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This was first published in August 2021.

If we have come this far then we have fully isolated, characterized, and genetically sequenced an exogenous virus particle. However, we still have to show it is causally related to a disease. This is carried out by exposing a group of healthy subjects (animals are usually used) to this isolated, purified virus in the manner in which the disease is thought to be transmitted. If the animals get sick with the same disease, as confirmed by clinical and autopsy findings, one has now shown that the virus actually causes a disease. This demonstrates infectivity and transmission of an infectious agent.

None of these steps has even been attempted with the SARS-CoV-2 virus, nor have all these steps been successfully performed for any so-called pathogenic virus. Our research indicates that a single study showing these steps does not exist in the medical literature.

Instead, since 1954, virologists have taken unpurified samples from a relatively few people, often less than ten, with a similar disease. They then minimally process this sample and inoculate this unpurified sample onto tissue culture containing usually four to six other types of material — all of which contain identical genetic material as to what is called a “virus.” The tissue culture is starved and poisoned and naturally disintegrates into many types of particles, some of which contain genetic material. Against all common sense, logic, use of the English language and scientific integrity, this process is called “virus isolation.” This brew containing fragments of genetic material from many sources is then subjected to genetic analysis, which then creates in a computer-simulation process the alleged sequence of the alleged virus, a so called in silico genome. At no time is an actual virus confirmed by electron microscopy. At no time is a genome extracted and sequenced from an actual virus. This is scientific fraud.

The observation that the unpurified specimen — inoculated onto tissue culture along with toxic antibiotics, bovine fetal tissue, amniotic fluid and other tissues — destroys the kidney tissue onto which it is inoculated is given as evidence of the virus’ existence and pathogenicity. This is scientific fraud.

From now on, when anyone gives you a paper that suggests the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been isolated, please check the methods sections. If the researchers used Vero cells or any other culture method, you know that their process was not isolation. You will hear the following excuses for why actual isolation isn’t done:

1. There were not enough virus particles found in samples from patients to analyze.
2. Viruses are intracellular parasites; they can’t be found outside the cell in this manner.

If No. 1 is correct, and we can’t find the virus in the sputum of sick people, then on what evidence do we think the virus is dangerous or even lethal? If No. 2 is correct, then how is the virus spread from person to person? We are told it emerges from the cell to infect others. Then why isn’t it possible to find it?

Finally, questioning these virology techniques and conclusions is not some distraction or divisive issue. Shining the light on this truth is essential to stop this terrible fraud that humanity is confronting.

For, as we now know, if the virus has never been isolated, sequenced or shown to cause illness, if the virus is imaginary, then why are we wearing masks, social distancing and putting the whole world into prison?

Finally, if pathogenic viruses don’t exist, then what is going into those injectable devices erroneously called “vaccines,” and what is their purpose? This scientific question is the most urgent and relevant one of our time.

We are correct. The SARS-CoV2 virus does not exist.

Sally Fallon Morell, MA

Dr. Thomas Cowan, MD

Dr. Andrew Kaufman, MD

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Notes

¹ Isolation, characterization and analysis of bacteriophages from the haloalkaline lake Elmenteita, KenyaJuliah Khayeli Akhwale et al, PLOS One, Published: April 25, 2019. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0215734 — accessed 2/15/21

² “Extracellular Vesicles Derived From Apoptotic Cells: An Essential Link Between Death and Regeneration,” Maojiao Li1 et al, Frontiers in Cell and Developmental Biology, 2020 October 2. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcell.2020.573511/full — accessed 2/15/21

³ “The Role of Extracellular Vesicles as Allies of HIV, HCV and SARS Viruses,” Flavia Giannessi, et al, Viruses, 2020 May

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While elite control over human societies started to gather pace with the Neolithic revolution 12,000 years ago, it was rapidly accelerated with the dawn of human civilization 7,000 years later. Since that time, ‘ordinary’ human beings like you and me have fought an unending sequence of battles to defend ourselves against these ongoing efforts by elites to kill or control us and capture the bulk of Earth’s resources for their own use.

We have had to fight off elites in a vast range of contexts: Pharaohs and Emperors politically, the Popes and other Vatican officials religiously, the City of London Corporation and other financial elites economically, monarchs and political elites nationally, and now a Global Elite that exercises enormous control technologically, economically, politically, militarily and otherwise over the entire world. For a fuller explanation of this point, see ‘Why Activists Fail’.

But there is a profound difference between all of the battles in earlier eras and the one we are in now.

If we lose this battle, there will be no subsequent battle.

The Long War against humanity will have been lost, once and for all.

Why? Because this battle is for everything that it means to be human – human identity, human freedom, human rights, privacy, dignity, free will and anything else that makes life worth living – and for control of the Earth and all its resources.

And while it is true that no human has any of these elements in anything like its entirety – who would claim to be fully ‘free’ in this world? – and many humans still lack all of these elements in any meaningful form, it is nevertheless true that the totalitarian nature of the program being imposed on us will transform the very concept of ‘human’ in a way that has only been conceived in the past 100 years or so and not previously attempted. Moreover, if successful, any ‘free will’ that humans might still possess will be utterly eliminated.

How is this Happening? The Deep Level

Despite the unending efforts of those people aware enough to perceive the true depth of this conflict, elites have been able to use a long series of techniques to ensure that the vast bulk of ‘ordinary’ people either do not perceive the conflict or waste their dissent by expressing it within frameworks designed and controlled by elites for that precise purpose. By doing this, it appears that dissent is ‘allowed’ and valued when, in fact, it is simply dissipated.

Thus, one key way in which elites have been able to subdue effective resistance is to convince us to believe in the delusion of ‘democracy’: to make us believe the twin delusions that we actually make choices about who will govern us and that those we elect will then represent us.

See ‘Killing Democracy Once and for All: The Global Elite’s Coup d’état That Is Destroying Life as We Know It’.

A second way in which elites have been able to distract us from where the real power in society lies is by convincing us that we have ‘legal recourse’ against injustice, including against elites who kill and exploit us. See

‘The Rule of Law: Unjust and Violent’.

A third way in which elites retain control over societies is by designing compulsory education systems that ensure that whatever unique emotional, intellectual, sensory and physical potential a child has at birth is either utterly eliminated within a few years of that birth or channeled to serve elite will.

See ‘Do We Want School or Education?’

And, of course, elites control populations by using extensive propaganda – marketed variously as ‘education’, ‘entertainment’ and ‘news’ – to ensure the passive submission of the bulk of the population to elite directives.

In short, an unending sequence of violence – ‘visible’, ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ – is used to terrorize the individual throughout childhood and adolescence into submissive obedience. This violence ensures that only a rare individual survives with any sense of ‘Self’, with the capacity to critique society and resist violence and exploitation strategically. See

‘Why Violence?’ and

‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So here we are in 2022, deeply engaged in the final battle to defend humanity, with most of the population unaware of what is happening and the bulk of those who are aware dissipating their dissent through elite-controlled channels.

Hence, as the World Economic Forum puts it so clearly in one of its promotional videos: By 2030, ‘You’ll own nothing. And you’ll be happy.’

See ‘8 predictions for the world in 2030’.

And that could well become true for the simple reason that key measures of the transformation taking place are shifting wealth from those with less to those who will shortly own everything, including you, as Dr Joseph Mercola points out – see ‘Who Will Eventually Own Everything, Including You?’ – and the technologies that will destroy your volition will also remove any concept of happiness.

In short, a transhuman slave needs nothing and experiences only those emotions that are programmed. A transhuman slave, whether as worker, soldier or consumer, will simply perform its programmed tasks until it is no longer functional and is ‘decommissioned’.

A human being without free will cannot resist because they do not know that they are enslaved.

How is this Happening? The Superficial Level

Well, under cover of a ‘virus’ that has never been isolated (and hence proven to exist) – see ‘COVID-19: The virus does not exist – it is confirmed!’, ‘Statement On Virus Isolation (SOVI)’ and

‘187 health/science institutions globally all failed to cite even 1 record of “SARS-COV-2” purification, by anyone, anywhere, ever’ – the Global Elite has been implementing its final ‘kill and control’ agenda via the World Economic Forum’s ‘Great Reset’ which details changes to some 200 areas of human life. See ‘The Great Reset’. As a matter of interest, do you remember being consulted about whether, for example, you would prefer to eat laboratory-grown ‘meat’ and insects rather than real food?

In fact, this ‘Great Reset’ is a long-planned and complex series of actions designed to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and leave those left alive as transhuman slaves in a technocratic world. For some detail, see

‘The Global Elite’s “Kill and Control” Agenda: Destroying Our Food Security’ and

‘Sleepwalking into Hell: The Global Elite’s Technological Coup d’état Against Humanity’.

Every day, while most people content themselves with trying to get on with living some version of the life that they experienced prior to 2020, another detail is mapped out and another measure is taken by compliant politicians in one or more countries around the world to destroy everything we have ever known. And the noose is ever-tightening.

Let me offer you just a taste of what else is happening, beyond what is ordinarily discussed as part of the ‘Great Reset’, as elements of the Global Elite’s agenda, about which you are not being consulted or even given thoughtful critiques to consider in government and corporate media.

The World Health Organization: International Health Regulations & the Pandemic Treaty

The World  Health Organization continues to promote its initiative to create a ‘Pandemic Treaty’. Using wonderful-sounding words such as ‘to build a more robust global health architecture that will protect future generations’, the Treaty sounds like something we have all been dreaming about. See

‘Global leaders unite in urgent call for international pandemic treaty’.

But like all elite initiatives of this nature, the devil is in the detail and, often enough, hidden in plain sight. Rather than offer a detailed critique here, you can consider several fine critiques by thoughtful scholars in the following articles or videos:

• James Roguski: ‘These proposed amendments will cede additional sovereignty, control and legal authority over to the World Health Organization.’ See ‘WAKE UP and Smell the Burning of Our Constitution’.

• Kit Knightly: The ‘Pandemic Treaty’ would ‘hand supranational powers to an unelected bureaucrat or “expert”, who could exercise them entirely at his own discretion and on completely subjective criteria. This is the very definition of technocratic globalism.’ See ‘“Pandemic Treaty” will hand WHO keys to global government’.
• Tessa Lena: ‘the proposed World Health Organization pandemic treaty… can potentially eradicate national sovereignty as we know it’. See ‘WHO Pandemic Treaty and the Banality of Evil’.
• Dr Joseph Mercola: ‘Make no mistake, the WHO pandemic treaty is a direct attack on the sovereignty of its member states, as well as a direct attack on your bodily autonomy.’ See ‘The WHO Pandemic Treaty. A Backdoor to Global Governance: “Stripping Away Individual Rights and Liberties”’.
• Professor Anthony J. Hall: ‘The creation of such a treaty would strip away jurisdiction from national, state, and provincial governments. Elected governments would cede away the right to formulate local health care policies through democratic means in the public interest.’ See ‘“Financial Reset” and Economic Warfare against Humanity: How Global Relations Should Be Restructured to Ensure National Sovereignty’.

But it would be unwise to ascribe too much significance to these latest, ongoing encroachments on national sovereignty. As explained above, the Global Elite has long exercised control over national governments (as well as international organizations) and the ongoing formalization of this process through the various measures outlined immediately above are simply the latest (health) details in this long-standing process.

Consequently, rather than focusing our resistance on these latest details by, yet again, falling for the trap of lobbying elite agents, as suggested by organizations such as the World Council for Health – see ‘#StopTheWHO: How You Can Take a Stand Against International Health Regulation Amendments’ – it is superior strategy to focus our resistance on the entire elite agenda by undermining elite power at its source.

World Government Summit

The World Government Summit was held in Dubai on 29-30 March 2022. See ‘World Government Summit 2022’. The event was sponsored and hosted by the United Arab Emirates, that bastion of ruthless dictatorship and human rights abuses – see ‘United Arab Emirates 2021’ – and brought together ‘thought leaders, global experts and decision makers from around the globe to share and contribute to the development of tools, policies, and models that are essential in shaping future governments.’ See ‘World Government Summit 2022’.

Klaus Schwab at the 2022 World Government Summit (Source: The Last American Vagabond)

‘The World Government Summit community is an opportunity for thought-leaders from the public and private sectors to join forces with world-renowned experts to design a better life for citizens across the world. Through Memberships and Partnerships, the Summit brings together change makers to shape a better future for humanity.’ See ‘World Government Summit: Community’.

It is reassuring to know that the WGS felt that the views of constituencies of ‘ordinary’ people – women, indigenous peoples, working people, the poor, the homeless, the unemployed, farmers, non-white peoples, religious people… – were not required and that the ‘world renowned experts’ were quite capable of designing ‘a better life for citizens across the world’ without even consulting us. Surely, after all, these high profile people fully understand the daily struggles of those who battle to survive, have a different worldview or are just simply not white, wealthy and ‘well-connected’.

In any case, as the host country’s long record reminds us, human rights are to be eviscerated in the world that is now being introduced, which is why those attending the Summit were obviously very supportive of the UAE’s ruthless approach to human rights.

As Derrick Broze noted in his thoughtful critique of this gathering: ‘Anyone with a functioning brain should… pay attention to this little known gathering of globalist Technocrats… [who] imagine a world where the tyrannical technological systems are invisible and the average person has zero recourse for preventing exclusion or punishment based on their social credit score.’ See ‘While You Were Distracted by Will Smith, the International Elitists Met at The World Government Summit’.

The Great Narrative

The Great Narrative was a forum sponsored by the World Economic Forum from 10-13 November 2021. According to the WEF: It was ‘a collaborative effort of the world’s leading thinkers to fashion longer-term perspectives and co-create a narrative that can help guide the creation of a more resilient, inclusive and sustainable vision for our collective future.’ The gathering involved ‘Top thinkers from a variety of geographies and disciplines – including futurists, scientists and philosophers – [to] contribute fresh ideas for the future.’

See ‘The Great Narrative’.

Again, perhaps like me, you find it difficult to identify with the people at this gathering. I wonder if they could see things from your perspective? Or mine?

The good news is that Klaus Schwab and Thierry Malleret, authors of the original book on Covid-19: The Great Reset, also wrote a book about The Great Narrative: For a Better Future. So at least you can read what they are doing to you and plan to do to you. As long as you can read between the lines.

But, again, Derrick Broze has been kind enough to offer a thoughtful critique:

Authoritarians use great narratives to legitimize their own power, and they do this by claiming to have knowledge and understanding that speaks to a universal truth…. With this understanding, the WEF’s call for a ‘Great Narrative’ should be seen for what it truly is – an attempt to displace all other visions of the future of humankind by placing the WEF and their partners at the heart of a narrative which paints them as the heroes of our time. This fits perfectly with the Technocratic philosophy employed by WEF founder Klaus Schwab. He envisions a future where ‘public-private partnerships’ of government and private business and so-called philanthropies use their wealth, influence, and power to design the future they believe is best for humanity. In actuality, the Technocrat philosophy merges with a Transhumanist mindset that sees humanity as limited, flawed, and in need of augmentation by technology in order to accelerate what Schwab calls the Fourth Industrial Revolution…. Of course, for Schwab and other globalists, the 4IR also lends itself towards more central planning and top-down control. The goal is a track and trace society where all transactions are logged, every person has a digital ID that can be tracked, and social malcontents are locked out of society via social credit scores. See ‘The Great Narrative and The Metaverse, Part 1: A Dystopian Vision of the Future’.

Sound like the sort of world that will be good for you?

Defeating the Global Elite’s Agenda

As you ponder the enormity of this elite project, I hope it will encourage you to deeply consider what meaningful resistance in this context will entail. We cannot succeed if we beg elite agents, including politicians, to fix it for us. In the last 18 months, five presidents who resisted the elite-driven narrative have been assassinated to remind us of that.

A Global Elite that is criminally insane – see ‘The Global Elite is Insane Revisited’ – is dealing with us ruthlessly and comprehensively.

So resisting it effectively and, ultimately, defeating its agenda, will require focused, strategic action that undermines the power of the Elite to implement its plan.

If you are interested in being part of this strategy, you can read how to do so on the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ website which offers further analysis, resources and a list of 29 strategic goals for doing so.

This includes campaigning to cause all sectors of society to refuse to develop and make available, or to purchase/use, technologies associated with the fourth industrial revolution and transhumanism (including 5G and 6G, military weapons, artificial intelligence [AI], big data, nanotechnology and biotechnology, robotics, the Internet of Things [IoT], and quantum computing) because these technologies will subvert human identity, human freedom, human dignity, human volition and/or human privacy.

See ‘Strategic Goals related to resisting the fourth industrial revolution and/or transhumanism’.

Beyond this it involves engaging with frontline personnel – ranging from police, the military (as well as veterans) and firefighters to healthcare professionals as well as emergency call-takers – to not enforce elite directives that are being implemented by governments. For just a few examples of frontline worker organizations already resisting part or all of the elite program,

see Police for Freedom, Global Veterans Alliance, World Doctors Alliance, Operation Freedom of Choice, Australian Firefighters Alliance and Bravest For Choice.

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 15 languages (Czech, Danish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish & Slovak) with more languages in the pipeline, can be downloaded from here:

‘The 7 Days Campaign to Resist the Great Reset’.

Notably, these latter actions avoid certain problems. Because they involve actions by people dispersed throughout the population, rather than people concentrated in one location (as with rallies), they are extremely difficult to interrupt. Hence, they virtually eliminate the risk of violent repression.

If strategically resisting the ‘Great Reset’ (and related agendas) appeals to you, consider joining the ‘We Are Human, We Are Free’ Telegram group (with a link available from the website).

Conclusion

The insane Global Elite has launched the final stage of a long-planned program to kill off a substantial proportion of the human population and enslave those left alive. They have agents (including international organizations such as the UN and WHO, politicians, medical personnel, government and corporate media) throughout society playing a part in implementing this program on their behalf.

If we are to defeat this program we must mobilize sufficient thoughtful and courageous people to act strategically to undermine the power of the Global Elite to inflict this program upon us. This can be done as described above.

As you ponder your involvement, remember this. If we do not fight successfully now to defend our humanity, no human being will have the opportunity to fight in future. It is ‘now or never’ for us all.

In that sense, this is the final battle.

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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’.

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Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, with a handbag full of unique message on Russia-Ukraine crisis and its geopolitical implications, has made a snapshot trip to North Africa and the Middle East, including visiting Algeria and Oman. Given what has been referred to as “special military operation” in Ukraine republic and the pressure of Western sanctions, and the fear of isolation, it is however important for Moscow to maintain several-years-old traditional ties with its partners in these two regions.

Within the Maghreb, Algeria remains one of the reliable partners for Moscow, and consequently Lavrov noting that Moscow and Algiers are united by strong and friendly relations, highlighted plans to boost military and technical cooperation, and also to ensure the renewal of a strategic agreement (treaty) that aims at scaling up  bilateral relations. The Declaration on Strategic Partnership signed on April 4, 2001 promotes the development of political dialogue and stepping up cooperation between the two parties.

“All these years we have been actively developing trade and economic cooperation,” Russia’s top diplomat said at a meeting with his Algerian counterpart Ramtane Lamamra. According the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reports, Lavrov noted that given “the rapidly developing friendly ties” it was necessary to maintain the high level of cooperation to sign “a new inter-state strategic document, which will reflect the new quality of our relations.”

The two diplomats were together meeting early April, when Lamamra visited Moscow as part of an Arab League delegation for negotiations on Ukraine. On the other hand, Lavrov last visited Algeria in 2019. Reports indicate that Algeria is among Russia’s three major trade partners in Africa. Besides economic cooperation, Moscow and Algiers claim fighting against terrorism. Algeria has been making its contributions to the International Counterterrorism Database established on Russia’s initiative.

Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune, on May 10, received Lavrov, both noted that Algiers is in favour of building further and stronger a comprehensive partnership, especially with a long history and one which is founded on principles of friendship and trust, with the Russian Federation. During the meeting, he reiterated an invitation to President of Algeria Abdelmadjid Tebboune on behalf of President of Russia Vladimir Putin to pay an official visit to the Russian Federation.

These developments are of particular significance this year as Russia and Algeria mark 60 years of diplomatic ties. The fast-growing trade and economic ties between the two countries was also highlighted. Algeria is one of Russia’s biggest trading partners on the African continent, with trade reaching $3 billion in 2022. In addition, Russia and Algeria work together closely under OPEC+ and the Gas Exporting Countries Forum.

Reports highlighted the development of military-technical cooperation, which has firm roots and good prospects. Moscow appreciates the trust Algerian friends put in the matter of strengthening Algeria’s defence capability. There are good prospects for continuing this trend. In addition, many Russian companies are interested in implementing joint projects with Algerian partners in energy, mineral resources, geological exploration, and pharmaceuticals.

Lavrov’s trip was aimed at ensuring that there are no plans to violate their obligations to Russia, particularly in the field of oil and gas supplies. In addition, Moscow sought to demonstrate that it continued to have its attention focused on the Middle East, the local Russian media Kommersant writes in its assessment and analytical news report.

The countries of the region have not joined the West’s sanctions against Moscow but they are concerned about the conflict’s impact on economic stability. Middle Eastern nations are considering the benefits that could be derived from the situation.

Western politicians are visiting the region one after another, hoping to find alternatives to Russian oil and gas. Major gas exporters, Qatar and Algeria, have found themselves in the center of the spotlight. Doha is already in talks with European partners. As for Algeria, it “cannot – and, most importantly, has no desire to – offer additional amounts of gas to Europe,” Director of the Center for African Studies at the Higher School of Economics Andrey Maslov noted.

In Oman located in the Middle East, Lavrov held meetings with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq Al Said and Deputy Prime Minister for the Council of Ministers of Oman Fahd bin Mahmoud Al Said. Both separate discussions were based on the entire range of Russian-Omani relations.

The meetings appreciated Sultanate’s balanced and objective position on regional situations like the Syrian settlement, and that of Syria’s return to the League of Arab States. The Sultanate of Oman, which never closed its embassy in Damascus, can be instrumental in this regard.

Oman plays an important role in strengthening stability and security in the Gulf region. Muscat’s balanced position makes it an important neutral platform for various diplomatic initiatives. This approach absolutely resonates with Russia’s Collective Security Concept for the Persian Gulf.

“We noted Oman and Gulf Cooperation Council countries, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, positive role in advancing a Yemeni settlement,” Lavrov noted in remarks. “We are on the same page with the understanding that we must do everything we can to resume direct Palestinian-Israeli talks and to find ways to finally resolve this drawn-out conflict based on available internationally accepted legal solutions.”

Lavrov’s visit to Oman has a great significance as well.

“Oman has always sought to take a special position and have its own opinion on all issues. Oman is also an experienced mediator in regional affairs, including the Yemen issue and Iran’s nuclear program,” Russian International Affairs Council expert Kirill Semenov noted.

All in all, Lavrov’s tour of the Middle East turned out to be a timely one amid speculations in the regional media about Russia’s declining role in the Middle East and its diminishing presence in Syria.

“Russia is focused on maintaining its presence in the areas that it finds crucial, primarily near its military bases in Latakia and Tartus, as well as in the areas where the presence of Russian troops is envisaged by agreements, particularly with Turkey. In other places, it may be about a temporary presence,” Semenov explained.

The Arab world is also seeking peace in Ukraine. In early April, the Arab League said it was ready to contribute to a peaceful resolution between Russia and Ukraine, and a delegation led by Secretary General of the Arab League Ahmed Aboul Gheit was sent to Moscow from Algeria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, the UAE and Sudan.

The Al Arabiya television channel reported citing its sources that the Arab League was prepared to offer its mediation to Russia and Ukraine and to host the negotiations. However, the group announced no specific initiatives a month after the report. As a member of the Arab League contract group, Algeria used this month’s negotiations to discuss some steps towards establishing peace in Ukraine republic.

In the meanwhile, as a direct result of the “special military operation” launched on February 24, Russia has come under a raft of stringent sanctions imposed by the United States and Canada, European Union, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and a host of other countries.

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

Featured image is from Russian Foreign Ministry/TASS

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Western media accuse Russia of perpetrating war crimes in Ukraine and committing human rights violations against civilians and prisoners. However, these same agencies are absolutely silent in the face of the evident practices of torture by Kiev’s agents against their enemies, which, curiously, present several similarities with the already known torture techniques applied by the CIA, according to a recent report by a journalist. The matter raises suspicions about a possible “instruction” that would be transmitted by American intelligence to Ukrainian neo-Nazis on “how to torture”.

On May 6, a meeting was held at the United Nations Security Council in order to discuss topics concerning the war crimes committed by Kiev against the population of Donbass during the eight years of conflict. Various evidence was presented, showing that such crimes are real and constitute indeed a serious problem in the region. The proofs included photos, videos, oral testimonies from residents of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as many other materials collected by journalists on the ground.

One of the journalist team’s leaders is the Dutch independent reporter Sonja van den Ende, who categorically claims that there is irrefutable evidence of the collaboration between Ukrainian official forces and neo-Nazi battalions in the execution of such crimes, showing that the practice is institutionalized and not restricted to isolated paramilitary groups. She also states that, despite the material presented, some Western countries – mainly US, UK, and France – showed an “arrogant” attitude, being disrespectful to the delicacy of the subject and ignoring the evidence of suffering of the people of Donbass, as well as despising the work of journalists.

These were some of her words:

“I participated in the UN Security Council Arria-Formula meeting on 6 May 2022 (…) The goal of this meeting was to present to the United Nations (UN) members evidence about war crimes committed by the Ukrainian Army in cooperation with the Azov Battalion which was provided by us, journalists on the ground, in Donbass. The evidence was presented in the form of videos and oral testimonies, from residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, especially Mariupol, Volnovakha and Melitiopol (…) [However] They (Western countries) completely ignored us and didn’t ask any questions (…) I personally made some remarks at the end of the meeting. I asked them if they want WWIII and why they don’t listen to us, the journalists, who are working on the ground”.

More than simply ignoring the gravity of the facts, the representatives of the Western powers even tried to deny the irrefutable evidence of such crimes. Rodney Hunter, political coordinator for the US Mission to the United Nations, claimed that Russia was “misusing” the Council’s functions and “spewing falsehoods, disinformation, lies and false narratives”. He ignored the fact that the accusations were not simply “made by Russia” but corroborated by an international team of journalists.

In fact, this Western attitude was already expected by all analysts who study the Ukrainian case. Silence and disdain have already become central hallmarks of the way Kiev’s allies deal with the countless evidence of war crimes, genocide and torture committed by the Ukrainian armed forces and Russophobic neo-Nazi militias. Russia has been trying to resolve the case in international instances for a long time, but without success, as is the case with the lawsuit filed within the European Court and ignored by the judges. The impossibility of peaceful resolution was one of the reasons why the military operation became inevitable.

What seems most shocking, however, is the fact that the reports pointed out by Van den Ende states as a conclusion that there is a similarity in practices between the acts of torture witnessed in the Donbass and those practiced by US agents in other parts of the world. Some of the journalists who participated in the investigations in Donbass, including Sonja herself, had previously participated in similar activities elsewhere, investigating crimes of torture committed by Americans. These professionals see an extreme similarity of practices in both cases and believe that this is not a mere coincidence.

The Dutch journalist stated that the torture techniques she saw practiced in a secret Ukrainian prison in Mariupol are strikingly similar to those practiced by the CIA in clandestine detention sites around the world. These techniques include acts of extreme violence, such as the so-called “enhanced interrogations”, where the interrogated are physically hurt in order to give information – a practice that was already confirmed by the US Senate, in 2014, to have been used by the CIA against prisoners.

Furthermore, Van den Ende claims that she has found evidence that Ukrainian neo-Nazis practice the so-called “waterboarding”, a drowning technique that is also widely used by the CIA, which leads her to believe that the Azov Battalion and other Ukrainian nationalist militias have been specifically trained by the Americans on “how to torture” their detainees.

Considering the high level of proximity between US intelligence and Ukrainian neo-Nazis, it does not seem surprising that the US has in fact operated some sort of clandestine training, teaching torture techniques considered “efficient”. What is surprising is that international organizations remain silent in the face of such an absurd fact. Something so serious cannot in any way be ignored: sanctions must be applied against the US for its connivance with Ukrainian crimes in Donbass.

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

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

It’s amazing how NATO and the EU can watch the crisis in Ukraine and not reflect on issues like these:

1) Prioritising weapons over all other security tools creates neither security nor sustainable peace; it creates hubris, anti-intellectualism and militarism.

2) Alliances can only thrive if they appoint enemies.

3) Military deterrence doesn’t work but stimulates escalation. With confrontational policies and offensive weapons, there can never be common security, stability or peace.

4) Applying one set of rules for “us” – e.g. the international rules-based order in contravention of UN-based international law – and another for “them” is moral fraud.

5) Creating hard borders with polarisation is unwise. Lacking empathy and a sense of history makes for counterproductive, self-destructive decisions.

6) Peace is about analysing the conflicts – or problems – that always stand between the parties. War happens when conflicts are neglected.

Since 1949, NATO has promised its taxpayers that they would live in peace. But today’s Europe is closer to catastrophe than ever before.

The world-domineering Western paradigm of security politics has come to its end. But more dollars and weapons are pumped into it.

By and large, the EU sides with and submits to US policies because, as a Union, it has failed to develop an independent comprehensive one-voice foreign and security policy.

Immediately after the Russian military intervention in Ukraine, it resorted to tit-for-tat devoid of analyses of the longer-term consequences to basically cut off – cancel – everything Russian. This is blind punishment and hate mood as if Russia would not exist in the future.

Next, it argued that China should put pressure on Russia and “help” the West to stop that war and that China should face negative consequences if it doesn’t.

Whether this is a genuine plea for help or another way of promoting the Western Cold War agenda vis-a-vis China remains to be seen. This attitude will prevent progress at the upcoming China-EU summit.

The West’s sanctions on Russia are extraordinarily ill-considered and will have self-destructive consequences. For a while, they will surely hurt the Russian innocent people, but they will, beyond a doubt,  boomerang back on the West, with a deep socio-economic crisis following.

Russia will see no reason to work with the West in the future – and will orient itself toward countries including Iran, India, and China. Contrary to the increasingly unreal and autistic perceptions of the West, the whole world does not support its reactions to Russia’s military operation in Ukraine.

The European Union has displayed a politically and rhetorically anti-China stand – on issues related to China’s Xinjiang, Hongkong, Taiwan, as well as provacation of Lithuania – but is now asking China to “help” solve a problem which several Union members have contributed vitally to as NATO members.

NATO’s confrontational expansion was always unwise. NATO should have been closed down when the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union dissolved.

History is catching up. The EU has failed miserably in living up to its own Lisbon Treaty and failed to work for peace inside the Union and the world.

If the EU/NATO members had distanced themselves from the US-promoted coup in Kiev in 2014 and insisted on other security arrangements for Ukraine’s future instead of full NATO membership, the world would not be in this dangerous situation.

The US and NATO want to tie up Russia’s militarily for as long as possible and undermine its economy and society, then turn to what it foolishly believes is its No.1 adversary: China.

Russia, of course, has other options and should negotiate a ceasefire and a new future relationship with Ukraine. The EU will have to become more independent to contribute constructively to the emerging multi-polar world order.

Europe desperately needs an entirely new all-European security and peace system, a kind of European UN, based on common security with Russia, trans-armament toward defensive military structures, non-threatening postures, early warning and – above all – civilian, civilised negotiations, instead of defunct and militarist escalatory deterrence.

In this sense, the NATO-Russia conflict in Ukraine could be used as a constructive turning point. It should mark the end of the outdated NATO paradigm and its peaceless policies.

It would be good for humanity if the East and West Europeans could creatively recognise their common interests and thereby do good for the future of humanity and practise cooperation instead of confrontation with China.

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Jan Oberg is director at the Transnational Foundation for Peace and Future Research in Lund, Sweden.

Featured image: China-EU relationship (Photo: VCG)

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***

The war in Ukraine is quintessentially Clausewitzean. And to understand it, we need to return to Carl von Clausewitz, the doyen of modern war, who recognised that war is practically limitless in variety, “complex and changeable,” and noting that every age has its particular kind of war with “its own limiting conditions and its own particular preconceptions.” 

Clausewitz’s contemporaneous observations of the character of nineteenth-century warfare are often misinterpreted confusingly as an advocacy of the unchanging nature of war itself. This paradigmatic complacency has engendered the Western narrative of the Ukraine conflict. 

Evidently, the Russian side did not conform to the Western narrative. The ensuing bewilderment threatens to fragment western unity. Not all NATO countries are anymore speaking in one voice. 

The US President Joe Biden and Britain’s Boris Johnson vow that they will be satisfied with nothing less than a Russian defeat. The New Europeans — Poland and the Baltic States principally — also demand an apocalyptic end to Russia’s history. Somewhat aloof stands Germany’s chancellor Olaf Scholz who merely says he doesn’t want Russia to “win.” France’s Emmanuel Macron keeps saying that without engaging Russia, European security architecture cannot be built. Then, there are outright sceptics like Greece, Turkey and Hungary. 

Biden and Johnson have the upper hand since they manipulate the current set-up in Kiev and leverage the war. But even these two hardened politicians seem to realise lately that things are more complicated. The Joint Vision Statement issued in Washington yesterday following the US-ASEAN special summit completely eschews the usual American rhetoric and hyperbole over Russian “aggression.”

It omits any references to Russia or the Western sanctions and instead underlines “the importance of an immediate cessation of hostilities and creating an enabling environment for peaceful resolution.” (See my blog Indo-Pacific strategy adrift in an illusion.) 

Nonetheless, incredible as it may seem, the fact remains that the US Congress is offering Biden a massive war budget to help Ukraine, which exceeds the state department’s annual budget and is more than what he proposes to spend on green energy projects in the US. 

Equally, the EU, which imposed such harsh sanctions on Russia, are realising belatedly that the sanctions are hurting European economies more than the Russian economy. In some European countries, the annual rate of inflation is approaching 20%, while prices in the eurozone increased by over 11%, on average. During a videoconference in Moscow on Thursday, President Putin highlighted that:

• Russian companies are steadily replacing Western partners who left due to sanctions; 
• 130 million tonnes of grain expected in Russia’s harvest this year, including 87 million tonnes of wheat — “an all-time high in Russian history”; 
• Inflation rates in Russia have fallen several-fold on March levels;
• Budget surplus have reached 2.7 trillion rubles; 
• There has been a record-breaking foreign trade surplus; 
• The ruble is posting “better results than all other foreign currencies” since early 2022.  

Critical voices are heard lately that anti-Russia sanctions are only exacerbating the US inflation crisis, and that prioritising aid to Ukraine is distracting Biden from more important domestic issues. Senator Rand Paul has demanded auditing of the gravy train to Ukraine, citing the analogy of Afghan war. He noted that the latest spending package will bring total US aid to Ukraine to $60 billion since the conflict began in February, which is nearly as much as Russia earmarks annually for its entire defence budget! 

Yet, Russia has no timeline for this war. It is taking its own time to systematically destroy Ukraine’s military capabilities, industrial base and infrastructure comprehensively. Biden and Johnson thought attrition would set in, as Russia is fighting the “collective West,” after all.  

But Putin reminded them on Thursday that Russia won World War II “not only by fighting on the frontlines, but also because of its economic might. At the time, it [Russia] had to confront not only Germany’s industrial potential, but Europe as a whole, enslaved as it was by the Nazis.” Putin deliberately shot off a stark reminder that will resonate in Europe. 

An EU consensus on oil embargo against Russia already seems elusive. Twenty European companies have so far complied with Moscow’s end-May deadline to make payments for gas purchases in ruble currency. And they include Germany, Europe’s powerhouse. 

The EU’s top executives, Commission president Ursula von der Leyen and foreign policy chief Josep Borrell, two ardent Atlanticists and hardcore Russophobes, pushed the envelope too far. Will EU unity survive these cracks? Scholz’s call to Putin Friday, which reopened a line of communication after several weeks, needs to be understood against this backdrop. Interestingly, US Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin also spoke with his Russian counterpart Sergey Shoigu on Friday — their first conversation since Russian operations began in February. 

Indeed, it is entirely conceivable that the time may be approaching to revisit the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline project. The closure of all Russian pipelines passing through Poland and Ukraine’s pipeline shutdown leaves Germany tantalisingly close to electricity shortage interrupting industrial production. (here and here)

Bloomberg reports, citing data from the International Energy Agency (IEA) that despite Western sanctions, Russia’s oil export revenue jumped some 50% in 2022. Russian shipments have increased by some 620,000 barrels per day in April, returning to their pre-sanctions average. Due to increased demand, more shipments were directed toward Asia. Ironically, the EU, despite the executive’s hardline stance, has so far remained the largest market for Russian fuel with 43% of the country’s oil exports going to the bloc in April, the IEA estimated.

Paradigms, to be relevant, must accurately reflect the reality. When that is no longer possible, the paradigms must be replaced, or the leaderships that rely upon them will inevitably fail. Politicians like Biden and Johnson are used to thinking in terms of a Westphalian world, and are taking time to come to terms with anomalies in the existing paradigm when new powerful trends are dramatically altering the concept of war. 

Karl Marx called it the “annihilation of space by time.” The phenomenon of regional conflict has become extinct, and localised violence has global implications thanks to advancement of transportation and communication and technologies. The paradigm-shifting present period is caused by a military-industrial revolution, which makes it a period of sharp, discontinuous change where existing military regimes are being upended by new more dominant ones, leaving old ways of warfare behind. 

One would have thought that on a Clausewitzian battlefield, ancient armies arrayed against one another would fire and manoeuver according to the commander’s directions. But in Ukraine, by contrast, these have been replaced with ambient forms of physical and nonphysical violence—sniping, lethal drones, hypersonic missiles, electronic attack, spoofing, disinformation on the other and so on. Russia is practising a warfare that the West is not used to — where wars aren’t won anymore. It is highly unlikely that there will be a ceremonial occasion bringing the Ukraine war to an end. 

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Featured image: Russia expects grain harvest of 130 million tonnes of grain, including 87 million tonnes of wheat – “an all-time high in Russian history,” says President Vladimir Putin, Moscow, May 12, 2022 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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***

Early on Wednesday morning, Israeli forces shot and killed Shireen Abu Akleh, the veteran Palestinian journalist and senior correspondent with Al Jazeera Arabic, during a raid just outside a refugee camp in the occupied West Bank. 

Abu Akleh, 51, was shot by a sniper as she attempted to cover the raid in Jenin, an incident her employer, the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network described as “a blatant murder, violating international laws and norms”. At the time of the shooting, Akleh was wearing a vest that clearly identified her as a member of the press.

The incident, which also resulted in her colleague Ali Asmoadi being shot in the back, was witnessed by several other journalists including Middle East Eye contributor Shatha Hanaysha.

Akleh was transferred to Ibn Sina hospital in Jenin where she was pronounced dead.

As news of the shooting spread, the Israeli government began unrolling a series of statements and videos that contradicted events leading up to her death.

Israel’s ministry of foreign affairs released a video in which it claimed that “Palestinian terrorists, firing indiscriminately, are likely to have hit Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Aqla”.

Exactly an hour later after that statement was issued, the Israeli government released a statement on behalf of Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in which his office attempted to further diffuse responsibility that added a cloud of uncertainty over the killing.

“According to the information we have gathered, it appears likely that armed Palestinians – who were firing indiscriminately at the time – were responsible for the unfortunate death of the journalist,” Bennett was quoted as saying.

Meanwhile, Hananya Naftali, an Israeli influencer who works with former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, also released a flurry of social media posts in which he falsely claimed that Abu Akleh had been buried almost immediately “because the Palestinian Authority wants to conceal the truth”.

Thirty minutes later, he performed a u-turn on this claim, too. Abu Akleh is scheduled to be buried on Friday.

It wasn’t long before mainstream western media news outlets began presenting the story as unclear.

Huwaida Arraf, long-time Palestinian-American activist and congressional nominee, told Middle East Eye that none of this was surprising.

“Israel’s propaganda machine plays a big role here. They deliberately muddle facts and present misinformation that the mainstream media faithfully repeats,” she said.

‘Clashes’ and ‘Palestinian bullets’

In its depiction of Abu Akleh’s murder, The Guardian described Al Jazeera as having “accused” Israel of killing one of its journalists, immediately balancing this claim by platforming the Israeli position that the journalist “may have been hit by Palestinian fire”.

Whereas Al Jazeera’s “accusation” was backed by witness testimony, the Israeli retort that it took place in the middle of clashes or a result of Palestinian cross fire came without any evidence.

Likewise, The Associated Press wrote that Abu Akleh had been “killed by gunfire”, purposefully obscuring the strong allegation that it was an Israeli sniper who had killed her.

The story also echoed Israeli talking points of “chaotic circumstances”, relegating Al Jazeera’s claim of a “targeted assassination” as hyperbole.

But the most alarming coverage came from the The New York Times which not only followed Israel’s official narrative, it also mischaracterised Al Jazeera’s official statement.

“Al Jazeera said one of its journalists was killed in the West Bank city of Jenin during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen,” the Times wrote.

Al Jazeera did not mention clashes in its statement.

The New York Times issued a correction later on Wednesday, claiming to have “misstated” Al Jazeera’s comments.

“[Al Jazeera] said she was killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank city of Jenin; it did not say she was killed during clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian gunmen,” the correction at the bottom of the story read.

“By the time corrections are made, people are no longer paying attention. In this case, plenty of journalists who were there when Shireen was killed, stated in no uncertain terms that it was the Israelis who shot at them,” Arraf said.

And even though the Times issued a correction, the erroneous reference to clashes between Israeli forces and Palestinian fighters remained in the story.

The Times only removed its attribution to Al Jazeera. In fact, by Thursday afternoon the story still claimed that there remained uncertainty over the details around the event, and that clashes were ongoing when the shooting took place.

“The circumstances surrounding the shooting of the journalist, Shireen Abu Akleh, a Palestinian American, were not immediately clear but it happened as clashes between the Israeli military and Palestinian gunmen took place in the city,” the Times wrote.

The New York Times did not respond to MEE’s response for clarity or comment by the time of publication.

Outrage towards mainstream coverage

The mainstream media’s coverage of Abu Akleh’s murder has left Palestinian rights activists in the United States aggrieved.

Much of the outrage is rooted in the knowledge that Israeli violence continues unabated with little recourse for justice.

According to Reporters Without Borders, at least 144 Palestinian journalists have been wounded by Israeli forces across the Gaza Strip, West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2018.

In May 2021, Israeli air strikes on Gaza destroyed Al Jalaa Tower, which housed a number of media offices used by outlets including MEE, Al Jazeera, the Associated Press, and other local media organisations.

In late April 2022, a formal complaint was filed with the International Criminal Court (ICC), alleging that Israel‘s “systematic targeting” of Palestinian journalists and its failure to investigate their killings amounts to war crimes.

