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Author’s Note: The following address was delivered in part at a webinar sponsored by the Black Alliance for Peace (BAP) on October 1. The event was held under the theme: “Colonialism, Compradors & The Militarized Crisis of Capitalism in Africa”. This program began an International Month of Action Against AFRICOM. Other panelists were Chris Matlhako, South African Peace Initiative; Ezra Otieno, Revolutionary Socialist League Central Committee (Kenya); and Jamila Osman, Resist US-Led War. The webinar was moderated by Salome Ayuak, BAP Africa Team.

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This webinar comes at a critical period in world history where the unfolding of a shifting balance of forces between the western industrialized states and the overwhelmingly world majority of the Global South has created social and political tensions which are being manifested in numerous ways on the international scene.

There is the upcoming COP27 United Nations Climate Conference in Sharm-el-Sheikh, Egypt during November once again providing a forum for the ever-intensifying debates over the necessity of addressing problems of atmospheric and land pollution which has resulted in extreme weather events impacting the supply of water, food and quality housing for several billion people throughout the world.

The COVID-19 pandemic beginning in early 2020, worsened the already unequal distribution of economic resources in both the developing and western capitalist countries. Workplace closures, the lack of adequate healthcare personnel and the failure of the United States to act rapidly early on in the pandemic, has had a devastating impact on the peoples of various geopolitical regions.

Even in the U.S., the largest capitalist economy in the world, millions of workers were idled or forced to shift to a new employment paradigm. Hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises were forced to go out of operation due to a lack of demand as well as disruptions in the availability of employees.

In the U.S., well over $2 trillion in capital infusions in 2020-2021 were interjected into the national economy in order to stave off an economic depression on the scale of the period between 1929-1941. Enormous grants, loans and other incentives were awarded to corporations while extended unemployment benefits and stimulus checks were sent to workers.

Despite all of these measures by the U.S. and other western capitalist governments aimed at stabilizing their societies, much uncertainty remains due to the advent of an inflationary spiral reflected in the rise of transportation, housing, food and other commodity prices. The disruptions in supply chains related to industrial parts, computer chips, tools and building materials has created further pressure on pricing for products and services.

Currently the financial markets in the U.S. and in Western Europe are experiencing tremendous losses prompting fears of an even deepening recession. A recession in the U.S. is defined by two consecutive quarters of negative growth. This has already occurred during 2022 although the term “technical recession” is never used by the current administration of President Joe Biden.

The U.S. central bank, known as the Federal Reserve, in reflecting the desires of finance capital, fears inflation far more than worsening poverty. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has raised interest rates charged to borrowers in the hope that the rise in prices will cease. However, the inflation persists at a rate which is even troublesome to major capitalist investors.

In the U.S., the policy decisions of the Biden administration have not challenged the role of the banks, energy firms and agribusiness interests in fueling inflation. There are no plans for the implementation of price controls nor the mass distribution of government surplus food stuffs which could lower prices for energy and agricultural products. The administration has periodically “warned” oil companies about taking advantage of the extreme weather events, such as Hurricane Ian, to raise prices even higher, yet the overall strategy of the Biden White House is to largely ignore the burgeoning economic crisis and the impoverishment of working and oppressed peoples in lieu of the upcoming midterm congressional and gubernatorial elections in early November.

However, the results of recent opinion polls illustrate discontent with the administration among the U.S. electorate. Biden’s approval rating has fallen to a range of 39-41 percent. Most voters, when asked, expressed concerns about the economy while losing faith in the ability of the administration to effectively address the current problems of rising prices, supply shortages, the threat of job losses and homelessness.

Despite the administration propaganda related to the proxy war in Ukraine, there is a direct correlation between military spending and inflation. Tens of billions of dollars are being sent to the NATO client regime in Kiev amid the declining prospects for economic stability in the U.S.

The current militarist approaches of successive U.S. administrations should not be a surprise to the anti-imperialist and antiwar constituencies both domestically and worldwide. Unfortunately, there are elements within the peace and social justice movements, for various reasons, have bought into the notions that the major source of instability internationally resides outside of the White House, Pentagon and Wall Street.

Placing demands upon the Russian Federation or any other adversary of the U.S. while at the same time not holding the administration in Washington and the bankers on Wall Street responsible for the crises of climate change, economic recessions, food deficits and the overall problems of governance within the imperialist states themselves, in effect nullifies any meaningful acts of solidarity with the Global South. As people living inside the capitalist-imperialist citadel of unipolarity dogmatism, it is essential that those who advocate for the ending of war and for a just world speak clearly in regard to the actual source of the instability within the existing world system.

Origins of Imperialist Militarism: The Atlantic Slave Trade and Colonialism

Western corporate and government media are inherently ahistorical in their approach to international affairs. This is quite evident in the coverage of the racial situation in the U.S. where African Americans and other oppressed peoples are subjected to disproportionate rates of impoverishment, police and racist vigilante violence, incarceration and victimization from environmental degradation.

During the era of the Atlantic slave trade, African people were turned into a source of enrichment through super-exploitation and national oppression based upon racial characteristics. From the early-to-mid 15th century until the latter years of the 19th century, millions of Africans were trafficked into an economic system which only benefitted the colonial rulers. As has been documented in the past, the origins of the major industries within the world capitalist system such as shipping, commerce, banking, manufacturing, criminal justice, etc., were spawned by the profits and military prowess refined during the feudal, mercantilist and incipient capitalist periods of economic history.

African enslavement and colonial occupation were never voluntary processes. These economic systems which provided the basis for the rise of industrial and monopoly capitalism were born in the military assaults and defeats of the African and other peoples of the Asia-Pacific and the Western Hemisphere. The interventions of European enslavers and colonialists disrupted traditional societies, city-states and nation-states. These exploitative and destructive patterns could have never been achieved without the maximum utilization of European military forces.

One source on the military aspect of the Atlantic slave trade noted that:

“Millions of Africans were captured and sent not only to America, but to different locations around the world as slaves. Wars also tended to break out on the continent between groups of people, and it became especially contentious when various African groups began conducting raids to capture and sell people for a profit.  In America, the price of this trade relationship was paid by the Native Americans, as diseases spread throughout their tribes. With the influx of foreign peoples to the country, different bacteria were brought in, much of which the Native Americans’ bodies could not fight off. The plantation economy also developed as a result of the institution of slavery. Furthermore, a strict social hierarchy went into effect, pitting races and groups of people against one another. Europeans, mixed people, natives, and the enslaved all suddenly pertained to a specific rank in society. Europe derived great wealth from the Triangle of Trade and saw a diffusion of not only European cultural customs, but of people as well. They were known to have spread weapons across the regions, especially to their trade partners on the African continent.”

Resistance to enslavement and colonialism took place over the centuries in various territories which were occupied by the Europeans. There were the wars fought by the people of Dahomey against France; the Maji Maji revolt of the people of Tanzania against colonial Germany during the early 20th century; people in Angola under their Queen Ann Zinga fought to liberate people from Portuguese colonialism; among many other instances. The colonial occupation of Africa and the enforcement of legalized institutional racism and segregation in numerous territories on the continent and in the Western Hemisphere were created and perpetuated through military force.

Consequently, the national liberation movements and revolutions were a continuation of this process of resistance. These historical developments were not peculiar to African people as all geo-political regions and territories witnessed revolts against exploitation, oppression and political repression by the colonizing forces.

Nonetheless, in the post-colonial period the threat of imperialist militarism has not receded on the African continent and other areas of the world. Since the consolidation of U.S. hegemony within the capitalist world after 1945, numerous wars of occupation and genocide have been waged by Washington.

In southeast Asia during the 1960s and early 1970s, millions were killed in the failed attempt to defeat the national liberation movements in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Revolutionary wars against colonialism in Africa also resulted in the deaths and displacement of millions between the 1950s to the 1990s.

Therefore, by viewing the contemporary situation in Africa and around the world through an historical lens illustrating the impact of the Atlantic slave trade and colonial conquest, today’s struggles against exploitation and oppression become clearer. The rise of a multipolar world system is a threat to the hegemony of the U.S., U.K and the European Union (EU).

The Russian Federation has refused to cooperate with the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to the point of this military alliance maintaining bases bordering its country. Since the Russian special military operation in Ukraine beginning on February 24, NATO has extended its tentacles to Sweden and Finland. On September 30, the same day in which Moscow announced the merging of the Donbass and Lugansk provinces into the Russian Federation, U.S.-backed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky made a formal request to join NATO.

Washington has been pressuring the AU member-states to provide political support for its efforts to eliminate Russian influence in Ukraine. A Russia-Africa Summit is scheduled to convene in Ethiopia in November and December. Repeatedly these attempts by the Biden administration have been met with rejection.

On a grassroots level there have been numerous reports of pro-Russian demonstrations in AU states such as Mali and Ethiopia. There are historical and contemporary reasons for African solidarity with Russia. During the period of the Soviet Union, Moscow maintained a diplomatic posture of being in solidarity with independence movements and post-colonial states pursuing non-capitalist and socialist oriented development programs. In the post-Soviet era, particularly under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, Moscow has enhanced its trade with various AU member-states along with Ukraine.

These realities have been highlighted in recent months with the current food deficits impacting East Africa and other regions. Russia and Ukraine supply in many cases between 50-90 percent of grain, maize and other agricultural imports. Agricultural inputs such as fertilizer are imported as well from Russia and Ukraine.

A joint meeting several months ago involving President Putin, AU Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat and the Chairman, Senegalese President Macky Sall, in Sochi, the framework for the opening of a humanitarian corridor to facilitate trade amid the escalating war in Ukraine was proposed. Although this plan was later facilitated by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the food deficits have become acute in the Horn of Africa. A combination of drought, internal conflict stoked by western military interference along with economic distress engendered by inflation and burgeoning national debt has endangered millions throughout the East Africa region.

The post-pandemic economic situation cannot be properly addressed while the White House continues to ship arms to Ukraine in their desperate attempt to continue the war. Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated openly that the foreign policy objectives of Washington are to weaken and remove the Russian government under President Putin.

The position of the AU in regard to the Ukraine war emphasizes the necessity of finding a diplomatic solution to the protracted dispute. This cannot be done as long as the Biden administration views as its principal foreign policy objective the forced removal of strategic competitors out of office from Moscow to Beijing.

It does not serve the interests of African working people, farmers and youth to become embroiled in a renewed Cold War instigated by the NATO countries at the aegis of the U.S. government and ruling class. At present, the advent of multipolarity as an approach to foreign relations will continue to heighten the paranoia and hostility of the U.S. ruling class and state government.

Nevertheless, the African people and other nonwestern nations around the world must stand firm in their convictions which diverge from imperialist interests. This attitude was reflected in discussions between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa during his visit to Washington, D.C. in mid-September. The same thrust was articulated by numerous African presidents and ministerial officials at the debates surrounding the United Nations General Assembly 77th Session held in New York City.

In a Foreign Policy article analyzing the visit of Ramaphosa to Washington for talks with Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the report emphasizes:

“The continent’s importance was highlighted after the United Nations voted to condemn Russian aggression, in which half of the abstentions came from African countries. Having been long neglected in U.S. foreign policy, most African countries are now largely aligned with China in their political and economic partnerships. As a result, Africa has played a major role in furthering China’s and Russia’s goal of weakening the United States as the dominant great power. South Africa’s position is important as the only African member of the G-20. Other African nations have followed its lead in refusing to bow to Western pressure on Russia. As expected, Ramaphosa raised objections to a draft U.S. bill that would sanction Africans doing business with Russian entities that are under U.S. sanctions. The bill, called the Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act, would monitor African governments’ dealings with Russia and has been called ‘Cold War-esque’ as well as described as ‘offensive’ by South African Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor. In Washington, Ramaphosa said Africans should not be punished for their historic nonaligned position. ‘We should not be told by anyone who we can associate with,’ he said—a position that has been popular across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as Shivshankar Menon noted in FP in July, even if the ideology may not have much to offer in this day and age, as C. Raja Mohan argued recently.”

This intrusive neo-colonial legislation labeled “countering Russia’s malign influence in Africa” is designed to bolster the already existing military presence of Pentagon troops and intelligence officials on the continent. Such a bill if passed would be tantamount to imposing a Cuba-like blockade on the AU member-states.

The Failure of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM): Greater Instability and Economic Distress

After 14 years, the AFRICOM project which was announced in 2007 by the administration of President George W. Bush, Jr. and became operational in 2008, has been a disaster for the AU member-states whether they have participated or not with this entity. Initially, the African states rejected the stationing of the AFRICOM headquarters on the continent.

Image: AFRICOM in Somalia (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Later after a reframing of the AFRICOM mission by the Pentagon, where the purpose was to assist African states by strengthening military cooperation and therefore enhancing security, numerous governments allowed the escalation of the presence of U.S. forces. In the Horn of Africa, the French military base at Camp Lemonnier, became the major outpost for Pentagon troops on the continent.

According to the AFRICOM website:

“In response to our expanding partnerships and interests in Africa, the U.S. established U.S. Africa Command in 2007. For the past 14 years, U.S. Africa Command has worked with African partners for a secure, stable and prosperous Africa. The creation of U.S. Africa Command has advanced this vision through a whole-of-government, partner-centric lens by building partner capacity, disrupting violent extremists, and responding to crises. Through consistent engagement, we strengthen our partnerships and assure our allies. Only together can we realize security goals vital for global interests and free trade. Allies and partners are critical in realizing our shared vision while enabling contingency operations, maintaining superiority over competitors, monitoring and disrupting violent extremist organizations, and protecting U.S. interests.”

However, in reality the security situation in Africa has worsened since the creation of AFRICOM and the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops on the continent. These military forces have constructed drone stations and makeshift bases while engaging in purported trainings of local military units along with engaging in what is described as counter-insurgency operations.

By 2011, AFRICOM was prepared for a large-scale military operation on the continent resulting in regime change and the destruction of population groups. In Libya, beginning in February of 2011, a rebel insurgency was trained and turned loose in the northern city of Benghazi with the aim of overthrowing the government of Col. Muammar Gaddafi.

After the defeat of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)-sponsored rebels in several regions of Libya, the U.S. went to the United Nations Security Council where they engineered the passage of resolutions 1970 and 1973 as a cover for the blanket bombing of the oil-rich North African state, then the most prosperous of the AU member-states. On March 19, the bombing of Libya began by the U.S. Air Force accompanied by NATO and allied units.

The result of the war which lasted for nine months killed tens of thousands of Libyans, Africans from other states working in the country and guests from other geopolitical regions. With the installation of a puppet regime in Tripoli after the murder of Gaddafi in October 2011, the conditions in Libya only deteriorated further.

Since 2011, the situation inside the country has not stabilized. The Libyan counter-revolution was the first major combat operation of AFRICOM. The administration of President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton championed the war as a victory for “democracy.” In reality, the instability within Libya spread throughout other neighboring states in North and West Africa.

In Mali just one year later in 2012, several insurgent groups began attacks on government institutions and civilian populations in the north and central regions of the country. President Amadou Toumani Toure, a former paratrooper in the Malian military, who had staged a coup in 1991, later changed his military uniform for civilian clothes and won the presidency of the country.

Burkina Faso coup leader Ibrahim Toure appears on State TV (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

One report from National Public Radio (NPR) in March 2012 said of the-then situation:

“’The Tuareg have been making demands for ages,’ says Houngnikpo, who studies civil-military relations at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. ‘This is the first time they have posed such a dangerous military threat.’ The army mutineers who seized control of Mali’s government say they have been taking heavy casualties in the recent fight against the Tuareg rebels, because Toure never provided them with adequate weapons or resources.

Mali has also been fighting an offshoot of al-Qaida, which calls itself the Al-Qaida Organization in the Islamic Maghreb, designated as a terrorist group by the U.S. State Department. The coup is a worrisome development for West African analysts such as Jennifer Cooke, head of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cooke says the coup is ‘a major setback to Mali’s political development,’ especially disturbing after the country had won a reputation for the growth of its democratic institutions and economic reforms. Cooke says the disruption will hamper the fight against the Tuareg rebels. And on Friday, word came that the rebels had advanced southward and occupied a strategic government military camp.”

Over the last decade there have been another two military coups in Mali. The leaders of these putsches were all trained within Pentagon military colleges in the U.S. After the March 2012 coup, French military forces were invited into Mali to assist in the fighting against the insurgents in the north and central areas of the country in early 2013. The presence of French forces was facilitated by AFRICOM which had already been operating inside the country.

Implications of the Recent Military Coups in Three West African States

A resumption of civilian rule in Mali after elections in 2013 saw the rise of President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita. The administration of Keita remained closely aligned with France.

Keita was reelected five years later in 2018. By this time opposition to his rule had grown substantially. In the early months of 2020, various parties and mass organizations began to demonstrate demanding the resignation of the government in Bamako.

Both AFRICOM and the French-coordinated Operation Barkhane had expanded their presence in Mali and throughout the Sahel region. Nonetheless, the attacks by Islamists intensified making the security situation in Mali far more precarious.

A coalition of opposition groups known as the June 5 Movement—Rally of Patriotic Forces (M5-RFP) continued their demonstrations setting the stage for a mutiny within the military on August 18, 2020. Keita and his Prime Minister Boubou Cisse were forced to resign and dissolve parliament.

Col. Assimi Goita emerged as the leader of the coup which was labelled as the National Committee for the Salvation of the People. Goita had been a member of the French Foreign Legion forces and was trained by the Pentagon. Later in 2021, the divisions within an interim governing structure resulting in another Goita-led coup reinforcing his role as the central figure within the Malian government.

Just two-and-a-half weeks after the August 2020 putsch in Mali, in neighboring Guinea-Conakry, there was another military coup led by Col. Mamady Doumbouya against the highly unpopular civilian regime of President Alpha Conde. The ousted president had initiated the revision of the Guinean constitution allowing him to run for a third term in office.

In the wake of the September 5, 2020 coup in Guinea, there was tremendous public support for the military seizure of power. When the 15-member regional Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) denounced the putsch, there were opposition parties which spoke in favor of the military regime.

On the same day of the coup in Guinea, the AFRICOM forces were engaged with the local military in what was described as a training exercise. Green Beret soldiers were videoed and photographed in the streets of Conakry as the coup was unfolding.

Even the New York Times took notice of the situation and reported:

“For the Pentagon, though, it is an embarrassment. The United States has trained troops in many African nations, largely for counterterrorism programs but also with the broad aim of supporting civilian-led governments. And although numerous U.S.-trained officers have seized power in their countries — most notably, Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi of Egypt — this is believed to be the first time one has done so in the middle of an American military course…. As a four-wheel-drive vehicle with Guinean soldiers perched on the back pushes through the crowd chanting ‘Freedom,’ one American appears to touch hands with cheering people. ‘If the Americans are involved in the putsch, it’s because of their mining interests,’ said Diapharou Baldé, a teacher in Conakry — a reference to Guinea’s huge deposits of gold, iron ore and bauxite, which is used to make aluminum.”

In Burkina Faso there has been another military coup, the second within eight months. On September 30, a group of officers announced the overthrow of Col. Paul Henri Damiba who had cited the growing atmosphere of insecurity as a rationale for his actions in January. Damiba was himself ousted by another military grouping led by Capt. Ibrahim Traore.

The leader of the latest coup was a part of the initial putsch in January under the banner of the Patriotic Movement for Safeguarding and Restoration. Traore was quoted by media sources as saying the decision was made to remove Damiba after he returned from the United General Assembly earlier in the month due to what the coup makers described as the ineffectiveness of the former military junta leader.

A series of attacks by Islamist insurgents over the last several months has eroded the legitimacy of the proclamations of the Damiba regime. Burkina Faso has experienced numerous coups since its independence in 1960. A period between 1983-1987, a revolutionary movement led by Capt. Thomas Sankara, sought to break the cycle of neo-colonial domination and debt obligations to the former colonial power of France.

Sankara, a popular figure and international statesman, advocated the cancellation of foreign debt obligations to international finance capital. Unfortunately, he fell victim to a violent coup in October 1987. The overthrow of Sankara was engineered by France through the then pro-western government in Ivory Coast.

The Guardian newspaper said of the September 30 coup led by Traore:

“Members of Burkina Faso’s army have seized control of state television, declaring that they had ousted military leader Paul-Henri Damiba, dissolved the government and suspended the constitution and transitional charter. In a statement read on national television late on Friday, Captain Ibrahim Traore said a group of officers had decided to remove Damiba due to his inability to deal with a worsening Islamist insurgency. He announced that borders were closed indefinitely, and that all political and civil society activities were suspended. It is the second takeover in eight months for the West African state. Damiba took power in a coup in January that ousted democratically elected president Roch Marc Kaboré. Damiba and his allies promised to make the country more secure, but violence has continued unabated and frustration with his leadership has grown in recent months. The statement came after a day of uncertainty, with gunfire ringing out in the capital, Ouagadougou. ‘In the face of the continuing deterioration of the security situation, we have repeatedly tried to refocus the transition on security issues,’ said the statement read aloud on Friday evening by the soldiers. The soldiers promised the international community they would respect their commitments and urged Burkinabes ‘to go about their business in peace.’”

There are new rhetorical dimensions articulated by the military leaders who have taken power in West Africa since 2020. The interim Prime Minister of Mali, Abdoulaye Maiga, in his address to the UN General Assembly condemned France and its role in the current instability in the country. Maiga even asserted that French troops had been observed delivering military equipment to some rebel forces operating against the central government in Bamako.

Guinean military leaders have publicly demanded the investment in new industries by the mining firms which are exploiting the vast aluminum and iron ore resources. These anti-Paris and anti-Western sentiments have also been extended to Burkina Faso where mass groupings outside the government are advocating for greater Russian involvement in the security concerns of the West Africa region.

Although there appeared to be substantial support from civilian organizations for the September 2021 coup in Guinea, in recent months mass demonstrations have taken place demanding the removal of the military administration. These protests were sparked by the rapid increase of prices for essential goods and fuel.

Al Mayadeen in its reporting on the latest coup in Burkina Faso wrote that:

“On September 28, a convoy carrying supplies was attacked in the town of Djibo, leaving 11 soldiers killed and around 50 civilians missing. More than 40% of the African nation, previously a French colony, is not under government control as most of the Sahel, including Niger and Mali, is suffering from the outcomes of the insurgency, which is beginning to spill over into the Ivory Coast and Togo.

Mali witnessed a large presence of French forces for nearly a decade, but French President Emmanuel Macron decided to withdraw his troops and the Malian military took over. The last French troops from Barkhane departed last month.”

On October 1, there were reports from Burkina Faso that the ousted interim coup leader, Col. Damiba, had taken refuge at a French military base inside the country. Demonstrations erupted outside the French embassy in the capital of Ouagadougou as protesters charged the former colonial power of involvement in an attempt to reimpose Damiba. Also, in the second largest city of Bobo Dioulasso, the French Institute was subjected to an arson attack by crowds.

Photographs of the demonstrations in Burkina Faso showed people carrying Russian flags. This gesture represents the rejection of the NATO countries as it relates to their presence in West Africa.

These developments portend much for the future of western military interventions in the AU member-states. In the final analysis, it is the African people who must wrestle their territories from neo-colonialism which is bolstered by imperialist militarism.

The rationale for assistance from AFRICOM, NATO, the French Foreign Legion and the European Union Forces have rapidly evaporated. Many of the same social elements dominating African military structures can no longer see a way forward through an unconditional alliance with the western capitalist governments and financial interests.

A long-term solution would require the restructuring of military forces in Africa enabling them to effectively represent the national and class interests of the people. After the transformation of the entire character of the post-colonial states, the basis for realignment of political forces on an international scale would be established.

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

Featured image: Burkina Faso demonstration outside French embassy (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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In his statement on the occasion of the 212^th anniversary of Mexican independence, delivered on Sept. 16, the President of Mexico Andrés Manuel López Obrador presented his proposal for the establishment of a High-Level Caucus for Dialogue and Peace in Ukraine. Yesterday, during his statement in the Security Council, and later in the general debate of the 77^th General Assembly, Secretary of Foreign Affairs Marcelo Ebrard formally presented Mexico’s proposal.

This article will address the rationale behind this initiative, its proposed operation, and steps that have been taken toward its realization.

Standstill at the United Nations

The escalation of tensions in the ongoing war against Ukraine is deeply worrisome. From Feb. 24 to July 31, 2022, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights recorded 12,584 civilian casualties in Ukraine. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has recorded 7,278,696 refugees from Ukraine across Europe. And according to a July Report of the Food and Agriculture Organization, initial estimates indicate a damage to agriculture between USD $4.3 billion and USD $6.4 billion due to the war.

In addition to these appalling figures, the precarious situation at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Station, which the International Atomic Energy Agency called “untenable,” has added a new threatening nuclear dimension to international peace and security.

In the meantime, given the direct involvement of a permanent member in the conflict, the Security Council has proven unable to take action, thus failing to comply with its U.N. Charter-mandated primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. So far, the only declaration it has adopted is the brief Presidential Statement S/PRST/2022/3 of May 6, 2022, co-authored by Mexico and Norway, in which the Council expressed strong support for Secretary-General António Guterres’ efforts in the search for a peaceful solution. However, it has not been able to back the diplomatic efforts undertaken by him that led first to the opening of humanitarian corridors that allowed the evacuation of civilians and, more recently, to the facilitation, along with Türkiye, of the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which allows the export and safe transportation of grain from Ukraine as well as the Memorandum of Understanding on promoting Russian food products and fertilizers to world markets.

Given the paralysis of the Security Council and building on General Assembly resolution A/RES/ES-11/1, Mexico and France also co-authored General Assembly resolution A/RES/ES-11/2, entitled “Humanitarian consequences of the aggression against Ukraine,” adopted on March 24 with overwhelming support. This resolution “strongly encourages the continued negotiations between all parties, and again urges the immediate peaceful resolution of the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine through political dialogue, negotiations, mediation and other peaceful means in accordance with international law.”

But tensions continue to escalate and urgent action is needed.

Mexico’s Foreign Policy As a Peace-Loving Nation

As we emphasized in another Just Security piece, one of Mexico’s key priorities as an Elected Member to the Security Council for the term 2021-2022 has been the peaceful settlement of disputes and mediation.

Mexico’s foreign policy as a peace-loving nation has borne fruit in the past. This was the case with the creation of the Contadora Group in the 1980’s that led to the Accords for the establishment of a firm and lasting peace in Central America. More recently in 2019, it also led to the establishment, together with Uruguay, of the Montevideo Mechanism with the purpose of opening a path for dialogue and negotiation in Venezuela.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, Mexico made clear its position on a political solution in its Feb. 25 statement in the Security Council, in which the following six points were highlighted:

1. We are facing the invasion of a sovereign country by another, which represents a flagrant violation of Article 2, paragraph 4 of the UN Charter and constitutes, in addition, an aggression by the terms of resolution 3314 (XXIX) of the General Assembly, adopted by all members of the United Nations.
2. Mexico has suffered four invasions during its history as an independent state: two by France (1838 and 1862-67) and two by the United States (1846-48 and 1914). The first U.S. intervention in 1846 resulted in the loss of almost half of our national territory at the time.
3. Mexico has always condemned all acts of aggression, as was evidenced by our protest before the League of Nations against the annexation of Ethiopia and Albania by Italy (1935-36) and the annexation of Austria by Germany (1938).
4. Our rejection of the use of force led us to convene, in 1945, the Inter-American Conference on the Problems of Peace and War in Mexico City, in order to arrive at the San Francisco Conference with a clear and defined regional position on this issue.
5. Mexico’s foreign policy is pacifist. Since the founding of the United Nations, it has defended and will continue to defend, in this organization and in all other forums, the prohibition on the threat or use of force in international relations.
6. In 1988, we inscribed in our Constitution (art. 89, X) the principles of the Charter of the United Nations as normative principles of our foreign policy.

Given its long-standing tradition for peace and diplomacy, embedded in our national Constitution, and in accordance with our responsibility as an Elected Member of the Security Council, it is only natural that Mexico has decided once again to champion a political solution to the conflict and to exhaust all efforts towards that end.

Pursuing a High-Level Caucus for Dialogue and Peace

Mexico’s proposal on the establishment of a High-Level Caucus for Dialogue and Peace in Ukraine is intended to boost the mediation efforts of Secretary-General Guterres and would therefore operate under his leadership, in partnership with other Heads of State and Government. Given their high moral character, it is hoped that the Prime Minister of India, H.E. Narendra Modi, and H. H. Pope Francis would support Guterres in this endeavor.

The objective of this Caucus would be to serve as a diplomatic channel to engage with both the Russian Federation and Ukraine, with a view toward confidence-building measures, lowering tensions, and brokering a cease-fire that could lead to a truce, thus opening a path for dialogue towards the ultimate goal of achieving a sustainable peace agreement.

Needless to say, this is easier said than done. Mexico is fully cognizant that the precondition for any mediation effort to succeed is the political will of the parties and we are cognizant that tensions continue to grow. In the past days, we have led several bilateral meetings with all relevant actors at the ambassadorial level on this proposal in New York, and more will take place at the ministerial level on the margins of the General Assembly’s high-level week. So far, albeit with caution, all parties have expressed their interest in learning more details about this proposal.

Conclusion

We are convinced that it is the duty of all Members of the United Nations to exhaust all diplomatic efforts towards the peaceful settlement of disputes. Indifference is unacceptable. It is precisely in dire times like these that our endurance is put to the test. We cannot and must not give in to despair. This initiative is now at the mercy of the political will of the parties. We hope that it leads to a new chapter in this conflict, one governed by diplomacy and political dialogue, for the sake of the people of the world who continue to suffer from the scourge of war and to whom we will always remain accountable for our actions and for our omissions.

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***

The Defense Department announced Wednesday that the United States and its allies are planning to “expand their nations’ industrial base” for building bombs, rockets and artillery for the war with Russia in Ukraine.

In the name of “providing long-term support to Ukraine,” the world’s leading imperialist powers are massively escalating their wartime production of “ground-based long range fires, air defense systems, air-to-ground munitions.”

The New York Times called the announcement a “Turning Point for Allies Arming Ukraine” and a “sign that the United States and its allies believe that the fighting in Ukraine will last years.”

That same day, Washington announced plans to more than double the number of long-range HIMARS missile launchers sent to Ukraine. According to the Pentagon, the US will spend another $1.1 billion on arms shipments to the country.

These moves come as Russia has declared that it would recognize the independence of four Ukrainian territories partially under its control, in what is expected to be the prelude to their formal annexation on Friday.

On Monday, a series of attacks took place on the Nord Stream I and Nord Stream II pipelines, which have the capability of transferring natural gas from Russia to Germany. Ending the Nord Stream II pipeline project was a major goal of the United States in seeking to provoke a war with Russia.

Although no state has taken responsibility for the attacks, Radosław Sikorski, the former Foreign Minister of Poland and husband of US state operative Anne Applebaum, tweeted, “Thank you, USA,” before subsequently deleting the tweet.

These developments follow a major military debacle for Russian forces in northeastern Ukraine earlier this month, in which Ukrainian US-NATO proxy forces advanced dozens of miles in a matter of days. In the wake of the collapse of Russian defenses in the Kharkiv region, the Kremlin threatened to use nuclear weapons in the war, while US officials declared that they would not be “deterred” from escalating their involvement in the war by the threat of nuclear annihilation.

The lightning advance by Ukraine was made possible by the fact that the United States had provided its most sophisticated ground-based missile and anti-aircraft systems to Ukrainian troops and had proposed, organized and led the offensive.

The United States, having transformed the Ukrainian army into a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Pentagon, has effectively emptied its armories of all available weapons to send to the country.

The weapons shipment announced by the Pentagon on Wednesday will be the first in which the United States is not drawing down existing inventories of weapons but rather directly commissioning defense contractors to build weapons potentially years in the future, the Pentagon said.

“Unlike Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which DoD has continued to leverage to deliver equipment to Ukraine from DoD stocks at a historic pace, USAI is an authority under which the United States procures capabilities from industry,” the Pentagon said. “This announcement represents the beginning of a contracting process to provide additional priority capabilities to Ukraine in the mid- and long-term.”

The Pentagon noted,

“In total, the United States has now committed approximately $16.9 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since January 2021. Since 2014, the United States has committed approximately $19 billion in security assistance to Ukraine more than $16.2 billion since the beginning of Russia’s unprovoked and brutal invasion on February 24.”

The US has, for example, sent more than 1.5 million 155mm howitzer shells to Ukraine, while it only produces 30,000 shells per year in peacetime.

“The military stocks of most [European NATO] member states have been, I wouldn’t say exhausted but depleted in a high proportion, because we have been providing a lot of capacity to the Ukrainians,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security, said earlier this month.

NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg declared,

“We are now working with industry to increase production of weapons and ammunition, somehow as a whole to increase production.”

“The United States needs to maintain stockpiles to support war plans,” Mark Cancian, a former US Marine Corps colonel and a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), told CNBC. “For some munitions, the driving war plan would be a conflict with China over Taiwan or in the South China Sea,” he said.

Alongside its rearmament plan, the United States has this week announced plans to reorganize how it commands, arms and equips its proxy forces in Ukraine, creating a unified command structure to organize the war effort.

So far, the Pentagon has not admitted to the creation of the new command structure in order to, according to the New York Times, “avoid feeding into the narrative of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that his country is at war with the United States.”

The Times reports that “The system would be placed under a single new command based in Germany that would be led by a high-ranking U.S. general, according to several military and administration officials.”

The newspaper added,

“The new command, which would report to General Cavoli, would carry out the decisions made by the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a coalition of 40 countries that the Defense Department created after the Russian invasion to address Ukraine’s needs and requests.

“About 300 people would be dedicated to the mission, which would be in Wiesbaden, Germany, the U.S. Army’s headquarters in Europe. Much of the training of Ukrainian soldiers on U.S. weapons systems is already taking place there or nearby,” the New York Times reported.

Amid the escalation of the war, the US Embassy in Moscow has urged its citizens to leave Russia, declaring,

“U.S. citizens should not travel to Russia, and those residing or traveling in Russia should depart Russia immediately while limited commercial travel options remain.”

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***

A New York hospital pulled a 30-second ad about myocarditis in children after Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and numerous doctors accused the hospital of normalizing and trivializing the condition.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital in early September published the 30-second ad, which promoted the medical center’s pediatric services for treating the condition.

The hospital pulled the ad amid public outcry following three CHD.TV episodes featuring discussions about how the ad appeared to normalize and trivialize myocarditis in children. CHD.TV is produced by Children’s Health Defense.

The ad, “Pediatric Patient Story,” featured a young girl named Suri and transitioned between live-action footage and animation.

“I’ve been into fashion since I can remember,” Suri said in the ad. “But one day, I had a stomachache so bad I didn’t want to do anything.”

Suri continued:

“The team at NewYork-Presbyterian said it was actually my heart. It was severely swollen — something called ‘myocarditis.’

“But doctors gave me medicines and used machines to control my heartbeat. They saved me. So now I can become the next great fashion designer.”

The ad ended with the caption “Stay Amazing” and then faded to the hospital’s logo, without any mention of what may have caused the potentially fatal heart condition.

Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show a strong link between cases of myocarditis and COVID-19 vaccines.

Between Dec. 14, 2020, and Sept. 16, 2022, 23,926 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis were reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, with 18,186 cases attributed to Pfizer, 5,304 cases to Moderna and 410 cases to the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine.

VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.

‘ … they make a ton of money on providing medical help.’

“I almost have no words for this type of advertisement,” said Aimee Villella McBride, CHD director of communications, in a Sept. 9 episode of CHD.TV’s “Friday Roundtable.”

“It left me speechless the first time I saw it,” she said.

Summit News on Sept. 16 called out the hospital’s commercial for treating myocarditis in children “as if it’s a common illness.”

Dr. Vinay Prasad, a hematologist-oncologist and professor of epidemiology and biostatistics at the University of California, San Francisco, retweeted the ad on Sept. 18, adding his own questions and comments.

Why would anyone try to normalize myocarditis, when it is easy to try to reduce it?
Lower doses
Space out doses
No moderna & Fewer doses in young men
Exemptions for future doses for people who already had COVID19

All preferable to TV ads hinting heart inflammation is no biggie https://t.co/DrOOAzqLkO

— Vinay Prasad MD MPH (@VPrasadMDMPH) September 18, 2022

On Sept. 19, America’s Frontline News said the ad targeted children and noted that myocarditis is a “hallmark side effect of the COVID-19 injections.”

And in the Sept. 19 episode of CHD.TV’s “This Week,” Mary Holland, CHD president and general counsel, pointed out the significance of the ad, noting that NewYork-Presbyterian, which is affiliated with Columbia University, is not “any old hospital.”

“This is one of the biggest and most prestigious hospitals in New York City,” Holland said.

Holland highlighted how the girl in the ad says the hospital’s doctors “saved me.”

“I think what’s left out of this ad,” Holland said, “is, ‘Yes, and they also injured her.’”

She added:

“They are the people — if they gave her a COVID shot — that caused myocarditis. They first injured her. They made a little bit of money on that. And then they made a ton of money on providing her medical help.

“And they lied to her about what the cause might be. I think they also neglected to say that myocarditis can result in needing a heart transplant within a matter of years.”

Holland commented further in a Sept. 18 tweet:

‘They make a little bit of money on [the shot], + then they make a ton of money on providing medical help.’ — Mary Holland on recent NY Presbyterian Myocarditis ad

‘This is turning the healthcare system against the people.’ #ThisWeek #CHDTVhttps://t.co/rLDXWMB3Yq

— Children’s Health Defense (@ChildrensHD) September 19, 2022

On Sept. 22, Tucker Carlson of Fox News  discussed the ad with Dr. Marty Makary, a researcher at Johns Hopkins University, who early on warned the CDC that they needed to “rigorously study the long-term effects of vaccine-induced myocarditis.”

“Severe heart damage in otherwise healthy children” is not something “we’ve always had” happening, Carlson said. “What type of life will someone have at age 50 when they suffer unnecessary heart damage as a child?”

That same evening, Dr. Peter McCullough, an internist and cardiologist in Dallas, Texas, retweeted a clip of the Fox news interview with Makary, with this comment:

Dr. Mackary on with Tucker Carlson. Long term effects of myocarditis devastating and far more common than the CDC led Americans to believe. Tucker asks: "What type of life will someone have at age 50 when they suffer unnecessary heart damage as a child?" pic.twitter.com/wiPxNWTSw2

— Peter McCullough, MD, MPH (@P_McCulloughMD) September 23, 2022

The next day, McCullough pointed out during the Sept. 23 episode of CHD.TV’s “Friday Roundtable” that there have been many fatal cases documented of vaccine-related myocarditis.

He pointed to a U.K. study published in August that reported 100 deaths due to vaccine-related myocarditis.

Sometime between Sept. 23 and Sept. 29, the hospital pulled the ad, which is still available on alternative media sites. The original youtube video is listed as private.

The Defender reached out to NewYork-Presbyterian’s public relations department to inquire about the ad and why it was pulled, but officials there did not respond by deadline.

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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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***

On Wednesday, the leaders of four regions in eastern and southern Ukraine called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to incorporate their territories into Russia.

Once the results of the accession referendums held in the previous days were known, the leaders of the self-proclaimed republics of Lugansk and Donetsk, Leonid Pasechnik and Denis Pushilin, traveled to Moscow to personally request President Vladimir Putin to incorporate these regions into the Russian Federation.

The heads of the administrations of Kherson and Zaporizhia also issued statements in which they also advocated “reunification” with Russia, highlighting the support this decision received in the referendums that were held between September 23 and 27 amid attacks perpetrated by Ukrainian forces.

The Russian news agency RIA published the results of the referendums held in the four separatist regions, where the majority of their populations voted in favor of annexation to Russia. The votes in favor of YES were as follows: Kherson (97%), Zaporizhia (98.19%), Lougansk (97.82%), and Donetsk (98%).

My statement at a press conference in #Donetsk yesterday after 4 days observing referendum prep & voting, ballot counting & external voting. The West has always lied & it will continue to lie especially when people resist their tyranny & oppression. #Donbass_is_Russia pic.twitter.com/g2SZleeeZ2

— vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) September 28, 2022

The annexation process of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson, and Zaporozhie to the Russian Federation might be completed in just 12 days.

According to Russian law, Putin must first recognize the independence of Kherson and Zaporizhia before approving their accession to Russia. This already happened on Feb. 21, three days before the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.

On Oct. 3, the Russian Lower House will hold an extraordinary session to deal with the issue. A day later, the Senate plans to debate the annexation of the new territories. Once both houses give their approval, President Putin will do the same.

