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One year after the astounding US humiliation in Kabul – and on the verge of another serious comeuppance in Donbass – there is reason to believe Moscow is wary of Washington seeking vengeance: in the form of the ‘Afghanization’ of Ukraine.

With no end in sight to western weapons and finance flowing into Kiev, it must be recognized that the Ukrainian battle is likely to disintegrate into yet another endless war. Like the Afghan jihad in the 1980s which employed US-armed and funded guerrillas to drag Russia into its depths, Ukraine’s backers will employ those war-tested methods to run a protracted battle that can spill into bordering Russian lands.

Yet this US attempt at crypto-Afghanization will at best accelerate the completion of what Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu describes as the “tasks” of its Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. For Moscow right now, that road leads all the way to Odessa.

It didn’t have to be this way. Until the recent assassination of Darya Dugina at Moscow’s gates, the battlefield in Ukraine was in fact under a ‘Syrianization’ process.

Like the foreign proxy war in Syria this past decade, frontlines around significant Ukrainian cities had roughly stabilized. Losing on the larger battlefields, Kiev had increasingly moved to employ terrorist tactics. Neither side could completely master the immense war theater at hand. So the Russian military opted to keep minimal forces in battle – contrary to the strategy it employed in 1980s Afghanistan.

Let’s remind ourselves of a few Syrian facts: Palmyra was liberated in March 2016, then lost and retaken in 2017. Aleppo was liberated only in December 2016. Deir Ezzor in September 2017. A slice of northern Hama in December and January 2018. The outskirts of Damascus in the Spring of 2018. Idlib – and significantly, over 25 percent of Syrian territory – are still not liberated. That tells a lot about rhythm in a war theater.

The Russian military never made a conscious decision to interrupt the multi-channel flow of western weapons to Kiev. Methodically destroying those weapons once they’re in Ukrainian territory – with plenty of success – is another matter. The same applies to smashing mercenary networks.

Moscow is well aware that any negotiation with those pulling the strings in Washington – and dictating all terms to puppets in Brussels and Kiev – is futile. The fight in Donbass and beyond is a do or die affair.

So the battle will go on, destroying what’s left of Ukraine, just as it destroyed much of Syria. The difference is that economically, much more than in Syria, what’s left of Ukraine will plunge into a black void. Only territory under Russian control will be rebuilt, and that includes, significantly, the bulk of Ukraine’s industrial infrastructure.

What’s left – rump Ukraine – has already been plundered anyway, as Monsanto, Cargill and Dupont have already bagged 17 million hectares of prime, fertile arable land – over half of what Ukraine still possesses. That translates de facto as BlackRock, Blackstone and Vanguard, top agro-business shareholders, owning whatever lands that really matter in non-sovereign Ukraine.

Going forward, by next year the Russians will be applying themselves to cutting off Kiev from NATO weapons supplies. As that unfolds, the Anglo-Americans will eventually move whatever puppet regime remains to Lviv. And Kiev terrorism – conducted by Bandera worshippers – will continue to be the new normal in the capital.

The Kazakh double game

By now it’s abundantly clear this is not a mere war of territorial conquest. It’s certainly part of a War of Economic Corridors – as the US spares no effort to sabotage and smash the multiple connectivity channels of Eurasia’s integration projects, be they Chinese-led (Belt and Road Initiative, BRI) or Russian-led (Eurasian Economic Union, EAEU).

Just like the proxy war in Syria remade large swathes of West Asia (witness, for instance, Erdogan about to meet Assad), the fight in Ukraine, in a microcosm, is a war for the reconfiguration of the current world order, where Europe is a mere self-inflicted victim in a minor subplot. The Big Picture is the emergence of multipolarity.

The proxy war in Syria lasted a decade, and it’s not over yet. The same may happen to the proxy war in Ukraine. As it stands, Russia has taken an area that is roughly equivalent to Hungary and Slovakia combined. That’s still far from “task” fulfillment – and it’s bound to go on until Russia has taken all the land right up to the Dnieper as well as Odessa, connecting it to the breakaway Republic of Transnistria.

It’s enlightening to see how important Eurasian actors are reacting to such geopolitical turbulence. And that brings us to the cases of Kazakhstan and Turkey.

The Telegram channel Rybar (with over 640k followers) and hacker group Beregini revealed in an investigation that Kazakhstan was selling weapons to Ukraine, which translates as de facto treason against their own Russian allies in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). Consider too that Kazakhstan is also part of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) and the EAEU, the two hubs of the Eurasian-led multipolar order.

As a consequence of the scandal, Kazakhstan was forced to officially announce the suspension of all weapons exports until the end of 2023.

It began with hackers unveiling how Technoexport – a Kazakh company – was selling armed personnel carriers, anti-tank systems and munitions to Kiev via Jordanian intermediaries, under the orders of the United Kingdom. The deal itself was supervised by the British military attaché in Nur-Sultan, the Kazakh capital.

Nur-Sultan predictably tried to dismiss the allegations, arguing that Technoexport had not asked for export licenses. That was essentially false: the Rybar team discovered that Technoexport instead used Blue Water Supplies, a Jordanian firm, for those. And the story gets even juicier. All the contract documents ended up being found in the computers of Ukrainian intel.

Moreover, the hackers found out about another deal involving Kazspetsexport, via a Bulgarian buyer, for the sale of Kazakh Su-27s, airplane turbines and Mi-24 helicopters. These would have been delivered to the US, but their final destination was Ukraine.

The icing on this Central Asian cake is that Kazakhstan also sells significant amounts of Russian – not Kazakh – oil to Kiev.

So it seems that Nur-Sultan, perhaps unofficially, somehow contributes to the ‘Afghanization’ in the war in Ukraine. No diplomatic leaks confirm it, of course, but bets can be made Putin had a few things to say about that to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in their recent – cordial – meeting.

The Sultan’s balancing act

Turkey is a way more complex case. Ankara is not a member of the SCO, the CSTO or the EAEU. It is still hedging its bets, calculating on which terms it will join the high-speed rail of Eurasian integration. And yet, via several schemes, Ankara allows Moscow to evade the avalanche of western sanctions and embargoes.

Turkish businesses – literally all of them with close connections to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) – are making a killing, and relishing their new role as crossroads warehouse between Russia and the west. It’s an open boast in Istanbul that what Russia cannot buy from Germany or France they buy “from us.” And in fact several EU companies are in on it.

Ankara’s balancing act is as sweet as a good baklava. It gathers    economic support from a very important partner right in the middle of the endless, very serious Turkish economic debacle. They agree on nearly everything: Russian gas, S-400 missile systems, the building of the Russian nuclear power plant, tourism – Istanbul is crammed with Russians – Turkish fruits and vegetables.

Ankara-Moscow employ sound textbook geopolitics. They play it openly, in full transparence. That does not mean they are allies. It’s just pragmatic business between states. For instance, an economic response may alleviate a geopolitical problem, and vice-versa.

Obviously the collective west has completely forgotten how that normal state-to-state behavior works. It’s pathetic. Turkey gets “denounced” by the west as traitorous – as much as China.

Of course Erdogan also needs to play to the galleries, so every once in a while he says that Crimea should be retaken by Kiev. After all, his companies also do business with Ukraine – Bayraktar drones and otherwise.

And then there’s proselytizing: Crimea remains theoretically ripe for Turkish influence, where Ankara may exploit the notions of pan-Islamism and mostly pan-Turkism, capitalizing on the historical relations between the peninsula and the Ottoman Empire.

Is Moscow worried? Not really. As for those Bayraktar TB2s sold to Kiev, they will continue to be relentlessly reduced to ashes. Nothing personal. Just business.

*

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This article was originally published on The Cradle.

Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is a correspondent and editor-at-large at Asia Times and columnist for Consortium News and Strategic Culture. Since the mid-1980s he’s lived and worked as a foreign correspondent in London, Paris, Milan, Los Angeles, Singapore, Bangkok. He has extensively covered Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asia to China, Iran, Iraq and the wider Middle East. Pepe is the author of Globalistan – How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War; Red Zone Blues: A Snapshot of Baghdad during the Surge. He was contributing editor to The Empire and The Crescent and Tutto in Vendita in Italy. His last two books are Empire of Chaos and 2030. Pepe is also associated with the Paris-based European Academy of Geopolitics. When not on the road he lives between Paris and Bangkok.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Cradle

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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***

With Britain’s economy grinding on the rocks of recession, the metrics of the Conservative Party’s forty-year “special relationship” with America prove that this relationship has been an infection borne by yet another engineered American virus. Today’s terminal decline mirrors America’s economic, political, social and moral decay.

The ravages of a wartime winter have returned to Britain. With the Bank of England similarly stricken by this special relationship, it has disastrously emulated the US Federal Reserve step by step. Dying economies are the precursor to the degradation of society.  As Britain prepares to endure another desperate holiday season it is time to recall that when Margaret Thatcher became PM in 1979, before she imported Reaganomics to Britain in 1980, sterling’s value was £2.33 to the US dollar. Three years later, £1.57. Now, £1.16.

“Special relationship”, you say?

The metamorphosis, crisis by crisis, of American financial chicanery continually stoked the global economic pyramid scheme of deficit spending. This was greeted wholesale by the Exchequer and without opposition from elected officials at White Hall. However, during those four decades, Britain’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) averaged less than a 1% increase per year with negative GDP in twenty-one of forty-two years.

In 1981 UK manufacturing as a percentage of national GDP was nearly 20% and jobs in this sector made up 21.8%. Ttoday just 7.6%. Trade union membership is down from 13 million in 1980 to just over 6 million members. The average home price (adjusted for inflation) increased from £103,237 to £271,100 while home rentals increased 8.86% per year from a median monthly rent of £357 in 1980 to more than £1400 today. In 1980 53,000 families were listed as homeless then more than doubling to 126,000 by 1989 and over 219,000 as reported in 2020.

Britain’s terminal symptoms have metastasized from America’s malignancies such as its ongoing increases from 1980 to 2019 in crime and murder rates, poverty (7% vs. 22%), personal debt (42.5% of GDP vs.  £1.7 trillion/105% GDP) and student loan debt (£460Billion total/ £45,800 per student), personal and business bankruptcies, and Suicide. Obesity and diabetes costs follow the American waistline, too, and add $10.7 billion in direct NHS costs and another $33.4 in related government subsidies yearly.

Prioritizing the ever-burgeoning war annuity was, however, routine each year and increased from £24.5 billion during Thatcher’s first term to £43.3 Billion this annum.

These massive sums have been an increasing, unnecessary, and unsustainable burden on a treasury already suffering from decades of conservative tax cuts.

The American economic affliction began under Ronald Reagan and quickly changed from a promise of “fiscal responsibility” featuring financial deregulation to tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy and the snipping of the Great Society’s social safety net. What this Reaganomics also cut was the tax base. Called, “Trickle-down economics,” this injection failed to course through the arteries of society for very long, failing somewhere along the way of the wealthy purchasing super yachts, private jets and increased political influence.

Conservatives hypocritically next embraced deficit spending as prescribed by the American economic mythologist John Maynard Keynes. Thus began the yearly increases in national budget deficits and the selling of government bonds (debt) to pay for it, all the while squeezing social programs.

With interest rates approaching zero and bank depositors receiving a similar return despite record bank profits – and rarely punished with convictions for criminal behavior- the mantra of “too big to fail”  by the Bank of England and the US Federal Reserve rationalized injecting manufactured money repeatedly into the economy in a trick called Quantitative Easing (QE). QE is the creation of money by printing it (digitally) after the US/UK over-budgets billions more than its tax annual base. The Treasury issues more debt (bonds) to sell to cover the deficit. Next, the BofE or Fed prints currency out of thin air to buy that debt. Sovereign UK debt is currently in excess of £2.69 Trillion. It was less than £200 Billion in 1980.

Interestingly, today there are one hundred and seventy-one British billionaires. In 1980, there was zero. That’s inflation.

Mark Carney, a Canadian, who was governor of the BofE deliberately lowered interest rates to historic lows thus making new home mortgages and equity refinancing so cheap as to transfuse 100’s of billions more in cash out of thin air as house prices soared. This was again merely a delay before the crash.

During this economic descent, too few politicians opposed this Keynesian snake oil while an increasingly complicit media dutifully back-paged it. Tony Blair and the vaporous Gordon Brown, after a decade of demonizing and privatizing the remaining vestiges of British social infrastructure in per usual Tory fashion, proved to be American lackeys rather than representatives of UK popular interests. Such treachery was highlighted in the recent article, “When Your Bank Fails, Don’t Walk…Run!”

With Blair began Britain’s slide into American-style “monocracy.”  Neither US Democrat nor Republican any longer provides sincere opposition. Although Britain has yet to suffer an American-style rigged national election, the UK has been similarly stripped of opposition leadership. The shameful and inaccurate demonization of Jeremy Corbyn by British media was designed to sever forever the spinal cord of the Labour Party. It worked. As went Corbyn, so went British socialism’s last dedicated champion. Instead, Labour offered up a Blairite member of the anti-labour Tri-lateral Commission, Sir Keir Starmer: A man whose prefix nicely explains his lack of effective leadership.

Monocracy is hidden by the media which instead of balanced reporting promotes one-sided censorship using journalistic tyranny to manipulate intellectual freedom. Like America, rather than budgeting for improving national interests, Britain finds it more cost-effective to tighten social liberties. Parliament’s quietly pending Online Safety Bill makes only the lies of the media safe but does exemplify the compliant corruption of politicians and the media. With 87% of all US media owned by six corporations that have the same agenda as the three companies controlling all of UK print media, this censorship has been uniform, self-serving, and effective.

The surreptitious privatization of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS), once the example to the developing socialist world, would make Aneurin Bevan roll in his grave. Thankfully halted in 2019, here the American trick of using Privately Financed Instruments (PFI) to provide private loans that use each hospital as collateral, but under draconian terms, forced dilapidated hospitals deliberately into the arms of US hedge funds. This still costs the NHS £2 Billion per year in ongoing pay-offs.

Before 1998 higher education was free. Since then UK students have racked up £460 Billion in student loan debt with a per-student average of £45,800. Acting on American changes in 2012 the UK made student debt one of the very few non-dischargeable debts in bankruptcy. This forever saddled each student with a huge debt service, and usually without a job within their discipline. Universities are now also heavily indebted based on the promise of these anticipated student fees. Recently diluting the A-level tests assured an increase and continuance of this vital college revenue. And a drop in standards.

The parallels to America continue from obesity caused by an adulterated US-style food supply, immigrants arriving by the thousands unchecked into cities already rotting from neglect and them also drawing on already depleted social services and,or the absurd mental aberration the young call “woke” that demands the human mind now believe that hard facts are merely discretionary or that a uterus is of no consequence whatsoever in biologically defining a woman.

The biggest and most threatening similarity, however, is apathy. Like America, Britain can blame itself for watching passively while divorcing itself from political reality and leaving that job to a corrupt media and political system.

A dying nation begins its decline by debasing its economy. When the process is irreversible the nation, instead of turning to the people’s needs, begins to turn on the people themselves.

It is time for voters to inoculate their countries at the ballot box. To elect representatives of true, not alleged, character who prioritize populism, not the profits of war. Those who reject American hegemony and its many bastardizations of Trickle-down economics. Politicians who will stop feeding the American virus on the blood and treasure of their own country, and who prioritize food before guns, society before tyranny, family before party, and education before ignorance!

If Britain is to survive it must now devote its full attention to its singular, most-important national emergency…

Britain!

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Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last twelve years documenting the “Sorrows of Empire.” He has authored over 200 articles all of which have been published and often republished and translated by news agencies worldwide. An archive of his published work can be found at watchingromeburn.uk. He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@)) gmx.com

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Over the past week, shocked Europeans – mostly in the UK and Ireland – have been posting viral photos of shockingly high energy bills amid the ongoing (and worsening) energy crisis.

Several of the posts were from small business owners who getting absolutely crushed right now, and won’t be able to remain operational much longer.

One such owner is Geraldine Dolan, who owns the Poppyfields cafe in Athlone, Ireland – and was charged nearly €10,000 (US$10,021) for just over two months of energy usage.

As the Irish Times reports, “The cost of electricity to the Poppyfields cafe for 73 days from early June until the end of August came in at €9,024.70 an increase of 250 per cent in just 12 months. There doesn’t include the €812.22 in VAT, which brought her total bill to €9,836.92.”

“How in the name of God is this possible,” tweeted Dolan.

I got this electricity bill today, how in the name of God is this possible, we're a small coffee shop in westmeath pic.twitter.com/uz5J8BePhB

— poppyfields cafe.🇺🇦 (@DolanGeraldine) August 29, 2022

UK pensioners are also facing a “terrifying” winter, as elderly Britons are about to get hit with an 80% rise in energy bills in October.

Elderly Britons are set to welcome a boost of around £1,000 to their state pension payments next year thanks to the return of the triple lock, however the cost of living crisis will still leave them significantly poorer.

However, the price cap for energy bills will rise by 80 per cent to £3,549 in October, and it is predicted to rise over £6,600 next year according to Cornwall Insight.

Higher energy bills often hurt pensioners significantly more than the rest of the population because they spend a greater amount of their income on heating their home. -Daily Mail

According to Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, “‘It’s a truly frightening prospect and one that most could not have prepared for, and never expected to face at this point in their lives,” adding “I think a lot of older people will be utterly bewildered that it has come to this and will also feel badly let down, and I can’t say I blame them.”

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Twitter researcher ‘Crab Man’ (@crabcrawler1), who compiles deep dives on a wide variety of topics (and is absolutely worth a follow), has put together a lengthy thread of similar cases – and put it in the context of the current European energy backdrop. The situation is dire, to say the least.

https://t.co/GqKe6S0M7a

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

Firebrick Brasserie. Lauder, United Kingdom. Had to close yesterday FOREVER, b/c of energy prices in the UK.

"energy prices that companies are charging – there is no price cap for businesses!!- have meant it is no longer sustainable for us to continue."
https://t.co/67CrgVw7sd pic.twitter.com/NOvMTQpumR

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

"Closed our tearoom we’ve successfully run for 7 years due to increasing costs in food/petrol/ utilities. Can’t sustain the hikes." pic.twitter.com/BW0bgqH1kO

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

"I currently pay £126 a month gas and electricity combined. Live alone. How the actual fuck can THIS be right? And I’m in a reasonable job. But I just can’t afford this. No fucking way." pic.twitter.com/TvIcbW7NS3

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

"Telford chippy boss 'in tears' as £5k monthly gas and electric bill forces business to close" https://t.co/gMtXWQymbY

— Crab Man (@crabcrawler1) August 30, 2022

*

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Featured image taken from Zero Hedge

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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***

Is Russia in trouble in Ukraine? 

Watch this interview of Scott Ritter by Judge Andrew Napolitano. Incisive Analysis. 

Scott Ritter is former Marine Corps major and former UN weapons inspector. 

*

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

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All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

The list of sins is lengthy and growing with diseased relish.  Australia’s first and for decades only international airline, Qantas, is looking rather tattered of late.  Its reliability is becoming something of the past, its standing diminished in an age of diminished international carriers.

There was a time when taking a Qantas flight involved experiencing clean, solid goodness, with the softening effects of regular and, for the most part, reliable service.  Nothing ever too flash, but reliable before finding your feet on chaotic ground.

Its minted reputation was enough to earn it a mention in Barry Levinson’s Rain Man, a 1988 production featuring a tormented Charlie Babbitt (Tom Cruise) and his autistic brother Raymond (Dustin Hoffman).  Raymond, as cinematic history notes, was utterly enamoured with Qantas’s immaculate safety record.  Various US airlines, with their documented crashes, could hardly match it.  Raymond duly regales Charlie with a number of lethal examples.  As Qantas did not fly out of Cincinnati, the car proved to be the only viable means of transport.

The current image of the airline is one of losses, be it in revenue, reputation and service.  This year, with bruising revelation, Qantas found out that it was no longer considered the safest of the globe’s airlines.  In rankings calibrated for an annual safety table by Airlineratings.com, which considers 385 carriers worldwide and their performance in terms of crashes, incident records, aircraft ages, operational innovation and COVID-19 protocols, the flying kangaroo barely figured.  That top honour went – and here it must have hurt – to Air New Zealand.

Geoffrey Thomas, the editor-in-chief of the Australian website making such bold assertions was adamant that Air NZ had an “excellent incident record, number of cockpit innovations, pilot training and very low fleet age”.  While Thomas sounds like a desperate geriatric examining a catwalk of fecund models, the overall sense of decline in Qantas is palpable.

The Qantas of today is not one of smooth reliable travel but indifference, disruption and disappointment.  It features queues, chaos and disequilibrium, from passengers to the workplace.  There are staffing problems (the taking of sick leave is regular), frequent cancellations, constant delays and instances of lost baggage.

The views of one Tom, as reported by the ABC, reveal the conditions that the airline is operating under.  “There is no one to talk to and when you go to work you are basically on your own.  It’s like we’re running a virtual airline.”

The new law of such a virtual airline is unpredictability.  “Keeping to departure times has always been sacred in the airline industry.  In the past we would be kept informed – you will be 10 minutes late, 15 minutes late.  Now you must pursue the information yourself and they may, or may not, know the answer.”

According to Tom, who has worked for three decades with the company, he had “never seen anything like it.”  He cites a flight he so happened to board earlier this year, finding no drinking water onboard and an incomplete load sheet.  (For the curious, the load sheet is essential in terms of weight and balance data, enabling the pilot to determine the load on the aircraft and how its distribution.)

The Australian Transport Workers’ Union has also roared its disapproval at the airline.  In a 2020 report, the union notes the nastier side of the carrier’s sharp practice.  QGS, a Qantas creation, is noted as being filled by part-time workers, with QGS contacts guaranteeing work to the value of only hours.  The report also notes the sacking of 5,000 employees, only to have them replaced by 9,000 part-time workers employed through subsidiary outlets.

During the course of the pandemic, this predatory beast of the aviation industry received A$2 billion worth in Australian taxpayer funds.  It is worth noting, on this score, that other airlines did not qualify, notably Virgin Australia, for the largesse of the Australian government. Qantas, with cocksure confidence, argued for its unique standing in the Australian aviation industry, boasting that it did not need a bailout.  However, just on the off chance it did require help, it would have to receive A$4.2 billion as a proportional measure to what Virgin might receive, as its revenue at the time was three times that of Virgin’s.

This staggering inversion of the survival of the fittest argument has seen the airline disappoint with dreary consistency.  Last month the company offered A$50 worth of vouchers, loyalty status extensions and lounge passes to frequent flyers by way of apology for the mess the airline had put customers in.

This meagre act of contrition is hardly likely to cover the diminished service customers have come to expect of an Australian carrier of such insufferable pride.  It certainly meant less with a video message sent to frequent flyer members featuring chief executive Alan Joyce.  “On behalf of the national carrier I want to apologise and assure you we are working hard to get back to our best,” the unconvincing CEO states, causing a residue of bile to form in any one caring to listen.

The Australian airline is hardly alone in this general malaise.  Airlines across the globe are spluttering along, providing even worse services than what they provided before.  Flights are fewer and, it follows, passengers.  Keeping these air hulks in the skies is proving increasingly challenging.  But shine has come off this particular Australian jewel, and it remains to be seen whether it is recoverable from the conundrum it, and its owners, find themselves in.

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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 by MDRX/CC BY-SA 4.0

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***

If Kiev’s conspiracy theory were true about it being Moscow that’s supposedly attacked the same facility under its own control and is thus the one that’s blackmailing all of Europe, then it wouldn’t have just sent its soldiers on a suicide mission to seize the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant before the International Atomic Energy Agency’s representatives’ arrival in order to plant fake evidence to that end.

The Russian Defense Ministry reported on Thursday that its forces successfully thwarted Kiev’s attempted seizure of the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) ahead of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) representatives’ visit to that facility. The ministry concluded that “The provocation of the Kiev regime is aimed at derailing the arrival of the IAEA mission to the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant”, which makes sense if one remembers the strategic context in which this ultimately failed mission was carried out.

That crumbling former Soviet Republic has waged nuclear terrorism against all of Europe by attacking this Russian-controlled facility over the past month out of desperation to blackmail its partners into keeping up the pace of their military aid to it, which Zelensky and his senior advisor Podalyak both tacitly admitted to in mid-August. It was subsequently revealed several days later by Politico that data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy’s Ukraine Support Tracker surprisingly proved that none of the six largest European countries made any new military commitments to Kiev the month prior in July.

This sequence of events vindicates Russian officials who said all along that this US-led NATO proxy is waging nuclear terrorism for military-strategic reasons, thus debunking yet another of the “official narratives” connected to the Ukrainian Conflict. If Kiev’s conspiracy theory was true about it being Moscow that’s supposedly attacked the same facility under its own control and is thus the one that’s blackmailing all of Europe, then it wouldn’t have just sent its soldiers on a suicide mission to seize the ZNPP before the IAEA representatives’ arrival in order to plant fake evidence to that end.

There’s already no doubt that fake news can indeed kill after it was the reason why Kiev dispatched a fascist assassin to Moscow last month to kill journalist Darya Dugina in a terrorist car bomb attack that many suspect was actually aimed against her father, who the US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) falsely claimed was “Putin’s Rasputin”, but now there’s further evidence to this effect after it was also just responsible for why Kiev sent its own soldiers on a suicide mission. They needlessly lost their lives because the Ukrainian military command wanted to “prove” their latest conspiracy theory at all costs.

Should the IAEA’s representatives stick to their strict code of conduct and not function as de facto Western agents during their visit to the ZNPP, then there’s no doubt that they’ll confirm that everything that Kiev’s claimed thus far about Russia supposedly being the one waging nuclear terrorism was nothing but lies while Moscow was telling the truth this whole time. They’ll see for themselves that there aren’t any Russian heavy weapons at this sensitive facility, but rather, that it’s littered with debris from Kiev’s Western-supplied missiles and other munitions that were illegally used to attack that site.

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is taken from OneWorld

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***

Incisive article by Dr. Rudolf Haensel first published in April 2020 in the immediate wake of the March 11, 2020 lockdown.

Autonomy is the state and attitude to life of self-determination, independence (sovereignty) and self-administration. Philosophically, it is the ability to see oneself as a being of freedom and to act from this freedom. It is also the power to not participate (Adorno). Natural Law says that there is something that is right by nature. It differs from the so-called Positive Right established by man in that man is entitled to it simply because he is human.

Since it is not created by any ruler or any kind of majority decision, it is pre-state law. This means that the laws of a state must be measured critically against natural law. (1) The knowledge of what is right by nature enables us to oppose totalitarian ideologies and dictatorships from a firm human standpoint, to feel a sense of indignation against injustice and inhumanity, even if the whole of society may cheer a dictator.

What is natural law?

Thinking in terms of natural law has its origins in ancient Greek philosophy, especially in Plato’s confrontation with the Sophists. Plato held against them that there are objective, absolutely valid norms, values and laws that do not depend on the changing opinions of people. It is by these objective ideas of what law is that the state and the state leadership must be measured at all times. Plato saw behind the law the objective idea of justice.

The highest goal in human life is a life governed by reason, and man can only achieve this if he learns in childhood and youth to moderate his desires and affects. He must learn to keep the golden rule of the middle (justice, bravery and prudence). If this does not become a habit in childhood and adolescence, he will later be torn to and fro by extreme affects and will never achieve a virtuous, level-headed, rational lifestyle (prudence).

The great teacher of the Church, Thomas Aquinas, combined Aristotle’s philosophy with the Christian philosophy and theology that came from Augustine. He thus had outstanding significance for the development of Christian natural law, Christian anthropology and theology, in the centre of which man as a person is placed. The order of being created by God is perfectly good. In it the “eternal law”, lex aeterna, was at work. This is the divine wisdom, as the supreme law. Man can recognize a part of this eternal law through his reason. (2)

Man has a natural inclination for goodness, which is “written in his heart” by the eternal law. It helps him to better recognize what is right in nature. The essential natural inclinations of man are those for the knowledge of the truth and for community life. With his reason, man can recognize the laws of nature and thus grasp the order created by God.

Human dignity is inviolable

Article 1 of the German Basic Law (GG) states:

“The dignity of man is inviolable. Respecting and protecting it is the duty of all state power.”Paragraph 1 of Article 1 adds: “Human dignity is the supreme constitutional principle to which all public authorities must therefore orient their actions. It is therefore the yardstick for the legislative, executive and judicial branches. The state must refrain from any action that could affect human dignity.” (3)

And this human dignity is over positive law (Natural Law).

What is happening, however, not only in Germany but worldwide, is the opposite of what the German Basic Law demands. Human dignity is trampled underfoot – and this is reminiscent of the Germany of the 1930s, the rise of fascism. Every thinking and feeling fellow citizen can “feel it on his own body”.

We are no longer free and can no longer lead our lives self-determined and independently. The governments leave us no room for manoeuvre and deny us the vested right not to take part in this madness, to oppose the totalitarian machinations decisively and with all their willpower. The rule of law has died.

But our thoughts are free (Cicero) and nobody can take away our dignity. We can also find the courage to use our own intellect (Kant). And we know what is right by nature. Therefore we will not submit to the dictates of corrupt politicians, scientists, doctors, journalists or questionable patrons like Bill Gates. (4)

Already more than 100 years ago, the great Russian writer Leo N. Tolstoy put on record his assessment of rulers:

“One could still justify the subordination of an entire people to a few people if the rulers were the best people; but that is not the case, never was and never can be. It is often the worst, most insignificant, cruelest, most immoral and especially the most mendacious people who rule. And that this is so is not by chance.” (5)

The human community rightly expects science – including medicine – to alleviate the plight of people and to serve the protection of life. But more and more scientists are selling their knowledge and skills and often their souls to the military-industrial complex. They even distance themselves so far from their humanity that they help to perfect the means for the general destruction of mankind.

An important contribution to the enlightenment and encouragement of the people could be the mass media, since they are obliged to provide truthful information to us citizens and to peace, in accordance with national and international agreements. But the opposite is true. They are “in the service of warmongering and hate propaganda” and “in the service of stultifying the masses” (Bertha von Suttner).

Let us therefore preserve the attitude to life of self-determination, independence (sovereignty) and self-administration and the ability to see ourselves as beings of freedom and to act from this freedom.

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Dr. Rudolf Hänsel is a graduate psychologist and educationalist.

Notes

(1) Messner, J. (1984, 7th unchanged edition). Natural law. Handbook of Social Ethics, State Ethics and Business Ethics. Berlin

(2) en.wikipedia.org. Keyword “Natural Law

(3) Basic Law of the Federal Republic of Germany

(4) See NRhZ No 741 of 8.04.2020: ‘To the Final Battle!’.

(5) Tolstoy, Leo N. (1983). Speech against the war. Frankfurt am Main, p. 74

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***

Few people in America today are as powerful and polarising as Anthony Fauci. For the Left, Fauci is a consummate cool-headed scientist, emblematic of the essential role of government. On the Right, he is a Deep State operative who destroyed the lives of countless people to serve a hidden agenda, all while mysteriously taking home a bigger paycheck than any other of the country’s two million federal employees (including their collective boss, the President).

The reality is that both narratives fundamentally misunderstand the position Fauci occupies in American government. Far from being a public health expert, Fauci sits at the very top of America’s biodefence infrastructure. And contrary to the notion that he is a Deep State string-puller of the Democratic party, it was George W. Bush and Dick Cheney who not only put Fauci there but created the very framework that the immunologist-physician commands.

This in part accounts for the otherwise inexplicable fact that Fauci, loathed by President Trump, was never fired by the notoriously vengeful politician who galvanised his brand with the phrase “You’re fired!”. But Fauci’s untouchability raises an even more perplexing question: Why did the media beatify him as the country’s beneficent, infallible Covid saviour rather than look into the reality of his position and the source of his nearly limitless authority?

To understand the rise of Fauci, and his legacy as he retires this year, we must return to the first months of the 2000s, when a hawkish new administration was settling into power. While George W. Bush had come to Washington touting a new brand of “compassionate conservatism”, Cheney came carrying decades of Defense Department experience, including a term as Defense Secretary under George H.W. Bush during Operation Desert Storm.

Bush’s interest in biodefence and pandemic preparedness is frequently traced back to a 2004 book, The Great Influenza. The reality, however, is that the administration came to power with biological weapons and infectious disease very much top of mind, with Cheney seeking to address the gaping hole in America’s national security left by the country’s lack of a coherent biodefence strategy.

But if biodefence wasn’t already a priority for the Bush White House, that swiftly changed a week to the day after the 9/11 attacks, a mere eight months into Bush’s first term, when the United States suffered the most serious biological weapons attack in its history. On September 18, 2001, a number of national media outlets, including CBS News, NBC News, ABC News, the New York Post and the National Enquirer, received a series of letters containing a dry white powder. Three weeks later, a second round of letters was sent to the offices of senators Tom Daschle, then the Senate Majority leader, and Patrick Leahy, head of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Twenty-two people were infected with anthrax, five of whom died. Already in a state of unprecedented military alert, the United States was sent into near-chaos by the anthrax attacks, which, by essentially weaponising the postal system with one of the world’s most lethal pathogens, engendered a sense that the country was under attack by an unseen enemy with unfathomable capabilities.

Bush has been rightly credited with identifying the threat of a global pandemic, as well as providing a serious policy for dealing with the spread of HIV/AIDS in Africa. But it was Cheney who served as the political engine behind a paradigm shift that would soon take place in America’s biodefence strategy. Six days before the 9/11 attacks, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee convened a hearing on “The Threat of Bioterrorism and the Spread of Infectious Diseases”. The hearing was led by Joe Biden, then chair of the committee, and included testimony by experts in strategic defence. In a prepared statement, Bill Frist, a physician who served as a Republican senator until 2007, noted that:

“Any threat to the security of the United States from a weapon of mass destruction, even those with low probability of occurrence but high potential consequence, including biological weapons, must be taken seriously through adequate preparation.”

The administration’s first landmark achievement in this effort was the creation of a presidential directive called “Biodefense for the 21st Century“. Signed by Bush in April 2004, it advanced a “comprehensive framework for [America’s] biodefence” based on the assumption that a bioweapons attack could devastate America. Despite being premised on a different intent (an attack), the framework described a scenario chillingly similar to what the world experienced with Covid-19, warning that a bioweapons attack could result in “catastrophic numbers of casualties, long-term disease and disability, psychological trauma, and mass panic; disrupt critical sectors of the economy and the day-to-day lives of Americans; and create cascading international effects by disrupting and damaging international trade relationships, potentially globalising the impacts of an attack on United States soil”.

That the directive warned about a biological catastrophe resulting from an attack, rather than an unintentional outbreak, was a seemingly natural assumption in the aftermath of 9/11. But even in June 2001, a small number of senior policymakers spent two days running a simulation of a bioweapons attack. Called Dark Winter, it was designed by the Johns Hopkins Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies and was based on a putative smallpox attack. Intended less to bolster preparedness than to expose vulnerabilities, the operation showed how quickly a public health disaster could lead to widespread chaos and social collapse. This was the stuff nightmares are made of — and, by all accounts, those were the nightmares that Dick Cheney was having.

Significant as it was, his transformation of America’s biodefence framework was part of a much larger repositioning of long-term geopolitical strategy, an effort also led by Cheney. In the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse in the early Nineties, Cheney, then Secretary of Defense under George H.W. Bush, along with Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, began formulating a grand strategy for the post-Cold War era. This plan, revealed in an infamous leaked memo, was rooted in a single strategic objective: America should permanently remain the world’s superpower. Its architects argued the US would do so only by preserving “strategic depth” to “shape the security environment”. The initial leaked memo was later reworked by Cheney’s chief of staff, Scooter Libby, who broadened the concept of “strategic depth” to cover not only geographic reach but also an ability to wage war with weapons that could not only cripple an enemy’s military capabilities but disrupt its political, economic and social stability.

In this context, the Bush Administration began ramping up biodefence spending, which quintupled to $317 million in 2002 alone. But that same year, an unusual respiratory disease started to spread in the Guangdong region of China. Eventually classified as Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, the disease would claim the lives of some 800 people as it spread across Asia, Europe, North America, the Mideast, reaching as far as New Zealand.

Although SARS was contained by the summer of 2003, that year the world witnessed the outbreak of yet another respiratory disease. In this case, it was the re-emergence of an avian influenza in the form of a strain known as H5N1, which had long been identified as having pandemic potential. The virus was found to have a terrifying 60% mortality rate.

By 2003, the Bush administration was requesting $2 billion in annual budget for biodefence — a sum that, as the Los Angeles Times noted, exceeded the combined research budgets for breast cancer, lung cancer, stroke and tuberculosis. That year, Bush announced in his State of the Union address that he would propose a further $6 billion for the development and stockpiling of vaccines over the subsequent decade, in addition to baseline biodefence funding.

The money was essential, but transforming a core element of America’s national strategic defence was as much about restructuring the governmental and human aspects of biodefence as it was funding them. In the case of research-based bioweapons preparedness, Cheney’s masterstroke was to remove the fragmented biodefence research programmes from various departments, institutes and centres, and place them under the aegis of a single institute: the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), led then, as now, by Anthony Fauci.

A 2003 NIAID article detailed what this shift meant for the relatively obscure public health agency: “In 2003, NIAID was assigned lead responsibility… for civilian biodefence research with a focus on research and early development of medical countermeasures against terrorist threats from infections diseases and radiation exposures. NIAID later assumed responsibility for coordinating the NIH-wide effort to develop medical countermeasures against threats to the civilian population.” While the statement is laden with references to “civilian research”, it included a crucial caveat that explains much about its role right through the Covid-19 pandemic: “Because new potentially deadly pathogens, such as avian influenza, may be naturally occurring as well as deliberately introduced by terrorists, NIAID’s biodefence research is integrated into its larger emerging and re-emerging infectious diseases portfolio.”

In other words, as far as NIAID was concerned, there was no meaningful administrative distinction between biodefence and scientific research. With the stroke of Cheney’s pen, all United States biodefence efforts, classified or unclassified, were placed under the aegis of Anthony Fauci. So important was this new command structure that a representative from the office of Scooter Libby, Cheney’s powerful chief of staff, was physically placed in NIAID headquarters in Washington during the transition to function as “a kind of political commissar” from the vice president’s office. This gave Fauci unparalleled access to not just Cheney, but President Bush, to whom he had an open channel.

Fauci now had a virtual carte blanche to not merely approve but design and run the kind of research projects he sought — and could do so with no oversight structure above him. Biodefence projects that formerly would have fallen under the authority of military or intelligence agencies were now under his direct supervision.

It’s this that explains one of the most bewildering irregularities surrounding Anthony Fauci: his compensation. As widely reported, Fauci is the highest paid member of the federal government, out-earning the President, four-star generals, senators, and Super Court Justices. His salary roughly doubled that of his own (nominal) boss, until recently, NIH director Francis Collins. Fauci’s giant pay packet can be traced back to 2004, the year after NIAID was made the country’s top biodefence authority agency. According to a report by Forbes, that year NIH deputy director Raynard S. Kingston wrote a formal memo to the agency’s director, Elias Zerhouni “to request that the current retention allowance [amount redacted] for Dr. Anthony S. Fauci be converted… in order to appropriately compensate him for the level of his responsibly in his current position of Director, National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), National Institutes of Health (NIH), especially as it relates to his work on biodefence research activities.”

This salary jump was only a by-product of the radical restructuring of America’s biodefence apparatus. The much more significant outcome was that Fauci was essentially placed at the top of a new chain of command over which he gained nearly total decision-making ability. He went from being the director of one the NIH’s constituent 27 institutes to being the only one who really mattered.

But it was Fauci’s ability to span the divide between science and politics, to “play ball”, that made him essential to the political echelon. The rapid increase in biodefence funding in the post-9/11 world, and the mushrooming of agencies and departments involved in the endeavour, would inevitably draw critics. One was, and still is, Richard Ebright, a major figure in the world of epidemiology who serves as chair of the Board of Governors and is a Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University.

“This well-intentioned response may perversely have exactly the opposite effect,” Ebright told the Los Angeles Times in 2003, implying that the burgeoning field of biodefence research could lead to leaks, failures, and even a bioweapons arms race. But, by then, the Bush administration had hired a man credible enough to respond to, and, in many ways, outshine the critics. “It’s going to be a challenge,” Fauci told the Times, dismissing Ebright’s concern as “spurious”. “But I have every confidence that the biomedical research community will adapt well to the change.”

Almost two decades later, as he heads towards retirement, his confidence seems misplaced. Perhaps in this we have another crucial lesson from the pandemic: that Marvel-like heroes, with all their fabulous abilities, are no replacement for the facts.

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Ashley Rindsberg is author of The Gray Lady Winked: How the New York Times’ Misreporting, Distortions and Fabrications Radically Alter History.

Featured image is from Children’s Health Defense

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***

Germany’s newsmedia — echoing America’s — have attributed the soaring fuel-prices to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which clearly is a lie, because the source is clearly Germany’s anti-Russian sanctions and termination of the Nord Stream 2 natural-gas pipeline and other supplies into Germany of the least-expensive fuels-sources, which had been Russian, which is why Russia was the biggest supplier of fuels to Germany.

Because those fuels were so much cheaper than the ones that the U.S. occupying forces demand Germany to use instead (such as liquefied natural gas from America), and because Germany’s leaders are more committed to Germany’s American masters than to the German people whom they are supposed to represent, they ought to be thrown out and replaced now by an entirely new German Government that will serve the German people instead of serve the U.S. occupying regime, which demands and enforces these sanctions. The purpose of the sanctions is to greatly reduce European fuel purchases from the cheapest source, Russia. That forces up fuel-costs in Europe, but Europe’s leaders comply anyway, which proves how obedient they are as stooges of the imperial regime across the Atlantic, in Washington.

America is run by — and its Government is effectively owned by — its billionaires, who buy politicians like hogs are bought at a pig-auction: the highest bidder wins. (It’s shown graphically here.) But at this auction, all of the highest bidders are billionaires, and the profit and nonprofit corporations that they control. Here is how the former U.S. President Jimmy Carter put it when asked about corruption in America:

It violates the essence of what made America a great country in its political system. Now it’s just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members. So, now we’ve just seen a subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors, who want and expect, and sometimes get, favors for themselves after the election is over. … At the present time the incumbents, Democrats and Republicans, look upon this unlimited money as a great benefit to themselves. Somebody that is already in Congress has a great deal more to sell.

What’s happening now to Germany is profitable to those people, but is threatening to destroy the whole world if Washington pushes it too far, and produces WW III.

The long road to our present predicament started when U.S. President Harry S. Truman decisively repudiated and reversed his predecessor FDR on 25 July 1945 and determined that the U.S. Government henceforth would be set onto the path of taking control of the entire world ultimately, to become the first-ever all-encompassing global empire (now called “hegemon”). By the time of 1947, he had created the CIA and the falsely named “U.S. Department of ‘Defense’” (actually department of aggression, like the CIA was the department of coups), and replaced FDR’s entire cabinet, in order to do this. They then produced NATO in 1949.

(The Soviet Union responded six years later, by forming their Warsaw Pact in 1955.)

Virtually all U.S. Presidents afterwards have been committed to this “hegemonic,” actually maniacal, zero-sum-game-committed, goal of America dominating everywhere, so that any competitor is automatically viewed as being an enemy. Their obsession is to achieve “hegemony” — global control — which none of them announces publicly as constituting the Government’s top goal, but they all call it instead their support of spreading ‘freedom’ and ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’, as-if the country which has a larger percentage of its population in prison than does any other nation on Earth could even POSSIBLY be a democracy, or promote human rights. Germany, like all other U.S. vassal nations, is merely a tool of that plan for world-conquest by the U.S. regime. Like all of the others, it’s dutiful to its foreign masters, and not to its own population (who now increasingly will be feeling the consequences).

In order for the German people to become authentically free, they need to replace their existing westward, Atlanticist, pro-U.S.-regime, orientation, by a far more economically viable eastward, Russian, Chinese, and authentically EurAsian one, which will mean that Germany will no longer participate in imperialism by ANY nation, but will instead quit NATO and have commerce with all nations that is NOT being restricted by anything like the imperialism America’s billionaires have been imposing upon Germans ever since 1945 and especially since 1991. If German politicians are being bought by the highest bidders like America’s are, then they will all have to be replaced in order for the German people to become freed from the American regime’s imperial yoke. EurAsia is one continent, after all, and no way will exist to pipeline gas or oil across the Atlantic Ocean, from America. And the very idea of replacing pipelined energy by far costlier LNG and other shipped energy is an insult to all residents of Europe.

On Sunday 3 July 2022, Bloomberg News reported that Germany’s “Economics Minister Robert Habeck said on Saturday that the government is working on ways to address the surging costs both utilities and their customers face, without giving details.” At least as early as that date, Germany’s Government knew what they were doing to the German people, but they did it anyway. And they continued to lie about it to the German people. The entire Government needs to be replaced; but, more than that, NATO must be abandoned.

Any German politician who supports it supports continued U.S. occupation, and supports continuation of the U.S. regime’s non-stop war, ever since 1945, against both Russia and China.

Isolating its economy from Russia and China makes sense? To whom? Germany will do far better as a partner of Russia and of China, than as a vassal of the U.S. regime. Russia and China would welcome the new German leaders as partners — not demand them to serve as mere stooges in a mere vassal-nation (as the U.S. regime does). And any such allegation as Bloomberg ‘News’ headlined on 25 June 2022, “Putin Is Pushing Germany’s Economy to the Breaking Point” is merely pretending that the February 24th invasion of Ukraine, instead of the sanctions that America and its vassal-nations imposed in response to it, is to blame here. In fact: The U.S. and its NATO had left Russia no other option than to invade Ukraine.