“The hypocrisy of mainstream media coverage was on full display when journalists were positively covering Ukrainian civilians’ making and using Molotov cocktails as a form of brave resistance. Israeli soldiers shoot Palestinian kids dead for holding a Molotov cocktail and you don’t hear a peep from the same journalists,” Arraf said.

Even though the Israeli military has yet to conclude its investigation, only publishing initial findings of its probe, the Israeli army has continued to push the message that there are indications that Abu Akleh was killed by Palestinian fire.

An unnamed Israeli official told Haaretz that this “PR blitz” has already influenced leading news organisations including The Associated Press, Sky News, the BBC, and AFP.

The official said that these agencies – which initially reported that Abu Akleh had been killed by Israeli fire – were now reporting that the circumstances of her death are under investigation.

‘Parroting Israeli talking points’

Nerdeen Kiswani, co-chair of Within Our Lifetime, a Palestinian American youth-led grassroots organisation based in New York City, described the mainstream media’s coverage as “disgusting, painful and hurtful”.

“You know, they’re not even saying who killed her. They’re just saying she died, you know, or that she got shot and they’re not really ascribing blame to the perpetrators in this situation,” Kiswani told MEE.

“And that is devastating because she spent her whole life uncovering Israeli violence and Israeli colonialism against Palestinian people. And then when they take away her life, the mainstream media won’t even do the due diligence of simply reporting the fact on who killed her.”

In response to the Times’ coverage, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), an anti-Zionist organisation opposed to Israeli occupation, called on its members to write to newspaper’s editors to demand better coverage.

“Instead of reporting the facts – as confirmed by other journalists present at the scene, by video footage and by rights groups like B’Tselem – western media has simply parroted talking points from the Israeli military,” Sonya E Meyerson-Knox, communications director of JVP, told MEE.

“And so, instead of describing how an Israeli military sniper fired at the head of a clearly identified journalist, we have reports of “unclear circumstances” and no attribution of who actually killed Shireen. Biased reporting like this isn’t just racist, it’s broadcasting free propaganda for an apartheid regime.”

Others like Azadeh Shahshahani, director of Project South, said that if media coverage continued in this vein, it “would make them no less than complicit in covering up war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

“As we have seen with the war on Ukraine, media coverage is instrumental in shaping public opinion and guiding public policy. It is incumbent upon media outlets to start telling the truth about the atrocities of Israeli Apartheid,” Shahshahani said.

Several Palestinian organisations have said they would hold a rally on Friday evening outside the New York Times’ headquarters in Manhattan. Within our Lifetime said they will hold a vigil for Abu Akleh at the annual Nakba rally in Brooklyn on Sunday.

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Featured image: Shireen Abu Akleh was an icon in Palestine and throughout much of the Arabic speaking world for her reporting from the occupied territories (Illustration/MEE)

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***

The following is an unpublished transcript of an interview I did for a TV channel that covers issues of interest to the worldwide Sikh diaspora. It concerns three pieces of farm legislation in India that were repealed in late 2021 after a prolonged protest by India’s farmers that gained global support and recognition.

Although the interview took place before the laws were repealed, the issues discussed remain highly relevant. That is because farmers are concerned that the government is dragging its feet on a number of issues more than six months after the legislation was repealed, not least a guaranteed minimum support price for produce procured by the public and private sectors, loan default injustices and other matters that have fuelled and deepened the country’s agrarian crisis.

The government’s apparent reluctance to implement the demands of farmers might indicate that the global corporations and financial institutions behind the legislation remain steadfast in seeking to secure what the laws aimed to bring about – the full-scale neoliberal marketisation of India’s agrifood sector, including the displacement of peasant farmers and independent, indigenous enterprises.     

The interview took place with prominent UK-based campaigner Ranjit Singh Srai.

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Ranjit Singh Srai (RSS): There has been much said about PM Modi’s new farm laws in terms of the motivation and the potential effect on farmers as well as the wider population. The government’s narrative has been pushed by its media friends and those taking part in the agitation have had their arguments patronisingly rubbished and simply been targeted as foreign agents, criminals and even terrorists. How do you see the outcome of any implementation of these new laws and the motivation behind them?

Colin Todhunter (CT): The new farm laws are being narrowly framed by certain commentators and sections of the corporate media. We hear they will be good for farmers and good for consumers. Farmers will have more freedom of choice when it comes to selling their produce and we will see more distribution networks and opportunities emerge.

We also hear that farmers will receive good prices as well. Farmers are concerned about the minimum support price mechanism being done away with. But we also hear that this will not occur and, even if it does, it will not matter so much because farmers will still be receiving good prices as a result of the farm legislation.

So, it is all being portrayed as a great success for farmers, for consumers and for the agribusiness corporations. Once this narrative is established, as it has been, it becomes easy to portray anyone who questions any of it as being somehow politically motivated.

But this depiction of those who protest or raise uncomfortable questions about the farm laws is little more than a diversion. To properly understand the new legislation and the reasons behind it, we must go back 30 years to India’s foreign exchange crisis.

At that time, the IMF and the World Bank granted India the equivalent of £90 billion worth of loans (around double that figure in 2022 given inflation) in return for the government dismantling its state seed supply system and reducing public funding for agriculture. India was also directed to shift towards the growing of cash crops to earn foreign exchange and to move 400 million people from the countryside into the cities.

Although many factors are at play, reducing the public sector’s role and the consequent lack of support for agriculture in general have to a large extent fuelled the ongoing agrarian crisis in the country.

This plan for agriculture has been going on for a long time regardless of which party has been in power. But under the current administration and with the implementation of the three farm laws, this programme is set to be accelerated.

The farm legislation is intended to drastically dilute the role of the public sector in agriculture, reducing it to a mere facilitator of private capital, leading to the entrenchment of industrial agriculture and the replacement of small-scale farms. To put it in simple terms, the legislation is intended to deliver a knockout blow to small holder agriculture and the peasantry.

(It must be added here that this form of agriculture remains vital. Contrary to much mainstream thinking, it can be said that rural India subsidises urban India. It provides a vast but cheap pool of labour to work in more menial positions. Millions migrate between city and village, especially when times get tough. When work dries up – or when the COVID-related lockdown was enforced – they headed back to their villages to survive. Moreover, the money earned in the city can be insufficient to live on and farming activities bring in much-needed revenue.)

The norm will eventually be industrial GMO commodity crop agriculture suited to the needs of the likes of Cargill, Archer Daniel Midlands and India’s giant retail and agribusiness giants as well as global agritech seed and chemical corporations. It could result in hundreds of millions of former rural dwellers without any work given that India is heading towards or is already experiencing jobless growth.

It is unfortunate that prominent journalists and media outlets in India are celebrating the new farm legislation and have attempted to discredit farmers who are protesting as being anti national. As if handing over the sector to foreign corporations is in anyway serving the national interest. What prominent figures are actually doing, whether they are aware of it or not, is cheerleading for the destruction of local markets and small-scale enterprises – farmers, hawkers, food processers or mom and pop corner stores.

By implication, they are helping to ensure that India is surrendering control over its agrifood sector to global players. They are doing the bidding of the World Bank, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and global agrifood corporations which want India to eradicate its buffer food stocks and dismantle the public food distribution system.

To understand what is planned for agriculture, we also need to understand what is planned for retail. This, too, could decimate millions of livelihoods in the retail sector. For example, Walmart entered India in 2016 with a multibillion dollar takeover of the retail start-up Jet.com. In 2018, this was followed by a takeover of India’s largest online retail platform, Flipkart. Today, Walmart and Amazon control almost two thirds of India’s digital retail sector.

In 2020, Facebook and a US based private equity firm committed over 7 billion U.S. dollars to Reliance Jio. It means that customers will soon be able to shop using Facebook’s chat application, WhatsApp.

These are key developments because, by monopolising digital retail platforms, these companies will not only control data about consumption and consumer preferences but will also control data on production, logistics, who needs what, when they need it, who should produce it, who should move it and when it should be moved. The online world and the offline world are not separate; they are intertwined. E-commerce platforms will be able to shape the entire physical economy.

What is concerning is that Amazon and Walmart have sufficient global clout to ensure they become a duopoly, controlling much of Indian agriculture, including the nature of agricultural production itself. Markets will no longer matter; so-called platforms will take over.

At the same time, the aim is to allow financial speculators and global agribusiness to buy up rural land and amalgamate it. The end game is a system of contract farming that serves the interests of big tech, big agribusiness and big retail. Small-holder agriculture and small-scale retail are regarded as impediments to this.

Through what is called ‘data-driven agriculture’, with the data owned and controlled by corporate interests, the farmer will be told how much production is expected, how much rain is anticipated, what type of soil quality there is, what type of genetically engineered seeds and input are required and when the produce needs to be ready.

Traders manufacturers and cultivators who remain in the system will become slaves to the platforms and stripped of any independence. It is a clear concern that India will cede control of its entire economy its politics and its culture to these all-powerful modern-day East India companies.

By reducing public sector buffer stocks, side-lining the role of the Food Corporation of India and by introducing corporate-dictated contract farming and full-scale neoliberal marketisation for the sale and procurement of produce, India will be sacrificing its farmers and its own food security for the benefit of a handful of unscrupulous billionaires who run Walmart, Reliance, Amazon, Facebook and the like.

Bayer, Cargill and the big tech giants and the rest of the corporate entourage that will benefit from the new legislation are depicted as the saviours of Indian agriculture and Indian farmers. But we should remind ourselves of how Monsanto sucked around $900 million from Indian farmers courtesy of its genetically modified seeds, while leaving small-scale and marginal farmers in what a pre-eminent US academic called a “corporate noose” of dependency and indebtedness.

Despite what industry-funded lobbyists and academics might say, BT cotton in India has been a failure. Monsanto helped itself, not Indian farmers.

RSS: PM Modi’s Hindutva, based on majoritarianism and authoritarianism, is working closely with and is supported by huge corporations that are taking over many sectors of the economy. To what extent do you see these new agricultural laws in that context?

CT: Both foreign and home-grown billionaires like Adani and Ambani have pushed for the farm laws and are determining policy in India. We are witnessing a crisis of democracy. The new farm legislation is but a symptom of this crisis.

Neoliberal globalisation is ultimately based on the deregulation of international capital flows, euphemistically called financial liberalisation. The dismantling of Bretton Woods and the deregulation of global capital movements have deepened the level of dependency of nation states on capital markets. In India, we can see the implications.

Global finance is in a position to dictate domestic policy. Successive administrations have made the country dependent on volatile flows of foreign capital and India’s foreign exchange reserves have been built up by borrowing and foreign investments. For policymakers, the fear of capital flight is ever present. Policies are often governed by the drive to attract and retain foreign capital inflows.

The Indian government has chosen to submit to the regime of foreign finance, awaiting signals on how much it can spend and giving up any notion of economic sovereignty. And as the state withdraws from aspects of public policy (under World Bank directives), the space left open becomes occupied by private players. We will see this with the new farm laws because this is what they are designed to  facilitate.

It is clear that the ongoing farmers protest in India is not just about farming. Given that around 60% of the population still rely on agriculture for a living, we are witnessing a struggle for the heart and soul of the country.

There is an intensifying struggle over space between local markets and global markets. The former are the domain of independent small-scale producers, cultivators and enterprises. The latter are dominated by large scale international retailers, commodity traders and the rapidly growing and highly influential e-commerce companies.

It is essential to protect local markets and indigenous, independent small-scale enterprises and farmers. This will ensure that India has more control over its food supply, the ability to determine its own policies and its own economic independence. In other words, the protection of food and national sovereignty and the capacity to pursue genuine democratic development.

But as a result of the farm legislation, we could see India bidding for food with borrowed funds on the open market. Instead of the Food Corporation of India continuing to procure and physically hold food stocks, thereby ensuring a degree of food security, the country will be at the mercy of international traders. This is why Modi places so much stress on the policy of foreign direct investment. Foreign reserves will be needed to procure food stocks. This constitutes a recipe for further dependency. It constitutes a reliance on foreign finance and global corporations.

Mainstream economic thinking passes this subjugation off as liberalisation. How the inability to determine your own economic policies and surrendering food security to outside forces is in anyway liberating is perplexing to say the least.

It is interesting to note that various reports from international human rights organisations recently downgraded India from being a free democracy to a partially free democracy. One report says India is now an electoral autocracy. How they ever considered India to be a free democracy in the first place is open to question. But these reports focused on the increase in anti-Muslim sentiment, clampdowns on freedom of expression and the restrictions on civil society since PM Modi took power.

The undermining of liberty in all these areas is cause for concern in its own right, but this trend towards divisiveness and authoritarianism serves another purpose. It diverts attention from the corporate takeover of the country, including agriculture. Whether it involves a divide and rule strategy along religious lines, the churning out of nationalistic sentiments, the suppression of free speech, pushing the farm bills through parliament without proper debate or the use of the police and the media to undermine the farmers protest, a major undemocratic heist is underway that will fundamentally adversely impact people’s livelihoods and the cultural and social fabric of the country.

RSS: You have, in your writings, linked self-determination with economic sovereignty and the need to challenge the authority and machinery of an over-powerful central state. To what extent can we protect the sovereignty of people and their livelihoods when, since 1947, one colonial master was simply replaced by another?

CT: On one side of this equation, there are the interests of a handful of multi billionaires who own corporations and platforms that seek to control India. On the other side, there are the interests of hundreds of millions of vendors, cultivators and small-scale enterprises who are regarded by these rich individuals as collateral damage to be displaced in their quest for ever-greater profit.

Indian farmers are on the frontline against global capitalism and a colonial style de-industrialisation of the economy. This is where the struggle for democracy and the future of India is taking place.

March to Delhi (Licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0)

There is a need for a fundamental reorganisation of the prevailing globalised food system. We require a system that reduces dependency on global conglomerates, external proprietary inputs, long supply chains, distant volatile commodity markets and patented technologies. Practical solutions to the agrarian crisis – it is a global crisis and these solutions universally apply – must be based on placing the farmer at the centre of policies. Policies centred on localisation, self-sufficiency, food sovereignty and agroecological principles.

India, like other countries, must delink from neoliberal globalisation. It must manage foreign trade and expand indigenous markets by protecting and encouraging small-scale enterprises, including smallholder agriculture. It must increase welfare expenditure by the state and commit to a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and income.

Genuine food security, in principle, derives from food sovereignty, which, in a broad sense, is based on the right of people and sovereign states and regions to democratically determine their own agricultural and food policies. Instead of rolling back the public sector and surrendering the food security of the nation to foreign corporations, there is a need for India to further expand official procurement and public distribution.

This would occur by extending government procurement to additional states in India and expanding the range of produce under the public distribution system. It would not only boost rural incomes but also address hunger and malnutrition, which is still a major issue in the country. If policymakers are really serious about boosting the rural economy, they would reject the corporate agenda and a reliance on rigged and unstable markets.

And if the various coronavirus-related lockdowns have shown anything, it is that regional and locally owned food systems are now required more than ever. But a solution that would genuinely address rural distress and malnutrition does not suit the agenda of global corporations.

This is why ordinary people need to push back and assert self-determination and democratic development, involving challenging the dominance of private capital and disputing the authority of central states which work to consolidate state-corporate power above the heads of ordinary people.

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

The author receives no payment from any media outlet or organization for his work. If you appreciated this article, consider sending a few coins his way: [email protected] 

Featured image: Ensemble of Government buildings on Rajpath in New Delhi, India (Licensed under FAL)

Read Colin Todhunter’s e-Book entitled

Food, Dispossession and Dependency. Resisting the New World Order

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

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

Click here to read.

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***

Discussions in Berlin about the supply of heavy equipment to Ukraine are ongoing, with lobbying for such supplies having the aim of forming a certain public opinion to drag Germany into a confrontation with Russia. The intense debate in the German government over the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine, including the Flakpanzer Gepard anti-aircraft guns, leads to the country completely abandoning a less militaristic policy that was forced on the country after its defeat in World War II.

In addition, 60 Ukrainian soldiers arrived in Germany on May 11 to begin 40 days training on the five-man operated Howitzer 2000 artillery system, and other training centers are reportedly opened/opening, thus making the European economic powerhouse a proxy of Ukraine and a participant in the conflict.

Elements of the German government are lobbying for the supply of heavy weapons to Ukraine, particularly Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. Chancellor Olaf Scholz, on the other hand, takes a more cautious and balanced position, stating that the possibility of the Bundeswehr supplying more heavy weapons to Ukraine is practically exhausted. At the same time, he noted that Germany would continue to provide financial and military assistance to Ukraine.

None-the-less, Germany is still delaying the transfer of the Flakpanzer Gepard to Ukraine. According to Welt, citing a source in the Ukrainian government, Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht did not provide correct information for obtaining weapons. The Minister did not inform the Ukrainian government that they would have to order the Flakpanzer Gepard directly from Krauss-Maffei Wegmann (KMW). The German outlet reports that Kiev was told that it would receive tanks directly from the federal government.

The head of the German Defense Ministry announced that the contract would be between Ukraine and KMW, therefore excluding the participation of the federal government whose role was only to give permission for a deal. As a result, the actual timing of Gepard deliveries has not yet been determined.

What is being omitted from discussions is that German-supplied weapons, and from other Western countries, could end up in the hands of neo-Nazis organizations like the Azov Battalion and even onwards to extremist Islamic groups like ISIS and al-Qaeda. According to Iraqi security military expert Jalil Khalaf: “America has sent a lot of weapons and so-called neo-Nazi volunteers to Ukraine. The very fact of this is a great danger not only for these countries, but also for the whole world, because no one rules out that these weapons can go to extremists or even IS.”

It is recalled that ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other jihadist organizations in Syria received Western-made weapons that were initially supplied to so-called “moderate rebel groups.” With Ukraine still having access to the Black Sea via the major port city of Odessa and being within a close flight proximity, Western weapons could very much be smuggled from Ukraine in the post-war period to Islamic terrorist organizations on Russia’s frontier in the Caucasus, keeping in mind that both ISIS and Al-Qaeda have a presence in the region.

A US intelligence source told CNN on April 19, when speaking about weapons accountability in Ukraine, that:

“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero. It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”

In addition, a US defense official said that in making the decision to send billions of dollars of weapons and equipment into Ukraine, the Biden administration factored in the risk that some of the shipments may ultimately end up in supposed unexpected places. But right now, the official said, the administration views a failure to adequately arm Ukraine as a greater risk.

It is more than likely that the West, including the US and Germany, very well know that these weapons end up in the hands of Far Right extremists like the Azov Battalion and Right Sector, but put the responsibility onto Ukraine under the guise of not knowing where weapons end up once they enter the country. There is every possibility that in a post-war Ukraine, especially if the country maintains access to the Black Sea, the weapons will be recycled on another Russian frontier, just as Western-made weapons used to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi were redirected against Syria.

Although Germany claims it was de-Nazified when it was defeated in World War II, by supplying weapons to a Ukraine that glorifies World War II Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera – weapons which will more than likely be used by neo-Nazi paramilitary groups that were absorbed into the Republican Guard and officialised, Berlin demonstrates that it is reluctant to take a neutral posture and considering the prospects to be actively involved in the conflict to support Ukraine. In light of the normalization of Ukrainian neo-Nazis across the Western media sphere and a Europe increasingly submissive to Washington’s interests, Berlin is still willing to militarily supply a regime that upholds Nazi ideology.

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Paul Antonopoulos is an independent geopolitical analyst.

Featured image is from InfoBrics

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***

Why is Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates giving medical advice on national television?

Bill Gates this weekend appeared on CNN and told Anderson Cooper’s audience that people over the age of 50 will probably have to get Covid boosters every 6 months until we get a better vaccine.

“For people over 50 or 60, they’ll probably have to be boosted every 6 months until we get even better vaccines,” Bill Gates said.

Anderson Cooper asked Bill Gates a follow up question on Covid booster shots as if he was interviewing a medical expert.

“I’ve been trying to figure this out for myself – I assume you know the answer to this so I’ll just ask you, when do you get boosted again?” Anderson Cooper asked Bill Gates.

Why doesn’t Anderson Cooper ask his own doctor when he should get another booster shot?

Bill Gates answered the question as if he’s a doctor: “It’ll be safe every six months…they might even make that shorter for people over 60 or 70… so we’re in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe.”

VIDEO:

Bill Gates: For people over 50 or 60, they'll probably have to get boosted every 6 months until we get even better vaccines; so we're in for ongoing vaccination to stay absolutely safe… pic.twitter.com/zqHXbCPzkK

— Wittgenstein (@backtolife_2022) May 15, 2022

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Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is currently the Associate Editor.

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***

Courts in the United Kingdom are likely to overturn fines imposed on businesses that defied Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown mandates.

Attorney Lucinda Nicholls made this claim, citing 25 cases she handled that challenged these penalties. Of this total, 23 have had their fines revoked by magistrates, while two are being appealed. She added that more than 800 businesses have “strong cases” to have their fines overturned.

“The biggest issue is enforcement of the legislation,” said the criminal defense attorney for London law firm Nicholls and Nicholls.

“It’s been quite easy to recognize where there have been problems in the enforcement and prosecution of these types of cases. [But even after] highlighting such significant problems, prosecutors are still insistent on proceeding – and it makes no sense. We’ve been in scenarios where costs have just added and added, and we’ve written to the local authority saying ‘Why are you doing this? This is completely unnecessary.’”

The challenges to the COVID-19 fines have been attributed to law enforcement being unaware of exemptions to lockdown regulations that are complex yet ever-changing. Gyms and fitness centers were among those businesses that were apt to have their fines revoked, according to Nicholls.

“If you had a body mass index of more than 40, under the regulations – you were entitled to go to a gym for exercise. Therefore, gyms were allowed to be open for that category of customer,” she explained.

The lawyer based her claim on a precedent – that of entrepreneur Alex Lowndes. He and his wife Amber, owners of Gainz Fitness & Strength in Bedford, were issued a prohibition notice by the area’s borough council for staying open. The Lowndeses were eventually fined £10,000 ($12,220), but this was recently overturned by a magistrate. (Related: Australian state to seize savings, homes, driver’s licenses of people with unpaid COVID fines.)

Alex dubbed the charge against him as “flimsy” and “inept,” and also lobbed criticism at the local prosecutors. “It was a blood lust in the end. They should have looked at it even six months in and said ‘This is a waste of time.’ But they kept going and going. They brought in an external [lawyer]; kept spending money; [used] resources, time [and] everything else – and it just got out of control,” he commented.

Gyms were among the first targets of COVID medical tyranny

A spokesperson for the borough council defended the move to sue the gym owners.

“We brought this case because there was ample and sufficient evidence for a successful prosecution following the non-payment of a fixed penalty notice and because it was in the public interest to prosecute, and the judge stated that they found no fault with how the council brought the prosecution.” said the spokesperson.

Alex also stood by his decision to keep his gym open. He explained: “It became clear [that COVID-19] was an airborne disease [that] you’re more prone to if you’re unhealthy, overweight, etc. – and gyms contributed a very small amount to the spread of the virus.”

“From a mental health point, gyms are really important. People depend on them and I think people underestimate that.”

The Bedford gym owner concluded that contesting the fine in court “was based on principle,” adding: “We should never have shut [down] in the first place, and we stand by what we did at the time.

The case of Gainz Fitness & Strength was similar to that of Atilis Gym in Bellmawr, New Jersey. The fitness center first made the news when it chose to reopen in May 2020, amid a COVID-19 lockdown put in place by Gov. Phil Murphy. Gym owners Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti were present at the gym, and even accommodated law enforcement officers that informed them of Murphy’s lockdown orders.

After two years of back-and-forth discussions with authorities in the Garden State, which even reached the point of Atilis Gym’s business license being revoked, Smith and Trumbetti’s decision to stand their ground and keep the gym open paid off. Borough authorities eventually reinstated the gym’s license, with Smith remarking that the move serves as a testament that “nothing would make us kneel.”

“They took our business license [and] our ability to pursue the American Dream. [But] we were right all along. To date, [we have had] 391,683 visits to our facility and people got healthier, happier and better,” Smith wrote in an April 6 post on the gym’s website.

Resist.news has more stories about gyms and other establishments defying COVID-19 lockdowns.

Watch Lou Uridel, owner of MetroFlex Gym in Oceanside, California, talking about businesses struggling with COVID-19 restrictions.

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Featured image is from MedicalTyranny

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***

The UK government has set out plans for further deregulation of GMOs in today’s Queen’s Speech.

Prince Charles, who delivered the speech on the Queen’s behalf said:

“My Ministers will encourage agricultural and scientific innovation at home. Legislation will unlock the potential of new technologies to promote sustainable and efficient farming and food production.”

The new Genetic Technology (Precision Breeding) Bill will use the same inaccurate, imprecise and cynical terminology of the recent Statutory Instrument to exempt a hypothetical subclass of GMOs that:

• could have occurred naturally, or;
• could have been created using traditional breeding

According to Pat Thomas, a director of Beyond GM

“These new regulatory criteria, which are poorly defined, scientifically unclear and were highly disputed during the passage of the statutory instrument, will likely continue to be disputed as the UK grapples with how best to regulate genetically engineered crops. The government’s goal is total deregulation but last year’s public consultation showed that 85% of respondents wanted to see gene editing regulated as GMO.”

She noted that Defra continues to mislead the media and others about the outcome of the consultation by suggesting there was a high degree of support for deregulation amongst public sector bodies and academic institutions when, in fact, the total number of respondents from these groups represent only a minority (1%) of the responses to the public consultation.

In addition, according to the A Bigger Conversation report Filling in the Blanks: What Defra Didn’t Say – An Alternative Analysis of the UK Government’s Consultation on the Regulation of Genetic Technologies, numerous key stakeholders and relevant bodies responding to the consultation expressed a large degree of scepticism about Defra’s contention that GMOs that “could have occurred naturally or through traditional breeding” could form the basis of scientifically sound regulation.

Science “superpowers”?

According to the government purpose of the proposed Bill is to remove unnecessary barriers inherited from the EU to enable the development and marketing of precision bred plants and animals, which will drive economic growth and position the UK as the leading country in which to invest in agri-food research and innovation.

This, it says, will

• Enable precision breeding technologies to improve the sustainability, resilience, and productivity of agricultural systems. Technologies such as gene editing have the potential to increase disease resistance in crops, which can reduce pesticide use, lower costs to farmers and increase food production.
• Unlock innovation to help us cement our place as a science superpower, and to help meet the ambitions in the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan.

Thomas notes that the two field trials thus far enabled by the Statutory Instrument meet none of those criteria. One, a GMO camelina (false flax) engineered to have an altered fatty acid profile has been the subject of several trials in the UK already. and the other, A vitamin D-containing tomato describes tomatoes “grown in pots on the research centre grounds”.

“In spite of the government view that we need GMOs to fight pressing ecological crises like climate change, drought and world hunger, neither of these crops addresses these issues. The camelina is intended for farmed fish feed and the nutraceutical industry and the vitamin D tomato also appears to be the subject of pharmaceutical rather than agricultural/environmental interest,” said Thomas.

Cynical semantics

The main elements of the Bill, which will extend to England and Wales, but apply to England only are:

• Creating a new, simpler regulatory regime for precision bred plants and animals that have genetic changes that could have arisen through traditional breeding or natural processes. No changes will be made to the regulation of animals until animal welfare is safeguarded.
• Introducing two notification systems for research and marketing purposes where breeders and researchers will need to notify Defra of precision bred organisms. The information collected on precision bred organisms will be published on a public register.
• Establishing a new science-based authorisation process for food and feed products developed using precision bred organisms.

Beyond GM has been calling for a public register of all GMOs used in breeding, but are clear it should include all GMOs and not just those deemed to be “precision breeding”.

Thomas also questions the use of the phrase “precision breeding” in relation to the government’s plan: “For years the UK government has tried to bury its intentions around deregulation under cynical semantics like sustainable intensification, new breeding technique, speed breeding and precision breeding. It’s all genetic engineering and an equitable public debate depends on transparent and clear language. Government has used this obfuscation to spin a narrative that gene editing is different from genetic engineering when it is just a different type of genetic engineering that brings with it all the same concerns and unresolved conflicts as older style techniques.”

She notes that moves to deregulate GMO food and feed products excludes any citizen engagement, and will be based on narrow scientific criteria devised and implemented by a small group of biased, prejudicial ‘specialists’ who represent vested interests. The process will eb inadequate in protecting  non-GMO, agroecological and organic businesses and see the UK abandoning crucial safeguards such as labelling, thereby denying citizens the right to choose not to buy or eat genetically engineered food products.

“Given the strong public concerns about genome editing and the fact that much of the science is unsettled and even contested, Beyond GM is calling for more widespread and inclusive debate.” says Thomas “We are also calling for a much broader approach to regulation that goes beyond limited and sterile laboratory science and embraces the social sciences, environmental concerns, food justice and ethics. No substantial change legislation should be made without reference to these considerations.”

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***

The US House of Representatives just approved another massive military “aid” package for the Ukraine War. The Biden administration had initially requested $33 billion in new money for the war, but leaders of both parties in Congress, eager to support the war, quickly said this was not enough, and raised the total for this package to $40 billion, a truly staggering total. The administration had already spent $14 billion before this latest weapons package. The latest spending spree (at a time when many Americans are struggling with crushing debt loads, lack of baby formula and other key supplies, and skyrocketing inflation) brings the total spent in Ukraine in 3 months to $54 billion on the books (not counting all the dark money for the spy agencies). The official annual budget for the War in Afghanistan averaged $46 billion…The sum the US has already spent on this war in a few months is quickly approaching the annual military budget of the entire Russian military.

This money goes to companies like Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, etc. These merchants of death make up the military industrial complex; they promote the permanent war economy, and have a vested interest in ensuring the US continues to engage in and support devastating wars abroad that destroy whole countries and societies, lead to millions of deaths and untold horrors like what we have seen in Yemen over the past few years. These same corporate and state ghouls are salivating over the profits to be made in a new cold war with China. In this conflict for global dominance they see a shining opportunity to bleed the taxpayers of this country dry, looking to get blood from a stone in our country where the rich pay and big corporations no real taxes, but the middle class and poor are bled dry, being pushed deeper and deeper into debt-peonage and wage slavery by rising tax rates, shrinking paychecks, and red hot inflation (itself a result of the Federal Reserve’s reckless money printing to bailout the banks numerous times since 2008).

And yet not one of the so-called progressive Democrats could find a spine to stand against this weapons package. Not AOC, not Ilhan Omar, not any of them. This is not so surprising when one considers their spinelessness on Yemen (introducing a War Powers Resolution under Trump, knowing he would veto it, bur refusing to do so now that Biden is president), their posturing around Palestine (where they consistently rotate turns supporting more military funding for Israel), and countless other betrayals and hypocrisies.

Of all the “squad” only Cori Bush has released a statement justifying her vote for the bill. The others have remained silent and refused to respond to requests for comment on why they voted to fund the war machine after so many promises (clearly hollow) to end “the forever war.” Bush’s statement, like the entire legacy of the Squad, is a pathetic excuse for progressive politics. First, she claims that this $40 billion in military funding is about “strengthen[ing] the Ukrainian people’s fight against oppression and tyranny.” She makes no mention of the fact that key US leaders from Hillary Clinton to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs have made it clear that they want this war to drag out as long as possible to bleed Russia. In the course of such a prolonged conflict, we can only imagine the cost the people of Ukraine will pay. In short, this bill is both about padding the pockets of the military industrial complex and also about sacrificing Ukraine to weaken Russia as a rival to the US and NATO. As many have noted, the US elite are more than happy to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian.

At the end of her statement, Bush includes a hollow note that

“The sheer size of the package given an already inflated Pentagon budget should not go without critique. I remain concerned about the increased risks of direct war and the potential for direct military confrontation.”

This is akin to helping someone pour gasoline on a fire, and then saying that one remains concerned about the risk of the fire spreading! This is what we can expect from Bush, the squad, and the entire so-called progressive wing of the democratic party.

With “allies” like this in Congress, who needs enemies? Chris Hedges – a great American public intellectual who was forced out of his job as the Middle East Bureau Chief at New York Times for his opposition to the Iraq War – has often emphasized that the only way to get any meaningful change in this country is not by lobbying/begging the Democrats or the Republicans, but through mass movements, protests, and acts of civil disobedience which scare the elite. From the powerful movement of the Bonus Marchers (WWI veterans protesting the government’s refusal to pay them their bonuses) in the 1930s, to the great coal strikes, and acts of civil disobedience in the Civil Rights Movement, change in this country has always been driven by the common people, the salt of the earth, not the decadent and corrupt elite in Washington.

The time has come to cast aside illusions about our so-called representatives in Washington, to stop believing in the lie of the Democratic Party as the supposed lesser of two evils, and to redouble our efforts to build up a renewed antiwar movement. Likewise, while a few dozen Republicans voted against the $40 billion, this is no reason for optimism that the Republican Party can be a vehicle for real change. During the Iraq War, once the protests swelled in size, many Democrats made court theater by feigning opposition to the war when Bush was president, only to support continued escalations and drone strikes once Obama was elected. As Howard Zinn notes over and over again in A People’s History of the United States, the two parties are part of one unified system of corporate monopoly rule. They exist to co-opt, mislead, and ultimate destroy movements that seek to change this system of oligarchical control of nearly every aspect of our country.

As long as we remain beholden to the Democrat or Republican Party politics, our movements will be gobbled up, defanged, and spat back out; regurgitated as pliant pawns of the corporate state and the military industrial complex, able to offer only the mildest of criticisms, and utterly impotent and unable to stand against the machinations of the megalomaniacs who run this country and are driving us all towards the brink of WWIII.

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Ryan Costello is an organizer in New York City with United Against War and Militarism and a member of the Yemen Peace Vigil.

Featured image is from Wikimedia Commons

Global COVID Summit Declaration Representing 17,000 Physicians and Medical Scientists

By Dr. Robert Malone, May 15, 2022

We, the physicians and medical scientists of the world, united through our loyalty to the Hippocratic Oath, recognize that the disastrous COVID-19 public health policies imposed on doctors and our patients are the culmination of a corrupt medical alliance of pharmaceutical, insurance, and healthcare institutions, along with the financial trusts which control them.

Palestinian Flag Is Raised in Jerusalem as American Journalist Is Laid to Rest

By Steven Sahiounie, May 16, 2022

On Friday, the funeral route began at the French Hospital just outside the New Gate at noon.  As the pallbearers lifted her coffin onto their shoulders in the process of loading the coffin into a hearse, the Israeli police set off stun grenades and rushed forward and brutally beat the pallbearers and other mourners, including women, with metal batons.

The Removal of Imran Khan: Dismantling Pakistan’s Relationships with China and Russia

By Michael Welch and Abdul Jabbar, May 15, 2022

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, Jabbar, this week’s feature guest, takes us through just how far back the new government in charge has taken the country already, away from partnership with Russia and China and towards advancing U.S. geopolitical aims.

Rogues and Spyware: Pegasus Strikes in Spain

By Dr. Binoy Kampmark, May 15, 2022

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Defence Minister Margarita Robles, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and 18 Catalan separatists are the latest high-profile targets to feature in the Pegasus canon.  Sánchez’s phone was hacked twice in May 2021, with officials claiming that there was at least one data leak.

Are These Chemicals Part of a Depopulation Agenda? “Chemicals can Impact Fertility Directly or Indirectly”. Environmental Factors

By Dr. Joseph Mercola, May 15, 2022

A great number of chemicals can impact fertility either directly or indirectly, but the most concerning class are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) such as phthalates. EDCs disrupt hormones, including sex hormones necessary for reproductive function, such as testosterone.

Weapons and Billions for War

By Manlio Dinucci, May 15, 2022

Well-deserved congratulations: while the U.S. Congress is allocating an additional $40 billion to arm Kiev’s forces in the war against Russia, adding to the $14 billion already allocated in March, Draghi has been working to open a similar channel of war funding in Europe through a “European Union Solidarity Trust Fund for Ukraine” and a “resilience package” worth an initial €2 billion provided to Kiev by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Can Europe Survive Without Russian Coal and Oil? Here’s What It Means for Skyrocketing Prices…

By Chris MacIntosh, May 15, 2022

So the EU, already in the middle of the worst energy crisis since the Arab oil crisis and likely worse, is now pushing to eliminate imports of Russian coal. Just so you understand the importance of Russian coal to Europe… Some 70% of Europe’s thermal coal comes from Russia. Coal accounts for about 20% of continental Europe’s electricity production (as of 2019; perhaps it is 25% now).

Video: Dr. McCullough: Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex for Our Lives

By Dr. Peter McCullough, John Leake, and Kristina Borjesson, May 15, 2022

A fascinating discussion with Dr. Peter McCullough and crime writer John Leake about their new book, “The Courage to Face COVID-19: Preventing Hospitalization and Death While Battling the Biopharmaceutical Complex.”

When Truth is Mixed with Falsehoods: The Subtleties of Anti-Russia Leftist Rhetoric

By Edward Curtin, May 15, 2022

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Why Funding Ukraine Is Just Dead Wrong

By Revolver, May 15, 2022

If the Biden Administration cared about protecting America’s well-being, then instead of financing Ukraine’s war effort, it would be working for a negotiated end to the war by the quickest means possible.

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The funeral of American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh on Friday was one of the largest gatherings of Palestinians in recent memory in Occupied East Jerusalem. Her brother, Anton Abu Akleh, had arrived from the US to oversee her funeral.  He was called into Israeli Occupation police headquarters where they ordered him to not allow any traditional Palestinian funeral customs to be followed, such as: not carrying the coffin on the shoulders of pallbearers and not allowing any Palestinian flags to be displayed. 

The Israeli Occupation forces killed Shireen Abu Akleh, and they wanted to orchestrate her funeral as well.

Image on the right: Israeli forces attacking Shireen Abu Akleh’s funeral

On Friday, the funeral route began at the French Hospital just outside the New Gate at noon.  As the pallbearers lifted her coffin onto their shoulders in the process of loading the coffin into a hearse, the Israeli police set off stun grenades and rushed forward and brutally beat the pallbearers and other mourners, including women, with metal batons. Videos of the scene showed a mixed crowd of men and women mourners who were there to accompany the coffin to the church and were beaten severely by the police, while none of the mourners had any weapons, or posed any threat.  The unprovoked attack by the Israeli police, wearing full riot gear, was so forceful that at one point the coffin almost touched the ground, but at the last moment, one pallbearer was able to catch the edge and hold the coffin aloft once more.

The threat to the Israeli government, which prompted the violent response, was the presence of thousands of Palestinians carrying hundreds of Palestinian flags.  The Israeli police were attacking and beating unarmed civilians, living under a brutal military occupation now lasting 74 years.  The occupation of Palestine and subjugation of five million people is a threat to Israel that they are deadly afraid of.

From there the coffin was taken to the Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Virgin in Jerusalem’s Old City. After her funeral service, the coffin was then transported to the Melkite Catholic Cemetery section of the Mount Zion Cemetery complex where she was laid to rest next to her parents.  She was born in Jerusalem, and her mother as well, but her father was from Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus Christ.

Rima Baqleh said,

“This is the least I can do, participate in the funeral of this iconic woman who has changed the history of Palestine,” she said. “For the first time, she managed to raise the Palestinian flag by thousands of Palestinian people in [Jerusalem’s] Jaffa Gate.”

On Wednesday morning, Abu Akleh was assassinated by an Israeli sniper while standing with a group of four journalists reporting on an Israeli raid into Jenin in the Occupied West Bank. The 25-year veteran journalist for Al Jazeera was wearing a blue flak jacket marked “PRESS” and a helmet.  According to eyewitness accounts from the other journalists, one of whom was shot in the back, there were no Palestinian fighters present, only the Israeli commandos. Al Jazeera and many other international groups and bodies have demanded an impartial investigation into her killing.

Abu Akleh is just the latest American citizen to be brutally murdered by Israelis. The US has made condolence-type statements in the aftermath of her killing, but no one expects any further action to be taken against Israel, which is the closest ally to the US.  Israel has been called an Apartheid State by the Human Rights Watch and has been deemed a racist state by other international groups.  Israel stands in defiance of dozens of UN resolutions, and yet the US remains its staunch supporter.  The US government speaks from one side of its mouth, saying they must defend freedom and democracy around the world, like in Ukraine, and from the other side of its mouth, they support and enable the brutal military occupation of Palestine and the Israeli war crimes and crimes against humanity which have been documented for decades.

If American values are freedom and democracy for all, then Israel does not stand for American values but stands for the exact opposite.  The American people are supposed to be in control of their government, but sadly they are not.  Elected officials enable Israel to act with impunity, while the US taxpayer pays the bills in Israel, with no accountability.  The US State Department policies in the Middle East have remained unchanged, and unchallenged for the last 74 years, regardless of what political party holds the Oval Office.

Marches were held for Abu Akleh in Jenin on Wednesday, and in Nablus, where doctors conducted an autopsy on her body. Her body was then brought to Ramallah, where a memorial service was held for her at the Palestinian Authority’s presidential compound on Thursday, with thousands in attendance. On Thursday, Israeli police raided the home of Abu Akleh and removed the Palestinian flag.

At dawn on Friday, before the funeral procession began, the Israeli Defense Forces raided Jenin, injuring 13 Palestinians, including two in critical condition.  The Occupation forces shelled Palestinian homes during a siege lasting four hours before arresting two men inside the home.

Sgt. Maj. Noam Raz, of the Israeli Defense Forces, died during the raid, which featured Israeli Forces using anti-tank grenades to bombard the home.

Image below: Syrian air defenses reacting to the Israeli missiles

Since March 22, dozens have died in Israel and Occupied Palestine as a result of acts of resistance to occupation, as well as Israeli raids and brutality. The raids in Jenin in the Occupied West Bank are the latest in an escalation of tensions.

The Russian Defense Ministry announced that Israel had launched 22 missiles at Syria on Friday evening. The Syrian air defense system shot down 16 of the 22 missiles and one drone. The targets were the port of Banias and the Syrian Research Center at Misyaf.  Israel used six F-16 jets in the attack which originated from the Mediterranean Sea near Banias, which houses the main oil refinery for Syria.

While Syrians were viewing the funeral of Shireen Abu Akleh on TV all day, by evening the news reports turned to news of the Israeli attack on Syria.  Five people were killed in the attack, including a civilian, seven were wounded, and farmlands were burned.

The five Syrian Army martyrs

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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.

All images in this article are from Mideast Discourse

This article was first published in December 2014 under the title: America is on a “Hot War Footing”: House Legislation Paves the Way for War with Russia?

Legislation had already been envisaged in 2014, to wage war on Russia. H. RES. 758 not only accused Russia of having invaded Ukraine, it also invoked article 5 of the Washington Treaty, namely NATO’s  doctrine of collective security.

