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Pfizer and Marvel this month released a customized Avengers comic book that urges people to become an “everyday hero” by staying up-to-date with the latest Pfizer COVID-19 booster shots.

Pfizer and Marvel’s “Avengers” are co-promoting Pfizer’s COVID-19 booster vaccines with the Oct. 4 release of a customized comic book.

Just as the “Avengers” repeatedly kept the world safe from the fictional supervillain Ultron, people need to protect themselves by updating their COVID-19 vaccination with the latest booster, according to the promotional comic.

Pfizer announced the new comic book in a tweet:

When Ultron wreaks havoc, the Avengers act as the first line of defense. People can help protect themselves by staying up to date with COVID-19 vaccinations. Head to https://t.co/PfNUYTZlkj to get a first look at Pfizer, BioNTech, and Marvel’s comic book! pic.twitter.com/hwhRateYIB

— Pfizer Inc. (@pfizer) October 4, 2022

The new comic, “Everyday Heroes,” shows Ultron — who represents COVID-19 as it keeps evolving — attacking and being successfully fended off by the Avengers — who represent the different Pfizer vaccinations — while a grandpa and his family are waiting at a nearby clinic to get a COVID-19 vaccine.

The story concludes with pictures of the Avengers and the family displaying bandages on their left arms, showing they got a Pfizer shot.

In addition to the superhero scenes, Pfizer added a page in the comic both before and after the story that shows people of different professions.

“What makes them everyday heroes?” one of the pages reads. “They know what to do to help defend against COVID-19.”

And the comic includes a banner — accompanied by a scannable QR code containing COVID-19 vaccination information provided by Pfizer — that reads, “Vaccinate and stay up-to-date with the latest recommended booster and be an everyday hero!”

The marketing collaboration comes amid sluggish uptake in the U.S. and Europe of Pfizer’s fall Omicron-specific booster shots, according to the Daily Mail, which on Oct. 6 reported that fewer than 1 in 20 eligible Americans had received the shot.

According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), only 7.6 million Americans have opted to get the updated booster dose as of Sept. 28 — almost one month since the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Aug. 31 granted Emergency Use Authorization for the new Pfizer and Moderna boosters and the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices on Sept. 1 authorized the shots.

Citing data from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, Reuters on Oct. 7reported that in the EU, weekly vaccine doses administered were ranging from around 1 million to 1.4 million in September.

Pfizer’s enlistment of Marvel’s Avengers comes after the U.S. Congress opted to not pass additional COVID-19 funding, signaling that the U.S. government will no longer be the primary purchaser of its COVID-19 vaccines.

Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla downplayed the potential negative impact the government decision might have on his company’s bottom line, stating that Pfizer’s shift into the private market will allow the drugmaker to be “even more competitive” and that its commercial skills are “even better suited” in an open market than in a government-contracting model.

Last month, Pfizer and Moderna aired new direct-to-consumer (DTC) TV commercials promoting their products — but they had to “play with cool with the branding side of things” because neither company’s fall COVID-19 booster vaccine has full FDA approval.

On Sept. 8 the day before the NFL season kicked off, Pfizer launched its booster ad, known as “More,” which features a narrator, speaking in rhyme, about the “normal” things that happen in everyday life with the tagline, “the more you want to do, the more we want to do.”

Moderna also aired a booster ad in time for the NFL season.

Moderna’s 15-second ad, “Get Boosted this Fall,” features text on a colored background that states, “We’re sick of COVID, but we don’t want to get sick with COVID, either” and then urges people to get their boosters.

Moderna’s logo is visible at the bottom throughout the ad, and the company carries over part of its logo within the text as an extra layer of promotion.

In the second quarter of 2022, Moderna generated $4.7 billion in sales, a 9% increase over the same period last year.

Pfizer’s revenue grew by 47% compared to the second quarter last year, to $27.7 billion, and the company’s net income increased to $9.9 billion — a 78% increase over the same period during 2021.

So far in 2022, Pfizer has spent more than $100 million in advertising.

U.S. 1 of 2 countries that let Big Pharma advertise directly to consumers

The U.S. and New Zealand are the only two countries that allow DTC advertising of pharmaceuticals.

In both countries, people reportedly take 50% more pharmaceuticals than in other nations. Yet Americans are sicker and more economically disadvantaged when compared with people in 10 other wealthy countries, according to the latest Commonwealth Fund report.

The FDA first authorized Pharma advertising in 1938, following the passage of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. In 1962, Congress formally granted the FDA statutory authority to regulate prescription drug labeling and advertising.

In 1969, the FDA issued final regulations for prescription drug advertising. The regulations state that ads must not be false or misleading, must present a “fair balance” of information describing both the risks and benefits of a drug, must include facts that are “material” to the drug’s promoted uses and must include a brief summary mentioning every risk described in the product’s labeling.

The FDA further relaxed its regulations, in 1995 and in 2004, leading to a boom in pharmaceutical advertising. As the FDA loosened regulations, the agency also took fewer enforcement actions.

In 2005, numerous physicians in the American Medical Association (AMA) drafted a proposal to ban DTC advertising, but the proposal failed.

A decade later, the AMA again called for a ban. Members drafted a new policy, convening a physician task force and launching an advocacy campaign to promote prescription drugaffordability and demand greater transparency in prescription drug prices and costs.

However, such efforts appear to have waned in recent years. The AMA’s current ethical code regarding DTC advertising is ambivalent about the marketing strategy and states physicians should “encourage and engage in studies that examine the impact of DTC advertising on patient health and medical care.”

Authors of a 2019 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association of U.S. pharmaceutical marketing trends over 20 years (1997-2016) found DTC advertising increased from $2.1 billion (11.9% of total spending) in 1997 to $9.6 billion (32.0% of total spending) in 2016.

The study’s other key findings included:

• DTC prescription drug advertising increased from $1.3 billion (79,000 ads) to $6 billion (4.6 million ads [including 663,000 TV commercials]), with a shift toward advertising high-cost biologics and cancer immunotherapies.
• Pharmaceutical companies increased DTC marketing about diseases treated by their drugs, with the number of disease awareness campaigns increasing from 44 to 401, and the amount of spending on such campaigns increasing from $177 million to $430 million.
• DTC advertising spending for health services increased from $542 million to $2.9 billion, with the largest spending increases by hospitals, dental centers, cancer centers, mental health and addiction clinics and medical services (e.g., home health).
• DTC spending on advertising for laboratory tests (such as genetic testing) increased from $75.4 million to $82.6 million — although the number of ads increased even more substantially (from 14,100 to 255,300), which the authors suspected reflected an increase in less expensive electronic media advertising.

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Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D., is a reporter and researcher for The Defender based in Fairfield, Iowa. She holds a Ph.D. in Communication Studies from the University of Texas at Austin (2021), and a master’s degree in communication and leadership from Gonzaga University (2015). Her scholarship has been published in Health Communication. She has taught at various academic institutions in the United States and is fluent in Spanish.

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All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name.

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Queen Elizabeth II has died, and there is immense public affection for the Queen for her dignified but warm conduct in 70 years of dedicated service as a constitutional  monarch. That affection is most marked among her British, Australian, Canadian and New Zealand Subjects, as well as among some British Commonwealth loyalists. However resolutely ignored is the Royal heading of British imperialism, slavery, colonialism, neo-colonialism, war and genocide for centuries up to the present.

It is no accident that the Royal parades for which Britain is famous heavily and prominently involve British regiments, and typically also the armed forces of countries for which the British Monarch is also the head of state, notably the White Anglosphere countries of Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

Indeed the sad passing of Queen Elizabeth II  and accession of King Charles III have been marked by huge military parades and the firing of massed artillery across the Anglosphere from Scotland  to remote New Zealand (Aotearoa). Indeed “Royal” is an appendage not just to numerous hospitals around the world  (e.g. the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne) but also to armed forces and security services from the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) and Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP).

The English have invaded 193 of the world’s present-day countries over the last 1,000 years, as compared to Australia 85, France 82, the US 72 (52 after WW2), Germany 39, Japan 30, Russia 25, Canada 25, Apartheid Israel 12, China 2, North Korea arguably zero, Iran zero and indeed most Developing Countries, zero  [1-4].

These invasions, from the Normans invading England in  1066 to the UK-backed US devastation of the Muslim world in the 21st century, have often involved genocide that is defined by Article 2  of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group” [5].

Thus the newly installed Norman English Establishment in 1066 commenced the violent removal of the Anglo-Saxon Establishment and genocidal removal of resistant peasantry (“the harrying of the north”), and the genocidal killing has continued for a thousand years.

Nearly every present-day country in the world has suffered British invasion and devastation. Indeed one notes that the magnificent venues and bejewelled crowns and other accoutrements of Queen Elizabeth II’s memorial arrangements and King Charles III’s accession variously reference that violent 1,000-year history of the English monarchy.

Space does not permit even a brief account of this millennium in which the British Establishment (read English Establishment) have invaded nearly every country on earth with inaccessible Mongolia, Kazakhstan and other Central Asian states being the notable exceptions.

For a summary see my article “British Have Invaded 193 Countries: Make 26 January (Australia Day, Invasion Day) British Invasion Day” [2], and also see my book “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” that includes a brief but comprehensive summary of the avoidable mortality-related history of every present day country in the world from Neolithic times [3].

The most horrendously super-deadly, English-complicit  events (deaths in brackets) include

• the 16th – 19th century onwards Amerindian Genocide in North and South America  (90 million deaths)  the 17th – 19th century North American Indian Genocide (up to 18 million deaths),
• the  15th -19th century African Holocaust of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (6 million deaths),
• the 19th century Chinese Holocaust (20-100 million deaths),
• WW1 (1914-1918; 40 million deaths), the 1918-1920 Influenza epidemic (50-100 million deaths),
• WW2 (1939-1945, 90 million deaths) [3, 4, 6, 7],
• and the 2-century Indian Holocaust (1,800 million Indian deaths from violence and imposed deprivation under the British) that commenced with the 1769-1770 Great Bengal Famine (10 million deaths) and concluded just prior to Indian Independence with the British-imposed and Australia complicit but “forgotten” 1942-1945 WW2 Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Indian Holocaust, WW2 Bengal Famine; 6-7 million deaths)[8-14].
• While the 2-century British-imposed Indian Holocaust (1757-1947) was quantitatively the worst man-made atrocity in human history (1,800 million Indian deaths from violence and imposed deprivation) [13, 14], from a qualitative perspective the 1788 onwards Australian Aboriginal Genocide and Ethnocide was the worst such atrocity in human history. Of 350-700 Indigenous languages and dialects in 1788 only 120 survive today, and of these all but 25 are endangered [15].

Queen Elizabeth II was Queen for 70 years,  from 1952-2022, and during that time the UK was regularly involved in wars that were horrendously deadly for the Indigenous people that the UK and its allies were attacking.

There are presently 15 countries having the Queen as head of state (UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Jamaica, Bahamas, Grenada, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Tuvalu, Saint Lucia, St Vincent and the Grenadines, Belize, Antigua and Barbuda, and Saint Kitts and Nevis [16]. Of these 14 countries only the 4 White Anglosphere countries (the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) have been involved in invading other countries during the Queen’s reign (1952-2022) [3].

In addition there have been a further 18 countries that for technical reasons connected with the independence and other processes had Queen Elizabeth II as sovereign for some time: South Africa, Pakistan, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Tanganyika (Tanzania), Trinidad and Tobago, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, Malta, Gambia, White-ruled Rhodesia (officially unrecognized  by the Her Majesty’s UK Government and Her Majesty the Queen), Guyana, Barbados, Mauritius and Fiji [16]. Notwithstanding internal violence and/or brief conflicts and incursions with neighbours (South Africa, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Uganda, Kenya, Rhodesia, Tanzania),  none of these countries were involved in the massive and genocidal invasion of other countries during the Queen’s reign (1952-2022) as carried out by the 4 White Anglosphere countries (the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) [3].

Of 33 countries that had the Queen Elizabeth II as sovereign (some for short periods) only the  4 White Anglosphere countries (the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) were involved in egregious violence against distant countries in a continuation of the extraordinary genocidal violence of England over a millennium (193 countries invaded i.e. nearly every present-day country invaded).

In summary, countries  in the post-1950 era that were variously subjects of the UK Monarchy, or were attacked and occupied by the UK and other war-making Anglosphere countries having the Queen as head of state (the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand) were as follows:

United Kingdom – Afghanistan, Argentina, Bahamas, Bahrain, Barbados, Belize, Botswana, Brunei, China (Korean War), Cyprus, Diego Garcia (part of  Mauritius), Egypt, Fiji, Gambia, Ghana, Guyana, Hong Kong, Indonesia (Confrontation), Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Kenya, Kiribati, Korea (North & South), Kuwait, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Maldives, Malta, Mauritius, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Serbia, Seychelles, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Syria, Tanzania, Trinidad & Tobago, Tonga, Tuvalu, United Arab Emirates, Vanuatu, Yemen.

Australia – Afghanistan, China (Korean War), Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Indonesia (Confrontation), Iraq, Korea, Malaysia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Timor-Leste.

Canada – Afghanistan, China (Korean War), Iraq, Korea.

New Zealand – China (Korean War), Indochina (Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia), Indonesia (Confrontation), Iraq, Korea, Malaysia, Samoa, Timor-Leste, Tokelau.

Below is a brief, alphabetically-ordered  summary of the last 70 years of egregious UK violence (with the overall historical period of British intervention, and deaths from violence and imposed deprivation given in brackets). One notes that at the end of WW2 (1945), a mere 7 years before the accession of Queen Elizabeth II in 1952,  the British Empire was at its peak. Most African colonies of the UK gained independence in the 1960s, and the key default reference for this list is [3] which contains a succinct history of every country.

Afghan forces attacking retreating British-Indian troops (Photo by Victor Surridge, Illustrations by A.D. Macromick, licensed under the Public Domain)

(1). Afghanistan (1838-2021): UK First Afghan War (1838); Second Afghan War (1878); UK control of Afghan foreign affairs (1907); Third Afghan War (1919); UK invaded and occupied Afghanistan with the US Alliance (2001-2021; Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust deaths 6 million). Huge under-5 infant deaths (in 2020 77,000 in Afghanistan as compared to 3,100 in the UK ) will continue due to US seizure of Afghan assets, and sanctions by the US Alliance including the UK.

(2). Argentina (1806-1982): British invasion repelled (1806); US-backed UK seized the Malvinas (Falkland Islands) (1833); Great War in Uruguay involving UK, France, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil (1839-1852); horrendous genocide of Indigenous people in Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay for the benefit of the British beef trade (19th century); genocidal Zionist psychopath Theodor Herzl contemplated Argentina as a “Jewish Homeland” (however the UK “gave” Palestine to the Zionists in 1917); Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands and was expelled by the UK in the Falklands War (1982).

(3). Bahrain (1861-1971): British protectorate established (1861); independence (1971); used by US, UK and Coalition forces against Iraq (1991).

(4). China (18th century onwards): the genocidal British conquered Bengal and thence set up the lucrative opium trade to China (Bengali opium for Chinese silver and tea; 1757); British defeated China in the First Opium War with ports opened and Hong Kong acquired (1839-1842); anti-Western Tai Ping Rebellion put down by the UK and other European forces (20-100 million dead; 1850-1864); Anglo-French forces defeated China and captured Beijing ((1856-1860); Queen Victoria the greatest opiate drug pusher in history; anti-Western Boxer rebellion subdued by the British with Russian, German, French, Japanese and US forces (1898); 35-40 million Chinese died under the Japanese (1937-1945); the British lead by Churchill successfully brought the US into war against Japan, and thence secured victory in the WW2 (1941-1945); UK forces fought Chinese forces in the Korean War (1950-1953); Hong Kong returned to China (1997); 800 million Chinese brought out of poverty in the Chinese economic “miracle” (1990s onwards); UK joined the threatening US anti-China stance (2020s).

(5). Cyprus (1878-1960): British rule (1878); British annexation (1914); the armed Greek Cypriot independence movement of EOKA culminated in independence under Archbishop Makarios (1960); conflict over Greek union, Makarios overthrown and Turkey seized part of the island (1974).

(6). Egypt (1882-1956): British conquest (1882); independence but with retention of British forces (1923); British forces finally left after the coming to power of Colonel Abdul Gamal Nasser (1956); however this was immediately followed by  the collusive UK, France and Apartheid Israel invasion of the Sinai Peninsula and the Suez Canal that took place at the same time as the Russian invasion of Hungary (1956); nuclear-armed,  UK-backed Apartheid Israel invaded again, seizing the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula (1967); defeated by Apartheid Israel in the Yom Kippur War (1973); US-brokered peace with Apartheid Israel, and return of the Sinai Peninsula (1979).

Image: While operating in Borneo during the Indonesian Confrontation, a soldier is winched up to a Westland Wessex HAS3 of 845 Naval Air Squadron, during operations in the jungle. A soldier is kneeling on the edge of the extraction zone. (Photo by British Army official photographer, licensed under the Public Domain)

(7). Indonesia (1963-1965): armed conflict between Indonesia and the UK and its allies  over Malaysia and the future of Brunei and Borneo (Confrontation) (1963-1966); the UK was heavily involved in machinations to remove President Soekarno and eliminate the Indonesian communists, that were realized with the UK- , Australia- and US-backed military coup in 1965 that removed President Soekarno, and in which 1 million progressive Indonesians and many Chinese were murdered and hundreds of thousands imprisoned (1965). Corrupt and violent military rule for 34 years was associated with 33 million Indonesian excess deaths from deprivation (1965-1999).

(8). Iran (1914 onwards): Oil discovered (early 19th century); Iran was neutral but there was heavy Anglo-Russian involvement in WW1 (1914-1918);  WW1-related Iranian Famine (1917-1919, 2-10 million deaths);  Anglo-Russian occupation and installation of Mohammed Shah Pahlevi (1941-1979); economic blockade and UK MI6 and US CIA coup that removed elected PM Mossadegh who wanted to nationalize Anglo-Iranian oil, with thousands  killed (the CIA secretly invoked Queen Elizabeth II to stop a nervous and ambivalent Shah from quitting) (1953); UK- and US-backed authoritarian Shah regime with Anglo-American, French and Dutch oil interests dominant (1953-1979);  Iranian theocratic revolution (1979) and increasing hostility from the UK, US and Apartheid Israel (1 million Iranians died in the UK- and US-promoted, 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War, and 3 million Iranians died from sanctions (1979 onwards) urged and applied by the nuclear powers US, UK and  Apartheid Israel against a non-nuclear weapons-possessing Iran [17]  .

(9). Iraq (1914 onwards): British invaded (1914); Kurdish and Arab revolts suppressed with use of the British Royal Air Force (RAF); Iraq made a British League of Nations Mandate ( 1920); first oil concession (1925); 25 year alliance with Britain (1930); British Mandate terminated and Iraq joined the League of Nations (1932); Iraqi Parliament rejected the UK demand for an extension of the of the 1930 alliance (1948); Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Iraq formed the pro-US Baghdad Pact (1955); Kassem military coup ousted UK-backed King Faisal II who was killed (1958); US green-lighted the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein; sanctions imposed killing 1.7 million Iraqis; deadly US, UK and Israeli bombing devastated Iraqi infrastructure (1990-2003); US, UK and Coalition Gulf War (0.2 million Iraqis killed); prefaced by US and UK lies about actually non-existent Weapons of Mass Destruction (notably by US President George W. Bush and UK PM Tony Blair), the US, UK, Australia and US lackey Coalition invaded and further devastated Iraq (2003-2011); rise of ISIS and subsequent defeat by the US, UK, Russia and the Syrian Government (2012-2017; half of Mosul, population 2 million, destroyed with 40,000 Iraqi residents killed by US, UK, and Australian bombing); notwithstanding demands  by the Iraqi Parliament that foreign forces leave, US, UK and Australian forces remained, and Trump threatened destruction of the Iraqi economy by freezing assets (2020); UK forces remain in Iraq, and NATO (including UK ) forces are planned to increase from 400 to 5,000 [18] (2021; I was alerted to this by the fact that some UK soldiers serving in Iraq were brought back to the UK especially for the Queen’s funeral). The ongoing UK-initiated and UK complicit Iraqi Genocide and Iraqi Holocaust has been associated with deaths from violence and imposed deprivation totalling 9 million (1914-2011), 4.6 million (1990-2011), and 2.7 million (2003-2011) [3, 4].

(10). Jordan (1918-1958): British defeated the Ottoman Empire (1918); Jordan was ruled from Damascus by UK-installed King Faisal I (1919); Faisal I removed by the French  and Jordan became part of a British Mandate (1920); Abdullah (son of Faisal) made emir with a British-trained army (1921); constitutional monarchy (1928); independent (1946); defeated by UK-backed Zionists (1948); changed name to  Jordan (1949); annexed West Bank of Palestine (1950); Jordan and Iraq formed the Arab Federation and British troops were sent to Jordan (1958); invasion and defeat by a now nuclear-armed Apartheid Israel of all its neighbours (the Naksa or Setback; 400,000 Arabs expelled in addition the  800,000 expelled in the UK-complicit 1948 Nakba) (1967); UK-backed and UK trained Jordan military took action against the huge Palestinian population (thousands killed) (1968); Jordan hosts over 2 million Palestinian refugees and over 1.5 million Syrian refugees.

(11). Kenya (1884-1960): Berlin Conference “gave” Uganda, Kenya, and Zanzibar to Britain and Tanzania (Tanganyika) to Germany (1884); Imperial British East Africa Company (1888); British East Africa Protectorate (1888); Mombasa-Lake Victoria Railway built with involvement of Indian workers (1895-1901); commencing in 1903 British settlement on most of the best land, with Kikuyu and Masai  people confined to the rest (20th century); the  “Uganda Plan” for Jewish Settlement was rejected by the genocidally racist Zionists, and the UK took back its offer of 13,000 square kilometres of Kenya (1903); interior Kenya colony and a coastal Protectorate of Kenya; European settlement of the temperate highlands, coffee plantations,  Indian labour and traders, and mounting Indigenous activism (20th century); Jomo Kenyatta started the independence movement (1944);  Kenyan Kikuyu Mau Mau uprising and the Mau Mau Emergency involving British atrocities and mass population incarcerations in concentration camps (1952-1960 excess mortality 1.1 million).

(12). Kiribati (1892 -1979): This low lying coral atoll archipelago of small islands was a UK colony (the Gilbert Islands part of the Gilbert and Ellice Islands) (1892-1979). In WW2 it was invaded by the Japanese who were thence removed by US forces from Tuvalu. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Christmas Island was used by the US and UK for the testing of nuclear weapons, including hydrogen bombs.

(13). Korean War (1950-1953): 28% of the North Korean population was killed [19] and no buildings were left standing by US bombing; the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand were all involved in the Korean  War (1950-1953; 5 million Korean deaths) [9]; the conduct of the Korean War may have involved setting up an “excuse” for the nuclear destruction of China [20].

(14). Kuwait (1897-1961): British protectorate (1897); independent sheikdom but British and thence Arab League forces remained because of Iraqi claims (1961); Iraq recognized Kuwait (1963);  greenlighted by the US, Iraq invaded and annexed Kuwait over an oil dispute (1990); US-led Gulf War freed Kuwait, with 80% of oil wells destroyed,  0.2 million Iraqi soldiers killed, and mass expulsion of Palestinians (1991); Kuwait was the launch site for the US, UK and Australian invasion of Iraq, and the UK-involved Iraqi Holocaust and Iraqi Genocide associated with 2.7 million Iraqi deaths (2003-2011).

(15). Libya (1943-2012): UK and Allied forces prevailed over German and Italian forces with subsequent Anglo-French rule (1940-1943); UN jurisdiction (1949); independent as a monarchy under King Idris (1951); Anglo-Libyan treaty permitted presence of UK forces  (1953-1956); oil discovered (1958); most British forces left (1966); military coup with rule by Colonel Qaddafi under whom Libya became the richest country in Africa (1969-2012); terrorists destroyed US passenger plane over Lockerbie, Scotland (1988); France, UK and US (FUKUS) Coalition bombing destroyed Libya, and Qadaffi was captured and butchered (2011-2012; 0.1 million killed, 1 million refugees, and continued civil war  between US- , UK- and Turkey-backed Government in Tripoli and Egypt-backed forces based on Benghazi).

(16). Malaysia (1786-1960): British founded Georgetown on Penang (1786);  trade involved Chinese, Indians, Sumatrans and Malays (18th – 21st centuries); British under Raffles founded Singapore (1819); British-Dutch Treaty- Malaya and North Borneo to Britain and South Borneo and the rest of Indonesia to the Dutch (1824);  British protectorate agreements with sultanates, Chinese workers for tin mines and Tamil workers for rubber plantations (1870s onwards); federation of Malay Peninsular sultanates under British protection and similar arrangements for Brunei, Sarawak and Sabah (1896); political movements of Chinese (Sun  Yat Sen, Communism), Indians (Congress and Gandhi) and Malays (Islamic reform) (20th century); Japanese occupation (1941-1945); independence (1957); Communist revolt suppressed by the UK with Commonwealth allies (notably Australia) in the Malayan Emergency (1950-1960 excess mortality 1.0 million and 0.5 million Chinese compulsorily resettled).

(17). Mauritius (including the Chagos Archipelago, and Diego Garcia) (1810-onwards):Mauritius was a British colony (1810); Mauritius independent (1968); ruled by the UK, the Chagos Archipelago is part of Mauritius and home to the Chagossians, a Bourbonnais Creole-speaking people, it was completely ethnically cleansed by the British in 1967-1973 to make way for the obscene US Diego Garcia military base that threatens the Indo-Pacific with “conventional” or nuclear destruction. The UK and US  berate China with the “rules-based order” over its island-building on uninhabited coral reefs in the South China Sea, but effected the  genocide of the Chagossians (the Chagossian Genocide).

(18). Nigeria (16th century – 1970): Portuguese, British and French slave trade with millions transported and millions dying (16th-18th century); British abolished slavery within the UK (1807); UK took Lagos (1861); palm oil and capitalist exploitation replaced slavery (19th century); Goldie secured UK interests along the Niger (1880s); Britain invaded Oyo State (1883); Royal Niger Company dominated the Niger trade (1886); Berlin Conference “awarded” Nigeria to Britain (1894-1895); Benin taken by the British (1897); British colony (Lagos) and British protectorates (North and South) (1906); Nigerian independence (1960); Igbo (Biafra) military coup followed by massacres of Igbo people in the North (1966); Biafra in Eastern Nigeria declared independence (1967); Biafra backed by France and Apartheid Israel but the central Nigerian Government backed by the UK, USSR, Egypt and Zaire; UK Labor Government headed by Harold Wilson secretly armed the Nigerian Government; Biafra defeated; Biafran Genocide excess deaths totalled 2.5-3.0 million (1967-1970).

(19). Oman, 18th century-1971): British influence commenced (late 18th century); slave-trading  Zanzibar lost to British (1856); an interior revolt was suppressed by British forces (1957); UN demanded British withdrawal (1965); some royal concessions but rebellion continued in Dhofar (1970); Oman joined the UN and the Arab League (1971); bases given to US, UK and Coalition forces (1991); Oman bases were used by the US, UK and US Coalition in attacks on Afghanistan Alliance (2001-2021; Afghan Genocide and Afghan Holocaust deaths 6 million).

Image is from YourNewsWire

(20). Palestine (1917 onwards): the British promised Palestine as a Jewish Homeland by the despicable “stolen goods”  Balfour Declaration of 2 November 1917 (made 2 days after the Australian and New Zealand (ANZAC) victory over the Turks at Beersheba (31 October 1917), this declaration actually being an inducement for Communist Russian Zionists to try to keep Russia in WW1); the UK War Cabinet under Churchill approved Partition of Palestine (1944); the British supplied and trained Zionist terrorists in the 1930s and 1940s and then withdrew (1948); The WW1 onwards Palestinian Genocide has been associated with 2.2 million Palestinian deaths from violence, 0.1 million, and imposed deprivation, 2.1 million. Genocidally racist Apartheid Israel gained nuclear weapons in the mid-1960s, enabled Apartheid South Africa do the same, and presently has 90 nuclear weapons and bomber, missile and German-supplied submarine delivery systems. Successive UK Conservative and Labour Governments and Oppositions have been  fervent supporters of nuclear terrorist, genocidally racist, grossly human rights-abusing, democracy-by-genocide Apartheid Israel (a notable exception was the outstandingly anti-racist UK Labour Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn who was falsely defamed and politically destroyed by the traitorous Zionists and the 34-member state International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) for supporting Palestinian human rights). Queen Elizabeth visited many countries in the Middle East but never visited Palestine/Apartheid Israel [21].

(21). Qatar (1868-1971): British installed Al-Thani clan and controlled foreign policy (1868); British protectorate (1916); oil discovered in Qatar (1939); UK left the Trucial Coast leaving 7 emirates as United Arab Emirates but with Bahrain and Qatar separate (1971); Qatar became a major US war base (2001); HQ for US, UK, Australian and Coalition invasion of Iraq (2003); Qatar withdrew from the Saudi-led and UK complicit war on Yemen (2017) and suffered intense Saudi Coalition hostility.

(22). Sierra Leone (16th century – 2000): exploited for timber, ivory and slaves (16th-20th century); British abolition of slavery and takeover of the Sierra Leone Company running Freetown (1807); 50,000 freed slaves settled but interior resistance to British rule (19th century); British protectorate over interior (1896); final British victory over Indigenous resistance (1897); autonomy with pro-British interim government (1960); independence under conservative Mende Sir Milton Margai as PM and representing Creole, British and Syrian-Lebanese merchant interests) (1961); 4 decades of coups and civil wars involving Guinea and Liberia; UN forces held hostage by rebels; British forces critically involved in defeating rebels; ban on rebel-funding sales of “blood diamonds” (2000); sanctions on Liberia; hundreds of thousands of refugees; rebel and pro-government militia disarmament (2001); 1991-2001 excess mortality 1.1 million.

(23). Somalia (1870- onwards): construction of the Suez Canal made the Horn of Africa strategically important to the British, French and Italians  (19th century); partial occupation by British-dominated Egypt (1870); Egyptians withdrew (1884); Italians defeated by Ethiopia (1896); Somali resistance to British eventually crushed using air power (1885-1920);  British forces from Kenya defeated the Italians (1941); Italian and thence British Somalia independence with union as United Republic of Somalia (1960); war by US- and Saudi-backed Somalia against USSR-backed Ethiopia over the Ogaden region (1976-1988; 840,000 refugees fled to Somalia); US gained formerly British Berbera base; Somalia-Ethiopia peace accord  (1976-1988 excess mortality 1.4 million); famine, US intervention and civil war (1990s onwards; 1991-2005 excess mortality  1.9 million); Indigenous Islamic Courts victory (2006-2007); US-backed Ethiopian invasion followed by African Union forces (notably from Kenya) (2007); continuing war of the Indigenous Al-Shabaab versus the US-backed foreign occupiers.

(24). South Africa (1795-1994): British occupation of the Cape during the Napoleonic Wars (1795); formal British “possession” by the Congress of Vienna (1814); British annexation of Natal (1843); Afrikaaner (Dutch origin) Boers enslaved and exterminated Indigenous Africans, and benefited from land, gold,  diamonds; British brought in  Indian and Chinese indentured labour (“5 year slaves”) (19th  century); British versus Afrikaaner Boer War , 50,000 Boer dead including  28,000 (mainly women and children) in British concentration camps (1899-1902); indignation in Europe over British crimes against the White Boers (20th century); Gandhi launched his non-violent Satyagraha message for human rights (Johannesburg, 11 September 1906);  many Afrikaaner nationalists were imprisoned as Nazi sympathizers in WW2 (1939-1945); Afrikaaner Nationalist victory (1948) and increasing racist Apartheid legislation legitimizing dispossession  confinement and control of the African, Asian and part-European majority; Apartheid policies led by Dr Hendrik Verwoerd, the “architect of Apartheid” (1948-1994); US, UK, Australia, Canada and Apartheid Israel support for Apartheid South Africa (1940s-1990s); Sharpeville Massacre (69 Africans killed; 1960) led to world-wide anti-Apartheid activism, Boycotts and Sanctions; the Queen was monarch of South Africa from 1910-1961); abolition of Apartheid, one-person-one-vote elections, and surrender of nuclear weapons acquired with Apartheid Israeli help  (1994);  Dr Verwoerd stated (1961): “Israel is an apartheid state” and leading heroes in the fight against Apartheid in South Africa (notably Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu) oppose Israeli Apartheid. Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Apartheid Israel and all its supporters is strongly supported  worldwide but is fervently opposed by the pro-Apartheid US, and by the pro-Apartheid Israel and hence pro-Apartheid  monarchies, the UK, Australia and Canada, under Queen Elizabeth II as head of state (20th and 21st centuries) .

(25). Sri Lanka (Ceylon) (1798-1972): British defeated the Dutch (1798); final British defeat of Indigenous resistance (1815); introduction of tea, coffee, and rubber cash crops (19th century); independence from Britain (1948); Queen Elizabeth II was Queen of Sri Lanka (Ceylon) from 1952-1972; growing conflict between the Tamils and the Sinhalese that descended into armed conflict  (1971 onwards); critically supported by Apartheid Israel and the US, the Sri Lanka Government defeated the Tamils (2009); the Tamil Genocide was associated with  100,000 Tamils killed and 800,000 Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka (2009).

(26). Sudan (1881-1958): Mahdi revolt against British-ruled Egypt (1881); General Gordon killed (1885); General Herbert (later Lord Kitchener) defeated Mahdi followers at Obdurman (the British executed the Sudanese wounded) (1889); Anglo-Egyptian condominium over Sudan (1889-1952); Egyptian independence from Britain and moves for Sudan independence  (1952); southern revolt commenced (1955); independence  from UK (1958) followed by 50 years of North-South civil war (1955-2005 excess mortality 12.4 million);

(27). Syria (1916 onwards): UK-France Sykes-Picot Agreement divided the Arab world between the non-Arab and non-Muslim UK and France (1916); British and Free French invaded (1941); Syria independent (1944); UK-backed Apartheid Israel attacked, and seized the Golan Heights (1967); US-led Coalition of US, UK, France, Apartheid Israel, Saudi Arabia and Turkey sought to remove the Assad Government under guise of defeating ISIS, but were opposed by Russia, Iran and Hezbollah (from Lebanon); ISIS was eventually defeated but the ISIS-held city of Raqqa was destroyed (like Fallujah for the second time and Mosul in Iraq) (2012-2017); 0.5 million Syrians killed, massive human rights abuses, and 11 million refugees (2012-2017). The US, UK and France were unable to get UN “permission” to bomb Syria as they had bombed Libya, but Apartheid Israel, the US and Turkey still occupy parts of Syria and regularly  bomb targets in Syria. It appears that Russia backs an Iran to Europe gas pipeline via Syria whereas the US and UK back a gas pipeline from Qatar via Syria to Europe.

(28). Uganda (1890-1962): UK-Germany Treaty over East Africa (1890); British protectorate (1894); beginning of cotton production (1904); British personal ownership-based “land reform” (i.e. military-backed theft) and cash crops distorted society; Indian immigration and the rail system advanced the economy (20th century); the  “Uganda Plan” for Jewish Settlement was rejected by the genocidally racist Zionists and the UK took back its offer of 13,000 square kilometres of Kenya (1903); independence (1955); Queen Elizabeth II was Queen of Uganda in 1962-1963; General Idi Amin came to power in a coup but was opposed by the US and Apartheid Israel (1971); expulsion of Indians; of 80,000 Indians  over 27,000 found safety in the UK, with others going to Canada, Pakistan and India (1972); severe repression in Uganda (0.3-0.5 million killed) (1970s);

(29). United Arab Emirates (1892 – 1971): British protectorates established (1892); British withdrawal (1971); UAE used by US, UK and Coalition forces in the Gulf War (1991); UAE involved with the UK, US, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE  in the genocidal war on Yemen (2012 onwards).

(30). Yemen (1839- onwards): British East India Company seized Aden (1839); long and complicated North-South conflict variously involving  the UK, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia; North Yemen joined the UN (1947); independence of South Yemen from UK (1967); Yemen unified (1989); Houthi rebellion (2012) followed by UK- and US-backed intervention of a Saudi-led Coalition of Egypt, some Gulf States and some African countries. The UK is complicit in a worsening Yemeni Genocide (massive threat from famine; 66,000 avoidable deaths from deprivation in 2022 alone; so far 400,000 killed and 1.3 million dead predicted by 2030) [22].

 (31). Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) (1889-1980): Rudd Concession opened up invasion by Boers and the British (notably by Cecil Rhodes’ British South Africa Company) (1889); Company charter renewed (1914); self-governing White-ruled Rhodesia (1923); Federation  of Rhodesia and Nyasaland (1953); by 1960 the 5% European minority owned 70% of the land; African National Congress (ANC) struggle for independence and majority rule (1960s to 1990s); Northern Rhodesia became independent Zambia and Nyasaland became independent Malawi (1963); after Ian Smith’s Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) the UK refused to suppress the White rebellion (1965); UN embargo was violated by South Africa, Portugal, and the West (notably the UK and US); Rhodesian republic (Queen no longer the Queen of Rhodesia) (1970); 1970s, African guerrilla warfare involving Rhodesia, Mozambique and Zambia; the war made 1 million homeless; internal settlement (1978); peace with interim formal UK control and supervised elections);  Robert Mugabe was elected PM (1980) and he ruled until deposed in 2017. The 1965-1980 hostilities  killed 25,000 with an excess mortality from deprivation of 0.7 million).

How many people died avoidably from imposed deprivation in countries variously occupied impacted by the Queen-ruled UK, Australia and New Zealand  in the post-WW2 era?

Whether a child is killed violently (by bombs, bullets, and bashing) or non-violently through avoidable deaths from imposed deadly deprivation, the death is just as final and the perpetrators  just as guilty. Avoidable deaths (excess deaths, deaths that should not have happened)  can be readily estimated from UN Population Division demographic data that have been made available and continually revised since 1950 [3].

The summary data provided below are of 1950-2005  excess mortality/ 2005 population (both in millions, m) and expressed as a percentage (%); this ratio is given for each major Occupier, for each country occupied and as a total for all the countries subject to a particular Occupier. The asterisk (*) below indicates a major occupation by more than one country in the post-WW2 era.

Australia [0.587m/20.092m = 2.9%] – Papua New Guinea [2.091m/5.959m = 35.1%], Solomon Islands* [0.050m/0.504m = 9.9%], total = 2.141m/6.463m = 33.1%

New Zealand [0.143m/3.932m = 3.6%] – Samoa [0.039m/0.182m = 21.4%], total = 0.039m/0.182m = 21.4%

UK [4.411m/59.598m = 7.4%] – Afghanistan* [16.609m/25.971m = 64.0%], Bahamas [0.007m/0.321m = 2.3%], Bahrain [0.054m/0.754m = 7.2%], Bangladesh* [51.196m/152.593m = 33.6%], Barbados [0.015m/0.272m = 5.5%], Belize [0.014m/0.266m = 5.3%], Bhutan [0.908m/2.392m = 38.0%], Botswana [0.443m/1.801m = 24.6%], Brunei [0.020m/0.374m = 5.3%], Cameroon* [6.669m/16.564m = 40.3%], Cyprus [0.054m/0.813m = 6.6%]; Egypt* [19.818m/74.878m = 26.5%], Eritrea* [1.757m/4.456m = 39.4%], Ethiopia [36.133m/74.189m = 48.7%], Fiji [0.054m/0.854m = 6.3%], Gambia [0.606m/1.499m = 47.6%], Ghana [6.089m/21.833m = 27.9%], Greece* [0.027m/10.978m = 0.2%], Grenada* [0.018m/0.121m = 14.9%], Guyana [0.086m/0.768m = 11.2%], Hong Kong [0.125m/7.182m = 1.7%], India [351.900m/1096.917m = 32.1%], Iraq* [5.283m/26.555m = 19.9%], Israel [0.095m/6.685 = 1.4%], Jamaica [0.245m/2.701m =9.1%], Jordan* [0.630m/5.750m = 11.0%], Kenya [10.015m/32.849m = 30.5%], Korea* [7.958m/71.058m = 11.2%], Kuwait* [0.089m/2.671m = 3.3%], Lesotho [0.951m/1.797m =52.9%], Libya [0.785m/5.768m =13.6%], Malawi [6.976m/12.572m = 55.5%], Malaysia [2.344m/25.325m = 9.3%], Maldives [0.015m/0.338m = 4.4%], Malta [0.019m/0.397m = 4.8%], Myanmar [20.174m/50.696 = 39.8%], Nepal [10.650m/26.289m = 40.5%], Nigeria [49.737m/130.236m =38.2%], Occupied Palestinian Territories [0.677m/3.815m = 17.7%], Oman [0.359m/3.020m =11.9%], Pakistan [49.700m/161.151m = 30.8%], Qatar [0.029m/0.628m = 4.6%], Saint Lucia [0.012m/0.152m = 7.9%], Saint Vincent & Grenadines [0.018m/0.121m =14.9%], Sierra Leone [4.548m/5.340m = 85.2%], Singapore [0.113m/4.372m = 2.6%], Solomon Islands* [0.050m/0.504m = 48.5%], Somalia* [5.568m/10.742m =51.8%], Sri Lanka [0.951m/19.366m = 4.9%], Sudan [13.471m/35.040m = 38.4%], Swaziland [0.471m/1.087m = 43.3%], Tanzania [14.682m/38.365m =38.3%], Tonga [0.020m/0.106m = 18.9%], Trinidad & Tobago [0.052m/1.311m = 4.0%], Uganda [11.121m/27.623m = 40.3%], United Arab Emirates [0.087m/3.106m =2.8%], Vanuatu [0.037m/0.222m = 16.7%], Yemen [6.798m/21.480m = 31.6%], Zambia [5.463m/11.043m = 49.5%], Zimbabwe [4.653m/12.963m =35.9%], total= 727.448m/2247.711m = 32.4% [3].

The avoidable mortality (excess mortality) from deprivation for the whole world totalled 1.3 billion for the period 1950-2005, but that associated with countries variously occupied  by the UK in the post-WW2 era totalled 727 million or 56% of that in the whole world. The excess mortality for the whole world during the reign of Queen Elizabeth II (1952-2022) totalled about 1.5 billion with about 50% in countries variously  occupied by the UK. Under-5 infant deaths represent about 1.0 billion of these avoidable deaths.

Thus about half of this Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust of 1,500 million people (including 1,000 million under-5 year old children) during the reign of Elizabeth II can be attributed to British colonialism and neo-colonialism. That is the awful reality that is unspoken during the dozen days of massive public mourning between HM The Queen’s death on 8 September 2022 and her official funeral to be held in in Westminster Abbey on 19 September 2022 that will be seen on TV by billions of people around the world.

Elizabeth II was much loved by the hundreds of millions of her Subjects from the wilds of Wales and Highland Scotland to the desert Outback of Australia and loyalist Royalist Pacific Islands on the other side of the world. She provided an  example of calm, niceness and dedicated public service that was widely admired, even by Republicans.  However the harsh reality that will be scrupulously ignored is that she presided for 70 years over a highly militarized global British system that was linked to a Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust of 1,500 million people. Indeed the military play a key part in the Royal ceremonials for which Britain is famous.

Public dissent from the military pageantry of the fortnight’s massive public memorializing  has so far been minimal, and has not been tolerated (a few public dissenters in the UK have been swiftly arrested). Thus the timid new Australian Labor PM, Anthony Albanese (a Republican), has suspended Parliament and declared a public holiday in memory of the Queen’s death, ignoring the immense cost of his patriotic measure. Thus Australia has a GDP of US$1,450 billion in 2022 and thus 1 day’s lost production can be crudely estimated at $1,450 billion/365 days = $4 billion, or about 10% of the annual Australian defence budget.

The closest the hysterical and saturating Royalist public commentary and coverage has got to the actual historical has been glib talk of a New Elizabethan Era. However nobody has dared to go into specifics.

Thus Elizabeth I launched the East India Company in 1600 that was  to ravage China and India over 2 centuries (several hundred  million  Chinese  and nearly 1.8 billion Indians died), whereas Elizabeth II’s 70 year rule was associated with 750 million avoidable deaths in the British “share” of the Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust.

Elizabeth I’s rule was associated with invasion of the Americas (that would ultimately kill 90 million Indigenous people) and invasion of Gaelic Ireland that set the stage for horrendous British atrocities in coming centuries  (notably under Cromwell in the 17th century) and  culminating in the 1848-1850 Irish Famine (1 million starved to death and 1.5 million were forced into exile).

The much vaunted New Elizabethan  Era of Elizabeth II was associated with huge technical advances and attainment of peace in Northern Ireland. However the Mainstream resolutely ignores the atrocities  outlined in items # 1- #31 above,  and avoidable mortality from deprivation totalling about 750 million people in UK-impacted countries during the reign of HM Queen Elizabeth II.

Elizabeth II made her third and last visit to India in 1997, and much debate was provoked by her visit to the Jallianwala Bagh of the Golden Temple in Amritsar, Punjab, India.

On 13 April 1919 this site was bloodied by the actions of the British Brigadier General Reginald Dyer who ordered troops to fire upon a gathering of thousands of Indians that resulted in the deaths of some 379 men, women and children. The Queen made no apology for this notorious British atrocity but commented thus:

“It is no secret that there have been some difficult episodes in our pasts – Jallianwala Bagh, which I shall visit tomorrow, is a distressing example. But history cannot be rewritten, however much we might sometimes wish otherwise. It has its moments of sadness, as well as gladness. We must learn from the sadness and build on the gladness” [23].

However not a word uttered about the 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British with Australian complicity in the WW2 Bengal Famine (WW2 Bengali Holocaust, WW2 Indian Holocaust) [8-14], nor indeed about 1,800 million Indians who died avoidably from imposed deprivation in 2 centuries of barbarous British rule [13, 14].

While the White Anglosphere is devoting nearly a fortnight to lavish public memorializing of HM Queen Elizabeth II, descendants of the victims of British imperialist  crimes have been less than enthusiastic. Thus Gwenda Stanley, Ambassador for the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra, commented: “She’s left a legacy of genocide and we’re the actual products of that, the result of that 232 years of genocide in this country” [24]. The ongoing Australian Aboriginal Genocide involved massive land dispossession, 0.1 million Indigenous people killed by violence, about 2 million deaths from imposed deprivation and disease, and about 0.1 million Indigenous children forcibly removed from their mothers and their cultures [15].

The Nigerian-born Uju Anya, an associate professor in the linguistics department at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, commented very angrily and unkindly: “I heard the chief monarch of a thieving raping genocidal empire is finally dying. May her pain be excruciating”.  She refused to back down after the subsequent outcry, stating further: “If anyone expects me to express anything but disdain for the monarch who supervised a government that sponsored the genocide that massacred and displaced half my family and the consequences of which those alive today are still trying to overcome, you can keep wishing upon a star,” and  “I stand by my tweet and do not have any regrets … I am the child and sibling of survivors of genocide. From 1967-1970, more than 3 million civilians were massacred when the Igbo people of Nigeria tried to form the independent nation of Biafra. Those slaughtered included members of my family. I was born in the immediate aftermath of this genocide” [25].  British imperialism, under the Labour government headed by Harold Wilson, secretly supplied arms, and ammunition to the Nigerian government during the Biafran Genocide (1967-1970).

After their defeat in 1945 the Germans adopted a CAAAA (C4A) protocol of Cessation of  the crimes, Acknowledgment of the crimes, Apology for the crimes, Amends for the crimes, and Assertion “never again to anyone”. Unfortunately for the war criminal offences of Britain over the last 70 years (and let alone the last millennium), there has been no Cessation, Acknowledgement, Apology, Amends or Assertion “never again”.

