national election did not involve the president, so the public was less moved by its theft.  Moreover, the Republicans, despite the theft, recaptured the House.  But the inattention to the theft paves the road for more thefts.  

The theft of the Arizona governorship from Kari Lake is completely obvious. In Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous, voting machines failed to function in the precincts known to be Republican. Voting lines were hours long.  The Republicans who suffered them were given paper ballots dropped into a box that the Democrat election officials said would be counted later.  When later arrived, it turned out that the uncounted ballots were “accidentally” mixed in with the counted ballots and could not be separated.  

Even this was not enough to elect Kari Lake’s opponent, who was serving as Election Commissioner and controlling every step of the voting and counting.  So for three days running the vote count stopped for 19 hours, 15 hours, 17 hours while Democrats forged Democrat votes. 

When presented with the evidence, the Republican judge said that whereas all these failures occurred, there was no proof that they were intentional.  

To be clear, a Republican judge ruled that as long as Democrats steal elections accidentally, it is OK.

So expect more accidentally stolen elections.

What two stolen national elections in a row means is that the electorate is powerless.  It is unable to put into office politicians who represent the voters and the country’s interest.  The electorate is powerless against the organized private interests, the ideologues who are erasing America, and the Deep State.  Elections have become a democratic cover for a stolen route to a one-party state.

So what is the Deep State?  We have some idea but we don’t know precisely.  We don’t know because political science in the universities and in high school civics classes if they still exist, teaches about what might once have existed years ago–democratically elected leaders who represent the people and the national interest.  

Today there is no such process. The President, House, and Senate are elected by the campaign contributions of powerful interests.  It is the interests of these interests, not those of voters, to which politicians respond.  

Together with these private interests, permanent government networks between some of these interests, social media and the remnants of print and TV media,  and established government bureaucracies such as the CIA and FBI control the explanations that the public receives. 

When the media is in service to government and is not watching government and holding government accountable, there can be no accountable government.

The fact that Democrats, with little public opposition, have succeeded in stealing two national elections proves the point.

Whether any of this matters depends on how determined are the neoconservatives who control US foreign policy to pursue Washington’s hegemony over the world in the face of Russian and Chinese opposition, and how long Putin will continue to drag out his “limited military operation in Ukraine,” thus enabling Washington to become too involved to let go.  Putin does not realize it, but he has empowered Washington to turn his ill-considered, indeed mindless, limited operation into a general war that leads to nuclear Armageddon.

Trump and Putin share gullibility in common.  Both have been slow to understand the Satanic forces confronting them. The consequences  will be horrendous. 

The fourth disastrous event is the Covid deception.  2022 is the year when it became completely clear that the Western medical establishment, media, and politicians lied through their teeth about the dangers of Covid and the safety and effectiveness of the mRNA “vaccines.”  Thanks to independent medical scientists, who stood their ground despite being censored, discredited, and punished, we know for certain that the Covid “vaccines” are neither safe nor effective.  Moreover, the Pfizer internal documents forced into release by federal court order show conclusively that Pfizer knew the “vaccine” was deadly.  As Pfizer shared the documents with its marketing agent, the US Food and Drug administration, the FDA also knew, yet gave approval to the Emergency Use Authorization of the mRNA “vaccines.”  As Professor Michel Chossudovsky has pointed out, the failure by Pfizer and the FDA to recall the “vaccines” based on Pfizer’s own internal study is mass murder.  At this point, very little is being done to hold Pfizer and the FDA accountable for murdering millions of people.

Image is from Children’s Health Defense

Almost all who died from Covid died from lack of treatment.  The medical protocols imposed prevented doctors from treating the virus with two known cures–HCQ and Ivermectin.  Some doctors in independent practice refused to follow the imposed protocols and saved thousands of lives. In other parts of the world–Brazil, India, Africa–use of Ivermectin both as cure and preventative essentially eliminated Covid as a health threat.  But in the “scientific” Western world, the cures were obstructed by official medical authorities. The Lancet, formerly a respected British medical journal, today a marketing shill for Big Pharma, denounced Brazil’s use of HCQ and Ivermectin as “an anti-scientific decision” and accused “a populist government” of  “undermining science.” See this.

There is no longer any doubt.  Following the vaccination campaign, excess deaths rose dramatically, and the excess deaths are among the vaccinated.  Still nothing is being done to help the millions of people whose health has been adversely impacted by the mRNA “vaccines.”

The orchestrated “pandemic” is a massive crime against humanity.  There has been no accountability and no help for the injured, which leaves the “pandemic” with the smell of organized genocide.  If so, we have reached the point where crimes against humanity is the official policy of the West.

How does a civilization recover when morality has been stripped of authority?  What has happened to us that Pfizer’s profits are elevated above life and public health, that executive branch mandates can override the US Constitution and the judgments of doctors and patients, that official narratives can be enforced by censorship?  Clearly, the foundation of our society is rotten and our civilization is collapsing.

In our society truth is dismissed as misinformation, normality is demonized as oppression, and perversity is normalized as liberation.  Transgender propagandizing of children is now common fare in public schools and public libraries.  This child abuse, ignored by Child Protective Services, is possible because laws require equal access to all organizations, depraved or normal.  The drag queen lobby has mastered the ability to manipulate the system.  The pretense is that it is just a matter of inclusion, but in fact it is revolution.  Sexual relations between a heterosexual man and a heterosexual woman is “heterosexual capitalist oppression,” but sex between adults and children is “the sexual liberation of children.”  The drag queen agenda is to undermine traditional notions of sexuality, to replace the biological family, and to arouse transgressive sexual desires in young children, and it is being financed with taxpayers’ money.  You can read about this in Christopher Rufo’s article in the Autumn 2022 City Journal.

So, just as prominent doctors and medical scientists who cured Covid patients with Ivermectin and HCQ are punished for saving lives by having their licenses and certifications stolen by bureaucrats whose protocols resulted in mass murder, parents who protest against public schools indoctrinating their children into sexual perversity are thrown out of school board meetings.  This is what I mean when I said morality has been stripped of authority.

Authority rests with those who are normalizing perversity.  Authority rests with the Satanists. It is going to be very difficult to get it away from them.

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

Featured image is from South Front

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***

How Great Britain fell for a confidence trick

In the 1960s, when Great Britain twice sought entry into then the EEC/EC, the historian Sir Arthur Bryant issued an unheeded warning:

“Once in the common market, we shall be a minority in an organization in which the decisions of the majority will have the power to bind the minority, not only for a few years but theoretically for all time.”

Sir Arthur Bryant could not have chosen a more apt word than “bind”. Although Great Britain was twice saved from her own folly by the French President Ch. de Gaulle in the 1960s, however, in 1973 she not so much joined as bound herself to the common market, and agreed to be bound by the 1957 Treaty of Rome.[i] Even at that time, the founders of the common market knew – but apparently Great Britain did not – that the common market (today the European Single Market) was not a club to join or a free trade area (the EFTA) with which to associate, but a superstate in the making. Its founders were in no doubt about this, even if the British politicians were unaware of – or unwilling to face up to – the ultimate goal of the founders. Robert Schuman, while preparing the European Coal and Steel Community in 1950, had said:

“These proposals will build the first concrete foundation of the European Federation”.

Article 189 of the 1957 Treaty of Rome is quite clear about what was involved:

“Regulations […] shall be binding in every respect and directly applicable […].” “Directives shall bind any Member State […].” “Decisions shall be binding in every respect […].”[ii]

Unfortunately, no more people read the 1957 Treaty of Rome than had read Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf before WWII (after the war it was too late), and many who should have known better-accepted assurances that no loss of sovereignty was involved in acceding to the EEC. Looking back, we can just regret that they did not know better about the issue. After a quarter of a century, during which the EEC became transformed firstly into the EC and then the EU, experience ought to have taught us what the anti-marketers failed to teach.[iii]

We can read, for instance:

“Initially I thought like everybody else, that we had joined a common market, and what could be nicer and more friendly and sensible and economically wised to do, but since then in 1975 when we had the vote to remain in that, so we were told, it has to become something more than a common market, it than became, a few years later, a European Economic Community than a European Community, it’s now the European Union, with all kinds of controls and restrictions, regulations and we are faster approaching by this new Constitution, something that the French have already named potentially the United States of Europe and I am not at all sure that that’s what I and many others voted to join back in 1975” [Delphine Gray-Fisk, retired airline pilot, a British citizen].

“We have lost one hundred percent control over our environment including health and safety regulations, we have lost near enough hundred percent control over our fishing, we have lost hundred percent control over our farming and we have lost hundred percent control over our trade policy and that last is of particular significance when you consider that Britain is the 4th largest economy in the world and we do more trade than any other country in the world, by far” [Linsday Jenkins, author].

“So, what are the MEPs [Member of the European Parliament] for? Well, I will tell you, the MEP’s are here to vote and to vote often and to vote regularly, sometimes we vote up to 450 times in the space of 80 minutes. Now I have to confess, I do not know what is going on half of the time, I have not either read all of the documents, so massive, are they. Now it can be, that my fellow MEP’s down there are all Albert Einsteins and all absolutely understand what is going on, but I suspect that is not the case, in fact, it is rather like paying monkeys – because what happens is the civil servants draw up the lists and if it is vote No. 58 and the piece of paper say VOTE, YES you VOTE YES and if it is No. 59 and it says to VOTE NO you VOTE NO, it is an absolute false, it is a complete masquerade democracy” [Nigel Farage, the MEP, the UK Independence Party, later the leader of the Brexit].

“We are now living under a legal order. The 1972 European Communities Act was a one-off, not an ordinary treaty, but a new way of life. These are new constitutional powers. The British Parliament surrendered its sovereignty in 1972. European laws have overriding force with priority over our British laws… The articles on the supremacy of the British parliament are now only historical perspective – they are non-binding” [Judge Morgan.]

The plot to destroy the sovereignty of the Member States

What is the real nature and purpose of such kind of united Europe? It can be easily claimed that behind the respectable European mask is, in fact, a plot with the ultimate aim to destroy the real sovereignty (independence) of its Member States and to re-align the whole balance of power worldwide.[iv] It should be remembered that, strategically, Europe’s unification drive began at a time when the entire Atlantic Alliance was coming to grips with the relative decline of the United States both as a world economic power and as leader of the West. The European Union (the EU, est. 1992/1993) with its central motor, the French-German axis, became a new GP in global politics. Therefore, the USA is no anymore in a position to dictate and implement global policies like at the time of the Cold War. After the creation of the EU, the US administration seeks multilateral action with the EU in several hot-spot areas of the conflicts in Europe, for instance, ex-Yugoslavia or Ukraine.

America’s generosity to the world has reduced her riches and necessitated a serious reassessment of her global strategic commitment. Trade frictions between the US and West Europe have long been a reality and have moved from the agricultural sector into advanced technological areas. Doubts also grew about the reliability of the US “nuclear umbrella” protecting West Europe, and a subsequent reduction of the American forces and the withdrawal of the Russian forces on the Continent followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union has been paralleled by increasing calls for a solely European self-defense capability. The European army and the European police force already exist in more than embryonic form.

It has to be noted that for centuries it has been the British most basic right to vote in one hundred percent of the members of Parliament who govern their country or vote them all out if they do not perform.

“For instance, the basic principle that you can elect a new parliament and then you can have a new law, that is the call of the democracy and this call does not exist in the EU and it does not exist in the Constitution we are building now” [Jense Peter Bonde, Danish MEP].

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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.

Notes

[i] In 1973, Great Britain together with Ireland and Denmark became Member State of the European Community.

[ii] Sir Arthur Wynne Morgan Bryant (1899–1985), was an English historian, a columnist for The Illustrated London News, and man of affairs [Wikipedia].

[iii] See more in [M. J. Artis, Frederick Nixson, The Economics of the European Union: Policy and Analysis, 2001.

[iv] A concept of sovereignty refers to a status of legal autonomy (independence) that is enjoyed by states what means in practice that the government has sole authority within its borders and enjoys the rights of the membership of the international political community. Therefore, the terms of sovereignty, autonomy, and independence can be used as synonyms.

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***

The EU alone possesses motive and capacity to conduct climate-camouflaged economic warfare on the Anglosphere. With English commonly, often officially, spoken in 60+ countries, “Anglosphere” presents problems; herein, it means:

• Australia: 7.7 million square kilometres; 26 million citizens.
• Canada: 9.9 million square kilometres; 39 million citizens.
• New Zealand: 268,000 square kilometres; 5.1 million citizens.
• UK: 242,500 square kilometres; 68 million citizens.
• USA: 9.8 million square kilometres; 332 million citizens.
• Total: 28 million square kilometres; 470 million citizens.

The 27-country EU spans 4.2 million square kilometres and counts 450 million citizens; i.e., same population; a seventh the land. Natural resource disparities are greater. Differences in fossil fuel endowments explain “Climate Change.”

The Anglosphere is Earth’s fossil fuel superpower; America its leading oil producer. Canada ranks fourth, the UK twentieth and Australia thirty-first. No EU country is a top 40 producer. None possess significant reserves. EU imports: 14 million b/p/d. Germany, Netherlands, Italy, France, Spain and Belgium – top 15 importers all – shelled-out $US176 billion for oil in 2021.

Anglosphere coal reserves are unmatched. American reserves far exceed second-place Russia’s whose reserves barely exceed Australia’s.

Canada and New Zealand are both top 15. Tory coal-phobes understate Britannia’s huge deposits. Germany tops the EU at a distant seventh in reserves and no black coal mining. Germany imports 40 million tonnes a year. EU countries imported 440 million tonnes in 2020. (EU outlier Poland, has the ninth largest reserves.)

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Behind egalitarian 27-culture tableaus, 10 wealthy western nations run the EU. In 1951, to coordinate energy policies, West Germany, France, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg founded the European Coal and Steel Community. They became the “European Economic Community” (1957) before welcoming Denmark (1973), and Greece (1981). Spain and Portugal joined in 1986. Rebranded “European Union” (1993), they embraced Austria, Finland and Sweden in 1995. During 2004-13, they admitted a dozen, mostly eastern, states. These 10 account for 70% of EU population; 90% of production. The small, divided, subordinated and poor Fringe 17 do not measurably influence climate politics. Brussel’s bureaucracies remain Core 10 preserves. (“Neutral” Switzerland is the Ten’s eleventh member.)

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The Allies, to administer the Marshall Plan, summoned a ‘Council of 16.’ In 1961, this morphed into “OECD” (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) with 19 European and Anglosphere member-states.

Today, OECD execs ladle-out $400 million annually from their Parisian HQ. OECD receives regular stipends from Anglosphere, Core EU, Japanese and Norwegian governments. Despite claiming 38 equal members, donors rule. A third of donations arrive strung with stringent strings.

OECD conjures multiday ministerials – without attracting media coverage. In March 2022, enviro-ministers from 38 nations huddled in Paris for days… crickets. A year earlier, OECD’s Environmental Policy Committee feted enviro-ministers at a confab themed: “Building a Green and Inclusive Future.”

In 1972, OECD members established UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) – now bigger than OECD, and a titanic climate actor; albeit highly donor-constrained. 100+ countries attend UNEP enviro-minister conferences.

A 1974 OECD energy ministers’ conference parried OPEC by unveiling an ‘organization of petroleum importing countries’ – the International Energy Agency. IEA execs now disperse $30+ million yearly from Parisian headquarters, a stumble from OECD’s digs. IEA members must be OECD members. With minimal fanfare, IEA routinely holds energy ministers’ conferences. From the get-go, IEA promoted biofuels, hydrogen and solar as oil substitutes. The oil phase-out campaign dates to IEA’s founding. In 2009 IEA’s green power efforts were spun-off into IRENA (International Renewable Energy Agency); another $30-million-a-year outfit.

Thatcher unlocked the gates for the Huns by slipping “Climate Change” onto the London-hosted, 1984 G7 Summit’s agenda; signalling willingness to wed IEA’s oil phase-out with an Anglosphere coal phase-out. This stratagem, borne of Maggie’s war on the miners, found favour among German oligarchs, and American gas-mongers coveting coal’s share of the electricity market. Assembled heads of state had their enviro-ministers prepare ‘Climate’ briefs for the 1985 (Bonn) Summit. A proper crusade commenced. 

To conduct the Climate Science Orchestra, UNEP concocted IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) in 1988. IPCC helps donor-government-selected Climate Science citation alliance ringleaders collate reports for donor-government Climate Science epistemic elites.

OECD/UNEP/IEA/IPCC masterminded the 1992 Rio mega-conference spawning the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. UNFCCC’s Conferences of the Parties (COPs) draw officials in ever-greater multitudes. COP27 (2022) broke records with 49,704 delegates. OECD member-states dispatch thousands; and cover costs for poor countries’ absurdly numbersome entourages; and for thousands of OECD-based NGO and media flunkies. COPs are EU-built Potemkin villages; luring and nudging Anglosphere politicians.

Fifty passages in UNFCCC’s 27-page Framework sort countries into groups possessing “differentiated responsibilities.” Categories include: developed,  developing, and least-developed. Eight climate-vulnerability groups are enumerated. Africa gets centered-out; as do fossil fuel-rich developing countries.

Ten passages deputize “Annex countries” as first-responders and bankrollers. Only Annex 1 countries (OECD + east European ‘economies in transition’) pledge domestic emission reductions. Only Annex 2 (OECD) must fund: UNFCCC, IPCC, and green energy in least-developed countries.

The 2015 Paris Accord affirms the Framework, stressing:

“Developed countries should continue to take the lead by undertaking economy-wide emission reduction targets.”

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Five defy categorization.

Geografi er skjebne. Oil separates Norway from Europe.

Polish coal melts EU links. At COP26, Poland’s enviro-minister committed to a 2030 coal phase-out only to reverse herself hours later; re-affirming her government’s 2049 plan. Annex 1 Poland suffers existential damage under the climate regime.

Japan isn’t in the EU, but it is in OECD, IEA, G7 and Annexes 1 and 2. This third largest oil and coal importer, drops $40ish billion a year on oil.

Turkey isn’t in the EU, but is in OECD, IEA, NATO and Annexes 1 and 2. Turkey imports 95% of its oil and most of its coal.

Adrift amidst Anglospheric vistas boasting more Irish than Ireland; EU’s lonely Anglophone finds a foot in two canoes.

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Clues cracking the climate caper came with the tip that tools used in the crime included: …national science institutions! Perps wielding education ministries and science foundations?! Suspect lists shrank.

Core EU states weaponized Climate Science to facilitate fossil fuel phase-outs. State science mandarins cultivated Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming into a zeitgeist-permeating paradigm. Cultural assets and authority symbols mobilized by Euroscience commissars overwhelmed intelligentsia, home and away.

Core EU states maintain standing armies of scientists. Commanders occupy chairs in illustrious academies, and edit renowned journals. Germany’s Education Minister supplies: 69% of the German Research Foundation’s $4 billion budget; 100% of the $600 million going annually to the 30,000-scientist/scholar German Academic Exchange Service; and most of the $6.5 billion feeding the 42,000-employee Helmholtz Research Centres, now all-aboard the Helmholtz Climate Initiative. France’s Higher Education Minister gives $3.8 billion yearly to the 33,000-employee National Center for Scientific Research; and $1.15 billion to a National Research Agency. Mussolini’s National Research Council takes $1.1 billion annually from Italy’s government (40% of national research funding). Franco created Spain’s National Research Council so Opus Dei could re-Catholicize science. Its $1.2 billion budget blesses 13,338 scientists and staff…

No scientific fact shineth by its own light. Carrying alarmist torches through the towns, run that gang of eight EU-based ‘strategic corporations’ dominating Anglosphere music, advertising and publishing.