However, according to the Institute for the Study of War and the British intelligence, the news about the annexation could even come on Friday, Sept. 30.

Majority of Ukraine's four regions support referendum on accession to Russia – #Russia #Ukraine pic.twitter.com/IRZuaiKiZ1

— teleSUR English (@telesurenglish) September 28, 2022

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***

The emergency authorizations of Pfizer’s and Moderna’s bivalent COVID boosters are based on preliminary test results from a grand total of eight mice, and that data hasn’t even been made public

Based on the antibody response in eight mice, the Biden administration has ordered 171 million doses of the two boosters

A reanalysis of data from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials found that, combined, the jabs were associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest at a rate of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated. Meanwhile, the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization was only 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna

According to a recent risk-benefit analysis of a third booster for university students, for each COVID hospitalization prevented, the booster will cause 18 to 98 serious adverse events

A number of top officials with the FDA, CDC and the NIH reportedly have serious concerns about the direction we’re going in, yet are too afraid to speak out or push back

*

August 31, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration authorized the reformulated COVID bivalent booster shots by Moderna and Pfizer1 — all without the required convening of its Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), which would typically discuss or vote on the authorization or approval of a new vaccine.

Instead, the FDA pushed the matter before the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). ACIP met for eight hours September 1, 2022, and authorized the untested boosters 13-to-1.2 3 CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky endorsed the recommendation later that evening.

Pfizer’s new booster, authorized for people age 12 and older, is a bivalent injection targeting Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5, which are the two currently in circulation.

Moderna’s shot, authorized for adults only, aged 18 and older, targets the already extinct Wuhan strain and Omicron subvariant BA.1.4 The two bivalent boosters is only be available to those who have already received the primary two-dose series and/or a monovalent booster at least two months ago.5

Safety and Efficacy Assumed Based on Mouse Data

As explained in “What They’re Not Telling You About the New mRNA Boosters,” the emergency authorization of these reformulated boosters is based on nothing more than preliminary test results from a grand total of eight mice,6 and that data hasn’t even been released to the public.

In an August 30, 2022, article, Science explained the makeup of the reformulated boosters:7

“Both the Pfizer-BioNTech collaboration and Moderna make their vaccines from messenger RNA (mRNA) coding for the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2. The new vaccines are bivalent.

Half of the mRNA codes for the spike protein of the ancestral virus strain that emerged in Wuhan, China, in late 2019, which is also in the original shots; the other half codes for the spike protein in BA.1 or the one in BA.4 and BA.5, which have identical spikes …

For the BA.4/BA.5 boosters, the companies have submitted animal data. They have not released those data publicly, although at the June FDA meeting, Pfizer presented preliminary findings in eight mice given BA.4/BA.5 vaccines as their third dose.

Compared with the mice that received the original vaccine as a booster, the animals showed an increased response to all Omicron variants tested: BA.1, BA.2, BA.2.12.1, BA.4, and BA.5.

The companies say clinical trials for the BA.4/BA.5 vaccines will begin next month [i.e. September 2022]; they need clinical data both for full approval of the vaccines — their recent submissions are only for emergency use authorization — and to help develop future updates.

Presumably they will measure recipients’ antibody levels, but not the vaccine’s efficacy against infection or severe disease. Such trials are very expensive and were not done for the BA.1 shot either.”

FDA and CDC Rely on Assumptions, Not Actual Data 

A key take-home here is that efficacy against infection and severe disease has NEVER been ascertained. Those trials were not done for the original shot, and won’t be done for the reformulated boosters. Yet the efficacy of these boosters is assumed and declared as having been “proven” based on the original trials.

Talk about a circular argument! It’s just assumptions piled upon assumptions. Yet, based on the antibody response in eight mice alone, the Biden administration has now ordered 171 million doses of the two boosters.

Let’s not forget that the mice actually did get infected with Omicron,8 although we don’t know to what degree, since they haven’t released the data. For all we know, the mice may have had a good antibody response, got sick and then dropped dead.

What’s more, the monovalent Pfizer booster authorized for children aged 5 to 11, back in May 2022, was based on the antibody levels of just 67 children.9 So, when the FDA claims the original human trials were exhaustive and have conclusively proven the shots are both safe and effective, they’re flat out lying.

In addition to apparent fraud being committed, and the fact that they eliminated the placebo groups midway, those human trials won’t even be finalized for another two years or so, as all clinical trials require follow-up.

All we have are preliminary analyses, and FOIA released documents clearly show Pfizer has been less than transparent about adverse effects, as they mislabeled and dismissed almost all of them.

A reanalysis10 of data from the Pfizer and Moderna COVID vaccine trials found that, combined, Pfizer and Moderna mRNA COVID-19 jabs were actually associated with a risk increase of serious adverse events of special interest of 12.5 per 10,000 vaccinated. Meanwhile, the risk reduction for COVID-19 hospitalization was only 2.3 per 10,000 participants for Pfizer and 6.4 per 10,000 for Moderna. So, again, the risk-benefit is crazy lopsided AGAINST the shots.

Repeat Boosting Can Destroy Your Immune Function

Aside from the risk of immediate adverse effects of these experimental gene transfer injections, there’s also the issue of immune destruction through repeat exposure. A number of scientists have warned that repeated injections appear to be breaking down people’s immune systems. As noted by independent journalist Rav Avora:11

“The European Medicines Agency has warned12 against the potential adverse immunological effects of repeated boosting every four months.

As Dr. Marty Makary from Johns Hopkins has noted,13 recent research shows a ‘reduced immune response against the Omicron strain among people previously infected who then received three COVID vaccine doses compared to a control group that previously had COVID and did not have multiple shots.’

It is just impossible to overstate the unconditional absurdity of the FDA and CDC decision. Not only is the booster merely available to the public … but it is recommended by the state for everyone, including children and teenagers — those with least to gain and most to lose.”

Indeed, the population most likely to be mandated to take a bivalent booster are students, and according to a recent risk-benefit analysis,14 which assessed the impact of booster mandates for university students, between 22,000 and 30,000 previously uninfected students (aged 18 to 29) must be boosted to prevent a single COVID-19 hospitalization.

And, for each COVID-related hospitalization prevented, the booster will cause 18 to 98 serious adverse events, including 1.7 to 3 “booster-associated myocarditis cases in males,” plus another 1,373 to 3,234 cases of “grade ≥3 reactogenicity which interferes with daily activities.”

In short, mandating a third COVID shot for university students will result in a net expected harm of massive proportions, which is completely unethical. Anyone who cannot compute that 18 to 98 serious injuries plus another 3,000+ injuries that are bad enough to interfere with daily living is WORSE than one COVID hospitalization really should not be in a public health position. They belong in a remedial first-grade math class.

Public Health Officials Go Along to Get Along

Sadly, a number of top officials within the FDA, CDC and the National Institutes of Health reportedly have serious concerns about the direction we’re going in, yet are too afraid to speak out or push back, so the death toll keeps mounting. In a July 15, 2022, Substack article, Makary and Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg shared the following:15

“The calls and text messages are relentless. On the other end are doctors and scientists at the top levels of the NIH, FDA and CDC. They are variously frustrated, exasperated and alarmed about the direction of the agencies to which they have devoted their careers.

‘It’s like a horror movie I’m being forced to watch and I can’t close my eyes,’ one senior FDA official lamented. ‘People are getting bad advice and we can’t say anything.’

That particular FDA doctor was referring to two recent developments inside the agency. First, how, with no solid clinical data, the agency authorized COVID vaccines for infants and toddlers, including those who already had COVID. And second, the fact that just months before, the FDA bypassed their external experts to authorize booster shots for young children …

At the NIH, doctors and scientists complain to us about low morale and lower staffing: The NIH’s Vaccine Research Center has had many of its senior scientists leave over the last year, including the director, deputy director and chief medical officer. ‘They have no leadership right now …’ one NIH scientist told us …

Another CDC scientist told us: ‘I used to be proud to tell people I work at the CDC. Now I’m embarrassed.’ Why are they embarrassed? In short, bad science. The longer answer: that the heads of their agencies are using weak or flawed data to make critically important public health decisions … And that they have a myopic focus on one virus instead of overall health …

An official at the FDA put it this way: ‘I can’t tell you how many people at the FDA have told me, ‘I don’t like any of this, but I just need to make it to my retirement.’”

Even Dr. Paul Offit, one of the most prominent pro-vaccine propagandists in U.S. history and a member of the FDA’s VRBPAC, has the common sense to question the sanity of rolling out untested shots to millions of people. In late August 2022, just two days before the FDA authorized the two bivalent boosters, he told the Wall Street Journal:16

“I’m uncomfortable that we would move forward — that we would give millions or tens of millions of doses to people — based on mouse data.”

Why Is FDA Making Unsubstantiated Claims in Ads?

The FDA is also advertising the COVID shots — and making bizarre unscientific claims in those ads. Here are two recent COVID booster campaign messages tweeted out by the FDA:

“It’s time to install that update! #UpdateYourAntibodies with a new #COVID19 booster.”17“Don’t be shocked! You can now #RechargeYourImmunity with an updated #COVID19 booster.”18

By law, the FDA should not engage in the advertising of drugs — historically, they’ve never even worked with drug companies to create ads19 — and the agency certainly should not put out false and misleading claims about drugs, as this is illegal. So, why are they doing both? As reported by Tablet magazine:20

“The continuation of unchecked conflicts of interest, and several recent authorizations for uses of new medical products that are in many ways unproven, demonstrate that the FDA is essentially unresponsive to public outrage, culminating in the bizarre spectacle of … promoting bivalent boosters on social media through unsubstantiated claims …

[A]cting not as a neutral regulator but actively advertising on behalf of pharmaceutical companies with government purchase contracts. The FDA’s disregard for its congressional mandate is not unique to this moment — it is a symptom of its decadeslong transformation into an agency captured by the corporations it is tasked with regulating.”

Why Is FDA Ignoring Red Flags?

Tablet magazine also highlights the FDA’s now-consistent disregard for safety issues, even when data clearly point to problems. This includes data showing frequent boosters can weaken immune function, and the fact that Pfizer, in its pediatric trial, actually observed a higher rate of severe COVID in the vaccine group than the placebo group.

The FDA also allowed Pfizer to discount 365 symptomatic cases in the pediatric trial and only count 10 cases that occurred after the third dose. This is how they got to 80% efficacy. In reality, however, the efficacy was negative after doses 1 and 2. As noted by Tablet magazine:21

“In a vaccine meant to prevent illness for an age group that is already at extremely low risk, this data should have been a red flag for the FDA. Why, then, has the body charged with protecting Americans from inadequately tested products been so eager not just to authorize these products for emergency use, but to enthusiastically recommend them?”

Clearly, the fact that 75% of the FDA’s funding comes from the drug industry is one factor that contributes to this corruption. Another is the revolving door between the agency and industry, with officials passing back and forth between the two.

A third factor is the financial conflicts of interest of individual officials. Tablet magazine reviews several examples of VRBPAC members receiving hundreds of thousands and even millions of dollars from drug companies, be it in the form of research grants, speakers’ fees or consulting fees.

Recent Studies Demonstrate Insanity of Continuing Boosters

In closing, at least three new studies demonstrate the insanity of continuing down the path of boosters:

1. Japanese researchers have found in vitro evidence of antibody dependent enhancement (ADE) following Moderna’s mRNA injection.22 23

2. A preprint study24 posted on bioRxiv in mid-September 2022 found Omicron sublineage BA.2.75.2 is exceptionally good at escaping neutralizing antibodies.

On average, this sublineage was neutralized fivefold less potently than BA.5, making it the most resistant variant to date. According to the authors, “These data raise concerns that BA.2.75.2 may effectively evade humoral immunity in the population.”

3. Another September preprint25 26 27 by Chinese researchers detail how and why SARS-CoV-2 variants are outracing vaccination efforts, and the role played by original antigenic sin.

4. In addition to BA.2.75.2, other variants with impressive immune evading capabilities include BR.1, BJ.1, and BQ.1.1. According to the authors,28 many of the variants now emerging have mutations converging in particular “hotspots” on the receptor binding domain (RBD).

They suspect this convergent evolution is linked to humoral immune imprinting, in other words, the phenomenon of original antigenic sin,29 the end result of which is reduced immunity and an increased risk of symptomatic infection.

If you’re up for some, at times, complex scientific jargon, check out coauthor Yunlong Richard Cao’s Twitter thread in which he does his best to lay out the findings. Cao explains the convergent RBD evolution as follows:

“Due to immune imprinting, BA.5 breakthrough infection caused significant reductions of nAb [neutralizing antibody] epitope diversity and increased proportion of non-neutralizing mAbs [monoclonal antibodies], which in turn concentrated immune pressure and promoted the convergent RBD evolution.”

The take-home message here is that this convergent RBD evolution — which is making new variants increasingly capable of evading neutralizing antibodies — is the result of a narrow antibody response.

It’s a byproduct of “vaccinating” the world during an active outbreak. The end result is that both natural immunity and the COVID jabs are rendered more or less null and void. If that’s not reason enough to quit this booster madness, I don’t know what is.

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Notes

1 New York Times August 31, 2022 (Archived)

2 Rumble, Friday Roundtable September 2, 2022

3 Pharmacy Practice News September 1, 2022

4 Sky News August 15, 2022

5 FDA August 31, 2022

6 Tablet September 18, 2022

7 Science August 30, 2022

8 Rav Arora Substack September 12, 2022

9 Forbes May 17, 2022

10 SSRN June 23, 2022, Revised September 9, 2022

11 Rav Arora Substack September 12, 2022

12 Bloomberg January 11, 2022

13 Sensible Medicine August 23, 2022

14 SSRN September 12, 2022

15 CommonSense July 15, 2022

16 WSJ August 28, 2022

17 Twitter FDA September 7, 2022

18 Twitter FDA September 9, 2022

19 FDA.gov Drug Advertising Q&A

20 Tablet September 18, 2022

21 Tablet September 18, 2022

22 Scientific Reports 2022; 12 Article number 15612

23 Eugyppius September 19, 2022

24 BioRxiv September 16, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.09.16.508299

25 BioRxiv September 16, 2022 DOI: 10.1101/2022.09.15.507787

26 Twitter Ulrich Elling September 17, 2022

27 Twitter Yunlong Richard Cao September 16, 2022

28 Twitter Yunlong Richard Cao September 16, 2022

29 Journal of Immunology January 15, 2019; 202(2): 335-340

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***

Soaring energy costs in Europe are shutting down businesses and threatening a bloc-wide recession. Yet not everyone accepts this fate. Some companies are moving to cheaper locations: the U.S. Steel giant ArcelorMittal said earlier this month that it would slash by half production at a steel mill in Germany and a unit at another plant, also in Germany. The company said it had based the decision on high gas prices.

Separately, ArcelorMittal more recently warned it expected its steel output for the fourth quarter of the year to be 1.5 million tons lower than it was in the final quarter of 2023, again citing excessive prices along with slumping demand.

At the same time, ArcelorMittal earlier this year announced it had plans to expand a Texas operation, describing the state as a “region that offers highly competitive energy and, ultimately, competitive hydrogen.” It is just one of the Europe-based companies that are beginning to see the benefits of growing in the United States, according to a report by the Wall Street Journal’s David Uberti.

Uberti cites industry executives as saying that it has not exactly been a difficult decision to make. Basically, according to the report, it comes to a simple dilemma between folding in the face of exorbitant energy bills and moving to a much cheaper energy environment, complete with fresh incentives for certain industries.

 

Chemicals, batteries, green energy—these are all areas set to benefit substantially from the Inflation Reduction Act passed last month. No wonder, then, that companies active in these areas see it as a good idea to either move or expand in the United States.

Meanwhile, in Europe, more and more companies are switching into survival mode. That’s because, for a lot of them, the time is coming to renew their electricity supply contracts with utilities. Thanks to energy inflation, these are set to be much higher than the contracts for the current year, with front-year prices reaching over $1,000 in France and Germany.

The New York Times’ Liz Alderman wrote in a recent story that energy-intensive industries such as manufacturing and fertilizer production were especially vulnerable precisely because of their higher energy needs. She cited the case of a glass-making major, Arc International, which is also shutting down production units to cope with higher energy costs.

The European Commission has promised to help by capping the revenues of electricity generators that use a primary source of energy other than gas, and taxing the “excessive” profits of oil, gas, and coal companies. According to the EC, raking in cash under the current circumstances was wrong, even though profits in themselves were something good.

Plans are to collect some 140 billion euros—almost equal to the same sum in dollars—to distribute among households and struggling businesses. Critics, however, note that this will not be enough to save companies from going under. European Aluminium, the industry association, even said energy costs could result in the breakdown of the aluminum industry in Europe.

“I think we’ll muddle through two winters,” the chief executive of refractory products maker RHI Magnesita told the Wall Street Journal. However, if gas doesn’t get cheaper, Stefan Borgas said, “companies will start to look elsewhere.”

It looks like businesses packing and leaving for cheaper jurisdictions is yet another unintended consequence of the policies favored by European governments, especially in the energy department. It is also one more risk for the survival of the bloc as a competitive industrialized formation in the future. And this risk presents one more conundrum for governments and the administration in Brussels to solve in short order.

*

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Irina is a writer for Oilprice.com with over a decade of experience writing on the oil and gas industry.

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***

On September 9, the US and its allies unveiled the next step in their plan to cap the price of Russian-sold oil – a bold next step that goes above and beyond initial embargoes.

So, what does this move really mean?

Impeding Russian oil sales is no small move. The bulk of Russia’s 11.3 million-barrels-a-day production in January 2022 was crude oil (10 million barrels a day) according to the IEA. Now, the agency forecasts that Russian oil production could fall by 1.9 million barrels a day by February, once the EU embargo on imports comes into force. Vortex estimates the decline at 2.5 million bpd.

From a monetary perspective that means that the reality is different from the intention. Indeed, Russia seems to be making more money, not less money, in spite of all these sanctions – including recent decisions by the US and the EU banning imports of oil and oil products.

The goals of the new guidance, backed by US, the G7 and the EU, are threefold:

1.     Maintain a reliable supply of seaborne Russian oil to the global market.

2.     Reduce upward pressure on energy prices – a huge impact on soaring inflation in the West.

3.     Reduce the Russian Federation’s revenue from oil.

By going after Russia’s global market, these new sanctions stand to influence Russian trading beyond those independently set up by the US and the EU. In terms of regulation, this is perhaps the most complex – and novel – regulations on trading and shipping the world has ever seen.

But it’s not the first of its kind. Let’s rewind by two years: Effectively, the first significant sanctions regulations on global shipping was issued by the Trump administration in May 2020. These regulations established a set of expectations for all relevant parties – from traders and banks, to shipping companies, insurers, ports and other related parties – to start rigorously screening for “deceptive shipping practices” beyond the standard vetting of simply “list matching” (i.e. checking that someone you do business with isn’t blacklisted).

These recent sanctions stand on the shoulders of the May 2020 edict in that they effectively tell companies how to carry out maritime transactions – not to mention that although these two regulatory decisions are unique, the uncertainty each has caused within the shipping and trading ecosystem is comparable.

So, What’s New? 

This new advisory means that companies aren’t allowed to offer maritime services – including transportation, insurance, maintenance, and more – to anyone trading above the price cap. It also mandates that anyone involved in the wider shipping supply chain must continually screen any trade partners for deceptive shipping practices – both those outlined in May 2020, alongside additional risk factors and abnormal patterns.

These guidelines bring about several key changes:

• Historically, most sanctions focused solely on dirty oil tankers, while the new regulations make clean petroleum a key part of the equation. In the past, not only were clean oil tankers subject to few – if any – compliance checks or audit trials, but trading desks and trade banks dealing in clean petroleum were largely unregulated. These new guidelines will bring tighter compliance standards to approximately 5,500 additional ships.
• Traders and related parties must now screen every transaction and document the whole chain of prices through every deal. Only once a deal is confirmed to be under the price cap and the services are at market price, can the deal go through.
• It extends the audit trail to five years.
• It expands the risk factors that companies must screen for – new company vetting, abnormal patterns, and more.
• Finally, it puts many more companies in the spotlight and raises widespread scrutiny around sanctions enforcement.

The Significance

So why do these sanctions matter so much?

Firstly, the shipping and trading world is far from binary and can’t just be broken down into good guys and bad guys. Accordingly, most of the affected shipping and trading companies are Western or trade in the West. For instance, it’s reported that a majority of Russia’s oil is transported by Greek shipowners, who operate in the EU and are now direct targets of this advisory.

Secondly, the US, EU and G7 are guiding these sanctions. Considering the sway these national entities have on global affairs, the effects will be further reaching than just G7 countries. While the May 2020 sanctions were exclusively American, these new restrictions could involve 30-plus additional new countries as partners in enforcing this price cap.

On the flip side, we can almost certainly expect that Russia and its partners will align with maritime transportation operators outside of the G7, EU, and the coalition allies. That means we’ll see more and more companies formed in the GCC area – China, Russia, Turkey – who will be buying ships and setting up insurance or finance facilities.

Major Challenges to Implementation

This manufactured, artificial means of controlling and containing oil prices can easily backfire – it will take a very fine balancing act to ensure that the measure is adopted, heeded, and achieves the right outcome. It also gives Russia an “out” to continue selling its oil and getting a benefit, so even if prices are capped and regulated in some capacity, it erodes and bypasses the intentions and effectiveness of initial sanctions.

Enforcing these regulations will be very difficult even if every transaction is documented. How will this be policed? By whom and when? The “speed cameras” analogy probably holds true here – will videoing a few people who commit felonies impact the rest of the market?

There is the risk that companies might do larger deals in parcels or fragment deals in order to get around the oil price cap.

The cost of implementing all the necessary controls for these restrictions will put many reputable companies off. By the time any big company implements this, we may be past the need for it.

While the US has released its advisory, we will have to wait for the European version of this same guidance because that is where all this really matters and where the impact on curtailing Russian oil is felt. This might be difficult to obtain due to the consensus way of making decisions in the EU.

So, does it make things more complicated or easier?

The new regulation focuses on two areas – pricing and maritime transportation. In a sense we believe this actually makes it much easier for firms to apply the sanctions, even if the task to maintain these standards is Sisyphean.

Although tracking flows of cargoes of Russia oil and the origin of each product is quite complicated, especially since bills of lading can and are being forged, this system does help properly define who are Tier 1, Tier 2,and Tier 3 players as laid out in the US Treasury Department’s advisory, and it lays out different requirements for each of them.

An example of the impact of this price cap are the two million barrels a day that are being shipped via Russia’s Baltic ports and require tugboat services to cross the Baltics. Without proof of trading under the price cap, these tugboat services will not be allowed to be rendered, thus impairing these exports.

Board Level Issue

Considering that recent sanctions have raised tensions, one thing is clear: it’s becoming more complicated to trade safely in this world. It requires more technology, more processes, more know-how – and sometimes, more sanctions. And the risk just took one huge step up. The US said clearly that they’ll be looking to enforce.

The United States’ bold statement of intent to enforce these sanctions is a board level risk, and all relevant stakeholders would be wise to take the advice of a consultant or a lawyer to review their processes and risk policies and decide on concrete next steps. While the guidance only comes into effect on December 6, players in the shipping game will only get there safely if they start moving now.

*

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Ami Daniel is the co-founder and CEO of the maritime risk management and intelligence company Windward.

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***

U.S. presidents routinely violate international law and the United Nations Charter. Yet every year they appear before that body and proclaim American innocence.

It takes a special kind of hubris for a president of the United States to speak at the United Nations, the place where international law is supposed to be upheld and defended. Yet the representative of the worst violator of international law predictably shows up every September when the United Nations General Assembly holds its annual session. The late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez got it right when he spoke in 2006:

“Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil, came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of the world. I think we could call a psychiatrist to analyze yesterday’s statement made by the president of the United States. As the spokesman of imperialism, he came to share his nostrums, to try to preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation, and pillage of the peoples of the world.”

Chavez is no longer with us, and Joe Biden is the third man to serve as U.S. president since George W. Bush was compared to the devil. But the words are as true now as they were then. This year Biden’s speech was replete with the usual drivel about the United States being some sort of guarantor of peace. Among other things, he said that permanent members of the Security Council should “…refrain from the use of the veto, except in rare, extraordinary situations, to ensure that the Council remains credible and effective.”

Perhaps Biden thinks that the rest of the world has amnesia. Every time the members of UN General Assembly condemn Israeli apartheid it is the U.S. that predictably steps in with a Security Council veto to protect its ally and partner in crime. Twelve of the 14 U.S. vetoes since 2000 were made on behalf of Israel. Any U.S. proposal calling for change in the Security Council structure is intended to weaken China and Russia’s veto power and to bring in its own puppets such as Germany and Japan.

Of course, Russia bashing was the focus of Biden’s speech with false claims of a nuclear threat, unprovoked attack, and accusations of war crimes. He didn’t mention well documented Ukrainian war crimes such as the shelling of civilians in Donetsk. Worse yet, there was no acknowledgement that Ukraine and Russia were negotiating until the U.S. and the U.K. intervened and scuttled the talks. Biden’s speech was full of projection and every condemnation leveled against Russia or Iran or Venezuela was instead an indictment of U.S. behavior in the world.

The world has changed but American administrations don’t. They continue behaving as if the U.S. is still the all-powerful hegemon that will always get what it wants. It does have the world’s reserve currency and the biggest military, but it can’t control the world without doing harm to itself and its allies. The United States cynically used the United Nations to call for a “no fly zone” over Libya, which allowed it to destroy that nation. Partnerships with jihadists brought destruction to Libya and to Syria, causing a humanitarian disaster which displaced millions of people. The 2014 coup against the elected government of Ukraine has turned into all out war. The sanctions targeting Russian gas and oil have raised prices all over the world and damaged European economies more than any others. The ruble has risen in value and the euro has declined. Even hegemons don’t always get their way.

While Biden mouthed platitudes and falsehoods at the United Nations, Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov met with representatives from China, Cuba, Eritrea, Serbia, Laos, Jordan, Nicaragua, Ethiopia, Algeria, Burkina Faso, India, Mali, Sudan, South Sudan, Equatorial Guinea, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and Mexico among others. So much for Washington’s claims that Russia is an isolated pariah.

While Washington rails against Moscow, it continues to ignore UN votes to end sanctions against Cuba. This year Cuba will again submit a resolution calling on the U.S. to end its trade embargo. During the 2021 vote only the U.S. and Israel voted no. The next vote will have the same result, and reveal Biden’s words, “The United States will always promote human rights and the values enshrined in the U.N. Charter in our own country and around the world,” as a sham.

The United Nations is in serious need of reform. It is part of the Core Group which chooses presidents for Haiti and acts against the will of its people. Biden mentioned Haiti in passing and called for an end to gang violence. But that violence is the direct result of U.S. interventions there. The 75-year history of allowing the permanent Security Council members to dictate to the rest of the world should change. But who should do the changing? Not the U.S., which always has ulterior motives and dirty hands.

Biden did make one valid statement. “Because if nations can pursue their imperial ambitions without consequences, then we put at risk everything this very institution stands for.” It is unfortunate that the U.S. ignores the consequences of its own actions.

*

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Margaret Kimberley is the author of Prejudential: Black America and the Presidents. You can support her on Patreon and also find her work on Twitter  and on Telegram.  She can be reached via email at Margaret.Kimberley(at)BlackAgendaReport.com.

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***

I address this to a friend who worked designing manned and unmanned underwater vehicles – UUVs. 

He left that firm and might no longer be in that field.  I know he was unhappy because there were, later on, contracts with the US Department of Defence.  He might have some insight into the Luciferan’s interest in our wonderful oceans which cover 5/6s of our globe.

I know in addition that the ‘hegemon’, a direct descendant of Nazi Germany, is active in the Caribbean Sea. ‘Fibre optic cable laying’ might be a front.  But consider the mineral wealth of Venezuela and the usual US attempts to subvert, subordinate and capture it, as with most other South and Central American nations.

So blatant – like the US navy stopping 6 Iranian oil tankers about a year ago on their way to Venezuela.  The crude was pumped into 2 vast US oil tankers that then went to lie off Houston.  I followed them on one of the websites tracking marine traffic. You can bet the oil was later refined there to pour down the thirsty US gullet.  And it is said is it not, that this vast and rich country of Venezuela has the largest reserves of oil.

Fact: World War III is being fought and it started before that obvious part of the war – COVID-19 and ”’vaccination”’ – global, as advised by Gates and the paramount psychopath and war criminal Blair, et. al.

Read this and this.

For truth and for ‘no mother and her child should be in the least harmed anywhere in our still beautiful world’. Millions endangered.

*

The Context

Read this. Do not forget that ‘nuclear first strike’ with ”’tactical’, cement penetrating nuclear weapons is official US ‘policy’.  And these can be ‘deployed’ in ‘theatre’ by commanders in the field.  These weapons are on US surface and sub vessels, and no doubt the ‘greatest ally’ has these too.

The word is fascism. My definition – the subjugation of the individual’s will and freedom by an overweening state. Humanity withers, freedom of speech is stifled and the soul dies. Self-preservation becomes a dominant drive.

*

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***

Russian President Vladimir Putin, by signing a new decree on legal recognition of four regions’ independence which are now joining the Russian Federation. The decree, made available on the database, was published on the official Internet portal for legal information on September 30.

On September 23-27, the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR) as well as the Kherson region and the liberated territories of the Zaporozhye Region, held referendum to join Russia.

In all of these regions, the overwhelming majority of voters favoured becoming part of the Russian Federation. These regions have been a thorny question these past several years, and with the accusation against Kiev for committing the highest level of human rights including intimidation, discrimination and maltreatment of Russian-speaking population in the Eastern Ukraine.

“In accordance with the generally recognized principles and norms of international law, recognizing and confirming the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples enshrined in the United Nations Charter, and taking into consideration the will expressed by the people of the Kherson region at the referendum held on September 27, I hereby order that the state sovereignty and independence of the Kherson region be recognized,” the president’s decree on recognition of the Kherson region said.

Russia has recognized the independence of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions in line with decrees signed. A similar document signed by Putin “recognizes the state sovereignty and independence of the Zaporizhzhya region.” Accordingly, a colourful ceremony of signing accession treaties with four new territories – the people’s republics of Donetsk and Lugansk (DPR and LPR), as well as the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions – was held in the Kremlin.

In all of these regions, Donetsk and the Lugansk People’s Republics as well as the Zaporozhye and the Kherson regions, with the results of the referendum showing a very high turnout, the overwhelming majority of voters favoured becoming part of the Russian Federation. The referendum ballots in all the four regions have been considered valid. The heads of the regions officially ask Russia’s leadership to admit them into the Russian Federation.

Below are the results of the referendum: Voting Turnout

• In the Kherson Region, 571,001 people took part, or 78.86% of the population.
• In the Zaporozhye Region, 541,093 people cast their ballots, or 85.4% of the total number of voters
• The LPR reported a turnout rate of 94.15%, with 1,662,607 people having cast their votes.
• Turnout in the DPR where 2,131,207 people participated in the voting hit 97.51%.

Final results

• In the Kherson Region, 87.05% of those who voted opted for joining Russia (497,051 people), with 12.05% (68,832) opposing the idea.
• In the Zaporozhye Region, the initiative was supported by 93.11% of voters (430,268 people).
• In the DPR, 99.23% of the electorate said they would favor uniting with Russia.
• In the LPR, 98.42% of the participants in the referendum voted for joining Russia.

What’s next? The United States and the entire European Union, as well as Germany, Canada and Japan have already stated they will not recognize the results of the vote. The United States has prepared a draft resolution asking the UN Security Council to condemn the referendum.

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres pointed out that the UN position on the referendum as unequivocal and slammed, in unreserved terms, the accession unto the Russian Federation.

Secretary General Antonio Guterres said:

“Any decision to proceed with the annexation of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions of Ukraine would have no legal value and deserves to be condemned.”

“The UN Charter is clear,” Guterres stressed, “Any annexation of a State’s territory by another State resulting from the threat or use of force is a violation of the Principles of the UN Charter and international law. The United Nations General Assembly is equally clear.”

He further stressed that

“Russian Federation, as one of the five permanent members of the Security Council, shares a particular responsibility to respect the Charter. It cannot be reconciled with the international legal framework. It stands against everything the international community is meant to stand for. It flouts the Purposes and Principles of the United Nations. It is a dangerous escalation. It has no place in the modern world. It must not be accepted.”

Guterres pointed out that the UN position on the referendum is unequivocal.

“We are fully committed to the sovereignty, unity, independence and territorial integrity of Ukraine, within its internationally recognized borders, in accordance with the relevant UN resolution. I want to underscore that the so-called referenda in the occupied regions were conducted during active armed conflict, in areas under Russian occupation, and outside Ukraine’s legal and constitutional framework. They cannot be called a genuine expression of the popular will.”

“Any decision by Russia to go forward will further jeopardize the prospects for peace. It will prolong the dramatic impacts on the global economy, especially developing countries and hinder our ability to deliver life-saving aid across Ukraine and beyond. It is high time to step back from the brink. Now more than ever, we must work together to end this devastating and senseless war and uphold the UN Charter and international law,” Guterres concluded.

That however, the Russian Permanent Mission to the United Nations said Guterres remained silent about the Kiev government’s actions in Donbass after 2014, and also about the situation around Kosovo but stopped short of condemning the US and NATO’s occupation of a part of the Syrian territory.

“Against this backdrop such a direct assault by the UN Secretary-General on the fundamental right of self-determination expressed by the population of DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhie regions represents yet another example of double standards,” Russian diplomats said in an official statement September 29.

“We regret that instead of acting as foreseen by the UN Charter, the Secretary General chose to be instrumental in influencing the position of UN Member States ahead of the anticipated initiation by the Western countries of the discussion of the issue of referenda in the GA,” the statement reads.

In addition to above, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said at her weekly media briefing that

“The (Ukrainian President Vladimir) Zelensky regime and, of course, most importantly, its American handlers do not want to accept reality, do not want to see this side of international law. On the contrary, they cynically question the procedure of the plebiscite and its results, considering them null and void.”

Zakharova stressed that the referendum in the DPR, the LPR, as well as in the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions were held “in full compliance with the norms and principles of international law and did not contradict international practice, and that they were legal.”

“Everything is questioned: both the form and the essence. They call names, stick labels, and do everything in their power to show their significance and rightness. Of course, they resort to the image of democracy, which is sacred for them,” the spokeswoman continued.

“These are statements of those who for many years have been flagrantly violating human rights everywhere: in Ukraine, in Western countries, on the territories of the occupied countries in different parts of the world. This is said by those who contributed to the transformation of the young Ukrainian state into a totalitarian, aggressive, neo-Nazi state. And today it encourages with money and arms orders to shell peaceful cities with artillery,” she added.

Russian experts have expressed their views, especially after the referendum on joining Russia ended with positive results. The local Russian Vedomosti wrote that throughout Russia, most people support the entry of the new territories.

“Over 70% of those surveyed are ready to support their accession,” All-Russia Public Opinion Research Center Director General Valery Fyodorov told the paper. “It’s even higher than support for the special military operation, which has remained at about 70%,” he added.

As for the international recognition of the plebiscites, Russian International Affairs Council Director General, Andrey Kortunov, told widely circulated Russia’s Izvestia that “there is the precedent of Crimea’s accession, which, as we all know, almost no one recognized, including Russia’s partners in the CIS, China and the vast majority of nations in the global South.”

“The sanctions that will be imposed on these territories and their population are crucial. Another important thing is that after the areas join Russia, the possibility of political dialogue with Kiev will be hard to imagine. Clearly, the Ukrainian authorities will be reluctant to hold peace talks with Russia on such terms as it would be tantamount to political suicide. These are the consequences that Moscow will have to take into account,” the expert added.

“The main goal of the referendum is to assure the people that Russia will protect these territories and they will not change hands,” Leading Researcher at the Russian Academy of Sciences’ Institute of World Economy and International Relations, Dmitry Trenin, noted. “It is the military’s job to fix the line of contact, it’s not done through political measures. The military will be far more motivated to defend the sovereign territory of Russia than some Ukrainian region that Russia controls,” the analyst emphasized.

In his sparkling speech in the Kremlin, Putin said Moscow would protect the newly incorporated regions by “all available means” and vehemently insisted that the question of handing them back would never be discussed and renegotiated. He clearly portrayed the special military operation and the snapshot referendum as part of efforts to reclaim Russia’s great power status and, on the other hand, to counter global Western domination. “History has called us to a battlefield to fight for our people, for the grand historic Russia, for future generations,” he said.

With Ukraine vowing to take back all occupied territory and Russia pledging to defend its gains, threatening nuclear-weapon use and mobilizing an additional 300,000 troops despite protests, the two nations are on an increasingly escalatory collision course.

Over these years Putin, concerned about security risks and lack of security guarantees from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) observing its promise of not expanding further eastward, embarked on “special military operation” ultimately aims at “demilitarization and denazification” of the former Soviet republic of Ukraine on February 24 after both Federation Council and the State Duma (legislative chambers) approved and gave the greenlight for this operation.

As a new world is awakening to the worsening situation, global leaders still believe that all countries have to respect and operate within the confines of international law. That all countries must be guided profoundly by the principles of non-interference in internal matters, respect for national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia is currently experiencing a raft of sanctions imposed by the United States and Canada, European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand and a host of other countries.

*

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Kester Kenn Klomegah, who worked previously with Inter Press Service (IPS), is now a regular contributor to Global Research. As a versatile researcher, he believes that everyone deserves equal access to quality and trustworthy media reports.

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***

Every psychopath is well practiced at lying; anyone who tolerates that person’s lying is not only encouraging psychopathy but is, oneself, psychopathically unconcerned about the public’s welfare, because any such encouragement will, itself, facilitate the further spreading of lies and deception of the public.

This is how psychopathy, which is a merely personal disease, becomes spread and pandemic, thereby producing a dysfunctional society, widespread deception. It happens not only due to the presence of psychopaths, but also due to their passive assisters, who fail to call-out the lie and the liar and to expose them publicly so as to assist in penalizing them, instead of to assist the lies and liars, for those to spread and thrive.

Being a member of a society is to have both rights and obligations within it. Silence in the face of lies that one knows are false is a failure of such an obligation: an obligation to avoid willingly spreading a social disease — the disease of spreading those lies and that falsehood, to a rampantly and ever-increasingly contaminated public.

This was how it came to be that in 2003 the U.S. & UK Governments busted and neutered the U.N. by invading and occupying Iraq solely upon the basis of lies, and never prosecuted for having done so. Neither the Governments (their leaders) were prosecuted for it, nor the news-media (their controlling owners) that were controlled by the same group of billionaires (America’s billionaires, of both political Parties), were prosecuted for these international-war crimes.

None of those leaders and their propaganda-organizations (or news-media — their owners) were prosecuted for having done, or assisted in doing, this. That clear fact has established a precedent which has been followed, ever since, by constant international lying by those same two psychopathic regimes, and now it is heading toward production of a World War III on the same basis, of constant Governmental and news-media lying and spreading of lies.

It is for “regime-change in Russia” instead of for “regime-change in Iraq,” but, just like before, the regimes that desperately NEED to be “changed” are the perpetrators of this enormous fraud, the ones that are in the United States and in the United Kingdom. The United Nations is sadly incapable of doing this — it has been virtually nullified ever since 2003 — but it must be done, before the end-result will annihilate us all.

The psychopathy of America’s leadership is now posing a mortal danger not only to the residents in one nation (Iraq; or, say, in Syria — there are so many other examples) but to the residents in all nations (WW III); and, if it is not stopped now, then the world will be stopped, and soon. This would be the extreme end of the pandemic of lies that go not only unpunished but hidden from the public, instead of exposed to the public (such as is being done here).

If this pandemic — which is vastly worse even than the covid-19 disease or any other merely physical pandemic in all of human history — does not now get exposed in the full light of honest public disclosure (presumably by means of news-media that are NOT owned by U.S.-and-allied billionaires), then what hope will there be, for our children, and for their grandchildren (if this pandemic of evil will not have expired the world before then)? It is an obligation not ONLY to the wider public, but even to one’s own descendants (if any), because it is an obligation to — and on behalf of — everyone. This hiding of guilt needs to stop now, because later might be too late. So: please send the URL of this article to everyone you know, and to as many people as possible whom you don’t know, because it concerns everyone.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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After several months of Russian “special operations” in Ukraine, it might be worth asking whether the U.S.-Russia proxy war is headed toward regime-change in Moscow, or at least efforts at regime change. For Washington, after Serbia, Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, and all the others, Russia must surely represent the ultimate, perhaps final, such operation.  In fact, since the very first days of the Bolshevik Revolution precisely one century ago, American ruling elites have savored the idea of turning the great Russian expanse into a vassal state allowing exploitation of its unparalleled natural resources.