Final conclusions

Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II  has died after 70 years of warm, nice, and dignified public service, and is being mourned by hundreds of millions  people around the world. However  while ostensibly politically neutral and disempowered, Queen Elizabeth II was the Head of State of a power that has wreaked immense harm to the world through colonialism, war and neocolonialism in the last 70 years, and indeed over the past 1,000 years.

It cannot be ignored that the Queen’s office is inescapably linked to a millennium of invasions and colonial atrocities variously led or figure-headed by her predecessors. However they are ignored, and the closest the Western public is presently getting to see of this horrendous military power reality are the spears, swords, halbards, automatic weapons, bayonets, cannons, war horses,  and colourful uniforms associated with the pageantry of her memorial fortnight.

Lest we forget the martyred billions. History ignored yields history repeated. Presently 7.4 million people die avoidably from deprivation each year (5.3 million being under-5 infants) on Spaceship Earth with endlessly greedy First World One Percenters in charge of the flight deck [3]. However it is predicted that in the absence of requisite action a worsening Climate Genocide  may kill 10 billion people this century en route to a sustainable human population of only 1 billion by 2100 [26]. Please inform everyone you can. All people are created equal, and we must all adhere to the fundamental imperatives of Humanity, namely Kindness and Truth.

*

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Dr Gideon Polya taught science students at La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia over 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, notably a huge pharmacological reference text “Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds”. He has also published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (2007, 2022) and “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (1998, 2008). He has recently published “US-imposed Post-9-11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide” (2020), and “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions” (2020). For images of Gideon Polya’s huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/.

Notes

[1]. “Stop state terrorism”: https://sites.google.com/site/stopstateterrorism/ .

[2]. Gideon Polya, “British Have Invaded 193 Countries: Make 26 January ( Australia Day, Invasion Day) British Invasion Day”, Countercurrents, 23 January, 2015: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya230115.htm .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, Korsgaard Publishing, Germany, 2021.

[4]. Gideon Polya, “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2020.

[5]. UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide  : http://www.edwebproject.org/sideshow/genocide/convention.html .

[6]. Gideon Polya, “Racist Mainstream Ignores “US-imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide””, Countercurrents, 17 July 2020: https://countercurrents.org/2020/07/racist-mainstream-ignores-us-imposed-post-9-11-muslim-holocaust-muslim-genocide/ .

[7]. “Report genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/reportgenocide/ .

[8]. N.G. Jog, “”Churchill’s Blind-Spot: India”, New Book Company, Bombay, 1944.

[9]. “Bengali Holocaust (WW2 Bengal Famine) writings of Gideon Polya”: https://sites.google.com/site/drgideonpolya/bengali-holocaust .

[10]. Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, Korsgaard Publishing, 2021.

[11]. Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[12]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, 1998, 2008 (revised and updated 2022 edition in press).

[13]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna, Cambridge Stevenson Prize And Dire Indian Poverty”,  Countercurrents, 20 November, 2011: https://countercurrents.org/polya201111.htm .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Britain robbed India of $45 trillion & thence 1.8 billion Indians died from deprivation”, Countercurrents, 18 Decemebr 2018: https://countercurrents.org/2018/12/britain-robbed-india-of-45-trillion-thence-1-8-billion-indians-died-from-deprivation/ .

[15]. “Aboriginal Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/aboriginalgenocide/ .

[16]. “List of sovereign states headed by Elizabeth II”, Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_headed_by_Elizabeth_II .

[17]. Gideon Polya, “Apartheid Israel bombing Syria & Iraq – hotting up deadly 4-decade US war on Iran”, Countercurrents, 14 August 2019: https://countercurrents.org/2019/08/apartheid-israel-bombing-syria-iraq-hotting-up-deadly-4-decade-us-war-on-iran .

[18]. Mark Nichol, “UK troops surge as Iraq simmers: Hundreds of British soldiers will be sent to Iraq as part of a new NATO mission”, Daily Mail, 19 February 2021: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9276693/Hundreds-British-soldiers-sent-Iraq-new-NATO-mission.html .

[19].  Michel Chossudovsky, “Know the facts: North Korea lost close to 30% of its population as a result of US bombings in the 1950s”, Global Research, 27 November 2010: http://www.globalresearch.ca/know-the-facts-north-korea-lost-close-to-30-of-its-population-as-a-result-of-us-bombings-in-the-1950s/22131.

[20]. I.F. Stone, “The Hidden History of the Korean War”, Monthly Review Press, 1969.

[21]. “Palestinian newspapers announce the death of Queen Elizabeth II”,  UPI, 9 September 2022: https://www.upi.com/News_Photos/view/upi/d285fc29de46a32b181131fd1b178e29/ .

[22]. “Yemen war deaths will reach 377,000 by end of year: UN”, Al Jazeera, 23 November 2021: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/11/23/un-yemen-recovery-possible-in-one-generation-if-war-stops-now .

[23]. Binoy Kampmark, “The other side of Elizabeth II’s reign: How to profit from plunder while disclaiming responsibility”, Pearls & Irritations, 14 September 2022: https://johnmenadue.com/cool-subjects-the-other-side-of-elizabeth-iis-reign/ .

[24]. Dana Morse, “Queen Elizabeth II’s death shows we’re still uncomfortable with Australia’s colonial truth”, ABC News, 14 September 2022: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-14/queen-elizabeth-death-indigenous-australia-analysis/101434952 .

[25]. Fred Mazelis, “Attack on Carnegie Mellon professor over criticism of British imperialism”, WSWS, 13 September 2022: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/09/13/pwge-s13.html?pk_campaign=newsletter&pk_kwd=wsws .

[26]. Gideon Polya, “Climate Crisis, Climate Genocide & Solutions”, Korsgaard Publishing, Germany, 2020.

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The goal of woke North American banking institutions is this: Crush truth-tellers while perpetuating an illusion of normalcy for those who mindlessly repeat the woke party line, no matter how egregious the affront to reality and morality.     

North American banking institutions continue to degrade themselves, spiraling downward from at first creating policies to shut down accounts of individuals and organizations deemed to be politically incorrect to now acting as major totalitarian state players: they are outright confiscating money from clients with whom they have political and moral differences.  

Remember back in 2014 when SunTrust Bank canceled the Benham Brothers’ accounts because of their pro-life and pro-conjugal marriage public support?   

Or in 2017 when VANCO, an online donation processor, at the behest of banking giant Wells Fargo, cut off services to the Ruth Institute, a global non-profit organization that seeks to create “a mass social movement to end family breakdown”? 

Or in 2018, when Visa and Mastercard cut off the donation processing services to the David Horowitz Freedom Center? 

The banking industry has now gone from “We refuse to do business with those whose pro-life, pro-family, pro-religious freedom, and pro-election integrity views we find abhorrent” to “We’ll steal your money” and “You don’t have the right to keep private property.” 

Their goal is this: Crush truth-tellers while perpetuating an illusion of normalcy for those who mindlessly repeat the woke party line, no matter how egregious the affront to reality and morality.

PayPal’s trial balloon 

After experiencing an enormous backlash on social media a couple of days ago, PayPal quickly walked back its outrageous plan to fine users up to $2,500 –– debited directly from their accounts –– for “misinformation.” The tech titan remained opaque on whether it will implement sanctions for what it perceives to be “intolerance” against homosexuals and gender-confused people.   

PayPal’s move went one step beyond GoFundMe’s canceling of donations to the Canadian Truckers who stood against the onerous vaccine mandates of the Trudeau Administration earlier this year. PayPal said it would actually raid its clients’ private accounts to punish their opinions. 

LifeSiteNews’ Raymond Wolfe explained that the new user agreement from PayPal would have updated the left-wing payment giant’s “list of prohibited activities” to include “sending, posting, or publication of any messages, content, or materials” that “promote misinformation,” determined at PayPal’s “sole discretion.” 

The policy change would also have prohibited posting content that PayPal considers to “present a risk to user safety or wellbeing” and would have expanded the company’s ban on “discriminatory” content to cover specific “protected groups” and characteristics, including sexual orientation and “gender identity.” 

The policy, slated to take effect on November 3, five days before the U.S. midterm elections, would’ve had a chilling effect on forthright public discourse. But that was the goal.  

PayPal attempted to cover its tracks, claiming that the “misinformation” language in the new user agreement was sent out “in error.” It was not. It was a trial balloon. PayPal wanted to see how far they could go to punish those who seek to protect children and young people from monstrously dangerous medical practices.     

We have surely left Western civilization behind 

The trajectory of woke national and international corporations toward totalitarian treatment of their customers became abundantly evident around the time of the U.S. Supreme Court’s disastrous Obergefell decision.  

Before Obergefell, Christians were relentlessly lectured about how homosexuals just wanted “the right to get married and be left alone.”  But within hours of the Obergefell decision, organizations which had spent years focused like a laser on corrupting the immutable definition of marriage immediately shifted their energies toward normalizing transgenderism for adults, then for kids.  Now, even the once-respected American Medical Association (AMA) and other medical professional organizations are asserting that anyone who is against gender affirmation medical treatments for young children is a terrorist who ought to be prosecuted.   

Woke institutions and corporations, in lockstep with our woke government, judge conservatives – especially Christian conservatives – to be enemies of the state. Why?  To silence sublime truth in order to achieve their Neo-Marxist agenda. Woke leaders are utterly incapable of, and opposed to, conserving anything, including the timeless definitions affirmed by every culture around the globe for millennia: Marriage & family, man & woman, mother & father, boy & girl, and son & daughter.    

To their discredit and shame, their relativism – a willful untethering from and rejection of truth – knows no bounds, yet they claim to be the great protectors of democracy.  

Yoram Hazony, in his recently released book, Conservatism: A Rediscovery, explains: 

The relativist sees in politics and morals a realm in which an endless variety of perspectives compete with one another for power without striving to attain what is true, and without anything being right in God’s eyes. The conservative, on the other hand, sees in politics and morals a realm in which an endless variety of perspectives compete with one another for power, each of them striving to reach the one truth, which is what is right in God’s eyes.

“Postnational, rule-driven democracy is both bureaucratically heavy-handed and contemptuous of traditional or customary morality,” observed Daniel J. Mahoney in an article headlined The Specter of ‘Fascism.’

“Its ideology centers around imposing an imperial and imperious conception of human rights on all those institutions and associations of civil society that resist postmodern relativism, sentimental humanitarianism, and the ideology of unencumbered human rights.” 

Mahoney quotes Polish philosopher and statesman Ryszard Legutko. Legutko pointed out that “it is considered to be ‘reactionary’ or even ‘fascist,’ and certainly illiberal and ‘extremist’ to defend truth as a goal of education, beauty as an aim of art, fidelity as the goal of marriage, and love of country as an essential element of citizenship.”  

“Inclusion (understood perversely or ideologically), sexual liberation, and political correctness, in contrast, are at the heart of a new form of democratic ‘correctness,’” noted Mahoney, adding, “If ‘reproductive rights’ and gender ideology are truly thesine qua non of democracy, then we have surely left Western civilization behind.” 

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Doug Mainwaring is a journalist for LifeSiteNews, an author, and a marriage, family and children’s rights activist.  He has testified before the United States Congress and state legislative bodies, originated and co-authored amicus briefs for the United States Supreme Court, and has been a guest on numerous TV and radio programs.  Doug and his family live in the Washington, DC suburbs.

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***

The disappearance of the USSR in 1991, a strategic catastrophe for Russia, ensured that large numbers of Russian people were living outside of the Federation. Millions of Russians in fact found themselves residing in the newly independent Ukraine in the early 1990s, and many of them have lived there without adequate rights.

The Soviet Union’s existence had guaranteed a measure of security in the international arena, providing a bulwark against the expansionist forces of the United States, which was a considerably more powerful country than the USSR. A somewhat similar stability has been gradually re-emerging with the return of Russia in the 21st century as a world power, having overcome a period of significant decline in the 1990s.

This century the percentage of Russians living below the poverty line has been greatly reduced, to as low as 11%. In the US it was officially estimated that 15% of Americans were living below the poverty line in 2014, and the real percentage was most likely higher than that. These figures have not been reported widely in the Western media.

Political scientist Moniz Bandeira wrote that the US has relied “on two fundamental pillars, NATO and the FED: 

• NATO, consisting of the European countries subordinated to Washington’s guidelines;
• and the privilege of printing the dollar as fiat currency, the world’s single reserve currency. Only the Federal Reserve (FED), the central bank of the United States, could and can issue the dollar at will”.

Founded in 1913 the Federal Reserve, headquartered in Washington, is indeed very powerful. In 2012 for example the Federal Reserve, which is effectively controlled by some of the West’s most influential banks, amassed that year at least $9.5 trillion, which amounted to about 65% of America’s annual Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Quite a number of Americans believe the Federal Reserve to be a government-controlled banking institution, but this view is mistaken. The Federal Reserve, as mentioned, is overseen by private interests and America’s largest banks like Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.

These US banks are closely connected to their European counterparts such as Deutsche Bank, Barclays and BNP Paribas. Also intertwined with the Federal Reserve and the other banks are the energy multinationals ExxonMobil, Chevron, Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum (BP).

The strongest branch of the Federal Reserve is the New York Federal Reserve Bank, which fell under the control of 8 long-established banking families. Only 4 of these dynasties hail from largely American backgrounds, which are Goldman Sachs, the Rockefellers, Lehman Brothers and Kuhn Loeb. The other 4 are the Rothschilds in Paris and London, the Warburgs from Germany, the Lazards from France and Israel Moses Sieff from Britain.

These families were still privately controlling the Federal Reserve into the 21st century. They have continued to hold sway over the international financial system, and became even wealthier in the aftermath of the 2007-08 financial crisis, which the public was called upon to resolve by digging into their pockets. The above families have been performing a central role in the oil futures market, either directly or through subsidiaries, on the New York Mercantile Exchange and the London Petroleum Exchange.

The 19th century German-born banker Anselm Rothschild once said, “Give me the power to issue the nation’s money, then I do not care who makes the laws”. His family members and colleagues have had that power. Moniz Bandeira noted, “This is why the United States has no regard for and flouts international law. It enjoys the privilege of manufacturing dollars when and how it pleases, without any backing, and manipulating its value through the discount rate”.

The privately-owned banks dominating America’s central bank (Federal Reserve) require the military-industrial complex, and armed conflicts, to preserve its status as state creditors by funding the rearmament and production of war matériel. This is more profitable to the financial institutions, by comparison to granting credits for non-military industries like agriculture.

Huge profits have been accrued from the manufacturing of conventional and nuclear weapons. According to the Brookings Institution in Washington, from the World War II years until 2007 US governments spent a total of $22.8 trillion on conventional and nuclear weapons. From 2007 onward Washington has spent further trillions on military hardware, as the already massive US arms budget expands. This expenditure has been most welcome to the weapons manufacturers and banks.

In the third year of president Barack Obama’s tenure, in 2011 America’s GDP that year amounted to around $14.9 trillion. Washington owed approximately $14 trillion to the banks. The US Department of Treasury, and the Federal Reserve Board, estimated that Washington owed $4.4 trillion to foreign governments, who purchased US treasury bonds as investors would do when buying a stake in a company.

Republican Senator Barry Goldwater insisted that most people don’t understand, or are unaware of, the operations of the most influential banking dynasties. Goldwater said, “How they acquire this vast financial power and employ it is a mystery to most of us”. He was referring to those such as the Rockefellers, Rothschilds, Warburgs and Lazards. Even today, it is likely that some of these names would be unfamiliar to many people on the street.

The national banks in Europe have also been owned and guided by private interests. The international bankers manufacture the money and provide the credit to governments, which assists in driving up the debt of the political state. This is especially so in the neoliberal era of rampant capitalism from the early 1980s, when the decision making was placed in the hands of corporations and taken away from government leaders.

America’s central bank operates outside the control of the US Congress. There is no scrutiny of its accounts; that is there are no audits, and the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors have manipulated the credit of the US, whose public debt had climbed to $17.9 trillion in October 2014.

Half a century ago Zbigniew Brzezinski, the well-known foreign policy adviser, suggested to the banker David Rockefeller that it would be wise to establish the Trilateral Commission, which was founded in 1973. This is an anti-democratic globalist organisation, which has helped Washington to maintain authority over its European and Asian allies. The Trilateral commission further allows commercial and financial interests to consolidate its hold in Washington, while handing over the means of force to the US military and NATO.

When George W. Bush succeeded Bill Clinton as president in January 2001, Bush sought to extend NATO’s jurisdiction at a faster pace than Clinton, which he proceeded to do, as 7 European nations joined NATO during the Bush presidency (2001-09). Bush, as with Clinton, chose to enlarge NATO not out of security reasons, but in order to increase US hegemony and to broaden the market for the war industry. Bush also planned to absorb the Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, an ambition which had been expressed clearly in April 2008 at a NATO conference in Romania.

It came despite the warning of William J. Burns, at the time the US Ambassador to Russia, and who is the current CIA Director. In a memorandum of February 2008, Burns wrote that Russia would strongly resist US attempts to incorporate the Ukrainians and Georgians into NATO. Burns’ memo was dispatched to various US bodies including the National Security Council and Joint Chiefs of Staff, and was sent to the Secretary of State (Condoleezza Rice) and Secretary of Defense (Robert Gates).

In Washington’s attempt to negate Russia’s influence, the Bush administration had dispatched 200 US military advisers to Georgia, a Caucasus nation directly bordering Russia to the north. Aside from its strategic significance on the map, Georgia is an oil transport hub where infrastructure passes through like the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, which is managed by a consortium in which British Petroleum (BP) is the largest shareholder; it features other fossil fuel companies like Total from France and ExxonMobil from America. The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline is 1,099 miles long and originates in Azerbaijan, crossing through Georgia and finishing up in Turkey.

Four months after the NATO summit in Romania, during early August 2008 Russia launched a military intervention in Georgia. It was implemented, among other reasons, in order to safeguard Russia’s sovereignty and security along its borders, while protecting the ethnic Russians and pro-Russian elements living in the regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. They were being bombarded by the air force of Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili, the US-educated puppet leader who was continuing to receive military aid from Washington.

The Russian military action was successful, strengthening Moscow’s position, and it drew much anger in the West. Shortly afterwards president Bush and his European allies, in an emergency meeting, deliberated on how to respond to the setback, from suspending relations with Russia to possible sanctions or boycotting the Winter Olympics scheduled to be held in Sochi, Russia in February 2014.

There was nothing the Western leaders could do, nor did they have any moral standing. In February 2008 America and the leading European nations recognised the independence of Kosovo, which had been part of Serbia for many decades. In addition, a significant number of people living in the Caucasus favourably viewed the Russian military campaign in Georgia.

Through agreement with the Bush administration, the Pentagon was formulating a neo-containment policy of Russia, and they recognised Georgia as a key pawn in this. The goal was to try and prevent Russia from becoming the dominant power again in the Caucasus. Further stoking unrest in Georgia were US-based organisations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), USAID, Freedom House, and the Open Society Institute bankrolled by billionaire George Soros. During a 3 month period in the autumn of 2003, Soros’ Open Society Institute funnelled $42 million into fomenting the so-called Rose revolution in Georgia of November 2003. Soros, and the above groups, performed a role in enabling the pro-Western Saakashvili to come to power in January 2004.

The Pentagon likewise invested millions of dollars in what were titled color revolutions, which had been instigated by the Western powers in other regions, such as the Ukrainian “Orange revolution” (Nov. 2004–Jan. 2005). Washington pursued these actions through the United States Army Civil Affairs and Psychological Operations Command (USACAPOC), the US State Department and non-governmental organisations like Freedom House and the NED. The roots of the Ukrainian crisis can be traced to US interference and imperialist expansion through NATO, as Washington refused to abandon its Cold War strategy of attempting to encircle Russia.

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Shane Quinn obtained an honors journalism degree and he writes primarily on foreign affairs and historical subjects. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Sources

PBS, “Who counts as poor in America?” 8 January 2014

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The World Disorder: US Hegemony, Proxy Wars, Terrorism and Humanitarian Catastrophes (Springer; 1st ed., 4 Feb. 2019)

Greg Bocquet, “Who Owns the U.S.?”

“Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines”, Ambassador William J. Burns

Congressional Bills 110th Congress, April 2008 https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-110sres523ats/html/BILLS-110sres523ats.htm

Richard W. Carlson, “Georgia on his mind – George Soros’s Potemkin Revolution”, The Weekly Standard, 24 May 2004

“Lavrov looks beyond army pull-out”, BBC News, 8 October 2008

France 24, “Independent Kosovo gains initial recognition”, 19 February 2008

Luiz Alberto Moniz Bandeira, The Second Cold War: Geopolitics and the Strategic Dimensions of the USA (Springer; 1st ed., 23 June 2017)

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History of the World War II

Operation Barbarossa, the Allied Firebombing of German Cities and Japan’s Early Conquests

By Shane Quinn

The first two chapters focus on German preparations as they geared up to launch their 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union, called Operation Barbarossa, which began eight decades ago. It was named after King Frederick Barbarossa, a Prussian emperor who in the 12th century had waged war against the Slavic peoples. Analysed also in the opening two chapters are the Soviet Union’s preparations for a conflict with Nazi Germany.

The remaining chapters focus for the large part on the fighting itself, as the Nazis and their Axis allies, the Romanians and Finns at first, swarmed across Soviet frontiers in the early hours of 22 June 1941. The German-led invasion of the USSR was the largest military offensive in history, consisting of almost four million invading troops. Its outcome would decide whether the post-World War II landscape comprised of an American-German dominated globe, or an American-Soviet dominated globe. The Nazi-Soviet war was, as a consequence, a crucial event in modern history and its result was felt for decades afterward and, indeed, to the present day.

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***

On 7 October 2022, late in the evening, at around 11.30 pm, I was detained at Gatwick Airport in London by anti-terrorism police. I was not released until shortly before 1 am and my computer was taken from me. It has not yet been returned.

My passport and all my personal belongings – my wallet, my phone, my keys, everything – were removed.  I was taken to a room where I was questioned for an hour by two anti-terrorism police officers, acting under powers given to the police (as I learned for the first time) by Schedule 3 of the 2019 Counter-terrorism and Border Security Act.

The Act is supposedly designed to allow the police to detain ‘hostile actors’ who are travelling to the country to ‘plan, prepare or carry out their hostile acts’ (according to the leaflet the officers gave me).  But the Act itself says, ‘An examining officer may exercise the powers under this paragraph whether or not there are grounds for suspecting that a person is or has been engaged in hostile activity’ (my emphasis)^[1].  So an Act ostensibly designed to allow hostile actors to be stopped in fact applies indiscriminately to everyone, according to its own explicit terms.

It is certainly surprising that the powers were wielded, in my case, against a British national.  Nationals should not normally be questioned in this way about their reasons for entering the territory of their own country.

One of the officers opened the interrogation by saying that I was not being detained and that therefore I could not have access to a lawyer.  But of course I was being detained, since it was impossible for me to leave the interrogation room and, even more so, the airport, without my passport and personal effects. (I was kept on the ‘air side’, i.e. before passing through passport control.)  The word ‘detained’ has evidently been emptied of all meaning.

According to the leaflet, ‘Unlike most other Police powers, the power to stop, question, search and, if necessary, detain persons under Schedule 3 does not require authority or any suspicion.’  So the special powers enjoyed by the Police at UK ports are a ‘regime of exception’ in which the normal safeguards of the rule of law have been tossed aside.

It goes on, ’You can be searched, and anything you have with you … this includes electronic devices … where searches are conducted, there is no requirement for a written notice of search to be provided to you.  Under certain circumstances, the officer can seize any property they find.’

What are these ‘certain circumstances’?  When I protested at the fact that my computer was being taken from me, which would prevent me from working until it is returned, and when I offered to bring it to a police station the following day, the officer replied that it was out of the question that it would not be taken.  In other words, there are no ‘certain circumstances.’ The seizure of such devices is, on the contrary, the rule.

In a state of law, the Police can search someone’s property only with a search warrant. This is a document signed by a judge which authorises private property to be searched and seized.  If you look up ‘search warrant’ in Wikipedia, it says, ‘In certain authoritarian nations, police officers may be allowed to search individuals and property without having to obtaincourt permission or provide justification for their actions.’  According to this standard, the UK is now an ‘authoritarian nation.’ 

It is precisely what separates a legal state from a dictatorship that the work of the police is not abused for political purposes, yet this is what occurred to me.

The officers questioned me about my work at the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation in Paris from 2008 to 2018 and about my work at the European Parliament since then, and more recently for FVD.  All the information they wanted is available publicly, for instance on Wikipedia.  The questioning was polite but amateurish.

I was asked about my political views.  The officer said, ‘It is a free country, not everyone is so lucky.’  I believe this is what is called ‘the British sense of humour’.

The officers told me that they had had two or three hours to prepare.  This means that they were alerted in London to my imminent arrival at the moment when my boarding pass was scanned in Budapest. Everyone should know this.

They spent those hours looking things up on the Internet.  The officer questioning me seemed unsure of what he was really trying to find out.  The Internet, as everyone should know, is a veritable cesspit of false information and there are endless claims on it about me which are untrue.  Many of these have been repeated recently in the Dutch press, as journalists go online, find what they are looking for and repeat lies told earlier by others.  In my case, they never tire of telling the same fairy tale. 

It is bad enough when journalists do this but it is frightening to think that anti-terrorism police officers regard Google as a reliable source of information.  One dreads to think how many genuinely hostile actors pass through the net if this is the Police’s idea of investigation. Unfortunately that is the state of the world today.

It is particularly symbolic that this should happen to me.  Ever since I started to get interested in international criminal law over 20 years ago, I have criticised the way in which international tribunals toss aside the myriad rules and procedures which have accumulated over the centuries to ensure due process.  The British are traditionally proud of these procedures which have protected citizens against abusive state power for centuries.  I have repeatedly warned that these dictatorial practices would soon percolate down into national jurisdictions and destroy the precious inheritance known as the rule of law. This has now happened.

Ever since the EU announced its Global Human Rights Sanctions Regime in December 2020, moreover, I have also pointed out that the EU has given itself the power to punish individuals by executive order.  This is a very dangerous development.  Individuals are punished under this regime without any legal procedure (no trial) and without any means of defending themselves.  So much for human rights!  I have warned for two years now that citizens of Western states would themselves be the target of these sanctions.  This duly happened in July when a British blogger, Graham Philipps, was sanctioned by the United Kingdom which has the same system as the EU and the US.

In other words I, who have been warning that these procedures, introduced at international level, would soon corrupt the criminal law in domestic jurisdictions, have now been proved horribly right by an example of this abuse of which I have now personally been a victim.  It was a profoundly disturbing experience.

Shortly before it happened, FVD International tweeted its disapproval of the EU sanctions imposed on the philosopher, Alexander Dugin.  As we showed with a screen shot of the relevant EU document, the European Council (i.e. the executive) sanctioned Dugin purely for his views.  Nowhere it is alleged that he has actually participated in the invasion of Ukraine nor even that he is guilty of incitement.  Instead, he is sanctioned for thoughtcrime. 

Some people who do not like Dugin are pleased at this.  But they should understand that these are seriously abusive powers which can easily, as in my case, be directed against totally innocent people.  To such people I can find no better response that the famous remarks by Pastor Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew

Then they came for me.  And there was no one left to speak out for me.

Europe is sliding into dictatorship.  In fact, it is already there.

*

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Note

^[1] https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/3/schedule/3

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***

At 8:45 on the morning of October 16, 1962, President John F. Kennedy’s national security adviser McGeorge Bundy entered the White House residence with grave news for the president. Bundy, with a stack of photographs under his arm, informed the president that the CIA believed it had evidence the Soviets were constructing medium range ballistic missile bases near San Cristobal, Cuba.

The thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis had begun.

It is frequently said (and it is no less true because of it) that the current crisis we now find ourselves in with nuclear armed Russia rivals the Cuban Missile Crisis. How and why that crisis came to a peaceful resolution owes itself to a number of factors that we believe are especially relevant today. Principally among those is the importance of strategic empathy in the formulation and practice of foreign affairs.

As the psychologist and former government official Ralph White has observed, “empathy is the great corrective for all forms of war promoting misperception. It means simply understanding the thoughts and feelings of others.” The ability of both Kennedy and Khrushchev to empathize with the position of the other enabled both countries, and the world, to weather the storm.

During the Cuban crisis, Kennedy was under intense pressure to act militarily, by striking the Soviet missile sites or invading Cuba, from the Joint Chiefs of Staff; members of the Executive Committee (ExComm) of the National Security Council (including, and especially, from his own vice president, Lyndon Johnson); and from congressional leaders, including Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Richard Russell. But time and again, to the consternation of his hardline civilian and military advisers, Kennedy pulled back from the brink.

One of President Kennedy’s most controversial decisions during the thirteen day crisis was to allow the Soviet tanker, the Bucharest, proceed past the U.S. naval blockade.

According to Robert Kennedy’s posthumously published memoir of the crisis:

“Against the advice of many of his advisers and of the military he had decided to give Khrushchev more time. ‘We don’t want to push him into a precipitous action-give him time to consider. I don’t want to push him into a corner from which he cannot escape.’”

President Kennedy also wisely resisted near unanimous pressure from the ExComm to launch a retaliatory strike against the Soviet surface-to-air missile  sites that were believed responsible for the downing and killing of American U2 pilot Rudolf Anderson, Jr. who was on a reconnaissance mission over Cuba on October 27.

Khrushchev likewise understood that Kennedy was under immense pressure to act by his military and national security apparatus. Thanks to a series of backchannel meetings between Robert Kennedy and the Soviet Ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Dobrynin, Khrushchev became aware of the pressures acting on the U.S. president.

In his memoirs, Khrushchev recalls Robert Kennedy’s warning to the Soviet Ambassador: “The military is putting great pressure on him, insisting on military actions against Cuba…Even if he doesn’t want or desire a war, something irreversible could occur against his will. If the situation continues much longer, the President is not sure that the military will not overthrow him and seize power.”

According to Khrushchev’s son Sergei, the Soviet leader told his foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, that he saw Kennedy’s backchannel message as a call for “help.”

“Yes, help,” Khrushchev told Gromyko. “We have a common cause, to save the world from those pushing us toward war.”

The crisis was ultimately resolved with an agreement that the United States would not invade Cuba in exchange for the removal of the offending Soviet missiles. A further understanding, kept secret at the time, was made that the United States would remove NATO’s Jupiter missiles in Turkey, which were viewed in the same way by the Soviet leadership as the Kennedy administration viewed the Soviet missiles in Cuba. The Soviets acquiescence in keeping the latter part of the agreement quiet, so as to allow the United States not to appear as though it was selling out a NATO ally, is another example of how strategic empathy played a role in ending the crisis.

Robert Kennedy noted in the years after the crisis, that the members of the ExComm who participated in the discussions, in his view, “were bright and energetic people. We had perhaps amongst the most able in the country, and if any one of half a dozen of them were President the world would have been very likely plunged in a catastrophic war.”

Taken together, the embrace of strategic empathy by Kennedy and Khrushchev paved the way for the peaceful resolution of the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War.

The lessons are clear. Yet worryingly, the question remains whether the current American and Russian leadership are inclined to learn from them.

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Featured image: June 1961  President Kennedy meets with Chairman Khrushchev at the U. S. Embassy residence, Vienna. U. S. Dept. of State photograph in the John Fitzgerald Kennedy Library, Boston.

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***

After Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla refused to show and answer questions in front of the special COVID committee of the European Parliament, Janine Small, president of Pfizer’s International Developed Markets, took his place in the hearing that took place on October 10, 2022.

She received many questions from the committee members, which, in majority, she did not specifically answer.

When asked about the “redacted” version of the contract, she said that they can’t disclose the whole contract because they have interests to protect.

When asked if they tested if their injections are stoping the transmission of the virus, she said that they did not.

I post the whole hearing with Pfizer’s representitive so everybody can see the context and everything that was asked and answered.

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Six members of the European Parliament held a press conference on October 11, 2022, one day after Albert Bourla, Pfizer CEO, refused to participate in the Covid committeee and answer questions.

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Demographic angst is a terrifying thing, especially to leaders concerned about poor returns from horizontal folk dancing.  Viktor Orbán of Hungary is particularly apprehensive that precious Hungarian blood is not being propagated, facing dilution, if not disappearance, from hordes of swarthy immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

In Italy, the country’s imminent first female prime minister is much of that same view.  Giorgia Meloni speaks about being a “woman, mother [and] Christian” with messianic purpose: to defend “God, country and family”.  The stress is on mother virtue rather than female rights, the latter only being relevant when it comes to highlighting migrant violence in fits of what has come to be known as femonationalism.

Unlike other conservatives and those of the Right in the Anglo-American tradition, welfare, in her political constellation, is not ill-fare.  People – provided they come from a certain traditional demographic and background – should be supported and encouraged by the state.  What matters is that they are the right sort of people.

To that end, Meloni insists on a pro-natalist platform to arrest Italy’s demographic decline, including reducing VAT rates on nappies, baby bottles and formula; increasing child benefits; and making childcare free.

The spectre she claims to combat is that of the Great Replacement, a view promoted by the French novelist and critic Renaud Camus.  In his essay, “Le Grand Remplacement”, he describes a process of colonisation in reverse, with native “white” Europeans deluged and eventually overcome by black and brown immigrants.  “You have one people, and in the space of a generation you have a different people,” he warns threateningly.

The corollary of such natalist welfare is a deep suspicion of the dark forces of the market and the sinister elements that operate beyond government control. In this, Meloni shares ground with those on other sides of the political aisle concerned about the more destructive effects of predatory capital and its handmaidens.

On such policies as unwanted refugees, she sounds awfully like her counterparts in other parts of the European Union and the EU-exited Britain.  While governments in Copenhagen and London have put forth programs to process asylum seekers in third countries, notably Rwanda, aping the grotesque Australian model of offshore processing, Meloni has repeatedly promoted much the same thing in the lead up to the 2022 elections.

She has even advocated the use of a “naval blockade” to halt illegal immigration, justifying it as a humanitarian gesture to prevent deaths at sea. In this, she could hardly improve on Australia’s own justifications for its Pacific concentration camps on Nauru and Manus Island.  We will bar you, detain you, and torture you in order to save you.

Meloni has managed to weave a number of themes in a populist narrative she delivers with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, claiming that Italy’s liberals have facilitated “the project of ethnic substitution of European citizens, desired by big capital and international speculators”.  Like her Hungarian counterpart, she has pointed the finger at the financing activities of George Soros, drawing heavily from the anti-Semitic trope of the Jewish usurer.

Allegations abound that the leader of the Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy) is a fascist.  Given that the Italian constitution openly prohibits “the reorganisation in any form of the dissolved Fascist Party”, this would be a remarkable coup indeed.  That said, the party can be said to be the spiritual heir to Movimento Sociale Italiano (Italian Social Movement), a creation of Benito Mussolini’s supporters after the Second World War.

In an interview with Corriere Magazine, Meloni explained how she had a “serene relationship with fascism”. Mussolini, she conceded, had made “several mistakes”.  Despite producing “a lot”, this fact did not “save him.”

In 1995, MSI joined a larger agglomeration of parties to become the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance).  AN, in turn, joined Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right People of Freedom party in 2009, where Meloni found herself Minister for Youth.  Three years later, she was part of a splinter group that ultimately became the Brothers of Italy.  Italian politics remains, as it has been for decades, populated by changelings.

It would be far from accurate to claim that Italian voters have somehow lost their marbles and lent dramatically rightwards in a fit of absentmindedness.  The formula is common to that of other elections witnessed since the election of Donald Trump in 2016: despair and disgust, tempered by considerable apathy.

The continued rule of Orbán, and Meloni’s victory, are also points of transatlantic celebration.  Former US Secretary of State was full of congratulation, claiming that, “Italy deserves and needs strong conservative leadership.”

Another former US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, forgot her political stripes in also cheering the prospect of a Meloni victory, showing that smashing glass ceilings is far more important than a sound reading of history.  “The election of the first woman prime minister in a country always represents a break with the past, and that is certainly a good thing.”

In forming a government, Meloni will have to keep a close eye on the antics of prospective coalition partner and perennial Eurosceptic Matteo Salvini of Lega, who is hankering for his old post at the interior ministry.  His message on decentralising power jars with the centralist sentiments of Meloni’s.  With 66 MPs and 29 senators, he is mischief-bound as, for that matter, will be others seeking a position in government.

The program of Italy’s new government will be troubling to immigrants, minorities, women, the LGBT community and all groups that do not hum the regressive tune of the Brothers.  But it is hard to see what those in Brussels will or can do.  The EU is as complicit as any in the undermining of rights when it comes to, for instance, irregular migrants, keeping up barriers as much as possible, repelling the unwanted (Ukrainians excepted).  An ugly continent, politically speaking, just got uglier.

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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: Meloni speaking at the 2022 Conservative Political Action Conference in Florida (Source: Vox España , licensed under CC0)

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***

Sweden is refusing to share the preliminary results of its official investigation into the Nord Stream pipeline explosions with Russia, asserting that the information is “confidential.”

Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson said that the outcome of the inquiry into what severely damaged the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines in late September would not be revealed to Moscow.

“In Sweden, our preliminary investigations are confidential, and that, of course, also applies in this case,” Andersson told reporters.

The investigation found that the blasts were an act of sabotage, although the culprit has not been named.

The Swedish leader said that Russia was free to conduct its own investigation into the incident, adding that Sweden had removed cordons from the area.

“The Swedish economic zone is not a territory that Sweden disposes of,” said Andersson.

President Vladimir Putin, who has accused the US and Britain of carrying out an “act of international terrorism” in targeting the pipelines, reacted to Sweden’s denial of access to the investigation by insisting,

“We all know well who the ultimate beneficiary of this crime is.”

As we previously highlighted, a former Pentagon advisor said the most likely culprits behind the Nord Stream pipeline blasts are the United States and Britain, and that the attack was carried out to prevent Germany from bailing on the war in Ukraine.

Douglas Macgregor suggested that the motive behind the attacks was to isolate Germany after Berlin began “to give the impression that they were no longer going to go along with this proxy war in Ukraine.”

According to a report by German magazine Der Spiegel, the CIA warned Berlin about a potential attack on gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea weeks before the explosions.

However, Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin insisted that there was no evidence the US was behind the attack, but only because the Pentagon said so.

Both Joe Biden and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland asserted that Nord Stream 2 wouldn’t be allowed to operate if Russia attacked Ukraine.

After the attack, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken welcomed the development as a “tremendous opportunity” for Europe “to once and for all remove the dependence on Russian energy.”

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***

Last week, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. secretly reaffirmed his own self-willed authority to kill persons in other countries, so long as the CIA and its military counterparts have “near certainty” that the target of the homicide is a member of a terrorist organization. That standard was concocted by the Biden administration.

There is no “near certainty” standard in the law, as the phrase is oxymoronic and defies a rational definition; like nearly pregnant. One is either pregnant or not. One is either certain or not. There is no “near” there.

Yet, the creation of this standard underscores the lamentable absence of the rule of law in the Biden administration, and in the administrations of its three immediate predecessors, each of which deployed drones to kill persons who were not engaged in acts of violence at the time of their killing, irrespective of the near certainty of their membership in any organizations.

“Terrorist” cannot be a standard for murder because it is subjective. To King George III, George Washington was a terrorist. To the poor folks in Libya and Syria, to the popularly elected governments toppled by CIA-inspired violence, to the innocents tortured at black sites around the world, the CIA is a terrorist organization.

The presidential use of drones to kill persons overseas began in 2002 with targeted killings ordered by President George W. Bush. It continued under President Barack Obama — who even killed Americans overseas. The rules for killing were made up by each president. They were relaxed under President Donald Trump, who gave CIA senior personnel and military commanders the authority to kill without his express approval for each killing.

The Biden administration quietly took back the Trump grants of authority so that today only the president can authorize targeted killing. Yet, there is no moral, constitutional or legal authority for these killings. But presidents of both political parties do it anyway.

The laws of war — a phrase itself that is oxymoronic — which are generally codified in the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter, all of which were spearheaded and ratified by the United States, mandate essentially that lawful wars can only be defensive and proportional to the threat posed or the harm already caused. Stated differently, treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory restrain the president from killing persons in other countries with which the U.S. is not lawfully at war.

Under the Constitution, treaties sit alongside the Constitution itself as the supreme law of the land. The last four occupants of the White House have ignored this when it comes to secret killings. Each has claimed publicly or secretly that the Authorization for Use of Military Force of 2001, or its cousin, the AUMF of 2002, somehow provide congressional authorizations for presidents to kill whomever they please; and somehow Congress can authorize killings.

Yet the AUMF of 2001 purported to authorize Bush to hunt down and kill the folks he failed to see coming on 9/11, whom he reasonably found caused 9/11. The AUMF of 2002 authorized Bush to invade Iraq in pursuit of the weapons of mass destruction that we now know Saddam Hussein never had.

The Constitution authorizes Congress to declare war, not random killings. Neither of the AUMFs was or is a valid declaration of war, which the Constitution requires as a predicate for all extrajudicial presidential killing. A declaration of war defines the target and sets the end. It is not open-ended as the last four presidents have claimed with respect to these two Bush-era statutes.

If the presidents are right, and the AUMFs authorize them to kill whomever they wish — including Americans — then they are not presidents answerable to the law and the Constitution, but kings who can kill on a whim without transparency or legal consequence.

The whole purpose of confining the war-making power to Congress and the war-waging power to the president was to keep those powers separate. History is littered with examples of tyrants using the powers of the state to kill for no moral purpose. American presidents have given themselves the power to kill.

Abraham Lincoln was the first head of state in world history to target civilians militarily and the first to kill civilians of his own country. Franklin D. Roosevelt slaughtered thousands of innocent helpless German civilians at the end of World War II by carpet-bombing German cities, rather than targeting the German military. Harry Truman slaughtered many thousands of Japanese civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All these murders were met with popular approval, as the targets had been demonized by the machinery of government — just like the “terrorists” Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden have killed.

But demonization of human targets and popular approval of their murders cannot make an immoral act a moral one. An act is moral when it is consistent with the Natural Law. According to the Declaration of Independence, under the Natural Law, all persons are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, and among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” The right to live is the foremost natural right and the great divine gift to all persons — not just Americans.

No person may morally be targeted for death by government for any reason unless it is presently necessary to stop that person from actively killing another. In the cases cited above, the presidential killings were done to terrify political opponents, as the civilian targets were helpless. And the killers were lauded as heroes.

Today, American troops — special forces — are on the ground in Ukraine showing Ukrainian forces how to use American weapons to kill Russian troops. This was done by a secret presidential order that has never been publicly acknowledged. These bullied and terrified Russian conscripts pose no threat whatsoever to life, liberty or property in America. But presidents kill because they can get away with it.

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***

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Tuesday said that Moscow was open to talks with Western powers as Turkey is looking to broker negotiations.

Lavrov also said that Russia would consider a meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and President Biden if one was proposed.

“We have repeatedly said that we never refuse meetings. If there is a proposal, then we will consider it,” he said.

A potential venue for talks between Biden and Putin could be the sidelines of the upcoming summit of G20 leaders that will be held in mid-November in Indonesia. But according to Lavrov, Russia has not received any serious proposals from the US to negotiate.

The US was quick to dismiss Lavrov’s comments, accusing him of “posturing” and calling for Russia to stop launching strikes across Ukraine. “We see this as posturing. We do not see this as a constructive, legitimate offer to engage in the dialogue and diplomacy that is absolutely necessary to see an end to this brutal war of aggression,” State Department spokesman Ned Price said.

Despite the US dismissal of potential talks, Turkey appears eager to broker negotiations between the two sides. The Kremlin said that Putin will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday, and it’s “possible” that the two leaders will discuss a Turkish proposal to host talks between the West and Russia.

Turkish Defence Minister Hulusi Akar spoke with his Russian counterpart, Sergey Shoigu, on Tuesday and noted a “common understanding” when it came to the need to reach a ceasefire, the Turkish Defense Ministry said.

“The importance of declaring a ceasefire urgently in order to prevent further loss of lives and to re-establish peace and stability in the region was emphasized, and it was gladly observed that there was a common understanding regarding the ceasefire,” the Turkish Defense Ministry said in a readout of the call.

While there are growing calls for peace talks, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky reiterated his position that he won’t hold talks with Russia as long as Putin is president during a virtual meeting with the G7. Zelensky recently signed a decree ruling out any dialogue with Putin’s government.

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***

Once again I have the pleasure of recommending to my readership a live interview on Iran’s Press TV earlier today. Once again, I find their news presenter very well briefed on the subject at hand. Once again I find their political positioning remarkably friendly to the Russian side in the conflict with the West over Ukraine.

One might draw conclusions about a shift in Iranian state politics away from ‘kiss and make up’ with the United States and towards alignment with its regional neighbors and with the great powers Russia and China. It is these last two which are raising Iran’s image of stable and constructive contributor to the world order in forums such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Caspian Economic Forum, presently being held in Moscow.

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Featured image: Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky seen earlier this year. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Service)

---

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

Reminder to the crusading Armageddonists …..  “Thou shalt not kill.” Exodus 20: 13
.

This incisive article by Felicity Arbuthnot was written 15 years ago on October 27, 2007.

Foreign policy lies prevail. The same neocons “are at it again”. ” We must bomb Iran”. Preemptive Nukes.

***
They are at it again. Remember when Milosovic was labelled “the butcher of Belgrade”, the new Hitler?

Then Saddam Hussein was “the butcher of Bagdad” and, of course the most dangerous man since Hitler – with weapons of mass destruction which could be unleashed on the world “in forty five minutes”.

Colin Powell lied to the U.N., about the danger Iraq posed to the planet; George Bush lied to anyone who would listen; Tony Blair lied to Parliament and aides concocted dossiers so dodgy they were laughable, yet in spite of the millions who marched, protested and knew the lies for what they were, there were millions who bought fiction as fact.

And here we go again. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (wait for “the tyrant of Tehran”) threatens the planet, is supplying weapons to Iraq’s resistance, is destabilising the region and the paradise that is occupied Iraq.

Whilst there are indeed plenty of Iranians or Iranian sympathisers in Iraq, they came in with the occupiers. Many in high places in Iraq’s corrupt, militia driven, American puppet government, speak Farsi, not Arabic.

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

A glance at the AEI website lists those including:

Paul Wolfowitz (“entrepreneurship and development”),
Michael Rubin (“Arab democracy”),
Richard Perle (“defence …intelligence”),
Joshua Muravchik (“global democracy”),
John Bolton (“foreign policy”),
Lynne Cheney, whose husband, as ever, is believed a driving force behind the attack plan (“culture and education”),
Michael Ledeen (latest book: “The Iranian Time Bomb: The Mullah Zealots Quest for Destruction”),
Daniell Pletka (“Vice President for foreign and defence policy studies”) who, writing in the “Wall Street Journal” (28th September 2007) referred to Iran’s “illegal nuclear weapons … Washington’s impotence” and “clear information of a link to a weapons of mass destruction programme”. This in spite of the International Atomic Energy Authority finding no indication of such programmes.

It all sounds chillingly familiar.

Interestingly, an item on the Institute’s list of “Research Projects” is “Global Investment in Iran”. Surely a matter for Iran – or does the AEI already regard Iran’s oil fields and assets as their fiscal frolic zone?

Orchestration is continuing apace:

“Even as we are succeeding in Iraq” (really?) “Iran is working against us … we will not achieve peace in the region if we ignore this threat”, writes Ledeen. Further, there are clear plans to liberate Iran’s women, Afghan style: “Since 1979, Iran has changed from a society where women could attend university and have careers, to one where they are second class citizens … sold as slaves …”. writes Diana Furchgott-Roth in the New York Sun (14th September 2007.)