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Waltzing suckers over abysses requires close constant contact. Eurocrats whisk Anglosphere politicians into labyrinthine multilateral fora affording Eurocrats ample access to Anglosphere politicians.

The 4,000 full-timers at NATO’s Brussels’ headquarters toil but a 50-minute flight from Paris. Of NATO’s 30 members, 27 are OECD. NATO HQ’s and OECD’s budgets look suspiciously similar. OECD’s been faulted for duplicating NATO’s work. Mandates intersect. NATO’s new Climate Change and Security Center for Excellence inspects all member-states’ obligatory annual climate impact assessments. NATO has hosted 32 heads of state summits; the last in June 2022. NATO ministerial conferences occur regularly, and irregularly. In March 2021 NATO quietly convened 30 foreign ministers.

EU-controlled orgs (OECD, NATO, G7, IEA, UNEP, IRENA, UNFCCC) stage continuous ministerial conferences. Anglo foreign ministers must vet endless preparations. Anglo heads of state must appear, or participate remotely. Preoccupied, mesmerised ministers attend back-to-back confabs where EU whips lurk furtively and Euros outnumber Anglos 5-to-1.

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Anglosphere and EU agree to sacrifice their coal and oil industries. EU sacrifices nothing whilst boosting climate-friendly exports and reducing fuel imports. Anglosphere surrenders its competitive advantage whilst back-flopping into the Great Depression. Sounds melodramatically awful, but EU sharps hold a boss hand: a 4-Prime Minister, President-high, climateer flush.

Republicans represent the last ditch.

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William Walter Kay is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

In a rare victory, Louisiana recently reached a $100 million settlement with the mining giant Freeport-McMoRan Inc., for contributing to the erosion rapidly devouring the state’s coast.

And this is just the beginning. Recently, a federal court ordered anine-year-old lawsuit to return to state court. The suit was filed against Chevron USA, Exxon Mobil Corp., ConocoPhillips Co. and BP America. Over 40 similar legal challenges may follow against the oil and gas companies that have caused, and are causing, Louisiana’s wetlands to disappear at an alarming rate. These lawsuits could win billions of dollars in damages.

The call for accountability against oil and gas companies is critical, but the dominant narrative misses an essential component: There’s no mention of financial reparations for Indigenous and historically Black communities in southern Louisiana who suffer the most loss and damages due to land loss and climate change and who are being actively displaced.

Southern Louisiana is home to large Native communities, including my own, the Houma. While many Houma still live on our ancestral lands, it is the fastest disappearing region in the country. Our lands are unprotected because no Indigenous tribe in the southernmost regions of Louisiana has federal recognition, and the state of Louisiana is heavily invested in fossil fuels.

Oil and gas companies have long opposed Indigenous tribes in Southern Louisiana achieving federal recognition. They fear that Native people will reclaim the oil-rich, ocean-accessible lands that fossil fuel corporations have been ruining for nearly a century.

Since oil and gas established corporate-colonial occupation over the area in the 1930s, Louisiana has lost more than 2,000 square miles of land. Companies dredged thousands of miles of canals through the marsh to get to and from oil and gas wells, carving up Native bayou communities. These canals directly destroy wetlands, disrupt wetland hydrology and act as avenues for salt water intrusion, causing the coastal marshes, our necessary and natural barriers to hurricanes, to rapidly erode.

In Louisiana, on average a football field of wetlands turns to open water every 100 minutes. Plaquemines Parish alone stands to lose 55% of its land over the next 50 years. The wetlands near Leeville, on Bayou Lafourche, sinks as much as an inch every 30 months.

The Jean Charles Choctaw Nation, which recently changed its name from the Isle de Jean Charles band of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw, a neighboring tribe related to the Houma, recently relocated from their home island in Terrebonne Parish, which shrunk from its original 35 miles to less than 1 square mile. Elders will tell you that Isle de Jean Charles used to be walkable to Pointe-aux-Chenes, the tiny Houma-French speaking town where my dad was raised and where my family lives. This trek is no longer possible.

Likewise, historically Black communities such as Ironton, a freedmen’s town located in Plaquemines Parish, continue to resist displacement. After hurricanes Katrina and Isaac, only about 50 families remain in the community. In 2021, Hurricane Ida scattered dozens of unearthed coffins from Ironton’s community cemetery and left few houses unscathed; recovery is ongoing. It is not incidental that Ironton is surrounded by polluting infrastructure, including the 2,400-acre Phillips 66 Alliance oil refinery, a grain terminal, and two coal export terminals. Not far from Ironton, a company called Venture Global is preparing to construct a pipeline and an export terminal, Plaquemines LNG, for liquified natural gas.

Oil and gas companies argue that they are legally allowed to destroy wetlands under state and federal rules put in place decades ago. Over time, the fossil fuel industry has ramped up destructive practices despite knowing the severe environmental consequences; it has become a wealthy and powerful machine that can manipulate laws in its favor.

At the same time oil and gas wells and canals are sinking the Louisiana coast, sea levels are rising due to climate change. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has removed the names of 31 bodies of water from their maps of Louisiana as bayou and bay borders disappear and become open water. The Biden Administration’s Inflation Reduction Act will add another layer to these injuries by reinstating $190 million in bids from fossil fuel companies to drill in the Gulf.

At the recent COP27 climate conference, one of the primary points of discussion was sourcing funding for ​“loss and damages” from climate change. Environmental leaders from across the world called on colonizing countries such as the United States and European countries to reinstate their extracted wealth to countries in the Global South who have contributed the least to climate change but are experiencing the worst impacts.

Likewise, our conversations around loss and damages here in the United States must include accountability for the rich, extractive, polluting industry that has torn up the Louisiana coast, while emphasizing a just transition. In a an essay calling for reparations from oil and gas corporations, New Orleanian artist and researcher Imani Jacqueline Brown invoked the doctrineof ​“unjust enrichment:” If an entity profits by impoverishing another, then these profits are unjust and must be reinstated.

In October, Shell reported its second highest quarterly profit ever at $9.5billion. Chevron made $11.2 billion and Exxon made $19.7 billion. Despite being an oil and gas state — which is supposed to mean jobs and prosperity, according to fossil fuel corporations — Louisiana is the second poorest state in the United States, with one of the highest racial wealth divides.

I can’t tell you in numbers the cost of a dying delta: It is invaluable and irreplaceable. I can tell you that since 1970, the oil and gas industry has raked in $52 trillion in profits, or nearly $3 billion per day for the last 50 years.

The solution: It’s time for oil and gas to pay the costs. These companies owe reparations and need to forfeit their wealth.

It must be acknowledged that successful litigation and money gifts, while necessary, only slow or reframe the problem — they do not change the system that allowed the harm in the first place or guarantee protections from more legal extraction. Our impacted communities need financial reparations to recover from past abuse and brace for future loss and damages as we fight for systemic change. And we should treat those reparations as a means by which to end to the extractive industry, once and for all. It’s too cheap for them to exploit us, and, even after major environmental victories, they are set up to do it again.

We need true systemic change. We need Pachamama—inalienable rights of nature that safeguard our natural environments, from living creatures to our water and air. And ultimately, the government needs to give land back to Indigenous people, so that Native communities like the Houma can protect their ancestral lands from companies that would plunder them for profit. Our future generations deserve to live on the lands of their elders and ancestors.

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Courtney Naquin is the Gulf Coast press secretary for Sierra Club and program manager and education coordinator for the Houma Language Project’s youth language internship program. They are also a Public Voices on the Climate Crisis fellow with Yale Climate Communications and the Op-Ed Project.

Featured image: The author’s grandfather’s house in Pointe-Aux-Chenes, Louisiana in the wake of Hurricane Ida. Oil and gas development has contributed to the massive destruction of the state’s coastal wetlands, and towns like Pointe-Aux-Chenes are particularly vulnerable to bigger storms and rising seas.

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***

As the new year began, ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons stated during a broadcast segment that he expected WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange would be released “within the next two months or so.”

“I know [Australia Prime Minister] Anthony Albanese. He’s working strongly behind the scenes,” Lyons added. “He has said as much, but enough is enough.”

Lyons is sympathetic to Assange’s plight, making him one of the few correspondents in the world working for establishment news media who is willing to endorse calls to end the United States case against him.

But the key question is whether Lyons knows about some shift in the so-called “quiet diplomacy” between the US and Australia that may result in Assange being released from Belmarsh prison and returned home to Australia.

It does not appear that Lyons possesses any knowledge of any development that has yet to be publicly reported in more concrete detail.

“My expectation is in the next two months or so, Julian #Assange will be released.”

Hear, hear! ABC Global Affairs Editor John Lyons on @abcnews_au. John talks about Julian’s declining health and his optimism for Albanese action.#Albanese #Biden #USA pic.twitter.com/zPWd1tz7wQ

— Ithaka the Movie (@IthakaMovie) January 1, 2023

In the clip of Lyons that was shared widely, he does not elaborate on how Albanese is “working strongly behind the scenes.”

Albanese is the leader of the Australian Labor Party, and previous reporting in July 2022 by Kellie Tranter for Declassified Australia featured documents obtained from the Australian Attorney General’s office that showed the Labor Party had not ruled out Assange’s extradition from the United Kingdom to the US.

Talking points in the documents indicated that the Labor Party was prepared for a prisoner transfer of Assange. A prisoner transfer could only happen if Assange pled guilty to one or all of the offenses or if he was put on trial and sentenced in a US courtroom.

“The Assange case is unique. One of the ways in which that is the case is the attempted extraterritorial use of the US Espionage Act,” Greg Barns SC, adviser to the Australian Assange Campaign, told Declassified Australia. “The US is seeking to establish a precedent where it could seek to extradite any journalist anywhere in the world for disclosure of US information.

“If Australia were to sanction a ‘deal’ whereby Assange pleaded guilty to a charge in exchange for an Australian served sentence, it would be endorsing that approach,” Barns added.

Assange also knows that if he pleads guilty he would be helping the US government establish a precedent that could be used against journalists like him in the future. That makes a guilty plea unlikely.

Tranter, an attorney, researcher, and human rights advocate, concluded, “The imprecise language of the Labor government statements on using ‘quiet diplomacy’ to ‘bring the matter to a close,’ rather than clearly saying what they are seeking, may be giving false hope to the Australian public. Without putting forward its ‘quiet diplomacy’ in non-negotiable terms to the US, it may be that the dropping of charges will not even be considered.”

Given that, Lyons’ remarks give us no reason to believe that the limbo in Assange’s case will end soon.

Lyons suggests the compelling thing about the Assange case is that Chelsea Manning, the “military officer who leaked the information,” is “free.” She was “pardoned by her own government.”

That is not exactly true, and in fact, it is also misleading. Manning had her sentence commuted by President Barack Obama because she was dealing with severe mental health problems and had even attempted suicide at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas. Obama accepted that Manning had served enough of a sentence, since she had been in confinement for over six and a half years.

However, Obama did not pardon her. He did not recognize that what she had done when releasing documents to WikiLeaks amounted to whistleblowing on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that was crucial to fueling important debates on counterinsurgency warfare and open-ended military occupations to fight terrorism.

Prosecutors at the US Justice Department would probably say of Manning that unlike Assange she did her time and was found guilty. The reason they are still pursuing Assange is because he has “evaded justice” and “must be held accountable.”

There is no evidence that officials in the Justice Department have changed their attitude. One unnamed official told longtime US national security journalist Eric Lichtblau in December 2022 that US Attorney General Merrick Garland “has made clear that he will follow the law wherever it leads.”

Lyons refers to Assange’s deteriorating health, saying that Assange’s brother Gabriel Shipton mentioned to him that Assange had a mini-stroke in Belmarsh last year. He also mentions the lockdown conditions that Assange had to endure in detention during early stages of the COVID pandemic.

None of these details consist of new information on Assange’s health. For the most part, Stella Assange, Assange’s family, or Assange’s legal team have not shared any specifics on his condition since the health scare in 2021.

It may be logical to presume that Julian Assange’s condition has worsened, but we do not know that he is any closer to death than he has been since his arrest in 2019.

“It’s been eight or nine years now of limbo,” Lyons states. “I think that it only takes one phone call from Anthony Albanese to Joe Biden, or at the end of a phone call, to say, listen, this is fine. Joe Biden would barely know the name Julian Assange. Of all the issues he’s got to deal with, Julian Assange is way down there.”

“Just to say, listen, we’re a great ally. We’re doing all this. Please, you’ve had this Australian citizen now waiting for justice for years and years and years. Whether he’s a journalist or not, I think any Australian citizen should be given due process, and he has not been given due process.”

The problem for Assange, however, is Biden does know his name.

Biden was vice president in the Obama administration and remembers the government had to respond to the WikiLeaks publications in 2010 and 2011. He also called Assange a “high-tech terrorist” when he appeared on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in 2010, and in 2019, when Biden was running for president, the Times asked him about the Espionage Act charges against Assange.

The US government under Biden does not believe Assange has been “denied due process.” That much is evident in their “assurances” to the UK government about how they would treat him.

Overall, what Lyons said is primarily advocacy, with no real news. It may not even be advocacy that benefits Assange because what Lyons said leads one to believe the Albanese administration is doing all that it can to have Assange freed from prison. Except we have no evidence that anything changed in 2022 to make this a reasonable expectation.

Yet let’s pretend for a moment that there is a small chance that what Lyons expects will come to fruition. Think of what it would signal to the world if a phone call from Albanese played an instrumental role in ending the case.

It would demonstrate that Assange was always one phone call away from freedom but remained in detention because the Australian government for several years refused to stand up and tell the US government that they had no right to put him on trial for engaging in journalism.

For the US government, it would be even worse. Dropping the case after a call would demonstrate that Assange was only prosecuted because he was an easy target for vindictive US officials. And after resistance to targeting him developed among the leadership of an allied country, officials could live with abandoning the case since “bringing him to justice” in a trial was never the main objective.

The objective was neutralizing Assange, and they succeeded in doing that years ago.

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***

Seventy-five years. That’s how long Pfizer and the FDA tried to hide the Pfizer documents from public view — long after just about everyone affected is dead. It wasn’t until renowned attorney Aaron Siri led a FOIA case against the FDA that a federal judge ordered the documents to be released in 108 days, the same amount of time it took the FDA to approve the Covid-19 injections.

Within the Pfizer documents is Document 5.3.6 (Post-Marketing Experience), a cumulative analysis of adverse event reports occurring in the 90 days after the public rollout of the Covid-19 mRNA injection. And within that report, 275 people suffered a stroke suspected to be attributed to the vaccine between days 1 to 41; 50% of these occurred within the first 48 hours after injection.

It’s important to note that strokes are life-altering events, which occur “when the blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted or reduced, preventing brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients. Brain cells begin to die in minutes.”—Mayoclinic

It’s a medical emergency. And prompt treatment is crucial. “Many stroke survivors experience paralysis on one side of the body or inability to move a specific part of the body.” And “Some stroke survivors may experience trouble using or understanding language (aphasia) or have trouble swallowing liquids or foods (dysphagia).”—thestrokefoundation.org

Sadly, all 300 stroke adverse event reports affecting 275 different patients within Pfizer Document 5.3.6 were classified as “serious.” One in five (61 of the 300) strokes was fatal, 32% did not resolve, 28% had an “unknown” outcome, and three suffered very rare deep brain clots (cerebral venous sinus thrombosis).

Amy Kelly’s full report can be viewed here.

And what was Pfizer’s conclusion? “This cumulative case review does not raise new safety issues.”

“If anything, it’s an underestimate,” argued Dr. Chris Flowers, as he joined DailyClout’s CEO Dr. Naomi Wolf and COO and WarRoom/DailyClout Pfizer Documents Research Project Director Amy Kelly to discuss the stroke findings from Pfizer Document 5.3.6.

Dr. Chris Flowers, MBBS, FRCR, FSBI, is a retired Associate Professor of Radiology at the University of South Florida and an extraordinary member of the Pfizer documents volunteer team. It was he who broke the story that Pfizer and the FDA knew, months ahead of time, that 35 teens suffered heart damage within a week of receiving the C19 shots before any U.S. government agency issued a press release warning the risks of myopericarditis to parents. He is also an author and a retired scientific paper reviewer for multiple radiology journals.

Dr. Flowers elaborates on the underestimate. “The problem is that there’s a huge number of patients who had a stroke whose resolution or outcome is not known (28%) and not reported, even though they’re supposed to follow this up for two years (another FOIA may be necessary to get that data). And we can’t find the data on these patients. What was their final outcome? By statistical analysis, there’s bound to be more people that have actually died, which will inflate that number.”

“So it could be more than 61 [deaths] out of 275 people who had stroke-like events,” added Dr. Wolf. “Right,” confirmed Dr. Flowers.

Dr. Flowers focuses on the lack of proper safety testing.

“As you know, endlessly on TV, all the pundits, all the bigwigs, they were all telling us we had to get the vaccine, and it was “perfectly safe.” But it’s getting more and more clear, as we spend time going through the documents, that the safety aspects of any vaccine trial were basically ignored. And I found out even more disturbing things coming out of the European Medicines Agency (think of as Europe’s FDA) in that they don’t even require the safety testing. They don’t even require the distribution and excretion of a vaccine to be approved for use in patients.”

Dr. Flowers came to this conclusion from a paper by Hélène Banoun, biological pharmacist, PhD: “The anti-Covid mRNA vaccines aren’t subject to biodistribution and excretion studies, and this is according to the regulations of the health agencies.”

“The same product may or may not be classified as a gene product depending on whether or not it is qualified as a vaccine against an infectious disease. In the latter case, it may be exempted from these studies.”

Dr. Chris Flowers later adds that the phase one portion of the clinical trials (safety testing) was essentially glossed over. What usually takes years was six months maximum. “The Wistar rats — and that was virtually it.” He elaborates on the importance of safety testing. “Every time you look at things like this, you’ve got to wait several years to make sure nothing [bad] has happened since someone has received this experimental intervention in their lives. It can be all sorts of things, and some of these things, like cancers, may not occur for months or years later.”

“And so, this is yet another example of Pfizer not doing what it said it would do and the FDA not performing its regulatory function,” commented Dr. Wolf.

She asks, “Would you say, Dr. Flowers, that making sure a trial is conducted, according to trial protocols, is a core regulatory function of the agency that is the FDA?”

“That’s how they used to do it,” answered Dr. Flowers. “Even with the swine flu, they had just a few serious adverse events, and they pulled the vaccine. … And yet, here we are with huge numbers. They occurred very, very early on — way before this post-marketing experience document was being produced. Even at the interim analysis stage of the trial before the EUA, there were serious adverse events. But because the Pfizer doctors had turned around every single time and said, ‘Well, no serious safety signal has been identified in these reports.’ It’s absolute nonsense!”

Dr. Wolf and Dr. Flowers then discuss the “odd” distribution of adverse events.

Dr. Flowers informs that Pfizer Document 5.3.6 tracked all countries receiving the Pfizer injection 90 days after vaccine rollout. And of that global rollout, approximately half of the total adverse events (42,086) occurred in the UK, a little less than half were in the United States, and the rest were scattered across a mix of other countries.