Joe Biden, or those running his White House, is no doubt poised to take matters to more dangerous levels, seemingly indifferent to any prospects of nuclear catastrophe. After sending tens of billions of dollars worth of high-tech weapons to the Kiev regime, Biden, during his visit to Poland, would say: “For God’s sake, this man [Vladimir Putin] cannot remain in power.”  

There can be little ambiguity: for years the U.S. goal has been to weaken, isolate, and eventually destroy the Putin government.  What Stalin and his successors desperately feared for decades – Western capitalist encirclement and strangulation – seems finally (and menacingly) to have arrived.

Washington has been waging nonstop war against Russia since Putin ascended to power more than two decades ago, along multiple fronts:

• Intervention by means of dispersed anti-Moscow groups – NGOs, CIA covert operations, George Soros “pro-democracy” organizations, propaganda outlets such as Radio Free Europe – throughout Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, going back to the late 1980s.
• Continuous push eastward of NATO military forces toward Russian borders since the early 1990s. This expansion has been accompanied by the proliferation of new member states across eastern Europe.
• The 2014 “Maidan” coup in Kiev, orchestrated by the Obama-Biden gang working with neocons, friendly NGOs, and Ukrainian neo-fascist forces.  The Russian population of Donbass and elsewhere would be targeted politically, economically, and militarily across the succeeding eight years.
• Ongoing NATO military operations, including establishment of new military installations close to Russian territory, boosting regional nuclear capabilities, arms shipments to NATO members, and continuous provocative armed-forces maneuvers.

Harsh economic sanctions imposed by the U.S. and European Union on the Russian Federation — flagrant acts of war explicitly intended to destroy a nation’s financial system  and, ultimately, its general economy.

• Aggressive efforts by the U.S. and other Western powers to bring Ukraine into both NATO and the European Union – that is, organizations strongly hostile to Russian interests and ongoing threats to the country’s national sovereignty.
• To this could be added the manufactured tremors of Russiagate – several years of phony allegations by the Washington and media elites of Russian collusion with Donald Trump to rig the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. These charges, the media hysteria, and series of investigations into Russian “interference” in American politics worked to fan the flames of Russophobia.

The crackpot idea of war against Russia has managed to achieve elite consensus in the U.S., its destructive passion most visible among those considered leftists and progressives.

As Biden recently proposed sending more billions to expand proxy warfare in Ukraine, Congressional liberals and progressives eagerly added to the amount.   Not only Bernie Sanders and the Squad, but every member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus joined the warmongering crowd.  American progressives, at present no different than garden-variety neocons, appear scarcely troubled by specter of a ”nuclear exchange” with the Russians.

As noted, the idea of U.S-engineered regime change in Moscow has a long history, starting with president Woodrow Wilson’s military intervention at the end of World War I.  All told, more than 200,000 “allied” forces invaded Russia in 2018, including an estimated 15,000 American troops sent to the vicinity of Vladivostok and Archangelsk in the Far East.  This had become known as the peace-loving “Polar Bear Expedition”.    The erudite, cosmopolitan, liberal Wilson had just sent U.S. armed forces to join the pointless European slaughter of World War I – after repeatedly invading Mexico, Haiti, and Central America.   The Polar Bear efforts found a country in the midst of military defeat, famine, disease, and poverty, yet those efforts to sabotage the new Bolshevik regime ended in miserable failure.

Once Soviet control was established, regime change would be unthinkable.  By the 1940s, moreover, Washington and its allies urgently needed the Red Army to help defeat the Germans in World War II.

With the 1991 Soviet collapse, matters quickly and dramatically changed.  President Bill Clinton, another enlightened liberal Democrat, was ready to pick up where Wilson’s scheme ran aground.   The embryonic, shaky Russian government was easy pickings, as U.S. elites and their Ivy League “advisers” intervened quickly to reduce the Federation to a dependent state open to unfettered resource exploitation.   They found a compliant ruler – the grossly incompetent Boris Yeltsin – to serve these imperial objectives.

The Clintonites pursued the Wilsonian dream with special fervor.  “Shock Therapy” (more shock than therapy) transformed the Russian economy into a rampant corporate oligarchy now open to Western exploitation.   The U.S. rigged the 1996 Russian elections to favor the extremely unpopular Yeltsin.   Meanwhile, Clinton worked indefatigably to dismember Yugoslavia through a mixture of economic sanctions, political maneuvers, and military aggression, thus sweeping away the last vestiges of independent power in Europe while paving the way toward further NATO expansion.   It turned out that the Democrats’ plan to create a vassal state was finally halted with Putin’s rise to power in 2000.   For this, of course, Putin earned the U.S. designation of “another Hitler”.

Putin’s revitalized Russia soon confounded Western efforts to achieve hegemony over the larger Eurasian region.  Emergent neocons and old-fashioned imperialists came together in fierce opposition to Putin, now the object of intensified Russophobia.  The main problem with Putin (leaving aside his reputed despotic rule) was his strong dedication to Russian sovereignty against Western attacks.

While neocons at that time were famously obsessed with the Middle East, others turned to resource wars driven by prospective energy shortages.  None other than Zbigniew Brzezinski, once president Jimmy Carter’s foreign-policy guru, laid out an imperial strategy that would ultimately lead to the gates of Moscow, in his 1997 manifesto titled The Grand Chessboard.  Brzezinski believed the noble superpower was entitled to whatever natural resources it could access in Eurasia, a territory stretching from Europe to the borders of China.  Here it was determined that oil, gas, mineral, and other reserves dwarfed those accessible anywhere else on the planet.  Russia itself would be a special prize, just as Wilson in his ill-defined global liberalism had been the first to recognize.

Ever the crusader for U.S. global supremacy, Brzezinski pointed out that “Eurasia was the globe’s central arena.  Hence, what happens to the distribution of power in the Eurasian region will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy and to America’s historical legacy.”  With a foothold there, moreover, Washington would secure enough leverage to simultaneously neutralize Russia, China, and Iran, Brzezinski adding: “A power that dominates Eurasia would control two of the world’s three most economically productive regions.  A mere glance at a map also suggests that control over Eurasia would almost automatically entail African subordination, rendering the Western Hemisphere peripheral.”

Brzezinski looked covetously toward U.S. penetration of the old Soviet republics, starting with Ukraine and then Georgia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.  By 1997, of course, the Balkans had been taken well along the path of colonization.  The overall main priority was to “prevent the emergence of any hostile force that could seek to challenge American primacy.”  Brzezinski concluded, ominously: “America is not only the first, as well as the only truly global superpower, but it is likely to be the very last.”    In U.S. geopolitical strategy, it follows, Russia was destined to be a vassal state fully open to the plunder of its rich natural resources.

Later neocon statements would ritually echo Brzezinski’s predatory globalism that called for unchallengeable U.S. world domination, always shrouded in sanctimonious pretenses of bringing democracy to backward cultures.    Woodrow Wilson had furnished the template: “make the world safe for democracy”.    Russia, with its enormous territory and super-abundance of energy and mineral resources, would be the ultimate conquest.

Brzezinski’s post-Soviet world has in fact become one of grand imperial delusions.  Those at the summits of Washington power did actually believe the U.S. would have the power to do what it wanted, when it wanted — despite nettlesome constraints here and there (usually in the form of “evil dictators” like Putin).  They could exploit resources, labor, and markets to the maximum extent.  They could bring unspeakable violence to societies with impunity, with little fear of serious blowback.  Violations of U.N. statutes, global treaties, and international law would pose no problem.   This outlook would define the post-Soviet “American consensus” and nowadays underpins all the hyper-ventilating Russophobia, but in an emergent multipolar world it serves nothing but geopolitical disaster.

Fortunately, Putin and the Russians have little interest in being reduced to a hapless puppet state – and they have plenty of nuclear weapons to back up their resolve.   Their resources will not be the object of Western larceny.   Thanks to the Ukraine war and all the counter-productive Western sanctions, Moscow is appropriately turning eastward, toward Iran, China, and India, toward the Shanghai Cooperative Organization, in effect checkmating U.S. and NATO geostrategic schemes.  Still, the specter of escalating military conflict between two nuclear powers – in the absence of strong counter-forces on both sides – can hardly be comforting to a world in turmoil.

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Carl Boggs, PhD in Soviet Studies, has written extensively on such topics as twentieth-century Marxism, social movements, ecological politics, and United States military interventions.  His latest book is Fugitive Politics (Routledge, 2022). He is a frequent contributor to Global Research.

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***

 

Three years ago, at the Summit on Sustainable Development Goals on September 25, 2019, the Nicaraguan representation observed:

“In order to comply with the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals, it is necessary to establish a new economic and financial model, and create new production and consumption patterns consistent with sustainable lifestyles and friendly to Nature … the lack of resources and the slow pace of the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in general are worrying, running the risk of not fully complying, globally, with all the goals set.”

With that intervention Nicaragua indicated a fundamental reality, namely, that for the majority world the main obstacle to its development is the bad faith of the United States and its allies, who are never going to agree to give up  their historical advantages built on  colonial conquest, genocide and slavery. Another clear example of this reality was presented last week when the Russian Federation offered to donate 300,000 tons of fertilizers to the countries most in need, on ships currently stalled in European ports due to financial sanctions affecting insurance and shipping companies. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov explained at the UN General Assembly,

“We have been reminding the European Union for weeks that there are 300,000 tons of fertilizers being held at European ports, and we have long offered to transfer them free of charge to needy countries in Africa, but the EU has not responded.”

This is yet one more shameful example of the West’s endless war against the majority world in which the system of wealth accumulation for the benefit of an elite obsessed with dominating the world collides against a multilateral vision and practical solidarity focused on the development of the human person in a multipolar world. So when Nicaragua called in 2019 for a new economic and financial model, it was preaching an imperative which is currently being imposed with great urgency. This clash between different visions of development has always characterized international relations. Perhaps its most elaborate expression was the Declaration on the Right to Development adopted in December 1986 with 146 votes. The United States voted against.

Currently that historic declaration exists mostly as a ghost haunting the bad faith of the world’s rich countries which have done everything possible to bury it because it set very inconvenient precedents for the United States and its allies. The Right to Development defends the principle of the self-determination of peoples, requires decisive interventions on the part of national governments and its obligations are binding on all actors who may affect human rights by their actions or omissions. Clearly, these characteristics make the Declaration completely unacceptable to Western elites.

The United States and its allies constantly act to deny the right to self-determination of peoples. They have never accepted prioritizing the human person over the accumulation of wealth. Western capitalism seeks to minimize the role of the national state, reducing the public sector to a minimum. The Declaration’s recognition of the large number of actors affecting human rights challenges the Western biased interpretation that only States can violate human rights, another way of undermining the importance of social and economic rights.

The Declaration requires that developed countries provide effective cooperation to impoverished countries and that all States promote international peace and security. It also insists that States protect their populations from foreign interference and threats of aggression, something particularly relevant in the case of Nicaragua. The Declaration not only affirms the right of Peoples to self-determination but also to sovereignty over their natural wealth and resources. It stipulates the right and duty of States to formulate national human development policies promoting the constant improvement of their populations based on active participation and an equitable distribution of resources.

It is important to remember these principles in the current international and regional context because the 1986 Declaration on Development in effect established the norms of the multipolar world that is emerging now. And this largely explains why the elites of the United States and the governments they buy every four years are so obsessed with the destruction of the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Because only with the governments of the Sandinista National Liberation Front has Nicaragua had successful National Human Development Plans.

The plans have been implemented from 2007 to 2011, from 2012 to 2016 and, despite the multi-million losses caused by the failed coup attempt, from 2017 to 2021. Now in the period 2022 to 2026 the current National Plan for the Fight against Poverty and for Human Development is being implemented. These plans have complied in an exemplary manner with the principles embodied in the Declaration on the Right to Development of 1986, and have been successfully implemented in a very adverse regional and international context. The mere fact of having a National Human Development Plan is deeply revolutionary because its implementation committed to an unalterable focus on the human person represents a radical challenge to the ideological status quo of capitalism in its neoliberal phase.

It is easy to list the social and economic achievements of Nicaragua led by President Comandante Daniel Ortgea and Vice President Compañera Rosario, especially in relation to poverty reduction. These are achievements recognized by various international institutions, from the World Bank to the Pan American Health Organization, UNESCO and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). The focus of human development policies on poverty reduction has consisted of a broad democratization of the economy so as to integrate, as actively productive subjects, large sectors of the population previously effectively excluded from  participation in the economy, especially women.

A natural and logical progression can be seen in Nicaragua’s National Human Development Plans. Poverty reduction through economic democratization requires the expansion and modernization of road and port infrastructure, electricity, water and sanitation, and also the guarantee of universal access to quality health services and education. But this is also a revolutionary practice in the context of the dominance of international speculative financial capitalism. The massive investment in public infrastructure to promote and facilitate national production and productivity contradicts the logic of financial extraction of neoliberal capitalism that has destroyed productive sustainability in the United States and elsewhere.

The human development policies in Nicaragua effectively reaffirm the revolutionary value of the principles of the Declaration on the Right to Development, especially in the face of the virulent reactionary and xenophobic policies of the United States and the European Union. The cynical elites that dominate those countries have never intended to promote the development of their historical victims. Nicaragua offers a model example to the countries of the region of how a small country, historically exploited and impoverished, can guarantee unprecedented levels of human development to its population when it has a government motivated by genuine revolutionary commitment.

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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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The three leaks that were discovered on Monday at the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines connecting Russia with Germany — one after another within hours of each other in the exclusive economic zones of Sweden and Denmark — were caused by blasts. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde tweeted that the blasts “are consequences of detonations, probably caused by sabotage. We continue to collect information and do not rule out any cause, actor or motive.”

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson shared the same opinion and described the event as “a matter of sabotage,” adding that no version is currently being ruled out. Prime Minister of Denmark Mette Frederiksen has since been quoted by Reuters as saying,

“It is now the clear assessment by authorities that these are deliberate actions. It was not an accident.”

Earlier, the Danish authorities issued a statement that the pipeline incidents were not caused by an accident. 

Meanwhile, Radoslaw Sikorski, a European Parliament member and a former Polish foreign minister, has thanked the US for damaging the Nord Stream pipelines.

“A small thing, but so much joy,” Sikorski tweeted, adding, “Thank you, USA.” 

Sikorski cited US President Joe Biden who had threatened on February 7 before Russia began its military operation in Ukraine, that if Moscow acted against Kiev, “there will no longer be a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” When a journalist asked Biden to clarify, he said enigmatically: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

Indeed, there are reports that two groups of US warships were sighted recently within 30 kms of the site of the incident where Nord Stream was attacked.

According to Sikorski, the damage to the Nord Stream narrowed Russia’s room for maneuver, since Moscow will now have to talk to the countries controlling the Druzhba and Yamal gas pipelines — Ukraine and Poland respectively —  to resume gas supplies to Europe. 

The German security services are of the opinion that only a state actor could have damaged the undersea pipeline, suggesting “divers or a mini-submarine” could have installed mines or explosives on the pipeline. When asked to comment, the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was non-committal saying “these are initial reports (of sabotage) and we haven’t confirmed them yet. But if it is confirmed, that’s clearly in no one’s interest.”

From the US perspective, as Blinken put it, while there are “clear challenges in the months ahead” in terms of Europe’s energy supply, “there is also a very significant opportunity to do two things.” The first is to “finally end the dependence of Europe on Russian energy” and the second is to “accelerate the transition to renewables” so the West can address the “climate challenge.” 

Clearly, for Washington, going ahead, the priority is to impose a price cap on Russian oil exports and “surge” supplies of LNG to Europe at a juncture when the US became the world’s largest LNG exporter this year, partly due to the embargo against Russia imposed by the West. And the price cap decision needs EU endorsement. 

The geopolitical ramifications are self-evident. The attack on the Nord Stream took place even as the referendum got under way on Monday in the Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson on these regions’ accession to Russia. On Sunday, Biden had issued a strong statement saying the US will never recognise Ukrainian territory as anything other than part of Ukraine and that “Russia’s referenda are a sham.”

The point is, as Sikorski pointed out, with Nord Stream lethally damaged, if Russia were to resume gas supply to Germany in the conceivable future, it can only be through the Soviet-era pipelines that run through Poland and Ukraine. But Warsaw and Kiev will not be in a mood to cooperate in the prevailing circumstances.

Principally, Russia loses whatever leverage it has over German policies at a juncture when a grave economic crisis looms ahead and there is growing demand to review Berlin’s decision against the commissioning of Nord Stream 2. Last week, large demonstrations took place in Germany calling for the commissioning of Nord Stream 2 to resolve energy shortage. 

As for the German leadership, it too no longer has an option to bite the bullet and seek resumption of Russian gas supplies (except by begging Poland and Ukraine to cooperate in the reopening of the Yamal and Druzhba pipelines.) On the other hand, Chancellor Scholz’s trip to the Gulf region (Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Qatar) last weekend seeking more oil supplies failed to produce the results he had hoped for. 

Saudi Arabia, which is aligned with Russia on regulating oil output, maintains an ambiguous position on the global stage as the West confronts Russia over total energy independence. In the UAE, Scholz achieved somewhat better results by signing an agreement on energy security, which provides for delivery of LNG before the end of 2022. 

From another perspective, the Nord Stream pipelines have been disabled at a defining moment in the Ukraine conflict when a lull is expected through the fall until December. Conceivably, this presents a small window of opportunity  for dialogue with Moscow. There are rumours that Scholz’s Gulf tour also aimed at seeking help from Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who has excellent relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin. (Prince Salman recently got the prisoner exchange arranged recently between Moscow and Kiev where according to a report in the Wall Street Journal on Sept 23, the Russian oligarch and politician Roman Abramovich acted as intermediary.) 

The bottom line is, in any architecture for dialogue between Europe and Russia, the resumption of Russian energy supplies to ease the economic crisis in Europe would be a leitmotif. Therefore, whoever struck Nord Stream struck had a perfect sense of timing. This dastardly act is state-sponsored and it only highlights that there are powerful forces in the West who want the conflict to prolong and will go the whole hog, no matter what it takes, to smother any incipient stirrings that aspire for ceasefire and dialogue. 

Such a “deliberate act of sabotage” needed much advance planning. Unsurprisingly, the Kremlin says it is “is extremely concerned about the incident.” What has happened is of a piece with the Anglo-American sabotage of the Istanbul agreement between Kiev and Moscow in late March, which extended the war by five months. 

In the present case, the war lobby has removed the pontoon bridge and made sure that European countries have no means to retrace now to source Russian gas and salvage their economies. As the Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban remarked sarcastically, the American oil companies have become “war profiteers.” The US not only replaced the Russian energy supplier but is forcing the Europeans to pay 8-10 times the contracted price with Gazprom.

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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is refusing to release the results of autopsies conducted on people who died after getting COVID-19 vaccines.

The FDA says it is barred from releasing medical files, but a drug safety advocate says that it could release the autopsies with personal information redacted.

The refusal was issued to The Epoch Times, which submitted a Freedom of Information Act for all autopsy reports obtained by the FDA concerning any deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System following COVID-19 vaccination.

Reports are lodged with the system when a person experiences an adverse event, or a health issue, after receiving a vaccine. The FDA and other agencies are tasked with investigating the reports. Authorities request and review medical records to vet the reports, including autopsies.

The FDA declined to release any reports, even redacted copies.

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“Queen of Soul” cited in 270 pages of documents declassified by the FBI as they pursued Black revolutionary and communist influences in political and cultural life during the 1960s and 1970s

On August 16, 2018, Aretha Franklin, popularly known as the “Queen of Soul”, passed away at her home in Detroit, Michigan at the age of 76.

Born in Memphis, Tennessee on March 25, 1942, Aretha came to Detroit in 1946 with her parents, vocalist Mrs. Barbara Siggers Franklin and Rev. Clarence L. Franklin, a well-known minister who originated in the Delta region of Mississippi. Franklin became a minister while he was a teenager in Mississippi.

Rev. Franklin was recruited to come to Detroit from Buffalo, New York in late 1945 and in subsequent years built the New Bethel Baptist Church into an internationally recognized religious institution located on Hasting Street on the eastside of Detroit. The community surrounding the church was later targeted in the late 1950s and early 1960s for demolition in a so-called “urban renewal” project fostered by the then City of Detroit government and the Federal Highway Administration based in Washington, D.C.

By the early 1960s, Detroit was seething with discontent over the massive displacement of more than 100,000 people from the lower east side communities known as Paradise Valley and Black Bottom. Many small businesses, social clubs, churches and as well as thousands of homes were destroyed by the racist white city administration.

New Bethel relocated on Linwood Avenue in the Virginia Park District on the west side in the Spring of 1963. This was the same year of the massive “Walk to Freedom” down Woodward Avenue on June 23. The demonstration was the largest civil rights manifestation in the United States and would set the stage for the “March on Washington” just two months later. The Detroit Walk to Freedom was led by Rev. C. L. Franklin, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Rev. Albert Cleage of the Central Congregational Church, also located in the Virginia Park District on Linwood Avenue, among other community and labor leaders.

Rev. Franklin was heavily involved with the SCLC as a board member and fundraiser. Dr. King and his organization, in which he served as president, were subjected to intense spying and disruption efforts by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) along with segregationist southern state governments bolstered by law-enforcement agencies and business interests.

Aretha Franklin often traveled with her father during the 1950s in his highly popular gospel tours throughout the South and other regions of the U.S. By 1960, Aretha had signed a recording contract with Columbia Records in New York City. Later in 1967, she switched to Atlantic Records where her first album catapulted the soul artist to the top of the charts.

FBI Sought to Document “Communist Infiltration of the SCLC”

Of the 270 pages of FBI files which were the topic of several newspaper articles in early September, a substantial portion of the documents focus on the SCLC and its activities during 1967-1969. Dr. King in early 1967, had come out solidly in opposition to the U.S. occupation of Vietnam and described the war as an “enemy of the poor.”

King’s position on Vietnam coincided with a radicalization of the SCLC and other organizations such as the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the emergence of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and the Republic of New Africa (RNA), to name some of the most well-known groupings. In late July 1967, the city of Detroit erupted in a Black rebellion, the largest of such occurrences among all other municipalities during the period. New Bethel Church was located in the heart of the hardest hit areas of the rebellion, yet the building was unscathed by the violence.

A declassified FBI document from Atlanta, Georgia, dated August 1, 1967, noted that the SCLC was holding its annual convention in the city between the 14-17th of that month. This document reported that a weekly African American newspaper announced that “Carol Hoover (Special Fund-raising Officer, SCLC) is serving as coordinator of the convention. Sidney Poitier, popular actor, will be the featured speaker at the opening banquet August 14, 1967, and Aretha Franklin, popular entertainer, will also appear at the banquet.”

Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee on April 4, 1968 after intervening in a citywide sanitation workers strike which had gone on for two months. Although the FBI and then Attorney General Ramsey Clark immediately claimed that King’s murder was not the result of a conspiracy, there is ample documented evidence that the SCLC co-founder and president was the subject an incessant surveillance and destabilization campaign by the federal government.

The SCLC convention was held in Memphis just four months after the assassination of King. On August 16, FBI sources in a document from the Special Agent-in-Charge to the Director of the FBI, under the topic “Communist Infiltration of the SCLC”, cited Rev. James Bevel, a SCLC staff member stating that:

“’The United States Government is involved in acts of genocide against the Vietnamese people in a systematic murder of non-whites.’ He stated that the United States is in Vietnam for the reason that it wants to gain physical control of Vietnam because the United States wants Vietnam’s rice and Tungsten. He described Vietnam as ‘the rice bowl of Asia’ and stated that the United States wanted to use Vietnam as a military base from which to dominate all Asia.”

In the first and second paragraphs of the confidential document dated August 21 on the 1968 SCLC convention in Memphis, it states:

“Enclosed herewith for the Bureau are 11 copies, Atlanta 4 copies, and for all listed offices 2 copies, an LHM (letterhead memorandum) and captioned as above. Copies are being furnished to the United States Attorney and United States Secret Service, Memphis, and to regional offices of Military Intelligence.”

This same report from an FBI source noted a performance by Aretha Franklin at the convention along with comments made by her father, Rev. C.L. Franklin. The document quoted Rev. Franklin as saying:

“England has degenerated from a first to a third-rate power. He stated that Communist China has evolved from a second-rate to a first-rate power and now has atomic energy.”

The Angela Davis Defense Campaign

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, 17, the younger brother of Black Panther Party Field Marshal and prison writer, George L. Jackson, died in an ambush by Marin County Sheriff Deputies. Jackson had attempted to take a judge and several jurors hostage in an effort to free George from San Quentin prison. George Jackson was killed one year later on August 21, 1971 in another effort to win freedom.

Arms utilized in the operation on August 7, 1970 in California were connected to Angela Davis, a then-member of the Communist Party (CPUSA) who had been fired in 1969 from her teaching position at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) at the aegis of Governor Ronald Reagan due to her political affiliations. Davis had been a leader in the Soledad Brothers defense campaign and was immediately put on the FBI’s most wanted list. She was later captured in October 1970 spawning an international campaign demanding her release.

Aretha Franklin in 1970 offered to post bond for Angela Davis (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

In a December 1970 article in Jet magazine Aretha offered to post bail for Angela Davis. She was quoted as saying:

“Angela Davis must go free. I’ve been locked up… and I know you got to disturb the peace when you can’t get no peace. Jail is hell to be in. I’m going to see her free if there is any justice in our courts, not because I believe in communism, but because she’s a Black woman and she wants freedom for Black people. I have the money; I got it from Black people.”

Other documents released by the FBI point to Aretha being mentioned in meetings hosted by the Young Workers Liberation League (YWLL), a youth group connected to the CPUSA during the early 1970s. The meeting merely suggested her as a performer for fundraising activities aimed at building the Angela Davis defense campaign.

An August 26, 1971 document from the FBI office in Los Angeles suggests that Aretha Franklin was being solicited to perform at a function hosted by the Black Panther Party. Bobby Seale, the then Chairman of the BPP, was scheduled to oversee a free food distribution event where 5,000 needy families would be served. There is no evidence that Aretha appeared at the program.

An FBI memorandum dated May 29, 1973 from the Special Agent-in-Charge of New York to the Acting Director of the FBI said:

“Document C-173 is a letter from Harold R. Washington, requesting that she donate funds to the Women’s Bail Fund. This fund was used for bail of inmates at the Women’s House of Detention in NYC.”

However, the memorandum went on to say that:

“On 5/2/73 (redacted name) advised that to the best of his knowledge, Aretha Franklin has never been associated with the Black radical movement. In view of the fact there is no evidence of involvement by Miss Franklin in BLA (probably Black Liberation Army) activities and in view of her fame as a singer, it is felt that it would not be in the best interests of the Bureau to attempt to interview her.”

In the final document related to the counterintelligence program of the FBI which are present in the declassified files on Aretha Franklin, dated September 22, 1976, it reports:

“Captioned individual, not further identified may be identical with one female entertainer by the same name, who has not been the subject of an investigation conducted by this Bureau. Our files, however, reveal that ‘The Daily People’s World’, a West Coast communist newspaper, carried a story under March 6, 1972, dateline, citing star performers raised $38,000 at Los Angeles for the Committee to Free Angela Davis…. In September 1972, a confidential source abroad advised that Coordinating Council for the Liberation of Dominica (CCLD) was a Black extremist group bent on disturbing the tranquility of the island of Dominica and the CCLD may have established a base of operation in the New York City area. The same source identified persons associated or known to Roosevelt Bernard Douglas, a Black extremist of international note, and the CCLD. One of the persons named was ‘Aretha Franklin, publicly known entertainer.’”

This same document from 1976 also reports: “In April 1973, during a review of documents obtained concerning the Black Liberation Army (BLA), one document bore the address of ‘Mrs. Aretha Franklin’ in care of Queens Booking Agency, 1650 Broadway, Room 1410, New York, New York. The BLA was a quasi-military group composed of small guerrilla units employing the tactics of urban guerrilla warfare against the established order with a view toward achieving revolutionary change in America. The significance of association of Franklin into the BLA is not known to this Bureau.”

In reviewing these documents one comes away with the feeling that there are additional entries which may have remained classified by the FBI. Other documents deal with suspicious letters sent to Aretha Franklin between 1968 and 1979 which came to the attention of the FBI through her managers and attorneys.

The last section of the declassified documents dwelled extensively on a copyright infringement investigation which led to an FBI raid on a private individual in Ohio. This investigation was initiated by a Detroit-based law firm which was handling Aretha Franklin’s affairs between 2005-2007. However, the FBI did not pursue the prosecution of the individual who admitted to unlawfully reproducing Franklin’s music and videos.

These documents do shed light on the extensive level of surveillance and destabilization launched by the U.S. government against the Civil Rights, Black Power and Left movements of the 1960s and 1970s. With the FBI being the chief law-enforcement agency in the country, this reveals that the state has never fully accepted the right of African American people to full emancipation and self-determination.

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

Featured image: Aretha Franklin, Rev. C.L. Franklin and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Detroit, Feb. 16, 1968 (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

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There are high ranking individuals within Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons across Canada, who weaponize these organizations against the lawful positions of ethical doctors. The victims and degrees of harm caused by their actions, goes far beyond the severe violation of our best doctors.

They have violated the entire population; they have caused massive suffering, death and disease, by unlawfully enforcing both the denial of proper covid treatment; and the deception, coercion, and cover-up of the misrepresented genetic injections that continue killing and maiming Canadians across this country. Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons in Canada unlawfully target any physician who treats covid infections with safe, cheap and effective medication.

They target any physician who writes an exemption for any man, woman, or child to be spared from the forced essentially bioweapon injections. They target any physician who shares any tidbit of truthful covid information, like “These injections are genetic experiments, and they are dangerous”. The Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons across Canada demand that physicians face professional and financial destruction if they do not submit and participate in a mass crime against humanity.

Please see the video below from Canadian Rights Watch. It includes Dr Peter McCullough, Dr Judy Mikovits, Dr Crystal Luchkiw, Dr William Makis, Dr Akbar Khan, and lawyers Michael Alexander and Leslie Smith.

If you only have ten minutes, start with Canadian cancer specialist and ground breaking cancer researcher Dr Makis. His ten minute testimonial starts at 19:00 and ends at 29:00. Dr Makis story shows how corrupt and criminal these organization were even before they started their current devote role in the gross violence that is the covid crimes against humanity.

Stop the Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons

Many of us are aware that the legal system has clearly been failing; but we can not accept this failure as the new normal. Please join me in being very ambitious and creative in motivating Federal, Provincial, and Local Police, Justices of the Peace, politicians, and legal experts, to take action, defend the public, prosecute and stop the ring leaders who have weaponized the colleges of physicians and surgeons against Canadians and our ethical physicians.

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Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

---

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

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

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

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

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store

You may also purchase directly at DonorBox “Worldwide Corona Crisis” Campaign Page! (NOTE: User-friendly)

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***

 

Since the Iranian revolution in 1979, the ruling clerics have strictly enforced the Islamic hijab on women in Iran. The clerics require women above puberty age to wear headscarves and avoid wearing tight clothing.

On September 13, 2022, Mahsa Amini, a 22-years-old woman, was arrested by Morality Police (Gashte Ershad) presumably for not having proper Islamic attire. Mahsa, who lived in the city of Saqqez in the province of Kurdistan, had come to Tehran with her family.

Three days later, Mahsa who had gone to comma under suspicious circumstances while in police custody, was confirmed dead in a hospital. Her death has sparked wide protests against the Islamic regime across many cities in Iran. A series of demonstrations began on September 16 in the streets and universities in major cities in Iran and is ongoing.

The protests did not have any leaders. The protesters chanted, “mullahs must be lost,” and “death to the dictator.” Women in many cities protested by setting their headscarves on fire and cutting their hair in public. As of September 26, 2022, at least 40 persons had been killed. The protests are the largest since the protests over the increasing price of gasoline in November 2019, which were quelled by security forces and caused 1500 deaths, according to Reuters.

The protesters targeted the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and the Islamic regime as a whole. Khamenei has been in the hot seat since 2021 when he engineered the presidential election to make his protégé Ebrahim Raisi president. In mid-September, Khamenei canceled all his meetings and public appearance due to illness as was reported by New York Times. He has contemplated for some time placing his son Mojtaba Khamenei as his successor, but Mojtaba is not favored by the people of Iran. The regime has tried to promote its ideology by incorporating religious and superstitious ideas into the schools’ curricula to indoctrinate students. This has led to wide criticism from teachers. Furthermore, the regime subsidizes pilgrimage to Mecca and Shia imams’ shrines in Iraq to fortify its Shi’a ideology throughout the region. This year the regime supported millions of Iranians to travel to Karbala to observe September 17, the 40-days anniversary (Arbaeen) 0f the death of Hossein ibn Ali, the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson, about 1400 years ago.

The Iranian Government Response  

The government authorities said the protesters violated the norm of civil disobedience, and it deployed a large security force and plain clothes Basij forces to quell the protesters. The protesters were beaten by batons and dispersed by teargas and water cannon. Some protesters confronted the Basij and set on fire their cars and motorcycles. The security authorities arrested a number of political activists and journalists. Also, for security reasons, the government slowed the internet speed, and access to WhatsApp and Instagram was restricted to prevent further spread of the protests. In response, the US Department of Treasury exempted sanctions and let internet providers expand the range of internet services to Iranians.

On September 23, the government brought its supporters into the streets. After Friday prayers, the pro-government crowd walked from Tehran university toward Azadi square. They condemned the insults to the Holy Qur’an, burning of mosques, and desecrating of the veil of Moslem women in Iran.  Further demonstration by the pro-regime crowd took place on September 25 (3 Mehr). The demonstrators gathered in Revolution Square in Tehran, protesting against the rioters. Similar crowds also gathered in other major cities.

Kayhan, a widely circulated pro-Khamenei newspaper, wrote the faithful people of Iran rose up against the oppressors and the rioters. The paper wrote that reformists and some celebrities who had supported the protesters are the lackey of the United States who must be brought to justice.  The paper claimed Iran’s progress in Shanghai Cooperation Organization membership and neutralization of the United States sanctions have made the Iranian enemies miserable.

In the past few decades, the Western powers had publicly criticized the ruling clerics in Tehran while tacitly supporting them to remain in power. Since president Raisii has come into office, this has changed course as Tehran has warmed up relations with China and Russia. The West is willing to loosen sanctions to let Iranian oil flow into the world market to reduce oil prices. However, Iran has not conceded to the West’s demands on its nuclear program.

Is another Velvet Revolution in the Cards?  

It is hard to speculate whether the current protests are the consequence of Mahsa Amini’s death or they had been pre-planned to launch a velvet revolution. The Iranian authorities have stated that the protests were instigated by anti-revolutionary groups from abroad. They blamed the riots on foreign-based Persian language media outlets such as Iran International, a television station based in London and staffed by a group of Iranian journalists. Tehran has said the station is financed by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Also, the government authorities blamed the Persian BBC of the British government and the Iranian exiled group Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK) for the instigations. On September 25, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said it summoned Britain’s ambassador Simon Shercliff, to protest what it described as a hostile atmosphere created by the London-based Farsi language media outlets. The ministry complained that the Persian news outlets had provoked disturbances and riots.

In the past few days’ demonstrations, many MEK members were seen in New York, London, Paris, and Frankfort who were waving their leaders’ pictures among the other protesters. MEK does not have supporters in Iran, and its members are considered mercenaries who are serving the US interests.

MEK was previously based in Iraq and also had a presence in France. The United States removed the MEK’s terrorist designation in 2012. In recent years, some Republicans, including the former Bush and Trump administrations’ officials, have openly embraced the group and have given speeches inside the organization camp. In 2014, the United States asked Albania to host the MEK.

Subsequently, Albania accepted some 3,000 members of the exiled group. Since then, Albania and Iran have had tense relations. Finally, on September 7, 2022, Albania cut diplomatic ties with Iran blaming Tehran for cyberattacks and asked Iranian diplomats to leave Albania within 24 hours.[1] It is not known whether the Iranian government obtained any information about future operations of the group by hacking the websites in Albania. In the meantime, the media inside Iran revealed that there were about 8 million tweets with Mahsa Amini’s hashtag on Twitter from abroad, which included 4 million from Israel, 2 million from Saudi Arabia, and nearly 2 million from Albania.

Dream of Balkanization  

Tehran feels the Western powers may take advantage of the recent riots to fan the flame of the Kurdish uprising. The Western powers and their regional allies want to radicalize the Kurds in northwest Iran, which is bordered by Iraq and Turkey, to advocate autonomous self-rule, which is wishful thinking for the balkanization of Iran.   Even though the Kurds are mostly secular and Sunni and oppose the theocratic government ruled by the Shia clerics, they are genuine Iranians and spread in several other regions in Iran. Incidentally, on September 25, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) announced that after the entry of Komala’s armed groups towards Iran’s border towns for creating chaos, the ground forces of IRGC attacked the group’s headquarters in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. Komala is a secular Kurdish party engaged in guerrilla warfare against the Iranian government. The Guard said these groups are linked to global arrogance.  

Have the Iranian Women Won?  

It appears the Iranian women have been successful in challenging the clerics’ enforcement of the hijab, as almost no officials in the regime talked about continuing to enforce the clerical guidelines on women’s attire. The fact is that enforcing the Islamic hijab in Iran is a form of violence against Iranian women, and the Morality Police must be abolished. Though the regime may abolish Morality Police, the protests are against the theocratic regime and may come back in another form. While foreign agents may have been at work to instigate the protesters, the ruling clerics’ repression and imposition of their religious ideology in the education curricula and people’s lives have created the potential for more protests.

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Akbar E. Torbat ([email protected])  is the author of “Politics of Oil and Nuclear Technology in Iran,” Palgrave Macmillan, (2020), https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9783030337650 . He received his Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Texas at Dallas.  

Note

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/albania-cuts-iran-ties-orders-diplomats-go-after-cyber-attack-pm-says-2022-09-07/

Featured image: Iranian protestors on the Keshavrz Boulvard (Photo by Darafsh, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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***

A classic “Cui bono?” explanation looks first to determine whom the beneficiaries from a crime are, and then seeks for possible evidence that those persons who benefit from the crime had initiated the crime — perhaps hired the agents who had carried out the crime. Those agents are then sought for and investigated in order to find evidence that they had been rewarded by the crime’s beneficiaries, for having perpetrated the crime.

In a “Cui bono?” approach to justice, those who created and organized and hired the crime would get the severest punishment for that crime; their mere agents would receive lower sentences.

However, in our popular media, the closest that normally is done to adhere to this methodology for finding an explanation and assigning blame is to identify corporation(s) that MIGHT have benefited from the crime.

Then, ultimately, if there is to be any prosecution at all against those possible beneficiaries, only the lower level of the corporation’s employees who had been incentivized by its top management to do the crime are pursued by the law, and the corporation’s controlling investors — whom those peons had been actually those investors’ agents, working on their behalf — suffer, at most, nothing more than a fraction of 1% of the corporation’s annual profits as slap-on-the-wrist fines, and even less than that percentage of their own stock-value in the corporation.

So: if there is any prosecution against the corporation, that firm’s investors are held harmless, protected by the law. This is NOT a “Cui bono?” system of justice; it is, at best, a ‘Cui bono?’ system of ‘justice’ — actually, a system of injustice.

Why do we have a system of injustice, not a system of justice?

The same persons who control the major corporations — and almost all of them are billionaires, who are the approximately 1,000 wealthiest individuals in the United States and control not only all of the major corporations but also those corporations’ hired lobbyists, and also all of the major news-media — are the major donors to the political Parties, and to the PACs that also fund those; and they thereby control also the U.S. Government, via those agents (including virtually everyone in Congress) and their millions of sub-agents who are the employees of those agencies.

In such a situation, how can justice be even possible? Those billionaires — both the ones who fund the Democratic Party, and the ones who fund the Republican Party — are well-represented by this Government, but the general public is represented almost not at all by it. So, the question is: How does the public become successfully fooled to believe that they live in a democracy?

I shall propose here what I believe to be the answer, which explains how this con-job is done:

The dominant ideology of these countries is called in the United States “libertarianism” and in Europe “neoliberalism,” and it holds that even if the Government is unjust (or unfair), the economy is just (or fair) if it is “free” — as unsubject to the political power (the government) as possible.