It  was first introduced by Rep. Kinzinger (Illinois) on November 18 2014, it was adopted by 411-10 in an almost unanimous vote on the morning of December 4th. (Kinzinger is at it again)

According to Supreme Allied Commander General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”: “He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added). 

And the Senate had adopted the  Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) calling for the militarization of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and the stationing of US and NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep.  

The House Resolution was adopted. In the words of Dennis Kucinich in an open letter published on December 2:

The resolution demands Russia to be isolated …  In other words, ‘let’s get ready for war with Russia.’

This is exactly the type of sabre rattling which led to the initiation and escalation of the Cold War. It is time we demanded that the US employ diplomacy, not more military expenditures, in the quest for international order.

Both the House and the Senate had given a Green-light to the Obama-Biden Administration to wage war against Russia in December 2014. 

These 2014 legislative initiatives  constitute a preamble to the 2022 Ukraine War.

We are currently in a World War III Scenario. 

We call upon Members of the House of the Senate to take a firm stance in favor of peace negotiations. 

Michel Chossudovsky, May 15, 2022

Below is the full text of my December 4 2014 article

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America is on a war footing.  While, a World War Three Scenario has been on the drawing board of the Pentagon for more than ten years, military action against Russia [2014] is now contemplated at an “operational level”.

Similarly, both the Senate and the House have introduced enabling legislation [2014] which provides legitimacy to the conduct of a war against Russia.

We are not dealing with a “Cold War”. None of the safeguards of the Cold War era prevail. 

There has been a breakdown in East-West diplomacy [during the Obama-Biden administration] coupled with extensive war propaganda. In turn the United Nations has turned a blind eye to extensive war crimes committed by the Western military alliance.  

The adoption of a major piece of legislation by the US House of Representatives on December 4th (H. Res. 758)  would provide (pending a vote in the Senate) a de facto green light to the US president and commander in chief to initiate –without congressional approval– a process of military confrontation with Russia.  

Global security is at stake. This historic vote –which potentially could affect the lives of hundreds of millions of people Worldwide– has received virtually no media coverage. A total media blackout prevails.   

The World is at a dangerous crossroads.

Moscow has responded to US-NATO threats. Its borders are threatened. 

On December 3, [2014] the Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation announced the inauguration of a new military-political entity which would take over in the case of war. 

Russia is launching a new national defense facility, which is meant to monitor threats to national security in peacetime, but would take control of the entire country in case of war. (RT, December 3, 2014)

Timeline of War Preparations

In May 2014, the  Russian Aggression Prevention Act (RAPA) was  introduced in the US Senate (S 2277), calling for the militarization of Eastern Europe and the Baltic States and the stationing of US and NATO troops on Russia’s doorstep:

S.2277 – Russian Aggression Prevention Act of 2014

Directs the President to: (1) implement a plan for increasing U.S. and NATO support for the armed forces of Poland, Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia, and other NATO member-states; and (2) direct the U.S. Permanent Representative to NATO to seek consideration for permanently basing NATO forces in such countries.

Directs the President to submit a plan to Congress for accelerating NATO and European missile defense efforts.

While The S 2277 resolution was sent to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee for review, its essential premises are already in the process of being implemented.  In mid-July, NATO’s Europe commander General Philip Breedlove in consultation with the Pentagon and Britain’s Ministry of Defence, called for:

 “stockpiling a base in Poland with enough weapons, ammunition and other supplies to support a rapid deployment of thousands of troops against Russia”.(RT, July 24, 2014).

According to General Breedlove, NATO needs “pre-positioned supplies, pre-positioned capabilities and a basing area ready to rapidly accept follow-on forces”:

“He plans to recommend placing supplies — weapons, ammunition and ration packs — at the headquarters to enable a sudden influx of thousands of Nato troops” (Times, August 22, 2014, emphasis added)

Breedlove’s “Blitzkrieg scenario” –which could potentially lead to military escalation– was reaffirmed at the September NATO Summit in Wales.  A so-called NATO action plan directed against the Russian Federation was decided upon.  The Wales Summit had given the “green light”.

Barely a month later, in October,  US-NATO military drills were held in the Baltic States. In early November, a second round of drills was held in both the Baltic States and Eastern Europe.

As part of this broader endeavour, NATO’s Iron Sword 2014 military exercises –involving the participation of nine member countries of the Atlantic Alliance– were launched in Lithuania in early November:

 ”US tanks rolled in to Lithuania earlier this month is a show of force to Russia that it’s not welcome in the region.”

The military exercises were explicitly directed against Russia. According to Moscow, they consisted in “increasing operation readiness” as well the transfer of NATO “military infrastructure to the Russian borders”.

In response to NATO deployments on Russia’s borders,  the Russian Federation also conducted in early November extensive  war games in the sea of Barent.  The Russian drills consisted in testing “its entire nuclear triad consisting of strategic bombers; submarines” and the “silo-based Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missile  launched from Plesetsk in Arkhangelsk Oblast” on November 1st.

The US House of Representatives H.Res. 758 Resolution

On 18 November,  a major resolution H. Res. 758 was introduced in the House of Representatives. Its main thrust consists in portraying Russia as an “Aggressor Nation”, which has invaded Ukraine and calling for military action directed against Russia:

You can watch Rep. Kinzinger’s floor speech on the legislation 

H.RES.758 — Whereas upon entering office in 2009, President Barack Obama announced his intention to `reset’ relations with the Russian Federation, which was described by former United States Ambassador… (Introduced in House – IH)

HRES 758 IH

113th CONGRESS

2d Session

H. RES. 758

Strongly condemning the actions of the Russian Federation, under President Vladimir Putin, which has carried out a policy of aggression against neighboring countries aimed at political and economic domination.

(The full text of H. RES. 758 is contained in annex to this article)

H. Res. 758 not only accuses Russia of having invaded Ukraine, it also invokes article 5 of the Washington Treaty, namely NATO’s  doctrine of collective security.

An attack on one member of the Atlantic alliance is an attack on all members of the Alliance.

The underlying narrative is supported by a string of baseless accusations directed against the Russian Federation.

It accuses Russia of having invaded Ukraine. It states without evidence that Russia was behind the downing of Malaysian Airlines MH17,  it accuses Russia of military aggression.

Ironically, it also accuses the Russian Federation of having imposed economic sanctions not only on Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova but also on several unnamed member states of the European Union.  The resolution accuses the Russian Federation of having used “the supply of energy for political and economic coercion.”

In essence, House Resolution 758 were it to become law would provide a de facto green light to the President  of the United States to declare war on the Russian Federation, without the formal permission of the US Congress.

In this regard, it could be interpreted as “mildly unconstitutional” in that it contravenes the substance of Article 1, Section 8, of the US Constitution which  vests in the Congress “the Power to declare war…”

The resolution urges the President of the United States in consultation with the US Congress to:

“conduct a review of the force posture, readiness, and responsibilities of the United States Armed Forces and the forces of other members of NATO to determine if the contributions and actions of each is sufficient to meet the obligations of collective self defence under article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and to specify the measures needed to remedy any deficiencies” .

What the above paragraph suggests is that the US is contemplating the use of NATO’s collective security doctrine under article 5 with a views to triggering a process of military confrontation with the Russian Federation.

The structure of military alliances is of crucial significance. Washington’s intent is to isolate Russia. Article 5 is a convenient mechanism imposed by the US on Western Europe. It forces NATO member states, most of which are members of the European Union, to act wage war on Washington’s behalf.

Moreover, a referendum on Ukraine’s membership in NATO is contemplated.  In case Ukraine becomes a member of NATO and/or redefines its security agreement with NATO, article 5 could be invoked as a justification to wage a NATO sponsored war on Russia.

“Fast Legislation”

The speed at which this legislation was adopted is unusual in US Congressional history.

House resolution 758 was introduced on November 18th, it was rushed off to the Foreign Affairs Committee and rushed back to the plenary of the House for debate and adoption.

Two weeks (16 days) after it was first introduced by Rep. Kinzinger (Illinois) on November 18, it was adopted by 411-10 in an almost unanimous vote on the morning of December 4th.

Members of Congress are puppets. Their vote is controlled by Washington’s lobby groups. For the defence contractors, Wall Street and the Texas oil giants, “war is good for business”.

In the words of Dennis Kucinich in an open letter published on December 2:

The resolution demands Russia to be isolated …  In other words, ‘let’s get ready for war with Russia.’

This is exactly the type of sabre rattling which led to the initiation and escalation of the Cold War. It is time we demanded that the US employ diplomacy, not more military expenditures, in the quest for international order.

Media Blackout

One would expect that this historic decision would has been the object of extensive news coverage.

In fact what happened was a total news blackout.

The nation’s media failed to provide coverage of the debate in House of Representatives and the adoption of H Res 758 on December 4.

The mainstream media had been instructed not to cover the Congressional decision.

Nobody dared to raise its dramatic implications.  its impacts on “global security”.  “World War III is not front page news.”

And without mainstream news concerning US-NATO war preparations, the broader public remains unaware of the importance of the Congressional decision. .

Author’s Note and Update

The FBI has recently released thousands of pages of material “relating to its investigation of Saudi government links to the 9/11 attacks”,

The thrust of this investigation is to accuse the so-called state sponsors of Al Qaeda which was allegedly responsible for the 9/11 attacks. Lest we forget, the justification of the invasion of Afghanistan in early October 2001 was because the Taliban government was allegedly supportive of Al Qaeda. 

The following text was first published in December 2015

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US foreign  policy has nurtured Al Qaeda, a creation of the CIA for more than 35 years, with the support of Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) and Saudi Arabia’s  infamous  General Intelligence Presidency (GIP).  

Lest we forget Osama bin Laden was recruited in 1979 by the CIA at the outset of the Soviet- Afghan war.  

A complex network of Al Qaeda affiliated terrorist organizations overseen by US and allied intelligence agencies has unfolded, extending across the Middle East, North Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, Central Asia, Western China, South and South East Asia. 

Rand Corporation  Report 2012

While mainstream analysis regarding CIA covert  support of “jihadist” terrorist entities is a taboo, the Western media (quoting expert opinion) will often place the blame on the intelligence agencies of America’s closest allies including Pakistan’s ISI  and Saudi Arabia’s GIP, i.e. for supporting terrorist entities (in defiance of the US). According to the Rand Corporation:

“Pakistan poses a particular challenge. As America’s relationship with Pakistan deteriorates, how long will the United States be able to pressure a state whose intelligence service [i.e Pakistan’s ISI which is in close liaison with the CIA] has ties with some of al Qaeda’s allies, such as the Haqqani network and Lashkar-e-Taiba?” (Set Jones, Resurgence of Al Qaeda,  Rand Corporation  Report 2012)

The Islamic State Caliphate:  A Project of US Intelligence

Today’s Al Qaeda most recent “affiliate”, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) based in Raqqa, Northern Syria is not only protected by the US and its allies, it is trained and financed by US-NATO, with the support of Turkey, Israel and Washington’s Persian Gulf allies.

In a bitter irony, the caliphate project as an instrument of propaganda has been on the drawing board of US intelligence for more than ten years.  In December 2004, under the Bush Administration, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) predicted that in the year 2020 a New Caliphate extending from the Mediterranean to Central Asia and South East Asia would emerge, threatening Western democracy and Western values.

And now in an unusual about turn, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) has configured a coalition of 34 mainly Muslim countries “to go after the Islamic state”.

In a bitter irony, the key protagonists of this counterterrorism initiative endorsed by the “international community” are Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey, i.e. countries which have relentlessly supported “Islamic terrorism” from the very outset in close liaison with Washington. In the words of Hillary Clinton in her declassified Emails: “donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide.”

Counter terrorism by the state sponsors of terrorism? A  New Normal? The propaganda campaign appears to have reached an impasse. According to the official statement:

“The [34] countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations centre based in Riyadh to co-ordinate and support military operations,”

Arab News December 2015

This “military alliance” will work in liaison with Obama’s counter-terrorism bombing campaign involving a coalition of some 20 countries initiated against the Islamic State in August-September 2014. The evidence, however, confirms that the bombing raids have avoided targeting the ISIL, which is integrated by mercenaries including special forces, who are in permanent liaison with US-NATO.

Screen shot, Daily Mail 

KSA Defense Minister Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, confirmed (December 14, 2015) that the campaign “would co-ordinate efforts to fight terrorism” specifically in Iraq and Syria in coordination  “with major powers and international organisations”, i.e NATO, the US, the EU.

In an unusual twist, the State sponsors of terrorism are now indulging in counterterrorism. The Islamic State in the Arabian peninsula, namely the House of Saud which is predicated on the tenets of Wahhabism is going after the Islamic State (ISIL) in Northern Syria. 

Known and documented, Saudi Arabia has played a key strategic role in promoting and financing terrorism on behalf of Washington. Moreover, Saudi weapons purchases from the US and Canada are also being used to equip and arm various “opposition” rebel groups in Syria including the ISIL and Al Nusrah.

It is worth noting: recruited by America’s ally, a large number of ISIS mercenaries are convicted criminals released from Saudi prisons on condition they join the ISIL. Saudi death row inmates were recruited to join the terror brigades.  (January 23, 2013)

It’s a theater of the absurd. It’s like asking Al Capone to lead a coalition of Chicago criminal syndicates to go after organized crime. In this case, the criminal syndicate based in Riyadh is acting on behalf of its Western sponsors.

And the media applauds in chorus without acknowledging several of their own reports which confirm that Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Pakistan, Qatar, Jordan, et al.  have been involved in recruiting, training and financing Islamic terrorists. The practice of beheading civilians by ISIS operative in Syria emanates from Saudi Arabia.  In the words of an earlier Daily Telegraph report (April 2014):

“We should not be blind to the fact that there is a project out there to destroy [Syria’s]  rich, pluralist, and unbelievably intricate culture and replace it with a monochrome version of Wahhabi Islam”.

What the mainstream media invariably fails to mention is that Saudi Arabia is a “go-between” and that Wahhabi Islam is being used and applied by Washington. In turn, the public is led to believe that this is a bona fide war of religion and that Muslims are waging war against Western civilization.

This “version of Wahhabism” has nothing to with Islam, it’s “Made in America”, its a diabolical tool of US foreign policy, which consists in applying and manipulating the ideology of Wahhabism as a means of recruiting and indoctrinating terrorists to wage a “jihad” on behalf of Uncle Sam.  US-NATO’s war without borders goes unnoticed; World public opinion is led to believe that Islam is waging a war against the West and that US-NATO are acting in “self-defense” against an elusive outside enemy based in the Middle East.

Politicians, journalists  and intelligence analysts are lying to themselves. Everybody knows that Saudi Arabia and Turkey are behind the terrorists and we also know that the US is behind Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

The US is the main architect of this terrorist undertaking which consists in sponsoring terrorists with a view to destabilizing and destroying sovereign countries in defiance of international law.

In 2013, the European Parliament published a detailed report (excerpt below) confirming the role of Saudi Arabia in spreading Wahhabi-Salafist ideology to terror groups in a large number of countries. The report, however, failed to acknowledge that these actions were conducted as part of a US foreign policy and intelligence agenda. (Excerpt (screenshot), p. 7 below)

 Screenshot, p. 7 of European Parliament Report

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“I feel we are back in 1939; Munich. Czechslovakia has been taken. Will the word community appease a market of 1.2bn or will it stand up for justice and humanity? If a conventional war starts between 2 countries, nuclear countries anything could happen.

“Supposing a country 7 times smaller than its neighbour; faced with a question. Either you surrender, or you fight till the end. I ask myself this question. And my belief is ‘La ilaha illAllah’, there is no God but one. We will FIGHT!”

– Imran Khan, from his speech at the United Nations General Assembly Seventy-fourth session, 9th plenary meeting (September 27, 2019) [1]

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\

A month following the vote of his political rivals to eject him from power, Imran Khan is riding perhaps the biggest waves of popularity that he has ever surfed upon! [2]

And with legions of supporters propping up his stature, he has launched the campaign “Ghulami Na Manzoor,” a call to unseat the “Imported government” of the recently installed Prime Minister Shehbaaz Sharif. Starting after May 20th, less than a week from the time this is written, a new vote of confidence will be launched from the very grassroots population against the individuals who have conspired to remove the leader they put in place nearly four years ago.[3]

The onslaught of the public would enter into Islamabad and hound the Prime Minister everywhere he goes with slogans of “thief and traitor.” Those unable to make the trip would protest locally in their own communities. [4]

That being said, the actual rules of governance would not likely recognize such tactics as anything more than a protest. Power appears to have returned to the old guard leaving U.S. interests in their leading role in the Pakistan stage.

One writer who has taken an interest in the current Pakistan plight, Abdul Jabbar, described the situation in Pakistan as being the latest example of what he calls Indirect Colonialism. HE puts it bluntly:

“In this kind of colonialism, the colonizing power uses local self-seeking, nation-betraying leaders to sacrifice national interests for the sake of self-advancement.

“The colonizer does not have to spend its resources on launching a formal invasion to occupy a country. Local corrupt politicians prostitute national interest to do the colonizer’s bidding.” [5]

On this week’s Global Research News Hour, Jabbar, this week’s feature guest, takes us through just how far back the new government in charge has taken the country already, away from partnership with Russia and China and towards advancing U.S. geopolitical aims. But this interview is preceded by a replay of one of Imran Khan’s most impassioned speeches, the one at the UN General Assembly relating to Islamophobia and the ever contentious Kashmir region. Toward the end of the program, we bring to the attention of listeners the role of a local terrorist army now appearing to attack Chinese in the province of Balochistan.

Imran Khan is the recently removed Prime Minister of Pakistan. He currently commands broad support within the grassroots population of the West Asian country.

Abdul Jabbar is a scholar originally from Pakistan. He has taught interdisciplinary studies (including political science) in the United States for nearly half a century, so he has been following the developments in Pakistan with great interest and concern, both from professional and personal points of view.

(Global Research News Hour Episode 355)

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Transcript – Interview with Abdul Jabbar, May 9, 2022

Global Research News Hour: This is Michael Welch for the Global Research News Hour, and the story of the Pakistan coup against Imran Khan is still an ongoing issue. Now one month into the new regime is in power, and Imran is delighting the many hundreds of thousands in the streets.

So we’re going to get a take by a new individual. His name is Abdul Jabbar. He taught English and Interdisciplinary Studies for 36 years on a full-time basis at City College of San Francisco, including visiting professorship at University of California-Berkeley, he’s a recipient of a Fulbright scholarship and two National Endowment for the Humanities Awards, he received his PhD in English from Case Western University in Cleveland Ohio, and has written three books, his latest, The Promise, Reality, and Potential of American Cultural Diversity is in the process of publication. He’s published several articles on literary, political, and similar topics. His video lectures are available on YouTube, and has been following developments in Pakistan with great interest and concern both from professional and personal points of view. Professor Jabbar, welcome to the Global Research News Hour.

Abdul Jabbar: Thank you for having me on the program Michael.

GR: Since Imran Khan was replaced from power one month ago, has there been any fundamental changes in terms of policy that he’s brought forward?

AJ: His policies have been completely turned around. His policy was for independent foreign policy, that was a major concern and that has been completely diluted with the new government because the new government is really [inaudible] in a sham When you have a coup like this, I don’t think we have any idea. For us, it’s just a matter of simple foreign policy decision to bring in someone who will cooperate with our view of the region. We don’t think much more than that. It leads to so many ramifications for the affected country, it’s hard to even imagine.

So right now, what’s happening is that the new prime minister is scrambling all over the world to get funding. He got some funding from Saudi Arabia and requesting the IMF to extend the loan. And you know every new regime that comes in uses the previous regime for causing the problems, but you know time will tell, I am not sure to what extent is it accusations that there was bad governance on the part of Imran Khan’s government. I’m not so sure to what extent I can believe it, but mainly what is of concern is the assassination attempts on Imran Khan. When we make foreign policy decisions to replace someone, I don’t think we really deep down want the person to be eliminated.

But the local people who take power, they have to then guard themselves against reprisal, repercussions, so they just eliminate the person, the opponent. So this time there is a lot of talk of assassinating Imran Khan, and a lot of warnings from the government, and a lot of advice from even the military that he should not call his big meeting where he expects about two million people to show up this month. There’s attempt also to have him arrested, so that’s the situation right now.

GR: So you mean to say that the deals with, the defense deal between Russia and Pakistan is over, that Pakistan is no longer part of the CPEC with China?

AJ: The deal with Russia was close to being completed when Imran Khan was overthrown, so that hasn’t gone through. That was a huge breakthrough for Pakistan’s economy, 30% discount oil, 30% discount on wheat, and Imran was just working for the benefit of the masses who are struggling with this global inflation with COVID thrown in. And that was not completely carried out, and I think it will not happen. The US will dictate terms. The US government will dictate terms with regard to Russia for sure. With China, remember China is the biggest investor in Pakistan’s market. With close to 60 billion dollars of investment in the program called CPEC, which means China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

And they are, well there are many projects which are going to be very beneficial to Pakistan in China, US has never liked the close relation of Pakistan to China. Because China is a potential threat to US economy, and the US government forgets that in 1971, Pakistan that enabled the first meeting between US and China, it was a secret meeting when Kissinger flew to Islamabad to Pakistan, and then Pakistan government arranged that secret meeting. So they were brought together, the two powers, so Pakistan was instrumental in doing that. So my take is Michael that Pakistan could play a centre role to bring either Russia and the US to clear the tensions. Pakistan believes in, believds under Imran Khan, no bases in Pakistan, no foreign bases.

No participation in foreign and I don’t know what is going to happen now with terrorism in Pakistan. All the Taliban are attacking Pakistan. Pakistan retaliated and there were 47 Taliban killed inside Afghanistan. So this is been happening in the past and now this will escalate…. Terrorism brought under control under Imran Khan because he [inaudible] will have a negotiated settlement with the Taliban  is no [inaudible] resolution. He was perfectly right. What we, out of 20 years of war, was to replace the Taliban with Taliban with trillions of dollars of expense and so many debts. So I think that the reversal it has taken place in the foreign policy with the new government.

GR: What can you tell me about the new prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif?

AJ: Shehbaz Sharif has many cases pending against him for corruption and money laundering like his older brother. He has power to have those cases honed in the federal judiciaries.  The judiciaries in the system of the whole [inaudible] [inaudible] situations is totally still the same that was there before Imran Khan. The system is the same, he tried to change from one. He failed miserably. Because the system is there and what they do is, like whenever there’s a hearing, the judges will postpone the hearing to the next day, to the next day. So Imran was furious, a few times he said the Judiciary is not doing its job.

So he had a lot of cases. He doesn’t have a clean slate. You can say that he’s almost like on the hill, and so are many of his cabinet members. But he’s a good manager, when he was chief minister of Punjab which is the biggest province in Pakistan. He did some good work and building his home city Lahore, and the area, so he, he’s a good manager, and I believe he will do whatever the US wants him to do, and since he may be able to get Pakistan some benefit in the short run.

But the people are not going to accept it. See millions of people are coming out all over the world. They demand election. In the elections, Imran will have two-thirds of majority that he needs. His problem was, Michael, that he didn’t have an absolute majority when he won elections in 2018. He had to work, compromise, with people with whom he totally disagreed. So it was very difficult. Now if the elections are held, he will have an absolute majority, and even then implement the vision that got postponed, because of the corruption in all these institutions that he inherited.

GR: It sort of brings us to your latest essay, American Style Colonialism and Imperialism with Pakistan the Latest Victim. You lay out how the status as an American conquest is protected by the local puppets who succeed one another. Every once in a while, somebody will actually place the interests of the country ahead of the welfare of US wealth and undue political interests. In Pakistan, before Khan, we had Benazir Bhutto, who was assassinated in 1977. What were the dynamics that played out in that case?

AJ: 2007,  think she was assassinated. ‘77 is when Zia-ul-Haq overthrew the democratic government of Bhutto and then he was hanged by Zia-ul-Haq. That is the last clear demonstration of US interference in the internal affairs of Pakistan. It was in 1977, July 5th, to be accurate, I had flown to Pakistan on a visit on July 4th because I know the people there didn’t travel much it was an American plane. So I travelled and I woke up to the news that the country’s government is overthrown and I came to know, I heard some people in the military, some friends, I came to know that the last pieces of the strategy were finalized in the American embassy on [inaudible].  So Zulfikar Ali Bhutto was overthrown. And then a couple of years later he was executed. What happened to the country since then, what did Zia-ul-Haq bring to the country, this is mind-boggling.

He has done the most amount of damage to the country single-handedly. It was a liberal democracy under Bhutto. Bhutto was not perfect. Just talking about the democracy that was in place, and it was a liberal democracy. Zia-ul-Haq brought in the extreme Wahhabi, Saudi Arabian imported version of Islam. And curtailing women’s rights, freedom of speech, and he came for 90 days to have elections but he stayed in power until he was assass– he was killed in an airplane crash. So that also were brought in all kinds of terrorists from over the world.

So they were funded by the US through Pakistan, the US and Saudi Arabia funded them under Zia-ul-Haq to fight the Soviet Union ‘79 invasion of Afghanistan. And so just imagine, those people came from 40 different countries, and they landed in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan ISI and the US training. So what happened, they destroyed the social fabric of the society. Because once the war was over. they were there. They weren’t leaving. I grew up in Pakistan. I don’t remember any household owning Kalashnikov. And after the Soviet invasion, the US and this [inaudible] for the US, all that changed the country’s society completely.

We could walk in Pakistan at 1 a.m. 2 a.m. freely, but then it was just a matter of being caught for ransom if you go to visit Pakistan. Things changed under Imran Khan simply because he said we should be in negotiated settlement and it is cultural imperialism to command another culture to obey us. And that was why he was respected by the Taliban, then we started calling him Taliban Khan. So really ironic.

GR: The elections in Pakistan are set for 2023. What do you think will take place in the interim to foil Khan’s attempts to return to power? I made you mentioned a possible assassination. Are there other things they could do to finish him off in case he can avoid assassination?

AJ: Just yesterday he said that there are a lot of attempts from all kinds of quarters. He expects some of those, but even if he’s assassinated it will not change the momentum because the youth, which is more aware than ever before, they want the restoration of the government that is representative of their will. And his party Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, which means just “his party,” Pakistan Movement for Justice, they will sweep the election. And the current government is trying to postpone the election until as you said 2023. And that, in the interim, many things can happen. You can have… Hopefully the worst scenario is civil war. That is nobody wishes. In Syria, we didn’t think anything would happen when we interfered others interfered, one side was Russia, on the other side was the US, the proxy war. Two and a quarter million people have been killed, so many millions displaced… We don’t know, you see when these things happen, they have their own momentum.

They take the ugliest possible terms, you can’t imagine, so what will happen Michael is anybody’s guess. The worst scenario is civil war. Within my own family there’s a civil war going on. So I can tell you that this, there’s a lot of tension, people and Saudi Arabia there was a spontaneous demonstration against Shehbaz. He had gone to Saudi Arabia and get funding. Here it pretty much is a convention to go to those holy sites in Saudi Arabia to offer prayers. So Shehbaz went there, Shehbaz Sharif and the crowd saw him recognized him and the Pakistan is living in Saudi Arabia they erupted with “Thief! Thief!” And there was a pretty much of a riot. The police came in and then more people joined in and Sharif and his Entourage were attacked and the Saudi Arabian government arrested people from both sides, and they have some draconian punishment for that. Saudi Arabia doesn’t…the government doesn’t want any protest, especially at that time in that place. And as you know they don’t like protest, period. So they’re going to give huge sentences.

The worst part of that incident was to me an FIR registered in a city in Pakistan to implicate to introduce the idea of assassinating Imran on religious grounds that he has done a sacrilege to a holy site because he’s behind the whole riot, that he instigated it. He was in Pakistan of course, there is no legal ability to this and it won’t win in the court. The problem is it instigates, it unleashes a tsunami of hatred and fanaticism.

It was a governor in Pakistan who simply said the blasphemy laws should be used carefully because a Christian woman was being hanged according to sources for blasphemy. And he intervened, he said, blasphemy is a very sensitive legal item, we have to use it very carefully. He was assassinated by a fanatic. Because he thought if he was being too soft on Christian minority and defaming and blaspheming the prophet. So this was the attempt to create a legal basis First Information Report. FIR is a legal document the police registered. And then it unleashes all these currents of hate, totally unfounded. So, you know, that is the worst-case scenario that could happen, that kind of assassination could take place.

Civil war is a possibility, and it’s also possible to be very hopeful, that the current government will continue until the election and the interim will not see any big upheavals other than Imran Khan [inaudible] And he insists on nonviolence. He does not want his followers to do any violence. So, it is possible that probably will be the best-case scenario short of elections.

GR: Well, that’s fascinating reality is playing out. Professor Jabbar I’m afraid we’re out of time now , but you brought us a lot to think about. Thank you for joining us.

AJ: Thank you very much for having me on your program!

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Notes:

1. Full Transcript of Prime Minister Imran Khan’s speech at the UNGA (September 28, 2019), Business Recorder; https://www.brecorder.com/news/524851
2. https://www.dawn.com/news/1686378
3. https://www.republicworld.com/world-news/pakistan-news/ousted-from-power-imran-khan-launches-campaign-to-unseat-imported-govt-in-pakistan-articleshow.html
4. ibid
5. https://multipolarista.com/2022/04/25/indirect-colonialism-us-pakistan-imran-khan/

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Weapons, lacking sentience and moral orientation, are there to be used by all.  Once out, these creations can never be rebottled.  Effective spyware, that most malicious of surveillance tools, is one such creation, available to entities and governments of all stripes.  The targets are standard: dissidents, journalists, legislators, activists, even the odd jurist.

Pegasus spyware, the fiendishly effective creation of Israel’s unscrupulous NSO Group, has become something of a regular in the news cycles on cyber security.  Created in 2010, it was the brainchild of three engineers who had cut their teeth working for the cyber outfit Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defence Forces: Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie.

NSO found itself at the vanguard of an Israeli charm offensive, regularly hosting officials from Mossad at its headquarters in Herzliya in the company of delegations from African and Arab countries.  Cyber capabilities would be one way of getting into their good books.

The record of the company was such as to pique the interest of the US Department of Commerce, which announced last November that it would be adding NSO Group and another Israeli cyber company Candiru (now renamed Saito Tech) to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

In July 2021, the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and civil society groups, revealed that 50,000 phone numbers of interest to a number of governments had appeared on a list of hackable targets.  All had been targets of Pegasus.

The government clients of the NSO Group are extensive, spanning the authoritarian and liberal democratic spectrum.  Most notoriously, Pegasus has found its way into the surveillance armoury of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which allegedly monitored calls made by the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi, on orders of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was butchered on the grounds of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad. NSO subsequently became the subject of a legal suit, with lawyers for Abdulaziz arguing that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Defence Minister Margarita Robles, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and 18 Catalan separatists are the latest high-profile targets to feature in the Pegasus canon.  Sánchez’s phone was hacked twice in May 2021, with officials claiming that there was at least one data leak.  This was the result of, according to the government, an “illicit and external” operation, conducted by bodies with no state authorisation.

Ironically enough, Robles herself had defended the targeting of the 18 Catalan separatists, claiming that the surveillance had been conducted with court approval.  “In this country,” she insisted at a press conference, “no-one is investigated for their political ideals.”

The backdrop of the entire scandal is even more sinister, with Citizen Lab revealing last month that over 60 Catalan legislators, jurists, Members of the European Parliament, journalists and family members were targeted by the Pegasus spyware between 2015 and 2020.  (Citizen Lab found that 63 individuals had been targeted or infected with Pegasus, with four others being the victims of the Candiru spyware.)  Confirmed targets include Elisenda Paluzie and Sònia Urpí Garcia, who both work for the Assemblea Nacional Catalana, an organisation that campaigns for the independence of Catalonia.

The phone of Catalan journalist Meritxell Bonet was also hacked in June 2019 during the final days of a Supreme Court case against her husband Jordi Cuixart.  Cuixart, former president of the Catalan association Òmnium Cultural, was charged and sentenced on grounds of sedition.

The investigation by Citizen Lab did not conclusively attribute “the operations to a specific entity, but strong circumstantial evidence suggests a nexus with Spanish authorities.”  Amnesty International Technology and Human Rights researcher Likhita Banerji put the case simply. “The Spanish government needs to come clean over whether or not it is a customer of NSO Group.  It must also conduct a thorough, independent investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware against the Catalans identified in this investigation.”

Heads were bound to roll, and the main casualty in this affair was the first woman to head Spain’s CNI intelligence agency, Paz Esteban.  Esteban’s defence of the Catalan hackings proved identical to that of Robles: they had been done with judicial and legal approval.  But she needed a scalp for an increasingly embarrassing situation and had no desire to have her reasons parroted back to her.  “You speak of dismissal,” she stated tersely, “I speak of substitution.”

While the implications for the Spanish government are distinctly smelly, one should not forget who the Victor Frankenstein here is.  NSO has had a few scrapes in Israel itself.  It survived a lawsuit by Amnesty International in 2020 to review its security export license.  But there is little danger of that company losing the support of Israel’s Ministry of Defence.  In Israel, cybersecurity continues to be the poster child of technological prowess, lucrative, opaque and distinctly unaccountable to parliamentarians and the courts.

*

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

Featured image is from Indian Punchline

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In 1992, researchers published data showing the quality of sperm counts in men had been cut nearly in half over the previous 50 years. A 2017 systematic review confirmed this trend, showing a 50% to 60% drop in total sperm count among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011

Testosterone has also declined in tandem with lower sperm counts, while miscarriage rates among women and erectile dysfunction among men have been steadily rising

We can rule out genetics as the cause, because the decline in sperm count is simply too rapid. That leaves us with environmental causes. Environmental causes can be broadly divided into two broad categories: Lifestyle and chemicals

Lifestyle factors that negatively impact fertility include obesity, smoking, binge drinking and stress

A great number of chemicals can impact fertility either directly or indirectly, but the most concerning class are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) such as phthalates. EDCs disrupt hormones, including sex hormones necessary for reproductive function, such as testosterone

*

In the After Skool video above, Shanna H. Swan, Ph.D., a leading environmental and reproductive epidemiologist and professor of environmental medicine and public health at the Icahn school of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, examines the role of environmental toxins in reproductive health.

In 1992, researchers published data showing the quality of sperm counts in men had been cut nearly in half over the previous 50 years. According to this study:¹

“Linear regression of data weighted by number of men in each study showed a significant decrease in mean sperm count from 113 x 10(6)/ml in 1940 to 66 x 10(6)/ml in 1990 and in seminal volume from 3.40 ml to 2.75 ml, indicating an even more pronounced decrease in sperm production than expressed by the decline in sperm density …

As male fertility is to some extent correlated with sperm count the results may reflect an overall reduction in male fertility. The biological significance of these changes is emphasized by a concomitant increase in the incidence of genitourinary abnormalities such as testicular cancer and possibly also cryptorchidism and hypospadias, suggesting a growing impact of factors with serious effects on male gonadal function.”

Are Humans Going Extinct?

Swan was initially skeptical, but she decided to look into it some more. To her amazement, after reviewing each of the 60 studies included in that 1992 analysis, she could find nothing to indicate that the finding was a fluke. It was the most stable trend she’d ever come across, and she spent the next 20 years investigating why human reproduction is plummeting.

In 2017, she published a systematic review and meta-regression analysis² showing a 50% to 60% drop in total sperm count among men in North America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011. Overall, men in these countries had a 52.4% decline in sperm concentration and a 59.3% decline in total sperm count (sperm concentration multiplied by the total volume of an ejaculate).

Swan refers to this shocking 39-year decline as “the 1% effect,” meaning the cumulative effect that an annual change of just 1% has over time. Testosterone has also declined in tandem with lower sperm counts, while miscarriage rates among women and erectile dysfunction among men have been steadily rising.

If these trends continue, and there’s no indication that they won’t, in the not-so-distant future, we’ll be looking at a male population that is completely infertile. At that point, the human population will become extinct. Along the way, however, we’ll be facing a number of other pressing problems.

How Will We Care for Aging Baby Boomers?

Historically, the age distribution of the population has looked like a pyramid. The bottom largest section was children, the middle, slightly smaller section was working adults, and the top of the pyramid was seniors. This worked out well, because the younger population was able to financially support and care for the much smaller older segment.

We no longer have that pyramid. In most countries, the population distribution now looks like a light bulb, with a narrow base of children, a bulbous segment of adults, and a narrowing but still very large segment of older adults.

Part of the equation is the fact that life spans have gotten longer, which is wonderful. But the funds to support this aging population — through social security and Medicare in the U.S., for example — are dwindling, as the payer base is shrinking so dramatically.

Another problem is the fact that we won’t have the labor force required to keep the economy afloat. There aren’t enough children to fill all the jobs after the adult population retires.

What’s the Cause?

According to Swan, there are likely a whole host of factors contributing to this reproductive calamity. We can, however, rule out genetics, because the decline in sperm count is simply too rapid. A 50% decline in just two generations cannot be explained by genetics.

That leaves us with environmental causes. Environmental causes can be broadly divided into two broad categories: Lifestyle and chemicals. Lifestyle factors that negatively impact fertility include:

• Obesity
• Smoking
• Binge drinking
• Stress

On the chemical side, we know that a great number of chemicals can impact fertility either directly or indirectly, but the most concerning class are endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs).³ EDCs disrupt hormones, including sex hormones necessary for reproductive function.

Many EDCs will mimic hormones, effectively taking their place. But, of course, the chemical doesn’t function the way the natural hormone does, so whatever that hormone controls won’t function well either. As explained in the 2019 report, “Male Infertility and Environmental Factors”:⁴

“Classically the EDCs bind to the androgen or estrogen receptor triggering an agonist or antagonist action. These in turn lead to increased or decreased gene expression of sex-specific genes.

In addition, EDCs act on steroidogenic enzymes and the metabolism of hormones, for example, inhibit the activity of 5-α reductase, which is the most important enzyme in the production of dihydrotestosterone and hence the regulation of the masculinization of the external genitalia and the prostate.

Furthermore, P450 enzymes in the liver that metabolize steroid hormones may be affected. In animal models EDCs affect hormone receptor levels. In addition to the effect on hormone action, animal experiments suggest that EDCs may also result in epigenetic changes and miRNA levels.”

Swan suspects EDCs are a primary culprit in infertility, in part because we’re surrounded by them every day of our lives. We’re exposed to them through our food, water, personal care products, furniture, building materials, plastics and much more.

In Utero Exposure to EDCs Can Drive Down Fertility

The most vulnerable time of a person’s life is in utero. This is when the building blocks for your reproductive system are laid down, and exposure to EDCs at this time can wreak havoc with a child’s adult reproductive capacity. Since the fetus shares the mother’s body, everything the mother is exposed to, the fetus is exposed to.

As explained in the video, a boy’s reproductive system is dependent on a certain level of testosterone for proper development. If the testosterone level is too low, his reproductive system will be impaired to some degree. In short, without sufficient testosterone, the boy’s reproductive system will “default” to female. He will be feminized, or as Swan describes it, “incompletely masculinized.”

Phthalates Are in Everybody

Swan was tipped off to investigate phthalates by a chemist at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who noted that these EDCs have been found in everybody, including pregnant women.

Specifically, phthalates have been shown to disrupt the reproductive development of males, because they lower testosterone levels and incomplete male development in animals has now become so prevalent, there’s even a name for it: phthalate syndrome.

Animal studies have shown that when a pregnant mother is fed phthalates in early pregnancy, her male offspring will have smaller and less developed reproductive organs. His testicles may not be descended, his penis may be smaller, and his anogenital distance (the distance between the anus and the genitals) tends to be shorter.

Swan was the first to study the anogenital distance in human male infants, and was able to confirm phthalate syndrome is occurring in humans as well. Boys born of women with high levels of phthalic metabolites in their urine — specifically those that lower testosterone — had phthalate syndrome, and the severity was dose-dependent.

Swan then replicated the study with another set of mothers and their babies, and found the same result. The next question then is, does a shorter anogenital distance result in lower sperm count? According to Swan, boys with a short anogenital distance are more likely to have reproductive defects such as undescended testicles and defects of the penis. He’s also more likely to develop testicular cancer at an earlier age than normal, and he’s more likely to be sub-fertile.

So, it is her professional conclusion that phthalate exposure in utero is “undoubtedly part of the explanation of the decrease in sperm count and fertility.” Phthalates and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) have also been linked to reduced bone mineral density in male teens,⁵ which could have significant implications later in life.

Common Sources of Phthalate Exposure

Phthalates are found in plastics. They’re what make the plastic soft and flexible, so wherever you find soft and pliable plastic, you find phthalates. Examples include:

• Vinyl clothing, such as raincoats and rubber boots
• Plastic shower curtains
• Plastic tubing of all kinds
• Foods that have been processed through plastic tubing, such as dairy products (the milking machines have plastic tubing)

Phthalates also increase absorption and help retain scent and color, so you’ll find them in:

• Cosmetics, perfumes and personal care products
• Scented household products such as laundry soap and air fresheners
• Pesticides

As noted by Swan, phthalates are only one class of EDCs. There are several others, including phytoestrogens, dioxins, flame retardants, phenols, PCBs and polyaromatic hydrocarbons. Phthalates, however, are among the most hazardous for male reproductive health due to their ability to block testosterone.

Joe Rogan also recently interviewed Shaw about this. An excerpt is included below. The full interview is available on Spotify.

Phenols Increase Female Sex Hormones

The phenols, such as bisphenol-A (BPA), have the opposite effect in that they make plastic more rigid and hard. In the human body, they increase the female hormone estrogen, resulting in breast development and a flabby midsection. BPA also damages the DNA in sperm.⁶ Like phthalates, BPA and other bisphenols are extremely pervasive. They’re found in:

The Good News

The good news here is that many of the chemicals that are most harmful to reproduction are not persistent, and your body can eliminate them in four to six hours.

Sperm production take about 70 days from start to finish, so over time, a man may be able to reverse some of the damage, provided it’s not congenital. The problem, of course, is that most people are exposed to multiple sources 24/7, so successful detox means you have to stop taking them in.

Another piece of good news is that researchers have shown that if you clean up the environment of the offspring from a toxic, unhealthy rat, normal reproductive capacity is restored after three generations of clean living.

While this is a relatively quick fix for rats, the life span of which is only two years, it’s not quite as simple for humans. Three generations in human terms is about 75 years, “but we can start in that direction,” Swan says, by making sure we a) don’t expose children to EDCs in utero, and b) eliminate further exposure during childhood if the child was exposed in utero.

Forever Chemicals in Our Food and Water

While phthalates and bisphenols are nonpersistent, PFAS — a class of chemicals that are pervasive in soil, water, and human bodies — are so persistent they’re known as “forever chemicals.” In Maine, farmers are now blowing the whistle, warning that PFAS on farmland are a “slow-motion disaster.”⁷

How do the chemicals get there? While spills and seepage from industrial sites are part of the problem in some areas, the most prevalent source of the contamination is biosolids — toxic human waste sludge — which is being marketed as an affordable fertilizer.