“Does that strike you as odd that this is a global rollout and the vast majority, once again, we found this once before in the total of adverse events, are in the UK and the US? Wouldn’t you expect it to be more random in a global rollout?” asked Dr. Wolf.

“Absolutely,” answered Dr. Flowers. “The distribution of the Pfizer vaccine was rather chaotic, shall we say, amongst many countries, with Pfizer trying to exploit governments as, for example, what happened in Uruguay, and in Argentina and Brazil — that we actually know about. I wouldn’t go all in and say, ‘Well, it’s targeted against a western population.’ But I mean, it’s particularly fair to commentate that maybe that is a possibility.”

Going back to Document 5.3.6, how many took the C19 injection, suffered a stroke, then died because of it?

If we do some quick math, we can get an idea. So, after 90 days, 61 people died, and Pfizer stopped recording data on February 28, 2021. We are now at the end of December 2022, and 22 months have since passed. So, 61 deaths multiplied by 22 months — then divided by 3 (90 days) equals 447 vaccine-induced deaths from stroke.

“This is just dying of one thing, “ added Dr. Flowers.

“Look at all the other things we’ve shown.”

These Covid-19 injections could also be affecting the personalities of those unfortunate enough have spike protein in the brain.

“From the brain point of view, we know that lipid nanoparticles in of themselves are irritant to blood vessels and [are] getting inside the brain, which has very, very sensitive blood vessels,” explained Dr. Flowers. And the spike proteins, carried by lipid nanoparticles, cause inflammatory change, which can then cause microvessel disease. “So when you get things like microvessel disease, little micro-clots occurring, then you are going to get lots of little micro-strokes that may not be visible on any type of imaging,” stated Dr. Flowers.

“Could a lot of inflammation or tiny micro-strokes in the brain cause personality changes?,” asked Dr. Wolf.

“Absolutely, if it affects the frontal lobes,” answered Dr. Flowers. “If you remember, there was a very barbaric old-fashioned treatment — One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — for example. They used to do a frontal lobotomy; they basically cut off the frontal lobe to pacify the really aggressive sociopath in prison.”

“I think that’s against the human court,” added Dr. Flowers. “And yet it’s being done in a different manner.”

“The notable thing about people who had frontal lobe lobotomies is how compliant they were,” added Dr. Wolf. “That their critical thinking facilities died — that they were tractable. They could be managed better institutionally.” She asks, “Couldn’t that be a possible explanation for the mysterious death of critical thinking we’re seeing in the vaccinated?”

“That’s definitely a potential real cause, a pathological cause for it,” answered Dr. Flowers. But “Is it [the] chicken [or the] egg? Because those sorts of people tended to be compliant beforehand.”

But the best way to really get to the bottom of it is to do immunohistochemical stains, as suggested by Dr. Ryan Cole. That is, an antigen-antibody pathology test that can be done on post-mortem brains to get to the bottom of “where does the spike protein go?”

What is the distribution of the spike protein? How long does it remain in the body? The authorities told us the contents of the injection would stay in the arm and that the spike proteins would degrade within a few weeks. But, in Dr. McCullough’s words, “It [mRNA] is everywhere. It’s in oral secretions. It’s in your genital secretions. It’s in sweat. It’s in breast milk. We don’t know when this clears out of the body.”

Nevertheless, Pfizer knew after the first 90 days, 275 people suffered stroke-related brain damage. While 61 families were grieving the death of their loved ones and the other 214 were seeking care for their family members post-stroke, Pfizer was too busy with their marketing campaign. “Safe and effective.” They failed to address the strokes, considered them to “not raise new safety issues,” and continued pushing the Covid-19 injections. And for that, they are, at minimum, guilty of criminal negligence and malfeasance.

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Venezuelan opposition legislators voted last week to dissolve their interim government, and with that they have ended the project of trying to replace Maduro with Juan Guaidó:

But nearly four years later and with little to show for the effort, the experiment has come to an end. On Friday, the opposition lawmakers who once rallied behind Guaidó voted 72-29 to dissolve their so-called interim government, effectively ending his mandate.

This was a long overdue move. Guaidó never had control of anything outside the National Assembly in Venezuela, and eventually he didn’t really have control over that. The U.S. made a major mistake in trying to foment regime change in Venezuela, and the backing of Guaidó was a perfect example of why the policy never made any sense. The entire policy has been an exercise in wishful thinking and reckless meddling from the start. After four years of failure and worsening hardship for the Venezuelan people, there may now be a chance for a serious rethinking of this policy.

Dumping Guaidó was a necessary move, but it was one that should have been done years ago. Following almost four years of ineffective efforts to dislodge Maduro, Guaidó’s standing with the Venezuelan people was terrible. According to one recent survey, his approval rating was 5% and only 6% of Venezuelans would vote for him as a candidate for president. All the time that was spent offering him up as the alternative and “legitimate” president of Venezuela was a waste, and now the opposition will be back more or less to square one with even less political capital and goodwill than they had before. It will take years to repair the damage done by being so openly aligned with the U.S. economic war that has been waged against Venezuela, and that can’t really begin until the economic war is brought to an end.

The Biden administration has begun taking very modest steps towards altering sanctions on Venezuela, but it needs to move much faster and go much further if sanctions relief is going to help the population. Keeping broad sanctions in place primarily punishes ordinary Venezuelans, and there can be no doubt about that at this point. No country has ever been democratized by being subjected to grueling collective punishment, and collective punishment will just make things worse for the people while Maduro clings to and tightens his hold on power. Our government’s policy aggravates the problems of food insecurity and poverty with economic coercion, and it is both morally indefensible and politically stupid.

The pro-sanctions theory that “maximum pressure” would force the Maduro government to crack and collapse has been tested and proven false. The U.S. will have to deal with Maduro as the de facto president for the foreseeable future, and it will have to acknowledge that its latest regime change attempt failed. Venezuela policy is a cautionary tale of what happens when the U.S. pays too much heed to ideological exiles, sets unrealistic goals, and uses the blunt instrument of sanctions to try to achieve far-reaching political goals. The U.S. must overhaul its Venezuela policy so that it is no longer focused on coercion and punishment, and that means ending broad sectoral sanctions. That may or may not help end the country’s political crisis, but it will at least stop making its economic and humanitarian crises worse than they already were.

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US Middle East policy continued its downward spiral in 2022. The president and Congress aided and abetted illegal Israeli objectives over better policies preferred by overwhelming majorities of American voters. In poll after poll, Americans have signaled they would like to cut U.S. foreign aid to Israel. Sanction Israel over apartheid practices. Hold it responsible for being the Middle East’s leading state sponsor of nuclear proliferation and not recognize Israeli territorial annexation. Americans also oppose Israel’s U.S. surrogates attempting to curb their 1st Amendment rights to boycott Israel in response to its perpetual human rights violations.

None of these popular and noble objectives were translated into U.S. policy in 2022. Americans are instead likely to be further undermined in 2023. Below are IRmep’s takes on 2022 and 2023 predictions.

Israel’s foreign agent AIPAC

AIPAC is an Israeli foreign influence operation. It was set up with Israeli and foreign funding laundered into the US by an Israeli foreign agent. The Department of Justice ordered AIPAC to register as an Israeli foreign agent in 1962 under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). At the time, AIPAC was the lobbying division of the American Zionist Council. The Department of Justice has never enforced the order.

Prediction: The Department of Justice will continue to refuse to properly regulate AIPAC under FARA leading to further abuses of the American system on behalf of AIPAC’s Israeli foreign principals.

Unconditional US foreign aid to Israel

US aid to Israel is illegal, unjustified and increasingly indefensible. That is why following passage of the $1.7 trillion omnibus spending bill this month, Israel surrogates in the US falsely claimed that at $100 billion Ukraine received more cumulative foreign aid than Israel. That is wrong. The Congressional Research Service pegs inflation adjusted aid to Israel between 1946-2018 at $236 billion. Even that aid figure does not include billions of “black” budget intelligence and covert aid.

It is a common tactic for lobby surrogates to attempt to minimize the enormous, illegal, unjustified and unconditional aid package. In past years, Israel surrogates even claimed the U.S. costs of maintaining its “ally” Israel were far less than costs of troops in Germany, Japan and South Korea. This claim is also false because there is no treaty alliance between the U.S. and Israel and therefore Israel is not technically an ally. The aid has also been illegal since the 1970s.

After learning that Israel, with the aid of U.S. surrogates, stole U.S. weapons grade uranium in the 1960s to fabricate Israel’s first atomic weapons, Senators John Glenn and Stuart Symington passed amendments now within the Arms Export Control Act prohibiting US foreign aid to clandestine nuclear weapons states. No U.S. president has ever issued waivers to make US aid legal and Congress ignores its own law. Most presidents sign letters promising never to discuss Israel’s nuclear weapons program.

Prediction: The president and Congress will continue to deliver illegal aid to Israel in violation of the Arms Export Control Act. Israel will continue to be the largest direct, indirect and black budget aid beneficiary.

AIPAC replaces “citizen lobbying” and conferences with campaign cash

AIPAC expenditures on “citizen lobbying” in conjunction with an annual policy conference in Washington used to be its biggest expenditure. It spent less directly lobbying Congress, the executive, and federal agencies through a dozen full time employees. While it tried to influence PAC and individual campaign contributions, it did not operate its own PAC.

No more. AIPAC faced increasing public protests at its conferences, counter conferences, unfavorable TV and radio and public denunciations when it emerged from the shadows and operatives flooded into the Washington Convention Center and Capitol Hill.

In 2021-2022 AIPAC launched a new PAC and super PAC to promote Israel’s preferred candidates over those who might instead demand abidance to American popular demands, international law, peace, justice and fairness. For the most part in 2022, Israel’s foreign agent managed to install pliable politicians and keep more principled representatives out of power.

From Israel and AIPAC’s perspective, it was worth spending up to $9 million on each House election race, and $48 million on a Senate race to install malleable politicians willing to unconditionally support Israeli, rather than popular American, interests. In most cases, AIPAC spent much less to dislodge even the mildest critics.

US aid divided by House and Senate count

Prediction: AIPAC will continue to raise and expend tens of millions in political races. AIPAC will not hold any further public “citizen lobbying” events in Washington over fear of mass protests and backlash. This will lower political exposure of U.S. politicians attending the conference and passing AIPAC drafted laws.

Abraham scams power illegal annexations

One major recent Israel lobby territorial demand is that the U.S. recognize 102,703 square miles of Western Sahara as Moroccan territory. In turn, Morocco is to engage in trade and diplomatic interchanges with Israel.

This is one phase of the worst recent debasements of US policy called the “Abraham Accords.” This Israel lobby initiative launched during the Trump administration seeking to transcend demands to stop Israeli violence, ethnic cleansing, oppression, apartheid and territorial displacement of the native Palestinian population. The Biden administration has done nothing to reverse the Abraham Accords and restore American credibility.

Since the Second World War international law has forbidden territorial acquisition via war and conquest. The Abraham Accords demand that the U.S. legitimize territorial acquisition via war and conquest if it works to Israel’s benefit.

At the close of 2022 the U.S. continues to support Trump administration legal theories that Israel has sovereignty over Syria’s Golan Heights, captured by Israel in a war it launched in 1967. The Biden administration also supports the idea that Jerusalem is the “undivided capital of Israel” while the UN holds that its status is subject to negotiations. Although there is mild Biden administration lip service opposition to Israel’s December declaration of its entitlement to “Judea and Samaria” (the West Bank) there has been no visible substantive action against ongoing Israeli illegal settlements.

Illegal annexations for Israel vs Russia

Some Arab leaders have begun to accept the Abraham Accords, even as most Arab populations remain universally opposed to normalization with Israel until there is justice for Palestinians.

At the close of 2022, the United States continues to push for the illegal annexation and recognition of 105,709 square miles of territory on Israel’s behalf. This is over ten times the amount of Ukrainian territory that Russia illegally annexed through 2022.

Prediction: Israel and its U.S. lobby will continue to demand illegal annexations under the Abraham Accords as Israel lobby media pundits deflect and provide cover. U.S. government officials will dodge questions about the illegal seizures using exclusive language when referring to Israel while condemning illegal Russian annexations.

Americans rise up against their own “Palestinianization”

Given the factors listed above, Americans wanting less corruption in foreign policy have had few avenues for effective resistance in Washington. However, as Israel through its lobby demands ever more entwinement and tribute from America, it has unwittingly expanded into hostile territories it has not managed to co-opt and is losing big.

AIPAC interlards spending bills in Congress with demands that Israeli companies be allowed preferential access to capital and participation in “joint” ventures in water, energy, health and military initiatives, harvesting billions of additional revenues for Israel and lobby insiders.

In Virginia, AIPAC and its state cutout, the Virginia Israel Advisory Board (VIAB) worked hard since 2013 to steer $25 million in US government funding and over $100 million in UAE government funds into an Israeli aquaculture company best known in the industry for killing fish. Highly qualified Virginia acuaculture companies were bypassed. The people rose up and the Israeli company was shown the door for an experienced Norwegian company. This operator change cut Israel and its surrogate AIPAC out of an estimated $2.9 billion in revenues.

The Israeli company Energix is accustomed to building on Israeli occupied West Bank and Golan Heights territories, landing it on the UNHCR list of human rights violators. Energix is importing its worst practices into Virginia, trying to corrupt and co-opt county boards of supervisors, using AIPAC-like behind the scenes tactics to disenfranchise neighboring landowners as it installs cheap, toxic, cadmium-heavy solar panels 95% of the market rejects, on prime agricultural land.

Communities, alerted to Energix’s practices, have now risen up. They have forced boards of supervisors to withhold zoning permits to Energix, sued, and are now pressing state agencies to withhold future licenses over widespread deceptive Energix practices. This has canceled or put on hold $4.3 billion worth of Energix revenues.

Prediction: As Americans face ever more direct Israeli attempts to “Palestinianize” their communities and future, they will increasingly band together and fight back.

Conclusion

While Israel and its lobby isn’t the only driver of disastrous U.S. Middle East policy, it plays the critical role. The Israel lobby mostly escapes scrutiny from even staunch critics. Many prefer to advance canards that Israel is merely a U.S. “client state”, America’s “unsinkable aircraft carrier” and that Israel’s lobby is both legitimate and not a major factor in policymaking.

None of this is true. For this reason, IRmep will continue its research and education programs into its third decade of operations.

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About 4,000 members of the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division are still deployed in Romania as part of a military buildup in Eastern Europe that President Biden ordered last year, as the Pentagon is still deciding whether to maintain current troop levels.

The New York Times reported Tuesday that some 101st soldiers are stationed at a base near the Romanian city of Constanta on the Black Sea while others are further north, just a few miles from the Ukrainian border, and are simulating fighting Russia in Ukraine.

In exercises with Romanian troops, the Times report said the 101st soldiers are firing artillery, launching helicopter assaults, and digging trenches similar to those on the front lines in Ukraine’s Kherson Oblast.

The deployment marks the first time the 101st has been sent to Europe since World War II.

CBS News reported in October that the 101st was conducting drills within just four miles of the Ukrainian border and that the unit was prepared to “fight tonight.” Commanders told CBS that they were in Romania to protect NATO territory but said they were ready to enter Ukraine if the war escalated.

The Times report stressed that the 101st Airborne deployment was about deterrence. If the US were preparing to enter the war directly, it would likely send significantly more troops. While in Romania, the soldiers are also participating in coastal defense drills, and Romanian troops are practicing firing HIMARS rocket launch systems into the Black Sea.

The military buildup in Eastern Europe has brought US troop levels on the continent to over 100,000 for the first time since 2005. The Pentagon is expected to decide soon if it will maintain the current levels for the long term or reduce or increase them.

The over $100 billion that has been authorized to spend on the war in Ukraine includes money to fund troop deployments in Europe. The latest Ukraine aid bill that was passed by Congress includes $6.98 billion for US European Command, which will likely fund the training of Ukrainian troops, other types of support for Kyiv, and US deployments in the region.

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

Featured image: Army soldiers assigned to the 101st Airborne Division arrive in Mihail Kogalniceanu, Romania, Jun. 28, 2022. Units from the 101st will support the Army’s V Corps’ mission to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank and engage in multinational exercises with partners across Europe to reassure allies and deter further Russian aggression. (Photo by Army Capt. Angelo Mejia)

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Jan. 22 marks the second anniversary of the UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, a global lifeboat supported by 70% of the world’s countries. Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Energy’s 2023 budget request for nuclear weapons’ upgrade is more than $21 billion and close to $8 billion for radioactive and chemical cleanup at nuclear weapon sites across the country. Stack this up against the same department’s 2023 budget for energy efficiency and renewable energy — $4 billion — and we see the future: weapons trump wind turbines; war worsens climate crisis.

Moreover, the government’s budget has no line items for the massive existential costs of nuclear weapons, three of which are described here:

• the dread that world-ending nuclear bombs provoke in humans (unless we have become “numb to … that culture of mass death”);
• the “forever” radioactive contamination that eludes cleanup to human and environmental safety standards, the estimated cost of just one site, Hanford, Washington, being $300 billion to $640 billion; and
• the theft and poisoning of indigenous peoples’ lands and culture for mining uranium, generating bomb-grade plutonium, and conducting above ground atomic bomb testing.

Hanford, Washington is the site of the largest plutonium-production reactors in the world from 1944 to 1987 (including for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki). The Hanford land, bordering the Columbia River, was effectively stolen from four Indigenous tribes and peasant farmers by the federal government and is now “arguably the most contaminated place on the planet,” according to Joshua Frank, author of “Atomic Days.”

The Hanford plutonium-making site has killed and contaminated fish, waterfowl and other biological life in the Columbia River and polluted 200 square miles of the aquifer beneath. It contains 177 leaky underground storage tanks holding 53 million gallons of radioactive and chemically hazardous waste — an atomic wasteland which may never be remediated. The worst and very-real scenario for this site and its workers is a Chernobyl-like explosion from leaking hydrogen gas.

While nuclear weapons governments and their bomb-making industries are criminally sleepwalking into what could mean the end of our planet’s life, many others — scientists, high-level military, citizens and whole countries — are countering the weapons holders’ political idiocy with principled intelligence.

• At their 40th reunion in Los Alamos, New Mexico, 70 of 110 physicists who worked on the atomic bomb signed a statement supporting nuclear disarmament. When have the brightest scientists of their day ever admitted that their most notable work was a colossal mistake?
• On Feb. 2, 1998 retired General George Butler, former Commander of U.S. Strategic Air Command addressed the National Press Club: “The likely consequences of nuclear weapons have no … justification. They hold in their sway not just the fate of nations but the very meaning of civilization.” Sixty other retired generals and admirals joined him calling for nuclear weapons abolition.
• Against immense pressure from nuclear-armed states, most aggressively the United States, 122 countries agreed in July 2017 to ban nuclear weapons. At the heart of the United Nations Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) is an explicit ethical goal: to protect the world’s peoples from the humanitarian catastrophe that would ensue were nuclear weapons employed.
• By the end of 2022, 68 countries ratified the Treaty and 23 more are in the process.
• At least 30 more countries have promised to join the Treaty.
• Since 2007, ICAN, an international organization with partners in more than 100 countries, has mobilized people throughout the world to convince their governments to support a ban on nuclear weapons.
• Mayors for Peace from over 8,000 global cities call for the abolition of nuclear weapons.