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American 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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***

Last week, British Tory leadership frontrunner Liz Truss said she would be willing to unleash nuclear war if she were to become prime minister.

She is not alone among political leaders in the western imperialist states to threaten nuclear annihilation in the past few months if their hegemony and imperial profits were threatened by resistance to their exploitation and control of the globe.

It was back in February that the West began to threaten Russia with nuclear war in response to a statement given by President Vladimir Putin.

Addressing western encroachments and threats to Russian security, ongoing since 1991 but increasing significantly since 2014, Putin declared:

“Whoever tries to hinder us, and even more so, to create threats to our country, to our people, should know that Russia’s response will be immediate. And it will lead you to such consequences that you have never encountered in your history.”

Putin prefaced his statements by averring that “even after the dissolution of the USSR and losing a considerable part of its capabilities, today’s Russia remains one of the most powerful nuclear states”.

The French foreign minister subsequently threatened Putin, who spoke of Russia’s nuclear capabilities as a defensive measure, by declaring that Nato, too, remained a “nuclear alliance” and “that is all I will say about this”.

‘Thinkable’ nuclear war

By March, The New York Times jumped on the bandwagon and published an article about the possibility that the Russians might use nuclear weapons if threatened by the West. The article, ironically, cited only western experts and officials who spoke of a limited nuclear war against Russia as “thinkable”.

The newspaper of record even quoted US General James E Cartwright, the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Barack Obama, as saying that the “reduced blast capability” of the smaller nuclear devices in existence today made breaking the nuclear taboo “more thinkable”.

It added:

“Nuclear war plans are one of Washington’s most deeply held secrets. Experts say that the war-fighting plans in general go from warning shots to single strikes to multiple retaliations and that the hardest question is whether there are reliable ways to prevent a conflict from escalating.”

It should be noted that the idea of a “limited” nuclear war in Europe is not new. It is a longstanding American fantasy – one that Ronald Reagan, in particular, nurtured.

In April, after the publication of The New York Times article, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov expressed worry about the implications of a nuclear war, emphasising that while Russia did not want a nuclear war, “the danger is serious”. US President Joe Biden’s response to Lavrov was to accuse the Russians of threatening nuclear war rather than expressing anxiety that the US and Nato could launch one.

Israeli threats

Indeed, in April, CNN reported that the US had not seen “any indication Russia has made any moves to prepare nuclear weapons for use during the [Ukraine] war”. But by June, NBC News joined the chorus of mainstream outlets considering the possible use of American nuclear weapons against Russia.

Earlier this month, Putin issued a statement to a UN conference which convened to review the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, affirming that “there can be no winners in a nuclear war and it should never be unleashed, and we stand for equal and indivisible security for all members of the world community”.

Yet, that very same day, Israel’s new prime minister, Yair Lapid, threatened to use Israel’s nuclear weapons against Iran:

“The operational arena in the invisible dome above us is built on defensive capabilities and offensive capabilities, and what the foreign media tends to call ‘other capabilities’. These other capabilities keep us alive and will keep us alive so long as we and our children are here.”

The Jerusalem Post, the conservative Israeli newspaper, postulated that Lapid’s not-so-veiled threat to nuke Iran was akin to his saying:

“What exactly do you ayatollahs think you are going to accomplish by trying to break out one or two weapons which you probably could not hit us with, and which might lead us to easily incinerate large parts of your country?”

This is not the first time Israel has threatened to use nuclear weapons against its neighbours. In fact, it had prepared to use its nukes twice before, in 1967 and in 1973 when it readied its then 13 nuclear bombs to be dropped on Cairo and Damascus.

Real or imagined

Of course, the only country on earth that has ever used nuclear bombs deliberately against civilians is none other than the US, which dropped them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 77 years ago this month, in a genocidal act that the US continues to defend to this day as one that prevented more casualties had the nukes not been dropped and the war continued.

In essence, the US argues that its nuking civilians was a high moral act to save more civilians from being killed. This is amazingly and horrifyingly the very same logic the US deploys today to justify its future use of nuclear weapons.

While Hiroshima and Nagasaki awakened most of the world to the utter horror of nuclear weapons, it only whetted American appetites to use them more.

Recently revealed documents show the United States seriously considered and made plans to use nuclear weapons against China in 1958, during the so-called Taiwan Straits crisis.

Yet, despite the US use of nuclear weapons and the West’s ongoing threats to annihilate all humankind if their profits and “security” interests are threatened, we have been treated for years on end to ceaseless western propaganda about the threat that allegedly Iran, which does not possess any nuclear weapons, poses to the West.

When Israel, which is in possession of possibly as many as 200 nuclear devices (and which still refuses to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty), threatened to nuke Iran a few weeks ago, its threat was taken lightly, if even considered, in the western press and by western officials, who were and remain too busy trying to eliminate a phantasmatic nuclear threat that Iran allegedly constitutes for Israel – a phantasm that has prolonged interminably the ongoing renegotiations of the nuclear treaty between the US and Iran.

It is the US and the imperialist West, not Iran or Russia, who have posed and continue to pose the largest possible threat to human existence and survival. What is truly ironic, however, is that western leaders and the western press can more easily imagine and plan for the end of the world, but not the end of the West’s imperial hegemony.

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Joseph Massad is professor of modern Arab politics and intellectual history at Columbia University, New York. He is the author of many books and academic and journalistic articles. His books include Colonial Effects: The Making of National Identity in Jordan; Desiring Arabs; The Persistence of the Palestinian Question: Essays on Zionism and the Palestinians, and most recently Islam in Liberalism. His books and articles have been translated into a dozen languages.

Featured image: The world’s first nuclear explosion – the U.S. ‘Trinity’ atomic test in New Mexico, July 16, 1945. If a nuclear war breaks out today, the devastation caused by modern nuclear weapons would make Trinity’s power look small by comparison. Most life on Earth would likely be wiped out. | U.S. Department of Energy

“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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***

It’s not contradictory nor surprising for someone like President Putin to simultaneously acknowledge the urgent necessity of reforms during the late Soviet era, lament the ultra-disastrous geopolitical and humanitarian consequences of Gorbachev’s related implementation, and defend his resultant Great Power’s interests in line with international law, all while without ever pining for the restoration of that former communist superpower.

The US-led Western Mainstream Media (MSM) has aggressively pushed the false information warfare narrative that so-called “Putin’s Russia” supposedly wants to “restore the USSR”, yet this twisted interpretation of that Great Power’s geostrategic intentions was just discredited by none other than the Russian leader himself and one of that country’s top foreign policymakers lamenting former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s passing. President Vladimir Putin praised him for understanding the necessity of reforms to urgent problems, while Deputy Speaker of Russia’s Federation Council and Chairman of its Foreign Affairs Committee Konstantin Kosachev said that his death was “a tragedy for the country and for all of those among us whose life changed for the better with his help.”

These condolences don’t correspond to what one would expect from a purportedly “neo-colonial/-imperialist” and “revisionist” state’s top officials who the Western public was brainwashed by their MSM into thinking are still sour about the USSR’s collapse that Gorbachev himself presided over. To the contrary, they’re extremely proud of their country’s independence from that superpower even though many Russians still regret how chaotically this process unfolded and some even wish that the spirit of his reforms would have succeeded in keeping it together. Presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov put it best when citing his boss’ famous quip that:

“You don’t have a heart if you don’t regret the collapse of the Soviet Union, but you don’t have the brains if you want it to be restored.”

That remark and his other one about how the USSR’s dissolution “was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” have been maliciously misportrayed by the MSM to manipulate their targeted audience into wrongly thinking that President Putin pines for the USSR’s restoration even though he wants nothing of the sort. Confidently defending one’s geostrategic interests in line with international law upon regaining the strength required to do so like Russia did isn’t the same ass wanting to rebuild that former superpower, let alone replicate its internal structure. Nor, for that matter, does it mean that he was influenced by Alexander Dugin’s related writings no matter how desperately some want to imagine that the latter is a modern-day “Rasputin”.

Rather, it’s objectively the fact that the collapse of the Soviet Union that Gorbachev presided over and which he inadvertently made irreversible through his well-intended but poorly implemented reforms was indeed “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” and “a genuine tragedy” for the Russian people like the subsequent part of President Putin’s misportrayed second quote noted.

Regarding the first, it immediately ended the bipolar world system that had hitherto kept the US in check to an extent while the second refers to how “Tens of millions of [Russian] citizens and countrymen found themselves beyond the fringes of Russian territory.” Not only that, but the onset of unipolarity led to the deaths of millions and the impoverishment of many more across the Global South.

It’s therefore not contradictory nor surprising for someone like President Putin to simultaneously acknowledge the urgent necessity of reforms during the late Soviet era, lament the ultra-disastrous geopolitical and humanitarian consequences of Gorbachev’s related implementation, and defend his resultant Great Power’s interests in line with international law, all while without ever pining for the restoration of that former communist superpower. The USSR’s last leader has a much uglier legacy than the MSM claims due to the consequences connected with the well-intended policies that he was responsible for, but at the same time, contemporary Russian officials are sincerely sad at his passing since he was also unwittingly responsible for their country’s independence.

*

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This article was originally published on OneWorld.

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

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: Mikhail Gorbachev, Photo by Michael Schilling (CC-BY-SA-3.0)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

It gives me no joy to write this piece.

Even a cursory review of the redacted version of the affidavit submitted in support of the government’s application for a search warrant at the home of former President Donald Trump reveals that he will soon be indicted by a federal grand jury for three crimes: Removing and concealing national defense information (NDI), giving NDI to those not legally entitled to possess it, and obstruction of justice by failing to return NDI to those who are legally entitled to retrieve it.

When he learned from a phone call that 30 FBI agents were at the front door of his Florida residence with a search warrant and he decided to reveal this publicly, Trump assumed that the agents were looking for classified top-secret materials that they’d allege he criminally possessed. His assumptions were apparently based on his gut instinct and not on a sophisticated analysis of the law. Hence, his public boast that he declassified all the formerly classified documents he took with him.

Unbeknownst to him, the feds had anticipated such a defense and are not preparing to indict him for possessing classified materials, even though he did possess hundreds of voluntarily surrendered materials marked “top secret.” It is irrelevant if the documents were declassified, as the feds will charge crimes that do not require proof of classification. They told the federal judge who signed the search warrant that Trump still had NDI in his home. It appears they were correct.

Under the law, it doesn’t matter if the documents on which NDI is contained are classified or not, as it is simply and always criminal to have NDI in a non-federal facility, to have those without security clearances move it from one place to another, and to keep it from the feds when they are seeking it. Stated differently, the absence of classification — for whatever reason — is not a defense to the charges that are likely to be filed against Trump.

Yet, misreading and underestimating the feds, Trump actually did them a favor. One of the elements that they must prove for any of the three crimes is that Trump knew that he had the documents. The favor he did was admitting to that when he boasted that they were no longer classified. He committed a mortal sin in the criminal defense world by denying something for which he had not been accused.

The second element that the feds must prove is that the documents actually do contain national defense information. And the third element they must prove is that Trump put these documents into the hands of those not authorized to hold them and stored them in a non-federally secured place. Intelligence community experts have already examined the documents taken from Trump’s home and are prepared to tell a jury that they contain the names of foreign agents secretly working for the U.S. This is the crown jewel of government secrets. Moreover, Trump’s Florida home is not a secure federal facility designated for the deposit of NDI.

The newest aspect of the case against Trump that we learned from the redacted affidavit is the obstruction allegation. This is not the obstruction that Robert Mueller claimed he found Trump committed during the Russia investigation. This is a newer obstruction statute, signed by President George W. Bush in 2002, that places far fewer burdens on the feds to prove. The older statute is the one Mueller alleged. It characterizes any material interference with a judicial function as criminal. Thus, one who lies to a grand jury or prevents a witness from testifying commits this variant of obstruction.

But the Bush-era statute, the one the feds contemplate charging Trump with having violated, makes it a crime of obstruction by failing to return government property or by sending the FBI on a wild goose chase looking for something that belongs to the government and that you know that you have. This statute does not require the preexistence of a judicial proceeding. It only requires that the defendant has the government’s property, knows that he has it and baselessly resists efforts by the government to get it back.

Where does all this leave Trump? The short answer is: in hot water. The longer answer is: He is confronting yet again the federal law enforcement and intelligence communities for which he has rightly expressed such public disdain. He had valid points of expression during the Russia investigation. He has little ground upon which to stand today.

I have often argued that many of these statutes that the feds have enacted to protect themselves are morally unjust and not grounded in the Constitution. One of my intellectual heroes, the great Murray Rothbard, taught that the government protects itself far more aggressively than it protects our natural rights.

In a monumental irony, both Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks journalist who exposed American war crimes during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, and Edward Snowden, the former National Security Agency employee who exposed criminal mass government surveillance upon the American public, stand charged with the very same crimes that are likely to be brought against Trump. On both Assange and Snowden, Trump argued that they should be executed. Fortunately for all three, these statutes do not provide for capital punishment.

Rothbard warned that the feds aggressively protect themselves. Yet, both Assange and Snowden are heroic defenders of liberty with valid moral and legal defenses. Assange is protected by the Pentagon Papers case, which insulates the media from criminal or civil liability for revealing stolen matters of interest to the public, so long as the revealer is not the thief. Snowden is protected by the Constitution, which expressly prohibits the warrantless surveillance he revealed, which was the most massive peacetime abuse of government power.

What will Trump say is his defense to taking national defense information? I cannot think of a legally viable one.

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Featured image is from FAIR

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***

Formerly top secret files show how the two oil corporations bankrolled UK covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 60s. The goal was to secure British access to key oil supplies across the developing world.

“Handsome” sums were provided by BP and Shell to the Information Research Department (IRD), which was Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm between 1948 and 1977, declassified files show.

The IRD used the secret subsidies to fund British covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 1960s across the Middle East and Africa, where Britain’s oil interests were substantial. Today, the value of the payments would be in the millions of pounds.

Such operations involved setting up newspapers and magazines, funding radio and television broadcasts, and organising trade union exchanges.

The objective was to promote “stability” in these regions by countering the threat of communism and resource nationalism, while improving the “public image” of Britain’s leading oil companies.

Ultimately, the goal was to secure British access to the supply of Middle Eastern and African oil.

Oil and propaganda

During the 1950s and 1960s, the IRD met annually with Shell and BP representatives to discuss how secret oil subsidies were being used and whether the oil companies were getting value for money.

In December 1960, IRD chief Donald Hopson met Shell’s UK executive Brian Trench and senior BP executive Archie Chisholm, alongside a number of other Foreign Office officials. The name of one individual remains classified, suggesting Britain’s intelligence services were also in attendance.

At the meeting, it was noted the IRD had spent £75,500 in oil money – valued at over £1.2m today – on covert propaganda operations between April 1959 and March 1960.

Over half of this money had been spent on the Arab News Agency (ANA), a long standing British propaganda front which had strong links with MI6.

“ANA operated the most comprehensive service in English and Arabic available in the Middle East with branch offices in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Amman, and representatives in some 15 other cities, including Paris and New York”, wrote journalist Richard Fletcher.

Hopson informed the oil companies “that their contributions had made it possible to put the [Arab News] Agency in a very strong competitive position in regard to its communications”.

For instance, oil company subsidies allowed ANA to pay for British news agency Reuters’ wire service. During this period, Reuters was pliable to UK government influence, and was seen as a useful propaganda instrument.

With this, ANA could supply news organisations across the Middle East with Reuters’ content. The service was described as “very successful in Egypt”, and it “secured the first place for Reuters in competition with the other world agencies”.

It is unclear whether Reuters was aware that the UK government was secretly channelling oil money into its accounts. One UK file, dated 1960 and entitled “Information Research Department: renegotiation of contract between Reuters and the Arab News Agency”, remains classified by the Foreign Office.

‘Valuable propaganda instrument’

On top of this, the IRD used £3,000 of oil money to fund Al Aalam (“The Globe”), an ostensibly independent magazine published in Iraq, which was seen by the Foreign Office as “a most valuable propaganda instrument”.

Al Aalam supported UK anti-communist efforts and sought to counter anti-British messaging coming from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. At this time, Nasserite Arab nationalism posed a significant threat to Britain’s regional interests, and was a central focus of British propaganda activities.

The oil companies’ contributions to Al Aalam, which had been ongoing since the early 1950s, “had in fact tipped the scale when the Treasury decision concerning the launching of the periodical was made”, it was noted. In 1960, the magazine achieved a monthly circulation of 85,000.

During this period, £15,000 in money from the oil companies was also “expended in Iran” on “emergency operations” which enabled “visits to be arranged, publication and translation work to be undertaken, and training schemes for Persian radio officials to be put in hand”.

‘Handsome contributions’

The IRD thanked Shell and BP for their “handsome contributions”, and requested an additional £138,750 in secret funding for the period April 1960 to December 1961. Indeed, these were “handsome contributions”, amounting to roughly 8 percent of the IRD’s annual official budget, and valued at £2.25m today.

“The general pattern of ANA’s activities would continue to be the same though the Agency would concentrate in the forthcoming year on strengthening its news collecting”, an IRD memo noted. To this end, the IRD requested an additional £42,500 for ANA’s running costs, and £26,250 for Reuters’ wire service.

On top of its pre-existing operations, the IRD proposed using oil subsidies to fund a number of new ventures.

One such project was geared towards building up “sufficient influence with certain selected Libyan Trade Unionists” in order to “encourage a spirit of moderation into industrial demands”. This issue was seen as “of direct interest to the oil companies” such that the IRD could “anticipate their support”.

A Foreign Office file shows media outlets in the Middle East received secret funds from British oil firms. (Photo: John McEvoy)

‘Student news service’

In Latin America, the IRD wished to “interest ourselves particularly in the student and trade union fields” by setting up a “student news service” with oil company contributions.

On top of this, the IRD requested £5,000 for a “trade union exchange visits scheme”. The scheme had already begun in Latin America, and the IRD was looking for oil money to expand the project into Africa.

It was also “hoped to start an examination of the possibilities of setting up a [television] programme agency for the Middle East shortly”.

Another project focused on news agency Gulf Times/Al Khalij, an IRD outfit based in Beirut, which was looking to expand and open a new office in Kuwait.

According to one IRD document, the agency’s core objective was “the preservation of [British] oil interests in the Gulf”. It was noted that the oil companies may thus “think it suitable to contribute [£30,000] towards the capital cost of the new venture”, which was valued at £110,000. This project, however, was ultimately abandoned by the IRD in April 1961.

‘Handmaid of BBC Arabic’

In 1963, the oil companies funded Huna London (“This is London”), a magazine which was described by one IRD official as “the handmaid of the BBC Arabic service” and “the best means we have of addressing the Arabs as a whole”.

Huna London had been the words used to announce the first BBC broadcast in Arabic in 1938, and the magazine would become the Arabic equivalent to the Radio Times, which listed British television and radio programmes alongside “contributions from leading writers and illustrators of the day”.

Oil money had “enabled 6,000 extra copies” of Huna London to be printed in 1963, “each requested by an individual Arab, to be sent out from Beirut”. The IRD envisaged that it might soon receive “requests for 100,000 or more copies”, which was described as a “highly desirable” outcome.

One proposed project remains redacted in entirety.

‘Contingency money’

Beyond this, the oil companies provided the IRD with tens of thousands of pounds in “contingency money”, which was to be used as “a stimulator of desirable projects”.

Norman Reddaway, a seasoned British propagandist based in the British embassy in Beirut, described the contingency fund as “particularly useful for pump-priming and for persuading people that desirable things could be done in advance of agreement by London”.

The oil companies felt the IRD was making good use of their money and, by 1960, they wanted to help British propaganda operations expand.

For instance, Shell was “widening their field of interest and… thinking in terms of propaganda in distribution areas as well as in producing territories. They are thus concerned with the public image of the oil companies in places like West Africa as well as in the Middle East”.

As a result, the IRD “could take it that” the oil companies “had an interest in all production and refining areas and territories adjacent thereto. Thus, for example, Somalia was an area of interest because of its proximity to Aden”.

Foreign Office minutes from a top secret meeting with Shell and BP. (Photo: John McEvoy)

Pump-priming

By late 1963, Shell and BP were beginning to express irritation at the IRD’s continued reliance on oil funds for ongoing projects.

Shell and BP had intended to pump-prime British covert propaganda projects so that these ventures could become self-sustaining. The oil companies, it was noted, were happy to help propaganda projects get off the ground but “did not like involving themselves in continuing commitments”.

In private correspondence dated 16 December 1963, Chisholm told Foreign Office official Leslie Glass that: “the object originally of the exercise on which we are engaged was to assist you to overcome certain financial restrictions in getting things moving at a critical and difficult time. We have been glad to continue our assistance with certain of these projects to our mutual advantage”.

Chisholm continued: “It was always our intention, however, that as projects reached full development and they justified financing from other sources, our contributions to them should tail off”.

Trench agreed, expressing hope that ANA, the Reuters service, and the Ariel Foundation – a British front organisation which facilitated exchanges of trade unionists and academics – “could be entirely financed from other sources by about 1966”.

The oil companies also found covert payments an awkward affair. Chisholm, for instance, “asked whether a less complicated method of making subventions was desirable”.

The IRD was not satisfied. In a draft response to Trench, one IRD official noted that “we are… faced always with the preliminary difficulty of being able to only approach you regarding projects which have a territorial interest common to you and your friends”.

Moreover, the IRD emphasised that “the result of a cessation of your [oil company] support would be that… undertakings would have to be cut down and be less freely available in the areas of common interest”.

Secret oil subsidies, in other words, were seen as central to the success of Britain’s propaganda operations in the region.

‘Very grateful’

Meanwhile, the IRD would have to discuss Latin America “bilaterally” with Shell, given the company’s interests in Venezuela outweighed BP’s interests in the region.

Despite the oil companies’ reservations, another £60,000 was provided to the IRD in 1964, for which British officials were “very grateful”. At this stage, future oil-funded projects in Algeria and the United Arab Republic were under consideration.

Secret oil subsidies to the IRD continued beyond 1964. As historian Athol Yatesfound, BP agreed in 1968 to fund broadcaster Sawt Al Saahil, a British covert radio station based in Sharjah (an emirate in the Gulf), to the tune of £3,000 for three years.

However, the extent to which Shell and BP funded British covert propaganda operations in the late and post-Cold War period remains unclear.

Shell and BP did not respond to requests for comment.

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John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin and Brasil Wire.

Featured image is from SHTFplan.com

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***

If he survives until today, Khalil Awawda will have been on hunger strike for 172 days in protest against Israeli administrative detention without charge. On the weekend, his family and lawyer were permitted to visit him in an Israeli hospital where they took and published horrific photos of the starving man. His strike is the longest among scores of fasts staged by Palestinian prisoners over the past 55 years. Starvation is the only means they can adopt to challenge Israel.

The European Union representative in Jerusalem expressed shock over the images, made the point  he is striking “in protest against his detention without charges”, and warned, “he is in imminent danger of dying. Unless charged immediately, he has to be released.”

On August 21, the Israeli supreme court rejected his petition to be released. Its decision amounted to a “death sentence”, Palestinian lawyer and former negotiator Diana Buttu told Al Jazeera.

“The supreme court rubber stamps everything that the Israeli security services put forward. It is only in very rare circumstances that we actually see that they are pushing back against what the security services are saying.”

Awawda was arrested in December 2021. Israel claimed he was a member of the Israeli outlawed Islamic Jihad. This was dismissed by his lawyer. Awawdah, who comes from the town of Idna near Al Khalil (Hebron), is among several Palestinian prisoners currently on hunger strike. He suspended his strike after 111 days when he was told his term in detention would not be renewed but resumed his protest after it was renewed for six months.

Israel has retained the policy of administrative detention imposed by Britain during its mandate in Palestine (1920-1948) where Palestinians were struggling against the 1917 British policy of transforming their country into a Jewish homeland. Britain also deported Palestinians who resisted its policy as it did to freedom fighters in other British occupied lands. For some years Israel followed suit.

Palestinian, Israeli and international human rights groups contend the policy violates the right of prisoners to due process and is aimed at crushing Palestinian resistance to the Israeli occupation.  Israel is holding 4,400 prisoners, 680 of them in administrative detention.The recently banned Palestinian prisoners’ support organisation, Adameer, launched a campaign against administrative detention last year in the wake of the May attack on Gaza and uprising in East Jerusalem and the West Bank and among Palestinian citizens of Israel.  During May and June Israel issued more than 379 administrative detention orders, dramatically surpassing previous years. Over the same period in 2020, 208 orders were issued.

The Israeli rights organisation B’Tselem states,

“In administrative detention, a person is held without trial without having committed an offense, on the grounds that he or she plans to break the law in the future. As this measure is supposed to be preventive, it has no time limit. The person is detained without legal proceedings by order of the regional military commander, based on classified evidence that is not revealed to them. This leaves the detainees helpless…”

Amnesty International brands this policy as a “cruel, unjust practice which helps maintain Israel’s system of apartheid against Palestinians.” Amnesty argues, in general, that administrative detention violates Article 9 of the International Convenance on Civil and Political Rights which states “that no one should be subjected to arbitrary detention and that deprivation of liberty should must be based on grounds and procedures established by law.”

On August 16, Human Rights Watch called on Israel to immediately release the French-Palestinian human rights worker Salah Hamouri from administrative detention and reverse the decision to revoke his residency status in his native Jerusalem.” Hamouri, a lawyer associated with Adameer, was arrested on March 7. HRW said that Hamouri’s Jerusalem residence was revoked for “breaching allegiance to Israel,” justifying his deportation.

HRW stated,

“International humanitarian law expressly forbids an occupying power from compelling people under occupation to pledge loyalty to it.”

In 2014, the UN Human Rights Committee urged Israel to “end the practice of administrative detention and the use of secret evidence in administrative detention proceedings, and ensure that individuals subject of administrative detention orders are either promptly charged with a criminal offensive, or released”.

Hisham Abu Hawash, a construction worker from the West Bank town of Dura, ended his 141-day hunger strike in January this year when the Israeli authorities decided to release him from administrative detention. However, the Israelis returned him from the hospital to prison for a month until he had served the entire term of his detention. Gideon Levy and Alex Levac reported in the Israeli liberal daily Haaretz that his doctors at the Shamir Medical Centre where “he spent the final days of his hunger strike, told him that it would take a year-and-a-half for his body to recover”. He vowed to strike again if rearrested. He was the last of 17 detainees striking since July 2021 over detention without charge or trial. His strike was the third longest in the post-1967 occupation history of Palestinian hunger strikers.  In April 2013, Samer Issawi secured release from administrative detention after 166 days. His fast was the second longest.

Palestinians have struck for better conditions, family visits, an end to beatings and abuse, access to television and fresh clothing. Four have died from Israeli forced feeding. Many have been rearrested after release and subjected to several terms of administrative detention, as well as imprisonment.  Administration detention is an honourable occupation in Palestine.

Take the case of Faisal Husseini, son of Abdel Qader Husseini, commander of Palestinian forces who was killed fighting Israeli shock troops in the battle for Qastal in April 1948.

Born in 1940 in Baghdad during his father’s exile from British-occupied Palestine, Faisal Husseini lived a peripatetic life until settling back in his home city of Jerusalem before the Israeli conquest. He joined Fateh and began his resistance career. He was sentenced to a year in prison in October 1967.  In 1979, he and other Palestinian intellectuals established the Arab Studies which was closed down from time to time and finally shuttered by Israel in 2001 after his death.  He was placed under administrative detention from 1982-1987. He became a leading figure in the First Intifada (1987-93), and was detained repeatedly during  this time as well as being put under house arrest and deported to the West Bank from Jerusalem, where his family can trace its roots for 1,000 years.

*

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The UK significantly increased its expenditure on investment programmes in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain via a secretive fund which has been slammed repeatedly for its lack of transparency.

The UK more than doubled its funding to Saudi Arabia and Bahrain via a secretive fund despite repeated criticism over the Gulf states’ poor human rights record and a looming domestic cost of living crisis.

Freedom of Information requests revealed that the UK Foreign Office’s Gulf Strategy Fund (GSF) provided Saudi Arabia with a funding increase of £813,605 to £1.8 million in 2021-22. In Bahrain, funding was raised from £710,028 to £1.8 million.

The GSF has been slammed by several politicians and human rights groups for its lack of transparency, with senior MPs calling for it to be scrapped entirely.

“The UK works with partners around the world to improve their human rights record, including the Gulf,” said the UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) according to Middle East Eye. 

“All cooperation through the Gulf Strategy Fund is subject to rigorous risk assessments to ensure all work meets our human rights obligations and values,” they added.

It is not clear what the increase in funds will be used for, or why it was implemented.

On Friday, the FCDO published updated “transparency data” on the GSF.

For Bahrain, the UK government said Britain “supports Bahrain-led and owned reform and capacity building programmes to deliver long-term security”.

This is followed by a series of bullet points listing schemes such as “criminal justice reform” without further information.

In Saudi Arabia, the UK has used the GSF to support Vision 2030 as well as to enhance “mutual prosperity by promoting inward investment”.

One of the bullet point list items simply says “smart cities and mobility opportunities in Saudi Arabia for UK companies”. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has launched a series of projects building megacities in the desert, including furitistic metropolis NEOM with a budget of US$500 billion.

An increase to the GSF comes as Britons face surging energy bills, with an estimated monthly energy bill of £3,000 to hit this winter. The UK government has been accused of offering an insufficient support package to help the most vulnerable afford power.

There are also concerns and growing scrutiny over human rights abuses in the two Gulf states.

Earlier this month, Leeds University student Salma al-Shehab was jailed for 34 years after she published a tweet that was mildly critical of a government programme.

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One of my purposes at JFK Facts, the Substack edition, is to report on the U.S. government’s tortured failure to comply with the 1992 JFK Assassination Records Act. The law set a 25 year deadline for release of all U.S. government files related to the murder of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

In October 2017 President Trump caved in to CIA and FBI pressure and agreed to keep secret portions of some 15,000 assassination related records for four more years. The former president, who often expresses his disdain for the “deep state,” gave the CIA exactly what it wanted on JFK: more secrecy.

Last year, the JFK question landed on Biden’s desk. The CIA and other federal agencies told the president that COVID prevented them from complying with the law. “’The COVID dog at my homework” excuse, I told the Washington Post, was absurd and insulting. The ever-patient President BIden set a new deadline of December 15, 2022 for full JFK disclosure.

You can read Biden’s memorandum here.

JFK Facts will be watching the government’s performance carefully. Some people assert that there’s nothing important in the withheld material. While it is true that there is lots of trivial information is being concealed by CIA and FBI, that does not mean that all of the information that is withheld is trivial.

Four Who Knew

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In the 9,118th meeting of the UN Security Council, the situation in Afghanistan was discussed. 

Martin Griffiths, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), opened the meeting with the following statement (excerpt sourced from ReliefWeb),

The people in Afghanistan continue to face extreme hardship and uncertainty. And let me share some numbers with you.

Close to 19 million people are facing acute levels of food insecurity, including 6 million people at risk of famine.

More than half of the population – some 24 million people – need humanitarian assistance.

And an estimated 3 million children are acutely malnourished. They include over 1 million children estimated to be suffering from the most severe, life-threatening form of malnutrition. And without specialized treatment, these children could die.

…

Around 25 million people are now living in poverty and three quarters of people’s income is spent on food. There’s been a 50 per cent decline in households receiving remittances; unemployment could reach 40 per cent; and inflation is rising due to increased global prices, import constraints and currency depreciation.

…

These are the figures, Mr. President, and they’re devastating and frankly they’re difficult to comprehend. We worry that they will soon become worse. Once the cold weather sets in, food and fuel prices – already high – will skyrocket, and families will have to choose between feeding their children, sending them to school, taking them to a doctor when they fall sick, or keeping them warm.

Mr. President, Afghanistan’s problems are, unfortunately, neither new nor unique.

…

There are many musts, Mr. President. But there are many opportunities. The path is clear, and the dangers equally so.

The people of Afghanistan are still there. They have shown incredible resilience over the decades and in this last year. Our task is to help them to prosper, to flourish and to be safe. Thank you very much.

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August 17, 2022, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director Dr. Rochelle Walensky publicly admitted the agency’s COVID response “fell short,” and that an internal reorganization has been launched to improve response times and data sharing, and to make health guidance easier to understand. Six days before this announcement, the CDC published updated COVID guidance, now matching what “misinformation spreaders” have called for all along

The vow to revamp fails to take into account the real reasons why people no longer trust the CDC, namely their dishonesty, their suppression of science that doesn’t fit the Great Reset narrative, and their protection of Big Pharma at the expense of American lives, including children and pregnant women

Despite widespread failures and blatant corruption within the CDC, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, the Health and Human Services’ (HHS) is asking for a bigger budget. Its proposed budget for 2023 is $1.7 TRILLION in mandatory spending and another $127.3 BILLION in discretionary spending

Of those budgeted trillions, the CDC will in 2023 receive about 1% of the HHS budget, or $10.6 billion — $2.3 billion more than its 2022 appropriation — and this includes “mandatory funding to establish a Vaccines for Adults program”

The CDC being wrong on everything about the pandemic — and taking two and a half years to admit even a fraction of it — is proof positive that centralizing health care decisions is a bad idea. Ideally, all that HHS money should be divided among the states. We’d be far better off with local community programs handling current HHS services — including pandemic response

*

After botching the COVID response in every possible and improbable way, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now wants more money — and more power.

August 17, 2022, CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky publicly admitted the agency’s COVID response “fell short,” and that an internal reorganization has been launched to improve response times and data sharing, and to make health guidance easier to understand.^1,2

“My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness,” Walensky said in a statement.

The problem is that reorganization will not fix the foundational problem, which is that the CDC can’t seem to quit protecting Big Pharma the expense of public health. Americans have lost faith in the CDC for the simple reason that it’s been lying to us day in and day out for two and a half years.

They’ve flouted basic rules and regulations, they’ve redefined well-established medical terms to suit the chosen narrative, they’ve made recommendations without scientific support while telling us to “trust the science.” They’ve completely ignored massive, unprecedented safety signals for both the COVID jabs and remdesivir, flatly refusing to answer questions about the mounting deaths and injuries from these drugs.

They’ve refused to take into account other public health parameters such as suicides and alcoholism caused by lockdowns, and deaths due to lack of treatment for chronic conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and cancer. They’re also refusing to address what is clearly deteriorating immune function among the COVID-jabbed. The list goes on.

In March 2022, Walensky admitted they “never suspected” the effectiveness of the shots might wane, despite clear and abundant evidence — shared on alternative media platforms — that the shots were not working.

What’s more, she admitted her source for the “95% effective” claim was a CNN report (which in turn pulled its information directly from a Pfizer press release). That’s the level of data gathering for decision making we’re dealing with here.

I guess that’s what happens when the vast majority of CDC employees, including Walensky herself, work from home for years on end. Considering Walensky STILL works from home to this day,^3,4 one also wonders how effective these supposed reorganization efforts can actually be.

The CDC is a wholly captured agency, beholden to Big Pharma, and as long as a single decision maker remains, they can reorganize and restructure to their hearts’ content. It won’t change a thing. As noted by The Defender,⁵ the CDC needs to be replaced with “a public health model that operates independently from Big Pharma.”

Health and Human Services to Get $1.7 Trillion

Failures and ineptitudes be damned, the Health and Human Services’ (HHS) proposed budget⁶ for 2023 is now an eye-popping $1.7 TRILLION in mandatory spending (up from 1.5 trillion in 2022⁷), and another $127.3 BILLION in discretionary spending (down from 131.8 billion in 2022⁸).

Operating divisions⁹ under the HHS include not only the CDC and the Food and Drug Administration, but also the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid and several others. In total, the HHS employs some 80,000 people.¹⁰

Of those budgeted trillions, the CDC will in 2023 receive 1% of the HHS budget or $10.6 billion¹¹ — $2.3 billion more than its 2022 appropriation — and this includes “mandatory funding to establish a Vaccines for Adults program.”

Yet with all that supposed brain power and money, what exactly do they accomplish? I would argue “precious little,” and the CDC’s COVID response is a perfect example of how our taxpayer funds are being wasted on advice that range from bad to worse.

The problem with concentrated power is that it gets corrupted. After 69 years, it seems the HHS is finally entering its death throes, as corruption within many of its operating divisions is now shockingly blatant.

The same goes for the World Health Organization. Incidentally, its biannual budget for 2022-2023 of $6.7 billion¹² is dwarfed by the HHS budget. Still, the WHO is now seeking to gain control over health decisions globally. I explain why this is such a horrendous and unworkable idea in “The WHO Is a Corrupt, Unhealthy Organization.”

The CDC being wrong on everything about the pandemic, and taking two and a half years to admit even a fraction of it, is proof positive that centralizing health care decisions is a bad idea. Ideally, all that money should be divided among the states. We’d be far better off with local community programs handling current HHS services — including pandemic response.

CDC’s Botched Test Kits

The errors of the CDC are too numerous to recount in a single article, but let’s take a look at one of the doozies, namely its botched COVID test. As reported by HealthDay reporters Robert Preidt and Robin Foster, back in December 2021:¹³

“Along with being contaminated, there was also a basic design flaw in COVID-19 testing kits created by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention early in the pandemic, a new agency review shows.

It was already known that the PCR kits were contaminated, but the CDC’s findings published Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE¹⁴ are the first to note a design error that caused false positives.

When the CDC’s test kits were developed and distributed in the early weeks of the pandemic, there were no other authorized tests available … The agency started shipping the test kits to public health laboratories in early February 2020, but many labs soon told the CDC that the tests were producing inconclusive results.

The CDC acknowledged later that month that the kits were flawed, and U.S. Food and Drug Administration officials said in April that poor manufacturing practices had caused contamination of the kits …”

So, the tests had not just one but two problems. First, they were contaminated with synthetic fragments, sequences of genetic material from the virus that are used to ensure the test is working properly. These synthetic sequences are thought to have contaminated the kits during quality testing, as they were being manufactured in the same CDC lab where quality testing took place.

Secondly, the CDC failed to catch a serious design flaw. The test was designed to detect the presence of three specific genetic regions or sequences of the virus. The test kit included a set of primers that bound to and made copies of those regions (when they were present in the patient, indicating exposure to the virus), as well as probes that fluoresced to signal that copying was taking place.

To work properly, these primers and probes had to bind to the genetic sequences, but not to each other. Here, one of the probes had a tendency to bind to one of the primers, thereby triggering a fluorescent signal, suggesting a positive result. This is how the test ended up producing an unacceptable number of false positives.

Eventually, smaller private companies ended up providing most of the PCR tests — without encountering these contamination and design flaw problems. The fact that the PCR test cannot identify an active infection and were used to create a false “casedemic” is another story, which we’ve covered multiple times. Here too, the CDC displayed shocking dishonesty, alternatively hiding and manipulating data to make the pandemic out to be something it really wasn’t.

They also recommended mask wearing despite overwhelming scientific evidence showing masks don’t prevent the spread of viruses. Time and again, CDC leadership made public health decisions on what appears to have been nothing more than assumption, personal opinion or fear — and that’s if you’re kind enough to exclude the possibility of fraud and collusion to benefit Big Pharma and the globalist Great Reset agenda.

Did HHS Create the Problem?

As mentioned, the HHS runs the NIH and CDC, both of which are implicated in the creation of SARS-CoV-2. So, basically, the same circle of people who may have created the problem are also in charge of solving it and providing a cure.

We’ve already seen how “effective” they’ve been in that regard. They’ve devastated public health with useless lockdowns, mask mandates and social distancing, and killed an as-yet undetermined but extraordinarily high number of people with improper, dangerous and experimental treatments.

As noted in “Why the COVID Jab Should Be Banned for Pregnant Women,” the CDC to this day insists pregnant women get the COVID shot,¹⁵ despite trial data suggesting it may cause miscarriage in 8 out of 10 cases.^16,17,18 Will reorganization eventually correct this murderous advice?

In an August 2, 2022, Current Affairs interview,¹⁹ professor Jeffrey Sachs, chair of The Lancet’s COVID-19 Commission, said he believes the U.S. government is preventing a thorough investigation into the origin of the pandemic, for the simple reason that the virus was the result of U.S. research. Indeed, there are patents spanning decades to suggest that’s true (see “Patents Prove SARS-CoV-2 Is a Manufactured Virus”).

If our very worst suspicions are true, then the U.S. government funded not only one bioweapon but two — the original SARS-CoV-2 and the gene transfer injections misrepresented as “COVID vaccines.” And the HHS divisions of the FDA and CDC went along with all of it, not even pausing at the possibility of killing or injuring 6-month-old infants and toddlers.

Waging War on Pathogens Is a Failed Strategy

In an August 10, 2022, Brownstone Institute article, Aaron Vandiver, a wildlife conservationist, writer and former litigator, reviews why the global war on pathogens is a failed strategy that needs to end:²⁰

“Bill Gates has called the global response to COVID-19 a ‘world war.’ His militaristic language has been echoed by Anthony Fauci and other architects of COVID-19 policy for the last two and half years … I believe that an ecological perspective reveals many of the flaws inherent in an aggressive high-tech attack on a pathogen…

To me, the ‘war’ on COVID-19 has been characterized by a destructive set of attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors that appear to be deeply engrained in our political and economic institutions, and which form a pattern that should be recognizable to conservationists and ecologists.

In the remainder of the article,²¹ Vandiver goes into several aggressive and destructive COVID interventions in greater detail — and their consequences. I recommend reading through it.

Importantly, when we go to war against pathogens, we go to war against ourselves, because without pathogens we cannot exist. The key to health is balanced co-existence with bacteria, viruses and other pathogens, which exist by the trillions in and on our bodies.

The Twisted Logic Behind Gain-of-Function Research

Vandiver, like Sachs, also points out that gain-of-function research funded by the NIH appears to be the most logical and most heavily supported theory as to the origin of the pandemic, and that denial of the lab leak theory is underpinned by reckless scientists unwilling to recognize the risks inherent in their work.

“Most fail to realize that Fauci and other proponents of ‘gain of function’ have long shown reckless disregard for the risks of tampering with natural viruses, expressing a paranoid attitude toward nature that is the antithesis of respect for ecology,” Vandiver writes.

“Fauci and others claim that ‘Mother Nature Is the Ultimate Bioterrorist’ to justify their Frankenstein-like efforts to hunt down the most dangerous viruses that exist in wild nature, take them to labs like the one in Wuhan, and tinker around with them to make them more dangerous and deadly.

Their twisted logic seems to be that if they intentionally create superviruses, they can somehow anticipate and prepare for natural pandemics. Most objective observers, however, say that ‘gain of function’ is a military-industrial boondoggle that has no practical benefit whatsoever and dramatically increases the risk of pandemics …

It remains inconclusive whether ‘gain of function’ research actually caused the COVID-19 pandemic, but its potential to have done so is a vivid example of how powerful actors like Fauci use technological tools to interfere with natural processes, with disregard if not outright contempt for the long-term ecological consequences, thereby creating opportunities to exercise more power.”

In conclusion, Vandiver notes:²²

“If we carefully analyze each aspect of ‘world war’ on COVID-19, we can see how each tactic and high-tech ‘weapon’ has harmed human health, destabilized civil society, and possibly disrupted the ecological balance between the human population and the virus, while enriching private interests and empowering financially captured government regulators.

The ‘war’ has been characterized the distinct pattern that I described at the beginning of this essay … This destructive pattern appears to be deeply ingrained in our institutions and in the outlook of our leaders. It largely defines our society’s dysfunctional relationship with the natural world.

An ecological perspective that keeps this pattern in mind, and takes into account all of the consequences of launching high-tech ‘wars’ on pathogens or any other part of our environment may help us avoid similar catastrophes in the future, or at least to recognize them.”

Death by Medicine

In “Are Medical Errors Still the Third Leading Cause of Death?” I review the now decades-long history of modern medicine being a leading cause of death, at times spinning up to take first place, and rarely dipping below fourth. Several studies and investigations over the years have placed medicine and medical errors as the third leading cause of death in the U.S.

The pandemic has revealed just how dangerous it is to listen to dog whistles like “trust the science.” Which science? The one Big Pharma concocts to make money or the one that double checks and investigates claims independently?

The CDC’s COVID policies were all wrong — consistently 180 degrees from helpful — and have only recently been updated²³ to match what all of us “misinformation spreaders” have been saying for well over two years. That update was published August 11, just six days before Walensky announced the CDC’s reorganization plans.

I’m not buying the idea that the CDC suddenly realized it was going in the wrong direction. They knew it from the start, and they did it intentionally. I suspect they’re only now starting to course correct because mainstream media are losing its grip on the public.

Mainstream media were their cover for every obnoxious, unscientific recommendation, and without that brainwashing arm, the CDC has no way to turn but back. Like Dr. Anthony Fauci, they probably realize that the political tide is turning, people are fed up with the “1984” double-speak, and if Republicans take the House in November, the CDC could well be facing any number of investigations.

Senators Promise Investigations

August 23, 2022, two U.S. senators promised a “full-throated investigation” of Fauci’s and former NIH-chief Francis Collins’ potential roles in the origin of the pandemic, and issued a formal request for the HHS and NIH to preserve documents and communications.²⁴

Leadership at the CDC and FDA also need to be investigated and questioned about the ins and outs of their decision making. Not that I think they’ll ever admit to “working for the devil,” meaning the Deep State cabal that is using COVID as a cover for a global takeover, but there needs to be a reckoning nonetheless.

Those willing to sacrifice the lives, futures and Constitutional rights of Americans on behalf of these transhumanist psychopaths need to be ruthlessly weeded out. And then, we need to implement new public health systems, perhaps new agencies, with powers that are more limited in scope and state-run rather than federal.