In 2019, I wrote about how the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has failed to adequately regulate the biosolids industry, thereby allowing massive quantities of toxic materials to be introduced into our food supply.

You can learn more about this in the Natural News documentary “Biosludged,” above. PFAS accumulate in the soil and is transferred into your food. Proof of this can be seen in food testing, which in 2017 found PFAS chemicals in 10 of the 91 foods tested.

Chocolate cake had the highest amount — 250 times above the advisory limit for drinking water. (There’s currently no limit for food.) Nearly half of the meat and fish tested also contained double the advisory limit for water. Leafy greens grown within 10 miles of a PFAS plant also contained very high amounts. As you might expect, PFAS also accumulate in your body.

Maine Takes Action

In Maine, PFAS contaminated water wells have sparked both outrage and action. A March 2022 article in The Maine Monitor spells out the game plan:⁸

“Maine is the first state to comprehensively test for the impacts of forever chemicals from sludge spreading on farmland, a practice occurring nationwide where fully half of wastewater sludge is land-applied. Consequently, Maine has had to pioneer policy actions, moving to implement recommendations of a year-long PFAS task force.

The next policy step must be passage of LD 1911, which would ban land application of sludge and the land application or sale of compost derived from sludge. Two dozen companies and municipalities are licensed to convert sludge into compost, despite the state’s own finding that 89% of finished compost samples exceeded the screening level for PFOA, a common PFAS compound.

Adam Nordell, co-owner of Songbird Farm in Unity — another site of high PFAS contamination — summarized the importance of LD 1911 this way: ‘No one can undo the historic contamination of our land. But we know enough now to turn off the tap.’

A second bill before the Legislature, LD 1639, would prevent the state-owned Juniper Ridge landfill, managed by Casella Waste Systems, from accepting construction and demolition debris that originated out of state and is laden with PFAS and other toxics, increasing the contaminated leachate entering the Penobscot River.”

Toxic Pesticides

Communities in Maryland and Massachusetts have also confirmed that pesticides used against mosquitoes were contaminated with PFAS, even though they’re not supposed to contain such chemicals. In April 2022, the Pesticide Action Network (PAN) reported:⁹

“EPA claimed that there were no PFAS chemicals used in this way, but independent testing¹⁰revealed that there was PFAS contamination in pesticides being used by mosquito control districts — of 14 mosquito control products tested, half were found to contain PFAS. These products are heavily applied across communities, often weekly, from Spring through Fall.

In response to these concerns, EPA claimed that the PFAS contamination was due to leaching from fluorinated plastic HDPE storage containers. While this explanation has been touted by many as proof that PFAS contamination of pesticides is not a serious concern, the testing in Maryland and Massachusetts revealed that three products were contaminated from another source than the containers.

Beyond this kind of contamination, PFAS are active ingredients in at least 40 pesticide products used worldwide. And this only accounts for pesticides that include PFAS as an active ingredient.

PFAS products are a popular surfactant (helps spray more easily) so PFAS may also be used as inert ingredients in pesticides, which unfortunately don’t have to be reported since chemical composition falls under ‘trade secret’ jurisdiction.

It is clear that PFAS are present in a variety of commonly-used pesticide products, regardless of storage conditions. No research has been done on the synergistic effects of PFAS and pesticides — which we know pose their own set of human and environmental health risks.”

Again and again, the EPA has failed in its duty to protect public health from chemicals that wreak havoc on human health, fetal development and fertility. As noted by PAN, “EPA has engaged in a regulatory stalling tactic — changing the definition of what is considered to be a PFAS to shirk responsibility.”

The new “working definition” of PFAS has been considerably narrowed from what it was, thereby excluding many chemicals used in drugs and pesticides. To counter the EPA’s deliberate shortcomings, the U.S. Congress has also introduced a bill (HR.5987 — the PFAS Definition Improvement Act¹¹) that would require the EPA to use the widest and most comprehensive definition of PFAS.

I join PAN in urging you to call on your representatives to co-sponsor this bill. Maine and Maryland have also proposed bills to prevent PFAS contamination in pesticides specifically.

It’s hard to be optimistic when faced with such dire statistics as a 1% reduction in male fertility per year. But if we care about life, we must at least try to turn things around. One step in the right direction would be to eliminate EDCs from common use. In the meantime, men and women of childbearing age would be wise to take precautions and clear out anything that might expose them to these chemicals in their day-to-day lives, before they try to conceive.

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Notes

¹ BMJ September 12, 1992, 305(6854): 609-613

² Human Reproduction Update November-December 2017; 23(6): 646-659

^3, 4 Global Reproductive Health 2019; 4(2): e28

⁵ Newswise April 29, 2022

⁶ WTOL11 April 29, 2022, Updated May 2, 2022

^7, 8 The Maine Monitor March 13, 2022

⁹ PANNA.org April 20, 2022

¹⁰ Maryland Pesticide Network March 26, 2021

¹¹ HR.5987

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***

President Biden, receiving Italy’s PM Draghi at the White House, said,

“The thing I most appreciate about you is your effort from the beginning to bring NATO and the EU in sync in helping Ukraine.”

Well-deserved congratulations: while the U.S. Congress is allocating an additional $40 billion to arm Kiev’s forces in the war against Russia, adding to the $14 billion already allocated in March, Draghi has been working to open a similar channel of war funding in Europe through a “European Union Solidarity Trust Fund for Ukraine” and a “resilience package” worth an initial €2 billion provided to Kiev by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

At the same time Mario Draghi and other G7 leaders (of which Italy is a member along with the U.S., Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Japan) allocated $24 billion to support Ukraine in its war against Russia. Draghi’s role is also important in the financing to Kiev decided by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, initially amounting to about $5 billion.

Thanks to this funding, in the months before and after the war the United States and its allies supplied Kiev forces with 85,000 missiles, more than 50 million rounds of ammunition of all calibers including for long-range howitzers, drones and other advanced weapons systems. Kiev forces, particularly those of the Azov Regiment and other neo-Nazi formations, are not only armed but directed by NATO.

The colossal spending on the war against Russia, which is set to increase and become permanent, is paid for by the citizens of Italy and Europe directly and indirectly by cutting social spending.

Added to this is the growing expense resulting from the EU Directive to accept and keep all Ukrainians arriving (without the need for visas) in Italy and other European countries.

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This article was originally published in Italian on byoblu.

Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

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***

Wait, you mean dirty stinky polluting coal? That coal?

Which brings me to….

EU to Block Russian Coal

So the EU, already in the middle of the worst energy crisis since the Arab oil crisis and likely worse, is now pushing to eliminate imports of Russian coal. Just so you understand the importance of Russian coal to Europe…

Some 70% of Europe’s thermal coal comes from Russia. Coal accounts for about 20% of continental Europe’s electricity production (as of 2019; perhaps it is 25% now).

Watching the news is enough to drive a man to drink or to put his drink through the telly.

But fear not, there is a silver lining.

Sure, the Russians can take their coal and stick it where the sun doesn’t shine! This works well for a populace now being riled up to the hysterical level, but the question remains: who are they going to find to replace that coal? Are the EU not aware that there is no spare capacity in the big coal exporting nations? Did no one tell the Europeans that coal is base load? Are they not aware they can’t get anymore gas to offset any deficiency in coal? My goodness, when you look at this purely rationally, the only conclusion we can come to is that the energy crisis in Europe is very much in its infancy.

If you thought that there is an issue with respect to security of oil supplies, security over supplies of coal is a different dimension. Indonesia, Australia, and Russia accounted for some 75% of world coal trade in 2019.

Whether or not Brussels can get an agreement by EU state members to ban the import of coal remains to be seen…. But given the EU’s neo-marxist Malthusian ideology and the recent “reported” war crimes committed by Russian troops, it does appear that there is a way “better than even” odds of a ban being agreed to.

But wait. There is more — a blockade of Russian oil? This is becoming more scary by the day!

Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, said yesterday that it is now more a question of when, rather than if, the EU imposes a blockade on Russian oil.

The topic will be on the table for debate at Monday’s foreign affairs council meeting, Borrell said, adding: “Sooner or later — I hope sooner — it will happen.”

Preparations for an oil ban, potentially as part of a sixth package of EU sanctions, reflect a marked hardening in the mood among member states, driven by the reports of atrocities committed by Russian troops in Bucha and other areas that were under occupation.

Political pressure for action is only mounting. In a symbolic vote, the European Parliament yesterday backed by a large majority an immediate full embargo on Russian oil, coal, gas and — in a potential sign of things to come — nuclear fuel.

It isn’t hard to figure out where this is all heading (you ain’t seen nothing yet when it comes to rising commodity prices). What keeps us awake at night is where this all heads politically and socially.

What we do expect from the “great resetters” is the following:

We’ll be told that this world of fossil fuel consumption is clearly unsustainable. See, look, they’ll say from their ivory towers, pointing to spiraling prices. The reason you’re freezing is because it’s unsustainable. The reason you can’t afford the food at the supermarket or that it’s simply not on the shelves any longer is because — you guessed it — it is unsustainable.

Bugs. That’s their answer.

Middle class lifestyles will be curbed as we’re instructed to strive for “sustainability” and transition to shitty pod apartment living and mass transit, while eating synthetic foods grown in labs. But fear not, the Obamas, Clintons, Klaus’ will still keep their mansions, and Silicon Valley futurists will insist on exemptions for their yachts and private jets.

The truth is that left-wing governments have deliberately curtailed drilling and capex spending on domestic energy. They shut nuclear power plants and subsidized costly, inefficient solar and wind projects. Germany froze after their wind turbines stopped working, and they import most of their energy now.

But it’s not just the sausage eaters, as across the West we’re seeing the same thing. We have now ended up not with any form of “green sustainable utopia,” but instead with fuel shortages, rocketing prices, energy dependency often on the world’s most repressive regimes, and we’re about to have severe food shortages. All of this is directly because of these initiatives.

But watch, they will lay the blame on Putin.

***

Disturbing economic, political, and social trends are already in motion and now accelerating at breathtaking speed. Most troubling of all, they cannot be stopped.

The risks that lie ahead are too big and dangerous to ignore. That’s why contrarian money manager Chris Macintosh just released the most critical report on these trends, What Happens Next. This free special report explains precisely what’s coming down the pike and what it means for your wealth and well-being. Click here to access it now.

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***

While the so-called liberal and conservative media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them.  This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.

Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article.  Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…”  But I read on.  By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going.  Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]

While ostensibly about European anti-war and anti-NATO activists caught on the horns of a dilemma, the piece goes on to assert that although US/NATO was guilty of wrongful expansion over many years, Russia has been an aggressor in Ukraine and Georgia and is guilty of terrible war crimes, etc.

There is not a word about the U.S. engineered coup in 2014, the CIA and Pentagon backed mercenaries in Ukraine, or its support for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Ukraine’s years of attacks on the Donbass where many thousands have been killed.  It is assumed these actions are not criminal or provocations.  And there is this:

The uncertain response of Europe’s peace activists is both a reflection of a brutal, unprovoked invasion that stunned the world and of an anti-war movement that has grown smaller and more marginalized over the years. The left in both Europe and the U.S. have struggled to respond to a wave of support for Ukraine that is at cross purposes with a decades long effort to     untangle Europe from a U.S.-led military alliance. [my emphasis]

In other words, the article, couched in anti-war rhetoric, was anti-Russia propaganda.  When I told my friend my analysis, she refused to discuss it and got angry with me, as if I therefore were a proponent of war.  I have found this is a common response.

This got me thinking again about why people so often miss the untruths lying within articles that are in many parts truthful and accurate.  I notice this constantly.  They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously.  Few do notice them, for they are often imperceptible.  But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them.  This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful  or not.  It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly schooled people.

For example, in a recent printed  interview, Noam Chomsky, after being introduced as a modern day Galileo, Newton, and Descartes rolled into one, talks about propaganda, its history, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, etc.  What he says is historically accurate and informative for anyone not knowing this history.  He speaks wisely of U.S. media propaganda concerning its unprovoked war against Iraq and he accurately calls the war in Ukraine “provoked.”  And then, concerning the war in Ukraine, he drops this startling statement:

I don’t think there are ‘significant lies’ in war reporting. The U.S. media are   generally doing a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.

In the blink of an eye, Chomsky says something so incredibly untrue that unless one thinks of him as a modern day Galileo, which many do, it may pass as true and you will smoothly move on to the next paragraph.  Yet it is a statement so false as to be laughable.  The media propaganda concerning events in Ukraine has been so blatantly false and ridiculous that a careful reader will stop suddenly and think: Did he just say that?

So now Chomsky views the media, such as The New York Times and its ilk, that he has correctly castigated for propagandizing for the U.S. in Iraq and East Timor, to use two examples, is doing “a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine,” as if suddenly they were no longer spokespeople for the CIA and U.S. disinformation.  And he says this when we are in the midst of the greatest propaganda blitz since WW I, with its censorship, Disinformation Governance Board, de-platforming of dissidents, etc., that border on a parody of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. 

Even slicker is his casual assertion that the media are doing a good job reporting Russia’s war crimes after he earlier has said this about propaganda:

So it continues. Particularly in the more free societies, where means of state violence have been constrained by popular activism, it is of great importance to devise methods of manufacturing consent, and to ensure that they are internalized, becoming as invisible as the air we breathe, particularly in articulate educated circles. Imposing war-myths is a regular feature of these enterprises.

This is simply masterful.  Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis.  And while he is at it, Chomsky makes sure to praise Chris Hedges, one of his followers, who has himself recently wrote an article – The Age of Self-Delusion – that also contains valid points appealing to those sick of wars, but which also contains the following words:

Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.

The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army   conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.

‘The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,’ historian Andrew Bacevich writes.

But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures. [my emphasis]

Russia’s revanchism?  Where?  Revanchism?  What lost territory has the U.S. ever waged war to recover?  Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.?  The U.S.’s history is a history not of revanchism but of imperial conquest, of seizing or controlling territory, while Russia’s war in Ukraine is clearly an act of self-defense after years of U.S./NATO/Ukraine provocations and threats, which Hedges recognizes. “Nine weeks of humiliating military failures”? – when they control a large section of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Donbass. But his false message is subtly woven, like Chomsky’s, into sentences that are true.

“But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public.”  No, it is exactly what the media spokespeople for the war makers – i.e. The New York Times (Hedges former employer, which he never fails to mention and for whom he covered the Clinton administration’s savage destruction of Yugoslavia), CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, the New York Post, etc. impart to the public every day for their masters.  Headlines that read how Russia, while allegedly committing daily war crimes, is failing in its war aims and that the mythic hero Zelensky is leading Ukrainians to victory.  Words to the effect that “The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself” presented as fact.

Yes, they do inflate the Russian monster myth, only to then puncture it with the myth of David defeating Goliath.

But being in the business of mind games (too much consistency leads to clarity and gives the game away), one can expect them to scramble their messages on an ongoing basis to serve the U.S. agenda in Ukraine and further NATO expansion in the undeclared war with Russia, for which the Ukrainian people will be sacrificed.  Orwell called it “doublethink”:

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.  To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary….with the lie always one step ahead of the truth.

Revealing while concealing and interjecting inoculating shots of untruths that will only get cursory attention from their readers, the writers mentioned here and others have great appeal for the left intelligentsia. For people who basically worship those they have imbued with infallibility and genius, it is very hard to read sentences carefully and smell a skunk.  The subterfuge is often very adroit and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past – e.g. the George W. Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Chomsky, of course, is the leader of the pack, and his followers are legion, including Hedges.  For decades they have been either avoiding or supporting the official versions of the assassinations of JFK and RFK, the attacks of September 11, 2001 that led directly to the war on terror and so many wars of aggression, and the recent Covid-19 propaganda with its devastating lockdowns and crackdowns on civil liberties.  They are far from historical amnesiacs, of course, but obviously consider these foundational events of no importance, for otherwise they would have addressed them.  If you expect them to explain, you will be waiting a long time.

In a recent article – How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy – Christian Parenti writes this about Chomsky:

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit.

Parenti’s critique of the left’s response (not just Chomsky’s and Hedges’) to Covid also applies to those foundational events mentioned above, which raises deeper questions about the CIA’s and NSA’s penetration  of the media in general, a subject beyond the scope of this analysis.

For those, like the liberal woman who referred me to The Intercept article, who would no doubt say of what I have written here: Why are you picking on leftists? my reply is quite simple.

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Smelling skunks is not as obvious as it might seem.  Being nocturnal, they come forth when most are sleeping.

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Edward Curtin is a prominent author, researcher and sociologist based in Western Massachusetts. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). 

Featured image is from Kim Petersen

He is the author of Seeking the Truth in a Country of Lies

To order his book click the cover page.

“Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies is a dazzling journey into the heart of many issues — political, philosophical, and personal — that should concern us all.  Ed Curtin has the touch of the poet and the eye of an eagle.” Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

“Edward Curtin puts our propaganda-stuffed heads in a guillotine, then in a flash takes us on a redemptive walk in the woods — from inferno to paradiso.  Walk with Ed and his friends — Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, George Orwell, and many others — through the darkest, most-firefly-filled woods on this earth.” James W. Douglass, author, JFK and the Unspeakable

“A powerful exposé of the CIA and our secret state… Curtin is a passionate long-time reform advocate; his stories will rouse your heart.” Oliver Stone, filmmaker, writer, and director

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 fascinating discussion with Dr. Peter McCullough and crime writer John Leake about their new book,

THE COURAGE TO FACE COVID 19: PREVENTING HOSPITALIZATION AND DEATH WHILE BATTLING THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL COMPLEX.

The book traces the travails of cardiologist/epidemiologist McCullough, who became an early leader in devising successful treatment protocols for covid patients and, after making it his mission to get the word out about the protocols, has been persistently attacked by what he describes as the biopharmaceutical complex while becoming a global leader among physicians and others seeking to save people around the world from the complex’s deadly agenda.

To purchase THE COURAGE TO FACE COVID 19: PREVENTING HOSPITALIZATION AND DEATH WHILE BATTLING THE BIOPHARMACEUTICAL COMPLEX, go here: couragetofacecovid.com

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This interview was originally published on The Whistleblower Newsroom.

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***

Quietly, thoughtlessly, and ominously, America is sleepwalking towards a nuclear war.

Two weeks ago, the Biden Administration asked Congress for $33 billion to support Ukraine in its fight against Russia. But in a divided Washington, the Uniparty has united in agreement that $33 billion is not enough. On Monday, Republicans and Democrats in Congress struck a deal to send Ukraine $40 billion in aid. Leaders unveiled the bill text on Tuesday, and voted on it within hours.

The bill raced through the House in the dark of night, with unanimous Democratic support. Of course, the phony left-populist poser Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her “Squad” were on board. Republican support was overwhelming as well, but a few members did bravely stand against the tide.

They were 57 strong.

Full List Of The 57 Republicans That Voted Against The Democrats America Last $40 Billion Foreign Aid Package For Ukraine pic.twitter.com/tkvybRqpqQ

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) May 11, 2022

Matt Gaetz led the charge.

Just a year ago, we lost a war against goat herders waving rifles. Members of Congress are now recklessly asserting that we are at war with Russia.

If we are at war, then why not vote on an AUMF?

We are sleepwalking into a war, and the American people are left in the dark. pic.twitter.com/vN3xHT0JZ6

— Rep. Matt Gaetz (@RepMattGaetz) May 11, 2022

MTG was right there alongside him.

In the America LAST $40 BILLION Ukraine FIRST bill that we are voting on tonight, there is authorization for funds to be given to the CIA for who knows what and who knows how much?

But NO BABY FORMULA for American mothers! pic.twitter.com/Fmdb7yKiLV

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) May 10, 2022

On the other side, Nancy Pelosi wants to take food out of her neighbor’s mouths to buy weapons of war from Ukraine. Forget the babies who can’t get baby formula thanks to the federal government’s shenanigans.

Pelosi: "When you're home thinking about [what $40 billion to Ukraine] is all about, just think about 'when I was hungry, you fed me' from the Gospel of Matthew." pic.twitter.com/J1NukSFVuo

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) May 11, 2022

Let them eat Javelins? We certainly don’t recall reading that one in the Bible.

For now, the aid package has been held up thanks to a gutsy objection from Sen. Rand Paul. Still, one senator can’t block it forever.

Adding in the several billion America has already sent to Ukraine, America is poised to spend $43 billion on this conflict in just seven months. And we’re not just sending Ukraine weapons. The U.S. Congress has volunteered our tax money to pay the salaries of its officials, as if they were long-distance contractors of the federal government. In a way, that’s exactly what they are. He who pays the piper, calls the tune.

Huge numbers are always getting thrown around in Washington, so it’s worth pausing to evaluate just what $43 billion means.

• The $43 billion is roughly three times the final cost of President Trump’s unfinished border wall with Mexico.
• If this U.S. aid were a national military budget, it would be the 10th-largest military budget in the world, just ahead of South Korea and well above countries like Italy, Australia, and Iran. Even if one excludes the non-military portions of the package, it exceeds the defense budgets of Israel.
• Speaking of Israel, this six-month aid package exceeds all U.S. aid to Israel over the past decade.
• $43 billion is more than the cost of any of the first eight years of the war in Afghanistan. 
• $43 billion handily exceeds the current budget of the Department of Justice, which has some 113,000 employees. It’s almost double the budget of NASA.

CNN has more details:

Included among the legislation’s allocations for defense is $6 billion to assist Ukrainian military and national security forces, according to a fact sheet released by House Democrats. The expenditure will go toward training, weapons, equipment, logistics and intelligence support as well as other needs.

There will also be almost $9 billion to help restock US equipment that has been sent to Ukraine. That comes as many lawmakers have raised concerns about replacing US stocks of weapons the US is giving to Ukraine, especially stingers and javelin missiles.

…

The bill also includes $6 billion in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative funding, another way the Biden administration has been providing Ukraine with military assistance. USAI funding allows the administration to buy weapons from contractors and then provide those weapons to Ukraine, so this method does not draw directly from US stocks.

To address humanitarian needs, the bill will include $900 million to bolster refugee assistance, including housing, trauma support, and English language instruction for Ukrainians fleeing the country.

The measure provides an additional $54 million that will be used for public health and medical support for Ukrainian refugees.

[CNN]

And keep in mind, this is only to cover through next September. If the war is still grinding on then, and President Biden comes back asking for another $40 billion to cover another five months, America will end up spending $83 billion in one year on a war that our own soldiers are not even fighting in. For comparison, 1991’s Gulf War, which the U.S. actually fought in, cost the country just $14 billion in 2022 dollars.

Yet incredibly and depressingly, the consensus at the top of the GOP is that $43 billion for Ukraine is the single best and most important use of America’s dwindling wealth.

Mitch McConnell just said "We all agree that the most important thing going on in the world right now is the war in Ukraine," while agreeing to send $40 BILLION in American taxpayer funds there.

If you DON'T agree with Mitch and think we need to put #AmericaFirst please RT.

— Jeremy "Harmless Regime Affirmer" Carl (@jeremycarl4) May 10, 2022

So far, most Republican criticism of Ukraine aid has focused on the wastefulness of it. With rampant inflation and shortages at home,  a sieve on the border, and exploding crime rates, sending tens of billions of dollars to Ukraine is irresponsible, like a struggling middle class household splurging on a luxury car.

But we will go further. Even if America had unlimited wealth to throw around, sending $40 billion to Ukraine would be just plain wrong. Sending aid to Ukraine doesn’t make America safer, happier, or better off. It doesn’t even make Ukraine happier or better off. Instead, Americans are paying $40 billion for the “privilege” of raising our exposure to nuclear war, and condemning Ukraine to endless war.

If the Biden Administration cared about protecting America’s well-being, then instead of financing Ukraine’s war effort, it would be working for a negotiated end to the war by the quickest means possible. 

Ukraine’s pre-war GDP was just $155 billion, so America’s latest aid package is equal to more than one-quarter of their economy. In America, a similar figure would be more than $5 trillion. America is not “supporting” Ukraine. Ukraine is totally and completely dependent on American support to continue effective resistance. If America stopped supplying President Zelensky’s war effort, he would have to make peace immediately. By extension, that means America has almost complete leverage in terms of telling Ukraine what peace deal it should accept. America should be using this power to negotiate with Russia, reach an agreeable long-term solution to the conflict, and then urge— even compel—Ukraine to accept it. Instead, Biden is encouraging Ukraine to reject any peace deal, and writing a blank check to ensure the war can go on as long as possible.

This isn’t being done to help Ukraine, though. It’s only being done to hurt Russia, with the Ukrainians themselves seen as expendable cannon fodder. Rep. Dan Crenshaw even said so explicitly on Twitter Wednesday, bragging that the Ukraine war is a great way to spend money because it kills Russians, doesn’t kill Americans (for now), and the Ukrainian deaths as part of the bargain don’t count:

Yeah, because investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea. You should feel the same.

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) May 11, 2022

So far, one of the only leaders to realize this, in fact, is former President Trump.

NEW!

President Donald J. Trump:

“It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement. If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage. This is a war that never should have happened, pic.twitter.com/AAIt0oSNzM

— Liz Harrington (@realLizUSA) April 18, 2022

Via Newsmax:

Former President Donald Trump on Monday urged Ukrainian and Russian leaders to sign a peace deal soon, or ”everyone will be dead.”

”It doesn’t make sense that Russia and Ukraine aren’t sitting down and working out some kind of an agreement. If they don’t do it soon, there will be nothing left but death, destruction, and carnage,” Trump said in a statement Monday.

”This is a war that never should have happened, but it did. The solution can never be as good as it would have been before the shooting started, but there is a solution, and it should be figured out now—not later—when everyone will be dead!”

[Newsmax]

Even legendary left-wing academic Noam Chomsky acknowledged that Trump is the only statesman of note in the West who has pointed the path towards an early end to the war, instead of perpetual conflict:

How bad have things gotten under Biden? Noam Chomsky is now touting Donald Trump as the one person who could deescalate the Ukraine conflict. I never thought I'd hear this admission. pic.twitter.com/eUmipWGwTG

— Tim Xeriland (@Xeriland) May 2, 2022

When the Ukraine war first broke out, it was the biggest news story in the world, and such a dramatic development that it finally banished Covid-19 from the national consciousness. Diehard Current-Thing supporters finally moved on from masks and vaccines, and instead hung Ukraine flags alongside the Pride flags outside their windows. Most Americans were supportive of the Ukrainian cause, but they also made it clear they were not willing to fight a direct war with Russia, let alone a nuclear one, on Ukraine’s country’s behalf.

After a few weeks of excitement, it became clear that the Ukraine war was going to be a slow-moving slog rather than a thrilling blitzkrieg, and our attention wandered as it inevitably does. For most Americans, Ukraine has become old news.

But if Americans have largely moved on, Washington certainly has not. In fact, for Washington, America’s lack of attention has provided an opportunity to escalate America’s involvement in the war. With the public looking away, there is no political pressure to avoid constantly escalating America’s involvement in a far-off conflict that by rights should be none of their concern.

Every day, America does more and more to justify the label of co-belligerent in the conflict. In the past two weeks, both the First Lady and the Speaker of the House have made surprise visits to the country.

Now, along with moral support, America is planning to essentially bankroll Ukraine’s entire war effort. In New York Times write-ups, former military officials boast about how silly it is to worry about over-escalation. America, they say, has nothing to fear from supplying heavier and heavier weapons for a war against a nuclear power:

[F]or Washington at least, concerns about supplying arms that Russia might consider “escalatory” have ebbed — as has the initial worry that Ukraine will use longer-range weapons, like jet fighters, to attack Moscow itself and set off a bigger war. … Some argue the Americans are being too cautious.

“Seven weeks ago, they were arguing over whether to give Stinger missiles — how silly does that seem now?” said retired Lt. Gen. Frederick B. Hodges, the former top U.S. Army commander in Europe. “We have been deterred out of an exaggerated fear of what possibly could happen.”

[NYT]

In the past two months, Stinger missiles and rifles have turned into large battle-armed drones and heavy howitzers. In the months to come, that could give way to fighter jets and more.

But even more dangerous than weapons might be the ever-increasing collaboration between Ukraine and U.S. military intelligence. While it matters little for the actual battlefield situation, Russia’s most high-profile embarrassment of the war has been April’s loss of the old Soviet guided-missile cruiser Moskva. According to the Financial Times, the ship’s loss enraged Vladimir Putin, and pushed him to abandon negotiations for more aggressive war goals.

Vladimir Putin has lost interest in diplomatic efforts to end his war with Ukraine and instead appears set on seizing as much territory as possible, according to three people briefed on conversations with the Russian president. Putin, who was seriously considering a peace deal with Ukraine after Russia suffered battlefield setbacks last month, has told people involved in trying to end the conflict that he sees no prospects for a settlement.

… Putin said peace efforts were at a “dead end” and was infuriated after Ukraine sank the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, according to two people.

“There was hope for a deal. Putin was going back and forth. He needs to find a way to come out of this a winner,” one of the people said.

After the Moskva sank, “Putin was against signing anything. [ . . . ] after the Moskva he doesn’t look like a winner, because it was humiliating,” the person added.

[FT]

Now, predictably, self-important parasites in the U.S. military establishment have leaked that the U.S. played a central role in the Moskva’s sinking, providing the intelligence that allowed Ukrainian forces to make the attack. Even after the outbreak of war, Russia’s initial negotiating position was rather lenient: It was the same demands for Ukrainian neutrality and recognition of the status quo in Crimea and Donbass that Russia had sought before its invasion. In effect, America’s intelligence services have scuttled the chance for an early peace, and they are too stupid and egotistical to even hide their responsibility for doing so.

Back in 2020, anti-Trump commentators claimed that entirely unsupported rumors that Russia was paying bounties for the Taliban to kill U.S. troops amounted to an “act of war.” If that’s the case, then how is Russia supposed to view the completely confirmed role of the United States in the deaths of at least twenty-seven Russian sailors? Right now, the U.S. still has hundreds of troops in eastern Syria. If Russia retaliated by helping extremists in that country to kill U.S. troops, how is the U.S. supposed to react?

Thankfully, we haven’t had to ask that question, because so far, Russia has chosen not to militarily retaliate against America’s steadily-escalating involvement in Ukraine. It may well be that Russia will never retaliate. But every time the U.S. chooses to escalate, it is rolling the dice again.

When America gambles in this way, it is not gambling with America’s wealth, or its credibility, or even the lives of its soldiers. It is gambling with civilization itself. Russia still has nearly 6,000 nuclear warheads in its stockpile, including more than 1,500 currently deployed and ready for use.

Given the stakes of the Ukraine conflict, even a one-in-a-thousand risk of escalating to nuclear war is incredibly irresponsible. As we wrote back in January in a piece entitled, “The Globalist American Empire Would Rather Risk Nuclear War Than Admit Its Own Arrogance”:

Even if Russia did conquer and annex all of Ukraine (something it has shown no interest in doing), America’s security interests would remain unchanged. Ukraine doesn’t supply the United States with any irreplaceable natural resources. It doesn’t sit alongside a critical trade route or geographical position. It isn’t physically proximate to the United States. Ukraine matters to America’s domestic security as much as Iraq, Syria, Libya, or Venezuela; i.e. not at all. Just like all four of those other countries, a war over Ukraine would have nothing to do with protecting America’s safety, its prosperity, or its values. Instead, it would be a product of a cloistered foreign policy elite that is not content with controlling one country and instead seeks to boss around the entire planet.

READ THE REST…

For the past decade, Washington warhawks have fearmongered about Russia’s plans to build a new Soviet Empire by force. Others have surmised about Vladimir Putin’s plans to restore the borders of pre-1917 Russia, which would require invading not just ex-Soviet republics but also Poland and Finland.

But the events in Ukraine in the past three months vindicated Revolver’s analysis and have demonstrated that fears of a neo-Soviet empire are fundamentally absurd. Russia has taken thousands of casualties and lost 3500 vehicles attempting to take over the impoverished eastern third of Ukraine, a region that speaks Russian, has many sympathetic locals, and which is directly adjacent to Russia and its logistical support networks. Russia following up on this struggle by invading wealthier, more distant, and more hostile neighbors who are also full members of NATO would be ridiculous, and if Russia did it anyway, it is even more ridiculous to fear that they might win. The Ukraine war has demonstrated conclusively that Russia is incapable of materially threatening the United States or its core allies by conventional military means.

As a result, Russia only endangers America to the extent that our own leaders choose to risk nuclear war. The only reason Saddam Hussein’s Iraq killed a single American is because America chose to start a war and lose thousands of lives fighting it. Similarly, the only way Russia can threaten America’s existence is if America’s leaders deliberately provoke it, turning manageable diplomatic disputes into a possible nuclear war.

As far as Americans are concerned, that is the only major outcome of America financing the war. Americans are paying billions of dollars to marginally increase the chances that they and all of their family members die horribly in a nuclear war. That’s it. This military aid isn’t encouraging a peace deal; in fact, U.S. aid has hardened the resolve of both countries and pushed them further away from the negotiating table. This aid isn’t saving Ukrainian lives. Rather, by allowing the war to go on indefinitely, it simply ensures that more will be killed.

If this seems familiar, it should, because permanent war is America’s strategy in many other places—the passive-aggressive strategy of a fading empire. In Afghanistan, America had given up on ever defeating the Taliban well before the humiliating collapse of the Kabul government in August 2021. Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw described America’s posture pre-withdrawal position in Afghanistan as a “residual force” “propp[ing] up” the Kabul government while conducting occasional warfare, and for him, this was a good thing.

Similarly, in Syria, America’s actual strategy was to keep the war going as long as possible without a winner, no matter how much of a human calamity the conflict caused.

With no end in sight for the war in Syria, the Obama administration continues to approach the conflict in a way that is prolonging the fighting. As it pursues its stated goal of removing Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad from power, the Obama administration is implementing a policy that keeps the Syrian regime and the many different opposition forces in the country locked in a deadly stalemate.

…

CIA director John Brennan has provided more insight into the administration’s strategy. Addressing the fact that the administration has continued to support a number of opposition groups that are fighting to overthrow the Syrian government, Brennan explained that the administration only provides the opposition groups with just enough resources to keep them fighting. “I think what we’re trying to do is to make sure the moderate opposition continues to stay strong, puts the pressure on the regime,” Brennan said. “We don’t want the Syrian government to collapse,” he added. “That’s the last thing we want to do.”

[The Wire]

This isn’t bravery, or “toughness.” It is morally monstrous. It is the reckless action of a declining superpower which feels entitled to control the entire world, and believes in the right to cause perpetual warfare in regions where it cannot have its way. It is the decision to throw away tens of thousands of lives in a war that doesn’t have to be fought at all. Real toughness is standing up to the military industrial complex and regime commissars cheerleading us into another war against American interests, not saber rattling against a nuclear adversary because the Regime has decided this is the next Current Thing.

Americans have had enough of the fake “toughness” that has in the past twenty years to brought us to the edge of ruin. We have had enough stalemates to exhaust half a dozen lesser powers. With the end of the Afghan War, America finally had a chance to rest and recover the strength and wealth it has spent decades squandering. Now, the Biden Administration and both parties in Congress are determined to avoid that, and start financing a new war that is far more existentially dangerous than those that came before.

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***

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, who is now the deputy of Russia’s Security Council, warned Thursday that the US and NATO risk a direct conflict with Russia and a “full-fledged” nuclear war by pouring weapons into Ukraine.

“The pumping of Ukraine by NATO countries with weapons, the training of its troops to use Western equipment, the dispatch of mercenaries and the conduct of exercises by the countries of the Alliance near our borders increase the likelihood of a direct and open conflict between NATO and Russia instead of their ‘war by proxy,’” Medvedev wrote on Telegram.

“Such a conflict always has the risk of turning into a full-fledged nuclear war,” Medvedev added. “This will be a disastrous scenario for everyone.”

While it’s widely believed that a direct war between the US and Russia could quickly turn nuclear, the risk doesn’t appear to be factored into the Biden administration’s Ukraine policy. Over the past few months, the US has significantly escalated its support to Kyiv in its war against Russia through increased military aid, training, and expanded intelligence sharing.

President Biden has maintained that he won’t send US troops into Ukraine to fight Russia directly, but the proxy war still risks provoking a response from Moscow. Despite the risks, some ultra-hawks in Washington favor a direct conflict with Russia, including Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL).

Kinzinger introduced a bill that would give President Biden war powers if he determined Moscow used chemical, biological, or nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but the legislation failed to gain a single cosponsor. Kinzinger is also a proponent of the US enforcing a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which would require shooting down Russian warplanes and bombing surface-to-air missiles inside Russia.

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

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

You could see something new playing out on the Sunday shows this weekend: Some TV news networks are starting to raise questions about whether the U.S. involvement in the Ukraine might have some downsides.

But not on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

After hearing from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — who called for “more weapons, more sanctions” — and Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova — who asked for “more military support, more sanctions” — “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan warmly welcomed Jim Taiclet, the chairman and CEO of Lockheed Martin, tossing him questions that weren’t even softballs, they were bouquets.

One can imagine how that might have come about. Earlier in the week, President Biden visited a Lockheed Martin factory in Alabama that makes Javelin anti-tank missiles, pitching his requests for $33 billion in aid to Ukraine and subsidies for American microchip production. So Ukraine and supply-chain issues were in the news, and Taiclet could address both.

But still, what it came down to was a major television network inviting onto its marquee news show the head of the largest weapons manufacturer in the world — the company that profits more from war than any other company worldwide — and not asking a single pointed question.

Watch the entire six-minute segment and ask yourself if state television in a totalitarian country would have done it any differently.

After praising the Javelin and marveling at Lockheed’s ability to ramp up production so quickly, Brennan actually fed Taiclet a line to make it seem like what he was doing is particularly noble.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You said — well, you implied you’re basically doing on spec, right?

JIM TAICLET: That’s right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you’re a businessperson. You have to plan ahead. We don’t know how long this war is going to last. The CIA says, you know, Vladimir Putin thinks he’s got to double down here. So, how long are you planning for with this ramp up?

The idea that Lockheed is taking a risk and doing this “on spec” is risible. Orders are pouring in, not the least of which being a new request from the Army for $239 million in Javelins over the next three years.

And Taiclet himself then proceeded to make the case that for Lockheed, things are looking very good indeed for sales on Javelins, Stingers, and “advanced cruise missiles.”

“The Ukrainian conflict has highlighted a couple of really important things for us,” he said. “One is that we need to have superior systems in large enough numbers. …So, we know there’s going to be increased demand for those kinds of systems from the U.S. and for our allies as well and beyond into Asia Pacific most likely too.”

Taiclet said the “second really valuable lesson” from the war in Ukraine is that “control of the air space is really critical” and then began the upsell:

So products and systems like F-16, F-35, patriot missiles, THAAD missiles, we know that there’s going to be increased demand for those kinds of equipment, too, because the threat between Russia and China is just going to increase even after the Ukrainian war, we hope is over soon. Though two nations, and regionally Iran and North Korea, are not going to get less active. Probably they’re going to get more active. So we want to make sure we can supply our allies and our country what they need to defend against that.

This guy is a weapons merchant. He sees crises as opportunities. And once the war in Ukraine is over, he’s clearly looking forward to increased tensions with Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.

Brennan questioned nothing.

How much are U.S. taxpayers spending on those Javelins? She didn’t ask. The Pentagon’s 2023 budget request calls for buying 586, at a total cost of $189 million, or about $322,000 per unit.

How much is too much? Global military spending was already at astronomical levels even before Ukraine — topping $2 trillion for the first time in 2021, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. The United States accounts for 38 percent of that, more than the next 11 highest-spending countries combined.

Just how much money is Lockheed Martin making from all of this? It’s by far the largest arms company in the world, with $67 billion in sales last year. In fact, it made so much money in 2021 that it spent $4.1 billion simply buying back its stock — a move that typically increases share prices and makes stock options wildly more lucrative.

So how much did Taiclet earn last year? $18 million. How much bigger a bonus will he get this year? Who knows?

Brennan also encouraged Taiclet to complain about supply chain issues.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So what do you need to do that, because you did say supply chain is an issue? I read that there’s over, what, 250 microchips or semiconductors in each Javelin.

JIM TAICLET: That’s right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: We know there’s an effort in Congress to get legislation to try to create more semiconductors here instead of relying on Asian suppliers. Can you do this scale-up without that kind of legislation?

Answering that question directly and honestly might have led to embarrassing Brennan, since Taiclet told investors last month that supply-chain issues are already being resolved, and that “we expect these timing impacts to be recovered over the course of 2022.”

So he sidestepped:

JIM TAICLET: It will be extremely helpful to have the bipartisan Innovation Act passed, for example, because we do need to invest more in the infrastructure in the U.S. so we have domestic supply, especially in microprocessors. And so our production line can run today, but in the future we’re going to need more domestic capability in microprocessor, not only design, but manufacturing, testing, et cetera, so that were have assured supply of those microprocessors in the future.

Brennan kept on trying to feed him lines:

MARGARET BRENNAN: But we’ve heard on this program time and again from businesspeople how important that is to get done. Congress still hasn’t voted on it or voted it through.

JIM TAICLET: Right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you have any commitments from anyone here in Washington to get this to the president’s desk soon?

JIM TAICLET: Well, we know that there’s a lot of support for it both in Congress, in the administration, the Commerce Department, et cetera.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because it takes time to scale that up?

So it wasn’t just that CBS invited the world’s biggest weapons manufacturer to address its huge audience about an ongoing war — it fluffed him up and tried to get him to whine more, even as he spoke enthusiastically about future opportunities to make a killing.

“Face the Nation” was an outlier on Sunday, however. Hosts on several other networks asked at least a few skeptical questions of their guests.

Ironically, it may have taken an admonitory column by New York Times opinion columnist Thomas Friedman to change their tone.

Friedman, whose optimistic warmongering during the Iraq war became synonymous with clueless, armchair-warrior punditry, wrote on Fridaythat we “are edging toward a direct war [with Russia] — and no one has prepared the American people or Congress for that.” He continued:

We need to stick as tightly as possible to our original limited and clearly defined aim of helping Ukraine expel Russian forces as much as possible or negotiate for their withdrawal whenever Ukraine’s leaders feel the time is right.

But we are dealing with some incredibly unstable elements, particularly a politically wounded Putin. Boasting about killing his generals and sinking his ships, or falling in love with Ukraine in ways that will get us enmeshed there forever, is the height of folly.

Bret Baier on “Fox News Sunday” and Abby Phillips on CNN’s “Inside Politics” both actually quoted from Friedman’s column.

On Fox News, mentioning Friedman’s piece led Sen. Lindsay Graham to even further heights of hawkery, declaring that “Putin must go. I like Tom Friedman, but…  let’s take out Putin by helping Ukraine.” Even Baier asked if there was another way. “There is no offramp. No offramp,” Graham insisted.