There must be two Irans: “Literacy is well over ninety percent, even in the rural areas and in 2005, more than sixty five percent of students entering university were women. The voices that come through most strongly on the Iranian blogosphere are those of this educated, young generation.” Over sixty five percent of this country of seventy million are under thirty years old.

“I feel cold when I think about a possible war against my homeland”, wrote one blogger: “My picture of war hasn’t come from Hollywood movies, I have seen the pain, the kids tears, bloody streets …”  In a picture showing a meeting of the Tehran Photographers Association, the venue is packed with vibrantly dressed women – and one man. (See : Inside Iran, New Internationalist, March 2007: www.newint.org )

Iran is not perfect, but where is? Britain’s Prime Minister Brown “refuses to rule out” joining the US military intervention – to decimate for “democracy” and plunder resources. According to the Sunday Telegraph (1st October 2007), a dossier is being drawn up on Iran’s violations of International Law, as with Iraq. “Violations of International Law”? Two countries, Britain and America  have not alone violated, but torn up International Law. Yet again, who guards the guards?

Can a nation, which even invaded Grenada (which has no armed forces, main exports: bananas, nutmeg, mace; a war for nutmegs?) in 1983, totalling a psychiatric hospital (24th anniversary, 25th October) population 94.103 (1994) v. United States, population 260.713.000 (1994) because it was a “threat”, be trusted?

But the war drums are beating: “WE MUST bomb Iran”, is the header for Josua Muravchik’s Los Angeles Times article (19th June 2007.)

He begins with quotes straight from the Pentagon’s Iraq propaganda handbook: “…since the country’s secret nuclear programme was brought to light … the path of diplomacy and sanctions has led nowhere.” Tehran has “spurned” a “string of concessions”; the UN Security Council was derelict in its duty toward the Iranian threat.

The completion of Iran’s nuclear arsenal grows closer daily, this “premier state sponsor of terrorism” could “slip nuclear material to terrorists”. The bomb Iran doesn’t have, would, of course “constitute a dire threat to Israel’s six million population”. No mention of Israel being the fifth largest nuclear power on earth, without a blink towards the non-proliferation treaty, or indeed even an admission of having such weapons.

However Iran’s non-weapons: “would spend finis to the entire non-proliferation system”. The “…global struggle” with Iran is “akin” to the forty year one with the Soviet Union and – wait for it – “a clash of civlisations”.

“The only way to forestall these frightening developments is by the use of force … by an air campaign against Tehran’s nuclear facilities. We have considerable information about these facilities; by some estimates they comprise about 1,500 targets…. What should be the timing of such an attack? If we did it next year, that would give time for U.N. diplomacy to further reveal its bankruptcy …’” is Murachik’s conclusion. “Deja vu, all over again.”

Not mentioned, anywhere, in the demented rhetoric regarding an attack on Iran, is the “A” word: Armageddon. “Likely targets for saturation bombing” (that look likely to involve tactical nuclear weapons) “are the Bushehr nuclear power plant” (where Russian and other foreign national technicians are present) “a uranium mining site at Saghand” (near a major city, Yazd) “the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz, a heavy water plant and radioisotope facility at Arak, the Arkedan Nuclear Fuel Unit, the Uranium Enrichment Facility and Nuclear Technology Centre in Isfahan, the Tehran Nuclear Research Cnetree, the Tehran Molybdenum, Iodine and Xenon Radioisotope Production Facility …. a reportedly dismantled uranium enrichment plant at Lashkar Abad and the Radioactive Waste Storage Units in Karaj and Anarak”.(Wayne Madsen: http://www.entimesreport.com/Attack_on_Iran.html )

These were facilities, many begun after the US/UK overthrow of Iran’s democratically elected, democratic Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadegh in 1953, after he had nationalised the country’s oil. The coup was engineered by the CIA’s Kermit Roosevelt, grandson of Theodore. General Norman Schwartzkopf’s father then travelled to Iran, to help train Savak, the murderous, ruthless, secret police of America’s friend, the Shah.

However, modern history aside, forget global warming.

Consider the enormity of the seemingly proposed attack, apart from the unimaginable horror of those fried and irradiated in the immediate vicinity and surrounding countries (including “allied”, troops throughout the region.).

This is a succinct description of what the explosion of just one nuclear power plant generated, Chernobyl, in 1986:

“Irradiated human cells splinter into fragments called micronuclei … a definitive pre-cursor of cancer. During the nuclear reactor disaster at Chernobyl, the …radiation released was the equivalent of four hundred atomic bombs … Exposed Russians quickly developed blood cell micronuclei …” (The Radiation Poisoning of America, Amy Worthington, 9th October 2007: http://www.globalresearch.ca )

The plight of the children and the Chernobyl region’s cancers twenty one years on, have become an ongoing, tragic, global health study, as Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the residents of the Pacific islands, after the British and French nuclear tests. Chernobyl’s radiation traversed the globe within days. In the highlands of the U.K., Wales and Cumbria, livestock straying in affected areas are still inedible and unsaleable. Chernobyl was doused from the air with fire retardant, by crews, which, in spite of protection by heavily leaded cockpit floors, reportedly, not one has survived the ravaging resultant cancers. If Chernobyl was four hundred atomic bombs, see the above list and do the maths. Don’t forget to add the “coalition’s” democratic nuclear weapons dropped on them.

Norman Podhoretz, one of the founding fathers of neo-conservatism in the United States, is gung-ho, another one reportedly urging Bush to bomb Iran. He told Bush: “You have the awesome responsibility to prevent another holocaust. You are the only one with the guts to do it.”(Sunday Times, 1st October 2007.) A holocaust by any other name …

Mohammad Mossadegh and Saddam Hussein made fatal mistakes. They nationalised their countries’ oil. Saddam Hussein finally tied the noose around his neck, when he switched Iraq’s oil revenues out of US Dollars and into Euros in 2000.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has also vowed to switch from US Dollars and move to a currency “further east”.

As Iraq, is this really about a nuclear threat?

Will the millions who believed the last great lie, be fooled again? If they are not, will it make any difference, in the illegal space the US and UK Administrations inhabit?

On the ground in the Middle East (or in this case on the water) it seems not. Here is a communication from a Landing Signals Officer* (an LSO directs carrier aircraft whilst landing) on a carrier attack group that is planning and staging a strike group deployment in the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most strategically vital oil routes, which is controlled by Iran.

The LSO is convinced Iran will be attacked, commenting that “… all Air Operation Planning and Asset Tasking are finished (meaning) all targets have been chosen, prioritized and tasked to specific aircraft, bases, carriers, missile cruisers …” Further, the LSO comments, there is deep disquiet amongst senior officers about “staging a massive attack on Iran”. However, “I have seen more than one senior Commander disappear …”; it’s weird, because everyone who has “disappeared” has questioned this mission.

How limited would the attack be?

“I don’t think it’s limited at all. We are shipping in and assigning every Tomahawk, we have an inventory. I think this is going to be massive and sudden (with) thousands of targets. I believe no American will know when it happens, until after it happens.”The LSO ponders that discussing a secret attack is “treason” but is so concerned “something tells me to tell it anyway.”

“Yes, we are going to hit Iran big time. Whatever political discussion that is going on is window dressing … a red herring. I see what’s going on here below deck, in the hangers and weapons bay – and I have a sick feeling about how it is going to turn out.’”

Would the US Administration really endanger the entire planet?

Here is a story told to me by Bernard Lown, one of co-founders of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) during the Reagan era. http://www.ippnw.org Lown worked closely with another eminent fellow cardiac surgeon, the (then) USSR’s Yevgeny Chazov. Since physicians know no borders, they had formed a friendship, then a movement, which bridged the cold war, the Reagan “Evil Empire” (re. the Soviet Union) nonsense and within two years, had doctors and surgeons from eighty two countries spreading the word, that even cardiac arrest paled against nuclear war.

In 1995, IPPNW collectively won the Nobel Peace Prize.

Since Lown travelled, lecturing, to the USSR frequently and had built trust over many years at all levels, the US State Department asked if he would engage in some unofficial diplomacy. Relations between the two countries were far worse than most realised. After one such visit to Moscow, I met Lown in Paris. We sat in dappled Spring sun, at a pavement breakfast café – fresh squeezed orange, coffee, croissants.

“I came back two days ago and went to talk (at the State Department) of the concerns in Moscow. Afterwards, a senior official – a household name (he declined to divulge) walked me to the exit. As we neared the exit, he put his arm round my shoulders:

‘Don’t worry, Professor Lown, if there is a nuclear war, we will be the first ones to rise up and meet Jesus in the sky.’” Lown, used to the vagaries of the unwell, responded: “Tell me, does anyone else in this building feel as you do?”

“Oh yes, many of us do.”

The swathe of “household names”, from the Reagan era, are now in the Bush Administration and the American Enterprise Institute.

The Armageddonists are back.

The world should be very afraid – or should the physicians in white coats move in?

Felicity Arbuthnot is a journalist and activist who has visited the Arab and Muslim world on numerous occasions. She has written and broadcast on Iraq, her coverage of which was nominated for several awards. She was also senior researcher for John Pilger’s award-winning documentary,

“Paying the Price: Killing the Children of Iraq”. http://www.johnpilger.com/page.asp?partID=4

and author, with Nikki van der Gaag, of “Baghdad” in the “Great Cities” series, for World Almanac Books (2006.)

Note

*Regarding the LSO, this came from a second, but highly trusted source, who for obvious reasons, would not divulge the name or further details of the LSO.

Please also see:

Livni behind closed doors: Iran nukes pose little threat to Israel
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/916758.html

Religious Extremists in America (Christian Zionists)
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=_UoHfCUBiEM

Kill Or Convert, Brought To You By the Pentagon
http://www.thenation.com/blogs/notion?bid=15&pid=220960

Military Religious Freedom Foundation http://militaryreligiousfreedom.org
Al-Bushra http://www.al-bushra.org

Christians be aware!
http://www.nwo101.com/2007/10/christians-be-aware.html

Europe’s Dark Winter Woes Worsen: Ukraine Stops Exporting Electricity to Europe

By Mac Slavo, October 12, 2022

Ukraine has announced that it will have to halt electricity exports to Europe. Russian missile strikes are said to be responsible for the forced suspension of power exports, Kyiv has announced.

Is the Death of an Innocent Woman Being Exploited to Advance the Goal of Regime Change in Iran?

By Elizabeth Sigrún, October 12, 2022

In an era increasingly awash with political instability, the latest protests in Iran are yet another manifestation of the plague of Western imperialism. The sudden death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini and the unclear circumstances surrounding her death have precipitated a remarkable global response condemning the Iranian government as well as purporting to champion the rights of Iranian women in defiance of Islamic fundamentalism.

Abnormal Blood-Clotting: The Trail of Blood from the COVID Jabs

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, October 12, 2022

Abnormal blood clotting was one of the first mysterious health effects to emerge in the COVID pandemic, first, as an effect of the natural infection, and later, as a side effect of the COVID jabs.

Manipulated Ukraine

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, October 12, 2022

Ukraine is not part of Saharan Africa, nor is it a country of illiterate or ill-educated people. How is it possible for Ukrainians to tolerate such a stumble, how is it possible that their tycoon and corrupt political elite so enchanted them and diverted them to the wrong side through manipulations?

Is Biden Getting Fed Up with Zelensky’s “Ungrateful Begging”?

By Andrew Korybko, October 12, 2022

It’s now no longer “Russian propaganda” to describe Zelensky as an ungrateful beggar, but the implied standard of “political correctness” after Biden himself just reportedly told the Ukrainian leader to cut it out and stop angering American taxpayers ahead of the midterms.

Did Latin America Gradually Turn Left? Or Neoliberal?

By Peter Koenig, October 12, 2022

To the superficial observer, it may be a blessing the despots and dictators, human rights abusers, like Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque; Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno; Chile’s Sebastián Piñera; to name just a few, are gone, have disappeared from the Latin American political arena, in what was presented to public opinion as the result of so-called “democratic elections”.

A Perfect Storm in US Foreign Policy

By M. K. Bhadrakumar, October 12, 2022

The old adage is that a good foreign policy is the reflection of the national policy. A perfect storm is brewing on the foreign policy front in America triggered by the OPEC decision on Thursday to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, which will on the one hand drive up the gas price for the domestic consumer and on the other hand expose the Biden Administration’s lop-sided foreign policy priorities. 

Video: Unable to Defend His Country, Zelensky Asks to Launch Nuclear War

By South Front, October 12, 2022

Ukrainian advance in all regions has stopped. In the south of the country, Ukrainian forces are preparing for further offensive deep in the region. Russian artillery and warplanes are heavily attacking the amassing forces of the enemy.

Britain Bounces Back, EU in Crisis, USA Attacks Europe

By Rodney Atkinson, October 12, 2022

Contrary to an original estimate the UK’s economy grew in the second quarter of this year by 0.2% revised up from -0.1% but there were 4 bank holidays in this period each probably costing about 0.16% of GDP (CEBR study 2012) so those 4 days would have added another 0.64%

Tulsi Gabbard Finally Departs Democrat War Party

By Kurt Nimmo, October 12, 2022

The upper echelon of the ruling Democrats is not for or against an individual based solely on his or her skin color. The only thing that matters is class and how much money and power an individual has. There is no real support for Black Lives Matter or less radical groups. It is simply a tool for diversion and control.

First published with foresight on August 18, 2020

***

Everything we were originally told about the Coronavirus has turned out to be wrong.

In fact, it’s not a “novel” one-of-a-kind infection at all, but a member of a larger family of which there have been many iterations in the recent past.

It’s also not the most contagious or most lethal virus we’ve ever seen, but a fairly-mild infection that has no impact on the majority of people and that only kills somewhere between 1 in every 200 to 1 in every 1,000 people. (CDC-IFR- 0.26%)

Also, there was no real danger that our public health system was going to collapse, because the projected number of potential deaths (1 to 2 million in the US) never approached the estimates of the flawed computer models that were used to decide the policy.

In short, just about everything we were told from the very beginning turned out to be demonstrably wrong. Why is that? Why do you think that the people who provided us with the information –many of them supposedly “experts” in their field– were so wrong about everything? And why haven’t they made any effort to publicly correct their mistakes when they realize how much confusion they’ve caused?

It’s politics, right? What other explanation could there be? Our leaders and their behind-the-scenes puppet-masters are using science as a vehicle for achieving their own narrow political objectives. In broader terms, COVID–19 or, should we say, CODENAME: Operation Virus Identification 2019, is the plan to manipulate virus-hysteria “to drastically and irrevocably” change the “fundamental structure of society” to establish a totalitarian world order. (Quote: from CJ Hopkins) That’s what’s happening, and the Democrats, the media and the many infectious disease experts are playing key roles in this operation that’s bound to continue until its objectives are achieved.

But let’s forgo the political analysis for now and review what we actually know about the virus itself. This, of course, would not be necessary if the media had been doing its job by providing accurate information rather than fueling public hysteria. Sadly, the majority of people are just as misinformed now as they were 6 months ago when the outbreak began. How could that be if the media was actually doing its job? It couldn’t.

What we know for certain is that the doomsday scenarios never materialized. 2 million Americans did not die and the world did not come to an abrupt end. We also know that the computer model predictions from the Imperial College were bogus just as we know that the countries that ignored those absurd models did better than the others. As Nobel prize winner Michael Levitt points out in an article at Haaretz:

“The same type of models predicted that in Sweden, the number of deaths from COVID-19 would reach about 100,000 by June, if the Swedish government continues to refuse to impose lockdown measures. Sweden rejected these models and bravely adopted… a democratic policy that broadly enabled normal life to continue. Despite the large nursing homes in Sweden...the number of deaths turned out to be 6% of the one predicted, about 6,000 people, at an average age of 81. Half of the victims were nursing home residents who, in Sweden, have a median life expectancy of 9 months after admission.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)

Repeat: Sweden’s death toll turned out to be just 6% of the original estimate. By comparison, the US death toll (167,000) is not quite 10% of the original (Imperial College) estimate. Both estimates were catastrophically wrong, and yet, we shut down the economy, drove unemployment up to levels not seen since the Great Depression, and condemned the country to years of agonizing restructuring. And for what??

Well, to promote a ghastly, authoritarian political agenda, that’s why. And this just helps to underscore what Covid-19 is really all about. It’s politics masquerading as science.

The Haaretz article also sheds light on the issue of “herd immunity” which is routinely mischaracterized in the media as the point at which 60% (or more) of the population have been infected and therefore have developed antibodies to the virus. This is wrong, in fact, the threshold for herd immunity is much lower than that, perhaps 5 to 15% of the population.

But, how can that be, after all, we were told that this was an entirely new “novel” virus that our species had never before experienced and for which we had no built-up immunity?

That was another lie. Here’s Michael Levitt again:

“Widespread infection is not required for stopping the epidemic. The argument that 60% of the population must be infected and becomes immune before the infection spread is halted is based on an incorrect mathematical calculation….The most significant evidence – decidedly refuting the need for 60% infection rate – is pre-immunity. For example, COVID-19 has several relatives (other coronaviruses) to which the population had been exposed, and such prior exposure can provide immunity to a significant segment of the population. Back in April, two of us wrote an article about the postulated nature of this immunity and the statistical evidence that pointed to its existence. We noted that in several closed communities that underwent testing, the infection rate was always capped at 20%, which statistically aligns with maximal infection rate in these communities rather than recurring coincidences. About a month later, a group of researchers published corroborating evidence in Cell, one of the most prestigious journals in the life sciences. About 60% of people in California who had never been exposed to COVID-19, had immune memory cells that recognized the virus and are therefore likely to provide immunity.

Moreover, a study in Germany showed that such immunity could reach a level as high as 81% of the population. …This rate of pre-immunity to COVID-19 is also evident in the global rates of infection. The virus began infecting humans more than eight months ago, and the epidemic has already spread to most of the world. Yet in all countries, the infection rate remains below 20 percent of the general population. This limited rate of infection has remained unchanged regardless of social distancing measures (if any),such as quarantines, local or country-wide lockdown, mask-wearing, and so on. In Sweden, for example, the infection rate did not exceed 20% and the percentage of people who survived the epidemic exceeds 99.9% (!) of the population. Such is the case in Belgium as well, the country with the highest population mortality rate, where less than 20% were infected, and more than 99.9% of the population has survived the epidemic…The implications of these findings are of utmost importance. They call for immediate removal of most restrictions on the economy, immediate return to normal life of low-risk population while helping high-risk groups reduce the rate of social contacts.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)

This is not some minor point. Our policy and the policies adopted by countries around the world are based on assumptions that are both unscientific and false. Do you really think the people responsible for implementing these policies don’t know the science or don’t know about “pre-immunity” or that that “prior exposure can provide immunity” or that ” the infection rate was always capped at 20% in all countries” (which means that only 1 in every 5 people will contract the infection regardless of their exposure.) or that in all cases and all countries “more than 99.9% of the population has survived the epidemic”?

Admit it, most readers don’t know anything about any of this because none of it has appeared in the MSM. Why is that? What malicious, evil forces are at work here? Why do our leaders and our media want to keep us in the dark about issues that are critical to our decision-making, critical to our livelihoods, and critical to our very survival? Why?

Again, do you really think our leaders and infectious disease experts– like the affable Anthony Fauci– are unaware of these facts? Do you think they have dismissed them as too trivial or too superficial to tell the public or do you think they are deliberately withholding any information that might mitigate the prevailing atmosphere of hysteria that is keeping the American people afraid, isolated and abjectly submissive to the manipulations of their paymasters?

That’s what you call a “no-brainer”. We have entered a period in which wealthy, globalist oligarchs are using fake science, amplified through their assets in the media and Democrat party, to fundamentally restructure society in a way that enhances their material interests while strengthening their grip on power. It’s as plain as the nose on your face.

And there’s more too, because censorship, manipulation and politics have real costs, and the costs can be calculated in terms of the lives that are lost due to the imposition of a ruthless and thoroughly-counterproductive policy: Lockdown. Here’s Levitt again:

“The third argument – removing restrictions will result in a higher mortality than a policy of lockdowns and restrictions – is also incorrect. A virus spreads in the population until enough people become infected and immune, or until a vaccine is found. Lockdowns and restrictions may only slow down its spread (“flatten the curve”) but they do not lower the total number of infections or overall mortality. If there is a risk of overwhelming hospitals, there might be a need to slow the spread of the infection. Otherwise, flattening the curve can only be harmful since the infection returns once the restrictions are removed. Moreover, efficient protection of high-risk groups is possible only for a limited period of time: The longer the time, the harder it is to prevent their exposure to the virus. Therefore, paradoxically, it is precisely lockdowns and restrictions that slow the building of herd immunity, which in turn is needed to stop the epidemic and protect high-risk groups. In the long run, such policy can lead to excessive mortality.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)

In other words, lockdowns can postpone infections but cannot prevent them. A virus is going to do what a virus does. Period. Imposing lockdowns is as bound to fail as standing at the water’s edge and ordering the tide to stop coming in. It’s empty posturing that achieves nothing. As Levitt says, lockdowns are, in fact, a threat to older and vulnerable people because the longer they are in place, “the harder it is to prevent their exposure to the virus.” In short, the lockdowns actually kill the people they are supposed to save.

Do you think our leaders know this? Of course, they know it. Levitt is not the only scientist who’s able to think clearly and rationally. The others have merely shaped thier approach to the demands of their employers. Does the name “Bill Gates” ring a bell?

Here’s Levitt again:

“In Sweden…there is no “second wave” because there was no lockdown. Thus, the policy of imposing and easing restrictions only prolongs the crisis, destroys the economy, and eventually leads to a larger number of victims. It may even continue for years as long as a vaccine is not available. The alternative to lockdowns and restrictions must be seriously considered.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)

Indeed, lockdowns cost lives, lockdowns cost money, and lockdowns are the wrong policy. Here’s Levitt one last time:

“It can be assumed that the handling of the COVID-19 crisis will be scrutinized – both in terms of health aspects, but also in light of public outrage over the state of the economy. So many people all over the world have lost their sources of income, livelihood, dignity and future. Poverty is a much more severe mortality risk factor than COVID-19, and it affects children as much as adults. One of the key questions that will surely be asked is whether the leadership in each country has ever seriously considered a worthy alternative to resolving the crisis, which will not cost so many human lives or destroy the economy. Countries such as Norway, Ireland, and Belgium have already declared that they will not impose further lockdowns as the obvious damage outweighs the doubtful benefit by a wide margin.” (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz)

By any measure, the United States is in worse condition than ever before. We have destroyed our economy, closed our schools, obliterated our small and medium-sized businesses, increased suicides, depression, domestic abuse, poverty, homelessness, alienation and destitution. The American people have been plunged into a strange world of persistent fear and relentless manipulation by scheming elites who are resolutely committed to remaking society from the ground-up. COVID-19 is merely the vehicle they have chosen to achieve their nefarious objectives.

Author’s Note: All excerpts taken from (“Countering the Second Wave with Facts, not Misconceptions” Haaretz) Udi Qimron, Uri Gavish, Eyal Shahar, Michael Levitt” See this

1– Prof. Udi Qimron is the (elected) Head of Department of Clinical Microbiology and Immunology, Faculty of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University

2– Dr. Uri Gavish is a Physicist, an expert in Algorithm Analysis and a Bio-medical consultant

3– Prof. (Emeritus) Eyal Shahar is an Epidemiologist, University of Arizona

4– Prof. Michael Levitt is a Nobel Prize-winning (Chemistry, 2013) Structural Biology professor, Stanford UniversityThe original article was published in Ha’aretz in Hebrew on July 20, 2020. The English text contains minor revisions.

This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Mike Whitney is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Freedom Articles

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate This Article button below the author’s name.

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***

In an era increasingly awash with political instability, the latest protests in Iran are yet another manifestation of the plague of Western imperialism. The sudden death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini and the unclear circumstances surrounding her death have precipitated a remarkable global response condemning the Iranian government as well as purporting to champion the rights of Iranian women in defiance of Islamic fundamentalism.

Contrary to the narrative dominating Western headlines that a democratic and grassroots revolution is under way in Iran following Amini’s death, the author maintains that Amini’s death is being exploited by Western-backed forces to hasten a color revolution and create the conditions for greater destabilization and regime change in the region.

The Iran protests did not achieve worldwide attention because of some spontaneous and organic mobilization of women across the country, nor are they representative of some monolithic goal seeking to liberate all Iranian women from the alleged (and supposedly equally felt) brutal dictates of their Islamic Republic government.

One need not dig too far back into United States history to see a repeated pattern of allegations of human rights abuses being levied against adversarial governments as the raison d’être for Western intervention.

One of the most infamous in recent memory post-9/11 was George W. Bush’s disingenuous embrace of the cause of women’s rights to further justify his administration’s decision to invade Afghanistan in the disastrous War on Terror. In the first Gulf War, the false testimony of “Nurse Nayirah” al-Sabah to the Congressional Human Rights caucus—during which she accused Iraqi troops of invading a Kuwait City hospital and removing 312 babies from incubators to perish on the cold floor—was instrumental in tipping the scale for the U.S. Senate and the American public to overwhelmingly support military force in Iraq in its quest to “save Kuwait.”

“Nurse Nayirah” al-Sabah testifying before the Congressional Human Rights Commission on the eve of the 1991 Persian Gulf War. [Source: youtube.com]

And who can forget the disturbing accusation by Western leaders of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad supposedly “gassing his own people” via a chemical attack on civilians in Douma in 2017. That the U.S. government had covertly backed rebel groups (including al-Nusra and ISIS) in the region against the Syrian government is as troubling as it is inconvenient.

Nevertheless, the chemical attack narrative struck an emotional chord with concerned Westerners who across the board (save for a few anti-imperialist voices) insisted that “Assad must go” to save the Syrian people!

A sobering analysis of U.S Empire and its legacy of defectors, color revolutions, and flat-out lies to justify militarism and war efforts begs the question: Are the Iran protests a legitimate call to action for women’s rights, or are they largely smoke and mirrors—a familiar yet questionable narrative of human rights violations once again being deployed to advance U.S. regime-change efforts in Iran?

Let’s first consider what prompted the latest (fleeting?) global moral outrage against Iran and supposed pursuit for the rights of women in the country. The unexpected death of a civilian woman, Mahsa Amini, on September 16, 2022, sparked sharp disdain for the Iranian government and their state apparatuses, most notably of their “morality police.”

The circumstances of her death have not yet been conclusively determined; all the while rage continues to fester within parts of Iran and in the international community. When alleged eyewitnesses and other “trusted voices” (like Iranian expatriate Masih Alinejad—a CIA asset who has worked alongside Mike Pompeo, Madeleine Albright, and other warmongers) claimed that Amini was beaten by Iranian police for incorrectly wearing her hijab, the Iranian government was quick to release CCTV footage that—contrary to what was being echoed at the time—showed Amini unexpectedly collapsing on her own inside Tehran’s police station.

Refuting the claim of the Iranian government that she had a previous medical condition propelling a heart attack and subsequent coma, Amini’s family maintains that their daughter was beaten to death.

Of course, the death of this young woman is undeniably upsetting, and if evidence comes forward suggesting the morality police are to blame, then the reasonable demand is to put those officers on trial for policy brutality and demand accountability of the country’s state officials.

But one ought to cast a critical lens on how this singular event amidst a sea of human rights catastrophes so shamefully rampant in our current global milieu has caused a global uprising while the suffering of Palestinians under Israeli occupation, Yemenis at the hands of Saudi Arabia, and Armenians under Azerbaijan forces have gone largely ignored in the eyes of supposed justice-oriented Westerners.

It is also peculiar how U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iran for decades (principally and deleteriously felt by Iranian civilians including women and children) have managed to slip under the radar of demands by the masses for justice and democracy for Iranian women, conveniently eschewing any moral outrage for the myriad ways the imperial core has directly caused the suffering and deaths of Iranian civilians.

It also seems odd how quickly narrative management and new demands have been achieved as this story swept across the mainstream Western press and Meta’s social media. While Amini’s death initially sparked liberal demands to remove the mandatory hijab laws, it appears to have seamlessly shifted into manufacturing consent for regime change of the Iranian government.

It is all too convenient how the demands advanced by concerned Westerners and a specific faction of Iranian protesters for “justice and democracy” seem to fall perfectly in line with the imperialist ambitions of Iran’s principal adversaries, namely the United States and Israel. It makes you wonder if people’s moral outrage over Mahsa Amini’s death and disdain for Iran’s Islamic Republic comes from a genuine and lasting concern for Iranians, or because the latest war propaganda told them to.

Casting suspicion on the demands of these protests and expressing concern for its possible future outcomes are reasonable given the myriad angles on why these protests do not really make a lot of sense upon closer inspection.

First, protests of this size and sustained duration do not commonly erupt suddenly and organically. The success of these ongoing protests to capture the undivided attention of international audiences with such gusto involves very skilled organization with a history of strategic planning, resources, and sustained leadership—without which the protest(s) would inevitably lose steam.

While boots-on-the-ground military operations and coup d’états were once the primary strategy by which imperialist nations destabilized their enemies, embracing more covert strategies including astroturfing organic social movements or outright creating the conditions for political unrest within a country has become more normative and arguably more successful.

Under the deceptive exterior of functioning as a neutral non-profit organization, the primary function of CIA cut-outs like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is to foist regime-change operations in countries adversarial to U.S. interests by arming and training rebel groups, defectors, agent provocateurs, and/or separatists to infiltrate protests and social movements in order to swiftly advance the imperialist ambitions of the United States.

While Westerners were seemingly out-of-nowhere captured by the call to support democracy for citizens in Hong Kong 2019/20 under the alleged brutal dictates of the Chinese government, critical investigative journalism has since revealed these uprisings were but the latest covert escalation in the United States’s cold war with China.

Many of the Hong Kong “pro-democracy” protesters openly courted U.S. military intervention. [Source: thegrayzone.com]

Anyone who does not think Iran’s political adversaries are somehow involved tacitly or directly with these mass protests is certainly naïve to the sly tactics of these color revolutions. It is also no accident that certain so-called movements for “social justice,” “democracy,” or “women’s rights” are embraced and promoted by the U.S. Empire, while truly revolutionary movements such as the Sandinistas, the Bolivarian Revolution, and the Palestinian Resistance Movement do not get anywhere near the same global attention and are actively repressed in the Western press.

The fact that these protests in Iran have received wall-to-wall coverage should raise a few eyebrows.

The moral condemnation people express over the practices embedded in certain Islamic republics but not others is also quite curious. Why, for instance, do Westerners (in the last two weeks especially) deem the Iranian Islamic Republic so morally aghast for women’s rights, but the same disdain (as demonstrated in global uprisings for example) is not reserved for the Saudi government and its strict adherence to extremist Wahhabism?

While it can certainly be argued that Iran ought to modernize some of its laws pertaining to the rights of women, Saudi Arabian authorities have enacted far harsher repressive tactics upon the women in their own country, all the while directly engaging in the ethnic cleansing of the citizens of Yemen. I have yet to see a call to action from Western liberals to demand justice for Saudi (and Yemeni) women living under the dictates of this repressive regime.

Finally, make no mistake, we are living in a time of grossly hostile geopolitics led predominantly by the United States and its junior partners, and causing numerous political quagmires worldwide—so many that we can’t keep up. Masses of people are swallowing war propaganda like it is kool-aid, and sadly it is only become more sophisticated and covert through the advancement of private and corporate-run social media companies.

It is no coincidence that, within this milieu of disastrous geopolitical conflicts, the imperial core continuously sows disdain for Iran (of varying degrees depending on the current political climate) in its quest to manufacture consent for eventual war with them. Just two years ago, we were caught in the throes of a possible war with Iran after the Trump administration ordered the assassination of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani on January 3, 2020.

The U.S. Empire does not care about Mahsa Amini, but they do care about exploiting her death to achieve their own political ends. These ends of course are to successfully reinstall a Western puppet to lead Iran (like the West did in 1953, overthrowing Mohammad Mosaddegh and installing the Shah in its place until the 1979 Islamic Revolution) and have it become a subservient neo-colony of the United States.

As one of the members of the Axis of Resistance against Western-led imperialism, however, Iran continues to be a thorn in the side of the United States and makes their intended goals very difficult to achieve.

The Iran Nuclear Deal is at a standstill since Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the JCPOA in 2018. More recently, Iran supported Russia’s military operation in Ukraine with the assistance of combat drones and also joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) supplying oil to China in exchange for China’s investments in Iran’s infrastructure.

Iran also has a history of supporting other U.S. adversaries and fellow members of the Axis of Resistance, including Hezbollah; the Houthi movement; Palestinian resistance against Israeli occupation and Zionism; and the Assad government in Syria. A nuanced understanding of this context certainly illuminates why global outrage against Iran was never only about the death of a single civilian but, instead, was a global reaction to a cleverly orchestrated destabilization effort by the imperial West.

The question then lingers: What is an appropriate response by concerned citizens globally (but especially those residing in the imperial core) as a show of true solidarity with the women of Iran during these contentious times?

As a concerned observer in Canada, I have been sorely disappointed by several factions of the so-called socialist Left which have failed to support one obvious measure that would alleviate women’s suffering and death in Iran: the lifting of crippling economic sanctions by Western nations.

Decades of sanctions in Iran have prevented the regular flow of food, medicine and other essential supplies into the country, the negative effects of which are predominantly felt by the most vulnerable people in society.

Protest led by CodePink demanding lifting of sanctions on Iran—something that would genuinely ease the plight of Iran’s women. [Source: theowp.org]

Somehow though, at the height of the trending concern for Mahsa Amini, the United States deemed it necessary to temporarily adjust just one type of sanction—the country’s access to the internet—allegedly in order for civilians to evade surveillance and censorship by the Iranian government in the wake of the Amini protests.

The United States swiftly activated Elon Musk’s Starlink internet services to assist in this effort.

Any claim by the United States to suddenly embrace the noble pursuit of Iranians’ fight against censorship is laughably hypocritical as the U.S. Empire engages in the slow assassination of Julian Assange and the complete annihilation of press freedoms.

Further, if the U.S. can lift internet sanctions with the snap of the finger (to “help Iranian women”), what is stopping them from lifting sanctions on food, medicine, and life-saving medical devices? This is precisely because sanctions are a covert act of war designed to destabilize the living conditions of citizens in hopes that they will eventually seek to overturn their own government.

While the Western left has been quite eager to organize symbolic rallies of supposed solidarity for #MahsaAmini, and to publicly condemn the “repressive and reactionary” Iranian government, most of these groups subtly maintain that their calls for justice do not advocate for Western intervention in Iran or regime change. From an outsider looking in though, it is difficult to distinguish how the messaging relayed in these left-leaning protests differ meaningfully from those echoing State Department talking points.

Vulnerable groups of people, oftentimes women in Middle-Eastern countries, are routinely used as pawns to advance the imperial ambitions of the West. The blowback of foreign governments inserting themselves into the internal politics of other sovereign countries, mostly for nefarious reasons, cannot be ignored.

If Western observers of these protests truly want to help, the most meaningful thing they can do is to challenge the dictates of their own imperialist governments and demand an end to the brutalizing sanctions that have directly caused immeasurable suffering and death of Iranians. It is, indeed, the most meaningful show of solidarity one can do in pursuit of Iranian prosperity.

*

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Elizabeth Sigrún is a writer, editor, and community organizer/activist. Elizabeth holds a Master’s degree in Critical Sociology from Brock University. She has participated in a variety of campaigns for social change over the last 15 years, and is committed to the pursuit of justice through an anti-imperialist and socialist lens. Elizabeth can be reached at [email protected].

Featured image is from The Libertarian Institute

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate This Article button below the author’s name.

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***

Abnormal blood clotting was one of the first mysterious health effects to emerge in the COVID pandemic, first, as an effect of the natural infection, and later, as a side effect of the COVID jabs. By mid-March 2021, 20 countries had suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s COVID shot, either in full or in part, following reports of deadly blood clots

In December 2021, a team of international scientists detailed the mechanism behind the AstraZeneca jab’s propensity to trigger blood clots. The shell of the vector — a weakened chimpanzee cold virus — in some people acts like a magnet and attracts platelets. Your body mistakes these platelets as a threat and produces antibodies to fight them, resulting in dangerous blood clots

Israeli researchers have also linked the Pfizer jab with a rare blood clotting disorder

A Swedish study found two doses of the COVID jab were 43% protective against Omicron infection at week 4. By week 14, protection had dropped to zero. Effectiveness against COVID-related hospitalization remained around 80% until week 25, but dropped to 40% by week 40. Using one statistical analysis method, COVID jabbed Swedes had a higher risk of death or hospitalization from COVID roughly a year after receiving their second dose

A recent case report links the COVID shots to lethal myocarditis (heart inflammation) and encephalitis (brain inflammation)

*

Abnormal blood clotting was one of the first mysterious health effects to emerge in the COVID pandemic, first, as an effect of the natural infection, and later, as a side effect of the COVID jabs.

By mid-March 2021, barely four months after the rollout of the COVID injections, 19 European countries plus Thailand1 had suspended the use of AstraZeneca’s injection, either in full or in part, following reports of deadly blood clots.2 3

Contrary to the Moderna and Pfizer shots, the AstraZeneca jab uses a viral vector — a genetically modified and supposedly noninfectious chimpanzee cold virus — to deliver double-stranded DNA for the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein into your cells.4

Earlier that month, The Defender had reported5 U.K. data showing the AstraZeneca jab was responsible for 77% more adverse events and 25% more deaths than the Pfizer shot. Around that same time, doctors at Oslo University Hospital also announced that the blood clotting disorders experienced by some recipients of the AstraZeneca shot were in fact caused by the injection.6 A March 18, 2021, article in Science Norway read, in part:7

“‘Our theory that this is a powerful immune response most likely triggered by the vaccine, has been confirmed,’ says professor and chief physician Pål Andre Holme … ‘In collaboration with experts in the field from the University Hospital of North Norway HF, we have found specific antibodies against blood platelets that can cause these reactions … the chief physician explains …

When asked to clarify why he says ‘most likely’ in the quote, Holme confidently responds that the reason for these rare cases of blood clots has been found.

‘We have the reason. Nothing but the vaccine can explain why these individuals had this immune response,’ he states. [Norwegian national newspaper] VG also asks how Holme can know that the immune response is not caused by something other than the vaccine.

‘There is nothing in the patient history of these individuals that can give such a powerful immune response. I am confident that the antibodies that we have found are the cause, and I see no other explanation than it being the vaccine which triggers it,’ he responds.”

Study Details Mechanism of Action 

In early December 2021, a team of international scientists published a paper8 detailing the mechanism behind the AstraZeneca jab’s propensity to trigger blood clots. As reported by the Daily Mail at the time:9

“A team of international experts, involving researchers from AstraZeneca, say that in a very small number of cases — about one in 100,000 in the UK — the vaccine can set off a chain reaction which leads to the body confusing its own blood platelets for fragments of virus …

They found that the shell of the vector vaccine — the weakened cold virus used to teach cells how to neutralize COVID — sometimes acts like a magnet and attracts platelets, a protein found in the blood.

For reasons the scientists are still probing, the body then mistakes these platelets as a threat and produces antibodies to fight them. The combination of the platelets and the antibodies clumping together leads to the formation of dangerous blood clots …

Essentially, after being delivered into the body adenovirus binds with a specific protein in the blood, known as platelet factor 4 (PF4), which is normally used by the body to promote coagulation in case of injury.

Using incredibly detailed images of the adenovirus in the vaccine the scientists demonstrated the adenovirus in the Oxford-AstraZeneca is negatively charged, and could attract positively charged proteins like a magnet.

The researchers believe that in a case of ‘mistaken identity’ the body’s immune system considers this platelet cluster as threat and releases antibodies to attack it, clumping together to it and triggering potentially life threatening blood clots. This condition is called vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia (VITT).”

The following graphic was published in the Daily Mail to illustrate the potentially deadly chain reaction.

How Long Does Risk Remain?

As for how long the risk of blood clotting remains is unknown. In mid-September 2022, the American Heart Association reported that the risk of abnormal blood clotting remains elevated nearly a year after natural infection:10

“People who got COVID-19 had a higher risk of dangerous blood clots for close to a year later, according to a large new study11 on the aftereffects of a SARS-CoV-2 infection …

COVID-19 was linked to a sharply increased risk of blood clot-related issues — including heart attack and stroke — immediately after diagnosis compared to people who never had COVID-19 [and] … that risk remained higher for some problems up to 49 weeks later …

Researchers found that the first week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of an arterial blood clot — the kind that could cause a heart attack or ischemic stroke by blocking blood flow to the heart or brain — was nearly 22 times higher than in someone without COVID-19. That risk dropped sharply, to less than four times higher, in the second week.

‘Between 27 and 49 weeks, there is an approximately 30% increased risk for arterial clots,’ [senior author, professor of medical statistics and epidemiology at the University of Bristol, Jonathan] Sterne said. ‘But the elevation is greater for longer’ for clots in veins, which include deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism, when a clot travels to the lungs.

In the first week after a COVID-19 diagnosis, the risk of such venous problems was 33 times higher. By the third and fourth weeks after diagnosis, the risk was still about eight times higher. And between 27 and 49 weeks later, the risk was still 1.8 times higher than in somebody who had never had COVID-19.”

If the risk of blood clotting remains high for nearly a year after natural infection, it seems reasonable to suspect the risk is dramatically elevated far longer in those who got one or more COVID shots, as their bodies are now producing the toxic spike protein internally, and there’s no known off-switch.

We still do not know how long the human body continues to produce spike protein after a COVID jab. And, while AstraZeneca was singled out as the main culprit of blood clots, Pfizer’s and Moderna’s mRNA jabs are no safer in this regard.

Pfizer’s COVID Jab Linked to Blood Clotting Disorder

As early as June 2021, Israeli research suggested there was a link between the Pfizer shot and thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP), which is very similar to vaccine-induced immune thrombotic thrombocytopenia or VITT. A list of distinguishing features between the syndromes can be found on UpToDate.com.12 As reported by The Defender:13

“Scientists with the Institute of Hematology at Shamir Medical Center said they began researching the possible link after reports of a sudden increase in TTP across Israel — four cases detected in one month compared to two or three cases per year. TTP is an autoimmune disorder that causes blood clots to form in small blood vessels throughout the body …

The medical team said they found a ‘chronological connection’ between vaccination and the onset of TTP symptoms. They stressed this occurred in both new patients and in patients with pre-existing TTP whose disease had been in remission but flared up soon after getting the vaccine …

As The Defender reported in April, U.S. regulatory officials were alerted as far back as December 2020 that the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines — like AstraZeneca and J&J COVID vaccine — could pose similar risks of blood clots.”

Even before the rollout of the shots, experts warned that blood clots and cardiovascular problems were predictable. Among them were Dr. Patrick Whelan, a pediatric specialist, who in a letter14 to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned that the shots could “cause microvascular injury and blood clots throughout the body including the brain, heart, liver and kidneys, in ways that were not assessed in the safety trials.”

He pointed out that studies looking at the natural infection had found that “viral proteins appear to cause tissue damage without actively replicating virus,” and if that was true, he suspected the spike protein produced in response to the jabs might also cause the same kind of damage. Today, ample evidence points to Whelan’s suspicions being correct.

Jabs May Raise Risk of COVID Death Over Time 

Studies are now also coming out with evidence that the shots may be causing antibody dependent enhancement (ADE), and that they kill heart and brain cells. Starting with the ADE evidence, a Swedish study,15 using data from the entire Swedish population over the age of 12, a total of 9,153,456 people, found that two doses were 43% protective against Omicron infection at week 4. By week 14, protection had dropped to zero.

Effectiveness against COVID-related hospitalization remained around 80% until week 25, but dropped to 40% by week 40. While these data are highlighted in the abstract, a more intriguing finding remains buried in the text that few take the time to read. As reported by investigative journalist Alex Berenson:16

“Based on one statistical analysis [cubic spline method] vaccinated people had a HIGHER risk of death or hospitalization from COVID roughly a year after receiving their second dose. The charts — b and d below — show that vaccine protection against death and hospitalization begins to decline slowly after about five months and then plunges about nine months …

This data provides real-world evidence of possible vaccine-caused ‘antibody dependent enhancement.’ In ADE, vaccines cause our immune systems to produce antibodies that help a virus or other pathogen to attack us …

(The top chart shows the relative risk of infection, hospitalization, intensive care, and death by week after two vaccine doses. The red line marks zero effectiveness; when the blue line falls below it, it is suggesting vaccinated people are at higher risk of infection.)”

When they used another statistical method called standard polynomial regression, the shots remained moderately effective against hospitalization and death over time, falling to 45% protection against death around nine months, after which the effectiveness mysteriously started trending upward again.

According to Berenson, the lead author of the paper did not endorse either method as superior to the other. When asked for comment, Dr. Yiyi Xu told Berenson they “need more data to know which finding might be correct,” and that, at present, “the estimation is quite uncertain for both analyses.”

COVID Shots Kill Brain and Heart Cells 

Another recent paper17 links the COVID shots to lethal myocarditis (heart inflammation) and encephalitis (brain inflammation). As reported by Steve Kirsch:18

“The paper is entitled: ‘A Case Report: Multifocal Necrotizing Encephalitis and Myocarditis after BNT162b2 mRNA Vaccination against COVID-19.’ It was published yesterday, Oct 1, and … already has over 100,000 views of the abstract and over 6,000 views of the full text.”

The report details the case of a 76-year-old man with Parkinson’s disease (PD) who died three weeks after receiving his third COVID shot. His first injection was the AstraZeneca jab, received in May 2021, which was followed by two doses of Pfizer in July and December 2021 respectively.

Autopsy confirmed his Parkinson’s diagnosis, but it also revealed several unexpected conditions contributing to his death, including:

• Aspiration pneumonia
• Systemic arteriosclerosis
• Acute vasculitis (vascular inflammation) in both the brain and the heart
• Multifocal necrotizing encephalitis (meaning tissue death all over the brain)
• Chronic cardiomyopathy (heart disease), and
• Mild acute lympho-histiocytic myocarditis (a rare form of myocarditis that occurs wen lymphocytes, white blood cells, enter and inflame the heart muscle)

Testing for SARS-CoV-2 antigens (spike and nucleocapsid proteins) revealed the inflammation was in response to spike protein only, particularly in the endothelial cells of small blood vessels. As noted by the authors:19

“Since no nucleocapsid protein could be detected, the presence of spike protein must be ascribed to vaccination rather than to viral infection. The findings corroborate previous reports of encephalitis and myocarditis caused by gene-based COVID-19 vaccines.”

Irrefutable Evidence the COVID Shots Can Kill

Kirsch goes on to cite other evidence showing the COVID shots can kill, including a report20 titled “On COVID Vaccines: Why They Cannot Work, and Irrefutable Evidence of Their Causative Role in the Deaths After Vaccination,” written by Drs. Sucharit Bhakdi and Arne Burkhardt.

Bhakdi and Burkhardt claim to have developed a way to test for spike protein in human tissue, and say they’ve found spike protein in the tissues of people who have been injured and/or killed by the jabs.

Of the 15 bodies their team examined for this report — all of whom had died seven days to six months post-jab — 14 (93%) were found to have been killed by the COVID shot.21 The video above reviews their findings. All 14 had clear evidence of the body attacking itself, including the heart, with fatal consequences.

Resources for Those Injured by the COVID Jabs

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 has 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, but many of the treatments that worked against severe COVID-19 infection also seem to 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 typically uses ivermectin. Both of these drugs bind and thereby facilitate the removal of spike protein.

As a founding 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.com22 (hyperlink to the correct page provided above).