Never, ever, should an agency like the CDC be allowed to ban doctors from treating patients, for example, based on their own expertise and experience. What has happened during this pandemic, and is still happening, is a true crime against humanity. We must never forget how health officials, government officials, media and other influencers tried to foment hatred against the unvaccinated, and how they’ve been willing to discriminate to the point of death.

The CDC has now backtracked on discrimination, agreeing people should not be treated based on their vaccination status. But we remember the calls for “re-education camps” and no-fly lists. Backtracking is not going to erase the attempts to destroy the lives of those who refused to play their Russian roulette.

I, for one, would love to hear the CDC explain why they have ignored the blaring safety signal of nearly 1.3 MILLION reports of COVID jab injuries in the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).²⁵ Wouldn’t you?

*

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Notes

¹ CNBC August 17, 2022

² Fox News August 17, 2022

³ Twitter Jenna Luche-Thayer August 17, 2022

⁴ New York Times August 17, 2022

⁵ The Defender August 18, 2022

⁶ HHS.gov FY 2023 Budget

^7, 8 HHS FY 2022 Budget

⁹ HHS Organizational Chart

¹⁰ HHS Careers

¹¹ CDC Media Statement March 28, 2022

¹² WHO 2022-2023 budget

¹³ US News December 16, 2021

¹⁴ PLOS ONE December 15, 2021

¹⁵ CDC.gov Updated July 14, 2022

¹⁶ Pierre Kory Substack August 20, 2022

¹⁷ Wayback NEJM Letter to the Editor June 27, 2021

¹⁸ Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law November 2021; 4: 130-143

¹⁹ Current Affairs August 2, 2022

^20, 21, 22 Brownstone Institute August 10, 2022

²³ MMWR August 11, 2022; 71

²⁴ The Defender August 24, 2022

²⁵ OpenVAERS Through August 12, 2022

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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.”

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The Biden administration filed a request today asking the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower court decision that halted offshore fracking in federal waters off California. Today’s filing asks for an “en banc” review of the key ruling.

Both the Center for Biological Diversity and California attorney general Kamala Harris sued the federal government in 2016 to stop offshore fracking. In June a three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court decision that prohibits offshore fracking in federal waters off the California coast. Now the administration is asking for en banc review to overturn that ruling and allow offshore fracking to resume.

“It’s incredibly disappointing to see the Biden administration doing the oil industry’s bidding by defending fracking off the California coast,” said Kristen Monsell, an attorney at the Center for Biological Diversity. “This contradicts the administration’s climate goals, because fast-tracking offshore fracking will mean more dirty fossil fuels. The 9th Circuit’s decision was well-reasoned and the right one under the law. We’re confident this effort to overturn it will be rejected. Offshore fracking shouldn’t be allowed at all, let alone without a careful, comprehensive analysis of its harmful environmental effects.”

The 9th Circuit’s June ruling found that the federal government violated the National Environmental Policy Act, Endangered Species Act, and Coastal Zone Management Act when it allowed fracking in offshore oil and gas wells in all leased federal waters off California.

The appeals court order prohibits the Department of the Interior from issuing fracking permits until it completes Endangered Species Act consultation and an environmental impact statement that “fully and fairly evaluate[s] all reasonable alternatives.”

The decision was the result of three separate lawsuits filed by the Center, the state of California, and other organizations.

At least 10 fracking chemicals routinely used in offshore fracking could kill or harm a broad variety of marine species, including sea otters and fish, Center scientists have found. The California Council on Science and Technology has identified some fracking chemicals to be among the most toxic in the world to marine animals.

*

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Featured image: Oil rigs off the California coast. Credit: Drew Bird Photo

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Activists are expected to protest the Toronto air show because of its ties to arms manufacturers, the fact that it re-traumatizes victims of war, and that it’s an attempt to sell the Canadian public on warplanes. The Canadian government is currently in a bidding process to purchase 88 new fighter jets next year.

Activists from World BEYOND War, No New Fighter Jets Coalition, Independent Jewish Voices, Defund the Police Fund Our Communities, Canadian Defenders for Human Rights, and more will gather at Dufferin Gate Loop (158 Dufferin St. Toronto) to protest the Toronto Airshow.

WHAT: Activists from World BEYOND War, No New Fighter Jets Coalition, Independent Jewish Voices, Defund the Police Fund Our Communities, Canadian Defenders for Human Rights, and more will demonstrate with banners, leaflets, and free resources for passersby.

WHEN: Sunday, September 4th, 12PM. Follow on Facebook & on Twitter @wbwcanada for photos & updates.

WHERE: Dufferin Gate Loop (158 Dufferin St. Toronto)

VISUALS: Large banners, Toronto downtown, large crowd.

Background

• Lockheed Martin, one of the major sponsors of the air show, has seen their stocks soar nearly 25 percent since the start of the new year. Just prior to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Lockheed Martin Chief Executive Officer James Taiclet said on an earnings call that he predicted the conflict would lead to inflated defence budgets and additional sales for the company. Further, Lockheed’s F-35 Jet is advertised in the show; the 110 million dollar jet is designed for first strike attack and is dual-capable for carrying both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons.
• Canada has become one of the world’s top arms dealers globally, and is the second-biggest weapons supplier to the Middle East region. Most Canadian arms are exported to Saudi Arabia and other countries engaged in violent conflicts in the Middle East and North Africa, even though these customers were repeatedly implicated in serious violations of international humanitarian law.
• Canada’s current stock of fighter jets have spent the last few decades bombing Libya, Iraq, Yemen, and Syria, prolonging violent conflict and contributing to massive humanitarian and refugee crises. These operations had an immediate deadly toll on human life, and killed many more by destroying vital civilian infrastructure.
• The Canadian International Airshow (CIAS) expects to host around 2,500 showgoers each day. However, Lori Duthie, CIAS executive director, said a million people typically spread out along the shore to watch the show.

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Iranian and Israeli news agencies report that Tel Aviv’s attack of Damascus and Aleppo airports on 31 August came in response to the landing of the same Iranian cargo plane at both airfields.

According to Iran’s official Tasnim News Agency, Israel launched its first attack of the night on Aleppo airport roughly ten minutes after the plane landed in the city.

After this attack was over, the plane in question took off from Aleppo and headed for Damascus, where once again the Israeli army bombed the runway minutes after the plane landed.

Israeli news outlet Haaretz claims the cargo plane was an Iranian airliner that has been sanctioned by the US for alleged ties to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In an unprecedented attack, on Wednesday night Israeli missiles hit the runways of Syria’s two main airfields.

Breaking News: For the first time, Israel targets Aleppo International Airport and Damascus International airport in the same day, one hour apart. pic.twitter.com/PLlMo7Z7Xl

— The Cradle (@TheCradleMedia) August 31, 2022

This was the first time since the beginning of the conflict that Israel targets both airports on the same night, just one hour apart.

Syrian air-defense systems in Latakia intercepted several Israeli missiles fired from the Levantine Sea, causing loud explosions in the area.

No casualties were reported from the attacks, although both airfields suffered material losses. The attack in the Syrian capital also knocked out power in several areas of the city.

Wednesday’s attack marked the second time this year that Tel Aviv targets Damascus International Airport.

On 10 June, the Israeli army launched a vicious attack on Syria’s main airfield, destroying vital sections of the runways and causing Damascus airport to go completely out of service for a period of two weeks.

According to Israeli media, the decision to destroy the airport’s runways was an attempt to deny Iran access to infrastructure that could be utilized for weapon transfers.

In view of the occupation of Iraq in 2003 and the recent occupation of Al-Tanf zone in Damascus governorate by US forces, Syrian airports have been the most reliable means of transportation employed by Iran to support resistance against Israeli attacks in Lebanon and Gaza.

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Featured image: Archive. (Photo credit: airhistory.net/STREEP via The Cradle)

In the Months Prior to 9/11: US Covert Support to Al Qaeda in Macedonia, “Financing Both Sides”

By Prof Michel Chossudovsky, August 31, 2022

While Washington supports the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, it is at the same time – behind the scenes – funneling money and military hardware to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) now engaged in a border war with the Macedonian Security Forces. In a cruel irony, Washington is arming and advising both the KLA attackers and the Macedonian defenders under military and intelligence authorization acts approved by the US Congress.

The Biden Administration and Two Looming Crises: An Economic and Financial Crisis and a Hegemonic War

By Prof Rodrigue Tremblay, August 31, 2022

Besides the lingering Covid-19 pandemic and the on-going climate crisis, which will be accompanied by an energy crisis, not to mention the coming migration crisis, the world could be facing two man-made major crises in the years to come, i.e. an economic and financial crisis and a hegemonic war crisis.

Baghdad Is in Chaos After Almost 20 Years Since the US Invasion

By Steven Sahiounie, August 31, 2022

The latest death toll has risen to 30 Iraqis as Baghdad descends into chaos and violence, with another 390 protesters wounded from bullets and tear gas inhalation. In March 2023, it will mark the 20^th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and yet the country has never recovered and still has no stable democracy.

Macron’s Attempt to Exploit Algerian Gas Unlikely to Succeed

By Lucas Leiroz de Almeida, August 31, 2022

Amid the search for diversification of energy sources, France seems ready to resume some of its colonial ties with Algeria. The African country is an important gas producer and can help Europe with supplies at this time of widespread shortages as consequence of anti-Russian sanctions. However, it remains to be seen whether it is in the Algerian interest to play this role of “substitute” for Russia that France wants it to play.

Washington’s “Modern Cold War” Against Africa. SADC Summit Rejects Anti-Russian Bill in U.S. Congress

By Abayomi Azikiwe, August 31, 2022

A recent gathering of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has expressed its displeasure with recent legislation making its way through the United States Congress which is aimed at punishing the continent for its diplomatic and trade relations with the Russian Federation.

Rockefeller Foundation Funds Behavioral Scientists to Brainwash People Into Taking COVID Injections

By Mac Slavo, August 31, 2022

An initiative funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation is investing an initial $7.2 million in behavioral research. This particular study will be focused on brainwashing the public into getting the COVID-19 injections, the foundation announced last week.

The Cult of Modern Psychology: “Psychiatric Drugs Are Dangerous”

By Dr. Gary Null and Richard Gale, August 31, 2022

On August 27^th, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel published an article entitled “This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs: She’s Not Alone.” The article begins as an honest indictment of psychiatry’s rising irresponsible practice of over prescribing multiple powerful drugs for teens struggling with anxiety, depression and other behavioral disorders. Richtel states the problem clearly.

Young Doctors in Canada Are Dying at Rate 23x Normal After the Second Booster

By Steve Kirsch, August 31, 2022

The Canadian Medical Association (CMA) data for 2020 shows doctors in Canada aged 50 and under die at a rate of about 6 per year. After the latest booster, 6 Canadian doctors, 50 and under, died within a 15 day period. Something is very wrong here, but nobody wants to talk about it or look into it. They’d rather look the other way.

Beggars in Surplus: Australia’s University Gangsters

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, August 31, 2022

With the election of a new government in Australia in May, the begging bowls were being readied by administrators in the university sector.  Bloated, ungainly, ruthless and uneven in quality, the country’s universities, for the most part, had inadvertently made their case for more public funding harder.

Colossal Financial Pyramid: BlackRock and The WEF “Great Reset”

By F. William Engdahl, August 31, 2022

A virtually unregulated investment firm today exercises more political and financial influence than the Federal Reserve and most governments on this planet. The firm, BlackRock Inc., the world’s largest asset manager, invests a staggering $9 trillion in client funds worldwide, a sum more than double the annual GDP of the Federal Republic of Germany.

This essay was first published by antiwar.com in April 2001, barely 5 months before the September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTC and the Pentagon.

It was subsequently published by Global Research when the site was launched in September 9, 2001. That was twenty-two years ago. 

What is of utmost significance in our understanding of Al Qaeda’s alleged role in 9/11 is that US military operatives on contract the Pentagon were involved (in the months leading up to 9/11) in providing support to separatist forces in Macedonia with links to al Qaeda. 

Michel Chossudovsky, August 31, 2022

US Finances Ethnic Warfare in the Balkans

by Michel Chossudovsky

Antiwar.com, April 2001,

Global Research, September 2001

INTRODUCTION

While Washington supports the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, it is at the same time – behind the scenes – funneling money and military hardware to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) now engaged in a border war with the Macedonian Security Forces. In a cruel irony, Washington is arming and advising both the KLA attackers and the Macedonian defenders under military and intelligence authorization acts approved by the US Congress. Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), a mercenary outfit on contract to the Pentagon, is helping Macedonia – as part of a US military aid package – “to deter armed aggression and defend Macedonian territory.” But MPRI is also advising and equipping the KLA, which is responsible for the terrorist assaults. In this war, the American military-intelligence apparatus is pulling strings “on both sides of the fence.” What is the hidden agenda?

“[The] United States of America and the Kosovo Liberation Army stand for the same human values and principles … Fighting for the KLA is fighting for human rights and American values.”(Senator Joseph Lieberman, quoted in the Washington Post, 28 April 1999)

THE KLA IS TRANSFORMED

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) – transformed in September 1999 into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) under UN auspices – is behind the terrorist attacks in the Tetovo region of Macedonia as well as in Southern Serbia. In Macedonia, these assaults are waged by the KLA’s proxy: the Ushtira Clirimtare Komtare (UCK) or National Liberation Army (NLA). The terrorists operate from KLA bases inside Kosovo under KFOR protection.

Supported by the US, the KLA and its various proxies are well equipped. According to Carl Bildt (special UN coordinator for the Balkans), the Macedonian Security Forces “are no match” for the rebels:

“the guerrillas are a competent military organization… They have a core of very experienced fighters. They are well fortified, evidently well prepared, and in all probability they control substantial parts of the hinterland.”

But where did they get the money? The Western media conveys the impression that the National Liberation Army (NLA) developed into a modern rebel force overnight, spontaneously “out of thin air” and that NATO leaders have no contacts with the KLA.

UN PEACE-KEEPING FINANCES TERRORISM

According to the (London) Sunday Times,

“American intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.”¹

A review of US Congressional documents would suggest that CIA support was not discontinued after the war.² Moreover, while the KLA maintains its links both to the CIA and criminal syndicates involved in the Balkans narcotics trade, the paramilitary organisation -renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) has been elevated to UN status, implying the granting of legitimate sources of funding through UN as well as through bilateral channels.

Procurement of military supplies, training of the KLA and military advisers has been entrusted to Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI), a US based mercenary outfit linked to the Pentagon. The pattern is similar to that followed in Croatia and in the Bosnian Muslim-Croatian Federation where so-called “equip and train” programmes were put together by the Pentagon.

MPRI’s training concepts – which had already been tested in Croatia and Bosnia – are based on imparting “offensive tactics… as the best form of defence.”³ In the Kosovar context, this so-called “defensive doctrine” applied in terrorist assaults in Southern Serbia and Macedonia is intent upon transforming the KLA paramilitary into a modern military force which serves the Alliance’s strategic objectives. MPRI listed in 1999 “ninety-one highly experienced, former military professionals working in Bosnia & Herzegovina.”⁴ The number of military officers working on contract with the KLA has not been disclosed.

There is, however, a consistent thread: KLA Chief of Staff Agim Ceku (previously with the Croatian Armed Forces) has been involved in a long-term relationship with the MPRI. Ceku started working with MPRI in 1995 in the planning of “Operation Storm” in Croatia, which led to ethnic massacres and the expulsion of more than 200.000 Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia. The fact that Ceku is “an alleged war criminal” – according to the files of the Hague Tribunal (a body reporting to the UN Secretary General) – does not, however, seem to bother anybody in the “international community.”⁵

Ceku holds a UN passport (Laissez-Passer) which provides him with diplomatic immunity within Kosovo. According to ICTY prosecutor Carla del Ponte, Ceku’s reputation and integrity, however, are unstained because the Hague tribunal’s “inquiries … relate to atrocities committed [by Ceku] in Krajina … between 1993 and 1995. Ceku’s record in Kosovo itself is not thought to be in question.”⁶

Behind to polite façade of international diplomacy, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has – on Washington’s instructions – knowingly and willfully approved the appointment of “an alleged war criminal” to participate in a UN peacekeeping operation. In other words, the UN system is “financing terrorism,” creating an ugly precedent in the history of a respected international body: “The United Nations is paying the salaries of many of the gangsters,” who are now involved in the terrorist assaults into Macedonia.⁷

RECYCLING NARCO-DOLLARS

US support to the KLA is only one among several sources of KLA financing. Various Islamic organisations have channeled money and military equipment to the KLA. Prior to the 1999 war,

Mujehadeen mercenaries recruited in a number of countries fought against Serb Security forces alongside the KLA in Kosovo. According to the ‘Sunday Times,’ the recent assaults by the KLA’s proxy in the Tetovo region of Macedonia have been “encouraged by mercenaries from Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia.”⁹

Amply documented, the Balkans drug trade is used to finance ethnic warfare with the complicity of the US and NATO. The pattern of covert support – through the recycling of narco-dollars – has been an integral part of CIA covert operations since the Soviet-Afghan war. According to documents of the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), “members of the notorious Albanian mafia have links to a drug smuggling cartel” based in Kosovo’s capital, Pristina. This cartel is allegedly manned by ethnic Albanians who are members of the Kosovo National Front (KNF) whose armed wing is the KLA. The DEA documents apparently show it is one of the “most powerful heroin smuggling organisations in the world” with its profits being diverted to the KLA to buy weapons.¹⁰

In the words of former DEA agent and author Michael Levine:

“Ten years ago we were arming and equipping the worst elements of the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan – drug traffickers, arms smugglers, anti-American terrorists…Now we’re doing the same thing with the KLA, which is tied in with every known middle and far eastern drug cartel. Interpol, Europol, and nearly every European intelligence and counter-narcotics agency has files open on drug syndicates that lead right to the KLA, and right to Albanian gangs in this country.”¹¹

While US aid – combined with drug money – is channeled to the KLA, Washington and Brussels perfunctorily condemn the NLA-Tetovo instigated terrorist assaults while casually denying the links of the attackers to the KLA. In the words of former NATO Secretary General Javier Solana: “‘it would be a mistake to negotiate,… the terrorists have to be isolated. All of us have to condemn and isolate them. Nothing can be achieved through violence” …

NATO has pledged to ”starve” the rebels by cutting supply lines from neighboring Kosovo.”¹² While condemning the terrorists, NATO – through the UN – has also been “raising the urgent need for restraint by the Macedonian forces.”¹³

This double talk is of course a form of political camouflage: you say that you are against the terrorists and then support them via the KLA with guns, ammo and military advisers paid by the US public purse.

FINANCING BOTH SIDES

But there is something else even more terrifying which has not been revealed to public opinion. The guerilla war in the Tetovo region of Macedonia is being financed and therefore controlled by Washington “on both sides” of the border. While Washington pumps money into the KLA, the FYR of Macedonia – which has been an obedient client state – is also the recipient of US military aid and training. Macedonia is a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace (PfP) and aspires to acquire full NATO membership.

The same group of US military advisers on contract with the KLA is also “helping” the Macedonian Armed Forces. The MPRI – while assisting the KLA in its terrorist assaults – is also present behind enemy lines in Macedonia under a so-called “Stability and Deterrence Program.” The later is intent upon “assisting the Macedonian Armed Forces … to deter armed aggression and, should deterrence fail, defend Macedonian territory….”¹⁴ What is happening is that the US mercenary company with a mandate “to defend the border” is also advising the KLA on how best “to attack the border.”

Is this not crystal clear: The military-intelligence ploy is to finance both sides of the conflict, provide military aid to one side and finance the other side. And then “make them fight.” It’s a sinister military-intelligence game, an “insider operation” with US military advisers on both sides from the same mercenary outfit (the MPRI). Macedonia’s “Stability and Deterrence Program” is in fact largely supported by US foreign military sales (FMS), namely MPRI is in charge of delivering (i.e. dumping) to the Macedonian Armed Forces obsolete weapons and hardware which the US Department of Defense wants to get rid of.

Moreover, with its various sources of financing (drugs, Islamic organisations, US military aid, contributions from the US-Albanian community), the KLA and its Macedonian proxy the Ushtira Clirimtare Komtare have the upper edge. The money channeled from various sources including the drug trade far exceeds the meager FMS allocations granted in the form of surplus military equipment to the Macedonian Ministry of Defence.¹⁵

The friendly and cordial meetings held in Skopje (July 2000) between General Henry H. Shelton, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and his Macedonian counterpart, General Jovan Andrevski, constitute an obvious smoke screen. While America’s top brass pays lip service to its PfP partner and ally, the KLA – with the support of the Albanian American community – is actively recruiting US citizens to fight as volunteers against the Macedonian Security Forces.¹⁶ Bear in mind that this pattern of “financing both sides” is not limited to the Balkans: since the end of the Cold War, Washington has been involved in channeling covert financing and triggering civil conflicts in different parts of the World including Central Africa, the Caucasus and Central Asia. By financing both sides of the conflict, the US controls the outcome of the war.

MPRI OVERSEES THE SHOW

While recruiting a wide range of military and intelligence expertise from its data bank of former military personnel, MPRI is controlled by a handful of former generals and ex-CIA officers. MPRI General (retired) Rich Griffitts – responsible for MPRI’s program in Macedonia – is talking to the Macedonian Chief of Staff. He also talks to KLA Commander Agim Ceku – with whom he has established a longstanding relationship since Operation Storm in Croatia in 1995. Ceku is part of the MPRI’s “old boys network”; in collaboration with MPRI, he was one of the main architects of “Operation Storm.” In this capacity, he also acted as Commander of the Artillery division, which ruthlessly shelled Krajina Serb civilians!¹⁷

Whether MPRI personnel stationed in Kosovo is in direct contact or communication with their colleagues in Macedonia is not the issue: all MPRI military staff in the field report back to Rich Griffitt, Crosbie Saint and Carl Vuono (President of MPRI) at the company’s headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia. Crosbie Saint – in charge of the company’s “International Group” – coordinates MPRI’s various operations in Kosovo and Macedonia as well as in Croatia and Bosnia. In turn, Saint – who is a former director of military intelligence – is in permanent contact with the Pentagon, KFOR and the CIA.¹⁸

HIDDEN AGENDA

So what kind of war is this? Both sides in the Macedonia border war are controlled by the US. American military personnel from the same private mercenary company are stationed on “both sides of the fence” assisting their local counterparts to fight a war on Washington’s behest.

If this war is allowed to continue, it will inevitably lead to the escalation of ethnic hatred, civilian casualties and refugees. This in turn will result in political destabilization and social unrest in both Macedonia and Yugoslavia, thereby providing a pretext to Washington and NATO to directly intervene under the disguise of “peace-keeping” and “confidence building.” The hidden agenda also consists in the mobilization of ethnic Albanians in Macedonia to support or become part of the KLA’S structure.

In other words, Washington is “financing ethnic warfare” as a means to achieving broad geopolitical, strategic and economic objectives using the KLA as proxy force. Meanwhile, the ‘international community” – warning of an impending “humanitarian disaster” – has sent in an army of observers and human rights experts, with a mandate to protect the political and social rights of ethnic Albanians. This brokered “reconciliation” – imposed by NATO under UN auspices – is based on the premise that ethnic Albanians in Macedonia are an oppressed social minority. It not only fosters socio-ethnic divisions within Macedonia; it also provides legitimacy to the KLA sponsored “freedom fighters” as well as international media sympathy. It tends to discredit the Macedonian Security Forces, thereby weakening their ability to fight the KLA.

While Washington continues to support the terrorists behind the scenes, the military alliance presents itself as an impartial mediator. In turn, NATO’s informal mouthpiece, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is placing the blame on the Skopje government, calling upon:

The dispatching of Bulgarian troops into Macedonia (under NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” Program) to fight the rebels could (if implemented) contribute to triggering a much broader conflagration in the region. Similarly, ethnic clashes – also engineered by Washington – have been triggered in Montenegro, which has a sizeable Albanian ethnic minority. And in Montenegro, the MUP, Montenegro’s highly partisan police force is being assisted by the Croatian Armed Forces, which in turn are being trained by the MPRI under the so-called Croatian Armed Forces Readiness and Training System (CARTS). Similarly, demanding “autonomy” for ethnic Hungarians in the North of Vojvodina is part of NATO’s ploy with large numbers of NATO troops stationed on the Hungarian side of the border. More generally, the various military aid packages provided to Croatia, Bosnia and the KLA are ultimately directed against Serbia.20

Despite the compliance of the Belgrade and Skopje governments to Washington’s demands, US foreign policy purports to eventually dismantle political institutions and get rid of political parties which resist US-NATO domination. Their objective is to eventually break up what remains of Yugoslavia into what UN Balkans envoy Carl Bildt has called a “patchwork of protectorates” on the “Kosovo-Bosnia model under UN “peace-keeping,” namely under military occupation.²¹

A Dayton-style agreement is the chosen framework for displacing and destroying existing State institutions including a fragile yet functioning parliamentary system. With regard to Macedonia, the OSCE has appointed Ambassador Robert Frowick to work with the Skopje government. His terms of reference are clear. In 1996, Frowick was put in charge of implementing “democracy” in Bosnia-Hercegovina under the Dayton agreement: the Bosnian “Constitution” – previously drafted by American lawyers at the US Air Force base in Dayton, Ohio – was appended to the 1995 US brokered “General Framework Agreement.”22

DISARMING THE NEW WORLD ORDER

The terrorist assaults in Macedonia and Southern Serbia are serving Washington’s strategic goals in blatant violation of international law. NATO is increasingly discredited in the eyes of World public opinion. The lies and falsehoods are surfacing and the people of Yugoslavia are determined to preserve their sovereignty in the face of American aggression.

US foreign policy directed against so-called “rogue states” lacks credibility both in the US and internationally. Around the World, citizens are looking to Yugoslavia and the courage of its people who have resisted the imposition of the New World Order. The lies concerning the war against Yugoslavia have been uncovered and revealed to millions of people.

NOTES

1. Tom Walker and Aiden Laverty, ‘CIA Aided Kosovo Guerrilla Army’, Sunday Times, 12 March 2000).
2. See “Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2000.” HR 1555, Section 308 “Report on Kosova Liberation Army.”
3. See Tammy Arbucki, “Building a Bosnian Army,” Jane’s International Defence Review, August 1997.
4. See Military Professional Resources, Inc, “Personnel Needs,” MPRI web page.
5. See Michel Chossudovsky, “United Nations Appoints Alleged War Criminal,” Emperors Clothes, March 2000.
   
6. See Tom Walker, “Kosovo Defense Chief Accused of War Crimes,”Sunday Times, London, 10 October 1999.
7. Quoted in John Sweeney and Jen Holsoe, “Kosovo Disaster Response Service Stands Accused of Murder and Torture,” The Observer, London, 12 March 2000.
8. Michel Chossudovsky, “Kosovo Freedom Fighters Financed by Organized Crime,” Covert Action Quarterly, Fall 1999, also published by Emperors Clothes.
9. Tom Walker, “NATO Troops caught in a Balkan Ulster,” Sunday Times, London, 18 March 2001.
10. According to DEA documents reviewed and quoted in R. Chandran, “US-backed KLA linked to Heroin Network.“
11. Quoted in the New American Magazine, May 24, 1999)
12. Quoted in the New York Times, 20 March 2001)
13. United Nations Interim Administration Mission In Kosovo (UNMIK), Press Release, 29 March 2001.
14. See MPRI.
15. US military aid under the FMS program for Macedonia was $4 million in FY 2000, 7.9 million was appropriated for 2001. More recently, the US announced a $13.5 million military aid package, See Government of Macedonia, Ministry of Defence, Communique, 21 March 2001; Congressional Budget Justification for Foreign Operations, Fiscal Year 2001, Released by the Office of the Secretary of State, Resources, Plans and Policy, U.S. Department of State, March 15, 2000.
16. New York Times, 19 March 2001.
17. See Michel Chossudovsky, “NATO has Installed a Reign of Terror in Kosovo,” July 1999.
18. See MPRI.
19. Statement by OSCE Parliamentary Assembly President Severin on former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Kosovo, 23 March 2001.
20. See Michel Chossudovsky, “The War Against Yugoslavia Is Not Over,” June 2000.
21. See Carl Bildt’s statement. Bildt was formerly the High Representative in Bosnia following the adoption of the Dayton Agreement in 1995).

22. For a discussion see Michel Chossudovsky, “Dismantling Yugoslavia, Recolonizing Bosnia,” Covert Action Quarterly,Spring 1996, also published by Emperors Clothes. Also, see text of the Bosnian Constitution.

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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The latest death toll has risen to 30 Iraqis as Baghdad descends into chaos and violence, with another 390 protesters wounded from bullets and tear gas inhalation. In March 2023, it will mark the 20^th anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, and yet the country has never recovered and still has no stable democracy.

The Green Zone is a high-security area in Baghdad housing the Iraqi government as well as some foreign embassies.  Security forces reported at least seven rockets fell in the zone yesterday.

Muqtada Al-Sadr gave a speech today asking his supporters to leave the area and go home, and he wouldn’t consider them as supporters if they stay.  Reports on the ground say there is a movement to withdraw from the zone of conflict.  Al-Sadr stated further that the Hashed al-Shabi was not involved in the clashes yesterday, and urged a return to calm.  He said a revolution that includes violence is not a true revolution, and he criticized his supporters who may have participated in yesterday’s clashes.

The combatants are rival militias.  On the one side are the supporters of al-Sadr, and on the other side are the Popular Mobilization group, as well as Iraqi security forces.

Civilians took cover in their homes as gunmen in pickups cruised Baghdad while gun and rockets fire was heard across the city last night.

The Iraqi oil sector provides about 85% of the government revenues, and in the aftermath of the war in Ukraine, Iraq has become a major supplier, but the increase in revenues has not been felt by the average Iraqi, and poverty and unemployment have been featured in the current unrest.  The 2021 estimate was 4,161,500 barrels per day, but the country still doesn’t have full electricity and even basic services are not fully met.

Yesterday, Al-Sadr announced he was leaving politics, closing offices, and today in his speech he reaffirmed his decision to remain out of political life.  It was his announcement that prompted his supporters to breach the cement walls of the Green Zone and storm the government offices.

A source speaking for Al-Sadr said later yesterday the cleric was on a hunger strike to stop the violence and use of weapons.

Iraq’s military announced a nationwide curfew yesterday, and the caretaker premier suspended Cabinet sessions in response to the violence.

US Embassy evacuated staff, and the Dutch Embassy staff moved to the German Embassy which is far outside the Green Zone.

Iran closed its land borders with Iraq yesterday and announced flights would stop as of today. Iranian state television urged its citizens to avoid traveling to Iraq, and those already there not to travel between cities.

Kuwait has urged its citizens to leave the country, while Dubai’s long-haul carrier Emirates stopped flights to Baghdad.

The Egyptian president, Abdel Fattah El Sisi, spoke last night in separate telephone calls with his Iraqi counterpart, Barham Salih, and the prime minister, Mustafa Al Kadhimi, the president’s spokesman, Bassam Rady, said in a statement.  Al Kadhimi was on a visit to Egypt when the violence interrupted his stay.  El Sisi assured Al Kadhimi that Egypt was ready to do everything possible to safeguard Iraq’s security and open a path for dialogue to end the current escalation.

Iraq has been in a deep political stalemate since legislative elections in October last year due to disagreement between political factions over the formation of a governing coalition, which has left the country without a new government, prime minister, or president for 10 months.

Iraq’s political system suffers from rampant corruption, outdated infrastructure, insufficient essential services, skilled labor shortages, and antiquated commercial laws that stifle investment. There is almost no private sector.

In October 2021, 329 legislators were elected to the Parliament. The acting Iraqi National Intelligence Service Director General Mustafa al-Kadami became prime minister in May 2020 after the previous prime minister resigned in late 2019 because of widespread protests demanding more employment opportunities and an end to corruption.

The 2021 election results were: Sadrist Bloc 73, National Progress Alliance 37, State of Law Coalition 33, Kurdish Democratic Party 31, Al Fatah Alliance 17, Kurdistan Alliance 17, Al Iraq Alliance 14, New Generation Movement 14, Ishraqet Konoon 6, Tasmin Alliance 5, Babylon Movement 4, National Contract Alliance 4, National State Forces Alliance 4, other 22, and independent 43.  On 13 June 2022, 73 MPs from al-Sadr’s bloc resigned from parliament.

Al-Sadr is a prominent cleric, but also an Iraqi politician and militia leader, and led the Sadrist Movement. He had asked for all foreign troops to leave Iraq, both the US and its allies, and those from Iran.  His militia has thousands of fighters, and millions of Iraqis support him. Many Iraqis see him as a symbol of resistance to foreign occupation.

After the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in January 2020 and the Iraqi parliament’s resolution demanding ‘Yankee Go Home’, Al-Sadr called for “the immediate cancellation of the security agreement with the US, the closure of the US embassy, the expulsion of US troops.”

The pro-Iran Coordination Framework, or Popular Mobilization Units (al-Hashd al-Sha’abi in Arabic), are militia units that have fought alongside the Iraqi military against ISIS since 2014.

Saddam Hussein was ousted from power in Iraq in March 2003 by the US invasion of Iraq, which killed hundreds of thousands, and destroyed the country’s infrastructure.  He had been President since 1979 and was hung on December 30, 2006.

In October 2005, Iraqis approved a constitution that had been designed by the US occupation.  The largest secular democracy on earth, the US, designed a government for Iraq which was not secular but depended on sectarianism.  Iraq was a Shiite majority, as is Iran, and the US was determined that the Shiites would have a political advantage, and the US insisted that religious sects be the basis for the parliament’s representation.

The issue of Middle Eastern Christians was presented in a PBS report in 2011, “Why Did Assad, Saddam, and Mubarak Protect Christians?”

The report covered strong authoritarian leaders who ruled in a secular fashion, especially Saddam Hussein and Bashar al-Assad, who both ruled from the Ba’ath Party, which is a Socialist and secular political party.

Syrian, Iraqi, and Egyptian Christians were all afraid of Radical Islam taking over the country, after a revolution, or US invasion, and the result would be devastating for the Christian community.

In the case of Egypt and Iraq, after their strong leaders were deposed, both by US intervention, Christians suffered, and continue to suffer.  Iraq’s Christian community has migrated abroad out of fear and oppression.  Egypt’s Christian community has suffered attacks on churches by Islamic militants following the Muslim Brotherhood, who were supported by President Obama in the rigged election of Muhammed Morsi.

Only in Syria has the US invasion and regime change been resisted and thwarted.  President Assad still leads the only secular government in the Middle East, where all religions are freely worshipped, and the constitution prohibits any political party from having a religious platform.

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This article was originally published on Mideast Discourse.

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

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Amid the search for diversification of energy sources, France seems ready to resume some of its colonial ties with Algeria. The African country is an important gas producer and can help Europe with supplies at this time of widespread shortages as consequence of anti-Russian sanctions. However, it remains to be seen whether it is in the Algerian interest to play this role of “substitute” for Russia that France wants it to play.

Last week of August French President Emmanuel Macron made an official trip to Algeria seeking to meet with local authorities in order to advance discussions on various strategic topics. As expected, the main issue of the meetings was the bilateral cooperation in gas supply. The French leader praised the North African country for its productive capacity and applauded Algerian’s role as a European ally, which many analysts have interpreted as a form of “testing the waters” for new energy contracts.

Macron’s visit lasted three days, ending on August 26, after several meetings between the French president and local leaders, including politicians, businessmen, artists and athletes. On the last day of the visit, Macron and his Algerian counterpart, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, announced the formation of a cooperation pact, whose objective would be to achieve a “new, irreversible dynamic of progress” in bilateral ties, but there was no specific mention about gas.

Macron tried to evade claims that his mission in Algeria would simply be to reach new sources of gas. According to him, the diplomatic objectives went beyond the mere search for gas, including a series of relevant topics. However, the almost unanimous opinion among experts is that Paris tried to show a gesture of diplomatic goodwill in the hope of receiving some kind of benefit in the gas supply in return. This type of opinion seems really justified when we remember the recent tensions between the two countries.

Last year, Macron showed a very different attitude towards Algeria than he does today. In September 2021, the French president stated that the government of the North African country foments hatred against the French people and even questioned the existence of Algeria as a nation, in a statement that showed many neocolonialist and racist elements. The case generated a serious crisis in bilateral relations, with the rupture of diplomatic relations and the banning of French aircraft from Algerian airspace. Months later, relations were re-established and reached a greater degree of stability, which was largely due to the French effort to seek new strategic partners. Now, with the gas crisis, this French effort seems even greater.

However, not all experts believe that the French project will succeed. For example, Dr. Farid Benyahia, a renowned Algerian political scientist and expert on geopolitical, economic and energy issues, believes that the gas partnership between France and Algeria will not be promising as Paris plans to obtain a satisfactory amount of energy to supply not only the country’s basic needs, but also the French re-industrialization project announced by Macron last year. And this seems to be a demand that goes beyond Algeria’s productive capacities.

Furthermore, he points out that the rise in gas prices is not exclusively due to the conflict in Ukraine but is also related to the European project of transition to green energy. The sanctions have exacerbated a pre-existing problem and created an unsustainable situation, in which the small Algerian gas supply will not be enough to reverse the scenario of rising prices.

“The energy security problems in France, and in Europe as a whole, did not begin with the start of the Russian special operation in Ukraine and the subsequent drop in gas and oil supplies, but long before that (…) Soaring energy prices in Europe were primarily caused by the high cost of the [green] energy transition as well as the recovery of the global economy after the Covid-19 crisis”, he says, adding that the most coherent alternative would be to invest in nuclear energy, which has not been carried out efficiently, with most of French reactors being close to ending activities.

“[If Macron wants to pursue his reindustrialization project], the growth in electricity consumption could reach 90%. Most French reactors will reach the end of their lifecycle by 2040 (…) [So], It will be difficult for Emmanuel Macron to find alternatives to gas, oil and Russian coal”, he concludes.

In addition, experts consulted by Bloomberg also say that even if Macron manages to advance the negotiations initiated during his visit, it is unlikely that the state company that controls gas production in Algeria will commit to increasing supplies to France, given the current production capacity: “Even if Macron manages to make amends during his visit, Algeria’s state-run energy company, lacking investment, says it doesn’t have the capacity to provide more to France in the short term”, Bloomberg says.

Since the beginning of this year, Algeria has increased gas exports to Italy, due to a new agreement. The volume has already reached the mark of 13.9 billion cubic meters, representing a growth of 113% in relation to what was previously destined for Rome. In recent months, the country has also signed agreements with Turkey and opened space for Chinese companies to start new exploration projects on Algerian soil. In fact, to meet French demand, the African country would have to reduce the supply to its current partners, as the Algerian reserves do not produce much surplus.

It is curious to note the arrogance of France in trying to suddenly reverse the entire diplomatic crisis initiated by Macron’s neocolonialist stance just to gain advantages in a moment of energy shortages. Paris thinks that Algeria must stop serving its current partners in order to meet a new French demand, which reflects France’s colonial mentality. Simply, Macron continues to think that Algeria is still a French colony, which must be available to serve the “metropolis” at any time. However, his plans are likely to fail and once again the only alternative left for Paris will be to decline its aggressive stance towards Russia.

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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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***

A recent gathering of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) has expressed its displeasure with recent legislation making its way through the United States Congress which is aimed at punishing the continent for its diplomatic and trade relations with the Russian Federation.

This event was convened under the theme of “Promoting Industrialization through, Agro-Processing, Mineral Beneficiation, and Regional Value Chains for Inclusive and Resilient Economic  Growth.’’ The title took into serious consideration the contemporary operating context in the Southern Africa region and the urgent need to enhance the implementation of the SADC industrialization and market integration programs as contained in its development framework covering the years of 2020-2030.

A statement issued in the aftermath of the 42nd Annual Summit of the SADC, follows a pattern among African Union (AU) member-states that has emphasized the necessity of seeking a diplomatic solution to the Russian special military operation in Ukraine.

SADC leaders convene in DRC (Source: Abayomi Azikiwe)

Many member-states of the SADC were leaders within the national liberation movements turned political parties which won state power through protracted armed and mass struggles. Since 1980, when its predecessor, the Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was formed, the regional federation has fostered economic and diplomatic cooperation throughout the sub-continent and beyond. Thirty years ago in August 1992, the SADC transformed into its present structures during a summit meeting in the newly independent Republic of Namibia.

Membership within the SADC has grown over the last three decades with the independence of South Africa and the affiliation of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Union of Comoros, Seychelles, Madagascar and Mauritius. The regional body has provided peacekeeping forces in the time of national crisis in various member-states as well as negotiating sustainable solutions to political and constitutional crises within the region. This region of Africa is well endowed with natural resources including strategic minerals, oil and natural gas deposits of enormous magnitude. Consequently, the imperialist states have continued to exert influence within the region. The Republic of Zimbabwe, a founding member of SADC, has been subjected to western sanctions for more than twenty years.

In recent months, the AU and SADC entities have resisted the pressure from Washington, the European Union (EU) states and NATO to intervene politically in alliance with the U.S. in regard to its disastrous military adventure in Eastern Europe. The war prompted by the foreign policy of the administration of President Joe Biden has cost thousands of lives while dislocating millions and resulting in a burgeoning energy and food crises.

Source: Abayomi Azikiwe

At the August SADC Summit, the federation reiterated its views on the current situation in Eastern Europe and the necessity of African states to exercise their right to self-determination and an independent foreign policy.

In a post on its website, it reveals that the SADC Chairperson emphasized in regard to the present world situation:

“Africa is ready to work with the rest of the world as an equal partner and will not let anyone dictate the terms of engagement since the continent has the capacity to fund its own developmental trajectory. Outgoing Chair of the Southern African Development Community (SADC), President Lazarus McCarthy Chakwera of Malawi said this at the 42nd SADC Summit in Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of Congo. ‘There is no one outside Africa who is coming to build Africa the way we want it to be built. Not the Americans. Not the Europeans. Not the Asians,’ President Chakwera said. ‘They may give us a road here and there, a stadium or two, a few million dollars that are nothing more than pocket change to them and that is nothing compared to the amounts they give each other as Westerners or Easterners. We need serious resources and there is no one who is going to hand it to us.’”

U.S. Legislation Infringes Upon African Sovereignty

The Congressional bill in the U.S. purports to guard against the alleged nefarious efforts by the Russian Federation to extend its influence in Africa. The reality is that Russia, and even more so during the days of the Soviet Union, advanced African independence, unity and socialist orientation between the 1950s and the 1980s.

Thousands of African students have studied in the former Soviet Union and today’s Russia. There are numerous joint economic, cultural and social projects between Moscow and numerous AU member-states. Later in November-December of this year, the Russian-African Summit will reconvene in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, the headquarters of the AU.

Consequently, the recent Cold War offensive by Washington against the continent is a hostile maneuver to undermine the ability of African states to conduct trade and other forms of cooperation with Russia. Extensive trade in agricultural products and inputs between Moscow, Ukraine and the AU member-states has been severely hampered due to the western sanctions and proxy war against Russia.

There is no guarantee that such legislation would not be extended to include the People’s Republic of China, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Republic of Cuba, Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, among other independent states. In fact, all of these nations have been targeted with economic measures coordinated by the White House, Congress, State Department, the Pentagon and the Wall Street based multinational corporations.

According to a report published by Modern Diplomacy:

“Labeled as the “Countering Malign Russian Activities in Africa Act” (H.R. 7311) was passed on April 27 by the House of Representatives in a bipartisan 419-9 majority and will probably be approved by the Senate which is evenly split between the Democrats and the Republicans. This legislative measure is broadly worded enabling the State Department to monitor the foreign policy of the Russian Federation in Africa including military affairs and any effort which Washington deems as ‘malign influence.’

In actuality, the most malign influence on the continent stems from the centuries-long exploitative and oppressive systems of enslavement, colonialism, settler- colonialism and neo-colonialism which have served to stifle African development. The U.S. legislation is clearly yet another mechanism to extend imperialist hegemony over the AU member-states.

As President Chakwera of Malawi said during his farewell address as SADC Chairperson:

“In the time of our forefathers, they came here and stole entire nations and human beings from Africa, and now in our time, they have come bearing gifts and loans and if we are not careful, these will be the Trojan horse used to steal from us the riches of our minerals, our fresh water, our human talent, and our fertile land. We must defend what is ours and make sure that no one takes from us what is ours. If the world wants what we have, they must buy it in a fair trade so that we can use the proceeds to build ourselves new cities, new universities, new infrastructure, new industries, and new programs that will lift our people out of poverty and meet the needs of the most vulnerable among us, including people with disabilities. With the resources we have, we refuse to be anyone’s beggar, and with the unity we have, we must refuse to let anyone steal from us or use us to steal from our own people or each other. So, let’s show and tell the world with one voice that Africa is open for business, but it is not for sale.”

Modern Day Cold War Intensifies

The SADC Summit comes at a time of intense diplomatic offensives on the African continent where leaders from the U.S. and France have visited several AU member-states. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited three countries during August. His unsuccessful mission was to influence governments to turn against Moscow and Beijing.

Blinken’s tour occurred after the Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov visited Uganda and Ethiopia to make preparations for the upcoming summit in Ethiopia. French President Emmanuel Macron spent three days in Algeria along with high-level energy executives whose purpose was to negotiate an increase in the supply of natural gas to their country.

The anti-Russian legislation in Congress is part and parcel of the propaganda and psychological warfare campaign aimed at extending imperialist influence internationally. Progressives, antiwar activists and anti-imperialists based in the western capitalist states must recognize these machinations by Washington and its allies for what they truly represent. Until the Pentagon war machine is defunded and dismantled there cannot be any significant improvement in the social conditions of working and oppressed peoples within both the western industrial states and the Global South.