By contrast, on CNN, quoting Friedman led to a strong discussion with former CNN Moscow correspondent Jill Dougherty and New Yorker writer Robin Wright about what could “trigger a wider war.”

Phillips asked Wright about her recent article declaring that “the conflict has rapidly evolved into a full proxy war with Russia, with global ramifications.”

“We were initially reactive,” Wright said. “We crossed a threshold in saying we want to weaken Russia, that Ukraine, independent and sovereign, will long outlast Vladimir Putin.” Wright added that U.S. intelligence officials “went a step too far about the language about the intelligence we were giving.”

And Dougherty raised the possibility of diminishing popular support, saying some Americans are “looking at the economy, and inflation going through the roof, and people who have investments are looking at the market, and there might be some people who say well where’s all this money coming from? And why is it going to Ukraine? Don’t we have problems?”

NBC’s “Meet the Press” stuck entirely to the abortion debate. On ABC’s “This Week,” host Martha Raddatz promised viewers a discussion of how “intelligence leaks prompt new fears that the U.S. could be closer to direct conflict with Russia” – but that topic didn’t actually come up in the two reports about Ukraine later in the show.

In the most hopeful sign that Washington journalists are becoming more skeptical in their reporting of the war in Ukraine, CNN “State of the Union” host Jake Tapper peppered U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield with solid questions, starting with a crucial one:

TAPPER: So, the U.S. is supplying deadly weapons, financial aid, intelligence that allows Ukraine to kill Russians. At what point is this just a proxy war that the U.S. is fighting against Russia, but the U.S. is not the one pulling the trigger? Where’s the line there?

Thomas-Greenfield’s answer was non-responsive, simply asserting that support will continue and “Russia has felt the consequences of our support for the Ukrainians.”

TAPPER: I mean, we’re not giving them the location of a Russian general so that they can order Uber Eats for them. It’s with the express purpose of, here is where this Russian general is. Go do what you’re going to do. And then the Ukrainians kill them.

The ambassador parried again:

THOMAS-GREENFIELD: We’re providing them with the intelligence, so that they can defend themselves against Russian aggression and also put them in a position where they’re stronger at the negotiating table against the Russians. How they use that intelligence is up to them.

Good questions. The next step, of course, is demanding real answers.

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***

A professor who advocated for longer lockdowns in his role as a SAGE government advisor now admits that the negative impacts of lockdowns were never included in SAGE modeling and that they should have been.

Professor John Edmunds was part of the SAGE team that told the government there would be 6,000 Omicron deaths per day in the absence of another lockdown late last year.

In reality, the death toll never got anywhere near that number as the doomsayers were proven spectacularly wrong yet again.

Now Edmunds admits that the economic harm and the knock-on health effects of lockdown were harms that “in principle” could have been factored into models “but in practice they were not.”

The professor called for an extended lockdown in Summer 2021 and said the government was “taking a risk” by lifting restrictions, but now says some of the alarmist death projections put out by SAGE were “truly eye-watering.”

“The epidemiological model is only one component [of decision-making] and I wondered and I worried that we’d had too much weight,” said Edmunds.

“There is of course an enormous economic impact from many of the interventions and other indirect impacts on psychological health and so on. Now these in principle could be included but in practice they were not,” he added.

“Joy shall be in heaven over one sinner that repenteth and all that – but you can’t help feel the recantation is very convenient as we move on from the pandemic and people start to look back with more objectivity at all the crazy, costly things that were done in the name of ‘science’ and at the behest of modellers,” writes Will Jones.

Edmunds is another individual who, having once vehemently advocated for stricter and longer lockdowns, is now having to concede that they were a mistake and is fleeing the sinking ship that is the entire lockdown narrative.

As we recently highlighted, figures from the World Health Organization show that Sweden had fewer COVID deaths per capita than much of Europe despite refusing to enforce strict lockdowns and mask mandates like numerous other nearby countries.

A study published in the Royal Society Open Science journal last month found that lockdowns in the UK caused around 60,000 children to suffer clinical depression.

A major study by Johns Hopkins University earlier this year concluded that global lockdowns have had a much more detrimental impact on society than they have produced any benefit, with researchers urging that they “are ill-founded and should be rejected as a pandemic policy instrument.”

Lockdown advocates were on the wrong side of history, something that should be paramount if health authorities once again try to lock down parts of society when the next pandemic hits, as Bill Gates has virtually guaranteed us will happen.

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Featured image is a screenshot from the video

This article first published by Global Research on March 6, 2014 at the very outset of the Ukraine crisis explains the nature of the Kiev proxy regime.

It is of  relevance to an understanding of recent events.

What is happening in Ukraine has serious geopolitical implications and could potentially lead to a World War III scenario. 

It is important that a peace process be initiated with a view to preventing escalation.

Global Research does not support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

***

This was my assessment in the immediate wake of the EuroMaidan Coup in February 2014:

“The World is at a dangerous crossroads: The structures and composition of this proxy government installed by the West do not favor dialogue with the Russian government and military.

A scenario of military escalation leading to confrontation of Russia and NATO is a distinct possibility. The Ukraine’s National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) which is controlled by Neo-Nazis plays a central role in military affairs.  In the confrontation with Moscow, decisions taken by the RNBOU headed by Neo-Nazi Parubiy and his brown Shirt deputy Dmytro Yarosh –in consultation with Washington and Brussels– could potentially have devastating consequences. (March  6, 2014)

***

We are dealing with a coalition government (integrated by two neo-Nazi parties) which is supported by “Western democracy” and the “international community”. 

According to the New York Times,

“The United States and the European Union have embraced the revolution here as another flowering of democracy, a blow to authoritarianism and kleptocracy in the former Soviet space.” ( After Initial Triumph, Ukraine’s Leaders Face Battle for Credibility,  NYTimes.com, March 1, 2014, emphasis added)

“Flowering Democracy, Revolution”?  The grim realities are otherwise. What is a stake is a US-EU-NATO sponsored coup d’Etat in blatant violation of international law.

The forbidden truth is that the West has engineered –through a carefully staged covert operation– the formation of a proxy regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

Confirmed by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, key organizations in the Ukraine including the Neo-Nazi party Svoboda were generously supported by Washington: “We have invested more than 5 billion dollars to help Ukraine to achieve these and other goals. … We will continue to promote Ukraine to the future it deserves.”

The Western media has casually avoided to analyze the composition and ideological underpinnings of the government coalition. The word “Neo-Nazi” is a taboo. It has been excluded from the dictionary of mainstream media commentary. It will not appear in the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post or The Independent. Journalists have been instructed not to use the term “Neo-Nazi” to designate Svoboda and the Right Sector.

Composition of the Coalition Government

We are not dealing with a transitional government in which Neo-Nazi elements integrate the fringe of the coalition, formally led by the Fatherland party.

The Cabinet is not only integrated by the Svoboda and Right Sector (not to mention former members of defunct fascist UNA-UNSO), the two main Neo-Nazi entities have been entrusted with key positions which grant them de facto control over the Armed Forces, Police, Justice and National Security.

Image left: John McCain meets Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok (centre)

While Yatsenuyk’s Fatherland Party controls the majority of portfolios and Svoboda Neo-Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok was not granted a major cabinet post (apparently at the request of assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland), members of Svoboda and the Right Sector occupy key positions in the areas of Defense, Law Enforcement, Education and Economic Affairs.

Andriy Parubiy (image right) co-founder of the Neo-Nazi  Social-National Party of Ukraine (subsequently renamed Svoboda) was appointed Secretary of the National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU). (Рада національної безпеки і оборони України), a key position which overseas the Ministry of Defense, the Armed Forces, Law Enforcement, National Security and Intelligence. The RNBOU is central decision-making body. While it is formally headed by the president, it is run by the Secretariat with a staff of 180 people including defense, intelligence and national security experts.

Parubiy was one of the main leaders behind the Orange Revolution in 2004. His organization was funded by the West. He is referred to by the Western media as the “kommandant” of the EuroMaidan movement.

Andriy Parubiy together with party leader Oleh Tyahnybok is a follower of Ukrainian Nazi Stepan Bandera, who collaborated in the mass murderer of Jews and Poles during World War II.

Neo-Nazi march honoring Stepan Bandera

In turn, Dmytro Yarosh, leader of the Right Sector delegation in the parliament, has been appointed Parubiy’s deputy Secretary of the RNBOU.

Yarosh was the leader of the Brown Shirt Neo-Nazi paramilitary during the EuroMaidan “protest” movement. He has called for disbanding the Party of the regions and the Communist Party.

 Dmytro Yarosh speech at Euromaidan (Centre)

 The Neo Nazi party also controls the judicial process with the appointment of  Oleh Makhnitsky of the Svoboda party to the position of prosecutor-general of Ukraine. What kind of justice will prevail with a reknown Neo-Nazi in charge of the Prosecutor’s Office of Ukraine?

Cabinet positions were also allocated to former members of the Neo-Nazi fringe organization Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian National Self Defense (UNA-UNSO):

“Tetyana Chernovol, portrayed in the Western press as a crusading investigative journalist without reference to her past involvement in the anti-Semitic UNA-UNSO, was named chair of the government’s anti-corruption committee. Dmytro Bulatov, known for his alleged kidnapping by police, but also with UNA-UNSO connections, was appointed minister of youth and sports.

Yegor Sobolev, leader of a civic group in Independence Maidan and politically close to Yatsenyuk, was appointed chair of the Lustration Committee, charged with purging followers of President Yanukovych from government and public life. (See Ukraine Transition Government: Neo-Nazis in Control of Armed Forces, National Security, Economy, Justice and Education, Global Research, March 02, 2014

The Lustration Committee is to organize the Neo-Nazi witch-hunt against all opponents of the new Neo-Nazi regime. The targets of the lustration campaign are people in positions of authority within the civil service, regional and municipal governments, education, research, etc.

The term lustration refers to the “mass disqualification” of people associated with the former government. It also has racial overtones. It will in all likelihood be directed against Communists, Russians  and members of the Jewish community.

It is important to reflect on the fact that the West, formally committed to democratic values, has not only spearheaded the demise of an elected president, it has instated a political regime integrated by Neo-Nazis.

This is a proxy government which enables the US, NATO and the EU to interfere in Ukraine’s internal affairs and dismantle its bilateral relations with the Russian Federation. It should be understood, however, that the Neo-Nazis do not ultimately call the shots. The composition of the Cabinet broadly coincides with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland ” recommendations” contained in the leaked telephone call to the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine.

Washington has chosen to spearhead Neo-Nazis into positions of authority. Under a “regime of indirect rule”, however,  they take their orders on crucial military and foreign policy issues –including the deployment of troops directed against the Russian federation– from the the US State Department, the Pentagon and NATO.

The World is at a dangerous crossroads: The structures and composition of this proxy government installed by the West do not favor dialogue with the Russian government and military.

A scenario of military escalation leading to confrontation of Russia and NATO is a distinct possibility. The Ukraine’s National Security and National Defense Committee (RNBOU) which is controlled by Neo-Nazis plays a central role in military affairs.  In the confrontation with Moscow, decisions taken by the RNBOU headed by Neo-Nazi Parubiy and his brown Shirt deputy Dmytro Yarosh –in consultation with Washington and Brussels– could potentially have devastating consequences.

However, it goes without saying that “support” to the formation of a Neo-Nazi government does not in any way imply the development of “fascist tendencies” within the White House, the State Department and the US Congress.

“The flowering of democracy” in Ukraine –to use the words of the New York Times– is endorsed by Republicans and Democrats. It’s a bipartisan project. Lest we forget, Senator John McCain is a firm supporter and friend of Neo-Nazi Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok (Image right).

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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***

Read Part I, II, III and IV:

Destination Ukraine: The Ignorance of War

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, April 07, 2022

Destination Ukraine: Will Poland Go Rogue? Warsaw’s Ulterior Motive? The Lviv Connection

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, April 21, 2022

The Lies…and the Eyes…of Ukraine. Reporting from Lviv

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, April 19, 2022

Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, Transnistria: Escalation Towards a World War III Scenario?

By Brett Redmayne-Titley, April 29, 2022

EU and NATO backed Moldova President Maia Sandu has a war problem. It’s not a Russian problem. It is a peace problem.

That problem gathered en mass in all around the huge pinnacle at the Eternity Memorial Complex in the Moldovan capital of Chisinau at the completion of the annual Victory Day march. This march commemorates the historic victory of Russia over Germany at the close of WW II and those who died for this just cause.

More importantly a war that was, until 2014 in Ukraine, the end of national Nazi influence on earth.

However with fear in the air and a renewed US inspired Nazi connotation heading south towards Transnistria and Moldova (see: Part Four) there was a renewed energy in this huge crowd of more than 30,000 in attendance. Moldova is in the cross hairs of NATO. And every Moldovan knows it.

This threat to this wonderful and pristine country is based, as usual, on one big western lie.

NATO would have the world believe that there is a Russian threat within Moldova and that this threat in embodied in Transnistria which forms a national and natural border between Ukraine and Moldova. In doing so these war pigs to the West and their media prostitutes state that Moldova is divided on the Russian issue and that most Moldovans are in such fear of the Russian presence embodied in Transnistria that they support NATO intervention on their land.

As shown marching shoulder to shoulder on this beautiful Spring morning in Chisinau- old and young, civilian or veteran-  this lie is utter rubbish.

It is said that “a picture paints a thousand words.” Presented for the readers consideration are the following series of pictures from the Victory day march. A March that this day was necessary to honour victory, but more importantly, for peace.

Need I say more.

Today is a Memorial Day to those who fought and those who died in war wearing the Russian uniform. Remembering war means remembering the value of peace. Thousands who attended brought similar photos of loved ones from all wars including Afghanistan and Syria.

Regarding Moldovan fear of Russia and more importantly Transnistria…the flags tell the story.

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Vic…Tor..ia!…Vic…Tor…ia!… Vic…Tor…ia!  Was chanted over and over and over.

However, one chant rose above all others a chant that NATO and the other US puppets – and the uninformed world MUST hear and understand well……

Russ…Kiy…Ya!…..Russ…Ki …Ya! …Russ…Ki…Ya!!!

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The Knight is Russian. The dragon…is Naziism.

Uniforms and medals were everywhere. Worn by Moldovans, proudly. One officer, seeing me taking photos, grabbed me by the sleeve to get my attention. He took my arm and pointed up and down the boulevard at the massive marching crowd.

“We, everybody… we are Russian!” he said with a huge smile of Moldovan national pride.

Orange is NOT for the 2014 US backed “Orange Revolution” that overthrew legitimately elected Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych and thus began- deliberately- the Ukrainian/ NATO war.

Orange is for VICTORY!  Over German terror. Today, Orange is for peace… instead of terror.

This is the Georgievskaya, or St. George Ribbon medal. Showing that their president is also a threat to Moldova Maia Sandu had banned this Victory Day march and the wearing of the medal and Orange and black. It did not work. The police did nothing.

If they had made one arrest… it would have been a riot.

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Thousands also line the boulevards, cheering on the marchers and their implicit demands to President Maia Sandu: Peace… NOT war!

While I was shooting, a person unknown stuck this on my camera lens. A message to all reporters. Of course, I agree.

But a special shout out goes to the smarmy little British “journalist” on the left of this final picture, an unknown Sky News reporter who I had noticed standing in front of a camera and muttering his scripted lines before the camera rolled.

Taking a break just before, and looking around at the growing crowd of Moldovan and Red Victory flags surround him, this little man of war said, and here I quote,

“Right! And they think their little Red Card protest is going to stop this war?”

In one sentence, the Biggest problem: Those of the pro-war media doing their job of bringing the lies of this war to their war mongering western public. Who is this evil little man? I don’t know.

But he should be damn thankful, as I listened in horror from ten feet away, that I am a pacifist.

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Dedication:  To Peace on Earth…too long forgotten.

Brett Redmayne-Titley has spent the last decade travelling and 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 many articles can be found at watchingromeburn.uk. He can be contacted at live-on-scene ((@))gmx.com.

He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

This article was first published in French in the Monde diplomatique in April 1997.  It was then published in the African Journal of Political Economy and in my book entitled The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order. 

Author’s Note

The policy of land expropriation in Mozambique leading to the establishment of White Afrikaner farms using indentured Mozambican farm workers had the support of the ANC government. It also had the the personal blessing of President Nelson Mandela “who had delegated Mpumalanga Premier Matthews Phosa to the SACADA Board of Governors.

Premier Phosa, a distinguished ANC politician and among the most prosperous black businessmen in Mpumalanga province (East Transvaal), contributed to laying the political ground work for the expansion of White Afrikaner business interests into neighbouring countries.  

The SACADA project was coordinated by the leader of the right wing Freedom Front and former South African Defense Force Chief General Constand Viljoen 

Viljoen developed a close personal relationship with Nelson Mandela. He had convinced Mandela that  promoting White Afrikaner  farms in neighbouring countries “would provide food and employment for locals”.  What was not discussed was that this ANC government policy implied a de facto process of land expropriation which went against the basic tenets of the ANC’s struggle for land rights for African peasants.

From the outset, international corporate agribusiness and the World Bank  were involved in this project. It is worth noting that during the period of “Transition” preceding the 1994 presidential elections, General Constand Viljoen had been “plotting an Afrikaner guerrilla war against multiracial rule”. (Financial Times, December 5, 2013)

While Mandela “believed in action” … at the core of [his] militancy was always a desire to get the white colonial regime to come to the table and talk.” (Mail and Guardian, December 12, 2013). This stance largely characterized his relationship  with General Viljoen.

It is worth noting that in the 1980s General Viljoen as Chief of the South African Defence Force led South African troops into Angola. In 1993, he participated in the establishment of the Right wing racist Afrikaner Volksfront (AVF).  He later formed the Freedom Front Party which presented candidates to the April 1994 elections.

The article on Exporting apartheid was the object of controversy.

Its publication in Le Monde diplomatique in April 1997 coincided with the hearings of the South Africa Truth Commission led by Rev Desmond Tutu, which focused on the role of General Constand Viljoen as South African Defense Force Chief during the Apartheid period. (General Viljoen testified in May 1997 before the Truth Commission

The article was the object of a June 1997 law suit claiming defamation directed against the author and Le Monde diplomatique by the South African Chamber for Agricultural Development (SACADA)  and the leader of the Freedom Front and former SADF Chief General Constand Viljoen. 

The law suit launched in Paris was subsequently thrown out by the Paris Court of Justice.

Michel Chossudovsky, December 12, 2013, May 14, 2022

Exporting Apartheid to Sub-Saharan Africa

by Michel Chossudovsky

April 1997

The right wing Afrikaner Freedom Front (FF) headed by General Constand Viljoen plans to develop a “Food Corridor” extending across the Southern part of the continent from Angola to Mozambique. Afrikaner agri-business is to extend its grip into neighbouring countries with large scale investments in commercial farming, food processing and eco-tourism. The agricultural unions of the Orange Free State and Eastern Transvaal are partners; the objective is to set up White-owned farms beyond South Africa’s borders.

The “Food Corridor,” however, does not mean “food for the local people.” On the contrary, under the scheme the peasants will lose their land, with small-holders becoming farm labourers or tenants on large scale plantations owned by the Boers. Moreover, the South African Chamber for Agricultural Development (SACADA) which acts as an umbrella organization also includes, centrally, several right wing organizations including the Freedom Front (FF) led by Viljoen, whose grim record as South African Defence Force (SADF) Commander in Chief during the Apartheid regime is well known.

The Freedom Front, although “moderate” in comparison to Eugene Terre’Blanche’s far-right Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), is a racist political movement committed to the Afrikaner Volksstaat. The SACADA-Freedom Front initiative has nonetheless the political backing of the African National Congress as well as the personal blessing of President Nelson Mandela who has delegated Mpumalanga Premier Matthews Phosa to the SACADA Board of Governors. All the other governors are members of the Freedom Front. Premier Phosa, a distinguished ANC politician and among the most prosperous black businessmen in Mpumalanga province (East Transvaal), has also contributed to laying the political ground work for the expansion of White Afrikaner business interests into neighbouring countries.

In discussions with President Mandela, General Viljoen had argued that “settling Afrikaner farmers would stimulate the economies of neighbouring states, would provide food and employment for locals, and that this would stem the flow of illegal immigrants into South Africa.” Viljoen has also held high level meetings on Afrikaner agricultural investments with representatives of the European Union, the United Nations and other donor agencies.

In turn, Pretoria is negotiating with several African governments on behalf of SACADA and the Freedom Front. The ANC government is anxious to facilitate the expansion of corporate agri-business into neighbouring countries. As one newspaper account affirms, “Mandela has asked the Tanzanian government to accept Afrikaner farmers to help develop the agricultural sector” while SACADA itself has approached some 12 African countries “interested in White South African farmers.” In a venture set up in 1994 under the South African Development Corporation (SADEVCO), the government of the Congo had granted to the Boers 99 year leases on agricultural land; President Mandela endorsed the scheme calling on African nations “to accept the migrants as a kind of foreign aid.”

The African host countries have on the whole welcomed the inflow of Afrikaner investments. With regard to regulatory policies, however, the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organization (WTO) (rather than national governments) call the shots, invariably requiring (indebted) countries to accept “a wide open door to foreign capital.” In this context, the liberalization of trade and investment under donor supervision, tends to support the extension of Afrikaner business interests throughout the region. Moreover, in the sleazy environment shaped by transnational corporations and international creditors, corrupt politicians and senior bureaucrats are often co-opted or invited to become the “business partners” of South African and other foreign investors.

The expropriation of peasant lands

The “Food Corridor” initiative will displace a pre-existing agricultural system: it not only appropriates the land, it takes over the host country’s economic and social infrastructure and, almost inevitably, spells increased levels of poverty in the countryside. It will most likely provide a fatal blow to subsistence agriculture as well as to the peasant cash crop economy, displacing local level agricultural markets and aggravating the conditions of endemic famine prevailing in the region. As if this were not enough, Jen Kelenga, a spokesperson for a pro-democracy group in Zaire, also sees, at the heart of the initiative, the Boers “in search of new territories to apply their racist way of living.”

The “Food Corridor” if carried through, could potentially alter the rural landscape of the Southern African region, requiring the uprooting and displacement of small farmers over an extensive territory. Under the proposed scheme, millions of hectares of the best farmland would be handed over to South African agri-business. The Boers are to manage large scale commercial farms using the rural people both as “labour tenants” as well as seasonal agricultural workers.

Such initiatives also dovetail with World Bank directives regarding land-use in the region. Indeed, the Bank has pressed for land legislation throughout Sub-Saharan Africa that would abrogate the right to land of millions of small-holders, with identical land legislation now being enforced throughout the region. The national level land laws (drafted under technical advice from World Bank Legal Department) are with some variations “exact carbon copies of each other”:

“The constitution [in Mozambique] says that the land is the property of the State and cannot be sold or mortgaged. There has been strong pressure particularly from the United States and the World Bank for land to be privatized and to allow mortgages …”

Under the proposed land legislation, both SACADA and the World Bank nonetheless tout the protection of traditional land rights. The small peasantry is to be “protected” through the establishment of “customary land reserves” established in the immediate vicinity of the White commercial farms. In practice, under the new land legislation, the majority of the rural people will be caged into small territorial enclaves (“communal lands”) while the bulk of the best agricultural land will be sold or leased to private investors.

This also means that peasant communities which practice shifting cultivation over a large land area, as well as pastoralists, will henceforth be prosecuted for encroaching on lands earmarked for commercial farming, often without their prior knowledge. Impoverished by the macro-economic reforms, with no access to credit and modern farm inputs, these customary enclaves will, as noted, constitute “labour reserves” for large scale agri-business.

Afrikaner farms in Mozambique

SACADA has plans to invest in Mozambique, Zaire, Zambia and Angola, “with Mozambique being the test case.” President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and President Nelson Mandela (1994 picture right) signed an intergovernmental agreement in May 1996 which grants rights to Afrikaner agri-business to develop investments in at least six provinces encompassing territorial concessions of some eight million hectares. According to one South African official:

“Mozambique needs the technical expertise and the money, and we have the people … We favour an area which is not heavily populated because it is an Achilles heel if there are too many people on the land … For the Boers, Land is next to God and the Bible.”

In SACADA’s concessionary areas in Mozambique, the Frelimo government will ensure that there is no encroachment; rural small-holders and subsistence farmers (who invariably do not possess legal land titles) will either be expelled or transferred into marginal lands.

In Mozambique’s Nissan province, the best agricultural land is to be leased in concession to the Afrikaners for fifty years. At the token price of some $0.15 per hectare per annum, the land lease is a give-away. Through the establishment of Mosagrius (a joint venture company), SACADA is now firmly established in the fertile valley of the Lugenda river. But the Boers also have their eyes on agricultural areas along the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers as well as on the road and railway facilities linking Lichinga, Niassa’s capital to the deep seaport of Nagala. The railway line is being rehabilitated and modernized (by a French contractor) with development aid provided by France.

In the initial stage of the agreement, concessionary areas in Niassa province were handed over to SACADA in 1996 to be settled by some 500 White Afrikaner farmers. These lands are earmarked for commercial farming in both temperate highveld and sub-tropical lowveld. The available infrastructure including several state buildings and enterprises will also be handed over to the Boers.

The Boers will operate their new farms as part of their business undertakings in South Africa, dispatching White Afrikaner managers and supervisors to Mozambique. The Boers will bring from South Africa their Black right-hand men, their tractor operators, their technicians. In the words of the project liaison officer at the South African High Commission in Maputo: “Each and every Afrikaner farmer will bring his tame Kaffirs” who will be used to supervise the local workers. The number of White settlers in the concessionary areas in Niassa is likely to be small.

SACADA has carefully mapped out the designated areas by helicopter, South Africa’s agricultural research institutes have surveyed the area, providing an assessment of environmental as well as social and demographic conditions.

Creating “rural townships”

Under the SACADA scheme, the rural communities in Niassa which occupy the Afrikaner concessionary areas are to be regrouped into “rural townships” similar to those of the Apartheid regime:

 “What you do is to develop villages along the roadside close to the [White] farms. These villages have been planned very carefully [by SACADA] in proximity to the fields so that farm-workers can go back and forth; you give the villages some infrastructure and a plot of land for each household so that the farm-labourers can set up their food gardens.”

Unless token customary land rights are entrenched within or in areas contiguous to the concessions, the peasants will become landless farm labourers or “labour tenants.” Under the latter system applied by the Boers in South Africa since the 19th Century, black peasant households perform labour services (corvée) in exchange for the right to farm a small parcel of land. Formally outlawed in South Africa in 1960 by the Nationalist government, “labour tenancy” remains in existence in many parts of South Africa including East Transvaal and Kwa-Zulu Natal. Its reproduction in the form of rural townships in Mozambique will provide reserves of cheap labour for the White commercial farms.

This, plus the increasing derogation of workers rights in Mozambique and the deregulation of the labour market there under IMF advice, will enable the Boers not only to pay their Mozambican workers excessively low wages but also to escape the demands of Black agricultural workers in South Africa. Moreover, under the Mosagrius Agreement the Mozambican government will be fully responsible in dealing with land disputes and ensuring the expropriation of peasant lands “without prejudice or loss that may occur from such claims to SDM [Mosagrius] and other Mosagrius participants.”

Small wonder, then, that South Africa’s major commercial banks, the World Bank and the European Union have firmly backed the project. Indeed, “the Food Corridor” has become an integral part of the IMF-World Bank sponsored structural adjustment programme in Mozambique. In the words of SACADA Secretary Willie Jordaan: “SACADA has endeavoured to bring its policies in line with the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, and [is]set to become an international development agency” with a mandate to contract with donor institutions and carry out “foreign aid programmes” on their behalf.

The international community

In short, while the international community had endorsed ANC’s struggle against the Apartheid regime, it is now providing financial support to a racist Afrikaner development organization. Under the disguise of “foreign aid,” Western donors are in fact contributing to the extension of the Apartheid system into neighbouring countries. The European Union has provided money to SACADA out of a development package explicitly earmarked by Brussels for South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Programme. According to an EU spokesman, the project “was the best noise out of Africa in 30 years.” The EU Ambassador to South Africa Mr. Erwan Fouéré met General Viljoen to discuss the project. Fouéré confirmed that if all goes well, further EU money could be made available to cover the costs of “settling Afrikaner farmers in South Africa’s neighbouring countries.”

The initiative is categorized by the donor community as a bona fide development project which will benefit the peasantry in the host country as well contribute to South Africa’s Reconstruction. The fact that the scheme derogates the land rights of small-holders and replicates the system of “labour tenancy” prevalent in South Africa under Apartheid is not a matter for discussion.

Moreover, national investment priorities set by the donors in neighbouring countries (under the World Bank sponsored Public Investment Programme), are increasingly tuned to meeting the needs of South African business interests. In Mozambique, for instance, so-called “targeted investments” are undertaken with a view to rehabilitating port facilities, roads, water resources, river and lake transportation, etc. largely to the benefit of South African investors including SACADA.

Moreover, under the SACADA Agreement, Afrikaner investors “shall be allowed a right of first refusal” in privatization tenders in concessionary areas under their jurisdiction. In turn the country’s investment legislation (drafted with the technical assistance of the World Bank) will provide for the free remittance of corporate profits and the repatriation of capital back to South Africa.

The SACADA scheme is also likely to suck up a portion of the State’s meagre health and education budget. In Mozambique, under the terms of the Agreement the authorities are also to support the provision of Western-style health services as well as create a “sanitary environment” for the White Afrikaners settling in the territory. Part of the money provided by donors and international organizations for social programmes will also be channelled towards the concessionary areas.

Recolonization?

Add to these enormities the fact that the “export of Apartheid” to neighbouring countries seems to exemplify a literal “carving up” of national territories into concessionary areas. In Mozambique, for example, an autonomous territory – “a State within a State” – is being developed initially in Niassa province; the Mosagrius project controlled by the Boers (overriding the national and provincial governments) is the sole authority concerning the utilization rights of land in its concessionary areas (clause 34); similarly the territory is defined as a free trade zone allowing for the unimpeded movement of goods, capital and people (meaning White South Africans). All investments in the concessionary areas “will be free from customs duties, or other fiscal impositions.” In this way, concessions granted to foreign investors in various parts of the country (a pattern that is being duplicated [see accompanying box] in the tourism sphere, including in Niassa Province itself) begin to define a recasting of national territory into a number of separate “corridors” that is eerily reminiscent of the colonial period.

In short, the system of territorial concessions – with each of the corridors integrated separately into the world market – tends to favours the demise of the national economy. And the falling of such corridors under the political custody of donors, non-governmental organizations and foreign investors also means that these latter constitute a de facto “parallel government” which increasingly bypasses the State system. But this latter process dovetails neatly with other demands of donors, their requirement (in the name of “governance”) of the down-sizing of the central State and the “decentralization” of decision-making to the provincial and district levels. Rather than providing added powers and resources to regional and local communities, however, State revenues will be channelled towards servicing Mozambique’s external debt with “decentralization” predicated on fiscal austerity under the structural adjustment programme. Add all this up and the result is a considerable weakening of both the central and regional governments, and a further reinforcement of Mozambique’s recolonization.

One may speculate, finally, as to why the ANC has made itself such a vigorous party to this process. Most charitably, one may conclude that the ANC has championed – albeit without serious debate or discussion – the granting of “Land to the Boers” in neighbouring countries as a means to relieving land pressures within South Africa: the policy is said to facilitate the ANC’s land redistribution programme in favour of Black farmers.

Of course, there are good reasons to believe that, despite its merits, South Africa’s Land Reform Programme is unlikely to succeed, this programme being increasingly undermined by the post-Apartheid government’s own sweeping macro-economic reforms under the neoliberal policy agenda. In rural South Africa, the removal of agricultural subsidies, the deregulation of credit and trade liberalization (which is part of the Macro-economic Framework) have not only contributed to the further impoverishment of Black small-holders and tenant farmers, the measures have also pushed numerous White Afrikaner family farms into bankruptcy. Pretoria’s structural adjustment programme thereby favours an even greater concentration of farmland than during the Apartheid regime as well as the consolidation of corporate agriculture both within and beyond South Africa’s borders.

In other words, the Boers “Second Great Trek” to neighbouring countries does not contribute to relieving land pressures within South Africa. In fact the policy accomplishes exactly the opposite results: it maintains Black farmers in marginal lands under the old system of segregation. Moreover, it reinforces corporate control over the best farmland while also providing a political avenue to Afrikaner agri-business for “exporting Apartheid” to the entire Southern African region.

Note

Most of Mozambique’s coastline on lake Niassa – including a 160 km. stretch in the Rift Valley from Meponda to Mapangula extending further North to Ilha sobre o Lago close to the Tanzanian border – has been designated under the project “for tourism and other complementary and subsidiary activities [which are] ecologically sustainable.” The latter also include designated areas for Afrikaner investments in fishing and aquaculture on lake Niassa (displacing the local fishing industry). In turn, the Agreement hands over to the Boers, the development and operation rights over the Niassa Game Reserve on the Tanzanian border. The Reserve includes an extensive area of some 20,000 hectares earmarked for so-called “ecologically sustainable ecotourism.”

In a much larger undertaking, James Ulysses Blanchard III the notorious Texan tycoon, has been granted a concession over a vast territory which includes the Maputo Elephant Reserve and the adjoining Machangula peninsula south of Maputo. During the Mozambican civil war, Blanchard had provided financial backing to Renamo, the rebel organization directly supported by the Apartheid regime and trained by the South African Defence Force (SADF).

Blanchard intends to create an Indian Ocean Dream Park with a floating hotel, deluxe tourist lodges at $600 – $800 a night and a casino. Large parcels of land in Manchangula have also been allocated to agricultural investors from Eastern Transvaal.

Local communities in Blanchard’s concessionary area will be expropriated; in the words of his general manager, John Perrot:

“We’re gonna come here and say [to the local villagers] `Okay, now you’re in a national park. Your village can either get fenced or you can have them wild animals walking right through your main street’.” (M.C.)

The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order (PDF)

by Michel Chossudovsky

In this new and expanded edition of Chossudovsky’s international best-seller, the author outlines the contours of a New World Order which feeds on human poverty and the destruction of the environment, generates social apartheid, encourages racism and ethnic strife and undermines the rights of women. The result as his detailed examples from all parts of the world show so convincingly, is a globalization of poverty.

This book is a skilful combination of lucid explanation and cogently argued critique of the fundamental directions in which our world is moving financially and economically.

In this new enlarged edition – which includes ten new chapters and a new introduction — the author reviews the causes and consequences of famine in Sub-Saharan Africa, the dramatic meltdown of financial markets, the demise of State social programs and the devastation resulting from corporate downsizing and trade liberalisation.

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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

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A group of U.S. intellectuals – journalists, political advisers, and scholars –are initial signers of an open letter to President Joe Biden (see full text below), pleading with him to reject policies which lead to an “intensification of conflict with Russia” and which “could lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people.”

“We hereby declare that your escalation of this conflict as the President of the United States has not been done in our name.”

Please join us with your signature and promotion of this important petition.

Not in Our Name

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Dear Mr. President,

The undersigned strongly and unambiguously express their opposition to your policy with regard to Ukraine. Your strategy is edging the world closer and closer to a nuclear war with Russia, and to another world war. Recently, you requested Congress for even more funds to be sent Ukraine in order to help them buy more weapons for the military conflict with Russia. “So we need to contribute arms, funding, ammunition … so that they continue what they are doing,” you said on April 28 when asking for some more $33 billion in taxpayer funds to support Ukraine. “Robust military assistance”for Ukraine is your expression. Reuters reported that “President Joe Biden asked Congress for $33 billion to support Ukraine” and called it “a dramatic escalation of U.S. funding for the war with Russia.” At the same time, the U.S.-led NATO April 27 meeting in Ramstein, Germany urged NATO members to provide more military support to Ukraine, with Germany promising to send 50 self-propelled Cheetah anti-aircraft weapons. We reject your heightened escalation of this conflict as dangerous and a provocation.

The response from Russia? Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on April 26 said there was a “serious” risk of nuclear war over Ukraine. “It’s real. It shouldn’t be underestimated,” he stated.

Do we want to risk a nuclear war with Russia over a regional conflict in Eastern Europe? 

The independent journalist Glenn Greenwald just recently stated, “Whatever your views on the moral dimensions of this war, it’s hard to deny this is the most dangerous moment in US foreign policy in two decades. Every week, US/NATO involvement in the war intensifies, as Russia explicitly warns of nuclear war. For what?”

We hereby declare that your escalation of this conflict as the President of the United States has not been done in our name.

Nor did you act in our name when you, as Vice-President of the United States, were involved in the 2014 coup in Ukraine that toppled the officially elected leadership of Ukraine. At that time, a telephone conversation of your collaborator Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary of State under President Barak Obama) revealed how she discussed which leaders should be placed into the new government in Ukraine. The transcript of that conversation also exposed your own direct involvement in this interference with a foreign nation state. This intrusion into the internal affairs of a sovereign nation was not done in our name, either.

You designated this same official, Victoria Nuland, now as the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. In that position, she has recently had to admit that Ukraine does have bio labs and that the U.S. is involved in them and is worried what Russia would do with its dangerous content should they get a hold of it. “Ukraine has biological research facilities which in fact we are now quite concerned Russian troops may be seeking to gain control of,” Nuland said. “So we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach.” Some of those very same Ukraine bio labs are ones that your own son, Hunter Biden, only months after the U.S.-led political coup in Ukraine in 2014, invested money by way of the U.S. Company Metabiota which is working with the Department of Defense. Additional evidence has been recently unearthed, effectively proving the U.S.’s involvement in Ukrainian bio labs.

This strange and troubling U.S. involvement in bio labs at the border of Russia – with direct involvement of your own family –  is not done in our name, either.

And let us also remind you that the United States does not have a good moral standing when it comes to condemning unjust wars of aggression. Recent U.S. history demonstrates a pattern of multiple military invasions of sovereign states – or military and tactical support for others to do so – most prominently the unjust 2003 invasion of Iraq with hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties, but also in Afghanistan, Libya, and Syria.

At this dangerous moment in history, the U.S. must exert its power to become a force for just peace, urging Russia and Ukraine to come to the negotiation table in order to agree on compromises that would enable and ensure peace in the region.

The U.S. should not engage in a policy of intensification of conflict with Russia that could lead to the deaths of millions of innocent people. There are grave consequences of cumulative provocations.

If you wish to sign

Link to Page, click here

Not in our name, Mr. President.

Signatories:

Dr. Chuck Baldwin, Pastor, Author, Columnist, Radio Talk Show Host, Presidential Nominee

Donna F. Bethell, Esq.

Walter E. Block, Ph.D., Harold E. Wirth Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair and Professor of Economics Loyola University New Orleans

Dr. Peter Chojnowski, philosopher and director of Sister Lucy Truth

Patrick Delaney, journalist

Matt Gaspers, Managing Editor, Catholic Family News

The Most Reverend Bishop René Gracida

Carrie Gress and Noelle Mering, TheologyofHome.com, Fellows, Ethics & Public Policy Center

Scholars, Institute for Human Ecology, CUA

Dr. Robert Hickson (USA ret.), retired professor of literature and military history

Dr. Maike Hickson, journalist

Steve Jalsevac, Co-Founder of LifeSiteNews.com

Jim Jatras, retired former U.S. diplomat, GOP Senate foreign policy adviser

Jason Scott Jones, movie producer, founder of the Vulnerable People Project, host of the Jason Jones Show

Dr. Clifford A Kiracofe

Jack Maxey, journalist and political analyst

Brian M. McCall, Editor-in-Chief, Catholic Family News

Eugene G. McGuirk, BA, MA, MBA, Deacon and Educator

Eric Metaxas

Hon. Andrew P. Napolitano, former jurist, constitutional scholar, and legal commentator

Fr. David Nix, Diocesan hermit

Jack Posobiec, Editor, Human Events

Eric Sammons, Editor-in-Chief, Crisis Magazine

Dr. Michael Sirilla, Professor of Theology, Franciscan University of Steubenville

Beverly Stevens, REGINA Magazine

Frank Walker, Editor, Canon212.com

John-Henry Westen, co-founder and editor-in-chief of LifeSiteNews.com

Sir Owen Samuel Whitman, GCS, political commentary and consultant

Michael Yon, War Correspondent/author

Elizabeth Yore, Esq., Founder, YoreChildren

John Zmirak, Ph.D., Senior Editor, The Stream

*

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***

In December 2020, as the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic drew towards a close, families across the world were preparing to spend the coming holiday season in lockdown. Weary from being fed a constant diet of coronavirus fear stories by the mainstream media, many were no doubt looking forward to a few days spent well away from the latest news headlines. But as any media mogul knows, a distracted population can often present the ideal opportunity for troublesome news stories to be quietly buried. The accusation by Nobel peace prize nominee David Steinman, in December 2020, that World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus had allegedly aided genocide in his native Ethiopia, would appear to be an example of this: 

From 2012 to 2016, Dr. Tedros was Ethiopian foreign minister and a member of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) Executive Committee that controlled Ethiopia’s government until a 2018 democracy revolution. Human rights groups report that the Ethiopian government systematically engaged in widespread ethnic or politically based human rights violations during that period including murder, torture, kidnapping, enforced disappearances, unlawful imprisonment, and other inhumane acts.

An American economist who was nominated for the 2019 Nobel peace prize, Steinman has accused Tedros of being a “crucial decision maker” who directed the actions of Ethiopia’s security forces between 2013 and 2015. According to Steinman, Tedros was one of three officials in charge of the country’s security services at that time, when the widespread killing, arbitrary detention, and torture of Ethiopians was taking place. A high-ranking Ethiopian politician, Tedros officially held the role of foreign minister during those years, having previously been the country’s health minister.

Complaint to the International Criminal Court

In a comprehensive complaint lodged at the International Criminal Court (ICC) at the beginning of December 2020, Steinman alleges that Tedros oversaw the “killing, and causing serious bodily and mental harm to, members of the Amhara, Konso, Oromo and Somali tribes with intent to destroy those tribes in whole or in part.” The complaint further states that “the four-year period in which Tedros co-led Ethiopia’s government was marked by widespread or systematic crimes against humanity by subordinates.”

Disturbingly, Steinman specifically accuses Tedros’ subordinates of “intimidation of opposition candidates and supporters”, the “unlawful imprisonment” of children in “cruel and inhuman conditions,” the “forced sterilization of Amhara women,” and the “enforced disappearance of persons kidnapped or murdered by security or paramilitary forces.”