The new UN Treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons bolsters the hope that the United States and the eight other nuclear giants will grow up into pragmatic, if not ethical adult governments and eliminate forever their genocidal weapons. One nation did so: South Africa developed nuclear weapons capability and then voluntarily dismantled its entire program in 1989.

The road less taken

In 1963, President John Kennedy gave at American University’s commencement what has been deemed the most important speech by a U.S. president — a speech on peace with the Soviet Union. But “what about the Russians?” everyone asked. Kennedy responded “What about us … Our attitude [toward peace] is as essential as theirs.” According to historian Jim Douglass, “John Kennedy’s strategy of peace penetrated the Soviet government’s defenses far more effectively than any missile could have done.” Promoted across the Soviet Union, Kennedy’s speech and his behind-the-scenes diplomacy with Khrushchev led toward defusing Cold War tension and planted the seed of a world without nuclear weapons and war. This seed awaits germination.

If the U.S. could once again replace its masculinist power with creative foreign policy and reach out to Russia and China with the purpose of dismantling nuclear weapons and ending war, life on Earth would have a heightened chance.

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Pat Hynes, a retired professor of environmental health, is on the board of the Traprock Center for Peace and Justice and an active member of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and Nuclear Free Future. Her recently published book “Hope, But Demand Justice” is available at World Eye bookstore and Haley’s Publishing.

Featured image is from ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons)

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The #TwitterFiles are fast becoming the greatest glimpse behind the veil of America’s out-of-control surveillance state since 2013, when Edward Snowden heroically sacrificed his career and citizenship to reveal the blatantly unconstitutional and dangerous surveillance of the American people by the NSA. 

Now — thanks to great reporting by Matt Taibbi, Bari Weiss, Lee Fang, Michael Shellenberger and David Zweig — they have proven beyond any doubt that the “intelligence community” has been manipulating the digital press in the United States for years. Led by the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and the CIA, the surveillance state didn’t just run roughshod over tech companies, they obviously placed staff agents in place at Twitter and other key tech companies in order to influence censorship policy. Twitter alone had dozens of intelligence agency veterans on its senior staff.

Matt Taibbi stressed that the #TwitterFiles document that “the state isn’t a bit actor in a mostly-private ‘content moderation’ movement. It’s the central player, clearly the boss of the whole operation, and clearly also the driving force in its expansion, a truth we can show in pictures.”

And censorship was not limited to the Hunter Biden computer story because it conflicted with the CIA war narrative in the Ukraine. The heavy hand of government censorship was brought to bear on a broad spectrum of issues, including COVID vaccines and masking, the Nordstream II sabotage, and election fraud charges — to the point that the sitting President of the United States was de-platformed under pressure from Deep State operatives. “A long list of government enforcement agencies essentially got to operate Twitter as an involuntary contractor, heading into the 2020 election,” Taibbi noted.

Thus, it shouldn’t be a surprise the mass media lacks interest in the Jeffrey Epstein/Ghislaine Maxwell cases where the two were charged with trafficking underage girls for sex to … absolutely no one who was prosecuted or charged (probably because Epstein/Maxwell ran an MI6 or Mossad honeytrap). The spook-run media did their best to zero-out speculation about the US sabotage of Nordstream II and a host of other issues of concern to their interests.

Meanwhile, establishment lickspittles like corporate-Democrat podcaster David Pakman are pooh-poohing the political censorship as a nothingburger, and the Hunter Biden story as merely private companies refusing to circulate nude pictures of the president’s son with underage girls. Why mention Burisma, “the Big Guy” or how Biden led Obama-era policy in Ukraine and China as Biden’s family cashed in with lucrative $20,000/month no-show jobs if your role is to support the CIA war narrative in Ukraine?

The FBI/ODNI/CIA obviously censored the Hunter Biden laptop story because it would expose corruption in the Ukrainian government, which would have damaged the narrative for the war they planned on escalating with Russia (by getting Ukrainian forces to shell the disenfranchised ethnic Russian areas of Ukraine that had declared secession).

The Surveillance State’s role in Ukraine

The official narrative for the Maidan Revolution of 2014 is that deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, the last president elected by the entire Ukraine, had become unpopular and corrupt. In addition, he had signed press censorship laws and had taken Ukraine on a path away from membership in the European Union, leading to spontaneous popular riots that overthrew the freely-elected president.

The narrative above is at least factually accurate, with the exception of the last clause. Masses will sometimes riot for food, but they will never riot to get membership in the European Union. As Great Britain shows, they may possibly riot to get out of it.

The other part of the official narrative being spun by the “intelligence community” is the holy inviolability of Ukraine’s 2013 borders, borders deliberately gerrymandered by Stalin to include enough ethnic Russian enclaves within the Ukrainian border to prevent Ukrainian national unity leading to independence.

The southern and eastern regions of Ukraine that seceded in the wake of the Maidan Revolution — Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk — were the regions most heavily populated by ethnic Russians (see map from Wikipedia below).

They also happened to be the regions that voted most heavily for incumbent President Yanukovych, who was unseated by the Maidan Revolution (see map below by Wikipedia).

Thus, it should be no great surprise that a population ethnically distinct from Ukraine would have no problem seceding from a government that had just unconstitutionally overturned a leader fairly elected in a close national election where their votes had amounted to the margin of victory.

Moreover, there are also religious differences among the regions of Soviet-era Ukraine borders, with the Russian ethnic areas mostly following the Moscow Orthodox Patriarchate and the Ukrainian areas following the Kiev Orthodox Patriarchate (see Wikipedia map below).

Thus, current Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky’s move on December 2 to ban the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate in Ukraine will only further entrench these sectional differences. And from the perspective of the warmongers, that may be more a feature than a bug.

It doesn’t make any sense to get all worked up over three oblasts seceding and choosing to be governed by the most corrupt government in Europe instead of the second-most corrupt government in Europe. Unless you’re the CIA, and you want to sacrifice more Ukrainian young men in order to win your goal of eventual regime change in Russia.

The CIA role in Ukraine

The CIA has been fomenting coups and grooming “civil society” in Ukraine since the 1940s. But since the break-up of the USSR in 1991, those efforts have accelerated to a fever pitch.

And it’s really impossible to discuss the US role in Ukraine without an outline of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Nadia Diuk. Created in 1983, the NED is a Cold War leftover that has long been the overt face of the CIA’s covert regime change efforts. And the key person for two decades on Ukrainian and Russian policy at the NED was Nadia Diuk, a CIA officer in the 1980s mentioned in several declassified CIA memoranda (see snippet below) who became a careerist at NED with Eurasia as her case-load and a long personal and ethnic interest in Ukraine. She was the child of Ukrainian immigrants who had participated in the CIA insurgency of the 1940s.

According to an official NED obit for Diuk, who died of cancer in 2019, “Nadia came to NED as a program officer in 1987, three years after the Endowment’s founding, and went on to lead the NED’s grant making in Europe and Eurasia, providing crucial support to countless civil-society groups throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.” Naturally, the obituary left out Diuk’s history at the CIA. But Diuk’s driving interest was always Ukraine, a country where millions of dollars in “aid” to local NGOs has flowed in recent decades.

The US government’s own foreign propaganda agency, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, has even termed the NED’s strategy funding of local NGOs “regime change on the cheap.” And while the NED worked with just a $40 million per year budget back in 2002, the NED is now a budgetary behemoth spending more than $300 million per year, doling out money to “independent” journalists and a wide spectrum of political parties across the world — including to libertarian parties.

In Venezuela, NED funded an NGO headed Maria Corina Machado, who later went on to head “Vente Venezuela,” the most prominent libertarian party in Venezuela. Machado, a Yale University graduate, was later charged with treason by the Chavez government for accepting the grant (amounting to less than $100,000) from the NED.

It’s not clear if Machado is or ever was a CIA asset; I’d like to think she wasn’t and isn’t.

But people who have lived under tyrannical governments often have this understandable but fundamentally dangerous idea that everything from the West — even the CIA — represents freedom. In their desperation, they think they can’t afford to be choosy about their allies.  But the same principles that make the KGB/FSB a tool of tyranny in Russia make the CIA a tool of tyranny here in America and around the world.

Thus, it’s understandable why dissidents in Venezuela, Ukraine or Russia would look for “allies” in Western intelligence agencies, even if they don’t understand that those Western intelligence agencies would never bring actual freedom to their countries.

Libertarians — of all people — should realize that espionage establishments with long histories of sabotage and assassination will not usher in anything remotely resembling the libertarian idea of freedom. The NED’s leader for decades was Carl Gershman, a Socialist Party USA activistuntil he was brought into the NED as a CIA asset. Nor are there examples of the CIA bringing freedom directly to countries with their coups and revolutions. The opposite is history.

And this history has also been the case in Ukraine. Since the 2014 CIA coup, Ukraine has drifted away from liberty by almost every metric, from curtailed religious freedom to nationalization of the press to bans on political opposition.

The official narrative is that this sharp turn away from liberty by the Ukrainian government is excusable because of the war, as if these same apologists for the Zelensky regime would have excused Roosevelt banning the Republican Party during World War Two, or his nationalization of the Col. Robert McCormick’s Chicago Tribune, and a ban on German Lutheran Churches in America as war measures. But none of those happened, nor would they have been excusable had they happened.

Regime change in Ukraine was squarely in the NED’s sights immediately before the Maidan coup, with NED chair Carl Gershman writing for the Washington Post on September 27, 2013: “Ukraine is the biggest prize, and there Russia’s bullying has been particularly counter-productive,” Gershman noted of Russian economic sanctions that the US has also used prolifically. “The United States needs to engage with the governments and with civil society in Ukraine.” And the NED had already invested heavily in Ukrainian civil society by that point.

Where the Washington Post’s reporting brazenly revealed the secrets of CIA misbehavior during the Church Committee hearings of the 1970s, by the early 2000s it had become a reliable and willing channel of CIA propaganda.

Immediately after the Maidan coup, CIA Director John Brennan was found taking a victory tour through Ukraine, and planning for the next stage of war.

The CIA and libertarianism globally

About that same time the CIA and its NED subsidiary had already taken a strong interest in recruiting members of the Russian Libertarian Party (a party only founded in 2009), and made efforts to recruit within the Russian libertarian movement.

One of the people the CIA — and Diuk — took an interest in was a young Russian journalism student named Vera Kichanova who was serving as an intern at Voice of America, an official US government propaganda agency. The 20-year-old Kichanova ran for the Moscow city municipal council (which includes 1,502 elected members) in 2012, and became the first elected member of the Russian Libertarian Party. According to the NED, “She left her job as a reporter for Voice of America because Moscow’s elected municipal council members are not allowed to work with foreign media.”

The next year, 2013, the NED flew Kichanova out to Washington, DC to give her their “Democracy Award.” Kichanova subsequently moved her journalistic base to Kiev after the Maidan revolution, in Diuk’s beloved Ukraine, and later went to Oxford (where Diuk had matriculated) to earn her doctorate. She then began filling up a resume with a wide array of libertarian organizations, including the Atlas Society and the Adam Smith Institute. Today, she serves on the board of one of the two Russian Libertarian Party factions (the RLP split in a 2020 factional battle).

It also happens to be the faction of the Russian Libertarian Party that has repeatedly criticized the US Libertarian Party on Twitter and elsewhere for its strong non-interventionist position on the Russo-Ukrainian war.

I mention Kichanova not to tar her as a CIA asset; like Maria Corina Machado, I hope she declined to be recruited by the CIA. But there’s not really much doubt in my mind that a recruitment attempt was in fact made. Nor is there any doubt that she ended up on the RLP board faction that is spewing CIA propaganda to attack the Libertarian Party here in the US. She may remain detached from the fake RLP (the real one is here) spewing CIA propaganda from her London office, so I can’t blame her directly for the attacks.

I’m more interested in the larger patterns.

The point of this column is not to cast doubt on the sincerity of Kichanova or Machado; it’s to raise awareness about how the CIA has been recruiting libertarians globally and turning them into warmongering assets. It’s perhaps related to the NED/CIA program that the Spanish Libertarian Party adopted a resolution separating themselves from the US Libertarian Party on December 9, 2022. I expect there will be other libertarian parties across the globe to make similar statements.

This is a global battle for liberty, in part because the US government has waged a global battle against liberty.

And I would be remiss if I didn’t suggest that the intelligence community’s infiltration of libertarian parties abroad is likely no more limited than its infiltration of media sources is limited to sources outside the United States. They may be influencing political parties domestically as well, as America is just another government ripe for CIA regime change after much practice on governments abroad. This may explain in part the over-the-top reaction by some of the rage-quit crowd after the Mises victory in Reno this past May, and resistance to the new LNC leadership’s strong anti-interventionist message on social media and elsewhere.

I write this not to induce paranoia; there are many millions of people marinated in establishment media propaganda who thereby internalize it, but who are emphatically not CIA agents. Much of the domestic criticism of the US Libertarian Party’s policy of non-intervention is probably based in media laziness and lack of critical thinking, even among libertarians.

One might argue that if you walk with the feds, and you talk like the feds — even if you’re not a fed — it doesn’t matter. And on a practical level that’s probably true. But some of them can be saved by proper feeding of relevant information. That’s our role as members of the Libertarian Party.

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President Volodymyr Zelensky has signed a new bill into law which strengthens government control over public access to news in Ukraine. Zelensky has already nationalized the country’s media under martial law powers invoked after Russia’s invasion last year, stoking criticism from press freedom groups.

Signed on December 29, the law expands the Ukrainian broadcast regulator’s powers over news agencies ”dramatically,” now including both print and online sources, according to the Kyiv Independent. The measure requires publications to obtain licenses to operate, and any media org without the proper paperwork can be shut down, the outlet reported, adding that the body handing out the permits will be under Zelensky’s control.

According to Ukraine’s Institute of Mass Information, under the law, the media regulator is likely to be controlled by the incumbent authorities because its members are appointed by Zelensky and the Ukrainian parliament, where his party has an absolute majority.

In March, Zelensky issued a presidential decree which nationalized Ukraine’s broadcast media, stressing the need for a ”unified information policy” to combat Russian disinformation and voices critical of the government. Around the same time, he also banned a long list of opposition political parties with alleged links to Russia, and has since taken punitive action against Orthodox churches also said to have ties with Moscow, effectively quashing all dissent under martial law powers.

While Zelensky’s power-grabs throughout the 11-month conflict have largely gone unnoticed in the American mainstream press – which has devoted ample coverage to similar wartime repression in Russia – the New York Times highlighted calls from human rights groups to rescind the law over fears that it will crush the free press.

”Ukraine will demonstrate its European commitment by promoting a free and independent media, not by establishing state control of information,” said Ricardo Gutiérrez, the general secretary for the European Federation of Journalists.

The Committee to Protect Journalists and other civil rights orgs also slammed the legislation while it was being debated by lawmakers in December. While Ukraine’s legislature agreed to strip away some of the bill’s more extreme measures, the final draft still hands the federal government near total control over Ukraine’s news media.

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Kyle Anzalone is the opinion editor of Antiwar.com and news editor of the Libertarian Institute.

Will Porter is the assistant news editor of the Libertarian Institute and a staff writer and editor at RT.

Kyle Anzalone and Will Porter host Conflicts of Interest along with Connor Freeman.

Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky delivers an address in Kiev, Ukraine, April 15, 2022. (Credit: Ukrainian Presidency)

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In all probability, the message conveyed to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov from his American counterpart Antony Blinken via Israel’s new foreign minister Eli Cohen concerned the Ukrainian missile attack on Makeyevka (Donetsk) on New Year Day at 12.02 am  killing 89 Russian conscripts. 

Kiev claimed that upto 400 Russian soldiers might have been killed. Russian MOD has made a rare acknowledgment of scores of deaths — latest figure is 83. Moscow rarely releases figures for casualties in the war. 

The Russian statements stressed that US-made Himars missiles were used in the attack. The site was a “a temporary deployment facility” (a vocational school temporarily used as barracks for scores of recently mobilised troops sent by Moscow. 

The incident sparked renewed public criticism over the state of Russia’s military and the decision to use civilian infrastructure to house soldiers. The First Deputy Head of the Main Military-Political Department of the Russian Armed Forces Lieutenant General Sergey Sevryukov told reporters:

“It has already become obvious at present that the main cause of the occurrence was activation and large-scale use, contrary to the ban, of personal phones by personnel within the reach of enemy’s destruction means. This factor enabled the enemy to take the bearing and determine coordinates of servicemen location to deliver a missile strike. Required measures are being taken at present to exclude such tragic incidents in the future.” 

Apparently, blame game has begun — that the “main cause” of the tragedy was the unruly behaviour of soldiers who used mobile phones on the warfront. But there is going to be consequences. 

Public pressure may increase demanding maximum use of force to end the war quickly. There is always the danger of escalation if certain unwritten, unspoken red lines in the conduct of the war are crossed. 

It is entirely conceivable that there could be Cold-War style “strategic deconfliction” parameters worked out between the general staff in Moscow and the Pentagon aimed at avoiding miscalculation or any set of actions (by either side) that could lead to unnecessary conflict. The US and Russian forces have been operating in Syria for years and a communications line, used daily, has helped the two sides avoid direct conflict. 

Now, the New Year attack comes as the Biden administration is trying to provide billions in weaponry to Ukraine while also claiming that avoiding a direct clash with Russia has been a top US priority.

At any rate, although Russian intelligence would have a fair idea of the location of NATO officers conducting the Ukrainian operations, they have not been so far targeted. That is why, the Russian MOD’s decision on Monday to highlight that US-supplied Himars missiles have killed scores of Russian soldiers on Sunday night would have caused some uneasiness in Washington.

The big question is whether Moscow will also now go up the escalation ladder and directly target American military personnel deployed in Ukraine. 

Of course, any killing of American military personnel in Ukraine will make very damaging headlines in the US news cycle for the Biden Administration. So far, there has not been a single instance of a body bag arriving from Ukraine. The Russian generals probably ensured that. 

The Russian reports often mention publicly that the highly advanced HIMARS missile systems supplied to Ukraine are in reality operated by the US personnel. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Tass news agency as recently as last week:

“The Kiev regime is deliberately flooded with the most advanced weapons, including samples that have not yet been put into service in the Western armies, apparently in order to see how they will do in combat conditions… Meanwhile, Westerners are saying they prefer to remain ‘above the fray’ and find a direct face-off between NATO and Russia unacceptable, which is unadulterated hypocrisy. Already now, NATO members have de facto become parties to the conflict: Western private military companies and military instructors are fighting on the side of the Ukrainian forces. The Americans transmit satellite and other reconnaissance data to the Ukrainian command almost in real time and participate in planning and carrying out military operations.” 

Neither Washington nor Brussels ever endeavoured to refute these  damning Russian allegations. Instead, they choose to tread warily since a public discussion may jeopardise the delicate “strategic deconfliction” arrangement / understanding worked out with the Russian general staff. 

It comes as no surprise if Washington distances itself from the dastardly attack on New Year Day in Donetsk, which drew Russian blood. Quoting an unnamed Israeli diplomat, the Times of Israel reported that the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken had a call with the newly appointed Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen on Monday and asked him “to pass messages on to Lavrov but did not say what they were.”  