Other Helpful Treatments and Remedies

In previous articles, I’ve also covered a number of treatments and remedies that can be helpful for COVID jab injuries, such as:

• Hyperbaric oxygen therapy, especially in cases involving stroke, heart attack, autoimmune diseases and/or neurodegenerative disorders. To learn more, see “Hyperbaric Therapy — A Vastly Underused Treatment Modality.”
• Time-restricted eating — Kory believes there may be ways to boost the immune system to allow it to degrade and eventually remove the spike from your cells naturally, over time. One of the strategies he recommends for this is TRE (time restricted eating), which stimulates autophagy, a natural cleaning process that eliminates damaged, misfolded and toxic proteins. Another strategy that can do the same thing would be sauna therapy.

  Most people eat more than 12 hours a day, which is a recipe for metabolic disaster. The ideal window for most everyone is 16 to 18 hours of continuous fasting with the least meal at least three hours before bed. If you are overweight, shoot for 18 hours of fasting each day; if you’re of normal weight, 16 hours.

• Lower your omega-6 intake — Linoleic acid is consumed in amounts 10 times above the ideal in well over 95% of the population, and contributes to massive oxidative stress that impairs your immune response. Seed oils and processed foods need to be diligently avoided. You can review this previous post for more information.
• Pharmaceutical grade methylene blue, which improves mitochondrial respiration and aid in mitochondrial repair. At 15 to 80 milligrams a day for those suffering from long-haul COVID could go a long way toward resolving some of the fatigue many suffer post-jab. Methylene blue is actually the parent molecule for hydroxychloroquine and has been used to treat malaria since 1890.

  It may also be helpful in acute strokes. The primary contraindication is if you have a G6PD deficiency (a hereditary genetic condition), in which case you should not use methylene blue at all. To learn more, see “The Surprising Health Benefits of Methylene Blue.”

• Near-infrared light, as it triggers production of melatonin in your mitochondria23 where you need it most. By mopping up reactive oxygen species, it too helps improve mitochondrial function and repair. Natural sunlight is 54.3% infrared radiation,24 so this treatment is available for free. For more information, see “What You Need to Know About Melatonin.”

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Notes

1 The Sun March 15, 2021, Updated March 16, 2021

2 The Defender March 16, 2021 Countries Suspend AstraZeneca Vaccine

3 The Defender March 11, 2021

4 New York Times February 3, 2021 (Archived)

5 The Defender March 2, 2021

6 Science Norway March 18, 2021

7 Science Norway March 18, 2021

8 Science Advances December 1, 2021; 7(49)

9 Daily Mail December 2, 2021

10 American Heart Association September 19, 2022

11 Circulation 2022; 146: 892-906

12 UpToDate VITT vs ITP vs TTP

13 The Defender June 23, 2021

14 Regulations.gov Comment from Patrick Whelan December 9, 2020

15 Lancet Preprint September 20, 2022

16 Alex Berenson Substack October 3, 2022

17 Vaccines 2022; 10(10): 1651

18 Steve Kirsch Substack October 2, 2022

19 Vaccines 2022; 10(10): 1651

20 On COVID Vaccines: Why They Cannot Work, and Irrefutable Evidence of Their Causative Role in the Deaths After Vaccination

21 Steve Kirsch Substack December 28, 2021

22 Covid19criticalcare.com

23 Physiology February 5, 2020 DOI: 10.1152/physiol.00034.2019

24 Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology February 2016; 155: 78-85

Featured image is from Mercola

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Official all-cause mortality statistic that get released to the public are often delayed 6-12 months after year end, and even then they can be designated interim – subject to change. So if you want to identify a spike in deaths within a population how would you get an early warning signal?

Boots-on-the-ground organisations notice up ticks and spikes in sales or staffing numbers. When this happens in industries that deal with deaths, alarm bells should be going off, especially when these deaths are in healthy working age groups, children and near births, and where COVID-19 has not been attributed to their death!

Some whistleblowers have been speaking out about anomalies in their work space since mid 2021, but when in late 2021 the data came out from an insurance company that they had experienced a 40% increase in life insurance payouts in the working age group in 2021, equivalent to 4 times a 200 year catastrophic event, that got Wall Street’s attention.

The unprecedented death numbers were not COVID-19, but happened to coincide with the timing of the roll-out of the experimental, brand new technology, emergency use COVID-19 vaccines. The catastrophic effect of the draconian “mitigation” rules imposed on the healthy population of the world had already been in place for a year, it may be a contributing factor, but doesn’t necessarily explain the timing. And if that was the explanation, then the “cure” is excessively worse than the burden of the disease.

Using other means to identify excess mortality

Particular industries that work with death statistic, there is both anecdotal information, and hard statistics, that expose alarming death numbers, which sadly is now showing up in little children, and expected to get worse.

• Life Insurance companies
• Funeral directors
• Embalmers
• Coffin manufactures and suppliers
• Florists – baby wreath demand
• Airline pilots
• Military database
• Disability data

Below I try to focus on links to Excess Mortality information. Visit other post on this site to find out the types of vaccine adverse events that can lead to death – blood clotting and heart inflammation seem to be highest on the list.

Sudden deaths and deaths of unknown causes will be captured on another page coming soon.

Also check out these pages for more information:

• Insurance companies, Death & Disability payouts – Edward Dowd – HERE
• Embalmer whistleblowers – HERE
• Funeral Director – John O’Looney – HERE
• Information on Pilots and the Jab – HERE
• Miscarriage and Infertility – HERE

Excess Mortality articles in reverse chronological order

2022

September 26, 2022 – Good Sciencing: 1354 Athlete Cardiac Arrests, Serious Issues, 922 of Them Dead, Since COVID Injection (website is continuously updated) – READ, ARCHIVE

ARCHIVE

September 25, 2022 – Expose News: Europe suffers horrifying 755% increase in Excess Deaths among Children since EMA approved COVID Vaccine for Kids – READ

September 21, 2022 – Sydney Morning Herald: COVID complications push Australian deaths to highest numbers in 40 years – ABS new data shows that the highest number of people have died in the March quarter of 2022 than in any of the past 41 years an 18% increase! – READ

September 20, 2022 – Sky News: More people have been dying this year due to irregular heartbeat, official figures suggest – Excess deaths, or extra deaths, are the number of deaths that are above the long-term average for a particular week or month of the year. – “The total number of deaths due to an irregular heartbeat was 37.1% above average in March and 23.1% in April – a sharp jump from 13.7% in January and 9.2% in February.” – READ

September 20, 2022 – Bannons War Room: Edward Dowd Shares Data Findings By Team Showing Harmful Effects Of COVID Jabs – WATCH1, WATCH2, links to graphs – HERE

September 20, 2022 – Sky News: More people have been dying this year due to irregular heartbeat, official figures suggest – READ

September 18, 2022 -Expose News: EU forced to begin Europe-wide Investigationinto 700% to 1600% increase in Excess Deaths among Children since EMA approved COVID Vaccine for Kids thanks to Exclusive Investigation carried out by The Exposé – READ

September 18, 2022 – Daily Mail: Undertakers are run off their feet with abnormally high numbers of Australians dying – and it’s not just because of Covid – READ

• Melbourne undertaker Martin Masson sees and increase in 40-60 aged deaths,
• Doctors not sure why more are dying but are concerned it mirrors the UK
• Possible factor is that people have avoided going to the doctor for check-ups
• [If doctors even suggest the vaccine their licence is threatened – CONTEXT]

September 17, 2022 – Dr Marian Laderoute: Surprisingly…Plain & Simple – Risk-Benefits of COVID-19 Interventions – All-Cause Mortality – READ

• “The gold standard for assessing risk versus benefit: “the all-cause mortality rate ratio of ever vaccinated (i.e., with at least one dose of vaccine) over the unvaccinated” reveal for the 17 months from January 1, 2021 to May 31, 2022 the average ratio was 6.90 (p=0.0001). This means the ever vaccinated were at almost a 7-fold increased risk of death from any cause over the unvaccinated.” – GETTR

September 16, 2022 – Eurostat: Excess mortality hits +16%, highest 2022 value so far – “This was the highest value on record so far in 2022, amounting to around 53 000 additional deaths in July this year compared with the monthly averages for 2016-2019.” – READ, ARCHIVE

source, ARCHIVE, ENLARGE

September 15, 2022? – Towards the Light: GB News: Why are birth rates falling and excess deaths rising? | Jamie Jenkins – facts behind the stats – WATCH

September 9, 2022 – Zero Hedge (Epoch Times): Adults Aged 35–44 Died At Twice The Expected Rate Last Summer, Life Insurance Data Suggests – READ

September 8, 2022 – Trust the Evidence Substack: Australian Excess Deaths – Australia is seeing significant excess mortality, and it’s not all down to COVID – READ

• Early lockdowns and strict border measures meant Australia was largely covid-free until the end of 2021 when they opened up.

September 2, 2022 – GB New: German study into the phenomenon of excess deaths | Kathy Gygnell and Mark Steyn discuss – Editor of The Conservative Woman Kathy Gygnell discusses the rise in excess deaths and a new German study examining the phenomenon – WATCH, BACKUP, GETTR

• Excess mortality in Germany 2020-2022 – PRE-PRINT STUDY
• In April 2021 an extensive vaccination campaign started in Germany.

source

source

The figure shows that the strong increase in mortality in April 2021 and the further development of the excess deaths covaries with the strong increase of the number of  vaccinations. source

August 31, 2022 – Igor Chudov Substack: PROVEN RELATIONSHIP: COVID Boosters and Excess Mortality in 2022 –
There is a very strong statistically significant association between excess mortality in 2022, and uptake of COVID boosters – 29 countries. – READ

“It shows that booster uptake was extremely strongly (and positively) related to excess mortality, with P value being 0.0002. Mind you, anything with P below 0.05 is considered statistically significant — so P=0.0002 is ironclad” – source

“What is the proper interpretation is that there is an EXTREMELY PROMINENT RELATIONSHIP between boosters and deaths in 2022. This is an alarm signal and food for thought that needs to be analyzed further. We need to search further to understand causality better.”

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August 29, 2022 – Dr John Campbell: Excess deaths, the data – WATCH

August 29, 2022 – Epoch Times: High Percentage of COVID Deaths Had 3rd Shot, More Excess Deaths After 4th Shot – Once people catch on to the correlation, governments stop updating the data – READ

August 29, 2022 – Tasmanian funeral director is concerned about the 50% rise in funerals he is undertaking in the last 7 mths. This has been a rapid rise in the last 6 to 7 months, and it’s not just the elderly. There’s something that’s not quite right. – TWEET, BACKUP

August 29, 2022 – Expose News: Europe officially records a shocking 691% increase in Excess Deaths among Children since EMA first approved COVID Vaccine for Children – READ

August 28, 2022 – Fox News | Dan Bongino UNFILTERED: Rising all cause mortality since the advent of the COVID-19 vaccines which failed to stop the virus and have caused record injuries, disabilities, and deaths – Dr McCullough – EXCERPT, FULL

August 28, 2022 – Edward Dowd: UK ONS Excess Deaths for ages 1-14 corresponding the the jab introduction. The acceleration in excess deaths at the end of 2021 and 2022 seems to coincide with the introduction of the different vaccine doses for age groups 12-15 and 5-11. 2022 is proving to be a year with substantial excess mortality for these age groups. – GETTR

source

August 28, 2022 – Arkmedic – Dr Ah Kahn Syed Substack: Australia’s excess death toll just keeps getting worse – ABS released new statistics – READ“80% of the adult population of Australia had received their COVID vaccine by the 5th October 2021. Then something happened as can be seen by the graphic. The all-cause mortality rate went up – and never came down again. It continues at 10% over baseline which is equivalent to about 15,000 deaths a year.”

source

Interactive chart of the ABS Provisional Mortality Stats- HERE, TWEET

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August 27, 2022 – Peter Imanuelsen Substack: Something weird is happening with the excess death rate (and it’s nowhere to be found on the news!) – There is a higher mortality rate than normal, what is going on here? – READ

August 27, 2022 – The Expose: How a small Scientific Elite dictates Government Policy – Excess deaths actually 35% higher than average, but that is not how this New Zealand University public health department scientists reported it – The correct interpretation of the 2022 figures in the graph is as follows: All six countries which have followed vaccination policies very similar to New Zealand now have rapidly rising all-cause death rates – READ

• “…we are not recording the vaccination status of people on death certificates. As a result, we don’t know what is causing the excess deaths in New Zealand. In the UK, such figures are kept and they show that excess deaths are disproportionately affecting the vaccinated, especially the boosted. Data from other countries indicate the causes might include high cancer rates, blood clots, and cardiovascular illness. Crucially, death rates are unusually affecting working-age people and the young. Have our experts informed our government? Apparently not.”

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August 26, 2022 – Independent Sentinel: ‘Unknown Cause’ is the Top Cause of Death in Canada! – READ

• A study looking at excess deaths in Alberta was quietly released in March 2022 in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases – Excess Deaths during COVID-19 pandemic in Alberta, Canada – STUDY
• Concluding: “There was statistically significant increase in all-cause mortality. Although older adults are more likely to die of COVID-19, there was massive increase in non-COVID-19 related mortality among the youth.”

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August 26, 2022 – The Expose: John Campbell Shares Some Truth, YouTube Deletes His Video – On Saturday 20th August on his channel with 2.43 million subscribers, he discussed the recent increase in excess deaths “More people are dying in the UK than we would expect” he said – READ, WATCH CHANNEL

August 25, 2022 – GB News: Mark Steyn questions why young healthy people are dying across the UK – cause unknown – WATCH, TWEET, ARTICLE, ARTICLE2

source

August 24, 2022 – Edward Dowd: Weekly UK Office of National Statistics (ONS) cumulativeexcess death data for 2021 and 2022 broken down by age group. – GETTR

Chart shows the cumulative percentage of weekly excess deaths for 2022 relative to 2010-2019 average, for three different aged groups (1-14) red dotted line, (15-44) black line, & (45-64) blue line. Vaccination rollout began week 13 of 2021 for age 45-64, later for other age.

In 2022, for each age group there is a positive RISE in EXCESS DEATHS. Data stopped being reported week 28.

August 21, 2022 – The Ethical Skeptic: Houston, We Have a Problem (Part 1 of 3) – How to boost Covid mortality while hiding rising Cancer deaths – PART 1, THREAD, WEBSITE,
[note: Death Certificate guidance changed in 2020 for COVID-19 see TIMELINE – US, AUST, UK]

source

August 20, 2022 – The Expose: Covid-19 Vaccination is Depopulating the Planet according to Official Data & the Pfizer Documents – The evidence – READ

August 18, 2022 – Bannons War Room: Edward Dowd Discusses 20% Increase In Excess Deaths In Working Age Adults After Vaccine Mandates (referencing SOA below) – WATCH, Ed Dowd – HERE

August 2022 – Society of Actuaries (SOA) Research: Group Life Covid-19 Mortality Survey Report:
Table 5.7 “Excess Mortality By Detailed Age Band” – REPORT, SOURCE

A spike in Q3-2021 (timing of vaccine mandates). The excess continues in the working age groups through Q1-2022. Notice that half of excess deaths in ages 25-44 are non-Covid deaths. – source, WATCH

Reports for additional trend research:

• SOA: Insurance company COVID-19 Mortality Study – 2021 Q1: Actual and Expected Relative Mortality Ratios – includes list of participating insurance companies – PDF
• U.S. Individual Life COVID-19 Reported Claims Analysis – 4Q 2021 Update – PDF
• Group Life COVID-19 Mortality Survey – Dec 2020 [Baseline]- PDF
• May 2021 – Society of Actuaries – U.S. Population Mortality Observations – Preview of 2020 Experience – [Baseline] – PDF

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August 15, 2022 – Tim Truth: Germany Excess Deaths Soar, Latest Week +16% Excess Deaths, Stillbirths in ’21 +11.1% Over Avg – WATCH

August 13, 2022- Daily Sceptic: Large German Insurer Reports Staggering Rise in Adverse Effects from COVID-19 Vaccines – READ, OTHER
According to FOIA of German Techniker Krankenkasse insurer, the number of billed cases of vaccine-related adverse effects needing medical treatment skyrocketed in 2021 compared with 2019 and 2020.

source

August 11, 2022 – The Highwire Ep 280: ICAN-OBTAINED DATA REVEALS MORE EVIDENCE OF DEATH SPIKE – WATCH

On July 12, 2022, ICAN, through its attorneys, submitted freedom of information requests [FOIA EXAMPLE] to five of the largest US life insurance companies to access their annual statements (2017 to 2021). Ordinary Death Benefit payouts (non-COVID-related deaths) appear to have significantly risen in 2021 when compared with 2017-2020 for four out of five of these companies.

ICAN FOIA documents – Life insurance company annual statements:

• New York Life Group – PDF
• Northwestern Mutual Group – PDF
• Mass. Mutual – PDF
• Prudential of America Group – PDF
• Metropolitan Group – PDF

source

source: ICAN FOIA documents

August 6, 2022 – Alex Berenson substack: The funeral business is doing great! – And not because of Covid – READ

• “Service Corporation International, “North America’s leading provider of funeral, cremation, and cemetery services” – handling 450,000 corpses* a year. (*not their word)”
• “pull-forward isn’t turning out to be a problem. Americans are still dying at rates well above normal, even as Covid becomes a minimal part of business this year.”
• [SCI Investor Day Presentations contain graphs, they can’t be archived, so if they get deleted >> WARNING LARGE ZIP FILE]

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August 6, 2022 – Rebel News: New study finds COVID-19 vaccines did not reduce mortality in the U.S. – READ

August 4, 2022 – Expose News: While you were distracted by Boris resigning the UK Government published indisputable evidence that the COVID-19 Vaccines are deadly and are killing people in the Thousands: Mortality Rates are lowest among the Unvaccinated in all Age Groups (many graphs) – READ

Click here to continue reading…

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Featured image: Covid-19 mortality. Photo credit: Isaac Quesada

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***

Ukraine is not part of Saharan Africa, nor is it a country of illiterate or ill-educated people. How is it possible for Ukrainians to tolerate such a stumble, how is it possible that their tycoon and corrupt political elite so enchanted them and diverted them to the wrong side through manipulations?

Instead of confronting their political scum, the Ukrainians, again with a lot of help from the Western friends, estimated that the snake is not in the bowels, but on the other side of the eastern border – in Russia, so they need NATO’s protection. And the focal illusion is that when Ukraine becomes a member of NATO, the country will prosper just as, for example, North Macedonia prospered in the same organization. 

Ukraine has thus decided that those who are further away from it are closer to it – not only geographically, but also spiritually and culturally, those who despise Ukrainians just as much as Russians, if not more. That contempt is hidden for only a moment in the name of strategic reasons, and it will last for a few more days after the end of the war, regardless of its outcome. And then everything will return to normal. Solidarity with Ukrainians who remain in the West will be replaced by intolerance towards foreigners who burden the social system, take jobs, raise the crime rate and lower the salaries of domestic workers. Ukrainians will again be the others – those who are not “us”. Even if Ukraine one day joins the European Union or/and NATO, that contempt will not disappear nor will the status of Ukrainians as second-class citizens change.

And then when you renounce yourself and try to become something that you are not and that you have been convinced is more civilized and better, you will not become that other – you are more likely to become nothing. This is true not only for Ukrainians but also for “enlightened” Russians, Serbs, and others, for all those who would like to be what they are not, in the hope that they will be acceptable to those who will never accept them. Bulgarians, Romanians, and even Poles, and to exchange experiences with them related to acceptance, respect, integration and “Europeanization”. And they can pour oil into the water quite scientifically and to see how it mixes.

The questions arose:

1) Why do the citizens of West Europe support the insane policy of NATO’s expansion to the east, which is already hitting them on the head, due to the large increase in the cost of living?

2) What kind of rush into a war as it can become atomic? If geostrategy is left aside, the Ukrainian war is just an excuse for hidden Russophobia to explode uncontrollably.

3) What kind of hatred is it that obscures the view and suppresses even the instinct of self-preservation?

That hatred gave itself the appearance of humanism and hid behind a mask of compassion for Ukrainians … except those from East Ukraine. Western humanity (which is honest in some parts of society) has clear boundaries and is guided by the media. Remember, no Ukrainian refugees in the UK! At the same time, ordinary Russians and Russian culture are persecuted across the Western countries!

Those who sincerely and wholeheartedly cared about the suffering of Iraqis, Libyans, and Syrians are shedding tears over the fate of Ukraine, just as they care about the hell of Yemen today. Those who today, in the name of humanism, sincerely participate in the tragedy of Ukrainian refugees and their children, will harass Russians and Russian children tomorrow when they recognize them in their environment. Perhaps Russophobia is strongest in the most educated parts of Western societies, which are not bothered by pathological outbursts of Russophobia related to Russian culture or the humiliation of its employees. Are we on the way to erasing Russian culture from European culture and maybe banning it?

No one is saying that Russia is totally innocent in this tragic story about Ukraine? No, but Russian guilt is on the other side – on the side of incompetence, on the side of delay, and indecision. Russia is guilty as she has not been able to control the Russophobic processes in Ukraine since 2014 by soft power, nor to use the advantage of the Russian language, historical, family, or economic ties.

Unfortunately, corrupted top authorities of Russia (like in the West), Russia full of oligarchs and tycoons (as in the West), Russia of huge property inequalities (lesser than in the USA), could not even offer itself as an attractive alternative social model for others (but the Western models as well cannot do that). Therefore, there is no Russophile person who can or should ignore these sad facts (but all Russophobes are ignoring these facts in the West).

However, an even bigger, and fatal mistake is that Russia, with its sluggish and indecisive foreign policy, persistently sent the wrong, defeatist signals to the Western gangsters. It has done almost nothing to make the world aware of the decades-long humiliation of the Russian minorities in the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) since 1991 and Ukraine since 2014, nor has it done anything more serious to protect them except using the formal language of diplomacy. Russia also reacted lukewarmly to the constant strengthening of Nazi movements in its neighborhood, even though the Russians and Russia were the main targets of that madness. Russia allowed the processes of Nazification of Ukraine since 2014 to go too far, without setting clear red lines much, much earlier but not just now in 2022. That is why no one took Russia seriously until February 24^th, 2022.

Consequently, there is a great, global shock about the current Russian military action in East Ukraine. Only now, with a huge delay of 30 years and for the first time after the Cold War 1.0, the West started to take Russia seriously. The price of the delay is high, much higher than it had to be, the risks are huge and the outcomes for the global security and economy are uncertain. The only certain thing is the suffering of Ukrainian citizens and the death of soldiers on both sides.

*

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

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***

It’s now no longer “Russian propaganda” to describe Zelensky as an ungrateful beggar, but the implied standard of “political correctness” after Biden himself just reportedly told the Ukrainian leader to cut it out and stop angering American taxpayers ahead of the midterms.

Criticizing Zelensky as ungrateful for his incessant begging in spite of his side already receiving literally tens of billions of dollars of support from US taxpayers was smeared by the Mainstream Media (MSM) as so-called “Russian propaganda”, that is, up until Tuesday. The Washington Post (WaPo) – which can’t by any stretch of the imagination be described as “Russian propaganda”, “Russian-friendly”, or against the US’ ruling Democrat elite – just reported that none other than Biden himself is getting fed up with the Ukrainian leader for precisely that.

In their piece about how “Biden scrambles to avert cracks in pro-Ukraine coalition”, they wrote that:

“Early in the war, Zelensky called repeatedly and publicly on the United States and other Western countries to do more — to send additional weapons and impose harsher sanctions on Russia — even as Biden and Congress were already sending unprecedented amounts of aid and advanced weapons to Kyiv.

Biden understood as a fellow politician that Zelensky had to advocate forcefully for his people, but he also told the Ukrainian leader privately that it would be hard for him to keep asking Congress for money if Zelensky appeared ungrateful and kept saying it was not enough, according to a former White House official.”

This is yet another piece of evidence proving the existence of rifts between the US and Ukraine.

As I explained in my latest analysis about how “Zelensky’s Plan For NATO Troops Under The Cover Of G7 Peacekeepers Probably Won’t Happen”, America has twice rejected Kiev’s demand for direct NATO involvement in the conflict, both through his crumbling former Soviet Republic’s official membership in that bloc and then indirectly under the guise that he suggested on Tuesday. I added that Washington’s reluctance to comply with its proxy’s demand proves that it won’t proverbially let the “tail wag the dog” and is also concerned about the impact of more direct involvement ahead of the midterms.

Regarding Zelensky’s ungrateful begging, the Biden Administration has hitherto complied because the US’ military-industrial complex and those members of the elite that invest in related companies have profited from this unprecedented money laundering operation. Even so, his team got carried away and now many Americans are enraged at the thought that a foreign country halfway across the world that was condemned by Transparency International as one of the most corrupt in the world is receiving more money than their own impoverished compatriots and those suffering from environmental disasters.

Finally cognizant of the domestic political consequences of this scheme, Biden reportedly told Zelensky that he needs to stop being so ungrateful and instead start showing that he appreciates everything that the American taxpayers have given his side thus far. The ruling party is apparently concerned that voters might turn against them even more fiercely than previously expected due to their fury over how much Ukraine is getting at the expense of their own fellow citizens. All of this was foreseeable and warned about long ago by objective observers, yet it wasn’t until now that their words were heeded.

The “official narrative” towards the Ukrainian Conflict, which is actually a US-led NATO proxy war on Russia through that neighboring country, is therefore evolving. It’s now no longer “Russian propaganda” to describe Zelensky as an ungrateful beggar, but the implied standard of “political correctness” after Biden himself just reportedly told the Ukrainian leader to cut it out and stop angering American taxpayers. This just goes to show that the rifts between the US and Ukraine are widening beyond the latter’s demands for direct NATO intervention, which few have yet to publicly acknowledge.

*

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

On October 10 alone, around 200 Russian air- and sea-based cruise missiles as well as a number of suicide drones struck Ukraine. In total, 70 targets were hit by Russian forces, including military and energy infrastructure facilities, as well as decision making centers in the capital.

This was the first such destructive attack on Ukraine since February. The high-precision strikes all around the country resulted in deaths of 12 people, including at least one high-ranking Ukrainian official involved in operations against Russia and persecution of pro-Russian citizens. The number of victims is comparable to daily deaths of civilians in Donetsk alone.

In one day, about 20 thermal power plants and substations in Ukraine were damaged. So far, some regions of the country remain cut off from electricity supply.

However, not a single blow was inflicted on strategic facilities with a high voltage of 750 kV neither nuclear nor hydro power plants. Thus, the attack was not aimed at the destruction of the Ukrainian energy system, but at causing limited damage to it.

In turn, Ukraine will stop exporting electricity to Europe in order to stabilize its own energy system.

On October 11, Russian strikes continued. Russian long-range missiles and suicide drones hit targeted facilities in different regions on Ukraine, including Vinnytsa, Rovno, Zaporozhie, Odessa, Nikolaev and others. The eastern part of the country was mainly affected. Russian forces are targeting military and railway facilities in the Ukrainian rear in order to disrupt the supply to Ukrainian troops on the front line.

According to the Office of Ukrainian President, US President Biden has promised to transfer modern air defense systems to Kiev. Washington risks suffering significant reputational losses in the global arms trade market if Russian missiles hit modern air defense systems in Ukraine. It is supposed that the US may provide Kiev with outdated NATO-made systems. So far, Washington is yet to officially announce this new gift to Ukraine.

Meanwhile, the Armed Forces of Ukraine did not stop shelling the regions that have recently entered into the Russian Federation, including with foreign weapons.

Over the past day, more than 250 shells hit the settlements in the DPR, killing at least one woman and wounding dozens of other civilians. The town of Stakhanov in the LPR was again shelled with US-made HIMARS MLRS.

Dozens of Ukrainian missiles were intercepted by air defense means in the southern regions. Ukrainian forces again struck the Antonovsky Bridge with HIMARS but failed to damage it.

Three villages in the Russian Belgorod region and one in the Kursk region also came under fire. At least one woman was killed. On the evening of October 11, Ukrainians targeted Crimea with an UAV. It was intercepted by the Russian air defense forces over the town of Dzhankoy but the wreckage fell in the residential area and wounded an 11-year old girl.

*

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***

To the superficial observer, it may be a blessing the despots and dictators, human rights abusers, like Argentina’s Mauricio Macri, Colombia’s Iván Duque; Ecuador’s Lenin Moreno; Chile’s Sebastián Piñera; to name just a few, are gone, have disappeared from the Latin American political arena, in what was presented to public opinion as the result of so-called “democratic elections”.

Good, you may think. These countries have a better future ahead.

So, who are the new “leaders” of just these four “demo-countries”?

• Argentina: Alberto Fernández; label “center-left”;
• Colombia: Gustavo Petro; label “left”;
• Ecuador: Guillermo Lasso; officially described as “the country’s first center-right president in nearly two decades”. What a lie! Moreno was so right-wing; he could easily be dubbed a fascist.
• Chile: Gabriel Boric; label “left”.

The WEF’s Young Global Leaders

There are many more of these “new left” leaders throughout Latin America. Those who were not recently replaced by “democratic elections”, had to bend to methods of coercion and “obedience” to stay in place or alive. Nicaragua may be a case in point.

They all have in common being graduates or scholars of Klaus Schwab’s (WEF) Academy for Young Global Leaders (YGL). Schwab himself boasted earlier this year, how “we were able to infiltrate countries’ governments [with YGLs’] around the world.”

” But what we are really proud of now with the young generation like Prime Minister Trudeau, President of Argentina and so on, is that we penetrate the cabinets… It is true in Argentina and it is true in France now… (Klaus Schwab)

Click here or image to access Video 

So, think again. Are these countries now better off with their new “left” or “socialist” governments? Hardly. But they carry the very confusing label of being “left”- meaning for the good of the people. That, in today’s world is a total lie, outright BS.

You must know – left and right have seized to exist already 20 to 30 years ago, when globalism entered center-stage. Now there are only Globalists and the others. The others “are too many”,

Klaus Schwab’s closest adviser has repeatedly said, out of arrogance, or out of sheer stupidity, is immaterial, that We, the People, are “useless eaters”. In other words, we can be done away with – neutralized – and the world would be a better place. (See Peter Koenig)

What we are currently experiencing are:

• fake and coerced “vaxxes” which have an impact on mortality and morbidity (destruction of natural immunity, infertility),
• coupled with endless wars, possibly nuclear wars and most certainly weather wars – all under the pretense that wars bring peace.

What is even more disturbing than this dystopia, is that today still the majority of people buy all these propaganda slogans and lies. Even if they know, something is not quite right, they still go along. Their conscience doesn’t want to infringe on their comfort zone. They are suffering from cognitive dissonance. They are the perfect citizens for the globalists. If they survive, they will become digitized slaves, owning nothing but being happy.

All the new progressive LAC (Latin America and Caribbeans) leaders – and many others around the world (Schwab’s pride, the YGLs) — have been put into their positions to defend the anti-human Globalist Agenda. Of course, they were all “democratically elected”.

Cyber-targeted, AI-steered, election propaganda and outright election fraud have become so sophisticated that most people can’t see it, or even if they would see it, they wouldn’t want to believe in so much evil. Good old cognitive dissonance is an integral part of the Globalists take-over formula.

Is President Biden — a “democrat”, the US equivalent of “left-leaning” – good for the people?

Absolutely not. He, and his vassalic European counterparts, are abject globalists, destroying the US and Europe to the detriment of the people, following the Financial-IT complex’s mandate of artificial energy crises, food shortages, and, of course, “climate change and / or global warming” – which will lead to water shortages, to privatization of the remaining pristine water resources and eventually to water wars.

And remember – all will be the Russians’ fault, and by extension that of the Chinese. A fake emperor always needs a fake enemy to survive. But the fakery is shining through the ever thinner veil of an imploding pyramid of lies and deceptions.

Man-made climate change, also called “geoengineering” or weather warfare, is part of the Reset / Agenda 2030 program, all supported by Biden, and, by scholarly obedience, also by the new LAC leaders – and all those submissive puppets of the 193 UN members – plus the entire UN leadership. All are bought, coerced, or blackmailed. See this.

It’s the end-phase. Only we, the awakened, can stop this treacherous approach to a new world governance.

*

First you should know that worldwide – including in Europe and even in the United States — no President or Prime Minister is being “elected” without the approval of “Washington”, which is the front and the face for the behind the scene reigning giant digital-financial interests that rule not only Washington, but the world.

Yes, all 193 UN member countries and the UN itself and all its specialized technical “sub-organization” are controlled and directed by this digital-financial complex.

To refresh our memories – they include on top of the financial empire pyramid, BlackRock, Vanguard and StateStreet. The first two are interlinked, able to act as one asset manager, if convenient. Further down the road, follow minor giants, like JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, UBS and more.

The first three control literally all western production, including food manufacturing processes, by direct or indirect majority stock owners. They are majority shareholders in everything. This just as a background to better understand their power and leverage over the world.

If by “miscalculation” the wrong PM or President is “elected”, he or she will be ousted. Of course, even that will be done, so that people think, the coup was carried out internally.

Take Pakistan, Prime Minister Imran Khan was democratically elected in 2018 by a two-thirds majority of Pakistanis. He was a leader of the people and for the people. He wanted his country to regain political sovereignty, be free to choose Pakistan’s alliances, for example China and Russia, to the detriment of the United States.    

Imran Khan was ousted as PM on 10 April 2022 by a Washington-instigated Pakistani parliamentary no-confidence motion. He was immediately succeeded by his Washington-friendly opponent, Shehbaz Sharif.
See this and this.

Any leader who doesn’t dance to the tune of Washington, or rather – doesn’t follow the orders of the WEF, backed and directed by the Cult, the IT-Financial complex, will simply be removed.

Regime change may come in different shades of Color Revolutions. Presidents Putin and Xi are certainly in the Cult’s crosshairs. Endless lie-campaigns and war propaganda, may eventually convince the public at large that nothing less than a nuclear attack on Russia can bring peace to the world. War is Peace and Peace is War (“1984” George Orwell).

The spirit of Edward Bernays, Sigmund Freud’s nephew, the acknowledged father of public relations and war propagandist par excellence, is alive and well.

Latin America is just being highjacked by the worldwide phenomenon of selling neoliberal Globalism as people-friendly socialism.

People, wake up. Your leaders (sic) are not for you but against you. The same as is the case throughout the west. We, the People, have to fend for ourselves. Consciously and vehemently. Otherwise, we will be doomed.

*

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

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

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***

Ukraine has announced that it will have to halt electricity exports to Europe. Russian missile strikes are said to be responsible for the forced suspension of power exports, Kyiv has announced.

Damage to energy infrastructure caused by Moscow’s air strikes in retaliation for the “terrorist attack” on the Crimean bridge has forced Ukraine’s government to cut off electricity exports to the European Union. The strikes removed a supply source that Kyiv claims helped its partners reduce their reliance on power generated with Russian natural gas.

Russia has already said that the missile strikes on Ukraine were a response to the damages done t the Crimean bridge. President Vladimir Putin said Monday’s air strikes on Kyiv and other major Ukrainian cities (targeting military, energy, and communications infrastructure) came in response to Ukraine’s attack on the strategic Crimean Bridge on Saturday.

“If there are further attempts to conduct terrorist attacks on our soil, Russia will respond firmly and on a scale corresponding to the threats created against Russia,” Putin announced.

 

Now that the Nord Stream pipelines are destroyed, Europe has no choice but to reduce its dependence on Russian natural gas. There is so far been no retaliation for the destruction of the pipelines, however, no ruling class had yet to take responsibility for the attack either.

“Today’s missile strikes, which hit the thermal generation and electrical substations, forced Ukraine to suspend electricity exports from October 11, 2022, to stabilize its own energy system,” the Ukrainian Energy Ministry said on Monday in a statement, according to a report by RT. “The cynicism is that the entire supply chain has been hit,” Energy Minister German Galushchenko said. “It’s both electricity distribution systems and generation. The enemy’s goal is to make it difficult to reconnect electricity supplies from other sources.”

Ukrenergo, the national power grid operator, claimed its specialists have been “engaging backup supply schemes” and repaired some of the damage by Monday night.

In the meantime, the ministry urged “all citizens of Ukraine to unite” and minimize their energy use during the peak demand hours, arguing that not only Ukraine is implementing measures to reduce power consumption, but the “whole of Europe is doing this now.”

*

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***

Wars don’t begin on a single day by a single military action — even though history portrays things this way at times.

Hostile actions escalate over time to full-blown conflicts — the pattern unfolding in Ukraine since hegemon USA’s so-called 2004 Orange Revolution in former nation-state.

It’s now a territory controlled by the empire of lies and forever wars, a platform for waging war on Russia.

Things escalated since the Obama/Biden regime’s 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev.

Vladimir Putin authorized Russia’s SMO last February because over 100,000 US-controlled Ukrainian troops were mobilized in preparation to invade Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as the Russian Republic of Crimea — preceded by weeks of heavy cross-border shelling.

Since then, Russian forces liberated the LPR entirely, most of the DPR, and most Kherson and Zaporozhye areas.

Following open, free and fair referendum voting last month, they joined the Russian Federation — exercising their UN Charter right of self-determination.

At the same time, hegemon USA — perhaps jointly with one or more vassal states — detonated explosives to render 3 of 4 Nord Stream gas lines to Germany inoperable, an act of state-sponsored terrorism against the Russian Federation.

Then on October 8, Ukrainian Nazis damaged a portion of the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait — another terrorist act against what connects Russia’s Republic of Crimea to the mainland.

What was a symbolic, not a strategic, action was authorized by dominant Biden regime hardliners.

At war on Russia by use of Ukrainian foot soldiers, hegemon USA is fully in charge of their operations.

On Sunday in response to Crimean Bridge sabotage, Russian Security Council Deputy Chairman, Dmitry Medvedev, minced no words as follows, saying:

“Russia can only respond to this crime by directly killing terrorists, as is the custom elsewhere in the world.”

“This is what Russian citizens expect.”

What happened “was a terrorist act and sabotage committed by the criminal Kiev regime.”

“There never was any doubt about that.”

“All reports were presented and conclusions made.”

On Sunday, Vladimir Putin met with Russia’s Investigative Committee Chairman, Alexander Bastrykin.

He explained the following, saying:

“(O)ur investigative team of the Main Directorate of Investigations and crime and forensic experts promptly arrived at the site of the incident.”

“They carried out a detailed examination of the site together with explosives experts and forensic team and reached well-grounded tentative conclusions.”

“We opened an investigation in accordance with part 2 of Article 205 “Terrorism,” and this is confirmed by the preliminary stage of the investigation.”

“We interrogated numerous witnesses and eyewitnesses.”

“Special expert studies have been launched and largely completed – explosives expertise, DNA testing and a forensic analysis.”

“Respective instructions were issued to the Federal Security Service and the Interior Ministry of Russia regarding investigative activities.”

“We have already established the route of the lorry which exploded.”

“It drove through Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia, and the Krasnodar Territory.”

“In addition, we have also identified the carriers – the persons who took part in arranging the movements of that lorry.”

“The FSS field agents helped to identify suspects from among those who could have arranged the terrorist act and those who are active within the Russian Federation.”

Mincing no words, Vladimir Putin said the following on Sunday:

Crimean Bridge sabotage “was a (state-sponsored) terrorist attack aimed at destroying critical Russian civilian infrastructure.”

Kiev regime “special services were the authors, perpetrators and customers” of what happened — as authorized by their US master.

Separately on Sunday, Belarusian State Border Committee Chairman, Anatoly Lappo, accused Ukrainian Nazis of planning imminent strikes on the nation’s territory, saying:

“Today, almost all border bridges have been blown up.”

“Automobile and railway border routes are completely mined.”

Ukrainian Nazis “put anti-tank mines in three rows on roads” along border areas.

“We are under pressure.”

“They are aiming at our border guards.”

“Sometimes they shoot in the air.

“Constant aerial reconnaissance is being carried out.”

“Ukraine is planning to conduct a strike on the territory of Belarus.”

Last week, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko accused Kiev of massing tens of thousands of troops along the nation’s 1,000 km border.

According to Belarusian Defense Minister, General Viktor Khrenin, the nation’s military is able to deploy around 500,000 forces to defend its territory against foreign aggression.

Separately on Monday, Russia responded to state-sponsored terrorism by Kiev regime Nazis against the Crimean Bridge.

According to eyewitnesses, multiple explosions rocked Kiev, Odessa and other Ukrainian cities.

Reportedly, the regime’s Security Service (SBU) and key infrastructure targets were struck.

Its so-called prime minister, Denis Shmygal, said the following:

“As of 11:00 AM Monday, 11 crucial infrastructure facilities were damaged in eight regions and in Kiev.”

“Some regions are currently without power.”

“We need to brace for temporary disruptions in electricity and water supplies and communication services.”

Occupied Kharkov areas lost power and water.

More on Russian retaliation against regime state terror as additional information becomes available.

Months earlier, Belarusian President Lukashenko warned that hegemon USA, its NATO vassals and Nazified Kiev are “push(ing) toward a third world war” against Russia, adding:

The empire of lies and forever wars “is the sole beneficiary of what is happening here.”

“In this way, Europe can be shown its place and (US) competitors eliminated.”

A new “iron curtain” emerged.

The risk of US-dominated NATO global war with nukes is ominously higher today than ever before.

Based on recent events discussed above, has it already begun unannounced?

*

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---

“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

The old adage is that a good foreign policy is the reflection of the national policy. A perfect storm is brewing on the foreign policy front in America triggered by the OPEC decision on Thursday to cut oil production by 2 million barrels a day, which will on the one hand drive up the gas price for the domestic consumer and on the other hand expose the Biden Administration’s lop-sided foreign policy priorities. 

At its most obvious level, the OPEC decision confirms the belief that Washington has lost its leverage with the cartel of oil-producing countries. This is being attributed to the deterioration of the US’ relations with Saudi Arabia during the Biden presidency. But, fundamentally, a contradiction has arisen between the US interests and the interests of the oil producing countries. 

Contradictions are nothing new to the geopolitics of oil. The 1970s and 1980s witnessed two major “oil crises.” One was man-made while the other was an interplay of historical forces — the Yom-Kippur War of 1973 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979. 

In the downstream of the Yom-Kippur War, the Arab nations weaponised oil and proclaimed an oil embargo on western nations which were perceived to have supported Israel in the war. The result was that the price of oil rose nearly 300% in less than 6 months, crippling the world’s economy. 

President Nixon asked petrol stations not to sell gasoline from Saturday night through until Monday morning. The crisis affected industry more than the average consumer. 

In 1979, the Iranian Revolution hit oil production rates and the world’s oil supply shrunk by 4%. Panic set in, demand for crude oil shot up and price more than doubled. 

The Biden Administration tempted Fate by underestimating the importance of oil in modern economic and political terms and ignoring that oil will remain the dominant energy source across the world for the foreseeable future, powering everything from cars and domestic heating to huge industry titans and manufacturing plants. 

A smooth transition to green energy over time is largely dependent on the continued availability of plentiful, cheap fossil fuel. But the Biden Administration ignored that those who have oil reserves wield a huge amount of power over our oil-centred energy systems, and those who buy oil are on the contrary, cripplingly dependent on the market and the diplomatic relations which drive it. 

The Western powers are far too naive to think that an energy superpower like Russia can be simply “erased” from the ecosystem. In an “energy war” with Russia, they are doomed to end up as losers.  

Historically, Western nations understood the imperative to maintain good diplomatic relations with oil-producing countries. But Biden threw caution into the wind by insulting Saudi Arabia calling it a “Pariah” state. Any improvement in the US-Saudi relations is not to be expected under Biden’s watch. The Saudis distrust American intentions. 

The congruence of interests on the part of the OPEC to keep the prices high is essentially because they need the extra income for their expenditure budget and to maintain a healthy investment level in the oil industry. The International Monetary Fund in April projected Saudi Arabia’s breakeven oil price — the oil price at which it would balance its budget — at $79.20 a barrel. 

The Saudi government does not disclose its assumed breakeven oil price. But a Reuters report suggested that a preferred price level would be around $90 to $100 a barrel for Brent crude — at which level, it won’t have a huge impact on the global economy. Of course, over $100 will be a windfall. 

Meanwhile, a “systemic” crisis is brewing. It is only natural that the OPEC views with scepticism the recent moves by the US and the EU to push back Russia’s oil exports. The West rationalises these moves as aimed at drastically reducing Russia’s income from oil exports (which translates as its resilience to fight the war in Ukraine.) The latest G7 move to put a cap on the prices at which Russia can sell its oil is taking matters to an extreme. 

The OPEC regards it as a paradigm shift, as it implicitly challenges the cartel’s assumed prerogative to ensure that global oil supply matches demand, where one of the key measures of supply-demand balance is price. Arguably, the West is de facto setting up a rival cartel of oil-consuming countries to regulate the oil market. 

No doubt, the West’s move is precedent-setting — namely, to prescribe for geopolitical reasons the price at which an oil-producing country is entitled to export its oil. If it is Russia today, it can as well be Saudi Arabia or Iraq tomorrow. The G7 decision, if it gets implemented, will erode OPEC’s key role regulating the global oil market. 

Therefore, the OPEC is proactively pushing back. Its decision to cut down oil production by 2 million barrels per day and keep the oil price above $90 per barrel makes a mockery of the G7 decision. The OPEC estimates that Washington’s options to counter OPEC+ are limited. Unlike in the past energy history, the US does not have a single ally today inside the OPEC+ group. 

Due to rising domestic demands for oil and gas, it is entirely conceivable that the US exports of both items may be curtailed. If that happens, Europe will be the worst sufferer. In an interview with FT last week, Belgium’s prime minister Alexander De Croo has warned that as winter approaches, if energy prices are not brought down,

“we are risking a massive deindustrialisation of the European continent and the long-term consequences of that might actually be very deep.” 

He added these chilling words:

“Our populations are getting invoices which are completely insane. At some point, it will snap. I understand that people are angry . . . people don’t have the means to pay it.”

De Croo was warning about the likelihood of social unrest and political turmoil in European countries. 

Without doubt, this is a tectonic shift in geopolitics which may probably turn out to be more important than the conflict in Ukraine in the making of the multipolar world order. 

This perfect storm in Biden’s foreign policy can also impact the midterms in November and deliver a Republican majority in the Senate, which could set the tempo for the 2024 US presidential election.  

The Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has said that by turning away from Russian energy, Europe has become a captive market for the US oil companies which are now making “crazy money,” but the high cost of it is draining away the competitiveness of the European economy.   

“Production is collapsing. Deindustrialization is coming. All this will have very, very deplorable consequences for the European continent over probably, at least, the next 10-20 years,” Peskov said. 

Russia could be the biggest “gainer” of OPEC+cuts. The expert opinion is that oil prices will move higher from current levels through year-end and next year. That is to say, Russia will not cut any output while the price of oil is set to rise in the coming months! As oil price rises, Russia will not have to cut even a barrel of its production so long as it has a big enough market after December to sell the crude now going to Europe. Again, Russia, for its part, reiterates that it will not supply oil to countries that would join the G7 price cap. It is matching the Biden Administration’s non-market instruments. 

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***

Ukrainian advance in all regions has stopped. In the south of the country, Ukrainian forces are preparing for further offensive deep in the region. Russian artillery and warplanes are heavily attacking the amassing forces of the enemy.

The Ukrainian command is regrouping forces along the entire front line in the region before the upcoming offensives on Kherson and Novaya Kakhovka.

On the left bank of the Ingulets River, Russian precise strikes destroyed three Ukrainian pontoon crossings — in Velike Artakovo, Belaya Krynitsa, Novogrigorivka. Clashes continue in the area of Davidov Brod.

On the morning of October 7, Ukrainian militants struck a residential quarter in Kherson with HIMARS MLRS. Five civilians were killed after a precision-guided missile hit a bus.

In the north-eastern front, Ukrainian forces have not managed to advance in the recent days.