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

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***

Western media outlets are playing the drumbeats of war by warning the public that a new Chinese empire is going to develop into an unstoppable force capable of ruling the world with an iron fist.

They claim that under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), they will control every country and human being on earth.  Overall, it’s an absurd claim.  It is fair to say that China under the leadership of the CCP has several issues that concerns the Chinese public with a social credit score system, Zero Covid policy rules and a nation-wide surveillance system that is Orwellian to say the least.  China also had a one child policy that has led to a decline in its population which was and still is problematic for its future when it comes to their labor force and economy, but they ended that policy in 2016.  Whatever faults China has, it is not looking to rule the world despite what Western countries claim especially the United States who say that Beijing’s policies reflect a growing appetite for imperial expansion.

On May 25^th, 2017, Reuters published ‘China says new Silk Road not about military ambitions’ reported on what China’s Defense ministry had said about China’s future “China’s ambition to build a new Silk Road is not about seeking to expand its military role abroad nor about seeking to set up foreign bases.” The Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told a regular monthly news briefing conference that China’s Silk Road was not expanding militarily nor setting up bases in any sovereign country and that the accusations were “groundless.” Guoqiang said that “the new Silk Road is about cooperation and trade” and that “The Belt and Road initiative has no military or geostrategic intent. China is not seeking the right to guide global affairs, or spheres of influence, and will not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.”

According to a report from September 23^rd, 2020, by the National Herald India titled ‘China will never seek expansion, has no intention to fight either ‘Cold War’ or ‘hot war’, says Xi Jinping’ as Xi Jinping declared in a pre-recorded video sent to the United Nations meeting that “We will continue to narrow differences and resolve disputes with others through dialogue and negotiation” he continued “We will never seek hegemony, expansion, or sphere of influence. We have no intention to fight either a Cold War or a hot war with any country.”   The report also mentioned India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise visit to the Ladakh region a few months prior where he said that “the era of expansionism is over and that the history is proof that “expansionists” have either lost or perished” in what the report described as a “clear message” to China.  “Xi, also the General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party of China and the Commander-in-Chief of the Chinese military, said his country will not pursue development behind closed doors.” Xi made it clear that a new plan for development for growth domestically and internationally will create more opportunities for China’s economy.  Xi said the following:

Rather, we aim to foster, over time, a new development paradigm with domestic circulation as the mainstay and domestic and international circulations reinforcing each other. This will create more space for China’s economic development and add impetus to global economic recovery and growth

The report also mentioned that during the Covid-19 pandemic, US President, Donald Trump ramped up tensions with China and “demanded that China, where the coronavirus emerged, be held accountable for failure to control the virus and for allowing it to spread across the world” he continued, “As we pursue this bright future, we must hold accountable the nation which unleashed this plague onto the world: China”.  Trump’s rhetoric including his administration slapping tariffs on China’s goods surely increased tensions between Washington and Beijing.  The National Herald India quoted what Xi had said about China’s own decisions that will benefit its own economy and path of development and that it should be respected, “one should respect a country’s “independent choice of development path and model.”  Xi made a point that the world is diverse, and that it can inspire human advancements:

The world is diverse in nature, and we should turn this diversity into a constant source of inspiration driving human advancement. This will ensure that human civilisations remain colourful and diversified

Conflicts and Disagreements: China, India, and the Soviet Union

The history between China and India involved conflicts over border issues.  In 1962, China had a dispute with India over Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh borders.  The conflict was mostly among ground troops of both sides which did not involve any Air force or Naval forces.  What started the conflict was China’s construction of a road that connected the Chinese regions of Tibet and Xinjiang.  However, Aksai Chin was claimed by India.  So, in the months of October and November the Sino-Indian War began.  Several violent conflicts also occurred between China and India after the 1959 Tibetan uprising due to India’s recognition of the Dalai Lama, or who is known as Gyalwa Rinpoche to the Tibetan people.  In an important note to consider, the Dalai Lama was supported by the CIA for many years.  The CIA financially supported the Dalai Lama from the late 1950s until the mid-1970s with more than $180,000 a year for the CIA’s Tibetan program to support anti-China activities and to create foreign offices within Tibet to lobby for international support which was a concern for China.

In 1960, India had constructed a defensive policy to disrupt China’s military patrols and its logistics in what was called ‘Forward Policy’  that placed Indian outposts along the borders in the north of the McMahon Line, the eastern portion of the Line of Actual Control.   However, China did try to implement diplomatic settlements between 1960 and 1962, but India rejected the proposal allowing China to abandon diplomacy and became aggressive along the disputed borders. China defeated Indian forces in Rezang La in Chushul in the west and Tawang in the east.  China declared a ceasefire on November 20^th, 1962.  The war ended as China withdrew to its areas claimed in the ‘Line of Actual Control.’  Matters became complicated when the Soviet Union sold MiG fighter aircrafts to India in a show of support since the US and the UK refused to sell arms to India.  However, tensions between China and the Soviet Union were also high during that time which was known as the ‘Sino-Soviet split’ over ideological differences in Marxist-Leninist theories during the Cold War.  There were various agreements between China and India with no progress for peace until 2006.   Although Indian officials were concerned with China’s growing military power and its relationship with Pakistan (India’s main rival), China’s Silk Road opened the doors for peace between both nations.  In October of 2011, China and India formulated border mechanisms regarding the Line of Actual Control as both resumed bilateral army exercises between China and Indian troops by early 2012.  In 2013, what was known as the Depsang standoff, India had agreed to demolish and remove several ‘live-in bunkers’ in the Chumar sector along with the removal of observation posts built along the border among other things that made the resolution of the dispute a success, so the Chinese military withdrew it forces, ending the dispute in May 2013.  Although there are some disagreements between both countries still exist over their borders policies, today China and India are part of the BRICS coalition.

The Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979

On December 21st, 1978, Vietnam launched an attack on the Khmer Rouge.  After more than 10 years of fighting, Vietnam had successfully defeated the Khmer Rouge ending Pol Pot’s reign of terror.  Then in February 1979, China had declared war with Vietnam over its borders.  Now Vietnam was facing a two-front war. China’s invasion was a surprise to the world because China supported Vietnam with its wars against France and the US.  From 1965 until 1969, China had more than 300,000 troops in the Vietnam war with more than 1,000 members from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) who were killed with 4,300 wounded.

However, it all changed due to China’s domination of Vietnam for centuries which created animosity among the Vietnamese government and its people towards Beijing thus creating tensions between both countries.  Conflicts on the border also developed between China and the Soviet Union in 1969 during the Sino-Soviet split, so Vietnam had a dilemma, it had to choose one of them as an ally.

On November 3, 1978, Vietnam signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation with the Soviet Union that offered security assurances.  Since tensions were high at the time, more than 150,000 Chinese who were living in Vietnam had fled. Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping and CCP officials viewed Vietnam as ungrateful and traitorous.  The Chinese saw the treaty as a threat since the Soviets had a similar treaty with Mongolia which in a way allowed the Soviets to surround China.  On December 7, 1978, China’s Central Military Commission decided to launch a “limited war” along their borders and at the same time, Vietnam had invaded Cambodia to destroy the Khmer Rouge.

Since Vietnam had border clashes with the China-backed Khmer Rouge in Cambodia along with Beijing’s decision to cut aid to Hanoi, it decided to partner with Moscow.  On January 29^th, 1979, for the first time, Chinese Vice-premier Deng Xiaoping went to the US and reportedly told President Jimmy Carter that “The child is getting naughty, it is time he got spanked.”   A couple of weeks later, on February 15^th, China terminated the 1950 Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship, Alliance and Mutual Assistance and Xiaoping declared that China was going to attack Vietnam to support its ally, the Khmer Rouge of Cambodia among other reasons including the plan to reclaim the Vietnamese occupied Spratly Islands.  China wanted to prevent the Soviet Union from intervening on Vietnam’s behalf, so Xiaoping warned the Soviets that China’s forces were prepared for war.  Declaring an emergency, China deployed all of the PLA forces along the Sino-Soviet border and set up a military command station in Xinjiang, they also evacuated more than 300,000 civilians from the area.

China eventually suffered a defeat by the Vietcong since its military was not prepared to fight an experienced fighting force who previously defeated two Western powers, France, and the US.  It was reported that experienced Vietnamese ‘tank-killing teams’ destroyed or damaged more than 280 tanks and armored vehicles during the war.  China avoided the use of its Air Force and Navy since it promised the Soviets and Americans a limited war against Vietnam.  China also knew that Vietnam had an experienced military as well as having one of the best anti-air capabilities in the world.  After two short weeks of fighting, China began withdrawing its troops.  By March 16, Chinese troops had a ‘scorched-earth campaign’ in Vietnam destroying bridges, factories, mines, farms, and crops.  It is estimated that China had between 7,900 to 26,000 troops killed and between 23,000 to 37,000 wounded.  Vietnam had between 20,000 to 50,000 troops and civilians killed and wounded.  China clearly had a difficult time with Vietnam.

China’s history with its neighbors shows that it may be difficult even today if they decided to become an imperialist power subjugating the world to its demands because it would face an uphill battle that will become economically and politically costly and that will collapse its economy and society.  Before the US became a global empire, they made sure they contained and controlled its own backyard and that was the Caribbean and Latin America after the Spanish-American War of 1898.  China would have to control its own backyard against several nations including Russia, India, Vietnam, and others.  China understands that imperial projects to dominate the world is a risk not worth taking.

Remember, China was on the receiving end of Japanese Imperialism that practically destroyed its society.  In 1931, Imperial Japan had invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria for raw materials to fuel its industries, and by 1937 they controlled many areas of China.  The Imperial Japanese war crimes mounted against the Chinese people.  China understands the consequences of war because it sees what has happened to the US and its military adventures which has led to its decline.  It knows it will not benefit anyone, in fact wars can destabilize regions, destroy economies, and disrupt societal norms and China is not at all interested in any of that.  They want to rebuild their civilization.

The age of empires is over.  A new multipolar world is needed now more than ever before where no single entity or centralized power could rule over any country who wants to remain sovereign.  That would start an era of lasting peace around the world.  Of course, there are no guarantees that total peace would prevail in a multipolar world because there will be bad actors who will prefer a globalized world order over countries who want sovereignty, but in a multipolar world order, wars can be avoided.  It would be a good start where sovereign countries would respect each other’s boundaries and work out their differences.  That’s the way it should be instead of a group of globalist psychopaths making geopolitical and economic decisions to change the social fabric of every country on the planet.

Inside China: The Surveillance State

China’s internal problems is a stain on its reputation.  China’s surveillance state is indeed problematic.  In 2018, the CCP installed more than 200 million surveillance cameras with an increase in facial recognition technology nationwide.  Surveillance cameras and facial recognition networks would add to the social credit system already in place that gives Chinese citizens a score based on their “social behaviors.” Going back to 2003, China began its Smart City pilot programs to track and analyze air quality, traffic, wastewater disposal systems, social behaviors of its residents and other areas of urban life.  We can fairly say that China’s surveillance state is rather extreme and unnecessary.  The Chinese people will increasingly voice their concerns to the CCP’s leadership in the future to scrap its surveillance capabilities because it can get out of control, but the question is, will it happen?  Only time will tell.

The Uyghurs: China’s Problem with the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)

One issue that has been mainly ignored in recent years by the Western mainstream media is the terrorism committed in China by the Uyghurs. Why? The Western view of China’s human rights abuses when it comes to the Uyghurs has two sides of the story.  First it benefits the Military-Industrial Complex and its future of selling arms to its allies throughout Asia including Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan.  Second, it’s the demonization of China to gain support among the American people for a future war with China because they are “bad.”  Former US President Barack Obama supported his Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her ‘Pivot to Asia’ agenda that she had published in Foreign Policy magazine titled ‘America’s Pacific Century.’ Clinton made it clear that the US goal is to remain a global hegemonic power especially in the Asia-Pacific region:

As secretary of state, I broke with tradition and embarked on my first official overseas trip to Asia. In my seven trips since, I have had the privilege to see firsthand the rapid transformations taking place in the region, underscoring how much the future of the United States is intimately intertwined with the future of the Asia-Pacific. A strategic turn to the region fits logically into our overall global effort to secure and sustain America’s global leadership. The success of this turn requires maintaining and advancing a bipartisan consensus on the importance of the Asia-Pacific to our national interests; we seek to build upon a strong tradition of engagement by presidents and secretaries of state of both parties across many decades. It also requires smart execution of a coherent regional strategy that accounts for the global implications of our choices.

What does that regional strategy look like? For starters, it calls for a sustained commitment to what I have called “forward-deployed” diplomacy. That means continuing to dispatch the full range of our diplomatic assets — including our highest-ranking officials, our development experts, our interagency teams, and our permanent assets — to every country and corner of the Asia-Pacific region. Our strategy will have to keep accounting for and adapting to the rapid and dramatic shifts playing out across Asia. With this in mind, our work will proceed along six key lines of action: strengthening bilateral security alliances; deepening our working relationships with emerging powers, including with China; engaging with regional multilateral institutions; expanding trade and investment; forging a broad-based military presence; and advancing democracy and human rights

FOX News is one of the US mainstream media outlets that jumps into the defense of the Uyghurs when it comes to the CCP and its alleged abuses.  However, FOX News ignores the daily abuses of the Israeli regime against the Palestinians or the abuses by the Saudis against the people of Yemen who have been bombarded with US-made weapons since 2015.  To be fair, not only FOX News demonizes China, but so does the liberal media such as CNN, MSNBC, the New York Times that includes the BBC and others throughout Europe.

One situation that is rarely discussed in the West is the terrorism incidents caused by certain groups and individuals in the Uyghur community not only against the CCP, but also against the Han Chinese, the largest ethnic majority in China.  In ‘Violent Separatism in Xinjiang: A Critical Assessment’ by James Millward from the East-West Center based in Honolulu, Hawaii and Washington D.C. documented terrorist activities since the early 1990’s that accelerated after the September 11^th attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. Millward wrote the following concerning terror groups originating out of the Xinjiang region in China:

Since the 1990s, concerns about Uyghur separatism have received increasing official and media attention. These concerns have heightened since the events of 9-11 with the advent of a more robust U.S. presence in Central Asia and Chinese attempts to link Uyghur separatism to international jihadist groups. A steady flow of reports from the international media—as well as official PRC releases (a document on “East Turkistan” terrorism, a white paper on Xinjiang, and a list of terrorist groups)—have given the impression of an imminent separatist and terrorist crisis in the Xinjiang region

Some of the terror attacks that were documented occurred in as early as 1992:

February 5, 1992: Urumqi Bus Bombs. Three were killed and twenty-three injured in two explosions on buses in Urumqi; the PRC’s 2002 document claims that other bombs were discovered and defused around the same time in a cinema and a residential building. Five men were later convicted in this case and reportedly executed in June 1995.

February 1992-September 1993: Bombings. During this period there were several explosions in Yining, Urumqi, Kashgar, and elsewhere; targets included department stores, markets, hotels, and centers of “cultural activity” in southern Xinjiang. One bomb in a building of the Nongji Company (apparently a firm concerned with agricultural equipment) in Kashgar on June 17, 1993, killed two and injured six. One bomb went off in a wing of the Seman Hotel in Kashgar, though no one was hurt in this explosion. The PRC’s 2002 document claims that in the 1993 explosions two people were killed and thirty-six injured overall

On March 9^th, 2008, Reuters published an account on what took place during an attempted terrorist attack on a passenger jet on its way to Beijing ‘China foils attempted terror attack on flight.’  The report said that “China foiled a bid to cause an air disaster on a passenger jet en route to Beijing and the plane made a safe emergency landing, an official said on Sunday, in what state media called an attempted terrorist attack.”  According to Reuters sources, “The China Southern flight originated in Urumqi, capital of the restive far western Chinese region of Xinjiang, where militant Uighurs have agitated for an independent “East Turkestan.”  On September 8^th, 2011, the BBC reported that a militant Islamic group was behind a terrorist attack in the Xinjiang region that resulted in dozens of people dead.  The BBC report ‘Islamic militant group ‘behind Xinjiang attacks‘ said the following:

A militant Islamic group has released a video saying it was behind recent attacks in China’s Xinjiang region which left dozens of people dead, a US internet monitoring group says.  The video was made by a group calling itself the Turkistan Islamic Party.  The group, which is fighting against Chinese control of Xinjiang, says the attacks were revenge against the Beijing government.

One of the deadliest attacks experienced in China occurred on March 1^st, 2014 in the Kunming Railway Station in Kunming which is located in the Yunnan province.  The BBC reported on the incident and said that ‘China separatists blamed for Kunming knife rampage’ and said that “Chinese officials have blamed separatists from the north-western Xinjiang region for a mass knife attack at a railway station that left 29 people dead and at least 130 wounded” and that “a group of attackers, dressed in black, burst into the station in the south-west city of Kunming and began stabbing people at random.”  The report also said that “Images from the scene posted online showed bodies lying in pools of blood” and that the “State news agency Xinhua said police shot at least four suspects dead.”  There were other terrorist attacks that involved the Uyghurs that only pushed the CCP to move forward with facial recognition and a social credit system associated with a criminal offending database.  By 2021, the CCP’s surveillance system expanded in the southern city of Guangzhou that allowed incoming passengers to walk through a biometric security checkpoint.

Image: Terrorist attack on a railway station in Kunming in 2014 

In Xinjiang, security checkpoints and identification stations were in many places where people must show proof of ID with their faces being scanned at the same time by various cameras before they enter any supermarket, train stations or any other public place.  China’s security concerns do go beyond what is needed to protect themselves from terrorism.

However, I do not justify any form of police state tactics against any population despite China’s extreme measures that resembles George Orwell’s 1984, however, at the same time, there are legitimate concerns involving the Uyghur population and their use of terrorism that has caused numerous deaths and injuries of innocent people.

From China to Syria: ETIM joins Al-Qaeda and the Syrian “Moderate” Rebels

One piece of information the Western media usually ignores is the fact that since 2013, there have been thousands of Uyghurs who have traveled to Syria and joined terrorist groups such as Al-Qaeda, the Syrian “Moderate Rebels” and others to fight against Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian army.  One western media news agency reported on the Uyghurs in Syria and their affiliation with US-backed terrorists who were trying to overthrow or kill Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad and that was the Associated Press (AP) who published an Exclusive story ‘Uighurs fighting in Syria take aim at China’ admits a fact about the Uyghurs and their ties to terrorist groups from the Middle East and Africa and how they are using their experiences to fight China:

Since 2013, thousands of Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking Muslim minority from western China, have traveled to Syria to train with the Uighur militant group Turkistan Islamic Party and fight alongside al-Qaida, playing key roles in several battles. Syrian President Bashar Assad’s troops are now clashing with Uighur fighters as the six-year conflict nears its endgame

The AP mentioned a Uyghur by the name of Ali who said, “We didn’t care how the fighting went or who Assad was,” said Ali, “we just wanted to learn how to use the weapons and then go back to China.”  That’s what Chinese officials needed on their hands, Uyghurs traveling to Syria to learn how Al-Qaeda and others use terrorist tactics and techniques then bring that knowledge back to China.  The CCP had its hands full with the threat of terrorism on Chinese soil.  The AP outlined the facts that the Uyghurs have committed numerous crimes in China over the years:

Uighur militants have killed hundreds, if not thousands, in attacks inside China in a decades-long insurgency that initially targeted police and other symbols of Chinese authority but in recent years also included civilians. Extremists with knives killed 33 people at a train station in 2014. Abroad, they bombed the Chinese embassy in Kyrgyzstan in September last year; in 2014, they killed 25 people in an attack on a Thai shrine popular with Chinese tourists

In a report from June 2016 by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission titled ‘China’s Response to Terrorism’ by Murray Scot Tanner and James Bellacqua clarifies what China has been facing when it comes to terrorism:

While tracking the nature and magnitude of China’s terrorist challenges is difficult, it is clear that China faces some level of domestic terrorist threat, and that its citizens have been victims of terrorist attacks both at home and abroad.

Between 2012 and 2015, China suffered multiple domestic terrorist attacks. Reported incidents became more frequent during this period, and they also became more dispersed geographically, with major incidents occurring in Beijing and other eastern cities, in addition to China’s mostly Muslim western regions. Several of these incidents were also targeted at high-traffic urban areas, resulting in indiscriminate injury or death to civilians

In an unusual fashion, in what they call a backgrounder, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), a bi-partisan establishment think tank based in New York City published ‘The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)’ explained who and what is ETIM and its longtime affiliations with terrorists: 

Reportedly founded by Hasan Mahsum, a Uighur from Xinjiang’s Kashgar region, ETIM has been listed by the State Department as one of the more extreme separatist groups. It seeks an independent state called East Turkestan that would cover an area including parts of Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR). After Mahsum’s assassination by Pakistani troops in 2003 during a raid on a suspected al-Qaeda hideout near the Afghanistan border, the group was led by Abdul Haq, who was reportedly killed in Pakistan in 2010. In August 2014, Chinese state media released a report stating that Memetuhut Memetrozi, a co-founder of ETIM who is serving a life sentence in China for his involvement in terrorist attacks, had been indoctrinated in a madrassa in Pakistan. The report, which said Memetuhut had met Mahsum in 1997 and launched ETIM later that year, marked a rare public admission of Pakistani ties to Uighur militancy.

Some experts say ETIM is an umbrella organization for many splinter groups, including ones that operate in Pakistan and central Asia. The Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP), for instance, is one of the most prominent groups, formed in 2006 by Uighurs who fled to Afghanistan and Pakistan in the 1990s. That group took credit for a series of attacks in several Chinese cities in 2008, including deadly bus explosions in Shanghai and Kunming. According to U.S.-based intelligence firm Stratfor, the TIP’s “claims of responsibility appear exaggerated, but the threat TIP poses cannot be ignored.” Stratfor also said that the TIP had expanded its presence on the Internet, issuing videos calling for a jihad by Uighurs in Xinjiang. Ben N. Venzke, head of the U.S.-based independent terrorism-monitoring firm IntelCenter, says it is unclear whether the TIP is separate from ETIM, but notes that the groups’ objectives are both Islamist and nationalist

In the last year of the Trump administration, despite the proof from various reports including those produced by the US and its think tanks that ETIM committed multiple terrorist attacks in mainland China, the US government removed ETIM from its terror list.  According to Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) ‘US removes separatist group condemned by China from terror list’ reported that “The United States said it would no longer designate a Chinese Uighur separatist group as a “terrorist organization” on Friday, sparking sharp condemnation from Beijing.”  This was a clear indication that Washington is doing everything it can to destabilize China.  It is a move that will allow newly trained Uyghurs to use their newly acquired skills to cause more chaos in China.  It’s basically a slap in the face:

The East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM) was removed from Washington’s terror list, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced in a notice posted in the Federal Register.

“ETIM was removed from the list because, for more than a decade, there has been no credible evidence that ETIM continues to exist,” a State Department spokesperson said, news agency AFP reported

This is a typical turn of events for Washington and its long-term objective of destabilizing China by whatever means necessary to try stop its rise to power.  The New World Order is becoming a multipolar world order with China, Russia and others who will compete with declining Western powers who are basically responsible for many of the wars, economic exploitation, and the colonization of the global south and that’s what Washington and its European allies are afraid of.

US Government Propaganda on China’s Internment Camps for the Uyghurs

In an important investigation by Ben Norton and Ajit Singh of The Grayzone ‘No, the UN did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur Muslims’ starts off with an introduction on how mainstream media propaganda has claimed that China has imprisoned more than 1 million Uyghurs in designated “internment camps” but as the facts makes itself clear, it is a fabrication by the CIA and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) that is funded by Washington’s armchair warriors:

A spokesperson from the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) confirmed in a statement to The Grayzone that the allegation of Chinese “camps” was not made by the United Nations, but rather by a member of an independent committee that does not speak for the UN as a whole. That member happened to be the only American on the committee, and one with no background of scholarship or research on China.

Moreover, this accusation is based on the thinly sourced reports of a Chinese opposition group that is funded by the American government’s regime-change arm and is closely tied to exiled pro-US activists. There have been numerous reports of discrimination against Uighur Muslims in China. However, information about camps containing 1 million prisoners has originated almost exclusively from media outlets and organizations funded and weaponized by the US government to turn up the heat on Beijing

On August 10, 2018, the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination conducted a review for 179 countries who were signed on to the convention which is a process that takes place annually which also included a review for China’s compliance.  “On the day of the review, Reuters published a report with an explosive headline: “U.N. says it has credible reports that China holds million Uighurs in secret camps.”  From CNN, FOX News to the New York Times, all echoed the same propaganda that the UN had investigated China’s actions against the Uyghurs and accused Beijing of genocide, but it was all a lie.  The UN did conduct any investigation into the Uyghur internment camps “and this committee’s official website makes it clear that it is “a body of independent experts,” not UN officials.”  One individual that The Grayzone report focused on is Gay McDougall, a member of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR):

What’s more, a look at the OHCHR’s official news release on the committee’s presentation of the report showed that the only mention of alleged re-education “camps” in China was made by its sole American member, Gay McDougall. This claim was then echoed by a Mauritanian member, Yemhelhe Mint Mohamed.

During the committee’s regular review of China, McDougall commented that she was “deeply concerned” about “credible reports” alleging mass detentions of millions of Uighurs Muslim minorities in “internment camps.” The Associated Press reported that McDougall “did not specify a source for that information in her remarks at the hearing.” (Note that the headline of the AP news wire is much weaker than that of Reuters: “UN panel concerned at reported Chinese detention of Uighurs”)

The Grayzone received an email from the OHCHR spokesperson Julia Gronnevet “confirmed that the CERD was not representative of the UN as a whole.”  She said that “You are correct that the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination is an independent body,” Gronnevet wrote. “Quoted comments were made during public sessions of the Committee when members were reviewing State parties.”  The report confirmed that McDougall’s claims were false:

Thus the OHCHR implicitly acknowledged that the comments by McDougall, the lone American member of an independent committee, were not representative of any finding by the UN as a whole. The report by Reuters is simply false

The mainstream media has tried to cover up McDougall’s lies with an “Activist group” called ‘Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD), but the problem with this network is that it is supported by US regime-change operators based in, you guessed it, Washington D.C:

In addition to this irresponsible misreporting, Reuters and other Western outlets have attempted to fill in the gaps left by McDougall, referring to reports made by so-called “activist group” the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders (CHRD).

Conveniently left out of the story is that this organization is headquartered in Washington, DC and funded by the US government’s regime-change arm.  CHRD advocates full-time against the Chinese government, and has spent years campaigning on behalf of extreme right-wing opposition figures

CHRD is supported by one of the most notorious organizations involved in Regime-Change operations around the world, and that is the National Endowment for Democracy (NED):

However, tax documents uncovered by The Grayzone show that a significant portion of this group’s budget comes from the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a CIA-linked soft-power group that was founded by the Ronald Reagan administration in the 1980s to push regime change against independent governments and support “free markets” around the world.

In 2012, the NED gave the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders $490,000. In 2013, it got a $520,000 grant from the NED

The list of funds given to CHRD from the NED continued in 2015 with $496,000, and another $412, 300 was added to its budget in 2016.

Behind the CHRD is its international director, Renee Xia who is an anti-China activist who in the past has called upon Washington to impose sanctions on CCP officials.  She is an advocate for the release of a neoconservative Chinese dissident by the name of Liu Xiaobo:

While Liu Xiaobo became a cause celebre of the Western liberal intelligensia, he was a staunch supporter of colonialism, a fan of the most blood-soaked US military campaigns, and a hardcore libertarian.

As writers Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong reported in The Guardian in 2010, Liu led numerous US government-funded right-wing organizations that advocated mass privatization and the Westernization of China. He also expressed openly racist views against the Chinese. “To choose Westernisation is to choose to be human,” Liu insisted, lamenting that traditional Chinese culture had made its population “wimpy, spineless, and fucked up.”

While CHRD described Liu as an “advocate of non-violence,” he practically worshiped President George W. Bush and strongly supported the illegal US-led invasion of Iraq, as well as the war in Afghanistan. “Non-violence advocate” Liu was even a fan of America’s wars in Korea and Vietnam, which killed millions of civilians

The Grayzone mentioned an article published by The Guardian in 2010, ‘Do supporters of Nobel winner Liu Xiaobo really know what he stands for?’ written by Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong state the fact that Liu supports Israel’s atrocities against the Palestinians and has claimed that they are the provocateurs:

Liu has also one-sidedly praised Israel’s stance in the Middle East conflict. He places the blame for the Israel/Palestine conflict on Palestinians, who he regards as “often the provocateurs”

Overall, the accusations by the CHRD against China and its imprisonment of the Uyghurs is brought to you by the CIA and its propaganda news networks from around the world:

A look at the sourcing of the Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders’ research raises many doubts about its legitimacy. For one, the most-cited source in the CHRD report, accounting for more than one-fifth of the 101 references, is Radio Free Asia, a news agency created by the CIA during the Cold War pump out anti-China propaganda, and still today funded by the US government.

Even The New York Times has referred to Radio Free Asia as a “Worldwide Propaganda Network Built by the CIA.” Along with Voice of America, Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty, Radio y Televisión Martí, and Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia (RFA) is operated by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a federal agency of the US government under the supervision of the State Department. Describing its work as “vital to U.S. national interests,” BBG’s primary broadcasting standard is to be “consistent with the broad foreign policy objectives of the United States.”  The near-total reliance on Washington-linked sources is characteristic of Western reporting on Uighurs Muslims in China, and on the country in general, which regularly features sensational headlines and allegations

China’s Threat to the ‘New World Order’ is the Multipolar World Order

The US and its European allies are afraid of China’s economic growth and of its political influence on the world stage, not of its supposed “imperial agenda” they consistently claim.  China is becoming part of a multipolar world where more than one country has the economic and diplomatic influence instead of the Old-World Order where a unified Western power structure led by the US and its European allies that has brought nothing more than death and destruction to most of the global south.  Their imperial expansion accelerated after World War II to become a global empire, but the world is tired of the same old political establishment from the West telling the rest of the world what to do and who they can become allies with.  China is a target of the West, but China will protect its sovereignty at all costs.  China is ready for a war.

China will be a force economically for centuries to come with their Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that was introduced in 2013 as a global investment project to develop an economic infrastructure strategy to invest and trade with more than 150 countries who participate in the project.  The US is worried about that, so, like spoiled children, the US House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi and then later on, fellow Democrat Senator, Ed Markey from Massachusetts and other Democrat Representatives including John Garamendi and Alan Lowenthal from California, and Don Beyer of Virginia with Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen of American Samoa, who is a Republican with more politicians to follow suit in the future, all defiantly went to Taiwan in an effort to antagonize China to see how far will the CCP go knowing that the One-China Policy is what Beijing takes seriously, in fact, it’s the red line for them.  It was an insult, but China did not take any serious actions against the move that would have led to a world war.

China has human rights issues and to be fair, so does the US government, for example, the US has more people in prison than any other country on the planet.  There is no doubt that the CCP has serious issues when it comes to its internal security policies, but hopefully the Chinese people and their government will work something out in the future when the threat of terrorism and other security issues are no longer a problem.  Perhaps a new beginning can emerge that will benefit China’s society.  But one thing is certain, China and its people will not be bullied by the West.  They experienced an invasion by Imperial Japan during World War II, so it is guaranteed that China will not allow something like that to happen again especially if the US planned to install a military base in Taiwan.

China was and still is a great civilization.  China had periods of history where they flourished, for example under the Tang Dynasty (618-907), although not a perfect example because there were internal conflicts and rebellions for political reasons, but it was considered China’s golden age.  Under the Tang Dynasty, China had a rich, highly educated society that was well-governed. The Tang Dynasty has a rich history of poetry and numerous innovations with political and cultural influences throughout Asia.  China has the potential to become a great civilization once again.

Today, China is not a threat to world peace.  What the West fears is China’s rise as an economic powerhouse along with its Russian counterpart and others who challenge US and European hegemony.  Now the rest of the world (especially the global south) can pick and choose who they trade with and who they choose as an ally.  In other words, most countries around the world will now have a choice.  They don’t have to listen to Washington anymore, they can choose whoever they want that will benefit them the most without giving up their sovereignty in doing so.  The US and Europe as a partner is risky, especially for smaller countries who in some cases, have natural resources but don’t have a formidable military that can protect themselves from western powers.  However, China, Russia and Iran have that power to challenge the West, and now the global south sees what is happening geopolitically and they feel more optimistic about the future.  A future without Uncle Sam waving his big stick and telling governments what to do will be a new start for the world.  The era of empires is over with a multipolar world order is on the horizon and that’s a fact the West is not willing to accept.

We are closer to World War III than ever before, but the question is, where would it begin?  In the South China Sea, in the Middle East or in Eastern Europe? I believe that World War III will begin in the Middle East between Israel and Iran, but it’s hard to tell at this point, but one thing is guaranteed, China will be involved in the next world war.  They want China to become another puppet state that they can control and dominate economically and politically forever and that’s not an exaggeration.  The US and its European allies have been the dominate power on the global stage for centuries and they are not willing to give that up anytime soon, but there is a new multipolar world emerging and that would end the threat of Western hegemonic powers that has only brought misery and pain around the world.

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Timothy Alexander Guzman writes on his own blog site, Silent Crow News, where this article was originally published. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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The Department of Justice responded on Tuesday to Judge Aileen Cannon of the Southern District of Florida regarding former President Donald Trump’s request for a “special master” to be appointed to review the documents taken from the August 8 raid of Mar-a-Lago.

The DOJ claimed designating a special master — a third-party lawyer appointed by the court to oversee part of the case — would be a threat to national security.

“The Justice Department argued in a court filing that Trump lacks the legal standing to appoint a special master. Appointing that watchdog could harm national security, the agency warned,” CNBC reported. “The department also said it has evidence that government records likely were concealed and removed from a storage room at Trump’s home at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”

“Trump had sued to block the Justice Department from further investigating any materials taken in the raid until a court-appointed special master is able to analyze them. That step is typically taken when there is a chance that some evidence should be withheld from prosecutors because of various legal privileges,” the outlet added.

“As an initial matter, the former President lacks standing to seek judicial relief or oversight as to Presidential records because those records do not belong to him,” the DOJ wrote to Judge Cannon.

The DOJ claimed in its court filing on Tuesday that the FBI had “uncovered multiple sources of evidence indicating … that classified documents remained” at Mar-a-Lago.

“The government also developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the DOJ wrote.

The Justice Department’s filing came days after Judge Cannon announced her preliminary intent to appoint a special master, as requested by the attorneys for Trump, to review documents that the FBI took from Mar-a-Lago.

Cannon said the decision was made based on submissions from the former president’s attorneys and “the exceptional circumstances presented,” Fox News reported.

A hearing is set for Thursday at 1:00 p.m. in West Palm Beach, Florida.

Trump’s team was ordered to file a response by Wednesday (8/31).

“District Court Judge Aileen Cannon in the Southern District of Florida ordered Trump’s lawyers to elaborate on their arguments for why the court has the ability to step in at this time, explain what exactly Trump is asking for and whether the Justice Department has been served with Trump’s special master motion,” CNN previously reported.

“Cannon also asked Trump’s team to weigh in on any effect the request might have on a separate review conducted by a magistrate judge into whether any portions of the still-sealed FBI affidavit laying out probable cause for the search can be released,” the report added.

Meanwhile, U.S. Magistrate Bruce Reinhart, the judge who approved the FBI’s search warrant, rejected an argument from the Department of Justice last week and admitted the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago was “unprecedented.”

In a filing, Reinhart rejected the Justice Department’s argument to keep the affidavit “sealed,” citing the “intense public and historical interest.”

Reinhart wrote that he rejects “the Government’s argument that the present record justifies keeping the entire Affidavit under seal.”

“The Government argues that even requiring it to redact portions of the Affidavit that could not reveal agent identities or investigative sources and methods imposes an undue burden on its resources and sets a precedent that could be disruptive and burdensome in future cases,” Reinhart wrote. “I do not need to reach the question of whether, in some other case, these concerns could justify denying public access; they very well might.”

He added: “Particularly given the intense public and historical interest in an unprecedented search of a former President’s residence, the Government has not yet shown that these administrative concerns are sufficient to justify sealing.”

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The Corona Committee Israel was initiated by attorney and economist Viviane Fischer and attorney Dr. Reiner Fuellmich, together with Avital Livny, Dr. Yaffa Shir-Raz, and Ilana Rachel Daniels. Avital Livny, Dr. Yaffa Shir-Raz, and Ilana Rachel Daniels head this committee branch and conduct an evidence review of the Corona crisis and actions.

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On August 27^th, New York Times reporter Matt Richtel published an article entitled “This Teen Was Prescribed 10 Psychiatric Drugs: She’s Not Alone.” The article begins as an honest indictment of psychiatry’s rising irresponsible practice of over prescribing multiple powerful drugs for teens struggling with anxiety, depression and other behavioral disorders. Richtel states the problem clearly.

“Many psychiatric drugs commonly prescribed to adolescents are not approved for people under 18. And they are being prescribed in combinations that have not been studied for safety or for their long-term impact on the developing brain.” The practice of prescribing multiple psychiatric drugs, known as polypharmacy, to any given patient has “gone mainstream.” 

Many of these drugs, such as the entire class of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, or SSRIs, carry black box warnings. Because psychiatry has never proven itself as an exact science, physicians frequently experiment by switching drugs, prescribing drugs for conditions they were not licensed for, and combining drugs into highly toxic cocktails.  The Times article documents several cases where young adults were taking 9 and 10 drugs simply for a diagnosis of anxiety and depression. In practice, psychiatry is largely based on guesswork rather than empirical evidence.

Admirably, Richtel’s article identifies a crucial problem in modern psychiatric practice for treating common mental disorders.  However it suffers from the sin of omission. It fails to specifically identify the nature of the teen’s suffering from polypharmacy practice.

Nor does Richtel mention that these drugs commonly cause the very mental illnesses they are prescribed to relieve. He also fails to mention that the entire Chemical Imbalance Theory upon which psychiatric medication for depression is based remains unproven. As we will explore in detail, the theory may be completely erroneous as a fundamental tenet for treating such disorders with drugs.

Richtel’s omissions are no surprise. The New York Times and the National Institute of Mental Health that the newspaper writes on behalf of has lost all credibility for promoting blatant psychiatric quackery. Having been one of the nation’s loudest media cheerleaders for US military interventions in the Middle East, when did the Times ever take responsibility for accurately reporting on the high rates of suicide among military personnel due to the overprescribing of psychiatric medications?  It is now well established that SSRIs contribute to suicidal and homicidal ideation. This was the reason for the CDC slapping a black box warning on SSRIs. By omitting the most important facts regarding the failures of SSRIs and other psychopharmaceutical drugs, the mainstream media and the entire psychiatric establishment has been manufacturing madness for decades. So where has the Times and the mainstream media been for the past fifty years when reporting the actual cause of anxiety and depression, and offering legitimate criticisms for prescribing SSRIs and other medications.

In 1986, the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly released its antidepressant drug Prozac, the world’s first SSRI.  Prozac has been called a wonder drug. Since its approval over fifteen other SSRIs, including Paxil, Zoloft, Luvox, and Celexa are now commonly prescribed for depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, anxiety and post traumatic stress.

The popularity of SSRIs has skyrocketed. Today, one in every six Americans, approximately 77 million Americans, is taking psychiatric medication, and a quarter of these are long term users. Forty-five million and 31 million for depression and anxiety respectively.

This ratio jumps to an incredible 21% among women between the ages of 45 and 64. During the first couple months of the Covid-19 pandemic prescriptions for depression, anxiety and insomnia increased by 21 percent. Worldwide, mental illness is now the leading cause of disability among children. Since 2015, antidepressant use among children between 5-12 has grown 41 percent, the majority being boys.

Active members and veterans of the US military have become especially dependent on psychiatric medications. Seventeen percent of active duty service members are currently taking antidepressants, sedatives, and other psychiatric drugs, which is 7 percent higher than the wider US population. In 2020 the Department of Veterans Affairs reported that it needed to spend $682 million more in 2021 to deal with the epidemic of mental health disorders within the military. Fifty three million dollars was necessary for suicide protection alone, which now averages 20 suicides per day. A decade ago, the Pentagon spent $280 million on psychiatric drugs.

Along with the rise in antidepressant use, there has been a surge in the creation of many new clinical diagnoses for mental disorders.  What would have been considered just a few years ago to be rebellious behavior among teenagers is now termed Oppositional Defiant disorder; what was once looked upon as a child not wanting to do math homework is now classified as Mathematics Disorder.

The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) includes normal behaviors that have been pathologized as mental disorders. These include Binge Eating Disorder, Caffeine Withdrawal, Hoarding Disorder and Social Communication Withdrawal. As the psychiatric establishment increasingly asserts its importance by pathologizing normal human behaviors, tens of millions of Americans are popping pills in an attempt to find mental wellbeing. All the while, Big Pharma is making a killing; antidepressant drug sales alone are predicted to top $22 billion by 2027 and global sales for all psychiatric drugs are anticipated to reach $41 billion by 2025.

Considering how widely SSRIs are prescribed, you would be forgiven for thinking that this class of drugs is highly safe and effective. In point of fact, these drugs come with a host of devastating and sometimes deadly health implications. Examining the state of the medical industrial complex deeper still makes one thing abundantly clear: Psychiatry is NOT a science but a massively destructive unscientific experiment fueled by a medical industrial complex that values profits over human life and wellbeing.

Let’s break it down:

FACT: Psychiatric Drugs are Dangerous

Volumes of solid scientific evidence demonstrate that SSRIs carry serious and sometimes deadly side effects. These adverse effects include akathisia (a condition in which a person feels compelled to move about), permanent neurological damage, bone fracture, birth defects, sexual dysfunction, suicide (especially in children and teenagers) and acts of violence.[1-5] Shockingly, evidence indicates that SSRI use in patients can, in fact, exacerbate and lengthen bouts of depression and significantly promote relapse.[6]

Most alarming has been the relationship between suicides and psychiatric drug use. The year 2021 saw suicide among military personnel reach an all time high. Since 911, the number of active duty and veteran suicides is over four times greater than actual combat causalities.  In other words, more active-duty American soldiers are ending their own lives than are dying in battle. Could it be that the rising rates of suicide among members of the US military are being fueled by SSRIs and other psychiatric medications? A body of research suggests that the answer is yes.

A meta-analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal, which pooled data from more than 700 studies and 87,650 patients, found that that there exists an “association between the use of SSRIs and increased risk of fatal and non-fatal suicide attempts” The researchers stated in their conclusion that methodological limitations may have caused them to actually underestimate the real risk of suicide.[7]

In 2004, the FDA required SSRI manufactures to place a black box label on SSRI drugs stating suicide as a lethal side effect. How many more deaths have to occur before the FDA bans these dangerous medications altogether?

FACT: Psychiatric Drugs are NOT Effective

Back in 1967, a British psychiatrist proposed the Chemical Imbalance Theory, which established a template for future research to search for mental disorders in chemical imbalances that may be observed in the brain. It is also the underlying basis for the belief that the neurotransmitter serotonin is responsible for what has become the Serotonin Theory of Depression. However, a large state of the art “umbrella review evaluation” conducted by a consortium of eight universities investigated the relationship between serotonin and depression and found that there is no convincing evidence to make this claim.  Furthermore, many studies show that SSRIs are generally no more effective than a placebo (sugar pill) for treating depression. The authors of one meta-analysis examining the effectiveness of using SSRIs in patients with depression remarked that:

“These findings suggest that, compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression, but show significant effects only in the most severely depressed patients”[8]

Upon closer investigation, it’s little wonder that these drugs aren’t efficacious. Psychiatric authorities still contend that mental illness has its roots in “chemical imbalances” in the brain that may be mediated through pharmaceuticals. The only problem is that there is no compelling evidence to confirm this hypothesis. To the contrary, there is increasing evidence to debunk the chemical imbalance theory altogether.  Furthermore, studies prove that SSRIs can adversely interfere and disturb normal brain function; SSRIs ultimately reduce the brain’s ability to respond to serotonin.[9] This is a possible reason that many individuals on SSRIs are more likely to suffer from depression for longer periods of time, and relapse more frequently.

FACT: Psychiatric Diagnoses Have No Basis in Science  

The American Psychiatric Association’s Fifth Edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) is the definitive guide for psychiatric diagnoses. Of the nearly 300 mental disorders outlined in the DSM-5, the criteria for determining mental illness are based solely on subjectively measured and described behaviors.  There are no blood tests, no brain scans or urine samples- not one biological marker to validate the existence of these so-called conditions.

The flawed nature of conventional mental health diagnoses has been pointed out for years. In a 2010 opinion piece for the Los Angeles Times, Allen Frances, chairman of the taskforce that created the DSM-4, commented on the absurdity of the ever-expanding pool of mental disorders stating the following:

“The first draft of the next edition of the DSM, posted for comment with much fanfare last month, is filled with suggestions that would multiply our mistakes and extend the reach of psychiatry dramatically deeper into the ever-shrinking domain of the normal. This wholesale medical imperialization of normality could potentially create tens of millions of innocent bystanders who would be mislabeled as having a mental disorder. The pharmaceutical industry would have a field day — despite the lack of solid evidence of any effective treatments for these newly proposed diagnoses.”

Even more damning was a deathbed confession in 2009 by the eminent child psychiatrist, Dr. Leon Eisenberg. In his final interview, Eisenberg reportedly revealed that “ADHD is a prime example of a fictitious disease.” The bombshell came at the end of Eisenberg’s long career developing foundational theories in modern psychiatry that led to the creation of ADHD and other mental disorders.