The Russian readout of Cohen’s phone conversation with Lavrov on Tuesday mentioned that the latter “informed his Israeli counterpart about certain aspects of the situation in Ukraine in the context of Russia’s special military operation.” 

Lavrov probably had his say on Blinken’s charade that the US had nothing to do with the killing of 89 Russian soldiers. The fact that as many was six deadly HIMARS missiles were fired in rapid sequence at a single target at 12.02 am shows a high level of certainty on the part of the Ukrainian side and/or their western mentors that maximum damage would be inflicted. 

The intelligence inputs in real time show direct American participation in the horrific operation targeting the Russian conscripts’ New Year party just when the toasts began. Of course, whipping up public sentiments in Russia against Putin is a core American objective in the war.   

We are entering a grey zone. Expect “surgical strikes” by the Russian forces, too. After all, at some point soon enough, it will emerge that what’s sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. 

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“The Russians have decided there is no way to negotiate an end to this. No one will negotiate in good faith; therefore we must crush the enemy. And that’s what’s coming.” — Colonel Douglas MacGregor (9:35 minute)

“Strictly speaking, we haven’t started anything yet.” — Vladimir Putin

The war in Ukraine is not going to end in a negotiated settlement. The Russians have already made it clear that they don’t trust the United States, so they’re not going to waste their time in a pointless gabfest. What the Russians are going to do is pursue the only option that is available to them: They are going to obliterate the Ukrainian Army, reduce a large part of the country to rubble, and force the political leadership to comply with their security demands. It’s a bloody and wasteful course of action, but there’s really no other option. Putin is not going to allow NATO to place its hostile army and missile sites on Russia’s border.

He’s going to defend his country as best as he can by proactively eliminating emerging threats in Ukraine. This is why Putin has called up an additional 300,000 reservists to serve in Ukraine; because the Russians are committed to defeating the Ukrainian army and bringing the war to a swift end. Here’s a brief recap from Colonel Douglas MacGregor:

Washington’s proxy war with Russia is the result of a carefully constructed plan to embroil Russia in conflict with its Ukrainian neighbor. From the moment that President Putin indicated that his government would not tolerate a NATO military presence on Russia’s doorstep in Ukraine, Washington sought to expedite Ukraine’s development into a regional military power hostile to Russia. The Maidan coup allowed Washington’s agents in Kiev to install a government that would cooperate with this project. PM Merkel’s recent admission that she and her European colleagues sought to exploit the Minsk Accords to buy time for the military building in Ukraine confirms the tragic truth of this matter.” (“US Colonel explains America’s role in provoking Russia-Ukraine conflict“, Lifesite)

This is an excellent summary of the events leading up to the present day although we should spend a bit more time on Angela Merkel’s comments. What Merkel actually said in her interview with Die Zeit was the following:

“The 2014 Minsk Agreement was an attempt to buy time for Ukraine. Ukraine used this time to become stronger, as you can see today.” According to the ex-Chancellor, “it was clear for everyone” that the conflict was suspended and the problem was not resolved, “but it was exactly what gave Ukraine the priceless time.” (Tass News Agency)

Merkel has been sharply criticized for admitting that she and the other western leaders deliberately deceived Russia about their true intentions vis a vis Minsk. The fact is, they had no intention of pressuring Ukraine to comply with the terms of the treaty and they knew it from the very beginning. What we know for a fact is that neither Merkel nor her allies were ever interested in peace.Second, we now know that they maintained the fraud for 7 years before she spilled the beans and admitted what they were really up-to. And finally, we now know from Merkel’s comments that Washington’s strategic objective was the opposite of the Minsk agreement. The real goal was to create a heavily-militarized Ukraine that would prosecute Washington’s proxy-war on Russia. That was the primary objective, war on Russia.

So, why would Putin even consider negotiating with people like that; people who just lied-to-his-face for 7 years while they flooded the country with weapons that would be used to kill Russian servicemen?

And what was the objective that compelled Merkel and her Washington colleagues to lie?

They wanted a war, which is the same reason why Boris Johnson put the kibosh on an agreement that Zelensky had negotiated with Moscow in March. Johnson sabotaged the deal because Washington wanted a war. It’s that simple.

But there is a price to pay for lying, and that price comes in the form of distrust, which is the pernicious erosion of confidence that makes it impossible to resolve issues of mutual concern. Russia’s deputy chair of the national Security Council, Dmitry Medvedev, expressed his views on the matter just this week in the bitterest terms. He said:

The behavior of Washington and others this year “is the last warning to all nations: there can be no business with the Anglo-Saxon world [because] it is a thief, a swindler, a card-sharp that could do anything…. From now on we will do without them until a new generation of sensible politicians comes to power… There is nobody in the West we could deal with about anything for any reason.” (Ex-Russian President outlines timeline for reconciliation with the West, RT)

Of course, the Washington warhawks will not be bothered by the prospect of severed relations with Russia, in fact they probably welcome it. But the same cannot be said for Europe.

Europe is going to regret that it tied itself to Washington’s anvil and threw itself into the sea. Sometime in the near future –when they finally realize that their economic survival is inextricably linked to access to cheap fossil fuel– EU leaders will change course and implement a policy that ensures their own prosperity. They will withdraw from NATO’s ‘forever war’ and join the ranks of civilized nations seeking a secure and economically-integrated future. We expect that even NordStream, which was destroyed in the greatest act of industrial sabotage in the modern era, will be reconnected establishing the main energy artery that binds Russia to the EU in the world’s biggest free trade zone. Eventually, common sense will prevail and Europe will emerge from the slump brought on by its alliance with Washington. But, first, the conflagration between Russia and the West must play out in Ukraine, and the “Guarantor of Global Security” must be replaced by the one nation willing to fight Goliath on his own terms in a winner-take-all contest.Ukraine is shaping up to be the decisive battle in the war against the “rules-based system”, a war in which the United States is going to use ‘every trick in the book’ to maintain its grip on power. Check out this short blurb from political analyst John Mearsheimer who explains the means by which the US has preserved its dominant role in the global order:

“You cannot underestimate how ruthless the United States is. This is all covered-up in the textbooks and the classes that we take growing up because it’s all part of nationalism. Nationalism is all about creating myths about how wonderful your country is. It’s America right or wrong; we never do anything wrong. (But) if you really look at the way the United States has operated over time, its’ really amazing how ruthless we’ve been. And the British, the same is true of them as well But we cover it up. So, I’m just saying, if you are Ukraine and you’re living next to a powerful state like Russia Or you’re Cuba and you’re living next to a powerful state like the United States, you should be very, very careful because this is like sleeping in bed with an elephant. If that elephant rolls over on top of you, you’re dead. You’ve got to be very careful. Am I happy about the fact that this is the way the world works? No, I’m not. But it is the way the world works for better or worse.” (John Mearsheimer, “How the World Works“, You Tube; 1 minute)

Source: Multipolarista via The Unz Review

Bottom line: The prospects for peace in Ukraine are zilch. The US foreign policy establishment has decided that the only way it can reverse America’s accelerating decline is through direct military confrontation. The war is Ukraine is the first manifestation of that decision. On the other hand, Russia no longer puts any stock in negotiations with the West, because western leaders cannot be trusted to honor their commitments or fulfill their treaty obligations. The irreconcilable differences of the two main parties makes escalation inevitable. Absent a partner that can be trusted, Putin has just one option for resolving the conflict: Overwhelming military force. That’s why he called up 300,000 reservists to serve in Ukraine, and that’s why he’ll call up 300,000 more if they are needed. Putin realizes that the only way forward is by lowering-the-boom quickly and imposing his own settlement on the vanquished. This is exactly what Mearsheimer predicted just weeks ago when he said this:

“The Russians are not going to roll over and play dead. In fact, what the Russians are going to do is crush the Ukrainians. They are going to bring out the big guns. They are going to turn places like Kiev, and other cities in Ukraine into rubble. They’re going to do Fallujas, they’re going to do Mosuls, they’re going to do Groznys …. When a great power feels threatened…the Russians are going to pull out all stops in Ukraine to make sure they win. …You want to understand that what we are talking about doing here, is backing a nuclear-armed great power– that sees what’s happening as an existential threat– into a corner. This is really dangerous.” (John Mearsheimer, Twitter)

Source: PressTV via The Unz Review

So, if we know that Russia is going to try to end the war by defeating the Ukrainian Army, then what should we expect in the near future?

That’s a question that has been answered by a number of analysts who have followed the war closely from the very beginning. We will provide a few paragraphs from each of them in a minute, but first, here’s a recap of the meetings that took place last week that suggest a major Russian offensive may be just weeks away. The excerpt is from an article at Consortium News by Patrick Lawrence:

Alexander Mercouris… recently listed the exceptional series of meetings Putin has held over the past couple of weeks with the entire…. military and national security establishment. In Moscow, the Russian leader met with all of his top military commanders and national security officials (including) Sergei Surovikan, the general he put in charge of the Ukrainian operation….

Putin subsequently flew to Minsk with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu for exchanges with the Belarus political and military leadership. Then it was onward to meet with the leaders of the two republics, Donetsk and Lugansk, that were incorporated via referenda into the Russian Federation last autumn.

It is impossible to avoid concluding that these back-to-back meetings, barely covered in the Western press, portend a new, near- or medium-term military initiative in Ukraine. As Mercouris put it, “Something very big is on the way.”

Among the most interesting encounters in all of this took place in Beijing last week, when Dmitry Medvedev, currently deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council and long close to Putin, had talks with Xi Jinping….

At some point in the not-distant future, the war of hollow rhetoric in behalf of imperial hubris will weaken and drift toward collapse. This degree of Surreal detachment from reality simply cannot be sustained indefinitely — not in the face of a new Russian initiative, whatever the form it turns out to take.” (PATRICK LAWRENCE: “A War of Rhetoric & Reality“, Consortium News)

Is Lawrence, right? Is “something big on the way”?

It certainly looks like it. In the space below I have transcribed quotes from recent videos with Colonel MacGregor and Alexander Mercouris, two of the best and most reliable analysts of the war in Ukraine. Both agree that a Russian “winter offensive” will take place in the near future, and both agree on the strategic objectives of the operation. Here’s a clip from MacGregor:

“The American people don’t really understand that the Ukrainian Army in the Donbas is on the verge of collapse. They’ve taken hundreds of thousands of casualties… (and) they’re closing in on one hundred and fifty thousand dead. The 93rd Ukrainian Army Brigade was just withdrawn from Bahkmut– which has been turned into a Ukrainian bloodbath by the Russians– and they left after suffering 70 percent casualties. For them, that means that out of 4,000 men… they pulled out with about 1,200 men. That is a catastrophe, but that is what’s really happening. And when the Russians finally launch their offensive, Americans are going to watch this entire house of cards collapse. Then the only question is, will someone finally stand up and put an end to this utterly false narrative.” (“Colonel Douglas MacGregor”, Real America, Rumble; 8:45 min)

And here’s more MacGregor:

It is looking more and more like the Russians would like to complete their task in Donbas first. They want to eliminate all the Ukrainian forces that are in the Donbas… Remember, this was always an economy-of-force measure. It was designed to grind up as many Ukrainians as possible at the lowest possible cost to the Russians. That’s what’s been going on in southern Ukraine (and) it continues. It has worked brilliantly. And Surovikin, the theatre commander, has said that will continue until he’s ready to launch his offensive. When the offensive is launched, it will be a very different battle. But the interesting thing is, that the Ukrainians have taken so many casualties in the South, we are beginning to hear reports that they are on the verge of collapse. And that’s why we’re hearing about teenage boys age 14 or 15 pressed into service. …and we’re getting videos from Ukrainian soldiers saying,”The people in Kiev had better hope that the Russians get to them before we do… because we’ll kill them.” They are talking about people in the government, because they see no evidence that Zelensky’s government …gives a damn about them. They are running out of food and clothes; they are freezing, they are taking heavy casualties, and they are being driven back.” (“Will Ukraine have enough Fire Power?”, Col MacGregor, Judging Freedom, You Tube; 17:35 min)

Both MacGregor and Mercouris appear to agree that the Russian strategy involves “grinding down” the enemy, (killing as many Ukrainian troops as possible) consolidating Russian gains while expanding their control over areas in the east and along the Black Sea, and, eventually, partitioning of Ukraine into 2 separate entities; a “dysfunctional rump state” in the west, and an industrialized, prosperous state in the east. Here’s Alexander Mercouris from a recent update on You Tube:

My strong impression is that ...the focus of the Russian winter offensive –which is indeed coming– will be on ending the battle in Donbas, breaking Ukrainian resistance in Donbas, clearing Ukrainian forces from the Donetsk People’s Republic. It does not look to me as if the Russians are planning some great advance on Kiev or on western Ukraine.That is not what these comments of General Gerasimov say. …the Russians are focusing on Donetsk… It’s ‘low risk’ but it is highly-effective. It is grinding down the Ukrainian Army exactly as General Surovikin said. It is weakening Ukraine’s future ability to continue the war and — at the same time– it fulfills Russia’s primary mission which, from the start, has been the liberation of Donbas.

Now, it is not going to end there. Other Russian officials have been saying that in 2023, we should see the recapture of Kherson region … and there will most surely be other Russian advances in other places. But the main battle was, and remains, Donbas. Once that battle is won, once Ukrainian resistance is broken, the Ukrainian army will be fatally weakened… which means that Ukraine will not only have lost its most heavily industrialized region, and its most heavily fortified zone. It will also mean the Russians will have unimpeded access all the way to the east bank of the Dnieper River. At that point, they will be in a position to cut Ukraine in half. This seems logical to me and it seems clearly to me that this is the Russian plan. They are not making a secret of it, but they are keeping people on-their-toes and guessing about the troops that are in Belarus. But I suspect the primary purpose of those forces is to pin Ukrainian soldiers down …around Kiev from a possible Russian offensive there, and to counter the very big buildup of Polish troops. So that is what Gerasimov has been saying.” (“Alexander Mercouris on Ukraine”, You Tube; 31:35 min)

While no one can predict the future with absolute certainly, it seems that both MacGregor and Mercouris have a good-enough grip on the facts that their scenario cannot be dismissed out-of-hand. In fact, the present trajectory of the conflict suggests that their predictions are probably “dead on”. In any event, we won’t have to wait long to find out. Temperatures are dropping fast across Ukraine which allows for the unencumbered movement of tanks and armored vehicles. Russia’s winter offensive is probably just weeks away.

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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). 

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Starting on 7 April 2023, a rule that Joe Biden’s U.S. Commerce Department issued on 12 October 2022 will be fully in force, outlawing, by U.S. Executive (President Biden’s) fiat, any U.S.-allied country to engage in any commerce (buying or selling) with China that his Administration considers to be (or potentially to be) related to either artificial intelligence or supercomputing. He’s pretending to be the chief executive officer not ONLY for the U.S. Government but for the entire planet — all nations — the leader of the entire world’s government, replacing any authority that the U.N. or any of its agencies might possess, and with authority to replace international law by whatever he presents as being “international rules.” Finally, his Administration’s many assertions that they represent “the rules-based international order” have clear meaning: that phrase means whatever the U.S. regime wants it to mean. Those “rules” replace whatever is, or might be, international laws (which is the U.N.’s supposed — and exclusive — area of authority); and, (unlike whatever authority the Truman-created version of the FDR-planned “United Nations” might have possessed) this “rules-based international order” is backed up by the U.S. military, which constitutes half of the entire world’s military (with 1,649 military bases throughout the world, of which 900 are in foreign countries) and thus — as the physical enforcer of the U.S. regime’s “international rules” — provides to it the enforcement-power that U.S. President Truman refused to allow the U.N. to possess.

On 14 October 2022, the international law firm of Crowell & Moring headlined “New U.S. Restrictions on Transfers to China for Semiconductor and Advanced Computing Uses”, and reported that

Two new rules announced by the U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) strive to severely inhibit China’s progress in indigenously producing advanced semiconductors. Although advanced semiconductors are widely used for commercial applications, BIS cited serious concerns regarding China’s use of the technology for WMD and military applications, and enabling human rights violations or abuses. BIS’ announcement follows remarks in September by the U.S. National Security Advisor signaling a shift in the U.S. export control strategy from one of maintaining a “relative” advantage over competitors in certain key technologies, to maintaining “as large a lead as possible.” It remains to be seen if U.S. allies key to the semiconductor supply chain will impose similar export restrictions on transfers to China. Following the announcement of the rules, BIS officials have underscored the importance of multilateral adoption of the new currently unilateral controls, describing engagement with allies as a “priority” for BIS.

“WMD” and “human rights violations and abuses” are the U.S. regime’s standard excuses for its aggressions against other countries, either via sanctions or via coups or via invasions (such as was the case in Iraq), but Crowell was also pointing out, to its clients, the real reason: that “BIS’ announcement follows remarks in September by the U.S. National Security Advisor signaling a shift in the U.S. export control strategy from one of maintaining a ‘relative’ advantage over competitors in certain key technologies, to maintaining ‘as large a lead as possible.’” In other words: this action by Biden is intended to cripple China in artificial intelligence and in supercomputing, so as to lock-in for the indefinite future the U.S. regime’s global dominance, which will be necessary in order for the U.S. to replace the U.N. and its international laws, by America’s (and its military’s) “international rules” — such as by forcing the U.S. regime’s ‘allies’ or vassal-nations to comply with them (in this instance, by dropping China as regards supercomputing and AI).

Just as Biden’s America had forced Russia — when Russia demanded from it., on 17 December 2021, a promise that Ukraine on Russia’s border will never be allowed to join America’s anti-Russian military alliance NATO — to invade Ukraine in order for Russia to be able to prevent Ukraine from ever being able to join NATO, Biden’s America is also now forcing China to either choose to become another U.S. ‘ally’ or else to become “The West’s” ‘enemy’, and for the entire world to be forced to choose sides between the U.S. regime and its ‘enemies’: China and Russia.

Both in regards to Russia, and in regards to China, the U.S. regime is now forcing any remaining “non-aligned” nation to choose a side in what the U.S. regime views as being already WW III (though not YET a nuclear WW III — that is yet to come).

The non-aligned nations are being forced by the United States into needing to be “either for us or against us.” The coming world will be the U.S. and its ‘allies’ against everybody else. And the U.S. and its ‘allies’ will need to pretend that the aggressors here are China and Russia, instead of the U.S. This will be the ‘democracies’ versus the ‘dictatorships’.

The Crowell advisory also pointed out that only starting on 7 April 2023 will the full force of this new means of aggression against China be felt:

Temporary General License

To avoid disruptions of the IC supply chain, BIS has also announced a temporary general license (TGL), effective October 21, 2022 through April 7, 2023, allowing exports, reexports, or retransfers from abroad to or within China by companies not headquartered in an U.S. arms embargoed or sanctioned cy to allow for activity in China involving advanced IC and computer parts now covered by the new controls. The TGL does not authorize transactions with end users or ultimate consignees in China, nor does it allow activities with Entity Listed parties.

Right now, the firms that have relationships with Chinese firms regarding supercomputing and artificial intelligence are either preparing to do without China, or else to do without America, in those fields. So: if a firm will be writing-off China, then here is what they will be writing off:

On 29 August 2022, I headlined “Why RussChina Will Probably Be the Dominant Nation Beyond the Year 2100” and opened by pointing out, about China,

China is already a serious contender to become the world’s dominant nation because of its Governmental system and because that system has produced by far a larger number of highly intelligent and well-educated people than any other nation has. China’s most-basic asset is its having the world’s largest population; and, to this, its Governmental system has increased (added to) the effectiveness of that population, so as to make China already the world’s #1 nation regarding human resources.