The Ukrainian military is regrouping forces preparing to further attack Svatovo and Kremennaya. Reconnaissance groups and foreign UAVs are active in the region. Russian units are preparing for the defense. Most of civilians were evacuated.

In turn, Russian-led forces continue their slow advance in the DPR. In the Bakhmut region, they took control of the villages of Otradovka and Veselaya Dolyna. Ukrainian forces are still fighting on the western outskirts of Zaitsevo. In the town of Bakhmut, Wagner fighters took control of the Asphalt Plant.

In the Zaporozhie region, the Ukrainian military command is reinforcing positions apparently preparing for large-scaled offensive. The attacks are expected to come in the directions Melitopol and Berdyansk. Offensive operations could be carried out in the area of the Zaporozhie NPP as well. The Ukrainian maneuvres could be also aimed at distraction of the Russian military from other regions.

After the four former regions of Ukraine entered the Russian Federation, Moscow clarified that it can use all means to protect its territories, including nuclear weapons. At the same time, it was noted that their deployment is only possible in accordance to the Russian military doctrine and the fundamental laws of state policy in the field of nuclear deterrence. Thus, their deployment is possible in the case of aggression against Russia or its allies with the use of weapons of mass destruction, or aggression with the use of conventional weapons, when the existence of the state itself is threatened.

Blaming Russia, the Kiev regime called on NATO to launch “preventive” strikes against Russia, and not “wait for Russia’s nuclear strikes.”

“What should NATO do? Exclude the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons…. Preemptive strikes so that they know what will happen to them if they do use. That’s what NATO should do: review the order of use,” said Zelensky.

Moscow assesses his demands as call for the outbreak of World War. The West is inflaming a nuclear war, and the puppet unstable Zelensky has turned into a monster whose hands can destroy the planet, the Russian Foreign ministry responded.

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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***

The pound – at 1.11 cents to the dollar and 1.14 to the Euro is back at the levels it was before the Kwarteng budget. 

Contrary to an original estimate the UK’s economy grew in the second quarter of this year by 0.2% revised up from -0.1% but there were 4 bank holidays in this period each probably costing about 0.16% of GDP (CEBR study 2012) so those 4 days would have added another 0.64%

The UK has the second lowest debt to GDP ration in the G7 countries:

Japan 266%, Italy 151%, Canada 118%, France 113%, UK 96%, Germany 70%

While the crisis in Germany and the Eurozone has been due to the boomerang effects of anti Russian sanctions, particularly in the gas market, The United Kingdom has proven natural gas reserves of 200 billion cubic meters, reserves have stayed at the same level since 2015 and it amounts to about 5 years of UK gas consumption.

Euro in Trouble

While in the last year the pound is down 17% against the US dollar the Euro is down 15%.

Two European banks Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank are in crisis. The latter was fined $14bn in the USA and they manage respectively $1.45 trillion and $1.3 trillion of assets. France’s 3 biggest banks have set aside $1.4bn for losses.

The European Systemic Risk Board has flagged “severe risks to financial stability” and Christine Lagarde, the President of the European Central Bank has warned that the risks to financial stability are “severe”.

32  French reactors out of service. EDF is forced to buy on the open market at extortionate rates. And that at a time of critical gas shortages due to western sanctions against Russia which supplies 40% of Europe’s gas. European gas prices are about 10 times what they are in the USA so the incentive for European (and especially German) industry to move to the USA is growing.

The USA is shipping record amounts of LNG to Europe to counter the loss of Russian gas but as Natural gas prices rise in the USA those exports could be cut off with even more catastrophic results for European industry.

While the Bank of England has been buying Government bonds to reduce interest levels the ECB has been buying Italian bonds (yields rose to 4.9%) in order to save the Euro. The more they buy the more inflationary it is and the more interest rates in Italy come under pressure – and the more they have to buy Italian bonds! The prospect of contaminating all Euro bonds is high – and EU pension funds hold Euros 800bn in bonds. If bonds collapse so do pensions!

If Gas for the giant German company BASF drops by 50% it will shut down completely with possible permanent damage. BASF produces fertilizer, petroleum refining, medicines, plastics, consumer products and critical  industrial materials for the rest of German industry. 40% of BASF production is direct from gas 60% is used for energy.

At the moment Germany is running on stored gas. Ammonia production is down 70% in Western Europe (spring planting crisis no fertiliser) with a threat to diesel exhaust fluid and engine oil additives (ie the entire transport sector).

Metals smelting is down 50% with Eurometaux warning of permanent de-industrialistion. 50% of EU aluminium and zinc capacity has been forced offline and many companies have closed indefinitely.

Germany has nationalised its biggest gas importer Uniper and given domestic households priority over industry. Domestic vegetable production is threatened due to energy costs (up 10 times since 2021)

If, as is virtually certain unless the USA and Europe can make peace in Ukraine, Russia’s permanent redirection of energy eastwards means long lasting gas shortages and higher prices for European industry.

USA Destroys Russia-Germany Pipeline

There is no serious doubt about the fact that it was the USA which sabotaged the two pipelines Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2 bringing gas from Russia to Germany not least because President Joe Biden, Russophobic State Department official Victoria Nuland and Republican Senator Ron Johnson are all on the record demanding the Nord Stream pipelines be taken out.

As Sea Power Magazine reported on June 14th, the US Navy’s 6th Fleet Task Force 68 was running underwater explosives removal drills in the exact area where these sabotage explosions took place.

Der Spiegel reported that the CIA had warned of an attack and a former Polish foreign minister Mr Sikorski said the US did it.

Jim Geraghty, senior political correspondent for the American political journal National Review, has also praised the attacks in a brief piece called Who Will Rid Me of This Meddlesome Pipeline? He is proud that he has been arguing about the importance of taking Nord Stream 2 offline since February and suggests that the attacks reflected his influence.

Having already described the mad nature of the Ukraine war we now have the madness of NATO allies attacking each other, threatening economic catastrophe and breaking a critical taboo that international infrastructure like pipelines should not be attacked in war.

Of course it is Europe with its massive network of internal and international oil, gas and electricity pipelines which is vulnerable – not the United States. If, as George Friedman of Geopolitical Futures says:

“The EU was created to ensure peace and prosperity, as its motto proclaims. Peace is shaky, and prosperity is slipping away. The Italian election signals a crisis.”

 

Then it is predominantly the USA which has been responsible for this collapse making a mockery of its vaunted gift to the world of its “rules based order”!

As if the lack of gas itself were not crucifying European industry the financial losses of the destruction of the pipelines will severely affect the corporations which needed them for supplies and cannot deliver and those which invested in them.

Wintershall Dea AG and PEG/ E.ON; the Dutch N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie and the French ENGIE.

Then there are those which financed NS2: Wintershall Dea and Uniper; Austrian OMV and British-Dutch Shell.

The Biden mad house has made as many enemies among its friends as it has world wide for its war on Russia through Ukraine. No wonder some 150 countries in the UN cannot be brought on board.

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And Into The Fire

Fascist elements in post war Europe and the development of the European Union

By Rodney Atkinson

With contributions from William Dorich and Edward Spalton

Publisher: ‎ GM Books; 1st edition (July 25, 2013)
Publication date: ‎ July 25, 2013
Print length: ‎ 164 pages

 

 

Click here to view this and other titles by Rodney Atkinson.

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***

The secret British intelligence plot to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge is revealed in internal documents and correspondence obtained exclusively by The Grayzone.

The Grayzone has obtained an April 2022 presentation drawn up for senior British intelligence officers hashing out an elaborate scheme to blow up Crimea’s Kerch Bridge with the involvement of specially trained Ukrainian soldiers. Almost six months after the plan was circulated, Kerch Bridge was attacked in an October 8th suicide bombing apparently overseen by Ukraine’s SBU intelligence services.

Detailed proposals for providing “audacious” support to Kiev’s “maritime raiding operations” were drafted at the request of Chris Donnelly, a senior British Army intelligence operative and veteran high ranking NATO advisor. The wide-ranging plan’s core component was “destruction of the bridge over the Kerch Strait.”

Documents and correspondence plotting the operation were provided to The Grayzone by an anonymous source.

The truck bombing of the Kerch Bridge differed operationally from the plot sketched therein. Yet, Britain’s evident interest in planning such an attack underscores the deep involvement of NATO powers in the Ukraine proxy war. At almost precisely the time that London reportedly sabotaged peace talks between Kiev and Moscow in April this year, British military intelligence operatives were drawing up blueprints to destroy a major Russian bridge crossed by thousands of civilians per day.

The roadmap was produced by Hugh Ward, a British military veteran. A number of strategies for helping Ukraine “pose a threat to Russian naval forces” in the Black Sea are outlined. The overriding objectives are stated as aiming to “degrade” Russia’s ability to blockade Kiev, “erode” Moscow’s “warfighting capability”,  and isolate Russian land and maritime forces in Crimea by “denying resupply by sea and overland via Kerch bridge.”

In an email, Ward asked Donnelly to “please protect this document,” and it’s easy to see why. Of these assorted plans, only the “Kerch Bridge Raid CONOPS [concept of operation]” is subject to a dedicated annex at the conclusion of Ward’s report, underlining its significance.

The content amounts to direct, detailed advocacy for the commission of what could constitute a grave war crime. Markedly, in plotting ways to destroy a major passenger bridge, there is no reference to avoiding civilian casualties.

Across three separate pages, alongside diagrams, the author spells out the terms of the “mission” – “[disabling] the Kerch Bridge in a way that is audacious, disrupts road and rail access to Crimea and maritime access to the Sea of Azov.”

Ward suggests that destroying the bridge “would require a cruise missile battery to hit the two concrete pillars either side of the central steel arch, which will cause a complete structural failure,” and “prevent any road re-supply from the Russian mainland to Crimea and temporally [sic] disrupt the shipping lane.”

An alternative “scheme” entails a “team of attack divers or UUVs [unmanned underwater vehicles] equipped with limpet mines and linear cutting charges” targeting a “key weakness” and “design flaw” in the bridge’s pillars.

This “flaw” is “several thin pylons used to support the main span,” which were intended to allow strong currents to flow underneath the Bridge with minimal friction. Ward pinpoints a particular area in which the depth of water around a set of pillars was just 10 meters, making it the “weakest part” of the structure.

In related emails obtained by The Grayzone, Chris Donnelly, the senior British army intelligence operative and former NATO advisor, declared the proposals to be “very impressive indeed.”

Reached by phone, Hugh Ward did not deny that he had prepared the Kerch Bridge destruction blueprint for Chris Donnelly.

“I’m going to have a chat with Chris [Donnelly] and confirm with him what he’s prepared for me to release,” Ward told The Grayzone, when asked directly if he drafted the “audacious” plan.

Asked again to confirm his role in the blueprint, Ward paused, then said: “I can not confirm that. I’ll have a chat with Chris first.”

A suicide attack on a $4 billion transportation artery 

At dawn on October 8th, an incendiary attack damaged the Kerch Bridge. A truck exploded, setting two oil tankers ablaze, causing two Crimea-bound spans of the roadway to collapse into the sea below, and killing three.

While the affected section was quickly repaired and traffic resumed the next day, Western media has celebrated the incident as the latest Russian embarrassment and failure in the conflict with Ukraine. In some cases, journalists openly cheered and joked about what could plausibly be categorized as a war crime that claimed civilian lives.

The suicide strike targeted a connecting structure between Crimea and mainland Russia constructed at a cost of $4 billion, and whose opening provided a major public relations victory for the Kremlin, reinforcing Moscow’s renewed control of the majority Russian-speaking territory.

Upon its unveiling in May 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin remarked:

“In different historical epochs, even under the tsar priests, people dreamed of building this bridge. Then they returned to this in the 1930s, the 40s, the 50s. And finally, thanks to your work and your talent, the miracle has happened.”

The Bridge has been heavily defended since February 24th, not least because it serves as a major transport route for military equipment to Russian soldiers in Ukraine. Russia has previously promised major reprisals in response to any strike on the structure.

Following the attack, widespread euphoria erupted among Ukrainians, Ukrainian authorities, and Ukraine supporters on social media. Oleksiy Danilov, head of Ukraine’s national security and defense council, posted a video of the burning bridge alongside a black-and-white clip of Marilyn Monroe singing Happy Birthday, Mr. President — a reference to Putin turning 70 the same day.

Furthermore, Ukrainian media has reported via an anonymous source “in law enforcement agencies” that the attack was carried out by the Security Service of Ukraine. Yet, high-ranking Ukrainian officials, including chief presidential adviser Mykhailo Podolyak, are now backtracking, claiming instead that the incident was a Russian false flag.

Such allegations have become commonplace in the wake of incidents in which Ukrainian – or Western – culpability seems likely or indeed certain, such as the Nord Stream pipeline explosions.

Laying the foundations of World War III

While the attack on Kerch Bridge did not involve specialist divers, underwater drones or cruise missiles, there are indications that Ward’s plans were shared with the Ukrainian government at the highest levels. In fact, Chris Donnelly forwarded them to former Lithuanian Minister of Defense Audrius Butkevičius, before introducing the pair by email.

A leading figure in Lithuania’s anti-Communist movement, Butkevičius has admitted to deliberately leading pro-independence fighters into Soviet snipers’ line of fire on January 13th 1991. This incident is sometimes referred to as Vilnius’ “Bloody Sunday,” and is officially observed as the Day of the Defenders of Freedom. Butkevičius and his confederates knew the maneuver would provoke mass casualties, further inflaming the local population against Soviet leadership and encourage regime change, which is why they orchestrated it.

More recently, Butkevičius co-owned Bulcommerce KS, a company that servedas “the main intermediary in the supply of Bulgarian weapons and ammunition to Ukraine through third countries,” for use in the civil war in Donbas.

Butkevičius has been credibly accused of working for British intelligence. Email exchanges with Donnelly confirm he is in contact with Guy Spindler, a long-time MI6 officer who was posted in London’s Moscow Embassy concurrently with the infamous Trump-Russia “dossier” author Christopher Steele.

Reached by phone and asked if he reviewed the “Audacious” plan to destroy Kerch Bridge, Spindler told The Grayzone: “I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.”

Contemporary accounts suggest Spindler directly coordinated with Boris Yeltsin at the time of a failed coup against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991.

Butkevičius was also for many years a “senior fellow” at the Institute for Statecraft, a shadowy “charity” founded by Donnelly that manages a number of arm’s length military and intelligence operations on behalf of the British state and NATO, including the now notorious Foreign Office black propaganda unit, the Integrity Initiative.

Leaked Initiative files name Butkevičius as the organization’s key contact in Ukraine at the time of the country’s 2019 election. Three years earlier, he was one of the “escorting personnel” for five Ukrainian intelligence operatives whisked to London by the Institute for Statecraft in order to brief the British military on Russian “hybrid warfare” techniques. Alongside him was Vidmantas Eitutis, who at the time trained Ukraine’s army to conduct “active counterintelligence operations” in Luhansk.

In the Kerch Bridge sabotage proposal commissioned by Donnelly, Ward asks whether the Russian military knew how vulnerable the bridge supposedly was, and “what countermeasures could be expected” in response to its destruction (see image above).

The blitz of retaliatory missile strikes on Ukraine on October 10th provides a likely answer. It is also probable that if Ward’s outline was followed, Moscow’s reprisal would have been even more deadly, putting the lives of countless Ukrainians – and Russians – at significant risk.

Donnelly was clearly unmoved by such concerns, declaring the plans to be “very impressive indeed.”

A similar disregard for catastrophic consequences was evident in a private memo authored by Donnelly in March 2014, outlining “military measures” that Ukraine should take following Moscow’s seizure of Crimea.

Stating that, “if I were in charge I would get the following implemented,” Donnelly advocated mining Sevastopol harbor using a “car ferry,” destroying fighter jets on Crimean airfields “as a gesture that they are serious,” using a “big microwave anti-satellite weapon” to take down Russian space installations, and turning to the West for oil and gas supplies.

“I am trying to get this message across,” he concluded. These prescriptions have yet to be implemented, perhaps because they risk triggering an apocalyptic situation. Indeed, such “gestures” would amount to brazen provocations against a nuclear power, from which Ukraine’s oil and gas network was and remains exclusively designed to receive energy.

Yet it appears Donnelly and those around him would be content to see World War III erupt over Crimea. In fact, as the leaked documents obtained by The Grayzone will continue to demonstrate, provoking conflict between the West and Russia has long-been one of his ultimate objectives.

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Kit Klarenberg is an investigative journalist exploring the role of intelligence services in shaping politics and perceptions.

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***

“You know, when police start becoming their own executioners, where’s it gonna end? Pretty soon, you’ll start executing people for jaywalking, and executing people for traffic violations. Then you end up executing your neighbor ‘cause his dog pisses on your lawn.”—“Dirty Harry” Callahan, Magnum Force

When I say that warrior cops—hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge—have not made America any safer or freer, I am not disrespecting any of the fine, decent, lawful police officers who take seriously their oath of office to serve and protect their fellow citizens, uphold the Constitution, and maintain the peace.

My concern rests with the cops who feel empowered to act as judge, jury and executioner.

These death squads believe they can kill, shoot, taser, abuse and steal from American citizens in the so-called name of law and order.

Just recently, in fact, a rookie cop opened fire on the occupants of a parked car in a McDonald’s parking loton a Sunday night in San Antonio, Texas.

Image: An officer opens the driver’s door and orders Erik Cantu out of the vehicle in San Antonio, Texas, on Oct. 2, 2022.San Antonio Police Dept.

The driver, 17-year-old Erik Cantu and his girlfriend, were eating burgers inside the car when the police officer—suspecting the car might have been one that fled an attempted traffic stop the night before—abruptly opened the driver side door, ordered the teenager to get out, and when he did not comply, shot tentimes at the car, hitting Cantu multiple times.

Mind you, this wasn’t a life-or-death situation.

It was two teenagers eating burgers in a parking lot, and a cop fresh out of the police academy taking justice into his own hands.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, either.

In Hugo, Oklahoma, plain clothes police officers opened fire on a pickup truck parked in front of a food bank, heedless of the damage such a hail of bullets—26 shots were fired—could have on those in the vicinity. Three of the four children inside the parked vehicle were shot: a 4-year-old girl was shot in the head and ended up with a bullet in the brain; a 5-year-old boy received a skull fracture; and a 1-year-old girl had deep cuts on her face from gunfire or shattered window glass. The reason for the use of such excessive force? Police were searching for a suspect in a weeks-old robbery of a pizza parlor that netted $400.

In Minnesota, a 4-year-old girl watched from the backseat of a car as cops shot and killed her mother’s boyfriend, Philando Castile, a school cafeteria supervisor, during a routine traffic stop merely because Castile disclosed that he had a gun in his possession, for which he had a lawful conceal-and-carry permit. That’s all it took for police to shoot Castile four times as he was reaching for his license and registration.

Image: Philando Castile (Courtesy Of Castile Family)

In Arizona, a 7-year-old girl watched panic-stricken as a state trooper pointed his gun at her and her father during a traffic stop and reportedly threated to shoot her father in the back (twice) based on the mistakenbelief that they were driving a stolen rental car.

This is how we have gone from a nation of laws—where the least among us had just as much right to be treated with dignity and respect as the next person (in principle, at least)—to a nation of law enforcers (revenue collectors with weapons) who treat the citizenry like suspects and criminals.

The lesson for all of us: at a time when police have almost absolute discretion to decide who is a threat, what constitutes resistance, and how harshly they can deal with the citizens they were appointed to “serve and protect”—and a “fear” for officer safety is used to justify all manner of police misconduct—“we the people” are at a severe disadvantage.

Add a traffic stop to the mix, and that disadvantage increases dramatically.

According to the Justice Department, the most common reason for a citizen to come into contact with the police is being a driver in a traffic stop.

On average, one in 10 Americans gets pulled over by police.

Of the roughly 1,100 people killed by police each year, 10% of those involve traffic stops.

Historically, police officers have been given free range to pull anyone over for a variety of reasons.

This free-handed approach to traffic stops has resulted in drivers being stopped for windows that are too heavily tinted, for driving too fast, driving too slow, failing to maintain speed, following too closely, improper lane changes, distracted driving, screeching a car’s tires, and leaving a parked car door open for too long.

Motorists can also be stopped by police for driving near a bar or on a road that has large amounts of drunk driving, driving a certain make of car (Mercedes, Grand Prix and Hummers are among the most ticketed vehicles), having anything dangling from the rearview mirror (air fresheners, handicap parking permits, toll transponders or rosaries), and displaying pro-police bumper stickers.

Incredibly, a federal appeals court actually ruled unanimously in 2014 that acne scars and driving with a stiff upright posture are reasonable grounds for being pulled over. The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that driving a vehicle that has a couple air fresheners, rosaries and pro-police bumper stickers at 2 MPH over the speed limit is suspicious, meriting a traffic stop.

Equally appalling, in Heien v. North Carolina, the U.S. Supreme Court—which has largely paved the way for the police and other government agents to probe, poke, pinch, taser, search, seize, strip and generally manhandle anyone they see fit in almost any circumstance—allowed police officers to stop drivers who appear nervous, provided they provide a palatable pretext for doing so.

Black drivers are almost two times more likely than white drivers to be pulled over by police and three times more likely to have their vehicles searched. As the Washington Post concludes, “‘Driving while black’ is, indeed, a measurable phenomenon.”

In other words, drivers beware.

Traffic stops aren’t just dangerous. They can be downright deadly.

Patrick Lyoya was pulled over for having a mismatched license plate. The unarmed man was shot in the back of the head while on the ground during a subsequent struggle with a Michigan police officer.

Reportedly pulled over for a broken taillight, Walter Scott—unarmed—ran away from the police officer, who pursued and shot him from behind, first with a Taser, then with a gun. Scott was struck five times, “three times in the back, once in the upper buttocks and once in the ear — with at least one bullet entering his heart.”

Samuel Dubose, also unarmed, was pulled over for a missing front license plate. He was reportedly shot in the head after a brief struggle in which his car began rolling forward.

Levar Jones was stopped for a seatbelt offense, just as he was getting out of his car to enter a convenience store. Directed to show his license, Jones leaned into his car to get his wallet, only to be shot four times by the “fearful” officer. Jones was also unarmed.

Bobby Canipe was pulled over for having an expired registration. When the 70-year-old reached into the back of his truck for his walking cane, the officer fired several shots at him, hitting him once in the abdomen.

Dontrell Stevens was stopped “for not bicycling properly.” The officer pursuing him “thought the way Stephens rode his bike was suspicious. He thought the way Stephens got off his bike was suspicious.” Four seconds later, sheriff’s deputy Adams Lin shot Stephens four times as he pulled out a black object from his waistband. The object was his cell phone. Stephens was unarmed.

That police are choosing to fatally resolve these encounters by using their guns on fellow citizens speaks volumes about what is wrong with policing in America today, where police officers are being dressed in the trappings of war, drilled in the deadly art of combat, and trained to look upon “every individual they interact with as an armed threat and every situation as a deadly force encounter in the making.”

Keep in mind, from the moment those lights start flashing and that siren goes off, we’re all in the same boat. Yet it’s what happens after you’ve been pulled over that’s critical.

Trying to predict the outcome of any encounter with the police is a bit like playing Russian roulette: most of the time you will emerge relatively unscathed, although decidedly poorer and less secure about your rights, but there’s always the chance that an encounter will turn deadly.

Survival is key.

Technically, you have the right to remain silent (beyond the basic requirement to identify yourself and show your registration). You have the right to refuse to have your vehicle searched. You have the right to film your interaction with police. You have the right to ask to leave. You also have the right to resist an unlawful order such as a police officer directing you to extinguish your cigarette, put away your phone or stop recording them.

However, there is a price for asserting one’s rights. That price grows more costly with every passing day.

If you ask cops and their enablers what Americans should do to stay alive during encounters with police, they will tell you to comply, cooperate, obey, not resist, not argue, not make threatening gestures or statements, avoid sudden movements, and submit to a search of their person and belongings.

Unfortunately, in the American police state, compliance is no guarantee that you will survive an encounter with the police with your life and liberties intact.

Every day we hear about situations in which unarmed Americans complied and still died during an encounter with police simply because they appeared to be standing in a “shooting stance” or held a cell phone or a garden hose or carried around a baseball bat or answered the front door or held a spoon in a threatening manner or ran in an aggressive manner holding a tree branch or wandered around naked or hunched over in a defensive posture or made the mistake of wearing the same clothes as a carjacking suspect (dark pants and a basketball jersey) or dared to leave an area at the same time that a police officer showed up or had a car break down by the side of the road or were deaf or homeless or old.

More often than not, it seems as if all you have to do to be shot and killed by police is stand a certain way, or move a certain way, or hold something—anything—that police could misinterpret to be a gun, or ignite some trigger-centric fear in a police officer’s mind that has nothing to do with an actual threat to their safety.

Now politicians, police unions, law enforcement officials and individuals who are more than happy to march in lockstep with the police state make all kinds of excuses to justify these shootings.  However, to suggest that a good citizen is a compliant citizen and that obedience will save us from the police state is not only recklessly irresponsible, but it is also deluded.

To begin with, and most importantly, Americans need to know their rights when it comes to interactions with the police, bearing in mind that many law enforcement officials are largely ignorant of the law themselves.

A good resource is The Rutherford Institute’s “Constitutional Q&A: Rules of Engagement for Interacting with Police.”

In a nutshell, the following are your basic rights when it comes to interactions with the police as outlined in the Bill of Rights:

You have the right under the First Amendment to ask questions and express yourself. You have the right under the Fourth Amendment to not have your person or your property searched by police or any government agent unless they have a search warrant authorizing them to do so.  You have the right under the Fifth Amendment to remain silent, to not incriminate yourself and to request an attorney. Depending on which state you live in and whether your encounter with police is consensual as opposed to your being temporarily detained or arrested, you may have the right to refuse to identify yourself. Not all states require citizens to show their ID to an officer (although drivers in all states must do so).

As a rule of thumb, you should always be sure to clarify in any police encounter whether or not you are being detained, i.e., whether you have the right to walk away. That holds true whether it’s a casual “show your ID” request on a boardwalk, a stop-and-frisk search on a city street, or a traffic stop for speeding or just to check your insurance. If you feel like you can’t walk away from a police encounter of your own volition—and more often than not you can’t, especially when you’re being confronted by someone armed to the hilt with all manner of militarized weaponry and gear—then for all intents and purposes, you’re essentially under arrest from the moment a cop stops you. Still, it doesn’t hurt to clarify that distinction.

While technology is always going to be a double-edged sword, with the gadgets that are the most useful to us in our daily lives—GPS devices, cell phones, the internet—being the very tools used by the government to track us, monitor our activities, and generally spy on us, cell phones are particularly useful for recording encounters with the police and have proven to be increasingly powerful reminders to police that they are not all powerful.

Knowing your rights is only part of the battle, unfortunately.

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, the danger arises when the burden of proof is reversed, “we the people” are assumed guilty, and we have to exercise our rights while simultaneously attempting to prove our innocence to trigger-happy cops with no understanding of the Bill of Rights.

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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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***

Gabbard should have done this years ago, but it is better late than never.

I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, are… pic.twitter.com/oAuTnxZldf

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) October 11, 2022

Thank you for speaking the truth, Tulsi.

Now, let’s take a look at a Newsweek write-up on Gabbard’s decision.

Gabbard, who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic Party presidential nomination in the 2020 election, made the announcement in a video posted on Twitter, in which she accused the Democrats of stoking “anti-white racism,” and “dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.”

The upper echelon of the ruling Democrats is not for or against an individual based solely on his or her skin color. The only thing that matters is class and how much money and power an individual has. There is no real support for Black Lives Matter or less radical groups. It is simply a tool for diversion and control.

The same principle applies to Republicans, including so-called MAGA Republicans. Each group or rather faction of the ruling political class has its own social, political, and economic schtick to attract different elements of a culturally diverse nation. Overall effectiveness hinges on slightly different approaches pushing the same basic neoliberal doctrine.

The vast majority of Congress and the political class can be said to be almost exclusively upper middle class to mega-wealthy.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of America has slipped into the lower middle class, what used to be called the working class. Millions more are living in poverty where there is growing childhood malnutrition and widespread violence. The Democrat elite lies when they say they are champions of the poor and downtrodden. Both Democrats and Republicans—essentially a uni-party representing corporate and banking interests—pay lip service and deliver crumbs to the vast majority of America as it is pushed deeper into poverty.

On the topic of war, Democrats have shown, especially in regard to Ukraine, they are quite frankly dangerously insane.

Historians and high school history teachers say liberal Democrats are traditionally antiwar, citing the countercultural values of the 1960s resistance to the Vietnam War.

All of that is nonsense. Democrat Truman used two atomic bombs on Japanese civilians. Democrat Kennedy sent advisers to Vietnam (following the failures of French colonialism in SE Asia). Johnson escalated Vietnam. Carter set the stage for Afghanistan and the Mujahideen that would splinter into al-Qaeda. All these Democrats were staunch “anti-communists,” especially JFK.

Clinton and NATO bombed an Eastern European country for over seventy days. Clinton also killed civilians with cruise missiles in Iraq and bombed a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan. Obama and Clinton’s wife along with NATO bombed Libya, where 30,000 died, and fueled horrific violence in Syria in an attempt to overthrow Bashar al-Assad.

Now comes the Democrat Biden and the war in Ukraine.

This is not to say political class Republicans are peaceniks. Nixon escalated Johnson’s escalation in Vietnam and spread the bloodshed and horror into Laos and Cambodia, the latter so destabilized it ended up with Pol Pot and around a third of the population butchered.

Reagan illegally supported a terrorist group in violation of the Bolan Act. He sent warships to flatten villages in the mountains of Lebanon. His warplanes killed the adopted daughter of Moammar Gadaffi, a fate Moammar would later suffer himself for the mistake of taking the USG at its word.

And, finally, the George Bushes, father, and son, instigators of two wars on one country, Iraq, with a long and inhumanely punishing sanctions regime in between, enforced by Clinton.

The corporate media is rife with lies about Russia and nuclear war. Russia has said it will resort to nuclear weapons if its existence is threatened. Vladimir Putin did not say he will use nukes in what’s left of Ukraine.

Now that Crimea, Donetsk, and Luhansk have voted to join the Russian Federation, any attacks on the Donbas will be considered an attack on Russia proper.

It really was the only way to stop the mass murder of ethnic Russians in Ukraine committed by Nazi-leaning ultranationalists. They have bombed and attacked fellow Ukrainians of Russian ethnicity since 2014 and the illegal USG coup that deposed the elected leader of the country. The people of Donetsk have pleaded for help for years, only to be ignored by the “democratic” “international community” of neoliberal captured governments.

Yes, Democrats should be outraged about war. Short of self-defense, it is never acceptable. But the problem here is that they are only selectively outraged, as directed by the elders of the Democrat faction of the USG Uniparty. Loyal Democrats did not complain when their hero Obama ramped up the illegal drone war (extrajudicially killing Americans, in addition to foreigners) and put together the unwarranted war that turned Libya from the most advanced country in Africa into a violent slave market.

As you may have noticed, I am not linking anything here. I have done that hundreds of times since nine eleven.

Most of what I said above is historical fact. It can be researched. If you believe I am a “conspiracy theorist,” I dare you to check out the facts, that is if you can get an accurate read with the new search engine ranking algorithms that require a deep drill, extra work, creative search criteria, and often dead ends where there was not before. I count the loss of a stellar research database, the History Commons, in the “misinformation” reshuffle of reality.

It is difficult not to be cynical. There is literally next to no opposition to this war, only angry rhetoric and cartoonish representations of Putin, and half-ass prayers for the victims of Ukraine on social media where the most outrageous and transparent lies become memes with grade school level insults hurled about, thus keeping the division alive as the world economy begins to take on water and a nuclear WWIII seems all but inevitable.

Newsweek knows there are murderous Nazi goons in Ukraine. It has reported as much. The liberal alternative press has posted a long list of articles on the Nazi problem in Ukraine. Do you hear about that now? How it just might have something to do with what is now going on?

No, you hear crickets.

Tulsi:

I can no longer remain in today’s Democratic Party that is now under the complete control of an elitist cabal of warmongers driven by cowardly wokeness, who divide us by racializing every issue & stoke anti-white racism, actively work to undermine our God-given freedoms, hostile to people of faith & spirituality, demonize the police & protect criminals at the expense of law-abiding Americans, believe in open borders, weaponize the national security state to go after political opponents, and above all, dragging us ever closer to nuclear war.

All very true—and will get her forever marked as a “conservative Republican,” and thus easily tossed around in the divisive political game that has gone into hyperspace since covid.

Finally, Gabbard is calling for Democrats with any shred of human dignity left—there are sadly few—to leave the party. This can be ignored—especially if it does not pick up any traction.

It just might. I hope it does.

I think the German psychologist and socialist Wilhelm Reich was correct when he observed in his largely unknown little book, “Listen, Little Man,” that the average person would rather leave the dirty work to the political psychopaths and remain blissfully unaware of the crimes committed in their names.

“I believe in a government that is of, by, and for the people,” she said. “Unfortunately, today’s Democratic Party does not. Instead, it stands for a government of, by, and for the powerful elite. I’m calling on my fellow common sense independent-minded Democrats to join me in leaving the Democratic Party.”

I hope you can, Tulsi. But again, I am by nature a cynic, especially in regard to the state and war.

*

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Kurt Nimmo writes on Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image: U.S. Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard speaking with attendees at the 2019 California Democratic Party State Convention at the George R. Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco, California. Credit: Gage Skidmore/ Flickr) 

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***

 

The seven-month-old war between NATO and Russia in Ukraine escalated Monday, after Russia carried out a series of attacks against largely civilian infrastructures throughout Ukraine.

Some 14 people were killed and 97 injured in the strikes, according to Ukrainian officials, and power was disrupted in more than half the country’s regions. The Wall Street Journal reported that most strikes were “hitting electricity substations and other targets outside city centers, away from civilian homes.”

On Friday, the Ukrainian Special Forces orchestrated a terrorist suicide bombing on the Kerch Bridge, which connects Russia to Crimea. The move came after the former commanding general of the US Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, urged Ukraine to “drop” the bridge, and current US officials publicly gave a green light to attack it.

Days after the attack, the aim of the Kerch Bridge bombing comes into sharper view. Its purpose was to provoke a military response by Russia against civilian infrastructure in Ukraine, which could then be used to justify a massive increase in US-NATO involvement in the conflict.

For months, US officials had been expressing concern that Russia had not been “provoked” into expanding the war into western Ukraine, which had been largely spared in recent months.

Last month, former US Ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor complained to The Hill that, despite the fact that the White House had provided “larger, more capable, longer-distance, heavier weapons to the Ukrainians,” the “Russians have not reacted.” Up to this point, Taylor said, the “Russians have kind of bluffed and blustered, but they haven’t been provoked.”

With Tuesday’s attack, Russian authorities had, in fact, allowed themselves to be “provoked,” setting the stage for an even more massive escalation of US-NATO involvement in the war.

The attack on the Kerch Bridge was timed to take place just days before the NATO defense ministers’ meeting on October 12 and 13, which is expected to expand the level of direct NATO involvement in the conflict.

A senior Biden administration official interviewed by the Washington Post called the escalation of the war a “turning point.”

The attacks, in the words of the Washington Post, raise the question of “whether the United States and its partners may have to move beyond the concept of helping Ukraine defend itself, and instead more forcefully facilitate a Ukrainian victory.”

The Post wrote:

“So far, the US supply effort has been deliberative and process-oriented in the kinds of weapons it provides, and the speed at which it provides them, so as not to undercut its highest priority of avoiding a direct clash between Russia and the West. That strategy is likely to be part of the agenda at Tuesday’s emergency meeting of G7 leaders and a gathering of NATO defense ministers later in the week.”

In other words, dominant sections of the US political establishment will use the attacks as a pretext to carry out a long-planned escalation of the war.

In this way, the attacks on civilian infrastructure ordered by Putin play right into the hands of the US and NATO, which had hoped that by provoking Russia, they would be given a pretext to intervene more directly in the war and ensure Russia’s military defeat.

Ahead of the meeting, US officials are demanding an expansion of arms shipments to Ukraine.

“I pledge to use all means at my disposal to accelerate support for the people of Ukraine and to starve Russia’s war machine,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Robert Menendez.

CIA Democrat Representative Elissa Slotkin tweeted that the dispatch of more air defense systems for Ukraine was “urgent,” adding,

“Providing these systems is a defensive—not escalatory—step, and our European friends need to step up along with us to get the Ukrainians what they need.”

The Wall Street Journal in an editorial demanded that the United States “provide Ukraine with more weapons, including better air defenses,” declaring, “Mr. Putin won’t end his war until it becomes clear the cost of continuing it is too high.”

Speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Monday, Biden “pledged to continue providing Ukraine with the support needed to defend itself, including advanced air defense systems,” according to a summary of the call from the White House.

On Tuesday, Zelensky will address a meeting of the G7, which is likewise expected to pledge more military support to the conflict. Zelensky will, according to the Guardian, “emphasize anti-aircraft systems, and repeat the longstanding demand for longer-range missiles.”

Ukrainian officials claimed that Russia conducted missile attacks against more than 20 cities, including the capital, Kiev. According to the Ukrainian General Staff, Russian forces launched more than 84 cruise missiles and 24 drone attacks.

The Institute for the Study of War reported that

“Russian forces launched missiles from 10 strategic bombers operating in the Caspian Sea and from Nizhny Novgorod, Iskander short-range ballistic missile systems, and 6 missile carriers in the Black Sea.”

In a sober assessment of the military consequences of Monday’s strikes, the Institute for the Study of War wrote,

“Ukrainian and Western intelligence have previously reported that Russia has spent a significant portion of its high-precision missiles, and Putin likely knows better than Medvedev or the milbloggers that he cannot sustain attacks of this intensity for very long.”

It continued,

“The October 10 Russian attacks wasted some of Russia’s dwindling precision weapons against civilian targets, as opposed to militarily significant targets.”

It added that

“Ukrainian air defenses also shot down half of the Russian drones and cruise missiles,” and noted that “Russia’s use of its limited supply of precision weapons in this role may deprive Putin of options to disrupt ongoing Ukrainian counter-offensives in Kherson and Luhansk Oblasts.”

“Throughout the war, the Russian military has had problems with target selection and the accuracy of their missiles,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia studies at CNA, told the New York Times. “As the war goes on, their supply of precision-guided weapons has dwindled, and they are using weapons that are not suited to land targets or that are old and unreliable.”

Meanwhile, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said he had ordered troops to deploy together with Russian forces near the Ukrainian border. Lukashenko declared that

“Strikes on the territory of Belarus are not just being discussed in Ukraine today, but are also being planned.”

Poland urged its citizens to leave Belarus “with available commercial and private means.”

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Biden’s Broken Promise to Avoid War with Russia May Kill Us All

By Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J. S. Davies, October 11, 2022

On March 11, 2022, President Biden reassured the American public and the world that the United States and its NATO allies were not at war with Russia. “We will not fight a war with Russia in Ukraine,” said Biden. “Direct conflict between NATO and Russia is World War III, something we must strive to prevent.”

Free Speech and the Tyranny of ‘Kindness’. Jacinda Ardern in the Global Limelight

By Colin Todhunter, October 11, 2022

Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, grabbed the global limelight a few years ago, making headlines by stating she wanted to put “kindness” into politics. In 2019, Foreign Policy, a publication closely associated with the Atlantic Council and the US State Department, published the article ‘The Kindness Quotient’, a glowing promotion of Ardern.

Destroying Europe? Is Washington Behind the OPEC Decision to Cut Petrol Output? Sabotaging the E.U. Economy

By Peter Koenig and Press TV, October 11, 2022

US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, says the government is working closely with Congress to review alternatives regarding ties with Saudi Arabia. That’s a day after the 23 countries, together known as OPEC+ agreed to reduce the output by 2 million barrels per day from November.

Resistance to British Colonial Brutality: Bhadshah Khan’s Afghan Peace Movement

By Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, October 11, 2022

In 1929, a Pashtun tribal leader in nearby Afghanistan named Bhadshah Khan – a peer of Gandhi – became an important ally by inaugurating Afghanistan’s indigenous non-violent movement known as the Khudai-Khidmatgar – the servants of God.

Nicaragua Facing a “Satanic West”

By Stephen Sefton, October 11, 2022

In November 2010, when now President Vladimir Putin was Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, he proposed “the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” The European Union never accepted that vision. Three years later, the United States staged a coup d’état in Ukraine with the complicity of the European Union and its member countries.

The Rule of Power. Paypal Penalties for “Those Guilty of Misinformation”

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts, October 11, 2022

Last week PayPal, an online service for making and receiving payments, announced that at PayPal’s “sole discretion” $2,500 would be seized from accounts of those PayPal decided were guilty of spreading misinformation.  “Misinformation” is whatever some speech control office at PayPal doesn’t like or dissent from official narratives. 

Fighting the Corona War and Beyond

By Dr. Emanuel Garcia, October 11, 2022

In less than three years the Group – call it what you will – that engineered this phoney pandemic, shut down the entire world within weeks, and pushed a campaign of fear and control that had the best and brightest shilling for masks, lockdown, universal ‘vaccination’ and quarantines – this Cabal has managed to inoculate, at the time of writing, 68.2 percent of the world’s population.

It’s Time to Tell Biden We Say ‘No!’ to Nuclear War!

By Rep. Ron Paul, October 11, 2022

Last week the New York Times ran a shocking article claiming that the US intelligence community believes the Ukrainian government to be responsible for the August attack that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian philosopher.

Terror on Crimea Bridge Incites Russia to Unleash “Shock and Awe”?

By Pepe Escobar, October 11, 2022

At least 450 kg of explosives were employed in the blast. Not on the truck, but mounted inside the Crimea Bridge span itself. The white truck was just a decoy by the terrorists “to create a mirage of cause and effect.” When the truck reached the point on the bridge where the explosives were mounted, the explosion took place.

Health Risks Associated with 5G Exposure, Small Cell Densification and New Wireless Networks

By Environmental Health Trust, October 11, 2022

The European Parliament requested a research report  “Health Impact of 5G” which was released in July 2021 and concluded that commonly used RFR frequencies (450 to 6000 MHz) are probably carcinogenic for humans and clearly affect male fertility with possible adverse effects on the development of embryos, fetuses and newborns.

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The European Parliament requested a research report  “Health Impact of 5G” which was released in July 2021 and concluded that commonly used RFR frequencies (450 to 6000 MHz) are probably carcinogenic for humans and clearly affect male fertility with possible adverse effects on the development of embryos, fetuses and newborns. 

Cell towers, 5G Networks and 4G Small Cells Emit Radiofrequency (RF) Radiation 

Studies find RF exposure elevated in buildings located close to cell antennas. 

Baltrėnas et al 2012 investigated RF power density levels from cell phone antennas located 35 meters away from a 10-story apartment building. The transmitting antennas were approximately at the same height as the 6th floor of the building. The researchers found the highest RF at floors 5–7. The RF at the 6th floor balcony was three times higher than the 3rd floor balcony. The RF power density at the 6th floor  was about 15 times the RF measures at the first floor.

The study “Radiofrequency radiation from nearby mobile phone base stations-a case comparison of one low and one high exposure apartment “ published in Oncology Letters (Koppel et al 2019) found that the apartment with high RF exposure had outdoor areas as close as 6 meters (about 19.6 feet) from the cell antenna array. In contrast, the low exposure apartment’s balcony had cell antennas at 40 meters (about 131 feet) away. The researchers also found that both apartments had good mobile phone reception and “Therefore, installation of base stations to risky places cannot be justified using the good reception requirement argument.”

A 2017 case report of RF levels in an apartment close to two groups of rooftop cellular antennas used an exposimeter to measure levels of different types of RF in the apartment and balconies including TV,  FM, TETRA emergency services, 2G GSM, 3G UMTS, 4G LTE, DECT cordless, Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz  and WiMAX. The closest transmitting antennas were at a base station 6 meters from the balcony. The researchers documented a number of important findings. First, 97.9% of the mean RF radiation was caused by downlink from the 2G, 3G and 4G base stations. (Downlink means  frequencies emitted “down” from the base station cellular antennas.)  The researchers found that if the base station RF emissions were excluded, the RF radiation in the children’s bedrooms was reduced ~99%. The researchers conclude that, “due to the current high RF radiation, the apartment is not suitable for long‑term living, particularly for children who may be more sensitive than adults.”

Outdoor levels of RF are increasing from the densification of wireless networks

A study measuring RF EMF exposure in the European cities of Basel, Ghent and Brussels found total RF exposure levels in all investigated outdoor locations had increased up to 57.1% in one year (April 2011 to March 2012). The RF increase was most notably observed in outdoor locations due to mobile phone base stations. Urbinello et al., 2014

A 2018 study published in Oncology Letters documented measurements of “unnecessarily high” radiofrequency (RF) radiation levels in several locations in Stockholm, Sweden.  The authors conclude “Using high-power levels causes an excess health risk to many people. Even higher RF radiation is expected when 5G is implemented.”

A 2018 study by Hardell et al published in the World Academy of Sciences Journal found the RF levels at Järntorget square in Stockholm Old Town Sweden (measured in April, 2016) were only one order of magnitude lower than the RF levels associated with an increased incidence of tumors in the Ramazzini radiofrequency animal study (Falcioni et al 2018) which exposed rats to a lifetime of RF mimicking cell tower base station exposures.  The authors concluded that, “These results indicate that an increased cancer risk may be the situation for individuals staying at the square, primarily for those working in shops and cafés around the square. We have not measured RF radiation emissions in apartments around the square. It cannot be excluded that at certain places, the radiation may even be higher…”

A 2017 study of Royal Castle, Supreme Court, three major squares and the Swedish Parliament found despite the hidden architecturally camouflaged antennas, the passive exposure to RF radiation from cell antennas can be higher than RF levels associated with non thermal biological effects. Some of the highest levels  were from antennas closer to the ground and targeted towards the square. The researchers note that the heaviest RF load falls on people working or living near hotspots, compared to people that are walking by and briefly exposed. RF measurements from earlier published studies were compared to the 2017 measurements indicating that “it is clear from our present and previous studies that the level of ambient RF radiation exposure is increasing.”

A 2016 study at Stockholm Central Railway Station in Sweden documented higher RF levels in areas where base station antennas were located closest to people. Importantly, the RF from the downlink of UMTS, LTE, GSM base station antennas contributed to most of the radiation levels.

A 2022 study “Very high radiofrequency radiation at Skeppsbron in Stockholm, Sweden from mobile phone base station antennas positioned close to pedestrians’ heads” created an RF heat map of RF measurements finding that the highest RF measurements were  in areas of close proximity to the base station antennas. The researchers concluded with recommendations to reduce close proximity placements such as positioning antennas “as far as possible from the general public”  like in high elevation locations  or remote areas.

A 2022 study in the World Academy of Sciences Journal measured levels of radiofrequency radiation (RFR), from wireless networks including 5G, in the city of Columbia, South Carolina and found the highest RFR levels in areas where the cell phone base station antennas were placed on top of utility poles, street lamps, traffic lights or other posts near to the street. When the scientists compared their 2022 findings to a 2019 published review on the mean outdoor exposure level of European cities, they found the Columbia, South Carolina  measurements to be the highest. The Columbia, S.C. study concluded that the highest exposure areas were due to two reasons:  cell phone base antennas on top of high-rise buildings provide “good cell coverage reaching far away, but creating elevated exposure to the radiofrequency electromagnetic fields at the immediate vicinity; and cell phone base station antennas installed on top of utility poles have placed the radiation source closer to humans walking on street level.”