Given the lack of scientific rigor with which the APA concocts new disorders, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the DMS-5 even outlines “internet gaming disorder” as a brain abnormality that warrants further study. The bottom line is that psychiatry’s DSM handbook has as much credibility as a comic book.

FACT: The Psychiatric Establishment is Bought and Paid for by Big Pharma

Like the other branches of the medical-industrial complex, psychiatry is infested with conflicts of interest. One of the most outspoken critics of the pharmaceutical industry’s extensive influence over modern medicine is Dr. Marcia Angell, the former editor-in-chief of the New England Journal of Medicine who is currently on the faculty at Harvard University’s School of Public Health.

In her New York Book Review article, Dr. Angell recounts the systemic corruption that has plagued the field of psychiatry:

“As psychiatry became a drug-intensive specialty, the pharmaceutical industry was quick to see the advantages of forming an alliance with the psychiatric profession. Drug companies began to lavish attention and largesse on psychiatrists, both individually and collectively, directly and indirectly. They showered gifts and free samples on practicing psychiatrists, hired them as consultants and speakers, bought them meals, helped pay for them to attend conferences, and supplied them with “educational” materials. When Minnesota and Vermont implemented “sunshine laws” that require drug companies to report all payments to doctors, psychiatrists were found to receive more money than physicians in any other specialty. The pharmaceutical industry also subsidizes meetings of the APA and other psychiatric conferences. About a fifth of APA funding now comes from drug companies.”

Dr. Angell goes on to describe how pharmaceutical companies manipulate study results to maximize profit streams from their drugs:

“…drug companies make very sure that their positive studies are published in medical journals and doctors know about them, while the negative ones often languish unseen within the FDA, which regards them as proprietary and therefore confidential. This practice greatly biases the medical literature, medical education, and treatment decisions.”

Upon further investigation not only are unfavorable clinical trial results concealed while positive results are highlighted and publicized, but the pharmaceutical industry has been embroiled in scandals involving fabricated study results.  In one case, Dr. Scott S Reuben, a Massachusetts anesthesiologist and researcher, allegedly faked data for 21 studies on major medications. Several of the drugs reviewed in Reuben’s studies, including Wyeth’s antidepressant, Effexor FX, were presented in a favorable light without any supporting clinical evidence.

In our opinion, professional dishonesty is rampant in modernpsychiary. In 2013 The Economist published an article entitled “Unreliable Research: Trouble at the Lab.” The paper covered the work of Dr. Daniele Fanelli at the University of Edinburgh, who studied the flaws of scientific research conducted at academic institutions. Dr. Fanelli stated that fraud is likely second to incompetence in generating erroneous results —  although determining the difference is difficult. Dr Fanelli evaluated 21 separate surveys by academics (mostly in the biomedical sciences but also in civil engineering, chemistry and economics) carried out across a 21 year period (1987 to 2008). Only 2% of respondents admitted falsifying or fabricating data, but 28% of respondents claimed to know of colleagues who engaged in questionable research practices.

Collusion and deception have become hallmarks of the medical establishment. Here are some examples of psychiatry’s corruption by the pharmaceutical cartel.

Psychologist Lisa Cosgrove and her colleagues examined the conflicts of interest among the panel members tasked with updating the DSM-5 handbook. Her study noted that “69% of the DSM-5 task force members report having ties to the pharmaceutical industry. This represents a relative increase of 21% over the proportion of DSM-IV task force members with such ties (57% of DSM-IV task force members had ties).”[10]

Cosgrove points out that panel members are eligible to help edit the DSM as long as they are not paid more than $10,000 from drug companies per year (through consultancies and other jobs). In addition, members are permitted to own up to $50,000 in stock holdings in pharmaceutical firms and still serve in their position.

Moreover, the American Psychiatric Association meets in secret to develop the DSM. All of the task force members are required to sign non-disclosure agreements.  This practice has been assailed by many, even former DSM chairman Robert Spitzer, who stated in an interview that “When I first heard about this agreement, I just went bonkers…transparency is necessary if the document is to have credibility.”[11]

Groups such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) and the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), which were allegedly founded to advocate on behalf of people with mental disorders, have been challenged for operating as front groups created to push the pharmaceutical industry’s profit-driven agenda.

In the 1970s and 1980s, leaders at the National Institute of Mental Health played a key role in helping found these professional organizations, such as NAMI, in order to enable drug companies to effectively lobby lawmakers in Washington and state capitols to fund more psychiatric research. These organizations have enjoyed a steady stream of generous financial support from drug makers for decades.

Psychiatrist Dr. Peter Breggin has alleged that NAMI is the “astroturf lobbying organization… for the psychopharmaceutical complex.”  The organization controls 70 percent of the mainstream media’s messaging about mental health and psychological disorders. Its corporate sponsors are a Who’s Who of the nation’s largest firms in the drug and chemical industries, Wall Street banks, the most influential Silicon Valley companies and the major media networks. It dominates social media, with over 160 million impressions, to advance psychiatry’s drug-based model for dealing with mental illness.

In a single year NAMI spent $3.5 million to grab state organizations to advocate on its behalf through its many hundreds of local chapters in every US state. And in 2021, NAMI’s annual report called for $2.1 billion of additional funding to advance its influence over state psychiatric organizations and the media. It is currently in a collaboration with Google to embark on an initiative that would flag internet searchers for psychological related disorders, such as anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsion, etc, thereby incorporating a vehicle for the psychiatric and drug industry to identify and reach out to internet users who may suffer from these mental afflictions. Very likely, this initiative will generate algorithms for pharmaceutical ads targeting the specific searches people make.

Given the overwhelming evidence implicating modern psychiatry as a sick and twisted farce designed to profit from human suffering, how could it be that this issue doesn’t receive any substantive media coverage? Why hasn’t this been exposed by The New York Times, CNN and MSNBC, or 60 Minutes? Could it be the hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising that the corporate media receives from Big Pharma each year? Perhaps this could lead to self-censorship.

The Dangers of SSRIs

We need to take a deeper look at the dangers associated with SSRIs. The most controversial issue surrounding the use of SSRIs–a possible connection to suicidal and homicidal thoughts and behavior in some users–made news in mid-2003 when the Food and Drug Administration recommended that Paxil not be used to treat depressed children and adolescents because regulators were reviewing reports from clinical trials of an increased risk of suicidal thinking and suicide attempts in young users.[12]

Although the Prozac era has ended for Eli Lilly, the availability of less costly generics means that fluoxetine may be more affordable for tens of millions of uninsured people. In addition to gaining approval for Prozac for indications besides depression (obsessive-compulsive disorder, bulimia nervosa, and panic disorder), Eli Lilly now markets two Prozac-related products that have their own patents: Sarafem is the version of Prozac approved for the treatment of premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD).[13] It was the first prescription drug in the US with this indication. The second drug is Prozac Weekly, intended for the longer-term treatment of depression when symptoms have stabilized.[14]

IQVia (formerly IMS Health) has observed a trend toward “lifestyle indications” for antidepressants.[15] In addition to major depression and OCD, both Paxil and Zoloft are indicated for panic disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety disorder. Zoloft also is approved for premenstrual dysphoric disorder, while Paxil is approved for generalized anxiety disorder. [16-17] Doctors, for their part, prescribe SSRIs for a wide range of conditions, such as headaches, substance abuse, eating disorders, back pain, impulsivity, upset stomach, irritability, hair pulling, nail biting, premature ejaculation, sexual addictions, and attention deficit disorder.[18]

One growing market for SSRIs and other psychiatric medications is young children and adolescents. This is despite some studies showing that antidepressants are no more effective than placebos in these patients.[19-22]  Another study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that psychotropic medications prescribed to preschoolers has rapidly increased.[23]

An analysis of prescription claims among young Medicaid patients in North Carolina found that the use of Ritalin-type stimulants and Prozac-type antidepressants among children rose dramatically and that more were taking both drugs at once. Current figures record that 1 in 5 children have a mental health problem: 43 percent increase in ADHD, 37% rise in teen depression, and   200 percent increase in suicides among adolescents between 10-14 years of age. For 2020, the IQVia patient tracker database records over 6.1 million persons between 0-17 years of age on some type of psychiatric medication.  Breaking down this statistic, 2.1 million are antidepressants, 3.1 million are taking anti-ADHD drugs such as Adderall, and another 1.2 million are on anti-anxiety drugs. Writing about the increase in psychiatric drugs prescribed for younger people, Jerry Rushton, MD, MPH, commented, “… the consistent increase in SSRI use and in dual prescriptions is especially surprising. We need further information about whether this is due to new unrecognized mental disorders, substitution for other therapies, or overprescription.”

Serotonin and side effects

Prozac relieves depression by affecting the level of serotonin, a neurotransmitter that connects receptor sites and fires nerve cells. Joseph Glenmullen, MD, a clinical instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, explains in his book Prozac Backlash that the drug inhibits the reuptake of serotonin–a process in which a cell that releases this chemical messenger reabsorbs any unused portion of it. By blocking the reuptake of this neurotransmitter, Prozac boosts the level of serotonin and prolongs the serotonin signals in the brain.[24]

Dr. Glenmullen points out, however, that neurotransmitters like serotonin, adrenaline, and dopamine are connected by complex circuitry and function interdependently.

Changes in one neurotransmitter can set off changes in another. Thus, the idea that Prozac-type drugs work “selectively” on serotonin is an illusion. When the level of serotonin is artificially increased, the primary reaction in the brain is a drop in dopamine–a powerful secondary effect that was not understood when the new class of serotonin boosters was introduced. The severe effects of the SSRIs are thought to be caused by the connections between the serotonin and dopamine systems. “Drugs producing a dopamine drop are well known to cause the dangerous side effects that are now appearing with Prozac and the other drugs in its class,” Dr. Glenmullen writes. His term for these compensatory reactions in the brain is “Prozac backlash.”[25]

Dr. Peter Breggin has also reported in Talking Back to Prozac: What Doctors Aren’t Telling You About Today’s Most Controversial Drug, that Prozac acts as a stimulant to the nervous system.[26] Therefore, it can produce side effects that mimic those of amphetamines and are exaggerations of the desired effects of Prozac in relieving depression.

According to Dr. Breggin, the FDA psychiatrist who wrote the agency’s safety review of Prozac, the drug’s effects–including nausea, insomnia, and nervousness–resemble the profile of a stimulant drug rather than a sedative. He notes that nearly all of the Prozac side effects listed in the Physician’s Desk Reference “fit into the stimulant profile.” Among others, these stimulant symptoms include headaches, nervousness, insomnia, anxiety, agitation, tremors, weight loss, nausea, diarrhea, mouth dryness, anorexia, and excessive sweating. He adds in The Antidepressant Fact Book that all of the SSRIs can cause insomnia, anxiety, agitation, and nervousness. These same effects and others are caused by the classic stimulants–methylphenidate, amphetamine, methamphetamine, Ecstasy, and cocaine. [27]

A drug that acts as a stimulant can also overstimulate the body systems. In Talking Back to Prozac, Dr. Breggin offers the example of a person who takes Prozac to relieve depression (the beneficial effect) and suffers from agitation and insomnia (the negative effects). These adverse reactions “are inherent in the stimulant effect that produces feelings of energy and well-being,” he writes. “In this sense, the difference between ‘therapeutic effects’ and ‘toxic effects’ are merely steps along a continuum from mild to extreme toxicity.”[28]

Between 2004 and 2019, the FDA’s Adverse Events Reporting System or FAERS reported over 7.3 million adverse events for 30 different antidepressants on the market.  Across the board, SSRIs were the most responsible; however, one reason may be that SSRIs are more prescribed. It is not unusual for serious adverse effects to surface after a drug hits the market. Only then is a major new warning added to the label or the drug be withdrawn. The FDA informs doctors, but not the public that the approval of a drug does not mean it is safe.

In 2004, the FDA was compelled to issue a black box warning on virtually all antidepressant drugs. Four years later the FDA instituted a black box warning for all second generation antipsychotics due to rising deaths among elderly patients.  It is not uncommon for drugs to eventually undergo greater scrutiny after they have been on the market for longer periods of time and drug injuries and deaths increase. It is estimated that there is a 20% chance that problems will arise with any given drug after its approval. One group of researchers stated, “The safety of new agents cannot be known with certainty until a drug has been on the market for many years.”  Now that pharmaceutical companies have easier access to fast track new drugs off the production line through the FDA’s regulatory review process, there has been a noticeable increase in black box warning for new drugs.

Dr. Glenmullen says that popular psychiatric drugs follow a “10-20-30 year pattern” in revealing their dangerous effects and falling into disfavor: About 10 years after their debut, the earliest signs of problems appear. At 20 years, there is enough data for the problems to be undeniable and a significant number of physicians to voice their concerns. At 20 years (or more), professional organizations and regulators actively work to stop overprescribing of the drug. At this point, drugs have become passé and lose their patent protection, and the manufacturers move on to more profitable drugs “that can be promoted as ‘safer’ because their hazards are not yet known.” [29]

Comparisons of efficacy

SSRIs have no more specific effect on depression than do other antidepressants, including the tricycles and monoamine-oxidase inhibitors (MAOIs), according to Charles Medawar. As he explains in The Antidepressant Web, patients generally respond to antidepressants in about 60% to 70% of cases, while the typical response to  placebo is 30% to 35%. Therefore, the popularity of SSRIs is due to the fact that most experts believe they are safer or otherwise more acceptable than the alternatives. And, in fact, promotional messages for SSRIs state three advantages: the drugs produce fewer unwanted side effects, are more acceptable to more patients, and are safer when overdosed.[30]

Despite the safety-related claims made in the medical literature, “the evidence overall does not suggest that SSRIs show any great and decisive safety advantage over alternatives in day to day use,” says Medawar. Consider the results of trials comparing SSRI efficacy and safety with that of other antidepressants: “Two independent meta-analyses, each starting with a careful search of the literature to identify all properly controlled trials, have reached broadly similar conclusions–the SSRIs do have the edge on alternatives, but not by much.”[31] One analysis of 62 trials found a 49% dropout rate for SSRIs versus a 54% rate for tricyclic antidepressants. A second analysis of 63 trials (16 comparing an SSRI with a nontricyclic) found that 3% fewer people stopped taking an SSRI because of the side effects. [32]

Other reviews also have found that the newer antidepressants are no more or less effective in treating depression than older-generation drugs. In a government study conducted by Dr. Cynthia Mulrow and colleagues, the researchers analyzed more than 300 randomized controlled trials and concluded there were no significant differences in efficacy between newer and older agents or in overall discontinuation rates.[33-34] Fewer people taking SSRIs stopped treatment due to adverse effects than those taking first-generation tricyclics (the rate difference was 4%). More than 80 studies found that newer antidepressants were more effective than placebo in treating major depression in adults. The response rate was 50% for the drugs, versus 32% for a placebo.

A more disturbing conclusion was reached by Dr. Irving Kirsch and colleagues who analyzed data sent to the FDA for approval of the six most commonly prescribed antidepressants over the course of a dozen years (Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft, Effexor, Serzone, and Celexa). Their analysis found that the response to placebo was almost as great as the response to the antidepressants. The mean difference on the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression was two points, according to a report in Psychiatric Times. The difference was statistically, but not clinically, significant. The article states, “More than half of the clinical trials sponsored by the pharmaceutical companies failed to find significant drug/placebo difference, and there were no advantages to higher doses of antidepressants.” The authors add, “The small difference between antidepressant and placebo has been referred to as a ‘dirty little secret’ by clinical trial researchers …”[35]

Several recent studies have reported similar results, finding that an SSRI did not differ significantly from placebo in the treatment of depression.[36]

*

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

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

They are regular contributors to Global Research.

Notes

[1] Koliscak, Lindsey P., and Eugene H. Makela. “Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor-induced akathisia.” Journal of the American Pharmacists Association 49.2 (2009): e28-e38. Print.

[2] Wu, Q., A. F. Bencaz, J. G. Hentz, and M. D. Crowell. “Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitor treatment and risk of fractures: a meta-analysis of cohort and case–control studies.” Osteoporosis International 23.1 (2012): 365-375. Print.

[3] Bahrick, Audrey (2008). “Persistence of Sexual Dysfunction Side Effects after Discontinuation of Antidepressant Medications: Emerging Evidence”. The Open Psychology Journal 1: 42–50. Retrieved 30 January 2014.

[4] Olfson M, Marcus SC, Shaffer D (August 2006). “Antidepressant drug therapy and suicide in severely depressed children and adults: A case-control study”. Archives of General Psychiatry 63 (8): 865–72.

[5] Henry, Chantal, and Jacques Demotes-Mainard. “SSRIs, Suicide and Violent Behavior: Is there a Need for a Better Definition of the Depressive State?.” Current Drug Safety 1.1 (2006): 59-62. pubmed.gov. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

[6] van Weel-Baumgarten, EM, et al. “Treatment of depression related to recurrence: 10-year follow-up in general practice.” Journal of Clinical of Pharmacy and Therapeutics 25.1 (2005): 61-6. pubmed.gov. Web. 24 Mar. 2014.

[7] Fergusson , Dean, et al.. “Association between suicide attempts and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: systematic review of randomised controlled trials.” British Medical Journal 330 (2005): n. pag. BMJ.com. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

[8] Kirsch, Irving, Brett J. Deacon, Tania B. Huedo-Medina, Alan Scoboria, Thomas J. Moore, and Blair T. Johnson. “Initial Severity And Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis Of Data Submitted To The Food And Drug Administration.” PLoS Medicine 5.2 (2008): e45. plosmedicine.org. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

[9] Andrews, Paul W, et al.. “Blue again: perturbational effects of antidepressants suggest monoaminergic homeostasis in major depression .” Fronteirs in Psychology July (2011): n. pag. journal.frontiersin.org. Web. 17 Mar. 2014.

[10] Cosgrove, Lisa, and Sheldon Krimsky. “A Comparison of DSM-IV and DSM-5 Panel Members’ Financial Associations with Industry: A Pernicious Problem Persists.” PLoS Medicine 9.3 (2012): e1001190. plosmedicine.org. Web. 18 Mar. 2014.

[11] Carey, Benedict. “Psychiatry’s Struggle to Revise The Book of Human Troubles.” The New York Times. The New York Times, 17 Dec. 2008. Web. 27 Mar. 2014.

[12] U.S. Food and Drug Administration. FDA talk paper: FDA statement regarding the anti-depressant Paxil for pediatric population. June 19, 2003.

[13] U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). New treatment approved for severe premenstrual symptoms. FDA Consumer magazine, Sep-Oct. 2000.

[14] U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Weekly Prozac dosage: treatment alternative for depression. FDA Consumer magazine, May-June 2001.

[15] IMS Health. Lifestyle indications for antidepressants. April 4, 2000. From www.ims-global.com/insight/news_story/news_story_000404b.htm.

[16] GlaxoSmithKline. Prescribing information for Paxil (paroxetine hydrochloride) Tablets and Oral Suspension. August 2003. From www.us.gsk.com/products/assets/us_paxil.pdf.

[17] Pfizer Inc. Prescribing information for Zoloft (sertraline hydrochloride) Tablets and Oral Concentrate. Revised September 2003. From www.pfizer.com/download/uspi_zoloft.pdf.

[18] Glenmullen, Joseph, M.D. Prozac backlash: overcoming the dangers of Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, and other antidepressants with safe, effective alternatives. Touchstone, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2000, p. 14.

[19] Leonard M. Children are the hot new market for antidepressants. But is this how to make them feel better? Boston Sunday Globe, May 25, 1997, D1, D5 (cited in Glenmullen).

[20] Strauch B. Use of antidepression medicine for young patients has soared. New York Times, August 10, 1997, 1 (cited in Glenmullen).

[21] Martin A, Leslie D. Trends in psychotropic medication costs for children and adolescents, 1997-2000. Arch Pediatr Adolesc Med 2003 Oct; 157(10):997-1004.

[22] Fisher RL and Fisher S. Antidepressants for children. Is scientific support necessary? J Nerv Ment Dis 1996; 184:99-102 (cited in Glenmullen).

[23] Pellegrino D. Commentary: Clinical judgement, scientific data, and ethics: antidepressant therapy in adolescents and children. J Nerv Ment Dis 1996; 184:106-8 (cited in Glenmullen).

[24] Glenmullen, op. cit., p. 17.

[25] Ibid, pp. 17-20.

[26] Breggin, P.R., and Breggin, G.R. Talking back to Prozac: What doctors aren’t telling you about today’s most controversial drug. St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1994, p. 121.

[27] Breggin, P.R. The antidepressant fact book. Perseus Publishing, Cambridge, MA, 2001, p. 46.

[28] Breggin and Breggin, 1994, p. 105.

[29] Glenmullen, op. cit., pp. 12-13.

[30] Medawar C. The antidepressant web–marketing depression and making medicines work. International Journal of Risk & Safety in Medicine 1997;10(2):75-126. Posted online at a Web site operated by Social Audit Ltd., the publishing arm of Public Interest Research Centre Ltd.: Last updated August 8, 2003.

[31] Anderson IM, Tomenson BM. Treatment discontinuation with selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors compared with tricyclic antidepressants: a meta-analysis. Brit Med J 1995 June 3; 310:1433-8 (cited in Medawar).

[32] Song F, Freemantle N, Sheldon TA, et al. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors: meta-analysis of efficacy and acceptability. Brit Med J 1993; 306:683-7 (cited in Medawar).

[33] Mulrow CD, Williams JW Jr, Trivedi M, Chiquette E, Aguilar C, et al. Treatment of depression–newer pharmacotherapies. Psychopharmacol Bull 1998; 34(4):409-795.

[34] Geddes JR, Freemantle N, Mason J, Eccles MP, Boynton J. SSRIs versus other antidepressants for depressive disorder. Cochrane Database Syst Rev 2000; (2):CD001851.

[35] Hollon SD, DeRubeis RJ, Shelton RC, Weiss B. The emperor’s new drugs: effect size and moderate effects. Prevention & Treatment, 5 Artical 28, 2002 (cited in Kirsch and Antonuccio).

[36] Hypericum Depression Trial Study Group. Effect of Hypericum perforatum (St John’s wort) in major depressive disorder: a randomized controlled trial. JAMA 2002 Apr 10; 287(14):1807-14.

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Washington exerts more control over the Kiev regime, establishing its own military command, increasing the presence of numerous foreign-backed NGOs, as well as sending US corporate advisers and representatives.

Ukraine was never seen as a particularly sovereign country. However, in 2014 any semblance of independence was lost for good when the political West used the Neo-Nazi elements of Ukrainian society to install the current Kiev regime.

Both the European Union and the United States had interests in Ukraine, albeit somewhat divergent. While the EU saw Ukraine as a perfect opportunity to significantly enlarge its area of neocolonial exploitation, the US saw it both as that and unmatched strategic leverage against Russia.

With Ukraine under firm Washington control, the concept of mutually assured destruction (MAD) would’ve been severely undermined by giving the US a clear advantage, forcing Russia to either effectively capitulate or escalate. The Pentagon strategists were especially happy with this turn of events, regardless of how many Cold War-era pundits, former military and government officials advised against this extremely dangerous, almost suicidal approach.

For its part, the Russian establishment realized it would be cornered if this were to materialize. Moscow decided to act decisively on February 24, launching its special military operation in order to drive NATO further from its western borders, as well as to prevent the complete loss of Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. Russia’s intervention proved that the Kiev regime forces, albeit significantly enlarged and modernized, were no match for Moscow’s superpower military. Seeing how fast its project in Kiev would crumble, the political West reacted by sending billions of dollars’ worth of weapons, in addition to mobilizing its massive propaganda machine to create an image of “Ukrainian defenders fighting off Russia’s completely unprovoked brutal invasion.”

Russia’s BTGs (battalion tactical groups) took control over large swathes of land in mere days, helping shape the field of battle to Moscow’s liking and setting the stage for the most important aspect of the special military operation – demilitarization. As the fighting started turning into a classic example of attrition warfare the political West realized that Russia will most certainly prevail. The US and NATO understood that only constant weapons shipments could keep the Kiev regime forces afloat. Still, despite the Western propaganda machine trying to portray these weapons as the new “wunderwaffen”, the Neo-Nazi junta’s experience fighting the Russian military with the said weapons painted a much less flattering picture.

In order to tackle the issue of the Kiev regime’s incompetence, the US decided to take even more control of the situation and how military assets sent by the political West were being used. This has turned Ukraine, already a prime example of US neocolonialist foreign policy, into an almost direct US colony. The much-touted offensive in the Kherson oblast illustrates this perfectly. The offensive didn’t only fail before it even began, but it’s also clear that the US needs it much more than the Kiev regime itself. The Neo-Nazi junta lacks soldiers, weapons and logistics to launch any sensible offensive. In addition, the Russian military enjoys air superiority, making any such attempt suicidal at best.

Still, the United States, and above all, the troubled Biden administration, is in desperate need of even a semblance of victory as the midterm elections are mere months away. The US government needs to demonstrate just how “successful” its Ukraine policy is. The problem is that there’s nothing good it can use to create the illusion of success. The current US global standing, coupled with an increasingly difficult domestic situation poses a significant threat to the Democratic Party, which desperately needs anything to show that the Biden administration’s policies, both domestic and foreign, are beneficial for the US.

To accomplish this goal, the US is “increasing its presence” in Ukraine. The notion that its money will be embezzled by the corrupt Kiev regime officials and its “lethal aid” sold on the black market is making the Biden administration especially uncomfortable, as this will very likely create even more problems and further damage the already shaky reputation of the current US government, to say nothing of the negative consequences for its Ukraine policy. To tackle this issue and since it’s unsatisfied with the “military successes” of the Kiev regime forces, the US is establishing its own military command which will control the course of military operations conducted by the Neo-Nazi junta forces. This also includes the distribution and use of American and other Western weapons supplied to the Kiev regime forces.

The changes in policy are not only affecting the military, but also the government institutions. Exercising even more control over the actions of the Kiev regime government, increasing the presence of numerous foreign-backed NGOs, as well as sending US corporate advisers and representatives are all actions which aim to tighten the US neocolonial grip. In this way, even the local operational decision-making is being taken away from the regime and relegated to the US embassy in Kiev. It is precisely this neocolonial policy (nearly a carbon copy of the one carried out in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East, etc.) that is pushing the Ukrainian people into a protracted and bloody conflict with Russia, one they cannot hope to win.

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Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.

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I’ve disagreed with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas over a whole range of issues and still do. But I support his refusal to apologise for the killing of 11 Israeli participants at the 1974 Munich Olympics, and his use of the term ‘holocausts’ to describe the many massacres to which Palestinians have been subjected by Israeli forces over the years.

Abbas, who made his remarks at a joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, was not asked about his view of the Nazi Holocaust, but of the death of the Israeli athletes on the 50th anniversary of the Munich incident. His reply, reminding his questioner of the ‘Israeli holocausts’ perpetrated daily against the Palestinian people, was poignant and powerful. He should not retract it or try to clarify or fudge it to appease criminals whose record is replete with racism, atrocities, and war crimes.

The massacre of the Israeli athletes in Munich was not committed by Abbas or by the Black September squad that abducted them. They were killed by Israeli Mossad operatives and German police who stormed the place where they were being held. The five kidnappers, who had wanted to exchange them for Palestinian prisoners held in the Israeli occupation’s jails, were all liquidated. But Israel, supported by Germany’s guilt complex, considers itself above any law or accountability and feels free to twist the facts.

Abbas has saved countless Jewish lives by devoting 60,000 Palestinian security personnel to protecting Israeli settlers for the past 30 years, the biggest scandal in the history of national liberation movements. His only reward has been to be insulted and abused by Yair Lapid, Lieberman and other Israeli leaders.

Lapid described Abbas’ remarks as disgraceful and unforgivable and accused him of denying the Holocaust in which six million Jews including a million children perished. Lapid’s hands and those of all previous Israeli governments are soaked in the blood of Palestinian children, most recently the 16 slain in just three days in the Gaza Strip. They are the last people on earth entitled to lecture anyone about the killing of women and children.

Abbas was excoriated by Scholz and the German opposition for describing Israel as a racist Apartheid state. If I were him I would have replied that the Germans should apologize to the Palestinian people, not the other way round, for their blind unconditional defence of blatant Israeli racism and their hypocrisy, double standards, and falsehoods when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

The Nazi Holocaust was the ugliest crime in modern history and must be condemned in the strongest terms. But usage of the term is not a Jewish copyright, and we should not be prevented from using it to describe the holocausts to which the Palestinians and other peoples have been and continue to be subjected.

Israel has committed countless massacres against the Palestinian, Lebanese, and Egyptian people — last but not least the recently revealed Latroun massacre in which 90 Egyptian soldiers who surrendered after being surrounded in the 1967 war were burned alive. It carries out mass killings, holocausts, blockades, and sieges against the Palestinians with impunity. It has never abided by a single UN resolution applicable to it, nor respected its signature on any agreement with Palestinians, including the shameful Oslo Accords that gave it 80% of the territory historic Palestine in exchange for a bastardised version of ‘autonomy’.

I wish Abbas had taken such a bold stance 30 years ago instead of engaging in futile negotiations and imagining that peace could be achieved with a murderous, racist coloniser. Maybe he has experienced a belated awakening to atone for his sins. Better late than never. But the Palestinian people realised long ago that the policy of banking on peaceful solutions and international resolutions had failed, and that the only way of regaining their rights is resistance.

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Thanks to Forbes for bringing this article to our attention. Copyright Forbes.

***

Ukrainian aircraft are firing American-made AGM-88 High-Speed Anti-Radiation Missiles (HARM) at Russian air-defenses in Ukraine.

It’s an unexpected development, considering that the HARM normally isn’t compatible with the Soviet-designed MiG-29 and Su-27 fighters and Su-24 and Su-25 attack jets that the Ukrainian air force operates.

But it’s possible to guess how the Ukrainians and Americans have made the 800-pound, radar-seeking missile work.

Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s minister of defense, back in July teased the country’s acquisition of anti-radiation missiles. But the first evidence of American HARMs in Ukraine came Sunday, when photos circulated online depicting wreckage of a missile somewhere in Ukraine—wreckage with the distinctive stenciling of an AGM-88. More photos followed Thursday.

The photos sparked widespread speculation. Since no air force ever has integrated the HARM on a Soviet plane type, some observers wondered aloud whether a NATO ally of Ukraine fired the missiles.

That always was unlikely, of course, as NATO—while a strong supporter of Ukraine—carefully has avoided direct involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war, for obvious escalatory reasons.

Alternatively, some observers pointed out that later models of the Raytheon-made AGM-88, which first entered service in the 1980s, are compatible with ground launchers. Perhaps the Ukrainians had cobbled together some kind of improvised truck-launcher for older HARMs.

On Monday, U.S. Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl ended the speculation. The Ukrainian air force was firing HARMs that the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden transferred to Ukraine under Biden’s “presidential draw-down authority,” which allows him to dispatch overseas surplus U.S. weaponry.

“We’ve included a number of anti-radiation missiles that can be fired off of Ukrainian aircraft that can have effects on Russia radars and other things,” Kahl said. “So there are also things that we’re doing to try to make their existing capabilities more effective.”

Kahl even hinted at which of Ukraine’s roughly 100 remaining front-line warplanes are carrying the 14-foot anti-radiation missile. Kahl noted speculation that Ukraine quietly has been acquiring—or at least seeking to acquire—second-hand MiG-29s from NATO countries.

“A lot was made about the MiG-29 issue several months ago,” Kahl said. “Not very much has been noticed about the sheer amounts of spare parts and other things that we’ve done to help them actually put more of their own MiG-29s in the air and keep those that are in the air flying for a longer period of time.”

Click here to read the full article.

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David Axe is a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina.

Featured image: A U.S. Navy EA-6B fires an AGM-88 HARM in 1999. (Source: US Navy photo)

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***

August 22, 2022, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced he will resign from his posts as director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — a position he’s held for 38 years — and chief medical adviser to the White House, come December.

It appears Fauci is making sure to get out before new Republican congressional members take their seats. He’s probably banking on being able to plead the Fifth Amendment as a private citizen and never have to answer to anything he did while in public office, should Republicans decide to investigate his role in the pandemic.

Fauci’s misdeeds include but are not limited to disastrous and contradictory COVID policies, funding of banned gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China, colluding to destroy the reputations of scientists who called for focused protection rather than lockdowns, and lying to Congress.

One of the darkest stains on Fauci’s career was his handling of the HIV epidemic. Suppressing the use of repurposed drugs, Fauci zeroed in on AZT, a toxic drug that killed an estimated 300,000 AIDS patients. He followed the same script during the COVID pandemic, with devastating consequences.

Ever since the COVID outbreak became apparent, Fauci has seemingly done everything in his power to confuse the public and strip us of our human and civil rights in order to further the agenda of the technocratic, transhumanist cabal.

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August 22, 2022, Dr. Anthony Fauci announced he will resign from his posts as director of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) — a position he’s held for 38 years — and chief medical adviser to the White House, come December.¹

He noted he is “not retiring” but rather will “pursue the next chapter” of his career, presumably within the private sector. I wouldn’t be surprised if he ends up working with Bill Gates and/or the World Health Organization.

Timing Is Everything

The timing of his departure is interesting, seeing how Republicans may end up controlling the House come January 2023. They then will control which kinds of hearings and investigations will be held.

So far, Fauci has benefited from the protection of the Democratic Party and mainstream media — which went so far as to dub him the “sexiest man alive”² in 2021, in an apparent effort to polish his increasingly tarnishing image — and sharp questioning by Republican Sen. Rand Paul aside, nothing has been done to hold Fauci responsible for any of his misdeeds, which include but are not limited to:

• Disastrous and contradictory COVID policies³
• Funding of banned gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China (discussed in the Sky News report above from June 2021)
• Colluding to destroy the reputations of scientists who called for focused protection rather than lockdowns, and
• Lying to Congress (below)

So, it appears Fauci is making sure to get out before new Congressional members take their seats. He’s probably banking on being able to plead the Fifth Amendment as a private citizen and never have to answer to anything he did while in public office, should Republicans decide to investigate him.

As noted by Batya Ungar-Sargon during an August 22, 2022, episode of The Hill’s “Rising” (video below), when asked about whether he had any regrets about his pandemic response, Fauci denied having made any mistakes — a surprising stance, considering his many flip-flopping and contradictory recommendations.

Amazon Protects Fauci’s Reputation by Censoring Book Reviews

When Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s best selling book “The Real Anthony Fauci“⁴ came out in November 2021, there were 20,000 reviews of the book on Amazon but mine was number one with 7,500 “liking” the review. The reason I mention it is that this was my headline last summer: “The Details Exposed in This Book Will Lead to Fauci’s Resignation.”

Then, at some point, Amazon censored the reviews, and now the top critical review has 2,485 “likes” and the top positive review has a measly five and my review is nowhere to be seen. Nice job of censoring, Amazon.

“The Real Anthony Fauci” is a carefully referenced, scathing critique of Fauci’s career. As explained by Kennedy in my interview with him in mid-November 2021, Fauci is the highest-paid federal employee in the U.S., and 68% of his $437,000 a year salary comes from bioweapons research.

Instead of safeguarding public health, Fauci turned the National Institutes of Health (NIH) into an incubator for pharmaceutical products, and essentially sold the entire country to the drug industry. He was instrumental in creating the vaccine “gold rush” in the 2000s, when he partnered with Gates to vaccinate the world with a battery of new vaccines.

One of the darkest stains on Fauci’s career, aside from his role in the COVID pandemic, was his handling of the HIV epidemic. Suppressing the use of repurposed drugs, Fauci zeroed in on AZT, a toxic drug that killed an estimated 300,000 AIDS patients.

He followed the same script during the COVID pandemic, with devastating consequences. He suppressed all inexpensive and nontoxic treatments and pushed the toxic and deadly remdesivir to the front of the line, making it the only drug available to hospitals, which were financially rewarded for killing patients with it.

As noted by The Federalist in a January 2021 article⁵ written by civil rights attorney Ilya Feoktistov, Fauci has failed upward ever since he joined the NIH in 1984, meaning each failure was rewarded with greater influence and funding.

Did Fauci Write ‘Expect the Unexpected’?

Fauci also has a book of his own, the publication of which occurred under rather suspicious circumstances. In a 2021 interview, Fauci said he was working on a memoir, but was precluded from contracting with a publisher while still employed by the federal government.^6,7

In June 2021, Fauci’s book, “Expect the Unexpected: Ten Lessons on Truth, Service, and the Way Forward,” was listed for sale on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, only to be delisted almost immediately.⁸ According to the publisher, National Geographic Books, the book was “prematurely posted for pre-sale.”

They also stated Fauci was not actually involved in the creation of the book and would not receive royalties from it. The original Amazon posting, however, gives a different impression:⁹

“In his own words, world-renowned infectious disease specialist Anthony Fauci shares the lessons that have shaped his life philosophy, offering an intimate view of one of the world’s greatest medical minds as well as universal advice to live by.”

When, in November 2021, “Fauci: Expect the Unexpected” finally came out, it had National Geographic listed as the “editor,” with no author specified.¹⁰ Is this Fauci’s own work, repackaged and sold with National Geographic as the author/editor and publisher? If so, then Fauci has flouted the rules and committed yet another illegal act.

Violators of Nuremberg Code Must Be Held Accountable

Many are now wondering if Fauci, through his resignation, will be able to slip through the fingers of accountability. Hopefully, justice will prevail on that point, in one way or another.

As noted by Children’s Health Defense president Mary Holland during an event to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nuremberg Code (video above),¹¹ “Those who violated the Nuremberg Code must be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.” Fauci, without doubt, deserves to be very high up on that list.

During that same event, Holocaust survivor and founder of the Alliance for Human Research Protection, Vera Sharav, also stressed that the “Nuremberg Code is our defense against abusive experimentation,” and that to prevent another mass genocide, “we must identify ominous current parallels before they poison the fabric of society.” Sharav continued:¹²

“Humanity is currently under siege by the global heirs of the Nazis. A posse of ruthless, interconnected, global billionaires have gained control over national and international policy-setting institutions. They have embarked on implementing a diabolical agenda:

In May, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Klaus Schwab, the architect of the dystopian Great Reset declared: ‘Let’s be clear, the future is not just happening; the future is built by us, a powerful community here in this room. We have the means to impose the state of the world.’

The ultimate goal of these megalomaniacs is to gain total control of the world’s natural resources and financial resources and to replace humans with transhuman robots.

Transhumanism is a biotech-enhanced caste system — the new eugenics … Transhumanists despise human values and deny the existence of a human soul. [Professor Yuval Noah] Harari declares that there are too many ‘useless people.’ The Nazi term was ‘worthless eaters.’ This is the ‘New Eugenics.'”

Fauci’s COVID Hall of Shame

See video here.

Ever since the COVID outbreak became apparent, Fauci has seemingly done everything in his power to confuse the public and strip us of our human and civil rights in order to further the agenda of the technocratic, transhumanist cabal. Here’s a shortlist of past articles detailing his Hall of Shame activities:

• Wuhan Lab Caught Deleting Files Proving Fauci Funding — At least 200 scientists have signed a statement from the Cambridge Working Group disagreeing with Fauci. May 26, 2021
• The Biggest Flip-Flop Ever — He was wrong about the usefulness and need for masks and post-vaccination mask requirements, yet nothing compares to this. June 2, 2021
• Fauci in the Hot Seat as Emails Reveal His Lies — Emails show Fauci helped cover up the lab origin theory and has lied about masks and the need for vaccination when you’ve already recovered from COVID-19. June 9, 2021
• When Do Noble Lies Just Become Blatant Lies? — Anthony Fauci claims the lies he’s told were to protect the public and influence behavior. August 28, 2021
• Will Fauci Be Held Accountable for Lying to Congress? — Right now, Tony Fauci probably wishes this research article didn’t exist — but it does, and it clearly shows the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research. September 9, 2021
• New Cache of Documents Exposes Lies to Congress — In a recent hearing, senators question Dr. Fauci as to whether his institute directly or indirectly provided grants to fund gain-of-function research on coronaviruses. September 11, 2021
• Fauci Must Be Fired and Arrested — Saint Anthony has been caught in a web of insidious lies that keep reaching new lows. He’s making news once again for funding research that involved abusing animals for 40 years. November 6, 2021
• Disney Documentary Glorifies Fauci’s Façade — Disney+, via its streaming partner National Geographic, released a documentary on Dr. Anthony Fauci, elevating him to hero status while ignoring the lies he’s foisted upon the American people. November 8, 2021
• Who’s the Real Anthony Fauci? — Should Anthony Fauci be truly praised for the work he’s doing? Here’s a look into what he may be planning. December 9, 2021
• The Scheming of Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci — How did we get into the mess we’re now in? Whatever happened to WHO’s emphasis on clean water, nutrition and improving conditions of poverty around the world? December 19, 2021
• Fauci Wants to Mandate the Vax to Fly — Fauci suggests that vaccines may be mandatory on domestic flights but does not cite safety as a reason for the regulation. January 9, 2022
• How Anthony Fauci Controls Science Globally — Looked at as a kind of savior, the man on the white horse that would ride us out of this coronavirus crises is actually Big Pharma’s biggest servant. January 21, 2022
• Fauci Likely to Birth His Own COVID Variant After Paxlovid — Fauci experienced COVID-19 rebound after taking one course of Paxlovid. July 14, 2022

Roadmap for Prosecuting COVID Crimes

While many worry it might not be possible to hold COVID criminals like Fauci responsible for their roles, Francis Boyle, in December 2021, laid out a viable roadmap for prosecuting these individuals.

As explained by Boyle, a professor of international law at the University of Illinois College of Law who helped write the Biological Weapons Anti-Terrorism Act of 1989, this law imposes fines and prison sentences on anyone who “knowingly develops, produces, stockpiles, transfers, acquires, retains or possesses any biological agent, toxin or delivery system for use as a weapon.”

The problem we face is that our federal government has been captured by forces that seek to destroy the U.S. from within. As such, we cannot trust the federal judiciary to prosecute and hold those responsible for the pandemic and the toxic COVID shots accountable.

To circumvent the corrupted federal judiciary, we need to focus on locally elected prosecutors instead. Depending on the state, they may go by titles such as district attorney, state attorney, prosecuting attorney or county attorney.

Boyle recommends organizing locally to find people willing, as a group, to call on your local, elected district attorney to convene a grand jury and indict the individuals suspected of being involved in the creation of SARS-CoV-2 — which includes Fauci — and those responsible for the COVID shots with “murder and conspiracy to commit murder.”

Even if Fauci is prosecuted and convicted of crimes against humanity, with all his ties to the Deep State and intelligence community, it is highly probable he struck a deal early on and would likely receive a presidential pardon for his crimes. So don’t hold your hopes up for Fauci ever being held responsible for his crimes in this lifetime.

At this point, there are loads of evidence showing SARS-CoV-2 is a manufactured bioweapon. Dr. David Martin has identified hundreds of patents relating to its creation, spanning not years but decades, and much of this research was funded by the NIAID under Fauci’s leadership.

I reviewed some of this evidence in “Patents Prove SARS-CoV-2 Is a Manufactured Virus,” which featured Martin’s September 2021 testimony to the German Corona Extra-Parliamentary Inquiry Committee.

It will be a difficult task to hold the COVID criminals to account, but as noted by Kennedy in the interview featured at the top of this article, the tide is turning against the globalist cabal, for whom the pandemic was an ideal justification for the rollout of worldwide totalitarianism. We’re in a momentous time in history, and everyone has a role to play, even if it’s only to privately reject tyranny and peacefully disobey unconstitutional edicts.

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Notes

¹ Fox News August 22, 2022

² NY Post September 15, 2021

^3, 7 Brownstone Institute August 22, 2022

⁴ Amazon.com The Real Anthony Fauci

⁵ The Federalist January 13, 2021

⁶ New York Times August 22, 2022

⁸ Daily Wire June 3, 2021

⁹ Daily Wire June 1, 2021

¹⁰ Amazon.com Fauci: Expect the Unexpected

¹¹ The Defender August 22, 2022 Holland

¹² The Defender August 22, 2022 Sharav

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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.”

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For more than 18 months, our governments and the  media have been telling us:

“the return to normal life will be possible thanks to the vaccine”,

“you will regain your freedom when you are vaccinated

“the non-vaccinated are responsible for the continuation of the epidemic”.

But no real-world study has provided the slightest evidence to support this pro-vaccine injection marketing propaganda.

And the analysis of official WHO data (available at WHO covid dashboard) is very disturbing.

None of the champions of vaccination have succeeded in eliminating the virus, nor in avoiding strong resurgence of the epidemic, and very few have totally liberated their vaccinated people from the supposedly health liberating measures imposed without scientific proof of their effectiveness.

Britain is the champion of the Astra Zeneca injection

But its high level of “vaccination” has not protected it from a strong resumption of the epidemic which has persisted for four months, with an average of 40,000 cases daily.

On August 10, 21, testifying before British MPs, Professor Sir Andrew Pollard head of the Oxford Vaccine Group said “the fact that vaccines did not stop the spread of Covid meant that reaching the threshold of global immunity in the population was ‘mythical‘”, adding “with the current Delta variant, this is not possible”.

Israel is the champion of the Pfizer injection

In the spring of 2021, before the emergence of the Delta variant, Israel had been the first country in the world to believe it had achieved herd immunity with the Pfizer injection.

But its very high rate of injection did not allow it to avoid a new wave with the establishment of a new absolute record of daily contaminations (11000/D or the equivalent for France of 70000 cases/D).

And the daily mortality followed despite the third injections. This resurgence of the disease made the Minister of Health recognize that the injection’s effectiveness rate did not exceed 39% and that it only lasted a few months.