Regarding China’s “Governmental system,” I linked there to a recent study titled “China is Fast Outpacing U.S. STEM PhD Growth” by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University. In other words: China’s graduate levels of education in Science, Technology, Mathemnatics, and Engineering, already is “fast outpacing” America’s.

Regarding China’s “increased (added to) the effectiveness of that population” I linked to PISA, the global high-school test-results-based comparisons of pre-college education, or “Program for International Student Assessment” and linked there to an article about that from Big Think dot com, titled “China’s schoolkids beat American students in all academic categories”.

Regarding China’s being “the world’s #1 nation” for “human resources,” I linked directly to that PISA study, because it proves that China’s high school students are dreams that America’s colleges and universities can only hope to be bringing here to become, as adults, assets to this nation instead of to any other nation (such as China).

America is living off of what FDR, and, before him, Lincoln, and before him, America’s Founders, did. Truman and his successors have, by now, already wasted it. Biden wants to force the rest of the world not to notice. But, by cutting off China (the world’s leader in human resources) and Russia (the world’s leader in physical resources), he is destroying his nation, forever.

(That last link is to a news-site whose leading contributor — the one having the largest number of high-viewers-per-page articles there — until recently was myself, but the site’s owner was recently threatened by an agent for the U.S. regime and so cancelled me, as a result of which, my articles have been removed from there, so that his business will not be destroyed by any such agent. So, as-of today, here is what is showing at that URL. And here it was before that. And here is why it was done.)

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from Summit News

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The global elites have shown great interest in insects as a source of food.  Not for themselves, mind you, but rather for the rest of us.  It is only incidental that using bugs as a food source would reserve fresh fruits and vegetables, beef, pork and chicken, and other current foodstuffs for those most deserving, such as themselves.  We have to ask, though, is eating bugs really such a good thing for humans?

Catching the bug

Most of the interest around bugs as a food source has centered around such insects as crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, and similar insects that reproduce quickly, have relatively large mass, and will eat all sorts of vegetable waste material and convert it into bugs.  While this sounds like a good way to convert organic mass into foodstuff in short order, there are other things to take into account.

The aforementioned insects all have one characteristic in common.  They have exoskeletons.  That is, unlike mammals who have our skeletons on the inside and the soft parts outside, these insects are much more like crabs and lobsters where their shell serves the purpose of our skeletons, and all the soft, nutritious parts are protected inside.  While some might like the crunchy outside, similar in texture to some breakfast cereals, there is a bit of problem – a fly in the ointment, as some might say.

This outer shell is indigestible by humans.  Our digestive system cannot convert the shell material into useable nutrients.  Eating these insects would be like eating a crab whole, shell and all, and not the soft-shell variety either.  Crab shells and insect shells alike use essentially the same indigestible substance that we are not equipped to handle.  Since the shell forms a large portion of the insect, that means that a sizeable portion of the mass has no nutritional value, reducing the food value of these bugs.

It’s a feature…

Fortunately, there is a solution.  Chickens, pigs, cows, many fish, and other animals have the necessary enzymes in their digestive systems to convert the insect shells into useful food materials.  Some, like cows, rely on useful microorganisms in the gut to do the conversion, while others produce the enzymes directly.  In either case, the bugs get converted into digestible animal protein that humans can eat and enjoy.  By passing the bugs through these natural food processing systems, the nutritional value of bugs is greatly improved from a human standpoint.

A bug in the system

Anyone who has spent time on a traditional farm with chickens, pigs, and cows has witnessed firsthand these conversion processes.  One need only witness the delight a chicken takes in hunting down and spearing a tasty cricket to appreciate the gusto with which these tidbits are consumed.  Unlike with humans, a bug diet would make millions of chickens happy.  Happy chickens are productive chickens.

There is even a useful byproduct in the form of biological waste exhaust materials such as guano and dung.  These materials are rich in certain minerals and other plant nutrients and form valuable fertilizer materials for plant growth.  Instead of indigestible waste that would have to be processed in human sewage systems, this biological preprocessing yields recyclable organic material that contributes to sustainable agriculture.

Of course, there is also an industrial solution.  The digestive enzymes can be mass produced in a variety of ways, including in gene modified bacterial fermentation vats.  These enzymes could then be added to a bug mash to convert the indigestible shell material into something humans could use.

The resulting goo would lack somewhat in texture so further processing would be needed to turn what would be a gooey, sticky, paste the consistency of gel toothpaste, into something somewhat palatable.  Various flavorings and # could be added to improve taste, and sawdust or other materials could be added to improve texture and fibre content.  Entire new food processing industries could be created almost overnight.  It would add new meaning to the term “processed food”.

Source: www.saltbushclub.com

Turning the tables

In addition to mashed bug, with or without gravy, the goo could be dried and ground up to make a kind of flour so we could have bug bread, bug cakes, bug petit fours, and bug cookies.  All this would be in addition to crispy deep fried bug, bugburgers, buggybits on salads, bug stew, and many other culinary delights.  An entire new school of bug cuisine would be formed to attempt to make bugs not only palatable, but even pleasant to consume, much to the dismay of the elites who would seek to force their will on us.

Perhaps the bug mash could even be fermented, yielding one or more beverages, and further converting bugs into consumable substances.  It would add an entirely new meaning to the term “bug juice”.  This would be in addition to the already wide array of byproducts of fermentation that already exist.

Don’t bug me

Why bugs?  As is obvious to many of us, this elite fascination with making people eat bugs is not about nutrition or “saving the planet” or any other positive purpose.  Rather, it seems most to be about the demonstration of power and control.  Food production and consumption is fundamental to life, and the history of humanity is in large measure the history of securing and producing food.  Regional cuisines reflect the adaptations people have made to convert the local materials into consumable foodstuffs.

Strongly # foods found in many areas have been developed to disguise the taste of decay where rapid food spoilage is a problem.  Pickling, drying, and other food preservation methods were devised in areas with long periods when food supplies were not readily available.  It is only natural that were our food supply restricted to insect materials, we would find ways to make that food source interesting and even enjoyable.

Sic semper tyrannis

No, it would seem that the push to force us to eat bugs is all about the psychological effect of being forced to consume a foodstuff that until now has largely been the food of lower animals and of desperate people.  It is promoted for its humiliation value, not its nutritional advantages.  Being forced to eat carrion beetles is the next best thing to being forced to eat raw dung.  What becomes manifestly obvious is the contempt the “elites” hold for common humanity.

It is the modern equivalent of “let them eat cake”—an expression that eloquently captured the arrogance of the elites of the time.  We know what happened to that elite aristocracy.  They saw themselves secure in their power and privilege.  It was much to their surprise to find that power to be an illusion, a mist dispelled by the sun of revolution.

This attempt to demonstrate the power to force consumption of an unwanted food on common humanity is ultimately doomed to failure.  Even were they to succeed, common human ingenuity would transform the source into something positive, just as has been done countless times before. We would transform defeat into victory, humiliation into triumph.  It would be the ultimate expression of the invincible human spirit encapsulated in an almost trivial sounding sentence: “When life hands you a lemon, make lemonade.”

Look on our works, ye elite, and weep.

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David Robb is a practicing scientist and CTO of a small firm developing new security technologies for detection of drugs and other contraband.  Dave has published extensively in TheBlueStateConservative, and occasionally in American Thinker.

Featured image is from Canada Free Press

PfizerGate: Tragic Truth Behind COVID Vaccines in the U.K.: 47,379 Excess Deaths in 8 Months Due to Vaccination

By The Expose, January 02, 2023

As the death toll rises, a dark shadow has been cast over Britain. Official data reveals that since April 2022, 407,910 deaths have occurred, with 47,379 excess deaths against the 2015-2019 five-year average.

Ukraine General Zaluzhny: “God Himself” Is on the Side of the Neo-Nazi Ultranationalists

By Kurt Nimmo, January 02, 2023

In other words, God is a neo-Nazi, an ultranationalist with a visceral, violent hatred of everything Russian (and Polish, Roma, and Jewish). Before dismissing the above headline as hyperbole, consider the following: Vitalii Zaluzhny’s adviser is Dmytro Yarosh, the commander of Right Sector’s Ukrainian Volunteer Corps.

African-American Diaspora Engagement at the Core of US-African Relations in Multipolar World

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, January 04, 2023

The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit held in Washington has placed African-American diaspora at the core for strengthening multifaceted  relations with Africa. The White House and African leaders have stressed the importance of Africa’s voices, advocated for incorporating Africans distinctively within the institutional structures to deal with various bilateral issues and for making further inroads into Africa. 

Video: Is the Chinese Communist Party a Threat? Emanuel Pastreich

By Emanuel Pastreich, January 03, 2023

It has become common practice in the alternative media, especially those parts of the alternative media that identify themselves with the term “conservative”, to provide detail and often quite accurate data about the manner in which COVID-19 vaccines are employed to kill off the population, and to offer new insights into the enormous frauds, engineered by the corporate elites, using the names of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. But the ultimate responsibility for those actions is attributed by these blogs and reporters to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Liberty for Julian Assange

By Barbara Nimri Aziz, January 03, 2023

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s vindication seems — maybe, perhaps, imaginably — achievable. It’s enough for me to publish my singular New Year resolution — not a wish, but a firm resolution — to more actively contribute to growing pressure to free Julian Assange, the mistreated, vilified and imprisoned, brave and brilliant founder of WikiLeaks.

Putin Now Has a Likely Successor: Medvedev?

By Eric Zuesse, January 03, 2023

Medvedev has just been promoted to a new and permanent position in Russia as the head of Russia’s military-industrial complex, which (unlike America’s MIC that controls the U.S. Government) is majority-owned by the Russian Government and is therefore the most critically important part of the national-security side of the Government.

COVID Jabs Have Erased 25 Years of Health Gains. Shocking Decline in US Life Expectancy

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, January 03, 2023

In August 2022, provisional life expectancy estimates for 2021 were released, showing Americans had lost nearly three years of life expectancy during 2020 and 2021. In December 2022, the finalized mortality report confirmed these shocking data.

A Gloomy 2023? Here Are Some Bright Spots

By Rep. Ron Paul, January 03, 2023

The prospects for peace, justice, and the advancement of liberty in 2023 may at first seem further away than ever. Washington’s determination to overthrow the Russian government via a proxy war in Ukraine has brought the threat of nuclear war closer than ever in history.

The 10 Most Influential Figures in the History of Oil

By Josh Owens, January 03, 2023

Oil has been the single most influential resource in modern history, driving industrialization, building nations, and deciding the outcome of wars. It has been responsible for raising millions of people out of poverty and for razing entire cities to the ground. From technological advancements to environmental disasters, few, if any, industries have left as large a mark on the earth.

The Big Hoax – From Climate Change to Biodiversity

By Peter Koenig, January 02, 2023

It is amazing that a majority of people of our beloved Mother Earth still haven’t noticed that we are living in an ever-growing tyranny since the beginning of 2020. A dictatorship that has been planned for many decades, if not longer. And it started around the globe, in all 193 UN member countries (194 WHO members) at midnight of December 31, 2019.

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The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit held in Washington has placed African-American diaspora at the core for strengthening multifaceted  relations with Africa. The White House and African leaders have stressed the importance of Africa’s voices, advocated for incorporating Africans distinctively within the institutional structures to deal with various bilateral issues and for making further inroads into Africa. 

Over the years, African leaders have been engaging with their diaspora, especially those excelling in sports, academia, business, science, technology, engineering and other significant fields that the continent needs to optimize its diverse potentials and to meet development priorities. These professionals will primarily leverage into various sectors, act as bridges between the United States and Africa.

As explicitly reiterated at the mid-December African leaders’ gathering, the overarching message was to focus on “deepening and expanding the long-term US-Africa partnership and advancing shared priorities, amplifying African voices to collaboratively meet this era’s defining challenges.”

Corporate Council on Africa is the leading U.S. business association focused on connecting business interests between the United States and Africa. The United States has helped close more than 800 two-way trade and investment deals across 47 African countries for a total estimated value of over $18 billion, and the American private sector has closed investment deals in the continent valued at $8.6 billion since 2021, the White House said.

The United States is not only the undisputed leader of the free world, but also home to the most dynamic African diaspora. The African diaspora ranks amongst the most educated immigrant group and is found excelling and making invaluable contributions in all sectors of life-business, medicine, healthcare, engineering, transportation and more. The contribution of the African diaspora is not negligible, we see more of them appointed to senior government positions by President Biden like Wally Adeyemo, US Deputy Treasury Secretary, and Dr John Nkengasong Global AIDS Coordinator and Special Representative for Health Diplomacy.

U.S. Department of the Treasury Deputy Secretary Wally Adeyemo and Vice President of the United States Kamala Harris during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, December 13, 2022 (Ben Solomon/U.S. Department of State)

Beyond engagement with the Biden administration, African leaders express the vision, dynamism and humility to engage with their diaspora. They are excelling in sports, academia, business, science, technology, engineering and all those other sectors that the continent needs to beef up to optimize its potential and meet development priorities. In addition, it is in Africa’s high interest to embrace them.

Since its inception more than two decades ago, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) has offered Africans the opportunity to engage and establish business networks from Africa to the United States and vice versa. It has been one surest way working towards an integrated relations, and in uplifting relations unto a higher appreciable stage.

Speaking at a U.S. Export-Import Bank conference, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai told the gathering there that they needed more investment in addition to market access. The duty-free access for nearly 40 African countries has boosted development, fostered more equitable and sustainable growth in Africa.

The AGOA offered promise as a “stepping stone to address regional and global challenges,” especially with Africa’s young and entrepreneurial population. The future is Africa, and engaging with this continent is the key to prosperity for all of us,” Tai said.

According to World Bank Statistics, remittance inflows to sub-Saharan Africa soared 14.1 percent to $49 billion in 2021 following an 8.1 percent decline in the previous year due coronavirus pandemic. Beyond remittances, Africa stands to benefit largely from the input of its diaspora considered as progressive in the United States.

Welcoming African entrepreneurs, Africa-American and African leaders for a reception, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the United States was guided by the principle of close overwhelming partnership with Africa.

“We can’t solve any of the really big challenges we face if we don’t work together. So it’s about what we can do with African nations and its people,” Blinken said. “We welcome all other members of the international community, including the United States, to join us in the global efforts to help Africa.”

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken meets with Namibian President Hage Geingob, Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema, and South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor in Washington, D.C. on December 14, 2022. [State Department photo by Freddie Everett/ Public Domain]

In featuring prominently integrative aspects and cultural familiarity within the African diaspora, New York Mayor Eric Adams said that the success of African Americans showed the need for Africans to “walk differently.”

On disapora came Greg Meeks, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The main strategy was rooted in one key word – partnership – and in recognition of shared priorities and working together. There were also many African and American youth leaders, students in the United States and Africa who are tuning in virtually – most spoke vividly on strengthening the bonds between African countries and the United States.

The strategy recognizes the immense role that the African diaspora members and young people will play in shaping and strengthening that partnership. One young leader, who has mobilized climate finance to make the water sector more resilient in South Africa, is now sharing the lessons that she learned at a U.S. government agency. Another, fresh off her experience fighting infectious disease in Malawi, was sharing her insights with nonprofits and businesses in the United States.  

Others were expanding educational opportunities for children, conducting environmental research, creating job opportunities for youth in both African countries and the United States, and demonstrating exactly why the diaspora is such an unparalleled asset for people on both continents.  It’s these interconnections, the back and forth, and the benefits that flow to Africa and the United States alike that is so incredibly powerful.

The United States practically is committed to ensuring that young people continue to bring their talents and hard work to the tremendous benefit of people across the continent and to the benefit of people in the United States. It has a number of programs that are doing just that – programs like the Young African Leaders Initiative – and through economic development programs, like the Academy for Women Entrepreneurs program.  Now, since its inception in 2019, that program has provided more than 5,400 women throughout Africa with the training and the networks that they need to start and to scale small businesses.

Late December, additional investments were announced to make it easier for students to participate in exchange programs from African countries, to increase trade opportunities for members of the African diaspora, and to support African entrepreneurs and small businesses. Each of these investments is guided by one overarching goal: to continue building partnership so to better address the shared challenges facing Africa.

The adopted strategy reflects diversity, its influence, and the ingenuity of its young people. Those youth are a growing part of the continent’s population – and also the world’s.  Today, more than 60 percent of Africa’s population is under the age of 25.  

By 2030, two in every five people on this planet will be African.  These rising generations are powering dynamic economic growth in their countries and far beyond.  2016 – just a few years ago – African startups raised $350 million dollars in investment; last year, they raised $5 billion in investment – and that’s a curve that’s going to keep going up and up and up. 

An African-American Yvonne Orji once wrote that, “Nigeria made me.  America raised me.”  It is often said that one of America’s greatest strengths is cultural diversity – there are few greater testaments to that than the immense contributions of the African diaspora community. 

The United States is investing in the infrastructure that provides the foundation for African entrepreneurship. That means creating more pathways for the free flow of ideas, of information, of investment, which in the 21st century requires one thing: digital connectivity.

Interestingto note that Africa has around twice as many internet users as the United States, yet the continent has only a fraction of our data center space.  What does that mean?  Slower, less reliable connectivity.  That’s why U.S. Development Finance Corporation is investing $300 million in building data centers across the continent – because there is the need for networks that can keep up with the lightening pace of new ideas.

Second, investing in rising leaders. Since President Barack Obama created the Young African Leaders Initiative, nearly 5,800 trailblazers from every country in sub-Saharan Africa have come to the United States for academic and leadership training – developing skills, relationships that are going to last for a lifetime and to the benefit of their communities.

Many of the Mandela Washington Fellows are entrepreneurs, and has until today thousands of graduates. For example, Abel Hailegiorgis from Ethiopia has a company building bicycles and wheelchairs from bamboo, which is stronger than steel – sustaining the planet, supporting local farmers and local manufacturers. The forthcoming years will involve frequent exchanges directed at contributing substantially to the network of professionals from African countries.

After the U.S.-Africa leaders summit, the National Basketball Association (NBA) has signed agreements to open and further expand American sports across Africa. With its African headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa in 2010, additional offices are planned in Dakar, Lagos, Accra, Nairobi and Cairo in 2023. The league is committed to expanding efforts to make the game of basketball and the NBA more accessible across the continent.

The National Basketball Association (NBA) Africa and the Basketball Africa League (BAL) continue to attract world class marketing partners, including the BAL Foundational Partners Rwanda Development Board (RDB), NIKE, Jordan Brand, and Wilson, alongside NBA Africa’s recent collaborations with ESPN Africa, Afrosport, KFC Africa (Pan-Africa), Africell (Angola), Stanbic Bank (South Sudan), and Maven Developments (Egypt).

That’s not all.  In September, the U.S. African Development Foundation teamed up with the Tony Elumelu Foundation to create a new program to provide financing, technical assistance, and mentorship to emerging young innovators in Africa. He recently launched another initiative to connect up-and-coming climate entrepreneurs with American companies.