The underlying belief is that corruption comes from the government and NOT from the economy itself.

Consequently: corruption comes from the holders of public offices, but NOT from the corporations UNLESS there are “a few bad apples” in that lot, who do what the corporation doesn’t want them to do. At worst: corporations are “negligent,” in this scenario. The economy ITSELF is not systematically corrupt. Consequently, the billionaires are to be viewed more as “wealth-creators” by means of their investments, than as being, by any means, the incentivizers of crimes against the public, often exploiting the public and profiting thereby.

That neoliberal or libertarian view is the viewpoint by conservatives (or “The Right”), but is it ALSO the viewpoint by liberals (or “The Left”)? Yes, and here is how it is:

Karl Marx is generally held to be the founder of “The Left,” and he blamed “the bourgeoisie” or middle economic class, as being the exploiters and the persons who benefit from capitalism or a free market. He did not blame the aristocracy — the top economic class, who control the corporations and constitute what today are commonly called “billionaires” — for political problems. He really believed that the middle class — and NOT or NOT ONLY the super-rich — are the cause of society’s injustices. If he had blamed “the aristocracy” (the wealthiest class), then he would never have been able to win the financial support from the aristocracy that he did and which enabled him to publish. So: he blamed “the bourgeoisie” INSTEAD OF “the aristocracy.” Consequently: leftism became corrupted, even at its very start. It was corrupted BY the aristocracy.

Marx blamed ALL STOCKHOLDERS, and not ONLY the ones who own the controlling blocks of stock in the major corporations — not ONLY “the aristocracy” — and this is the reason why the Soviets purged the “kulaks” or small-business owners, and not ONLY the few individuals who had held the vast majority of the nation’s wealth.

A good example of this leftist mentality is a recent article by, and news-interview video of, a leftist news-analyst, Thomas Fazi. The article was titled “Civil disobedience is coming”, and at 4:50 in the video-interview of him about it, he was asked,

“Who are these people? Who is benefitting from all of these bad things?”

and Fazi answered:

“Well, it’s the usual suspects. If we take Covid, we know that the lockdowns, the Covid measures, they caused immense harm to most citizens, they caused immense harm to small and medium businesses, but they allowed Big Tech, Big Pharma companies, to reap in billions, tens of billions in profits, and to acquire even more power than they already had. .. If we look at the current crisis, it’s exactly the same. In this case, we’re … talking about Big Oil, Big Energy, Big Gas.”

The major funders of Britain’s Labour Party, and of America’s Democratic Party, could hire or sub-contract to such a writer, just as the liberal aristocrats during Marx’s time funded him and his work. It holds the corporations responsible — WHEN it does — ONLY in such ways as to protect the biggest beneficiaries of corporate crimes.

But such thinking is not progressive; it is not conducive to increasing democracy, and to equal rights and obligations of each and every person, under the law, and which contains no systematic favoritism toward the super-rich, and no systematic denigration and further weakening of the very poor. 

Ultimately, such leftism is remarkably close to neoliberalism (libertarianism), because it accepts the view that the billionaires hire people to promote to the public: that billionaires are “entrepreneurs” instead of “exploiters,” and that they had gotten so rich because they had earned every cent of it and not depended upon the state and its (billionaires’-created) system in order to become so rich.

This billionaires-funded view makes fundamentally no distinction, except Fazi’s rhetorical one, between those “small and medium businesses” on the one hand, versus such international megacorporations as ExxonMobil and Lockheed Martin on the other.

AND it focuses blame against “corporations” INSTEAD OF against the individual beneficiaries from its crimes.

That leftism is a false, crippled, leftism, not authentic progressivism, which DOES AND CONSISTENTLY make that distinction — by identifying the billionaires who actually CONTROL those giant corporations, and by seeking to get the laws changed so as to finally provide ACCOUNTABILITY to “Cui bono?” Obviously, billionaires will not fund writers such as that, progressive ones.

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This article was originally published on The Duran.

Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

 

 

 

 

 

It has begun. The next step is to round up the “terrorists,” and we know what the state does to them.

Next, they'll start rounding up people. This the predictable path of authoritarians. https://t.co/TPXYEUGr7D

— Another Day in the Empire (@day_empire) September 27, 2022

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, for some reason deemed a “liberal,” has called for a global system of repression against speech she does not agree with, namely questioning climate change.

I am referring to the classic definition of liberalism, a political ideology based upon the protection of individual liberty, including and most importantly free speech.

Jacinda Ardern is not a liberal. She is a fascist.

Merriam-Webster defines fascism as a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control, including the sort of “solution” proposed by Ardern to demonize and criminalize those who disagree with her, but also Hillary Clinton and other modern autocratic “liberals” masquerading as saviors of the people (so long as they agree and vote for them).

“New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern is the latest liberal leader to call for an international alliance to censor speech,” writes Jonathan Turley, a legal scholar holding the Shapiro Chair for Public Interest Law at The George Washington University Law School, where he teaches constitutional law.

Unsatisfied with the unprecedented corporate censorship of social media companies, leaders like Hillary Clinton have turned from private censorship to good old-fashioned state censorship. Speech regulation has become an article of faith on the left. Ardern used her speech this week to the United Nations General Assembly to call for censorship on a global scale.

Ardern noted how extremists use speech to spread lies without noting that non-extremists use the same free speech to counter such views.   To answer her question on “how do you tackle climate change if people do not believe it exists” is that you convince people using the same free speech.  Instead, Ardern appears to want to silence those who have doubts.

In addition to silencing and eventually criminalizing those who have legitimate arguments countering the theory of manmade climate change, Ardern “defended the need for such global censorship on having to combat those who question climate change and the need to stop ‘hateful and dangerous rhetoric and ideology,” in other words, those who oppose the non-classic “liberal” ideology.

Ardern’s proposal “is the same rationale used by authoritarian countries like China, Iran, and Russia to censor dissidents, minority groups, and political rivals.  What is ‘hateful’ and ‘dangerous’ is a fluid concept that government have historically used to silence critics or dissenters,” Truly continues.

For Ardern and the ruling financial elite she serves, speech is a “weapon of war,” not “hypothetical” but as real and dangerous as physical weapons. “ The weapons of war have changed, they are upon us and require the same level of action and activity that we put into the weapons of old,” she insists.

For those of us who have lived through twenty long years of the so-called “war on terror,” some understand how these globalist fascists deal with “terrorists”—outright murder without trial, abduction, torture (in CIA dungeons), and indefinite confinement without trial. Are these the tactics were can expect from fascist leaders of Ardern’s ilk in response to those who disagree with the globalist agenda.?

Age and gender are meaningless for these psychopathic killers. Consider the case of sixteen-year-old Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in Denver in 1995, and his Yemeni cousin, both killed by the US military in Yemen. Abdulrahman was the son of Anwar al-Awlaki, a supposed al-Qaeda figure and cleric who in the past worked with the CIA. He was also assassinated by the CIA.

“The Obama administration’s top Pentagon lawyer [in January 2012] said that American citizens who join Al Qaeda can be targeted for killing and that courts should have no role in reviewing executive branch decisions about whether someone has met such criteria,” The New York Times reported (emphasis added).

Free speech “extremists” and “terrorists” are a far worse threat to “democracy” than the CIA’s al-Qaeda, according to the FBI.

“The rise in domestic terrorism — as profiled in a captivating New York Times Magazine report from 2018 — is largely driven by an uptick in far-right extremism. Of the 263 acts of domestic terrorism that occurred between 2010 and the end of 2017, 92, around a third, were committed by Americans on the far right,” according to New York Mag’s Intelligencer.

The precise boundaries of “far-right extremism” are rarely if ever defined or clarified—and this is not a mistake. The ambiguity allows the state to declare any non-‘liberal” individual or group as “far-right” extremist.

In addition, the FBI has long honed the art of setting up and framing people as terrorists, from COINTELPRO in the 1960s until today. Revelations of FBI involvement in the capitol “insurrection” should be instructive.

Ardern and the “liberal” fascists will not rest until conservatives, civil libertarians, and others in opposition to their agenda are either imprisoned or eliminated.

Supposed climate change is simply the beginning. Ardern and her disciples, all working in the service of the neoliberal state, will not rest until blogs such as this one are wiped off the internet and opposition activists are either squelched or, short of that, locked up (or possibly even assassinated) on domestic Gitmos.

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

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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 2.0)

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***

Recently held referendums in the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk and in Zaporozhye and Kherson oblasts will affect the military operation in Ukraine as, besides the high degree of support for accession, any attack by the US or NATO on these territories would be a direct attack on the Russian Federation. Any Western attack against the new Russian territories could be considered a declaration of war and unleash an open conflagration, something that the US and its NATO allies are unlikely wanting to directly engage in.

The referendum, in this sense, has been a political instrument of great importance since it has allowed the Donbass region, the ancestral territory of the Cossacks, to return to Russia. The result of the elections was expected because historically the regions of the Don River basin have deep Slavic roots, speak the Russian language and profess the Orthodox Christian religion. It was only after the founding of the Soviet Union in 1922 that Moscow ceded those territories to Ukraine.

In addition, the annexation of these regions is a strategic step in the current confrontation between Russia and Ukraine. This is especially the case as a harsh winter is approaching and the political and energy crises in the European Union is seemingly leading to an economic recession.

According to official statistics, with 100% of the ballots counted, 99.23% of Donetsk voters voted in favour of joining Russia, and 98.42% of the Luhansk electorate also voted yes. In Zaporozhye, the yes vote received 93.11%, while the Kherson oblast was the only one with less than 90% of the votes favourable to joining Russia, with a massive 87.05% none-the-less.

Source: InfoBrics

These territories called for a referendum, considering them necessary for the “defence against terrorist acts” perpetrated by the Ukrainian government and the NATO members which supplies them. In turn, several countries and international organisations condemned the holding of the votes and made it clear that they will not recognize their results.

During all the days of voting, the Ukrainian military bombed the regions to try and prevent people from participating in the referendum. The authorities of these regions assure that with their integration into Russia, security will be guaranteed and a historical justice restored. They also stressed that it was necessary to take such a decision due to the permanent attacks by the nationalist regime in Kiev.

Russian President Vladimir Putin declared that Russia will support the decision made by the inhabitants of Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson. The US, the EU, the OSCE and other countries and international organisations described the call as illegal, made it clear that they will not recognize the results and threatened new sanctions packages.

This comes as Russia’s ambassador to Washington, Anatoly Antonov, warned that the US and other “sponsors of Ukrainian neo-Nazi criminals” are approaching a red line by allowing Western weapons to be used to attack Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson.

“The sponsors of neo-Nazi criminals are approaching that dangerous line of which we clearly warned repeatedly. The United States becomes a party to the Ukrainian conflict,” the ambassador said in a statement.

Antonov warned that Washington is encouraging Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to continue attacking with the weapons that NATO countries have sent without measuring the consequences.

“Diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution to the crisis cannot be effective as long as Western countries use the Zelensky regime as a mercenary against Russia,” he stressed, adding that Russia’s defensive response will be forceful.

Earlier, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken assured that the White House was not going to prevent Zelensky from attacking Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson with US weapons after these entities become a part of Russian territory. The US also announced that it will impose a raft of new sanctions against Russia, which is already the world’s most sanctioned country.

The European Union also seems poised to adopt new sanctions on Russia, though some EU members are questioning existing restrictions as economic pain is already hurting Europe more than Russia. The Biden administration, for its part, is looking to target government-linked Russian financial institutions, including the Russian Deposit Insurance Agency, which is intended to protect Russians bank accounts, and the National Payment Card System, or Mir, an electronic funds-transfer system.

However, further sanctions and encouraging Ukraine to continue attacking Russia’s new regions will not lead to a reversal of the reality on the ground – Donetsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson will soon be integral parts of the Russian Federation. With some of these regions still under Ukrainian occupation, it now appears that Moscow has a clear end-game to its military operation in Ukraine, the full liberation of these territories from Ukraine.

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

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***

Once upon a time, cops were tasked primarily with things like catching murderers and rapists and protecting property.

They were always used, of course, whenever necessary, to protect state interests – but, then again, the state’s interests weren’t always so obviously nefarious and illegitimate as they are today.

Law enforcement’s purview expansion is explained in large part by securitization theory.

As a result of the this process, peculiar new breeds of law enforcement – Public Health© officers and green police – have sprung up throughout the West.

Securitization theory: the advent of new security threats

The basic premise of securitization theory in political science is that, given the opportunity, a state will endlessly concoct new security “threats” as a justification to exercise greater power outside of the constraints of the normal political process:

“Securitisation theory shows us that national security policy is not a natural given, but carefully designated by politicians and decision-makers. According to securitisation theory, political issues are constituted as extreme security issues to be dealt with urgently when they have been labelled as ‘dangerous’… by a ‘securitising actor’ who has the social and institutional power to move the issue ‘beyond politics’.”

The process, in a nutshell, works like this:

• The government identifies a new existential “threat,” either legitimate or overblown, either naturally occurring or cynically engineered by the state itself.
• The corporate media and corporate state stoke fear about the threat into the hearts and minds of a gullible public
• In the fog of panic, the state slyly provisions itself with new authority and resources to combat the threat, thereby increasing its power

The threats change, but whether “domestic terrorism,” COVID-19, or climate change, the process largely remains the same.

Once you download the blueprint for the securitization process, analyzing the state’s actions in real-time becomes as easy as reading lines off a script.The average pre-9/11 American wouldn’t have believed that a trumped-up flu could ever be conceived as a “national security threat.”

But, 9/11 changed everything. Securitization became routine.

The corporate state’s apparatuses, like the Rand Corporation, were ready to pounce on the new COVID-19 Public Health© emergency and cast it as a “national security” issue. Here the Rand Corporation likens COVID-19 hysteria to World War II:

“COVID-19 is the greatest threat to the United States to materialize in over a century. To put it into perspective, World War II, which many consider to have been an existential threat, claimed an average of 9,000 American lives per month… And when the safety of the nation is endangered, the situation becomes a matter of national security and it should be treated as such. “

America used to go to war with Nazis; now it goes to war against microbes and climate.

Security issues require securitizing actors – enforcement mechanisms to counter the threat. Hence the Public Health© officer. Hence biomedical martial law.

The rise of the Public Health© officer

Meet the biomedical state’s new frontline enforcer: the Public Health© officer.

This miserable creature is here to ensure you take your shots, wear your mask, and, most importantly, shut your mouth.

He is granted full enforcement power and broad jurisdiction to enforce Public Health© orders, such as:

• “Curfew – regulates times during which a person is required to stay indoors.”
• “Social distancing – maintaining distance between people to avoid the spread of disease.”
• “Quarantine – restricts the movement of people who show symptoms or are potentially infected by a disease.”
• “Self-quarantine – the voluntary act of putting oneself in quarantine.”*
• “Isolation – separates sick people from those who are not.”
• “Shelter-in-place (stay at home) – requires individuals stay in a safe, non-public location (home) except for essential activities and work, until told otherwise”

(*Somehow, “self-quarantine” is both voluntary and enforceable by a Public Health© officer if you won’t do it yourself.)

Here’s one in action:

This is frightening and this is what Canada has become. pic.twitter.com/wKOL8YZBlk

— Alexandra Lavoie (@ThevoiceAlexa) July 16, 2022

Here, the masked, portly Canadian Public Health© officer detains a pair of overpolite Canadian travelers, confiscates their passports and demands proof of vaccination for “noncompliance” with COVID protocols. He cites the broad power granted in the Canadian Quarantine Act as the source of his authority.

Is the robot police dog here with a mounted RPG for the vaxxed, or unvaxxed?

“Science provided possibility of liberation but science itself is not liberator

When ideals of humanity are war & conquest, tools become as dangerous as razor in hands of child

Fate of humanity is entirely dependent upon its moral development”

Einstein pic.twitter.com/v7S5jS2NiI

— Double Down News (@DoubleDownNews) August 15, 2022

Let’s consider the pertinent points:

A.) The corporate state controls the police.

B.) The corporate state – from Australia to Canada to Great Britain — insists on vaccine mandates and have enforced draconian lockdowns for years.

C.) We’ve seen the hell they’ve unleashed on anti-mandate protesters worldwide using actual flesh-and-bones dogs.

ENGLAND: Police set an attack dog on a protester IN Newcastle at the anti-covid passport protest over the weekend. pic.twitter.com/EdV6OcvZ5l

— Apex World News (@apexworldnews) August 30, 2021

Seems like a recipe for more of the same, just with robots instead of Rover.

How long until the RPG dog gets sicced on you?

Welcome to Techno-Hell.

The Public Health© Officer’s Successor: ‘Green Police’

France recently created a legion of “green police” brigades to combat climate change offenders:

“Gérald Darmanin, who serves as France’s Minister of the Interior, has announced that he aims to create 3,000 posts for new ‘green police’ officials, a move that he has deemed necessary in the face to tackle climate change.”

European and North American “green police” will enforce increasingly common North Korea-tier curtailing of basic human dignity, like forcing shop owners to turn off their lights at night and limiting heating and air conditioning.

‘Just following orders’: no dice

“Just following orders” is the oldest, lamest excuse for government goons to excuse their aberrant behavior – one that didn’t save the Nazi camp guards at Nuremberg, and won’t this time either if we don’t allow it.

We’re long overdue for Nuremberg II, which should be a pillar of every opposition candidate’s platform.

As for individual action, get free with the parallel economy.

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This article was originally published on The Daily Bell.

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

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***

The recent incident on the Nord Stream pipeline has drawn the attention of the entire world. Authorities on both sides of the global geopolitical scenario pointed to possibilities indicating deliberate sabotage and terrorism. Kiev baselessly accuses Moscow of being responsible for the act, however several evidence indicate that the biggest suspect of having operated this sabotage is the US.

On September 27, the Swedish National Seismic Network (SNSN) reported a series of strong underwater explosions in the region of the Nord Stream 1 pipeline facilities. As a result of the explosions, many gas leaks occurred, huge sea waves were generated, and the structure of the entire gas pipeline was severely harmed. Interestingly, the day before, a similar incident had already been reported by Nord Stream AG – the company that manages the gas transport – at the installations of the second pipeline. Strong pressure drops hit Nord Stream 2 and left worrying damage to the facilities. Now, Nord Stream 1 and 2 are both damaged.

Obviously, the economic and environmental damage of a tragedy like this is countless and irreparable. However, what is most remarkable is the fact that both gas pipelines collapsed at virtually the same time and precisely at this moment of so many international tensions involving the West and Russia. In fact, the possibility that the explosions in both pipelines occurred accidentally was not received with credibility by either side on the world scenario. EU Foreign Policy Chief Josep Borrell said he did not believe in the hypothesis of an accident, which led Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko to mention in an interview that Moscow is willing to cooperate with the EU in investigations if there is a request to do so.

As expected, some Ukrainian and Western leaders immediately began to unjustifiably accuse Russia, despite Moscow’s willingness to cooperate with Europe to find those responsible for the possible sabotage. Kiev’s presidential adviser Mikhaylo Podolyak, for example, commented on his social media:

“The large-scale ‘gas leak’ from Nord Stream 1 is nothing more than a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU. [Moscow is seeking to] destabilize the economic situation in Europe and cause pre-winter panic”.

However, at no time was any plausible evidence presented to support this “conclusion” of Russian participation in the sabotage.

From different points of view, it is possible to say that it would not be in Moscow’s interest to promote such an action. The Nord Stream project was a very important part of Russo-European energy relations and there would be no strategic reason for either side to try to boycott the pipelines.

Source: InfoBrics

On the other hand, if there is one side that has repeatedly expressed an interest in boycotting Russian-European relations, it is the US. In order to isolate Russia and increase European dependence on Washington and its allies, the US government boycotted Nord Stream on several occasions with sanctions and coercive measures. Before the start of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, the US had already tried to dissuade Europeans from continuing energy cooperation with Moscow, which was intensified by anti-Russian packages of measures since February. In fact, Washington has used the operation in Ukraine as an excuse to advance its agenda of complete separation between Russia and Europe.

More than that: US officials have made it clear on some occasions that they would take direct action against Nord Stream if Russia “invaded” Ukraine. On January 7, President Biden stated in a press conference:

“if Russia invades, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it. I promise you, we will be able to do that”. Also, earlier Victoria Nuland had already said, in January, that “if Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward”.

Considering that the beginning of the special military operation for the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine is seen by the West as an “invasion”, these threats made by the American authorities in the past sound today practically as a confession of guilt for the possible sabotage against the gas pipelines. In fact, this is the opinion even of some pro-Western authorities, such as the former Polish Foreign Minister Sikorski who posted on his social network a photo of the explosion on Nord Stream 1 writing “Thank you, USA”, admitting believing that Washington provoked the tragedy.

It is important to remember that Poland was also interested in the end of the Nord Stream project, as the gas pipeline directly connects Russia and Europe, ending the dependence on the Polish route, which made costs higher and gave the Polish government bargaining power with Europe. In fact, the US and Poland would be the most suspect countries in the case of sabotage against Russian-European gas pipelines and this seems evident from the pronouncements of these authorities.

Now, it remains to be seen how Europe will deal with these facts. It is essential that this tragedy serves as an example to illustrate the anti-strategic aspect of this subservient relationship that the EU has been maintaining with the US in recent decades.

Washington exhibits an authoritarian and aggressive behavior and is possibly involved in a sabotage operation that will worsen the European energy crisis during this coming winter. This is more than enough reason for European states to start adopting a sovereign foreign policy.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

September 14, 2022, Politico published a special report based on four dozen interviews with U.S. and European officials and global health specialists, who admit Bill Gates is running the global COVID response

Four health organizations — The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the Wellcome Trust — rapidly took a lead on the global pandemic response, and while all four claim to be independent organizations, they’re all actually founded and/or funded by Gates

During the earliest days of the outbreak, the Gates Foundation, GAVI, CEPI and the Wellcome Trust began a coordinated effort to identify vaccine makers, fund tests, drug treatments and mRNA shots, and develop a global distribution plan in collaboration with the World Health Organization. In the end, they failed to meet their own goals on all fronts

Gates is unqualified to make health recommendations, and he’s never been elected to represent the public

Gates has used his wealth, influence and sheer shrewdness to get him into a position where he can dictate global health policy for his own financial benefit

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The idea that Bill Gates exerts undue influence over global health has consistently been denied and dismissed as a loony conspiracy theory. But as with so many other things, this conspiracy theory is now turning out to be a conspiracy fact.

September 14, 2022, Politico published an extensive special report based on “four dozen interviews with U.S. and European officials and global health specialists,” headlined, “How Bill Gates and His Partners Took Over the Global COVID Response.”1

As noted by Igor Chudov on Substack,2 within hours the headline was edited to read: “How Four Private Groups Used Their Clout to Control the Global COVID Response — With Little Oversight,”3 as illustrated in Chudov’s screen captures below.

Curiously, five hours after that edit, Politico changed the headline back, so at the time of this writing, it reads:4 “How Bill Gates and Partners Used Their Clout to Control the Global Covid Response — With Little Oversight.” The only word now missing from the original headline is “his.” You can see how the headline shifted back and forth over the course of 15 hours on archive.today.5

Four Gates Organizations Monopolize the Global COVID Response

According to Politico,6 four health organizations — the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) and the Wellcome Trust — rapidly took a lead on the global pandemic response, and while all four claim to be independent organizations, they’re all actually founded and/or funded by Gates.

“When Covid-19 struck, the governments of the world weren’t prepared,” Politico writes. “While the most powerful nations looked inward, four non-governmental global health organizations began making plans for a life-or-death struggle against a virus that would know no boundaries.

What followed was a steady, almost inexorable shift in power from the overwhelmed governments to a group of non-governmental organizations, according to a seven-month investigation by POLITICO journalists based in the U.S. and Europe and the German newspaper WELT.

Armed with expertise, bolstered by contacts at the highest levels of Western nations and empowered by well-grooved relationships with drug makers, the four organizations took on roles often played by governments — but without the accountability of governments.”

Six Takeaways From Politico’s Investigation

During the earliest days of the outbreak, while governments were still debating the seriousness of it, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI, CEPI and the Wellcome Trust began a coordinated effort to identify vaccine makers, fund tests, drug treatments and mRNA shots, and develop a global distribution plan in collaboration with the World Health Organization. In a side bar, Politico highlights six key takeaways from their investigation:7

“1 The four organizations have spent almost $10 billion on COVID since 2020 – the same amount as the leading U.S. agency tasked with fighting COVID abroad.

2 The organizations collectively gave $1.4 billion to the World Health Organization, where they helped create a critical initiative to distribute COVID-19 tools. That program failed to achieve its original benchmarks.

3 The organizations’ leaders had unprecedented access to the highest levels of governments, spending at least $8.3 million to lobby lawmakers and officials in the U.S. and Europe.

4 Officials from the U.S., EU and representatives from the WHO rotated through these four organizations as employees, helping them solidify their political and financial connections in Washington and Brussels.

5 The leaders of the four organizations pledged to bridge the equity gap. However, during the worst waves of the pandemic, low-income countries were left without life-saving vaccines.

6 Leaders of three of the four organizations maintained that lifting intellectual property protections was not needed to increase vaccine supplies – which activists believed would have helped save lives.”

Unqualified and Unelected

As detailed by Politico, through Gates’ lobbying and financial might, the international response to COVID rapidly shifted from individual governments to “a privately overseen global constituency of nongovernmental experts.”

“What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting … tremendous resources?” ~ Kate Elder, senior policy adviser for the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign

In the U.S., president Biden has earmarked $500 million to CEPI alone in his $5 billion COVID budget, which has yet to be approved by Congress. But, as noted by Kate Elder, a senior vaccines policy adviser for the Doctors Without Borders’ Access Campaign:8

“What makes Bill Gates qualified to be giving advice and advising the U.S. government on where they should be putting … tremendous resources?”

Lawrence Gostin, a Georgetown University professor who specializes in public-health law told Politico:

“I think we should be deeply concerned. Putting it in a very crass way, money buys influence. And this is the worst kind of influence. Not just because it’s money — although that’s important, because money shouldn’t dictate policy — but also, because it’s preferential access, behind closed doors.

[It’s] anti-democratic, because it’s extraordinarily non-transparent, and opaque [and] leaves behind ordinary people, communities and civil society.”

Gates ‘Owns’ the WHO

Many have pointed out that Gates, through his billions in donations to the WHO, has significant leverage over the WHO’s decisions. In September 2021, Astrid Stuckelberger, Ph.D., a WHO insider, blew the whistle on Gates, explaining how the WHO is, in fact, controlled by Gates, who in turn dictates policy for his own personal financial benefit.

Of the four organizations Politico focuses on, GAVI, the Vaccine Alliance, may be the most important. GAVI, founded by Gates, is headquartered in Switzerland. In 2009, GAVI was recognized as an international institution and granted total blanket immunity, including qualified diplomatic immunity, which is extremely odd considering the organization has no political power that would warrant diplomatic immunity.9

Odder still is that GAVI’s immunity clauses go beyond even that of diplomats. GAVI’s immunity covers all aspects of engagement, including criminal business dealings. Equally strange is the fact that they’re completely tax exempt.

GAVI can basically do whatever it wants without any repercussions. Police can’t even investigate or collect evidence from GAVI were they to be implicated in a criminal investigation. That’s how well-protected they are. And, according to Stuckelberger, GAVI is the entity that is really directing the WHO.

According to Stuckelberger, Gates did, in 2017, request to be put on the WHO’s executive board — like a member state — ostensibly because he gives them so much money. There’s no evidence that Gates was ever officially granted the status of a member state, but it appears he figured out an alternative power play.

Stuckelberger pointed out that Gates and the WHO entered into a three-way contract agreement with Swissmedic, the Food and Drug Administration of Switzerland, which is highly unusual. So, essentially, when Gates did not get voted in as a one-man nation state, he created three-party contracts with member states and the WHO, essentially placing him on par with the WHO!

One curiosity that supports the idea that Gates is either the real power behind the WHO, or has the same amount of power as the WHO, is the fact that Gates has repeatedly been the first to announce what the world needs to do to address the pandemic, and then the WHO would come out with an identical message that member states then had to follow.

But who the heck is Gates to direct global health and pandemic responses? He’s a nobody. He has no medical training. He’s completely unqualified to speak to any health issues whatsoever. He didn’t even graduate college. And he’s never been elected to represent the people in any capacity.

Basically, what we have here is one wealthy individual who figured out a way to unofficially monopolize the decision-making ability of a global health authority in order to enrich himself, which is beyond crazy.

The WHO Was Instrumental in Gates’ Rise to Power

Gates’ influence over the WHO is undoubtedly why the WHO allowed these four Gates-funded groups to direct the global response to COVID in the first place. As reported by Politico:10

“The WHO was crucial to the groups’ rise to power. All had longstanding ties to the global health body. The boards of both CEPI and Gavi have a specially designated WHO representative.

There is also a revolving door between employment in the groups and work for the WHO: Former WHO employees now work at the Gates Foundation and CEPI; some, such as Chris Wolff, the deputy director of country partnerships at the Gates Foundation, occupy important positions.

Much of the groups’ clout with the WHO stems simply from money. Since the start of the pandemic in 2020, the Gates Foundation, Gavi, and the Wellcome Trust have donated collectively more than $1.4 billion to the WHO — a significantly greater amount than most other official member states, including the United States and the European Commission, according to data provided by the WHO.”

It would be one thing if these organizations actually did an excellent job. But they didn’t. An independent review11 by Dalberg Global Development Advisors, a New York policy advisory firm, found the initiative created by Gates’ groups, the Access to COVID-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A), failed on all fronts.

Despite a $23 billion budget,12 ACT-A procured only 16% of its target number of tests for low-and middle-income countries, and of the 245 million treatments it was supposed to deliver to low- and middle-income countries, they only allocated 1.8 million. Similarly, of the 2 billion COVID shots that were supposed to be delivered by the end of 2021, only 319 million doses were delivered.

Of course, one could argue that failure to deliver fraudulent CPR tests and dangerous treatments and mRNA shots were a blessing in disguise. But the fact remains that these organizations are far from excellent and fail miserably in reaching many of their stated goals.

They overpromise and underdeliver. They’re willing to sacrifice lives to maintain control over moneymaking patents. And, while they’re more or less singlehandedly shaping the global response to pandemics, there’s no one to hold them to account for their performance.

What Politico Left Out

While Politico’s report is sweeping in breadth, it still failed to include a number of important puzzle pieces listed in Chudov’s Substack article. For example:13

• SARS-CoV-2 appears to be an intentionally engineered bioweapon.
• The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation helped organize Event 201, a tabletop pandemic preparedness exercise in October 2019 that prophetically predicted COVID-19 — and the need for a massive propaganda and censorship campaign to quash “conspiracies” about the virus.
• Gates purchased 3.1 million shares of BioNTech in September 2019 for $55 million.14 15 At the time, BioNTech was working on patient-specific immunotherapies for cancer and other chronic diseases. In mid-March 2020, BioNTech partnered with Pfizer to develop a COVID mRNA jab.16 By August 2021, Gates’ prescient investment was worth $1.7 billion.
• The Gates Foundation financed EcoHealth Alliance,17 the organization suspected of having a hand in the development of SARS-CoV-2.
• The Gates Foundation also financed the University of North Carolina (UNC) with at least 56 different grants, where Ralph Baric, Ph.D., conducted gain-of-function research linked to the development of SARS-CoV-2. Baric also worked with EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV).

As noted by Chudov in his closing remarks:18

“Nevertheless, the mere publication of this article has huge importance. The things that most of us know and talk about, are appearing in the so-called ‘mainstream press’ — after the damage was all done, of course.

The virus was released; millions died; over a billion young people were force-vaccinated under false pretenses. When it is too late to change anything, Politico is finally stating the obvious. Still, it is better than nothing.

Almost everything in the Politico article was known a year ago. Where was Politico then? Busy taking government COVID vaccine advertising money. The pandemic was a crime, not an accident.”

The Gates-Fauci Scheme to Vaccinate the World

Gates is far from the only nemesis in this orchestrated drama, however. Dr. Anthony Fauci is another key player. Ironically, Gates claims he’s “taken the brunt of COVID conspiracy abuse” because Europeans are not familiar with Fauci. He recently told Fortune magazine:19

“It was quite a phenomenon; here in the U.S., it focused on myself and Tony Fauci, and internationally it was more just me because they didn’t know who Tony was — he really missed out on that!”

But while Gates tries to pass it off people’s concerns about his undue influence over their health as a joke, there’s no shortage of evidence that he really is pulling strings he’s far from qualified to pull.

In “Bill Gates Lays Out Plan for Global Takeover,” I review Gates’ role in the WHO and the WHO’s plan to, ultimately, seize control over all health care decisions, worldwide. I’ve also reviewed how Gates and Fauci have collaborated, forming a formidable public-private partnership that wields incredible power over the American public.

As early as 2000, Fauci and Gates formed an agreement to control and expand the global vaccine enterprise, which in 2021 culminated in a plan to inject every man, woman and child on the planet with an experimental COVID shot. Gates and Fauci’s collaboration are detailed in Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s best-selling book, “The Real Anthony Fauci.” The video at the top of this article summarizes their joint scheme.

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Notes

2 Igor Chudov Substack September 15, 2022

3 Politico September 14, 2022 (Archived w changed headline)

4 Politico September 14, 2022

5 Archive.today Screenshots of Politico article between Sep 15, 2022 02:09 through Sep 20, 2022 01:29

6 Politico September 14, 2022

7 Politico September 14, 2022

8 Politico September 14, 2022

9 GAVI.org June 23, 2009

10 Politico September 14, 2022

11 Dalberg Global Development Advisors, ACT-Accelerator Strategic Review

12 Politico September 14, 2022

13 Igor Chudov Substack September 15, 2022

14 Sec.gov Investment Agreement

15 BioNTech September 4, 2019

16 BioNTech March 17, 2020

17 Gates Foundation Committed Grants to EcoHealth Alliance

18 Igor Chudov Substack September 15, 2022

19 Fortune September 13, 2022 (Archived)

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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Banks in Turkey will no longer accept the Russian Mir payment system, as reported by the Turkish NTV broadcaster on Wednesday, 28 September. 

According to a person speaking on behalf of the Russian Kremlin, this decision is due to weeks of “unprecedented pressure” exercised by the United States. 

“It’s clear that banks and economic operators are under the strongest possible pressure from the United States, and they are threatened with secondary sanctions on the banking system,” the Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov criticized Washington for its measures.

Turkiye Vakiflar Bankasi, TC Ziraat Bankasi, and Turkiye Halk Bankasi were the last three banks to receive the Russian Mir bank cards. The report says that the three banks will still process the ongoing payments but will pull out of the system. 

The US Department of Treasury issued a warning stating that all non-US financial institutions “risk supporting Russia’s efforts to evade US sanctions through the expanded use of the MIR National Payment System outside the territory of the Russian Federation.” This could also incur economic penalties for said banks. 

On 19 September, Turkey’s Isbank and Denizbank announced the suspension of the Russian Mir payment system. 

After the start of the war in Ukraine, Visa and Mastercard stopped operations in Russia and with Russians around the world. As a result, Moscow has been pushing Mir debit and credit cards on other countries as an alternative to the hegemonic system. 

Mir cards were accepted in Cuba, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam, some former Soviet bloc countries, and by the Chinese online retail service, AliExpress. Reportedly, on 21 September, Armenia, Vietnam, and Kazakhstan suspended their use of Mir cards.

Iran expressed on 16 August that it was just “months away” from joining the Mir payment system. To overcome the excruciating US sanctions, Moscow and Tehran have been looking for other ways to cooperate. 

In mid-July, Russia agreed to develop several oil and gas fields in Iran with a $40 billion investment contract, the largest in the history of Iran’s oil industry.

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***

For around 60 years, the United States published an annual study called the World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers (WMEAT) report. The document provided detailed information on global arms transfers, defense spending, and a range of other military-related topics.

For reasons that remain unclear, last year’s defense spending bill put an end to the report. The State Department published its final edition last month, quietly marking the end of an era in military disclosures.

“At one point in history, the WMEAT report was the model for transparency around the world,” Jeff Abramson of the Arms Control Association said, noting the importance of its Cold War-era origins.

Of course, the report wasn’t perfect. Experts say WMEAT tended to overcount military sales in misleading ways, among other things. But its demise is part of a larger shift away from transparency in military affairs, according to experts who spoke with Responsible Statecraft. In recent years, civil society has lost access to some of the most detailed information about which American weapons are being exported, where they’re going, and how they’re being used — crucial gaps given that U.S. companies account for almost 40 percent of global arms exports.

“We are the number one supplier of the weapons that enable and extend conflict,” said Ari Tolany of the Center for Civilians in Conflict. “It is a responsibility to understand how and where those defense articles and services are being transferred and proliferating.”

The drivers of the downturn remain unclear. Some speculate that the government is simply trying to avoid sharing embarrassing information, like whether human rights abusers are using American arms. Others say that increased international tensions have driven the U.S. and other states to guard their secrets more closely or simply ignore calls to share information with the public.

What is clear is that the problem comes from across the government. Both Congress and the executive branch have contributed to the downturn, and they’ll need to work together in order to change course.

Unlike the sudden end of the WMEAT, much of the drop in public information has been gradual. Take the Section 655 report, an annual round-up that details direct commercial sales (DCS) from American arms manufacturers to foreign clients. The document used to stretch for several hundred pages, giving such granular detail that researchers could know that, in 2008, U.S. manufacturers gave Colombia exactly 325 non-automatic firearms at a value of $1,869,129.

More recent 655 reports have been far less thorough, providing only broad information on commercial sales in a brief, pamphlet-length format. For example, readers of the 2021 edition only know that U.S. companies sold Colombia around 3247 guns and/or gun-related items at a value of $789,953 — hardly a useful data point for those who want to understand the arms trade.

Notably, the report’s drop in quality has coincided with a relative jump in the use of DCS at the expense of foreign military sales (FMS), which are country-to-country deals overseen by the Pentagon. FMS, which has far more transparency requirements than other programs, shrank to approximately $30 billion last year while DCS sales authorizations totalled more than $100 billion for at least the fifth year in a row. (It is worth noting that DCS authorizations don’t necessarily lead to sales, but they are a helpful data point given that there are no requirements to disclose actual deliveries.)

Arms researchers also say that many reports made by the executive branch have become unavailable to the public. While they used to be able to ask congressional offices to share documents, analysts contend that such reports are increasingly marked as “official use only,” meaning that non-government analysts aren’t allowed to see them.

The sharpest drop in transparency has come in the area of small arms, a worrisome development given that guns tend to prolong conflicts and enable human rights abuses, as both the Red Cross and UN have noted. Between 1981 and 2010, the United States sent such weapons to about 60 percent of countries who were involved in a violent conflict, sometimes providing them to more than one party in a single war.

In 2020, President Donald Trump moved regulation of non-automatic firearm exports from the Department of State to the Department of Commerce, which is not obligated to share detailed information on these sales with the public. Despite hopes that President Joe Biden would overturn Trump’s controversial decision, the policy change has remained in place.

“Everything I’ve heard and everything they’ve said in hearings makes me think they’re actively not doing it,” said Nate Marx, a research fellow at the Center for International Policy.

There is, however, one major exception to the drop in transparency: arms transfers to Ukraine. Since Russia’s invasion, Washington has shared detailed and timely information on 22 separate weapons packages, allowing the public to know exactly which weapons the U.S. is sending to support Ukraine’s defense.

Explanations for this exceptional transparency vary widely. Some experts give a positive take, arguing that the Biden Administration is committed to transparency and sees the disclosures as a necessary part of security aid, a category that has a higher level of built-in scrutiny than other types of weapons transfers. More cynical analysts view the approach as a way to show off and earn political points by announcing a new tranche of aid every couple of weeks.

Regardless of why they’re doing it, most experts agree that the Biden team’s approach to Ukraine aid would be a much-improved baseline for transparency moving forward. But the biggest change that many analysts and activists want comes in a more challenging area: “end-use monitoring,” or EUM.

EUM is a wonky term for verifying that weapons 1) get where they’re supposed to go and 2) aren’t used in ways that violate the laws of war. While the U.S. is a relative leader in military transparency, EUM has long been a bit of a blind spot, with officials focusing mainly on whether U.S. weapons have made it to the correct stockpile.

“It’s not been what we think would be proper end-use monitoring, which is have they been misused?” says Abramson of the Arms Control Association. “For example, is Saudi Arabia using U.S. weapons in Yemen in ways that it wasn’t supposed to? That kind of reporting and tracking and care has not been the norm, and that’s what we really should be doing.”