Speaking to Channel 13 TV News on August 5, 2021, Dr. Kobi Haviv, medical director of Herzog Hospital in Jerusalem, said that “85-90% of hospitalizations are of fully vaccinated people” and “95% of severe patients are vaccinated.” destroying vaccine propaganda claiming that the vaccine would protect against severe forms.

The Netherlands has over 75% of its population vaccinated,

But this great success of pseudo-vaccine sales is currently marked by an absolute record of daily contaminations (12,000 cases per day), which makes us consider new restrictive measures.

Here again, vaccination has proven to be unable to protect the population.

On November 13, Dr. Kuipers, a specialist in intensive care, declared[1]

“The suggestion has been made of herd immunity. Forget it!“.

“We are now working with several scenarios. One is: there will always be a large number of corona patients. With a substantial number of patients, we really need to organize care differently in the long run. Increase hospital capacity to accommodate all Covid-19 and regular care patients.”

Singapore is Asia’s champion of pseudo-Covid vaccination with about 90% of the population injected

But this success in the number of injections has not prevented it from suffering a real tsunami of contaminations with a number 4 times higher than the pre-injection peak.

On Thursday, August 19, 2021, at a multi-conference of the ministry’s task force, Finance Minister Lawrence Wong warned:

“Singapore will not achieve herd immunity during the pandemic despite its high COVID-19 vaccination rate[2].”

“The path to becoming a COVID-resilient nation will be a long and difficult task. Even with very high vaccination rates, we will not achieve herd immunity.”

On September 8, 21, Tikki E. Pangestu, an infectious disease expert and visiting professor at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine in Singapore said:

“Achieving 95% herd immunity to Delta is a myth. With the Delta variant now dominant in most countries, the target should instead be immunity to disease or prevention of severe illness and death from the virus.”

South Korea exceeds 80% vaccination rate

In June, the Korean media was pleased that herd immunity was within reach.

They even claimed that “it would be achieved by November[5]”. Ministry of Health spokesman Son Young-rae warned that:

“Even after herd immunity is achieved in November, face masks and other safety measures will still be needed.

But since October, their mirage is fading, the epidemic is exploding and so is the mortality:

In October, the daily number of infections rose to 2.5 times that of the peak of the epidemic before vaccination (2600 vs 1000) and mortality followed.

This shows that vaccines do not solve the Covid problem or the problem of health restrictions.

Germany has injected 70% of its population

But this success of the sales of pseudo vaccines did not avoid a strong resumption of the epidemic in July with an exponential growth since September with a number of daily contaminations (36000) largely exceeding the records of before “vaccination”.

The inhabitants of Berlin’s government district are bidding a slow and silent farewell, without a statement, without a press release, to an illusion, to the goal that politicians have been pursuing since the beginning of the year: collective immunity.

“Unfortunately, I can hardly imagine at this point that we will achieve herd immunity,” said K. Lauterbach[6] a health expert of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD).

Vaccine euphoria has apparently given way to vaccine fatigue, and part of the population still does not want to be vaccinated, knowing that vaccine protection is much weaker and shorter than advertised and post-vaccination accidents more numerous. The country is gradually learning to live with the pandemic, but it is struggling, partly because all the consequences are not known and remain unpredictable.

The Danish population is more than 75% vaccinated,

But this high “vaccination” rate has been unable to prevent a sudden resurgence of the epidemic and the threat of further confinement.

The Danish Infectious Diseases Agency SSI has stated that it no longer believes that herd immunity can be achieved in the country through vaccination,[7] which means that sars CoV 2 could continue to circulate for years.

“If vaccines were 100% effective against the variants currently in play and we had 100% vaccine coverage in people 12 years and older, then we could talk about achieving true herd immunity against the delta variant,” Krause said. “But unfortunately that’s not the reality; we can’t achieve that.”

“This means that it now makes sense to treat Covid-19 the same way we treat seasonal flu, and not respond to waves of infection with strict restrictions.” “It will be more reminiscent of the flu than before,” she added.

Iceland is the most vaccinated European country

Unfortunately, this vaccination coverage did not prevent a major recurrence of the epidemic.

In June 2021 Þórólfur Guðnason, Iceland’s chief epidemiologist, said that vaccine immunity was progressing well.

But since the new wave, he had to admit in an interview on public radio that :

“vaccination has not led to the herd immunity that the experts hoped for and that in reality herd immunity could not be achieved by vaccination.”[9]

Iceland Says Herd Immunity Must be Reached Through Transmission

Organic Lifestyle Magazine 0 Comments

For want of anything better, he made a last attempt to achieve it by encouraging a booster (3rd dose).[10]

Ireland was also highly vaccinated (over 75% of the population fully vaccinated)

In June Dr. Vellinga stated[11]:

“with the vaccines, if we continue as we are doing, by the end of the year we should have a fairly normal situation”.

However, a major relapse in infections occurred at the beginning of July 2021, which has been increasing for the past month.

The city of Waterford has one of the highest Covid-19 vaccination rates in Ireland, with 99.7% of adults over 18 years fully vaccinated, but has become the place with the highest Covid-19 infection rate in the country.

The 14-day incidence rate reached 1,486 cases per 100,000 population, three times the national average of 493 infections per 100,000 population. The adjacent Tramore-Waterford City West election area has a 14-day rate of 1,121 per 100,000, according to the latest weekly figures released by the Health Service Executive’s Health Protection Surveillance Centre.

What about the “herd immunity” that our leaders have made a holy grail?

Thierry Breton, the European commissioner in charge of vaccines, had deemed possible a collective immunity on July 14, 2021 in the European Union. Before the Senate, he explained the principle of the vaccine certificate as follows:

“Nothing will be mandatory!”.
“We will never use the word passport. It gives the feeling of being mandatory. It will not be. It will be voluntary”.

How could we still believe him?

The WHO had warned from the start:

“never in the history of public health has herd immunity been used as a strategy to respond to an epidemic.”[12]

On 12/11/2021 Dr. Jefferson Jones, a physician on the CDC’s COVID-19 epidemiology workgroup concluded at the meeting:

“thinking that we will be able to reach some sort of threshold where there is no more transmission of infections may not be possible.”

Since then, the CDC has shifted its focus away from a specific vaccination goal that, once achieved, would presage the end of the pandemic.

Herd immunity could only be expected from the vaccine if it fully protected vaccinated individuals long enough and prevented them from transmitting the disease. This is the case with vaccines against smallpox or yellow fever.

However, the proven facts show that neither of these two conditions is fulfilled by the anti-Covid pseudo-vaccines. Vaccinated people are only 40% protected and not more than a few months, in case of infection their viral load is equal to that of non-vaccinated infected people and they can transmit the disease perfectly. This explains why herd immunity is unattainable with the current pseudo-vaccination.

Conclusions

This overview of the evolution of the epidemic in these vaccine champion countries, as described by WHO data and John Hopkins University curves, shows :

• That the Covid pseudo-vaccines do not protect populations from recurrence of the epidemic
• That health agencies have abandoned the hope of collective immunity through vaccination, now qualified as a myth by almost all the agencies that believed in it
• That this failure is the consequence of the insufficient efficiency and the much too short duration[13] of the current pseudo-vaccines which do not prevent from being sick nor from transmitting the disease
• That many experts think that it is time to learn to live with covid as with the seasonal flu.

It is high time that our Minister of Health considered the facts and the conclusions of foreign agencies and stop the fruitless quest for an illusory and dangerous vaccine grail.

The failure of pseudo-vaccines is all the more obvious now that cheap early treatments have proven to be safe and effective in India as well as in Africa (Nigeria, Madagascar) when we look at the data published by the WHO.

India has favored early and preventive treatments with hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin with success.

Nigeria benefited from daily treatment with antimalarials

Madagascar is the victorious champion of Artemisin

Dr Gérard Delépine

***

First published in French by Mondialisation.ca

Translated by Global Research

Notes :

[1] https://www.curacaochronicle.com/post/main/nl-forget-it-acute-care-expert-says-about-covid-herd-immunity/

[2] : Lawrence Wong Singapour n’atteindra pas l’immunité collective contre le COVID
https://www.bworldonline.com/95-herd-immunity-vs-delta-is-a-myth-says-infectious-disease-expert/

[3] La Corée du Sud est en passe de créer une immunité collective après avoir vacciné 20 millions de personnes
https://en.yna.co.kr/view/AEN20210803004500320

[4] https://koreajoongangdaily.joins.com/2020/07/09/national/socialAffairs/herd-immunity-covid-antibody/20200709190007649.html

[5] https://www.nationthailand.com/international/40004280

[6] Milena Hassenkamp, Christoph Hickmann, Armin Himmelrath, Martin Knobbe, Timo Lehmann, Martin U. Müller, Miriam Olbrisch, Gabriel Rinaldi et Christoph Schult L’immunité collective est impossible. Maintenant quoi ? Der Spiegel 21/7/2021
https://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/herd-immunity-is-impossible-now-what-a-35335ea0-5ab2-4e3d-95e5-f2672b817056-amp

[7] Ritzau/Le local [email protected] @thelocaldenmark 6 août 2021
https://www.thelocal.dk/20210806/explained-why-has-denmark-given-up-on-achieving-herd-immunity-via-vaccines/

[8] https://grapevine.is/news/2021/06/11/icelands-herd-immunity-is-progressing-well/

[9] https://www.organiclifestylemagazine.com/iceland-says-herd-immunity-must-be-reached-through-transmission

[10] https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/news/2021/11/08/hopes_booster_shot_will_create_herd_immunity/

[11] https://www.rte.ie/news/primetime/2021/0608/1226962-covid-19-ireland-herd-immunity/

[12] Allocution liminaire du Directeur général de l’OMS lors du point de ‎presse sur la COVID-19 — 12 octobre 2020‎
https://www.who.int/fr/director-general/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19—12-october-2020

[13] 4 à 6 mois alors que L’immunité naturelle dure beaucoup plus longtemps

“Fake COVID-19 Emergency”: Nuremberg Codex – Why Is It Ignored Today, and Nothing Happens

By Peter Koenig, August 30, 2022

Other violations of the Nuremberg Codex are the Cult-inspired showering of lies, fear and other psychological instruments to keep the people “down”, in check, and easily manipulable. So, they will be afraid not to do the bidding of their governments, or if necessary – increasingly the case – of the military-supported dictatorial rules, often sanitary rules, falsely justified for health protection.

Washington Announces $3 Billion Military Aid to Kiev. Worldwide Impacts, Devastating Economic and Social Consequences

By Uriel Araujo, August 30, 2022

On August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day, Washington announced about $3 billion in military aid to the country. According to the White House, Kiev is to receive “air defense systems, artillery systems and munitions, counter-unmanned aerial systems, and radars” to ensure it can “continue to defend itself over the long term”.

COVID “Vaccines” Destroying Human Fertility. Dr. Christof Plothe

By Dr. Christof Plothe, Iron Will, and Dr. Mark Trozzi, August 30, 2022

The COVID injections have been reckless at best, violent at worst. Among the 1,500 disease states that follow the injections, women’s menstrual irregularities and both male and female infertility rates are alarming. People are being sterilized.

”One Health” – Where Biosecurity Meets Agenda 2030

By Elze van Hamelen, August 30, 2022

According to the UN and associated agencies, nature and food chains are sources of pathogens with pandemic potential. To protect citizens from them, the ”One Health” approach has been developed: the UN, the CDC, EU, RIVM, universities, corporations, and NGOs are working together worldwide to monitor and anticipate potential risks by coordinating collaboration at local, regional, national and international levels.

“U.S. Out of Korea”: Joint Military “Decapitation Drill” Against North Korea. DPRK Missile Launch Is “Self-defense”

By Sara Flounders, August 30, 2022

The western corporate media described the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s launch of two missiles Aug. 17 as threatening, aggressive and paranoid. What most media failed to report was the prior U.S. military exercises with Japan and South Korea off Hawai’i, in preparation for extensive war exercises off Korea, that provoked the DPRK’s two warning shots.

Exhaustive Study of German Mortality Data Finds Excess Deaths Tightly Correlated with Mass Vaccination

By eugyppius, August 30, 2022

Excess mortality in Germany 2020–2022 is a preprint by Christof Kuhbandner (a psychologist at Regensburg) and Matthias Reitzner (a statistician at Osnabrück) that applies sophisticated actuarial analysis to the publicly available all-cause mortality data provided by the German government. It turns out that when you account for historical mortality trends, the virus no longer looks so dangerous, and the vaccines no longer look so great.

A Death in Moscow. Who is Darya’s Father, Philosopher and Sociologist Aleksandr Dugin

By Philip Giraldi, August 30, 2022

The horrific car bombing in Moscow that killed twenty-nine year old Darya Dugina last week raises many questions about the motives of the Ukrainian regime and its supporters that sent an assassin to murder a prominent Russian civilian who has no overt role in the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.

Abolish NATO or Convert It to Serve Peace. Jan Oberg

By Jan Oberg, August 30, 2022

This Catalogue contains 30 arguments for the abolition of NATO. Each argument is based on rational peace research analysis, in contrast to the fact-resistant propaganda that NATO and mainstream politics and media promote about the ’defensive’ peace alliance.

Rockefeller Foundation Wants Behavioral Scientists to Come Up with More Convincing COVID Vaxx Narratives

By Zero Hedge, August 30, 2022

In yet another sign that the covid vaccination agenda of globalist institutions did not do quite as well as they had originally hoped, the Rockefeller Foundation has revealed that it (along with other non-profits) has been pumping millions of dollars into a behavioral science project meant to figure out why large groups of people around the world refuse to take the jab.

President Emmanuel Macron Warns of Cold Winter in Europe. Natural Gas Supplies and France’s Relationship with Algeria

By Abayomi Azikiwe, August 30, 2022

EU countries are quite concerned about the availability of natural gas to those countries which are heavily dependent on Russian supplies. Although France is in a better position than other EU states and Ukraine, Macron traveled to the former North African colony of Algeria during August 25-28 to negotiate a 50% increase in natural gas supplies.

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White House officials have confirmed that the United States will send M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, also known as HIMARS, to war-torn Ukraine.

The medium-range rocket systems have long topped the lists of weapons requests by Kyiv as fighting against Russian forces has concentrated in the eastern regions of the country.

The US officials confirmed the systems would be part of a new $700m security assistance package to Ukraine that will also include helicopters, Javelin anti-tank weapon systems, tactical vehicles, spare parts and more.

In an op-ed in the New York Times on Tuesday, Biden wrote that the US will “provide the Ukrainians with more advanced rocket systems and munitions that will enable them to more precisely strike key targets on the battlefield in Ukraine”, although he did not name the systems by name.

He said the weapons are meant to help Ukraine “fight on the battlefield and be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table”.

The military package, which is expected to be officially announced on Wednesday, will be the eleventh provided by the US to Ukraine since the Russian invasion began on February 24.

In total, the US has provided about $4.5bn in military assistance since the invasion, including howitzers approved in April, the most powerful artillery provided prior to the HIMARS.

What is the new system US is providing?

HIMARS are a high-tech, lightweight rocket launcher that is wheel mounted, giving it more agility and manoeuvrability on the battlefield.

Each unit can carry six GPS guided rockets, which can be reloaded in about a minute with only a small crew.

Analysts say the system is considerably more reliable than other rocket systems Ukrainian forces currently use.

The range of the systems provided by Washington will be about 80km (50 miles), almost double the range of the US-provided M777 howitzers, which entered the Ukrainian battlefield in May.

It was not clear on Wednesday how many of the systems the US will send to Ukraine.

Click here to read the full article.

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Featured image: The High Mobility Artillery Rocket System fires the Army’s new guided Multiple Launch Rocket System during testing at White Sands Missile Range. (U.S. Army photo/Public Domain)

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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A couple of weeks before Vladimir Putin announced his ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine, he met in the Kremlin with Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz. At their joint press conference following the meeting, Putin mentioned in passing that Ukraine is controlled today by neo-Nazis. This remark was famously ridiculed by Scholz as “laughable,” thereby earning for him the Kremlin’s utter contempt. German-Russian relations have undergone a sharp deterioration ever since, with Germany gradually stepping up its supplies of cutting-edge lethal weaponry to Kiev and Russia, in its internal political discussions, placing Germany alongside the United States and Britain as de facto ‘co-belligerents’ which may be subjected to Russian missile attacks if the war escalates further.

At the time of the exchange of courtesies between Putin and Scholz in February, I wrote an essay in which I tried to explain the background to Russian claims of rampant Nazism in Ukraine, which sounded very odd to Westerners but found a very receptive audience among the Russian population, where evocations of Nazism arise at every annual May 9^th celebration of Victory in Europe Day, marking the end of WWII. As I noted then, one source of Russian allegations was the celebration by official Kiev of the ultra-nationalist Stepan Bandera, a Nazi collaborator of the German forces in WWII who practiced vicious ethnic cleansing against Jews, Russians and Poles. Statues are erected to him; streets are named after him across Ukraine.

Of course, the numbers of actual neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine before and since 2014 have been very small as a percentage of the overall population. In the parliamentary and presidential elections that have taken place since the United States installed its preferred regime in Kiev in February 2014, the neo-Nazi candidates have not scored more than several percentage points.  However, from the first days of the February coup d’etat, neo-Nazis have held the key ministerial posts in defense and the security apparatus of the Ukrainian government, effectively calling the shots in foreign policy and the confrontation with Russia.

When the Russians finally flushed out the Azov battalion extremists from their fortified positions at the Azovstal steel works in Mariupol three months into the ‘special military operation,’ they found and presented on television proof positive of the Nazi presence at the core of the Ukrainian armed forces. Ukrainian prisoners of war were stripped and the Russian camera men video-recorded their tattooed bodies, featuring not only swastikas and other German Nazi symbols but also portraits of Hitler and other Nazi leaders from the Third Reich. Western journalists, of course, saw all of this but it hardly was reported in our media. Nor has there been any reconsideration in the West of the facile dismissal of Russian concern over neo-Nazism that Scholz demonstrated.

Events in the EU’s ‘front line’ countries of the Baltic states and Poland have given a new dimension to the Russian concerns over neo-Nazism. I have in mind the dismantling and removal of statues and other monuments to the Soviet Army liberators of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania from German occupation in 1945 even as their own Nazi collaborators from the past are given new honors. This has greatly accelerated in recent weeks. Meanwhile, parades of the descendants of the collaborators have been going on in Riga and elsewhere year after year.

Still more controversial and significant has been the attempts of Lithuania to close down land transportation between the main territory of the RF and its Kaliningrad outpost in violation of all signed undertakings for free transit between different constituent parts of Russia agreed by the EU.

Add to that the latest Estonian led effort to close Europe entirely to Russians. A few weeks ago, Estonian border guards at the Narva crossing refused to admit Russians holding Schengen visas issued previously by their own authorities and now they are refusing to recognize Schengen visas issued by other EU Member States. Together with Poland, all three Baltic States have demanded that the EU no longer issue visas to Russian tourists.

To be sure, the demand that all Russians be barred from Europe as punishment for their war on Ukraine has not met with universal approval within the EU. Even Germany came out against the initiative, with Scholz saying that exceptions must be made for humanitarian reasons. Others have debated the legality under EU law of such generalized prohibitions directed at an entire population.  But the debate rages on.

Finally, a statement made yesterday by Latvian President Egils Levits got the full attention of Moscow. He said that Russian-speaking residents of Latvia should be ‘isolated from society’ if they oppose his government’s policies with respect to the war in Ukraine.  Just what is meant by “isolate” is not clear. Does Levits intend to intern them in concentration camps?  Given the absolute failure of Latvia to respect EU human rights norms going back from the first days of the country’s independence from the USSR in 1991, such an atrocity would not be out of character.

I have dealt with precisely this issue in essays going back to 2014 which were included in my collection Does Russia Have a Future?:  see chapter 22 “Latvia’s 300,000 Non-Citizens and the Ukrainian Crisis Today” and chapter 33 “Latvia’s failed U.S. inspired policies towards Russia and Russians.” I further explored these issues in my 2019 book A Belgian Perspective on International Relations, chapter38 “Republic of Latvia, Apartheid State Within the EU.”

The point is that upon achieving independence thanks to the active support of many of its Russian-speaking citizenry, the government of Latvia turned around and stripped 400,000 of them of their citizenship, close to 40% of the total population at the time, and offered them a path to regain passports that only a tiny fraction of them could follow.  When President Levits speaks today of Russian-speaking “residents” of Latvia, he has in mind those who were deprived of civil rights including passports and remain stateless up to the present time.  Everything that Latvia did to its Russian-speaking population going back 30 years set the precedents for Kiev’s repressive policies towards its own 40% who are Russian speakers after the nationalists from Lvov came to power in 2014.

These various developments were the main topic for discussion in yesterday’s Evening with Vladimir Solovyov political talk show, which stood out as especially valuable.  Although I have made reference to this particular talk show frequently over the years as a good source of information about what Russia’s political and social elites are thinking, I freely acknowledge that the presenter cannot and does not fill every program with material and panelists worth listening to.  Indeed, there is a lot of sludge on air between the gems. By ‘sludge’ I mean the kind of ‘kitchen talk’ in which expert panelists talk the same non-facts-based drivel that ordinary Russians will engage in when they follow the principle of socializing described by Chekhov in Act Two of The Three Sisters:  “They are not serving us tea, so let’s philosophize.”

In any case, last night’s Solovyov was definitely worth listening to. The question of neo-Nazism in Europe was the glue binding together different elements of the discussion, ranging from Levits’ obnoxious declaration of the same day to the fate of ordinary Russians in Kazakhstan and Central Asia after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and what to do about all of these challenges to the Russian World.

The overriding point was that the Russophobia and ‘cancel Russian culture’ movements that have swept Europe during 2022 mean that Russians are the Jews of today. They are what the Hitlerites called Untermenschen, against whom all manner of rights violations if not outright murder can be practiced. This arises in its worst form in Ukraine, where Russians as a people are systematically dehumanized in statements from the top leadership of the country.  In Ukraine, the ultra-nationalists call Russians “Colorado,” a reference to the bugs that infest potato crops. These insects carry the orange and black colors of the St George’s ribbons that patriotic Russians wear. This is the same logic that made possible the biological weapons attack on Russian soldiers in the Zaporozhie that was carried out last week by Ukrainian forces, sending the victims to intensive care treatment for botulism poisoning. That development probably did not get coverage in your daily newspaper.

The conversation on Solovyov was particularly interesting in the ‘what is to be done’ segment. Acknowledging that a ‘special military operation’ against Latvia is not practicable yet given Latvia’s membership in NATO, a panelist who heads the State Duma committee on relations with the Former Soviet Union states, said that those Russians who profited from the transit business between Russia and Latvia for decades should now pay up and contribute financially to relocating the Russian speakers in Riga to the Russian Federation, meaning providing good housing and jobs that till now were never on offer to incentivize immigration. A fellow panelist broadened the proposed assistance to suggest a government program of resettlement modeled on what Israel did some decades ago to facilitate the relocation of certain Black African Jews from their country of persecution to the State of Israel.  And it was suggested that similar relocation offers should be extended to Russian speakers in Kazakhstan and other Central Asian countries where they have all been second class citizens since these countries became independent of the USSR.

This issue of the fate of ethnic Russians living outside the borders of the Russian Federation at the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union has been around for a long time.  When Vladimir Putin spoke the words that have been so often raised by Russia-haters in the West, namely that the break-up of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20^th century, he definitely had in mind the fate of the 25 million Russian speakers who were left high and dry in the other republics, now sovereign states ruled by the non-Russian majority populations.  In 1991 and later years, Russia’s own economic woes left it unable to offer decent housing to its soldiers and officers transferred back to Russia from the former Warsaw Pact countries, let alone to care for the 25 million Russian civilians outside its borders.

Last night’s panelists argued that the time has come to redress this moral failure of Russia to stand by its former citizens who are Russian-speakers, to offer to repatriate them under attractive conditions.  This would respond to the country’s own economic interests by redressing the demographic challenges Russia is facing as a result of its 1990s collapse and birth rates that then declined precipitously.  And it would be a direct answer to the neo-Nazi movements in Europe which would gladly exacerbate repression among Russians in their midst.

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Featured image: Ukrainian Neo-Nazi summer camp

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On August 24, Ukraine’s Independence Day, Washington announced about $3 billion in military aid to the country. According to the White House, Kiev is to receive “air defense systems, artillery systems and munitions, counter-unmanned aerial systems, and radars” to ensure it can “continue to defend itself over the long term”. The question is precisely how long – the United States is already overburdened there, as Europe is quietly abandoning the cause, while the Americans are also escalating tensions in Asia with China over Taiwan.

Six months on, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine has brought millions of migrants and refugees to Europe. In a post-pandemic global economy already in a bad shape over a global supply chain crisis, the heavy sanctions against Moscow have, to a large degree, backfired against the US and Europe, and also increased the risk of food insecurity in Africa and the Middle East.

Russia has admittedly been slowing down its operations so as to minimize civilian casualties and restore peace in the areas it controls, as Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu remarked on August 24. Albeit ridiculed by the Western press, this allegation is indeed credible, considering the fact that Ukraine has, from the very beginning, militarized residential areas as part of human shields tactic (as denounced by Amnesty International) – and also considering the fact that, most experts expected Russia’s operation to end very quickly with its victory.

Many Western experts have been advising Washington to exercise restraint, while concluding that the current crisis was caused by the US own overextension of its power and by NATO’s expansionism. Chinese experts, such as Cui Heng, an East China Normal University’s research fellow, hold similar views. He sees the current Russian military campaign as the “aftershock” from a 2014 crisis initiated by NATO’s expansion and American use of “color revolution to jeopardize regional order and balance of power.”

Song Zhongping, adjunct professor and commentator, in turn argues that, while facing NATO’s eastward expansion, Moscow had no choice but to try to create a buffer zone to safeguard its own national security. The conflict, he adds, may have benefitted American industrial complex, but has brought major social and economic troubles to Europe. He concludes that a prolonged conflict can backfire on the US itself, as its sanctions have brought a “reverse-dollarization” and even fomented a new multilateralism tendency amongst African, Asian, and Latin-American states, which have been increasingly opting for non-alignment and multi-alignment.

Song Zhongping’s point is clearly exemplified by the BRICS group consensus at broadening BRICS+ cooperation so as to include other emerging states, such as Turkey, and even Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. Even a historically staunch US ally such as Saudi Arabia has come to find the US dollar hegemony system to be quite risky and is therefore seeking alternatives.

On August 23, NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg himself, while urging Western nations to continue providing aid to Ukraine, admitted that it will be hard and that European countries will have to “pay a price” for such a support. There will be “consequences”, according to him, “not only in the military sphere, but also for industries”, and therefore Europe must increase its production. He added that the coming winter will be tough, but also said that it could take “years” to support Kiev. While supporting Ukraine, he said, NATO must also make sure there is no escalation.

Those are indeed hard sacrifices the US-led NATO is asking of its European members. One wonders how exactly the European bloc might benefit from such an endeavor.

It is widely known, for instance, that the dramatic energy price rises in Europe since 2021 could have been at least partly avoided if Nord Stream-2 pipeline connecting Russia and Germany had not been delayed. The latter suspended the certification of the pipeline on  February 22, after Russia recognized Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and US sanctions ensued. Nord Stream 2 AG, as a result of that, filed for bankruptcy and fired all employees – although the bankruptcy procedure has been suspended by a court decision, the matter has seriously affected the local economy in Germany.

Moreover, Germany’s Central Bank has said the country had not experienced such high inflation rates since the 1970 oil crisis. Some estimate it could soon top 10 percent this autumn. Europe is currently haunted by the specter of a recession, amid limited energy to warm households during the coming winter, and rising food prices – which increase the risk of food insecurity.

Meanwhile, Nord Stream 1 gas pipeline is running empty.

Russia is currently supplying only 20 percent of what it normally supplies, due to maintenance issues and Western sanctions, and it has announced it will completely shut the pipeline for 3 days, for maintenance – the flow could thus decrease even further. To ensure that households, hospitals and schools are not left literally in the dark and freezing, German industry will be the first to see cuts in supplies. In this case, with factories shutdowns and working hours reductions, one can only imagine how this would affect German workers. Europe can of course reduce its energy dependence on Russia, but such a thing can only be accomplished in the long run.

It is not even clear whether Europe can survive next winter, and the bloc faces a deep crisis while it embraces Ukraine in contradiction with its own values.

To sum it up, the US-led world order is clearly collapsing, while Washington tries, at any cost, to prolong a conflict which benefits no one.

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Uriel Araujo is a researcher with a focus on international and ethnic conflicts.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

Global Research Publishers has released the PDF edition of Prof. Michel Chossudovsky’s ebook, entitled Worldwide Corona Crisis, Global Coup d’Etat Against Humanity, on August 24, 2022.

Analyzing the pandemic since its onset in 2020, Prof. Chossudovsky said,

“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.”

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15 Chapters, 164 pages, Price: $11.50 

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When the Combined Chiefs of Staff Conference in Casablanca, Morocco ended in January 1943, President Franklin Roosevelt and Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill held a press conference. Toward the end of the press conference, FDR told the correspondents that the Allies were determined to demand the “Unconditional Surrender” of Germany, Italy, and Japan.

FDR later said that Ulysses S. Grant’s 1862 ultimatum of “Unconditional Surrender” to the Confederate garrison holding Fort Donelson in Tennessee was his inspiration. Grant was trying to speed the capture of an isolated fortress and avoid unnecessary casualties on all sides.

But FDR’s policy of “Unconditional Surrender” during a destructive global war was unwise and costly. It stiffened German resistance, lengthened the war, pushed violence to its utmost limits and rejected any resolution to the conflict other than the opponents’ complete annihilation—the kind of result that Stalin and Hitler called “victory.” Sadly, there is no evidence that anyone in the White House or the Pentagon studied the policy’s psychological impact on the German or Japanese peoples before it was announced.

Biden’s speech on March 26 in Warsaw removed any doubt in Moscow’s governing circles that Washington’s goal was Russia’s destruction: “…that’s why I came to Europe again this week with a clear and determined message for NATO…—we must commit now to be in this fight for the long haul…and for the years and decades to come.” In case there was any lingering uncertainty, Biden added, “For God’s sake this man [Vladimir Putin] cannot remain in power.”

President Biden’s policy in Ukraine seems equally thoughtless and it’s having a similar effect on Russia and the course of the war. Since Biden delivered his speech, Russian control of Ukrainian territory has jumped from 5 to and estimated 22%, the same portion that provides Ukraine with 85% of its GNP. Moscow abandoned the “fight and negotiate strategy” of the “Special Operation” for a new one: extend permanent Russian control over the Russian-speaking areas in Eastern Ukraine from Kharkov to Odessa. When the fighting ends, Moscow will likely control roughly 30-35% of Ukraine’s former territory.

Meanwhile, Moscow mastered Washington’s economic sanctions and, as James Rickards notes, continues to reduce the supply of natural gas to Western Europe with has resulted in Germany, Europe’s economic powerhouse, relying on its energy reserves as winter approaches and Russian supplies dwindle.

At home, inflation will cost the average American household more than $5,200 this year. A few days ago, Dr. Ron Paul described the situation: “Inflation is a tax on middle class and poor Americans. The wealthy—like those who run Raytheon and Lockheed Martin—always get the new money first before prices go up. The rest of us watch as the dollar buys less and less.” As Washington celebrates the commitment of more and more dollars to fighting Russia in Ukraine, the rest of America struggles with open borders and rising criminality in its major cities.

The timeless lesson is that emotionally charged speeches should never frame national policy, but Biden is in good company. Lyndon Johnson talked himself into a similar dilemma in Vietnam when he insisted, “If we are driven from the field in Viet-Nam, then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise, or in American protection.” Eventually, LBJ was trapped by his own rhetoric.

He discovered what Biden is discovering in Ukraine. LBJ found out the hard way that the North Vietnamese were far more committed to “victory at any cost” than were the American people. In the aftermath of North Vietnam’s Tet Offensive, American support for the war dropped dramatically and the specter of defeat plunged the Johnson administration into a crisis of legitimacy.

Biden has forgotten that a lost war, even a proxy war, weakens the right to rule of those who govern the nation. The Biden administration is ignoring the fundamental truth that proxy wars like the one Washington is waging against Russia in Ukraine are not exempt from war’s iron discipline: all wars put national existence, power and prestige at risk, making victory or defeat the only real options.

Like the North Vietnamese, Moscow is far more committed to victory in Ukraine than Washington or its European allies. Once again, U.S. support for ongoing operations in Ukraine is razor thin and growing concern in the U.S. and Europe is that Biden’s unlimited war aims could involve the use of nuclear weapons to reverse Ukraine’s defeat.

Of course, the idea of using nuclear weapons in this way runs counter to Eisenhower’s fundamental point that nuclear weapons are weapons of last resort in defense of the nation. Whether tactical or strategic, nuclear weapons have no other rational application in modern warfare. Frankly, their use for any other purpose is suicidal. Anyone inside the Biden administration or Congress who is considering their use in Ukraine should be locked up.

The price of gratuitous self-righteousness is always high. Moscow will never again allow Washington and its allies to transform Eastern Ukraine into a launching pad for offensive military operations against Russia proper. Washington’s distorted view of the world and the realities of twenty-first century warfare will not alter Russia’s control of Eastern Ukraine.

President Biden’s insistence that Russia must be defeated regardless of how long it takes or how much it costs the Americans, Ukrainians, and NATO members is worse than FDR’s unconditional surrender demand. It endangers the American people, and eventually, if carried to its logical extreme, this policy stance will induce our allies and strategic partners to abandon their alliance with Washington.

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Colonel (ret) Douglas Macgregor, U.S. Army, is a decorated combat veteran, the former senior advisor to the acting secretary of defense in the Trump Administration and the author of five books. His most recent is “Margin of Victory: Five Battles that Changed the Face of Modern War” (USNI, 2016).

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According to recent reports, the US is recruiting Afghan pilots to fight in Ukraine. The objective would be to restore Ukrainian Air Force troops after the numerous casualties caused by Russian forces during the special military operation. With that, it remains evident that the US wants to prolong the conflict at all costs, even if it is necessary to sacrifice more and more lives.

In a recent interview, an anonymous source from the US military and diplomatic circles informed Russian media that the Pentagon is running a secret training program for Afghan pilots who allegedly fled the Central Asian country with US forces after the Taliban took Kabul. The combatants would have fought alongside the American occupying troops, which is why they feared punishment from the Taliban government, and for that reason they received asylum in the US.

Currently, the program is being conducted within the US territory, in the state of California, with plans to send the pilots to Europe soon. They will be integrated into the ranks of the Ukrainian “resistance”, with the aim of recovering Kiev’s military power, considering that the local air force troops have been practically decimated by Russia. Currently, the Ukrainian air combat capability is extremely weakened, as there is not enough personnel or equipment to maintain the routine of confrontations, so, Western aid is really the only way to keep Ukrainian military active.

In addition, it was informed by the source that not only pilots would be participating in the program, but also Afghan troops with other military specializations, mainly former members of special operations units. The case reveals that the US continues to work with an aid program to Kiev that goes far beyond the simple supply of weapons and money, with fighters being mobilized to replace ranks after Ukrainian casualties, which undoubtedly characterizes a high degree of interventionism. However, the informant believes that even with this help there will be no change in the final outcome of the conflict, considering the undeniable advance of Russian forces. In fact, no military aid from the West seems enough to prevent Moscow from achieving its goals in the operation.

“As we know, the Pentagon began recruiting former Afghan pilots who ran to the US together with the Americans a year ago. Their training now kicks off in California with plans to subsequently dispatch them to Ukraine via Poland (…) All these hysterical attempts ‘to plug holes’ will only postpone the Kiev regime’s military catastrophe and the political one of its ‘sponsors’ in Washington (…) They won’t impact the end result”, the source said during the interview.

This type of assistance with troop mobilization is not the only one being operated by the US and other NATO countries. There is widespread mobilization for foreign mercenaries to be deployed in Ukraine. Western media channels have been spreading false information about the conflict, trying to make it seem less dangerous and intense than it really is, talking about a non-existent Ukrainian “reaction”, only to motivate citizens of other countries to volunteer. As expected, these initiatives have had catastrophic consequences, as many people with no previous military experience are landing in Ukraine and dying quickly during the intense clashes.

On the other hand, there are indeed many trained and experienced military personnel arriving in the country to face Russian forces. Before this information about Afghan troops emerged, it had already been reported by sources that many of the British “volunteers” who were landing in Ukraine were actually secret special forces agents.

However, at no time did any military intelligence report indicate any real improvement in the combat capability of Kiev’s armed forces with the receipt of this type of foreign aid. The Russian troops neutralized the main strategic points of the enemy forces, so that any form of aid seems ineffective to provoke a reversal of the military scenario, serving only to induce a prolongation of the clashes.

The West is acting directly with its interventionism. It is no longer about logistical and material support, but about real human resources, as troops are being mobilized. This situation needs to be discussed, with clear condemnation against the American – and British – attitudes by as many countries as possible. Moscow has clearly prevented escalation and even reduced the intensity of the military actions in order to avoid civilian casualties in Ukraine, but if the West continues to intervene directly in the conflict, tougher measures will inevitably be taken.

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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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Munich Stands Up — We are part of a global civil rights movement! All over this beautiful earth, courageous people are standing up against the authoritarian tendency that has been evident in so many countries in recent years.

We celebrate this internationality.

So it is with great joy and honor that we had Mary Holland and Shabnam Palesa Mohamed visit us on August 24, 2022 Friedensengel Park. 

Click image below to watch the video.

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The COVID injections have been reckless at best, violent at worst.

Among the 1,500 disease states that follow the injections, women’s menstrual irregularities and both male and female infertility rates are alarming. People are being sterilized.

Highlights

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According to the UN and associated agencies, nature and food chains are sources of pathogens with pandemic potential. To protect citizens from them, the ”One Health” approach has been developed: the UN, the CDC, EU, RIVM, universities, corporations, and NGOs are working together worldwide to monitor and anticipate potential risks by coordinating collaboration at local, regional, national and international levels.

Is this a blueprint for expanding power of the UN and WHO – allowing them not only to set health policy in the event of crisis, but also to take control of food chains and natural areas in the name of public health?

“’One Health’ is an approach to designing and implementing programs, policies, legislation and research in which multiple sectors collaborate and exchange to improve public health,” is explained on the World Health Organization (WHO) website.

“Many of the same microbes that infect animals are harmful to humans, and they are part of the same ecosystems.”

According to the WHO, to combat these risks coordinated action between public health, animal health and environmental organizations is required. ‘One Health’ particularly focuses on risks to food safety, zoonoses – animal-to-human transmissible infections- , antimicrobial resistance, “and other risks to public health.” Livestock, in particular, is seen as a high-risk source of zoonoses.

One health: expanding biosecurity governance with Agenda 2030

It fits perfectly into what philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls the paradigm of biosecurity. In the article ‘Biosecurity and politics’ Agamben warns that the use of health terror is a means of governing through worst case scenarios. He explains that this is an entirely new model of governance: ‘the citizen no longer has the right to health, but is legally obliged to health’. Since few people adhere to political philosophies or ideologies anymore, security or health are the only reasons for which citizens allow far-reaching restrictions on their fundamental rights. Agamben: “the biosecurity governance model shows that it can flatten all political and social relations under the guise of civic participation.”

Judging from the activities that have been taking place in the last 10 years under the guise of ‘One Health’, this biosecurity is being extended under the radar to anything that can affect health. Starting with our food and nature. The ‘One Health Commission’ lists “some” areas that “urgently need to start applying the One Health approach, at all levels of academia, government, industry, policy and research, because of the indelible interconnectedness of animal, environmental, human, plant and planetary health:

• Agricultural production and land use
• Animals as Sentinels for Environmental agent and contaminants detection and response
• Antimicrobial resistance mitigation
• Biodiversity / Conservation Medicine
• Climate change and impacts of climate on health of animals, ecosystems, and humans
• Clinical medicine needs for interrelationship between the health professions
• Communications and outreach
• Comparative Medicine: commonality of diseases among people and animals such as cancer, obesity, and diabetes
• Disaster preparedness and response
• Disease surveillance, prevention and response, both infectious (zoonotic) and chronic / non-communicable diseases
• Economics / Complex Systems, Civil Society
• Environmental Health
• Food Safety and Security
• Global trade, commerce and security
• Human – Animal bond
• Natural Resources Conservation
• Occupational Health Risks
• Plant / Soil health
• Professional education and training of the Next Generation of One Health professionals
• Public policy and regulation
• Research, both basic and translational
• Vector-Borne Diseases
• Water Safety and Security
• Welfare / Well-being of animals, humans, ecosystems and planet

Source: One Health Commission

One Health background and funding

The idea of “one world, one health” was first floated by the Wildlife Conservation Society at a conference in New York in 2004. Six unspecified ‘international organizations’ then developed a strategic framework that was presented at the International Conference on Avian and Swine Flu in Egypt in 2008. In the same year, the One Health Joint Steering Committee (OHJSC) and a One Health Commission (OHC) are established with the help of an unspecified “significant donation” from the Rockefeller Foundation.

The goal of the commission is to put One Health on the map worldwide. The Rockefeller Foundation launched the disease surveillance networks (DSN) initiative in 2007, with an initial investment of $22 million. A portion of this will likely have gone to the OHJSC, as the foundation reports: “Global disease surveillance networks are part of the One Health view of the world. The Rockefeller Foundation recognizes that the local and regional context is part of an international web of relationships, managing health issues requires regular diplomatic actions and trade space for technocrats.” The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is also committed to the One Health approach, it is one of five components of the ‘Grand Challenges’ program in which a total of $100 million has been invested. According to researcher Akio Yamada, these ‘donations’ show a shift in the focus of philanthropic institutions from single issue topics to intersectoral, multidisciplinary projects.

One Health at the EU, Netherlands and the US

Over the years, a veritable infrastructure for a coordinated intersectoral approach has been put in place – out of sight of the general public – at all possible levels of government.

Stella Kyriakides, the EU Commissioner for Health and Food Safety, emphasizes the importance of One Health in her speech at the G20 Summit on September 6, 2021: “‘One Health’ has been a priority within the EU for several years now. It is clear that we need to expand our knowledge on environmental conditions, and surveillance, detection and collective action on human-animal interaction. For a strong European health union, we call for the development of European and national preparedness plans so that we can better face future crisis.” We have learned in recent years that such ‘preparedness plans’ have great predictive value.

In 2019, the EU has established the European joint program (EJP) in which 44 laboratories and research centers in 19 member states are committed to knowledge development in the field of One Health and ware working on the establishment of a sustainable framework through which activities of medical, livestock, and food institutes are aligned and integrated. The Dutch University of Wageningen (WUR) is involved, and RIVM (the Dutch CDC) also plays a major role: it coordinated the development of a strategic agenda and participates in 20 of the 29 projects of the EJP. To support international cooperation the RIVM is “involved in partnerships with similar parties in other countries, and cooperates with the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) and the European Centre for Disease Control (ECDC).

Wageningen is also involved in the Netherlands Centre for One Health (NCOH), an “open innovation network.” Not only the RIVM and Wageningen are active in putting One Health on the map in the Netherlands: “The Netherlands is particularly vulnerable when it comes to viral diseases, due to mosquitoes, and because of the high population density and intensity of livestock farming,” warns the Dutch research consortium One Health PACT, in which experts work together. The ‘One Health Portal’ supports “professionals from the human and veterinary domain.”

Outside the EU and in the Netherlands, the One Health approach is also falling on fertile soil in the US: The Centre of Disease Control, the US version of the RIVM, writes on its website: One Health is gaining recognition in the US and worldwide as an effective way to address health problems caused by human-animal contact.” One Health is also part of the ‘National Biodefense Strategy’.

One Health at the UN level

The UN is putting the icing on the cake with the establishment of the ‘One Health High-Level Expert Panel’ (OHHLEP) in November 2020. According to the text on the website, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and WHO, led by Germany and France, took the initiative to establish the expert panel. On April 29, these UN organizations signed a “groundbreaking agreement to strengthen cooperation to sustainably balance and optimize the health of humans, animals, plants and the environment… The new Quadripartite MoU provides a legal and formal framework for the four organizations to tackle the challenges at the human, animal, plant and ecosystem interface using a more integrated and coordinated approach. This framework will also contribute to reinforce national and regional health systems and services”.

The same organizations – FAO, OIE and UNEP – were named in the proposal to amend the International Health Regulations (IHR) to be involved in declaring an international health crisis. It is interesting to note that in addition to including more UN agencies in combatting ‘health crises’, these changes proposed expanded surveillance capacity and the support of developing these capacities in countries where the infrastructure was lacking. Because Southern Hemisphere countries opposed these changes, they did not pass. However, it shows the way in which the WHO intends to expand its tentacles, and the negotiations on the pandemic treaty are still continuing.

Genomic surveillance

In March 2022, the WHO has published its “Global genomic surveillance strategy for pathogens with pandemic and epidemic potential, 2022–2032”, which applies genomics to track infectious diseases by sequencing the genomes of bacteria, parasites and viruses.  The supporting documents give a lot of information about how wonderful genomic surveillance is for tracking of the development of diseases, but give surprisingly little information about what kind of samples are collected (blood, saliva, other?), from what sources, and in what databases they are stored.