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. delivers remarks at the U.S.-Africa Business Forum in Washington, D.C. on December 14, 2022. [State Department photo by Freddie Everett/ Public Domain]

Third, there is a program for fostering greater engagement by American companies. The U.S. private sector already invests more than $4 in Africa for every dollar that the government allocates to the region in foreign assistance – and it wants to do more. That’s the objective of the Office of Global Partnerships, which will take a U.S. private sector delegation to Ghana in February. It’s the goal of the Prosper Africa initiative – which is marshalling agencies from across the government to help more U.S. companies and inventors – investors to do business in Africa, and do it in a way that promotes inclusive growth – growth that’s sustainable for the planet.

Prosper Africa’s institutional investor delegation invests more than $85 million in an African fund that will provide financing to small businesses and entrepreneurs.

Through a partnership with Prosper Africa, Pierre’s company – Yolélé – is distributing fonio and other products made by small farmers in the region to markets in the United States. In a region where it’s getting harder to grow crops due to a warming climate, fonio’s deep roots make it virtually drought-resistant.  Now, in West Africa, it’s said that “Fonio never embarrasses the cook” which is good news. 

President Joe Biden has signed an executive order for the creation of African Diaspora Advisory Council as part of the presidency. According reports, the post-summit large-scale projects and programs will be coordinated, monitored and implemented jointly by the president administration, the White House, State Dept of African Affairs and the African Diaspora.

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Featured image: A general view during the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday, December 13, 2022 (Scott Taetsch/U.S. Department of State)

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Imagine that you and your spouse have a 14-month-old baby in excellent health. Your child is perfectly responsive to mother and father. His cognitive and social development has hit all milestones. He then receives an MMR (measles, mumps, rubella) combination vaccine. A few hours later he is struck with high fever, seizures, and severe gastrointestinal distress.

You call your pediatrician, who explains that, per the CDC, “There is a small increased risk for febrile seizures after MMR vaccines.” The pediatrician assures you the seizures will soon pass and your baby will be fine. However, following this initial attack, the baby becomes withdrawn and unresponsive to his mother. Instead of his characteristic bright-eyed smile, cheerful babble, and exclamations of delight, his facial affect becomes either blank or highly distressed. He ceases playing interactive games and showing interest in objects that had previously grabbed his attention.

You hope his condition is a passing aberration, but it’s not. Weeks and months go by, but the cheerful and responsive 14-month-old toddler you knew never returns.

As the child grows bigger and stronger, his condition becomes more frightening. He is easily upset at minor changes, throws tantrums, and reacts strangely to the way things look, taste, and smell. At night you and your spouse are tormented by his agonized shrieks and the thudding of his head against the headboard.

You are referred to a developmental pediatrician who diagnoses your child as suffering from autism. Immediately you wonder: Why was our healthy baby suddenly afflicted with this catastrophic social and cognitive impairment?

The pediatrician has no answer. “The cause of autism remains unknown,” he says.

“What about the MMR vaccine administered right before the trouble began?” you ask.

“We know the MMR vaccine doesn’t cause autism?” the pediatrician replies.

“But you just said we don’t know what causes autism?” you say.

“We don’t know what causes autism; we just know that it isn’t caused by the MMR vaccine,” he proclaims.

Your heart sinks with the suspicion that only a moron would dare utter such a patent logical fallacy. And yet, upon further investigation, you learn that your pediatrician is simply parroting the public health agency orthodoxy on MMR vaccines—an orthodoxy established without any comparative study of autism among vaccinated vs. unvaccinated children.

You observe mainstream media pundits parroting the same “safe and effective” mantra. CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, asserts on national television, “We don’t know what causes autism, but we do know it’s not caused by the MMR vaccine.”

The situation is analogous to a missing child last seen getting into a brown 1976 Pontiac Firebird. The parents go to the local police station and are told by the missing persons investigator: “We don’t know what happened to your child; we only know his disappearance is not connected with the driver of the brown 1976 Pontiac Firebird, whose identity we don’t know.”

You turn on the television and see Microsoft monopolist Bill Gates aggressively proclaiming there is no link between the MMR vaccine and autism. You wonder why Gates is widely regarded as an authority on MMR vaccines and autism, but no explanation is forthcoming. And so, like Captain John Yossarian in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22, you ask yourself: “Am I insane, or is everyone else insane?”

You assume your predicament must be rare, but then you ask around and discover there are tens of thousands of couples who have experienced the same disaster. And yet, virtually no one in the medical science establishment will even acknowledge the connection between your child receiving the MMR injection, his febrile seizures, and the onset of autistic symptoms.

A notable exception is the British gastroenterologist, Andrew Wakefield, who has long been interested in examining this link. Dr. Wakefield is so concerned that he directed the documentary film, VAXXED: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. Released in 2016 and initially scheduled to be screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, it was cancelled after the organizer, Robert De Niro, came under heavy pressure to ax it. Then as now, those who questioned the safety and efficacy of vaccines were heavily censored and censured.

A major character in the film is senior CDC scientist, William W. Thompson, who, in 2014, contacted the biologist and autism researcher, Dr. Brian Hooker, as well as US Congressmen Bill Posey (R-FL). Thompson stated that his colleagues at the CDC had, in fact, documented evidence of a link between the early administration of the MMR vaccine and autism—especially in African American boys—but had chosen to destroy the evidence. Instead of publishing their true findings, they presented a paper with an altered dataset that concealed the link. Thompson, who was listed as one of the authors, claimed his bad conscience had spurred him to become a whistleblower.

As I watched VAXXED, I was most struck by the parents’ testimony. As producer Del Bigtree pointed out, many of these parents are intelligent and reasonable people who are acutely aware of sudden changes in their children. Mothers are exquisitely sensitive to what is going on with their infants. It is therefore the height of arrogant obtuseness to dismiss their testimony out of hand.

There is now widespread acknowledgement that the global incidence of autism has sharply risen over the last twenty years. According to a recent study published in Autism Parenting Magazine, as many as 1 in 44, or 2.3% of American children, are now suffering from it. This compares to approximately 5 out of 10,000 in the 1970s (when the MMR vaccine was introduced).

Autism is a catastrophe for its victims and their parents. A recent study published in the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders “following 187 people diagnosed with autistic disorder found their long-term outcomes to be overwhelmingly negative.”

The outcome data was grim, showing pervasive inability to live independently, hold a job, or manage money. Few became independent, with 99% unable to live independently. Of those, 70% lived at home with relatives, 21% lived in disability homes in the community, and 8% in residential facilities.

Given these dire findings, one would think that our public health agencies would regard the high incidence of this terrible syndrome as an emergency and invest billions to investigate ANY and ALL possible causes. And yet, given that these agencies refuse to acknowledge the testimony of tens of thousands of parents, it appears that no serious research is being conducted to examine the possible link between the MMR vaccine and autism.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

As someone who played a minuscule role in a CIA information operation that targeted Soviet military operations in Afghanistan in November 1985, I feel somewhat qualified to comment on the mammoth propaganda campaign the United States and Europe have unleashed on Russia. I have never seen anything so perverse and so dishonest.

Let me give you a recent example. Remember this recent “news” headline? “

DUCKING FOR COVER

‘SICKLY’ PUTIN CANCELS BIGGEST SPEECH OF HIS LIFE AS FIRST RUSSIAN STATE OF NATION SINCE INVASION IS MYSTERIOUSLY AXED

Source: The Sun

This was courtesy of the UK’s SUN. Lacking any reliable source, The SUN opted for speculation:

VLADIMIR Putin has cancelled his state of the nation address fuelling rumours he is in hiding from the Russian people and could be in failing health.

Putin’s spokesman finally confirmed the speech – which would be one of biggest in Vlad’s life – will not go ahead before the New Year. . . .

It comes after the mad tyrant also cancelled his end of year press conference and his annual hockey game.

Got it? Putin is either deathly ill — suffering from Parkinsons, cancer, Irritable Bowel, etc. — or deathly afraid of having to explain the ass whooping that Ukraine is delivering to Russia. You see, Putin can’t handle tough questions. Oops!! Wait a minute. We have breaking news. Turns out that Putin held a 48-minute press conference three days before Western Christmas (does this count as “end of the year”?):

It would appear that Putin delights in trolling the Western pundits and media. Does Putin look like a man suffering from some devastating illness? Does he give off the vibe of a guy who cannot control his bowels and is called Mr. Poopy Pants behind his back? Joe Biden could not pull this off even if he consumed Zelensky’s weekly dose of cocaine. Putin is coherent and in command of facts.

It would be one thing if the Western propaganda effort was focused solely on ridiculing and trying to foment opposition inside Russia to Vladimir Putin. But it is not. Western propaganda is demonizing all things Russian — e.g., literature, art, chess, sports figures, and actors and actresses. This approach is not creating a reservoir of good will towards the West. Just the opposite. It is fortifying Russian nationalism and solidifying support for Putin.

This is just one more piece of evidence that Western intelligence agencies have become a toxic, venal clown show. A professional, competent intelligence agency would use propaganda to support a broader strategic goal. So what is the “strategic goal” in attacking all things Russian? Pissing off the Russian people does not strike me as a recipe for bringing Russia under the control of the West. It also fails to provide the answer to the question, “Who replaces Putin?”

I do not even see a Russian version of the impotent Venezuelan pawn, Juan Guaido, who was tossed into the trash bin of history today by his previous backers:

on Friday, dozens of politicians who once backed Guaidó voted in favor of removing the 39-year-old engineer and replacing his U.S.-supported “interim government” with a committee to oversee presidential primaries next year and protect the nation’s assets abroad.

See this.

The U.S. mojo for overthrowing foreign governments has fallen on hard times. The last successful Western engineered coup was in Ukraine in February 2014. Since then the U.S. efforts to put their own boy in charge of a foreign government have faltered badly. Not just in Venezuela. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, working with the Brits and Turkey and some Gulf States, tried to get rid of Syria’s Bashar Assad and funded a civil war. The attempted coup in Khazakstan in January 2022 was a bust. Syria and Khazakstan shared one thing in common — Russia was their friend and Russia intervened to shore up those governments.

I wonder what the Russia phrase for Mighty Mouse is?

 

Is Russia the new Mighty Mouse? An interesting question to contemplate on the eve of entering 2023.

*

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Larry Johnson is a bona fide Son of American Revolutionaries. At least 24 of his ancestors, men and women, fought to free the American Colonies from British rule. Some died for the cause of liberty. 

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***

We had just received the news that another shelling had taken place.

To be sure, the school we had just left had been hit for the umpteenth time with a 155 mm NATO-made missile during the morning hours. The quasi-totality of the window frames was covered with wood panels which bore witness to the almost frantic desire of the NATO-supported Kyiv regime not only to target the most vulnerable but also to impede the transmission of remembrance in an attempt to eradicate the future.

In what has become a grim reminder of the daily ordeal suffered by the population of Donetsk these past nine years, we drove to the site of the bombardment only to discover that this time the target had been the football stadium.

Known as the Donbas Arena, this state-of-the-art stadium had been home to the Shakhtar Donetsk (the Donetsk Coal Miners) football team since its inauguration in 2009.

It embodied the vibrant economy of the region and its then-attractiveness to foreign investors. (The structure had been built and completed ahead of schedule by a Turkish consortium and its architectural style was conceived by a famed British designer.) The DONBAS ARENA was selected to host a few games of the 2012 European Football Championships, including a semi-final game featuring future champion Spain.

Photo courtesy of Arnaud Develay

What immediately struck me upon arriving at the site was that it was built adjacent to the city’s war memorial in Lenin Komsomol Park.

Known as the Monument dedicated to the DONBAS Liberators, the site features a towering 18-meter high sculpture depicting a soldier and a miner (Donetsk’s name during the Soviet Era was Stalino and as the symbol of the city’s then-vibrant mining industry, “Stalino” had been named as twin city to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) jointly holding a sword with its edge planted firmly in the ground.

At the foot of the statue stands the entrance to a museum with an eternal flame.

The Monument was dedicated to “the memory of all military units and formations that liberated Donbas during the Great Patriotic War.”

Photo courtesy of Arnaud Develay

The contrast between the gravitas oozing from this place in opposition to the consumerism, almost pagan rituals, symbolized by the stadium situated a stone’s throw away highlights the struggle currently taking place in this part of the world against the unhinged forces of materialism.

World War II memorial. [Photo courtesy of Arnaud Develay]

The cult of money and ephemera-like gratification of supporting football teams stands in stark contrast with the timeless sobriety and dignified undertones emanating from the site where the names of thousands of martyrs are forever etched in dark granite.

In the background, the thundering of artillery resonated sporadically in the grim grey sky as if to remind the visitor that the war is ongoing and that its outcome is still uncertain.

This dichotomy plays out throughout all of the Donbas.

We then drove to a place where the current war might very well have turned out completely differently had it not been for a few soldiers turning the tide of fate against incredible odds back in 2014.

As a place where the forces of nihilism also attempted to eradicate the memory of those who had given their lives in liberating the region, Saur-Mogila was “the focal point of intense fighting, when Soviet troops managed to retake control of the height from German forces in August 1943. In 1963, a memorial complex was unveiled at the top of the hill to honor fallen soldiers, comprising an obelisk with a steel-and-concrete statue of a Soviet soldier, four steel-and-concrete sculptures built along the slope leading up to the obelisk (each memorializing infantrymen, tank men, artillerymen and airmen involved in the battle), and walls inscribed with the names of fallen soldiers in the battle.”^[1]

Photo courtesy of Arnaud Develay

In May 2014, the Kyiv junta launched a massive military attack on this highly strategic hill. They started by bombing World War II war memorials. A few DPR volunteers managed to contain the offensive by calling their artillery gunners to target their own coordinates with the intention of inflicting huge casualties on the enemy.

This tactic succeeded in allowing the Republic of Donetsk time to mobilize in a way conducive to survival in order to prolong the struggle. “Alec,” one of these heroes, was with us and told us about the ferocity of the fighting. He joined the ranks of the volunteers at 48 years old. He is now 57. He testifies that, in the heat of the moment, he called on his commanders “to bomb the Germans.”

Former SBU operative Vassili Prozorov perfectly captured the war for the control of the narrative going in Ukraine for at least 20 years. In his documentary “Culturocide,” he recalls in detail how the school manuals throughout the cities of the Lugansk and Donetsk Republic were aimed at brainwashing children with crude russophobic propaganda and an invented history of Ukraine predicated on an ideology known as “integral nationalism.”^[2]

Oleksii Arestovych, a former intelligence officer now serving as an adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, once stated that “Ukraine’s national narrative is predicated on a lie that we tell ourselves and others for if the truth was to come out, the country would cease to exist.”^[3]

These are the stakes of the Special Military Operation.

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Arnaud Develay is an international lawyer and participated in the defense of former President Saddam Hussein along with Former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark. In the wake of the Caesar Act, he documented the illegal sanction regime imposed on Syria while living in Damascus. Arnaud is now based in Moscow and can be reached at [email protected].

Notes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donbas_strategic_offensive_(August_1943) 

2. https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?ei=UTF-8&q=culturocide%2C+you+tube#id=1&vid=0123ba93df81edbd14ba2a6197b63abd&action=click 
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0aXu1lYABJI

Featured image: World War II memorial in Saur-Mogila. [Source: Photo courtesy of Arnaud Develay]

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***

“Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something else.” – Aristotle, Poetics (1457b)

It all seemed familiar.  Anthropomorphised Mother Nature in vengeful mood; humans wondering if they might meet a frozen demise in trapped vehicles; the planners taking stock as to how best to cope with grim circumstances.  The New York State governor Kathy Hochul was happy to stick her head out in declaring the latest lethal winter storm in Buffalo to be nothing less than a “war with Mother Nature, and she has been hitting us with everything she has.”

Having found her less than imaginative metaphor, the governor ran with it, suggesting that Mother Nature had laid waste to the region around Buffalo.  “It is [like] going to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking.”

Sappy media outlets have also taken up Hochul’s call from the parapets of battle, scouring the record for heartfelt accounts of the human spirit.  The Guardian warmed to “stories of endurance, survival and rescue” – these are the sorts of things you expect when under attack from an omnipotent enemy.  “Good Samaritans took stranded travellers into their homes; strangers worked together to help a snow-trapped expectant mother through some birth.”

Metaphors of war and the environment are rarely helpful.  They conjure up false notions of battle, fictional platoons, ready reserves and resources marshalled against a retributive god or some sentient force of agency.  Unfortunately, they are everywhere, and often conceptually shaky.  “A solidified metaphor, a metaphor accepted unambiguously as truth,” writes Scarlet Marquette with accuracy, “is, in fact, a most pernicious force, inimical to truth.”

Officials have made it a habit to see war everywhere, often involving inanimate and abstract notions that do more to distort than clarify.  They operate as enormous distractions in the service of not making policy.  There are wars on sugar, salt, fat, poverty, homelessness and that colossally failed project known as the “War against Drugs”.

Such tendencies have seen a slew of publications, many of the specialised variety.  One co-authored article in the dedicated journal Metaphor and Symbol argues that “war metaphors are omnipresent because (a) they draw on basic and widely shared schematic knowledge that efficiently structures our ability to reason and communicate about many different types of situations, and (b) they reliably express an urgent, negatively valenced emotional tone that captures attention and motivates action.”

That the action is necessarily well-directed or founded is another matter.  Susan Sontag picked up on this point in examining illness and its various metaphors, writing that “military metaphors contribute to the stigmatizing of certain illnesses and, by extension, those who are ill”.

But the theme of Nature can also be taken from the other side: that humanity has brought wrath against itself for its plundering, fecund, and warring ways.  Nature, in that sense, is the recipient of human bad behaviour, with humans refusing to come to the table and make peace.

The UN environment chief, Inger Andersen, sees much in that comparison.  Unlike Hochul, her concern lies in the concern that human beings have been the unilateral aggressors, exploiters, and marauders.

“As far as biodiversity is concerned, we are at war with nature.  We need to make peace with nature.  Because nature is what sustains everything on Earth … the science is unequivocal.”

Pausing to reflect on the birth of the 8 billionth human being was an occasion to celebrate, but “the more people there are, the more we put the Earth under heavy pressure.”  That pressure came in the form of “the five horsemen of the biodiversity apocalypse”, namely, land-use, overexploitation, pollution, the broader climate crisis, and the spread of invasive species.

The same sentiment is expressed by the United Nations Secretary General António Guterres, who shifts the focus to humanity as the warring problem on Planet Earth.  He puts his hope in the children to save us from this dilemma, hoping the young will be far more sensible in making peace.  “I am continuously inspired by their commitment & leadership in tackling the war against nature.”

If one starts off with the premise that human beings are prone to such innate war making tendencies – and this premise has been challenged – alternatives have been suggested.  The philosopher William James proposed a re-channelling of such desires in his address, “The Moral Equivalent of War.”  Instead of killing each other, humanity might go about other pursuits.

Unfortunately, such redirections bring environmental consequences James could scant see.  “To the coal mines and iron mines, to freight trains … to road-building and tunnel-making, to foundries and stoke holes, and to the frames of skyscrapers, would our gilded youth be drafted off, according to their choice, to get the childishness knocked out of them, and to come back into society with healthier sympathies and soberer ideas.”

Another rechannelling is required, but it will not be found in the exhortations to survival suggested by Hochul. Her language is not that of humans bound to nature as collaborative ecological agents, but warriors besieged.  In that analysis, nature itself is stigmatised.  Like Medea, she will kill her children, and is accordingly to be feared.