Even in Ukraine, the U.S. seems to have relied on Kyiv’s word as to how the weapons have been used, according to Abramson, who added that we “don’t quite know” what protections are in place to prevent diversion.

“I understand that there are policies in place, and they may share those at some point,” he said. “But, at this point, I haven’t seen it.”

Fortunately, that could change soon. The House version of the defense spending bill has a provision that would expand EUM to include reporting about whether U.S. arms are being misused.

If the Senate agrees to leave in that proposal, then Americans will get access to a much clearer picture of how U.S. weapons are being used abroad. With billions of dollars worth of American arms pouring into Ukraine each month, this could hardly come at a better time.

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***

If ever there was a blatant statement of realpolitik masquerading as friendliness, the latest US-Pacific Island declaration must count as one of them.  The Biden administration has been busy of late, wooing Pacific Island states in an effort to discourage increasingly sharp tilt towards China.  It has been spurred on, in no small way, by Beijing’s failure in May to forge a trade and security pact with Pacific Island countries.

In July, Vice President Kamala Harris was given the task of spreading the good word to those attending the Pacific Islands Forum that the US “is a proud Pacific nation and has an enduring commitment to the Pacific Islands, which is why President Joe Biden and I seek to strengthen our partnership with you.”

Harris also acknowledged the Pacific Islands had not been in Washington’s diplomatic radar in recent years.  They had not received deserving “attention and support”.  This, she promised, would change.  As a start, embassies would be established in Tonga and Kiribati.  A United States Envoy to the Pacific Islands Forum would be appointed.  USAID would also expand its operations and re-establish a regional mission in Suva, Fiji.

This month, the focus has been on the push for a broader declaration designed to rope in the sceptics.  President Biden, in his address to leaders at the State Department ahead of the White House dinner, extravagantly declared that, “The security of America and, quite frankly, the world, depends on your security – and the security of the Pacific Islands.”

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, in remarks made before a September 29 meeting with the leaders of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Federated State of Micronesia and Republic of Palau, spoke of “the incredible breath and depth of the relationship and partnership we have.”

The previous day, at a working lunch with US-Pacific Island Country Leaders, Blinken also spoke of “a shared history, value and enduring people-to-people ties.”  As part of a group, the United States would discuss with Pacific Island states “the challenges that we face, exchange ideas and perspectives, and chart a way forward to deliver on the issues that matter most to our people.”

As has become customary in the Blinkenesque argot, one takes the management waffle with the occasional candid remark.  China, the obvious target in this latest push for deeper regional engagement by Washington, is not mentioned once.  The threats of climate change, the role of viruses, transnational criminal organisations, corruption and human trafficking are.

But the shadow of Beijing is discernible in remarks that the grouping will be able to preserve “a free and open Indo-Pacific where every nation – no matter how big, no matter how small – has the right to choose its own path.”

The declaration itself makes eleven points.  Among them is the resolve to strengthen the partnership to enable “individuals to reach their potential” and foster conditions where “the environment can thrive, and democracy will be able to flourish.”  Greater US involvement in terms of diplomatic presence and “development cooperation” is envisaged.  Other bread and butter points include responding to the climate crisis, advancing sustainable development and economic growth, and improving responses to disasters.

The standout provision is the seventh, where the nature of US power is camouflaged behind the promise of keeping the “Blue Pacific Continent” free of war and conflict.  “We will oppose all efforts to undermine the territorial integrity and sovereignty of any country, large or small.  We condemn all wars of aggression, including Russia’s brutal war against Ukraine.”  This is very much the sentiment of a policing authority, a watchful armed guard.

Such a sentiment also finds voice in a White House release, which explicitly states Washington’s determination to maintain a firm hand in the Pacific.  “The United States recognizes that geography links the Pacific’s future to our own: US prosperity and security depend on the Pacific region remaining free and open.”

Some of the Pacific Island states have expressed their pleasure at the whole circus, with Samoan Prime Minister Fiame Naomi Mata’afa openly contrasting Washington’s approach with that of Beijing’s in May.  “We’ve been insisting that if partners wish to talk to us, collectively, then they need to do it through the modalities of the Pacific [Islands] Forum.”  China, in proposing something similar along the lines of the declaration, had not done so.

While approving in her remarks about the general nature of the agreement, the Samoan leader was also explicit in what it did not promote.  Maintaining regional peace and security was an important goal but should not come at the cost of an increased US military presence.  “We wouldn’t like to encourage that in any way.”  This may prove to be wishful thinking, given Washington’s ambitions as expressed in the AUKUS security pact.

The other good reason for the attraction among certain Pacific Island states is the cash that is predicted to follow.  An amount somewhere in the order of US$860 million in expanded aid programs is expected in addition to the US$1.5 billion provided in the last decade.

The Solomon Islands, which has proven to be more friendly than most towards Beijing, is a case in point, and will receive additional aid to improve its tourism industry.  This is despite having shown reluctance to signing the declaration in the first place.  But if the conduct of the Sogavare government is anything to go by, the more cunning Pacific Island leaders will be happy to take whatever they can get their hands on from both Beijing and Washington. That would certainly make things open if agitating.

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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: Chinese Embassy in Solomon Islands

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***

The 2022 Congressional midterms are around the corner. Based on historical precedent and the state of the union, they should be a slam-dunk for the GOP.

Runaway inflation, brazen warmongering, ongoing COVID hysteria, record-setting crime spikes, and unchecked illegal immigration of the past two years has all been overseen and endorsed by the Democrats who control Congress and the presidency. In a functional two-party system, this would and should guarantee a landslide loss come the 2022 midterms.

But we will likely see no such thing, on account of the undeniable reality that the GOP sucks almost as much as the Democrats because they largely serve the same donor class.

Republicans rarely, if ever, follow through on their campaign pledges. Trump, who won by posturing as an outsider intent on shaking up the system, pledged to #DraintheSwamp:

“I know the guys at Goldman Sachs. They have total, total control over him (Ted Cruz). Just like they have total control over Hillary Clinton.” -Donald Trump on the campaign trail, 2016

Once elected, though, he proceeded to fill his cabinet with the slimiest Swamp creatures he could recruit, like the multiple Goldman Sachs bankers he hired for his staff and cabinet.

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Based on the GOP’s fecklessness and obvious corruption, Democrats, in addition to capitalizing on a culture war win in the aftermath of the overturn of Roe vs. Wade, have enjoyed a bump in the polls.

Democratic Congressional candidates, on average, are doing unexpectedly well for an incumbent party holding the presidency in an off-year election cycle.

(Yes, polls are usually wrong, and often immensely so. But the point remains: if the GOP was worth a damn, it would be running the table.)

But don’t conflate their improved polling numbers with actual grassroots enthusiasm.

Amazingly, more than half of Democratic voters (56%) are so dissatisfied with their president that they want Biden gone by 2024. He has a pathetic 39% approval rating.

Biden’s cackling hyena-esque diverse sidekick, Kamala, is received even more coldly, with an icy 37% approval rating.

Sad!

Yet, in spite of those historically terrible numbers – even from members of their own party – the Biden/Kamala duo is somehow still outperforming Trump in most 2024 projections.

Again, with the deluge of disasters, one after another, since dementia-riddled Biden assumed office, the former president should be running away with it in the head-to-head.

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The 2016 election pitted the two most unpopular presidential candidates in recorded history against each other. 2020 wasn’t much different. 2024 will probably be more of the same.

Almost no one — except the most diehard MAGA loyalists and the Blue MAGA K-Hive cult members on the Team Red and Team Blue, respectively — vote for a party. The best they can be asked to do electoral-participation-wise is vote against the other party.

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The discontent cuts across partisan lines. A Gallup poll last year found that:

• “Sixty-two percent of U.S. adults say the “parties do such a poor job representing the American people that a third party is needed”
• “A record-high 63% of Republicans favor a third party”
• “33% of Americans believe the two major political parties are doing an adequate job representing the public”

Source: Gallup poll

Nothing changes in the American electoral system because it is actually functional – just not in the self-governance small-d democracy sense of the word.

For the corporate state, the status quo offers the best of both worlds:

• On the one hand, since there’s no meaningful difference between the two major parties, it maintains the kind of functional control that typifies a one-party dictatorship.
• On the other hand, it maintains the façade of a “democracy” and all of the fake moral authority that lends. Then the US government gets to gallivant across the globe running coups on uncooperative governments under the guise of promoting “human rights” and “our values.”

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The reality of the system is that disillusioned have nowhere to turn for relief, and are conditioned to believe that they have no viable alternatives outside of the duopoly – the “lesser of two evils” voting paradigm.

We no longer live in a representative democracy (to the extent that we ever actually did), and the above-cited polling confirms that average Americans are increasingly sick of both factions of the de facto one-party state.

This is functional totalitarianism – North Korea with more Democratic© window-dressing like pluralistic Diversity©.

“Americans are led to feel free through the exercise of meaningless choices. There are only two political parties. There is a reduction of the number of media companies. Banking has been reduced to only a handful of banks. Oil companies. These are important, and you’re given very little choice.

Oh, but the flavor of jellybeans? The flavor of muffins? A bagel? You can get a Pina Colada bagel. We’re given the illusion of choice by the meaningless of choices of trivial things. You know what your freedom of choice in America is? Paper or plastic, buddy?… Pepsi or Coke? Window or Aisle? Smoking or [Nonsmoking]?”
-George Carlin

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Eventually the chickens will come home to roost.

If and when the piper comes for his due, and popular discontent erupts into an uncontrollable fire in the vein of the French Revolution, winning elections will become a secondary concern to politicians, replaced by their primary occupation of keeping their heads attached to their necks.

In any case, let us, to whatever extent possible, separate our political destiny from the corporate state uniparty. Enlist in a parallel society/economy.

“You can vote however the fuck you want,
But power still calls all the shots.
And, believe it or not,
Even if democracy broke loose,
They’ll just make the economy scream
Until we vote responsibly.”
– Propagandhi, ‘A People’s History Of The World’

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

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***

There can be no acceptable future without an honest analysis of the past.  — Aleksander Solzhenitsyn  

In high school we were taught that capitalism refers to an economic system comprised of privately run for-profit companies that sell products and/or services. We learned that, whether its stock is privately held or traded on a public exchange, a capitalist enterprise has, generally speaking, a relatively small number of people (owners, a board of directors, senior management) who function as the employer and a relatively large number of people who function as the employees.

The employer pays a salary or wages to the employees for their labor, including their ideas, but all the final decisions—how, what, and where to produce the goods and, most importantly, what to do with the profits—are made by the handful of employers at the top. The entire capitalist model is based on a hierarchical system wherein a small minority has complete authority over the majority.  

In the capitalist system, the wage the employer pays to the employee will always be of less value than the worker’s labor plus the other inputs used during the entire production process. In other words, to make a profit the employer must pay the worker less than the surplus income his labor generates. The higher the surplus, the more competitive the company is in its industry. By contrast, the employee wants higher wages—wants to increase his standard of living. Therein lies the struggle between employer and employee. Ever since capitalism’s inception, that conflict has always been a source of tension between the two opposing sides.  

Capitalism comes in several variations, but the one constant is the unequal employer-to-employee relationship. That unequal relationship exists in state-controlled capitalism—found, for instance, in the communist countries of China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and the former USSR—as well in as the democratic-socialist countries of Scandinavia. It also exists in so-called capitalist countries, in which privately held businesses operate under an economic system variously labeled free market, free trade, free enterprise, corporate, shareholder, or laissez faire. Each type falls under the umbrella of capitalism.  

Therefore, regardless of the brand of capitalism, all forms of it are inherently autocratic: The employer owns the means of production and has final—if not exclusive—say in all business decisions. In sum, capitalism’s built-in designrequires inequality.  

These days you’ll often hear the expression “crony capitalism” bandied about. In fact, it’s a deceptive term, for it leads one to think there’s such a thing as “good capitalism” and “bad—crony—capitalism.” In reality, they are one and the same.  

The Cooperative Model     

There is, however, another economic model that most of us never hear mentioned in high school or college and that even in our adult years we rarely, if ever, learn about: the “cooperative.”  A cooperative is a special type of corporation that places ownership and control of the corporation in the hands of the employees. In a cooperative—and only in a cooperative—there exists, not an employer-versus-employee relationship but an employer-and-fellow-employer mutuality. What this means is that all of the workers, from bookkeeper to janitor, own the means of production. They are all employers. They have no employees working for them—that is, under them.              

We will call the cooperative’s workers “employees” simply because that word is more understandable in the context of this article.  

Being non-hierarchical, the cooperative system gives everyone an equal voice in the decision-making process. When it is time to make a collective decision, every employee has one voting share, referred to as a membership share. The share represents the employee’s ownership of the cooperative. Regardless of professional position or personal wealth, each employee may own and exercise only one voting share. No employee can buy or control the share of another employee. In other words, all personnel in a cooperative function as their own board of directors, each with an equal voice in the decision-making, whether they are hiring a new administrator or conducting day-to-day operations.  

By contrast, in a traditional capitalist model (sometimes referred to as shareholder capitalism), the workers do not own the enterprise. (They may own a portion of the shares, but that right gives them neither ownership nor a major influence on their company’s board of directors.) There are usually three classes of shares: Class A voting shares, held by regular investors; Class B voting shares, held by the company’s founders; and Class C shares, normally held by the employees. Class B shares typically do not trade in the open market, whereas Class A shares trade, but Class B shares have ten times the voting power of Class A shares. Class C shares have no voting rights, but still trade in the open market. For instance, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, issues Class A shares and Class C shares. Both classes trade in the market, with negligible difference between the two share prices.  

In a capitalist-run corporation, if a wealthy shareholder or a group of shareholders buys up the majority of the voting shares, they will have the majority of the voting power when choosing a new CEO or electing new members to the board of directors or voting on other key issues that determine the company’s destiny.  The entire process doesn’t even remotely resemble an egalitarian way of organizing a business structure.  

Stakeholder Capitalism  

As if shareholder capitalism were not problematic enough, the World Economic Forum (WEF) has of late been foisting on the world the concept of “stakeholder capitalism.” In stakeholder capitalism, either a single unelected and unaccountable individual or a group of unelected and unaccountable individuals—they could be vendors or customers or even community activists—get to decide if a company is fulfilling its obligation to live by sustainable environmental, social, and governance (ESG) practices. By embracing ESG metrics such as diversity and inclusivity, among other measurements, a company can get a favourable score, enabling it to receive future investments and bank loans. Naturally, the opposite happens if a company refuses to report or comply with the WEF’s ESG standards. It could be boycotted and deprived of all future investments, thereby ensuring its demise. In short, the intellectually bankrupt concept of ESG is nothing more than a thinly veiled deception employed by social engineers to gain control of companies and their assets.  

Although no consolidation between two cooperative-run corporations has ever taken place, it might be instructive to outline how the process would be carried out if there ever were such a merger. First, the workforce from both companies would have to vote on whether combining the two cooperatives would be acceptable to them. Unlike capitalist mergers or acquisitions, where layoffs are common—sometimes affecting thousands of workers—in a cooperative merger, all employees must be retained. The wealth from the combined entity would be distributed evenly throughout the workforce. The CEO would have no more earnings or influence after the merger than before it. The top salary would still be capped up to a maximum of four times that of the lowest base wage in the firm (or whatever ratio the employees, through a vote, have agreed upon). The CEO would never earn ten times—much less 1,000 times—more than the cooperative’s lowest wage earner.  

Incidentally, in a cooperative, the CEO and the other executives work for the employees, who are technically the CEO’s employers! I say this because managers with a particular skill set or type of expertise are often brought into a cooperative from the outside. No matter how senior a manager’s position may be, if his performance is subpar he can be removed at any time by the employees (his employers) in a vote of no-confidence.  

In stark contrast, after a merger between large companies in the capitalist system, their senior managements use the combined entity’s swelled size and wealth to exert more control, more clout, not only over the remaining employees but also over their external surroundings—that is, the political, social, and economic milieu.  

Put another way, companies that are capitalist behemoths are apt to flex their enlarged, “merged” muscles—often in bullying, despotic fashion. The lesson: Concentrating affluence and influence in the hands of a small minority, whether in large corporations, big banks, centralized governments, or, really, any institution, tends to widen and deepen already existing inequalities throughout the entire structure of a society.  

This intrinsic tendency of capitalism to narrow the field of companies while simultaneously creating enormous enterprises—thereby reducing industry competition—is why in every capitalist economy the federal government is eventually called upon to pass antitrust laws that prevent monopolization. Small-to-mid-sized businesses simply cannot compete and thus cannot survive in such an environment.  

Granted, the capitalist production system does temporarily provide more efficiency in some areas. However, that efficiency is eventually offset by a creeping accumulation of power, which serves a nation’s ruling class well while undermining all other social and economic classes. So, we have the ruling class both creating and benefitting from massive mergers and acquisitions.  

The capitalist system that came to the fore in late nineteenth-century America and that rose in prominence and power in the twentieth century is so potent today that it controls, to one degree or another, all levels of government and all levers of power. This paradigm holds true not just for the American Empire but for almost all nations that are home to capitalism. Consequently, any perceived notion of democracy we once had in the West is now nothing more than an illusion.  

The Origin of Democracy  

I say “perceived” because the original meaning of “democracy,” as envisioned by the ancient Greeks, has long since been reduced to a meaningless slogan. As we may recall, the word “democracy” (demokratia) derives from the Greekdemos, meaning “people , ” and the Greek kratos, meaning “power.” Literally translated, it means “people power.”   

Centuries later, the members of the US ruling class who drafted the American government’s constitutional system interpreted democracy as, literally, mob rule by the majority—by “the many”—to the detriment of all minorities. This unfavorable definition of democracy is reminiscent of the views of Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Plato (c. 420s–347/348BCE), two aristocrats who, perhaps unsurprisingly, given their social status, despised democracy.  

What is politely avoided by the anti-mob rule folks is the answer to the question: Who exactly are “the many”? For, throughout history, “the many” have always occupied the middle and lower rungs of the social ladder. They have never been allowed to be on par with, much less rule over, the few at the top—the blue-blooded, the landed, the wealthy, the highly decorated, the educated, the titled, and, given all those traits, the entitled.  

This mob rule definition of democracy is actually an adulteration of the original concept of democracy. Our school textbooks have mysteriously neglected to tell us that there once existed a true democracy, formally established in Greece by an Athenian statesman who predated Aristotle and Plato by more than a century: Cleisthenes (c. 570–508BCE). In that first and—as far as we know—only perfect democracy, the citizens quite literally were the government. They protected themselves from their own excesses and potential errors through checks and balances built into their legislative and judicial systems, which were set up and administered solely by the citizens—that is, by themselves. This was not mob rule. It was rule truly by the people and truly for the people.  

Yet when we read Aristotle’s writings about earlier Greeks, we discover that he never once mentioned Cleisthenes and his remarkable achievements. Why is that? Probably because, as we said above, Aristotle was a member of the establishment and as such couldn’t abide the thought of future generations of young minds learning about—or even organizing—a government that would upset the privileged positions of power that the parasitic ruling class enjoyed.  

The Pretense of Democracy  

Though we in the West have been indoctrinated by our government schools to believe that capitalism and democracy thrive together and cannot survive without one another, in fact just the opposite is the case. All forms of capitalism are completely incongruous with all forms of democracy—direct, representative, presidential, parliamentary, participatory, social, and Islamic.  

Indeed, capitalism and democracy can coexist only temporarily. Capitalism’s inevitable dysfunctions—undemocratically run enterprises, extreme concentration of wealth and power, unequal distribution of goods (resulting in artificial excess and scarcity), and public-private partnerships (creating unholy alliances between capitalists and government officials)—become manifest in, and eventually erode, any well-intended brand of democracy.  

Thus, no matter how noble the aims of some of the American Founding Fathers in creating a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic, that republic was, by the end of the nineteenth century, barely functioning. Granted, representative democracy may have still been working at municipal and county levels, but at the state and national levels it had become nothing more than an illusion.  

Today, the United States “republic”—such as it is—and other so-called Western democracies are under attack by a global financial oligarchy. Intertwined with and embedded in the WEF and its parent, the United Nations, these financial oligarchs forward a neo-Malthusian depopulation agenda that targets all of humanity.  

Ironically, capitalists who give lip service to the idea of “democracy” and pretend it actually exists in politics have never allowed “democracy” in the workplaces they own, control, and amass personal fortunes from. Why not? Surely it is because they recognize that the deprivations, inequities, bought-and-paid-for politicians, and ecological disasters that plague the world today are natural outgrowths of the unaccountable power wielded by the privileged few at the top of global capitalist-run organizations.  

In short, by not democratizing the economy and its means of production, a political system that calls itself a representative democracy or any other kind of democracy can never stand the test of time. The autocratically run,undemocratic institutions that make up its economy will eventually dominate that nation’s political and economic spheres.  

Put another way: Any nation, without exception, that utilizes the capitalist economic system has always succumbed and will continue to succumb to the aforementioned erosion in democracy at the state (or provincial) and national levels of politics.  

The Grand Deception  

The federal election process in the West also deserves a few words. Just because registered voters can go to a ballot box every two or four or six years to cast a vote for plutocrat A or oligarch B does not mean they live in a free country or have equal representation or guaranteed rights. Citizens of Western countries are programmed from childhood to believe that they are choosing between ideological dualities, when, in reality, they are merely choosing between two sides of the same coin, which is minted by their masters. This is the grand deception of the two-party or multi-party paradigm.  

Clued-in contemporary authors, pundits, and documentary filmmakers have opined that we are living in a time when the leadership of many nations is compromised. In saying this, they mean that individuals are placed in positions of power—as president, prime minister, or chancellor—based on whether they can be influenced and even silenced, notbased on their meritorious character, leadership skills, or statesman-like wisdom. It should be noted: Although this is an accurate assessment of the twenty-first century, the phenomenon of “captured” politicians and their bureaucrat lackeys is hardly new. It has been well underway in American politics since the end of the nineteenth century—and in older nations throughout all time.    

Elections have become—if they were not always—merely a stamp of approval given by deceived voters to candidates who have been pre-selected for political office by an exclusive coterie of money men. More precisely, these money men are members of an alliance of billionaire, supranational, multigenerational families. They profess undying devotion to free enterprise, to their countrymen, and to the so-called democratic process. But in reality they are loyal only to themselves and their clan. It’s not surprising that they are beholden to money and power, for they have been taught from birth that enormous wealth and outsized influence are rightfully theirs, based on their bloodlines, their genes, their smarts, and their self-deluded belief in their godlike status. They are what we might call global financial oligarchs.  

These supposedly superior human beings are behind Big Everything: Big Government, Big Capital, Big Industry, Big Science, Big Pharma, Big Military, Big Agriculture, Big Intelligence, Big Media, Big Academia, Big Entertainment—behind anything and everything that enables them to retain their presumed authority over, even ownership of, the rest of the human race—and, indeed, over all the earth. Any thought they have, word they utter, or move they make is in support of their will, their wealth, their comfort, their control—all with the intention of making subservient or physically annihilating everything and everyone else.  

The global financial oligarchy’s lust for control has in this era wed itself to technology and pseudoscience as a means of engineering society into a scientific dictatorship, aka technocracy. Their diabolical plan, which is already well underway, is designed to eradicate representative democracy, sovereign nation-states, and individual liberties, not to mention small businesses, national currencies, and cash. The end goal of this global technocratic dictatorship is to control, commodify, digitize, and financialize absolutely everything on earth—including nature and human beings’ bodies and minds.  

In ancient Egypt, in the Roman Empire, and in many other early civilizations, the wealth of a nation resided in the hands of a few families, and it has remained in the hands of these ruling family dynasties ever since. In the nineteenth century, they bore prestigious names like Morgan, Rothschild, Rockefeller, Carnegie, Schiff, Warburg, Loeb, DuPont, House, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (the British Royals). 

Today, those same dominating, power-craving, status-seeking men and women—and their descendants and protégés—are steering humanity towards a neo-feudal dystopia. These privileged individuals—and their associated societies/councils, news outlets, Wall Street/City of London financiers, philanthropic organizations, universities, and think tanks—operate, entirely apolitically, behind the scenes. They lurk in the shadows of government offices and in other halls of power, always designing ways to subvert the popular vote and steal the property, liberty, happiness, health, welfare , and every God-given right of all people.   

With most of the world now peering into the jaws of the technocrats’ nightmarish “Great Reset” and their equally spine-chilling transhumanist agenda, it is time to peacefully organise and find new alternatives to our broken economic paradigm. The cooperative model, which I described above, is already taking hold on a global scale.  There are, at present, millions of people organising cooperatives around the world.  

For instance, twelve percent of humanity is currently part of three million cooperatives dotting the earth. As of 2020, ten percent of the planet’s employed population was involved in some kind of cooperative—whether food, banking, or manufacturing. For instance, one of the largest cooperatives in the world, Zen-Noh (Japanese National Federation of Agricultural), has an annual revenue of over $56 billion USD. Even during the pseudopandemic, food cooperatives across the US were thriving.  

And that’s only the beginning. There are other alternatives to our dysfunctional economic system. These are by no means one-size-fits-all solutions, but taken either individually or in combination, they can provide answers for each unique situation or region of the world. These include, for example, Freedom Cells, which are self-organised peer-to-peer groups that can peacefully assert sovereignty; create alternate, parallel institutions; and participate in innovative counter-economic activity. Freedom Cells can use either Bitcoin or a barter system as a medium of exchange. The latter is also called agorism. In theory and in practice, agorism serves the people, not the ruling oligarchy.  

Throughout history, humanity has gone through prolonged periods of trial and error when seeking ways to organize an economy. At first, some humans kidnapped, owned, and controlled other humans, and the system of forced labor—slavery—was the main way work was accomplished. Next came the feudal system, in which lords allocated a portion of their property to be cultivated by serfs. Though retaining ownership of the land, the lords gave a share of the crops to the peasants who produced them.    

While feudalism was an advance, in every sense of the word, beyond slavery, there was still much room for improvement. What followed was the capitalist system. True, capitalism was a big change for the better over its predecessor. But does that mean capitalism is the be-all and end-all of economic systems? Does it mean we should stop trying out alternate economic models? Of course not. I sincerely believe we can do better.  

The cooperative model and Freedom Cells, both of which are growing in number and gaining in stature these days, are only the beginning of this exciting, emerging new chapter in human economic development.  

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David Skripac has a Bachelor of Technology degree in Aerospace Engineering. He served as a Captain in the Canadian Forces for nine years. During his two tours of duty in the Air Force, he flew extensively in the former Yugoslavia as well as in Somalia, Rwanda, Ethiopia, and Djibouti.

He is the author of a recently published e-book, “Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified,” and a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Our Species Is Being Genetically Modified. Are We Witnessing Humanity’s March Toward Extinction? Viruses Are Our Friends, Not Our Foes

Author: David Skripac

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13 people were killed and 58 wounded when Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fired precision missiles and suicide drones at Kurds near Irbil and Sulaimaniya in northern Iraq on Wednesday morning.

The attack was in retaliation after Iranian authorities accused Iranian Kurdish dissidents in Iraq of collaborating with Kurdish protesters in northwest Iran which is home to over 10 million Kurds.

The first series of attacks began on Saturday, followed by more on Monday as Iran unleashed a wave of drone and artillery strikes targeting Kurdish positions.

Koya, about 65 kilometers east of Irbil, was shelled.  The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in a statement said the attacks “impacted the Iranian refugee settlements” in Koya, and that refugees and other civilians were among the casualties.

Why did Iran attack Kurds in Iraq?

On September 24, a protest was held in support of the women of Iran outside the UN compound in Irbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq.

Posters with the face of Mahsa Amini were held aloft as the protesters chanted “women, life, freedom.”

“We are not against religion, and we are not against Islam. We are secularists, and we want religion to be separate from politics,” said Maysoon Majidi, a Kurdish Iranian actor and director living in Irbil.

Last week, Masoud Barzani, president of Iraqi Kurdistan’s governing party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party, called Amini’s family to express his condolences for her death.

Kurdish political identity is tied to the secularist, nationalist and communist ideology of the jailed founder of the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), Abdullah Ocalan.

Tasnim news agency in Iran said the shelling targeted the offices of Komala and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran for allegedly sending “armed teams and a large number of weapons … to the border cities of the country to cause chaos.”

Mahsa Amini, her scarf, and her death

Protests erupted in Iran this month over the death of a young Iranian Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini.  She was arrested on September 13 in Tehran by the morality police, who enforce a strict dress code which includes covering the head of women with a scarf.  The 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqez died three days later in a hospital after being held in police custody.

Her death has focused on women’s rights in Iran, as well as the Kurdish population, and has touched the Iranian Kurdish community in exile in the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

“Woman, Life, Freedom!” the protesters have chanted in Iran’s biggest demonstrations in almost three years, in which women have defiantly burned their headscarves and cut off their hair.

The headscarf (hijab) is currently required by law to be worn by women in Iran and Afghanistan. It is no longer required by law in Saudi Arabia since 2018.

Amini’s family has asked for an investigation into her death, which the authorities blame on a heart attack; however, her cousin living in Iraq charged that she died after a “violent blow to the head,” with reports she was bleeding from her ear.

Protests in Iran have continued for almost two weeks as police vowed to confront protesters, which have been said to have killed at least 76 people, and spread to at least 46 locations in Iran, with more than 1,500 demonstrators arrested.

On Wednesday, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi condemned the “chaos” sparked by a wave of women-led protests over Amini’s death.

On September 23, the Kurdish-majority town of Oshnavieh in Iran’s West Azerbaijan province briefly fell into the hands of protesters, who set fire to government offices, banks, and a base belonging to the Revolutionary Guard Corps.

What is Kurdistan Region Iraq?

In 1991, Iraqi Kurds broke away from central government control with the help of a US-led no-fly zone. The Kurdistan Region Iraq (KRI) is an autonomous region in Iraq comprising the four Kurdish-majority governorates of Erbil, Sulaymaniyah, Duhok, and Halabja.

The new Iraqi constitution stipulates that Iraqi Kurdistan is a federal entity recognized by Iraq, and has developed its oil and gas sector independently of Baghdad based on a 2007 law.

Baghdad’s reaction to attack

Iraq’s caretaker prime minister, Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, and his foreign ministry condemned the attacks in a statement on Wednesday and would summon the Iranian ambassador to inform him of Iraq’s objection to the attacks on Iraqi territories and that Iraq considers this action a violation of sovereignty.

US reaction to the attack

On Wednesday, the US condemned the Iranian attack on northern Iraq and said,

“We stand with Iraq’s leaders in the Kurdistan region and Baghdad in condemning these attacks as an assault on the sovereignty of Iraq and its people. “

Saddam Hussein and past stability

In 2018, journalist Jane Arraf interviewed Iraqi General Nijm al-Jabouri.  He recalled the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and said,

“We thought we would breathe freedom, we would become like Europe,” instead he says “We returned to the Dark Ages.” He added, “But many people, when they compare between the situation under Saddam Hussein and now, find maybe their life under Saddam Hussein was better.”

Almost 20 years after the US invasion, electricity is still unreliable in Baghdad, water is in short supply, and hospitals are ill-equipped. Security and basic services are in shambles and the government is in disarray.  Al-Jabouri said, “It was very difficult to imagine that the United States would allow religious people to control Iraq.”

Qathem Sherif al-Jabouri, a mechanic in Baghdad, recalls helping to bring down the large statue of Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003.

“Those who came after haven’t improved the infrastructure, they haven’t built anything, they haven’t done anything for the people,” and added, “Saddam’s was a brutal regime. But now, I regret hitting the statue.”

The US invasion of Iraq destroyed the region

On March 19, 2003, the US-led invasion of Iraq began the worst foreign policy disaster in modern history.  The war led to the death of millions of people; fueled sectarian violence; allowed for the rise of militant religious groups and empowered Iran. US President George W Bush’s case for the war was discovered to be based on lies and propaganda.

The bombing of Baghdad was so severe that its infrastructure has yet to be fully rebuilt, and the city remains scarred not only by the US assault but also by the more than a decade of the bombing that followed.

US administrator L. Paul Bremer III allocated power along religious and ethnic lines. Iraq became the Arab world’s first Shiite-led government in centuries. Many of the leading Shiite political figures were Iranian-backed, and today Iran plays a major role in the political life of Iraq, thanks to the American invasion. The war would go on for eight years killing an estimated 151,000 to 600,000 Iraqi civilians during its early stages.

The US withdrew its troops from the conflict in 2011 and is said to have spent nearly $2 trillion in war-related costs in Iraq during its eight years of engagement.

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

Featured image: Iranian protestors on the Keshavrz Boulvard (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

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***

The New York Times, which consistently supports every American war, has published an op-ed by a neoconservative think tanker titled “Biden’s Cautious Foreign Policy Imperils Us“.

This would be Joseph Biden, the president of the United States who has been consistently vowing to go to war with the People’s Republic of China if it attacks Taiwan, and whose administration has been pouring billions of dollars into a world-threatening proxy war in Ukraine which it knowingly provoked and from which it has no exit strategy.

With this administration’s acceleration toward global conflict on two different fronts, one could easily argue that Biden actually has the least cautious foreign policy of any president in history.

“In the aftermath of Vladimir Putin’s recent nuclear threat and call-up of reservists, it was reassuring for the leader of the free world to be unflinching,” writes the article’s author Kori Schake, who then adds, “Rhetoric aside, the administration has signaled in numerous other ways that Putin’s threats have constrained support for Ukraine.”

As though the possibility of nuclear war should not constrain U.S. proxy warfare in that country. As though the crazy thing is not the U.S. government’s insane nuclear brinkmanship with Russia, but its reluctance to go further.

“The gap between what the administration is claiming as their foreign policy objectives, and what it is actually willing to do, is a serious problem for American security, for Russia and beyond,” writes @KoriSchake. https://t.co/SX32lJKNgM

— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) September 26, 2022

More Money for War

Schake criticizes the fact that while Biden has been saying a PRC attack on Taiwan would mean a direct U.S. hot war with China, the U.S. military would need far more funding and far greater expansion to be able to win such a war, so it should definitely do those things instead of simply not rushing into World War Three.

“But worse are the real gaps in capability that call into question whether the United States could indeed defend Taiwan,” Schake writes, adding:

“The ships, troop numbers, planes and missile defenses in the Pacific are a poor match for China’s capability. The director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, has assessed that the threat to Taiwan between now and 2030 is ‘acute,’ yet the defense budget is not geared to providing improved capabilities until the mid-2030s. More broadly, the Biden administration isn’t funding an American military that can adequately carry out our defense commitments, a dangerous posture for a great power. The Democratic-led Congress added $29 billion last year and $45 billion this year to the Department of Defense budget request, a measure of just how inadequate the Biden budget is.”

The Pentagon. (Joe Lauria)

As Shchake discusses the urgent need to explode the U.S. military budget [already at $777.7 billion] in order to defend Taiwan, The New York Times neglects to inform us that Schake’s employer, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), has been caught accepting a small fortune from Taiwan’s de facto embassy while churning out materials urging the U.S. government to go to greater lengths to arm Taiwan.

In a 2013 article titled “The Secret Foreign Donor Behind the American Enterprise Institute,” The Nation’s Eli Clifton reports that, thanks to a filing error by AEI, the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office was found to have been one of the think tank’s top donors in 2009. Had that filing error not been made, we never would have learned this important information about AEI’s glaring conflict of interest in its Taiwan commentary.

AEI is one of the most prominent neoconservative think tanks in the United States, with extensive ties to Bush-era neocons like John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, and the Kristol and Kagan families, and has played a very active role in pushing for more war and militarism in U.S. foreign policy. Dick Cheney sits on its board of trustees, and Mike Pompeo celebrated his one year anniversary as C.I.A. director there.

Epitome of the Revolving Door

Schake herself is as intimately interwoven with the military-industrial complex as anyone can possibly be without actually being a literal Raytheon munition.

Her resume is a perfect illustration of the life of a revolving door swamp monster, from a stint at the Pentagon, to the university circuit, to the National Security Council, to the U.S. Military Academy, to the State Department, to the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, to the Hoover Institution, to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, to her current gig as director of foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.

Her entire career is the story of a woman doing everything she can to promote war while being rewarded with wealth and prestige for doing so.

And now here she is being granted space in The New York Times, a news media outlet of unrivaled influence where enemies of U.S. militarism and imperialism are consistently denied a platform, to tell us all that the Biden administration is endangering us not with its insanely reckless hawkishness, but by being too “cautious”.

One of the craziest things happening in the world today is the way westerners are being trained to freak out all the time about Russian propaganda, which barely exists in the west, even as we are hammered every day with extreme aggression by the immensely influential propaganda of the U.S.-centralized empire.

You know you are living in a profoundly sick society when the world’s most influential newspaper runs propaganda for World War Three while voices pushing for truth, transparency and peace are marginalized, silenced, shunned, and imprisoned.

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***

Dear Editor of the once-upon-a-time Famous-for-truth New York Times,

With headlines like this, Sabotaged Pipelines and a Mystery: Who Did It? (Was It Russia?), even suggesting that Russia may have blown up their own pipeline, the NYT is killing its last vestige of credibility.

You know exactly this is a lie.

The only force that has a vital interest in doing so is the US / NATO conglomerate – to make sure, there is no way Germany could change their mind and go back on their decision to let their people freeze to death this winter, and to economically destroy Germany, THE economic force and leader of Europe.

You, and your analysts know that.

Unfortunately, there is no common people’s influence on our reporting. There are stronger forces that have bought into your mind-bending journalism.

Still, once a supporter of the NYT, I feel I want to tell you.

The Same with this reporting

Russian Proxies in Ukraine Push Moscow to Annex Occupied Regions

and

Vladimir Putin will sign agreements on Friday to take over four Ukrainian regions, the Kremlin said, after votes widely denounced as a sham

Here too, these are not “proxy” Russians who signed a sham petition to be annexed to Russia. You know it very well.

These are real Russians, living in the far Eastern part of Ukraine, the Donbas area mostly, who have been discriminated ever since the US instigated the Maidan coup on 22 February 2014 – when a neo-Nazi government was installed that let the Nazi Asov Battalions literally slaughter Ukraine’s own people in Donbas — at least 14,000 were reported killed – about half of them children – in the eight years since the “Victoria Nuland” (“Fuck Europe”) coup. See this.

We are talking about the same Asov Battalions, that helped Hitler during WWII fight against Russia.

Already in 2014 / 2015 the Donbas districts wanted to join Russia. President Putin did not allow it, because at that time he still believed in the “Minsk” Agreements, sponsored by France and Germany.

These agreements were principally meant to protect the Donbas people, as well as to demilitarize – de-Nazify – Ukraine, and to keep NATO out of Ukraine. None of the conditions of the Minsk Agreements (September 2014 and April 2015) were ever adhered to.

If truth-seeking geopolitical analysts around the globe know the real background, you, Editor-in-chief of the NYT, and your journalists, know the real story too. Still, you report lies and half-truths to further influence and promote people’s opinion against Russia.

The New York Times has become weaponized against Russia and China, by your mere reporting.

Don’t you think that this will eventually backfire?

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

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

Featured image is from FAIR

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MEP Nathalie Loiseau of France is lobbying for individual sanctions on all observers of the Russian-organized referendums in the Donbass region. She has singled out journalist Vanessa Beeley not only for her coverage of the vote, but for her reporting on the foreign-back war against Syria’s government.

A French Member of European Parliament (MEP), Natalie Loiseau, has delivered a letter to EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Borrell, demanding the European Union place personal sanctions on all international observers of the recent votes in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and certain Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine.

Obtained by The Grayzone from an EU source, the letter is currently being circulated among European parliamentarians in hopes of securing a docket of supportive signatures.

“We, as elected members of the European Parliament, demand that all those who voluntarily assisted in any way the organization of these illegitimate referendums be individually targeted and sanctioned,” Loiseau declared.

The French MEP’s letter came after a group of formally Ukrainian territories held a vote on whether or not to officially incorporate themselves into the Russian Federation in late September. Through the popular referendum, the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which announced their respective successions from Ukraine in 2014 following a foreign-backed coup against the government Kiev, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhia, voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining the Russian Federation.

Loiseau singled out Vanessa Beeley, a British journalist who traveled to the region to monitor the vote. Extending her complaint well beyond the referendum, the French MEP accused Beeley of “continuously spreading fake news about Syria and acting as a mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin and Bashar el [sic] Assad for years.”

Loiseau, a close ally of French President Emanuel Macron, specifically demanded Beeley be “included in the list of those sanctioned.”