Given the shocking nature of the evidence he presents, Steinman requested the ICC to investigate, issue an arrest warrant for, and prosecute Tedros, as well as its Prosecutor to ask the Ethiopian government to make a referral to the ICC. Curiously, however, the mainstream media has made almost no mention of the story. Notable articles in The Times of London and the UK’s Daily Mail aside, news of Steinman’s ICC complaint has essentially been buried.

The pandemic treaty they are trying to protect

While the COVID-19 pandemic has already seen a dramatic escalation in the influence of the WHO, under the leadership of Tedros plans are being made for its powers to be ramped up still further. Behind the scenes, a so-called ‘Pandemic Treaty’ is being prepared that could legally bind the countries of the world into following the WHO’s instructions in the event of a future pandemic. Threatening the personal freedoms and bodily autonomy of the entire global population, its powers could potentially include the implementation of restrictive lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations, vaccine passports, travel restrictions, and more. The treaty is currently expected to come into effect by 2024.

Viewed in this light it is easy to see why David Steinman’s complaint against Tedros has been brushed under the carpet. Were the story to gain even so much as a toehold in the mainstream media, it could fatally undermine the WHO’s credibility and in so doing derail plans for the pandemic treaty. In such a situation, the pharmaceutical industry and other corporate beneficiaries of the treaty could stand to lose hundreds of billions of dollars in potential profits.

Tedros of course has the right to be assumed innocent until proven guilty. Equally, however, given the serious nature of David Steinman’s accusations against him, and his role as Director-General and public face of the WHO, the people of the world have the right to be told the facts. Meantime, the continued silence of the mainstream media over this story speaks volumes.

*

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This article was originally published on Dr. Rath Health Foundation.

Executive Director of the Dr. Rath Health Foundation and one of the coauthors of our explosive book, “The Nazi Roots of the ‘Brussels EU’”, Paul Anthony Taylor is also our expert on the Codex Alimentarius Commission and has had eye-witness experience, as an official observer delegate, at its meetings. He is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image: WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus announced approval for China’s Sinopharm COVID-19 vaccine, Geneva, May 7, 2021 (Source: Indian Punchline)

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***

From the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine to the infamous Gulf of Tonkin incident to the chemical weapons attacks in Syria that were falsely blamed on Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, the American public has routinely been fed disinformation in an effort to get them to support wars of aggression on the principle that they are being fought in self-defense.

The alleged massacre by Russian troops in Bucha, a town 63 kilometers north of Kyiv, following a Russian retreat on March 30, appears to be the latest such incident designed to garner support for a wider U.S. war against Russia.

On March 31, the mayor of Bucha, Anatoli Fedoruk, heralded the liberation of Bucha from Russian occupiers; notably, he made no mention of any massacre.

The New York Times reported that the Russian withdrawal was completed on Saturday, April 2, and that the Russians “left behind them dead soldiers and burned vehicles, according to witnesses, Ukrainian officials, satellite images and military analysts.” No mention of any massacre.

The Times article from April 2, authored by Andrew E. Kramer and Neil McFarquhar, was titled: “In Broad Retreat From Kyiv, Russia Seeks to Regroup.” It pointed out that “Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov battalion walked through the remnants of a Russian military convoy in the recently liberated town of Bucha on Saturday, just outside the capital after the Russians withdrew.”

The Azov Battalion is a notorious neo-Nazi outfit so it could not have ushered in much of a liberation.^[1]

The Times reported further that it had found the bodies of six civilians. “It was unclear under what circumstances they had died, but the discarded packaging of a Russian military ration was lying beside one man who had been shot in the head,” the paper said.

This would indicate that they were probably Russian soldiers that were killed or civilians friendly toward the Russian military who had received food from them.

Azov Battalion Sweep

On April 2, hours before the massacre was reported in international media, the U.S. and EU-funded Gorshenin Institute online [Ukrainian language] site Left Bank announced that:

“Special forces have begun a clearing operation in the city of Bucha in the Kyiv region, which has been liberated by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The city is being cleared from saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.”

The Russian military had by this point completely left the city so, as Joe Lauria reported in Consortium News, this sounded like reprisals. The state authorities would be going through the city searching for “saboteurs” and “accomplices of Russian forces.”

Sergiy Korotkikh, head of the Nazi territorial defense at Bucha, shared a 30-second video on Telegram of Azov Battalion troops walking along a deserted street in Bucha and a fragment of conversation afterwards:

“Those guys without blue armbands, can we shoot them? Fucking of course!”

This clearly indicates that the Ukrainian army forces carried out civilian shootings in Bucha which have gone unacknowledged by politicians and in the mainstream U.S. media.

“Apparent Atrocities“

It was only after the Azov Battalion sweep—on Sunday, April 3—that the world learned of the Bucha massacre.

According to Wikipedia, Mayor Fedoruk at this time reported that 412 bodies were found in the aftermath of the incident, many with their hands bound behind their backs and shot at close range.

An inquiry by Radio Free Europe claimed to confirm the use of a basement beneath a campground as a torture chamber. Many bodies were found mutilated and burned, and girls as young as fourteen were reportedly raped by Russian soldiers.

Human Rights Watch reported, based on an eyewitness testimonial, that soon after they occupied the city in early March, Russian forces went door to door, searching residential buildings, claiming they were “hunting Nazis.” 16 unlawful killings were attributed to Russian forces, including nine summary executions and seven indiscriminate killings of civilians.

Human Rights Watch also documented that Russian soldiers executed five men in Bucha in a separate incident prior to their withdrawal and that a man was shot on his balcony by Russian troops while smoking a cigarette and that a 9-year old girl was shot in the shoulder while trying to run away from Russian forces.

These findings contradict the Russian Defense Ministry’s claim that “not a single local resident has suffered from any violent action” while Bucha was “under the control of the Russian armed forces,” and that the evidence of crimes was a “hoax, a staged production and provocation” by authorities in Kyiv.

However, oddly, there is not a single piece of video footage of Russian troops in Bucha engaged in wide-scale civilian killings; not a single snapshot, social media update, or text message.

The chief regional prosecutor in Bucha, Ruslan Kravchenko, told Human Rights Watch on April 15 that 278 bodies had been found in the town since Russian forces withdrew—but he did not specify who was the source of their death.

Serhii Kaplychnyi, head of the municipal funeral home in Bucha, said that during the Russian occupation, his team placed dozens of bodies in communal graves, though at least some of the victims were Ukrainian soldiers.

Ukrainian authorities in Bucha exhume bodies from a mass grave behind the Church of St. Andrew and All Saints, where local authorities and volunteers placed bodies of those who died and were killed during the occupation of the city by Russian forces. [Source: hrw.org]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said:

“We strongly condemn apparent atrocities by Kremlin forces in Bucha and across Ukraine. We are pursuing accountability using every tool available, documenting and sharing information to hold accountable those responsible.”

The word “apparent” is significant because it acknowledges that the atrocities are not confirmed. The Pentagon in fact admitted on April 4 that it could not independently confirm the stories of Russian atrocities at Bucha.

Leaked Satellite Images Offer No Smoking Gun

The BBC and other Western media outlets purported to have smoking-gun proof that Russia was behind a major massacre in Bucha when they reported on satellite images from March 19 showing dead bodies that were in the same place that they were found by Ukrainian forces after the Russian troops had withdrawn.

According to the BBC, this directly contradicted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov’s claim that footage of bodies in Bucha was “staged” after the Russians withdrew.

The number of bodies in the satellite imagery is only six, however, which is well short of the total of 412 civilians that the Ukrainian government claimed Russian troops had massacred in Bucha.

Former U.S. Marine Corps Intelligence Officer Scott Ritter pointed out, furthermore, that dead bodies left to rot on the street for nearly two weeks would be badly bloated and decomposed with black faces and putrid liquid coming out of them—which was not shown in the satellite imagery.

According to Ritter, evidence that could be extracted from the images showed that the bodies appeared to have been killed within 24-36 hours of their discovery—meaning that they were killed after the Russians withdrew from Bucha.

Many of the bodies had white cloth strips tied to their upper arm, a visual designation which indicated either loyalty to Russia or that the persons did not pose a threat to Russians.

Ritter said that the evidence overall is strong that the Ukrainian police carried out a cleansing operation in Bucha on April 1 and murdered people. However, the Ukrainian government—which is losing the war—saw an opportunity to gain sympathy for its cause in the West by blaming the Russians and building momentum for more military support.

Ritter added that the U.S. knows very well who killed so many people in Bucha—they have the satellite photos—but that the U.S. “isn’t in the business of truth.” Rather, they are “in the business of promulgating Ukrainian lies”—which aim to “advance the narrative of Russia as a genocidal state massacring Ukrainian civilians”—which is not what happened.

Car footage from April 1 purports to show dead bodies in the same place as the March 19 satellite images. Chilean journalist Gonzalo Lira, who was detained by Ukrainian Security Services (SBU), asserted that the car video was of high-production quality that could only be achieved with high-end equipment, suggesting it was made by government intelligence agencies.

Another section of the road showed more dead bodies from March 11. Russian sources claim the bodies were in fact moving and were not dead.

Whether the latter is true is uncertain. However, the number of bodies on the satellite images amounts to at most nine—well short of 412 and not consistent with genocide. The condition of the bodies and existence of white cloth strips beneath their arms further suggests that they were killed by the Azov battalion—which has received arms from the U.S. and training from the CIA and/or U.S. Special Forces who are experts in psy-war (creating atrocities and blaming them on the enemy).

Russians Acted Like Savages

On April 6, The Washington Post published an article entitled “In Bucha, the scope of Russian barbarity is coming into focus. The article claimed:

“The name of this city is already synonymous with the month-long carnage that Russian soldiers perpetrated here. But the scale of the killings and the depravity with which they were committed are only just becoming apparent as police, local officials and regular citizens start the grim task of clearing Bucha of the hundreds of corpses decomposing on streets and in parks, apartment buildings and other locations … investigators uncovered evidence of torture before death, beheading and dismemberment, and the intentional burning of corpses … ‘[The Russians] didn’t act like men; they acted like savages’ … [The Russians] made the city an arena for blood sport …”

This was characteristic of media coverage.

The media and political establishment from this time began to clamor for greater U.S. military intervention. Congressman Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) even called for shooting down Russian planes.

President Biden called Putin a war criminal because of what happened at Bucha and told the conference of North America’s Building Trades Unions: “If I gotta go to war, I’m going with you guys,” causing the audience to cheer with gusto.

Lend Lease Act of 2022

The war fever resulting from the alleged Bucha massacre led to the unanimous passage by the U.S. Senate on April 6 of the Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022, which loosened regulations on military shipments to Ukraine using World War II language.

The law states that lent or leased defense articles “are intended for Ukraine’s government or the governments of other Eastern European countries affected by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.”

This expansion allows the president to expedite delivery of military supplies to other countries that may be in Russia’s sights.

The Lend-Lease Act followed from an emergency $13.6 billion aid package to Ukraine that was passed with only three dissenting votes in Congress.

Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who supported both measures, called the Bucha massacre “pure evil,” adding that Russian troops are carrying out a “genocide” in Ukraine. “When we murder wantonly innocent civilians because of who they are, whether it be their religion, their race, or their nationality, that is genocide, and Mr. Putin is guilty of it,” Schumer said.

Chris Coons, the Democratic Senator from Delaware and President Biden’s closest ally in the U.S. Senate, went on CBS News’s Face the Nation after news of Bucha broke to state:

“The American people cannot turn away from this tragedy in Ukraine … I think the history of the 21^st century turns on how fiercely we defend freedom in Ukraine and that Putin will only stop when we stop him … If Vladimir Putin, who has shown us how brutal he can be, is allowed to just continue to massacre civilians, to commit war crimes throughout Ukraine without NATO, without the West coming more forcefully … I deeply worry that what’s going to happen next is that we will see Ukraine turn into Syria …”

On April 28, the Lend-Lease bill was approved in the U.S. House of Representatives by a vote of 417-10.

Source: govtrack.us

All of the Democrats, including the entire progressive caucus and “the Squad” and all but 10 Republicans, approved the bill after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited everyone to the Speaker’s Dining Room for a photo exhibit that “capture[d] many of [the Russian] atrocities…unthinkable, grotesque, diabolical atrocities.”

On May 9, after a visit to a Lockheed Martin plant in Alabama that produces the Javelin anti-tank missiles that are supplied to the Ukrainian military, President Biden signed the Lend-Lease bill into law, stating that the “atrocities the Russians are engaging in [ie. Bucha] are just beyond the pale.”

Like other military aid programs to Ukraine, the Lend-Lease bill by implication would have no legitimacy if the atrocities attributed to Russia were either exaggerated or actually committed by Ukraine.

Long Pattern of False Pretexts

The Russian “massacre” at Bucha is but the latest in a long line of false slanders or half-truths directed against Russia that have been used to compel support for legislation that provokes conflict and advances regime-change efforts.

In 2012, the U.S. Congress passed the Magnitsky Act, sanctioning Russia based on false allegations that the Russian government had stolen $230 million from an American hedge-fund manager in Russia and Democratic Party donor named Bill Browder and tortured to death his lawyer, Sergey Magnitsky, who was a whistleblower in the case.

Magnitsky in fact was an accountant specializing on off-shoring money for the wealthy who was being investigated as an accomplice in Browder’s scheme to rob the Russian government, and likely died of a heart attack.^[2]

The late John McCain (R-AZ), a Russia hawk and strong supporter of the Magnitsky Act and new Cold War, speaks near portrait of Sergey Magnitsky. [Source: mccaininstitute.org]

In 2016, the U.S. accused the Russians of meddling in the U.S. election when evidence about this was discredited and at best thin.^[3] Earlier, the Russians were accused of shooting down a Malaysian airliner when thorough investigations pointed to the likely culpability of the Ukrainian intelligence services, with possible CIA backing.^[4]

The Russians were additionally falsely accused of a) paying bounties for killing U.S. soldiers in Afghhanistan; b) selling COVID vaccine R&D secrets from the West; c) hacking into Vermont’s power grid, and; d) ordering the poisoning of the Skirpals and Alexei Navalny.

All of these incidents fit a larger pattern in U.S. history of disinformation and deception that has fueled the permanent warfare state and has greatly increased the threat of nuclear Armageddon.

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

Notes

1. The Times also noted that in the nearby town of Irpin, “members of the Odin Unit, which includes foreign fighters from the United States and United Kingdom, took cover on Tuesday as they moved through the streets and cleared remaining Russian forces.” The presence of U.S. and UK mercenaries does not give confidence that the people of the region would view the defeat of Russian troops as a genuine liberation. 
2. See Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano, The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War As Tragedy, the Second As Farce (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2018), 13, 14. 
3. Kuzmarov, The Russians Are Coming, Again. 

4. See John Helmer, with Max van der Werff, Liane Theuerkauf and Sam Bullard, The Lie That Shot Down MH17 (John Helmer, 2020). 

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***

The following is an interview of Peter Koenig with GEOFOR, Centre for Geopolitical Prognosis (Russia)

GEOFOR: Greetings! Since our last conversation, truly historic, epochal changes have taken place in the world. The struggle between Russia and the West is only gaining momentum. How do you see the prospects for this process? How far can this confrontation go?

Peter Koenig: Predicting an outcome at this point is close to impossible. We are talking about a proxy war, the west / NATO against Russia, played out in Ukraine and eventually — potentially – I trust not – in the European theatre.

This would be the third world war on European territory in a little over a century.

At least today, 6 May, the UN Security Council for the first time has encouraged both parties to seek negotiations for peace, or at least a cease fire. Of course, that doesn’t mean much, since President Zelensky is totally controlled by the west, predominantly Washington and Brussels, meaning NATO.

If this call for negotiations does not amount in anything tangible, in terms of at least an armistice agreement, with the strong expectations that it may eventually be leading to Peace, the conflict could go on for a long time – and escalate further, indeed risking a WWIII scenario; emerging, God forbid, in a nuclear war. Let’s not even think about it.

On the other hand, let’s not forget, that in her entire 246 years of history, the US have known only 15 years without a conflict. The US economy is to almost 60% based on war, direct war-industry and war-related services and industries. Therefore, a new war for the US is necessary, now, with the hegemon USA faltering, more than ever.

As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview with Al Arabiya, President Zelenskyy is totally in the hands and under control of the west.

While Zelenskyy accepted several of Russia’s conditions, he backed out of his commitment after he got instructions from US / NATO to the contrary.  See this 59-min. video interview.

GEOFOR: Today, a number of states are increasing arms supplies to Kiev. How many more weapons can Western countries supply to Ukraine, as their stockpiles are not unlimited after all?

PK: Supplying Kiev with arms is a western war-industry bonanza. As mentioned before, the US, for one, depends with her economy to more than 50% on wars and armed conflicts, carried out either directly or by proxy. The Ukraine-Russia war is a proxy war for the US / NATO and by NATO-association also for Europe. Therefore, rather than depleting western weapon stockpiles, their war industry is running on overdrive. “War is good for business” has become a common, almost “household- phrase”; it indicates the type of dystopian world we are living in.

GEOFOR: Returning to the previous question: don’t you think that Russia should have blocked the western borders of Ukraine in response? And at the same time, maybe it’s time for the Kremlin to stop supplying oil, natural gas as well as other resources and goods to Europe and the United States?

PK: It’s difficult to block borders.

Russia never had the intention and still doesn’t to “take-over”, as in absorbing Ukraine. Russia had and still does have four objectives: No NATO ever in Ukraine; making Ukraine an independent and neutral country; denazifying Ukraine; and, last but not least, protecting the two overwhelming Russian and Russian-speaking Donbass Provinces, Donetsk and Luhansk. The Donbas area, you may recall, is constantly being attacked by the Nazi-Azov battalion, having caused about 14,000 civilian deaths since the western engineered February 2014 Maidan coup in Kiev.

These are simple objectives, offered by Russia. Zelenskyy originally accepted them against Russian security measures, but then backtracked, when Washington / NATO said nyet. See above Lavrov interview.

GEOFOR: How long can the unity of the West last on the issue of sanctions against Russia against the backdrop of their own internal problems, rising prices, protests, etc.?

PK: This is another good question. In fact, already now, and since the very beginning of the this insane “sanctions game”, the west is the primary loser. Not Russia, but the west, predominantly Europe, is suffering from their own sanctions. These are sanctions imposed by the US and Europe, the spineless European Union let herself being coerced in repeating them.

It is clear that Europe depends much more on Russian vital supply lines like energy especially gas than vice versa. Germany, for example, depends to at least 50% on Russian gas; and this is a conservative estimate. The rest of Europe also needs Russian gas as a vital energy supply source.

The reason for Europe to go along with the “sanctions”, may be a bit more complex than meets the eye. There is a little known fact, known only to few people: Germany, the lead country in the EU, is by no means free and independent. Germany still lives under an armistice agreement since WWII, no Peace Agreement has ever been granted by the winners of the war, especially the United States. Several attempts by German Chancellors to break loose from this – we might as well call it slavehood – failed. Washington reacted “no way”, or else…..

A case in point is Nord Stream 2. It was killed not by Germany, but by Washington. To the detriment of all of Europe.

So far, the EU has followed the dictate of her major economic and defense (NATO) partner. How long they will adhere to this unspoken rule is anyone’s guess. From my point of view, the breaking point is near. The moment, when Europe has to make her own decisions, independent of the coercion Germany is under.

In the meantime, President Putin and his brilliant economic adviser, Sergey Glazyev, have come up with an ingenious solution. Russia will honor her contractual obligations supplying the west with gas and other hydrocarbons, provided that Russian energy is paid in rubles. Not in US dollars, not in Euros, but in Russian Rubles. This rule applies to all countries which acquiesced to Washington’s request to dish-out sanctions on Russia, concerning more than 40 countries. See this.

The Ruble rule has originally created quite some protests and upheavals in Europe, to the point where Mme. Ursula van der Leyen, President of the European Commission (EC), naively called out, this is unacceptable…. Well, its simple. It’s either rubles or no gas. Eventually most countries have accepted the Russian conditions, quietly, no fuss, and especially no western mainstream media coverage.

This could become a bonanza for Russia: The Petro-Ruble replacing the faltering Petro-Dollar. It’s very befitting for the west and for the western “sanction-prone” monetary system. More and more countries dare defecting the fiat-money system, for mor stable currencies, like the gold and national economy-backed ruble and Chinese Yuan.

Most frauds eventually come to an end. The fiat US-dollar scam has lasted long enough – more than a century, since the fraudulently passed 1913 Federal Reserve Act. It’s time that the dollar is being replaced – ringing the world into a more honest, more equitable socioeconomic system.

GEOFOR: The United States is increasing its activity in the Pacific region: the AUKUS block, nuclear submarines for Australia, cooperation on hypersonic weapons with the Australians and the British, etc. Does this mean that, on the one hand, Washington is working to weaken Europe and NATO, and on the other hand, it is preparing a new strategic project directed against China and Russia?

PK: The AUKUS block is an expansion of NATO into the Pacific. Its not a weakening of NATO per se, quite to the contrary. It is meant to further encircle China, via the South China Sea and indirectly Russia.

Under this deal Australia would receive from the British war industry nuclear submarines, replacing and cancelling a 2016 contract for French submarines.

As a byline, according to ABC Australia new (see this), the broken submarine contract with France, could cost Australian tax-payers as much as 5 billion dollars.

AUKUS is a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, announced on 15 September 2021 for the Indo-Pacific region. Under the pact, the US and the UK will help Australia to acquire nuclear-powered submarines. The pact would essentially expand NATO into the Pacific region.

On the other hand, NATO is not intended to be weakened in Europe. Quite to the contrary. While several EU NATO members have quietly started expressing doubts about the usefulness of NATO in times of Peace, the Ukraine-Russia proxy-war has changed the tune.

Worldwide highly funded propaganda of Russian aggression, makes “everyone” scramble for more security. European “leaders” (sic) – most of them scholars of Klaus Schwab’s Academy for Young Global Leaders are implanted by the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) and its invisible handlers. They will follow their learned script of working towards the Great Reset, a global tyranny, eventually leading to the western Globalists dream of a One World Order (OWO), or a Global Governance, led by Washington. That’s their pipedream.

In the meantime, NATO in Europe may soon have two new members, if their dream comes through, Sweden and Finland. They are considering applying for NATO membership. Mr. Stoltenberg, NATO’s Secretary General, has already said, he would favor an accelerated accession, if indeed the two countries would apply. According to Stoltenberg, full membership could be possible by June 2022.

Just imagine, Finland that shares a 1,340-kilometre-long border with Russia. Sweden, however, shares no border with Russia, and Sweden and Russia have not been at war with each other for at least the last two centuries. Sweden joining NATO might, therefore, be considered a specially sever act of aggression by Russia.

In the case of Finland, if Ukraine is any indication, Russia would most certainly not tolerate another NATO country – Finland – on her doorstep. This could become another point of contention, escalating the war scenario – and again, God-forbid, towards a hot (nuclear?) WWIII scenario.

An overwhelming majority of the people in both Finland and Sweden are against their countries’ accession to NATO. For the sake of world piece, we may just hope that the leadership of the two countries listen to their people.

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This was first published on GEOFOR.

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

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

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***

The House of Representatives May 10 approved $40 billion of aid to Ukraine 368-57. All Democratic representatives voted yes. 

Previously antiwar Democrats like Reps. Ayanna Pressley, Jim McGovern, Barbara Lee, and Pramila Jayapal, who should know better, have uncritically embraced the Administration’s escalating war against Russia to the tune of $40 billion.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine must be condemned. But the Administration has been telegraphing for weeks that its war aims now go well beyond defending Ukraine. President Biden said that President Putin cannot remain in power. Secretary of Defense Austin said the U.S. seeks to weaken Russia. And Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that we are fighting until “victory”.

“We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians; we’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia, and it’s important that we win,” commented Rep. Seth Moulton on Sunday. This is the war that Massachusetts House members voted to fund.

The Biden Administration has not outlined a strategy for ending the war—only one for hitting back at Russia. Secretary of State Blinken has not met with Russian Foreign Secretary Lavrov since the Russian invasion started more than two months ago. There is no off ramp. There is no diplomacy.

In fact, Ukraine and Russia were reported to be close to a diplomatic settlement in late March.  Ukraine would be declared a neutral country. It would not join NATO but other guarantees would be provided for its security. The status of Russophone parts of Ukraine would be decided by internationally supervised referenda at a later date. There is no reason not to pursue a deal along these lines.

Russia is a nuclear weapons power. The danger of nuclear war has risen substantially during the Ukraine crisis, and escalations on the US side are pushing us closer to the brink. This war must be settled at the negotiating table—not on the battlefield!

The House did not impose any traceability or conditionality on the more than $20 billion of military aid it voted yesterday. Will arms go to the neo-Nazi Azov battalion and other far-right elements of the Ukrainian armed forces? Will they go to the international arms black market? Nobody knows or seems to care.

House Democrats dropped their goal of securing funding for COVID relief in their rush to support the US proxy war in Ukraine. They left the 93,413 Americans who contracted COVID yesterday in the lurch in their rush to war. The United States has suffered far more deaths and far more cases from COVID than any other country in the world. But to Congress, war is a higher priority.

Democrats have long forgotten about their goal of passing a Build Back Better program which would begin to seriously address the world’s climate emergency and rampant inequality at home.

The cost to eliminate homelessness in the United States would be $20 billion, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Politicians must return to their senses and put war fever aside. The Russian invasion of Ukraine is terrible. So is the US/Saudi war in Yemen. So is the continuing US occupation of part of Syria. So is the US-supported oppression of the Palestinians by Israel. So are US sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, Nicaragua, and more. Wars rarely end with one side vanquishing the other and achieving all its aims. They end with a compromise. It’s time for negotiations, not arms shipments, to end the Ukraine/Russia war.

From Common Dreams: Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

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Cole Harrison is the executive director of Massachusetts Peace Action.

Featured image is from Al Mayadeen English

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***

The head of what has been dubbed the Biden administration’s ‘Ministry of Truth’ previously compared free speech to “fairy dust” during testimony about social media censorship in front of the UK Parliament.

Yes, really.

Nina Jankowicz, recently appointed DHS ‘disinformation czar,’ made the comments while providing oral evidence regarding the implementation of the UK’s controversial Online Safety Bill, which will ban legal content which has “the potential to cause harm.”

After agreeing that the government should set minimum speech standards which ban “misogyny,” Jankowicz blasted alternative social media platforms for supporting “freedom of expression and fairy dust.”

She also said that government-connected communications regulators such as Ofcom should “be able to establish the minimum standards that would be applied to all platforms and incur fines.”

“That could be based, again, on the preexisting terms of service,” she added.

Jankowicz also endorsed empowering governments to demand data on individual users from social media cites for the purpose of implementing further censorship policies.

“The social media platforms can do that if they are compelled to,” she said.

Jankowicz also asserted that social media platforms should utilize algorithms that would “allow us to get around some of the free speech concerns” by demoting content so few people saw it.

“You can shout in the black void, but you do not get a huge audience to do that,” she stated.

The comments are in line with previously statements made by Jankowicz when she revealed that free speech made her “shudder” while also promoting the lie that the Hunter Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation.

The disinformation czar also ludicrously cited Christopher Steele as an expert on disinformation. Steele was the author of the infamous Clinton campaign-funded Trump ‘peegate’ dossier’ that turned out to be an actual product of disinformation.

As we previously highlighted, Jankowicz previously demanded that “trustworthy verified people” like her be given the power to edit other people’s tweets, making Twitter more like Wikipedia.

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***

Once again, the US government seems to be the side most interested in taking the Ukrainian conflict to its ultimate consequences. A law recently signed by President Joe Biden threatens to escalate the dispute in Eastern Europe to extremely dangerous levels, increasing NATO’s support for Kiev in order for the Ukrainian forces to be able to continue fighting for a long time even without any material chance of real victory.

On May 9 the US president signed the “Ukraine Democracy Defense Lend-Lease Act of 2022”, leading to a new phase in Washington-Kiev relations, in which Americans will be authorized to streamline and de-bureaucratize the process of sending military aid to Ukrainian forces. The objective of such a maneuver is to banish any procedural obstacle to the agility of bilateral military partnership, encouraging the systematic sending of material so that Ukrainian troops maintain their “resistance” against the Russian special operation.

Explicitly, the American objective with such an attitude is not to contribute to the achievement of peace, but to encourage further combat and promote war. The indiscriminate escalation of the hostilities became a central point of American strategy in Ukraine. Washington assumes the objective is simply to make Ukraine beat Russia. In practice, as there is no possibility of this happening, the objective of the American “aid” seems to be to provoke a “long-term defeat”, that is, to make Russia suffer in this conflict enough so that it does not start any other operation like this again. This could only be achieved by fueling the fighting with more and more weapons for Ukraine, as proposed by the new law.

Scott Ritter, military analyst and former US Marine Corps intelligence officer commented on the topic as follows:

“The stated policy of the United States at this point in time is to create the conditions for a strategic Russian defeat in Ukraine, one of the goals of which is to bleed Russia dry so that Russia can never again carry out an action such as it has undertaken in Ukraine, or anywhere else  (…) This is the opposite of achieving peace. This is about promoting war. And as such, yes, the lend-lease legislation is not just adding fuel to the fire, it’s pouring fuel all over the fire”.

In fact, this supposed “strategic objective” seems incoherent. For there to be any real harm to Russia, the aid would have to be strong enough that Moscow would be forced to mobilize its full offensive potential towards Ukraine – which evidently is not happening now. And for that to occur, it would be needed a level of help much higher than mere shipment of armaments. To reverse Ukraine’s current status of virtually strategic neutralization, the West would need to become more directly involved in the conflict, which would be interpreted as NATO intervention and would result in a Russian response – something the Americans certainly want to avoid.

So, the speech seems just an attempt to deceive public opinion: there is no real intention to “defeat” Russia, either in the short or long term. There is only the desire to carry the conflict forward in order to delay its consequences, which are the retreat of NATO in Europe and the geopolitical multipolarization. When victory becomes impossible, delaying defeat is the most strategic thing to do and that is precisely what the US is doing in Ukraine, to the detriment of the local people, who just want peace.

An important point to be commented on is the fact that the bill approved by Biden this week is not new. Despite its recent approval, the project had already been introduced by Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Ben Cardin (D-MD), Roger Wicker (R-MS) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH) in January 2022. This means that the intention of US lawmakers is old and has no specific relationship with Russian military operation. It was already the goal of the US to promote an unrestrained militarization of Ukraine, which demonstrates that Moscow’s justification for the need to demilitarize Kiev is valid. Had the operation not started, Kiev would now be receiving these weapons in the same way – and possibly using them against civilians in Donbass.

The first consequences of the Act are about to come. May 10 the House approved a new budget of more than 33 billion dollars in military aid to Kiev. With the new Act, approval by the Senate must take place as quickly as possible, without further discussions or bureaucracies. Direct private transactions with Ukraine will also take place without regulation in the US. Of course, this will also be a precedent and the US is expected to force European countries to pass similar laws to reduce bureaucracy in military trade with Kiev.

Now the scenario is set for an escalation that is sure to further complicate the situation for Ukraine.

The Russians clearly do not want to use their full military potential in this operation, but they are willing to tolerate it only up to a point. If necessary, Moscow will not hesitate to increase its fighting force to resolve the situation as quickly as possible. Both the Ukrainian government and the West know this but prefer to maintain the narrative that it is possible to “defeat Russia”, perpetuating a situation that harms more and more the civilian population and only benefits the West and its military industry.

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

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***

If the U.S. passes the NOPEC bill, a bill designed to pave the way for lawsuits against OPEC members for market manipulation, the oil market could face even more chaos. OPEC’s most influential energy ministers warned against passing the legislation, suggesting it could send oil prices soaring by 200% or 300%.   “The last thing we want is someone trying to hinder that system,” the UAE’s Energy Minister Suhail al-Mazrouei said at a conference in Abu Dhabi, referring to the system OPEC has had in place for decades to ensure supply to the market is adequate (adequate according to OPEC’s view). 

“If you hinder that system, you need to watch what you’re asking for, because having a chaotic market you would see … a 200% or 300% increase in the prices that the world cannot handle,” al-Mazrouei said at a panel at the World Utilities Congress hosted by CNBC’s Dan Murphy.

As gasoline prices in America hit record highs, some lawmakers are looking to resurrect the NOPEC legislation that would allow the U.S. Attorney General to sue OPEC or its member states for antitrust behavior.

Forms of a NOPEC bill have been considered in Congress committees for nearly two decades, but they have never moved past committee discussions.

Now OPEC is warning of greater market chaos if NOPEC becomes law. But it’s not only OPEC that has been warning about the implications for America in setting a precedent to remove sovereign immunity. The most powerful oil lobby in the United States, the American Petroleum Institute (API), is also against such legislation, arguing it would bring unintended harm to America’s oil and gas industry and American interests in the world. So is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, while the White House expressed “concerns” about the potential implications of such a law.

Last week, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee approved the so-called No Oil Producing and Exporting Cartels Act (NOPEC).

Forms of antitrust legislation aimed at OPEC were discussed at various times under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, but they both threatened to veto such legislation.

This time, it’s unclear if the bill would be moved for discussion at the Senate, or then to President Joe Biden’s desk, and it’s unclear whether he would sign such legislation into law.

Commenting on the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s approval of the NOPEC bill, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week:

“I don’t have an official position on this legislation right now, but we do believe that this potential — the potential implications and unintended consequences of this legislation require further study and deliberation, particularly during this dynamic moment in the global energy markets brought about by President Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.”

“So, we’re taking a look at it and certainly have some concerns about what the potential implications could be,” Psaki added.

Major trade groups have already expressed opposition to the bill, arguing it could backfire on America’s oil and gas industry and U.S. interests.

The bill could have an unintended negative impact on America’s oil and gas industry, the API said in a letter seen by Reuters.

The API has opposed NOPEC legislation during previous discussions of a bill. In 2019, under President Donald Trump, the institute told the then-members of the Senate and House Judiciary Committees, “We see this legislation as creating significant detrimental exposure to U.S. diplomatic, military and business interests while having limited impact on the market concerns driving the legislation.”

“The legislation threatens serious, unintended consequences for the U.S. natural gas and oil industry,” and it “represents a political act aimed at removing a sovereign nation’s litigation immunity from certain U.S. laws and opens the opportunity for reciprocal or even additional action on the part of those impacted countries,” the API said more than two years ago.

Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce addressed the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, saying it opposes the bill known as S. 977.

“Although S. 977 is intended to be limited to restraint of trade in oil, natural gas or petroleum products, the Committee should be wary of the precedent it would create. Once sovereign immunity has been eliminated for one action of a state or its agents, it can be eliminated for all state actions and the actions of agents of the state,” the Chamber of Commerce said.

“Under reciprocal legal regimes, the United States and its agents throughout the world could be tried before foreign courts – perhaps including the military – for any activity that the foreign state wishes to make an offense,” it added.

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

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***

Senator Rand Paul has blocked a fast-track senate vote on the additional $40 billion funding package created by Joe Biden and House Democrats.  Both Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell approved a fast-track vote; however, senator Rand Paul (KY) stood defiant against their effort.

Despite the high-profile pressure from the two Senate leaders, Rand Paul refused to move and that means the Senate will have to take procedural steps to overcome his objection, which could take several days.

“My oath of office is the US constitution not to any foreign nation and no matter how sympathetic the cause, my oath of office is to the national security of the United States of America,” Paul said in his remarks before objecting to moving to swift passage of the bill. “We cannot save Ukraine by dooming the US economy.”

Watch:

The $40 billion supplemental spending bill for Ukraine is more than the total military budget of Russia.  The combined Ukraine aid packages now exceed $60 billion, more than the entire budget for the U.S. Dept of Homeland Security including border protection.

Rand Paul is on the right side of history with his position, and the overwhelming majority of Americans agree with him.   However, the opinion of the people is irrelevant to the Senate.   Even democrat Senator Chuck Schumer seemed to admit this point when he said Rand Paul’s position “was not the opinion of the overwhelming majority here,” meaning in the senate.  Schumer would have used other terms if he thought the American people agreed with him.  They don’t, and he knows it.

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The Biden Administration used the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ (FBI) counterterrorism resources to investigate conservative parents and Republican politicians, according to whistleblowers cited in a congressional letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland Wednesday. 

The letter, sent to Garland by Republican Reps. Jim Jordan and Mike Johnson, cites evidence provided to Congress by whistleblowers showing that the FBI launched dozens of investigations into parents for criticizing school COVID policies. The whistleblowers provided the evidence as part of an investigation into the application of Garland’s October memo to the FBI instructing them to treat conservative parents as “domestic terrorists.” 

BREAKING: The Biden Administration has mobilized FBI counterterrorism resources to investigate parents, including at least one member of @Moms4Liberty, for expressing protected political speech at local school board meetings.

This is a grave abuse of power. pic.twitter.com/MdK0vm51VN

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) May 12, 2022

Garland issued the memo following a letter from the National School Board Association (NSBA), which asked the Biden administration to target parents who attended school board meetings in opposition to curricula and school district COVID policies. Subsequently released emails showedthat the administration worked in tandem with the NSBA to come up with the policy that would be found in Garland’s memo. 

Whistleblowers: The FBI has labeled dozens of investigations into parents with a threat tag created by the FBI's Counterterrorism Division pic.twitter.com/STlLdrfbMz

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) May 11, 2022

An email obtained by the House Judiciary Committee in November from the Counterterrorism and Criminal Division of the FBI showed that the bureau used the tag EDUOFFICIALS to monitor threats against education officials nationwide, a tag which whistleblowers claim was used to launch investigations into parents. 

Source: @realchrisrufo/Twitter

According to the letter, “These cases include investigations into parents upset about mask mandates and state elected officials who publicly voiced opposition to vaccine mandates. These investigations into concerned parents are the direct result of, and could not have occurred but for, [the] directive to federal law enforcement to target these categories of people.” 

Examples mentioned in the letter include a mother investigated for allegedly telling a school board member “we are coming for you.” The mother was reported for belonging to the conservative group “Moms for Liberty” and for owning a gun.  

Another example cited shows that the FBI interviewed a father who opposed mask mandates because someone reported that he looked like an “insurrectionist” and “rails against the government.” It was also claimed that he owned “a lot of guns and threatens to use them.” The person that made the claim against the father later admitted that there was “no specific information or observations of … any crimes or threats.” 

A third example shows that a local Democratic Party official claimed that a Republican politician “incited violence” by opposing a school district’s jab policy. 

“You have subjected these moms and dads to the opening of an FBI investigation about them, the establishment of an FBI case file that includes their political views, and the application of a ‘threat tag’ to their names as a direct result of their exercise of their fundamental constitutional right to speak and advocate for their children,” the letter states.  

“This whistleblower information raises serious concerns that your October 4 memorandum will chill protected First Amendment activity as parents will rightfully fear that their passionate advocacy for their children could result in a visit from federal law enforcement.” 

Garland, testifying before Congress in October, said that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had not deployed antiterrorism tools against parents protesting COVID policy. “I can’t imagine any circumstance in which the Patriot Act would be used in the circumstances of parents complaining about their children,” Garland said, “nor can I imagine a circumstance where they would be labeled as domestic terrorism.”  

The DOJ did not immediately respond to LifeSite’s request for comment.

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***

The New York Times provides daily updates from the CDC on the numbers vaccinated.  While nothing that comes out of CDC’s mouth is necessarily reliable, I am presenting the official numbers below. But it is certainly possible that the numbers of the unvaccinated or partially vaccinated are even higher than presented here.

Pay close attention to the numbers.

257.6 million (of a total 334 million Americans) got at least one dose of vaccine.  That is 77% of the country.  If you remove the 0 through 4 year olds, it is 82% of those eligible by age for vaccine.  It seems like the vast majority of Americans went along with the vaccine program.

But not for long.

A surprising 15% of the initially vaccinated (and 11% of all Americans) never went back for their second shot.  That is huge.  There is no other vaccine where such a high percentage fails to complete a 2 dose series. So if you add together the 18% who refused any shot and the 11% (of all Americans) who refused to complete the initial series, you are up to 29% vaccine refusers and ex-vaxxers who did not get “fully vaccinated,” which refers to two shots, using CDC’s terminology.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Friday that about 257.6 million people had received at least one dose of a Covid-19 vaccine, including about 219.6 million people who had been fully vaccinated by the Johnson & Johnson single-dose vaccine or the two-dose series made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna.

The C.D.C. also reported that about 100.5 million fully vaccinated people have received an additional vaccine dose or a booster dose, the highest level of protection against the virus.

Why does CDC use the term “about” when it has a record of every single American who has been vaccinated?

Now let’s look at how many Americans went along with the booster dose.   Only 100.5 million Americans took that first booster, or 30% of Americans, according to the NYT.  But if you look at the NYT graph of % boosted by county, in many counties less than 15% of the population took booster #1.  Why didn’t the NYT use additional colors for counties where over 35% or over 40% were boosted?  Are there none?  If so, the total boosted in the US may be less than 30%.

But let’s go along with CDC and the NYT and use 30% or 100.5 million people as our boosted number.

How many people took the first two shots (or one if they got the J and J shot) and refused the booster?  36% of Americans (219.6 M-100.5 M/ 334 M people) took the initial series and refused the booster.  Add 36% to 18% who refused all, and add 11% who refused the second shot and now you have 65% of the country that said “No more!”

Throw in the 5.6% of Americans below age 5 who are not eligible for the vaccine (it is not emergency use authorized for them) and you find that 70% of us are not “up to date” according to the CDC.

It looks like Americans are not so dumb after all.  Despite two years of continuous propaganda, and unprecedented threats of employment and educational loss if unvaccinated, Americans are saying, “Enough.”  They have stopped queueing up at vaccine clinics, many of which are now closed.

Why would they do that?

It seems they have access to the alternative media.

They have seen people get injured or die after receiving the shots.

They have enough common sense to know it’s not right to get an injection every few months.

Information coming from the UK and other places that vaccination did not prevent deaths or hospitalizations, not to mention cases and spread, has gotten out via the bush telegraph.  People were able to distinguish the truth from fake news.

Information that vaccination with the COVID vaccines seems to impair the ability to mount a broad immune response to COVID could only be suppressed for so long.

The original Moderna clinical trial data, which should have been available to regulatory agencies at least since the Moderna package was presented for licensure, reveals that while 93% of unvaccinated controls produced the SARS-CoV-2 anti-nucleocapsid antibody after infection, only 40% of the vaccinated produced this antibody at detectable levels after infection.  They failed to mount the expected immune response. It is possible or probable that the more doses of these vaccines you receive, the less broad immunity you will develop, even after getting infected.

In any event, Americans have woken out of their slumber.  According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, only 35% of 5 through 11 year olds have received any COVID vaccine, and only 28% have received both doses.  Twenty percent of initially vaccinated 5-11 year olds were never brought back for the second shot. Doesn’t that tell you something?