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

Featured image: Hochul being sworn in as Governor in 2021 (Licensed under CC BY 2.0)

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***

It has become common practice in the alternative media, especially those parts of the alternative media that identify themselves with the term “conservative”, to provide detail and often quite accurate data about the manner in which COVID-19 vaccines are employed to kill off the population, and to offer new insights into the enormous frauds, engineered by the corporate elites, using the names of the United Nations and the World Health Organization. But the ultimate responsibility for those actions is attributed by these blogs and reporters to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and to the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The conclusion in most cases is that the US is under assault from communists in China and that the democrats in the US who abet its actions are “leftists”. Concerns about actions of the CCP in the US and globally are not without evidence.

Click the image below to watch the video.

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This article was originally published on Fear No Evil.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

Americans had lost nearly three years of life expectancy during 2020 and 2021. In 2019, the average life span of Americans of all ethnicities was 78.8 years. By the end of 2020, it had dropped to 77.0 years and by the end of 2021 it was 76.4

From 2020 to 2021, death rates increased for each age group 1 year and over. The age groups with the highest increases include working age adults, 25 to 54, and children under 4

The leading causes of death in 2021 were heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, all three of which were higher in 2021 than 2020. Unintentional injury and stroke also significantly increased in 2021

Heart disease, stroke and cancer are all now-known side effects of the COVID jabs. Unintentional injuries may also be due to the shots, as you may easily be injured if you pass out or suffer a heart attack or stroke while doing just about anything

If the COVID jabs worked, you’d expect excess mortality to drop, yet that’s not what we’re seeing. We’re also not seeing mass death from COVID. The only clear factor that might account for these discrepancies is mass injection with an experimental gene transfer technology

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In August 2022, provisional life expectancy estimates^1,2 for 2021 were released, showing Americans had lost nearly three years of life expectancy during 2020 and 2021. In December 2022, the finalized mortality report³ confirmed these shocking data.

Shocking Decline in US Life Expectancy

In 2019, the average life span of Americans of all ethnicities was 78.8 years.⁴ By the end of 2020, it had dropped to 77.0 years⁵ and by the end of 2021, it was 76.4.⁶ As detailed in the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s finalized mortality report for 2021:⁷

“In 2021, life expectancy at birth was 76.4 years for the total U.S. population — a decrease of 0.6 year from 77.0 years in 2020 … For males, life expectancy decreased 0.7 year from 74.2 in 2020 to 73.5 in 2021. For females, life expectancy decreased 0.6 year from 79.9 in 2020 to 79.3 in 2021 … From 2020 to 2021, death rates increased for each age group 1 year and over …”

As Virginia Commonwealth University professor of population health Dr. Steven Woolf told USA Today,⁸ “That means all the medical advances over the past quarter century have been erased.”

Life Expectancy Has Dropped Across All Age Groups

Age-specific rates of death increased across all age groups as follows:⁹

As you can see, something very strange is going on here. While life expectancy dropped across all age groups, the age groups with the highest increases in mortality were working age adults, 25 through 54, followed by children between the ages of 1 and 4.

What’s Killing Younger Americans?

The leading causes of death in 2021 were heart disease, cancer and COVID-19, all three of which were higher in 2021 than 2020.¹⁰ Unintentional injury and stroke also significantly increased in 2021.

Heart disease, stroke and cancer are all now-known side effects of the COVID jabs. Unintentional injuries may also be due to the shots, as you may easily be injured if you pass out or suffer a heart attack or stroke while doing just about anything.

Woolf, however, believes low COVID-19 jab rates and general poor health of Americans are to blame for the increased mortality. In addition to disregarding the fact that the primary causes of death are side effects of the COVID shots, working age adults and children are also, comparatively speaking, the healthiest groups in general and ought to have a lower risk of death from any cause, but especially heart disease and cancer.

And, since they have a far lower risk of dying from COVID in the first place (compared to the elderly), a slightly lower COVID jab rate in this age group is unlikely to have made such a huge difference.

According to CDC data,¹¹ 84% of 25- to 49-year-olds got at least one dose and 71% is considered “fully ‘vaccinated.'” In the 50 to 64 year category, it’s 95% and 83% respectively. In the 65 and over category, 95% got at least one dose and 93% are “fully ‘vaccinated,'” so it’s not like there’s a major difference in jab rates.

‘Sudden Death Syndrome’ May Be Driving Down Life Expectancy

COVID-19 is an unlikely cause for the rapid decline in life expectancy for the simple fact that it’s not a major contributor to rising excess mortality. Excess mortality is a statistic that is related to but separate from life expectancy.

It refers to the difference between the observed numbers of deaths (from all causes) during a given time, compared to the expected number of deaths based on historical norms, such as the previous five-year average. (Formula: reported deaths minus expected deaths equals excess deaths.)

Across the world, excess mortality has dramatically risen since the start of the pandemic, and barely a day now goes by without a healthy adult suddenly dropping dead with no apparent cause. People have died during live broadcasts, in the middle of speeches and during dinner.

Clearly, they were feeling well enough to go to work, to an event or a restaurant, and something caused them to instantaneously die without warning. These are the people making up these excess death statistics. They shouldn’t be dead, yet something took them out.

Excess Deaths Took Off After the COVID Jab Rollout

While COVID-positive deaths were part of the equation in 2020, excess deaths really took off after the rollout of the COVID jabs, not during the height of the pandemic as one would expect if COVID-19 was the real killer.¹² Besides, we already know that “COVID-19 death” simply means that the person tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 at the time of death or just prior to it.

For the U.S., there were 3,440,546 deaths of all ages for the year 2020.¹³ The expected numbers were 3,028,959, so that was an excess of 13.6% (411,587 above expected). In 2021, there were 3,459,496 deaths of all ages, which was 16.4% above expectations. As of mid-April 2022, the excess death rate was already at 14.1%, with 1,041,538 reported deaths of all ages.

If the COVID jabs worked, you’d expect excess mortality to drop, yet that’s not what we’re seeing. We’re also not seeing mass death from COVID. The only clear factor that might account for these discrepancies is mass injection with an experimental gene transfer technology.

More Working Age Adults Were Coerced Into Taking the Jab

Life insurance data confirm that it’s working age adults who are dying in record numbers, which is what’s really driving down life expectancy. In the third quarter of 2021, the death rate of working-age Americans (18 to 64) was 40% higher than prepandemic levels, and these deaths were, again, not attributed to COVID.

As noted by Dr. Robert Malone in a January 2022 Substack article,¹⁴ workers were forced to accept the toxic COVID jabs at a higher frequency relative to the general population. This, I believe, is the real answer to why they’re dying at a disproportionate rate.

As for children under 4, well, toxins tend to be more dangerous to younger children, so it’s no great shock that the death rate for children has risen more than the rate of older people. After all, we’re now giving these toxic COVID jabs to babies as young as 6 months old.

Data Manipulation Hides Real Cause of Death

As mentioned, the leading causes of death in 2021 were heart disease, cancer and COVID-19. Data analysis by The Ethical Skeptic¹⁵ — self-described as a former intelligence officer and strategist — shows cancer deaths are now being mislabeled as COVID deaths. The suspicion is that this is an effort to hide the fact that the COVID shots have resulted in soaring cancer rates.

Seven of the 11 International Classification of Diseases (ICD) codes tracked by the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics — including cancer — saw sharp upticks starting in the first week of April 2021, which is when large swaths of the American population were getting their first COVID jabs.

According to The Ethical Skeptic’s analysis of U.S. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR) data, the CDC has been filtering and redesignating cancer deaths as COVID deaths since Week 14 of 2021 to eliminate the cancer signal.¹⁶

The following two charts illustrate how cancer mortality is being artificially suppressed. As explained by The Ethical Skeptic:^17,18

“The set dynamics are complex, but the principle is straightforward. When a death cert lists Cancer as the UCoD [underlying cause of death] and COVID as MCoD [main cause of death] — the UCoD & MCoD are being swapped, and COVID is being listed as the UCoD 100% (425/wk).

“This results in 20% of all COVID deaths each week, also happening to be persons dying of Cancer — which is egregiously higher than it should be. This is clear over-attribution = equates to exactly the difference between the Cancer and All Other ICD-10 code lag curves.”

The problem facing the CDC, is … What does one do when COVID Mortality is no longer substantial enough to conceal the excess Cancer Mortality?”

So, to rephrase, what The Ethical Skeptic is saying is that 20% of the weekly so-called COVID deaths are cancer deaths, which is rather astounding. Swapping the underlying and main causes of death, listing COVID as the main cause, hides (to some degree) the fact that cancer deaths are going through the roof.

According to his analysis, the COVID shot is killing 7,300 Americans per week. COVID, meanwhile, is killing 1,740 people.¹⁹ What will the CDC blame when COVID disappears, and they can no longer swap the underlying and main cause of death designations? Time will tell.

In the meantime, cancer is already one of the leading causes that is prematurely killing Americans, and uncontrollable turbo-charged cancers only started to occur after the rollout of the COVID jabs.²⁰

Former NIH Director Blames Christian Misinformation

Former National Institutes of Health director Dr. Francis Collins recently suggested misinformation spread by White Evangelical Christians are driving vaccine hesitancy, and that it’s this religious “culture war” that is killing Americans.

Collins either has an agenda or is seriously confused, as statistics show whites in general had the highest COVID jab uptake rates when the jabs came out, and people who took it were far more likely to promote the jab than discourage it. As reported by the Kaiser Family Foundation:²¹

“… federal data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that 78% of the total population in the United States have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine …

Over the course of the vaccination rollout, Black and Hispanic people have been less likely than their White counterparts to receive a vaccine, but these disparities have narrowed over time and reversed for Hispanic people.”

Christians in general also haven’t been particularly “hesitant” about getting the jab. An investigation by the Public Religion Research Institute found²² 56% of white evangelical protestants got jabbed, as did 74% of White mainline protestants and 79% of white Catholics. For some reason, the jab rates among Black religious affiliations were not assessed, so we have no idea whether religion has influenced Blacks to reject the shot.

Bear in mind, the COVID jab rate for the U.S. as a whole (one dose or more) is 79%,²³ so Christians in general are about as average as you can get. Granted, evangelical protestants have a significantly lower rate, but is Collins suggesting white evangelicals are causing Blacks to reject the jab — because Blacks had, and still have, the lowest jab rates.²⁴

The Use of Scapegoats Is a Classic Prejudice Builder

As detailed in “Vaccines Are the New ‘Purity Test,'” the Nazis used a four-step process for dehumanizing Jews,²⁵ — prejudice, scapegoating, discrimination and persecution. By scapegoating Jews as dirty and diseased, the German public was indoctrinated into agreeing with, or at least going along with, the Nazis’ genocidal plan.

Over the past three years, we’ve seen how government officials have repeatedly tried to pin blame for the spread of COVID on one specific group or another. Fortunately, these narratives didn’t stick in the long term, but they did do significant harm for a time.

Collins’ attack on evangelical Christians is just the latest example of how they try to maintain control by seeding division among races, religious and political groups. The more we distrust and fear each other, the less we pay attention to the real criminals.

But, in order for this the division attempt to work, there must be a target, a scapegoat, toward which people can direct their frustration. COVID-19 is now endemic and a rare threat to anyone. COVID narratives are simply being recycled to keep the fear of illness and distrust among people going.

It’s important to realize, though, that fear is the No. 1 destroyer of freedom. The greater your fear, the more you’ll obey, and the more you obey, the more freedom you must give up. And freedoms relinquished are never voluntarily given back by those in power. People throughout the ages have always had to fight to regain freedoms lost.

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Notes

^1, 6 CDC Provisional Life Expectancy Estimates for 2021, August 2022

² New York Times August 31, 2022 (Archived)

^{3, 5, 7, 9} CDC NCHS Data Brief December 2022

⁴ CDC Press release July 21, 2021

^8, 10 USA Today December 22, 2022

^11, 23, 24 USA Facts COVID Vaccine Tracker

¹² Our World in Data Excess Mortality During COVID Pandemic

¹³ US Mortality

¹⁴ Robert Malone Substack January 2, 2022

¹⁵ The Ethical Skeptic August 20, 2022, Part 1

¹⁶ Gettr The Ethical Skeptic July 16, 2022

¹⁷ Twitter The Ethical Skeptic October 2, 2022, Corrected chart

¹⁸ Twitter The Ethical Skeptic October 1, 2022

¹⁹ Twitter The Ethical Skeptic September 29, 2022

²⁰ Steve Kirsch Substack February 5, 2022

²¹ KFF July 14, 2022

²² PRRI September 22, 2021

²⁵ BahaiTeachings Hitler’s Four-Step Process for Dehumanizing the Jews

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***

As has frequently been the case in America’s recent wars, in Ukraine a largely hidden clandestine conflict is paralleling the actual fighting on the ground. One should assume that a variety of western spies using various kinds of cover are operating at all levels as well as in adjacent areas in Poland and the Baltic states. The Russians certainly have their own informants inside the Ukrainian government itself and Kiev has proven itself capable of carrying out so-called covert actions in Moscow, to include the car bombing assassination of Darya Dugin on August 20^th. At the same time, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Britain’s MI-6 are known to be working assiduously to collect information that suggest vulnerabilities in the Russian offensive capabilities while also seeking to identify those potentially recruitable individuals who do not support President Vladimir Putin’s intervention to liberate Donbas. The activities of spies and the agents that they direct should be considered a major part of the overall war effort by both sides.

Recently there have been some interesting articles revealing what some of the spies and their political masters have been up to over the past six months. Bear in mind, however, that the business of spying is 50% dissimulation to conceal what is actually taking place, so what the various intelligence services have been revealing is more than likely to include at least some deliberate misdirection. One recalls how in February 1981 Bill Casey, the new CIA Director appointed by President Ronald Reagan, famously quipped “We’ll know our Disinformation Program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”

If the quote is accurate, Casey would probably be delighted to see the massive propaganda effort carried out by the Joe Biden White House to initiate and sustain a proxy war against Russia that was completely avoidable and serves no national interest beyond testing how one can restart the Cold War complete with threats of nuclear annihilation. And one should observe that Casey might well have been delivering a subtler message within his apparently off-the-cuff comment. He might have been suggesting that no one should trust anything coming out of the mouth of a high government official, particularly if that official is an intelligence officer.

With that in mind, it was interesting to read an account of some recent remarks delivered in London by the head of MI-5, Ken McCallum. McCallum is no fool and his comments clearly were intended on one level to reinforce the message that the British government is taking good care of national security. In other words, he intended to spin a narrative that would reassure a public that has become increasingly concerned over the course of the Ukraine war and the possible painful consequences derived from British direct involvement in it.

What McCallum is selling is a suggestion that the Ukraine war is actually good for national security because it has enabled the expulsion of hundreds of Russian intelligence officers all over Europe. CNN’s story on MI-5’s annual assessment of the state of Britain’s security describes how the Kremlin’s “…ability to spy in Europe has been dealt the ‘most significant strategic blow’ in recent history after coordinated expulsions of [Russian] diplomats since the invasion of Ukraine, with a hundred diplomatic visa requests refused in the UK alone in recent years.”

McCallum stated that in this year alone 600 Russians officials had been expelled from Europe, 400 of whom were considered to be intelligence officers under cover. He expanded on the details in additional comments after his speech how “We’ve continued to work intensively to make the UK the hardest possible operating environment for Russian covert action. In the UK’s case, since our removal for 23 Russian spies posing as diplomats, we have refused on national security grounds over 100 diplomatic visa applications … the serious point is that the UK must be ready for Russian aggression for years to come.”

What does it all mean? McCallum explained how there has been “a very, very large dent in [Russian intelligence capabilities] across Europe. Since counter-intelligence information is shared throughout NATO it’s not easy for the Russians to cross post [one officer] expelled from country A to Country D… I hope what will continue to be true is that a very large volume of trained, experienced Russian intelligence talent, if I can use that term, will be of far less utility [in] the world for many years to come.”

McCallum concluded his address with some obligatory comments on the threats coming from adversaries like Iran and China. The MI5 tale presumably warmed the hearts of each and every American neocon hoping for some good news for Hanukkah, but there is something big that is missing from the Russia story. That would be that mass expulsions of Russian diplomats and “spies” clearly began long before the Ukraine war was a twinkle in Volodymyr Zelensky’s eye, so it would seem that MI-5 and NATO were planning something well in advance, which is certainly interesting. But more important, is the fact that expulsion of diplomats is reciprocal, meaning that what is being done to the Russians is served up in return by Moscow, which has also been expelling suspected foreign intelligence officers and refusing to accept the credentials of many individuals submitted to the Foreign Ministry as replacements. That means that reducing Russia’s ability to spy through its diplomatic and trade missions also results in reducing your own capabilities.

I do not know if western intelligence has penetrated the Kremlin by recruiting one or more Russian officials within the inner circle of Vladimir Putin’s government, but I would assume that to be the case. Spies at that level are routinely given secure electronic means of communicating with their American or British intelligence handlers, but every case officer knows that the ability to meet personally, even fleetingly in Moscow, produces vastly more directed intelligence than exchanging texts electronically. The Russians are surely aware of that just as they more-or-less know who the diplomat-spies in their midst are. Kick them all out and what do you have left? Which is why the boasting by McCallum reflects something of a Pyrrhic victory at best.

There are other indications that western intelligence is seeking new sources of information, and it is being reported on by the Russians themselves. To be sure, there have been numerous stories in the western media regarding discontent among ordinary Russians over the war, to include suggestions that some senior Putin advisers and military officers have also become highly critical of developments. These stories, leaked from western governments hostile to Russia, may or may not be true, though domestic Russian opinion polls indicate that Putin’s favorability rating continues to be over 70%.

Russia Today (RT), the state-owned media outlet, reports that the CIA is stepping up its efforts to recruit the presumably disgruntled Russians. Relying on coverage of a recent “CIA at 75” event held at George Mason University in Virginia, RT quotes the Agency’s Deputy Director for Operations David Marlowe, who told a “select audience” that CIA officers abroad have recently been engaged in a major effort to exploit “fertile ground” to recruit Russian agents from “among disgruntled military officers, oligarchs who have seen their fortunes thinned by sanctions, and businesspeople and others who have fled the country.”

Marlowe elaborated how it works, saying “We’re looking around the world for Russians who are as disgusted with [the conflict in Ukraine] as we are. Because we’re open for business.” Marlowe did not explain how dissident Russians who have fled the country will be able to provide useful intelligence information on decision making in the Kremlin, but perhaps he is being optimistic. Russia has in fact denounced several overt attempts to recruit its remaining diplomats and military attaches in Europe and the US using what are referred to as “cold pitches,” where someone approaches a target on the street or in a social setting and offers money or other inducements in return for information. Russian reports indicate that American officers have been hanging around Russian Embassies passing out to those leaving or entering the building cards with phone numbers to contact the FBI and CIA. Inevitably, cold pitches very rarely work because even if the target were so inclined, he or she would have to consider the possibility that his or her own loyalty was being tested by the agency that he or she works for.

So, there is a certain inconsistency in McCallum and Marlowe, representing MI-5 and CIA respectively, claiming that they are winning the secret war against Russia by expelling their potential targets to make them go back home to Moscow while at the same time increasing their own efforts to recruit those very people that they just kicked out. Well, espionage is a profession like no other, and what is playing out now in and around and regarding Ukraine tends to prove that axiom. But bear in mind that the CIA is now “open for business.”

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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