Beeley responded to Loiseau’s letter in a statement to The Grayzone:

“Imposing sanctions on global citizens for bearing witness to a legal process that reflects the self-determination of the people of Donbass is fascism. Should the EU proceed with this campaign, I believe there will be serious consequences because the essence of freedom of speech and thought is under attack.

Russia’s referendums: drawing a line with NATO

In mid-September 2022, Beeley and around 100 other international delegates traveled to eastern Europe in order to observe a vote to join the Russian Federation in the regions of Kherson, Zaporozhia, and the independent republics of Lugansk and Donetsk.

Why did their presence trigger such an outraged response from Western governments? The answer lies in the recent history of these heavily contested areas.

The formally Ukrainian territories of Kherson and Zaporozhia fell under Russian control earlier this year as a result of the military campaign launched by Moscow in February, while the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared their independence from the government in Kiev in 2014.

Russia began its special military campaign in Ukrainian territory on February 24. The operation followed Moscow’s decision that same week to formally recognize the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic (the Donbass Republics) in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass have been embroiled in a bloody trench battle with the US-backed government in Kiev since 2014.

Ukraine’s civil conflict broke out in March 2014, after US and European forces sponsored a coup in the country that installed a decidedly pro-NATO nationalist regime in Kiev which proceeded to declare war on its minority, ethnically Russian population.

Following the 2014 putsch, Ukraine’s government officially marginalized the Russian language while extremist thugs backed by Kiev massacred and intimidated ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine. In response, separatist protests swept Ukraine’s majority-Russian eastern regions.

The territory of Crimea formally voted to join Russia in March of that year, while the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region declared their unofficial independence from Kiev that same month. With support from the US military and NATO, Ukraine’s coup government officially declared war on the Donbass in April 2014, launching what it characterized as an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in the region.

Russia trained and equipped separatist militias in Donetsk and Lugansk throughout the territories’ civil campaigns against Kiev, though Moscow did not officially recognize the independence of the Donbass republics until February 2022. By then, United Nations estimates placed the casualty count for Ukraine’s civil war at roughly 13,000 dead. While Moscow offered support to Donbass separatists throughout the 2014-2022 period, US and European governments invested billions to prop up a Ukrainian military that was heavily reliant on army and intelligence factions with direct links to the country’s historic anti-Soviet, pro-Nazi deep state born as a result of World War II.

Ukrainian armed forces reportedly flew the flag of the German Third Reich from their position in the Donbass, according to surveillance footage from militias on the pro-Russian side pic.twitter.com/ezwmBHo1bs

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 13, 2021

Russia’s military formally entered the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, following Moscow’s recognition of the Donbass republics. While Russian President Vladimir Putin defined the liberation of the Donbass republics as the primary objective of the military operation, he also listed the “de-nazification” and “de-militarization” of Ukraine as a goals of the campaign. As such, Russian troops have since secured control of Ukrainian territories beyond the Donbass region, including the territories of Kherson and Zaporozhia.

Facing increased Western investment in the Kiev-aligned bloc of Ukraine’s civil war, authorities in the Donbass republics announced a referendum on membership in the Russian Federation in late September 2022, with Moscow-aligned officials in Kherson and Zaporozhia announcing similar ballot initiatives. Citizens in each territory proceeded to approve Russian membership by overwhelming majorities.

The results of the referendum not only threatened the government in Kiev, but its European and US backers. Western-aligned media leapt to characterize the votes as a sham, claiming Moscow’s troops had coerced citizens into joining the Russian Federation at the barrel of a gun. Their narrative would have reigned supreme if not for the hundred or so international observers who physically traveled to the regions in question to observe the referendum process.

Observers like Vanessa Beeley now face the threat of returning home to the West as wanted outlaws. But as Loiseau’s letter made clear, the British journalist was in the crosshairs long before the escalation in Ukraine.

Beeley among European journalists targeted and prosecuted for reporting from Donetsk

Vanessa Beeley was among the first independent journalists to expose the US and UK governments’ sponsorship of the Syrian White Helmets, a so-called “volunteer organization” that played frontline role in promoting the foreign-backed dirty war against Syria’s government through its coordination with Western and Gulf-sponsored media. Beeley also played an instrumental role in revealing the White Helmets’ strong ties to Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, as well as its members’ involvement in atrocities committed by Western-backed insurgents.

Beeley’s work on Syria drew harsh attacks from an array of NATO and arms industry-funded think tanks. In June 2022, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which receives funding from a variety of NATO states, corporations and billionaires, labeled Beeley “the most prolific spreader of disinformation” on Syria prior to 2020. (According to ISD, Beeley was somehow “overtaken” by The Grayzone’s Aaron Mate that year). The group did not provide a single piece of evidence to support its assertions.

Though Beeley has endured waves of smears, French MEP Natalie Loiseau’s call for the EU to sanction the journalist represents the first time a Western official has moved to formally criminalize her work. Indeed, Loiseau made no secret that she is targeting Beeley not only for her role as an observer of the referendum votes, but also on the basis of her opinions and reporting on Syria.

Loiseau’s push to issue personal sanctions against EU and US citizens comes on the heels of the German government’s prosecution of independent journalist Alina Lipp. In March 2020, Berlin launched a formal case against Lipp, who is a German citizen, claiming her reporting from the Donetsk People’s Republic violated newly authorized state speech codes.

W/o explanation, @YouTube has demonetized my interview w/ Alina Lipp, the only German journalist in Donetsk

The German state has seized funds from Lipp's bank account and is prosecuting her under new speech laws for her reporting on Ukrainian war crimes https://t.co/No7OjRb8be pic.twitter.com/93BRKVq2FF

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) July 17, 2022

Prior to Lipp’s prosecution, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue launched a media campaign portraying her as a disseminator of “disinformation” and “pro-Kremlin content.”

In London, meanwhile, the UK government has imposed individual sanctions on Graham Philips, a British citizen and independent journalist, for his reporting from Donetsk.

And in Brussels, Loiseau’s campaign against Beeley appears to have emerged from a deeply personal vendetta.

Who is Natalie Loiseau?

In April 2021, Beeley published a detailed profile of Loiseau at her personal blog, The Wall Will Fall, painting the French MEP as a regime change ideologue committed to “defending global insecurity and perpetual war.” Beeley noted that Loiseau served as a minister in the government of French President Emanuel Macron when it authorized airstrikes in response to dubious allegations of a Syrian government chemical attack in Douma in April 2018.

Beeley also reported that Loiseau has enjoyed a close relationship with the Syria Campaign, the public relations arm of the White Helmets operation. This same organization, which is backed by British-Syrian billionaire Ayman Asfari, was the sponsor of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue report which branded Beeley a “top propagator of disinformation” on Syria.

Loiseau has taken her activism into the heart of the European parliament, using her position as chair of the European Parliament’s Subcommittee on Security and Defense to silence colleagues who ask to many questions about the Western campaign for regime change in Syria.

During an April 2021 hearing, MEP Mick Wallace attempted to question Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Director General Fernando Arias about allegations he personally aided the censorship of an OPCW investigation which concluded no chemical attack took place in Douma, Syria in April 2018.

Loiseau immediately descended into a fit of rage, interrupting Wallace and preventing him from speaking.

“I cannot accept that you can call into question the work of an international organization, and that you would call into question the word of the victims in the way you have just done,” Loiseau fulminated.

Wallace responded with indignation, asking, “Is there no freedom of speech being allowed in the European Parliament any more? Today you are denying me my opinion!”

.@wallacemick of Ireland asked OPCW chief Arias whether he will account for the scientific fraud in the Douma investigation and why he's refused to meet the dissenting inspectors. Wallace was interrupted by the chair, and Arias refused to answer: pic.twitter.com/c043R3111V

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) April 15, 2021

A year later, Wallace and fellow Irish MEP Clare Daly sued the Irish network RTEfor defamation after it broadcast an interview with Loiseau during which she baselessly branded them as liars who spread disinformation about Syria in parliament.

Now, Loiseau appears to be seeking revenge against Beeley, demanding that she be criminally prosecuted not just for serving as a referendum observer, but for her journalistic output.

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The editor-in-chief of The Grayzone, Max Blumenthal is an award-winning journalist and the author of several books, including best-selling Republican Gomorrah, Goliath, The Fifty One Day War, and The Management of Savagery. He has produced print articles for an array of publications, many video reports, and several documentaries, including Killing Gaza. Blumenthal founded The Grayzone in 2015 to shine a journalistic light on America’s state of perpetual war and its dangerous domestic repercussions.

Anya Parampil is a journalist based in Washington, DC. She has produced and reported several documentaries, including on-the-ground reports from the Korean peninsula, Palestine, Venezuela, and Honduras.

Featured image: Left: French MEP Nathalie Loiseau Right: Journalist Vanessa Beeley (Source: The Grayzone)

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***

On the very day the world learns about the sabotage of Russia’s Nordstream 1 and Nordstream 2, guess what else happened? Well, Ukrainians from the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporhyzhia and Kherson oblasts voted in overwhelming numbers to become Russians. While that is a game changer that is not what I had in mind.

How about this–Poland on Tuesday inaugurated a new pipeline that will transport gas from Norway through Denmark and the Baltic Sea? That is it!!! What a coincidence!! Or is it?

There is at least one prominent Polish citizen who believes the United States merits praise for sabotaging the Nordstream pipelines. Former former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, who happens to be married to Anne Appelbaum, an enthusiastic neo-con masquerading as a journalist, tweeted the following upon learning that the Nordstream lines were now “złamany” (Polish for”kaput”): “Thank you, USA.”

But, perhaps that is a bit of deflection. Poland has longstanding animus towards Nordstream. In other words, Poland has a clear motive for backing the destruction of the Russian pipeline. More than a year ago -April 2021 to be precise–this appeared in print:

Poland strongly opposes the development of Nord Stream 2, which will give Gazprom a subsea alternative route for supplying natural gas to Western European customers. At present, that gas has to pass through overland pipeline networks in Poland and Ukraine, bringing in valuable transit fees and providing both nations – which do not always have cordial relations with Russia – a measure of energy security.

One month later, Poland pitched a Kielbasi fit:

Poland has reacted angrily to President Joe Biden’s decision to waive US sanctions on Nord Stream II, warning the move could threaten energy security across Central and Eastern Europe.

“The information is definitely not positive from the security point of view, as we know perfectly that Nord Stream II is not only a business project – it is mostly a geopolitical project,” said Piotr Muller, a spokesman for the Polish government. . . .

Announced following a phone-call between Joe Biden and Chancellor Angela Merkel, the US decision to lift sanctions was welcomed in Berlin, with Foreign Minister Heiko Maas noting that “it is an expression of the fact that Germany is an important partner for the US, one that it can count on in the future.”

The highly controversial pipeline has met with vigorous opposition across Central and Eastern Europe, including in Poland and Ukraine where officials say the project would be used by the Kremlin as a geopolitical weapon, de-facto increase Europe’s dependence on Russian gas and threaten energy security in the Eastern half of the continent.

Makes you wonder if there was some wheeling and dealing was going on between Washington and Warsaw. Given Warsaw’s critical location and role in ensuring U.S. and NATO military supplies is delivered to Ukraine, the Poles have a bit of leverage to push the United States to take out the pipelines or to help Poland take out the pipelines. Poland’s message to the United States was simple–reverse course on Nordstream and rupture the pipelines or you can find another way to move your military supplies to Ukraine.

But wait, doesn’t this create some real problems for Germany? Sure. But Poland “don’t” (sic) care. There was this little incident called World War II and it seems that the Poles are still miffed at the Germans. If revenge is a dish best served cold, then this sucker is a frozen dinner:

Poland’s top politician said Thursday that the government will seek equivalent of some $1.3 trillion in reparations from Germany for the Nazis’ World War II invasion and occupation of his country.

Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the Law and Justice party, announced the huge claim at the release of a long-awaited report on the cost to the country of years of Nazi German occupation as it marks 83 years since the start of World War II. . . .

Germany’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday the government’s position remains “unchanged” in that “the question of reparations is concluded.”

See this.

With this new supply of Polish controlled natural gas, Germany is in a tough spot. Buy from Poland or buy from the United States. Either way, the Germans pay a premium while the United States and Poland make some bank.

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***

Something really strange just happened.  On Monday, large underwater “explosions” were detected in the precise areas of the sea where the Nord Stream pipeline system is now leaking.  In fact, the explosions were so large that they actually registered on the Richter scale.  If someone wanted to purposely damage the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines, very large explosions would be needed because those pipelines are extremely thick.  So it appears that this was a deliberate act of sabotage, and that is what many European officials are now alleging.  But if that is the case, who was behind it?

At this point we just don’t know.

But there are certain facts that we do have.  The following are 14 things we know about the “mysterious explosions” that severely damaged the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 pipelines…

#1 We are being told that the sections where the pipelines were damaged are “70-90 meters below sea level”.  So someone would need to go down pretty deep to get to them.

#2 It is extremely unlikely that these pipelines could have been ruptured by accident because they are extremely thick…

The steel pipe itself has a wall of 4.1 cm (1.6 inches) and is coated with steel-reinforced concrete up to 11cm thick. Each section of the pipe weighs 11 tonnes, which goes to 24-25 tonnes after the concrete is applied.

#3 It is being reported that explosions “were heard” in the areas where gas is now leaking out of the pipelines…

Explosions were heard near the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipes where gas is now leaking into the Baltic from three holes, scientists have confirmed, while chronic safety concerns have led to a five-mile exclusion zone being imposed around the affected area.

#4 The Swedish National Seismic Network detected one explosion that registered 1.9 on the Richter scale and another one that registered 2.3 on the Richter scale…

Two powerful underwater explosions were detected on Monday in the same area of sea as the Nord Stream gas leaks, according to the Swedish National Seismic Network.

The monitoring network said the first explosion occurred on Monday at 2:03 a.m. Swedish time with a magnitude of 1.9 on the Richter scale, followed by a second at 7:04 p.m. on the same day with a magnitude of 2.3.

#5 The largest leak is reportedly “spreading bubbles a good kilometre (3,280ft) in diameter”…

It comes after shocking footage released earlier today by the Danish military from a flyover of the affected region showed huge swathes of the sea near the Danish island of Bornholm churning as the gas bubbled to the surface.

A military statement claimed that the largest leak ‘is spreading bubbles a good kilometre (3,280ft) in diameter. The smallest is creating a circle about 200 metres (656 feet) in diameter’, while the head of Denmark’s Energy Agency said it could take up to a week for gas to stop draining into the sea.

#6 German officials are claiming that this was a deliberate act of sabotage…

Germany is reportedly far less hesitant, however, with officials believing sabotage is virtually the only plausible cause for the leaks.

“We can’t imagine a scenario that isn’t a targeted attack. Everything speaks against a coincidence,” a government official reportedly told German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.

#7 Interestingly, this incident took place just one day after thousands of German protesters took to the streets and demanded the opening of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline…

Thousands of protesters took to the streets in the northeastern German seaside town of Lubmin on Sunday, urging officials to put into service the halted Nord Stream 2 pipeline project that was designed to transport fuel from Russia to Germany.

Germany had stalled the launch of the ambitious energy project for months before putting it on the back burner in the wake of Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, which is now in its eighth month.

#8 The prime minister of Denmark also believes that this was a deliberate act of sabotage…

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has said her government believes the leaks were caused by ‘deliberate actions’, adding that the gas supply pipeline will be out of action for around a week.

She said this evening: ‘It is now the clear assessment by authorities that these are deliberate actions. It was not an accident. There is no information yet to indicate who may be behind this action.’

#9 The Ukrainians are blaming the Russians for the explosions…

It comes after Kyiv’s presidential advisor Mikhaylo Podolyak said on Twitter: ‘The large-scale gas leak is nothing more than a terrorist attack planned by Russia and an act of aggression towards the EU.’

Podolyak accused Russia of seeking to ‘destabilise the economic situation in Europe and cause pre-winter panic’.

#10 It is being reported that the CIA recently warned Germany about a potential attack on the pipelines…

German magazine Spiegel said the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) recently warned Berlin about the increasing signs of a possible planned attack on the Nord Stream pipeline system.

Spiegel reported, citing unnamed sources, that the CIA tipped off Berlin in the summer about possible attacks on NS1 and NS2.

#11 A Polish member of the European Parliament seems absolutely convinced that the United States was behind the attack…

A former Polish Defense Minister, Radek Sikorski, has attributed to the United States the sabotage of two pipelines, Nord Stream 1 and 2, which carry natural gas from Russia to Germany. “Thank you, USA,” Sikorski wrote on Twitter. Sikorski was Minister of National Defense from 2005 – 2007 and served as Deputy Minister of National Defense and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, previously. He is currently an elected member of the European parliament.

Nord Stream 1 and 2 lie on the bed of the Baltic Sea. Nord Stream 2 was finished last year but Germany never opened it because Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24.

#12 Joe Biden previously threatened to “end” the Nord Stream 2 pipeline if Russia invaded Ukraine: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."

Reporter: "But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany's control?"

Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that." https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC

— ABC News (@ABC) February 7, 2022

#13 Victoria Nuland has also previously threatened the Nord Stream 2 pipeline: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

.@UnderSecStateP Victoria Nuland: “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.” pic.twitter.com/hEGBrx6HJj

— Department of State (@StateDept) January 27, 2022

#14 Meanwhile, European officials just gathered for a ceremony “to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe”…

Leaders from Poland, Norway and Denmark have attended a ceremony to mark the opening of the new Baltic Pipe, a key stage in the drive to wean Poland and Europe off Russian gas.

The pipeline will transport natural gas from the Norwegian shelf via Denmark and through the Baltic Sea to Poland. It is the centrepiece of a Polish strategy to diversify away from Russia that began years before Moscow’s February invasion of Ukraine triggered a global energy crisis.

The flows from Norway along with supplies via liquefied gas terminals are central to Poland’s plan. The country was cut off from Russian gas supplies in April, allegedly for refusing to pay in roubles.

So what does all of this mean?

I don’t know.

But this certainly is not going to be good for the rapidly growing energy crisis in Europe.

It is going to be a bitterly cold winter all over the continent, and there will be a lot of anger.

As I keep warning, the comfortable lifestyles that we are all currently enjoying will soon be rudely interrupted.

Everything is changing, and a lot of pain is on the horizon.

So I would encourage you to monitor global events very, very closely in the months ahead, because they are going to have very serious implications for every man, woman and child on the entire planet.

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Michael Snyder published thousands of articles on The Economic Collapse Blog, End Of The American Dream and The Most Important News, which are republished on dozens of other prominent websites all over the globe. 

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***

Hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking, is a technique for obtaining oil and gas from shale rock. Sometimes referred to as ‘unconventional oil and gas development’, the process involves drilling into the earth and directing a high-pressure mixture of water, sand, and chemicals at rock. While governments commonly claim the process poses little or no risk to public health, the truth is the exact opposite. Studies have demonstrated clear links between fracking and cancer, heart attack, adverse birth outcomes, and numerous other negative health effects.  

Undermining their assertions that the process is safe, the fact is that only rarely have governments assembled detailed assessments of the public health risks associated with fracking and weighed these against its supposed benefits. Anyone carrying out such in-depth analyses would find there is much to be concerned about.

Fracking and cancer

Examining the links between fracking and cancer, a review published in the Science of The Total Environment journal in 2017 identified 55 chemicals released into air and water that are known, probable, or possible human carcinogens. These chemicals included 20 that have been shown to increase the risk of leukemia and lymphoma. The researchers warned that millions of people living within a mile of fracking wells may have been exposed to such chemicals.

Recent research has validated these concerns by finding that Pennsylvania children living near unconventional oil and gas developments at birth were two to three times more likely to be diagnosed with leukemia between the ages of 2 and 7 than those who did not live near such oil and gas activity.

Fracking and heart problems

Research published in 2021 shows that unconventional natural gas developments are associated with heart attacks. Published in the journal Environmental Research by researchers in the United States, it found that such developments are associated with increased heart attack hospitalization rates among middle-aged men, older men, and older women, as well as with increased mortality from heart attack among middle-aged men. The researchers say their findings lend support for increased awareness about the cardiovascular risks of unconventional natural gas developments and suggest that bans on fracking can be protective for public health.

Unconventional natural gas development has similarly been linked to hospitalization in patients suffering from heart failure. A study published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology in 2021 found that older patients with heart failure appear to be particularly vulnerable to adverse health impacts from unconventional natural gas development activity.

Adverse effects on infant health

Multiple studies show that fracking has negative effects on birth outcomes and infant health. A recent study published in the Journal of Health Economics found “consistent and robust evidence” that drilling shale gas wells negatively impacts both drinking water quality and infant health.

Evidence from Pennsylvania confirms the link between fracking and negative effects on infant health. Research published in the Science Advances journal in 2017 found evidence for negative health effects from in utero exposure to fracking sites within 3 km of a mother’s residence, with the largest health impacts seen for in utero exposure within 1 km of sites. The health impacts included a greater incidence of low–birth weight babies as well as significant declines in average birth weight and in several other measures of infant health.

A 2019 study exploring the impact of fracking on infants’ birth health across Oklahoma counties made similar findings, demonstrating that the closer the mother’s residence at birth to fracking wells, the more negative are the effects on the infants’ birth health. The link between proximity to fracking wells and adverse birth outcomes is further supported by separate research from California and rural Alberta, Canada.

Increased hospitalization and other problems

Studies show a clear link between fracking and increased hospitalizations. Research examining the health implications of unconventional natural gas development in Pennsylvania has found a significant association between shale gas development and hospitalizations for pneumonia among the elderly. Evidence from Pennsylvania similarly shows that unconventional natural gas development is associated with hospitalization rates for genitourinary problems such as kidney and urinary tract infections. Other Pennsylvanian research has confirmed a link between unconventional gas and oil drilling and hospital inpatient prevalence rates for the medical categories of dermatology, neurology, oncology, and urology.

Evidence clearly shows that many of the chemicals used in fracking can damage the lungs, liver, kidneys, blood, and brain. Symptoms commonly reported by residents living within 1 km of fracking wells include sleep disruption, headache, throat irritation, stress or anxiety, cough, shortness of breath, sinus problems, fatigue, nausea, and wheezing.

Dancing to the tune of the energy cartel

Given the weight of scientific evidence that now exists, it is impossible to believe that governments are not aware of the adverse health effects of fracking. As such, we can only conclude that public health is knowingly being sacrificed on the twin altars of corporate profit and economic benefit. While currently only four countries (United States, Canada, China, Argentina) produce shale gas or shale oil commercially, others are increasingly attempting to do so. The UK government has recently lifted a ban on fracking that had been in place in the country since 2019, saying it could now go ahead despite opposition from local councils.

Only rarely do politicians focus on the negative health effects of fracking, preferring instead to argue over its environmental impacts. We need to be aware however that dancing to the tune of the energy cartel has a dark and criminal history dating back more than a century and involving two global wars. Politicians and corporations placing profit before human health must be held to account for their actions. Ensuring this happens sooner rather than later may be our best defense against history repeating itself.

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. You can find Paul on Twitter at @paulanthtaylor

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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***

It should now be quite clear to any reasonable person that the Biden administration is hell-bent on destroying Russia and will risk nuclear war in doing so.  It has already started World War III with its use of Ukraine to light the final match.  The problem is that reasonable people are in very short supply, and, as Ray McGovern recently wrote in “Brainwashed for War with Russia, the Biden administration and their media lackeys

… will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China …. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse – or a modicum of embarrassment.

Many good writers – all of whom are banned from mainstream media – have  made clear why the corporate media propaganda about the US/NATO war against Russia via Ukraine is false and egregiously dangerous.  The government of the U.S.A. is led by morons in the demonic grip of the “The U.S. Should Rule the World” ideology.  It is nothing new.

I don’t wish to debate the facts, for that is a fool’s game created to suggest there is something to debate.  For the evidence is clear, except to the public in the grip of propaganda-induced ignorance or those elites who never learned from the ancient Greek goddess Nemesis that dark Furies will destroy those who in their hubris push the limits.  The Biden administration has already done that, while President Biden mutters inanities as if he were a mafia boss wandering the streets in his pajamas and slippers.  The recent sabotaging of Nord Stream 2 is another example of the treacherous road we are traveling, as Diana Johnstone makes clear in her recent article, “Omerta in the Gangster War.”

For years, the U.S.- run NATO has moved military forces and bases into countries encircling Russia. This includes weapons that can very quickly be converted to nuclear use. This, as I’ve pointed out before, is tantamount to Russia doing the same in Mexico and Canada, and let’s add Cuba as well.  We know what the U.S. response would be, but when President Putin and his government objected and said this is a betrayal of previous agreements, he was dismissed as if he were a child making things up.

In 2014, when the U.S. engineered a coup in Ukraine, bringing into power neo-Nazi elements, and Russia protested this coup on its western border, Washington mocked such concerns. Every time Russia has complained about such provocative moves, the U.S. has dismissed them as inconsequential.

For years the U.S. has supported the Ukrainian killing of the Russian speaking peoples of eastern Ukraine, and finally, when Ukraine had amassed forces to invade the Donbas region, the Russian government had had enough and sent troops into the region to defend this area.  Thus the hypocritical West played at outrage that what they had created was finally backfiring.  Russia was cast as the guilty party for invading Ukraine.  And now a full-fledged U.S. war against Russia is out in the open and it will become more dangerous as it continues.  Nuclear annihilation becomes a very real possibility as the Biden administration continues to push the envelope.

There will be no end to the war in Ukraine because the U.S. is intent on doing everything in its power to try to bring Russia to its knees.  It is madness on its face, but then insane people are in charge. In this process, everyone is expendable, friends, foes, and anyone who stands in its way, including the U.S.’s supposed European allies whose leaders seem intent on destroying their own countries.

Perhaps ironically – but I think not, as a knowledge of history confirms – the volte-face of the American liberal class with its promotion of the new Cold War, censorship, the CIA, and FBI and the so-called progressive Democratic politicians in the U.S congress, including Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, embracing and voting for war with Russia via Ukraine, should be no great surprise. These people, and their Republican counterparts, with rare exceptions here and there, live on desolation row and flip when so ordered.  But “nobody has to think too much about Desolation Row,” in Dylan’s words, because it’s the social disease we inhabit, and like fish in water, many know nothing else.

On a similar note, Ray McGovern has also recently reminded those who pay attention to him that The New York Times, as is its tradition, is promoting the U.S. war against Russia just as it did with the Vietnam War in the 1960s.  Little changes is his theme, no apologies are ever offered, and the readers of the most famous American newspaper and CIA conduit are asked to swallow daily doses of propaganda that are so egregiously obvious that only children would be fooled.  Sadly, the United States has become a country of children, Babes in Toyland who never realize that at the end of the plot the gun is reversed and is aimed at them.  And it’s not funny.

A century ago in the years before World War I, American progressive intellectuals, as Stuart Ewen writes in PR: A Social History of Spin:

… had espoused the Enlightenment dictum that people – at least middle-class people – were essentially rational, capable of evaluating information and then making intelligent decisions.  In the context of the CPI [the U.S, Committee on Public Information, a large propaganda apparatus set up in April 1917 by President Woodrow Wilson to sell the American entry into the war against Germany as necessary to ‘Make the World Safe for Democracy,’ whose members included Edward Bernays, the propagandist and so-called father of public relations] ‘public opinion’ became something to be mobilized and managed; the ‘public mind’ was now seen as an entity to be manufactured, not reasoned with.

Faith in reason was abandoned in favor of psychological manipulation of emotion and the use of unreason – the “night mind” – which became the template for future propaganda and the application of psychological techniques, a forerunner of the CIA’s MKUltra and Operation Mockingbird  As the crackdown on dissent increased with passage of the 1917 Espionage Act (under which Julian Assange is falsely charged today) and then the Sedition Act in 1918, many so-called progressives embraced the authoritarian imposition of state controls on dissent, just as they do today.  An important exception was Randolph Bourne, who in 1917 castigated these turncoats in his blistering essay, “War and the Intellectuals.”  “Socialists, college professors, publicists, new-republicans, [and] practitioners of literature,” he wrote, “had assumed the iniquitous task of ‘riveting the war mind on a hundred million of the world’s people.’”  Today such people debate whether they should be called liberal or progressive.  I say, call them warmongers of the lowest order.

I remember when I was an impressionable child and television had only a few channels.  This was in the years between the Korean War and the one against Vietnam. There was a movie that was repeated on television regularly: Yankee Doodle Dandy, starring the amazing performer Jimmy Cagney as George M. Cohan, the Irish-American composer/lyricist/playwright, who, in the years before WW I was known as the man who owned Broadway and whose statue stands in Times Square in New York City.

Child that I was, I saw the film many times and was mesmerized.  My emotions rose with every viewing.  My heart strings vibrated to the tunes of “Over There” and “You’re a Grand Old Flag.”  I marched proudly to WW I with Cagney/Cohan.  This was a movie that appeared in 1942 to promote the WW II war effort by using the lies about WW I to do it.  But oh what fun!  And the stirring songs – fodder for a child.  And this was before the CIA completely owned Hollywood.

Yet I grew up.  I am no longer a child.  I have studied and seen through the propaganda of The New York Times, CNN, the Washington Post, Fox News, The Guardian, Hollywood, etc.

Many of those I know have not.  They believe in the unbelievable. They still live in what Jim Garrison called the “Doll’s House” and accept what Harold Pinter termed “a vast tapestry of lies.”  Pinter said in his 2005 Nobel address what has not changed an iota since about the U.S.’s murderous foreign policy:

It never happened. Nothing ever happened. Even while it was happening it wasn’t happening. It didn’t matter. It was of no interest. The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.

When I was a child, I was hypnotized by “Yankee Doodle Dandy.”

I’ve grown a bit.  McGovern and Pinter are right; little has changed – Vietnam, WW I, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Somalia, Iran, Nicaragua, El Salvador, China, etc.  And of course, Russia, always Russia, at whose heart the weapons are always aimed, fiendish Russia that must be destroyed to make the world safe for the predators that pose as lovers of democracy and international law.

When President Kennedy, deeply chastened by the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, spoke about real peace and democracy at American University on June 10, 1963, he was the last American leader to recognize that international relations had to undergo a radical change, especially in the nuclear age.  Demonizing other countries had to give way to dialogue and mutual respect.  He said:

What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children–not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women–not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

Five months later the CIA made sure his voice was stilled.  Such sentiments have been verboten ever since.

Only children still believe the America propaganda and its war machine.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Behind the Curtain.

Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image: A US government propaganda poster from the 1940s (Source: Multipolarista)

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He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book, click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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The War of Economic Corridors has entered incandescent, uncharted territory: Pipeline Terror.

A sophisticated military operation – that required exhaustive planning, possibly involving several actors – blew up four separate sections of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) gas pipelines this week in the shallow waters of the Danish straits, in the Baltic Sea, near the island of Bornholm.

Swedish seismologists estimated that the power of the explosions may have reached the equivalent of up to 700 kg of TNT. Both NS and NS2, near the strong currents around Borholm, are placed at the bottom of the sea at a depth of 60 meters.

The pipes are built with steel reinforced concrete, able to withstand impact from aircraft carrier anchors, and are basically indestructible without serious explosive charges. The operation – causing two leaks near Sweden and two near Denmark – would have to be carried out by modified underwater drones.

Every crime implies motive. The Russian government wanted – at least up to the sabotage – to sell oil and natural gas to the EU. The notion that Russian intel would destroy Gazprom pipelines is beyond ludicrous. All they had to do was to turn off the valves. NS2 was not even operational, based on a political decision from Berlin. The gas flow in NS was hampered by western sanctions. Moreover, such an act would imply Moscow losing key strategic leverage over the EU.

Diplomatic sources confirm that Berlin and Moscow were involved in a secret negotiation to solve both the NS and NS2 issues. So they had to be stopped – no holds barred. Geopolitically, the entity that had the motive to halt a deal holds anathema a possible alliance in the horizon between Germany, Russia, and China.

Whodunnit?

The possibility of an “impartial” investigation of such a monumental act of sabotage – coordinated by NATO, no less – is negligible. Fragments of the explosives/underwater drones used for the operation will certainly be found, but the evidence may be tampered with. Atlanticist fingers are already blaming Russia. That leaves us with plausible working hypotheses.

This hypothesis is eminently sound and looks to be based on information from Russian intelligence sources. Of course, Moscow already has a pretty good idea of what happened (satellites and electronic monitoring working 24/7), but they won’t make it public.

The hypothesis focuses on the Polish Navy and Special Forces as the physical perpetrators (quite plausible; the report offers very good internal details), American planning and technical support (extra plausible), and aid by the Danish and Swedish militaries (inevitable, considering this was very close to their territorial waters, even if it took place in international waters).

The hypothesis perfectly ties in with a conversation with a top German intelligence source, who told The Cradle that the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND or German intelligence) was “furious” because “they were not in the loop.” 

Of course not. If the hypothesis is correct, this was a glaringly anti-German operation, carrying the potential of metastasizing into an intra-NATO war.

The much-quoted NATO Article 5 – ‘an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us’ – obviously does not say anything about a NATO-on-NATO attack. After the pipeline punctures, NATO issued a meek statement “believing” what happened was sabotage and will “respond” to any deliberate attack on its critical infrastructure. NS and NS2, incidentally, are not part of NATO’s infrastructure.

The whole operation had to be approved by Americans, and deployed under their Divide and Rule trademark. “Americans” in this case means the Neo-conservatives and Neo-liberals running the government machinery in Washington, behind the senile teleprompter reader.

This is a declaration of war against Germany and against businesses and citizens of the EU – not against the Kafkaesque Eurocrat machine in Brussels. Don’t be mistaken: NATO runs Brussels, not European Commission (EC) head and rabid Russophobe Ursula von der Leyen, who’s just a lowly handmaiden for finance capitalism.

It’s no wonder the Germans are absolutely mum; no one from the German government, so far, has said anything substantial.

The Polish corridor

By now, assorted chattering classes are aware of former Polish Defense Minister and current MEP Radek Sirkorski’s tweet: “Thank you, USA.” But why would puny Poland be on the forefront? There’s atavic Russophobia, a number of very convoluted internal political reasons, but most of all, a concerted plan to attack Germany built on pent up resentment – including new demands for WWII reparations.

The Poles, moreover, are terrified that with Russia’s partial mobilization, and the new phase of the Special Military Operation (SMO) – soon to be transformed into a Counter-Terrorism Operation (CTO) – the Ukrainian battlefield will move westward. Ukrainian electric light and heating will most certainly be smashed. Millions of new refugees in western Ukraine will attempt to cross to Poland.

At the same time there’s a sense of “victory” represented by the partial opening of the Baltic Pipe in northwest Poland – almost simultaneously with the sabotage.

Talk about timing. Baltic Pipe will carry gas from Norway to Poland via Denmark. The maximum capacity is only 10 billion cubic meters, which happens to be ten times less than the volume supplied by NS and NS2. So Baltic Pipe may be enough for Poland, but carries no value for other EU customers.

Meanwhile, the fog of war gets thicker by the minute. It has already been documented that US helicopters were overflying the sabotage nodes only a few days ago; that a UK “research” vessel was loitering in Danish waters since mid-September; that NATO tweeted about the testing of “new unmanned systems at sea” on the same day of the sabotage. Not to mention that Der Spiegel published a startling report headlined “CIA warned German government against attacks on Baltic Sea pipelines,” possibly a clever play for plausible deniability.

The Russian Foreign Ministry was sharp as a razor: “The incident took place in an area controlled by American intelligence.” The White House was forced to “clarify” that President Joe Biden – in a February video that has gone viral – did not promise to destroy NS2; he promised to “not allow” it to work. The US State Department declared that the idea the US was involved is “preposterous.”

Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."

Reporter: "But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany's control?"

Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that." https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC

— ABC News (@ABC) February 7, 2022

It was up to Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov to offer a good dose of reality: the damage to the pipelines posed a “big problem” for Russia, essentially losing its gas supply routes to Europe. Both NS2 lines had been pumped full of gas and – crucially – were prepared to deliver it to Europe; this is Peskov cryptically admitting negotiations with Germany were ongoing.

Peskov added, “this gas is very expensive and now it is all going up in the air.” He stressed again that neither Russia nor Europe had anything to gain from the sabotage, especially Germany. This Friday, there will be a special UN Security Council session on the sabotage, called by Russia.

The attack of the Straussians

Now for the Big Picture. Pipeline Terror is part of a Straussian offensive, taking the splitting up of Russia and Germany to the ultimate level (as they see it). Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America: A Critical Appraisal, by Paul E. Gottfried (Cambridge University Press, 2011) is required reading to understand this phenomenon.

Leo Strauss, the German-Jewish philosopher who taught at the University of Chicago, is at the root of what later, in a very twisted way, became the Wolfowitz Doctrine, written in 1992 as the Defense Planning Guidance, which defined “America’s mission in the post-Cold War era.”

The Wolfowitz Doctrine goes straight to the point: any potential competitor to US hegemony, especially “advanced industrial nations” such as Germany and Japan, must be smashed. Europe should never exercise sovereignty: “We must be careful to prevent the emergence of a purely European security system that would undermine NATO, and particularly its integrated military command structure.”

Fast-forward to the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act, adopted only five months ago. It establishes that Kiev has a free lunch when it comes to all arms control mechanisms. All these expensive weapons are leased by the US to the EU to be sent to Ukraine. The problem is that whatever happens in the battlefield, in the end, it is the EU that will have to pay the bills.

US Secretary of State Blinken and his underling, Victoria “F**k the EU” Nuland, are Straussians, now totally unleashed, having taken advantage of the black void in the White House. As it stands, there are at least three different “silos” of power in a fractured Washington. For all Straussians, a tight bipartisan op, uniting several high-profile usual suspects, destroying Germany is paramount.

One serious working hypothesis places them behind the orders to conduct Pipeline Terror. The Pentagon forcefully denied any involvement in the sabotage. There are secret back channels between Russia’s Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev and US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

And dissident Beltway sources swear that the CIA is also not part of this game; Langley’s agenda would be to force the Straussians to back off on Russia reincorporating Novorossiya and allow Poland and Hungary to gobble up whatever they want in Western Ukraine before the entire US government falls into a black void.

Come see me in the Citadel

On the Grand Chessboard, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Samarkand, Uzbekistan two weeks ago dictated the framework of the multipolar world ahead. Couple it with the independence referendums in DPR, LPR, Kherson and Zaporozhye, which Russian President Vladimir Putin will formally incorporate into Russia, possibly as early as Friday.

With the window of opportunity closing fast for a Kiev breakthrough before the first stirrings of a cold winter, and Russia’s partial mobilization soon to enter the revamped SMO and add to generalized western panic, Pipeline Terror at least would carry the “merit” of solidifying a Straussian tactical victory: Germany and Russia fatally separated.

Yet blowback will be inevitable – in unexpected ways – even as Europe becomes increasingly Ukrainized and even Polandized: an intrinsically neo-fascist, unabashed puppet of the US as predator, not partner. Vey few across the EU are not brainwashed enough to understand how Europe is being set up for the ultimate fall.

The war, by those Straussians ensconced in the Deep State – neocons and neoliberals alike – won’t relent. It is a war against Russia, China, Germany and assorted Eurasian powers. Germany has just been felled. China is currently observing, carefully. And Russia – nuclear and hypersonic – won’t be bullied.

Poetry grandmaster C.P. Cavafy, in Waiting for the Barbarians, wrote “And now what will become of us, without any barbarians? Those people were some kind of a solution.” The barbarians are not at the gates, not anymore. They are inside their golden Citadel.

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst and author. His latest book is Raging Twenties. He’s been politically canceled from Facebook and Twitter. Follow him on Telegram. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

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***

As a military professor for six years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in the 1990s, I often walked past the honor code prominently displayed for all cadets to see. Its message was simple and clear: they were not to tolerate lying, cheating, stealing, or similar dishonorable acts. Yet that’s exactly what the U.S. military and many of America’s senior civilian leaders have been doing from the Vietnam War era to this very day: lying and cooking the books, while cheating and stealing from the American people. And yet the most remarkable thing may be that no honor code turns out to apply to them, so they’ve suffered no consequences for their mendacity and malfeasance.

Where’s the “honor” in that?

It may surprise you to learn that “integrity first” is the primary core value of my former service, the U.S. Air Force.  Considering the revelations of the Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971; the Afghan War papers, first revealed by the Washington Post in 2019; and the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, among other evidence of the lying and deception that led to the invasion and occupation of that country, you’ll excuse me for assuming that, for decades now when it comes to war, “integrity optional” has been the true core value of our senior military leaders and top government officials.