According to CDC, 75% of American children have already had COVID. And it is only very rarely a severe disease for children, despite CDC’s desperate spin. So the idea of mass vaccinating little kids is unspeakably cruel.

Now the 65% of us that are awake need to save the preschoolers from these fiendish shots.  FDA has set aside several days in June for advisory committee meetings on shots for toddlers and babies, and a booster dose for the 5-11 year olds.  We muststop the carnage before the vaccines are authorized for the tiniest Americans.

We also need to save the unawakened parents from themselves, in case the vaccines do get authorized. These parents desperately need our guidance.  Won’t you help?

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Ivermectin has notable antitumor effects, which include inhibiting proliferation, metastasis and angiogenic activity in cancer cells

Ivermectin may target cancer in multiple ways, including inducing apoptosis and autophagy while also inhibiting tumor stem cells and reversing multidrug resistance

Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed that ivermectin regulates the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death

The development of an injectable form of ivermectin, or liposomal ivermectin, could help overcome some of its limitations regarding solubility, and open its use to a broader range of cancers

Considering that the “war against cancer” has been ongoing for decades, with little to show in terms of lives saved, repurposing existing drugs with favorable safety profiles and notable anticancer effects — like ivermectin — makes sense

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Ivermectin is a widely used antiparasitic drug that’s listed on the World Health Organization’s essential medicines list¹ and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. In low- and middle-income countries, ivermectin is commonly used to treat parasitic diseases including onchocerciasis (river blindness), strongyloidiasis and other diseases caused by soil-transmitted helminthiasis, or parasitic worms.²

The drug is also used to treat scabies and lice. It’s estimated that the total number of ivermectin doses distributed is equal to one-third of the world’s population and, as such, “ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans.”³

Ivermectin also has demonstrated antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties and made headlines for its potential role in treating COVID-19⁴ — although much of the positive press has been censored and falsely labeled misinformation.⁵ Now researchers are highlighting another potential use for ivermectin, which is equally as exciting as its potential role in COVID-19 — as an anticancer agent.

Ivermectin’s Powerful Antitumor Effects

Ivermectin has notable antitumor effects, which include inhibiting proliferation, metastasis and angiogenic activity in cancer cells.⁶ It appears to inhibit tumor cells by regulating multiple signaling pathways, which researchers explained in the Pharmacological Research journal, “suggests that ivermectin may be an anticancer drug with great potential.”⁷

Their graphic, below, shows the multiple ways that ivermectin may target cancer, including inducing apoptosis and autophagy while also inhibiting tumor stem cells and reversing multidrug resistance. They stated that ivermectin “exerts the optimal effect when used in combination with other chemotherapy drugs.”⁸

Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207

Many may not be aware that scientists Satoshi ōmura and William C. Campbell won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2015 for their discovery of ivermectin.⁹ The medicine is used to treat not only parasitic diseases like malaria but also shows promise for treating asthma and neurological diseases, in addition to cancer.

Along with direct cytotoxic effects, it’s believed that ivermectin regulates the tumor microenvironment, mediating immunogenic cell death — another reason for its promise as an anticancer agent.¹⁰ Research suggests the drug may be useful for the following cancers:¹¹

Ivermectin Shows Promise Against Colorectal Cancer

A study published in Frontiers in Pharmacology specifically highlighted ivermectin’s potential to fight colorectal cancer, which is the third most common cancer worldwide.¹² The drug was found to inhibit colorectal cancer cell growth in a dose-dependent manner as well as promote cell apoptosis.

Further, even at low doses of 2.5 and 5 µM, ivermectin inducted cell arrest in colorectal cancer, leading researchers to state, “[I]vermectin might be a new potential anticancer drug therapy for human colorectal cancer and other cancers.”¹³ Considering that the “war against cancer” has been ongoing for decades, with little to show in terms of lives saved, repurposing existing drugs with favorable safety profiles and notable anticancer effects — like ivermectin — makes sense.

The Pharmacological Research scientists similarly noted, “Drug repositioning is a shortcut to accelerate the development of anticancer drugs.”¹⁴ Not only has ivermectin been shown to permeate tumor tissues effectively, but it has a long history of successful use in humans. They explained that even when doses were increased, no serious adverse effects were found:¹⁵

“[T]he broad-spectrum antiparasitic drug IVM (ivermectin), which is widely used in the field of parasitic control, has many advantages that suggest that it is worth developing as a potential new anticancer drug. IVM selectively inhibits the proliferation of tumors at a dose that is not toxic to normal cells and can reverse the MDR [multidrug resistance] of tumors.

Importantly, IVM is an established drug used for the treatment of parasitic diseases such as river blindness and elephantiasis. It has been widely used in humans for many years, and its various pharmacological properties, including long- and short-term toxicological effects and drug metabolism characteristics are very clear. In healthy volunteers, the dose was increased to 2 mg/Kg, and no serious adverse reactions were found …”

Is Liposomal Delivery a Game Changer?

The development of an injectable form of ivermectin, or liposomal ivermectin, could help overcome some of its limitations regarding solubility and open its use to a broader range of cancers. The cancer immunotherapy treatment pembrolizumab, for instance, is approved to treat PD-L1-positive, triple-negative breast cancer, which accounts for only about 20% of cases.

As an immune checkpoint inhibitor, it works best in so-called “hot” tumors, which are already infiltrated by T cells. If ivermectin could be injected into the tumor, inducing T-cell infiltration into the area and inducing immunogenic cancer cell death, it’s possible that it could turn a “cold” tumor into a “hot” one, thereby making it more effectively treated.¹⁶

Biotech company Mountain Valley MD has developed a liposomal delivery system for ivermectin that they believe could dramatically widen its treatment potential. In an interview with Medical Update Online, Dennis Hancock, Mountain Valley MD president and CEO, explained:¹⁷

“So the business value proposition really simply is, we take the best-selling and best-acting drugs and expand their ability to be used on … more types of cancer on a broader spectrum. So you still need the cancer drug and what our Ivectosol does is it enables it to be used in a broader universe …

What’s really exciting about the work that Mountain Valley MD is doing is we’re enabling drugs that have already been proven in their efficacy and safety to do better and do more faster — so we’re not asking people to ‘wait five years and see’…”

Most of the research involving ivermectin for cancer to date involves oral or in-vitro administration. Mountain Valley MD is conducting preclinical trials using liposomal ivermectin for metastatic melanoma, non-small cell lung cancer, triple-negative breast cancer and possibly bladder cancers. They also have plans to produce liposomal ivermectin for use in human trials.¹⁸ In a news release, Mike Farber, director of life sciences at Mountain Valley MD, stated:¹⁹

“The extensive research supporting the drug ivermectin as effective in the inhibition of proliferation, metastasis, and angiogenic activity in a variety of cancers, and as an initiator of immunogenic cell death, is overwhelming. Imagine what is possible when you have the world’s only human injectable form of ivermectin that can be directly injected into a tumor or provided through more bio-available forms such as intravenously.

We believe this will be groundbreaking research with near-immediate application to be able to proceed directly to human trials based on the safety and efficacy of ivermectin.”

What About Ivermectin for SARS-CoV-2?

In the U.S., ivermectin has been vilified as a treatment for SARS-CoV-2, despite its impressive inhibitory effects on the virus.²⁰ Even the FDA has a dedicated webpage warning “why you should not use ivermectin to prevent COVID-19.”²¹

It’s interesting to note, however, that Africa has a lower number of cases, severity of disease, hospitalizations and deaths than other areas of the world,²² which may be due to using prophylactic medications for endemic infections — ivermectin and others, such as sweet wormwood — that have successfully treated COVID-19.

For instance, a study from Japan demonstrated that just 12 days after doctors were allowed to legally prescribe ivermectin to their COVID-19 patients, the cases dropped dramatically.²³ The chairman of the Tokyo Medical Association²⁴ noticed the low number of infections and deaths in Africa, where many use ivermectin prophylactically and as the core strategy to treat river blindness.²⁵ More than 99% of people infected with river blindness live in 31 African countries.

Aside from these observations, a study published in the March 2022 issue of the International Journal of Infectious Diseases found that treatment with ivermectin reduced mortality in COVID-19 patients — and to a greater degree than remdesivir.²⁶

Another recent investigation by Cornell University, posted on the University’s preprint server January 20, 2022, found ivermectin outperformed 10 other drugs against COVID-19, making it the most effective against the Omicron variant.²⁷ It even outperformed nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid), which was granted emergency use authorization against COVID-19 in December 2021.

Remdesivir costs between $2,340 and $3,120,²⁸ and nirmatrelvir costs $529 per treatment,²⁹ while ivermectin’s average treatment cost is $58.³⁰ Do you think this has anything to do with ivermectin’s vilification?

Dr. Pierre Kory, who is part of the group that formed the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Working Group (FLCCC) to advance early treatments for COVID-19, pleaded with the U.S. government early on in the pandemic to review the expansive data on ivermectin to prevent COVID-19, and to keep those with early symptoms from progressing and help critically ill patients recover — to no avail.^31,32

However, if you’d like to learn more about its potential uses for SARS-CoV-2, FLCCC’s I-MASK+ protocol can be downloaded in full,³³ giving you step-by-step instructions on how to prevent and treat the early symptoms of COVID-19.

FLCCC also has protocols for at-home prevention and early treatment, called I-MASS, which involves ivermectin, vitamin D3, a multivitamin and a digital thermometer to watch your body temperature in the prevention phase and ivermectin, melatonin, aspirin and antiseptic mouthwash for early at-home treatment.

Household or close contacts of COVID-19 patients may take ivermectin (18 milligrams, then repeat the dose in 48 hours) for post-exposure prevention.³⁴ Whether ivermectin’s potential as an anticancer agent will be stifled the same way it was for COVID-19 remains to be seen, but it appears to be a compound that’s worth watching as a potential powerful agent in the fight against cancer.

*

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Notes

^1, 2 WHO March 31, 2021

³ American Journal of Therapeutics: July/August 2021 – Volume 28 – Issue 4 – p e434-e460

⁴ In Vivo. Sep-Oct 2020;34(5):3023-3026. doi: 10.21873/invivo.12134

⁵ Trial Site News November 27, 2021, 3:52

^6, 7, 8 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207

^9, 20 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., Introduction

¹⁰ Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., 2.1 Breast cancer

¹¹ Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., 2. The role of IVM in different cancers

^12, 13 Front Pharmacol. 2021; 12: 717529

^14, 15 Pharmacol Res. 2021 Jan; 163: 105207., Summary

^16, 17, 18 Medical Update Online June 19, 2021

¹⁹ Mountain Valley MD May 3, 2021

²¹ U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Why You Should Not Use Ivermetin to Prevent COVID-19

²² AP News, November 19, 2021

²³ YouTube, November 23, 2021 Min 1:25

²⁴ Tokyo Web, August 13, 2021

²⁵ World Health Organization, Onchocerciasis

²⁶ International Journal of Infectious Diseases March 2022; 116(Supplement): S40

²⁷ Cornell University, January 20, 2022

²⁸ AJMC June 29, 2020

²⁹ Precision Vaccinations, November 19, 2021

³⁰ JAMA 2022;327(6):584-587

³¹ FLCCC Alliance, Ivermectin & COVID-19

³² Mountain Home May 1, 2021

³³ FLCCC Alliance, I-Mask+

³⁴ FLCCC Alliance, I-MASS

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***

At a certain point, as I was reading the book I’d recently been sent, a strange transformation began occurring: Gradually, as I moved ever deeper into it, I wasn’t so much reading as quietly singing a hymn . . . participating in a chant.

The book is A Promise to Our Children: A Field Guide to Peace, by Charles P. Busch, an online version of which was sent to me by Adam Vogal, president of the Oregon Peace Institute.

The book isn’t so much about ending war as it’s about, well, loving children. And children are massacred, again and again and again and again, as the military forces of the world fight and kill, not so much one another, but rather various random swaths of humanity — a.k.a., civilians — who simply happen to be present when the bullets are fired and the bombs go off. They’re in the way. They’re collateral damage.

Early in the book, Busch, who is director of Fields of Peace, points out that “in World War I, the ratio of combatant deaths to civilian deaths was nine to one. In World War II that ratio changed dramatically. Every one combatant death was matched by one civilian death. Today, following the Vietnam War, and now Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, the ratio has again changed dramatically: one combatant death to nine civilian deaths.”

And a terrifyingly large percentage of those civilian deaths happen to be children, which is to say: “Far more children are killed in today’s wars than combatants. War has become the killing of children.”

As Busch’s words hit home — war has become the killing of children — he’s not so much making an abstract point as bringing the news to us in whatever random moment of our lives we happen to be, sort of like parents responding to a knock on the door and learning that their son or daughter has just been killed in combat.

This is the promise the book urges us to make, indeed, to say aloud, to repeat on a daily basis: “I will not be a part of the killing of any child, no matter how lofty the reason. Not my neighbor’s child. Not my child. Not the enemy’s child. Not by bomb. Not by bullet. Not by looking the other way. I will be the power that is peace.”

What does this mean, for God’s sake? These wars aren’t my fault! As I read the book, I hurried past those words, but I couldn’t let go of them. Finally I read them aloud. I suggest you do the same. I’ll wait . . .

Somehow Busch manages to push readers a little closer to the planet’s combat zones, or perhaps what I mean to say is that he clarifies the concept of “combat zone.” If there is one, we are in it, but we can choose to live in such a way that we stand up to its wrong: that we do something, on a daily basis, to change the world. He concedes the simplicity of this idea, but notes that change often emerges from simple, seemingly naïve — usually debased and ridiculed — ideas: from Mahatma Gandhi’s Salt March in 1930 to Greta Thunbeg sitting alone on the steps of the Swedish parliament building, demanding governmental action on climate change.

The only real solutions to conflict are nonviolent ones. I believe most people on Planet Earth know this, yet human civilization is organized in lethal opposition to itself, with a global annual military budget in 2021 of more than $2 trillion, half of which is American. Think how many children we’re prepared to kill!

Indeed, all hail Herman Goering, who said during the Nuremberg Trials: “Naturally the common people don’t want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along. . . . All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked. . . . It works the same in any country.”

In contrast, let me introduce Mary Gordon, a Canadian educator who has developed a curriculum called Roots of Empathy, which Busch writes about:

“In a 4th grade classroom, a group of students sit in a circle on the floor. It is the first day of the school year. They are excited and a little nervous. They are waiting for the arrival of what the teacher said will be a ‘very special surprise.’ The door opens, and in comes a mother holding her 6-month-old infant, Evelyn.

“The mother and child join them in the circle, spreading a green blanket for the infant to sit and roll and rest on. Every three weeks throughout the school year Baby Evelyn and her mother will return, and the children will come to know Evelyn. They will observe her development, her ability to sit up and express her desires and emotions. They will learn to name her expressions — hunger, tiredness, frustration, joy, anger, contentment. And the students will learn the proper way to hold an infant, and, one by one experience Evelyn’s warmth and fragility, and her preciousness.”

This is for real! Gordon’s Roots of Empathy curriculum, which she developed in 1996, is now being used in a dozen countries, including Canada and the U.S. This is emotional — or perhaps what I would call spiritual — education, with an infant as the teacher.

“In the classroom where Baby Evelyn became the teacher, the students soon claimed her as their own. They welcomed her arrivals with singing and gifts — drawings, paper necklaces, poems, and flowers. They loved her and wished they could take her home with them.”

This differs a bit from the established school norm, where the emotional education process, which takes place primarily on the playground, is often led by bullies, who teach kids how to be either jerks or victims.

The Roots of Empathy curriculum teaches, my God, empathy: reverence for vulnerability. Who knew that could be taught? But if the development of empathy is not simply left to chance — if children start becoming aware of it, start valuing and understanding it, in their preteens — they will probably be less susceptible, as adults, to the Goering dictum, less likely to be dragged into war, less willing to dehumanize others, less willing to kill their children.

The concluding metaphor in Busch’s remarkable book — his hymn — is about the great forests of the world, which may seem to consist of thousands of individual trees, but every forest is, in fact, one entity, a single life form connected at the roots.

*

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***

Outer space isn’t what most people would think of as an ecosystem. Its barren and frigid void isn’t exactly akin to the verdant canopies of a rainforest or to the iridescent shoals that swim among coral cities. But if we are to become better stewards of the increasingly frenzied band of orbital space above our atmosphere, a shift to thinking of it as an ecosystem — as part of an interconnected system of living things interacting with their physical environment — may be just what we need.

Last month, in the journal Nature Astronomy, a collective of 11 astrophysicists and space scientists proposed we do just that, citing the proliferation of anthropogenic space objects. Thousands of satellites currently orbit the Earth, with commercial internet providers such as SpaceX’s Starlink launching new ones at a dizzying pace. Based on proposals for projects in the future, the authors note, the number could reach more than a hundred thousand within the decade. Artificial satellites, long a vital part of the space ecosystem, have arguably become an invasive species.

The band of orbital space just above our atmosphere is becoming so densely populated with satellites that it may threaten the practice of astronomy. Whereas the main source of light interference used to be the cities below, it is now increasingly the satellites above. These artificial stars can be a billion times brighter than the objects astronomers hope to study, and they emit radio waves that can interfere with telescopes. By some estimates, around one in twenty images from the Hubble Telescope are affected by the streaks of passing satellites. By 2030, the authors say, a third of Hubble’s images could be impacted.

Yet the choice by the authors of the Nature Astronomy paper to call the orbital space around Earth an ecosystem reflects the fact that it’s not just astronomers who are affected by the recent infiltration of the night sky. Rather, the cluttering of orbital space is impacting the wellbeing of creatures both above the skies and below.

To begin with, there are the handful of astronauts at any given moment who call low-Earth orbit home — and the plants, worms, and tardigrades that have been their playthings on the International Space Station. Space junk created by the rare but inevitable collisions between satellites — which can travel faster than bullet speed — is becoming a threat to that life. Last year, a 5-millimeter hole was puncturedin the International Space Station’s robotic arm by debris of unknown origin.

But clutter in low-Earth orbit also threatens ways of life for entire communities of people here on the ground. The traditions and cosmologies of many Indigenous peoples, for example, are rooted in the movements of the stars. Polynesian sailors’ feats of navigation by starlight are unparalleled. The Palikur people of the Amazon see constellations as boats driven by shamans that bring rain and seasonal fish. The recent deluge of light pollution in our night skies is more than a headache to these and other Indigenous peoples, whose cosmologies may wither if the numbers of satellites aren’t kept in check. New artificial mega constellations could mask those that have been relied on for millennia. (This issue may provide rare common ground between Indigenous peoples and professional astronomers, the latter of whom have historically been aligned with colonialism and courted controversy with the construction of new telescopes on sacred Indigenous lands.)

For many non-human animals, evidence suggests that a clear night sky might be a basic survival need. The hazy stripe of the Milky Way is used by dung beetles to navigate back to their burrows. Migratory birds, harbor seals, and some species of moths all use the movement of the stars as a compass too. Who knows how many other creatures might depend on a clear view of the night sky?

To protect the space ecosystem, we should treat it the way many aspire to treat our atmosphere and our oceans: as a global commons, a resource that lies beyond national, corporate, or individual ownership. The 1967 Outer Space Treaty took steps toward this ideal by recognizing that all nations have an equal interest in the exploration and use of outer space. Yet even that treaty establishes space as a resource humans can use for our own benefit. That’s like defining an ecosystem in terms of the natural capital it offers to humans, rather than recognizing the protection of habitats and biodiversity as an intrinsic good.

Who knows how many creatures might depend on a clear view of the night sky?

More apt would be to emphasize not the potential benefits that space provides to humans but rather the potential threats that humans pose to orbital space. In this view, overuse of the global commons by any one actor imposes a shared expense on us all. In our management of Antarctica, for example, preservation goes hand in hand with human activity on the continent. In this light, we shouldn’t see low Earth orbit as the next frontier of capitalist extraction, but rather as an ecosystem to be protected — one that, like other ecosystems, has limits and tipping points beyond which there is no return.

Some groups have started to open up conversations and build initiatives to this effect. The authors of the Nature Astronomy paper, for example, propose a “space traffic footprint” akin to a carbon footprint. And in February, the International Astronomical Union launched the Center for the Protection of the Dark and Quiet Sky from Satellite Constellation Interference. The center, which will be co-hosted by the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab and the Square Kilometer Array Observatory, aims to act as a hub of information and advocacy, bringing together stakeholders such as astronomers, ecologists, and Indigenous peoples alike. While much remains to be done, the issue is one of perspective as much as policy. It will take a shared commitment to the value of a clear night sky, and collaboration across diverse communities, to preserve orbital space for generations to come.

Unlike other ecosystems, the near-barrenness of the band of space just beyond our atmosphere is precisely what makes it unique and valuable. Preserving this transparent window grants us all access to what lies beyond.

*

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Thomas Lewton is a science journalist who writes about astrophysics and the environment.

Featured image: A pass of the Starlink 4 train of satellites on March 26, 2020. Visual: Alan Dyer/Stocktrek Images

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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.

Visit and follow us on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles.

***

Hats off to Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for her Senate May 10 testimony on the likelihood of nuclear war with Russia, even though parts of it were surreal, as we discuss below.

From an intelligence perspective, she told it like it is. Not only that; she took the quintessential nuclear-use question a step beyond what CIA Director William Burns had told the Financial Times on May 7. Burns pointed out that Russian President Vladimir Putin “doesn’t believe he can afford to lose” in Ukraine. Burns added:

“I don’t think this means Putin is deterred at this point because he staked so much on the choice that he made to launch this invasion that I think he’s convinced right now that doubling down still will enable him to make progress.”

Whether or not Burns read our brief VIPS Memo of May 1, it was, frankly, good to see that he and we were on the same page regarding the key judgment that the Ukraine conflict is a must-win for Putin.

Ms. Haines took VIPs’ warning (about an “existential threat” to Russia) a step further. Swallowing hard and, uncharacteristically, stammering a little, she answered THE big question when asked by Sen. Mark Warner (D, VA):

“We’re supporting Ukraine but also we don’t want to ultimately end up in World War III and we don’t want to end up in a situation where actors are using nuclear weapons. Our view is, as General Berrier indicated, there’s not a sort of an imminent potential for Putin to use nuclear weapons. We perceive that … as something that he is unlikely to do unless there is effectively an existential threat to his regime and to Russia from his perspective.

“We do think that that could be the case in the event he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine, and that NATO is sort of, in effect, either intervening or about to intervene in that context, which would obviously contribute to a perception that he is about to lose the war in Ukraine.

“But that there are a lot of things that he would do in the context of escalation before he would get to a nuclear weapon, and also that he would be likely to engage in some signaling beyond what he has done thus far before doing so.”

Do You Dare Follow the Logic in this Syllogism?

Major Premise: We don’t want to end up in WWIII, using nuclear weapons.

Minor Pemise: Putin may use them if he perceives that he is losing the war in Ukraine.

Conclusion: Thus the U.S. will do what it takes to make Putin “perceive” he is losing in Ukraine.

See what I mean about surreal? Oh, but not to worry; Putin will probably first signal “beyond what he has done thus far” before using nukes. Right!

Putin Need Not Be Paranoid

It did not take a tirade by Sen. Lindsey Graham, or the outspoken “Victory Over Russia in Ukraine” pledges of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate leader Chuck Schumer, or the “weakening Russia” objective advertised by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to give President Putin a complex. Nor is it some kind of surprise to him that he is atop the list of those to be removed by “regime change.” What causes wonderment is the nonchalant way that prominent US policy officials proceed willy nilly, apparently without really comprehending the dangers at hand – even when those dangers are laid out before them by top intelligence officials like Haines and Burns.

Putin, of course, is under no illusions. He is only too well aware that this is what the U.S.-arranged coup d’etat in Kyiv in 2014 (rightly labeled the “most blatant coup in history”), was all about. That coup sharpened the Kremlin’s understanding of the existential threat Russia faced. If confirmation were needed, it came – surprisingly – from the US Defense Intelligence Agency. In DIA’s Dec. 2015 “National Security Strategy Report,” DIA Director Lt. Gen. Vincent Stewart asserted:

“The Kremlin is convinced the US is laying the groundwork for regime change in Russia, a conviction further reinforced by the events in Ukraine. Moscow views the US as the critical driver behind the crisis in Ukraine and believes that the overthrow of Yanukovych is the latest move in a long-established pattern of U.S.-orchestrated regime change efforts.”

So, you don’t have to be paranoid … Paranoia or not, the likelihood that nuclear weapons might be used if Putin “perceives” he is losing in Ukraine is NOT something to be treated with such nonchalance. Reasonable policy makers would be well advised to change the Conclusion resting beneath those premises in the fateful syllogism depicted above.

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Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Featured image is licensed under Creative Commons

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

by Michel Chossudovsky

Available to order from Global Research! 

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

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

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

Reviews

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

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

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

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***

First published on Global Research in November 2003, this article by Felicity Arbuthnot reveals how journalists in Iraq were killed and threatened for revealing the truth:

thirty major news gathering outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The circumstances of the death of ITN’s Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. Journalists’ protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.

***

“He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding.”

If Tony Blair is making a list of topics to discuss with President Bush, ‘accountability’ should be well near the top. The lack of it, at US Administration level, is stunning.

“It is just not worth characterizing by numbers”, said Brigadier General Vincent Brooks, when asked how many Iraqis had died during the invasion. But from Guantanamo Bay to America’s own casualties, ‘life, liberty’ – yet alone the ‘pursuit of happiness’ has become frighteningly endangered under the neo-cons pulling George W’s strings.

At the recent World Uranium Weapons Conference in Hamburg, Dr Doug Rokke, former senior Pentagon advisor charged with the 1991 uranium clean up of Kuwait, described how injured US troops are being flown ‘in their hundreds, in the dead of night’ back to US bases ‘throughout Europe’, in order to disguise the magnitude of casualty figures. Public photographs of coffins of the dead have been proscribed and in stark contrast to the public honoring and grief of the Italian nation for their nineteen soldiers and carabinieri, killed in a suicide bombing in Nassiriyah, southern Iraq last week, the US military shuffles its fallen as quietly as possible into their final resting place.

With the death toll of US soldiers having exceeded, in just seven months, that of the first three years of Vietnam it is worth asking if even these figures are the full truth. Many of those who have joined the military in Iraq, do not hold American passports, but were, broadly, promised that they would be given them on return, for their efforts against the ‘war on terrorism’. According to Dr Rokke, should they die, their deaths are not factored in to ‘U.S.’ casualties. Further, Mazen Dana, the Award winning Reuters camera man, shot dead by US troops whilst filming outside Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib prison in August – with full permission and press accreditation from the US Authorities in Baghdad – told his brother Nazmi, a chilling tale days before he died.

“Mazen told me by phone few days before his death that he discovered a mass grave dug by U.S. troops to conceal the bodies of their fellow comrades killed in Iraqi resistance attacks,” Nazmi said.

“He also told me that he found U.S. troops covered in plastic bags in remote desert areas and he filmed them for a TV program. We are pretty sure that the American forces had killed Mazen knowingly to prevent him from airing his finding.”

“All international and local news agencies sent cables of condolences to his family, lauding his …… determination to uncover the truth wherever it was”, recorded veteran Middle East correspondent Awed Al Ragoub.

Truth is becoming increasingly difficult for journalists to record in Iraq. Last week, reported the Boston Globe, thirty major news gathering outlets wrote to the Pentagon complaining of intimidation, arrest, destruction of note books, video tape, recorders and film. The circumstances of the death of ITN’s Terry Lloyd and disappearance of his colleagues is still obscured by the US Administration as has been the US tank attack on the Palestine Hotel with deaths of three journalists. Journalists’ protection, under the Geneva Convention is absolute.

Iraq is now a vast Guantanamo Bay, with the disappeared unaccounted for, which was why Mazen Dana was filming outside Abu Ghraib. Even prisoners under Saddam, were more accounted for. The full number of both prison camps and prisoners are simply unknown. With the bombing of the Red Cross building in Baghdad and resultant pull out of staff, the last shred of accountability for the detained has been removed. The Red Cross is enshrined in the Geneva Convention as the neutral body who can interview and account for prisoners in war, held as hostage or in conflict zones. The tragedy of the Red Cross attack had a coincidental convenience for a U.S. human rights time bomb.

The Geneva Convention also has emotive words regarding environmental destruction. Viet Nam with Agent Orange, torching of villages, rapes and even the decapitation of a baby by a US soldier to steal her necklace, has been recently chillingly revisited by a stunning, painstaking two year investigation by journalists at the extraordinarily committed but relatively small town Toledo Blade newspaper.

‘Will this be another Viet Nam?’ has been a frequent haunting, relating to American body bags. Maybe. But little addressed is : environmentally, it is. Distraught reports have come out of Iraq of fauna, flora, wheat, barley, agriculture, bushes being torched by US soldiers with, like Viet Nam, music blaring and redolent of Palestine’s olive groves, Iraq’s great dates palms being mown down. Iraq has maybe six hundred different kinds of dates, is the worlds biggest producer. Nothing is wasted: sugar syrup is made, the stones are polished and made into beads, the fronds become anything from brooms to intricate, evocative bird cages. The date harvest (about now) is a vivid, beautiful celebration; towns and cities display them in markets in their vibrant colors: from sand and gold to brown and near vermillion, in great, intricately woven baskets – made of the fronds. Date palms are near sacred. Asking the way to a home, people will deliberate the location of the house and then , invariably say: “the garden has the tallest (smallest, most twisted etc) palm …”

The full horror and lack of accountability is outside the scope of an article, but was starkly outlined by an Iraqi academic – old friend, rabidly anti- Saddam – I met recently. She told me of a beloved alter-ego, the sister she never had, who had gone to find medication for one of her two children. The two kids were in the back of the car and she trawled the pharmacies for the medicine. (Hospitals are now , say Iraqi doctors, worse equipped than after the 1991 war, but under the new freedom no journalists are allowed to visit to record.) Finally, she found what she was needing. Driving back over the 14th of July Bridge (hugely emotive and named after another revolution against the British) she was shot at by US troops, the car burned out and she and her children burned to the unrecognizable. Baghdad, being a village of five million people, her husband quickly learned what had happened and ran across the town with friends and blankets, to cover and succor them in death. They were shot at, as they returned repeatedly, for three days, by the troops as wife and childrens’ remains stayed in the car, before they could be collected and interred.

“For telling you this, I await the knock at the door, any day, like all academics do who speak out in this occupation”, said my friend. Academics are being disappeared at stunning speed in Iraq. “You know” she said quietly, her eyes meeting mine: “many of us say we want Saddam and our country back.”

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Felicity Arbuthnot has written and broadcast widely on Iraq and with Denis Halliday was senior researcher for John Pilger’s Award winning documentary: ‘Paying the Price – Killing the Children of Iraq.’ She is Associate Editor of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image: US Embassy in Iraq under siege. Credit: Creative Commons

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***

May 12, 2022, the arbitrary decision by the government of the United States to exclude Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela from participation in the regional Summit of the Americas – scheduled to take place in Los Angeles, June 6th to 10th – represents another example of imperial hubris and delusion.

Mexico’s President, Andrés Manuel López Obrador recently announced that he would boycott the Summit unless all countries in the region are invited. Some member states of CARICOM and the Organization of Eastern Caribbean States, including Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and Grenadines, are also considering not attending the Summit. Gaston Browne, Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda, stated that his country “does not believe in the policy of ostracising Cuba and Venezuela.”

The Black Alliance for Peace (BAP), however, believes that even if the U.S. reverses its decision and invites all countries of the region, the aggressive, illegal, and oppressive policies of the U.S. toward the region demands that these governments take a stand and reject the invitation to attend the Summit.

The Summit of the Americas, taking place every three years, promotes “economic growth and prosperity throughout the Americas based on shared democratic values.” However, this rhetorical hypocrisy is evident with the Biden-Harris administration’s subversion in Haiti and sanctions and attacks on Nicaragua, Venezuela, and Cuba. “From support for autocracy in Haiti, the embargo against Cuba, and deaths in Venezuela as a result of U.S. sanctions, the U.S. continues to prove that it has no regard or respect for the peoples and nations of our region and should not be given the honor of hosting this summit,” states Jemima Pierre, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team.

BAP understands the motivations and interests to expand U.S. hegemony across what the U.S. sees as its “backyard” are tied to a reassertion of the racist Monroe Doctrine. Democracy and human rights are no more than ideological props as the U.S. utilizes forces like OAS, CORE Group, and SOUTHCOM to ensure the interests of its capitalist oligarchy. Our call is, “U.S. out of the Americas,” and our goal is to work towards the establishment of the region as a “Zone of Peace.”

“As long as the U.S. operates as a hegemon instead of a partner in our region, the peoples and nations of Latin America and the Caribbean must consider the U.S. an enemy to national sovereignty and People(s)-Centered Human Rights. It is, therefore, an absurdity and a surrender of dignity to allow the U.S. to not only host this summit, but to determine who can attend,” said Erica Caines, co-coordinator of BAP’s Haiti/Americas Team.

BAP is committed to a democratic and independent “Americas” free from militarism and subversion. Toward that, we believe that rejecting the divisive and disrespectful politics of the U.S. is a moral and political imperative.

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Today, we are witnessing the assassination of Palestinian-American Journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in Jenin in Palestine’s Occupied West Bank.

She was deliberately targeted and killed by an Israeli soldier.

According to the Palestinian Authority government spokesperson, “all the witnesses present at the scene of the crime ensures that it was an Israeli sniper that committed the crime in a deliberate way.”

She was reporting on behalf of Al-Jazeera.

Killing journalists is a crime against humanity, which has increasingly become routine. 

Today our thoughts are with Shireen Abu Akleh (image right) and her family.

Her Legacy and Commitment to Truth will live. 

Flash Backwards to Iraq, April 2003. Nineteen Years Ago

In the immediate wake of the Battle of Baghdad, April 9, 2003, I recall the killing of two journalists by U.S forces. Al-Jazeera’s headquarters in Baghdad was deliberately targeted.

The Pentagon sponsored media were “embedded” within the US Armed Forces. This was the basis of war propaganda. And it was tightly controlled. 

Independent journalists who had not been officially approved by the invading US Forces, namely those who were “un -embedded” were targeted and killed.  Tariq Ayoub, a correspondent for Al Jazeera was killed when two US missiles struck Al Jazeera’s Baghdad offices.

 “The Al Jazeera cameraman was killed on the roof ‘getting ready for a live broadcast amid intensifying bombardment of the city when the building was hit by two missiles.'”

“Another journalist died [Reuters Taras Protsyuk] and four others were also injured when a US tank round later hit the Palestine Hotel where at least 200 international correspondents, including Al-Jazeera reporters, are staying…”  (See Al Jazeera report, 8 April 2003)

The killings of the journalists by US forces was deliberate. This was not an accident. In fact, it was consistent with Pentagon “guidelines” regarding independent “un-embedded journalists”. 

Since the war on Iraq, killing journalists is an integral part of war propaganda, which has taken an even more dramatic turn in America’s wars and military interventions against a large number of countries including Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, Palestine, … not to mention Ukraine. 

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The text below has not been modified, updated or edited since its publication on April 11, 2003

Michel Chossudovsky, April 9, 2018, May 12, 2022

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The Battle of Baghdad, April 2003: Killing the Independent Media, Killing the “Unembedded Truth”

By Michel Chossudovsky

April 11, 2003

The tragic death of two journalists on the 8th of April bears a direct relationship to the timing of US military operations in Baghdad. The killings were an integral part of the Pentagon’s war plans.  They marked a turning point in the disinformation campaign.

On the 8th of April,  Al Jazeera and Reuters were deliberately targeted.  This was not an accident.  In fact, it was consistent with Pentagon “guidelines” regarding the independent “unembedded journalists”, who had been reporting since the beginning of the war under the “protection”  of the Iraqi Ministry of Information.

A week prior to the war, the Pentagon had intimated that it would target the transmission of information by independent  journalists, from their satellite mobile phones.  (Of course, that does not mean that  they would actually kill the journalists.) According to veteran BBC correspondent Kate Adie, in an interview with Irish TV, the Pentagon had:

 “threatened to fire on the satellite uplink positions of independent journalists. Uplinks is where you have your own satellite telephone method of distributing information, the telephones and the television signals. According to the Pentagon official they would be ‘targeted down… Who cares.. ..They’ve been warned'” (See transcript of interview with Katie Adie, Pentagon Threatens to Kill Independent Reporters in Iraq)

The underlying objective was to unseat the “unembedded media” and disrupt factual and objective reporting from the war theatre. The killing of the journalists was also a warning to media organizations from Asia and the Middle East, which were covering the war from Baghdad, without due accreditation of the US military.

With the entry of US troops into Baghdad, the independent journalists, who were  operating under the protection of the Iraqi Ministry of Information, were brought under the direct control of the US military. In turn, the approved USCENTCOM  “embedded journalists”, attached to various US and British divisions, were now reporting directly from Baghdad, overshadowing and silencing many of their independent “nonembedded” colleagues, who had been operating out of the Palestine Hotel.

This shift in jurisdiction over the independent journalists in Baghdad took place on the 8th of April, with the breakdown of the Ministry of Information and the killing of two independent journalists by US forces.

“A Reuters reporter, photographer, television cameraman and television technician were taken to hospital after the blast. The extent of their injuries was not immediately clear.” (Reuters, 8 April 2003)

According to the Pentagon, “American soldiers who killed two foreign journalists in a Baghdad hotel had ‘exercised their inherent right to self-defence’. (quoted in the Advertiser, 10 April 2003).

The Pentagon’s objective was clear: foreclose independent reporting of the ongoing battle of Baghdad. How to achieve this objective:

-intimidate the un-embedded journalists and oblige them to seek approval and/or accreditation with the US military,

-exert direct censorship on the flow of information out of Baghdad.

Targeting “Unembedded” Humanitarian Organizations

Coincidence? On the same day, April 8th, a convoy of seven vehicles of the Red Cross (ICRC), involved in re-supplyng the city’s hospitals .was “caught in cross fire”. Thirteen people were killed including the ICRC delegate in Baghdad (who is a Canadian). The vehicles “were clearly marked with large red crosses visible from a distance.” (Health Newswire Consumer, 10 April 2003). The press reports suggest that the convoy had been deliberately targeted. The Red Cross was the last independent international aid agency operating in Baghdad. It suspended its operations that same day, April 8th.

The attack on the Red Cross, which had been working closely with Iraqi health officials and hospital staff, was also an important turning point. It laid the groundwork for bringing in the Pentagon’s approved (“embedded”) humanitarian organizations and aid agencies.

Saddam’s Statue: A Media Staged Event

The following day, 9th of April, broadcast live by network TV, the whole world had its eyes riveted on the collapse of Saddam’s 40 foot statue, portraying   “a jubilant crowd.”

A couple of hundred people at most, mainly by-standers gathered in Al-Fardus Square, while the statue was brought down by US Marines in a carefully staged media event.  An Aerial photograph of the event suggests that the square had been  “sealed off and guarded by tanks” (NYC Indymedia) . The Marines had draped an American flag over Saddam’s statue and forcefully pulled it down with a tug from a tank recovery vehicle. A hundred or so people, at most,  were shown on TV screens, rejoicing. (The Video is available online at Reuters. Photographs of the event are also available)

The “liberation footage” was replayed obsessively by network TV. “Iconic images” of the toppled statue were plastered on the front page of major newspapers. In chorus, the Western media portrayed this staged event as “historic”, as a spontaneous mass movement of “thousands” of “happy Iraqis”, celebrating the “Liberation of Iraq” by American troops.

Reuters first released the story on the 9th, following the Live TV newscast. The report said that  “dozens” of people were celebrating the collapse of the statue. Hours later, this story had already been changed. The AFP report also acknowledged that “dozens” of people were rejoicing:

“Tanks had rumbled by late afternoon into the central Al-Fardus (Paradise) Square, where dozens of Iraqis quickly set about the massive bronze statue of the Iraqi president, a symbol of his 24-year iron-fisted rule…. Dozens of Iraqis jumped on the fallen figure shouting with joy and venting their anger by breaking it into pieces.” (AFP, 9 April 2003)

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s mouthpiece, the London Daily Express, casually inflated the “dozens” to “thousands”:

“In historic scenes reminiscent of the fall of the Berlin Wall, thousands of civilians cheered as young men mounted the statue and tied a makeshift noose around Saddam’s neck.” (Daily Express, 10 April 2003)

Baghdad was not rejoicing. Since the outset of the war, several thousand civilians had been murdered and maimed by US and British troops. US occupation forces invoking the pretext of self-defense continue to shoot indiscriminately at civilians, as evidenced by several press reports. (See for instance ABC TV broadcast, 10 April 2003). Baghdad has a population of 5.6 million and most people, fearing for the lives, decided to stay home. With the entry of US troops, a reign of terror prevails in Baghdad.

Media Spin

The bringing down of the statue of Saddam played a crucial role in the Pentagon’s propaganda campaign. Relayed by Fox News and CNN,  it was immediately heralded by TV channels and news media around the World as marking an end to the war. While fighting was still ongoing, with heavy casualties on both sides, the Western media had decided in chorus: “It’s in the end game now,”

In turn, the toppling of Saddam’s statue had become a symbol of Iraq’s “Liberation” by US forces, overshadowing everything else, including the atrocities committed by US and British forces.

Since the entry of US troops into Baghdad, civilian casualties are no longer front-page news. The slaughter of women and children and the crisis in the hospitals, is no  longer an issue. The impending humanitarian crisis, reported by the relief agencies and the UN is no longer mentioned. Civilian deaths are view as “the price to pay” to “liberate Iraq”:

 “the number of Iraqi civilians accidentally killed has been far, far less than the number that would have been killed by Saddam Hussein’s evil regime in the normal scheme of things” (Daily Telegraph, Sydney, 8 April 2003)

. “I’m sure there will be more casualties, but it is one of the prices we have to pay” (Washington Post, 10 April 2003)

“‘one day’ the mothers of children killed or maimed by British cluster bombs will thank Britain for their use (British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon quoted in the Independent, 5 April 2003)

In turn, because “the war is nearly over”, detailed and accurate reporting from the war theatre is no longer deemed necessary.

Meanwhile, financial markets rejoice. Investors on Wall Street “applauded images of a statue of Saddam…[which] sent sent stocks surging…” (UPI, 9 April 2003).

This “liberation euphoria” also serves to disarm the critics and create divisions within the anti-war movement. A segment of the anti-war movement now views as “positive” the demise of the Iraqi regime, thereby tacitly signifying their approval of the US military intervention in support  of “regime change”.

“Peace”, “reconstruction”, “democracy” and “the post-Saddam era” are the buzz words.  The main justification for waging the war (i.e. Iraq’s alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction) is no longer deemed relevant. The fact that the invasion was a criminal act in blatant violation of the UN charter and the Nuremberg charter on war crimes is no longer an issue. (For further details see Charter of the Nuremberg Tribunal and in the Judgment of the Tribunal. Adopted by the International Law Commission of the United Nations, 1950 ).