Image from Koppel T and Koppel T: Measurements of radiofrequency electromagnetic fields, including 5G, in the city of Columbia, SC, USA. World Acad Sci J 4: 22, 2022

Published Reviews That Recommend Cell Towers Be Distanced Away From Homes and Schools  

• A review paper entitled “Limiting liability with positioning to minimize negative health effects of cellular phone towers” reviewed the “large and growing body of evidence that human exposure to RFR from cellular phone base stations causes negative health effects.” The authors recommend restricting antennas near home and within 500 meters of schools and hospitals to protect companies from future liability (Pearce 2020).
• An analysis of 100 studies published in Environmental Reviews found ~80% showed biological effects near towers. “As a general guideline, cell base stations should not be located less than 1500 ft from the population, and at a height of about 150 ft.” (Levitt 2010) 
• A review published in the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health found people living less than 500 m from base station antennas had an increased adverse neuro-behavioral symptoms and cancer in eight of the ten epidemiological studies (Khurana 2011).
• A paper by human rights experts documented the accumulating science indicating safety is not assured and considered the issue within a human rights framework to protect vulnerable populations from environmental pollution. “We conclude that, because scientific knowledge is incomplete, a precautionary approach is better suited to State obligations under international human rights law.” (Roda and Perry 2014)
• A review entitled “Evidence for a health risk by RF on humans living around mobile phone base stations: From radiofrequency sickness to cancer  reviewed  the existing scientific literature and found radiofrequency sickness,  cancer and  changes in biochemical parameters. (Balmori 2022)

Cell Towers  Radiofrequency Radiation and Cancer: World Health Organization International Agency for Research on Cancer 

In 2011, radiofrequency radiation was classified as a Class 2B possible carcinogen by the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (WHO/IARC). The WHO/IARC scientists clarified that this determination was for RFR from any source be it cell phones,  wireless devices or cell towers. Since 2011, the published peer-reviewed scientific evidence associating RFR to cancer and other adverse effects has significantly increased.

In 2019, the WHO/IARC advisory committee recommended that radiofrequency radiation be re-evaluated as a “high” priority in light of the new research. The date of the re-evaluation has not been set.

Currently, several scientists conclude that the weight of current peer-reviewed evidence supports the conclusion that radiofrequency radiation is a proven human carcinogen (Hardell and Carlberg 2017, Peleg et al, 2018, Miller et al 2018).

Research Studies to Know

• European Parliament requested a research report  “Health Impact of 5G” which was released in July 2021 and concluded that commonly used RFR frequencies (450 to 6000 MHz) are probably carcinogenic for humans and clearly affect male fertility with possible adverse effects on the development of embryos, fetuses and newborns.

• A large-scale animal study published in Environmental Research found rats exposed to cell tower emission RF levels had elevated cancers, the very same cancers also found in the US National Toxicology Program animal study of cell phone RF. Falcioni 2018
• A study published in Electromagnetic Biology and Medicine found changes in blood considered biomarkers predictive of cancer in people living closer to cell antenna arrays (Zothansiama 2017).
• A study published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found higher exposure to cell arrays linked to higher mortality from all cancer and specifically lung and breast cancer (Rodrigues 2021).
• A 10 year study published in Science of the Total Environment on cell phone antennas by the local Municipal Health Department and several universities in Brazil found a clearly elevated relative risk of cancer mortality at residential distances of 500 meters or less from cell phone towers (Dode 2011).
• A study commissioned by the Government of Styria, Austria found a significant cancer incidence in the area around the transmitter as well as significant exposure-effect relationships between radiofrequency radiation exposure and the incidence of breast cancers and brain tumors (Oberfeld 2008).
• A review published in Experimental Oncology found “alarming epidemiological and experimental data on possible carcinogenic effects of long term exposure to low intensity microwave (MW) radiation.”  Even a year of operation of a powerful base transmitting station for mobile communication reportedly resulted in a dramatic increase of cancer incidence among the population living nearby (Yakymenko 2011).

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Jacinda Ardern, New Zealand’s prime minister, grabbed the global limelight a few years ago, making headlines by stating she wanted to put “kindness” into politics. In 2019, Foreign Policy, a publication closely associated with the Atlantic Council and the US State Department, published the article ‘The Kindness Quotient’, a glowing promotion of Ardern.  

The strategic marketing of Ardern in various publications has focused on her likeability, pro-environment stance, compassionate values and collaborative nature. To further appeal to liberal sentiments, she was said to represent everything Trump is not.

Ardern belongs to a set of global leaders who were groomed for their positions through the World Economic Forum (WEF) Young Global Leaders programme. Yes, that WEF – the elitist organisation where hard-nose billionaires and their handmaidens gather to set out policies aligned with powerful business interests.

The charm offensive that Ardern’s promoters undertook was an investment. She delivered on COVID and is now expected to sell more questionable policies to the public.

Arden recently stated at the UN:

“As leaders, we are rightly concerned that even the most light-touch approaches to disinformation could be misinterpreted as hostile to values of free speech that we value so highly.”

She went on to state:

“How do you tackle climate change if people believe it does not exist? How do you ensure the human rights of others are upheld as they are subjected to hateful and dangerous ideology.”

She continued by saying speech (that the authorities disagree with) can be a weapon of war.

During COVID, Ardern urged citizens to trust the government and its agencies for all information and stated:

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

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

When anyone in power or any institution lays claim to ‘the truth’, history shows we are on a slippery slope to silencing thought and dissent that we disagree with.

Like other political leaders, during COVID, Ardern clamped down on civil liberties with the full force of state violence on hand to ensure compliance with ‘the truth’.

Clearly, Ardern is not alone here. Trudeau, Biden and others display Orwellian undertones as they talk of the need to challenge ‘misinformation’ and those who question ‘the truth’. The thin end of a very wide authoritarian wedge.

It seems critical analysis and open debate are fine as long as those involved keep within the framework of what is deemed supportive of the narrative. Chomsky was correct on that.

We are often urged to ‘trust the science’ and accept that the ‘science is decided’ on various issues. We heard this on the COVID issue, when we were told governments are ‘following the science’, while they and the big tech companies censored world-renowned scientists and opposing views and opinions. In ‘following the science’, conflicts of interest were rife and notions of objectivity, open disclosure and organised scepticism – core values of scientific endeavour – were trampled on.

Those who questioned the COVID narrative were smeared, shut down and censored – the playbook of Big Pharma, Big Tobacco, Big Ag and authoritarian governments down the years.

Is anyone who questions and wants a more open debate on climate change or whether such change is occurring as stated or will lead to ‘extinction’ to be charged with disseminating misinformation?

Is questioning the orthodoxy of the zero-carbon policy agenda to be shut down and those who challenge it to be labelled ‘extremists’.

Ardern asks: How do you tackle climate change if people believe it does not exist?

But it is also pertinent to ask: How do you tackle it if you accept it exists?

Even if we accept humanity is in trouble and facing a genuine climate emergency, people should at least be able to question the current ‘green’ agenda based on a ‘stakeholder capitalism’ strategy (governments and others facilitating the needs of private capital) that has co-opted genuine concerns about the environment to pursue new multi-billion-dollar global investment opportunities – described in the 2020 report Nature for Sale by Friends of the Earth.

If you read that report, you might conclude that we are witnessing a type of green imperialism that is using genuine concerns about the environment to pursue a familiar agenda of extractivism, colonisation and commodification – the same old mindset, greenwashed and rolled out for public consumption.

For some, things seem set to remain the same – business as usual.

Economic crisis  

But in March 2022, BlackRock’s Rob Kapito warned that a “very entitled” generation of people would soon have to face shortages for the first time in their lives as some goods grow scarce because of rising inflation.

Kapito said:

“We have a very entitled generation that has never had to sacrifice.”

He, of course, was referring to ordinary people, not the high-flying class of the mega-carbon-footprint multi-millionaires and billionaires who will continue to live life to the max and cash in on their various investments and ventures.

Kapito talked about the situation in Ukraine and COVID being responsible for the current crisis, conveniently ignoring the inflationary impact of the trillions pumped into imploding financial markets in 2019 and 2020 (dwarfing the crisis of 2008) and a moribund economic system his ilk have milked dry to the point of collapse.

Kapito is a co-founder of Blackrock, the world’s largest asset manager which exerts enormous influence on monetary policy in the US and Europe. According to Salary.com, Kapito, as the president of BlackRock, made $26,750,780 in total compensation in 2021. Of this, $1,250,000 was received as a salary, $9,700,000 was received as a bonus, $15,125,180 was awarded as stock and $675,600 came from other types of compensation.

Neither Kapito nor any of the hegemonic, unimaginably entitled and unelected billionaire class will have to experience any hardships in the coming years. No, they will be responsible for inflicting it on you. The same class of people who designed and profited from a strident neoliberalism based on deregulation and privatisation – a system now in collapse and responsible for the current crisis and the immiseration of hundreds of millions.

In the 1980s, to legitimise the neoliberal agenda, governments rolled out an ideological onslaught, pressing home the notion of individual rights and the primacy of the market. Now, there is a new ideological shift towards a great reset – again being driven by neoliberalism, this time, its collapse.

Arden’s utterances on the dangers of free speech, the singularity of ‘truth’ and the implicit shift towards authoritarianism must be viewed within the context of managing the economic crisis. What she says reveals how the financial and political elites based on Wall Street, in Washington and in the City of London are thinking.

The authorities fear blowback in terms of mass dissent. Liz Truss, the UK prime minister wants to place ‘legal curbs’ on striking trade unions as many of them take action to counter the ‘cost of living’ crisis. There is also the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts (PCSC) Act which came into force in June and threatens citizens’ rights, not least the right to protest.

It therefore comes as no surprise that, today, individual rights and free speech are under threat. The ultimate control mechanism would be linking central bank digital currencies to personal carbon footprints, spending and dissent in an age of economic turmoil. Trudeau gave the game away on that when he hit protesting truckers where it hurt most – denying access to their bank accounts.

How long before ‘misinformation’ and challenging ‘the truth’ becomes thought crime and – as Jacinda Arden might put it – ‘cruel to be kind’ actions are taken against those who challenge dominant state-corporate narratives?

Well, not long because we have already witnessed it during the last few years.

Tyranny is the type of ‘kindness’ we don’t need.

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

Featured image: Ardern speaking during the session “Safeguarding Our Planet” at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum in Davos, 22 January 2019 (Photo by Foundations World Economic Forum – Safeguarding Our Planet at the Annual Meeting 2019, licensed under CC BY 2.

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Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

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

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

Click here to read.

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Tensions are heating up between the United States and Saudi Arabia after Riyadh-led OPEC and allied oil producing countries announced a big output cut. 

US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, says the government is working closely with Congress to review alternatives regarding ties with Saudi Arabia. That’s a day after the 23 countries, together known as OPEC+ agreed to reduce the output by 2 million barrels per day from November.

Oil producers insisted they want to boost the crude market already reeling from the global economic crisis. But the decision came amid soaring energy prices. Washington harshly reacted to the move by OPEC+, calling it a “shortsighted decision”. It also vowed to reduce OPEC’s control over energy prices. The US has warned the oil cartel about the crippling consequences of its measure for the world economy.

Interview questions referred to the OPEC+ decision to reduce outputs as an instrument to increase prices, create more energy shortages – all this ahead of a predicted cold winter – and thereby helping to plunge Europe into an economic fiasco.

And how come President Biden failed to convince Saudi Arabia to increase OPEC’s oil production to keep economies around the world alive? Instead, Washington may be accusing Riyadh of siding with Washington?

Responding, I said that this was another big sham; that Biden never tried to convince OPEC to increase petrol output.

To the contrary, the US wanted to destroy Europe, and what better way of doing so than to deprive them from the energy that would keep Europe’s economy turning?

By pretending the contrary, Washington just wanted to make sure that they are perceived as the “good guys”, wanting to help the world to get enough energy to sustain their economies.

Whatever happens these days, we have to put into the context of the Big Picture, and that’s like almost always the “Great Reset” or UN Agenda 2030 – their planned disastrous predicaments for Europe and the world.

In fact, OPEC+ petrol output reduction (2 million barrels per day), if it happens, it will be following instructions of the US. Washington is known for dancing on several weddings at the same time. They show this all the time.

Referring to WWII, as one of the most flagrant examples: The US was officially fighting against Hitler, while at the same time funding his war against the Soviet Union. With money directly from the FED and with Petrol delivered by the Rockefeller’s Standard Oil.

Today, we are talking about a much bigger plan, as depicted in the Great Reset a.k.a UN Agenda 2030, aiming at a One World Order, plunging the entire 193 UN member countries into an abyss of unheard proportions. Associations of countries, like the Euro-bloc, as well as individual countries sovereignty have to be destroyed.

The plan is to actually devastating Europe with the help of two of the most corrupt and treacherous German politicians, the President of the EU Commission and the German Chancellor. They were put into their positions precisely for their treacherous character and lack of ethics.

It was clear from the beginning that US / NATO was behind the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, with the full knowledge and acquiescence of Madame Ursula von der Leyen, and very likely also of Chancellor, Olaf Scholz.

After all, there is plenty of evidence, including Biden telling a journalist on 2 February 2022 that he has means to stop the flow of Russian gas to Germany and Europe.

See below the full PressTV interview – Youtube 12 min. Or click here to watch on Youtube.

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

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

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Is not the Pashtun amenable to love and reason? He will go with you to hell if you can win his heart, but you cannot force him even to go to heaven. – Badshah Khan

If anyone today could name an historical figure connected to the origin of non-violent resistance against political oppression, it would most likely be India’s Mohandas Gandhi. Gandhi virtually defined the idea of non-violent resistance in his struggle to free India from British colonial rule. But in 1929, a Pashtun tribal leader in nearby Afghanistan named Bhadshah Khan – a peer of Gandhi – became an important ally by inaugurating Afghanistan’s indigenous non-violent movement known as the Khudai-Khidmatgar – the servants of God. Since Khan realized that God needed no service he decided that by serving God they would in fact be serving humanity and set out to remove violence from their ancient Pashtun tribal code. Known as Pashtunwali, Afghans had lived by the code’s elaborate rules for millennia and continue to order their lives by it to this day.

In addition to establishing a leadership council accepted by the community, Pashtunwali laid out in detail the proper behavior for hospitality as well as what was necessary to create security for all including how and when the act of revenge was acceptable.

Following Britain’s colonization of Afghan tribal lands east of the Hindu Kush Mountains in 1848, these principles of Pashtun law were gradually replaced by a new British colonial order.  Pashtun society was already known to be in need of social reform for its long-standing acceptance of revenge killing. But the British creation of a small, elite landlord-class to control and administer the province turned revenge killing into a permanent blood bath.

According to Dr. Sruti Bala of the University of Amsterdam:

“With traditional tribal authority diminished, this ruling elite gradually emerged as a group of powerful landlords who fought among each other and increased rivalry among the clans. By introducing their own manner of punishment and control, including fines, levies and even imprisonment, they created a new culture of conflict with its own rules of settlement.”

According to Bala “this was a major change in comparison with the tribal councils’ traditional focus on limiting conflicts and blame, and resolving feuds without punishment.” The 1872 Frontier Crimes Regulation Act further worsened the situation by sanctioning punishments and mass arrests without trial and legal support and placed heavy restrictions on the free assembly of ethnic Pashtuns. The Frontier Crimes Regulations were far stricter in the Pashtun territories than in any other part of British India and directly limited civil liberties. According to Bala, “The infringements on civil as well as basic human rights were legitimized by the apparent need to control the Western frontier as a defensive line against Russian aggression and military advances in the region.” And this was of course long before the threat of Soviet communism ever existed.

British competition with Russia for control of Central Asia was a central feature of the 19^th century imperialism known as the Great Game. Over time a delicate balance was reached and Afghanistan used as a buffer state between empires but not without a brutal suppression of the Pashtun tribes by the British.

Khan’s appeal to non-violence was accepted by many Pashtuns as a way to resolve deep rooted social problems while undermining British authority at the same time. Although organized like an army, his recruits swore an oath to renounce violence and to never so much as touch a weapon. Over time, the Khudai-Khidmatgar movement developed an educational network to address the social and cultural reforms needed to leave revenge and retribution behind and move towards non-violent development.

This network served the community by focusing on education for all, encouraging poetry, music and literature as avenues of expression that would help eradicate the roots of violence that had become normalized among Pashtuns during British rule.

The non-violence base of the Khudai-Khidmatgar not only addressed the imbalance created by tribal feuds, it also brought Afghans under the single platform of non-violence which ultimately helped the Pashtuns present a powerful united front against British imperial designs.

Khan at a pro-independence rally in Peshawar with Mahatma Gandhi in 1938 (Licensed under the Public Domain)

Khan was an active member of the Indian National Congress, Chief of the Frontier Province Chapter of the Congress and a close ally of Gandhi and when they first met he questioned Gandhi about something that troubled him. “You have been preaching non-violence in India for a long time,” he said. “But I started teaching the Pashtuns non-violence only a short time ago, yet the Pashtuns seemed to have grasped the idea of non-violence much quicker and better than the Indians. How do you explain that?” To which Gandhi replied, “Non-violence is not for cowards. It is for the brave and for the courageous and the Pashtuns are brave and courageous. That is why the Pashtuns were able to remain non-violent.”

Gandhi’s response to Badsher Khan’s question defined the Khudai-Khidmatgar accurately, but a true understanding of the Pashtun non-violence movement only begins there.

Followers of Khan’s Khudai Khitmatgar movement (c. 1947) (Licensed under the Public Domain)

The strength of Badsher Kahn’s Khudai-Khidmatgar and its philosophy challenged more than just the Afghan tribal code of Pashtunwali and the dominance of the British Empire in India. Badsher Khan also challenged the idea expressed by many Western orientalists that his movement was just an aberration.

As we discovered in writing our book Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, getting an authentic picture of Afghan culture through the minefield of orientalist scholarship is no simple task. Sruti Bala’s 2013 article in the Journal Peace and Change points out that commentaries and studies of anything regarding the Afghan non-violence movement are “ridden with interconnected problems” that make it impossible to come anywhere close to an honest understanding of Badsher Khan’s movement.

Cultural stereotyping of Pashtuns, labeling acts of non-violent resistance as simply an aberrant phase of an inherently violent culture and denying the indigenous Afghan roots of the movement are just the start. Added to that is an intellectual prejudice which privileges elitist viewpoints of Gandhi’s Hindu non-violence movement over the actual concrete acts and practices of the Muslim Khudai-Khidmatgar.

The maltreatment of the Afghan nonviolent movement reveals more about the biases of Western academics than of the movement itself and according to Sruti Bala has completely obscured its place in history. She writes:

“The social and political movement that this organization spearheaded is arguably one of the least known and most misunderstood examples of non-violent action in the twentieth century. The lack of extensive research is partly connected to the systematic destruction of crucial archival material during the colonial era, as well as by Pakistani authorities following independence.”

Why was the non-violence movement of Mohandas Gandhi awarded recognition and international celebrity status by the West; while the Pashtun Khudai-Khidmatgar movement and its leader Badsher Kahn were suppressed, imprisoned and eventually outlawed? Should the Afghan non-violent movement be dismissed as just an aberration as critics say, or is it more likely that Badsher Khan’s commitment by Pashtuns to internal tribal reform and genuine non-violent resistance was something the British Empire feared might actually change the game and so, did everything in their power to erase it from the public’s memory and pretend it never existed.

Dr. Sruti Bala provides some clues about Badsher Khan and the suppression of the Khudai-Khidmatgar.

“Khan belonged to a comparatively well-off land-owning family. Unlike Gandhi or Nehru, he was neither a man of Western learning nor a prolific writer.” She writes. “In fact, he was described as, ‘a man of very large silences,’ a nationalist leader whose life of ninety-eight years, one third of which was spent in jail, is steeped in myth and legend.”

“Khan spent nearly thirty-five years of his life in prison for his political activities and involvement in civil disobedience actions. The British and later the Government of Pakistan systematically destroyed most documents and material records of the movement by raiding homes and confiscating anything related to the Khudai-Khidmatgar from handkerchiefs to uniforms and flags to copies of the movement’s journal.”

The treatment of Badsher Khan was an extreme example of British colonial brutality that left a mark on Afghan society that remains to this day. But as Sruti Bala points out, without taking these aspects of Pashtun history into consideration it is easy to fall into the orientalist discourse of viewing Pashtun culture stereotypically as one that intrinsically values brutality and revenge.

According to Bala, Indian nationalism also played an important role in perpetuating the image of the brute Pashtun, while never acknowledging or mentioning its own role in sustaining a racist Pashtun narrative. As an example, the Indian bourgeoisie were quite prepared to participate in the structural and institutional violence of the Frontier Province and eager to gain favors from the British.

Image: Khan pictured with Mahatma Gandhi (c. 1940s) (Licensed under the Public Domain)

And then there is the Pashtuns own complicity with the narrative through their service to the Empire. “The British ruled the Pashtun provinces through rich and influential landlords.” Bala writes. “One of the most prestigious regiments in the British Indian Army founded in 1847 was the Corps of Guides with a significant Pashtun presence. Many of the activities of the Khudai-Khidmatgar were thus addressed as much against Pashtun collaboration with the British, as directly against British colonial laws.

Yet without exception, the old stereotype continues to rule. Every historical account of the Khudai-Khidmatgar always begins by highlighting Pashtun culture as violent and vengeful, instead of portraying it as a culture living on the borders between civilizations under constant threat to its survival and forced to defend itself… Why is this so?

Again according to Bala,

“Gandhi’s speeches to the Pashtuns on his visits to Khudai-Khidmatgar camps reveal a clear mistrust of Pashtun nonviolence which can be traced back to both a suspicion of the lower class Khidmatgar’s soldiers’ inability to embrace the ‘HIGH’ ideals of nonviolence as well as a subtle anti-Muslim slant in his perception of the Pashtuns.”

So despite overt proof of the Khudai-Khidmatgar’s commitment to nonviolence, Ghaffar Khan’s movement continued to be subjected to Gandhi’s personal mistrust of Muslim values and specifically his class biases.

“For the Khudai-Khidmatgar” Bala writes, “nonviolence was not a matter of individual soul-searching and achievement, but a principle for the entire community, requiring a collective effort. This is why I believe the Pashtun interpretation of nonviolence is very different from the individualistic approach that Gandhi adopted.”

And so in this is to be found a profound difference between the Afghan and Indian concept of nonviolence and perhaps the key to their success or failure as peace movements. According to Bala, Khan is generally placed in the shadow of Gandhi, often referred to as his pupil or even more patronizingly as the Frontier Gandhi. They were good friends, shared similar views on civil disobedience, spent significant time working together and held each other in high regard. But, in terms of serving as a movement whose ideals for peace could be made universal, it would seem that it was Gandhi’s appeal to the West’s upper class elites that won him success even though Badsher Khan would have served as a more realistic, grassroots hero for a world in dire need of workable community-based formulas for peace.

Yet largely because of Gandhi, Badsher Khan’s movement remains viewed as just a poor provincial attempt at replicating his ideology and not a genuine indigenous movement of its own with its own characteristics. During his visits to the service and training camps of the Khudai- Khidmatgar, Gandhi insisted on incorporating his personal ideas such as vegetarianism, fasting, and hand spinning (Khadi) into their social reform activities in order to instill what he believed was a “true” sense of nonviolence in the soldiers of the Khudai-Khidmatgar. But for Gandhi to make his specific personal religious preferences a gauge for the purity of Pashtun nonviolence, he risked removing his philosophy from the realm of a cultural movement and placing it firmly into the realm of a personality cult.

According to Bala, references in Khan’s biography indicate that such missionary attempts at making Pashtun practices palatable to liberal upper caste Hindu sensibilities were often met with mild derision. One Khudai-Khidmatgar leader remarked that he had no objections to eating vegetarian food in Gandhi’s ashrams, but wished the Gandhians would not be so fussy when they came to the Frontier Province themselves.

But yet, the sense of Gandhi’s moral superiority was no laughing matter when it came to the plight of the Pashtuns under British rule. In an October 1938 speech to Khudai-Khidmatgar rank and file members Gandhi announced openly that the Pashtun’s commitment to peace was incomplete. He then proceeded to refer to the idea that Pashtuns – who held life so cheap and would have killed a human being with no more thought than they would kill a sheep or a hen, could at the bidding of one man lay down their arms and accept nonviolence – AS A FAIRY TALE.

Gandhi made his apartness from the common Afghan man and woman, landed or landless a hallmark of his speeches. Reading them today betrays a racist sensibility and a disregard and prejudice for the detail, history and context of Pashtun life that has been systematically carried forward into numerous current high minded but failed social experiments.

Gandhi’s disrespect for the elaborate system of Pashtun tribal rules known as Pashtunwali is troublesome. More troublesome still is that multiple generations of historians and journalists have looked to Gandhi’s Pashtun stereotype as the end all and be all to the history of the Khudai-Khidmatgar. Badsher Khan understood more than anyone the need to disassemble and delegitimize the acceptance of violence within the context of Afghan society as a prerequisite for creating an authentic peace movement. It is that model inspired by Badsher Kahn that should comprise the next stage of a global movement that removes the impetus from the elite and places it in the hands of the people. And only by doing that can a genuine peace movement move forward.

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Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story, published by City Lights (2009), Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire, published by City Lights (2011). Their novel The Voice, was published in 2001. Their memoir, The Valediction Three Nights of Desmond Book 1 was published by TrineDay (2021) and The Valediction Resurrection Book 2 was published by TrineDay (2022). For more information visit invisiblehistory, grailwerk and valediction.net

Source

A Declaration of Human Rights for the 21st century World Peace Proposal

Featured image: Founder of the Awami National Party (ANP) in what is now the state of Pakistan. He also served as a politician in Pakistan as well as leader of the Red Shirt Movement, which had close ties to Gandhi of India. (Photo licensed under the Public Domain)

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In November 2010, when now President Vladimir Putin was Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, he proposed “the creation of a harmonious economic community stretching from Lisbon to Vladivostok.” The European Union never accepted that vision. Three years later, the United States staged a coup d’état in Ukraine with the complicity of the European Union and its member countries. In this context, President Vladimir Putin’s speech on September 30^th, receiving four other regions as part of the Russian Federation, was especially historic.

In fact, he effectively acknowledged Russia’s abandonment of the policy of wanting to maintain relations with Europe and with the West in general. This is a revolutionary change in international relations that affects the whole world. The speech of September 30th arises from the experiences of a leader and his government team during ten years of constant efforts for Peace, for a more just and equitable world, and for respectful relations based on international law. President Putin’s words express the exasperation of a lost decade of one attempt after another to maintain relations of respect and understanding with the United States and the European Union.

It was a decade of patience constantly frustrated, of goodwill constantly scorned and insulted, of agreements signed in good faith, the Minsk Agreements among many others, constantly undermined and betrayed. President Putin comments, “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything to ensure the safe life of our people. This is the great mission of liberation of our people.” That mission is about liberating the peoples of the Russian Federation from the sinister hybrid war against them and the explicit threats by Western leaders who want to destroy it, including with nuclear weapons.

Invoking the right of self-defense, President Putin clearly explains why the West is attacking Russia:

“…it is greed, the determination to maintain its power not limited in any sense, which are the real reasons for the hybrid war that the West is fighting collectively against Russia. They don’t want our freedom, they want to see us become a colony. They don’t want equal cooperation, but they do want to loot. They do not want us to be a free society, but a multitude of slaves without souls.”

President Putin discusses in his speech the issue of impunity in relation to the various crimes against humanity committed by the European powers and the United States. He recognizes that those countries accumulated their wealth through centuries of conquest, genocide and slavery and then maintained the tremendous advantages thus accumulated, by means of a system of intimidation and neo-colonial plunder. But President Putin takes his argument beyond mere condemnation of Western criminality, when he invokes the cause of Russia’s self-defense as also and necessarily the defense of humanity, not only in the material sense but in a deeply spiritual sense as well.

For many, this is the central part of his message:

“I would like to insist that the dictatorship of Western elites is directed against all societies, including their own. It is a challenge to all, this absolute denial of humanity, the trampling of religion and traditional values, the suppression of freedom is acquiring features “of a religion in reverse”, of a self-evident Satanism. Jesus Christ already said it in the Sermon on the Mount: “By their fruits you will know them.” He was referring to the pseudo-prophets.”

For Nicaragua, a target of Western imperialism for centuries, this speech by President Vladimir Putin has special relevance and importance because it categorically vindicates the same experiences at the Latin American and Caribbean level of Bolivia, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela. Perhaps it is worth sketching the characteristics of the ”obvious Satanism” of the West pointed out by President Putin. The two predominant anti-values among the American and European governments are hypocrisy and sadism from which flow:

• systematic disrespect for the interests and sensibilities of others

• the constant practice of intimidation and harassment

• the systematic use of lies and deception

• psychological warfare with the abandonment of all norms of good faith reporting in all areas of information (media, institutional, academic and non-governmental among others)

• the use of aggression and terrorism in all its forms

Precisely these anti-values have characterized Western policies towards the ALBA-TCP countries, reaching their height in the case of Nicaragua with the diabolical failed coup d’état of 2018. But it is also about endless other crimes in many countries of the world. It is only necessary to remember the innumerable terrorist acts against the brotherly Cuban people and the permanent sabotage of their economy or the constant harassment against the government of Evo Morales that ended in the coup of 2019.

In the case of the sister Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, it is about the endless terrorist sabotage of the country’s energy and oil infrastructure in the context of the sadistic economic and financial offensive of more than a decade. The sister Islamic Republic of Iran has suffered, in addition to illegal unilateral coercive measures, repeated terrorist attacks, including the murder of its most prominent nuclear scientists, crimes openly admitted by Israel with the most complete impunity, and the notorious assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 by the United States.

It is impossible to summarize so much criminality briefly stretching from Haiti to Somalia and the Congo, to Palestine and Yemen, to Afghanistan and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, to mention just a few of the most notorious examples

Through their control of the international financial system, the Western authorities have stolen billions of dollars from the resources of Libya, Iran, Afghanistan, Venezuela and now more than US$300 billion from the Russian Federation. The United States occupies part of the Syrian Arab Republic and has stolen millions of barrels of oil and thousands of tons of wheat from the occupied area with total impunity. In what many writers consider the most significant terrorist attack since September 11th 2001, the United States and its allies destroyed the Nord Stream 1 and a branch of the Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea.

These gas pipelines had been built at a cost of many tens of billions of US dollars. They carried the huge quantities of cheap Russian gas needed to sustain the European economy, and especially the manufacturing economy of Germany. Now Europe is going to depend mainly on extremely expensive liquefied natural gas from the United States that will not even meet the enormous energy demand in European countries. In recent days, a terrorist attack was also carried out on the bridge connecting the rest of Russia with Crimea. All this criminality reflects the malevolent anti-values so tenaciously rooted in Western culture.

Against the sinister anti-values of the West and its regional and local accomplices, genuine values focused on the human person, on their aspirations and needs are promoted in the majority world, which imply:

• always acting in good faith

• sincerely acknowledging the interests and sensitivities of others

• insistence on dialogue for the resolution of disagreements and conflicts

• always telling the truth and demonstrating honesty

• reporting the truth authentically and reliably in every area of human activity and international relations

• always promoting Peace and a culture of Peace

These are precisely the moral and cultural values that Nicaragua, under the leadership of President Daniel  and Vice President Rosario, has developed with their revolutionary strategic vision based on the principles of Christianity, Socialism and Solidarity. Now, President Putin’s speech has ratified in the most categorical way the convictions and values permanently expressed by President Daniel, but also by President Nicolás Maduro, by our Bolivian brother Evo Morales and President Luis Arce, by the president of Cuba, compañero Miguel Díaz Canel, and also by prominent Caribbean leaders such as Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves.

In Nicaragua, we perfectly recognize the satanic nature of the West because we experienced it for ourselves at firsthand in 2018. Now we continue to witness the infinite hypocrisy and sadism of the US and European governments frustrated that did not achieve their goal of destroying Nicaragua. We believe the truths enunciated by President Putin in his speech of September 30th are undeniable because our own experience shows that he is absolutely right.

Now that Nicaragua’s relations with the Russian Federation, with the People’s Republic of China, with the Islamic Republic of Iran are developing to new levels, in addition to maintaining very good relations with many other countries in Asia and Africa, Nicaragua is part of an unstoppable historical trend. The majority world no longer has to keep silent about the monstrous, terrorist, parasitic nature of the West. Certainly, Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela are not keeping quiet.

As our Vice President Rosario has repeatedly commented,

“Hatred, Never Again! Let them learn this, let them know this, let them internalize this. Nothing is built with hatred, because hatred destroys. With Love, you make your way, you create a Future, you create Well-being, you create Joy… Love can do anything, Love conquers everything!”

The vast majority of the population in Nicaragua believes this truth. Next November 5th will provide another massive democratic confirmation of the faith of our people in their revolution for the Common Good of a Christian, Socialist, Solidarity based society.

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This article was originally published on Tortilla con Sal, translated from Spanish.

Stephen Sefton, renowned author and political analyst based in northern Nicaragua, is actively involved in community development work focussing on education and health care. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

Last week PayPal, an online service for making and receiving payments, announced that at PayPal’s “sole discretion” $2,500 would be seized from accounts of those PayPal decided were guilty of spreading misinformation.  “Misinformation” is whatever some speech control office at PayPal doesn’t like or dissent from official narratives.  In other words, PayPal announced a policy of thought control as described in George Orwell’s 1984. See this and this. 

Moreover, $2,500 would be seized for each bit of misinformation, apparently even for errors resulting from being misinformed or from misunderstanding.  If an account holder spreads misinformation twice, $5,000 is seized; ten bits of misinformation costs the account holder $25,000.  Since the definition of misinformation is at PayPal’s sole discretion, it wouldn’t be long before PayPal, faced with missing its quarterly expected profits, would jack up its earnings by seizing people’s accounts.

It is unclear how a person spreads “misinformation” on a payments mechanism.  Does it mean that “spreading misinformation” means donating to an organization that challenges official narratives?  Does it mean that PayPal would have an army of employees watching social media comments of account holders and reading their emails?

The first seizure was in England where the robbed account was that of the Free Speech Union.  It caused an uproar and protests from Members of Parliament and PayPal’s former president, and a couple of days later PayPal said that PayPal’s announcement that it was going to seize money from customers’ accounts for spreading misinformation was itself misinformation. See this. 

Think about this for a moment.  If PayPal can seize $2,500 from your account because some woke freak in PayPal’s Thought Control Police Force finds your opinion “offensive,” so can your bank, your 401k, your IRA, your investment account.  Your credit card company can bill you $2,500 for each disapproved statement and turn your account over to bill collectors when you don’t pay.  Maybe your car and house will be seized.  Once central banks impose digital money on their insouciant populations, people can be robbed at will by every approved party for every imaginable offense.

A Fish Rots From the Head

Where did PayPal get the idea that it can seize the money of people whose statements it disapproves?  Obviously, they got it from the US government.  The US government has seized people’s property because the property “facilitated a crime,” which means that a crime took place on the property by someone, not necessarily the owner (The Tyranny of Good Intentions by Paul Craig Roberts).  The US government seized Venezuela’s gold because it disapproved of Venezuela’s politics.  The US government seized Russia’s central bank reserves when Russia intervened in Ukraine to protect the Russian population of former Russian territory.  US lawmakers want to punish Saudi Arabia for tending to its own interest instead of Washington’s (see this).  The California government wants to steal the medical licenses of doctors who ignored medical protocols designed to serve Big Pharma’s profits and instead saved their patients’ lives (see this).

It should be obvious that Western Civilization no longer exists.  A civilization is defined by its values, such as free speech, and when those values are no longer honored, the civilization no longer exists.  

Think about what the US government has done to Julian Assange.  His decade long incarceration in the absence of charges, trial, and conviction violates all legal principles that comprise our constitutional protections from arbitrary and unjust treatment by government.  It shows how far gone we are that Assange’s illegal and unconstitutional treatment continues year after year and produces no outrage from Congress, media, law schools, bar organizations, courts, or the American population.  The official narrative is that he is a Russian spy and we have to get him at all cost, including the establishment of precedents that destroy our security from arbitrary and ruthless oppression.  The assertion that Assange is a Russian spy is an intentional lie, and for the sake of supporting a lie we are depriving ourselves of our constitutional protections.

The US government’s policy of seizing whoever’s property it wants to seize is spreading worldwide.  If the home of democracy and the rule of law can arbitrarily do as it likes, so can the South African government which says it is considering seizing the farms of white people without compensation (see this). In other words, there is no longer a rule of law. There is a rule of power.

The rule of power is what the American and European peoples are up against, and they seem very slow to realize it.

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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.

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***

Every day I receive articles examining and reexamining Covid variants and subvariants, discussing studies about the effects of the pathogen, reporting on the ever-evolving plans for further ‘vaccinations’ and also the ever mounting evidence for the inefficacy and danger of the existing so-called vaccines and boosters. We are enveloped in a storm of information, from all sides, about what  is in essence a sham.  The pathogen exists, it has evolved, the jabs keep jabbing and all the while Phase I of the plan to digitize and enslave humanity is reaching its culmination – quite successfully, I should add. 

In less than three years the Group – call it what you will – that engineered this phoney pandemic, shut down the entire world within weeks, and pushed a campaign of fear and control that had the best and brightest shilling for masks, lockdown, universal ‘vaccination’ and quarantines – this Cabal has managed to inoculate, at the time of writing, 68.2 percent of the world’s population.

During this period various governments have discovered how easy it has been to control the peoples from whom, ostensibly, they derive their power. Medicine has been subverted and became an ignominous caricature of itself, the legal system has shown thoroughgoing corruption, and free speech and free expression have been punished.  Bank accounts of those who protested governmental restrictions and illogical ‘health’ policies were violated and the creeping dissipation of once-cherished beliefs about fundamental human rights and ideals and the hitherto inviolability of one’s savings and property has been tolerated.

As I expected from the lawless criminals who have imposed their agenda upon us, the mortality and morbidity resulting from their inoculations is now being attributed, by them, to the coronavirus they unleashed, and because of the unprecedented variability in ‘vaccine’ batches, their crimes have been further obscured. Truths about the origin of the pathogen and the effects of the jab have been concealed very cleverly, and while diligent researchers devote time to demonstrate, belatedly, what was evident from the beginning about the fraud, Phase II lies waiting to be unleashed.

I note with wry dismay that doctors who shilled on mainstream media for the Jab without exercising one iota of the critical thinking that should have been in operation from the beginning are now going very public with their mea culpas. But they are far too late, and their regrets do not move me to sympathy after the damage they have inflicted by their negligence.

And although many people have awoken to the hypocrisy, the greater majority remain unthinking and unquestioning still.

What lies in store for us?

China is giving us a glimpse.  I have been appalled to learn from a correspondent in that vast country the conditions under which people lived during the infamous lockdown of Shanghai, China’s most ‘advanced’ city, with a population of 26 million, from April to June of 2022.  The inhabitants there were confined to their apartments, or apartment buildings, or apartment complexes, depending on Covid case proximity, and positive cases were forced to move to Fangcang shelter hospitals.  The delivery of food was unreliable and inadequate. In my informant’s words, “it’s worse than prison because the prisoners still have some time to walk around the prison.”

Nasal and throat PCR tests were administered with alarming frequency – sometimes twice daily –and  even now malls, shops and restaurants require a negative PCR test within 72 hours for entry.  There are PCR testing booths throughout the vast city, apparently to stay. Paper money has virtually disappeared from use, and cash apps via mobile phones have become the norm. Jabs were ‘encouraged’ for everyone, from age 3 upwards – but curiously enough the pressure to be jabbed came from no official government document or decree, but from school teachers, employers, community workers, etc.

During Phase II of the Agenda in the West, the Green New Deal with carbon tracking systems will be introduced, cash will be phased out, and those who have been unfortunate enough to have been jabbed will be getting sick and dying in significant numbers. Digitization, with its utopian promise of convenience, has lulled us into complacent passivity. The wet dream of the Technocratic Elite will be well on its way, unless … unless we reclaim our senses and recognize that a renaissance of the human spirit can reverse these impositions.  Power – human power – flows up from the populace, not down from it’s self-appointed hegemons.

Rousseau famously began his Social Contract with the observation that men are born free and everywhere in chains. The goal of humankind, fettered from within by instinct and from without by institutionally imposed strictures, is to realize the promise of its unalienable right to liberty.

Should one wish for inspiration, the example of the late psychoanalyst Muriel Gardiner comes to mind. After the Anschluss in Austria this brave heroine fought a fight of guile, courage and indefatigability in the underground, as she recounts in her autobiographical memoir, Code Name “Mary”.

I reread it just last week and I can think of no more relevant work to assist those of us seeking to break the chains of deceit, confusion, terror and blunt force epitomized by the Corona War against humanity, a war that is the most encompassing and unique in our brief history.  How we fight will determine the outcome, and fight we will – with dignity, determination, adaptability, intelligence, and without masochism, for we aspire to victory, not martyrdom.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

‘Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion’ chronicles the ‘perfect storm” of safety trial problems, regulatory lapses, and government propaganda that led to mass ‘vaccination’ with a shot that has devastated lives.

A newly released documentary that has been praised as “brilliant” and “outstanding,” chronicles the shocking story of how COVID shots were pushed in the United Kingdom using government propaganda and misleading data from Big Pharma.

While the film, aptly titled, “Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion,” is primarily focused on the U.K., one of its most powerful sub-narratives is relevant worldwide: How pharmaceutical manufacturers sidestepped safety hurdles and misled the public regarding the effectiveness and potential harms of the COVID jabs.

The documentary uses expert testimony to show how the trial data was flawed, and how the “vaccine” manufacturers used “very, very misleading” figures to promote the COVID-19 shot.

Consultant cardiologist Dr. Aseem Malhotra, who was “one of the first to take the Pfizer vaccine,” shared how Pfizer’s promotion of its shot using relative risk reduction, and not absolute risk reduction, led to the impression that the mRNA COVID shot was dramatically more effective at preventing disease than was actually the case.

“The guidance has been for many years that we must always use absolute risk reduction in conversation with patients, not just relative risk reduction alone. Otherwise, it’s considered unethical,” Malhotra explained.

“The accusation is that governments acted on Pfizer’s relative risk figure of 95% efficacy. When the absolute risk was a mere 0.84%. In other words, you’d have to vaccinate 119 people to prevent just one from catching COVID,” said John Bowe, founder of C.O.V.I.D. Charity Organisation for the Vaccine InjureD.

The film went on to highlight the “shocking allegations” of clinical trial research specialist Alexandra Latypova, who studied Pfizer trial documents that were force-released in the U.S. after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. Among her findings were the following:

• “Pfizer skipped major categories of safety testing altogether.
• The toxicity of the COVID-19 vaccines’ mRNA active ingredient was never studied.
• The FDA and Pfizer knew about major toxicities associated with gene therapy class of medicines.
• The CDC, FDA and Pfizer lied about vaccines staying in the injection site.
• My examination of leaked Moderna documents also revealed that vaccine-induced antibody-enhanced disease was identified as a serious risk.”

Worsening the problem of woefully inadequate studies was a disruption of the ordinary regulation process, Bowe explained. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) Chief Executive June Raine had “admitted that the agency had changed from Watchdog to Enabler.”

The film highlighted video footage in which Raine confessed that normal safeguards in the clinical trials for “vaccines” had been discarded for the COVID jabs:  “We tore up the rule book and we allowed companies to immediately start juxtaposing not sequential phases of clinical trials, but overlapping. Beginning the next one before the previous had been finished.”

Furthermore, a huge conflict of interest was posed by the finding that “86% of the funding of the MHRA comes from the drug industry,” according to Malhotra.

The film went on to highlight heart-tugging stories of COVID jab injuries, which in some cases shattered the lives of the victims, making them almost entirely dependent on caregivers for day-to-day living.

MP Sir Christopher Ghope protested in parliament that doctors have proceeded to add insult to injury in these unfortunate cases by consistently dismissing the jabs as a possible causal factor:

Those who were in perfect health before their vaccine have encountered too much ignorance and skepticism when seeking medical help. For some, their GP’s have refused to engage and that has reached the extent that they are made to feel gaslighted, Madam Deputy Speaker, with their physical pain being dismissed or explained away as mental illness. How insulting and humiliating is that?

Another key piece of the documentary was its demonstration of how the UK government scandalously coordinated propaganda to promote the COVID jab. It showed screenshots of actual instructions from a “playbook” of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE), which explicitly instructed, “Use [of the] media to increase [a] sense of personal threat,” to achieve government aims during COVID-19, among other things.

“Immediately,” the UK’s communications regulator, Ofcom, “asked broadcasters to take note of the significant potential harm that could be caused by material misleadingness in relation to the virus or public policy regarding it,” Bowe said.

“They warned of taking appropriate regulatory action on any breaches,” he continued, pointing out that this warning was issued “the same day” the above-mentioned SAGE document “was approved.”

Following this series of events, a BBC reporter was shown publicly stating, “Just to let you in on a journalistic point here. We actually don’t, as a matter of editorial policy, we don’t debate with anti-vaxxers, whether they’re right or wrong. We actually don’t do that.”

Watch “Safe and Effective: A Second Opinion” for free here.

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The Biden Administration is swiftly establishing a narrative that the recent OPEC decision to cut oil production by two million tonnes is a geopolitical “aligning” by Saudi Arabia and Russia. It taps into the Russophobia in the Beltway and deflects attention from the humiliating defeat of President Biden’s personal diplomacy with Saudi Arabia. But it is not without basis, either.

Foreign policy was reputed to be Biden’s forte but is turning out to be his nemesis. An ignominious end is not unlikely; as with Jimmy Carter, West Asia may become the burial ground of his carefully cultivated reputation. 

The magnitude of what is unfolding is simply staggering. Biden realises belatedly that territorial conquests in Ukraine is not the real story but embedded in it  is the economic war and within that is the energy war that has been incubating through the past 8-month period following the Western sanctions against Russia. 

The paradox is, even if Zelensky wins the war, Biden would still have lost the war unless he wins the energy war and goes on to win the economic war as well. 

President Vladimir Putin visualised such an outcome as far back as in 2016 when on the sidelines of the G20 Hangzhou summit, the tantalising idea of OPEC+ crystallised between him and then Saudi Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. 

I wrote at that time that “An understanding between Russia and OPEC holds the potential to completely transform the geopolitical alignments in the Middle East… This shift cannot but impact petrodollar recycling, which has been historically a robust pillar of the western financial system. In strategic terms, too, Washington’s attempt to ‘isolate’ Russia is rendered ineffective.” That was 6 years ago. (See Pay heed to the butterfly effect of Putin-Salman oil deal in Hangzhou, Asia Times, Sept. 7, 2016) 

The debris that surrounds Biden today is a large messy pile. He didn’t realise that the lackadaisical way the Russian offensive in Ukraine rolled on because Putin was concentrating on the economic war and the energy war, the outcome of which will determine the future of the US’ global hegemony, which has been riveted on the dollar being the reserve  currency.

Precisely, back in the early 1970s, Saudi Arabia agreed that the price of oil should be determined in dollars and that oil, the world’s most widely traded commodity, be internationally traded in dollars, which virtually mandated that every country on the planet ought to hold dollar reserves in order to buy oil. The US, course, reciprocally pledged on its part that free access to dollar was guaranteed for all countries. 

However, it turned out to be a phoney assurance in the wake of the rampant weaponisation of dollar and the US’ preposterous moves to grab other countries’ dollar reserves. Unsurprisingly, Putin has been harping on the need for setting up a reserve currency alternative to the dollar, and that finds resonance in the world opinion. 

All indications are that the White House, instead of introspection, is considering new forms of punishment for Saudi Arabia and Russia. While “punishing” Russia is difficult since the US has exhausted all options, Biden probably thinks the US holds Saudi Arabia by its jugular veins: being supplier of weaponry and custodian of massive Saudi reserves and investments and  being the mentor of Saudi elites. 