As a retired Air Force officer, let me tell you this: honor code or not, you can’t win a war with lies — America proved that in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq — nor can you build an honorable military with them. How could our high command not have reached such a conclusion themselves after all this time?

So Many Defeats, So Little Honesty

Like many other institutions, the U.S. military carries with it the seeds of its own destruction. After all, despite being funded in a fashion beyond compare and spreading its peculiar brand of destruction around the globe, its system of war hasn’t triumphed in a significant conflict since World War II (with the war in Korea remaining, almost three-quarters of a century later, in a painful and festering stalemate).  Even the ending of the Cold War, allegedly won when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, only led to further wanton military adventurism and, finally, defeat at an unsustainable cost — more than $8 trillion — in Washington’s ill-fated Global War on Terror. And yet, years later, that military still has a stranglehold on the national budget.

So many defeats, so little honesty: that’s the catchphrase I’d use to characterize this country’s military record since 1945. Keeping the money flowing and the wars going proved far more important than integrity or, certainly, the truth. Yet when you sacrifice integrity and the truth in the cause of concealing defeat, you lose much more than a war or two. You lose honor — in the long run, an unsustainable price for any military to pay.

Or rather it should be unsustainable, yet the American people have continued to “support” their military, both by funding it astronomically and expressing seemingly eternal confidence in it — though, after all these years, trust in the military has dipped somewhat recently. Still, in all this time, no one in the senior ranks, civilian or military, has ever truly been called to account for losing wars prolonged by self-serving lies. In fact, too many of our losing generals have gone right through that infamous “revolving door” into the industrial part of the military-industrial complex — only to sometimes return to take top government positions.

Our military has, in fact, developed a narrative that’s proven remarkably effective in insulating it from accountability. It goes something like this: U.S. troops fought hard in [put the name of the country here], so don’t blame us. Indeed, you must support us, especially given all the casualties of our wars. They and the generals did their best, under the usual political constraints. On occasion, mistakes were made, but the military and the government had good and honorable intentions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere.

Besides, were you there, Charlie? If you weren’t, then STFU, as the acronym goes, and be grateful for the security you take for granted, earned by America’s heroes while you were sitting on your fat ass safe at home.

It’s a narrative I’ve heard time and time again and it’s proven persuasive, partially because it requires the rest of us, in a conscription-free country, to do nothing and think nothing about that. Ignorance is strength, after all.

War Is Brutal

The reality of it all, however, is so much harsher than that. Senior military leaders have performed poorly.  War crimes have been covered up. Wars fought in the name of helping others have produced horrendous civilian casualties and stunning numbers of refugees. Even as those wars were being lost, what President Dwight D. Eisenhower first labeled the military-industrial complex has enjoyed windfall profits and expanding power. Again, there’s been no accountability for failure. In fact, only whistleblowing truth-tellers like Chelsea Manning and Daniel Hale have been punished and jailed.

Ready for an even harsher reality? America is a nation being unmade by war, the very opposite of what most Americans are taught. Allow me to explain.  As a country, we typically celebrate the lofty ideals and brave citizen-soldiers of the American Revolution. We similarly celebrate the Second American Revolution, otherwise known as the Civil War, for the elimination of slavery and reunification of the country; after which, we celebrate World War II, including the rise of the Greatest Generation, America as the arsenal of democracy, and our emergence as the global superpower.

By celebrating those three wars and essentially ignoring much of the rest of our history, we tend to view war itself as a positive and creative act. We see it as making America, as part of our unique exceptionalism. Not surprisingly, then, militarism in this country is impossible to imagine. We tend to see ourselves, in fact, as uniquely immune to it, even as war and military expenditures have come to dominate our foreign policy, bleeding into domestic policy as well.

If we as Americans continue to imagine war as a creative, positive, essential part of who we are, we’ll also continue to pursue it. Or rather, if we continue to lie to ourselves about war, it will persist.

It’s time for us to begin seeing it not as our making but our unmaking, potentially even our breaking — as democracy’s undoing as well as the brutal thing it truly is.

A retired U.S. military officer, educated by the system, I freely admit to having shared some of its flaws. When I was an Air Force engineer, for instance, I focused more on analysis and quantification than on synthesis and qualification. Reducing everything to numbers, I realize now, helps provide an illusion of clarity, even mastery.  It becomes another form of lying, encouraging us to meddle in things we don’t understand.

This was certainly true of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, his “whiz kids,” and General William Westmoreland during the Vietnam War; nor had much changed when it came to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and General David Petraeus, among others, in the Afghan and Iraq War years. In both eras, our military leaders wielded metrics and swore they were winning even as those wars circled the drain.

And worse yet, they were never held accountable for those disasters or the blunders and lies that went with them (though the antiwar movement of the Vietnam era certainly tried). All these years later, with the Pentagon still ascendant in Washington, it should be obvious that something has truly gone rotten in our system.

Here’s the rub: as the military and one administration after another lied to the American people about those wars, they also lied to themselves, even though such conflicts produced plenty of internal “papers” that raised serious concerns about lack of progress. Robert McNamara typically knew that the situation in Vietnam was dire and the war essentially unwinnable. Yet he continued to issue rosy public reports of progress, while calling for more troops to pursue that illusive “light at the end of the tunnel.” Similarly, the Afghan War papers released by the Washington Post show that senior military and civilian leaders realized that war, too, was going poorly almost from the beginning, yet they reported the very opposite to the American people. So many corners were being “turned,” so much “progress” being made in official reports even as the military was building its own rhetorical coffin in that Afghan graveyard of empires.

Too bad wars aren’t won by “spin.” If they were, the U.S. military would be undefeated.

Two Books to Help Us See the Lies

Two recent books help us see that spin for what it was. In Because Our Fathers Lied, Craig McNamara, Robert’s son, reflects on his father’s dishonesty about the Vietnam War and the reasons for it. Loyalty was perhaps the lead one, he writes. McNamara suppressed his own serious misgivings out of misplaced loyalty to two presidents, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, while simultaneously preserving his own position of power in the government.

Robert McNamara would, in fact, later pen his own mea culpa, admitting how “terribly wrong” he’d been in urging the prosecution of that war. Yet Craig finds his father’s late confession of regret significantly less than forthright and fully honest. Robert McNamara fell back on historical ignorance about Vietnam as the key contributing factor in his unwise decision-making, but his son is blunt in accusing his dad of unalloyed dishonesty. Hence the title of his book, citing Rudyard Kipling’s pained confession of his own complicity in sending his son to die in the trenches of World War I: “If any question why we died/Tell them, because our fathers lied.”

The second book is Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars, edited by Andrew Bacevich and Danny Sjursen. In my view, the word “misguided” doesn’t quite capture the book’s powerful essence, since it gathers 15 remarkable essays by Americans who served in Afghanistan and Iraq and witnessed the patent dishonesty and folly of those wars. None dare speak of failure might be a subtheme of these essays, as initially highly motivated and well-trained troops became disillusioned by wars that went nowhere, even as their comrades often paid the ultimate price, being horribly wounded or dying in those conflicts driven by lies.

This is more than a work of dissent by disillusioned troops, however. It’s a call for the rest of us to act.  Dissent, as West Point graduate and Army Captain Erik Edstrom reminds us, “is nothing short of a moral obligation” when immoral wars are driven by systemic dishonesty. Army Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Davis, who blew an early whistle on how poorly the Afghan War was going, writes of his “seething” anger “at the absurdity and unconcern for the lives of my fellow soldiers displayed by so many” of the Army’s senior leaders.

Former Marine Matthew Hoh, who resigned from the State Department in opposition to the Afghan “surge” ordered by President Barack Obama, speaks movingly of his own “guilt, regret, and shame” at having served in Afghanistan as a troop commander and wonders whether he can ever atone for it. Like Craig McNamara, Hoh warns of the dangers of misplaced loyalty. He remembers telling himself that he was best suited to lead his fellow Marines in war, no matter how misbegotten and dishonorable that conflict was.  Yet he confesses that falling back on duty and being loyal to “his” Marines, while suppressing the infamies of the war itself, became “a washing of the hands, a self-absolution that ignores one’s complicity” in furthering a brutal conflict fed by lies.

As I read those essays, I came to see anew how this country’s senior leaders, military and civilian, consistently underestimated the brutalizing impact of war, which, in turn, leads me to the ultimate lie of war: that it is somehow good, or at least necessary — making all the lying (and killing) worth it, whether in the name of a victory to come or of duty, honor, and country. Yet there is no honor in lying, in keeping the truth hidden from the American people. Indeed, there is something distinctly dishonorable about waging wars kept viable only by lies, obfuscation, and propaganda.

An Epigram from Goethe

John Keegan, the esteemed military historian, cites an epigram from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as being essential to thinking about militaries and their wars. “Goods gone, something gone; honor gone, much gone; courage gone, all gone.”

The U.S. military has no shortage of goods, given its whopping expenditures on weaponry and equipment of all sorts; among the troops, it doesn’t lack for courage or fighting spirit, not yet, anyway. But it does lack honor, especially at the top. Much is gone when a military ceases to tell the truth to itself and especially to the people from whom its forces are drawn. And courage is wasted when in the service of lies.

Courage wasted: Is there a worst fate for a military establishment that prides itself on its members being all volunteers and is now having trouble filling its ranks?

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William J. Astore, a retired lieutenant colonel (USAF) and professor of history, is a TomDispatch regular and a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network (EMN), an organization of critical veteran military and national security professionals. His personal blog is Bracing Views.

Featured image is from The Cradle

Anteprima della sessantaseiesima puntata della trasmissione Pangea Grandangolo, la rassegna stampa internazionale di Byoblu, che andrà in onda sul canale tv Byoblu il 30/09/2022 alle 20:30.

Intervista a Vandana Shiva: riprendiamoci la sovranità In questa terza intervista a Berenice Galli, Vandana Shiva aggiorna i temi di fondo del sistema da lei proposto, alternativo a quello oggi dominante.

Le questioni che affronta non riguardano solo l’India. Esse sono strettamente legate ai drammatici problemi che abbiamo in Italia, in particolare quelli riguardanti i piccoli produttori agricoli. Riportiamo qui di seguito alcuni brani dell’intervista:

“Gli agricoltori in India lottano contro le leggi che distruggono la loro sovranità. I piccoli produttori potranno sopravvivere solo se la loro sovranità viene difesa. Nel momento in cui la sovranità viene loro tolta, i piccoli produttori scompariranno, proprio come avviene con la diversità delle specie, che scompaiono se la loro sovranità non viene rispettata.

Quando le leggi sono fatte su misura per le multinazionali affinché queste ottengano mercati sempre più grandi, sempre più controllo sull’utilizzo della terra, sempre più controllo sul decidere e disegnare i sistemi agricoli, ecco che subiamo gli enormi problemi a cui stiamo assistendo. Ma per me questo momento storico ha un aspetto interessante perché non solo gli agricoltori indiani si stanno rivoltando, ma anche gli agricoltori olandesi, quelli tedeschi, irlandesi, italiani. E lo fanno perché gli oligarchi, i miliardari, possiedono la più alta concentrazione di ricchezza, hanno in mano le attività finanziarie che controllano le multinazionali.

Questi miliardari hanno un progetto comune: sterminare tutte le specie e tutta l’umanità produttiva. L’economia della cura è per me un processo rivoluzionario perché la cura è la prima cosa che sostiene la vita, sia nella società che nella natura, ma ancora più importante è che, introducendo la cura nell’economia, ci riappropriamo dell’economia, e la riconvertiamo dall’essere economia di pirateria e furto ad essere un’economia di rigenerazione ed amore”.

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Since the beginning of the Russian special military operation in Ukraine, Washington has shown that it is willing to do anything to move global society against Moscow, even if it means violating international law. According to a recent report, the US government plans to take measures against Russia within the UN framework to respond to the integration of the liberated regions into the territory of the Federation. Considering that Russia would veto any measure of this kind in the UNSC, it is possible to say that once again the US is planning a kind of “coup” at the UN.

A report recently published by Politico says the US government has a plan to impose measures against Russia globally, adopting a resolution at the Security Council to condemn Moscow for the referendums in the liberated oblasts. In fact, such a resolution has already been proposed by American diplomats, promoting sanctions not only against Moscow but also against all countries that recognize the referendums as legitimate and the liberated zones as part of Russian territory.

However, the proposition of resolutions is a mere bureaucratic practice, subject to control by countries with veto power. The West has tried several times to sanction Russia in the Security Council and was prevented precisely because Moscow has the right of veto, due to its permanent seat. But apparently the US would be seeking to pass the resolution independently of the bureaucratic procedure of the Council, trying to prevent Russia from vetoing the measure.

There are still no very clear details on how this would be done, but articles published about the issue cite internal US government sources and it is alleged that something is being planned in this regard. There is also no clear information on the material implications of such a resolution, on whether it would be limited to imposing sanctions against Russia or whether it would attempt to promote massive military support to Kiev on an international scale. However, it is expected that the US government will use a strategy similar to that adopted in the Resolution 82, which approved the condemnation against North Korea in 1950 and “legitimized” the US invasion of the Peninsula.

It is necessary to remember that this would not be the first time that the US government has tried to do something of this kind. A few months ago, Washington officials made statements that the US was planning a Security Council’s reformulation, excluding Russia, due to intervention in Ukraine, and China, due to strong ties with Moscow. After several denunciations and criticisms, the American plan seems not to have gone ahead, but apparently the US continues to plan illegal maneuvers against the current institutional arrangement of the UN.

It is important to mention that the strength of the UN as an international institution is due to the willingness of its member states to comply with the commitments made in international deliberations. It is the member states that make the organization strong, not the organization that coerces the states. In this sense, if illegal maneuvers, coup attempts, institutional illegitimate reforms and other similar attitudes become common in the organization’s praxis, the tendency is not that the affected countries are deterred, but that they simply withdraw from the UN and the organization ends.

If the US continues to try to create a “UN without Russia”, the UN will not last long, as no organization with global dimensions can survive in the absence of Russia. That is why it is absolutely irrational to want to impose coercive measures against Russia on a global level. What the US and other Western powers can legally do is try to pass measures through the regular procedure, submitting resolutions and peacefully accepting an eventual Russian veto. It is this bureaucratic structure that has allowed the UN to balance international interests and avoid a new world war since 1945.

For the West, however, ensuring peace is no longer a priority in the face of the agenda against Moscow. The US objective is to carry out every possible form of attack on Russia, even appealing to coups in the UN itself. It remains to be seen when the other signatory states of the UN Charter will perceive the threat posed by American anti-Russian belligerence and will take measures to prevent the catastrophe.

Undoubtedly, reforms in the UN are necessary, but not to make it subservient to Washington, but to adapt it to the multipolar world order. It is necessary to expand the Security Council and include the new emerging powers, in addition to guaranteeing the existence of mechanisms that improve international security. Any way that acts contrary to this will only contribute to the failure of the UN.

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Lucas Leiroz is a researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant. You can follow Lucas on Twitter.

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***

While the propaganda machine works round the clock to create an alternate reality that doesn’t exist past a TV or smartphone screen, the economic and social unraveling resulting from the failed economic siege of Russia has been affecting hundreds of millions around the world.

After Russia launched its counteroffensive against NATO aggression, the state and corporate-run mainstream media of the political West started spreading multiple false narratives about it. One of the most common themes was that the Russian military supposedly “failed” because the Kiev regime didn’t collapse in a matter of days.

In the following months, especially after the Russian forces withdrew from northern areas of Ukraine, this was used to further reinforce the narrative that the Russian military was somehow “defeated”. However, the truth lies in the Russian military and geopolitical nomenclature regarding the events in Ukraine. While the political West is unanimous in calling it “an unprovoked, brutal invasion”, the Russian side calls it a special military operation.

Although the wording may seem irrelevant, it does have serious implications. The whole operation has been limited from the start. As Russian President Vladimir Putin himself stated, Moscow didn’t really show more than a fraction of its capabilities. And indeed, given the number of Russian troops initially engaged in the special military operation, which was approximately 100-150 thousand, versus more than 200,000 troops of the Kiev regime, it’s clear that Moscow never expected to take control of the entire territory of Ukraine. In addition, the Kiev regime forces exponentially grew in size after the forced mobilization of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian men. And although Western media are trying to downplay it, multiple estimates put the number of conscripted personnel anywhere between several hundred thousand and nearly a million soldiers.

For its part, Russia decided not to increase the number of troops engaged in the special military operation. What’s more, with troop rotation, the true number of Russian soldiers actively engaged in combat operations was much lower, most likely standing between 50 and 100 thousand, stretching for well over a thousand kilometers from the northern areas of the Kharkov, through Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson regions all the way to the Black Sea coast. These forces have consistently been outnumbered by the Kiev regime troops for over 7 months now and have stood their ground.

And although this could be attributed to the Russian military’s vast technological and numerical superiority, especially in terms of artillery and air dominance, it can only be considered a remarkable achievement from a purely military standpoint. This also explains the Kiev regime’s reaction to Moscow’s recent low-level mobilization announcement, which will increase the number of Russian troops engaged in the special military operation by 300,000, pushing the total to well over 400,000 soldiers.

As per usual, the mainstream media in the United States and other countries of the political West have been trying to portray this as a sign of Russia’s supposed “weakness”. However, the Pentagon’s and NATO’s reaction speaks volumes of how the political West really feels about the mobilization. With Western Military Industrial Complexes already working at maximum capacity to supply the Kiev regime forces with additional weapons, having a twofold or threefold increase in the number of Russian troops is the last thing they needed (at least in the short term). If the Russian military was able to conduct successful offensive operations for months, while being outnumbered, what could one expect when Moscow decides to exponentially increase the size of its forces engaged in the special military operation?

In the meantime, the Western press and other media are constructing the narrative that millions of Russian men are supposedly trying to flee the country in order to avoid mobilization. Naturally, they are ignoring the fact that the Russian Ministry of Defense registered nearly 900,000 requests for joining the armed forces, with many regions and federal subjects in the country providing several times more troops than they’re required to. The most prominent example of this is Chechnya, which overshot its mobilization quota by over 250%. And yet, the Western media keep insisting that there’s supposed “widespread opposition to Putin’s war”. In reality, the fact that the Russian police arrested several hundred protesters in a country of approximately 150 million shows just how truly “widespread” the opposition to mobilization is.

Expectedly, the propaganda war isn’t only limited to the supposed “failures” of the Russian military, but also its leadership. Recent speculation that Vladimir Putin is ill, on the verge of death or losing power, while ignoring the rapidly deteriorating mental and physical health of Joe Biden serves as a testament to that. To make matters worse, the attempts by the so-called “fact-checkers” to whitewash Biden’s string of dementia-induced gaffes can only be described as comical. And while the political West’s propaganda machine works round the clock to create an alternate reality that doesn’t exist past a TV or smartphone screen, the economic and social unraveling resulting from the failed economic siege of Russia has been affecting hundreds of millions around the world and is only bound to get worse.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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***

During an interview on the corporate media “Face the Nation” program, the “president” of the fake nation Ukraine, revealed how much of your money is being shoveled into the coffers of oligarchs infamous for theft and forming neo-Nazi paramilitaries.

“The United States gives us $1.5 billion every month to support our budget to fight,” said Zelenskyy, and added that there is “a deficit of $5 billion in our budget,” as if the US, with a staggering deficit problem of its own, is somehow responsible for propping up the neo-Nazi infested “democracy.”

See the entire interview here:

Like most conmen, Zelenskyy will never be satisfied with the amount of debt (that is expected to be the responsibility to pay off for American children and grandchildren) incurred to shovel devalued dollars into the dark neo-Nazi hole that calls itself Ukraine.

Zero Hedge notes:

Zelensky said, after revealing the astonishing $1.5 billion in aid on a monthly basis figure, “But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians. Why do we need this? We need the security in order to attract our Ukrainians to come back home.”

In other words, we are responsible to make up for what the oligarchs and kleptocrats in Ukraine have stolen to pad their private fiefdoms and paramilitaries.

As for his fellow Ukrainians, if billions of devalued US dollars defeat Russia (and it most certainly will not), this will convince those that have escaped war and misery, will decide “it’s safe [to] come, settle, work here and will pay taxes and then we won’t have a deficit of $5 billion in our budget. So it will be a positive for everybody,” Zelensky insisted.

No mention here that thousands have fled Ukraine to escape neo-Nazi persecution, torture, and targeted assassination (for the crime of speaking Russian).

🇺🇦 Ukrainian nationalists terrorizing the people of Eastern Ukraine

In late February 2022, Russian forces & volunteers helped Donbas refugees to leave their destroyed homes & have a chance at a new life. The number of refugees in February exceeds 3.2 million.@georgegalloway 😔 pic.twitter.com/MsFhC08h9a

— Bro Fii (@OB_Ages) September 23, 2022

“And then the United States will not have to continue, give us this support,” he concluded, though the way things are going it could be years before the US might “not have to continue” the nonstop aid. Zelensky appeared to be trying to present a strange “win-win” for American, though again if average US taxpayers grasped the full enormity of it, they certainly might question that narrative.

Right. And I have a bridge and a stable of pink ponies on the Moon for sale.

On Monday, Reuters reported:

Negotiators of a stop-gap spending bill in the U.S. Congress have agreed to include nearly $12 billion in new military and economic aid to Ukraine, sources familiar with the talks said on Monday, reflecting continued bipartisan support for the Kyiv government in the wake of Russia’s invasion.

In response to a request from the Biden administration, the funding would include $4.5 billion to provide defense capabilities and equipment for Ukraine, as well as $2.7 billion to continue military, intelligence and other defense support, said the sources, who asked not to be identified ahead of the announcement.

Reading this, one might believe neolibs and neocons, so prevalent in Congress and our government, are generously helping the Ukrainian people, but this is nothing short of a sick joke. In fact, the US national security state doesn’t give a fig about the fate of the Ukrainian people. It is using Ukraine as a battlefield in an undeclared war between Russia and NATO, a fight NATO has itched for since its inception in 1949.

Of course, “defending” Europe from “Russian [and previously Soviet] aggression” is only part of the manufactured picture, as NATO has long been used as an enforcer in the Balkans, the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa.

As for the crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia by the neoliberal NATO hit squad, the late Ramsey Clark, a former senior official in the Kennedy and Johnson Justice Department, organized “Text of Indictment by the Independent Commission of Inquiry Hearing to Investigate U.S./NATO War Crimes Against the People of Yugoslavia.” Ramsey indicted

The Government of every NATO country that participated directly in the assaults on Yugoslavia with aircraft, missiles, or personnel and Commanding Generals, Admirals, NATO personnel directly involved in designating targets, flight crews and deck crews of the NATO military bomber and assault aircraft, NATO military personnel directly involved in targeting, preparing and launching missiles at Yugoslavia, the governments of the NATO countries’ personnel causing, condoning or failing to prevent violence in Yugoslavia before and during NATO occupation and Others to be named.

The document, of course, was ignored by NATO, the US, and the corporate war propaganda media. NATO prefers to take out media that does not support its murderous and unprovoked actions, as it did when Obama decided to use NATO to turn Libya into a third-world hellhole and slave market.

A press conference held by the Broadcast Employees Libya declared:

In an act of international terrorism and in violation of Security Council resolutions of the UN, NATO attacked the facilities of the Broadcasting Department of Libya during the early hours of [July 7, 2011]. Three of our technicians were killed and 15 injured while performing their professional duty as Libyan journalists… We are employees of Libyan state television. We are not a military target, we are not officers in the army and not a threat to civilians. We are doing our job as journalists in representing what from the bottom of my heart we believe is the reality of the NATO aggression and violence in Libya.

According to research conducted by the Foundation to Battle Injustice,

not only the United States, but also other members of the NATO, including the United Kingdom, are responsible for war crimes in the Middle East. So far, none of these States has suffered any economic or legal responsibility for their crimes, despite the confirmed and recognized facts of brutal reprisals against civilians and the use of prohibited weapons against civilians.

NATO enforcers committed numerous war crimes, according to a November 2020 report.

According to a report on the actions of the military in Afghanistan, which has long been classified, Australian soldiers deliberately killed farmers and civilians in Afghanistan as part of a rite of passage through which all recruits had to go. The report was published after a four-year investigation, during which more than 400 witnesses were interviewed and several thousand documents were examined. The report provides evidence that one of the Australian soldiers knocked a local unarmed resident to the ground and shot him in the back of the head, despite the fact that the civilian posed absolutely no threat. The investigation also learned about another incident when Australian mercenaries and patrol members “deliberately attacked” unarmed civilians, after which they planted weapons and ammunition on them, trying to create the impression that they were in danger. Soldiers also competed to outperform other patrols in the number of civilian enemies killed in combat.

The United Kingdom, being a NATO member country, was one of the first to take part in the operation against the Taliban regime in Afghanistan in the autumn of 2001. British forces were involved in the killing of nearly 300 Afghan civilians, including at least 86 children and more than 200 adult civilians. The British Armed Forces paid compensation to Afghan civilians in the amount of $940,657 for 289 dead civilians between 2006 and 2014, which is an average of $3,254 per family. In other words, for the UK, the life of an Afghan civilian during the war cost an average of 2,380 pounds. The youngest victim was a three-year-old boy who was killed during a mine clearance operation by British forces. One of the most serious incidents listed in the protocols is the death of four children who were allegedly “mistakenly shot” by British soldiers during an incident in December 2009. Many military experts are still wondering how four children from the same family can be “shot by mistake”. (Emphasis in original.)

The manifest absurdity of NATO propaganda focusing on unproven and fake (e.g. Bucha) war crimes is intended to rationalize mass murder on a large scale.

Day 204.
Ukrainian army attack, deliberately targeting civilian areas in Donetsk. There is no Russian military element there. This coverage will never appear in the Western media. They are just waiting for news of slander and propaganda like #Izyum, #Bucha, & #Kramatorsk. pic.twitter.com/tSm5bC8jhE

— AW. Wikanadi  (@awwikanadi) September 21, 2022

Important video segment for discussions with people who believe the US and west war propaganda wholeheartedly. Like the russian systematic rape stories or bucha. I found it in the intro to "redacted" live shows, then googled because no source.Sry fr ads.https://t.co/Ow1oYfwM7D

— Dodo Dadabi (@DDadabi) September 21, 2022

NATO war propaganda has remained an integral part of the “alliance” since its inception. NATO’s pernicious media spin has focused on the Cold War, anticommunism, the arms race, the Vietnam War, “Team B” (to overestimate the effectiveness of the Soviet military), the propaganda by Le Cercle, also known as the “Piny Group” (mostly from intelligence services), the Jerusalem Conference on International Terrorism, and the effort to turn the “war on terror” into a noble cause (as if 900,000 deaths and $8 trillion squandered was worth it, as the late Madeline Albright might have said).

All of the above should provide enough evidence of the murderous character of NATO, the serial murdering midget created by the US national security state to enforce neoliberal doctrine on the reluctant.

Ukraine hopes for a surplus of gravy from the United States and, despite public opposition, will get pretty much what it wants, including missiles able to reach the interior of Russia, including its nuclear power plants (a truly psychopathic proposal of murder en masse).

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Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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

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***

Fox News reporter Jennifer Griffin has confirmed that the U.S. was not responsible for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline explosion, because the Pentagon told her so.

Yes, really.

Despite accusations flying that the United States could have been involved in the blasts that have reportedly could scupper the pipelines permanently, and without any investigation having taken place, Griffin’s crack journalism has solved the case.

“There is no evidence or indication the US was involved in any way with the Nordstream 2 pipeline explosions,” Griffin tweeted. “My question at the Pentagon briefing today: Can you rule out that the U.S. was involved? Senior Military Official: ‘Yeah, we were absolutely not involved.’ ”

There is no evidence or indication the US was involved in any way with the Nordstream 2 pipeline explosions.

My question at the Pentagon briefing today: Can you rule out that the U.S. was involved?
Senior Military Official: “Yeah, we were absolutely not involved.”

— Jennifer Griffin (@JenGriffinFNC) September 28, 2022

Well, that’s that then, case closed.

As Chris Menahan notes, the Fox News reporter has been guilty of brazenly amplifying false regime propaganda before.

“Earlier this year, Griffin put out the debunked hoax story that Russia bombed the Babi Yair holocaust memorial in Ukraine.”

The reporting was later debunked after an Israeli journalist visited the site and found it to be completely unscathed.

Griffin also recycled the lie that Russia was using “mobile crematoriums” to “evaporate” war dead, when the supposed video proving it was taken from a 2013 YouTube video.

“When news came out about US biolabs in Ukraine, Griffin also simply repeated Pentagon talking points to dismiss the story as a nothingburger,” writes Menahan.

When Griffin was recently rewarded with a new multiyear contract, she stated that it “has been an honor to provide viewers with trusted reporting from the Pentagon and across the world on issues that are paramount to all of us – the security and safety of our fellow citizens and allies.”

“Trusted reporting.”

Here is Jennifer Griffin laundering Victoria Nuland talking points on behalf of the Pentagon

She offers no proof to back up these claimspic.twitter.com/dgjf9vxjEX

— Jack Posobiec XLV (@JackPosobiec) March 10, 2022

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***

The Israeli MOH had no adverse events reporting system for the entire year of 2021. They commissioned a research team to analyze the reports from a new system implemented on December 2021. A leaked video reveals that in June, the researchers presented serious findings to the MOH, that indicated long-term effects, including some not listed by Pfizer, and a causal relationship – so the Ministry published a manipulative report, and told the public that no new signal was found

“Here we will have to really think medical-legal. Why medical-legal? Because for quite a few adverse events we said: ‘OK, it exists, and there is a report, but still get vaccinated’. I mean, we have to think about how to write it and how to present it correctly. So this will not yield lawsuits later: ‘Wait, wait, wait, you said everything will pass and you can get vaccinated. And now look what happened to me. The phenomenon continues'”.

The speaker is Prof. Mati Berkowitz, a pediatric specialist, head of Clinical Pharmacology and Toxicology unit at Shamir Medical Center, and head of the research team appointed by the Israeli Ministry of Health (IMOH) to examine the safety of the COVID-19 vaccine. This crucial study was based on a new adverse event reporting system the MOH launched in December 2021 – 12 months AFTER rolling out the vaccines to the public, as the system implemented in December 2020, as they now officially admit, was dysfunctional and did not allow an analysis of the data. In an internal Zoom meeting in early June, the recording of which was leaked to the press, Prof. Berkowitz warned MOH senior officials that they should think carefully how to present his study’s findings to the public, otherwise they may be sued, since they completely contradict the MOH’s claims that serious side effects are rare, short term and transient. After analyzing the reports received over a period of 6 months, the research team found that many serious side effects were in fact long-term, including ones not listed by Pfizer, and established causal relations with the vaccine. Yet, instead of publishing the findings in a transparent manner to the public, the MOH withheld the findings for nearly two months, and when it finally released an official document, it misrepresented and manipulated the findings, minimizing the extent of reports, and stating that no new adverse events (“signals”) were found, and that the events that were detected were not necessarily caused by the vaccine, even though the researchers themselves said the exact opposite.

Background: “The world’s laboratory” had no reliable monitoring system

As is well known, Israel was crowned, by none other than Pfizer’s CEO Albert Burla, “the world’s laboratory”. And for a good reason. Indeed, Israel has a very high vaccination rate and was the first in the world to give boosters to everyone. In fact, Pfizers’ request for the approval of the boosters was at least partially based on the so-called study conducted in Israel. Israel was also one of the first countries in the world to vaccinate pregnant women.

Yet, as the MOH now admits, during this entire critical year in which the vast majority of Israelis were vaccinated, most of them with 2-3 doses, the vaccine adverse events reporting system was dysfunctional and did not enable a reliable analysis of the data.

In fact, since the beginning of the vaccination campaign, many Israeli experts have expressed serious concerns regarding the ability of the IMOH to monitor the safety of the vaccine and provide reliable data to the world. Nevertheless, the IMOH told the Israeli public, the FDA, and the entire world, that they have a surveillance system, and that they are closely monitoring the data. For example, Prof. Retsef Levy from MIT, an expert in health systems and risk management, voiced serious criticism during a Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meeting on September 17 which focused on the approval of the booster dose, stating that the system is dysfunctional and that the safety of COVID-19 vaccines is not monitored properly. In response, Dr. Sharon Alroi-Preis, the Health Ministry’s head of public services and a top COVID adviser to the Israeli government, claimed that she is “pretty surprised with Retsef Levi’s comment that Israel doesn’t follow adverse events”. Dr. Alroi-Preis stated: “It’s our data. I’m in charge of it. So I know exactly what is being reported to us”.

Only at the end of December 2021, a year after starting the vaccine rollout did the MOH finally institute a proper system, to coincide with the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines in children aged 5-11. The new system is based on a non-anonymous digital reporting form, which the Ministry asked all public HMOs (Health Management Organizations) to distribute among all patients after they had been vaccinated, so that those who suffered side effects could report them. At the same time, the ministry appointed Prof. Mati Berkowitz and his staff members to analyze the reports. The analysis was done on reports received from the HMOs in Israel over a period of 6 months – from the beginning of December 2021 to the end of May 2022.

The team examined both the close categories of side effects that were set by the MOH (there were 7 such categories), and the free text (they identified 22 categories of side effects). Due to limited time and resources, they decided to first analyze only the 5 most common side effects they identified: 1. neurological injuries; 2. general side effects; 3. menstrual irregularities; 4. musculoskeletal system disorders; and 5. digestive System/kidney and urinary system.

New signals, long-term adverse events, and re-challenge

In early June, the researchers presented their findings to MOH senior officials, including Dr. Emilia Anis, head of the MOH’s epidemiological department. Here are their main findings and points:

1. New signals – The research team identified and characterized side effects not listed by Pfizer, including neurological side effects such as hypoesthesia, paresthesia, tinnitus, and dizziness; back pain; and Digestive System symptoms in children (abdominal pain).
2. Long-term events – The research team repeatedly stressed during the discussion that their findings indicate that, contrary to what we were told so far, in many cases, serious adverse events are long-term, last weeks, months, a year, or even more, and in some cases – are ongoing, so that the side effect still lasted when the study was over. These include menstrual irregularities and various neurological side effects, muscle-skeletal injuries, GI problems, and kidney and urinary system adverse events.
3. Re-challenge – The researchers found many cases of re-challenge – recurrence or worsening of a side effect following repeated doses of the vaccine. In fact, they identified cases of re-challenge in all the 5 most common side effects they analyzed – e.g., neurological injuries; general side effects; menstrual irregularities;  musculoskeletal system disorders; and digestive system/kidney and urinary system.

An important example that demonstrates the severity of these findings is menstrual disorders.

* Long-lasting – In one of the slides, the researchers wrote: “Studies carried out on the above-mentioned subjec noted short-term abnormalities (up to a few days) in the menstrual cycle. However, over 90% of the reports detailing the characteristics of the duration of this adverse event indicate long-term changes (emphasis in the original. Y.S). Over 60% indicate duration of over 3 months”.

* Rechallenge – Then in ~10% of the cases, the problem recurred following additional doses.

1. Professor Retsef Levi, who is also a member of the Israel Public Emergency Council for the COVID 19 Crisis, said in an interview with GB News that the example of long-term menstrual disorders detected in the study also demonstrates the authorities’ response to the public’s reports. At first, they utterly deny any causal relationship between these disorders and the COVID-19 vaccines – in this case they denied it despite countless reports that flooded the internet from the very beginning of the vaccination rollout. Then, when the reports still continued and became impossible to deny, the authorities, and experts on their behalf, changed the narrative admitting there might be a relationship, but even if there is one, the symptoms are mild and transient. They only last a few days and they have no future implications on fertility.
   

   The researchers’ conclusions: The findings establish causality, and may lead to lawsuits

   1. Causality – The researchers emphasize that, according to the literature, these findings establish causal relations between the vaccine and the side effect.

   As can be heard in the following clip, Prof. Berkowitz stresses that it increases the chances of causality “from possible to definite”:

   “One of the things that are strong here is the re-challenge. We know about medications. There is the Naranjo scale [the Adverse Drug Reactions (ADR) Probability Scale]. Naranjo, when there is an adverse event which recurs with the re-challenge, it turns from ‘possible’ to definite, to significant”.

   2. Think Medical-Legal – as if all this wasn’t damning enough, Prof. Berkowitz warns the MOH officials, in reference to the long-lasting side effects, they should think carefully how to present his study’s findings to the public, since they completely contradict their claims that serious side effects are rare, short term and transient.

The HMO’s are keeping the data close to their chests

The research team explained during the meeting that their study one important limitation – they only got cooperation from one small HMO to share the data it received from the new reporting system. (Israel’s health system is divided into 4 different HMO-type organizations; each Israeli is signed up with one of them), while none of the other 3 HMO’s shared their data, including Israel’s 2 largest ones – Clalit and Maccabi. Prof. Berkowitz said that they are keeping the data ‘close to their chests.

The only HMO that did fully cooperate (Meuhedet) is very small, representing only about 15% of the Israeli population, with a heavy religious population, who has lower vaccination rates than the general population, and seldom use smartphones, so most of them were not even able to receive the text message.

Two other limitations mentioned by the research team:

• The most severe cases were not even included in the analysis. There were 173 cases of hospitalization and ER visits that were separately examined by a dedicated expert committee.
• The researchers stressed they still have a lot of work, since they only analyzed the 5 top common side effects,  but there were 17 others (including cardiovascular, which was 6^th most common) that they did not yet analyze.

‘The denominator report’ – concealment, manipulation and cover-up

Although the IMOH was aware of these findings, they withheld them for 2 months, not only from the public, but even from their own expert committee that decided on June 30 to approve the vaccine for infants as young as 6 months. That decision was made 3 weeks after the IMOH had been warned about these results and their implications.

The formal report was finally released, on August 20, in a closed press briefing, and surprisingly, the MOH admitted in this report, black on white, that Israel did not have a functional adverse events reporting system until December 2021. The unbelievable explanation was: “As the vaccination operation progressed, data was received from the anonymous online form, but without the ability to process and professionally validate the data”.

Yet, even after receiving such serious findings and warnings, they manipulated the data and tried to hide crucial information to make the vaccine look safe.

• ‘No new signal’ – The MOH went so far as to claim there were no new adverse events found in the study that were not already known – no new signals. What about the neurological injuries, which the researchers said are not even mentioned in Pfizer’s label? What about the long duration, or the re-challenge? None of these findings are anywhere to be found in the official report.

• Manipulating the numbers – In order to promote the narrative of “rare adverse events”, the MOH divided the number of reports received with a denominator of the total number of doses given in Israel for the entire year and a half since the beginning of the vaccine rollout – ~18 million, hiding the fact that they only instituted the system in December 2021, and that the analysis was done on reports received during the 6 months until May 2022, from one small HMO.
  This ignores the known fact that such passive reporting systems cover only a fraction of the actual events. That would still be true even if the system was operational throughout the entire vaccination period and used by all HMOs (which of course is not the current case). This manipulation – using the denominator of the total doses, was repeated in each of the categories of the side effects in the report.

Furthermore, it turns out that in order to downplay the rate of reports on menstrual irregularities, the MOH used a denominator of the total number of all adult doses – ~16 million – and thus, absurdly, included men in the equation of how common menstrual irregularities are.

Global implications

The discussion exposed in the leaked video has far-reaching and worrying implications, at a global level. While Israel is a relatively small country, it was dubbed “the world’s laboratory”. The eyes of much of the world were on it, and the FDA and other regulators have repeatedly cited its experience with the vaccine as a basis for policymaking, including for boosters and mandates and much else. So if Israel did not in fact have a functioning adverse event monitoring system in place and its data was a fiction, and even when it did launch a proper monitoring system a year too late, with analysis of the system’s findings, completely ignored and withheld – what was the FDA really relying on? What were all those regulators relying on?

The Ministry of Health did not respond to Real-Time Magazine’s requests for comment. Prof. Mati Berkowitz refused to comment and referred us to the IMOH.

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***

 

 

Situation

The Senate might vote on the fiscal year 2023 military budget this month. Or it might not; nobody’s sure. What’s for certain is that the bill the Senate considers will have at least as much as $850 billion for the Pentagon. In other words, we’re staring down a $72 billion year-to-year increase in military spending with this legislation: The FY2022 version of the same bill (National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA) licensed $778 billion for the Pentagon.

How we got to an $850 billion Pentagon budget

In March, Joe Biden proposed increasing annual military spending by $35 billion—to $813 billion—as part of his FY2023 budget request. In June, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) added another $37 billion on top of that before advancing the $850 billion bill to the House floor for approval.