The Pentagon’s propaganda apparatus had taken over. The targeted killing of journalists in Baghdad marked a crucial turning point. Independent reporting out of Baghdad has been seriously impaired.

News media from Arab countries including Al Jazeera, which had been threatened for their “non-Western news perspective”, were towing the line. Since the attack on its office in Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s news reports seem to have taken on a different tone.

Virtually the entire news chain has become “embedded”.

The War is not over

How best to disarm the anti-war movement and silence the critics: Convey the illusion that the war is over.

But the war is not over.

Heavy fighting is ongoing. The evidence suggests that a significant part of the Iraqi arsenal and troops is still intact. (For further details see the report of Richard Bennett published on April 5, 2003) .  Thousands of Iraqi troops and armed civilians including volunteers from neighboring countries are confronting the invaders.

The Pentagon has acknowledged that it only controls part of the city.

The Battle of Baghdad is not over.  The struggle against US occupation has commenced.

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***

Important article by Forbes. Selected excerpts.

Our thanks to Forbes for bringing this article to our attention.

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We know the pandemic has had a serious negative impact on the academic achievement of school-age children. But recent evidence shows we also need to worry about Covid-era babies and toddlers.

Because of Covid-related disruptions, about a third of early elementary students will likely need intensive support to become proficient readers, according to one study. Now two additional studies suggest that many children born during the pandemic will also be at risk for academic failure. It seems that overburdened parents haven’t been able to engage babies and toddlers in the kind of “conversation” that is crucial for language development—and eventually, for reading.

…

Independently, another study from Brown University’s Advanced Baby Imaging Lab found similar results. The lab has been tracking over 1700 families with young children since 2010. One year into the pandemic, researchers found that children’s average cognitive performance was the lowest it had been since the study began. A separate analysis of infants found a dramatic decline in verbal functioning in 2021, apparently because adults were initiating fewer conversational turns.

The reasons for the decline in vocalizations and conversational turns aren’t entirely clear from the data, but the Brown study concluded that factors related to the pandemic had “by far the greatest impact on infant and toddler neurodevelopment.”

…

While it’s true that schools and teachers have been stretched thin as a result of the pandemic, it would be nothing less than a tragedy if their added burdens were used as a reason to stick with an approach to reading instruction that has been failing students for far too long. Especially in light of this new evidence that the negative impact of Covid is likely to be with us for years to come, we have no time to waste in adopting materials and methods that can work for all students, including the most vulnerable.

Click here to read the full article.

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Natalie Wexler is the author of The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America’s Broken Education System—and How to Fix It (Avery, 2019). She is also the co-author, with Judith C. Hochman, of The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing in All Subjects and Grades” (Jossey-Bass, 2017). Substack: https://nataliewexler.substack.com/

Featured image is from Pixabay

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Amid the retreat of Russian forces in the Kharkiv region, the Armed Forces of Ukraine continue to expand their control zone in the Kharkiv region.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine are aiming at reaching the borders of the Russian Federation.

The Ukrainian Army advanced along the right bank of the Seversky Donets River and took control of the area north of the Pecheneg reservoir. The further Ukrainian advance towards the town of Volchansk located on the Russian border is expected. At the same time, clashes were reported in the villages of Liptsy and Rubezhnoye in the Kharkiv region.

The Ukrainian Armed Forces managed to advance towards the villages of Cossack Lopan and Tsupovka, where a small Russian grouping continues to hold the defense.

One of the main threats to the Russian forces was posed by the AFU attack in the area to the northwest of the town of Izyum. The main blow of the AFU counteroffensive targeted the villages of Ivanovka and Rudnevo on the eastern bank of the Seversky Donets River. Ukrainian troops continue their attempts to cross the river and take control of the settlements.

According to local reports, the AFU managed to transfer some forces across the Seversky Donets River and attack Russian positions.

If the AFU counterattack is successful, it will pose a dangerous threat to the Russian grouping in Izyum. This region is the main springboard for the Russian attack on the city of Slavyansk from the north.

Despite the attempts of the AFU counteroffensive, Russian troops continued to expand the control zone in the Izyum area.

Russian-led forces took control of the village of Velika Kamyshevakha after prolonged fighting to the west of Izyum. The Russian offensive against the AFU grouping in Barvenkovo continues.

In the Luhansk People’s Republic, the encirclement of the AFU group in the cities of Severodonetsk and Lisichansk continues. There are battles for the village of Belogorovka. The positions of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Lisichansk are constantly shelled by Russian artillery, special forces are deployed on the city outskirts.

In the area of Rubezhnoe, Chechen soldiers of the unit of the Akhmat special forces and the People’s Militia of the LPR blocked the remnants of Ukrainian units at the Zarya plant. According to the military assistant to the head of Chechnya the area from the left flank of the Zarya plant to Kudryashovka located on the north-eastern outskirts of the town was secured.

To the east of Popasnaya, units of the Allied forces took control of Nizhny village and adjacent heights, there are battles for the town of Toshkovka located on the road leading to Lisichanck.

In the Donetsk People’s Republic, the People’s Militia forces are storming Avdiivka, Opytne and Peski. Taking control of settlements in the Donetsk region will stop the shelling of residential quarters of the city by Ukrainian artillery.

On May 10, the Naval Forces of Ukraine blocked the passage in the Dnieper Estuary, placing barges between Ochakov and Pervomaisky Island. Russian missiles have already attacked the area. The missile strike hit at least one of the barges south of Ochakov.

On May 9, the AFU made another attempt to counterattack a grouping of Russian forces on the island of Zmeiny. Attack was a failed “PR campaign” by the Kiev regime to seize the island on the eve of the Great Patriotic War Victory Day.

The attack ended with the complete defeat of the airborne forces of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

On May 10, the Russian Defense Ministry claimed that the Kiev regime lost 30 military UAVs in this area over the past three days, including 9 Bayraktar-TB2s. 27 bodies of Ukrainian special forces and nationalist fighters remain at Zmeiniy Island as a result of Kiev’s failed operation. According to the Russian Ministry of Defence, the operation resulted in the deaths of more than five dozen Ukrainian fighters and members of elite AFU units, the loss of 4 aircraft, 10 helicopters, 3 boats and 30 unmanned aerial vehicles.

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So far, all of the drugs developed against COVID-19 have been disastrous in one way or another. Remdesivir, which to this day is the primary COVID drug approved for use in U.S. hospitals, routinely causes severe organ damage and, often, death

Despite that, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved remdesivir for in-hospital and outpatient use in children as young as 1 month old

Another COVID drug, Paxlovid, will in some cases cause the infection to rebound when the medication is withdrawn

Molnupiravir (sold under the brand name Lagevrio) also has serious safety concerns. Not only might it contribute to cancer and birth defects, it may also supercharge the rate at which the virus mutates inside the patient, resulting in newer and more resistant variants

The fact that U.S. health authorities have focused on these drugs to the exclusion of all others, including older drugs with high rates of effectiveness and superior safety profiles, sends a very disturbing message. They’ve basically become extensions of the drug industry, protecting the drug industry’s interests at the cost of public health

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So far, all of the drugs developed against COVID-19 have been disastrous in one way or another. Remdesivir, for example, which to this day is the primary COVID drug approved for use in U.S. hospitals,¹ routinely causes severe organ damage^2,3,4,5 and, often, death.

Despite its horrible track record, the U.S. government actually pays hospitals a 20% upcharge for sticking to the remdesivir protocol, plus an additional bonus.^6,7,8 Hospitals must also use remdesivir if they want liability protection.

Incentives like these have turned U.S. hospitals into veritable death traps, as more effective and far safer drugs are not allowed, and hospitals are essentially forced to follow the recommendations of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. As reported by Forbes science reporter JV Chamary back in January 2021, in an article titled, “The Strange Story of Remdesivir, a COVID Drug That Doesn’t Work”:⁹

“Remdesivir is an experimental drug developed by biotech company Gilead Sciences (under the brand name Veklury) in collaboration with the US Centers for Disease Control and Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases …

The drug proved ineffective against the Ebola virus … yet was still subsequently repurposed for SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. News media prematurely reported that patients were responding to treatment.

But the published data¹⁰ later showed that ‘remdesivir was not associated with statistically significant clinical benefits [and] the numerical reduction in time to clinical improvement in those treated earlier requires confirmation in larger studies’ …

Nonetheless, in October 2020, remdesivir was granted approval by FDA based on promising data from relatively small trials with about 1,000 participants. A large-scale analysis¹¹ by the World Health Organization’s Solidarity trial consortium has cleared-up the confusion.

Based on interim results from studying more than 5,000 participants, the international study concluded that remdesivir ‘had little or no effect on hospitalized patients with COVID-19, as indicated by overall mortality, initiation of ventilation, and duration of hospital stay.’ As a consequence of being mostly ineffective, WHO recommends against the use of remdesivir in COVID-19 patients.”

Shockingly, US Approves Remdesivir for Babies

Curiously, while Big Tech — aided and abetted by the U.S. government — has spent the last two years censoring and banning any information that doesn’t jibe with the opinions of the WHO, the U.S. government has completely ignored the WHO’s recommendation against remdesivir.

In fact, in late April 2022, the FDA approved remdesivir as the first and only COVID-19 treatment for children under 12, including babies as young as 28 days,¹² which seems beyond Orwellian and crazy considering it’s the worst of both worlds: It’s ineffective AND has serious side effects.

What’s worse, the drug is also approved for outpatient use in children, which is a first. In an April 30, 2022, blog post,¹³ Dr. Meryl Nass expressed her concerns about the FDA’s approval of remdesivir for outpatient use in babies, stating:

“Remdesivir received an early EUA (May 1, 2020) and then a very early license (October 22, 2020) despite a paucity of evidence that it actually was helpful in the hospital setting. A variety of problems can arise secondary its use, including liver inflammation, renal insufficiency and renal failure¹⁴ …

WHO recommended against the drug on November 20, 2020. Few if any other countries used it for COVID apart from the US. A large European trial¹⁵ in adults found no benefit. The investigators felt 3 deaths were due to remdesivir (0.7% of subjects who received it.) However, on April 22, 2022 the WHO recommended the drug for a new use: early outpatient therapy in patients at high risk of a poor COVID outcome.”

Remdesivir — A Reckless Choice for Children

Nass goes on to recount how monoclonal antibody treatment centers have been turned into outpatient treatment centers using remdesivir instead, but we still don’t have a lot of data on its effectiveness in early treatment. She continues:¹⁶

“The FDA just licensed Remdesivir for children as young as one month old. Both hospitalized children and outpatients may receive it. The drug might work in outpatients, but the vast majority of children have a very low risk of dying from COVID.

If 7 deaths per 1,000 result from the drug, as the European investigators thought in the study of adults cited above, it is possible it will harm or kill more children than it saves.

Shouldn’t the FDA have waited longer to see what early outpatient treatment did for older ages? Or studied a much larger group of children? Very little has been published on children and remdesivir …

When we look at the press release¹⁷ issued by Gilead, we learn the approval was based on an open label, single arm trial in 53 children, 3 of whom died (6% of these children died); 72% had an adverse event, and 21% had a serious adverse event.”

Overall, remdesivir appears to be an exceptionally risky treatment choice for young children. Certainly, there are safer early treatment protocols that are very effective. Two other COVID drugs, Paxlovid and Molnupiravir, also have serious safety concerns.

Post-Paxlovid COVID Rebound

As reported by Bloomberg,¹⁸ COVID patients treated with a five-day course of Paxlovid sometimes experience severe rebound when the medication is withdrawn.¹⁹ U.S. government researchers are now planning to study the rate and extent to which the drug is causing SARS-CoV-2 infection to rebound, and whether a longer regimen might prevent it.

Bloomberg describes the post-Paxlovid rebound of David Ho, a virologist at the Aaron Diamond AIDS Research Center at Columbia University:²⁰

“Ho said he came down with COVID on April 6 … His doctor prescribed Paxlovid, and within days of taking it, his symptoms dissipated and tests turned negative. But 10 days after first getting sick, the symptoms returned and his tests turned positive for another two days.

Ho said he sequenced his own virus and found that both infections were from the same strain, confirming that the virus had not mutated and become resistant to Paxlovid. A second family member who also got sick around the same time also had post-Paxlovid rebound in symptoms and virus, Ho says.

‘It surprised the heck out of me,’ he said. ‘Up until that point I had not heard of such cases elsewhere.’ While the reasons for the rebound are still unclear, Ho theorizes that it may occur when a small proportion of virus-infected cells may remain viable and resume pumping out viral progeny once treatment stops.”

Clinical Director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Dr. Paul Sax, told Bloomberg:²¹

“Providers who are going to be prescribing this should be aware that this phenomenon occurs, and if people have symptoms worsening after Paxlovid, it’s probably still COVID. The big problem is that when this drug was released, this information wasn’t included [on the label].”

Pfizer Defends Paxlovid

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has stated it is “evaluating the reports of viral load rebound after completing Paxlovid treatment and will share recommendations if appropriate.” The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has not yet commented on the findings.

Pfizer, meanwhile, insists the increase in viral load post-treatment “is unlikely to be related to Paxlovid” because viral rebound was found in “a small number” of both the treatment and placebo groups in Pfizer’s final-stage study.²² Clifford Lane, deputy director for clinical research at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told Bloomberg²³ that some people may simply “need longer dosing of Pfizer’s drug than the standard five days.”

“There’s two things that suppress the virus: the drug and the host immune response,” he said. “If you stop the drug before the host immune response has had a chance to kick in, you may see the virus come back.”

Molnupiravir Supercharges Viral Mutation

Molnupiravir (sold under the brand name Lagevrio) also has serious safety concerns. This drug was developed by Merck and Ridgeback Therapeutics and approved for emergency use by the FDA December 23, 2021, for high-risk patients with mild to moderate COVID symptoms.

However, not only might it contribute to cancer and birth defects, it may also supercharge the rate at which the virus mutates inside the patient, resulting in newer and more resistant variants.²⁴ As reported in November 2021 by Forbes contributor and former professor at Harvard Medical School, William Haseltine, Ph.D.:²⁵

“… I believe the FDA needs to tread very carefully with molnupiravir, the antiviral currently before them for approval. My misgivings are founded on two key concerns.

The first is the drug’s potential mutagenicity, and the possibility that its use could lead to birth defects or cancerous tumors. The second is a danger that is far greater and potentially far deadlier: the drug’s potential to supercharge SARS-CoV-2 mutations and unleash a more virulent variant upon the world …

My concern with molnupiravir is because of the mechanism²⁶ by which this particular drug works. Molnupiravir works as an antiviral by tricking the virus into using the drug for replication, then inserting errors into the virus’ genetic code once replication is underway. When enough copying errors occur, the virus is essentially killed off, unable to replicate any further …

But my biggest concern with this drug is … molnupiravir’s ability to introduce mutations to the virus itself that are significant enough to change how the virus functions, but not so powerful as to stop it from replicating and becoming the next dominant variant.”

Haseltine cites prepandemic experiments showing MERS-CoV and the mouse hepatitis virus (MHV) both developed resistance against the drug, thanks to mutations that occurred. While the central idea behind the drug is that the genetic errors will eventually kill the virus, these experiments showed the viruses were in fact able to survive and replicate to high titers despite having large numbers of mutations throughout their genomes.

The drug did slow down replication, but as noted by Haseltine, “outside of the lab, as the drug is given to millions of people with active infections, this disadvantage may quickly disappear as we would likely provide a prime selection environment to improve the fitness of the virus.” This risk may be particularly high if you fail to take all the prescribed doses (typically 800 milligrams twice a day for five days).

Experts Question Usefulness of Molnupiravir

More recently, in a January 10, 2022, article, Newsweek cited concerns by professor Michael Lin of Stanford University:²⁷

“’I am very concerned about the potential consequences now that molnupiravir has been approved … It would only be a matter of time, perhaps a very short time, before a lucky set of mutations occurs to create a variant that is more transmissible or immunoevasive …

The drug simply speeds up that natural process. The hope is that over enough days all the viral copies will have so many mutations that none of the copies can function.’ But Lin said he was concerned that in the real world, there is a possibility that a mutated virus could jump from a patient taking molnupiravir to another individual, citing the relatively modest efficacy of the drug.

‘For cases that get worse so that people have to go to the hospital, this drug only prevents that from happening 30%of the time. That means 70% of the time the virus isn’t being eliminated quickly enough to make a difference. And we know COVID patients going to hospitals are highly contagious.’

Lin said the risks could be heightened when a patient does not comply exactly with the dosing schedule of the drug … ‘In any of those situations viruses will have picked up some mutations but not enough to kill all the virus copies,’ he said. ‘The survivors are now mutated, perhaps have picked up immunoevasion, and can go on to infect others’ …

According to Lin, the ‘very low efficacy alone’ should have disqualified the drug from approval … ‘Even if the drug were great we wouldn’t take such a risk, but this drug is worse than any other drug that’s sought approval for COVID-19. It’s completely not worth it.’”

Haseltine also told Newsweek²⁸ that, “Of all the antiviral drugs I have ever seen, this is by far the most potentially dangerous,” and “The more people that take it, the more dangerous it will be.”

One of the FDA panel members who actually voted against the approval of molnupiravir, James Hildreth, president of Meharry Medical College in Tennessee, wanted Merck to do a better job of quantifying the risk of mutations before approval. During the panel meeting, he noted that:²⁹

“Even if the probability is very low, 1 in 10,000 or 100,000, that this drug would induce an escape mutant which the vaccines we have do not cover, that would be catastrophic for the whole world.”

Government Has Sold Out to Big Pharma

Widespread use of a drug that turbocharges mutation of an already rapidly mutating virus probably isn’t the wisest strategy. Likewise, using drugs that cause high rates of organ failure, like remdesivir, and drugs that causes the virus to rebound with a vengeance, like Paxlovid, don’t seem to be in the best interest of public health either.

The fact that U.S. health authorities have focused on these drugs to the exclusion of all others, including older drugs with high rates of effectiveness and superior safety profiles, sends a very disturbing message.

They’ve basically become extensions of the drug industry and have abandoned their original purpose, which is to protect public health — by ensuring the safety and efficacy of drugs, in the case of the FDA,³⁰ and by conducting critical science and data analysis in the case of the CDC.³¹

Instead, they seem to be doing everything they can to protect Big Pharma profits, even if it costs you your life. Remdesivir, for example, is an extremely expensive drug, costing between $2,340 and $3,120 depending on your insurance.³²

Ivermectin, meanwhile — which has been very effective against COVID and shown to outperform at least 10 other drugs, including Paxlovid³³ — costs between $48³⁴ and $94³⁵ for 20 pills depending on your location. The average cost is said to be about $58 per treatment.³⁶

Paxlovid costs $529 per five-day course of treatment,³⁷ and molnupiravir is around $700.³⁸ While not quite as expensive as remdesivir, both are still nearly 10 times costlier than ivermectin, which is more effective. Paxlovid alone has cost U.S. taxpayers $5.29 billion. Just imagine the billions we could have saved had we saner leadership.

Since the FDA and CDC cannot be trusted, it’s imperative to take responsibility for your own health. Do your own research and follow your own conscience and conviction. Remember, when it comes to COVID-19, early treatment is crucial, and effective protocols are readily available — just not from the FDA, CDC or even most hospitals.

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***

The attorneys general of 20 states have threatened legal action against the US government unless they disband the newly formed Disinformation Governance Board.

We shared with you recently an article about the people behind the DGB, who have a history of trying to curb dissenting speech by calling it “disinformation.” We here at the OP have been the targets of censorship before and would not be surprised to see more of the same. (Here’s how we’re meeting the possibility of further oppression head-on.)

It turns out that we’re not the only ones concerned about this.

What’s being done?

In a letter addressed to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, the Attorney General of Virginia, Jason Miyares, spoke for the AGs of 19 other states and shared his concerns about the overreach.

The letter was acquired by ReclaimtheNet.org.

As the chief legal officers of our respective States, we, the undersigned Attorneys General, are tasked not just with enforcing the laws but with protecting the constitutional rights of all our citizens. Today we write you to insist that you immediately cease taking action that appears designed exclusively for the purpose of suppressing the exercise of constitutional rights.

Every American knows that the Constitution forbids the government to “abridg[e] the freedom of speech.” US Const. Amend. I. As Justice Robert Jackson wrote nearly eighty years ago, “[i]f there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion.” West Virginia State Bd. of Educ. v. Barnette, 319 US 624, 642 (1943).

Your recent testimony before the US House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, however, indicated that the Department of Homeland Security, under your leadership, is doing exactly that: prescribing orthodoxy by slapping a federal-government label of “disinformation” or “misinformation” on speech that government bureaucrats, operating behind closed doors, decree to be improper. This is an unacceptable and downright alarming encroachment on every citizen’s right to express his or her opinions, engage in political debate, and disagree with the government. The Biden Administration’s latest effort to decide what speech is “acceptable” and “orthodox” combines McCarthyite speech policing with the secrecy of the English Star Chamber.

In short, you seem to have misunderstood George Orwell: the “Ministry of Truth” described in 1984 was intended as a warning against the dangers of socialism, not as a model government agency. “MiniTru” and its thuggish apparatchiks are the villains in that story, not the heroes. For the sake of our democracy, you must immediately disband the “Disinformation Governance Board” and cease all efforts to police Americans’ protected speech. The existence of the Disinformation Governance Board will inevitably have a chilling effect on free speech. Americans will hesitate before they voice their constitutionally protected opinions, knowing that the government’s censors may be watching, and some will decide it is safer to keep their opinions to themselves.

The resulting damage to our political system and our culture will be incalculable: as a democracy, our political debates and decisions are supposed to take place in the public square, where every citizen can participate, rather than in government office buildings where hand-picked and unaccountable partisan committees are insulated from public supervision and criticism.

Read the rest of the letter here. [Screenshot below, Global Research edit] 

The letter goes on to question the timing of the new Ministry of Truth (just as Elon Musk completes the purchase of Twitter with the stated goal of restoring free speech on the platform). It also calls into question the dubious qualifications of head honcho, Nina Jancowiz, who AG Miyares describes as “often in error but never in doubt.”

(Want to learn how to starve the beast? Check out our free QUICKSTART Guide.)

How will the AGs enforce this?

In a firmly worded promise, Miyares concludes:

Unless you turn back now and disband this Orwellian Disinformation Governance Board immediately, the undersigned will have no choice but to consider judicial remedies to protect the rights of their citizens.

We sincerely hope this puts a halt to the censorship efforts of the Biden administration.

Who signed the letter?

The letter was signed by the attorneys general of 20 states. We hope that other states follow in their footsteps to protect this vital constitutional right. (Contact your state’s AG and let them know you support them or want them to get on board, too!)

The following AGs signed the letter.

1. Jason S. Miyares, Virginia (the author of the letter)
2. Steve Marshall, Alabama
3. Mark Brnovich, Arizona
4. Leslie Rutledge, Arkansas
5. Ashley Moody, Florida
6. Christopher M. Carr, Georgia
7. Todd Rokita, Indiana
8. Derek Schmidt, Kansas
9. Daniel Cameron, Kentucky
10. Jeff Landry, Louisiana
11. Lynn Fitch, Mississippi
12. Eric Schmitt, Missouri
13. Austin Knudson, Montana
14. Douglas J. Peterson, Nebraska
15. David Yost, Ohio
16. John M. O’Connor, Oklahoma
17. Alan Wilson, South Carolina
18. Ken Paxton, Texas
19. Sean D. Reyes, Utah
20. Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia

What do you think?

What do you think about the letter? Do you feel it will gain traction with the DHS and the current administration? Do you think more states will get on board? How can we support our AGs who are standing up for our constitutional rights?

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Daisy Luther is a coffee-swigging, adventure-seeking, globe-trotting blogger. She is the founder and publisher of three websites.  1) The Organic Prepper, which is about current events, preparedness, self-reliance, and the pursuit of liberty; 2)  The Frugalite, a website with thrifty tips and solutions to help people get a handle on their personal finances without feeling deprived; and 3) PreppersDailyNews.com, an aggregate site where you can find links to all the most important news for those who wish to be prepared. Her work is widely republished across alternative media and she has appeared in many interviews.

Featured image is from The Organic Prepper

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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First published on March 25, 2021, Updated on May 12, 2022.

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“The only means to fight the plague is honesty.” (Albert Camus, 1947)

Overview

1. Lethality: The overall infection fatality rate (IFR) of the novel coronavirus in the general population (excluding nursing homes) is about 0.1% to 0.5% in most countries, which is most closely comparable to the medium influenza pandemics of 1936, 1957 and 1968.
2. Age profile: The median age of covid deaths is over 80 years in most Western countries (78 in the United States) and about 5% of the deceased had no medical preconditions. In many Western countries, about 50% of all covid deaths occurred in nursing homes.
3. Vaccine protection: Covid vaccines provide a very high, but rapidly declining protection against severe disease. Vaccination cannot prevent infection and transmission. A prior infection generally confers superior immunity compared to vaccination (in part due to mucosal immunity).
4. Vaccine injuries: Covid vaccinations can cause severe and fatal vaccine reactions, including cardiovascular, neurological and immunological reactions. Because of this, the risk-benefit ratio of covid vaccination in healthy children and adults under 40 years of age remains controversial.
5. Excess mortality: In most countries, the pandemic increased mortality by about 5% to 25%. Some of the additional deaths were caused not by covid, but by indirect effects of the pandemic and lockdowns (including an increase in drug overdose deaths).
6. Symptoms: About 30% of all infected persons show no symptoms. Overall, about 95% of all people develop at most mild or moderate symptoms and do not require hospitalization. Obesity, in particular, is a major risk factor for severe covid.
7. Treatment: For people at high risk or high exposure, early or prophylactic treatment is essential to prevent progression of the disease. Numerous studies found that early outpatient treatment of covid can significantly reduce hospitalizations and deaths.
8. Long covid: Up to 10% of symptomatic people experience post-acute or long covid, i.e. covid-related symptoms that last several weeks or months. Long covid may also affect young and previously healthy people whose initial course of disease was rather mild.
9. Transmission: Indoor aerosols appear to be the main route of transmission of the coronavirus, while outdoor aerosols, droplets, as well as most object surfaces appear to play a minor role.
10. Masks: Face masks had no influence on infection rates, which was already known from studies prior to the pandemic. Even N95 masks had no influence on infection rates in the general population. Moreover, long-term or improper use of face masks can lead to health issues.
11. Lockdowns: In contrast to early border controls (e.g. by Australia), lockdowns had no significant effect on infection rates. However, according to the World Bank lockdowns caused an “historically unprecedented increase in global poverty” of close to 100 million people.
12. Children and schools: In contrast to influenza, the risk of severe covid in children is rather low. Moreover, children were not drivers of the pandemic and the closure of schools had no impact on infection rates in the general population.
13. PCR tests: The highly sensitive PCR tests are prone to producing false positive or false negative results (e.g. after an acute infection). Overall, PCR and antigen mass testing had no impact on infection rates in the general population (exception: to sustain border controls).
14. Contact tracing: Manual contact tracing and contact tracing apps on mobile phones had no effect on infection rates. Already in 2019, a WHO study on influenza pandemics concluded that contact tracing is “not recommended in any circumstances”.
15. Vaccine passports: Vaccine passports had no impact on infection rates as vaccination cannot prevent infection. Vaccine passports could, however, serve as a basis for the introduction of digital biometric identity and payment systems. NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden warned as early as March 2020 that surveillance could be expanded during the pandemic.
16. Virus mutations: Similar to influenza viruses, mutations occur frequently in coronaviruses. The omicron variant, which may have emerged from vaccine research, showed significantly higher infectiousness and immune escape, but 90% lower lethality.
17. Sweden: In Sweden, covid mortality without lockdown was comparable to a strong influenza season and somewhat below the EU average. About 50% of Swedish deaths occurred in nursing homes and the median age of Swedish covid deaths was about 84 years.
18. Influenza viruses: Influenza viruses largely disappeared during the coronavirus pandemic. Yet this was not a result of “covid measures”, but a result of temporary displacement by the novel coronavirus, even in countries without measures (such as Sweden).
19. Media: The reporting of many media was rather unprofessional, increased fear and panic in the population and led to a hundredfold overestimation of the lethality of the coronavirus. Some media even used manipulative pictures and videos to dramatize the situation.
20. Virus origin: Genetic evidence points to a laboratory origin of the new coronavirus. Both the Virological Institute in Wuhan (WIV) as well as some US laboratories that cooperated with the WIV performed various kinds of research on similar coronaviruses.

Overview Diagrams

Excess mortality by February 2022 (S)

Covid vs. flu pandemics (S)

Covid mortality in Sweden, the EU, and the US (S)

Sweden: Mortality since 1835 (S)

UK: Mortality since 1842, age-adjusted (S)

US: Monthly age-adjusted mortality (S)

US: Yearly age-adjusted mortality (S)

Germany: Monthly mortality s. 1950 (S)

Percentage of care home deaths (S)

US recessions in comparison (S)

North Dakota vs. South Dakota (S)

Lockdowns in Australia (S)

PCR tests: Sensitivity vs. Infectiousness (S)

Infections in Israel (S)

Post-vaccination deaths, USA, 1990-2021 (S)

Digital Identity (S)

Latest updates

Basics

1. Covid vaccines
2. Face masks
3. Covid treatment
4. Coronavirus origins
5. “Vaccine passports”

General

• The Propaganda Pandemic (February 2022)
• The Return of the Flu (November 2021)
• The WEF and the Pandemic (October 2021)
• Global Covid Mortality (September 2021)
• Obesity and the pandemic (June 2021)
• The failure of PCR mass testing (June 2021)
• Pre-symptomatic transmission (June 2021)
• Covid versus the flu, revisited (March 2021)
• Why Covid is a “strange pandemic” (Sept. 2020)

Vaccines

• Vaccine victims? Recent high-profile cases (April 2022)
• Covid Vaccines: The Next Vioxx? (February 2022)
• Covid Vaccines: A Reality Check (December 2021)
• Covid vaccine adverse events (December 2021)
• Israel: Highest infection rate in the world (Sept. 2021)
• Israel: Why is all-cause mortality increasing? (April 2021)
• Videos: Vaccines: Successes and Controversies (Dec. 2020)

Early Treatment

• The Ivermectin Debate (July 2021)
• Molnupiravir: Caution (October 2021)
• Severe covid: An autoimmune attack? (July 2021)
• Is budesonide effective against covid? (April 2021)
• Remdesivir: An Epidemic Failure (October 2020)

Face masks

• The Mask Folly in Retrospect (August 2021)
• Danish Mask Study: No Benefit (November 2020)
• WHO Mask Study Seriously Flawed (September 2020)

Other topics

• Coronavirus doesn’t exist? (April 2022)
• How the CDC fooled the world (January 2022)
• Open letter by Prof. Ehud Qimron (Jan. 2022)
• Judgment day: Sweden vindicated (Dec. 2021)
• Meanwhile in Australia (June 2021)
• The Censorship Pandemic (May 2021)
• On the “people collapsing in Wuhan” (April 2021)
• Lockdowns: Fewer Suicides in 2020? (April 2021)

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***

Always looking, and sounding, a touch unhinged, the beetroot-coloured Barnaby Joyce, leader of the Australian Nationals and, for a time now, deputy prime minister, has made a splash.  With the federal elections being held on May 18, he does not have much time to commit mischief and befuddle the political vultures.  But the National Press Club gave him a chance to make some trouble, a task accomplished with some success.

At stages during his address, it seemed that trouble had followed Joyce.  There was sniffing and sniffling.  Then a nosebleed, brief intermission and tissues.  The Twitterati thought this ominous; political commentators searched for omens about previous pre-election mishaps.  “I know you are going to get 1001 photos of me with a Kleenex up my nose, congratulations,” he chirped, on being handed a fresh tissue.

Of more interest, and some bafflement, was the speech itself, a filling of meaty prejudices and concerns about China, a fairly dismissive take on climate change, and a warning about the threat posed by a number of independent candidates that are knocking at the door of traditional conservative seats.

As far as Beijing is concerned, Joyce presents the classic Australian paradox: a pathological suspicion of the Yellow Horde and its strategic interests, but a delight at the voracious appetite they show for Australian commodities.  In recent years, Australia’s skewed and distorted pattern of wealth has developed on the back of that particular interest.  The same can also be said about the China student market and witless Australian universities lazily disposed to easy cash.

The role played by China in aiding Australian wealth did feature, if only to enable Joyce to speculate wildly as to who would replace it as top customer in the importing of iron ore exports.  This proved particularly pertinent on the issue of how Australian commodities were essentially going into Chinese war-making capabilities.

In his answer, Joyce recalled “talking to one of the large miners” and saying that “we have a big new customer.”  That customer: Germany.  “Germany is a big new customer.  And I imagine Germany is using the iron ore for a whole range of things and of course, one the other Germany is redoing, rearming.”  When “rearming” and “Germany” are used, however disjointedly, in a sentence, ghosts of wars past stir nervously.

Not, it would seem, now.  A Teutonic replacement would be welcome in the face of Beijing’s regional ambitions.  Chinese military expansion, Joyce stated unequivocally, was “without a shadow of a doubt” the most important issue facing Australians.

Inventively, and with a flourish, he took the view that China’s conduct in seeking security ties with countries such as the Solomon Islands was simple: the encirclement of Australia.  “It is quite obvious through their desire to have military bases that they are starting a process of encircling Australia and that there is a wish, at the very least, to intimidate, or worse, to supplicate Australia.”

Joyce has never quite had the mind or sense to understand the historical basis of China’s own concern of encirclement, a psychic disturbance very much aided by the United States and the recent AUKUS security pact.  The same can be said about his understanding of independent candidates, whom he rubbishes as being incapable of understanding national security.

Such novel, absurd and dangerous interpretations on the wishes of a power can become, at a moment’s notice, the bricks and mortar for conflict.  “The thing that China will respect is strength.  That’s why I say we have to become as strong as possible as quickly as possible.  And respecting strength means you have to be strong across all facets of what you do.”

Giving the impression of being far-eyed and sagacious, Barnaby spoke of his role in preventing previous efforts by Chinese entities to acquire Australian assets and muscle in on domestic matters.  “I refer to my successful endeavours to stop a Chinese state-owned enterprise takeover of Rio Tinto, our largest iron ore exporter, back as far as 2009.”  He then boasted of his support for “changes in foreign investment laws which the Labor Party opposed.”

When asked about the touchy issue of climate change and disagreement within his own party and his Liberal coalition partners, he was unperturbed.  Metropolitan, ecology-minded types, despite being threatened by the so-called “teal independents”, would not have their way on the issue of preventing coal projects.  “Because what we are doing is … we have got to make sure our nation earns as much money as possible.  We can’t do that if we shut down coal exports.”  What vision, what clarity.

What about the issue of the Coalition’s “safeguard mechanism” in responding to climate change?  In a sense, this looks suspiciously like a version of the demonised carbon tax, an idea considered pestilential in pro-fossil fuel circles.  The mechanism requires polluting companies to purchase carbon credits or, in lieu of that, reduce emissions.  “It’s like the ceiling on this,” the cryptic Barnaby intoned.  “It’s out of the way but it stops you going through the roof.  They [Labor] are going to bring the ceiling down to about head level for tall people.  And about 215 [companies] are going to start belting their heads on the fans and the lights and being fatally attacked based on that.”

In all the hyperbolic, and at points inscrutable venting, Joyce struggled with the correct pronunciation of Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese, the man vying to be the next Prime Minister.  Several attempts were made, none quite hitting the mark.  Labor will be hoping that such misfiring will translate into electoral returns.  Given Joyce’s previous successes, this will prove a tall order, notably in regional Australia.

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

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April 25 marked the 77^th anniversary of the “Oath of the Elbe,” when U.S. and Russian soldiers embraced in a historic meeting on the Elbe River in Torgau, Germany, to mark the final end of the Third Reich and pledge mutual understanding, empathy and peaceful relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union

Despite today’s hysterical hostility towards Russia—fomented by U.S. corporate interests, implemented by opportunistic politicians, and enflamed by a complicit mass media—the Russian and American people have a long tradition of friendship and mutual support.

A Suppressed History

Long forgotten is a history of U.S.-Russian cooperation that goes back to the era of Catherine the Great who supported the American revolution.

Believing that the American colonists were right, Catherine refused a request by King George for 20,000 Russian troops to help crush the revolution. King George subsequently tried to bribe Catherine by offering an island of Menorca in the Mediterranean Sea in exchange for convincing France to exit the war and thus forcing the American rebels to fight alone. Again, however, the offer was turned down.

During the Crimean War in the 1850s, when Russia was invaded by Britain, France and Turkey, President Franklin Pierce sent arms and munitions, as well as engineers and doctors, to assist the Russians.

Russia returned the favor during the American Civil War (1861-1865), when Abraham Lincoln called for Russian help because Great Britain and France began supporting the Southern Confederacy in an attempt to destabilize and weaken the United States.

Cartoon depicting Abraham Lincoln and Russian Czar Alexander II shaking hands as fighting rages all around them. [Source: usrussiarelations.org]

The Russians sent the Imperial Navy’s flagship, Alexander Nevsky, along with four other vessels into New York harbor four days after the Union defeat at the Battle of Chickamauga as a warning for the British and French to back off—which they did.^[1]

Russian Imperial Navy’s flagship, Alexander Nevsky, sailing into New York harbor as depicted in Harper’s Weekly. [Source: boweryboyshistory.com]

Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles wrote in his diary afterwards: “God Bless the Russians,” while future Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., a Union army lieutenant, wrote a song about “the nation who was our friend when the world was our foe.”^[2]

In Lincoln and the Russians (1952), historian Albert A. Woldman wrote:

“New York City, gaily bedecked with American and Russian flags, bubbled over with sumptuous hospitality for the Muscovite naval officers wearing gold laced chapeaux [who] were cheered as they were being driven up Broadway. The city’s merchants and businessmen gave a banquet in their honor at the Astor House and there was a Grand Ball for the officers at the Academy of Music [which] according to the editor of Harper’s Weekly was undoubtedly the greatest ball every given in this country, with excepting the ball to the Prince of Wales.”^[3]

Great Russian Ball at the Academy of Music, November 5, 1863. The tables were decorated with the likenesses of Washington and Peter the Great, of Lincoln and Czar Alexander. Harper’s Weekly referred to the Russians as “Slavic heroes,” and described the Ball as a “very wonderful and indescribable phantasmagoria of humanity.” [Source: opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com]

Harper’s Weekly specified that the feting of the Russian sailors had “a political significance….Every [U.S.] citizen felt bound to do what in him lay to testify to the Russians our sense of gratitude for the friendly manner in which Russia has stood by us in our present struggle, while the Western powers have done not a little to work our ruin.”^[4]

How quickly we forget!

Lincoln was generally a visionary who understood the benefits of close diplomatic relations with the Russians. The great man of letters, Leo Tolstoy, praised Lincoln as “a man of whom a nation has the right to be proud; a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity whose name will live thousands of years in the legends of future generations.”^[5]

Tolstoy would have had similar high regard for Franklin D. Roosevelt and his Vice President Henry A. Wallace (1941-1945), who would almost certainly have embraced and implemented the Elbe spirit. But any such possibility was sabotaged when Wallace was ousted from the vice-presidency at the 1944 Democratic Party convention in Chicago in a coup and replaced with Harry S. Truman, who betrayed Roosevelt’s legacy as president by starting the Cold War.

Of course, none of the above ignores the reality that the Russian-U.S. relationship has not always been ‘wine and roses.’

Toward the end of WW I, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson joined with Britain, France and Japan to launch a military invasion of Russia that included 8,500 American soldiers. It was originally intended to block the German war effort, but after the 1917 Russian Revolution, the Allied forces stayed on until 1920 in a futile attempt to overthrow Russia’s Bolshevik government.

U.S. soldiers in Siberia in 1918 in an ill-fated invasion designed to overthrow the Bolsehvik revolution. [Source: military.com]

And after World War II, U.S. government propaganda cynically transformed Russia into a threatening demon to justify the transformation of America into a permanent military economy for the enrichment of the military-industrial complex.

Nevertheless, it would be a good idea if the lost history of U.S.-Russian cooperation were to be remembered at this dark historical moment, since the fate of the world may depend on it.

Joseph Polowsky and the Elbe River Spirit

A person with his own private reason for remembering this history of Russian cooperation was a Chicago taxi driver named Joseph Polowsky.

Every year on April 25, prior to his death from cancer in 1983, Polowsky would stand on the Michigan Avenue bridge and pass out leaflets calling for a halt to the spread of nuclear weapons and Cold War.

When approached by passersby, he would tell them about the historic meeting between American and Russian soldiers at the end of World War II, along the Elbe River in Central Europe.

Polowsky didn’t just know the details of the meeting, which marked a crucial step toward the end of the war, he had taken part in it.

Today, Polowsky’s son, Joseph Wolff, is carrying on the tradition and spirit of the Elbe River meeting.

On the seventy seventh anniversary of the linkup, Wolff, called for a renewal of the Elbe River oath at a commemorative Zoom event.

The event was sponsored by the Eurasian Peoples’ Assembly and Edward Lozansky, president of the American University in Moscow (now Moscow International University), who has long promoted U.S.-Russian friendship.

Wolff reminded the audience that the meeting between U.S. and Soviet troops on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, marked the end of the Third Reich.

The troops made a pledge for mutual understanding, empathy and peaceful relations between the U.S. and Soviet Union which, Wolff said, his father worked for for the rest of his life.

Today, with U.S.-Russian relations at a breaking point, Wolff said that the time to renew the Elbe oath is now.

“The threat of World War III is real and the stakes are too high,” he said. “With the conflict in Ukraine, the threat from the pandemic and climate change, the world needs the U.S. and Russia to work on the same team.”

“All of us are part of one race, the human race. We need to set our grievances aside and have our two great nations work together for the human race to flourish for hundreds of years into the future.”

Despite the strenuous efforts by Biden and his surrounding coterie of war hawks and imperialist profiteers to paint Russia as a fearful enemy seeking world conquest, perhaps the spirit of Polowsky and the Elbe River oath might yet prevail if people mobilize in support of it.

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

Notes

1. See Albert A. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians (Cleveland: World Publishing Company, 1952), 135. The Battle of Chickamauga took place in September 1863. 

2. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 136, 248. The Russian czar had his own interests for sending the ships, including seeking American support as the Russian army crushed a Polish insurrection. 
3. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 137. 
4. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 140. 

5. Woldman, Lincoln and the Russians, 251. 

Featured image: U.S. and Soviet troops embrace on the Elbe River on April 25, 1945, to celebrate their defeat of Naziism. [Source: history.com]