Brian Deese, the director of the National Economic Council, told reporters Thursday, “I want to be clear on this (OPEC production cut), the president has directed that we have all options on the table and that will continue to be the case.” Earlier on Thursday, Biden himself told reporters that the White House is “looking at alternatives.”  

Neither Biden nor Deese explicitly named what those “alternatives” might be, other than to reiterate their ability to pull from strategic petroleum reserves, lean on energy companies to reduce consumer prices and work with Congress to consider legislative options.

This is a foreign policy black eye for Biden who is facing ridicule over his trip to Saudi Arabia in July, which was excoriated by Democrats and Republicans alike. The US political elites feel that the OPEC decision looks like a targeted Saudi move to weaken Biden and Democrats in advance of the November elections. They are furious.

Potentially, this could have an impact beyond the US-Saudi relationship and could change the security picture in West Asia more than anything since the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Already, the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is slouching toward West Asia with Iran joining it and Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Egypt being granted status as dialogue partners and Turkey intending to seek full membership. In the broader terms of de-dollarisation, the SCO summit in Samarkand drew up a roadmap for the gradual increase in the share of national currencies in mutual settlements, flagging the seriousness of its intention. 

Now, the American defence industry will stiffly resist any attempts to unwind its business in Saudi Arabia, and it has extremely close ties to Biden administration. But Washington may work for some sort of regime change in Riyadh. Prince Salman has said he “does not care” if Biden misunderstands him. There is little affection between them. The point is, this is not a mere hiccup. 

A colour revolution is unrealistic but a palace coup to block MBS from succession is a possibility. But it is risky as a coup attempt will probably fail. Even if it succeeds, will a successor regime have legitimacy regionally and be able to establish control? A chaotic  situation like in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq may ensue. The consequences can be disastrous for the stability of the oil market and rocky for the world economy. It could lead to the upsurge of Islamist groups. 

What rankles Biden is that his last trump card to reduce Russia’s high oil revenues without depressing supply through a “price cap” is in reality a conundrum that has become a lot more difficult now. Hence Biden’s rage that the Saudis have “sided” with Russia, which will now not only benefit from higher oil prices ahead of a price cap, but if Russia indeed is ever called upon to sell oil at a discount, at least the reduction will start at a higher price level!

As FT put it, “The kingdom and its allies in the Gulf are unlikely to turn their back on Russia. The Gulf states have not spoken out against the Ukraine invasion, and bringing Russia closer to the OPEC fold has been a long-term aim.”

The heart of the matter is that what Biden has done to Russia by grabbing that country’s reserves cannot but unnerve the Saudis and other Gulf regimes. They see the latest “price cap” project against Russia as setting a dangerous precedent that one day can lead to US attempts to control oil prices and even a direct attack on the oil industry.    

Suffice to say, Russia cannot be cornered through the next 3-4 year period at least when there is such a tight-rope walk ahead. The OPEC+ decision is poised to benefit Russia in multiple ways. It will buoy Russia’s oil revenue heading into winter, when demand for Russian energy from Europe typically rises — in essence, help Russia maintain market share even if its production in absolute terms drops off.

Ironically, Moscow won’t have to reduce a single barrel of output, as it is already producing well below the agreed OPEC target, while benefiting from higher oil price. Actually, the 2 million barrel cut will be achieved through reduction mainly by OPEC Gulf producers — shouldered by Saudi Arabia (-520,000 bpd), Iraq (-220,000 bpd), the UAE (-150,000 bpd) and Kuwait (-135,000 bpd).

Isn’t it amazing that Russian oil companies will benefit from higher prices while at the same time keeping output steady? And this is when the Central Bank in Moscow is likely to have more than recovered the $300 billion of reserves already that were frozen by the Western central banks at the beginning of the Ukraine war.

In reality, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states involved with OPEC+ have effectively sided with the Kremlin, which enables Russia to refill its coffers and to limit the impact of western sanctions. The implications are far-reaching — from the Ukraine war to the future relationship between the US and Saudi Arabia, and of course the emergent multipolar world order. 

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Last week the New York Times ran a shocking article claiming that the US intelligence community believes the Ukrainian government to be responsible for the August attack that killed Darya Dugina, the daughter of a prominent Russian philosopher.

Surely the established narrative that Ukraine is a model western democracy standing strong for our shared values against an aggressive Russian invader is damaged with reporting that Kiev conducted an al-Qaeda style attack on an innocent civilian inside Russia. The murder of Dugina was a textbook definition of terrorism, which is, “the use of violence or the threat of violence, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political goals.”

Just over a month later, the Nordstream pipelines were blown up, seemingly ending at least in the near term the possibility that Germany may find a way to save its economy by mending fences with its main energy supplier. A leading Polish politician thanked the US for doing the job.

Then over the weekend, the bridge connecting mainland Russia to Crimea was bombed, killing at least six civilians and leaving part of the bridge under water. Traffic was restored hours after the attack, but Russian President Vladimir Putin placed the blame on Ukraine’s intelligence service. We all know that Ukraine relies on its US masters, so we can assume the US provided the intelligence allowing the targeting of the bridge.

There is a pattern here. More and more brazen attacks are being launched against Russia and Washington is doing little to hide US fingerprints. Why?

The Biden Administration seems to be moving us closer to nuclear war over Ukraine and Biden himself seems to know it. Last week he said, Putin “is not joking when he talks about potential use of tactical nuclear weapons or biological or chemical weapons…” For the “first time since the Cuban missile crisis, we have a direct threat of the use [of nuclear weapons] if in fact things continue down the path they are going.”

So the question is if he knows that his proxy war against Russia is moving us closer to the unthinkable – nuclear annihilation – why does his Administration persist in crossing red line after red line? Apparently, Biden’s “experts” believe that Putin is bluffing and will do nothing about the Dugina assassination, the Nordstream pipeline sabotage, and the Kerch Bridge attack.

But what if they’re wrong?

Normally foreign policy action should be weighed on a cost/benefit basis. Will adopting one particular policy benefit the United States more than the risks involved? In this case there is absolutely nothing on the positive side of the ledger. Will the security and prosperity of the United States benefit more from regime change in Russia than it would suffer should nuclear war break out?

It doesn’t seem all that hard. No.

So what’s going on here? Why does the US Administration – with the support of most Republicans in Congress – continue to send tens of billions of dollars in military aid and move us toward nuclear war over a conflict that has nothing at all to do with the United States?

The time to end US participation in this war is yesterday. And if it takes millions of Americans in the streets peacefully protesting while demanding that their representatives stop this madness, then bring it on. Tomorrow may be too late.

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by Michel Chossudovsky

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Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
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Dear Dr. Barnett: 

On September 19, 2022, the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) issued a short statement expressing grave concern about worsening conditions in Haiti and pressing for “urgent and immediate attention from the international community.” In light of CARICOM’s more direct engagement in Haitian affairs in recent months, we call on your organization to respect Haitian sovereignty and to support the Haitian masses in their stand against the ongoing occupation of their country by foreign powers.

Despite the erroneous representation of the current protests in Haiti as simply “gang violence,” the latest demonstrations are a direct result of two factors. First, they are a response to the everyday economic misery caused by rising inflation, especially through the staggering increase in the price of fuel. Second, they are part of a long history of demands for the end of foreign meddling in Haitian affairs, especially via the installation and maintenance of an unelected and illegitimate government by the Core Group, of which the United Nations is a part. 

We applaud your concern for Haiti. We have also noted the support your member nations have given to Caribbean and Latin American self-determination. For this reason, we would like to remind CARICOM members that the U.S., Canada, France, and other Western countries, along with the Core Group, and UN missions such as MINUSTAH, are directly responsible for the current conditions in Haiti. Attempting to solve the current crisis in Haiti through a dialogue between unelected and illegitimate Haitian “stakeholders” will not be successful. It will only serve the needs of non-Haitians.

We share with you the words of a coalition of Haitian grassroots organizations explaining the main reason for the currency protests:

“[T]hese popular protests are part of a struggle for a Haiti free from suffocating foreign interference, gangsterization, this extreme manufactured misery and an anti-national, illegitimate, criminal political regime established by the Core Group of which the UN is a member.”

A brief historical contextualization is in order:

The UN Mission to Haiti Is a Foreign Occupation Repressing Haitian Sovereignty

As you surely are aware, the United Nations became an occupying force in Haiti after the U.S.-France-Canada-led 2004 coup d’état against Haiti’s democratically elected president, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. We must note that, in addition to Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, only Jamaica’s P.J. Patterson, in his capacity as leader of CARICOM, spoke up against the coup.

Following the coup, the UN took over from U.S. forces. Under Chapter VII of the UN charter, the UN established the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti (or MINUSTAH), for the tasks of military occupation under the guise of establishing peace and security. The Workers Party-led government of Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva then betrayed the Haitian people and undercut Haiti’s sovereignty by agreeing to lead the military wing of the UN mission in Haiti.

The history of the UN in Haiti has been a history of violence. An expensive, multi-billion dollar operation, MINUSTAH had between 6,000 and 12,000 military troops and police stationed in Haiti alongside thousands of civilian personnel. Like the first U.S. occupation (1915-1934), the UN occupation under MINUSTAH was marked by its brutality and racism towards the Haitian people. Civilians were brutally attacked and assassinated. “Peace-keepers” committed sexual crimes. UN soldiers dumped human waste into rivers used for drinking water, unleashing a cholera epidemic that killed between 10,000 and 50,000 people. The UN has still not been held accountable for this needless death.

The Core Group — an international coalition of self-proclaimed “friends” of Haiti — came together during the MINUSTAH occupation. Non-Black, un-elected, and anti-democratic, the goal of the Core Group is to oversee Haiti’s governance. Meanwhile, as with the first occupation, the United States and MINUSTAH trained and militarized Haiti’s police and security forces, often rehabilitating and reintegrating rogue members. The United States, in collusion with MINUSTAH and the Core Group, also over-rode Haitian democracy, installing both neo-Duvalierist Michel Martelly and his Haitian Tèt Kale Party (PHTK), alongside Martelly’s protege and successor, the late Jovenel Moïse.

It is claimed that this occupation officially ended in 2017 with the dissolution of MINUSTAH. But the UN has remained in Haiti under a new acronym: BINUH, the United Nations Integrated Office in Haiti. BINUH has had an outsized role in Haitian internal political affairs. For example, soon after Moïse was assassinated, its representative, Helen La Lime, asserted that Claude Joseph would be installed as Haiti’s leader. Later, the “Core Group” switched gears and demanded that Ariel Henry should be president. And this is exactly what happened when a “new” Haitian government was announced on July 20, 2021, with Henry as leader. This, without any say from the Haitian people, without any pretense of a democratic process, without any concern for Haiti’s sovereignty.

UN Occupation Increases Violence and Instability

Haiti currently has an unelected, unpopular, unaccountable, and illegitimate prime minister, propped up by the United States and the western nations. Meanwhile, Haiti’s security situation has deteriorated considerably as groups, armed by the transnational Haitian and Levantine elite, continue their attacks on the Haitian people. We must emphasize that, in the eighteen years that the United Nations mission has participated in the occupation of Haiti, the Haitian people have only experienced violence and political instability. You must recognize the foreign occupation of Haiti has left it in a state of disarray and violence.

The consequences of Foreign Meddling and Occupation

We must remind you that this is the sixth week of protests of the Haitian people against both the U.S.-backed puppet government of Ariel Henry and the continued occupation and meddling of the Core Group and the UN itself. With all the talk of Haitian “lawlessness,” one would never know that the other main reason for the protests was the illegitimate government’s decision, under IMF austerity dictates, to cut fuel subsidies, amid spiraling inflation and economic insecurity. Hear the people’s words:

“This new decision, taken to the detriment of the interests of the people, has aroused his anger and also intensified a protest movement already initiated, whose objective is the recovery of our sovereignty, the recovery of Haiti’s destiny by Haitians, the establishment by Haitians of a legitimate government, capable of defending the interests of the people and meeting the various challenges of the moment.”

No to Occupation. Yes to Self-Determination.

The speed at which contemporary events are moving in Haiti makes it difficult for those outside the Caribbean republic to understand its internal political dynamics. Because of this, it is easy to resort to historical cliches and short-hand analyses in an attempt to neatly package and summarize or flatten what are oftentimes complex, structural, and historical formations whose origins are as much rooted outside than inside the country. Thus to outsiders Haiti is in the middle of a crisis, a never-ending crisis marked by lawlessness and violence, by the failure of government and the collapse of the state, and by a savage populism paired with well-armed, predatory gangs.

We believe this representation of Haiti is fueled by an ancient racism premised on the notion that Haitian people (and African people more generally) are incapable of self-government, and this notion, in turn, nurtures the rationalization for the strengthening of the current mandate for the continued international occupation of Haiti.

We ask that you think with all seriousness about the relationships among nations in our region. All nations should be able to chart their own destiny, not just some. You must know the history of the proud Haitian people whose Revolution changed the course of world history and material aid helped the liberation of the Americas from colonial rule and enslavement. Despite the continued affront to its self-determination, the people of Haiti will continue to fight for its liberation.

The Black Alliance for Peace, in alignment with the wishes of the Haitian masses and their supporters, absolutely stands against any foreign armed intervention in Haiti, and continues to demand an end to the unending meddling in Haitian affairs by the United States and Western powers. We call for the dissolution of the imperialist Core Group, an end to Western support for the unelected and unaccountable puppet government of Ariel Henry, and for the respect of Haitian sovereignty.

Signed,

The Black Alliance for Peace, Haiti/Americas Team

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Featured image: Since August 22, Haitians have been mobilizing against poverty, inflation, shortage of fuel, gang-related violence, and the devaluation of the national currency. (Photo: Radyo Rezistans/Facebook via Peoples Dispatch)

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Aseem Malhotra, MBChB, a prominent London-based cardiologist and author, has gained considerable attention after detailing his changing thoughts on the legitimacy and necessity of COVID-19 vaccines. Malhotra wrote two editorials about his changing perspective in the Journal of Insulin Resistance, where he works as an editor.[1,2] He has also been discussing his stance with the media, appearing in a press conference hosted by the World Council for Health and regularly discussing the topic in interviews and on social media.

Malhotra was once a vocal supporter of COVID-19 vaccines, even appearing on television to promote the benefits of vaccination. Now, however, he is questioning if COVID-19 vaccines have done more harm than good for the general public and asking that they stop being administered altogether.

“There is a strong scientific, ethical and moral case to be made that the current COVID vaccine administration must stop until all the raw data has been subjected to fully independent scrutiny,” Malhotra said in his second of two editorials. “Looking to the future the medical and public health professions must recognize these failings and eschew the tainted dollar of the medical-industrial complex. It will take a lot of time and effort to rebuild trust in these institutions, but the health—of both humanity and the medical profession—depends on it.”

Why the change of heart on COVID vaccines?

Malhotra wrote that he happily received both doses of a COVID-19 vaccine in early 2021. In fact, he said, he was “surprised and concerned” at the time about the number of “vaccine-hesitant patients” he encountered on a regular basis.

When his father tragically died after suffering a cardiac arrest in July 2021, however, he says he started to reconsider his perspective. Malhotra’s father, Prof. Kailash Chand, OBE, was a celebrated figure throughout England and beyond—and, yes, he was vaccinated. His death confused Malhotra, both because his father had been taking great care of his body and because “there was no evidence of an actual heart attack.” Malhotra ultimately concluded that there is a “real possibility” the COVID-19 vaccines had played a significant role.

Malhotra explained that this is when he started thinking more and more about the vaccines. After reviewing the data in great detail in his editorials, he shared his conclusion that the numbers suggest there is “a greater risk of serious adverse events from the vaccines than being hospitalized from COVID-19.”

“Pharmacovigilance systems and real-world safety data, coupled with plausible mechanisms of harm, are deeply concerning, especially in relation to cardiovascular safety,” he added.

Scientists and doctors respond to claims the COVID vaccine causes more harm than good

The medical and scientific communities have responded to these editorials rather quickly. Both columns were repeatedly shared once they went live, and groups agreeing with Malhotra and disagreeing with Malhotra have both been quite active.

Health Feedback, a group focused on “sorting fact from fiction in health and medical media coverage,” provided a thorough rebuttal of the editorials on its website.

“Scientific evidence from clinical trials and safety monitoring indicate that the COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the group wrote. “While severe reactions to the vaccine can occur, they are rare, and the most common side effects of vaccination are mild and go away within a few days. All available evidence indicates that being vaccinated is safer than not being vaccinated.”

The Health Feedback response highlighted the fact that multiple organizations supporting Malhotra have been associated with spreading COVID-19 misinformation in the past. This includes the World Council for Health, the host of the previously mentioned press conference, and Health Advisory and Recovery Team.

A recent blog post from Science-Based Medicine, a website owned and operated by the New England Skeptical Society, focused on the second of Malhotra’s two editorials. David Gorski, MD, PhD, a professor with Wayne State University, wrote the blog post, describing it as “projection, pure and simple.”

“He’s accusing conventional medical authorities, big pharma, and social media companies of spreading medical misinformation about COVID-19 vaccines by using the very techniques of misinformation that he claims to decry, such as cherry-picked studies and conspiracy theories, to do it,” Gorski wrote.

Gorski also shared his doubts about the validity of the Journal of Insulin Resistance, saying the publication does not appear to publish many articles—and when it does, it appears to primarily publish the thoughts of its own editors. Both of these facts, he said, “raise red flags for this being an ideology journal disguised as a medical journal.”

Many have also fully agreed with Malhotra, sharing his story and commenting on it online. The Epoch Times and other outlets already known for being vocal against COVID-19 vaccines, for example, have highlighted the importance of his story. Also, one quick video of Malhotra from Sept. 27 has already hit 1.1 million views on Twitter.

The most important announcement of my life and career so far. Please watch, listen and share with family and friends. I reached these sobering conclusions reluctantly. To read the free full open access peer reviewed medical journal articles visit https://t.co/9IMbUlAAQ9 pic.twitter.com/sYxJJjeh9S

— Dr Aseem Malhotra (@DrAseemMalhotra) September 28, 2022

Cardiovascular Business also reached out to both the American College of Cardiology (ACC) and European Society of Cardiology (ESC) about the content of Malhotra’s editorials. The ACC has repeatedly supported COVID-19 vaccines, emphasizing that the small risks of these vaccines are not nearly as severe as the risks of a COVID-19 infection.

Instead of a full comment, the ACC highlighted its previous publications on this topic, specifically a 2022 document from its Solution Set Oversight Committee.[3] The ESC has not yet responded.

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Sources

1. Aseem Malhotra. Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine – Part 1. Journal of Insulin Resistance, Sept. 26, 2022.

2. Aseem Malhotra. Curing the pandemic of misinformation on COVID-19 mRNA vaccines through real evidence-based medicine – Part 2. Journal of Insulin Resistance, Sept. 26, 2022.

3. Ty J. Gluckman, Nicole M. Bhave, Larry A. Allen, et al. 2022 ACC Expert Consensus Decision Pathway on Cardiovascular Sequelae of COVID-19 in Adults: Myocarditis and Other Myocardial Involvement, Post-Acute Sequelae of SARS-CoV-2 Infection, and Return to Play: A Report of the American College of Cardiology Solution Set Oversight Committee. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2022 May, 79 (17) 1717–1756.

Featured image: Dr. Aseem Malhotra. (Courtesy of Dr. Aseem Malhotra)

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***

The terror attack on Krymskiy Most – the Crimea Bridge – was the proverbial straw that broke the Eurasian camel’s back.

Russian President Vladimir Putin neatly summarized it:

“This is a terrorist attack aimed at destroying the critical civilian infrastructure of the Russian Federation.”

The head of the Russian Investigative Committee, Alexander Bastrykin, confirmed face-to-face with Putin that Terror on the Bridge was carried out by the SBU – Ukrainian special services.

Bastrykin told Putin,

“we have already established the route of the truck, where the explosion took place. Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, North Ossetia, Krasnodar… The carriers have been identified. With the help of operatives of the FSB, we managed to identify suspects.”

Russian intel leaked crucial info to military correspondent Alexander Kots. The cargo was ordered by a Ukrainian citizen: explosives packed in 22 pallets, in rolls of film under plastic wrap, were shipped from Bulgaria to the Georgian port of Poti. Afterwards, the cargo was loaded onto a truck with foreign license plates and proceeded overland to Armenia.

Clearance at the Armenia-Russia border was smooth – according to the rules of the Eurasian Customs Union (both Russia and Armenia are members of the Eurasian Economic Union, or EAEU). The cargo evidently avoided detection through X-rays. This route is standard for truckers traveling to Russia.

The truck then re-entered Georgia and crossed the border into Russia again, but this time through the Upper Lars checkpoint. That’s the same one used by thousands of Russians fleeing partial mobilization. The truck ended up in Armavir, where the cargo was transferred to another truck, under the responsibility of Mahir Yusubov: the one that entered the Crimean bridge coming from the Russian mainland.

Very important: the transport from Armavir to a delivery address in Simferopol should have happened on October 6-7: that is, timed to the birthday of President Putin on Friday the 7th. For some unexplained reason, that was postponed for a day.

The driver of the first truck is already testifying. Yusubov, the driver of the second truck – which exploded on the bridge – was “blind:” he had no idea what he was carrying, and is dead.

At this stage, two conclusions are paramount.

First: This was not a standard ISIS-style truck suicide bombing – the preferred interpretation in the aftermath of the terror attack.

Second: The packaging most certainly took place in Bulgaria. That, as Russian intel has cryptically implied, indicates the involvement of “foreign special services.”

‘A mirage of cause and effect’

What has been revealed in public by Russian intelligence tells only part of the story. An incandescent assessment received by The Cradle from another Russian intel source is way more intriguing.

At least 450 kg of explosives were employed in the blast. Not on the truck, but mounted inside the Crimea Bridge span itself. The white truck was just a decoy by the terrorists “to create a mirage of cause and effect.” When the truck reached the point on the bridge where the explosives were mounted, the explosion took place.

According to the source, railroad employees told investigators that there was a form of electronic hijacking; the terror operators took control of the railway so the train carrying fuel received a command to stop because of a false signal that the road ahead was busy.

Bombs mounted on the bridge spans were a working hypothesis largely debated in Russian military channels over the weekend, as well as the use of underwater drones.

In the end, the quite sophisticated plan could not follow the necessarily rigid timing. There was no alignment by the millimeter between the mounted explosive charges, the passing truck and the fuel train stopped in its tracks. Damage was limited, and easily contained. The charges/truck combo exploded on the outer right lane of the road. Damage was only on two sections of the outer lane, and not much on the railway bridge.

In the end, Terror on the Bridge yielded a short, Pyrrhic PR victory – duly celebrated across the collective West – with negligible practical success: transfer of Russian military cargo by railway resumed in roughly 14 hours.

And that brings us to the key information in the Russian intel source assessment: the whodunnit.

It was a plan by the British MI6, says this source, without offering further details. Which, he elaborates, Russian intel, for a number of reasons, is shadow-playing as “foreign special services.”

It’s quite telling that the Americans rushed to establish plausible deniability. The proverbial “Ukrainian government official” told CIA mouthpiece The Washington Post that the SBU did it. That was a straight confirmation of an Ukrainska Pravda report based on an “unidentified law enforcement official.”

The perfect red line trifecta

Already, over the weekend, it was clear the ultimate red line had been crossed. Russian public opinion and media were furious. For all its status as an engineering marvel, Krymsky Most represents not only critical infrastructure; it is the visual symbol of the return of Crimea to Russia.

Moreover, this was a personal terror attack on Putin and the whole Russian security apparatus.

So we had, in sequence, Ukrainian terrorists blowing up Darya Dugina’s car in a Moscow suburb (they admitted it); US/UK special forces (partially) blowing Nord Stream and Nord Stream 2 (they admitted and then retracted); and the terror attack on Krymsky Most  (once again: admitted then retracted).

Not to mention the shelling of Russian villages in Belgorod, NATO supplying long-range weapons to Kiev, and the routine execution of Russian soldiers.

Darya Dugina, Nord Streams and Crimea Bridge make it an Act of War trifecta. So this time the response was inevitable – not even waiting for the first meeting since February of the Russian Security Council scheduled for the afternoon of 10 October.

Moscow launched the first wave of a Russian Shock’n Awe without even changing the status of the Special Military Operation (SMO) to Counter-Terrorist Operation (CTO), with all its serious military/legal implications.

After all, even before the UN Security Council meeting, Russian public opinion was massively behind taking the gloves off. Putin had not even scheduled bilateral meetings with any of the members. Diplomatic sources hint that the decision to let the hammer come down had already been taken over the weekend.

Shock’n Awe did not wait for the announcement of an ultimatum to Ukraine (that may come in a few days); an official declaration of war (not necessary); or even announcing which ‘”decision-making centers” in Ukraine would be hit.

The lightning strike de facto metastasizing of SMO into CTO means that the regime in Kiev and those supporting it are now considered as legitimate targets, just like ISIS and Jabhat al-Nusra during the Anti-Terror Operation (ATO) in Syria.

And the change of status – now this is a real war on terror – means that terminating all strands of terrorism, physical, cultural, ideological, are the absolute priority, and not the safety of Ukrainian civilians. During the SMO, safety of civilians was paramount. Even the UN has been forced to admit that in over seven months of SMO the number of civilian casualties in Ukraine has been relatively low.

Enter ‘Commander Armageddon’

The face of Russian Shock’n Awe is Russian Commander of the Aerospace Forces, Army General Sergey Surovikin: the new commander-in-chief of the now totally centralized SMO/CTO.

Image: Army General Sergey Surovikin by Mil.ru, licensed under CC BY 4.0

Questions were being asked non-stop: why didn’t Moscow take this decision way back in February? Well, better late than never. Kiev is now learning they messed with the wrong guy. Surovikin is widely respected – and feared: his nickname is “General Armageddon.” Others call him “Cannibal.” Legendary Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov – also a colonel general in the Russian military – lavishly praises Surovikin as “a real general and warrior, an experienced, strong-willed and far-sighted commander.”

Surovikin has been commander of the Russian Aerospace Forces since 2017; was awarded the title of Hero of Russia for his no-nonsense leadership of the military operation in Syria; and had on the ground experience in Chechnya in the 1990s.

Surovikin is Dr. Shock’n Awe with full carte blanche. That even rendered idle speculations that Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff Valery Gerasimov were removed or forced to resign, as speculated by the Wagner group Telegram channel Grey Zone.

It is still possible that Shoigu – widely criticized for recent Russian military setbacks – could be eventually replaced by Tula Governor Alexei Dyumin, and Gerasimov by the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces, Lieutenant General Alexander Matovnikov.

That’s almost irrevelant: all eyes are on Surovikin.

MI6 does have some well-placed moles in Moscow, relatively speaking. The Brits had warned Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the General Staff that the Russians would be launching a “warning strike” this Monday.

What happened was no “warning strike,” but a massive offensive of over 100 cruise missiles launched “from the air, sea and land,” as Putin noted, against Ukrainian “energy, military command and communications facilities.”

MI6 also noted “the next step” will be the complete destruction of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure. That’s not a “next step:” it’s already happening. Power supply is completely gone in five regions, including Lviv and Kharkov, and there are serious interruptions in other five, including Kiev.

Over 60 percent of Ukrainian power grids are already knocked out. Over 75 percent of internet traffic is gone. Elon Musk’s Starlink netcentric warfare has been “disconnected” by the Ministry of Defense.

Shock’n Awe will likely progress in three stages.

First: Overload of the Ukrainian air defense system (already on).

Second: Plunging Ukraine into the Dark Ages (already in progress).

Third: Destruction of all major military installations (the next wave).

Ukraine is about to embrace nearly total darkness in the next few days. Politically, that opens a completely new ball game. Considering Moscow’s trademark “strategic ambiguity,” this could be a sort of Desert Storm remixed (massive air strikes preparing a ground offensive); or, more likely, an ‘incentive’ to force NATO to negotiate; or just a relentless, systematic missile offensive mixed with Electronic Warfare (EW) to shatter for good Kiev’s capacity to wage war.

Or it could be all of the above.

How a humiliated western Empire can possibly raise the stakes now, short of going nuclear, remains a key question.

Moscow has shown admirable restraint for too long. No one should ever forget that in the real Great Game – how to coordinate the emergence of the multipolar world – Ukraine is just a mere sideshow. But now the sideshow runners better run for cover, because General Armageddon is on the loose.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

Russia Damages EU “Mission” in Kyiv

By Kurt Nimmo, October 11, 2022

In retaliation for the terrorist attack against the Kerch Strait bridge, Russia has reportedly damaged an EU “mission” said to help organize security in Ukraine.

Mitigating Africa’s Food Crisis, Increased Russian Grain Exports: Can African Leaders Prioritize and Address Food Security Challenges?

By Kester Kenn Klomegah, October 11, 2022

Global food security, especially in Africa, has been in the media publications these past few months. While a few outspoken African leaders shifted blames to Russia-Ukraine crisis, others focus on spending state budget to import food to calm rising discontent among the population.

Is the CIA Supporting Another Color Revolution in Iran—Like the One that Installed the Shah in 1953?

By Jeremy Kuzmarov, October 11, 2022

Amini died allegedly of a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke after, eyewitnesses claimed, she was beaten while incarcerated. The Iranian government, however, released a video which appeared to show that Amini merely got in a dispute with a police officer about the way she wore the hijab and that the police officer walked away.

Roadblocks in the Inter-Korean Railway Projects: The Armistice and the UN Command between Two Koreas

By Lee Je-hun, October 10, 2022

Even South Korea’s President Roh Moo-Hyun had to obtain permission from the United Nations Command (UNC) in order to cross the dividing line between the two Koreas on his way to the summit with his counterpart Kim Jong-Il in Pyongyang. The UNC has used its authority to grant permission to cross the dividing line as a wedge in the inter-Korean Railway Projects, and the United States government, which commands the UNC, has been engaged in a tug-of-war to preserve the armistice regime and the Cold War order in Northeast Asia.

The Treason of the Intellectuals

By Emanuel Pastreich, October 10, 2022

The opportunity that I had to study at Yale College as an undergraduate and later at Harvard University for my Ph.D., the chance I had to wander among the gothic buildings, to imbibe confidence and purpose, and to learn to think, learn how things work, from distinguished scholars, was a point of stubborn pride for me when I started my career as a professor, but that legacy had devolved into a nightmare, into a travesty.

Ukraine and Nuclear War: Putin Isn’t Bluffing!

By Jerry Kroth, October 10, 2022

Here is a distinctly minority opinion about the Ukraine war: Some people, more than a few, don’t support anything the military-industrial complex is promoting, especially since Vietnam, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Libya, and whatever new hegemonic expeditions are planned.

Dr. Mary O’Conner Faces Prison After Refusing to Turn Over Private Medical Records of COVID ‘Vaccine Exempt’ Patients

By Amy Mek, October 10, 2022

Now is the time for you to speak with your doctors and know whether they are willing to protect your medical files or will they hand over your most private and confidential details to the state.

Stepan Bandera and Neo-Nazism: Why US-NATO Needs “Banderistan Ukraine”?

By Dr. Vladislav B. Sotirović, October 10, 2022

At the first glance, an ordinary citizen of the globe can think that probably it must be that everything that is now happening in Banderistan Ukraine and around, including and reconstruction of international relations and reformulation of the global order in politics, is just a big misunderstanding.

Who Deserves a Nobel Peace Prize in Ukraine?

By Medea Benjamin and Ariel Gold, October 10, 2022

In what was described as a harsh rebuke of Russia, the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the Ukrainian human rights organization Center for Civil Liberties, along with Belarusian human rights advocate Ales Bialiatski and the Russian human rights organization Memorial. While at first glance, the Ukrainian Center for Civil Liberties might sound like a group that is well deserving of this honor, Ukrainian peace leader Yurii Sheliazhenko wrote a stinging critique.

Watch What They Do Instead of What They Say

By Michael Snyder, October 10, 2022

Over and over again, we are being told that there is nothing to be concerned about and that our leaders have everything under control.  But then we keep getting more signs that more war is coming.  In fact, it appears that preparations are being made for scenarios that would have once been unthinkable.

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***

On the latest slimed path Julian Assange has been made to trod, a few things have presented themselves.  The rusty sword of Damocles may be suspended above him (he, we are informed, has contracted COVID-19), but there are those, in the meantime, willing to defend him with decent conviction against his dispatch to the United States, where he is certain to perish.

From the side of decent conviction and steadfastness came the October 8 protests across a number of cities, attended by thousands.  A human chain numbering some 7,000 persons formed around the Houses of Parliament in London demanding the release of the WikiLeaks publisher from Belmarsh Prison.

Then there was the Boadicea-like performance that his wife is becoming famous for.  On the ideologically dry-cured medium of Piers Morgan’s Uncensored Program, a taster of that vengeance US justice is famous for could be gathered from an encounter between Stella, and the trumpeting warmonger and failed Trump advisor, John Bolton.

Bolton, it should be remembered, was the only evidence that President George W. Bush, dyslexic and reformed drunk, had a mild sense of humour. Sending that man to the United Nations as US ambassador was the equivalent of appointing a randy, murderous fox to guard unsuspecting chickens.  That appointment had it all: resentment, masochism and disgust for that concept known as international law.

There is much to say that former President Donald Trump, for all his insufferable foibles, insoluble perversions and naggingly vicious pettiness, never embarked on the eschatological murderous destiny that Bolton believes the US is destined for.  The messianic types always find some higher meaning for death and sacrifice, as long they are not the ones doing it.  The difference between the suicide bomber and the deskbound scribbler keen on killing is one of practice, not conviction. Both believe that there is a higher meaning written in blood, inscribed in the babble of post-life relevance and invisible virtue.  For us humble folk, life is good enough, and should be preserved.

According to Bolton, the 175 years Assange might receive for exposing the abundant dirty laundry known as US foreign policy and imperial violence was hardly sufficient.  He would, naturally, get a “fair trial” in the United States (never explain the ideologically self-evident), though absolute fairness was dependent on him receiving 176 years.  “Well, I think that’s a small amount of the sentence he deserves.”  With such a fabulous nose for justice, Bolton shares common ground with the commissars and gauleiters.

Unsurprisingly, Stella Assange had a view markedly at odds with such an assessment.  Her husband was being pursued,

“For receiving information from a source and publishing it, and it was in the public interest.  It was US war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he revealed tens of thousands of civilian deaths that had not been acknowledged before.”

Morgan, an incarnation of that guttersnipe, sewerage swilling demon virtually unsurpassed in modern British media, tried to sound cerebral and moral at points.  Did WikiLeaks redact the material from Chelsea Manning, one of the key sources for the disclosures?  Or had WikiLeaks been drunkenly cavalier in exposing all and sundry to the world?  Best ignore reading trial transcripts, Piers.  Knowledge drawn upon the cobblestones of truth is bound to be rough.

To those familiar with WikiLeaks, its practices and, indeed, the trial at the Old Bailey regarding Assange’s extradition, such claims could only be seen as decidedly weak. Stella explained that WikiLeaks did “redact all of those documents that Manning gave to WikiLeaks, and in fact it was in cooperation with those newspapers.”  The trial itself made it clear that the secret spiller, as Assange has often been accused of being, was none other than the Guardian itself, whose journalists had left, with tantalising promise, the decryption key in their book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s war on secrecy.

Stella, aflame with purpose and aware of her brief, also reminded the audience who she was talking to.  Bolton, she shot with acid fury, “sought to undermine the international legal system, sought to ensure that the US is not under the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction.”

Then came the well fashioned grenade, pin removed.

“And if it was, Mr Bolton might in fact be prosecuted under the ICC [International Criminal Court].  He was one of the chief cheerleaders of the Iraq war, which Julian then exposed through these leaks, so he has a conflict of interest.”

There have been other befouling episodes that can only be of concern to Assange and his family.  It has now come to light that security officials, in Australia’s Parliament, were under “significant pressure” to seize books from the Assange delegation during their August visit to Canberra.  A letter to Greens Senator David Shoebridge by the Department of Parliamentary Services explained that it was all linked to a protest.

The nature of the bureaucrat’s tone is to mock the valuable and diminish the relevant.   In the considered view of the Secretary of the Department of Parliamentary Services, Rob Stefanic,

“I appreciate that Assange’s family may not have viewed the screening procedure in a positive light, but having reviewed the processes followed by security staff, I am confident they performed their duties with respect and due diligence.”

Such reasoning would suffice for most police states, where bureaucrats sup at the same table with the security wonks.

The Department, it transpired, had tripped up.  The claim about the protest was inaccurate, as neither Assange’s father, John Shipton, nor his brother, Gabriel, had attended any protests.

“It is apparent that there are factual inaccuracies in the letter to Senator Shoebridge and the secretary will be writing to correct the record.”

The world has turned full circle.  Those opening the cabinet of secrets are considered the nasty tittle-tattles, who simply revealed the fact that daddy fiddled and mummy drank.  In this world, homicidally excited types like Bolton revel in expressing unsavoury views in the open; those who expose the bankruptcy of such views are to be punished.  We await the next grotesquery with resigned disgust.

*

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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]

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate This Article button below the author’s name.

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***

In retaliation for the terrorist attack against the Kerch Strait bridge, Russia has reportedly damaged an EU “mission” said to help organize security in Ukraine.

The EU Mission to Kyiv's windows were blasted out in Russia's missile strikes. The mission is right next to the Klitschko bridge. Curious to see how this is received in Brussels. @vonderleyen @JosepBorrellF pic.twitter.com/RUo6fT2t5P

— Michael Weiss 🌻🇺🇸🇮🇪 (@michaeldweiss) October 10, 2022

While the Klitschko bridge (also known as the “Glass Bridge”) appeared to be the target, the EU, USG, and the war propaganda media will portray this as an attack on good-natured folks merely attempting to help Ukraine (the mission was established after the violent 2014 coup arranged by the neocon, Victoria Nuland, and the US state department).

Russia understands perfectly well what the purpose of a “mission” established in Ukraine to help a coup-installed government that includes neo-Nazi psychopaths is—to further integrate the economic and social basket case semi-country into the European Union and NATO, thus moving the threat closer to Russia.

The timing of the “collateral damage” to the “mission” is curious, considering:

The European Union’s top diplomat has criticized the bloc’s slow pace of action in setting up a military training mission for the Ukrainian armed forces, as foreign ministers prepare to discuss the plan next week. https://t.co/trRd3A9ybN

— AP Europe (@AP_Europe) October 10, 2022

If the bridge was indeed the target, the missile missed, as this video reveals:

The strike fell not on the “Klitschko bridge”, but a little further.

Approximately there in Kyiv is the office of the EU Advisory Mission. It opened in Ukraine in December 2014, in response to the Maidan events. The mission was engaged in the reform of the Ukrainian police. pic.twitter.com/SXK97C5T8W

— whoami (@copemuch) October 10, 2022

I believe, as stated in the tweet below, that the explosion was intended to send a message to the European Union about the role it plays in the war. The EU acted as an early enabler in arming Ukrainian neo-Nazis.

In March, Politico reported:

More than 25 nations have joined in purchasing and delivering weapons to support Ukraine’s war effort. The U.S. has sent billions of dollars in missiles, ammunition and other items to the front. The EU signed off on a €500 million ($551 million USD) package — a first for the 27-country European bloc — to help arm Ukraine. And both Finland and Germany have rewritten long-standing policy that barred exporting weapons into war zones. (Emphasis added.)

https://t.co/sxXv31uoLY
Was The Glass Bridge the target or the HQ of the European Union Advisory Mission in Ukraine was Putin making a point to the EU and the NATO allies, afterall the HQ is just beside the Glass Bridge.#Escalation #UkraineRussianWar #EU#Europe #SabreRattling pic.twitter.com/TboTeWH0dI

— The Scottish Traveller (@TheScottishTra1) October 10, 2022

It would have been easy to take out the entire “mission” for its effort “to achieve a civilian security sector that is efficient, accountable, and enjoys the trust of the public,” according to the EUAM Ukraine website.

In September, the USG state department “committed an additional $457.5 million in civilian security assistance to enhance the efforts of Ukrainian law enforcement and criminal justice agencies to improve their operational capacity and save lives as they continue to help defend the Ukrainian people, their freedom, and their democracy from the Kremlin’s brutal war of aggression.”

Prior to that, in late March, the state department handed over $100 million in “civilian security assistance to enhance the capacity of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs,” according to this USG state department press statement.

It is a known fact or should be, that the main internal security apparatus of the Ukrainian state is the SBU (Sluzhba bezpeky Ukrayiny), or the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU). It is infested with neo-Nazis and violent ultranationalists that will not tolerate the kind of “democracy” EUAM claims to want for Ukraine.

Under Zelensky's watch, Ukraine's SBU has partnered with neo-Nazis from Azov and C14 to hunt down left-wing activists

This is from video posted by Azov members during the SBU's torture & kidnapping of leftist Alexander Matjuschenko in Dnipro – targeted for his political views pic.twitter.com/AboabzzT4T

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 18, 2022

In post-coup Ukraine, “internal security” is on par with that of its former mentor and collaborator, Nazi Germany, and the latter’s Gestapo. The SBU is busy at work eliminating the opponents of Zelenskyy’s authoritarian regime, the same as the Nazis did in Germany in the 1930s and early 40s.

As @dancohen3000 reported, exiled Ukrainian opposition figure @anatoliisharii said he faced a recent SBU assassination attempt after his friend was kidnapped.

Shariy's party was among 13 opposition parties outlawed by Zelensky under martial law. https://t.co/B2oLZ8v3au

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 18, 2022

Jason Melanovski writes:

The Kyiv Independent reported [in the last week of April] that “a hunt for alleged collaborators is underway in recaptured parts of the country.” The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) along with the national and local police, territorial defense units and the State Emergency Service, are leading the hunt for suspects.

In June, The Hard Worker Substack posted:

Perhaps most horrifying though, is that the intelligence agency of Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), with their special forces unit referred to as the Alpha Group, perpetrated a large amount of human rights violations, aided by the volunteers from the numerous regiments and battalions of Ukraine, alongside the official Ukrainian military.

The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) is, in itself, a creation by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) cooperates, and works alongside the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

The Responsible Statecraft website notes the CIA “is operating in Kyiv and has been for some time, according to new reporting by the New York Times” (report locked behind corporate war propaganda paywall).

“The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression,” reports The Grayzone. “With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents.”

The Ukrainian security service known as the SBU has served as the main enforcer of the post-Maidan government’s campaign of domestic political repression. Pro-Western monitors including the United Nations Office of the High Commission (UN OHCR) and Human Rights Watch have accused the SBU of systematically torturing political opponents and Ukrainian dissidents with near-total impunity.

The UN OHCR found in 2016 that “arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of such conflict-related detainees were common practice of SBU… A former Kharkiv SBU officer explained, ‘For the SBU, the law virtually does not exist as everything that is illegal can be either classified or explained by referring to state necessity.”

Yevhen Karas, the founder of the infamous neo-Nazi C14 unit, has detailed the close relationship his gang and other extreme right factions have enjoyed with the SBU. The SBU “informs not only us, but also Azov, the Right Sector, and so on,” Karas boasted in a 2017 interview.

The EU has hitched its wagon to neo-Nazis, sadists, torturers, and assassins. It showers this terror organization with praise:

EUAM is convinced that the SSU will with dignity master all challenges and prevent the enemy’s encroachments against the state of Ukraine by making best use of its 30-year experience in counterintelligence, counterterrorism and cybersecurity. The members of the Security Service, and in particular the Center for Special Operations “A”, destroy the enemy and capture invaders. The Departments for Counterintelligence and National Statehood Protection regularly detain Russian agents and saboteurs. SSU investigators record the crimes perpetrated by the invader and open criminal proceedings. Cybersecurity experts repel hacker and information attacks, initiate pressure on the aggressor’s infrastructure, and help to collect data on the movement of enemy’s equipment, subversive and reconnaissance groups.

Translation: the neo-Nazi-infested and CIA-controlled SBU aka SSU will continue to ferret out critics and political activists, described here as “Russian agents and saboteurs,” and torture and kill them. This is fully supported by unelected EU apparatchiks in Brussels and, without saying, Tony Blinken and his coterie of “humanitarian interventionists,” more accurately described as “liberal” neocons.

In a more perfect world, all of these characters, including Blinken, Biden, and Jake Sullivan, to name but a few would be brought before The Hague on crimes against humanity and enabling Nazi terrorism.

Unfortunately, we don’t live in that world.

*

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Kurt Nimmo writes on Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics

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***

Global food security, especially in Africa, has been in the media publications these past few months. While a few outspoken African leaders shifted blames to Russia-Ukraine crisis, others focus on spending state budget to import food to calm rising discontent among the population. Some experts and international organizations have also expressed the fact that African leaders have to adopt import substitution mechanisms and use their financial resources on strengthening agricultural production systems.

At the G7 Summit in June, President Biden and G7 leaders announced over $4.5 billion to address global food security, over half of which will come from the United States. This $2.76 billion in U.S. government funding will help protect the world’s most vulnerable populations and mitigate the impacts of growing food insecurity and malnutrition, including from Russia’s war in Ukraine, by building production capacity and more resilient agriculture and food systems around the world, and responding to immediate emergency food needs.

U.S. Congress allocated $336.5 million to bilateral programs for Sub-Saharan African countries, including Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe and regional programs in southern Africa, west Africa, and the Sahel.

Also of this $2.76 billion, USAID is programming $2 billion in emergency food security assistance over the next three months.  As of August 8, 2022, the U.S. has provided nearly $1 billion specifically for countries in Africa toward this $2 billion commitment, including Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Mali, Mozambique, Nigeria, Somalia, South Sudan, and Uganda.

That compared, Russia plans to earn (revenue) $33 billion by the end 0f 2022 through massive export of grains and meat poultry to Africa. The plan remotely aims at marginalizing local production, cut out foreign contributions to support livelihoods through local production and make African leaders spend their hard earned revenue on food imports instead of supporting agricultural production.

Primarily, Russia needs to export an estimated 50-60 million tonnes of grain this agricultural year from July 2022 to June 2023. Agriculture Minister Dmitry Patrushev and Algerian Agriculture and Rural Development Minister Mohamed Abdelhafid Henni, co-chairing the Russian-Algerian Intergovernmental Commission on late September, agreed on an increased wheat exports from Krasnodar Territory and Siberia regions to Algeria.

The Agriculture Ministry’s Agroexport Center said in a report that Russia has to increase exports to Angola. The estimated potential for Russian agribusiness exports to Angola is $100 million per year, and this includes grains, foremost wheat, soybean oil, beef, poultry, edible pork by-products, yeast and other agribusiness products.

Agroexport Federal Center for Development of Agribusiness Exports in close partnership collaboration with Trust Technologies and the business expert community drew up a concept for the development of exports of principal agricultural products (grain, dairy, butter, meat and confectionery products) to promising markets of African countries. It is estimated to build on the total volume of exports to African countries which in 2021 amounted to $33 billion.

“The African continent is an interesting and promising area for the development of Russian food exports. However, when working in this market, it is important to take into account a number of factors: strong differences in the level of welfare of the population, political instability in some countries, state regulation of prices for a number of goods, et cetera,” Agroexport head Dmitry Krasnov was quoted as saying in the statement and reported by Russian media including the Interfax News Agency.

By increasing grain exports to countries in Africa, Russia aims at enhancing the competitiveness of Russian agricultural goods in the African market. According to the business concept report, five African countries have been identified and chose as target markets for the delivery of the agricultural products. These are Angola, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Mauritius, Nigeria, Tunisia and South Africa.

In a sharp contrast to food-importing African countries, Zimbabwe has increased wheat production especially during this crucial time of the current Russia-Ukraine crisis. This achievement was attributed to efforts in mobilizing local scientists to improve the crop’s production. Zimbabwe is an African country that has been under Western sanctions for 25 years, hindering imports of much-needed machinery and other inputs to drive agriculture.