This decision was reportedly a matter of course for the committee. According to one HASC member, there was “almost no debate” on dumping another $37 billion on top of Biden’s own proposed increase. An overlooked reason why the committee’s move was so automatic was the ‘expertise’ that made a $72 billion year-to-year increase seem appropriate or even natural.

Think tanks are said to be free from the ugly forces that bias in-house policy planning—namely, all the lobbying and campaign cash that encourage members of Congress to make decisions based on parochial interests and not the public’s. The problem is that establishment think tanks are corrupted by the same monied interests members of Congress are. In this case, we’re talking about the arms industry.

Every think tank represented in a House Armed Services Committee hearing to provide expert testimony from January 1, 2020 through September 16, 2022 that disclosed its donors received funding from military contractors (the one that didn’t disclose its donors was the hawkish American Enterprise Institute).

The result? Military contractors were able to launder their profit-driven interests through ostensibly non-political institutions, while powerful lawmakers on the HASC got their parochially-driven policy positions validated by ostensibly unbiased ‘expertise’.

UPDATE (19 Sep): AEI is the think tank that doesn’t disclose its donors, but after some digging you’ll find that AEI has taken money from the military industry by way of its board chair (so the chart above should be a solid yellow pie). Here is Ben Freeman with the receipts:

Excellent, must read, research here. The one think tank that doesn't disclose its funders (for shame, AEI) also has $ ties to the weapons industry. #Thread (1/3) https://t.co/c71RX3irHa

— Ben Freeman (@BenFreemanDC) September 19, 2022

AEI's board chair, Daniel A. D’Aniello, is co-founder of the Carlyle Group which owns several DoD contractors: https://t.co/8RfUogxCUb

D'Aniello has given at least $20 million to AEI: https://t.co/eDNtqNcipi (2/3)

— Ben Freeman (@BenFreemanDC) September 19, 2022

In other words, 100% of think tanks represented in HASC hearings since Jan 2020 have accepted $ from the arms industry. (3/3)

— Ben Freeman (@BenFreemanDC) September 19, 2022

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***

In his remarkable book, The Psychology of Totaitarianism, the Flemish psychologist Mathias Desmet explains how collective psychosis can cause people to lose their critical faculties.  He cites a famous experiment in which a person can be made to say that one line on a diagram is the same length as another, when in fact it is longer, if seven or eight actors have pretended to come to the same conclusion before him.

Desmet is writing mainly about the coercive psychosis of Covid.  But the same arguments apply to the current collective psychosis about Russia.  For years and decades now, we have been fed horror stories about Russia.  These have of course only increased in intensity since the invasion of Ukraine. We have now reached a situation in which entire sections of the media, and their respective national governments, claim to believe things which are simply impossible.

The latest example is the apparent sabotage of the Nord Stream gas pipelines.  Russia has been immediately blamed but the accusation is not credible, for the following reasons.  I defy any person endowed with normal critical faculties to show the opposite.

The Americans have been opposed to Nord Stream 2 for years.

It was Germany, on the orders of the USA, that decided not to open the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in February. Joe Biden said in front of Olaf Scholz, ‘We will put an end to it.’  When asked how the US would do this, he replied, ‘I promise you, we’ll be able to do it.’[1] Victoria Nuland made it even more clear in January.[2] 

This is a long-standing American position.  Under the Trump administration, extraterritorial sanctions were imposed on European companies working on the construction of the pipeline.  Trump attended the Three Seas summit in Warsaw in 2018, an initiative to encourage the building of infrastructure to make Europe able to receive American liquefied natural gas in place of Russian gas. There is therefore a very long-standing US opposition to the continuing and increased supply of gas by Russia to Germany.

The Americans, together with the Poles and the Ukrainians, have been mounting a vociferous campaign against Nord Stream 2 for years, the Poles comparing the pipeline to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of September 1939. The former German Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, has been vilified and nearly expelled from his own party for working for Nord Stream 2.  In the face of all this hostility, Russia has continued to build the pipeline, completing it last year to the absolute fury of all the above-mentioned countries. Why would Russia blow it up after spending billions on it?

Russia has no motive to destroy the pipelines, but instead has an active interest in their remaining operational, including for political reasons. 

In the current situation, Germany refused to open Nord Stream 2 and then the Russians, ostensibly for technical reasons, idled Nord Stream 1. 

If you believe that the technical reasons are just a pretext, and that in reality the Russians idled Nord Stream 1 to put pressure on the Europeans, as has been widely alleged, then only possible logical conclusion is that that the pressure in question is being wielded in an attempt to force the Europeans to open Nord Stream 2, by making them realise they need it. 

As Russia continues to supply gas through the overland Yamal and Druzhba (Friendship) pipelines, and as Russia recently foiled a plot to blow up the Turk Stream pipeline[3], it is incredible to allege that Russia wants to stop supplying Europe with gas. 

On the contrary, the continued supply of gas, which is now sold for roubles, has helped the rouble become one of the strongest performing currencies in the world, its strength enabling the Russian Central Bank to cut interest rates and recover from the initial shock caused by the sanctions in March.  Russia has every interest in continuing to sell gas, including in the current conditions of economic warfare.  By the same token, Russia’s enemies have every motive for removing this leverage from Russia.

If you argue, as does the President of the European Commission, that Russia is trying to blackmail Europe by cutting gas supplies, then by what possible logic would Russia sabotage the pipeline?  The destruction of the pipeline removes precisely any ability of Russia to blackmail anyone.  That is presumably why it was sabotaged.

Could Russia have done it?

The crazier media have been full of speculation about Russian frogmen carrying out a secret mission.  Anything is possible.  But if this is the truth, then it shows up Nato in rather a bad light. The explosions occurred just a few kilometres or a few dozen kilometres from the Polish, Danish and German coasts – all Nato members.  If Nato is not capable of protecting a key item of European infrastructure, then what is the use of it?

By contrast, the Americans conducted exercises in June 2022 on Bornholm, the Danish island where the pipeline blew up, testing underwater explosives and drones.[4]  So while it is very difficult to see how Russian frogmen could have carried out an operation under Nato’s very nose, it is easy to see how the Americans could have done it because they were practicing that very thing right there three months ago.  Maybe that is what the exercises were really all about.

However, if you do believe that the Russians could have sent a secret hit squad to blow up a pipeline under the Baltic Sea, then it is inconceivable that they would blow up their own pipeline and not Baltic Pipe, which (coincidentally?) was officially opened on the very day after Nord Stream 2 was attacked.  Baltic Pipe is a Norwegian-Danish-Polish project designed to supply gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland and to reduce dependency on Russia.  If you think that Russia is trying to sabotage Europe’s gas supplies, you must surely conclude that it  would blow up Baltic Pipe instead.  If Russia wants to starve Europe of gas, it needs only not to put any gas into Nord Stream 2, it does not need to blow it up.

“F**ck the EU”

The US Undersecretary of State, Victoria Nuland, who as we saw above, said in January that she had told the Germans Nord Stream 2 would not go ahead, famously had a phone conversation in 2014 with the then US ambassador to Kiev, Geoffrey Pyatt, in which the two of them decided the composition of the new Ukrainian government.[5]  At one point, Nuland expressed in vulgar but succinct terms US policy over Ukraine: “Fuck the EU.”

That is exactly what the Americans have just done. At least, that is what the former Polish Foreign Minister and former Defence Minister, Radek Sikorski, thinks.  One of the most vicious Russophobes in a very Russophobic country, Sikorski is very close to the security services.  On the day of the attack, he tweeted quite simply, with a photo of the gas bubbling up to the surface of the sea, “Thank you, USA.”[6]

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John Laughland is Director of Forum for Democracy International.

Notes

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=95&v=OS4O8rGRLf8&feature=youtu.be

[2] https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1486818088016355336

[3] https://tass.com/society/1511625

[4] https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunity-for-research-and-resting-new-technology/

[5] https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2014/feb/07/eu-us-diplomat-victoria-nuland-phonecall-leaked-video

[6] https://twitter.com/radeksikorski/status/1574800653724966915

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***

This week New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. Her address was remarkable. The same person who ordered an invasion of peaceful protesters at Parliament earlier this year, had the chutzpah to say:

“In Aotearoa New Zealand, we deeply value our right to protest. Some of our major social progress has been brought about by hikoi or people power – becoming the first country in the world to recognise women’s right to vote, movement on major indigenous and human rights issues to name but a few.”

She then continued to call for a campaign of global censorship comprising governmental alliances in partnership with the private sector, for the purpose of combating “mis and disinformation”, which she characterized as weapons of war.

From her speech it appears that questioning climate change would be verboten, and attempting to understand the basis of an actual military conflict, e.g., in Ukraine, if it falls outside the approved governmental narrative, would trigger a warning to State censors.

I recall, incidentally, that this same Prime Minister locked down the entire country after a single positive case of Covid emerged in Auckland, that she pushed mandatory inoculations in healthcare, required mask-wearing and social distancing, and helped to create a vax apartheid society that divided people into two camps, the jabbed and the unjabbed, wherein those who exercised their right to choose not to receive an inadequately tested and dubious novel medical intervention were prevented from basic human social interaction: no haircuts, gyms, restaurants, cafes, no theatre-going, no assembly at places of worship, not even school sports for the “unclean”.

She allowed no debate regarding the so-called science behind measures that resulted in hardship, the loss of livelihoods, psychological turmoil and, too, the actual loss of life. And at no time did she support the early treatment of those who contracted Covid.

However I wish to call attention to another kind of disinformation about which the Prime Minister should be concerned: the disinformation of no information. It is a deviously clever tactic and I will illustrate its employment here.

Recently I was contacted by a midwife who had received anecdotal reports of an increase in perinatal deaths in 2022.  She filed Official Information Act requests with every District Health Board in New Zealand to obtain data on perinatal mortality, and in a number of these catchment areas there appeared to be a worrisome increase of deaths over the previous three years.  For example, in the Waikato District Health Board there were 49 perinatal deaths for 2021, and in only the first six months of 2022 there were already 46 total perinatal deaths.

I do not wish to present an analysis of the statistical data received, which is complex and outside my area of expertise – that is an undertaking for another time and by a qualified epidemiologist – but I do wish to point out one variable, one factor, that is glaringly absent, namely, whether mothers had received the Covid so-called vaccine.

This is an astonishing omission.  It signifies that of all the many variables involved in health outcomes, this particular one – the contribution of a Covid injection – would never be able to be determined. In light of the fact that the rollout of the injections represented New Zealand’s largest mass medical intervention in history, the failure to gather these essential data is a dereliction of duty that amounts to criminal neglect.

The Perinatal and Maternal Mortality Review Committee (PMMRC) is charged with the responsibility “to review and report on perinatal deaths with the aim of reducing them while continuously improving the quality of systems and policy.” Their most recent report covers the calendar year 2018; there is no information from that time until the present, though they claim to work  “towards zero preventable deaths or harm for all mothers and babies, families and whānau.”

When asked to include maternal Covid “vaccination” status as a datapoint, the PMMRC wrote evasively and skirted the request with assurances that they were keeping a close eye on perinatal deaths.

An honest government presiding over an honest healthcare system should be mandating the collection and reporting of maternal Covid “vaccine” data for routine analysis. Its failure to do so – purposefully or as a result of pure incompetence – should not be excused.

Instead, the Prime Minister rails on about “dangerous” purveyors of “mis or disinformation” who must be combated with the ways and means of modern warfare, and covers her own malfeasance by providing no information where information is essential.

Come to think of it, how much information was conveyed about the Pfizer inoculation? Oh, yes, I remember: safe and effective.

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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.

Featured image is a screenshot from a video by UNTV

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US military helicopters habitually and on numerous occasions circled for hours over the site of the Nord Stream pipelines incident near Bornholm Island earlier in September, Flightradar24 data showed.

Earlier this month, a US Navy Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk helicopter spent hours loitering over the location of the damaged natural gas pipelines in the Baltic Sea near Bornholm for several days in a row, September 1, 2, and 3, in particular.

Denmark’s maritime traffic agency and Sweden’s Maritime Authority on Monday reported a “dangerous” gas leak in the Baltic Sea close to the route of the inactive Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which experienced an unexplained drop in pressure.

The leak, southeast of the Danish island of Bornholm, “is dangerous for maritime traffic” and “navigation is prohibited within a five nautical mile radius of the reported position,” the agency warned in a notice to ships.

Following the incident, German newspaper Tagesspiegel claimed Monday that Berlin is convinced that the loss of pressure in the three natural gas pipelines between Russia and Germany was not a coincidence and suspects a “targeted attack“.

The cause of the incidents remains unknown and an investigation is underway. Swedish Foreign Minister Ann Linde said on Tuesday that the disruption was caused by detonations, which indicates that it was sabotage.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline, which runs parallel to Nord Stream 1 and was intended to double the capacity for undersea gas imports from Russia, was blocked by Berlin in the days before the start of the war in Ukraine.

Flightradar24 showed an unidentified aircraft that did not even have a helicopter icon hovering over the site. However, the aircraft’s 24-bit ICAO code included in the description makes it possible to establish the model, which is the US military’s Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk. The code is verified through open resources that collect data on military aircraft.

The US helicopter is also shown by the aircraft tracking service to have flown into the area of loitering over the Nord Stream pipelines from Gdansk, Poland.

On the second day of the loitering, almost in parallel with their US counterpart, a Dutch navy NH9 helicopter was flying in the vicinity of Bornholm Island, and it is expected to have been observing the Americans’ activity.

US helicopters also took flights over other Nord Stream pipelines on September 10 and 19 and others stayed over the incident site for hours on the night of September 22 and September 25.

Reportedly, helicopters that made sorties on the night of September 22-23 and 25-26 have especially confusing tracks.

These revelations come after German newspaper Der Siegel reported Tuesday that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) warned the German government there would be attacks on Nord Stream gas pipelines weeks ahead of any incident being reported around the pipelines.

An informed source told the German magazine that Berlin had been told by the CIA a few weeks ago that there would be attacks on the key pipelines supplying a huge portion of Europe’s energy from Russia.

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Featured image: The US military’s Sikorsky MH-60R Seahawk helicopter (Source: Al Mayadeen English)

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The results of the referenda on the accession of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), as well as the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions to the country, have been released by Moscow.

The head of the regional electoral committee Galina Katyushchenko declared that 93.11% of voters supported reunification with Russia, as 100% of ballots have been counted in the Zaporozhye Region.

Lugansk People’s Republic

In the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), 98.42% of voters backed accession to Russia, as per the head of the regional electoral committee, Elena Kravchenko.

“With 100% of the protocols of precinct commissions processed, 98.42% voted for the republic’s entry into the Russian Federation,” Kravchenko said.

Kherson

In the Kherson region, 87.05% of voters supported reunification with Russia, according to the head of the regional election commission, Marina Zakharova.

“A total of 497,051 (87.05%) participants in the referendum answered ‘Yes’ to the question put forward at the referendum ‘Are for the withdrawal of the Kherson region from Ukraine, the formation of an independent state by the Kherson region and its entry into the Russian Federation as a constituent entity of the Russian Federation?'” she said.

Donetsk People’s Republic

With all referenda counted, Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) reported 99.23% of voters in favor of becoming part of Russia.

There were 2,133,326 voters who voted, accounting for 97.51% of the total number of voters, as per the DPR central election commission.

Meanwhile, more than a hundred foreign observers from 40 countries, excluding specialists from Russia, attending the referenda in the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics, as well as in the Zaporozhye and Kherson regions, on joining the Russian Federation, reported no violations, with the exception of threats and shelling from Ukraine.

The voting in the referenda of DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye, and Kherson’s accession to the Russian Federation has begun early on Friday.

Residents of the Zaporozhye and Kherson areas joined the initiative last Tuesday after local public organizations submitted identical demands to their authorities.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has lately indicated in a televised address last Wednesday that Russia will support the referenda results.

NATO countries came together to condemn the referenda, according to a statement revealed last Thursday.

On his account, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has lately threatened Russia with new sanctions in the event of referenda after White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated that the US condemned the DPR, LPR, Zaporozhye, and Kherson referenda to join Russia as “sham” actions and asserted that the US would not recognize the results.

The referenda, according to Sullivan, and a reported Russian plan to mobilize more soldiers, reflect Moscow’s recent military defeats, including ceding sizable amounts of land to the Ukrainian military.

Since the beginning of the war in Ukraine, the Russian military took control of the Azov part of Zaporozhye and Kherson, liberating large cities, such as Kherson, Melitopol, and Berdiansk, and cutting off Kiev from the Sea of Azov.

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Featured image: A woman voting in a referendum (Source: Al Mayadeen English)

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Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 film Dr. Strangelove featured an unhinged Air Force General named Jack D. Ripper, who orders a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union after he becomes convinced that the Soviets were polluting the U.S. water supply.

The scenario presented in the film, unfortunately, is not inconceivable today given the Dr. Strangelove type characters who are prevalent in the upper-ranks of the U.S. military and political establishment.

Source: filmartgallery.com

On September 16, President Joe Biden’s nominee to head the U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM), which oversees the U.S. nuclear weapons arsenal, Anthony J. Cotton was asked at his Senate confirmation hearing by Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) whether he thought nuclear war was unthinkable.

He responded that if confirmed as STRATCOM commander, his role would be to “ensure that the 150,000 men and women supporting strategic command are prepared to do what some folks think may be unthinkable”—that is to deploy weapons from the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

Later in the hearing, Senator Joni Ernst (R-IO) asked Cotton whether in light of the 2018 National Defense Strategy’s conclusion that the U.S. would struggle to win a war with China over Taiwan, “the president should have flexible nuclear options to prevent conventional defeat at the hands of our adversaries in this particular scenario.”

Cotton replied: “yes I do.”

Criminally Insane?

Cotton’s predecessor, Carl J. Richard, would have likely responded in the same way. Last year, he wrote in the U.S. Naval Institute’s monthly magazine that the U.S. military had to “shift its principal assumption from ‘nuclear employment is not possible’ to ‘nuclear employment is a very real possibility,’” in the face of threats from Russia and China.

Former Pentagon whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg stated that Richard sounded like he was “criminally insane.”

Pitch For Even Bigger Nuclear Weapons Budget

The son of an Air Force Master Sergeant who served in the Korean War, Anthony Cotton grew up in Dudley, North Carolina and was commissioned in the Air Force through ROTC at North Carolina State University in 1986.

He went on to rise through the Air Force, becoming deputy director of the National Reconnaissance Office, a senior military assistant to the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, commander of the 45^th space wing and commander of the Air Force global strike command.

Besides specifying his intent on preparing U.S. forces to wage nuclear war, Cotton used his confirmation hearing to make a pitch for an even bigger budget for the U.S. nuclear arsenal—when the U.S. government is already slated to spend $634 billion over the 2021-2030 period, for an average of $60 billion per year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

U.S. nukes [Source: cbo.gov]

According to Cotton, “for the first time since 1945, the first time for us as a nation, we have two near-peer nuclear adversaries [China and Russia] [and will have to] roll up our sleeves to ensure that we are doing everything we can strategy-wise to [deal with] two.”

Cotton said that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was helping “constrain” Russia’s actions in Ukraine and could serve as a bulwark against a Chinese takeover of Taiwan. “I absolutely believe that our nuclear deterrent force held,” he said.

“We did not see Russia do anything with our NATO partners. We may have heard the rhetoric, but I think at the end of the day, Russia and China both understand that we have a strong, resilient nuclear force that is offering deterrence to ourselves and extended deterrence to our allies.”

Such logic obscures the fact that it was the U.S. that provoked conflicts with Russia in China in the first place—and has provoked the new nuclear arms race which could end with the obliteration of much of planet earth with people like Cotton in positions of authority.

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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].

Featured image: Anthony J. Cotton [Source: airandspaceforces.com]; left, Peter Sellers as Dr. Strangelove [Source: commonedge.org ] [Collage courtesy of Steve Brown.]

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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

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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.
–Ellen Brown, author of ‘Web of Debt’ and president of the Public Banking Institute   

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The leaders and most of the news media in the U.S. seem to believe that Washington’s foreign policy over the past several decades has been a success and benefitted both the United States and the world. That assumption wasn’t really true even during the Cold War, although that confrontation eventually resulted in the peaceful demise of America’s nasty totalitarian adversary. There was plenty of collateral damage along the way, with the suffering caused by Washington’s conduct in Vietnam and Afghanistan being the most glaring examples.

The performance of U.S. leaders after the Cold War has been even worse. An array of disruptive, bloody tragedies—most notably those in the Balkans, Afghanistan (again), Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Yemen—mark Uncle Sam’s global trail of wreckage. The Biden administration’s decision to use Ukraine as a pawn in Washington’s power struggle with Russia is fast becoming the latest example.

Very few policymakers even concede that Washington’s overseas military adventures often have not turned out as planned. The news media, which is supposed to serve as the public’s watchdog, have routinely ignored or excused America’s foreign-policy disasters. Instead, when one intervention fails, they simply move on to lobby for the next crusade pushed by U.S. leaders.  Consider how few news accounts now deal with the ongoing violence and chaos in places such as Libya, Syria, and Yemen, even though Washington was a major contributor to all of those tragedies. Paul Poast, a scholar with the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, aptly describes the conflict in Syria as America’s “forgotten war.” “That the war in Syria has become the “forgotten war,” he observes, “points to a more disturbing trend in U.S. foreign policy: The United States is so engaged in wars and interventions around the world that a conflict involving the U.S. military that has killed hundreds of thousands of civilians does not even register with the American public anymore.”

Daniel Larison, in a post on his Eunomia Substack, likewise notes that the pattern in Syria has been replicated in many other places, including Somalia. Despite the extensive human suffering caused by Washington’s long war in Afghanistan, that episode is already fading in prominence now that U.S. troops are no longer in the country. Ukraine is the new center of attention, and the conflict there is portrayed in the same, simplistic, melodramatic fashion that has characterized Washington’s previous crusades.

The elites’ post-Cold War track record is not a pretty one. Even the cases touted as successes fail to stand up to scrutiny. Interventionists emphasize that NATO’s use of military force ended both Bosnia’s civil war and fighting in Kosovo. Although that can be considered a success, it is a partial one at best. Despite the passage of 27 years, Bosnia is no closer to being a viable, united country today than it was in the mid-1990s. The three antagonistic ethnic groups still refuse to cooperate, and the Serbs even periodically threaten to secede.  By all measures, Bosnia is utterly dysfunctional, both economically and politically. Indeed, NATO’s military intervention merely may have postponed the day of reckoning.

The outcome in Kosovo was not much better. Tensions between the Serbian and Kosovar governments are sufficiently acute that NATO intends to increase its “peacekeeping” troop presence and take direct action if the situation gets worse. Belgrade still is unwilling to recognize Kosovo’s independence, a position shared by approximately half of the countries in the international system.  The regime in Pristina and its NATO backers stubbornly refuse to let the predominantly Serbian northeast be governed by Belgrade, even though that concession might resolve the ongoing diplomatic impasse. As in the case of Bosnia, Kosovo remains a powder keg that could cause major problems for the United States and NATO. Yet the Balkan interventions are considered Washington’s great success story.

Matters are even worse following the U.S. crusades in other countries.  The fighting between Syria’s “coalition of religions” government and the Sunni jihadists trying to unseat Bashar al-Assad continues, despite its absence in U.S.-government statements and Western news accounts. Washington also continues to support Kurdish separatists in northeastern Syria and has effective control over that area’s oil production.  The country, though, may be shattered beyond repair from the years of fighting facilitated by U.S. leaders.

The turmoil in Iraq is less severe, but is still damaging the country. Political disputes and mass demonstrations against the current government regularly surface in Iraq. Pro-Iranian militias continue to play a prominent role in the country’s government, and the three-way split among Sunni Arabs, Shiite Arabs, and Kurds is becoming ever more contentious. Political violence among rival factions shows no signs of subsiding, nor does public resentment against the presence of U.S. troops. Washington so lacks trust in its “ally” that officials once threatened to seize the country’s bank reserves if Iraqi leaders continued to press for the withdrawal of U.S. forces.

The level of human tragedy in Libya and Yemen is horrifying. Washington and its NATO allies bear almost exclusive responsibility for the situation in Libya. U.S. and NATO air strikes played a decisive role in overthrowing Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011. Libya thereafter became an arena of chaos as a multitude of militias vied for power, displacing more than a million residents. There were even credible reports of open-air slave markets for immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa. In the past few years, the fighting has coalesced into a contest for political dominance between a government that the United States supports and an insurgent army led by Field Marshal Khalifa Hafter, who was once a CIA asset. Scheduled national elections have been postponed numerous times, and fighting continues to periodically erupt.

Washington bears less direct, but still significant, responsibility for the suffering in Yemen. The Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations have all supported the war of aggression that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and their Gulf allies have waged against the nominally Shiite Houthis. The result has been appalling suffering by civilians, including widespread disease and famine conditions.

The latest application of Washington’s meddlesome policy is in Ukraine. U.S. leaders ignored repeated Russian warnings that making Ukraine a NATO member or even an unofficial NATO military assetwould cross a line that threatened Russia’s security.  When Moscow finally responded to the provocations with an invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the Biden administration opted to use Ukraine in a Western proxy war against Russia. The conflict has already done enormous damage to Ukraine’s infrastructure and taken thousands of lives. Worse, Washington and London appear to have sabotaged a possible peace accord between Moscow and Kiev.

The U.S. foreign-policy record over the past three decades could hardly be worse. It is crucial not to let policymakers and their media mouthpieces get away with convenient collective amnesia and imitations of Pontius Pilate. Instead, they need to be held fully accountable for their blunders and deception.

Future U.S. policymakers also need to avoid repeating the faulty performance of their predecessors. To do so, they must make three significant changes to U.S. foreign policy.

First, Washington should utterly renounce nation-building. Trying to remake alien societies by force and impose Western political, economic, and social values is the essence of folly. Even when the United States has not yet been drawn into a new war to enforce crumbling nation-building goals, as in Bosnia and Kosovo, such armed social experiments are an exercise in futility and frustration. Worse, nation-building missions frequently worsen conditions in the targeted country, and the predictable failure of U.S. objectives even can lead to Washington’s outright humiliation. The debacle in Afghanistan is a stark reminder of that danger.

Second, the United States must avoid the temptation to engage in regime-change wars. Such offensives often are a prelude to disastrous nation-building ventures. That was the case in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya. Those wars not only made matters worse for the populations in the three countries, but worsened the security situation for neighboring states and even the United States. In both Iraq and Libya, U.S. actions toppled secular dictators, paving the way for chaos that strengthened the position of Islamic jihadists. Granted, the secular dictators were brutal and sometimes caused problems for the United States, but Washington’s “solution” clearly made matters worse, not better.

Third, U.S. leaders must do a much better job of distinguishing vital national interests from secondary or peripheral ones. Washington’s current policy of using Ukraine as a proxy for a war against Russia is a troubling example of the failure to make such basic distinctions. The Biden administration is risking nuclear war with Russia to assist a corrupt, authoritarian regime in a country of little importance to the United States. Until the early 1990s, Ukraine wasn’t even an independent country, much less a U.S. vital interest. To accept the risks the Biden administration is incurring is irresponsible and violates the U.S. government’s responsibility to the American people.

Unless these policy changes are made, it is just a matter of time until a new set of officials repeat the disastrous blunders of their predecessors. If they do, the consequences to America and the world will be equally damaging.  Indeed, the Ukraine adventure reveals that the consequences could be even worse than the wreckage already wrought by Uncle Sam.

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Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute and a contributing editor at The American Conservative, is the author of 12 books and more than 1,100 articles on international affairs.

Featured image is from Mideast Discourse

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In light of the recent events surrounding the Ukraine war and the ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic, we present to you two important titles from Global Research that are both available in PDF formats. 

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“Michel Chossudovsky, in his book “The Worldwide Corona Crisis” describes in clear and concise and unabashed language the origins of this war, its conduct and its goals. No book of this kind can be infinitely comprehensive, nor should it aspire to be. But in this war against humanity in which we find ourselves, in this singular, irregular and massive assault against liberty and the goodness of people, Chossudovsky’s book is a rock upon which to sustain our fight.”
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“Towards a World War III Scenario: The Dangers of Nuclear War” 

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Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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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.

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This month, the United States announced it will provide Afghanistan with $327 million in humanitarian assistance, largely funneled through federal agencies supervised by the U.S. State Department such as the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). While this may seem like a lot of money considering Washington’s failure to pass basic social and infrastructure policies for people in the United States, it’s only a fraction of the $7 billion in Afghan financial reserves the Federal Reserve Bank of New York illegally seized last year. Moreover, as with all USAID projects, “aid” is primarily used to serve U.S. economic and political interests. Finally, these funds will not ameliorate the damage tens of millions of Afghans are forced to endure from the devastating U.S./EU-led sanctions.

The contradictions in U.S. foreign policy, coordinated by the U.S./EU/NATO Axis of Domination, continue to sharpen. The Taliban’s regressive policies toward women are still being used to justify calls for U.S.-backed regime change in Afghanistan. Many seemingly well-meaning reports from popular outlets like Reuters, AP News, New York Times, Foreign Policy and the U.S. military’s own, Stars and Stripes, continue to push imperialist propaganda, justifying continued U.S. intervention in Afghanistan.

These outlets confuse the U.S. public as to who is primarily to blame for the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan and erase the violent U.S. history there.

The Taliban continues to condemn the impact of the U.S.-led asset freeze and sanctions, along with a growing number of other countries, such as China and Russia. If conditions for all Afghans—including women, children and the rural poor—are to improve, it is clear the United States must end its war on Afghanistan as well as be held to account for its decades-long campaign of destruction and destabilization in the region.

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On Monday, powerful underwater explosions blew gaping holes in the Nord Stream 1 and 2 pipelines, which carry Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany. Gushers of gas a kilometer in diameter are rising to the surface from the blasts, which occurred in Danish waters. Tens of billions of dollars in infrastructure vital to financing Russia’s economy, and powering and heating the German and European economy, lie in ruins.

As the US and NATO wage war against Russia in Ukraine, this event points to the reckless military escalation underway in Europe. Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the blasts were the results of “deliberate action” by unknown parties, while Swedish seismologist Bjorn Lund said, “There’s no doubt, this is not an earthquake.”

Though European media instantly accused Russia of having bombed the Nord Stream pipelines, such charges are rapidly falling apart.

Even the New York Times, normally a source of aggressive anti-Russian propaganda, refrained from blaming the bombing on Moscow. “At first glance, it seems counterintuitive that the Kremlin would damage its own multibillion-dollar assets,” it acknowledged. “While some European officials were quick to speculate about Russian involvement, American officials were more cautious, noting the lack of available evidence,” it continued, noting that Washington “and most of its European allies stopped short of naming any suspects.”

Former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski, a member of several NATO think tanks who is married to prominent US foreign policy commentator Anne Applebaum, suggested openly that Washington was behind the bombing. He tweeted a picture of the gusher of natural gas with the label: “Thank you, USA.” He added, “Now $20 billion of scrap metal lies at the bottom of the sea, another cost to Russia of its criminal decision to invade Ukraine.”

Accusations of Russian involvement in the bombings lack all credibility and detract from the far more likely perpetrator: the United States. The first question that has to be asked about the Nord Stream bombing is: Cui bono? Who benefits, and who had the motive to carry it out?

Russia had no motive to destroy the Nord Stream pipeline. Russia’s Gazprom conglomerate owned half of the pipeline, alongside German, French and Dutch shareholders, and the pipeline was at the heart of Moscow’s plans to rebuild economic ties with Europe, if and when the war with NATO in Ukraine ended. It had no reason to blow up its own pipeline.

For Washington, the bombing presented two benefits. Firstly, coming amid the NATO military escalation against Russia in Ukraine, it would help fuel more anti-Russian war propaganda. Secondly, by making Europe more dependent on US natural gas imports to replace Russian gas, it corresponded to a major US aim in the Ukraine war from the outset: to bring Europe more firmly under US control. These aims have increasingly come into the open in recent years.

In 2018, bitter conflicts erupted between the Trump administration and Berlin, as Trump slapped sanctions on German car exports to America and demanded Berlin shut down Nord Stream 2.

On February 7, 2022, as he stepped up economic and military threats against the Kremlin before the Russia invasion of Ukraine, US President Joe Biden invited German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to Washington for talks. During a joint press conference with Scholz, Biden pledged to destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. “If Russia invades,” Biden said, “then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Pres. Biden: "If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it."

Reporter: "But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany's control?"

Biden: "I promise you, we will be able to do that." https://t.co/uruQ4F4zM9 pic.twitter.com/4ksDaaU0YC

— ABC News (@ABC) February 7, 2022

Asked how he would do this—as the Nord Stream pipeline is jointly owned by Russia and ostensible NATO allies of the United States such as Germany, France and the Netherlands—Biden refused to answer, simply saying: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

The Stalinist bureaucracy’s dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 not only paved the way for NATO to wage bloody imperialist wars from Iraq and Yugoslavia to Afghanistan, Libya and Syria. It deprived NATO of its main enemy, which had helped unify the alliance, and threw Eurasia open to major US and European corporations. Tensions between the NATO imperialist powers, as they competed for the division of the spoils of the world economy, exploded.

Trump demanded that Berlin end Nord Stream 2 after it called for an EU military buildup and a defense policy independent from NATO. While then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for Germany to “fight for our own future ourselves,” French President Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to prepare to confront Russia, China or America.

EU officials rejected Trump’s calls to end Nord Stream 2. Such demands, said German lawmaker Rolf Mützenich, “affect German and European companies and represent interference in our internal affairs. The EU and Germany are apparently not allied partners for Trump, but tributary vassals…”

The US policy towards Europe recalls Leon Trotsky’s warning, nearly a century ago, that in a period of crisis “the hegemony of the United States will operate more completely, more openly, and more ruthlessly than in the period of boom.” Trotsky described US imperialism’s plans for Europe after World War I as follows:

It will slice up the markets; it will regulate the activity of the European financiers and industrialists. If we wish to give a clear and precise answer to the question of what American imperialism wants, we must say: It wants to put capitalist Europe on rations.

This concisely describes Washington’s policy today. This year, it seized upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to escalate the war with Russia and impose the cutoff of EU energy trade with Russia that it had long sought. The impact on Europe is devastating.

Millions of workers in Europe face the prospect of freezing this winter, with gas prices surging tenfold as Europe replaces cheap Russian gas transported by pipeline with US liquefied natural gas. The price hikes are further magnified as European currencies fall against the US dollar, which is rising as the US Federal Reserve increases its interest rates. European steel, chemical and other companies, the Wall Street Journal noted, “are shifting operations to the U.S., attracted by more stable energy prices and muscular government support.”

The EU imperialists have agreed to this, insofar as the war is a pretext to keep diverting billions of euros to rearmament. The German bourgeoisie in particular aims, after losing two world wars, to re-emerge as Europe’s leading military power. This month Scholz called for Germany to “become the cornerstone of conventional defence in Europe, the best-equipped force in Europe” and demanded a German seat on the UN Security Council.

While Berlin officially ended its support for Nord Stream 2 after the Russian invasion, it is raising the issue of renewed energy ties with Russia. This week, Merkel said one should never lose sight of “the day after.” She called to think about what is “sheerly unimaginable at the moment—namely, how something like relations towards and with Russia can be developed again.”

It is more credible to explain the Nord Stream attack, not as an act of economic and political suicide by Russia, but as a signal sent by Washington to its EU “allies”: “Yes, you can re-militarize, but your energy and military policy will be set on our terms.”

These conflicts make all the more clear the enormous dangers facing masses of workers and youth as NATO and Russia teeter on the edge of an all-out global conflagration.

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Imagine the tobacco producer who invests in smoke limitation programs, or the arms manufacturer who attends a conference proposing to ban weapons and seek a better future.  Gautam Adani, one of India’s most ruthlessly adept billionaires, has added his name to the growing list of corporate transvestism, using ecological credentials as his camouflage for fossil fuel predation.

The central feature of Adani is having a nose for getting on the bandwagon and pushing to its front.  Everyone is doing it, at least when it comes to renewable energy sources.  Recently, the Adani Group, an entity specialising in power generation, real estate, commodities, and port infrastructure, promised it would invest $US70 billion in the green energy transition and associated infrastructure in what it calls “an integrated Hydrogen-based value chain”.

In terms of solar energy, the company has jostled its way up the ranks through Adani Green Energy, creating sprawling “solar parks” comprising thousands of hectares in Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh.  The acquisition of such land has come at considerable cost to local farmers, many of whom have protested such alienation and loss of fertile land.

Image is licensed under Creative Commons

Adani’s program is relentlessly expansive, part of a suite of approaches that seems to be winning investment from such companies as the French multinational TotalEnergies, which poured in money to acquire 25% of a stake in Adani New Industries.  In this, the Indian billionaire is simply pursuing what his other colleagues in the fossil fuel line are doing: pretend to go green and hope that no one notices the off-colour joke.  In this enterprise, Adani hopes to make his company the world’s largest renewable energy producer by 2030 (surely the joke), which might encourage some laughter but for its seriousness.

At the Forbes Global CEO conference held in Singapore, Adani was preeningly confident, exhibiting the cocksure awareness of a crossdressing trickster. “We are already the world’s largest solar player, and we intend to do far more.  Adani New Industries is the manifestation of the bet we are making in the energy transition space.”  He also told his audience that the new business, additionally “to our existing 20 GW renewables portfolio” would “be augmented by another 45 GW of hybrid renewable power generation spread over 100,000 hectares”.  Boastfully, he reminded those caring to listen that this was “an area 1.4 times that of Singapore.”

In April this year, he told the India Economic Conclave that his country was “on the cusp of decades of growth that the world will want to tap into.  Therefore, there can be no better defence of our interests at this time than atmanirbhar.”  The Hindi word in the statement, denoting self-reliance, is instructive enough, a feature of the Indian Prime Minister Narenda Modi’s nationalist drive.

As with most billionaires in history, success is a convenient wedding of self-aggrandisement and patriotic purpose, a case of making money and wrapping oneself in the flag.  More to the point, it is a shamelessly calculating push to combine interests of another sort, notably of the environmentally appealing nature.  “For India,” Adani told the audience at the IEC, “the combination of solar and wind power coupled with green hydrogen opens up unprecedented possibilities.”

Making greenwashing an essential part of its public relations, the Adani Group is globally engaged in promoting souped up ecological crossdressing.  In October 2021, the London Science Museum announced a sponsorship deal with Adani at the Global Investment Summit, a lead-up event to the COP26 Climate Summit in Glasgow.  The agreement involves the development of an exhibition space titled, “Energy Revolution: The Adani Green Energy Gallery”.

Dame Mary Archer, chair of the Science Museum Group, explained that the gallery would “take a truly global perspective on the world’s most urgent challenge.  We face a grave threat, but the future is not predestined”.  Critics were less than impressed by the Museum’s breezy refusal to consider Adani’s blotchy human rights records and treatment of indigenous communities both in India and Australia.  Protests were organised at the entrance to the museum.  Two trustees resigned.

Nothing, however, gets away from the core business of the Adani Group, which has close ties with the Modi government, ever keen to fashion it as a spear of influence.  The renewables canard cannot hide the practical, solid elements that keep Adani big in coal mining, gas distribution and transportation.

The latter has been particularly striking, with the company winning government tenders to operate a number of airport facilities despite lacking any experience in aviation.  This was a source of consternation for Kerala’s Finance Minister Thomas Isaac, whose state government was ignored in the bid for Thiruvananthapuram airport.  “People of Kerala will not accept this act of brazen cronyism,” he declared in 2020.

Whether its brazen cronyism or thick-as-thieves solidarity, no one, in terms of scale and influence, has as much influence with New Delhi as Adani does.  As Tim Buckley of Climate Energy Finance, a Sydney-based think tank explains, “His political power, his ability to understand the lay of the land in India, is second to none.”

The Adani Group also remains controversially, and deeply embedded in such controversial projects as the Carmichael Mine in Queensland, Australia, where it is looking, increasingly, like a relic, an echo of habitual ecological vandalism best shelved.  The company made a concerted effort to suppress the findings of a university report into its lack of consultation in mining operations with Traditional Owners, who had not “given their free, prior and informed consent” to the operations.  The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination also expressed its concerns in 2019 that Adani’s consultations regarding the Indigenous Land Use Agreement (ILUA) “might not have been conducted in good faith”.

All this paints a picture of a company keen to cut corners and stomp on toes with ruthless disdain.  For his efforts, Gautam Adani finds himself at a peg below the summit of wealth, being the second wealthiest man on the planet.  Only the extra-terrestrially minded Elon Musk bars his route on the rich list’s chart.  Ecological crossdressing, it would seem, pays.

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

Featured image is from Greenpeace