However, John Hopkins, Nature and other publications have reported that “COVID-19 has created a ‘watershed’ moment for wastewater Surveillance”. In the article “Secretive HHS AI Platform to Predict US Covid-19 Outbreaks Weeks in Advance”, the research journalist Whitney Webb reports that smart sewer and robotic wastewater collection can also be commercialized to “not only offer insights on drug consumption or contagious disease outbreaks but also information on community “eating habits” and “genetic tendencies” in order to “develop individual readings of particular neighborhoods”. Of course, the same samples – blood, sewage? – that are purported to track viruses and bacteria, store our dna information. In the article ‘The War Over Genetic Privacy Is Just Beginning’, John W. Whitehead and Nisha Whitehead explain that using DNA, scientists are able to track salmon across hundreds of square miles of streams and rivers. With government, research, and ancestry databases with individual dna profiles that abound, theoretically it is not only possible to match for viruses, but for people as well.

The EU project ‘Compare’, is seeking to expand this genomic surveillance under the banner of ‘One Health. In it, 28 European partners work together to tends to “speed up the detection of, and response to disease outbreaks among humans and animals worldwide. This new approach to disease surveillance will be able to revolutionize the way we combat diseases globally.”

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How many people were surprised when all the countries reacted roughly the same when the corona pandemic was declared? That was no coincidence; it was preceded with years of preparation, the development of an infrastructure and many trials and scenario planning exercises. If we look at the networks around ‘One Health’ – it extends the power of the WHO from health policy, to food chains and natural areas. Are these the contours of an expanded power-grab during a new ‘health’ crisis?

Warnings of an animal-caused pandemic in the mass media

Mass media regularly warn that the next pandemic might be caused by zoonoses: “Sprawling viruses: Should we treat animals radically differently?” headlines the Volkskrant in 2020. Trouw writes in January 2022, “Bird flu escalates: how dangerous are these zoonoses to humans?” “Like the new coronavirus, a large proportion of infectious diseases originate from animals. Should humans be worried?”, writes the NRC in the article ‘When diseases skip from animals to humans

‘ in May 2020. In the article ‘Spread of ‘free-range’ farming may raise risk of animal-borne pandemics’, the British Guardian doesn’t mince its words: “Risks of infectious diseases are rising…eliminating livestock would largely eliminate the risk of disease.” The authors do acknowledge that this would likely meet with popular resistance. However, the reasoning is particularly interesting: “If we can’t dramatically cut meat consumption then intensive ‘factory farming’ may be comparatively less risky”, because free range cattle is in contact with wildlife. What they fail to mention is that intensive factory farming requires high amounts of antibiotics, which increases antimicrobial resistance, another risk area point of the ‘One Health’ approach. If we follow the line of reasoning of the One Health advocates, only synthetic ‘food’, such as vertically farmed agriculture, lab-cultured meat, milk and butter, that are grown in laboratory or cleanroom conditions, can be free of zoonoses, bacteria and other diseases risks.

The NGO IFAW, “a global non-profit organization that helps animals and humans live together” published an action plan in 2021 together with AAP Foundation, the Animal Coalition, World Animal Protection and SPOTS Foundation on how the Netherlands can contribute to preventing the next pandemic, titled “From social distancing to wildlife distancing”. Step one of the action plan: strengthening the One Health approach.

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A shorter version of this article was published on De Andere Krant. Translated from Dutch to English.

Sources

www.who.int/health-topics/one-health

https://d-dean.medium.com/biosecurity-and-politics-giorgio-agamben-396f9ab3b6f4

https://ec.europa.eu/commission/commissioners/2019-2024/kyriakides/announcements/intervention-g20-health-ministerial-one-health-approach-and-global-coordination_en

https://www.onehealthcommission.org/

https://www.rivm.nl/en/documenten/final-strategic-research-agenda-for-one-health-european-joint-programme

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7122847/

https://veeteelt.nl/nieuws/rivm-en-nvwa-starten-onderzoek-naar-zoonosen-melkveehouderij

https://onehealthejp.eu/

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/coronavirus/pandemic-treaty/

https://onehealthejp.eu/about/

https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/22-11-2021-new-fao-oie-unep-who-platform-to-tackle-human-animal-and-environmental-health-challenges

https://www.ifaw.org/nl/documenten/van-social-distancing-naar-wildlife-distancing

Use of genome sequencing

COMPARE aims to develop a global platform that will make it possible to quickly identify disease-causing microorganisms which cause, or have the potential to cause, disease outbreaks around the world. The research project makes use of whole genome sequencing, in which a disease-causing microorganism’s wholeDNA-profile is mapped out at one time. ”The platform we are going to create in this project will make it possible in real time to exchange and interpret information about disease-causing microorganisms from around the world, and to compare this with other relevant information such as clinical and epidemiological data,” the consortium leaders professor Frank Møller Aarestrup from the National Food Institute of Denmark, and professor Marion Koopmans from Erasmus MC the Netherlands explain. “The aim is that the platform can be used to harmonise the way scientists, authorities, doctors and organisations around the world collect samples, generate genome sequencing data and carry out risk assessments. This new approach to disease surveillance will be able to revolutionise the way we combat diseases globally,” Aarestrup and Koopmans add.

One Health approach

Zoonoses – diseases that can spread from animals and food to humans – are the cause of many epidemics internationally. For this reason COMPARE is based on a collaboration across sectors and land borders. The project will also develop tools that can be used to diagnose and treat patients, investigate outbreaks and communicate the risks associated with various disease-causing microorganisms.

https://www.rivm.nl/en/international-projects/compare

The myriad ways sewage surveillance is helping fight COVID around the world

Wastewater tracking was used before the pandemic to monitor for polio and illicit drug use, but interest in the field and its applications has now ballooned.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01234-1

How COVID-19 Created a ‘Watershed’ Moment for Wastewater Surveillance

Wastewater surveillance can alert researchers to potential COVID outbreaks, often detecting cases before symptoms arise. This tool may have the potential to track other disease outbreaks as well.

https://publichealth.jhu.edu/2022/how-covid-19-created-a-watershed-moment-for-wastewater-surveillance

https://www.who.int/initiatives/genomic-surveillance-strategy

https://www.phgfoundation.org/briefing/one-health-genomics-why-animal-diseases-matter-for-human-health

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2022.08.02.22278212v1

Vertical farms and lab-meat are being sold als ‘hygienic’ and zoonose-free, because they are produced under lab/cleanroom conditions

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jun/23/free-range-extensive-farming-may-risk-more-animal-borne-pandemics-than-intensive-factory-farming-study

Covid-19 has got experts thinking urgently about the risk of diseases passing from farmed animals to humans. We examine the major outbreaks of the past two centuries

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ng-interactive/2020/sep/15/covid-farm-animals-and-pandemics-diseases-that-changed-the-world

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The western corporate media described the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea’s launch of two missiles Aug. 17 as threatening, aggressive and paranoid. What most media failed to report was the prior U.S. military exercises with Japan and South Korea off Hawai’i, in preparation for extensive war exercises off Korea, that provoked the DPRK’s two warning shots.

Tens of thousands of South Koreans demonstrate Aug. 13, during the first round of military drills Aug. 8-14. This “military drill” was described as preparation for a larger 11-day U.S.-South Korean military operation Aug. 22 to Sept. 1. Credit: Xinhua

An Aug. 19 article in the Daily Beast, an online news website, headlined a longer and upcoming military land, sea and air exercise this way: “U.S. to Enrage Kim Jong Un With Assassination Dry Run.” The article then reads:

“For the first time in years, joint exercises between the U.S. and South Korea this month will culminate in a trial run of decapitating the North Korean leadership.

“The U.S. and South Korea are about to play war games again, and this time they’re going for the jugular,” meaning to assassinate DPRK leader Kim Jong Un. (thedailybeast.com, Aug. 19)

The DPRK (North Korea) has not carried out a nuclear test since 2017, when these especially aggressive “kill chain” and “decapitation” drills were last conducted. Now there are predictions that the DPRK will carry out new nuclear tests in response.

People’s Korea wants peace but has been forced to develop nuclear weapons in order to defend themselves. Despite decades of threats and the harshest economic sanctions, they have refused to surrender.

This courageous spirit of Juche and self-reliance deserves the respect and solidarity of workers’ movements and anti-imperialist activists around the world.

U.S. general commands South Korean military

The exercises off Korea are described as a joint project of South Korea and the U.S. Armed Forces. A four-star U.S. general commands South Korea’s military, however, and the U.S. military has commanded South Korean forces since 1954, following the 1950-53 Korean War.

As with NATO, the U.S. military remains in command in South Korea. NATO’s military drills are under U.S. command and use U.S. equipment and training. Washington has “operational control” of the South Korean armed forces.

According to the Aug. 16 “Stars and Stripes,” a daily U.S. military newspaper and website, “Exact troop numbers [of the deployment] and equipment used for the upcoming exercise have not been publicly released by U.S. Forces Korea or the Ministry of Defense.”

During Ulchi Freedom Guardian in 2017, around 50,000 South Korean and 17,500 U.S. service members were used for the air, land and sea drills. The USFK has roughly 28,500 U.S. troops in South Korea.

As an additional insult to the Korean people, the former colonial occupier of Korea before the U.S. division and occupation of South Korea, the Japanese military, will take part in the military drill in Korea. There are more U.S. troops stationed in Japan than in Korea.

Three-stage confrontation

Ankit Panda of the Carnegie Endowment described to the Daily Beast the three-stage training operation:

“Now U.S. and Korean forces will go beyond their theoretical command post exercises, known as CPX, to field training exercises (FTX).

“The ‘kill chain’ is the first axis of South Korea’s ‘three-axis defense plan’ focusing ‘on the intelligence and strike capabilities necessary to detect and preempt North Korean missile launches.’ Second is ‘Korea Massive Punishment and Retaliation,’ KMPR, climaxing in the decapitation in which special forces snuff the target — one Kim Jong Un — in an intricately choreographed shock strike. Third is air and missile defense.”

DPRK President Kim Jong Un warned that the U.S., by “holding large-scale joint exercises, is pushing relations to a point that is irreversible.”

The terms “kill chain” and “decapitation,” which would involve a drone strike according to U.S. experts, exacerbate tensions with the DPRK.

The Jan. 2, 2020, U.S. drone assassination of Gen. Qassem Soleimani of Iran, leader of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, and nine Iraqi political and military leaders is an example of threat of U.S. lawless drone strikes.

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol cynically offered the DPRK possible food shipments in return for a DPRK agreement to disarm. The U.S. followed the forced disarmament of Iraq and Libya with those countries’ complete destruction. The North Korean leaders are well aware of that lesson.

Legacy of the Korean War

Since 1945, the U.S. has unilaterally divided Korea and installed puppet governments in the south in defiance of the Korean people.

A U.S. bombing campaign from 1950-53 leveled the DPRK in a war that killed over 3 million Koreans. U.S. Air Force planes dropped 420,000 bombs on the 400,000 inhabitants of Pyongyang, capital of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Not a building was left standing.

And it is the U.S. military occupation of Korea that installed corrupt, repressive governments.

The Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which laid down the rules governing and protecting U.S. personnel stationed in South Korea, means that South Korean courts and laws have no control over the U.S. army of occupation.

The U.S. maintains 73 military bases in South Korea. South Korea is forced to pay for this monstrous occupation. Now they are pressured to pay higher costs for hosting these troops.

Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, is the largest U.S. overseas military base, housing USFK headquarters and thousands of troops, civilian workers and their family members.

The U.S.-ROK combined military exercises, which prepare for an all-out war with North Korea, have developed into large-scale exercises that mobilize weapons, equipment and U.S. troops on the Korean Peninsula. These U.S. “war games,” which take place several times a year on the Korean Peninsula, are a threat to 80 million Koreans — north and south.

The military exercises have involved the use of B-2 and B-52H bombers, which are designed to drop nuclear bombs, and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. Due to their scale and provocative nature, they heighten tensions not only in Korea but throughout Asia.

Harsh U.S. economic sanctions on the DPRK on every form of industrial products, fertilizer, food products and medical supplies, have continued over 70 years, even during floods, droughts and the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Mass opposition to U.S. occupation

A massive demonstration of tens of thousands of South Koreans Aug. 13 took place during the first round of military drills Aug. 8 to 14, itself preparation for a larger 11-day U.S.-South Korean military operation Aug. 22 to Sept. 1.

The Aug. 13 protest demanded the withdrawal of all U.S. forces in South Korea and that the government suspend the upcoming joint military exercise with the U.S. and dissolve the South Korea-U.S. military alliance.

For nearly 70 years since the cease-fire in 1953, the U.S. has refused to sign a peace treaty with the DPRK, to allow for peaceful relations between South and North Korea or to end the military occupation. This threatens a renewed U.S. war. The militarization on the Korean peninsula grew continually in these decades.

The demand that the U.S. finally sign a peace treaty with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea resonates throughout Korea. This just demand deserves our renewed solidarity and global support.

U.S. out of Korea!

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This article was originally published on Workers World.

Sara Flounders is an American political writer active in progressive and anti-war organizing since the 1960s. She is a member of the Secretariat of Workers World Party, as well as a principal leader of the International Action Center. Sara can be reached at [email protected].

Sara Flounders is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: A map depicting North Korea with a radiation warning symbol and the flag of North Korea, in relation to North Korea’s nuclear weapon tests in 21st century. (Licensed under the Public Domain)

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Since the rollout of the experimental COVID shots, U.S. health officials have adamantly claimed the shots are safe for pregnant women and their unborn babies

Meanwhile, now-released Pfizer court-ordered, released data — which the Food and Drug Administration wanted to hide for 75 years — reveal the miscarriage rate among women whose pregnancy outcomes were known was 87.5%. The true rate may be higher or lower, as Pfizer did not record or report pregnancy outcomes for 238 of the 274 women known to be pregnant during the trial

A CDC-sponsored study that was widely used to support the claim that the shot is safe during pregnancy misreported the data. The actual miscarriage rate in that paper was 82%

As of August 12, 2022, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database listed 4,941 miscarriages post-COVID jab. For comparison, the fetal death reports for all other vaccines reported to VAERS in the last 30 years is 2,239

Israeli research found the Pfizer COVID jab impairs male fertility for three months after each dose, dropping sperm concentration by 15.4% and total motile count by 22.1%, compared to baseline

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Since the rollout of the experimental COVID shots, U.S. health officials have adamantly claimed the shots are safe for pregnant women, and have been urging all pregnant women to get the jab “to protect themselves and their babies.” To this day, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the COVID shot for:¹

“… people who are pregnant, breastfeeding, trying to get pregnant now, or might become pregnant in the future.”

The CDC further recommends:²

“People who are pregnant should stay up to date with their COVID-19 vaccines, including getting a COVID-19 booster when it’s time to get one.”

And claims:³

“Evidence continues to build showing that:

All the while, they’ve had Pfizer data showing the shots cause shocking rates of miscarriage which, adding insult to injury, have been blatantly miscategorized as a “recovered/resolved” adverse effect.⁴ Who in their right mind would consider DEATH a resolved side effect unless they had a depopulation agenda in mind all along?

I don’t see how this could be described as anything but a criminal cover-up. The only reason we know any of this is because U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman ordered the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to release Pfizer documents at a rate of 55,000 pages per month. The FDA and Pfizer had asked to release the documents at a pace of 500 pages per month, which meant it would take 75 years to disclose them all.⁵

Criminal Cover-Up

Dr. Naomi Wolf recently reported that an analysis of Pfizer data revealed 44% of the women in the trial suffered miscarriages.⁶ That statistic turns out to have been the result of a miscalculation,⁷ as Pfizer listed the miscarriages in two separate columns, resulting in them being counted twice.

We’ve repeatedly found Pfizer’s data collection and reporting to be all over the place, and seemingly on purpose, to make hazards more difficult to ascertain. Wolf admitted the error and took down the original report. However, while fact checkers are gloating over the perceived victory, there’s plenty of other evidence in the Pfizer material to demonstrate these shots should be banned for all time.

In an August 20, 2022, Substack article, Dr. Pierre Kory addressed other, “absolutely horrifying,” findings on miscarriages found in the Pfizer data dumps:⁸

“… let’s do a dive on just one page of the many thousands. See below, Section 5.3.6, Page 12 of the document called ‘Cumulative Analysis of Post-Authorization Adverse Event Reports.’

Looking at the first bullet under the header: Pregnancy cases: 274 cases including:

In this paragraph, at first read, it is just a list of adverse events and numbers, detailed in a way that is confusing at best, and obfuscating at worst. I think it is the latter because, if you do some simple arithmetic trying to parse that paragraph, you end up with this:

270 pregnancies were reported in vaccinated women during the first 12 weeks of the vaccine campaign. In 238 of them, ‘no outcome was provided.’ So, they only knew the outcome of 32 pregnancies reported. What happened in those 32 pregnancies they followed up on?

My hands are literally trembling as I write this, but here goes. In these 32 pregnancies, there were:

Note that this only adds up to 29 known outcomes, but then they note that ‘two different outcomes were reported for each twin’ and then they talk about ‘fetus/baby cases as separate from mother cases.’ I have no idea how to interpret this explanation of outcomes, so it may have been one or two less (or more) deaths then.

So, of the 32 pregnancies they knew the outcome of, 87.5% resulted in the death of the fetus or neonate. Burying this data in the way and not alerting the world to what they found, is criminal activity …”

To be perfectly clear, the failure to record and report the outcomes of 238 out of 274 pregnancies during a drug trial is simply unheard of. It’s shockingly unethical. And the fact that both the Food and Drug Administration and the CDC accepted this, and claim there’s “no evidence” of harm to pregnant women and their babies is proof positive of reprehensible maleficence.

There’s no fixing what’s gone wrong at the FDA and CDC. Their credibility with the public is ruined beyond any possible recovery. The CDC can review and reorganize itself all it wants, but it changes nothing. They are, to this day, urging pregnant women to take a shot that they KNOW will cause babies to die. Calling it a dystopia of epic proportions is a profoundly serious understatement.

CDC-Sponsored Study Also Tried to Hide Data

Need more evidence? How about the fact that the CDC-sponsored study⁹ published in The New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) in April 2021 — which was widely used to support the U.S. recommendation for pregnant women to get injected — also obfuscated data to hide a shockingly elevated miscarriage rate.

According to this paper, the miscarriage rate within the first 20 weeks of pregnancy was 12.5%, which is only slightly above the normal average of 10%. (Looking at statistical data, the risk of miscarriage drops from an overall, average risk rate of 21.3% for the duration of the pregnancy as a whole, to just 5% between Weeks 6 and 7, all the way down to 1% between Weeks 14 and 20.¹⁰)

However, there’s a distinct problem with this calculation, as highlighted by Drs. Ira Bernstein, Sanja Jovanovic and Deann McLeod, HBSc, of Toronto. In a May 28, 2021, letter to the editor, they pointed out that:¹¹

“In table 4, the authors report a rate of spontaneous abortions <20 weeks (SA) of 12.5% (104 abortions/827 completed pregnancies). However, this rate should be based on the number of women who were at risk of an SA due to vaccine receipt and should exclude the 700 women who were vaccinated in their third-trimester (104/127 = 82%).”

In other words, when you exclude women who got the shot in their third trimester (since the third trimester is after week 20 and therefore should not be counted when determining miscarriage rate among those injected before week 20), the miscarriage rate is 82%. (The errors in that NEJM article were also reviewed in a Science, Public Health Policy and the Law paper¹² published in November 2021.)

Of those 104 miscarriages, 96 of them occurred before 13 weeks of gestation, which strongly suggests that getting a COVID shot during the first trimester is an absolute recipe for disaster. So, here was yet another attempt to hide the fact that more than 8 in 10 pregnancies may be terminated as a result of the jab.

As of August 12, 2022, the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting (VAERS) database listed 4,941 miscarriages post-COVID jab.¹³ For comparison, the fetal death reports for all other vaccines reported to VAERS in the last 30 years is 2,239.¹⁴

Birth Rates Are Suddenly Plummeting Worldwide

In addition to miscarriages, we’re also looking at abruptly plummeting birth rates, suggesting the COVID jabs are having an adverse impact on future fertility as well.

“They are large drops, and they are occurring, almost like clockwork, approximately 9 months after pregnant women around the world started to be vaccinated,” Kory notes.¹⁵

For example, Germany recently released data showing a 10% decline in birth rate during the first quarter of 2022.¹⁶

The live birth rate graph for Sweden looks much the same, with a 14% drop:^17,18 According to Gunnar Anderson, a Swedish professor in demographics at Stockholm University, “We have never seen anything like this before, that the bottom just falls out in just one quarter.”¹⁹

Between January and April 2022, Switzerland’s birth rate was 15% lower than expected, the U.K.’s was down by 10% and Taiwan’s was down 23%.^20,21,22 In Hungary, MP Dúró Dóra has expressed concern about a 20% drop in birth rate during January 2022, compared to January 2021.²³

The U.S. is also showing signs of a drop in live births. Provisional data from North Dakota show a 10% decline in February 2022, 13% reduction in March and an 11% reduction in April, compared to the corresponding months in 2021.²⁴

In a July 5, 2022, Counter Signal article, Mike Campbell reported that in the five countries with the highest COVID jab uptake, fertility has dropped by an average of 15.2%, whereas the five countries with the lowest COVID jab uptake have seen an average reduction of just 4.66%. Below is a chart from Birth Gauge²⁵ on Twitter comparing live birth data for 2021 and 2022 in a large number of countries.

Many Women Report Menstrual Irregularities Post-Jab

High rates of menstrual irregularities post-jab are also a warning sign that reproductive capacity may be impacted. As of August 12, 2022, there were 31,443 VAERS reports of menstrual disorders.²⁶

Changes include heavier and more painful periods²⁷ and changes in menses length, as well as unexpected breakthrough bleeding or spotting among women on long-acting contraception or those who are postmenopausal and haven’t had a period in years or even decades.²⁸

Health officials have tried to brush off the reports, but a study published in Obstetrics & Gynecology — funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) and the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Research on Women’s Health — confirmed an association between menstrual cycle length and COVID-19 shots.²⁹

According to the authors, it’s possible that the immune response created by the mRNA shots affect the hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis, which plays a well-known role in the timing of a woman’s cycle:³⁰

“Our findings for individuals who received two doses in a single cycle supports this hypothesis. Given the dosing schedule of the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines in the United States (21 days for Pfizer and 28 days for Moderna), an individual receiving two doses in a single cycle would have received the first dose in the early follicular phase.

Cycle length variability results from events leading to the recruitment and maturation of the dominant follicle during the follicular phase …”

Other Disturbing Evidence

A Japanese biodistribution study for Pfizer’s jab also showed the COVID spike protein from the shots accumulate in female ovaries and male testes,^31,32 and there’s credible concern that the COVID jabs will cross-react with syncytin (a retroviral envelope protein) and reproductive genes in sperm, ova and placenta in ways that may impair fertility and reproductive outcomes.

A Pfizer-BioNTech rat study³³ revealed the injection more than doubled the incidence of preimplantation loss (i.e., the risk of infertility), and led to mouth/jaw malformations, gastroschisis (a birth defect of the abdominal wall) and abnormalities in the right-sided aortic arch and cervical vertebrae.^34,35 As noted by The Exposé:

“With this being the case, how on earth have medicine regulators around the world managed to state in their official guidance that ‘Animal studies do not indicate direct or indirect harmful effects with respect to pregnancy’? And how have they managed to state ‘It is unknown whether the Pfizer vaccine has an impact on fertility’?

The truth of the matter is that they actively chose to cover it up. We know this thanks to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request³⁶ made to the Australian Government Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).”

You can read more about that in The Exposé’s July 19, 2022, article, “FOIA Reveals Pfizer & Medicine Regulators Hid Dangers of COVID Vaccination During Pregnancy After Study Found It Increases Risk of Birth Defects & Infertility.”³⁷

We’re also seeing a sudden uptick in infant mortality. The Exposé³⁸ highlighted data from Scotland, showing neonatal deaths were 119% higher above the annual norm in March 2022.

COVID Jab Affects Male Fertility Too

Male fertility is also under attack by these bioweapons. Israeli research^39,40 published in the journal Andrology found the Pfizer COVID jab temporarily but significantly impairs male fertility, dropping sperm concentration by 15.4% and total motile count by 22.1%, compared to baseline pre-jab.

Both eventually recovered, some three months after the last jab, but if you destroy a man’s sperm for three months every time he gets a COVID shot, you’re significantly reducing the probability of him fathering a child for a good part of any given year and the stats reviewed above support this.

Remember, the mRNA shots are recommended at three-month intervals for the original series, and boosters are now being recommended at varying intervals thereafter. In the video above, Amy Kelly, project director for the Daily Clout’s Pfizer document analysis team, reviews this study and other post-jab male fertility concerns.⁴¹

End the COVID Shots Now, Before It’s Too Late to Recover

In October 2021, when the FDA was voting on whether to authorize the COVID jab for children aged 5 through 11, Dr. Eric Rubin, an FDA advisory panel member, Harvard professor and editor-in-chief of the NEJM, stated:⁴²

“We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes … And I do think we should vote to approve it.”

So, in this and other instances, they’ve openly admitted that anyone who takes the jab is part of an experiment. Yet at the same time, the FDA and CDC have insisted that the jabs are perfectly safe — all while in possession of data showing they’re anything but! In conclusion, I agree with Kory, who writes:⁴³

“… when a new medicine or device is introduced, you must first assume any adverse effects or deaths reported to be related to the intervention until proven otherwise. That is what I am doing here.

We must assume the vaccines are impacting fertility unless some other provable or credible explanations for a sudden drop in month to month birth rates. So stop the shots until you can prove they are not …

Too many young people dying,⁴⁴ too many becoming disabled, too many pregnancies resulting in fetal or neonatal death as above, and now we find out that if we continue with this vaccine obsession, they will not be replaced. This is a humanitarian catastrophe heaped atop the one caused by dangerous gain-of-function research.

When will the world wake up to this rapidly unfolding horror? For those of us who know what is going on, it is hard not to feel helpless as we are forced to watch increasingly apparent and widespread needless death. But we will continue to try to get these truths out despite the massive censorship and propaganda overwhelming the globe.

We have a moral and ethical obligation and take that responsibility seriously no matter what befalls us. Stop the vaccines, now. And if we can’t stop them, we must try to convince everyone we know to no longer agree to get vaccinated. Their lives and our future depend on it.”

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Notes

^1, 2, 3 CDC.gov Updated July 14, 2022

^4, 6 Clark County Today August 18, 2022

⁵ Bloomberg Law January 18, 2022

⁷ Twitter Phil Kerpen August 17, 2022

^{8, 15, 19, 43} Pierre Kory Substack August 20, 2022

⁹ N Engl J Med 2021; 384:2273-2282

¹⁰ Medical News Today January 12, 2020

¹¹ Wayback NEJM Letter to the Editor June 27, 2021

¹² Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law November 2021; 4: 130-143

^13, 26 OpenVAERS Reproductive Health Reports as of August 12, 2022

^{14, 35, 38, 44} The Expose August 7, 2022

¹⁶ Expose News July 18, 2022

^17, 20, 23 The Counter Signal July 5, 2022

¹⁸ Twitter Havard Skjaervik June 27, 2022

^21, 24 Igor Chudov Substack June 25, 2022

²² SWPRS June 2022

²⁵ Twitter Birth Gauge June 3, 2022

²⁷ Boston University September 9, 2021

²⁸ NPR August 9, 2021

²⁹ Obstetrics & Gynecology: January 5, 2022 – Volume – Issue – 10.1097

³⁰ Obstetrics & Gynecology: January 5, 2022 – Volume – Issue – 10.1097, Discussion

³¹ Children’s Health Defense June 3, 2021

³² Rights and Freedoms, Confidential Pfizer Research Document

³³ Reproductive Toxicology August 2021; 103: 28-35

³⁴ Science, Public Health Policy, and the Law November 2021; 4:130-143, page 135

^36, 37 The Expose July 19, 2022

³⁹ Andrology June 17, 2022 DOI: 10.111/andr.13209

⁴⁰ Expose June 26, 2022

⁴¹ Daily Clout August 16, 2022

⁴² Townhall October 26, 2021

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The horrific car bombing in Moscow that killed twenty-nine year old Darya Dugina last week raises many questions about the motives of the Ukrainian regime and its supporters that sent an assassin to murder a prominent Russian civilian who has no overt role in the government of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. It should be assumed that the target of the attack was Darya’s father, the philosopher and sociologist Aleksandr Dugin, who has been predictably denigrated by western media outlets like the Washington Post, which refers to Dugin as “Putin’s brain” or “Putin’s Rasputin” while the New York Times lamely calls him a “Russian ultranationalist.”

Dugin, to be sure, is a powerful media figure well known in Europe who is a strong supporter of the Kremlin’s military initiative against Ukraine which is currently playing out. It appears that he has never even met Putin, which means that I have met Putin more than he has, let alone advised him, and he is generally viewed as a marginal figure in his own country. To be sure, he is known for his fiery rhetoric and hawkish anti-Western and anti-American stance, envisioning as he does Russia serving “as a serious bulwark against the ubiquitous spread of the Western liberal model on the planet.” President Vladimir Putin’s August 16^th speech to foreign dignitaries at the Moscow Conference on International Security would seem to confirm that the Russian leader generally at least shares Dugin’s perspective. Putin said that “The situation in the world is changing dynamically and the outlines of a multipolar world order are taking shape. An increasing number of countries and peoples are choosing a path of free and sovereign development based on their own distinct identity, traditions and values.”

Dugin, like Putin, is a genuine conservative in cultural terms and would reasonably be described as a Russian nationalist, believing as he does that Russia and its traditional values should be cherished rather that cast away in pursuit of the currently fashionable globalism. He, also like Putin, is protective of the Russian Orthodox Church, which makes him an anachronism or worse from the viewpoint of the cancel culture currently rampaging in the west.

I had the privilege of participating in a conference in 2018 in the Iranian city of Mashhad with Dugin and got to know him somewhat. He is a distinguished intellectual, a prolific writer and speaker, and a true son of Holy Russia. That he looks backwards at Russian history to select the cultural trends and tendencies to inspire him should be a positive example of a possible course to pursue for the many conservatives worldwide who have been appalled at what is being done to western civilization at the hands of the wreckers who are now in control of so many nations.

The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) has used surveillance camera footage and other resources to reconstruct what likely took place in the car bombing. First of all, the Dugins had no special security. Aleksandr Dugin led a life in the open, as did his daughter. They would both go to cultural and folk events and speak, often freely meeting with supporters, which is what they were doing on the day of the bombing as honored guests at a “Tradition” festival near Moscow. Aleksandr had no reason to believe that some government might seriously want to assassinate him, even though it is known that he was on the Ukrainian government’s notorious Myrotvorets Enemies of Ukraine “hit list” for alleged supporters of the Russian intervention, which even includes prominent antiwar “Pink Floyd” musician Roger Waters. The names on the list are blocked on the actual group website, but there are reportedly more than 200,000 entries on it, including many prominent Americans. Curiously, the Myrotvorets site has on the home page upper right-hand corner the addresses of the originators of the site, which are Langley Virginia, home of the CIA, and Warsaw Poland. Dugin was clearly wrong if he assumed the list was all just a bit of political theater.

According to the Russian police, a 42-year-old woman named Natalya Vovk, who also uses the surname Shaban, reportedly a member of the Ukrainian National Guard’s Azov Battalion, departed Ukraine on July 23rd in a vehicle with false Donbas plates, the region currently under Russian control. She drove into Russia together with her 12 year-old daughter Sophia Shaban as cover, changed the plates to those of Kremlin ally Kazakhstan, and then proceeded to rent an apartment in the building in Moscow where Darya lived. According to one report, Darya would often drive her father to meetings as he did not like to drive, but in this case, he switched to another car. Vovk, who may have had an accomplice who helped her obtain a fake Kazakh passport and may have aided in constructing the bomb, planted the device under the Dugin car and detonated it by remote control before fleeing to Estonia after again changing her car license plates to Ukrainian. It is to be presumed that Vovk was on a mission planned and authorized by Ukrainian intelligence (SBU).

No western government has denounced the assassination. The Ukrainian government has denied being behind the attack, though there have been reported celebrations in Kiev and elsewhere. Dugina was reportedly declared “liquidated” on the Myrotvoretssite. The Washington Post has predictably editorialized its view that no one should believe anything that the Russians are reporting about the assassination, though one might more reasonably trust the Kremlin than the US Capital’s leading source of media disinformation. Likewise, the British media quickly jumped into the fray, suggesting that it was the Russians themselves, either a dissident group or agents sent by Putin, who did the foul deed. Even the Pope was on the receiving end after he described Darya Dugina as an “innocent victim.” Andrii Yurash, Ukraine’s ambassador to the Holy See, tweeted that the Pope’s words were “disappointing…how (is it) possible to mention one of ideologists of (Russian) imperialism as innocent victim? She was killed by Russians.” But, to be sure, unless additional information appears, there is nothing in the Russian government reconstruction of events that appears to be a fabrication as it is largely supported by surveillance camera video clips and photos of those involved.

There remain, however, two major questions that have not been answered or even addressed at this point. The first is motive and the second relates to which other countries might have been involved in the planning and execution of the bombing. And there is a back story that might contribute to a better understanding of what exactly took place and why. Dugin, for all his brilliant academic credentials and lack of any Russian government position, is regarded as actively hostile to the interests of the United States, possibly because of his support of the attack on Ukraine, and has been both sanctioned and become a person of interest for American law enforcement and intelligence agencies. Darya was also sanctioned.

By “person of interest” I mean that the national security agencies have applied their information collection resources to monitor where Dugin goes, whom he is in contact with, and to learn what are the various groups that he is involved with. That information would all by itself be suggestive in terms of the apparent plan to assassinate Dugin by car bomb, but it also fits in neatly with several other connections. First of all, the actual capabilities of the Ukrainian intelligence services are not clearly understood, but it is well known within the US intelligence community that the CIA, MI-6 and Mossad are all in Ukraine actively engaged in training and advising their local counterparts. The bombing in Moscow required considerable sophistication as it used prior intelligence, multiple license plates and presumably also identity documents when borders were crossed, something the Ukrainians acting alone might not have been able to accomplish.

So did the United States, Britain, and/or the Israelis know what their Ukrainian counterparts were planning? More than that, did they collude in the operation or provide intelligence that made it possible? NATO member Estonia’s apparent cooperation in aiding the exfiltration of Vovk rather suggests a broadly based intelligence operation. The Israelis in particular are adept at that type of cross border targeted assassination operation, having used similar tactics to kill Iranian scientists and technicians. And they might have also had a secondary motive in targeting Dugin over his criticisms of the Jewish role in the terror that followed the Bolshevik revolution as well as its enormous overrepresentation both in the current Russian oligarchy as well as in the new American and globalist elite. Interestingly, Putin has also angered the Israeli government by his criticism of the recent lethal attacks on the Palestinians and by his closure of the Jewish Agency for Israel which arranges the emigration of Jews from Russia to the Jewish state.

If foreign intelligence services were involved, that also would imply that the respective governments might have approved of the assassination attempt, which could suggest a motive beyond just warning Russia that its apologists could be killed even in Moscow at any time. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has pressured his “allies” to get more involved in the fighting in his country, beyond the provision of billions of dollars and weapons. The killing of Dugin might have been seen as a possible provocative move to encourage Moscow to over-react in response, leading to still more western involvement, perhaps to include NATO and other allied troops appearing on the battlefields to confront Putin directly. To be sure, one is not encouraged by statements coming out of the mouths of western leaders and NATO revealing that the real objective of the fighting is to weaken Russia and possibly bring about regime change, which increases the likelihood that Moscow will take a hard line in its reaction. Nor was it exactly encouraging to hear a befuddled President Joe Biden’s calling Putin a “war criminal” and Moscow’s intervention a “genocide” while also committing the US to endure whatever it takes for as long as it takes to make sure that Ukraine “wins” the war, which is a virtual promise to escalate the conflict.

It is also ironic that the US Congress is toying with the idea of declaring Russia a “state sponsor of terrorism” when it is Washington-ally Ukraine that is in fact using terror. It might seem inconceivable that anyone would plot to assassinate a prominent Russian in order to further escalate a conflict that is already edging perilously close to a nuclear exchange, but there you have it. If Zelensky and his neocon advisers set the trap to deepen the involvement of Washington in their war, Biden should have recognized the folly and backed completely out of the conflict. But there is little chance of that, unfortunately. When it comes to Russia, the hawks are both bipartisan and firmly in control.

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Philip M. Giraldi, Ph.D., is Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest, a 501(c)3 tax deductible educational foundation (Federal ID Number #52-1739023) that seeks a more interests-based U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Website is councilforthenationalinterest.org, address is P.O. Box 2157, Purcellville VA 20134 and its email is [email protected].

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

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Reading and rereading the US President Joe Biden’s statement last Monday on Ukraine Independence Day, one is reminded of English poet John Keats’ immortal line, ‘Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter.’ Three things are striking. 

Biden repeatedly invoked the abiding nature of the US’ relationship with the Ukrainian people. But in the entire statement, he never once mentioned the Ukrainian government or the leadership of President Volodymyr Zelensky. A careless omission? 

Second, Biden underplayed to the point of ignoring the intense US-Ukraine partnership at state-to-state level. The regime in Kiev is unthinkable without robust US support. Third, most important, Biden was silent on the war as such, which is at a decisive stage at present.

As recently as on August 18, twenty prominent American national security professionals urged the Biden administration to “to produce a satisfactory strategic narrative which enables governments to maintain public support for the NATO engagement over the long term… (and) move more quickly and strategically, in meeting Ukrainian requests for weapons systems.”

But Biden neatly sidestepped all that. Even when he spoke of the latest tranche of arms for Ukraine worth $2.98 billion, Biden expressed the hope that the weapon systems may ensure that Ukraine “can continue to defend itself over the long term.” (Emphasis added) 

American analysts estimate that the $2.98 billion weapons package is radically different in its dispensation mechanism. Thus, while military aid hitherto was drawn from pre-existing stockpiles of US weaponry and equipment, this time around, the aid package will be purchased or ordered from defence contractors. 

John Kirby, the spokesman for the National Security Council, admitted to reporters that some of the aid in the latest package could be dispensed more slowly than other parts of the package depending on defence contractors’ current stocks. He vaguely said, “It’s going to depend, quite frankly, on the item that we’re talking about. Some stuff probably will still need some production time to develop.” 

In effect, the military-industrial complex may have more to celebrate in Biden’s announcement than Zelensky. The Biden administration is moving away from depleting US current stockpiles, as European allies are also doing. 

According to Mark Cancian, Senior Adviser, International Security Program at the CSIS, Biden’s latest $2.98 billion package “will sustain the Ukrainian military over the long term but take months or even years to implement fully… Thus, this (package) will sustain the Ukrainian military over the long term, likely postwar, rather than increase its capabilities in the near or medium term…

“This means that the U.S. ability to provide equipment rapidly may be diminishing… The administration may need to ask Congress for more money soon. Although the bipartisan consensus for supporting Ukraine remains strong, there may be a fight with the progressive left and isolationist right about the wisdom of sending money abroad when there are pressing needs at home.” 

This is almost the same dilemmas that the US’ European allies are facing. The prestigious German think tank, Kiel Institute for the World Economy reported last week: “The flow of new international support for Ukraine has dried up in July. No large EU country like Germany, France, or Italy, has made significant new pledges.” 

It said the EU commission is pushing for larger and more regular aid packages to Ukraine, but the enthusiasm is lacking at the member country level — “Major EU countries such as France, Spain, or Italy have so far provided very little support or remain very opaque about their aid.” 

Waning domestic support is the main factor. Even in Poland, there is “refugee fatigue”. The inflation is the all-consuming concern in the public opinion. The German magazine Spiegel has reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz is facing dissent within his own party ranks from those who want Berlin to stop providing Kiev with weapons and instead want the chancellor to engage in dialogue with Russia.

On Thursday, Chancellor Scholz made a significant remark at a public event in Magdeburg that Berlin will not provide Kiev with arms that could be used to attack Russia. Scholz explained that Berlin’s goal in sending weapons is to “support Ukraine” and “prevent an escalation of the war into something that would be very different.” He said he was echoing Biden’s thinking. 

Indeed, while on the one hand, the United States continues to exert military pressure on Russia, hoping to break the resistance of its long-term strategic adversary, on the other hand, over the past two months, Washington has repeatedly signalled that it is not seeking victory, but a final solution to the Ukraine problem through peaceful negotiations.

As in Germany, there is a huge amount of anti-war pressure in the US too, especially among Democratic Party and the academic elite, as well as retired high-ranking officials and business executives, calling on the administration to stop heating up the situation around Ukraine. if the Democrats lose the midterm elections, or if the Republicans come to power in 2024, then the war could take a fundamentally different turn. Over time, similar changes are highly likely to occur in Europe too.

Already, the steady decline in the intensity of the impact of European and US sanctions against Russia speaks for itself. The Economist, which is a virulent critic of the Kremlin, admitted this week that the expected knockout blow from anti-Russia restrictions “has not materialised.” The magazine wrote: “Energy sales will generate a current-account surplus of $265 billion this year (for Russia), the world’s second-largest after China. After a crunch, Russia’s financial system has stabilised and the country is finding new suppliers for some imports, including China.”

On a sombre note, the Economist wrote, “The unipolar moment of the 1990s, when America’s supremacy was uncontested, is long gone, and the West’s appetite to use military force has waned since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.” 

Again, internationally, the support for Ukraine outside of the western bloc has dropped dramatically in the recent months. Kiev’s proposal on Wednesday to condemn Russia attracted the backing of just 58 out of 193 UN member states, whereas, at the March 2 UN GA session, 141 member countries had voted for a non-binding resolution to condemn Moscow.

Equally, Zelensky’s teflon coating is peeling off. His drug addiction is out in public view. The regime is shaky, as the wave of purges in the Ukrainian security establishment shows. According to Turkish President Recep Erdogan who met Zelensky in Lvov recently, the latter sounded insecure and unsure whether he is being fully kept informed of the ground situation. 

Zelensky’s erratic behaviour is not exactly endearing him, either. Pope Francis is the latest figure to be chastised by Kiev — because the Pontiff remarked that Darya Dugina was “innocent.” The Vatican ambassador was summoned to the foreign ministry to receive Kiev’s protest. 

The German daily Handelsblatt wrote today that

the “internal cohesion” of the Ukrainian government “is in danger. There are serious allegations against the president… At home, the Ukrainian president, who is celebrated abroad as a war hero, is under pressure… The comedian has become a warlord… The 44-year-old has so far been able to switch and act freely with his team, which is partly made up of colleagues from his television production company. But the grace period now seems to have expired.”

The daily forecast an approaching political upheaval by winter.

Biden carefully distanced himself from the Kiev regime and focused on the people-to-people relations. Even if the Americans know the Byzantine corridors of power in Kiev, they cannot afford to be explicit like the former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev who predicted last week that the Ukrainian military may stage a coup and enter into peace talks with Russia. 

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Throughout your lifetime, you or someone you trusted has unwittingly given up many aspects of your biometric and other personal data so that your digital identity can be created. Over time, this digital identity is being progressively defined and is replacing your actual physical, intellectual, emotional and spiritual identity. What you are allowed to do, and not do, will increasingly depend on your technological identity rather than your moral character, intellectual and/or physical abilities, your emotional suitability, religious beliefs and the many other attributes that define your unique personality.

Starting with your birth certificate, which identifies your name, birth date and birth location, as well as parenting, an endless series of details about your personal life has been accumulated and stored, sometimes with your knowledge and consent. Far more often it has been done without either.

Do you remember having your photo taken for a student and/or employee identity card, your vehicle license and/or a passport? Do you remember being finger and/or palm-printed, submitting to an iris scan, agreeing to a recording of your voice, offering data for ‘two-factor’ authentication, and requesting an ancestry search by submitting a sample of your DNA? Most often you had no choice: It was ‘legally required’. Other times, you were probably offered something in return, such as admission to an educational institution, ‘secure’ access to an account or information you wanted. But whatever other price you paid, you also paid an ‘identity cost’.

Moreover, none of that information has ceased to exist and there is a lot more interest in it now than there was when you, or someone, innocently agreed to tender it all those years ago. And it is being added to all of the time with information you have surrendered or that has been obtained about you, up until this morning. In addition, it will be added to by information gathered about you tomorrow.

Your bank account(s), academic and employment records, health records (including vaccination record), legal record (including traffic violations), internet search history, and any other information compiled by or submitted to a government authority, corporation or other entity has been recorded, compiled and systematically stored in data banks of which you have never even heard. And they are being used to generate your ‘social credit score’ which, depending on the country in which you live, is already or will be soon, used to determine what you can, and cannot, do.

In addition, facial recognition technology is vastly expanding the capacity of the surveillance state, and those corporations and entities that work with it, to identify and track you. And it is doing this already in the most obvious places such as on the street and in shopping centres. See, for example, ‘Microsoft partners with banks to introduce facial recognition: More invasive technology’.

Sometimes, an apparently desirable application is used as a trojan horse to have it introduced even more widely. See ‘Australian clubs call for facial recognition tech to watch drinkers and gamblers: More privacy invasion’.

Beyond that, of course, existing technologies already enable many aspects of your unique identity to be imitated precisely. Think you voice is unique? Not once they clone it so they can present some technological imitation as your voice. See ‘Voice Cloning for Content Creators’.

And you are no doubt well aware of simple ways that photos of you can be replicated. Or altered by ‘photoshopping’, to put you in an entirely different context or location.

Does this matter?

This has all been done, fundamentally, so that one day soon now you can be locked in the technological prison that is being created around you. This technological prison, being promoted under the guise of ‘smart cities’, is being built around you as cities are converted to ‘smart’ by installing 5G and the other technologies necessary for comprehensive surveillance and control. But the Saudis are building a ‘smart city’ in the desert too. You can watch their promotional video here: Neom.