At the African Green Revolution Forum (AGRF) summit held September in Rwanda, President Emmerson Mnangagwa told the gathering that

“we used to depend on importation of wheat from Ukraine in the past, but we have been able to produce our own. So, the crisis in that country has not affected us. There is an urgent need to adopt a progressive approach and re-purpose food policies to address the emerging challenges affecting our entire food systems.”

There are various local efforts to attain food security on the continent. For instance, the African Development Bank’s (AfDB) African Emergency Food Production Facility (AEFPF) to increase the production of climate-adapted wheat, corn, rice, and soybeans over the next four growing seasons in Africa. The International Fund for Agricultural Development’s (IFAD) Crisis Response Initiative (CRI) to help protect livelihoods and build resilience in rural communities. The Africa Adaptation Initiative (AAI) to develop a pipeline of bankable projects in Africa, to leverage private equity.

The Africa Risk Capacity (ARC) Africa Disaster Risk Financing Programme (ADRiFi) to help African governments to respond to food system shocks by increasing access to risk insurance products. A fertilizer efficiency and innovation program to enhance the efficiency of fertilizer use in countries where fertilizer tends to be over-applied. Support for the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) will fund soil mapping spanning multiple countries to provide information allowing for wiser water usage, greater fertilizer conservation, and improved climate resilience impacts.

Significant to note that during business conference held at the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center on April 22, African Development Bank Group President Dr. Akinwumi Adesina, speaking as a guest of the Washington, DC, US-based think tank, called for an increased sense of urgency amid what he described as a once-in-a-century convergence of global challenges for Africa, including a looming food crisis. The continent’s most vulnerable countries have been hit hardest by conflict, climate change and the pandemic, which upended economic and development progress in Africa.

Adesina said the ramifications of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 spread far beyond the conflict to other parts of the world, including Africa. Russia and Ukraine supply almost 30% of global wheat exports, and the price has surged nearly 50% globally, reaching levels reminiscent of the 2008 global food crisis.

Adesina said the tripling of fertilizer costs, rising energy price and rising costs of food baskets, could worsen in Africa in the coming months. He noted wheat made up 90% of Russia’s $4 billion in exports to Africa in 2020, and of Ukraine’s nearly $3 billion in exports to the continent, 48% was wheat and 31% was maize.

Adesina said Africa must rapidly expand its production to meet food security challenges.

“The African Development Bank is already active in mitigating the effects of a food crisis through the African Food Crisis Response and Emergency Facility, a dedicated facility being considered by the bank to provide African countries with the resources needed to raise local food production and procure fertilizer,” Adesina said. “My basic principle is that Africa should not be begging. We must solve our own challenges ourselves without depending on others…”

The bank chief spoke about early successes through the African Development Bank’s innovative flagship initiative, Technologies for African Agricultural Transformation (TAAT) program, which operates across nine food commodities in more than 30 African countries. TAAT has helped to rapidly boost food production at scale on the continent, including the production of wheat, rice and other cereal crops.

“We are putting our money where our mouth is,” Adesina said. “We are producing more and more of our own food. Our Africa Emergency Food Production Plan will produce 38 million metric tons of food.”

He said TAAT already had delivered heat-tolerant varieties of wheat to 1.8 million farmers in seven countries, increasing wheat production by over 1.4 million metric tons and a value of $291 million. He added that during the drought in southern Africa in 2018 and 2019, TATT was able to help deploy heat-tolerant maize varieties which were cultivated by 5.2 million households on 841,000 hectares.

In a similar argument and direction, the World Bank has also expressed worry over sub-Saharan Africa countries high expenditure on food imports, that could be produced locally using their vast uncultivated lands, and devastating impact on budgets due to rising external borrowing. According to the bank, it is crucial to increase the effectiveness of current resources to expanding and supporting local production especially in the sectors of agriculture and industry during this crucial period of Russia-Ukraine crisis.

In a press release titled – African Governments Urgently Need to Restore Macro-Economic Stability and Protect the Poor in a Context of Slow Growth, – High Inflation, the global lender said African governments spent 16.5 per cent of their revenues servicing external debt in 2021, up from less than 5 per cent in 2010. Eight out of 38 IDA-eligible countries in the region are in debt distress, and 14 are at high risk of joining them.

In late May 2022, the IMF and World Bank considered 16 low-income African countries to be at high risk of debt distress, while 7 countries – Chad, Republic of the Congo, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe, Somalia, Sudan and Zimbabwe – were already in debt distress. Bright spots, such as Côte d’Ivoire and Rwanda, are expected to exhibit rapid growth in 2022, the report said. However, 33 African countries need external assistance for food, and acute food insecurity is likely to worsen in the next months in 18 of these economies.

With the above facts, African leaders have to demonstrate a higher level of commitment to tackling post-pandemic challenges and the Russia-Ukraine crisis that have created global economic instability and other related severe consequences. And this requires collaborative action, and much stronger pace of transformation to cater for the needs of the population over 1.3 billion in Africa.

Máximo Torero, chief economist of the Food and Agriculture Organization, has observed that African policies have relatively failed to alleviate food security problems. It has emphasised the fragility of over-dependence on a globalised agricultural system. What is needed to achieve a more integrated and regionalized agricultural system is coordinated public policy responses to support agribusiness. These responses must ensure small and medium-sized farmers are included.

Action can be taken at a regional level too. And it would help identify issues relating to market access, border and transport-related problems, and possible anticompetitive behaviour. The integration of regional economies is one vehicle for alleviating pervasive food security issues. But regional integration can’t be achieved without the appropriate support for investment in production, infrastructure and capabilities.

An estimate suggests that rich Africans were holding a massive $500 billion in tax havens. Africa’s people are effectively robbed of wealth by an economy that enables a tiny minority of Africans to get rich by allowing wealth to flow out of Africa.

According to our basic research, Africa is not poor as foreign player are stealing its wealth. But, there is $203 billion leaving the continent. Based on a set of new figures, sub-Saharan Africa is a net creditor to the rest of the world to the tune of more than $41 billion. Then there’s the $30 billion that these corporations repatriate – profits they make in Africa but send back to their home country, or elsewhere, to enjoy their wealth.

In an opinion article published September by Foreign Policy in Focus, Imani Countess wrote that every year nearly $90 billion of African resources are lost to the global north in Illicit Financial Flows, or IFFs. It isn’t just the Russians, but also U.S.-based corporations and others throughout the global north. Russians are flying unprecedented huge quantity of gold out of Sudan, precious resources from the extractive industry  out of Central African Republic and Guinea.

According to him,

“the financial mechanisms that facilitate illicit financial flows are complex, most often through opaque deals and contracts involving government officials. People in these plundered communities do not have a voice. They face harm to local biodiversity, loss of their livelihoods, and a lack of meaningful benefits, especially in providing sustainable development. The losses are breathtaking and heartbreaking, as they represent revenue that should be invested in sustainable development in Africa.”

Dr Richard Munang is UNEP’s Africa Regional Climate Change Programme Coordinator and Ms. Zhen Han is a doctoral student at Cornell University wrote in a joint article that people living in extreme poverty in the sub-Saharan Africa increased from 290 million in 1990 to 414 million in 2010. The region currently spends more than $35 billion on food imports per year.

Of the challenges currently facing the continent, it is climate change that has greatly slowed down Africa’s progress towards MDGs, especially those related to eliminating hunger and poverty, improving human health and ensuring environmental sustainability. This is because climate change disproportionately affects the livelihoods of the most vulnerable population by increasing the occurrence of natural disasters, affecting the continuity of ecosystem functioning and the ecosystem services it provides. Climate change also damages the critical natural resources that vulnerable communities depend on.

Establishing food security is important for millions of people facing hunger in Africa and is crucial for sustainable economic development and long-term prosperity of the continent. Addressing food security in a changing climate, therefore, is key for a rising Africa in the 21st century. From the discussions above and various perspectives, African leaders have to focus and redirect both human and financial resources toward increasing local production, the surest approach to attain sustainable food security for over 1.3 billion population in Africa, and this falls within the framework of the Agenda 2063 of the African Union.

*

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***

 

In late September, protests erupted in Iran following the death of a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, after she had been arrested by morality police in Tehran purportedly for not wearing the hijab.

Amini died allegedly of a cerebral hemorrhage or stroke after, eyewitnesses claimed, she was beaten while incarcerated.

The Iranian government, however, released a video which appeared to show that Amini merely got in a dispute with a police officer about the way she wore the hijab and that the police officer walked away.

Amini subsequently collapsed in the Tehran police station and died two days later after having a heart attack allegedly caused by prior health problems (Amini allegedly underwent open brain surgery as a child in 2006).^[1]

U.S. President Joe Biden was very supportive of the protests from the outset, announcing intensified sanctions on Iran while assigning restrictions on the export of software and hardware to make it easier for Iranians to communicate with each other and the outside world.

Biden said that he was “gravely concerned about reports of the intensifying violent crackdown on peaceful protesters in Iran, including students and women, who are demanding their equal rights and basic human dignity,” and that for decades “Iran’s regime has denied fundamental freedoms to its people and suppressed the aspirations of successive generations through intimidation, coercion and violence.”

Are Iranian Leaders Paranoid?

Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, claimed that outside forces led by the U.S. had ignited the protests and were trying to bring down the Iranian regime.

The Iranian government was particularly vulnerable because of severe economic problems—caused in no small part by U.S. sanctions—and reports about the declining health of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is allegedly making preparations for his son, Mojtaba, to succeed him and sustain Iran’s commitment to Islamic ideology.

The U.S. has a track record of supporting regime-change operations like in Libya, Syria and Iraq among other countries.

The CIA also orchestrated a coup in Iran in 1953 that resulted in the overthrow of democratic reformer Mohammad Mosaddegh and installed the pro-Western Shah who terrorized his opposition and enabled foreign control of Iran’s oil industry.

That 1953 coup significantly started when the CIA paid off gangs and labor leaders to initiate protests against Mosaddegh.

Since the 1979 Iranian Revolution that overthrew the Shah, the U.S. has repeatedly tried to overthrow the Iranian government, which famously took U.S. Embassy officials hostage and frequently supported U.S. adversaries such as Hezbollah; the Houthi in Yemen; the Palestinians; and the Assad government in Syria.^[2]

In 2007, President George W. Bush openly endorsed a CIA plan for propaganda and disinformation targeting Iran, and approved the mounting of black operations designed to destabilize Iran’s government.

The Obama administration followed suit by a) encircling Iran with missiles placed in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates (UAE); b) strengthening Bush’s economic sanctions and pushing Saudi Arabia to drive up its oil production to push oil prices down; and c) removing the Mujahedin e-Khalq—a dissident group that plotted sabotage operations against the Iranian government—from the State Department’s list of terrorist groups.^[3]

The Trump administration ratcheted up sanctions even further and assassinated General Qasem Soleimani, famed commander of the Quds force, an elite unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

So Iranian leaders clearly are not paranoid in believing that the U.S. is behind the recent protests.

Syria, Libya, Ukraine Redux?

Many Iranian women have come out to voice their opposition to the mandatory veil—a measure the majority of Iranians actually support.^[4]

As in other “color revolutions,” legitimate grievances can be easily exploited by outside forces and protests can quickly become violent and dominated by extremists bent on regime change.

Images have filled social media of Iranian protesters waving signs such as “death to the dictator” amidst a backdrop of burning cars. One video showed a crowd defacing a billboard depicting Qasem Soleimani, a national hero.

Source: India Today

 

Independent news reports said that terrorist groups led by the Mujahedin e-Khalq—which has carried out bombings and murders—were among the crowds as well as supporters of militant Kurdish parties and other armed rebel groups linked with drug smuggling gangs and Balochi separatists, and that protesters were arrested carrying sharp weapons and explosives.

Killings were carried out including of at least one army General, with the purpose of blaming them on the government and provoking an overreaction among the security forces. Rioters burned banks and other state institutions, looted chain stores and attacked police stations, prompting violent counter-reprisals.^[5]

This is all eerily reminiscent of protests in Syria, Libya, Ukraine and elsewhere that resulted in civil wars and violent coups that devastated their societies for years afterwards.

U.S. Agent of Regime Change

In an article on the independent Arab webzine Al Mayadeen entitled “Dirty Money: Meet the U.S. Agent Driving the CIA-Led Riots in Iran,” journalist Mona Issa profiles Masih Alinejad, whom Issa calls “Washington’s weapon of choice for flaring up the largest color revolution attempt in Iran today.”

Image: Masih Alinejad—Washington’s weapon of choice. [Source: wikipedia.org]

Recipient of a women’s rights prize from the Geneva Summit for Democracy and Human Rights and American Jewish Committee’s moral courage award, Alinejad, 46, published a book in 2018 called The Wind in My Hair: My Fight for Freedom in Modern Iran that deals with her experiences growing up in Iran, where, she writes, girls “are raised to keep their heads low, to be [as] unobtrusive as possible, and to be meek.”

On her website, Alinejad has posted videos and photos of Iranian women showing their hair—minus the hijab. Then, after Mahsa died, she set up the influential Twitter feed, “#MahsaWasMurdered by the Islamic Republic’s hijab police in Iran.”

Alinejad told The New Yorker:

“I’m leading this movement. The Iranian regime will be brought down by women. I believe this.”

Operating from an FBI safe house in New York, Alinejad has been living in the U.S. for the past decade working as a full-timer for Voice of America, Persia, a U.S. propaganda mouthpiece funded by the U.S. Congress.

Alinejad’s coziness with the U.S. power elite was evident in a photo she took in May 2019 with former CIA Director and then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a strong advocate of regime change in Iran.

Issa uncovered that, between 2015 and 2022, the U.S. Agency for Global Media paid Alinejad more than $628,000 to harass veiled women, spread propaganda, and demand more sanctions against Iran—even though those sanctions were causing vast suffering, especially among women.

When Alinejad takes on Islamic regimes for oppressing women, generally, she targets only enemies of the U.S.—Iran primarily and the Taliban regime in Afghanistan—and not U.S. allies like Saudi Arabia, which is most notorious for its mistreatment of women.

Alinejad curiously has never sought to rally behind feminists in Saudi Arabia—only U.S. enemy states like Iran and Afghanistan. [Source: humanists.international]

So how real is Alinejad’s actual commitment to women’s rights?

Alinejad’s Accomplices

One of the first to accuse the police of beating Amini was Maziar Bahari, a filmmaker, former Newsweek reporter (1998-2011) and founder of the anti-Ayatollah news site IranWire, who wrote a book about being detained in Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison on what he claims were trumped up charges of espionage and sedition in the aftermath of Iran’s contested 2009 election.

Another Twitter post which propagated what appears to be a false narrative was from Babak Taghvaee, a military writer who was accused of being a CIA, Mossad and British MI6 agent and wrote reports for the Pentagon and U.S. State Department-funded Radio Free Asia/Radio Liberty.

What Role the NED?

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) is a CIA offshoot which supports civil society groups worldwide with the aim of ‘strengthening capitalism and democracy’ and overthrowing governments the U.S. does not like.

In 2021, it provided $631,500 to Iran. Part of the sum went to human rights groups that document abuses by the Iranian government with the goal of discrediting it. Other grants went to media groups that spread negative stories about the Iranian government, and yet more toward supporting dissident political groups under the guise of democracy promotion.

The NED has tweeted out support for Alinejad’s book, and on its website includes articles that support regime change. On September 22, for example, the NED’s “Democracy Digest” ran an article entitled “Iran Protests Pose New Test for Failed Regime.”^[6]

Advancing the rumor that Iran’s Supreme leader was on his deathbed, the article quoted from human rights activists condemning the Iranian government’s response to the protests and treatment of women in the country, of which Amini’s death was allegedly emblematic.

A senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa, Mariam Memarsadeghi is quoted as saying that “people of all different world views and lifestyles are out on the streets in one voice demanding the overthrow of the regime.”

Memarsadeghi continued:

“The only way these women and girls in Iran can be free of this indiscriminate violence, humiliation and everyday fear of a totalitarian regime is to be rid of that regime. Speaking out like this is definitely better than not doing so, but the foreign policies of democratic states and the United Nations has to be that this is a regime that should not exist…So long as this cabal rules, there really is no prospect for women’s rights inside Iran.”

What Kind of Regime Change?

While going all out in favor of regime change, the NED “Democracy Digest” article and others of its kind say very little about the kind of regime they would like to see replace that of the Ayatollahs.

The latter may be harsh but beyond abolishing the hijab, what kind of economic program do they advocate for? And what policies toward other Middle Eastern countries would be better than those advanced by the Ayatollahs?

Many it seems would want to ally Iran very closely with the U.S., raising questions as to whether they want to see a return to the Shah’s reign and the kind of exploitative economic practices that left Iran an underdeveloped vassal state of the West and ignited the 1979 Iranian Revolution in the first place.

And what about the fates of Syria, Libya and Ukraine? Do the proponents of regime change in Iran want to see their country enmeshed in civil war and destroyed?

While there may be no smoking-gun proof of CIA involvement in the Iranian protests, all the signs are there that history is being repeated—from the vocal support of President Biden and U.S. media to the protests, to the heavy involvement of the NED in Iran, to the role being played by exiled feminist Twitter warriors with ties to U.S. government-funded agencies.

In spite of mounting inflation and divisions over the hijab policy, the regime of the Ayatollahs will likely endure, however, because Iranians know their history.

They remember the brutality of the U.S. installed Shah and the CIA’s overthrow of Iranian democracy, and understand how Western imperialism weakened and humiliated many Middle Eastern countries before—and will do it again—as always under the phony veneer of advancing women’s and other human rights.

*

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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. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has called for a complete investigation, telling Amini’s family that “your daughter is like my own daughter, and I feel that this incident happened to one of my loved ones.” 

2. Equally problematic from a U.S. point of view has been Iran’s recent support for Russia’s military operation in Ukraine with combat drones and its joining the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and agreement to provide oil to China in exchange for China’s investment in Iran’s infrastructure. Tehran also recently announced that it would now conduct trade with Russia in the two country’s own currencies, rather than in U.S. dollars. 
3. Jeremy Kuzmarov, Obama’s Unending Wars: Fronting the Foreign Policy of the Permanent Warfare State (Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2019), 255. 
4. In 2021, Iranian deputy speaker of the parliament Ali Motahari suggested another referendum on the veil be conducted, which would be the best way to revoke the law if it is unpopular. 
5. Even Human Rights Watch acknowledged that some protesters threw rocks and that others assaulted security forces. Saterah Sadeghi, an educator from Isfahan, told journalist Max Blumenthal of The Grayzone Project that “a lot of those people [involved in the protests] died because of the thugs and mobs that were involved in these protests.” Sadeghi also said that militant Kurdish groups from Iraq—who wanted to sow chaos in Iran—were among those to attack police stations. They were part of the Barzani clan, which has historically been armed by the U.S. and Israeli Mossad

6. The regime is considered a failure because it has stood up to the U.S. in the international arena—other governments with worse records on human rights, like Saudi Arabia, and the economy, are never given such a designation. 

Featured image: Iranian protestors on the Keshavrz Boulvard (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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***

 

When this international press episode had already been recorded, the following news appeared in the New York Times:

“US intelligence agencies believe that parts of the Ukrainian government authorized the car bomb attack near Moscow in August, which killed Daria Dughina, American officials also said they had not been informed in advance of the operation and that they would have opposed the killing if they had been consulted”. For this reason, we added our comment entitled “

The murder of Daria Dughina according to the CIA narrative” at the beginning of this episode. 

Who carried out the sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines from Russia to Germany is the same President Biden who pointed it out in an interview when he declared:

“There will no longer be a Nord Stream. We will put an end to this project. I promise you that we will be able to do that.”

Joe Biden: “There will be no longer a Nord Stream 2”

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***

The opportunity that I had to study at Yale College as an undergraduate and later at Harvard University for my Ph.D., the chance I had to wander among the gothic buildings, to imbibe confidence and purpose, and to learn to think, learn how things work, from distinguished scholars, was a point of stubborn pride for me when I started my career as a professor, but that legacy had devolved into a nightmare, into a travesty.

I watched up close how the thoughtful and insightful men and women who were my classmates at Yale and Harvard, who were my colleagues as a professor, responded to the horrific institutional decay of the United States over the past two decades. Sadly, although I remember fondly the moments of deep insight and kind exchanges of those good old days, I observed how they, as intellectuals, as lawyers, doctors, engineers, executives, professors and government officials, how they betrayed their fellow citizens and buried the wisdom they had obtained at those temples of learning deep in the excrement of fraud and hypocrisy.

You see, they forgot the entire point of that elite education they had received. It was not supposed to be something you boasted about, or that you possessed like a yacht[P1] or a racehorse, a special key that got you into the club. No! That sort of thinking is the outgrowth of deep moral decay.

That education was a privilege alright, but one that brought with it an absolute obligation to serve society, to stand up bravely for the interests of the nation, and above all for the interests of those who have not had the opportunity to learn how the system works, to study about science and technology, about foreign lands and ancient things.

That is right, you were given special tools that few had access to. They were given to you so that you could use them, use them to help society, especially in times of need, in times of crisis.

And yes, that moment of crisis inevitably came. The 2000 election came, a moment when the entire federal government was taken over by multinational corporations and a handful of the wealthy. I looked around and my colleagues and friends acted as if nothing had happened. They took the fictions of the New York Times as their gospel and clung ever tighter to their privileges.

Then came the collapse of the twin towers, the last card in the Tarot deck, a modern miracle that belongs the Book of Revelations. In other words, a massive fraud that any high school student who has taken a semester of physics could see through.

And yet again, my colleagues from Yale and Harvard were silent; in many cases, they appeared at think tank seminars, on television, to promote this blatant fiction, and to use it as a justification for endless foreign wars, for the transfer of wealth to the billionaires.

It was, sadly, nothing other than the treason of the intellectuals.

I know that the billionaires were ultimately behind this, using their pawns and pets, but if the intellectuals, the upstanding members of society who have the specialized knowledge, the ability to write effectively, and the confidence to use those skills, if they had not sided with the establishment, if they had asked the most basic questions, the drive for war into Afghanistan, into Iraq, into Syria, and into another dozen nations, ending at the doorsteps of Russia and China, that downwards spiral could never have started.

And then there I was again, in January of 2020, right there in Washington DC, watching in amazement as the utterly contrived and unconvincing COVID-19 pandemic was rolled out for mass consumption. I knew that my colleagues were smart enough to see through that circus from the start, but almost without exception, they bought into the farce with enthusiasm, with pride and glee.

Some of them with medical expertise lent their credentials to this sinister operation.

I am an extremely limited man and I cannot claim any remarkable achievements, but I can say that it was obvious to me that the 2000 election, the 9.11 attacks, and the drive for war with Afghanistan and Iraq were a fraud and I spoke openly, and unambiguously, about these crimes at that moment.

I felt that it was my obligation as an educated American. It was, in a sense, the entire purpose of the education I had received.

My efforts, my dismissal from my job, and how I was forced out of the country, remain taboo topics for my colleagues from Yale and Harvard. Mentioning what was done to me, and to others like me, for opposing the COVID-19 fraud is also a no-no in the best of circles.

Let me say, dear colleagues, that I was also at fault. I did not do enough, especially to engage working people, and I overestimated my own capacity to effect change. I was limited by the subtle arrogance of the Ivy League I had imbibed and it took me two decades to relearn.

That is my confession, my apology, and my pledge to do better.

Now, dear colleagues, it is your turn. Admit to yourself, and to those around you, that you wrong, that you betrayed the trust placed in you by society, by those around you who did not receive such illustrious educations, when you played stupid in the face of the 2000 elections, the 9.11 incident, the drive for world war starting in Afghanistan, and finally the operation COVID-19 pandemic.

We can be forgiving of your mistakes, but only if you are ready to ask for forgiveness.

We are waiting now, for your answers, for your pledges, and for your actions. We hope you will make proper use of the educations that you have received at this moment of national crisis.

*

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This article was originally published on US Provisional Government.

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.

Featured image is from harvard.edu

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***

There would be hell to pay. Congress would demand the bombing of Moscow begin posthaste. The corporate propaganda media would have a field day. Brainless Russophobia would spread faster than covid. Russians would be gunned down on the streets of America.

And yet here is a former USG official, a man undoubtedly guilty of numerous war crimes, calling for the president of Russia to be assassinated. He threatened the people of Russia with retaliation for the supposed nuclear threats of their leadership. Putin said nukes may be used if Russia faces an existential threat. The media lies and says he will use “tactical” nukes in Ukraine if Russia begins to lose. There is no way Russia can “lose” in Ukraine, no matter what the turncoat Matt Drudge’s website says.

BOLTON CALLS FOR PUTIN ASSASSINATION pic.twitter.com/hSuzX6sMGD

— The_Real_Fly (@The_Real_Fly) October 8, 2022

Not a ripple. Hardly anyone (in the corporate propaganda media that is) complained about how outrageous John Bolton’s remarks were. In the video, Bolton has all the composure of Jeffrey Dahmer during his trial for murder.

It’s rare these warmongers are called out. First and foremost, John Bolton—during the Bush administration, when he pretended to be ambassador to the United Nations (because few in Congress saw him as ambassadorial material, thus did not vote to confirm)—was a primary driving force behind the illegal and war crime-ridden invasion of Iraq (1.5 million people killed).

“People like Bolton, who don’t want any constraints on his power from the international rule of law, are just trying out for the role of people like Nazi generals Günther von Kluge and Gerd von Rundstedt, who led the assault on Poland,” writes Juan Cole.

"J'espère qu'il prendra au moins 176 ans de prison pour ce qu'il a fait"

Voilà comment John #Bolton (qui, pas + tard que cet été, se vantait d'avoir aidé à planifier des coups d'État) s'adresse aujourd'hui à la femme de Julian #Assange, en amont de son extradition vers les USA. pic.twitter.com/Rmeb8zO5tk

— Fabien Rives (@Fabien_Rives) October 5, 2022

Bolton is a staunch defender of racist Likudnik ethnic cleansers in Israel, thus a supporter of apartheid and the assassination of journalists, both serious crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The 1973 United Nations International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid has not been applied to Israel, clearly an apartheid state. Article 4 A (4) of the Third Geneva Convention and Article 79 of Additional Protocol I mention the protection of journalists.

“International law [the Fourth Geneva Convention] prohibits without exception, the extra-judicial killing and considers it as a grave violated of international humanitarian law, and human rights protocols,” writes Wasem Mawlana (“Assassination & International Human Law”).

Neocons like Bolton don’t believe in laws preventing them from attacking foreign countries and calling for the assassination of elected foreign leaders.

Bolton’s casual reference to murdering Vladimir Putin and warning the Russian people of the fate that awaits them (likely along the lines of what Bush did in Iraq and Obama and Trump did in Syria and Libya) is not featured in the headlines of the corporate war propaganda media. Instead, the reports focus on Biden’s idiotic reference to Armageddon, thus widening the political divide between Democrats and Republicans (while the state continues to push for WWIII).

It is truly disgusting the corporate media turns to “experts” and “former officials” of Bolton’s reprehensible caliber for discussion on what is evolving into WWII and nuclear annihilation.

Meanwhile, those exposing war crimes of the state are locked away and slowly tortured to death, as seems to be the case with Julian Assange.

*

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Kurt Nimmo writes on Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research. 

Featured image is from Gage Skidmore

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***

“We are on a path of escalation to nuclear war, nothing less than that.” —Prof. Jeffrey Sachs,

Here is a distinctly minority opinion about the Ukraine war: Some people, more than a few, don’t support anything the military-industrial complex is promoting, especially since Vietnam, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia,2 Syria, Afghanistan, Grenada, Panama, Somalia, Libya, and whatever new hegemonic expeditions are planned.

Enough is enough.

But in addition, this very quiet minority especially doesn’t rally behind anything neo-Nazis are involved with, so support for Ukraine, Bandera, and the Azov Battalion are certainly wanting. The head of the Ukrainian parliament in 2019 was a neo-Nazi named Andriy Parubiy.3

Are you kidding?

Just look at the photos of the Azov symbol and the SS Wolfsangel Nazi symbols below.4

Nazi SS Wolfsangel symbol and Ukrainian Azov battalion boasting the same symbol (Source: Prof. Jerry Kroth)

These symbols, including swastikas, actually abound, but the corporate media scrubs them with a surfeit of fervor so that we can all maintain the fantasy that we are saving democracy and freedom at any cost.

As for Russia’s invasion, yes, this is clearly a war crime, because the UN did not authorize any intervention, and, legally that makes Putin a war criminal, but no less than George Bush qualifies for the same designation for his unprovoked aggression in Iraq, similarly unauthorized by the UN, and the 300,000 plus people he slaughtered.5

Regrettably, this minority is not at all enthusiastic with the New York Times-CNN-Nancy Pelosi-Mitch McConnell festivities in Ukraine. Trying to have little Ukraine defeat the world’s greatest nuclear superpower is sheer madness. That’s our policy, and it is patently insane.

Russia will not allow the US to build military bases in Malaya Rossia (“little Russia”) which is the historic name for the Donetsk-Luhansk region.6,7.8

We wouldn’t allow Russia to build military bases in Juarez, across from El Paso either, whether or not Mexico insisted on its sovereign right to engage in a mutual defense alliance with a foreign power.

Nor going to happen . . not by the hair of our chinny chin chins!

Sadly, if the West had agreed not to expand NATO, and to keep Ukraine neutral like Finland, Sweden, Austria, and Switzerland, there would have been no war, no death, no destruction, no invasion, no war crimes, no streaming refugees. The boiling point was reached on Jan 7, 2022 when NATO told Putin it had a right to expand into any country it wished. He threw up his hands, and, for the final time said, ‘not in my backyard.’9

So the war started, followed by sanctions, followed by export controls, followed by shortages of gas, oil, wheat, and sunflower oil, which, in turn, causes inflation which then brings recession, first in Europe, then the U.S., and that leads to starvation across Africa and the Middle East (coming) with global unemployment following on its heels. . . and it all started with an American neo-con gambit to try build military bases on Russia’s back porch.

The Western media has done its best to try to confuse and disrupt understanding this causal linkage calling it “Putin’s price hike,” 10 and, while most Western news consumers believe that misdirection, history will not forget the causal chain, even as the American echo chamber does.

NATO expansion, the military-industrial complex, American insistence on its exceptionalism and hegemony, and a deeply complicit media is the cause, and inflation, recession, war, and death the effect.

Currently, one of the most dangerous aspects of this Western media connivance is how it is obscuring the Ukrainian army’s shelling of the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. This bombardment could set off another Chernobyl, but media legerdemain makes it look like Russia is somehow mysteriously responsible for bombing the same facility it has been occupying.

It has occupied Zaporizhzhia since April, but the media obsessively speaks about Russia’s shelling the plant.11 Finally on Sept. 2nd, IAEA inspectors reported the Ukrainians were shelling the nuclear station, not the Russians, arguing that could endanger the whole of Europe—quite to the consternation of the Western media censors who couldn’t seem to prevent them from reporting the truth.12

The same holds true for the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline. Russia and Germany spent over $8 billion to build it, all with great pride, and the U.S. tried everything in its toolbox to stop it. Finally, it is sabotaged and the leak spews natural gas all over the Baltic.

But the first thing the Western Media does is to blame Russia for sabotaging its own creation.13

That’s right: Russia is blowing up its own pipeline —all they had to do was turn off the gas!— and it is bombing a nuclear power plant that it controls and occupies.

Really!14

Isn’t it just a smidgen more likely that Ukraine has been shelling the Russian occupied nuclear plant, and that the US or Britain, actually sabotaged the pipeline they wanted to close for so long?

Just how much more media misdirection do we have to endure!

To end all this nonsense, killing, mayhem, propaganda and nuclear lunacy, the solution is quite simple: Negotiate a solution and a ceasefire before the nut cases blow us all up. That’s what Henry Kissinger, Noam Chomsky and Professors John Mersheimer and Jeffrey Sachs advocate, and this silent minority couldn’t agree more.15 If the brutality and killing is unfathomably disgusting, as it should be, demand negotiation from your senator not escalation.

Chomsky says the U.S. is engaged in a proxy war with Russia down to the very last Ukrainian. No one in our government presently is advocating negotiation, nor peace. Corporate Democrats, boutique liberals, and Republicans are cheerleading us right to the doorstep of Armageddon.

Ukraine doesn’t have high tech anti-ship technology, but the US approved giving it harpoon missiles. If Ukraine succeeds in sinking a Russian ship, Putin would be an idiot not to sink a US ship in retaliation.

If one thinks this is not just as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis, they are living in Washington Post la-la land. The corporate media is providing generous soporifics that all this talk of nuclear war is just Putin’s blather and bluster, so nothing has diminished the steady introduction of more and more venomous weaponry—Javelins, Howitzers, Harpoons, NASAMS, and even paying salaries of the Ukrainian army16 — all to the enthusiastic applause of liberals and conservatives alike:

A billion here. Another billion there. Go get em Ukraine!

But to interrupt these whoops and hurrahs and introduce a spoonful of reality-contact, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the Doomsday clock to just 100 seconds before midnight, closer than the Berlin crisis of 1961, closer than the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, closer than at any time since 1947.17

On June 4, Putin said of the imminent dangers of nuclear war and of the West sending more and more lethal weapons into Ukraine: “The Horsemen of the Apocalypse are already on their way, and all hope now is with the Lord God Almighty.”18

The Secretary General of the UN said on Aug. 2 “Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.”19 He said that almost on the very same day that the military-industrial complex sent its latest ambassador, Nancy Pelosi, to Taiwan this time to try to rattle the cage of the Chinese.

And she did: Chinese Premier Xi Jinping said to President Biden,

“If you play with fire, you will burn to death.”20

Go Nancy!

On Sept 21, Putin addressed his nation, looked directly into the camera and warned Western powers that this could all lead to nuclear war. “This is not a bluff,” he said.

Isn’t it time we woke up? How much closer to the edge must the hawks and neo-con maniacs in the West think they can step before this all blows up in their face and in the faces of our children?

Conclusion: Negotiate a neutral Ukraine, end the war, cut the bloated Pentagon budget, and stop this global provocation, adventurism, brinkmanship, and insanity.

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Jerry Kroth, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor Emeritus from Santa Clara University (ret) and may be contacted through his website, collectivepsych.com.

Notes

1 Bloomberg, “Surveillance,” Oct 3, 2022

2 https://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2022/10/u-s-military-kills-wanted-shabaab-leaderin-airstrike-in-somalia.php

3 https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/ukrainian-speaker-andriy-parubiy-slammed-praisinghitler-historys-greatest-democrat

4 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfsangel

5 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-24547256

6 http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CL%5CI%5CLittleRussia.htm

7 A newer intermediate range U.S. Pershing missile travels 5800 mph. The distance from Donetsk to Moscow is 650 miles. So a U.S. Pershing stationed at a NATO base in Donetsk, Ukraine (assuming Russia said nothing, did nothing, did not go to war, and submitted to NATO expansion) would take 6.8 minutes to hit Moscow with a nuclear weapon. The fact that the U.S. got out of the Intermediate Range Nuclear Treaty doesn’t help. Trump cancelled that treaty in 2019. None of this escaped Russian strategic fears. If NATO bases are put in Ukraine, what is to stop the U.S. from installing the new Pershing? Certainly no existing treaty:

8 Photo credit Bloomberg: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2021/06/12/world/politicsdiplomacy-world/putin-us-russia-biden/

9 https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/nato-weighs-russias-security-offer-endukraine-standoff-82134155

10 https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/06/22/remarks-bypresident-biden-on-gas-prices-and-putins-price-hike/

11 https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-nuclear-plant-shelling-continuesd12ded8c3d79fe6f2a062546e5ced95b

12 https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-backs-iaea-call-shelling-near-zaporizhzhiastop-envoy-says-2022-09-09/

13 https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/nord-stream-russia-methane-leakbaltic-sea/

14 See Youtube, “US Col Richard Black asks “ Did US/NATO Blou up the Nord,” Oct 4, 2022

15 https://www.thedailybeast.com/noam-chomsky-is-right-us-should-work-to-negotiate-an-endto-the-war-in-ukraine

16 https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3138602/us-announces-298-billion-in-aid-to-ukraine/

17 https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/

18 https://www.newsweek.com/russia-warns-horsemen-apocalypse-ukraine-war-hits-100-days-1712609

19 https://www.npr.org/2022/08/02/1115160155/guterres-one-miscalculation-awaynuclear-annihilation

20 https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-08-12/Those-who-play-with-fire-will-get-burned-Beijing-warns-U-S–STCXChe5zi/index.html

Featured image is from en.kremlin.ru

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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

ISBN Number: 978-0-9737147-5-3
Year: 2012
Pages: 102

PDF Edition:  $6.50 (sent directly to your email account!)

Michel Chossudovsky is Professor of Economics at the University of Ottawa and Director of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG), which hosts the critically acclaimed website www.globalresearch.ca . He is a contributor to the Encyclopedia Britannica. His writings have been translated into more than 20 languages.

Reviews

“This book is a ‘must’ resource – a richly documented and systematic diagnosis of the supremely pathological geo-strategic planning of US wars since ‘9-11’ against non-nuclear countries to seize their oil fields and resources under cover of ‘freedom and democracy’.”
–John McMurtry, Professor of Philosophy, Guelph University

“In a world where engineered, pre-emptive, or more fashionably “humanitarian” wars of aggression have become the norm, this challenging book may be our final wake-up call.”
-Denis Halliday, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations

Michel Chossudovsky exposes the insanity of our privatized war machine. Iran is being targeted with nuclear weapons as part of a war agenda built on distortions and lies for the purpose of private profit. The real aims are oil, financial hegemony and global control. The price could be nuclear holocaust. When weapons become the hottest export of the world’s only superpower, and diplomats work as salesmen for the defense industry, the whole world is recklessly endangered. If we must have a military, it belongs entirely in the public sector. No one should profit from mass death and destruction.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute  

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According to recent reports, an amendment proposed by AUKUS (Australia, UK and the US) countries to legitimize their nuclear submarine cooperation is being curbed by Chinese diplomatic efforts. The $122.4 billion dollars deal reached in September 2021 had been announced as the core component of this new strategic partnership.

AUKUS, the security pact between these three Anglo-Saxon countries to counter China, was announced in September 2021, and has been controversial from the very start. Together with the QUAD, it has certainly increased tensions in the Asia-Pacific region.

In this context, Australian authorities in Canberra plan to acquire at least eight nuclear submarines, thereby possibly making the Indo-Pacific state the first one in the Southern Hemisphere to possess such vessels, as well as the first country that is a party to the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to do so other than the five recognized weapon states, namely the US, Russia, China, UK, and France. According to the International Atomic Energy (IAE) Rafael Grossi, these submarines will be fuelled by “highly enriched uranium”, so they could be weapons-grade or close to it. Beijing’s Permanent Mission, in a position paper sent to the IAE last month, emphasized the fact that the “AUKUS partnership involves the illegal transfer of nuclear weapon materials, making it essentially an act of nuclear proliferation.”

The AUKUS countries in turn argue that the NPT allows marine nuclear propulsion as long as the proper arrangements are made with the Agency. However, in this case, nuclear material will be transferred to rather than produced by Australia itself. China disagrees with the AUKUS’ stance, arguing that the IAE is in fact overstepping its mandate. Beijing has called for an “inter-governmental” process to examine the issue at hand.

This is a complicated matter: when nuclear submarines are at sea, their fuel is not within the reach of the IAE’s inspectors and there is no way to keep track of the nuclear material. The agency’s director himself, Rafael Grossi, has told the BBC the AUKUS submarine deal would be “very tricky” for nuclear inspectors.

China’s mission to the UN in Vienna has also bluntly described AUKUS’ plans as nuclear proliferation under a naval nuclear propulsion “cover”. Ambassador Wang Qun, Chinese Permanent Representative to the UN accused the AUKUS states of “double standard” in a September 19 interview.

American-Chinese tensions are already too high over the issue of Taiwan and to add fuel to the fire, Beijing perceives the US-led AUKUS plans as the West pushing its sea frontiers against China by weaponizing its ally Australia with nuclear submarines. To make matters worse, under the current arrangements the fleet would be a US-controlled squadron. Given the ongoing American “dual containment” policy, Beijing’s concerns do make a lot of sense.

Chen Hong, president of the Chinese Association of Australian Studies and also a director of the Australian Studies Center at East China Normal University, has even warned that by playing a part in this, Canberra could be sacrificing its own national security for the sake of other countries’ national interests.

In July, two Chinese think-thanks (China Arms Control and Disarmament Association and China Institute of Nuclear Industry Strategy) had already warned that the AUKUS submarine project could set a “dangerous precedent” and thus threaten non-proliferation in a lengthy report called “A Dangerous Conspiracy: The Nuclear Proliferation Risk of the Nuclear-powered Submarines Collaboration in the Context of AUKUS.”

According to the document, if the US and the UK have their way, nuclear states will for the very first time be transferring weapons-grade nuclear material to a non-nuclear state (Australia). Such a precedent, it warns, “ferments potential risks and hazards in multiple aspects such as nuclear security, arms race in nuclear submarines and missile technology proliferation, with a profound negative impact on global strategic balance and stability.” The report also controversially evokes the possibility that Canberra might actually be intent on acquiring nuclear weapons, given its historical pursuit of the technology since the 1950s.

Meanwhile, Rob Wittman and Donald Norcross, two members of the US House Armed Services Committee, in a Wilson Center discussion on southeast Asia and the Pacific, have  urged Australians to work closely with the US to master nuclear technology.

Anthony Moretti, a Department of Communication and Organizational Leadership Professor at the Robert Morris University argues that there is a loophole in the NPT which would allow Canberra to acknowledge to the IEA that it has acquired nuclear materials and then simply refuse to allow any inspections validating its procedures. This would be the only way for Australia to go ahead with the AUKUS deal under the current framework, but the problem is the dangerous precedent it would set, as mentioned above. It is quite hard to imagine how Beijing could possibly allow such development.

In his recent book titled “Sub-Imperial Power: Australia in the International Arena”, retired Australian army intelligence officer, Clinton Fernandes makes the convincing point that Canberra’s defense strategy has been built around a “structural dependence” on the US, which leaves it unable to defend itself in any scenario other than “in the context of the US Alliance.”.

Australia has been called the “coup capital” of the so-called democratic world and the American influence on the country over the years has a lot to do with this. Washington has also controlled Canberra’s foreign policy for decades, as exemplified by the infamous Anglo-American coup that “dismissed” Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Right now, the island-country has become yet another focal point of tensions between great powers.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

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This article was published by The Sydney Morning Herald in November 2020.

Ethiopia’s military has accused World Health Organisation chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus of supporting and trying to procure arms and diplomatic backing for Tigray state’s dominant political party, which is fighting federal forces.

“He himself is a member of that group and he is a criminal,” army chief of staff General Birhanu Jula claimed in a televised statement on Thursday before calling for him to be removed. Birhanu did not offer any evidence to support his accusations.

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***

At the first glance, an ordinary citizen of the globe can think that probably it must be that everything that is now happening in Banderistan Ukraine and around, including and reconstruction of international relations and reformulation of the global order in politics, is just a big misunderstanding. For the same people, probably NATO’s constant expansion to the east since 1999, i.e., to the direction of Russia, has nothing to do with the attempt to subdue and tear Russia apart as wanted the same both Napoleon (in 1812) and Hitler (in 1941).

They will tell you that instead of a war against and occupation of Russia, the goal of NATO’s enlargement is to make the strongest possible global defense alliance for the sake that the people of the world would be ready to resist the alien attack from the cosmos, once it happens. Finally, who will defend our planet if not NATO, and in that alliance, Ukraine is irreplaceable.

Without Banderistan Ukraine, we are going to be unable to efficiently defend our planet from bad guys from the cosmos. Therefore, this is not about NATO’s campaign in the east against Russia and has nothing to do with some earlier in history, bloody attempts of a similar kind (Napoleon & Hitler). Allegedly, this is a misreading of real Western intentions (USA, NATO, EU). In other words, this is a classic case of Russian paranoia, which sees a threat and a conspiracy against Russia in everything, even in foreign (NATO) bases and rockets right next to the Russian western borders (from Estonia to South Ukraine and across the Black Sea in Turkey).

To put aside the irony and cynicism from the previous paragraph as it is not appropriate for a situation in which the people of Ukraine are suffering and whose lives are falling apart in a thousand ways since 2014. However, how to hide the disappointment from the crocodile tears that are shed over the fate of Ukraine by those who, in fact, have been constantly pushing Ukrainians into the war since 2014?

The question became how to react to the diabolical hypocrisy of those who have been systematically destroying foreign countries and making their citizens unhappy for decades, not caring about international law or elementary norms of civilization, and who suddenly, right now in Ukraine, discovered that international law exists? For instance, to remind ourselves, from 1945 to 2001, there were 81% of wars launched by the USA and only 19% by others.

The Russian special military intervention in Ukraine or according to the Western Russophobic media, the 2022 Russian-Ukrainian War was, in fact, inevitable, as it was planned by NATO and consequently, step by step, led to such an outcome. Nevertheless, it has to be quite clear that the plan for the war was not made either in Ukraine or Russia. Both countries are tragic objects of the Western geopolitical plans and their own weaknesses. All we are looking at is a crescendo of processes that began long before 2022. It did not take much intelligence to predict what would happen. The triumph of evil and madness is always more clearly seen in retrospect, always when it is too late. Never since the end of the Second World War has madness ruled Europe as it does today. Europe is reminiscent of a puppet show run by an invisible (USA) hand.

After this conflict, the ethnic Ukrainians will lose the most, regardless of the saying that there is no winner in a war.

Who does not believe, let him ask the former Yugoslavs.

History has not forgiven the Yugoslavs for their stupidity, so neither will the Ukrainians.

Russia’s suicidal pro-Western policy of Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s is only now gaining its full meaning. It is not worse to repeat – history does not forgive stupidity. The only visible winners, at least for short time, are the United States as the global power at sunset of its influence manages to slow down its descent from the throne, it manages to weaken both Europe and Russia at the same time, preparing itself for the great Chinese final.

Today in Ukraine we are witnessing a tragedy of two close Slavic peoples who were in the same state until 1991, which after that just changed the name (from the USSR to the CIS). And when they parted peacefully in 1991, everyone went their own way, bravely, headlong, straight into economic and social chaos. They were led in both economy and politics by foreign advisers who have been showing them the way to “transition”. On that path, Ukraine managed to go much worse even than Yeltsin’s Russia.

Today, Ukraine is the country with the lowest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in Europe and has just lost the battle for the penultimate place from Moldova. This sad staggering cannot be explained by political reasons and conflicts in East Ukraine. The Ukrainians cannot blame the Russians for their economic ruin.

Even before 2014, Ukraine was constantly falling on the ranking list of European countries. At the beginning of the “transition” in 1991, Ukraine had a GDP per capita higher than Belarus by about 63%, higher than Poland by about 37%, and higher than Albania by about 293%. However, before the beginning of the crisis in Ukraine in 2013, its GDP per capita was lower than Poland’s by about 51%, Belarus’ by about 33%, and higher than Albania’s by only 8%. No country in Europe has fallen so badly in “transition” as Ukraine did.

Finally, a long-term economic and financial exploitation of Ukraine’s rich Russian-speaking eastern regions by the administration in Kiev led inevitably in 2014 parallel with the Russophobic Nazification of ethnic Ukrainians to the separation of the Russian-speaking eastern provinces which voluntarily and democratically rejoined their ethnohistoric motherland of Russia in October 2022 for the very reason to avoid further military terror by Banderistan Ukraine and her Western sponsors.

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

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