Despite the positive spin endlessly put on these projects by governments and corporations – see ‘Smart cities: The cities of the future’ – the fundamental outcome is that you will require a digital ID to do those particular things that the elite has decided you will be allowed to do. And you won’t be able to do anything else. This is usually called ‘slavery’ except that, in this new technological world, virtually all of the slaves will be transhuman with no independent will of their own.

How has this happened?

In a report published by the World Economic Forum in 2016, the authors wrote ‘Consistent with the World Economic Forum’s mission of applying a multi‐stakeholder approach to address issues of global impact, the creation of this report involved extensive outreach and dialogue with the financial services community, innovation community, technology community, academia and the public sector…. The mandate of this project was to explore digital identity and understand the role that Financial Institutions should play in building a global standard for digital identity. Identity is a critical topic in Financial Services today. Current identity systems are limiting Fintech innovation (as) well as secure and efficient service delivery in Financial Services and society more broadly. Digital identity is widely recognized as the next step in identity systems. However, while many efforts are underway to solve parts of the identity challenge and create true digital identity, there is a need for a concerted and coordinated effort to build a truly transformational digital identity system.’

See ‘A Blueprint for Digital Identity: The Role of Financial Institutions in Building Digital Identity’.

Screenshot from WEF

By 2018, another report by the World Economic Forum was proclaiming ‘Our identity is, literally, who we are, and as the digital technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution advance, our identity is increasingly digital. This digital identity determines what products, services and information we can access – or, conversely, what is closed off to us.’

See ‘Identity in a Digital World: A new chapter in the social contract’.

But one primary motivation for their interest in digital identity was reported in a World Economic Forum article in August 2022. Citing research conducted by the consultancy Cebr – see ‘The digital trust index’ – the World Economic Forum noted that ‘our global digital economy can unleash trillions of dollars of opportunities. But if we don’t know for certain who we are interacting with online, we cannot have trust. Digital identity must therefore be the foundational element to our digital economy….’ Moreover, according to the WEF: ‘Consumers also told us they would trust banks and financial services firms the most to create and maintain an identity system.’

See ‘Digital trust: How to unleash the trillion-dollar opportunity for our global economy’.

Of course, the World Economic Forum is not the only institution planning our digital identity prison. In a 2019 report, the United Nations stated ‘We recommend that by 2030, every adult should have affordable access to digital networks, as well as digitally-enabled financial and health services, as a means to make a substantial contribution to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.’

See ‘The Age of Digital Interdependence’.

In addition, that long-standing bastion of economic exploitation known as the World Bank has had a long-running involvement in digitizing identity, publishing a report on the subject in 2017 which was updated in 2021 and, unsurprisingly, linked to its notion of ‘sustainable development’: ‘Every person has the right to participate fully in their society and economy and to be recognized as a person before the law. Yet, as many as 1 billion people across the world do not have basic proof of identity, which is essential for protecting their rights and enabling access to services and opportunities.’

See ‘Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development: Toward the Digital Age’.

This report goes on to outline a set of ten principles – universal access, accuracy, security, privacy… – to guide the nature of digital identity, in various categories, that sound wonderful.

But fundamental issues are left unaddressed.

Why the rights to participation in society and the economy, and recognition before the law, suddenly requires ‘basic proof of identity’ and is ‘essential for protecting their rights and enabling access to services and opportunities’ is not explained. Nor is it explained why those same rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 – on which the world has so spectacularly failed to deliver since that time (and particularly for those billions of people marginalized by the global capitalist economy) – will now be magically delivered by a digitized identity.

As is often the case, the delusional rhetoric sounds good despite being a vast distance from the truth.

But the World Bank continues its rhetoric in a more recent report: ‘Vulnerable and marginalized groups are often the least likely to have proof of their identity, but also the most in need of the protection and services linked to identification.’

See ‘Principles on Identification for Sustainable Development: Toward the Digital Age’.

Moreover, according to the World Bank, experience has supposedly ‘shown that there are key actions countries can take to unlock their own paradigm shift towards building digital ID and G2P [government-to-person] payments ecosystems that empower people and support sustainable development outcomes’.

See ‘Identification for Development (ID4D) and Digitalizing G2P Payments (G2Px) Annual Report 2021’.

Really? How does this happen?

Of course, the documents go on to outline why identity is important to access certain rights and services – banking, voting, owning property, particular transactions… – but do not specify why a digital version of identity is necessary. A sleight of hand made necessary by the complete absence of any genuine reason for moving beyond long-accepted means of establishing identity, where they are appropriately useful.

Beyond international organizations such as these, major Non-Government Organizations including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation, as well as corporations, are predictably behind the moves to digitize identity for reasons explained in the ID2020 Manifesto. For example, as Peggy Johnson of Microsoft Corporation noted: ‘… it’s exciting to imagine a world where safe and secure digital identities are possible, providing everyone with an essential building block to every right and opportunity they deserve.’

See ‘ID2020’ and ‘ID2020 Manifesto’.

Again, why rights and opportunities, theoretically long-ago enshrined in a multitude of human rights laws, should now somehow be accessed through a digitized identity is, obviously, not explained.

With such a predatory list of sponsors – the World Economic Forum, World Bank, United Nations, major corporations, particular NGOs – clearly endorsing digital identity and the complete absence from any consultation process of those of us who might identify (not digitally, of course) as ‘ordinary’ people, it is obvious why those who understand the rapidly advancing technocratic agenda have issued a multitude of warnings about participating in the ongoing efforts to digitize your identity.

What, precisely, is at stake?

Your identity itself. Your freedom. Your privacy. Your human rights generally, including the right to choose what you eat and how you obtain it. And everything else that matters to you. Gone forever, if this global push is successful.

Let me explain this in a little more detail.

All over the world, countries have been implementing processes to digitize the identities of their citizens. Here, for example, are progress reports on what is happening in Nigeria and Greece: ‘Nigeria will be a testing ground for Microsoft’s digital ID tech’ and ‘Greece rolls out digital “wallet” for citizens; ID and driving license now on phone’.

Beyond this, did you know that people in Australia started getting microchipped in 2016? See ‘Australia Has Started Microchipping People’ and ‘Australia Becomes World’s Most Microchipped Nation’.

But other countries, like Sweden, are not far behind. See ‘Thousands of Swedish people are swapping ID cards for microchips’.

And while digitizing your identity in this way might appear to be technologically savvy and even more convenient – after all, opening a door without a key is a pretty slick move hey? – the problem is that once your identity is linked to other more important functions, control of your life is soon easily taken from you.

As John Adams noted in a recent interview by Martin North, once you link a microchipped identity with the soon-to-be-introduced Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), the Central Bank can simply reprogram your personal chip (or the chips of millions of people) to prevent you from engaging in a particular type of commerce if you do not comply with whatever mandatory requirements are in force at the time. Beyond this, of course, what else will the chip be used to control? Do you know? Watch ‘Australia’s banks want you MICROCHIPPED!’

And what if, as planned, your identity chip is linked to your driver’s licence and your car? How far do you think you will be able to travel from home? To go shopping for food? To travel to work? Will you be allowed to go on holiday?

Beyond these simple examples, what if your digital identity is linked to your health records (including vaccination status), your legal records, and anything else they decide to add – such as carbon credits – so that you can be given a ‘social credit score’? Perhaps you will be deemed unsuitable to be a parent and have your children taken away.

But the answers to these questions, as well as others, are already known and you can watch a fuller explanation of just how securely you are already locked in this digital ID prison in this video presentation by technology expert Aman Jabbi – see ‘Facial Recognition: Digital ID or Digital Dictatorship?’ – who spells it out in gruesome detail.

By the end of 2022, there will be more than twenty billion data collection (not just simple surveillance) cameras (of many types) in the world keeping track of the nearly eight billion people on Earth. As Jabbi observes: Under the guise of privacy, security and convenience, ‘We are being monitored everywhere and all the time’ by the ‘Internet of Eyes and Ears’ linked to artificial intelligence and a vast array of technological devices, such as smart street poles and lights which gather data via facial recognition cameras and environmental sensors, display digital signage, use speakers to instruct the immediate population how to behave, include ‘drone charging stations’ because drones ‘are going to be the new aerial police’ with everything wirelessly connected to each other and the Internet of Things (IoT). This comprehensive network will be used to collect your data and control your behaviour, including by use of LED (light-emitting diode) incapacitators (which Jabbi calls ‘puke guns’) which emit high-intensity beams of different frequencies that can make you vomit or inflict other forms of behavioural control. In short, behavioural compliance will be enforced not by human guards, but by artificial intelligence and electromagnetic weapons.

The digital identity they say is a new chapter in the social contract. It’s a social contract that nobody signed up for and nobody wants. But they are… going to force this on us.

Every entity, person, device and thing is going to have a digital identity and once you sign on to a digital identity, the only way you can access healthcare or your bank finances, ability to travel, ability to access the internet, to go to social platforms or do anything in your life, to buy food, you need a digital identity. And how will that digital identity be authenticated? Through your face. So your face is the key to unlocking access to life.

And this key is going to be linked to a new type of financial system which is going to be a combination of carbon credits, your social credits or social score… ‘reputation capital’, and then of course your status with respect to vaccines and boosters…. And if you don’t have enough carbon score and you don’t have enough social score or you haven’t taken your latest booster, your face will not be able to unlock your digital identity and therefore you cannot access stuff.

You’ll be locked out of the whole new matrix system. And this is what they call central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)….

This is essentially the key to understanding what sort of a new world that is going to be upon us once the final switches are turned on….

Your digital identity is really a digital prison and your face is used to unlock the digital prison if you behave well….

And how are they going to implement this? There is a new protocol called ‘Zero Trust in Cyber Security’… so by default we are going from a world of implicit ‘allow’ to default ‘deny’.

So as an example, when you log into your computer you type in a password… and you have access to your browser, your files, your applications but now this zero trust is about ‘default deny’ which means ‘we don’t trust you and for everything you need to do you’ll be denied initially until you can prove that you’re trustworthy’ and that trust will come from face recognition and from digital identity. (If you want to read more about ‘digital trust’, here is the Callsign report: ‘The digital trust index’.)

Beyond the above, by using ‘geofencing’ (both digitally and geographically), your access to everything, including who you can contact, how you can travel and how far, what media you can access or book you can read… can be controlled through your digital identity. ‘So the goal is to lockdown humanity in these smart cities and not allow them to move anywhere…. So the digital identity is inside the Trojan horse of security and privacy. I can’t stress this enough…. And this will result in total control of humans because people will comply in order to unlock access to life.’ In addition, ‘they can even be monitoring the emotional state of a child and the algorithms can decide whether child abuse is happening at home and then they can come for the children, which they will.’

Jabbi also points out that in late April 2022, the World Economic Forum and the United Nations took over the internet which means that, soon enough, ‘If you don’t accept a digital ID, you cannot get onto the internet and you cannot open your phone’. And he emphasizes that ‘Banning facial recognition means nothing because neither your government, nor your state or local officials are doing facial recognition so banning it is pointless because facial recognition is going to be done in the cloud on Amazon and Google servers with artificial intelligence algorithms, with cameras installed by private companies on public lands which are now owned by private corporations.’

Apart from Aman Jabbi, other scholars have also thoughtfully researched what is happening regarding digital identity and how it relates to other features of the overall elite plan.

After exhaustive research leading to their extensive report ‘Paving a Digital Road to Hell? A Primer on the Role of the World Bank and Global Networks in Promoting Digital ID’, scholars at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law concluded as follows in relation to digital ID:

As outlined in this primer, and as many of our partners and colleagues have documented, the World Bank and a wider network of global actors are promoting a specific model of digital ID. This model privileges economic identity, is disconnected from legal status, and steers attention away from civil registration. Contrary to the human rights and inclusive development language used to promote this vision of digital ID, this model threatens a range of fundamental rights, from the right to social security to the right to privacy. The purported benefits remain mostly unsubstantiated in the absence of serious baseline studies, cost-benefit and value for money analyses, and impact assessments. Meanwhile, researching and revealing the impacts of these systems has mostly been outsourced to an already overburdened and under-resourced community of human rights organizations, advocates, scholars, journalists, and other civil society actors.

The report includes three recommendations for addressing concerns about digital ID, given the transformational nature of the change intended: 1. detailed investigation and research, consideration (particularly of possible harms and their mitigation), cost-benefit analysis and impact assessments; 2. thorough discussion in democratic fora based on detailed knowledge of plans, actors involved in the scheme and roles played by foreign governments and international organizations; and 3. engagement of all stakeholders, including us, not just ‘technical experts’ in the deliberations.

Researcher Lynn Corey has also written an insightful four-part series of reports which are published on her website and as a book. In the second report – see ‘The Global Landscape on Vaccine ID Passports Part 2: How Your Digital Identity is Moving to The Blockchain for Full Control Over Humans’ – Corey identifies key players driving the long-term plan that is currently being implemented, particularly noting the importance of central banks but also other key elite agencies such as the World Economic Forum and United Nations. Their aim is to institute ‘complete digital control… over the world and all human beings’ and Corey observes that different agents ‘have their areas of expertise when it comes to building the digital identities, which is the key to making this all happen.’

Investigative journalist Jesse Smith bluntly observes:

With the evidence being provided openly, there is little reason to doubt that humanity is being ushered into a new era of surveillance and control through digital ID systems. This effort is being pushed by governments, banks, multinational corporations, and global governance organizations like the World Health Organization, World Trade Organization, and the United Nations.

But digital IDs only represent one aspect of the digital revolution….

A whole world is being created to enslave us in a perpetual digital panopticon including the metaverse, digital currency (CBDCs), mass surveillance, AI and biometrics, and body implants while blockchain technology records everything we do.

See ‘The Global Digital ID Surveillance Plan Accelerates – Urgent Resistance Needed’.

Beyond these scholars and organizations, there are other fine analysts who have explained why digital ID promises to inflict great harm on humanity. You can watch, for example, the excellent video report by James Corbett: ‘The Global Digital ID Prison’ and read the critique by Derrick Broze ‘Exposing The “Digital ID Is A Human Right” Scam’.

These and other scholars, such as Peter Koenig – see ‘Digital Identity – Absolute and Total Control via the QR Code: Open Letter to the Swiss Federal Council’ – have also explained why there is zero intention to meaningfully engage ‘ordinary people’ in consideration of the plan: The explicit intention is to impose it on us.

In addition, we also have the experience of India to consider, as documented in the report ‘Busting the Dangerous Myths of Big ID Programs: Cautionary Lessons From India’ which offers this summary before going on to expose how India’s digital ID system, introduced some years ago, has spectacularly failed to deliver gains for ‘ordinary’ people in twelve key areas, noting that ‘ID systems often promise a technological solution for a political problem’.

Around the world, the quickly expanding ‘Big ID’ industry has driven the adoption of centralized digital identity programs that severely undermine human rights. Governments, companies, and international agencies sell the idea of implementing a Big ID project as the silver bullet for solving a host of problems…. without ever presenting evidence that these tools will actually be effective at meeting people’s needs.… Aadhaar, India’s flagship Big ID project, is a clear example of this approach. Despite all the positive propaganda in its favor, Aadhaar has had a disastrous impact.

Despite the solidly documented negative experiences in relation to digitized identity and the many expert warnings against it, a range of powerful elite agents has a comprehensive program to impose this technocratic nightmare upon us. Consequently, it will require many people resisting strategically if it is to be defeated.

But if you remain sceptical of the risks and dangers of the technological world being constructed to imprison us, any time spent reading such books as the following should inspire you to consider ways to defend your true identity and, wherever possible, erase the existing elements of your digital identity, among many other responses: Shoshana Zuboff’s The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power, John W. Whitehead’s Battlefield America: The War on the American People, Derrick Broze’s How to Opt-Out of the Technocratic State as well as the several books on technocracy written by Patrick Wood and his articles posted on his website ‘Technocracy News and Trends’.

The bottom line is simple: Every time you submit to participation in some technological convenience, you  give up some control over your own life. And there is no easy way to reclaim it, assuming that you even can.

What can we do about this?

First, remember that despite the rhetoric to which we are routinely subjected about digital identity and other aspects of the elite’s technological prison (benignly labeled measures to enhance our ‘privacy, security and convenience’), the vast range of inconsistencies, illogical arguments and ongoing efforts to kill or enslave us – see ‘The Final Battle for Humanity: It Is “Now or Never” in the Long War against Homo Sapiens’ – are functions of elite insanity. See ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ with further detail in ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

This does not mean that we do not face a profound threat. We do. But it means that we cannot rely on reason or thoughtfulness alone to get us out of this mess: You cannot reason with insanity. And because the Global Elite controls international and national political processes, the global economy and legal systems, efforts to seek redress through those channels must fail.

See ‘The Elite Coup to Kill or Enslave Us: Why Can’t Governments, Legal Actions and Protests Stop Them?’

Moreover, if we are going to defeat this long-planned, complex and multifaceted threat, we must defeat its foundational components, not delude ourselves that we can defeat it one threat at a time or even by choosing those threats we think are the worst and addressing those first.

This is because the elite program, whatever its flaws and inconsistencies, as well as its potential for technological failure at times, is deeply integrated so we must direct our efforts at preventing or halting those foundational components of it that make everything else possible. This is why random acts of resistance will achieve nothing. Effective resistance requires the focused exercise of our power. In simple terms, we must be ‘strategic’.

If you are interested in being strategic in your resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ and its related agendas, you are welcome to participate in the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ campaign which identifies a list of 30 strategic goals for doing so.

In addition and more simply, you can download a one-page flyer that identifies a short series of crucial nonviolent actions that anyone can take. This flyer, now available in 20 languages (Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Spanish & Slovak) with several more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here:

‘The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset’.

If this strategic resistance to the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link accessible from the website).

And if you want to organize a mass mobilization, such as a rally, at least make sure that one or more of any team of organizers and/or speakers is responsible for inviting people to participate in this campaign and that some people at the event are designated to hand out the one-page flyer about the campaign.

If you like, you can also watch, share and/or organize to show, a short video about the campaign here:

‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ video.

Finally, while the timeframe for this to make any difference is now in doubt, if you want to raise children who are powerfully able to investigate, analyze and act, you are welcome to make

‘My Promise to Children’.

Conclusion

Resisting the digitization of your identity is an important element of effective resistance to the Elite’s ‘Great Reset’ program.

While there are some elements of this that are very difficult to avoid, such as facial recognition cameras that are virtually everywhere, it certainly includes not signing up for a digital identity or participating unthinkingly in those programs, such as using a QR code, getting a ‘vaccine passport’ or willingly submitting to efforts to palm-print or microchip you, that are linked to it.

But, as I have already noted, just resisting digitization of your identity is not enough.

We must strategically resist the foundational components of the Elite program.

The alternatives are death or slavery.

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Robert J. Burrowes has a lifetime commitment to understanding and ending human violence. He has done extensive research since 1966 in an effort to understand why human beings are violent and has been a nonviolent activist since 1981. He is the author of ‘Why Violence?’ His email address is [email protected] and his website is here.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

Purchase directly from the Global Research Online Store!

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.”

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

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***

This Catalogue contains 30 arguments for the abolition of NATO. Each argument is based on rational peace research analysis, in contrast to the fact-resistant propaganda that NATO and mainstream politics and media promote about the ’defensive’ peace alliance.

The Catalogue is based on the democratic assumption that diverse perceptions and concepts can exist – for instance, about what peace is – and that this hugely influential Western organisation is not sacrosanct and shall, therefore, not be exempt from critical analysis.

While set up in 1949, NATO passed its ”best before” date long ago. The alliance of 30 members and 40 partners has not been able to create the peace that is its overarching goal according to its founding treaty. Indeed, NATO violates that treaty on a daily basis.

Instead, with its expansion over the last 30 years, it has contributed to making the world a less peaceful place. The Ukraine tragedy – for which both NATO and Russia are responsible – speaks volumes about that sorry state of affairs in Europe but also beyond it.

Europe is now in the Second Cold War thanks to all major parties’ adherence to the primacy of weapons in deterrence mode instead of common security thinking and intelligent conflict-resolution as a road to peace. One by one, all the opportunities for a new European peace structure that arose when the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact dissolved have been squandered.

*

Most people focus on the violence – the war – in Ukraine. Undoubtedly, Russia is responsible for that and for violating international law. But what we should focus much more on is the underlying conflict. Violence always manifests itself and grows out of conflicts, conflicts that have been ignored, mismanaged, escalated, or provoked. NATO and its three-decades-long expansion, its presence in Ukraine since 1991 and its insistence – no matter the warning and the objective risks – to get Ukraine into NATO is the underlying conflict. NATO must take responsibility for that.

Because, as the Catalogue also argues, there were alternatives. But they were deliberately ignored.

*

Focus on conflict analysis and conflict understanding – and not on the violence – is the key to peace: What is the issue or problem that stands between the parties – not who is evil or guilty and should be punished?

The focus on violence and who is to blame is psychologically understandable – but for true, professional peace-makers, it is a waste of time and usually contributes to justifying more violence.

When the violence has died down, and a sustainable solution is found, legal processes may deal with guilt and crimes, but so may also new arrangements, truth commissions, forgiveness and reconciliation. These methods are all within our human capacity but – tragically – almost never found in security politics. NATO promotes none of them.

The fact is that we know more about the causes of violence and war than about the causes of peace. But that must not serve as an excuse for continuing the wrong conflict- and violence-promoting policies.

That said, there is enough research on the causes of violence reduction and peace for us to say that they are not what NATO promotes.

Its fundamental principles of deterrence, (forward) defence and its reliance on first-use of nuclear weapons will never lead to real peace, but they have brought us closer to war, including nuclear war.

*

NATO’s intellectual foundation concerning security and peace appears in inverse proportion to its military and political power.

Much of this report can be seen as a critical discussion of the alliance’s way of thinking – of its security Groupthink. It questions, even debunks, NATO’s conceptual and theoretical underpinnings and shows how out of date, contradictory and peace-preventing they are.

NATO defends them on its homepage in its conspicuously self-righteous propaganda piece called ”Setting the Record Straight” from July 2022. Part of it is fake, part of it convenient omissions – a cover-up for issues about NATO policies that ought now to be pushed up to the top of the international discourse about humanity’s future.

In addition, NATO employs a cover-up disinformation trick typical of our times. Instead of meeting criticism with an open mind and in a sound democratic spirit, it says that ”Since Russia began its aggressive actions against Ukraine, Russian officials have accused NATO of a series of threats and hostile actions.” Not so! Many of the points have been raised for years by intellectuals, diplomats, alternative media and civil society organisations, including TFF.

But tie them to Russia and – hocus pocus – critiques of the alliance are all implicitly transformed into Putin Verstehers, Putin lovers or “pro-Russian.”

That in itself indicates NATO’s intellectual level. A few billion people around the world do not subscribe to NATO’s so-called peace goal or the way it seeks to go about it. The present author, a professional peace and conflict researcher with 40+ years of experience in theory and on-the-ground work, is one of them.

It is perfectly possible to be critical of NATO’s activities without being categorised as guilty by fake association with its adversaries.

If not, NATO seems to have become a sort of secularised religion in a time when things are otherwise falling apart. Sacrosanct – for which reason all criticism equals ungodliness. This Catalogue discusses that interpretation too, and NATO Believers may see that as ’ungodly.’

Instead of conducting serious research and using scenario techniques to decide its policies, NATO merely makes postulates – about others, about its policies and how others ought to interpret it – favourably. NATO doesn’t seek to convince by rational analyses and arguments. NATO issues strategies, planning papers and summit minutes that are filled with postulates and serve as NATO scriptures.

Western mainstream media reports it all. Not a critical thought to be seen anywhere. They are members of the congregation.

For people who are not already NATO Believers, members of that congregation, NATO’s threat postulates appear to serve only one purpose, namely to support the imperial full-spectrum global dominance of the US and some alliance members and partners and legitimise NATO’s further armament, i.e. the Military-Industrial-Media-Academic Complex (MIMAC).

The overall goal for NATO has not been the security and peace of Ukraine, Russia and NATO Europe. It’s been to prevent Russia from being Ukraine’s partner and feel secure and to possess Ukraine fully. No compromise, no creative thinking about Ukraine as a cooperative project, no respect for public opinion in Ukraine. No idea about common security for all.

If you are not a NATO Believer, you’ll find ample evidence that Russia’s legitimate concerns have been ignored for about 30 years.

Promises indeed given to Russia in 1989-90 have been broken, even after Gorbachev and the Soviet Union had accepted that East and West Germany not only would be unified but also became a full member of NATO with no discussion of the nuclear weapons in Europe. It all happened on US and NATO’s premises while giving money to Russia – then on its knees – to force it to accept the fait accompli.

Furthermore – and what few know about – NATO has turned down all Soviet/Russian requests to become a member.

NATO’s argument that it respects all countries’ fundamental right to choose its own path, also when it comes to security arrangements, is simply fake. NATO woos prospective members in many ways, from an early moment (Ukraine since 1991), discussions about alternatives to NATO membership are non-existent.

At no point between 1991 and the end of 2021 was there any majority for NATO membership among the Ukrainian people, only among an elite, President Poroshenko’s in particular. When NATO decided in 2008 to make Ukraine a member, half of the Ukrainians were opposed to Ukraine’s membership in NATO, while fewer than one-fourth of Ukrainian people supported the Euro-Atlantic integration. So, whose right to freely choose? They – like all other new NATO members – were never granted a referendum.

*

The table of content that follows offers the 30 arguments categorised in seven themes – see the headlines A to G.

By way of ending this summary, let’s point out that NATO’s resource consumption – 12 times larger than Russia’s and increasing further – is out of place in a world struggling with saving humanity in record time before it is too late. The 2% of GDP goal for NATO’s future-secured militarism is intellectual bonkers.

NATO postulates who and what threatens it. It doesn’t explore opportunities for compromise or cooperation and does explain or argue. It exaggerates these threats to achieve even more superiority in what are fundamentally a-symmetric conflicts.

NATO is called ’defensive’ everywhere. It reveals that nobody knows the difference between offensiveness and defensiveness, a basic distinction in security discourses. It is pure public relations propagated by media people who are better at taking orders than reading books.

One thing is that NATO cannot and will not respect the new Nuclear Ban Treaty. Another is that its argument is that as long as nuclear weapons exist, it will remain a nuclear alliance. Think through the logic of that once more!

It’s easy to criticise. However, a doctor should move through diagnosis and prognosis and get to treatment – and not just criticise the patient for the disease. So Arguments 23-25 illustrate what could have been done instead to deal with Ukraine so that both Ukraine, Russia and NATO could have lived much more happily – and peacefully – than they do now.

NATO did have alternatives and could have done things differently. If securing peace had been the goal.

The final theme about NATO’s future draws up the gathering dark clouds, the alliance’s past and future cracks, and how ill-prepared it is for the world order change that takes place in the eyes of everybody else but the NATO Believers. It also argues that the Western knee-jerk, emotionalist and hateful and disproportionate reaction to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine will prove extremely counterproductive for these countries themselves and for NATO as well as accelerate the relative decline of the West.

Click here to read the full catalogue.

*

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***

Last week, President Biden announced he is creating a new program forgiving 10,000 dollars of student loan debt for those with income under 125,000 dollars a year. The amount rises to 20,000 dollars for borrowers who are Pell Grant recipients. Biden flip-flopped on the issue as he previously denied that the president has the authority to create a new student loan debt forgiveness program. He now claims a 2003 law allowing the Education Department to waive or modify provisions of federal student financial assistance programs to help students affected by war, other military operations, or a national emergency gives him the authority. Biden says debt forgiveness is necessary because of a continuing covid national emergency.

It seems odd that Biden would claim covid is a national emergency when even the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) has stopped recommending lockdowns, masks, and “social distancing.” A broad student loan forgiveness program also does not seem to fit the purpose of this statute, which was to provide student loan forgiveness for military personal, first responders, and others engaged in fighting the “war on terror.” Another basis offered for the president having the power to cancel the loans is a provision in the 1965 Higher Education Act that gives the Education Department limited authority to modify or forgive student loan debt. Given the Supreme Court’s recent decision narrowing the scope of a federal agency’s ability to unilaterally enact major new policies based on limited grants of authority, it is a definite possibility that the courts will overturn the student loan forgiveness program.

If the courts uphold the president’s action, then as many of 43 million Americans could have significant amounts, or even all, of their student debt forgiven. Of course, the debt does not go away; instead, the “forgiven” debt will simply be added to the national debt to be paid by the taxpayers either in the form of direct taxes or the hidden inflation tax. Thus, these loans will be paid off in part by taxpayers who did not go to college, paid their own way through school, or have already paid off their student loans. Since those with college degrees tend to earn more over time than those without them, this program redistributes wealth from lower to higher income Americans.

The student loan forgiveness will add between 300 and 500 billion dollars to the national debt. This is a greater increase in debt than the supposed “deficit reduction,” which consists of tax increase and expanding the IRS, contained in the phony Inflation Reduction Act.

President Biden also announced he is extending the student loans payment moratorium through the end of the year. “Temporary” federal benefits are rarely, if ever, truly temporary. When the time comes for the moratorium to expire, Congress will almost certainly extend it in response to pressure from constituents who benefit from the program, which includes colleges and universities in Congress members’ states and districts. The expectation that more student loan debt will be forgiven will also encourage more students to take out loans and will give colleges a new incentive to raise their tuition. This will raise the cost of the student loan and loan forgiveness programs.

Increasing debt caused by expanding student loans and loan forgiveness will increase pressure on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates low, leading to continued price inflation and an eventual major economic crisis. A step in avoiding this and reversing course is convincing a critical mass of people to understand that the welfare-warfare state and the fiat money system that underlies it are impractical and immoral.

*

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***

In yet another sign that the covid vaccination agenda of globalist institutions did not do quite as well as they had originally hoped, the Rockefeller Foundation has revealed that it (along with other non-profits) has been pumping millions of dollars into a behavioral science project meant to figure out why large groups of people around the world refuse to take the jab.

The “Mercury Project” is a collective of behavioral scientists formed by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), a non-profit group which receives considerable funding from globalist organizations and governments.  The stated goals of the project are rather non-specific, using ambiguous language and mission statements.  However, the root intentions appear to be focused on using behavioral psychology and mass psychology elements to understand the global resistance to the recent covid compliance efforts.

Mercury groups will be deployed in multiple nations and regions and will study vaccine refusal and the medical “disinformation” that leads to it.  They are operating with the intent to tailor vaccination narratives to fit different ethnic and political backgrounds, looking for the key to the gates of each cultural kingdom and convincing them to take the jab.

The Rockefeller Foundation and the SSRC note:

“Following the characterization of inaccurate health information by the U.S. Surgeon General as an “urgent threat,” and by the World Health Organization as an “infodemic,” the SSRC issued a call for proposals to counter the growing global threats posed by public health mis- and disinformation and low Covid-19 vaccination rates, and received nearly 200 submissions from around the world.

…With Covid-19 prevalent and rapidly evolving everywhere, there is a pressing need to identify interventions with the potential to increase vaccination take-up.”

The SSRC and the Mercury Project are not only receiving funding from foundations, but also government based institutions.  In June of 2022 the Mercury Project received another $20 million from the National Science Foundation, which claims to be an “independent” agency of the United States government.  Meaning, fabricating effective covid propaganda is becoming a money train for the small groups of behavioral researchers and psychologists that jump onboard.

The purpose of the NSF partnership with the Mercury Project is outlined on the SSRC website:

“This innovative partnership will support research teams seeking to evaluate online or offline interventions to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand and other positive health behaviors, including by targeting the producers and/or consumers of inaccurate health information and/or by increasing confidence in reliable health information.”

The Mercury Project lists these bullet points as their focus:

“Funded projects will provide evidence about what works–and doesn’t–in specific places and for specific groups to increase Covid-19 vaccination take-up, including what is feasible on the ground and has the potential to be cost-effective at scale. Each of the 12 teams will have access to findings from the other teams while exploring interventions including, but not limited to:

Conducting literacy training for secondary school students in partnership with local authorities to help students identify Covid-19 vaccine misinformation.

Equipping trusted messengers with communication strategies to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand.

Using social networks to share tailored, community-developed messaging to increase Covid-19 vaccination demand.”

In other words, their focus is propaganda, propaganda and propaganda.  The very basis of the existence of the Mercury Project presupposes that individuals cannot be trusted to make up their own minds about the information they are exposed to, and that they must be molded to accept the mainstream narrative.  It also presupposes that mainstream or establishment information is always trustworthy and unbiased.

The widespread non-compliance against covid vaccination mandates despite extensive government pressure is perhaps one of the most underappreciated events of the past century.  It is likely the reason why political elites and the corporate media went from a non-stop fear campaign against the public to almost no mention of covid within a matter of weeks.  It was as if the populace was being put through two years of waterboarding and then one day the torture simply stopped without explanation.

If vaccine passport laws had been implemented through western nations on the scale that governments and globalists were demanding, then the last vestiges of personal freedom would now be erased permanently.  All individual rights would become privileges granted by authorities and contingent on your submission to whatever covid booster shots or medical procedures happen to be in vogue at the time.  Think about it:  If they had gotten what they wanted, the west would look exactly like China does right now, or worse, with no economic participation without an up-to-date covid pass.

And, the threat still lingers.  Why the Mercury Project feels the need to compose vaccine propaganda for a virus with a mere 0.23% median Infection Fatality Rate is not explained.  And, if vaccination numbers from agencies like the CDC are accurate, then the population has already achieved herd immunity anyway (perhaps their numbers are not accurate?).  Why are globalist groups so obsessed with 100% vaccination for covid?  This is never explained.

They will say it’s all about saving lives, but if only 0.23% of people on average are at risk regardless of whether they are vaccinated or not, then public health is not really a believable explanation.  It would seem that the Mercury Project’s purpose is more about influencing people to vaccinate despite the science rather than in the name of science.

*

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Featured image is from Zero Hedge

Pages: 164, 15 Chapters

Price: $11.50 

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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.”

All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the “Translate Website” drop down menu on the top banner of our home page (Desktop version).

To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here.

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***

Europe could continue scrambling for gas supply for a number of winters due to low gas flows from Russia, according to the chief executive officer of supermajor Shell.

“It may well be that we will have a number of winters where we have to somehow find solutions,” Shell’s top executive Ben van Beurden said at a conference in Norway on Monday, as carried by Reuters.

Gas and power prices in Europe were setting fresh records every day of the past week, as natural gas supply from Russia continues to be limited ahead of the winter.

Energy prices in Europe have been smashing records after Russia’s Gazprom said on August 19 that it would halt all deliveries via Nord Stream to Germany for three days between August 31 and September 2. This announcement raised renewed concerns that supply via the pipeline could be further cut or halted altogether after the three-day unplanned maintenance at the end of August.

Soaring energy prices are fueling inflation and adding to the burden on households and industries across Europe.

In France, year-ahead power prices surged as much as 13% on Friday alone, to $1,003 (1,000 euro) per megawatt-hour for the first time ever, per Bloomberg’s estimates. French power prices have now soared tenfold over the past year.

Apart from rallying gas and power prices in the rest of Europe, France’s electricity supply is constrained by outages at some of its nuclear power plants.

In Germany, year-ahead electricity prices also hit a record of $843 (840 euro) per MWh on Friday, surging by 50% last week alone.

Last week, Europe’s benchmark gas prices at the Dutch TTF hub surged by 40% amid fears of a winter crunch in supplies.

This week, early on Monday the benchmark gas price slumped by 16% in early trade in Amsterdam, after Germany said its gas storage sites were filling at a faster pace than previously thought. According to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe, the EU gas storage was over 79% full as of August 28, with Germany’s storage at nearly 83% full.

*

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

Featured image is from OilPrice.com

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***

Why this site is allowed to operate is a good question. But you can access it easily, and even donate money to help the “cause,” if you are sympathetic to Nazis and think that assassinating people for their opinions is a wholesome way to support Ukraine.

Here is Roger Waters’ profile:

Roger Waters’ profile on Myrotvorets. [Source: Photo Courtesy of Deborah Armstrong]

The co-founder of Pink Floyd is known for his support of imprisoned WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world. 

[See Below]

***

I have written about the Ukrainian hit list known as Mirotvorets, or “Peacekeeper,” twice before. The first time was in an article about internet censorship, and the second time was when a 13-year-old Ukrainian girl, Faina Savenkova, was added to the list for publicly speaking out against Kyiv’s bloody war on Russian-speaking civilians in the eastern part of Ukraine, a region known as the Donbas.

Screen shot of Faina Savenkova’s profile on Myrotvorets. [Source: Photo courtesy of Deborah Armstrong]

Myrotvorets is a database which lists thousands of journalists, activists, and anyone else who is declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.” Their personal information is published, such as the addresses of their homes, phone numbers and bank account numbers; anything that can help them be easily located. When the people on this list are murdered, like Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli was, the word ЛИКВИДИРОВАН, “LIQUIDATED,” written in Ukrainian, is stamped across their picture in big red letters.

And, as of today, Darya Dugina, who was killed in a car bomb explosion in Moscow on Saturday, appears as “liquidated” on the website, adding more credibility to Russia’s assertion that she was assassinated by a Ukrainian nationalist who rented an apartment in the building where Darya lived in order to surveil her prior to her killing. It is believed that she was killed because her father, Alexander Dugin, was referred to as “Putin’s brain” and “Putin’s spiritual guide” in Western media, though these claims are really just more speculation.

Italian journalist Andrea Rocchelli is listed as “liquidated” on Mirotvorets site. [Source: Photo courtesy of Deborah Armstrong]

Darya Dugina, Russian war correspondent, is listed as “liquidated” on Mirotvorets site.

It seems that almost anyone can be added to this kill list. Even Henry Kissinger’s name is on the list despite his long history of Russophobia. But since he dared to air his concerns about how the U.S. is teetering toward war with Russia and China, Kissinger, who once suggested dropping nuclear bombs on Moscow, is now declared an “Enemy of Ukraine.”

Kissinger’s Myrotvorets profile. [Source: Photo courtesy of Deborah Armstrong]

Really, so many people have been added to this list that it has now become a badge of honor among those opposed to Ukraine’s regime, when they are included on the Myrotvorets site.

Filmmaker Igor Lopatonok is targeted by Myrotvorets because of a film he worked on with Oliver Stone. [Source: Photo courtesy of Deborah Armstrong]

Why this site is allowed to operate is a good question. But you can access it easily, and even donate money to help the “cause,” if you are sympathetic to Nazis and think that assassinating people for their opinions is a wholesome way to support Ukraine.

Here is Roger Waters’ profile:

Roger Waters’ profile on Myrotvorets. [Source: Photo Courtesy of Deborah Armstrong]

The co-founder of Pink Floyd is known for his support of imprisoned WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange, and for his opposition to imperialism and war, as well as for his awesome music, loved by millions around the world.

Waters recently referred on CNN to Joe Biden as a “war criminal” and said that Biden is “fueling the fire in Ukraine.”

“This war,” the musician stated, “is basically about the action and reaction of NATO pushing right up to the Russian border, which they promised they wouldn’t do when [Mikhail] Gorbachev negotiated the withdrawal of the USSR from the whole of Eastern Europe.”

Waters also said that Crimea belongs to Russia, because the majority of people living on the peninsula are Russian.

The rock star’s views have outraged the pro-NATO crowd and their Nazi friends, as well as the social justice warriors who froth at the mouth in support of whatever the mainstream media declare to be the “current thing.” Waters, who has always been something of a dissident and anti-war, the way all rock stars used to be when rock and roll was still real, is attacked mercilessly by the “woke” crowd, who are intolerant of all who are not in lockstep with their views.

Source: Photo courtesy of Deborah Armstrong

Social justice warriors to the rescue! Roger Waters is smeared for his dissident views. An investigation by the Russian Foundation to Battle Injustice reveals the names of the individuals, corporations and government entities which are believed to be the “organizers, sponsors and curators of the Ukrainian nationalist website.” While Myrotvorets is easily accessible to anyone who likes that sort of thing, this Russian human rights organization is blocked on major social media platforms like Facebook.

Some of the faces behind Myrotvorets named by the Foundation to Battle Injustice. [Source: fondfbr.ru]

Investigators say that the hit list, which was created in 2014, is supervised by the public organization “Myrotvorets Center,” which is headed by Roman Zaitsev, a former employee of Ukrainian Special Services, and by the public organization, “People’s Rear,” headed by George Tuka, a Ukrainian politician. The site is also controlled by the Security Service of Ukraine and was created on the initiative of Anton Gerashchenko, the adviser to Ukraine’s Minister of Internal Affairs. Gerashchenko faces charges of terrorism in the Russian Federation for his creation of the hit list.

In its early days, Myrotvorets published the names of so-called “Russian separatists” (residents of eastern Ukraine) who opposed the Maidan coup and believed it was economically unwise to break off relations with Russia. But later on, the site began publishing the personal data of public figures, journalists, activists and even children.

Myrotvorets became infamous following the murders of two Ukrainian public figures in 2015, whose private information was published on the website. Oles Buzina, a 45-year-old writer and journalist, and Oleg Kalashnikov, a 52-year-old deputy of the Ukrainian parliament, were killed just a few days after the publication of their home addresses.

In May 2016, Myrotvorets publicized the personal data of more than 4,500 journalists and media representatives from around the world who had received permission to work in the territory of Donbas. Investigators say that Myrotvorets’ administrators hacked the database of the Ministry of State Security of the Donetsk People’s Republic and gathered the phone numbers, email addresses and home addresses of foreign journalists whom Myrotvorets accuses of “collaborating with terrorists” because they are covering the war from territories not under Ukrainian control.

The journalists began receiving threatening phone calls and emails and experienced an increase in cyber-bullying and harassment on social networks. The government of Ukraine issued a statement that it had found no violations of the law in Myrotvorets’ actions, even though the human rights organization, “Committee to Protect Journalists,” condemned the site’s doxing of thousands of journalists working in eastern Ukraine.

The U.S. State Department confirmed that the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs was connected to the website, and acknowledged the publication of the journalists’ personal data, but the U.S. government has taken no action to block the website, although many Russian websites and alternative news media have been blocked by social media giants for publishing information about the war in Ukraine which does not line up with official narratives.

What’s more, there are companies in the U.S. which cooperate with Mirotvorets and provide the website with information.

Analysis of Mirotvorets’ network protocol. [Source: fondfbr.ru]

An analysis of the site’s network protocol by the Foundation to Battle Injustice found that the database uses the technological services of a company in California. And, if you look at the main page of Myrotvorets, you will see the address “Langley, the CIA headquarters in Virginia.” There are posts on the site from accounts that have names of Western intelligence agencies: CIA, FBI, NATO, MI5, NSA.

Who are these people, really? [Source: fondfbr.ru]

Andrew Weisburd, an American intelligence analyst, publicly announced his cooperation with the Ukrainian government in January 2015, around the time when Myrotvorets began publishing the personal data of journalists. Weisburd stated, “I’m just trying to do my part to help make bad things happen to bad people who are in the service of the Kremlin. And for the record, I’m not an army of one. I’m more like a one-man intelligence service.”

According to George Eliason, an investigative journalist who has been living in the Donbas for several years and writes for Consortium News, Joel Harding is another American who was involved with the creation of Myrotvorets. Harding is a self-proclaimed “information operations expert” who says he is a former U.S. Army intelligence officer and that he was a senior adviser at NATO. Harding developed a cyber-support strategy to oust Russian media from the Ukrainian information field and, according to Eliason, he wanted to control what news and information Ukrainians have access to on social networks, the internet and television.

According to Eliason and confirmed by a number of Foundation sources, the head of Bellingcat, Eliot Higgins, trained Ukrainians to find people on social media and add their data to Mirotvorets. Bellingcat, a Netherlands-based international investigative and research contractor, gets financial support from non-profit organizations and individuals associated with British and American intelligence, according to a number of independent investigations. Higgins, a citizen of the UK, served as a senior researcher at the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab.

The Foundation to Battle Injustice says it has evidence that a Bellingcat “operator,” Aric Toler, has personally trained Ukrainian nationalists to search for people’s personal information and enter it into the Myrotvorets database.

Foundation investigators also say they have sources and evidence connecting a group of cyber-activists known as “Ukrainian Cyberalyans” to Myrotvorets, and the group is accused of participating in attacks on Russian government and news websites, including the Russian Ministry of Defense, as far back as 2016. The intelligence data gathered from hacking those websites was reportedly handed to Ukrainian police and special services. Investigators believe that the “Cyberalyans” worked under the leadership of Dmytro Zolotukhin, a Ukrainian media expert.

A group of programmers, which the Foundation says was involved in the creation of Mirotvorets, has been collecting regular donations to bolster Ukraine’s participation in the “information war” since 2020. Their names are Artem Karpinsky, Andrey Baranovich, Alexander Galushchenko and Andriy Pereveziy. Though the programmers say they only received a few thousand dollars, data on transactions related to the group’s crypto wallets indicate the receipt of more than $100,000, according to Foundation investigators.

Under the guise of crowdfunding, investigators say, Myrotvorets receives considerable financial assistance from anonymous donors in the West. Virtually anyone can donate to the site, but the site’s most likely sponsors are Ukrainian nationalists living abroad and people associated with Western intelligence agencies who have enormous amounts of taxpayer money at their disposal.

The Foundation to Battle Injustice vows to continue its investigation of Myrotvorets until the website is finally removed.

Meanwhile, I’ll be rocking out to Pink Floyd.

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This article was previously published at medium.com and The Grayzone Project

Deborah Armstrong currently writes about geopolitics with an emphasis on Russia. She previously worked in local TV news in the United States where she won two regional Emmy Awards. In the early 1990’s, Deborah lived in the Soviet Union during its final days and worked as a television consultant at Leningrad Television.